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A Car for Your Valentine: Window Shop with Car and Driver

A Car for Your Valentine: Window Shop with Car and Driver

Yahoo07-02-2025

Would it be Valentine's Day without Window Shop? We're not sure of the answer to that question, so it made no sense to take the risk. After a brief hiatus, the gang is back to buy one another gifts of used cars that cost no more than $14,000 in any random color, or $15,000 if the car came in some sweet shade of red.
During last year's heart-day-themed episode, senior editor Elana Scherr said, "Sometimes, you want to give someone a gift that they wouldn't think to buy for themselves." Taking her own best advice, she bought editor-in-chief Tony Quiroga a Nineties-era Rolls-Royce she found in Nebraska, justified with something about luxury and life at the top and movers and shakers, none of which moved him as much as talk of a retracting hood ornament.
Joey Capparella, Hearst Autos' head of ranking and other things, also took Elana's advice. However, he multiplied it by some large scientific constant in deciding to buy contributor Jonathon Ramsey a lurid red Mercury Cougar XR7. Ramsey, ever thankful, and known to be a fan of cougars, might have had to be convinced this was the Cougar for him.
Ramsey bought for executive editor K.C. Colwell. After ruing being given a mere $14,000 for the task of pleasing what might be Window Shop's most fastidious panelist, he settled on a hope, a prayer, and a deep bronze Porsche 928 with a manual transmission and some color-matched wheels. It just might have worked.
Colwell hit the shops for Scherr, returning from the Nineties with a lime green Alfa Romeo GTV Spider—a distant cousin by marriage to the Mopar family that Scherr normally finds most comfort in. This one was another hit of Scherr's year-old wisdom, the Alfa being a convertible and, in case we didn't mention it, lime green.
EIC Quiroga's famous line introducing his picks—"You guys wanna see the winner?"—finally had real red substance. Buying for Capparella, the honcho gifted a scarlet Lexus SC with a manual transmission, a car so nearly perfectly suited and perfectly timed that everyone was ready to end the show as soon as it appeared onscreen. Nearly.
Tune in to find out who won the box of chocolates, then tell us what you'd buy for the same money, and then heed Scherr's latest Valentine's Day wisdom: "Guys, if she has not told you she doesn't like flowers, buy your girlfriend flowers."
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  • Car and Driver

This 2007 Porsche Cayman S on Bring a Trailer Could Bring 911 Money

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The all-electric 2026 Lexus ES wears a totally smoothed-over snoot and will bear the ES350e and ES500e monikers, the former with single-motor front-wheel-drive and the latter with dual-motor all-wheel drive. The power figures provided are mostly the same as those for Toyota's recently updated bZ (formerly bZ4X) electric SUV: 221 hp for the single-motor, front-wheel-drive ES350e and 338 hp for the dual-motor, all-wheel-drive ES500e. Disappointingly, those figures trail the performance delivered by the also-updated-for-2026 Lexus RZ electric SUV, the bZ's luxurious twin, which pushes out 224 hp in front-drive form, 380 hp in dual-motor form and 408 hp in dual-motor F Sport guise. Lexus says the front-drive ES350e is capable of up to 300 miles of range when equipped with the smallest of its wheel choices, a 19-inch fitment. The dual-motor ES500e cuts 50 miles off that peak range, for a just-okay 250 miles. 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Photos by MotorTrend, manufacturer

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