The truth is that the convertible you see here isn’t much of an M3 beyond powerplant and badging. “Whaddaya mean,” you wail. “It goes from 0 to 60 mph in under five seconds! It’s got 0.92 g of lateral grip! Plus the steering wheel’s all fat and full of color-y stitching! Sounds like an M3 to me.”

You may have a point, but historically the M3 is a model that makes no compromises. It’s a performance-tuned ballistic missile designed to obliterate expectations and competitors alike, a machine so perfectly in harmony with enthusiasts’ wants and desires that they wake up in the middle of the night mumbling its name under their breath, palms clammy with cold sweat.

But that all changes once you chop off the roof.

Gone is the I-beam structural rigidity. Added are several hundred speed-sapping pounds of electric-top wizardry. Introduced are very un-M-like quivers and jitters. In our minds, the M3 badge stands for dynamic purity, and the (relatively) flexy chassis and porky curb weight of the convertible result in a dilution of that ideal.

So the M3 convertible isn’t an M3 in the truest sense. What is it, then? Certainly nothing bad—in fact, it is the closest thing to a sports car that seats four real humans and has a roof that goes down. There are a few more visceral droptops out there, some of which claim to hold four people—the Porsche 911 Turbo cabriolet and its laughable rear seats, for example—but none offer such an intoxicating combination of practicality, speed, prestige, and modern technology as found in this car.

Gimme More of That Hot, Hot V-8

We can’t get enough of the M3’s stupendously awesome 4.0-liter V-8; you could strap it to a three-legged water buffalo and we’d be more than happy to take it for a spin. Our affection for the rev-happy eight-pot, of course, only grows with every sampling, and that was certainly the case with the M3 convertible.

414 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of torque provide plenty of motivation for the hefty, 4123-lb car, and our tests saw the M3 ’vert hit 60 mph in a blistering 4.6 seconds. The car’s closest competitor, the Mercedes-Benz CLK63 AMG cabrio, does the deed in 4.2 seconds, but that car boasts advantages of 61 horsepower and 170 (!) lb-ft of torque. Quarter-mile times are commensurate in disparity, with the M3 turning 13.1 seconds at 109 mph and the CLK doing 12.5 at 116. It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that the Benz costs a staggering $92,975, some $25K more than the M3 convertible, which starts at a comparatively thrifty $67,475.

You Might Need Your Own Bailout after Finishing With the Options List

As with all BMWs, though, the base price can bloat like a week-old carcass once you get frisky with the options list. Our completely and totally loaded tester, for example, rang up at $80,170. Of that, $550 went toward metallic paint, $1100 toward swathing the cabin in Fox Red (and fantastic) leather upholstery, and $1250 toward the Premium package and its power-folding mirrors, sycamore wood trim, universal garage opener, and BMW Assist. An additional $2445 was divided between a Cold Weather package, rear parking sensors for people with broken necks (or broken mirrors), HD radio, Sirius satellite radio, and a wonderful iPod hookup. We’d go so far as to call the iPod integration the most intuitive thing about the old iDrive system as a whole—we’re happy to say that iDrive has been completely revamped for 2009, making this one of our last encounters with the previous generation.

The biggest dollars were tacked on for stuff that actually affected the car’s performance. The Technology package, dual-clutch transmission, and 19-inch wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 performance rubber totaled an additional $7350.

In addition to navigation and keyless go, the Tech package adds electronic damping and the M Drive function, which allows the driver to pre-select via iDrive his or her preferences for the dampers, throttle response, steering effort and response, and stability control, and enable them using the M button on the steering wheel.

[ Original Source ]

To your list of things that will never happen, you can add one more: The hot-blooded pilotes of this staff will never rank this new Lincoln above a BMW, any BMW, in a comparison test. But the Supreme Court is not the only enclave of divided opinions; the contrarians among us think Ford has something going on here.

Consider the driver’s office. BMW and Benz, not to mention Honda and Acura designers—and Jaguar, too, now that we think of it—could learn much from a few hours in this Lincoln. The wide-screen dash display is so bright and legible you could read it with patches on both eyes. And the driver interface—the buttons or knobs or joysticks or what the Ultimate Driving Machine calls iDrive (i for infuriation?)—seems to explain itself at a glance here. The MKS combines a touch screen with just the right number of hard buttons and, even better, knobs. They’re all positioned high where you can see them, on the center stack in a remarkably simple array, angled just right for easy use. Strong, white, sans-serif characters on dark backgrounds encourage info to leap into your mind, whether from the screen or the dials of the cluster. Nothing blanks out when you put on your polarized sunglasses, either. Eat your hearts out, Benz and BMW drivers. Read more »

It’s fair to say that the folks at Audi have found their styling muse. After we swooned over the shape of the new S5 coupe, Audi basically added two doors to the design and called it the A4. It’s less zoomy-looking than the coupe, but it’s still sexy—unmistakably Audi—and won’t be confused with any other Auto Union offerings. But unlike BMW’s wild leap off the styling reservation, the A4 doesn’t jump out visually as a significant departure from Audi’s evolutionary progression that started with the first A4. Way back in 1996, we liked that first A4 well enough to have awarded it 10Best Cars honors three years running.
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Acura kicked its sleepy RL in the fanny with a 2005 redesign that ended the era of the Japanese Lincoln. Stone-sharpened styling, a 300-hp V-6, and a newfangled, yaw-inducing all-wheel-drive system suddenly made the RL a switchback hound among $50,000 luxury sedans.

Dandelions grew at dealers. Sales have slipped every year since 2005, to a low of 6262 cars last year. Meanwhile, arch-rival Lexus outsold the RL by more than three to one with its similarly priced GS350.

Instead of a kick in the pants, Acura is trying a frying pan to the face. The rearranging of the RL’s kisser for ’09 nudges it back toward Lincoln-like lassitude, with a squared-up nose, monster grille blade, and puffed-out front shoulders. Augmented by injections of chrome and bright plastic, the front and rear ends bristle with new bling.

Always the small fry in its class, the RL now evinces a more imperious—Imperial? New Yorker?—look, especially on its 18-inch wheels (17s were standard before). It’s a mirage; the dimensions barely change. The revised sheetmetal and bumpers add 2.2 inches to the overall length, but the cozy 110.2-inch wheelbase, tight back seat, and modest 13-cubic-foot trunk remain. The long list of standard equipment carries over, so look very close to see the new RL’s interior upgrades, including a fancier shifter and new front buckets with greater adjustability. A new interior noise-canceling system really does suck up the road rumble. Read more »

The model lineups of luxury automakers are fairly predictable. The six-cylinder is the entry-level car and the bestselling. The V-8 is a more powerful, higher-performing version and costs more. Then there’s Lexus, which until now had reversed this logic with its GS, a competitor to the BMW 5-series, Mercedes E-class, and Infiniti M35/M45.

The most powerful model in the lineup was a hybrid, the GS450h, making 339 horsepower. The V-6–engined GS350 made 303 horses, and the V-8 GS430 was good for just 290 in 2007. Recognizing that buyers of the V-8 GS might want more firepower for their money, Lexus has now rectified this anomaly by fitting the GS with the 4.6-liter V-8 and eight-speed automatic transmission from the big LS460. Hence, we have the GS460 shown here, with 342 horsepower, a comfortable buffer of 39 horses over the GS350 (and 52 more than the GS430).

The extra ponies are good for a 0-to-60-mph time of 5.5 seconds, 0.2 quicker than the last GS430 we tested and identical to the GS450h. Over the standing quarter-mile, the advantage extends to 0.2 second over the GS450h and 0.5 second over the GS430. We managed 16 mpg with the 460, 1 mpg worse than in the 430 and four fewer than in the 450h.
In most regards, the GS460 is a nice piece. The interior is skillfully wrought, the car is beautifully built, and the powertrain is a gem. As long as the road is smooth, it’s a serene ride, but sealed cracks and potholes in the pavement kill the serenity. Even in its soft setting, the adjustable suspension can’t compensate for the reinforced sidewalls of the Dunlop run-flat tires. Read more »