Auto Show!

I went to The Auto Show this reading week with a friend. We decided to make some categories and choose the best cars for them. Here were my choices:

Best Reasonably Priced Car
Our definition of reasonably priced car is < $30 000

The Kia Optima. Starts at $23 000, and you get tons of car for that money. You can get it pretty much fully loaded for around $35 000, and for that you get a navigation screen and a turbo with ~270hp. The interior look great as well. I think it's fantastic value considering all the car you get. It also helps that it's fantastic looking on the outside. Close runner up was the Hyundai Sonata, but you get more stuff with the Kia, and the Sonata feels somewhat "cheaper".

Best Reasonably Priced Roadster
Our definition of reasonably priced roadster was < $50 000

The Nissan 370Z. Now I had a really hard time with this. I can never seem to find a roadster that I think looks good. The 370 isn't the ugliest car in the world, but it's not  exactly pretty. However, it looks good on the inside, and it's pretty sporty, so it was my choice out of the other roadsters at the show. There really aren't a lot of good choices under $50 000. The most notable competition was the MX-5, but that didn't feel as fun. The Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible looks much better, but they didn't have any at the show. It's also much better value, so in real life I would probably prefer that.

Best Car

This is basically "If you could drive any car out of the Auto Show, which would it be". Not surprisingly, my choice coincides with this.

Aston Martin Rapide. Even better looking in person. It was the second best looking car in the show (after the better proportioned Virage) 

Other notable cars: The entire new Ford lineup. They redesigned most of their line up, and they all look fantastic. In particular, the new Ford Fusion:

I would say that the new Ford Fusion is the best looking reasonably price car you can buy today. Unfortunately, they didn't have pricing information on it yet, but if it's anything like the old one, it'll start at $19 000 (well equipped for ~30K)

All in all, the auto show was great fun as usual. Now back to real life (and school. boo). Remember the time I blogged about programming. Yup...