The depressing reality of the new car biz? Most buyers aren't that interested in driving. For every one of us who savors the sheer joy of running a fast car through the gears, there are 10,000 others who couldn't care less. To most people, driving is a chore. They'd much rather be guzzling a soda, snarfing a burger, texting their buddies, and watching TV -- preferably all at once -- instead of enjoying the interaction with a finely tuned piece of machinery while getting from A to B.

With the 2016 Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirement of 37.8 mpg looming over the horizon, automakers are (and will continue) rolling out more fuel-efficient models. Naturally, they're informing consumers about those fresh fuel-misers wherever eyes and ears turn. While watching TV, listening to the radio, reading the paper, or surfing the Web, it's hard to escape the onslaught of today's "40-mpg" small cars.

Road Test editor Scott Mortara headed down the quarter mile in the bright-yellow Boss 302 Mustang, steadying his speed for Motor Trend's standard brake test, just as he's done a thousand times before. Back in the day, before anti-lock brakes and stability control systems and decent tires, you never knew quite which direction the car might be facing when you finished a brake test. These days, though, it's fairly simple: At about 70 mph, you grenade the brake pedal and hang on. The electronic nannies keep the cars nice and straight, and our sophisticated on-board data-logging equipment automatically captures the distance it takes to decelerate from 60 mph to a standstill.

As an auto enthusiast and editor at this magazine, I find it impossible to not get amped over an all-new generation of car -- e.g., "the 10th-gen Supermobile that delivers 100 plus horses, 10 extra mpg, and 1,000,000 more covetous stares than last year's ninth gen." What's not exciting about that? This passion is why we here at Motor Trend report on all-new cars, dedicating covers, comparisons, and features to them. They represent the cutting edge of autodom, the best in powertrains, chassis, aerodynamics, safety, and design.

Ah yes, the good old days. When gas cost pennies per gallon, you could rent genuine Shelby Mustangs from Hertz, and the cops didn't have radar. When Toyota was still an obscure Japanese automaker, Hyundai was still in the construction business, and Motown still dazzled the world with brazen displays of power and performance and style. When sex was safe, and racing dangerous.

I've been covering cars for well over a decade, and never have I seen what I'm witnessing now: myriad new vehicles that are actually lighter and smaller (or at least no bigger) than the ones they've replaced. For as long as I can remember, next-gen cars have always been heavier and larger than their predecessors.

The squiggle on the map looks interesting-a road that, judging by the tightly packed contour lines, loops off Utah's Route 12 into some of the wilder parts of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. But it's the name of the road that caught my attention. How can we not take a road called Hell's Backbone? Mrs. MacKenzie, bless her, shrugs and says okay. I bring the Porsche Cayenne's ride-height setting back up to normal, switch the air suspension to comfort mode, and head off along the gravel

Computer scientists study the darndest things, or at least the ones at my alma mater, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, do. They write algorithms to predict presidential election outcomes and March Madness basketball brackets; they analyze aviation security risks; and now their dot-connecting computer codes are pointing an accusatory finger at the automobile for causing America's obesity epidemic. Preposterous! Or is it?

I've never wanted to own a Porsche 911, though they are great fun to drive. They're even wilder to ride in with a pro like Walter Rohrl flailing away at the helm. Such rides sometimes make me wonder if the "laws of physics" are open to creative interpretation like our Constitution. But two mechanical engineering degrees tell me they're not, hence, in my mind no proper racebred chassis should have its engine cantilevered off the rear axle (or the front). Yes, the 911's setup loads the rear tires for better launch acceleration and provides slightly better weight distribution under hard braking, but if this arrangement is superior, why doesn't anybody else in racing use it? I'm willing to bet that a mid-engine Cayman could spank a 911 on the Nürburgring if equipped with equivalent power, tires, and chassis optimization. So is it just pig-headed German stubbornness keeping the Cayman down?

Toyota introduced the original 2001 Prius to the U.S. in Y2K, nearly a dozen years ago. Since then, Japan's behemoth automaker has sold a cool two million of its shovel-nose gas-electric, with half that tally being consumed in the United States. In Los Angeles, the Prius is conspicuously common and comprehensibly cool -- about as ubiquitous as a Hollywood wannabe yet as special as a Hollywood star. That it took Toyota well over a decade to give its haute hybrid a sibling brings one thought to mind: What took so long?

We have put together a list of Toyota recall models and years. Find the car defects, according to the specific year and model, if you own a Toyota.

Toyota announced that it is recalling over 1.5 Million vehicles, including Lexus models, for problems with braking systems and fuel pumps.

The sticking gas pedal problem that prompted the recall of millions of Toyotas last year may have contributed to a deadly accident in Utah.

In the top Toyota AWD cars list, the Toyota Matrix S is believed to be the only one offered in the US. This article centers on Toyota AWD cars and SUVs.

The achingly beautiful Alfa 4C seen at the Geneva show is to spearhead Alfa Romeo's U.S. relaunch in 2012.

The latest member of the Prius family, the Prius v, which we featured in a couple of weeks ago, is just the first new addition to the growing Prius lineup. Destined to land in U.S. showrooms soon, the v is a larger, five-seat Prius with tweaked handling and bigger brakes. Last month, we revealed the Prius Coupe concept, a two-door that promises to put "fun to drive" and "hybrid" on the same page for the first time. Expected a Couple launch date in 2015.