Hottest New Wheels In Years Part One
PART ONE
If you are in the market for a new set of wheels you may be in luck for the 2020 and 2021 models as the COVID-19 pandemic has made it a shopper’s market.
That’s not just for cars, this phenomenal new value of your budget dollar is across the board for the consumer looking a major appliance, a house or a car. The market has slowed down to a crawl and sellers are fighting over customers.
While most consumers are pinching dollars and struggling to make ends meet, those who had saved up for a rainy day or have extra disposable income are finding the world is bending their way.
With automakers foolishly continuing to press ahead and tout the all-EV technology, there are still plenty of bargains to be had in the traditional combustion engines and the remarkable hybrid engines (with regenerative braking systems) markets.
HONDA
WINGS IT
For years both Honda and Toyota have been leading the front from Asia with exceptional quality, high performance and luxury at a very competitive price range with luxury performance cars from Europe.
Both marques seem to have allowed the sports coupe and the sportscar category to lapse into the rear-view mirror. The most recent couple of years have seen on the exhibition floor continued incremental redefinition of styling and performance.
With Honda, the powerhouse carmaker continues its trends with its hottest and biggest category, the Accord Sedan, available in hybrid engine and two door and four door trims.
As Motor Trend stated recently “Honda has one of the strongest portfolios in the business right now.”
A review of their newest models begs the question is the Honda Insight almost the same sheet metal and styling as the Accord? For approximate comparisons, with Honda topping the list of many industry watchers, its closest competitors are Hyunda’s Elantra and Toyota’s Camry, although Toyota appears to have a few more models to offer.
Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 Civic [Honda] but people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car” Elon Musk, Tesla
Retail price wise the Honda Accord hovers between the mid $20,000s to mid $30,000s while the Insight tops off at the low $30K. Another similar styling to the Accord is the Honda Clarity four door sedan which hovers between mid $30,000s to low $60Ks.
The Honda Clarity represents the company’s state of the art technology offering this model as both a plugin hybrid (gasoline and electric) or fuel cell (hydrogen to electric conversion) powerplants both in roomy four door sedans with the hybrid starting at $35,000 and the hydrogen fuel cell at $59,000.
The styling leaves a little more to be desired with the very sleek front edging towards a boxier stodgy hatchback look in the rear, with the sheet metal flaring out at the rear trunk and the top line elevation going higher with the lines abruptly angled towards the centerline of the car.
The rectangularly rounded rear lights jutting out from the sides of the car and the four windows design per each side of the car gives the overall aesthetic an overly cluttered look. The covered rear tires wells, supposed to promote a lower drag coefficient, create an even boxier look.
The 2021 Toyota Prius also amply demonstrates this recent design philosophy that attempts to fuse sleek with boxy, resulting in terrible visual aesthetic utilizing square and rectangular shapes on what is otherwise supposed to be sleek and fluid aerodynamic form.
The earliest such effort that I can remember harks back to the 2001 GM Pontiac Aztek SUV, which attempted to present muscular and sleek using boxy lines, deemed to be futuristic by the producers of the TV show Dark Angel, resulting in many such attempts since by various carmakers and on different automotive platforms.
THE TOYOTA EVOLUTION
Several sources indicate that Toyota may be the world’s leading light vehicles builder with roughly 12% global market share (this includes SUVs but does not include commercial vans, trucks and other heavy vehicles).
During the past several years, Toyota has struggled in keeping its sports vehicles amongst its lineups, ever since it retired the Toyota Celica and had been limping along with the pretender sub compact sporty looking Scion.
In terms of new car roll-outs, Toyota introduced the Mirai and the Yaris after heavily pitching the Prius for more than a decade in TV shows like Smallville and movies like The Other Guys, The Kids are All Right, Repo Man, Wall Street 2 and The Next Three Days. The Prius is a hybrid technology pioneer for Japanese and Asian carmakers.
Most recently Toyota re-launched a sleeker race car styled Supra and now the 86, which seems to be an updated and slightly larger Mazda Miata but more importantly it really resembles the newly refreshed Renault Alpine, a recent development enjoying significant popularity overseas.
While the Avalon represents the top-of-the-line luxury cars from Toyota, the vast majority of buyers are most keen on developments reserved for the extremely popular Camry line.
Aiming between the look of a luxury sedan and a sportscar, the Camry has moved closer to the styling of the Subaru lines, losing its touch of finesse and sleek elegance that a few years ago placed it squarely in competition with Mercedes Benz’ best.
For 2022, the Camry is mostly the same as the 2021 models, available with inline 4-cylinder and V-6 powerplants and in hybrid propulsion technology. The inline 4 is also available with an all-wheel drive option.
All 2021 Camrys are furnished with Safety Sense 2.5 which provides pedestrian detection and adaptive cruise control features. The hybrid model is also offered in the new XSE trim which is slightly sportier than the base LE model.
THE INSIDE TRACK – The New Supra
Boasting top notch power train, 4-cylinder 2.0 Liter 255 bhp output and six-cylinder twin turbo 3.0 Liter with 382 bhp output both from BMW, great overall handling and luxury level appointments, bad ingress/egress and lackluster rear visibility.
Despite all its refinements and improvements, the Supra’s styling exterior looks too jaunty and overlayered. Perhaps a smoother, sleeker skin could have better served this worthy line of muscular sportscars from Japan.
Far from done, the upcoming follow-ups to Hottest Wheels in Years will cover automakers car lines from the most recent period of 2020 through 2022, including the USA and Europe, in this three-part series due out in the following months and into next year. Stay tuned!
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