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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

2024 Acura ZDX revealed with up to 500 horsepower

The 2024 Acura ZDX electric SUV has been revealed along with many of the basic specifications. It will be available in two basic trims, the A-Spec and the Type S, and both offer fairly impressive performance and range wrapped in a package that's very similar to the Precision EV concept. The basic shape of the ZDX is quite close to the Precision, but everything has been softened. The nose still leans forward with a solid main grille, it has a floating roof, silver lower trim and a cab-rearward shape. Concessions to practicality include the conventional door-pulls and larger lower grilles for powertrain cooling. The A-Spec and Type S look pretty similar, with the main difference being wheel size: 20 inches for the A-Spec and 22 for the Type S. The A-Spec's tires are also 265-mm wide while the Type S gets 275-mm tires. And that top-trim ZDX gets the option of the Double Apex Blue Pearl from the concept, or the Tiger Eye Pearl from other Type S models. Unlike the Precision, the ZDX actually has an interior, and it does a good job of hiding its GM roots, at least at first glance. It has a low dash with slim air vents and a pair of screens for instruments and infotainment; 11 inches and 11.5 respectively. The screens are split up, and sit low behind a wraparound cowl design. Looking closer, though, and you'll see that the steering wheel and climate controls are carryover from the related Blazer EV, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. Acura has another important difference from the GM products: It will feature wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, in addition to all the Google Built-In apps. An 18-speaker Bang & Olufsen sound system is standard, too. Other fancy tech includes rear emergency braking with rear cross-traffic and pedestrian detection, blind-spot monitoring with steering assist, automatic parallel parking and, thanks to being based on a GM platform, hands-free highway driving assist (Super Cruise by any other name). Digging beneath the surface, we find that the A-Spec will come standard in rear-wheel-drive form, quite the departure from a company with decades of front-drive history and experience. It gets a single rear motor making 340 horsepower. It will be available with a dual-motor all-wheel-drive powertrain that we're presuming has the same total output, seeing as Acura didn't specify a different amount. Multi-link independent suspension with fixed shocks and springs are also standard for the A-Spec.

2016 Acura NSX grows into its updated styling for the 2015 Detroit Auto Show [w/videos]

It's not immediately clear at first glance, but the Acura NSX as it appears on the floor at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show is a far cry from the concept from the 2013 show. These days, the NSX packs a twin-turbo, longitudinally mounted V6 with over 550 horsepower on tap and nine-speed dual-clutch gearbox. Although, the three-motor hybrid setup remains with two units at the front and one for the rear axle. The numerous slashes and scoops make the design look much more aggressive than the earlier concept, but the changes go much deeper than the new skin. There's an inch of extra width and 3.1-inches more overall, including 0.8-inches extra length in the wheelbase. Underneath it all, is a carbon fiber floor and aluminum-intensive chassis to provide strength to harness all of its power. Unfortunately, Acura isn't specifically announcing engine output, the weight or the design's drag coefficienct yet, so there are still questions to answer. However production starts in fall 2015 with the order books opening in the summer. Pricing is among the factors that the Japanese brand isn't discussing, but it likely costs about $150,000 to park the company's latest supercar in your driveway. In the meantime, enjoy admiring this upcoming entry in the hybrid supercar market. Related Video: