Each year we look back and discuss one or two significant cars.  People often wonder what is the best car.  For what?  Value, price, style, performance?  There is really no single answer.

One year an editor of an auto magazine, selecting the year’s ten best cars, said “Honda,” meaning that ten Honda models should be named!  We’re not lucky enough to be that narrow, or focused, as you’re about to see.

I've been enormously impressed with Porsche as a car company in the last twenty years.  In the early nineties, they were facing extinction, with falling sales and no profits.  They called on the best advisors they could find – some Japanese production consultants, who guided Porsche through a major rethinking of their business.

Porsche got their costs down, their revenues up and entered new markets to supplement their sports car business.  First came the Cayenne SUV that many experts thought would be a bust.  Ten years later, it’s their best selling model, and at premium prices.

Porsche Cayenne

I was surprised at the Cayenne’s success, so my prognosis for the Panamera sedan, introduced in 2009, was more positive.  Porsche wisely designed a car that looks like a Porsche, and does not look like any of its competitors.  It’s really not very good looking, but it does look purposeful.  It’s beautifully made, tastefully finished, and technically interesting.  There are V-6, V-8, V-8 turbo, hybrid and diesel versions (not all available in the U.S.).

Driving a Panamera Turbo 5 recently (sticker price $187,000) reminded me that, in judging an extraordinary car like this, you can’t focus on the price/value relationship.  An all-wheel drive, 550 horsepower car that can hit 190 mph and accelerates to 60 mph in under 4 seconds, is clearly aiming elsewhere.  It’s quiet, supple and tractable in ordinary driving.  Mash the throttle; it’s fierce but still civil.  The PDK transmission is an electronically controlled 7-speed mechanical transmission that seems to ALWAYS be in the right gear.

My only reservation about cars like this:  Driving a car at or near its limit has always been great fun, and a measure of one’s driving ability.  But when the limits, whether speed, traction, road holding or braking are so high, there are two risks.  One is that if you make a mistake, the result might be catastrophic.  The other is that judges like to jail people cited for three-digit speeds.

WHEN YOU NEED A REST FROM YOUR PANAMERA:  Jump into your Fiat 500, a brilliant, charming, characterful, sub-$20,000 car.  Reviewed here in July 2011, the Fiat 500 is selling quite well – not quite at the lofty levels predicted by Chrysler, but well enough.

(Read the review at www.californiamille.com)

The Chrysler comeback, engineered by Fiat chief executive Sergio Marchionne, is going much better than I expected.  But they are hitting a snag in the Fiat operation.  The plan was to set up about 130 Fiat “studios” in key markets across the U.S. to represent the Fiat 500 initially, and to soon receive other Fiat and Alfa Romeo models.  Most of those “studios” are now open, with dealers having invested $1 million plus in each one.  They did not expect to support such an investment on the Fiat 500 alone, but rather to offer a range of attractive cars. 

Fiat 500

Recently, Fiat/Chrysler announced delays in new product development, with the result that the promised cars won’t be here for two more years.  The dealers feel ill used and wonder how to support those new stores.  But the Fiat 500 is alive and well.  It, and a Panamera, might be the perfect two car family solution!

Electric Cars

In 1910, electric cars were hot.  But with problems of range, cost and weight, they gradually lost out to the internal combustion engine.  In recent years, there has been a big push for electric cars by green interests.  When GM and Chrysler were seeking bailouts, they made a big show of electric car developments.  GM touted the Volt as a foundation of its future. 

Chrysler’s electric car megaphone has gone silent.  GM is still talking electric, but selling is another story.  There are still the cost, range and weight bugaboos.  In one recent month, GM sold 217,000 cars in the U.S. – only 700 were Volts.  These Volts carry a $7,500 per car federal subsidy, plus various state allowances, in order to wean the world off of rapidly disappearing oil.  Except there are two huge new oil finds, one in Alberta/North Dakota, the other in the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil, that threaten to put the Saudis out of business.

Is it possible that we’ve chanted ourselves into an ignorance of the facts?