[Brucelee]

Nice Mini-Boxster review. On balance, I have to agree with most of these choices.

Enjoy!


AUTOMOBILE Magazine Reveals 2008 All-Stars Winners




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LOS ANGELES--AUTOMOBILE Magazine, America’s leading automotive lifestyle publication, today announced the winners of its 2008 AUTOMOBILE MAGAZINE All-Stars Awards, delivering an exclusive selection of vehicles at the top of their class.

“This year’s list includes a number of stalwart All-Stars winners, namely the iconic BMW 3-series, as well as new entries, such as Chevy's impressive new Malibu and the sexy Volvo C30," said Jean Jennings, editor-in-chief of AUTOMOBILE Magazine. “These ten cars are the year's most exciting cars, our picks for the vehicles we'd most like to personally own in our dream garage."

Each year, the editors and bureau chiefs of AUTOMOBILE Magazine convene to test, evaluate, and debate the performance, significance, and pure enthusiast appeal of the cars that have made the biggest impact. The prestigious list of the deserving award winners is featured in the January 2008 issue, available on newsstands December 4, 2007.

AUTOMOBILE Magazine’s list of 2008 All-Stars, with editorial assessments, includes:

Chevrolet Malibu – The best Chevrolet family sedan AUTOMOBILE Magazine’s staff has ever driven. Smooth, quiet, well-finished and more than able to keep up with more powerful cars, it represents a true sea change in what GM is offering the public. This is the kind of car Americans have wanted from Detroit for years.

Infiniti G37/G35 – The yin to the BMW 3-series’ yang. Picking a winner between them—which is to say, choosing the best sport coupe/sedan in the world—is less about what the cars can do than it is about what their drivers want. The interior of the Infiniti is a pleasure dome, but the car’s power is obvious the instant you punch the push-button starter and hear the feral growl of the engine.

Volvo C30 – A perfect example of smoothly chic, Scandinavian cool. The C30 is whisper-quiet, perfectly composed and has a six-speed manual that you could teach your grandma to row flawlessly in fifteen minutes. The car embodies the one perfect criterion for All-Stardom: anyone would have it.

Chevrolet Corvette – Evolutionary improvements keep the Vette in a class of its own. The revised 2008 edition does the 0-to-60-mph sprint in 4.3 seconds—with an automatic transmission. There are faster new cars than the Corvette, but all of them cost a lot more.

Mazda CX-9 – Trucks and sport utilities seldom earn a berth on the All-Stars list, but when was the last time you could call such a vehicle’s engine charming, or its transmission silky? The CX-9 ventures beyond the obligatory nine-to-five routine to play party animal in the off-hours.

Volkswagen GTI – The GTI is magic. What else do you call a hatchback that can shame supercars? The GTI eclipses the class-clown Mini Cooper for spark and verve, and makes sense for real people who actually have to lead real lives. Fast, fun, cheap, and German. If you don’t like it, you’re probably dead.

BMW 3-series – Maybe we should give it a lifetime achievement award. We didn’t set out hoping to give the 3-series another All-Star award—this is the car’s thirteenth—but then we got in the car and started driving. BMW still does chassis tuning like no other carmaker. The 3-Series is the car that instantly makes any mope who slides behind its wheel a better driver.

Mercedes-Benz S-class – This year, Mercedes got it just right. The car drips with luxury accoutrements and high-tech accessories, but the S-class is more than just the sum of its equipment list. Rides and handles in a way that belies its size, and comes with a quartet of engines that range from supremely competent to mind-blowing.

Lotus Elise – The mid-engine sportster is a bravura engineering performance that reprises the truest Lotus virtues, namely light weight and fealty to handling excellence. The best-handling sports car we know—an audacious-looking thing that goes from 0 to 60 mph in less than five seconds.

Porsche Boxster/Cayman – If you’re afraid people will think you bought a Cayman because you can’t afford a 911, we hereby inform you that those people are fools. The Boxster and the Cayman are exquisite to drive, with steering so communicative you’ll feel more of the road’s surface only if you crawl along it on your hands and knees. Few cars are as entertaining to drive at school-zone speeds.

Criteria and Evaluation

The AUTOMOBILE MAGAZINE All-Stars are chosen by the AUTOMOBILE MAGAZINE staff, its worldwide bureau chiefs, and its contributors, following an intensive test drive of the year’s most innovative and important new cars. Vehicles considered for the All-Stars awards combine the following traits:

Redefines an existing category or creates a new market segment
Provides excellent value and performance for the money
Exhibits an exceptional design
Offers pure driving enjoyment
After a 1000-mile road trip, winners are determined by a round-table discussion that results in a vote for the ten winners. The award decisions are not made through an instrumented test process.

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