Hyundai, Toyota shine among TheWeeklyDriver.com’s 2011 Top-10 Cars

The WeeklyDriver.com had its most successful year in 2011. We posted plenty of car news and automotive trends articles, and we incorporated a good supply of independent videos to complement the approximately 100 vehicles we reviewed.

As editor and publisher of the site, I reviewed 29 cars and trucks in 2011. I drove more than a dozen other vehicles at press launches for several automakers, and I want to thank the nearly dozen manufacturers I worked with in 2011 for their continued support. Thanks also to Michael Dobrin Public Relations, Page One Automotive and Special Transport, Inc., for their continued logistics and manufacturer liaison assistance.

In July, I traveled to the Tour de France for the 13th time. There's no better place to test a new car than driving at high speeds on French freeways or while negotiating undulating country roads or while precariously ascending and descending narrow roads in the Alps and Pyrenees.

I reserved a Volkswagen TDI diesel for the estimated 5,000-mile journey. But the fine folks at Hertz made a mistake and I drove a Renault Clio around France for three weeks. There are many reasons why Renault isn't sold in the United States, and let's hope it stays that way.

Our contributing editors contributed dozens of reviews and videos to TheWeeklyDriver.com in 2011. The site, which debuted in 2003, has also gained appreciable advertising support. It's now an official Google News source. We're on Facebook and Twitter, and we have a YouTube channel (TheWeeklyDriver). We also recently debuted our site re-design.

Add it altogether and for the fifth straight year we're presenting our Best-of-the-Year list for 2011.

Many automotive sites pick Cars of the Year before the calendar year begins. They have their reasons. TheWeeklyDriver.com makes selections at the end of the year. We feel it allows for a year of reflection on what the automotive industry had to offer.

This year, for the first time, we're adding the favorite cars of 2011 from the site's contributing editors:

Derek Mau, contributing editor, photographer. Mau, the former editor of CarReview.com, recently joined TheWeeklyDriver.com. He's a skilled writer and photographer and has a keen sense of website dynamics. We met Mau at regional Toyota launch in Sonoma, California, we'll be colloborating more in 2012.

Mau selected the Hyundai Elantra:

"A 40 mpg car that has does not remind you it is a economy car. The 2011 Hyundai Elantra looks better than a Civic, performs beyond most cars in its class, and has a long list of standard features that would make Santa blush. Hyundai has brought together a winning combination of value, style, and performance in the redesigned Elantra, which makes the competition shrink in comparison.

"Unlike the Ford Fiesta, Ford Focus, and Chevy Cruze, shoppers do not have to upgrade to higher trims to get the advantage of high fuel efficiency rating of Elantra's 29/40 mpg city/highway. In the highly contested compact class, the Hyundai Elantra is a car that excels at most everything."

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And, finally, the top-10 Cars of the Year from TheWeeklyDriver.com.

My list isn't based on a points system or any objective rankings. Rather, it's 10 vehicles among the cars I drove during 2011 that I found innovative or efficient or are just fun to drive. I didn't single out one car of the year simply because it's unfair to do so.

Each car's MSRP is listed, followed by the price as tested and a comment. The alphabetical list varies from the performance and economic wonder Mazda 2 to the plush, solid Volvo S60. I've also listed the top-10 vehicles selected by TheWeeklyDriver.com from the previous four years.

Read More: http://www.theweeklydriver.com/hyundai-toyota-shine-among-theweeklydriver-coms-2011-top-cars/

Chicago Hyundai Elantra

AOL Autos - The Best Car And SUV Of 2011

Choosing the best car and truck of the year? It's a difficult task in any year. But automakers have gotten so good, for the most part, in achieving high quality even in the least expensive cars and trucks that any choices made are bound to invite heavy debate and argument.

Before we get to which vehicles were selected by AOL Autos staff editors, let's turn to a couple of other arbiters to see which models they chose. MotorTrend Magazine, probably the most influential car enthusiast magazine when it comes to choosing car and truck of the year, weighed in recently with the 2011 Volkswagen Passat as Car of the Year, and the Land Rover Range Rover Evoque as Truck of the Year.

We think they were half right.

Another body, the North American Car of the Year/Truck of the Year organization, will make its choices known at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next month. That organization, a jury of fifty journalists from different media outlets, vote on their favorites.

That group's three finalists in each category are Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra and Volkswagen Passat for the car award, and Honda CR-V, BMW X3 and Land Rover Range Rover Evoque for the truck category.

Among the newly designed vehicles released in 2011 that were eligible for MotorTrend, North America Car/Truck of the Year, as well as our selection, were the following 2011 models: Audi A6 and A7, Buick Verano, Chrysler 300, Fiat 500, Hyundai Accent, Hyundai Elantra, Kia Rio, Scion iQ, Subaru Impreza, Toyota Camry, Toyota Prius V, VW Beetle, Mercedes-Benz M Class, MINI Countryman, Nissan Quest and Saab 9-4X.


Read More: http://autos.aol.com/photos/2011-car-suv-of-the-year/


Hyundai Elantra Dealers in Chicago

Small cars rule as finalists for N.A. Car of the Year

Fuel-efficient small cars and trucks won over the judges as finalists in this year's North American Car and Truck of the Year judging.

The Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra and Volkswagen Passat are the finalists for the 2012 North American Car of the Year.

For North American Truck of the Year, the finalists are the BMW X3, the Honda CR-V and the Land Rover Range Rover Evoque. All the vehicles, both the car and crossovers, are compacts except the Passat, a midsize sedan.

Of all the myriad car and truck awards out now, the North American is still considered the most prestigious. It's picked by about 50 top auto journalists, including Test Drive's James R. Healey, and will be named at the big auto show in Detroit next month.

All three of the car finalists reflect the strategy of their respective manufacturers:

• The Focus is the first of many cars and crossovers that Ford plans to introduce from a new global platform.
• The Elantra is one of several new models from Hyundai that achieve at least 40 mpg, an attribute the South Korean automaker has touted in its advertising.
• The Passat, built at Volkswagen's new plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., is a linchpin of VW's goal to sell 800,000 cars a year in the U.S. by 2018. Through November, it has sold 398,654 vehicles in 2011.

"The finalists for Truck of the Year show how much our idea of what a truck is has evolved," said Detroit Free Press auto critic Mark Phelan, who also is a judge. "They're all crossover SUVs that offer fuel economy and performance you wouldn't have dreamed of in a truck 5 or 10 years ago."

Read More: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/12/small-vehicles-rule-as-finalists-for-na-car-of-the-year/1

The Hardest To Find Cars For 2012

The market for compact cars has been heating up lately, with lots of new entrants, many of them  offering luxury car features in a smaller, less expensive package. But no compact has been as hot as the 2012 Hyundai Elantra, which has been flying off dealer lots faster than any car in America.

If you’re looking for one, you’ll have to move fast. The Elantra, which starts at $15,000 and sells for an average $19,961, spends an average of just 10 days in inventory before it’s snapped up, according to automotive researcher Edmunds.com. Forbes looked at Edmunds’ data from the past three months to see which 2012 cars, on average, are selling the fastest. While most cars sit around at dealerships for 50 days or more before they’re sold, these hot sellers are typically gone in just 10 or 12 days.
We spotted three trends in the data that are worth considering if you’re hunting for a new car right now:

• Small cars are hot, especially newly introduced models
• Many Japanese cars are still in short supply, after various supply chain problems
• Luxury SUVs are in high demand at the end of the year

“Elantra has been an absolute phenomenon in the compact car segment,” said John Krafcik, president and chief executive of Hyundai Motor America. “In November, Elantra retail sales were up 37 percent, in spite of significant competition from all-new entries such as the Chevy Cruze, Ford Focus and Honda Civic.” In a segment where prices have been climbing steadily — the Focus sold for an average $20,827 in November, Edmunds says — the Elantra is seen by many as a good value, combining attractive styling, advanced safety features and 40 miles per gallon on the highway.

But the Elantra is just one of a bunch of new small cars that are in short supply for the 2012 model year. You’ll also have trouble if you’re hunting for a Nissan Versa or Hyundai Accent, both of which were redesigned for 2012, or the all-new Chevrolet Sonic, which replaces the Chevy Aveo. All three subcompacts are sold within 12 or 13 days of arriving at showrooms. The Versa has the lowest starting price of any car in America, at $10,990, but Edmunds says most are transacting around $15,600.

Read More: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2011/12/12/the-hardest-to-find-cars-for-2012/