With Toyota heir Akio Toyoda in the automaker’s driver’s seat, cars that customers can get passionate about are once again being green-lighted from drawing table to assembly line. So is the case with Lexus’s new LFA supercar: Intended as the halo car, as well as the first of a series of F-badged cars, the LFA was to define the “F-Series” as a brand.

Man, talk about bad timing. Just days after the Leftlane garage scheduled time to sample a 2010 Ford Mustang GT swathed in wow-look-at-me Grabber Blue paint, the Blue Oval crew officially announced that the 2011 ‘Stang would get a Camaro-challenging 412 horsepower, 390 lb-ft. 5.0-liter V8.

Once upon a time there was a hip car called the Scion xB. The name stood for nothing, but to some goons in marketing, it just sounded cool. Buyers were able to customize it to their hearts content. And for not a lot of money, either.

While the market for minivans has been on the wane ever since the crossover took off, Toyota has never wavered since introducing their first Sienna in 1997 as a 1998 model year entry. Since then, players have either discontinued their offerings (Ford, Nissan, Hyundai) or disappeared totally from the scene (Plymouth and Pontiac).

Cadillac’s late 20th century image took a rough beating thanks to lackluster products that performed poorly in both reviews and sales, hardly living up to the “Standard of the World” moniker. With products like the all-new SRX midsize crossover, General Motors is optimistic that Cadillac’s latest offerings will turn the tide for this once – and maybe future – king of luxury.

Akio Toyoda is working in double-time. In an effort to counter what he calls his company’s standing on the brink of “irrelevance or death,” the grandson of company founder Kiichiro Toyoda is pedaling as fast as he can to right the listing that this ship has taken of late.

To create a beautiful example of four-seat, enthusiast-oriented topless motoring, Infiniti took the best parts of its G37 Coupe and ripped the lid right off the sucka’.

The Canadian fall and winter can be brutal when the roads are slick and you’ve got a lot of power to put down to the tarmac – so it’s a good thing Ford equipped the Taurus ess-aych-oh with all-wheel-drive. A brief jaunt into Ontario from Michigan up King’s Highway 402 proved that the SHO is back – just don’t pronounce it phonetically, as lame fanboys are wont to do.

Darwin would probably be pleased with the evolution of the SUV. The vehicular example of “survival of the fittest” might be illustrated better by Toyota’s thoroughly revised 2010 4Runner than any other vehicle on the road. While its rivals have all but vanished, the 4Runner keeps on truckin’ – literally.

The arid terrain of San Diego looks similar to that which racers encounter in the Baja 1000 south of the border on the Baja Peninsula. That is, save for the highways, city streets, and lush landscaping found around the more tony parts of town – those where you might find the Lexus GX.

The iconic Jeep brand has been passed around more times than – well, we won’t go there. Willys, Kaiser, AMC, Renault, Chrysler, Daimler and now Fiat have all had at least some influence on the division best known for its open-top, seven slat grille off roader known today as the Wrangler.

All it’s really going to take is an open mind. That’s what BMW asked of consumers when now-former BMW designer Chris Bangle unleashed his new styles to the public in 2002. At that time, his take on the new 7-Series was as polarizing as any we can remember. Bangle is gone, but like catching lightning in a bottle for a second time, an open mind is what they hope greets the introduction of the new BMW 550i Gran Turismo.

Just a few days into our evaluation of Mazda’s lightly refreshed 2010 CX-9 crossover, we found ourselves in a bit of a conundrum. Crossovers, modern convention dictates, are boring contraptions designed for rugrat-hauling utility. The CX-9 is a driver-focused fun machine. What’s going on here?

More than two decades before introducing the Accord Crosstour, Honda took the wraps off of its Civic “Wagovan.” Part of the Japanese “tall-wagon” fad that also included such memorable rivals as the dual-sliding door Nissan Stanza Wagon and single-offset-reverse-light Toyota Tercel Sport Wagon, the Wagovan offered a mild amount of extra cargo space and a major dose of wacky styling. This all seems rather familiar.

We first saw it at the New York International Auto Show. Looking every bit the part of a cast member from the Mad Max movies, the GMC Terrain seemed like a futuristic armored car with hidden panels that would cover the tires and wheels in case of attack. Mr. Brinks, Mr. Wells and Mr. Fargo: Your vehicle awaits.

It’s fitting that we traveled to Half Moon Bay, California, home to a massive seagull population, to test a new type of gull. The 2010 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, one of the most exotic, outrageous new cars to debut in recent memory, harks back to the days when Sir Stirling Moss piloted its spirtual father, the ’50s 300SL Gullwing.

Once, compact pickups were truly that: Light duty, nimble versions of those hulking behemoths called half-tons. Over the years, however, the big ‘uns got more car-like and the little ‘uns got, well, bigger. Case in point: The Dodge Ram’s little Dakota brother, which is quickly outgrowing its sheetmetal as it tries to play with the big boys.

Driving Aston Martin’s new flagship droptop, the DBS Volante, it’s hard not to conjure up some excessively cliché Bond images. Yet unlike Her Majesty’s secret agent, with his unlimited bar tab, we desired a taste of fancy champagne on a decidedly Miller High Life budget.

It doesn’t take much to get us excited about a visit to the music-friendly city of Nashville – even the, uh, thrilling opportunity to sample Nissan’s very, very mildly refreshed Altima sedan was enough to pique our interest.

It’s not unusual to find someone else’s playlist still on the hard drive of a higher-end press car’s audio system when it shows up in our driveway for a week-long evaluation. Sometimes it’s fun to guess who had the vehicle last – the Barbara Streisand collection (200 songs, really?) in a Dodge Charger, for example. But no music has ever seemed more appropriate than “The Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack in a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8.