Take a pick among General Motors’ line-up of auto brands when it comes to overall popularity and chances are you’d take a while before picking Buick among them. It’s not the most popular brand by any stretch of the imagination, but thanks to a rejuvenation, Buick is looking like it’s going to be a major player in the mid-size luxury sedan with the 2012 Buick LaCrosse.
Taking the reins from the previous LaCrosse model, the 2012 model looks to take the company to the next level with an all new eAssist system that Buick is proclaiming to improve fuel economy by 25 percent. What’s most impressive about the new LaCrosse is that despite the state-of-the-art system that’s been given to the vehicle, Buick is not giving it an added impetus – separate cost from the vehicle – but rather, is putting the eAssist system as a standard feature in all 2012 models of the LaCrosse.
That, in itself, says a lot about Buick and it’s latest mid-size luxury sedan.
Continued after the jump.
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H&R Special Springs is no stranger to providing premium quality suspension components to a number of car models from different auto brands. To put it succinctly Quite simply, it’s what they do, and they’re pretty good at it too.
This time around, the tuning specialists went to work on a car that’s lauded for being a favorite in the auto world for having the best of both worlds: high quality performance without the wallet-burning price tag.
This, dear boys, is the Volkswagen Jetta.
Regarded as a car that comes with a blend of sophisticated styling and unparalleled German engineering, the 2011 Volkswagen Jetta was the perfect vehicle to use as a platform for H&R to showcase their unique abilities in demonstrating how a car as inherently capable as the Jetta can be tuned and styled into something that can turn it into a car worthy of recognition.
Details after the jump.
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The midsize sedan game is one of the most competitive areas in the automotive industry. There are so many players and not much room on the all-star team and as of now, the only Hyundai that has ever made its way onto this exclusive team is the wonderfully styled Sonata, a vehicle that has become the benchmark in terms of sedan styling.
The newest redesign from Hyundai comes in the form of the new Elantra. It might not be a sports car, but this machine is in no way boring. It looks brilliant, packs a decent motor, and can offer best in class fuel economy. Hyundai’s goal with this new vehicle is to continue to dominating the sedan game and with two strong players, they just might.
The new Elantra was just unveiled to the public and we have prepared a little preview of what you can expect in the new sedan.
UPDATE 12/19/10: It’s configurator time again! That’s right, boys and girls; Hyundai has just released a new configurator for the 2011 Elantra, which means that you can once again put your ’Configurator Caps’ back on and treat yourself to a fancy car and trim building exercise. Who knows, you just might end up liking your work too much you end up buying the car in the end.
Hit the jump to read on.
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The Volkswagen Jetta has clearly been an afterthought since the first day it went on sale. Basically, it was just a Volkswagen Golf with a trunk and a bigger backseat. Yet, it’s been one of the company’s biggest sellers in the United States for thirty years. That being said, it doesn’t come close to the sales of the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla, but it was never going to now was it.
The people who buy these Japanese economy cars aren’t like the rest of us. They care more about price than they do European driving ability and build quality. They want interior room to haul their many kids, something which the Germans never thought of when they were in the design room. But this was the old Jetta, and times have changed with their latest creation. The sixth-generation Volkswagen Jetta, like it or not, has grown fatter, gotten cheaper, and now caters to Americans like never before.
The new price of the Jetta comes in at $15,995 for the base S trim, right around the price of the Civic and the Corolla. It would seem like that good old "German quality" will be lost at this new price point, but we’ll just have to drive it to find out.
Hit the jump to keep reading.
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The baby Mercedes-Benz has only been around in its updated form for a new few years and it’s had quite a hard life during this time. It’s been praised, it’s been loathed, but most of all, it’s been playing second fiddle to the BMW 3-Series and that just won’t fly over at Stuttgart.
To try and close the gap, Mercedes is reworking the C-Class for 2011 and according to AutoBild, the photos you see here are the first official shots of the new sedan. Whether that’s true for not, we had to jump on it. We can immediately tell that some the exterior bits have been reworked with some S-Class and CLS elements, but the exterior was never the problem now was it.
The reason that the Merc always fell behind the BMW was down to its overall driving experience. The BMW was the king of precision driving and now the C-Class needs to catch up.
Has it done it?
UPDATED 12/22/10: We’ve updated the photo gallery of the new Mercedes C-Class with some photos of the car in both sedan and estate form. It took them a while to release it, but hey, at least they’re finally out. Check out the gallery and let us know what you think.
Hit the jump to find out.
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