<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Eight cars. Seven states. Thirty-six hundred miles. A journey across the automotive landscape in search of answers to life&amp;#039;s most pressing questions, like: Will Porsche kill the greatest sports-car debut in decades? Can Toyota get some Texas respect? How well will the new Cadillac compete against the German big boys? And so many crossovers -- what the hell?  --&amp;amp;gt; --&amp;amp;gt; --&amp;amp;gt; --&amp;amp;gt; --&amp;amp;gt; --&amp;amp;gt; --&amp;amp;gt; --&amp;amp;gt;The next generation of hybrids are being built for many reasons. But saving the environment isn&amp;#039;t one of them.  San Antonio to Dallas: Texas Sushi The Toyota Tundra is the biggest, most badass truck a Japanese carmaker has ever built. But that doesn&amp;#039;t mean Pappy is going to buy it. The U.S. truck market is not just imbued by a sense of patriotism, it&amp;#039;s a cutthroat battlefield ruled by brand loyalty. Chevy people buy stickers depicting Calvin pissing on Ford. Ford people buy stickers depicting Calvin pissing on Chevy. And Japanese-truck drivers buy stickers... well, no, they don&amp;#039;t. Because there aren&amp;#039;t any Japanese-truck drivers, at least none willing to show their faces at the ranch.  The biggest problem for Japanese automakers is that they design sensible trucks that deliver exactly what people need instead of what they want -- which is total overkill. So what&amp;#039;s Toyota to do if it wants to be taken seriously in the U.S. market? Go apeshit, of course. How did it do? Let&amp;#039;s consider the anti-Japanese-truck arguments as they relate to the new Tundra I&amp;#039;m driving from San Antonio to Dallas. Argument 1: Japanese trucks take bread out of American workers&amp;#039; mouths. As I approach my black Tundra SR5 4x4 four-door in the San Antonio airport parking lot, the first thing that catches my eye is a sticker on the back window: TOYOTA TUNDRA: BORN IN TEXAS, BUILT BY TEXANS. Indeed, the Tundra is built in a brand-new factory in San Antonio. Argument 2: Japanese trucks are wet napkins. Nissan thought it&amp;#039;d beat that rap when it dropped a 305 horsepower V-8 in the Titan, but when you&amp;#039;re up against Dodge Hemis and small-block Chevys, 305 horsepower is what you&amp;#039;d call a good starting point. The Tundra&amp;#039;s top engine is a 381 horsepower 5.7-liter V-8 hooked to a six-speed automatic transmission. That whups every truck save the GMC Sierra Denali, which pushes 403 horsepower. It also ensures that when I deactivate the traction-control system and mat the throttle, the Tundra lays down twin black stripes like a dragster in the burnout box. It&amp;#039;s silly power -- overkill power. Toyota&amp;#039;s catching on. Argument 3: Japanese trucks aren&amp;#039;t big or brash enough. Nothing about the Tundra&amp;#039;s size or styling makes you think of Hello Kitty. I park it in a row of domestic pickups and it blends in. If it doesn&amp;#039;t look small or apologetic in a Texas parking lot, my guess is that the Tundra will hold its own everywhere else.  But will hordes of truck owners trade in their pickups en masse? I don&amp;#039;t think so. At least not yet. Among other reasons, at $22,290, the basic Tundra costs about $2,000 more than the F-150, a difference significant enough that Toyota issued a $2,000 discount to its own dealerships in hopes that they would stop buying American trucks to ferry around parts. What the Tundra will do is extend Toyota&amp;#039;s stake in a market that measures its loyalty in generations, not model years, planting the seed for the day when you buy a Tundra because that&amp;#039;s what Pappy drives.  Dallas to Phoenix: Waiting for Evo  Unless Mitsubishi moves some Outlanders, the Evo may disappear. And Mitsubishi, too. It&amp;#039;s not often that a carmaker&amp;#039;s fortunes hinge on a single vehicle, but that&amp;#039;s where Mitsubishi Motors North America finds itself with the Outlander. A few years back, Mitsubishi got loosey-goosey with its financing arm. You know the stereotypical used-car ad: &amp;quot;Come on down to Crazy Eddie&amp;#039;s! We&amp;#039;re giving cars away!&amp;quot; Well, Mitsubishi went completely Crazy Eddie -- zero money down, zero percent financing, and zero payments for a year. Come on down!  This ended badly. As of September 2002, 62 percent of Mitsubishi&amp;#039;s loans were &amp;quot;special credit instruments,&amp;quot; which ballooned into a $673 million loss. It&amp;#039;s been struggling ever since. Why should we care? After all, the car market conforms to Darwinian law. And I don&amp;#039;t hear a lot of wailing over Isuzu&amp;#039;s agonized retreat from our shores. But here&amp;#039;s one reason: the Evo. It&amp;#039;s a $30,000 turbocharged BMW eater that makes even the most ham-fisted driver feel like a World Rally Championship hero. The world just won&amp;#039;t be as interesting a place without the Evo in the U.S. market. Which brings us back to our humble savior, the Outlander, a $29,000 crossover that Mitsubishi prays will help it mind the financial gap and kill time while it prepares the rollout of a whole new line of cars based on the Evo&amp;#039;s platform.  I have plenty of time to get to know the Outlander during my one-thousand-mile drive from Dallas to Phoenix. And here&amp;#039;s the good news: With eighteen-inch wheels, relatively low-profile tires, and a performance-minded all-wheel-drive system, this crossover has strands of Evo in its DNA. Too bad I&amp;#039;m pointed straight across the plains of Texas, where the only steering input will be for swerving around tumbleweeds and illegals. What I need is outright power, and in that department the Outlander is just okay. Its 3-liter 220 horsepower V-6 gets the job done, but by mile four hundred I&amp;#039;ve had plenty of time to wonder why Mitsubishi didn&amp;#039;t slap its ballsy 3.8-liter V-6 under the hood. It probably comes down to money. So what&amp;#039;s the verdict? Is the Outlander strong enough to help Mitsubishi hold on? After a thousand miles, I&amp;#039;d say probably yes. It strikes me as a nice little ride with a lot of equipment for the money. Which means there&amp;#039;s hope yet for the Evo. Hope against all hope.  Phoenix to San Diego: Cheap Seats  Twenty years ago, $15,000 didn&amp;#039;t buy you much more than a trash can on wheels. Today it buys amazing options, like the Suzuki SX4. In 1982, my parents bought a Subaru GL Wagon, a little four-cylinder four-wheel drive that is conceptually similar to the Suzuki SX4 that I&amp;#039;m driving from Phoenix to San Diego. That Subie cost about $8,000, which, adjusted for inflation, works out to more than $17,000 in today&amp;#039;s dollars. The GL had manual windows and door locks, no air-conditioning, no air bags, no antilock brakes, and something like 85 horsepower under the hood. That&amp;#039;s what you got for your inflation-adjusted $17,000 a quarter century ago. Here&amp;#039;s what you can get for $15,000 today: four-wheel drive; an eminently respectable 143 horsepower motor; air-conditioning; power windows, locks, and mirrors; keyless entry; front- and rear-curtain air bags; sixteen-inch alloy wheels; and antilock brakes. You get a seven-year, hundred-thousand-mile power-train warranty. And the deal sealer: You get a three-mode all-wheel-drive system that can be locked into off-road-style four-wheel drive or switched into two-wheel drive via a console-mounted switch.  After yesterday&amp;#039;s highway-only slog, I jump off the interstate near the Arizona-California border and I take Route 78 through farm country. The whoops are so severe that the gullies are pocked with scrapes from bottomed-out undercarriages. But the SX4 is a willing partner. At the sand dunes in Glamis, I toggle the AWD switch to &amp;quot;lock,&amp;quot; take a left off the road, and drive straight into the sand. Keeping the revs up in first gear, the SX4 has no problem blasting over washboard terrain and climbing moderate dunes. It&amp;#039;s awesome fun, and I&amp;#039;m mildly amazed that I can drive straight off the street and do this with a $15,000 Suzuki. A $15,000 Suzuki car. But here&amp;#039;s the amazing thing: The SX4 may be the best cheap-ass car you can buy, but it&amp;#039;s far from the only option. You&amp;#039;ve got Hyundai and Kia hawking the Elantra and Spectra, each of them with 138 horsepower, six air bags, and a hundred-thousand-mile warranty. Even the lowliest Chevy Cobalt gives you 148 horsepower and a level of refinement that makes you forget the rolling crapfest that was the Cavalier. Then there&amp;#039;s Scion, with its Japanese-funky styling underpinned by Toyota hardware. These days, $15,000 buys you choices. Good choices. So here&amp;#039;s an ad slogan that Suzuki can feel free to crib: &amp;quot;The SX4: priced like a shitbox, but actually not a shitbox!&amp;quot;  San Diego to Los Angeles: The Second Coming  There was a time when driving a Cadillac was like admitting you couldn&amp;#039;t afford a BMW. Not anymore. Cadillac has a lot going for it these days. Gone are the not-so-distant days of front-wheel-drive STS&amp;#039;s trying to take on BMW and Mercedes and losing badly. But the glaring flaw of the modern Cadillac has been the interiors. A few years ago, I was driving a $50,000 STS that sported interior plastics of such odious, glaring cheapness that at least one non-car-buff passenger pointed at the center console and remarked, &amp;quot;Wow, that looks like crap.&amp;quot; The SRX (above) is the first Cadillac that embraces a new philosophy set to spread throughout the lineup. It&amp;#039;s part of GM&amp;#039;s new focus on the experience of driving. Instead of saving a few dollars on the interior at the expense of Cadillac&amp;#039;s reputation, it&amp;#039;s invested money where customers are going to see and feel it every day. The dashboard vinyl is fitted by hand and stitched in such a way that the seams lie flat. The passenger-air-bag compartment is perforated on the back side rather than the front, so the right side of the dash is a seamless, clean expanse. The wood is of a rich new variety called Sapele pommele, which is also fun to say. (Try it!) And the center console -- the previous iteration of which attempted to mirror the edgy exterior styling with a mash up of bizarre shapes -- is more organic.  There was never anything fundamentally wrong with the SRX, and even my relatively short spin in this V-8 all-wheel-drive model reminds me why that old interior was so frustrating, because it brought down an otherwise handsome, powerful package.  For anyone who considered buying a pre-2007 SRX, the damage might already be done. But the SRX offers an impressive preview of something better, something more important, something that epitomizes the direction Cadillac seems to be moving in: the all-new 2008 CTS sedan. If the SRX interior amounts to an apology, then the long-awaited CTS, fully redesigned inside and out, will be a promise: From now on, Cadillacs will arrive in dealerships ready to do battle with the best luxury cars from Europe and Japan. They&amp;#039;ve nailed the power and the poise, and now they&amp;#039;ve got the quality.   Los Angeles to Las Vegas: Wayward Son  Audi engineered the new R8 to outrun the Porsche 911 GT3, the best car in its class. But what happens if Porsche takes over Audi?  Car-industry consolidation is usually a good thing for consumers. When a more successful company takes over a lesser one -- and that&amp;#039;s the way it usually works -- the strapped company gains resources that weren&amp;#039;t formerly there. Without question, Jaguar makes better cars now than it did prior to Ford&amp;#039;s takeover. BMW has managed to retain Rolls-Royce&amp;#039;s old-school snob appeal while bringing its cars&amp;#039; underpinnings into the twenty-first century. Even Saab, which has suffered badge-engineered Subarus and GMC trucks under GM&amp;#039;s stewardship, is probably better off now than it would&amp;#039;ve been on its own.  But automotive consolidation can cut both ways. Sometimes there are cars in the lineup that don&amp;#039;t please the new master. And this is where Porsche&amp;#039;s aggressive courting of VW/Audi -- of which it already owns 31 percent -- could get interesting. Volkswagen&amp;#039;s portfolio of brands includes some beautiful cars -- Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti -- most of which shouldn&amp;#039;t intersect too much with Porsche. But there&amp;#039;s one wild card, and that&amp;#039;s Audi. And there&amp;#039;s one Audi that was explicitly designed as a Porsche slayer: the R8. Priced around $110,000, the R8 wrings 420 horsepower from its 4.2-liter V-8. Those numbers put it right on top of the Porsche 911 GT3 ($106,000; 415 horsepower). There are plenty of differences between the two cars, but right now the main one is exclusivity. The GT3 looks like a 911, which in turn has looked essentially the same for, oh, four decades or so.  One of my favorite things to do with a hot new car is park it on the street and hang out nearby to gauge the reactions of passersby. So as I sit at a new-agey L.A. caf\u00E9 eating a bowl of granola and sipping a black tea-coffee concoction, I learn that Beverly Hills hasn&amp;#039;t the foggiest idea what the R8 is. One guy identifies it to a friend as the Bugatti Veyron. Another proclaims that it&amp;#039;s a street-legal version of an Audi Le Mans car, an impression that I&amp;#039;m sure Audi would very much like to encourage. Lots of people say nothing, engrossed as they are in capturing the perfect camera-phone shot.  The road between L.A. and Vegas doesn&amp;#039;t offer up much in the way of fun, but I try to get my thrills where I can find them. For instance, you know that a car has some serious grip when you try to test its limits on an on-ramp and attain such speed that you have to hit the brakes -- hard! -- to merge with the highway traffic. I mainly get my kicks by dropping it to third gear on the highway and listening to that wild V-8 nestled behind my head bellow its way past 8,000 rpm. I don&amp;#039;t believe I&amp;#039;ll ever get tired of that. But back to the Porsche question: Who knows? I suppose the relevant comparison is to the Volkswagen Touareg/Porsche Cayenne, twin competing SUVs developed in tandem. I once asked a Porsche executive if he was worried that the V-8 Touareg would steal sales from the similarly priced V-6 Cayenne. His response: &amp;quot;No.&amp;quot; He didn&amp;#039;t elaborate, but I guess the unspoken message was, Some people care about a Porsche badge more than they care about value.  But what happens when the Volkswagen creation is actually more exotic than its Porsche counterpart? The R8 is like the ambitious junior executive who beats the boss at golf. It might be a little too competent for its own good.  Las Vegas to San Francisco   Focus. Please! The hot buzzword in the car business is focus. In other words, play to your strengths and know your role, rather than trying to offer something for everyone. Ford has sold Aston Martin and is looking to move Jaguar and Land Rover because it wants to focus. GM and Nissan&amp;#039;s tentative courtship fell flat because it would&amp;#039;ve resulted in a loss of focus (also known as a &amp;quot;giant-ass mess&amp;quot;). And Mercedes looks to be ditching Chrysler so it can focus.  Once upon a time, Mercedes made a medium-sized sedan, a big sedan, and a couple of convertibles. Within the past two model generations, the venerable E-Class, S-Class, and SL-Class have been joined by the CLK, CLS, M, GL, G, R, and SLR. The result of this ever-expanding three-pointed alphabet is that some of the models no longer ring quite true. Remember the bargain-basement C230 coupe a few years back? Or what about the current R-Class? Does a Mercedes minivan help the brand? Really? Mercedes, then, has its hands full without dealing with Chrysler&amp;#039;s problems. Which is why I find myself in a CL600 on the way to San Francisco. From the moment you stick the key in the ignition, one thought comes to mind: How could this possibly come from the same company that gives us the Jeep Compass? The CL600 is a signature fat-cat car that does everything it can to ease the burden of being you. With a 510 horsepower twin-turbo V-12 underfoot, merging onto the highway certainly isn&amp;#039;t stressful. And once there, you can settle into the punishing banality of stop-and-go traffic while the CL caters to your whims. The seats, heated and cooled, offer a massage function with four different intensities. (I prefer &amp;quot;slow and vigorous.&amp;quot;) The cruise control, Distronic Plus, keeps an eye on the car in front of you, pacing it all the way down to a stop. The doors and trunk squeeze themselves closed, no vulgar slamming required. And did I mention the night-vision screen? Because you didn&amp;#039;t work your ass off to make partner not to have night vision, like the schlub driving the E-Class. What does all this mean? A few things. For starters, at $144,975, the CL600 may be the best luxury coupe, pound for pound, on the market. It&amp;#039;s fast enough to match 911&amp;#039;s in a straight line yet more understated than a Bentley. World-beating flagships like the CL are the reason that Mercedes has the most revered brand in the world. And when you&amp;#039;ve got that kind of brand equity, every model doesn&amp;#039;t need to be a segment-busting smash hit. Mercedes will always sell a certain number of cars, not because of those vehicles&amp;#039; innate brilliance but because of what that three-pointed star signifies -- a legacy of hard-earned snob appeal. Chryslers sell, but there&amp;#039;s no built-in safety net. For every hit like the Chrysler 300C, you can easily have acres of unsold Jeep Commanders. And if you&amp;#039;re Mercedes, maker of the finest coupe $150,000 can buy, you don&amp;#039;t need that kind of trouble. You need to concentrate on building profitable luxury cars. That&amp;#039;s what you&amp;#039;re good at. That&amp;#039;s what you&amp;#039;ve been doing for a hundred years. You need to focus.   San Francisco to Portland: The Savior   What&amp;#039;s a car company to do when it&amp;#039;s $18 billion in debt? Hitch its future to a new crossover, of course. And pray. If the 1980s were all about the mini-van and the &amp;#039;90s were ruled by the SUV, the &amp;#039;00s will be remembered for the crossover, for the simple reason that drivers want the size and versatility of an SUV with the mileage and handling of a car. Which is good for Ford, since it&amp;#039;s betting its comeback on one. Perhaps you&amp;#039;ve heard of it: the Edge? Of course you have. You can barely watch a half hour of TV -- any half hour -- without seeing that commercial. To its credit, Ford isn&amp;#039;t half-assing it with the Edge the way GM did when it introduced the underpowered Chevy Equinox crossover and the god-awful ugly Pontiac Aztek/Buick Rendezvous. At about $25,000, its savior comes equipped to compete with a 265 horsepower V-6 and no glaring aesthetic or dynamic flaws. It&amp;#039;s competitively priced and backed by that $80 million marketing campaign. In one sense, it&amp;#039;s good to see Ford jumping into the crossover game with both feet. But there&amp;#039;s something a little sad about having to pay people like Kelis to sing songs about the Edge when other cars are name-dropped in lyrics because they&amp;#039;re, you know, cool.  So how does it run? Well. Really well. Barely off I-5, I&amp;#039;m soon on a traffic-free rural road whose twenty miles of crazy-ass curves made me wish out loud for the R8. But this is exactly the reason for the existence of crossovers: You can&amp;#039;t always have a sports car or an SUV or a sedan when you need one, so why not drive something that can give you a little bit of all three? Like most crossovers, the Edge isn&amp;#039;t intended to be overtly sporty, but damn if it doesn&amp;#039;t play along. On one right-angle corner, I actually get the Edge into a four-wheel drift, and it hangs on. I wouldn&amp;#039;t have wanted to try that in an Explorer.  The Edge may not have a crazy personality like the Subaru B9 Tribeca. But it&amp;#039;s quietly competent and refined in just about any situation you could throw at it. This is precisely what Ford needs right now: a go-to car that will take it back to the top of the heap, or at least one step closer to repaying $18 billion in loans. Can the Edge do that alone? No way in hell. That&amp;#039;s one big hole. But it&amp;#039;s a step in the right direction. The next and perhaps biggest question is whether hundreds of thousands of former Explorer owners will agree.   Portland to Seattle: Green Bastard  The next generation of hybrids are being built for many reasons. But saving the environment isn&amp;#039;t one of them. Hybrids are at a crossroads. They emerged from the primordial ooze looking bizarre and futuristic. But then came the next generation, and a new question emerged: What happens when a hybrid looks just like a regular car? The answer, it would seem, is not much: Ford had to put zero-percent-financing incentives on the eminently normal-looking Escape Hybrid last year, and Honda sold only 5,598 Accord Hybrids in 2006. But you know what model Honda did sell a lot of last year? The much slower, dorkier-looking Civic Hybrid. And you made fun of BMW drivers for buying cars as class symbols. The Nissan Altima Hybrid I&amp;#039;m driving from Portland to Seattle fits well within this second category of normal-looking hybrids. Yet it has another twist, which further illustrates the weird world of today&amp;#039;s hybrids: It&amp;#039;s the unwanted offspring of Nissan&amp;#039;s fleet. Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn never wanted to build one. But for credits against California&amp;#039;s emissions laws, he felt like he had to. And thus you have the 2007 Altima Hybrid: a kick-ass hybrid that Nissan is selling at a loss to please the suits in Sacramento. Bastard child or not, my drive from Portland to Seattle is uneventful, which is a sign of how far hybrids have come. The Altima has a reasonable amount of juice -- 198 net horsepower -- and it surges out onto the highway on a wave of torque. The Toyota-designed drivetrain doesn&amp;#039;t beat you over the head with its hybridness. The sixteen-inch tires look like they belong on a proper car, not a golf cart. The Altima just feels like a nicely appointed, sporty Japanese sedan, albeit one that can occasionally reach forty miles per hour on electricity alone.  Hooray for hybrids, then? Not entirely. The Altima hybrid may be technologically sophisticated, but it&amp;#039;s economically crude. It costs Nissan money to build it. And at $24,400, it costs buyers $4,600 more to purchase than they&amp;#039;re ever likely to recoup on fuel savings. People will buy it, as they buy most hybrids, out of a sense of social responsibility. Kudos to them. But altruism isn&amp;#039;t going to save the world. Money is.  In the coming years, manufacturers have promised plug-in hybrids and lithium batteries, vehicles with fuel economies that make current hybrids look like gas-swilling trucks. The true breakthrough hybrid, whenever it comes, will be the one that wins buyers because it saves enough fuel to save them money. That car will enjoy monumental sales and consequently begin to actually make a difference in our energy consumption. Until that happens, hybrids will remain a novelty, even if they look like normal cars. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/cars/a2926/roadtrip0607/>