Marketplace of Ideas Blog

Many years ago (as you will read in a couple of weeks), one of my career ambitions was to become an automotive journalist.

This is, I guess, my most recent opportunity to do that while contributing to an important cause — the Bergstrom Drive for the Cure, at Bergstrom on Victory Lane, wrapping up today between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

First, Bergstrom Automotive deserves a huge amount of credit for doing this. The annual BMW one-day event isn't happening this year, so Bergstrom stepped up and offered not only BMWs, but all 14 of their brands in their Victory Lane locations, to drive over two days, with, as with the BMW Drive, $1 donated per mile driven.

I have done the BMW drive every year I could. My favorite non-Corvette of all time probably is the BMW 540i sedan I drove the first year I participated, with a powerful, yet quiet (so quiet that I once killed the engine and didn't even know it) V-8, six-speed manual transmission and all the luxury and performance touches a reasonable driver would want.

I drove four cars Friday, randomly chosen from what had not already been snapped up by other drivers. Ironically, I drove neither a BMW nor another German product; they all seemed taken while I was selecting another car to drive.

This is not precisely a comparison test, and it (as everything does in this space) reflects my own, and only my own, opinion. All of the cars were heavily optioned, with sunroofs and manual-shifting automatics. In reverse order of finish:

Volvo S40 2.4i sedan: Volvos have had a reputation for being really solid, safe and unexciting cars. Based on my first experience with a Volvo, that continues to be the case. (However, the turbocharged all-wheel-drive S40 T5 AWD is probably more exciting to drive.) The Volvo's sound system had one cool feature: When the driver changed stations, the digital readout showed the frequency, but a line underneath it also showed the radio going up and down the dial, like the old slide-rule radio dials of three decades ago.

Volvo has stuck with an unusual five-cylinder engine for three decades; when it came out in the late 1970s, Volvo claimed it delivered six-cylinder performance with four-cylinder fuel economy. I can't attest to that; I can claim that a five-cylinder engine sounds like ... a four-cylinder engine. But for A-to-B transportation, it's more than adequate.

Mitsubishi Eclipse GS: The idea behind the Eclipse and a later listed car (this is what writers call "foreshadowing") is simple: Small car, big (that is, powerful) engine. The small car part has a downside for large people such as your humble editor/blogger — you have to do the legs-first limbo to get in, and once you're in, the quarters are tight. (Getting out means a 90-degree left turn, sticking your legs straight out, and then carefully unfurling yourself.) Fortunately, the tall people get to drive, because in such cars as the Eclipse, only the short and young sit in the back seat.

Once you're in, though, it's a fun ride, with sufficient power under your right foot supplied by a 2.4-liter four-cylinder to move the car fast, though not wow-the-scenery-is-going-by-quickly fast. I didn't try to deafen myself, but the car was also equipped with a 650-watt Rockford Fosgate sound system. The blue instrument panel lights are nice too.

Land Rover Range Rover HSE: At the other end of the spectrum from the Eclipse is the Range Rover HSE, a vehicle so large that the couple inches of headroom lost with the sunroof is of no concern. Land Rovers originally were built (and some still are) for the hills of the United Kingdom and the wilds of Africa, but if you took this truck off-road, you'd probably never know it. In fact, I found myself driving it well past the posted speed limits on a couple of occasions, because there is very little feeling of forward movement in the vehicle. You can also wave at truckers at nearly eye-level because, being an off-road vehicle, it sits reasonably high. Reviewers regularly complain about the plastic appearance of the interior, but I could live with that, particularly because it is the first vehicle I have driven in a long time that has more legroom than I require.

It has a 305-horsepower V-8 engine, and of course there is no substitute for the exhaust note of a V-8. And just like driving the barges of the '70s, it has fuel economy to match — 12 mpg city, 18 mpg highway. Since list price for the 2009 HSE is $77,675 (though I could save almost $6,000 and buy a Range Rover Sport Supercharged and get 390 horsepower with the same fuel economy), I'm not buying one, but it is very roomy, very comfortable and very nice, though not my favorite of the day.

Hyundai Genesis coupe: I had read very positive reviews of the Hyundai Genesis sedan and the coupe, which, like the Honda Accord sedan vs. coupe is really a different car from the four-door. Hyundai did two smart things in their early U.S. days, when their brand had a poor quality reputation: (1) they instituted a 10-year 100,000-mile powertrain warranty and a five-year 60,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty, and (2) they improved their build quality.

So I did the limbo (see the Eclipse comments) again to see if the car was as good as its reviews, which compared the Genesis favorably to the Ford Mustang. This Genesis had the unusual combination of silver exterior and burnt-orange (they call it “brown leather”) interior. It also has something gadget people will find fun: a push-button starter switch, made live by a key fob. No keys.

This is a fun car. This is a really fun car. This is as fun as a box of puppies that have just been fed Sugar Frosted Flakes. This is a car that could cost you points off your driver's license if you aren’t careful. It has 306 horsepower and the exhaust note to match. (If I planned to buy one, I would, of course, get the six-speed manual transmission instead of the six-speed automatic with manual shifting, because the automatic, even with paddle shifting, just is not the same driving experience, but it costs $1,500 more.) As a rear-wheel-drive car, besides having superior dry-road handling, it has actual legroom for drivers with 34-inch inseams. (I have not driven a front-drive car since my Chevrolet Beretta that had sufficient legroom. Unfortunately, that was one of about three virtues of the Beretta.)

And all of this for $27,000 less than an appropriately equipped Chevy Corvette — say, this one, which the Bergstrom folks should feel free to drop off at my office or house whenever they like. (Unfortunately I can’t buy a Genesis because it has one fewer seating position than I have people in my family. But, you say, a Corvette has just two seats? What’s your point?)

But that's just four cars. What about a Porsche, or Mercedes–Benz, or Audi, or Jaguar, or BMW, or Nissan?

Well, to paraphrase Scarlett O'Hara, today is another day.