Enlarge / We never get tired of seeing the different ways Porsche finds to tweak the venerable 911. It's outdone itself with the Sport Classic, but the car comes with a price tag that means very few will experience it. (credit: Bradley Iger)

Sports cars have always been emotionally driven purchases, and perhaps no automaker understands this better than Porsche. There are more than two dozen iterations of the 911 on sale today, and while it can sometimes feel like sussing out the differences in character between one variant and another is an exercise in splitting hairs, the new Sport Classic tugs at enthusiasts' heartstrings in a way that no other modern 911 can.

Part of the Heritage Design Edition series, which includes a 911 Targa as well as two more as-yet-unnamed models, the new Sport Classic leverages the formidable capability of the latest 911 Turbo while delivering a genuinely unique driving experience and a distinct sense of style.

While its purposeful stance comes courtesy of the Turbo's widened body, elements like the bespoke carbon fiber hood, the Carrera GT-inspired carbon “double bubble” roof, and the eye-catching carbon fiber ducktail rear spoiler—the latter of which pays homage to the iconic 911 Carrera RS 2.7 of the early 1970s—help to provide the Sport Classic with a look all its own. The bodywork is also further differentiated from its Turbo sibling thanks to the deletion of the side intakes, a change that necessitated new tooling to stamp the unique panels that run from underneath the front of the doors all the way to the rear bumper. New inlets installed under the ducktail spoiler are on hand to channel air into the engine's intake system.

Enlarge / Alfa Romeo has a new crossover called the Tonale. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

I don't believe that Jeremy Clarkson was right when he said that you could only be a true petrolhead once you'd owned an Alfa Romeo, but the oafish TV presenter wasn't entirely off-base. I've just spent a week with Alfa's latest creation, the unfortunately named Tonale, and it has left me scratching my head. Beset by gremlins and not exactly cheap, it nonetheless charmed me in a way that I really don't think would have happened if I'd been driving, say, a Dodge .

Once upon a time, Alfa Romeo was Ferrari before there really was a Ferrari, building Grand Prix-winning race cars and drop-dead gorgeous road cars. That feels like a very long time ago now. A planned resurgence, set in motion while the brand was under the control of the late Sergio Marchionne , has fallen far short of its original ambitious sales targets— 100,000 Guilias a year , we were told at the time.

But the brand lives on, and it has an all-new model out. The Tonale is a smaller crossover than the Stelvio, and here in the US it is only available with a plug-in hybrid powertrain. It pairs a 180 hp (135 kW), 1.3 L four-cylinder gasoline engine that drives the front wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission with a 121 hp (90 kW) electric motor that drives the rear wheels, fed by a 15.5 kWh lithium-ion battery.

Enlarge / When you see a brightly colored triceratops by the side of the road you should probably check it out. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Polestar provided flights from Washington, DC, to Denver and back and two nights in a hotel so we could drive the model-year 2024 Polestar range. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

DENVER—A car's midlife refresh is, more often than not, a mostly cosmetic affair—new light clusters or a changed front fascia, perhaps a new interior. Truth be told, the styling tweaks to the model year 2024 Polestar 2 are subtle—you might notice new wheel designs, and the ersatz front grille has been replaced with a body-colored panel. Instead, Polestar concentrated on tweaking the bits you can't see, making the car more efficient and, in the case of the cheaper, single-motor version, a lot more fun to drive, too.

When Polestar first launched the Polestar 2 in 2020, it did so with a dual-motor all-wheel drive version , followed by a more affordable single-motor model . Although the more expensive, more powerful version was faster, as is often the case with electric vehicles, I found the supposedly lesser car the one to go for. It's this version that has had the most attention paid to it in the refresh, most notably the fact that its single motor now powers the rear wheels, not the front.

Polestar has developed a new electric motor that's significantly more powerful than the one it replaces, outputting 299 hp (220 kW) and 361 lb-ft (490 Nm). That's a 29 percent boost in power and 48 percent more torque than the previous single-motor model.

Enlarge / The Pininfarina Battista looks almost as good as it goes. And boy does this car go. (credit: Pininfarina)

There’s quick, and then there’s launching a car with such brutality that you can legitimately feel your cheeks pulling away from your face. It takes the Automobili Pininfarina Battista just 1.8 seconds to accelerate to 60 miles per hour. Yet somehow, that isn’t the most eye-popping detail about this hand-built Italian hypercar. Ditto its $2.5 million asking price.

A quick refresher: Automobili Pininfarina is a spin-off of legendary design house Pininfarina, a company responsible for making some of the automotive world’s most gorgeous cars (and also the VinFast VF8 ). The Battista—named for company founder Battista “Pinin” Farina—is Automobili Pininfarina’s first product, and it shares its electric underpinnings with the Nevera, a similarly hyperbolic supercar from Croatian brand Rimac .

Those EV guts consist of a T-shaped 120 kWh battery pack and four electric motors, one at each wheel. Max output is a yes-you-read-that-correctly 1,877 hp (1,400 kW) and 1,726 lb-ft (2,340 Nm) of torque, and while the aforementioned 1.8-second 0-to-60-mph sprint is ludicrous in its own right, even more impressive is that the Battista never lets up. It takes less than five seconds to hit 124 mph (200 km/h), and you’ll see 186 mph in just over 10 seconds. The Battista’s top speed? 217 mph (350 km/h). You’ll be there in no time.

Enlarge / Toyota took better photos of the bZ4x than I did, so I'm using theirs in this review. (credit: Toyota)

A few weeks ago, we reviewed Lexus' new battery-electric vehicle and came away underwhelmed. Today, it's the turn of its Toyota cousin, the closely related (and unfortunately named) bZ4x. The electric Toyota had a troubled launch last year when the cars had to be recalled due to wheels that might fall off . That's all solved now thanks to new bolts, washers, and wheels, so we finally spent a week with the bZ4x. Given this EV's initial reception, I was prepared to be disappointed, but by the end of the week, I was pleasantly surprised. The Toyota isn't particularly flashy, but it is more efficient than I was expecting.

Let's start with the name, because it's a little weird. But there's a reason behind the alphanumeric jumble. Toyota's plan to reach carbon neutrality is called Beyond Zero, so the EVs it's building to get there adopt the bZ moniker, thus bZ4x. You may want to call it Bizzyforks as at least one friend of mine does—no one will stop you if you do.

Like the Lexus and the Subaru Solterra, the bZ4x uses Toyota's e-TNGA platform; I mistakenly wrote in that Lexus review that it was an existing platform—it's actually not. It's roughly the same size as the Lexus, too—the wheelbase is an identical 112.2 inches (2,850 mm), but it's a bit shorter (184.6 inches/4,689 mm), a bit narrower (73.2 inches/1,859 mm) and slightly taller (65 inches/1,651 mm).

Enlarge / Everyone always said Porsche would never put its best flat-six engine in the Cayman or it would overshadow the 911. Maybe that's exactly what's happened. (credit: Bradley Iger)

Judging by recent projects like the Mission R and 718 Cayman GT4 ePerformance , Porsche looks poised to introduce an electrified version of the Cayman in the not-too-distant future. While it's likely that such a sports car will raise the bar for certain measures of performance, it's also safe to assume that the driving experience will be altered significantly. Thus far, high-performance EVs have struggled to deliver the kind of emotional connection that enthusiasts have grown accustomed to from their ICE-motivated counterparts—a factor that's undoubtedly top of mind for the designers who are working on the next generation of the automaker's lineup. In the meantime, though, the folks in Porsche's GT division have ensured that the current era of the Cayman will not go gentle into that good night.

A vocal contingent of the Weissach faithful long insisted that a model like the GT4 RS would never be produced. Since its introduction in 2005, the Cayman has been positioned as Porsche's entry-level sports coupe relative to the 911, and many posited that this mid-engine platform would never realize its full potential due to concerns that it might upstage its iconic older brother. Although the debut of the 981-generation Cayman GT4 back in 2016 was arguably the first piece of evidence that effectively refuted this theory, the 718 GT4 RS puts the notion to bed. Not only is this the most visceral and capable Cayman ever produced, it also makes a strong case for itself as the most compelling sports car on sale today, full stop.

The GT4 RS benefits from a wide variety of upgrades, but the engine is undoubtedly the star of the show. While it shares the same displacement as the naturally aspirated 4.0 L flat-six in the standard 718 GT4, it's actually an entirely different engine that's borrowed from the latest 911 GT3 . Output is down slightly from that rear-engine application due to the backpressure created by the Cayman's longer exhaust system, but peak figures of 493 hp (368 kW) and 331 lb-ft (449 Nm) of torque still make this the most powerful factory-produced Cayman ever offered by a wide margin and bestow it with a searing 9,000 rpm redline.

Enlarge / This is the second-generation Kia Niro EV, and it is a rather great little electric vehicle. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Last month, we reviewed a great little hybrid , the 2023 Kia Niro. In fact, Kia offers this little hatchback with three different efficient powertrains, and today we're looking at the entirely electric version, the 2023 Kia Niro EV. Ditching the internal combustion engine and replacing it with a slab of lithium-ion cells pushes the price up somewhat—starting at $39,550, the Niro EV is almost $11,000 more expensive than the parallel hybrid version—but on the upside, you get a right-sized electric car that's extremely efficient, particularly on short journeys.

This Kia Niro EV is in fact the second Niro EV we've tested— the first impressed us mightily when we reviewed it back in 2020. The technical specifications of the battery electric powertrain are actually very similar to those in the previous version. There's a 64.8 kWh lithium-ion traction battery between the axles, which powers a 201 hp (150 kW) electric motor that drives the front wheels.

The all-electric powertrain adds a fair bit of mass to the Niro; its curb weight of 3,721–3,803 lbs (1,688–1,725 kg) makes it almost 20 percent heavier than the parallel hybrid version. But in addition to having more power, the Niro EV makes a lot more torque—188 lb-ft (255 Nm), in fact—so it feels much peppier to drive.

Enlarge / There's certainly no ignoring the BMW XM's styling. But don't let it distract you from a competent chassis and powertrain. (credit: BMW)

BMW provided flights from LA to Phoenix and back, plus two nights in a hotel, so we could drive the XM. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

There was a time when "M" cars were lauded not only for the dynamic capability bestowed upon them by BMW's motorsport division but also for their measured aesthetic. Models like the E39-generation M5 epitomized the "if you know, you know" design philosophy, a balanced approach that won the hearts of enthusiasts and mostly flew under the radar for everyone else. But as the new XM plug-in hybrid clearly illustrates, the M Division is undergoing a sea change.

It has been more than four decades since BMW produced the last M1 , the only other road-going machine developed exclusively by the company's storied performance arm. And much like the M1, the XM serves as a statement of purpose.

But this is not a limited-production, mid-engine supercar, nor is it a stripped-down homologation specially built to satisfy the stipulations of a racing series, as the first M3 was. Instead, the XM was designed to represent the pinnacle. Not the pinnacle of performance, but the pinnacle of the modern BMW experience. And it resoundingly succeeds in that mission.

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Genesis provided flights from New York City to Atlanta and back, plus two nights in a hotel so we could drive the new GV70 Electrified. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

It's apt that a brand named Genesis looks at each step forward as a new beginning. The young brand has been the new kid on the luxury automaker block, contending with the challenge of competing with 100-year-old legacy manufacturers who have long set the bar for extravagance while trying to distinguish itself as something unique.

Regarding the latter, Genesis bets on its core principles of being audacious, progressive, and distinctly Korean to give its offering enough pop in contrast to the traditionally stuffy European fare. The GV70 Electrified is the latest move to that end, delivering a battery-electric vehicle version of its bold-styled crossover vehicle that's no mere drivetrain swap. The EV stands out on its own with unique styling and driving character while also having the distinction of being the first US-made Genesis vehicle ever.

Despite its name alluding to a hybrid system, the GV70 Electrified is the full battery-electric iteration of Genesis' luxury crossover. There are a handful of notable differences between the two versions, not the least of which is their points of origin. As mentioned, the GV70 Electrified is the first Genesis brand vehicle to roll off the assembly line at Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama or HMMA, the parent company's plant located in Montgomery, Alabama. Importantly, this means the GV70 Electrified is eligible for the full $7,500 IRS clean vehicle tax credit , at least until the implementation of the domestic battery content requirements.