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Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

2019 Cadillac ATS-V, CTS-V get cool color, weird name

A lot of special-edition cars are really not all that special. They consist of some special paint combo, and maybe a couple of optional features made standard. The Cadillac ATS-V and CTS-V Pedestal Editions are actually pretty much that. But they make up for the mild content list with a really nifty color, great exclusivity and also a weird name. They also help celebrate the ATS-V and CTS-V before they disappear from the line. First let's take a look at the color. It's a shade called Bronze Sand Metallic. It's an earthy, dark brown with a yellow-green tinge to it. We suspect it probably looks more impressive in sunlight, and it's unlike most browns we've ever seen. It's sure to garner attention in any parking lot stuffed with black, silver and white luxury cars. It's matched with sand-colored ultrasuede inserts and bronze-threaded carbon fiber trim on the interior that look sumptuous. Each also comes with carbon fiber exterior trim, red brake calipers, and the CTS-V adds the performance data recorder and Luxury Package. The name really is strange, though. Cadillac says, "The special-edition variants are named in tribute to Cadillac V-Series' time spent at the pinnacle of luxury high-performance." So it seems the thinking was that these cars are up on a pedestal compared with other performance luxury cars. But even in that sentence from Cadillac, there's a word that would be better and more recognizable for excellence: pinnacle. We can think of other great words for marking the peak or the top of performance and luxury, words such as "apex" or "climax." Well, maybe not that one. One of the big appeals of these cars is that there won't be many of them. There will only be 300 built, and that's the total between the ATS-V coupe and CTS-V sedan. The final total for each model will be determined by orders. Ordering opens up on the first week of November, with production coming at the end of that month. The cars will only be available to buyers in the U.S., Canada and the Middle East. There are significant price differences between the two cars. The ATS-V coupe starts at $77,090, while the CTS-V starts at $102,590. That puts the ATS-V at roughly $10,000 more than a base model, and the CTS-V at roughly $12,000 more than its base model. Related Video: Featured Gallery 2019 Cadillac ATS-V and CTS-V Pedestal Edition View 9 Photos Image Credit: Cadillac Cadillac Coupe Luxury Performance Sedan cadillac ats-v

Cars with the worst resale value after 5 years

While the old saying that cars lose a massive chunk of their value as soon as they’re driven off the dealerÂ’s lot might not be entirely true these days, most new vehicles steadily lose value as they age and are used. iSeeCars recently released its latest study on depreciation, finding the models that lose value the fastest, and the list is packed with high-end nameplates. The vehicles that lost value the fastest over five years include: Maserati Quattroporte: 64.5% depreciation BMW 7 Series: 61.8% Maserati Ghibli: 61.3% BMW 5 Series Hybrid: 58.8% Cadillac Escalade ESV: 58.5% BMW X5: 58.2% Infiniti QX80: 58.1% Maserati Levante: 57.8% Jaguar XF: 57.6% Audi A7: 57.2% While sports cars, hybrids, and trucks dominated the list of slowest-depreciating vehicles, luxury brands accounted for all of the top ten fastest-depreciating models. iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer also pointed out EVsÂ’ lack of representation on the slow-depreciating vehicles list, saying that thereÂ’s a disconnect between what automakers are building and what people actually want. The average five-year depreciation for all vehicles in the iSeeCars study was 38.8 percent. ThatÂ’s an almost 11% improvement over 2019Â’s figures, but some vehicle types perform worse than others. EVs depreciated 49.1 percent over five years, while SUVs dropped 41.2%. Trucks only fell 34.8% and hybrids 37.4%. Brauer noted that all vehicles depreciate slower than they did five years ago. Even so, EVs are not the best choice if youÂ’re looking for a vehicle that wonÂ’t feel like a ripoff when itÂ’s time to trade in. On the flip side, used EVs can present a stellar value, saving thousands over their new counterparts. Charging times and availability remain concerns for buyers in large parts of the country, but a heavily depreciated EV could be the used car value youÂ’ve been looking for. The same wisdom applies to used luxury vehicles, as the list above indicates. While new-car buyers shopping for luxury cars are set to see big depreciation during their ownership, that means the used car market is flooded with inexpensive used luxury cars. High repair costs and costly maintenance schedules are real issues that used luxury models face, however. Green Audi BMW Cadillac Infiniti Jaguar Maserati Car Buying Used Car Buying