MotorMouths

Very few cars can claim the power to change the world. Prius can. It’s cool. It’s dorky. If everyone drove one, we could tell OPEC to kiss our behinds.

If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the evening and all over the Lexus HS250h until I beat it into something that vaguely resembled a luxury car.

The latest and, I assert, the greatest wagon/coupe/crossover is the Acura ZDX, a ferociously dynamic, red-in-tooth-and-claw styling exercise. If only this major-league body didn’t have a minor-league chassis to go with it.

In most other respects, the Mercedes S400 is exactly like its V-8- and V-12-powered siblings — which is to say spectacular. The S-Class foundation is so transcendentally quiet and solid, you can’t even tell when the gas engine cycles off and on.

The wildly styled Acura ZDX is the Lady Gaga of new cars: out of nowhere, time-warped from the future, icy cool, hard to define, fascinating, gorgeous.

Even in this rough prototype, the Volt vibe is spacious, comfortable and lively. The whole car seems lit from within by the ambitions of its builders.

The BMW engineers have hammered the torque curve so marvelously level, and poured tranquilizing syrup over every gear change, that the new 5 Series actually feels a little remote and unfamiliar.

Perfect? Committed sensualists will miss some degree of adventure. Gone are the adrenaline chinchillas running up and down your spine. The 458 Italia is spooky fast without the haunting of mortality.

Hugely civilized, desperately fast, drenched in high-tech amenities and executed with the kind of spirit and joie de vivre than makes the competitive German products look positively Amish, the new Jag is now the presumptive favorite in the full-size premium sedan category.

The 2011 Chevrolet Cruze is supremely refined and quiet for a small car. But I’m sorry to say Chevrolet’s compact car of tomorrow feels more like its car of this afternoon, about 3:48 p.m. This is a car of quickly expiring market advantages.

The most compelling arguments for the Maserati GranTurismo Convertible are its female-athlete awesomeness—"fierce," as Tyra Banks would say—and its relative rarity. Outside of the Hamptons and Greenwich, Conn., these things are going to be as unusual as unicorns.

The Kia Sportage is a lot of automobile for the money, to be sure. But it’s hard to overlook the vehicle’s hollowness, a kind of strangely unsupported sound to it—especially when my right foot was fully engaged. Something felt missing at the core. Not awful, but worrisome.