It’s a new day and we all know what that means! Yet another post about the Mustang. Most of us here at Autoblog are unabashed Mustang fans. So when the call comes from Dearborn to drive yet another new Mustang, we invariably set about rearranging schedules. Such was the case last week. No sooner had we returned to frost-bitten Detroit after the LA Auto Show than the call came to return to SoCal. It was time to take the 2010 Mustang off the LA Convention Center stand and out into what passes for the real world in these parts.

Before we hopped into the updated Mustangs, Ford wanted to give us a refresher on what was being left behind. We were supplied with 2009 models to drive from our hotel to the staging area in Malibu. Anyone who has ever spent time in a 2005-09 Mustang is immediately aware that the weak link is its interior. In a word, it looked and felt cheap. The order of the day for the new 2010 model is refinement. Find out after the jump if Ford has made a Mustang worthy of competing in the now crowded class of modern day muscle cars.

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During the Toyota Venza press presentation in gorgeous Farmington, Pennsylvania, we listened to Toyota describe the recipe for the perfect modern station wagon: Take one of the country’s most popular sedans—the Camry, natch—add more trunk room for your junk, raise the roof a few inches, and leave everything else where it is. The thing is, Toyota won’t call the Venza a wagon.

Nor, for that matter, does it consider the Venza a crossover, the term every other manufacturer calls its wagons when it’s too chicken to call them wagons. To describe the Venza, then, Toyota came up with a yet-undiscovered wagon-avoidance term: “the car, optimized.”

Mix of Highlander and Camry

Eyes rolled around the room. Isn’t “the car, optimized” the very definition of a wagon? Toyota’s feeling is that the Venza is about 70-percent car, 30-percent SUV, but in contrast to most crossovers and sport-utes, the Venza makes no promises of off-road dexterity. (Although, interestingly, the Venza offers the same 8.1 inches of ground clearance as does Toyota’s own Highlander.) It also doesn’t offer a third-row-seat option, so mechanically speaking, what you have here essentially is a “Camry, optimized.” Read more »

The new Audi S4 is either Ingolstadt’s idea of a bad joke or a stroke of genius. If you follow the former line of thought, then you’re from the camp that thinks the economy has jumped off a cliff, gone into freefall and the last thing the world needs is a grunty super-saloon.

But if you side with the latter then Audi’s timing with the S4 couldn’t be more apt – the company has replaced its old 4.2-litre V8 with a new, smaller, supercharged V6. This car is potentially very in tune with these downsizing times.

And while the headline power figures might be down, they still surpass the equivalent Mercedes or BMW. The torque figure also bests both (and the old S4), while mpg figures are 26 percent better that before. The new S4 will even cost a few grand less than its predecessor. Time to find out if the drive is as good as the stats…

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Volvo makes safety sexier with this stylish crossover.

Volvo has been a longtime leader in the mommy-car milieu, a position that has imbued the Swedish company with a safety-oriented persona that’s given it the high ground in the family market. But that persona doesn’t translate very well with singles or young couples who want utility yet value cool above sensible.

If those priorities describe you, and you’ve been eyeballing compact urban utes such as the BMW X3, the Acura RDX, or, at the size/price periphery, the new VW Tiguan, here’s a ride that blends time-honored Volvo virtues with a generous dollop of style, performance, and even fun.

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This 500-hp monster is the strongest commitment to the diesel engine yet.

Some folks are writing off the diesel. The future, they say, lies in electric vehicles, with hybrids as the transition technology. Diesel fuel is expensive, they continue, and there is the further popular conception that diesels are not “clean.” In reality, a diesel typically shaves 30 percent off fuel consumption, and diesel fuel savings are even more substantial at high speeds. New technologies make burning diesel clean as—if not cleaner than—gasoline combustion.

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