Upscale luxury sedans with the look of sporty coupes have become very fashionable in recent years. These pseudo-coupes are aimed at drivers wanting to combine the style of a two door with a more practical four-door body. Porsche expanded into this burgeoning niche, bringing its sports-car DNA into the realm of sedans, or actually, a hatchback. We recently purchased one to test.

Right now, Chevrolet is selling two very different cars with the same Malibu nameplate. Thing is, one of them is much nicer than the other. That one would be the model we just bought, a 2013 Malibu Eco.

Toyota's crystal ball must be running on all cylinders. (Or maybe it's a hybrid.) With rising gas prices and a still-lukewarm economy, the Prius C seems tailor-made for these times: Prius fuel economy without the Prius price tag.

It's hard for a car company to compete these days without a competent small SUV. For years, Mazda had been (barely) selling their Tribute, a design they developed with Ford that was also sold as the Escape. It went on sale back in 2000 and eventually faded from the market after a 10-year run. But now Mazda finally has the fully modern, all-new CX-5. And this time Mazda is keeping this car for themselves.

Our recent test of a Chrysler 300 sedan equipped with the 5.7-liter Hemi V8 left a favorable impression, as evidenced by the significant improvement in the big sedan's road test score. Like many recently updated products from Chrysler, the 300 got an extensive freshening for 2011 that included a much-improved interior and other updates, transforming it into a comfortable and refined large sedan.

Picking up our new 2012 Audi TT Roadster on the first over-70 degree day this year in Connecticut is definitely not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Back in 1998, when Volkswagen recast its iconic Beetle, it produced a caricature of the original--a car with modern technology, but having more style than substance that ended up appealing to drivers (mainly women) who put a premium on cuteness. A frequent question was whether the company could continue to keep such a design fresh.

With the introduction of the iQ, Scion is offering fashion-conscious microcar buyers an alternative to the oh-so-three-years-ago Smart ForTwo.

During the last 11 years, I’ve purchased over 90 cars for the Consumer Reports auto test program. I’ve probably seen it all. Been there, negotiated that. However, my latest experience was notably frustrating, and I suspect, it wasn’t unique.

With gasoline prices on the rise and consumers looking to relieve their pain at the pump, we have been scrutinizing the fuel economy claims of automakers to see if the cars can deliver on the promises in the real world. To that end, we have been shopping for small, fuel-efficient cars, and just recently got a screaming deal on a 2012 Ford Focus SFE.

Long known for building some of the most fuel-efficient cars on the market, Honda has followed the latest small-car trend in offering a special fuel-efficient version of its popular Civic sedan. Resurrecting a designation from its past, HF, Honda a claims the car gets 1 more mpg overall and 2 more mpg on the highway than the standard Civic LX, thanks to aerodynamic improvements such as a trunk spoiler, more-aerodynamic wheels, and lower-rolling resistance tires. There is only one way to find out: buy one and test it.

Our Fisker Karma cost us $107,850. It is super sleek, high-tech—and now it’s broken.

As mentioned yesterday, Consumer Reports bought fuel-efficient versions of big-selling small sedans. We’re going to find out if these special models really save money at the pump. I was assigned to buy our 2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco. Sometimes car shopping is a pain (my colleague Mike Quincy will soon share about buying our BMW 3 Series). Sometimes it’s easy. This one was easy.

Would you spend several hundred dollars on your next new car to get an option package that improves fuel economy? That’s the question posed by high-fuel-efficiency versions of the big-selling Chevrolet Cruze, Ford Focus, and Honda Civic. Our surveys have shown that consumers would pay extra for savings, but can the cars deliver? To find out if these added-cost, fuel-sipper packages actually save money at the pump, we bought some cars to find out.

We just took delivery of our latest test car, the Mitsubishi’s “i” electric car. Also known as the i-MiEV (pronounced “Eye-Meev”), it’s the smallest of the new generation of electric cars hitting the U.S. market. And at $29,125, it is the cheapest, too. Although not yet on sale in the Northeast, we managed to buy one in California and have it shipped to our Connecticut auto-test facility.