SILVIO CALABI: Opinionated at any speed
Silvio Calabi has been reviewing cars since Ronald Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House. He lives in Camden.
Genesis GV80 3.5T AWD Prestige
You may remember the GV80 as the luxury SUV that Tiger Woods wrecked last February while he was in California for a golf tournament. Genesis—Hyundai’s Lexus, if you will—sponsored the tournament and loaned a demo to Woods while he was in town.
Photos of their GV80 crumpled up like an old shoebox, not to mention an ambulance taking away their celebrity driver, were not what the Genesis PR team had in mind when they handed Woods the key. But the whole mess eventually rebounded to… Read more
Ford Bronco Sport
Whenever I saw a Ford Bronco Sport on the road—and by now I’ve seen a lot of them—my first thought was always: “Oh, someone who didn’t want a ‘real’ Bronco! Someone who just wanted the look.”
Having now spent a week in each, a Bronco and a Bronco Sport, I realize it’s time to apologize to Sport drivers: You may have wished to flaunt the nameplate, but in truth… Read more
Hyundai Tucson Limited AWD
It’s war in the Compact SUV jungle, where family-friendly crossovers with two rows of seats and all-wheel drive fight it out for billions in sales. Victory hangs on a value triangulation: Buyers want looks, ease of use and low monthly payments; sellers push pricing as far as they can without quashing sales.
The Tucson has always done well for buyers and for Hyundai alike, and now the all-new-for-2022 Tucson sets the C-SUV bar higher yet—it’s that much snazzier-looking, sweeter-… Read more
Subaru Outback Wilderness
A new trim package for Subaru’s all-wheel-drive Outback wagon, called Wilderness, is available for 2022 and it’s not just cosmetics. This variant stands taller (9.5 inches of ground clearance) on longer-travel shock absorbers and springs and the bumpers have been tucked in. For off-roaders, this means 20.0 degrees of approach angle (up from 18.6º), a “breakover angle” of 21.2 degrees (up from 19.4º), and the departure angle—how steep a surface the new Outback can descend from without… Read more
Kia Carnival SX Prestige
Don’t call it a minivan and don’t call it an SUV, although it resembles both. Kia says it’s an MPV, for multi-purpose vehicle—“combining luxury, capability and flexibility into a whole new kind of vehicle.” It’s a replacement for Kia’s Sedona minivan, but one that’s so different, and so much larger and more high-tech, that it warrants a new name.
We might quibble with “Carnival,” which suggests a load of adolescents having a piñata party in the back, but there’s no arguing about the… Read more
Ford Bronco Sasquatch
In reviving the Bronco, its very first SUV (b. 1965, d. 1996), Ford seems to have cast a critical eye on the Jeep Wrangler and said, “Right, we’re going to build a vehicle with the same off-road cred, but minus the faults.” Ford succeeded, especially with this Sasquatch variant.
From some angles it looks Jeep-ish and from others Land Rover-y, but the new Bronco is a mid-size body-on-frame sport-utility vehicle that shares a skeleton with… Read more
Honda Civic 1.5T 4D Touring
In a way, the new-for-2022 Civic reminds me of Mercedes-Benz’s C-Class cars: They’ve both grown up. And whereas we once bought them because we couldn’t afford the fancier models, now we buy them because we just don’t want a bigger car. They’ve caught up with the rest of the family in value, refinement and overall swank.
Let’s not forget the Civic’s roots, either, which in North America go back to the Honda 600 micro-car. I first saw one in Montreal circa 1970. It was barely the size… Read more
Mercedes-Benz AMG GLE 63 S Coupe
“Whoa—it’s like a fighter plane in here!” said one of my neighbors. Well, it’s like that behind the wheel, too. AMG is Mercedes-Benz’s tuner division, the skunkworks where mad scientists take ordinary high-performance Mercs and turn them into extraordinary higher-performance Mercs. This one, for example, is armed with a 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged and electrically boosted V-8 that can churn out 603 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque.
There was a time, especially in the early… Read more
Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland L
The “L” is for long, and this stretched version of the familiar Grand Cherokee is what Jeep is offering families while they await the arrival of the even larger (and more deluxe and pricier) 2022 Grand Wagoneer. Since boatloads of two-row, 5-passenger Grand Cherokees have been sold over the years, Jeep must have reasoned that offering a variation with a third row of seats and upgraded, updated amenities couldn’t hurt.
And it doesn’t hurt,… Read more
Ford Mustang Mach-E Premium AWD
Electric vehicles never used to reach me in Midcoast Maine. They didn’t have enough range for the run from the press garage near Boston—that or the delivery driver would have had to hand me the key and say: “Here’s your car. But you can’t use it until you’ve recharged the batteries overnight.”
Those days are gone. The… Read more