Category: Ford

The all new VW Tiguan gives Volkswagen a much needed competitor in the hot compact crossover SUV market. Competing with the likes of the Honda CR-V, Nissan Rogue, Toyota RAV4 and Ford Escape, Tiguan has to be outstanding to win in the consideration set including those vehicles. Is it good enough?

The new Genesis G90 sets a new record for satisfaction results in AutoPacific's New Vehicle Satisfaction research. The results are distributed across the industry with American brands providing the most satisfying trucks and SUVs. Asian brands dominate car satisfaction results.

2017 Honda Civic Si brings enthusiast-oriented driving to the Honda Civic small car lineup. Exterior, interior, powertrain and chassis upgrades differentiate the Honda Civic Si from the rest of the Civic lineup.

The VW Atlas crossover enter the American SUV market at a time the market is booming. It is a competent XSUV going up against some serious heavyweights like the Ford Explorer and Honda Pilot.

Ford is updating its iconic sporty coupe giving us a more aggressive Mustang for 2018. In industry parlance this could be termed a "front and rear six" meaning the front and rear six inches of the car has been changed. The 2018 change is a bit more than that. The front end is the main contributor to the more aggressive Mustang look. The standard LED headlamps flank a redesigned grille which has a new sporty texture. The front fenders, front fascia, and hood are all new. In the rear end, the taillamp graphics are tweaked a bit, not so you'd notice.

The all-new 2017 Honda CR-V is a substantial improvement over the already excellent 2016 CR-V. Looking very similar, the CR-V has been transformed under the skin with better spaciousness, better ride and handling and better performance. Given these changes, CR-V should remain the highest volume Mid-Size Crossover SUV.

The all new Honda CR-V is an impressive compact crossover SUV. A pillar of Honda's product lineup that includes Accord, Civic and Odyssey, the CR-V sells almost 400,000 units per year. The entry crossover SUV category has become the best selling class of vehicle in the United States. Entry crossover SUV sales are higher than mid-size cars. The popularity of the segment, and how good this new CR-V is, has led Honda to add more assembly capacity at its Indiana assembly plant in 2017.

Ford's F-Series Super Duty pickups are all new for the 2017 model year. The Super Duty line includes the F-250, F-350, F-450 and F-550 heavy duty pickups. The term all new here is an actual fact because the last time the Super Duty was all new was over a decade ago. The high volume F-150 light duty full size pickup was all new and all aluminum for 2016. The Super Duty follows a year later, but Ford says the product update cadence should be shorter for both the F-150 and the Super Duties in the future.

The next generation Lincoln Navigator concept has been shown at the 2016 New York Auto Show and it is an absolute WOW. Like Lincoln did in 2015 when they stealthily introduced the Continental concept at New York, the Navigator concept was kept very quiet until its initial reveal. With this new Navigator, Lincoln takes a different tack towards elegance, sophistication and quietness - a Personal Santuary. The new Navigator adopts new Lincoln styling cues like the strongly trapezoidal grille opening, Lincoln logo mesh grille, headlamps accented by LED running lights. The front end is very strong looking. The rear appearance adopts Lincoln's horizontal full-width taillamp treatment.

AutoPacific, an automotive specialist research and product planning consultancy, forecasts that trucks, including XSUVs will be about 60% of the market for the foreseeable future. In fact, reading the crystal ball for the next five years, this percentage of the mix may be low.