All is Right With the World

From a top-flight crop of candidates, six emerge as 2017’s elite

- Auto Mobile Staff

The danger with an exercise such as this annual shakedown—aside from driving off a mountain face, careening into a 12-point buck as it sprints from the underbrush (almost happened), or  spinning off the track into an unprotected wall—is that it’s all too easy to become infatuated with big money, big horsepower, almost impossibly aspirational items. So it speaks well of this  year’s winning class that it spans an impressively diverse range, from a Japanese technological tour de force (admittedly a pricey proposition out of our personal reach) to a practical, all electric American offering to a sub-$25,000 compact mainstay, not to mention two decidedly different apex stalkers from Germany and a refreshingly original and elegant Scandinavian. The voting was closer than in many years past, but in the end none of our crew disputed the results with much vigor. The six winners proved over the course of a week that they are undoubtedly special. These, then, are the 2017 Automobile All-Stars.

A Force for Good

Acura’s supercar delights with its tech-friendly approach

Despite its Rube Goldberg like drive train and bogglingly complex electronics, the Acura NSX earned its All-Star status the old-fashioned way: by consistently putting a grin on drivers’ faces. The prevailing concern regarding Acura’s techy two-seater was that 21st century over thinking and automation would diminish the basic joys of turning a wheel and hugging a curve. The NSX’s myriad computers, motors, and clutches certainly make that threat more possible.