The sun bears down hot and bright on the tightly wound road course at Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club in the desert just outside Pahrump, Nevada. You’re in Third gear, winding a high-strung turbocharged five-cylinder engine to its 7000-rpm redline. You careen toward Turn 3, a tight, decreasing radius number with a really late apex.

Sport utility vehicles ain’t what they used to be. Thank goodness. Most of us really don’t need an old-school, body-on-frame, gas-guzzling galoot. Mercedes-Benz knows this and has given us the M-Class midsize crossover, made with a unibody construction. Sorry to use the cliché “car-like” but that’s exactly what it is.

We’re nearing a historic moment in automotive history. As a new BMW 3 Series platform looms on the horizon, and with it a new M3—which, it’s speculated, will be powered by a turbocharged version of the BMW inline six-cylinder engine—the naturally aspirated BMW M car as we knew it will have ceased to exist.

I needed to be reminded what it’s like to have a totally carefree, relaxed motoring experience. Bought new nearly 14 years ago, my car has developed a few nagging noises and personality disorders. Lucky for me the rest of the staff was committed to other vehicles or trips so into the 2011 BMW 535i sedan I went.

Knott’s Berry Farm started as a family restaurant and morphed into a sizable theme park, complete with Wild West shows, roller coasters and assorted “spin and hurl” rides. My college girlfriend was the lead operator on an attraction that would send its screaming passengers to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds, terminating with a 90-degree incline that briefly headed skyward until coasting back to the start. Although the entire sequence took 20 seconds, folks would wait half an hour under the hot SoCal sun to become the equivalent of human slingshot ammo.

I’d like to think the bit of extra work I’ve put in over the last few weeks is partially the reason why editor Bidrawn tossed me the key fob to the 2012 Audi A7 and said I could use it for a few days.

Just when some onlookers thought MINI had lost the plot and gone all soft on us with the Countryman, along comes the MINI Coupe to shovel a generous helping of spice back into the brand.

Gratuitous (and we admit, totally cliché) Joe Walsh reference aside, this Maserati really does do 185 mph, making it the fastest road car in the current range. And it gets there with help from all of 444 hp, giving it the best power-to-weight ratio as well.

First there’s denial, then, eventually, there’s acceptance. After current R32 enthusiasts get over the fact that the new Golf R won’t be powered by their much-loved VR6, they’ll start to come to their senses. Yes, the VR6’s sinister snarl is a thing of the past, relegated to the scrap heap of progress. In its place is the same turbocharged, 2.0-liter TFSI engine that motivates the Audi TTS, detuned just a bit from 266 to 256 hp, because the United States is considered a “hot” country (with states like Arizona) and there are different airflow and cooling characteristics between the TTS and Golf R.

Lotus is on the move. The company’s future plans are nothing if not ambitious, with no less than five distinct new models planned for the coming decade, including a new-generation Elise for 2012, the four-door Eterne and a 21st century interpretation of the famed Esprit.

With the S iteration, the Aston Martin Vantage range “comes of age,” states the official aston press release. As it turns out, the press office isn’t far off. With each iteration and special model, the V8 Vantage has seen significant technical improvement. This time, the car has been roundly improved in just about every area.

Automotive desire has a new name, and her name is Virage. That’s the nom de guerre of Aston Martin’s latest model, and she appears every bit as aggressive yet every bit as sensual as her sisters. So of course she looks the business. And with an Aston Martin V12 engine under her long, sleek hood, she sounds the business too.

I never knew you could drive so fast in Mexico. The long, dusty desert roads are punctuated with speed signs, but according to the locals they merely represent speed suggestions. If you have a little expendable income, discreetly slip the Federale 500 or 600 pesos—the equivalent of about 40 or 50 bucks—and he’ll generally send you on your way—with or without a gracias Senior.

Suspension guru Rhoddy Harvey-Bailey once explained to me that antiroll bars are only there to correct mistakes inherent in a suspension design. I recalled his words very clearly as McLaren Automotive’s MD, Antony Sherrif, explained the philosophy behind the suspension design of the new MP4-12C.

The ’12 Mercedes-Benz CLS63 AMG kicks butt in a most civilized way. There’s no reason to think the "basic" version of this machine, with 518 hp and 516 lb-ft of torque, cannot hold its own in a tush-kicking contest. But the car reviewed here has the optional Performance package, placing 550 hp and 590 lb-ft at the disposal of a flexed right foot, and raising top speed from 155 to 186 mph.

It was like experiencing an extremely vivid dream after a very rich and satisfying meal with a few glasses of wine at a trendy new restaurant. Driving through a surreal desert landscape, I was behind the wheel of what seemed to be my own 997.2 GT3. Things were totally realistic and believable, but on the other hand, I had the sense that something was just not quite right. Most everything was familiar and where it should be, however, the Alcantara seat inserts, parts of the steering wheel, hand brake lever and door handles were a “wild” shade of red. The driver seat felt comfortable, but tighter with less padding, so I looked towards the empty passenger seat and noticed that these were the folding carbon-fiber sport buckets that I should have ordered. This was all very strange.

It’s nine o’clock in the morning and you’ve been on an airplane for the last 10 1/2 hours—with one more plane to catch.

As we blast across the lonely, undulating terrain of the Southern California desert east of San Diego, in a trio of Flint Gray CLS63 AMGs, it occurs to me that I’m only one misplaced rock away from never seeing home again. As I reflect on past incidents, on debris I’ve hit and tires that’ve blown, I’m reminded that at none of those times was I all the way on the floor with 525 hp underfoot.

If a marque is going to make a comeback, it could do much worse than with the 500. Fiat left the United States in 1983 with tears in its reputation as large and numerous as the rust holes in its car bodies.

The Montezuma-Borrego Highway running from Ranchito to Borrego Springs in the Anza-Borrego desert wilderness is one of the more impressive 11-mile stretches of pavement in Southern California. Its technicality and a rapid elevation ascent or descent, depending on your direction of travel, is enough to turn even the most iron-clad gut. And it’s short enough to do back-to-back-to-back up-and-down runs in rapid succession. Essentially, it’s a near-perfect setting for spirited driving. Perfect for a Porsche 911.

Compromise is an unavoidable fact of life. What looks fantastic on paper is often subjected to series of revisions that can all but emasculate a once-great idea.

Even as the speedo heads towards the 300-kph mark in the Bugatti Veyron Super Sports, the traction control fights to rein in 1,184 hp of pure fury behind my head. I know it cannot get better than this. This time.

As it happens, the new Audi A8 will be sailing into the midst of perhaps its fiercest competition yet, with a hot new 7 Series from BMW; a forthcoming new S-Class from Mercedes that promises a range of powerplants from the pedestrian to the ludicrous; and a sexy all-new Jaguar XJ that has finally ascended as a truly viable contender.

The battle between the head and the heart-the analytical and romantic sides of our nature-is an eternal one. But in the car business, emotion sells cars to private individuals as effectively as numbers do to fleet managers.

Only last month did we ... hang on, we've already done that intro. But the story is more or less the same. There has been sufficient oohing and ahhing over the wild Jaguar C-X75 hybrid/jet turbine supercar concept (zero to 60 mph in under 3.4 seconds; zero to 200 mph in 17.5 seconds) after the 2010 Paris Motor Show that now the company is thinking about making it into a production car, perhaps up to 2,000 per year. Apparently, it all rests on Jaguar being able to make the turbine engines. The company has said it will spend two to three years working on that tech before spending another three to four developing the rest of the car. So that's, erm, about seven years to wait. Hah, they might have developed antimatter drive by then.