2022 Jeep Wagoneer First Drive - Luxury Light

The differences between the 2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer and the 2022 Jeep Wagoneer aren’t many.

The latter has a smaller-displacement V8, less power, an available 4×2 drive train, a cheaper price tag, and isn’t quite as deluxe. But it’s still upscale – just not quite as much as the SUV with Grand as part of the moniker.

That means the overall experience of driving the Wagoneer isn’t too different from the Grand Wagoneer, yet there are still some noticeable variations.

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2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer First Drive - In the Mix

When the invite hit to drive the 2022 Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer hit my inbox, I found myself a tad surprised by the location – New York City.

Or, to be precise, the roads outside the city in the Hudson Valley and Westchester County. We’d merely be laying our heads in Manhattan, with the real action taking place in the suburbs. With brief forays into strange lands named New Jersey and Connecticut.

There’s a reason why so many first drives are held in California – good roads and good weather. It’s the same reason why drives don’t take place as often in places like New York, Chicago, or even Detroit. The roads aren’t as fun to drive and are often in bad shape, and the weather is less predictable. Events that involve the (mostly) controlled environment of a track are an exception, of course.

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2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz First Drive - Style Meets Substance

Let the minitruck wars begin.

While the Ford Maverick has gotten most of the spotlight, the 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz became available for the media horde – or at least those in the horde than Hyundai deemed worthy of an invitation – to drive before the Ford.

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2022 Hyundai Kona N First Drive - Double Shot of Espresso

I was still rubbing sleep from my eyes when I checked my phone upon waking. I was scheduled to drive the Hyundai Santa Cruz, and here was a notification of an email saying something about driving the Hyundai Kona N instead. Was Hyundai short a truck or something?

Nope, they just had two Kona Ns around for media to drive at the lunch stop, and those Ns had to get there somehow. Would I like to drive one?

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Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: At Speed With Bentley's 2021 Lineup

For those of typical means, ultra-luxury automakers like Bentley exist in a vacuum. We see an M3’s worth of options on a Flying Spur and scoff at something so preposterous, so alien to our understanding of a dollar’s value.

It’s true enough that the law of diminishing returns tends to really kick in when MSRPs soar into six-figure territory and beyond: Is a Bugatti Chiron 50 times better than a C8 Corvette? Probably not. But years ago, when I was handed the keys to my first Bentley press car, I approached the prospect with a similar mindset and came away a changed man.

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QOTD: How We Feeling About THAT Ford?

It’s Bronco Day.

Today is the day that you, the reader, can finally read the reviews of the much-hyped 2021 Ford Bronco.

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2021 Ford Bronco First Drive - Living Up to the Hype

Few new-vehicle launches in recent years have generated as much hype or been as anticipated as that of the Ford Bronco.

Bronco has been a big story for us and our peers since last summer. We’ve ridden in one already, and now it was our turn to finally drive it. So I dutifully packed a bag and headed to the Texas Hill Country outside of Austin to see if the big Bronco would live up to the hype – and be a strong challenger to Jeep’s venerable Wrangler.

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2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee L First Drive - The Three-Row for the Jeep Stan

Jeep has offered all sorts of different utility vehicles over the years – it’s sort of the brand’s thing – but it hasn’t recently offered a three-row crossover. The last one it sold was the Commander, which left the market a decade ago.

I quite honestly forgot the Commander even existed – and I started in automotive journalism in 2007. While it was still on the market. I suspect most Jeep faithful have also memory holed that model.

That’s unlikely to happen with the 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee L, for better or for worse.

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2022 Nissan Pathfinder First Drive - Step, Not Leap, in the Right Direction

The last-generation Nissan Pathfinder became the forgotten three-row crossover, in part because it went from a rugged-looking rig to a soft-roading crossover. Nissan is apparently quite well aware of why the Pathfinder moved to the back of mind for a lot of shoppers, and the 2022 Nissan Pathfinder is meant to, if not be actually rugged, to project a rugged image.

So, for 2022, you get what the brand calls “bold, rugged design”. And it is bolder than before, with a bit more masculinity to its style, but it’s still blandly conservative enough to fit fine in the PTA line. As if Nissan’s designers felt they could only go so far in terms of being “rugged.”

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2022 Volkswagen Taos First Drive - Fitting Right In

Standing outside a building that typically hosts weddings in downtown Chelsea, Michigan, a fellow auto journalist and I chatted through our masks about how it’s getting harder and harder to write about crossovers, because so many of them are just in that happy middle – not particularly great, and certainly not bad.

Add the 2022 Volkswagen Taos to that list.

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2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe First Drive - Incredible Off-Road Machine, Just An Okay Hybrid

We live in incredible times. Just a few short years ago, there was only one engine you could get with your Jeep Wrangler. Now there’s half a dozen. Sure, the tried-and-true 3.6-liter Pentastar is a great place to start, but you can also get the 2.0-liter turbo, the 48-volt 3.6-liter eTorque setup, the 3.0-liter EcoDiesel, and a bonkers 6.4-liter Hemi. Plus, for 2021, Jeep is offering a plug-in hybrid version. Called 4xe, it promises green off-roading in a way only a Jeep can. But does it deliver?

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2021 Rolls-Royce Ghost First Drive - The Rolls for the Common Man

I didn’t choose the Rolls-Royce lifestyle, the Rolls-Royce lifestyle chose me.

A while back, I was just minding my own business when the brand’s PR team emailed me and asked if I’d come to a small, COVID-safe meeting at my local RR dealer to talk about the all-new Ghost. I figured it would be the standard thing we used to do pre-pandemic – show up for a bit, check out a new model, talk specs, and get some pics. Maybe I’d get a post out of it. If not, I’d learn useful info on background.

Color me surprised, then, when my local fleet soon emailed me, asking if I’d like a brief loan to sample the Ghost.

Yes, please, I said. Now, where’s that damn Grey Poupon?

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2022 Infiniti QX55 First Drive - Swing and a Miss

Infiniti wants so badly to show that it is back on the comeback trail.

It wants to do that so badly that it made a big marketing and P.R. push around the QX55 crossover. It even trailered the vehicle to journalists’ homes when it came time for each writer’s turn to evaluate the vehicle.

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2021 Volkswagen ID.4 First Drive - The Future Comes in Baby Steps

The electric-vehicle revolution keeps chugging along, one small crossover at a time.

Last month, the Ford Mustang Mach-E graced my garage. This week, I got about 48 hours, give or take, in the 2021 Volkswagen ID.4.

The two aren’t really the same, but they are similar – both are crossovers, both are EVs, and both are key early, if not first, steps taken by their respective manufacturers into the world of mass-market EVs.

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2021 Kia Sorento SX First Drive - Competent Crossover Seeking Spark

Kia’s slogan of the moment is “give it everything.” Problem is, the brand only gave the 2021 most of the things, not everything.

The result is a solid crossover choice that doesn’t feel quite as well finished as the company’s larger Telluride or its K5 mid-size sedan.

I was loaned a Sorento for a very short time, but I still managed to take it out on my preferred driving loop, and my quick take based on the short drive is that the overall package here is quite good, but there are more nitpicks around the margins than I’ve had with any Kia vehicle in recent times.

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  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?