There is no better place to greet a new pickup than Texas Hill Country. It’s beautiful and rugged — a place where pickups aren’t just fashion accessories. A recent stint in San Antonio put us behind the wheel of the re-designed 2014 Chevy Silverado. [...]

I’m going to come right out and say it: the 2013 Chevrolet Cruze Eco was the most fun car I’ve driven in a very long time. [...]

Americans used to look at micro cars and fantasize about flicking them off the roadways with full-size SUVs or V8-powered muscle cars. Then, gas trucked past $4 a gallon, and we began to think, “Gee, I really don’t need 5,000 pounds of steel and gas-sucking family bus to get to work.” The Smart fortwo, Fiat 500, and Scion iQ soon appeared on U.S. shores. Now, Chevrolet thinks there might be room for an even better micro. [...]

I knew it. I just knew someone, somewhere, would complain about the cabin plastics in a review of the 2013 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. [The guilty party shall remain nameless, for now.] Let me put this to rest: if you’re worried about the grain of the plastic on the door panels, the center console — or anywhere else for that matter — then you’ve completely missed the point of this car. [...]

If you’re old enough to remember the gas crisis of the 1970s, you’re probably old enough to remember some of the econo-boxes it inspired — dinky, rattly little things that offered solid fuel economy at the expense of physical and mental comfort. Getting one up to highway speed took Herculean effort, not to mention nerves of steel. [...]

I’ve always been one fascinated by the next big revolution in automotive propulsion. In the early 1960s, I was mesmerized by the Chrysler Turbine Car — a gorgeous creation that hummed softly while slurping down fuel like it was free and emitting large quantities of nitrous oxides. Smooth operation, but emissions and fuel economy were both serious problems later shared by the rotary engine as it struggled and ultimately failed to go mainstream in the 70s. [...]

Let’s get this out of the way right up front: the 2012 Chevrolet Volt is a stunner. Haters may gripe about the price (we’ll get to that in a minute), or they can complain about the loans that Chevy’s parent company, General Motors, received from the Bush and Obama administrations in 2008-09 (been there, done that, get over it). But there is absolutely no denying that the Volt is an amazing ride. [...]