Motoring Con Brio

The inspiration for this post comes amusingly from a friend’s rabid and almost universal hatred of all cars that are American. It led us to ask ourselves— is this kind of knee-jerk dismissal passé? Surely, not all cars coming out of Detroit are an abomination, are they? And as we had concluded recently, the answer came swiftly: certainly not.

Our criteria for this list was simple:

1. Does this car do the American automotive enthusiast (in particular one who might have traditionally had a European or Japanese bent) proud?
2. Would we rock this?

Here they are, in no particular order and not restricted to a specific price point or category in any way— there’s something in here for almost everyone.

Ford Focus ST:

As discussed recently.

Mustang Boss 302:

Why this and not the Shelby GT500? Simple: just the refreshing purity of the Boss 302, which gives you everything you need and nothing that you don’t. To us, it is the 911 GT3 of the Mustang lineup. The GT500 may have ‘more’ (of everything), but more isn’t always better.

Cadillac CTS-V:

The American car that gave the BMW M5 a run for its money (with ample change to spare). Make ours the wagon.

Corvette ZR1:

Again, think value. World-beating ‘hypercar’ performance at a less-than-supercar price (and, naysayers might argue, cachet).

Dodge Dart R/T:

We admit, this one was the hardest to include on this list (see our comments 1, 2, and 3 at the bottom)— Dodge’s four-door compact car (née Alfa Romeo Giulietta) doesn’t exactly set us alight with desire. But it’s been well-reviewed, looks and sounds decent, and is based on an honest-to-goodness Italian platform (albeit an economy car’s). For an affordable, ‘practical’ family car to round out this top five, one could do worse. Certainly, Dodge has (in the past).

Agree? Disagree? Drop a line in the comments.

¹ From a purely performance perspective, a Camaro ZL1 might have been the better inclusion to round out our top five, but we just like the Mustang Boss 302 better from a personal standpoint, even though the ZL1 is unquestionably impressive (and outperforms the Mustang, quite frankly). Sorry, Camaro fans (at least we were honest about our bias).

² The Tesla Model S and Fisker Karma were intentionally excluded from this list – recall that we made a reference to Detroit – even though one could probably make the argument that either/or belongs (probably the Tesla).

³ Were the Cadillac ATS-V already out, the Dart probably wouldn’t have made the cut.

Update (December 19, 2012): Can’t believe we forgot the Pontiac G8 GXP. It has been a few years.

Make this one our fifth choice in place of the Dart.

(Image credits: caranddriver.com, motortrend.com, roadandtrack.com, automobilemag.com— fittingly enough)

Posted in Moving images, Still images, What would you buy
Tags: america f*** yeah, boss 302, camaro, corvette, cts-v, dart, dodge, focus st, ford, mustang