The 2012 Esquire Car of the Year Awards

One of the tropes in the car business is things run in cycles: If you're on the top today, you'll eventually be on the bottom. Consider, then, America's largest carmaker: General Motors. GM began life in 1908 as a small Michigan holding company; it's now the world's second-largest car manufacturer. Over the years, it's put out genuinely amazing machinery, utter garbage, and everything in between.

This is relevant, because Esquire's Car of the Year isn't selected in a bubble. Like a lot of people, we look at the numbers — acceleration times, fuel mileage, sales potential — because those things matter. But above all, we focus on how a car makes us feel. The Esquire Car of the Year should be practical, but not at the expense of emotion. It should be sedate enough to ferry the boss to a meeting, yet soulful enough to get the juices pumping just sitting in the driveway. It's a gorgeous car you can buy for your commute, a back-road terror when it needs to be, a comfortable, spacious way to take the kids to swim practice. And because we live in America, there's also hometown pride. It doesn't dominate the proceedings, but we'd be lying if we didn't admit to feeling good when the winner comes from the same place we do.

Meet the newest Esquire Car of the Year: the 2013 Cadillac ATS. It is perhaps the single most important thing Detroit has built in years, and it is one hell of a car to boot. We're more than a little proud.

Consider Cadillac: GM's top-shelf brand, long struggling, once a genuine world leader. It's the carmaker that gave us the first electric starter, one of the first to offer workable electric lights, and the only American brand walking to have ever offered a standard V-16 — 16 whopping cylinders — all before World War II. Its slogan was once "the Standard of the World," and it wasn't just hype. But Cadillac wandered. The brand slowly morphed into just another badge in GM's portfolio; everything between the Carter administration and the first CTS sedan (2003) was either forgettable or aimed at comatose retirees. The GM bankruptcy, well, that needs no introduction. This from the only luxury-car brand America has left.

The turnaround began with the CTS. It was the first step, a well-crafted four-door that drove nicely and wanted for little. It evolved into the current CTS (an ass-kicker and leather-lined bargain) and 556-hp CTS-V (a thundering ass-kicker, with an engine stout enough to jump-start the sun). Suddenly Cadillac mattered again.

The rear-wheel-drive ATS, new this year, is the next step. The ads paint it as a sport sedan similar to the BMW 328i, a predictable move. The BMW is the industry benchmark, its iPhone, a product so pitch-perfect in ability that everyone uses it as a standard. The ATS's engineers have admitted that in the beginning they cribbed the BMW's measurements. (The two cars' wheelbases and lengths are all within 1.3 inches of each other.) But the BMW occasionally feels a little cold. It's German, after all.

Can the ATS hang with a 3 Series on winding pavement? Of course. Big deal. Those are numbers, and numbers are easy. Same for the optional 272-hp, 32-mpg, 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder — it's a smart, razor-sharp engine that would've seemed impossible a decade ago — or the available 321-hp, 28-mpg V-6, a smooth piece that rips into the asphalt the moment you toe the throttle. Technical excellence is pretty common these days, and if you run a car company and hire the right engineers, you have to be trying hard to miss it.

Humanity is the last true automotive bellwether, and how the Cadillac trounced this year's other debuts. The base ATS is $33,990, but from the right angle, the body creases and brightwork touches make it seem worth ten grand more. The shape is sharp and clean and soft all at once, like a lab experiment built from stem cells and diamonds. It feels American, in the same way that the Willis (née Sears) Tower looks American — taut and clean but oddly human. Like our three previous Esquire Cars of the Year — the Audi A7, the Audi S4, and the Ford Taurus SHO — its appeal is visceral.

For a long time, there was this notion that American cars should be like cars from Europe, Japan, or anywhere with a history of reliability and decent engineering. This is bunk, and you don't realize it until you see the nationalism thing done right. You sit in the cockpit of the ATS and think, Well, yeah. It's the hint of big-industry swagger in the capacitive-touch center console (piano black, with a motorized oddment drawer), a futuristic, glossy thing that you find yourself endlessly skittering your fingers across. It's the touch-screen navigation and cockpit control system that works like a smartphone, pinching to zoom and redrawing without a glitch. (As Steve Jobs taught us, tech should just work.) It's the blisteringly cool chassis — you put the car on a lift, walk underneath it, and everything is weight-drilled this, welded-aluminum aerospace-science-fiction that. This is the kind of stuff you see in supercars, not midlevel sedans. Every inch of this thing, you get the feeling that the people who designed it gave a damn about Detroit and machines and America — the old America, the one that built things and conquered divides. You see the ATS in your driveway and you think about that, but mostly you just want to get on the road. There is no better compliment.

Fathers everywhere go hoarse repeating the maxim "It isn't the fall that matters, but what happens when you stand back up." With the ATS, Cadillac is moving again, no longer unsure of itself, a brand to be proud of. The country has an attainable luxury car again. And Esquire has its Car of the Year.

THE SPECS
Engine: 202-HP, 2.5-LITER I-4
MPG: 22 CITY/32 HWY
Price: $33,990

Think back to high school: Music needed to be louder, food needed more fat in it, and cars were interesting only if they were orange or yellow or polka-dot obnoxious. Most people grow saner as they get older (exception: fat tastes good forever), but everyone needs to go high-school-grade batshit occasionally. Ford's Focus ST is that batshit. The ST is an ordinary hatchback with a turbocharger, a stiffer suspension, and a silly amount of power. But it also has a front end that's like a bloated catfish. It comes in a color called Tangerine Scream, and the interior is an ADD explosion of glossy paint and alien shapes. The bratty sport seats have ST stitched on them in big red letters, just in case you forget. The exhaust is a thunderous din, a peace-disturbing boom-thump that trips car alarms in parking garages. A six-speed manual is the only transmission. The ride is jarring but somehow not annoying; the car gobbles up corners giddily, like a dog straining a leash. There is nothing subtle here, and it bends you toward obnoxious acts. Most carmakers don't have the balls to build a car this ridiculous, and the ones that do rarely sell them in America. It's a reminder that cars are gutsy, juvenile things at heart; deep down, the good ones speak to the sixteen-year-old you. You don't drive something like this by accident, but then that's kind of the point.

THE SPECS
Engine: 252-HP, 2.0-LITER I-4
MPG: 23/32
Price: $24,495

Time was you bought a Land Rover or a Range Rover if you had a subcontinent to explore or lions to hunt. Progress being what it is, few people go exploring anymore, but the British brands have kept the lights on by selling bush-ready rides to wealthy, outdoorsy-ish dreamers. The more affordable, smaller Range Rover Evoque is the rebounding company offering those people what they really want--style piece first, off-the-road truck second--while simultaneously jolting the bottom line. (Outdoorsy-ish dreamers are legion, but apparently not all of them have full-size Range Rover cash.) Skyrocketing sales have shown the Evoque to be a good business case, but the cool part is the truck is simply more relevant for the times. You get a turbocharged 28-mpg four-cylinder; the bulldog bodywork of a concept car; all-wheel drive; a middleweight chassis that pounces into corners like a terrier nosing a rat; and an interior trimmed like a Gieves & Hawkes three-piece. There is no other SUV that comes close to nailing all these points. The Evoque is proof that SUVs can be stylish, forward, and elegant. Maybe you drive into the dirt, maybe you don't. Either way, you feel like a king.

THE SPECS
Engine: 240-HP, 2.0-LITER I-4
MPG: 18/28
Price: $43,995

Fast cars are like tools. Done right, they disappear underneath you. Done perfectly, they come back and help you along. Porsche has long specialized in the latter, but the brand's greatest talents have always been reserved for the company landmark, the 911. The more affordable Boxster has always lagged a little, never quite the inspired measure of its older brother. Scuttlebutt holds that Porsche didn't want the Boxster to crowd the 911's turf, but this year the balance shifts. The Boxster has a new chassis, a nicer interior, and lick-it-up bodywork that's the spitting image of the six-figure Porsche Carrera GT supercar's (2004-07). Like all those before it, the 2013 model has a midmounted six-cylinder between your spine and the rear wheels, aiding cornering balance; it sucks air through a pair of vents mounted in the rear fenders, pumping out a staccato aria that chills your bones. The best part, though, is how that whispering voice has been turned up. The suspension is always talking to you, the chassis convinced that you know how to get the best out of it, even if you don't. The 911 — a genuine world-beater — costs twice as much, carries the weight of history, and offers a backseat, but it isn't twice as thrilling. This is the best sports car in the business.

THE SPECS
Engine: 265-HP, 2.7-LITER H-6
MPG: 22/32
Price: $50,450

1. 2013 SRT Viper

Chrysler executives: "It looks like Halle Berry; current Viper owners will love it." Current Viper owners: "We love how our cars terrify grown men." Perfect.

2. 2014 Porsche 918 Spyder Hybrid

A 770-hp gas-electric hybrid supercar from a group of people apparently incapable of building bad things. (See: 2013 Boxster, left.)

3. 2014 Jaquar C-X75

Beleaguered English carmaker builds hybrid supercar with the help of the Williams Formula One team. Lesson: Never underestimate the British.

Colin Comer's Shelby Cobra: Fifty Years (Motorbooks, $40) is a milestone, an evocative love letter to the only American hot rod with a household name. Comer, a Shelby collector and racer, packs this gorgeous tome with illuminating no-fking-way interviews and miles-deep photography that tell the sweat-and-blood stories of the car's legend. Cobra mastermind Carroll Shelby died in May, and his cars regularly trade hands for millions. Save having the man's ghost school you over drinks, it gets no better than this.

Directed by Ron Howard

Great car movies don't exist. The last real contender was Asif Kapadia's 2010 documentary Senna, about a Formula One champion who believed that God was his copilot. That film left jaded old men crying in the aisles, but it was a low-budget gem. To Hollywood, cars are just a shortcut to sex, explosions, and that point in Transformers when you bludgeon yourself with a tire iron to stop the pain.

Ron Howard's Rush, due out next year, might change things. It's the true story of two drivers in the 1976 Formula One championship: the Austrian Niki Lauda, who burned his face off in a crash, and his rival and former roommate, the British womanizer James Hunt. These guys risked their lives at 180 mph in an era in which racing drivers died almost weekly.

Peter Morgan, who wrote Frost/Nixon, penned the screenplay. The eerily versatile Chris Hemsworth has the role of Hunt, and Daniel Brühl plays Lauda. Howard is known for being obsessive about period accuracy, which bodes well for a subject that needs no exaggeration. The last time he focused on death, nerves, and technology, we got Apollo 13, and you know how that turned out. (Hint: It was excellent.) Earlier this year, Howard tweeted pictures from the set filled with big-haired seventies girls, vintage cars, and the distinct feeling that something cool was about to happen. We deserve a movie like this. The car world deserves a movie like this. Go, Opie, go.

Fun, impractical cars are a treat, a reward for reaching a point in your life in which you don't need four doors or a big trunk. And because rewards are rewards, fun cars usually deal in overkill--more power and gimmicks than you need (see below). This is what makes the rear-drive Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ so freaking cool. The cars are mechanical twins, the result of an engineering collaboration between Subaru and Scion parent Toyota. At 200 hp and around twenty-eight hundred pounds — hundreds of pounds lighter than most new cars — they trade massive grunt and weight-adding frippery for insane reflexes. Because you aren't getting much besides speed and entertainment, you don't have to pay much for it: The Scion's $24,955 sticker can be swung by almost anyone with a full-time job. No other sports car with a roof and a backseat offers this much for this little.

THE SPECS
Engine: 200-HP, 2.0-LITER H-4
MPG: 25/34
Price: $24,955 (Scion), $26,280 (Subaru)

When you sit in the Scion FR-S, you realize this car wasn't really built for men over forty. It looks pretty badass, like a mini supercar. More like something from a video game. Even inside, its racing seats and pedals lead you to believe there's something more to the six-speed, rear-wheel-drive, 200-hp flat-four engine. But there's not... at first. I slide into the seat, and by the way, this car isn't made for people with confectionery addictions — it's really snug and low. When I start it up, it's pretty uneventful. Even when I throw it into first and start to go, I'm waiting for something to happen. Ah, but a moment of clarity... it's waiting for me! I stomp on the gas and red-line the rpm's quickly through third gear. The car is buzzing, screaming like a chainsaw. Now it seems to be in its element. The handling in traction mode is tight, and I'm reaching 6500 rpm through hairpin turns, kicking it into the next gear as I come out, and winding the hell out of that next gear all the way through the straightaway. But wait, the fun goes on: Hold the traction button for three seconds and then you can try to drift. The car is really balanced as the ass end kicks out and slides around the turns when you hit the gas at maximum rpm. It acts like a time machine, too. I'm twenty-five again! —David Curcurito

Several years ago, Mercedes-Benz cut the roof down on its E-class sedan, worked some sex into the interior, and massaged the front fenders until they were shaped like a supermodel's thighs. The resulting CLS four-door coupe became such a hit that car designers all over the world were tasked with taking the knife to their sedans — see the Audi A7, Volkswagen CC, and the sidebar to the right. It turns out people want four-doors to be sexy, just as you only marry someone who looks good naked. Practicality doesn't cancel passion.

The 640i Gran Coupe is BMW hitting the party late, but it was worth the wait. Yes, it's pretty. Yes, it shares underpinnings with the ordinary 6 Series, so it goes and handles like mad. But the Gran Coupe is more than the sum of its parts: It arcs down the road in a reserved, deft fashion, a unique template for what every luxury sedan should be: jaw-dropping, modern, adult. Chiefly, it seems to have been built by people who like gorgeous things but hate attention. Which is a shame, because if you drive one, that's all you're going to get.

THE SPECS
Engine: 315-HP, 3.0-LITER I-6
MPG: 20/30
Price: $76,895

There's a lot to be said for a car that does everything well. There is significantly more to be said for a car that does everything well, requires a bit of taste to appreciate, and flies under the radar (sometimes literally). The 256-hp Volkswagen Golf R is the latter. For one thing, the R is relatively expensive, especially when you consider that it's based on the standard Volkswagen Golf, a car that costs around $19,000. It also doesn't look amazing, at least not in the traditional sense. It looks like a European runabout with fat wheels and speed tweaks, because that's what it is. But oh, what tweaks. The Golf R is essentially VW's Golf GTI — the hotted-up base Golf — hotted-up again with all-wheel-drive and the fizzy, fireplug turbo four from the Audi TTS. The result is an all-weather weapon with acres of cargo space (the adult-sized rear seats fold down), a sports car's talent for shredding a two-lane, and styling that won't make the highway patrol glance past their doughnuts. There is no better all-around speed machine on the market, no car as skilled at serving as many masters. Just five thousand examples will be sold in America this year, a trifle. Think of it as a rare exotic without the fuss or upkeep, and that price seems as though they're paying you.

THE SPECS
Engine: 256-HP, 2.0-LITER I-4
MPG: 19/27
Price: $34,760

Like most industries, the car business runs on trends — someone does something interesting or successful, someone else tools up to mimic it. The average new car goes from drawing board to showroom in about four years, making quick turnarounds difficult, but ideas occasionally overlap. Case in point: the Audi A7, Esquire's 2011 Car of the Year, and a host of newer models with suspiciously similar rumps.

If Elon Musk didn't exist, someone would have to invent him, because the world needs driven billionaire madman visionaries. One of the founding minds behind PayPal, the South African–born Musk also started SpaceX, which recently sent a rocket to the International Space Station, and he owns SolarCity, the nation's largest provider of solar-power systems. But above all, Musk wants to build electric cars. Put gently, this is mildly insane. Car companies fail like restaurants — often and never cheaply — and it's an unwritten rule that if you have a brain, you leave new technology to the established players. But against better judgment, Musk founded Tesla and persisted.

His first model, the 2008-12 Roadster, was a proof-of-concept electric sports car based on the two-seat Lotus Elise. It cost more than $100,000, accelerated like a bat out of hell, and produced the CO₂ emissions of a ham sandwich. The Roadster was a landmark. But it was also cramped, impractical, and an obvious stopgap. Something was missing.

Now we have the heartbreakingly pretty Model S sedan ($49,900 when including a $7,500 federal tax credit). It's a sleek, emotional machine that shocks almost everyone with its performance and refinement. It may well change the way the world views electric cars. It got us genuinely excited about green cars again. That's no small thing.

SAM SMITH: Starting a car company is a crazy venture. What makes you think you'll succeed?

ELON MUSK: The youngest traditional American car company is Chrysler, and they're ninety years old. So it's like being in a forest of redwoods and you're trying to be the little sprout. It's not easy. But opportunity is created where there is technology discontinuity. I think the transition to electronic propulsion is the biggest disruption since the moving production line.

SS: Your belief in Tesla seems do-or-die personal.

EM: The biggest problem that humanity faces in the twenty-first century is sustainable energy. Until we decide to do the right thing and tax CO₂ production, the only way to make headway is to apply innovation to the problem. That means creating electric cars that are better than gas cars.

SS: What's been the toughest challenge?

EM: How difficult it is to manufacture such a complex object, with several thousand different parts that have to be produced around the world and then brought together and assembled in one place. You can't ship a car that's only 99 percent complete. You can fill a room with the amount of regulations that a car has to fulfill simply in order to be sold. It's a bloody amount of hard work.

SS: Did you ever consider making the Model S a plug-in hybrid?

EM: The more I looked at it, the more I couldn't figure out how to make a really great product with both electric and gasoline powertrains. The notion of a plug-in electric vehicle is alluring. But in fact, you're getting the worst of both worlds, because you're carrying a ton of dead weight.

There's a classic Wayne Gretzky thing: You want to go where the puck's going to be. And I'm convinced plug-in hybrids will only ever be a transitional thing.

SS: If you could rewind things a couple of years, Tesla's just getting off the ground, what would you have done differently?

EM: I think with the Roadster, we made an error. We really should have done a complete from-the-ground-up design of an electric car. The initial thought was let's get something to market quickly, we'll use a derivative of the Lotus Elise and that'll make things easier. It was like if you have a particular house in mind, but you can't quite find that house, so you decide you're going to modify what you have. And then you end up modifying everything but one wall in the basement, and the footprint of the house is not right.

SS: Henrik Fisker has said that he's surprised at most Americans' unwillingness to take a risk on new technology or new brands, at least when it comes to cars. Do you think that's true?

EM: No. I love America. It's a distillation of the human spirit of exploration. I mean you're not going to find any other country in the world that likes new things more than America. And it's great, I love it, it's why I'm here. I love the optimism and the sense of possibility in America. And I think Americans are quite discerning with respect to technology. They evaluate things, especially in the age of Twitter and Google. Word gets out. Fast. It's either good or it's not good, and there's no hiding.

The car business is rife with innovators, but because carmaking is a pricey way to gamble — do it right, you make space flight look cheap — most newcomers go broke and are quickly forgotten. The exception is Michigan-born Preston Tucker. From 1946 to 1948, Tucker put gobs of investor cash and PR hype into a bullet-shaped wonder called the Tucker 48. Like Musk, he rocked Detroit by genuinely reimagining the American car — the 48 featured a rear-mounted engine, an integral roll cage, steerable headlights, and Jonny Quest futurism at a time when General Motors was still selling warmed-over farm equipment. Just fifty-one cars were built before Tucker hit bankruptcy and underwent an SEC investigation for fraud, but stories like this are what makes America great: With the right idea, anyone can shake the world.

Frankfurt-Darmstadt Autobahn (Highway A5), Germany: Four lanes, no speed limit, straight for miles, and the world's most perfect asphalt.

U. S. Route 50, Nevada: Nicknamed "the Loneliest Road in America" on local highway signs because you can drive for hours without seeing a soul.

Route Napoleon (Highways D6085, N85), France: Follows Napoleon's march from Elba to Grenoble, winding through the heartbreakingly beautiful Alps.

San Juan Skyway, Colorado: 14,000-foot elevation and more than 200 miles of "Oh, this is why people like Colorado."

Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park, Montana: 50 miles of an edge-of-the-world engineering marvel, hanging off mountains — and a glacier.