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Byline: Warren Brown It is appropriate that I finished this last column for The Washington Post on Christmas Eve. It is an ending and beginning - for me and, looking [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is appropriate that I finish this last column for The Washington Post on Christmas Eve. It is an ending and beginning - for me and, looking [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It was about freedom - going where I wanted when I wanted . . . and dignity. I enjoyed watching my parents or anyone I loved and [...]

Byline: Warren Brown The 'middle class' no longer drives the American economy. In too many cases, it comfortably cannot afford the average price of a new car or truck with [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is not enough to tell consumers they've 'been waiting' for a product that is 'all new' from a vehicle manufacturer once considered exotic in the U.S. [...]

Byline: Warren Brown You must insert an ignition key to start this one, which tells you something about its price range in a vehicle age where push-button ignition is commonplace. [...]

Byline: Warren Brown The Hyundai Elantra is no longer a cheap car in the traditional defamatory meaning of the term - inexpensive, poor materials, flimsily made. In the 2018 GT [...]

Byline: Warren Brown I've sometimes been accused of being a socialist because I find it difficult to justify most high-priced automobiles. I'm not a socialist. I love the Audi SQ5, [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It makes sense. It won't be accepted by the majority of consumers anytime soon. But it is the future of an automobile industry in which romance has [...]

Byline: Warren Brown The automobile industry faces the future with caution. The car companies must passionately pursue tomorrow, but they cannot be reckless in that pursuit. They must remain concerned [...]

Byline: Warren Brown President Donald Trump wants to build a wall between the United States and places like Toluca - officially Toluca de Lerdo, a city of about 500,000 souls, [...]

Byline: Warren Brown The Toyota Camry has been sold worldwide since 1982. It was introduced in the U.S. market in 1987, and it has been manufactured here since 1988 by [...]

Byline: Warren Brown I drove for the joy of driving. It was that simple, pleasurable. The little car was responsive and peppy, the poetry of driving in motion. I was [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is the 2017 Jeep Renegade Latitude 'with Altitude package.' It is confusing nomenclature, done largely for marketing. But it means you will pay $10,000 more than [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Nissan Motor Co. wanted to make a point - that it successfully could compete with Ford, General Motors and Dodge in the raging pickup truck wars in [...]

Byline: Warren Brown The engine and transmission come from the United States. Much of the trim work - materials and other fit-finish pieces - are from Italy. Final assembly of [...]

Byline: Warren Brown We are growing up - drivers and vehicle manufacturers. In the past, we mostly cared about vehicle speed and handling. We still do. But we now realize [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is a compact sport-utility vehicle, easily mistaken for a high-riding sedan. In any case, it is a motorized delight - big enough to carry a family [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is a head-turner, one of the most distinctively designed SUVs entering the 2018 automotive market, largely because of its prominent triangular grille. But the competition is [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It was produced in 2007 for the 2008 model year. There were many of us in the global automotive media who thought its name and loopy exterior [...]

Byline: Warren Brown You won't be driving many rough or unpaved roads in this one. Put simply: You won't be going off-road - driving over rocks or fallen timber, crossing [...]

Byline: Warren Brown If you buy the 2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid, you also are buying the 2018 model. They are unchanged year to year. That is not a bad thing. [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is enough. With a turbocharged, 241-horsepower, four-cylinder engine fueled by premium gasoline, it can move fast enough to put you in or take you out of [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Mark Reuss, who created the General Motors Performance Division, loves Chevrolet and Buick. Chevrolet has the Corvette and Camaro, of course, and there is a lot to [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Italy is the kind of place where bicycles and motorbikes make sense for personal transportation. The streets are narrow - extremely narrow by U.S. standards, sometimes no [...]

Byline: Warren Brown A Washington-area General Motors dealer once scorned me for giving Chevrolet and other GM brands the benefit of the doubt. 'You are trying to be fair,' he [...]

Byline: Warren Brown American Honda Motor's spokesmen told me their company was selling a new hatchback in the United States. I thanked them for the information and filed it somewhere [...]

Byline: Warren Brown This is how you compete: You study rivals who have taken giant steps forward. You look at competitors who are giving you real market challenges, but you [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It makes sense, the Mercedes-Benz Metris urban van. I call it 'urban' because it is small enough to fit in most city garages, park on most city [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Sometimes, you get what you pay for. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It is the Law of Rational Consumerism. It requires knowledge. To wit: What [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Here's hoping U.S. automakers don't fall for the climate change 'hoax' mantra of the current presidential administration and many of its supporters. If they do, they would [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Please, pay attention when buying this one. There are two versions made for the 2017 model year. The first is a 2017 Jeep Compass carried over from [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Please allow me a momentary rant before getting into the subject of this week's column, the excellent Subaru Forester, which has been made in Japan since 1997 [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is like an old house with modern appliances - ones that are updated and easily usable. Not much has been done to the exterior. But there [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It has everything it needs, which probably is not enough for some people. The 2017 Acura MDX AWD Advance sport-utility vehicle, the subject of this week's column, [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It's the options - the extra stuff that supports the trim name, 'Inscription.' If you want the options, okay. You will get a great vehicle, probably one [...]

Byline: Warren Brown when they elevate the idea of 'family sedan' to the rank of automotive primacy. Thus, we have bestsellers such as the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord and Chevrolet [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is a big American sedan made by an Italian-American company, assembled in Brampton, Ontario - and originally designed in the United States by an African-American. Such [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Think of it as a superior health insurance policy offered at a superior price. Or, view it as a fine piece of art, a well-crafted jewel available [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Kia Motors America is motoring with the idea of affordable luxury. As executed in the 2017 Kia Cadenza Limited sedan, the subject of this week's review, it [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Honda wanted more than a traditional pickup truck when it remade its Ridgeline model. That's 'remade' vs. 'redesigned.' The Ridgeline, introduced in 2006, had been in abeyance [...]

Byline: Warren Brown There are people who comfortably can afford the 2017 Audi 3.0T Quattro sedan with 'competition' trim. 'Comfortably' means they can buy it immediately with cash; they easily [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Something is changing . . . rapidly. Traditional notions of automotive luxury and prestige are being surpassed by rapid advances in technology. These advances in technology are [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is my nature by religious training and faith to forgive offenses when contrition is offered and genuine remedy is proposed to set things right. In that [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is a heavy car relying on massive horsepower and muscle-bound torque to get up and go, which it does smoothly with seeming effortlessness. Still, the attention [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is a beautiful automobile, arguably worth the price. Arguably? Yes. In the mind of almost every consumer is a nagging voice saying that what was bought [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Common sense does not have to be expensively extravagant; nor does it have to be so inexpensively cheap that it excludes the real question of value. It [...]

Byline: Warren Brown It is back, and it is still big - a rolling testament to its name, the 2017 Nissan Armada sport-utility vehicle. There is a vigorous debate over [...]

Byline: Warren Brown As a young journalist, I thrilled at invitations from automobile manufacturers to drive exotic cars in exotic locations. But there always was a troubling disconnect. We journalists [...]

Byline: Warren Brown Excellent gasoline mileage is good. It's not everything. The 2016 Toyota Prius Two Eco hatchback gas-electric hybrid, specially built for maximum mileage, has a federal average mileage [...]