By K.S. Wang
Quick Stats: Loni Love comic/host The Real
Daily Driver: 2019 Lexus NX 300h (Loni’s rating: 9 on a scale of 1 to 10)
Favorite road trip: Los Angeles to Las Vegas
Car she learned to drive in: 1970s Chevy Impala
First car bought: 1993 Geo Spectrum
Comic and co-host of The Real, Loni Love is a long way from her 18-hour days at the General Motors factory, where she started working as soon as she finished high school.
“I have more respect for cars because back then when I was working at the General Motors plant, it was an assembly plant. This is before robotics; I used to have to build car doors. They called it ‘the tram,’” Love says of her job. “I can’t remember the car, it used to have carpeting, and you would have to put the trim in the door. It was a carpet, and you’d put the [...]
There’s no arguing SUVs are hot right now. They may have ample cargo space, but they usually can’t match lower-riding vehicles when it comes handling. Fortunately, there are many sedans on the market that are both practical and ideal canyon carvers. Keep reading for 11 sporty sedans that we enjoy driving. All of the sporty 4-door cars on our list start under $40,000.
Kia Stinger
It may be a Kia, but this sporty 4-door car has the right formula to make European luxury carmakers uneasy. The Stinger benefits from strong acceleration and nimble handling even with the base 2.0-liter turbo-four with 255 hp, not to mention the GT’s potent twin-turbo V-6 with 365 hp. For the performance you get, you can’t beat its starting price of $33,985.
Genesis G70
Hyundai’s Genesis luxury brand has already made its mark after coming into [...]
This summer, our long-term Hyundai Kona has finally had a few opportunities to stretch its legs. Several short trips have kept the odometer steadily climbing, with one trip in particular offering an opportunity to examine how useful the Kona’s cargo space is. In that context, though, it was with a solo driver over a single day. To truly test its mettle in this regard, we and the Kona needed an extended excursion away from home. With that in mind, my wife and I left the Los Angeles miasma behind for a week in one of the most remote parts of Colorado. This 2,000-mile round trip provided us a few opportunities to truly test the Kona in the wild.
Before we even left the driveway, I’d already learned a lot. The Kona is very much not a large vehicle, and I wasn’t sure how well it would carry a week’s worth of camping gear and supplies. [...]
The all-new mid-engine C8 Corvette still has a 6.2-liter naturally aspirated pushrod V-8 heart, but with everything else that’s been changed, does it still sound like a Corvette? We pulled out the expensive cameras and microphones so you can decide for yourself.
The C8 Corvette’s LT2 engine might look a lot like the C7 Corvette’s LT1, but there are a lot of changes you can learn about in our detailed look at the new car. Even still, a Chevy pushrod V-8 ought to sound like a Chevy pushrod V-8, but it’s not that simple. Getting the sound right, especially inside the car, was a big challenge for Corvette engineers.
There were challenges to making it sound right for onlookers, too. The exhaust piping in the C8 is significantly different from any previous Corvette as a result of the new engine location. The exhaust tubing is shorter in overall length and has to make different curves [...]
We’re big fans of the tin-top Ferrari 812 Superfast, which blew us away in our First Test (and with 789 horsepower from a naturally-aspirated V-12 that revs to 8,900 rpm, how could it not?). So when we got news of a convertible version called the Ferrari 812 GTS, to say we were thrilled would be an understatement. Actually, it was a bit more like the delicatessen scene from When Harry Met Sally.
The drop-top 812 is significant in another way: The 812 GTS is the first series-production Ferrari convertible with a front-mounted V-12 since the 365 GTS/4 Daytona, which debuted precisely 50 years ago at the 1969 Frankfurt Auto Show. Does anyone know what Don Johnson is up to these days? (Yes, we know, there have been four special, super limited edition front-engine V-12 spider models since, so hold your nastygrams). When it goes on sale, it will also be the most powerful convertible in [...]
