And the North American Car and Truck of the Year Finalists are…

For the past 18 years, a committee of journalists from U.S. and Canadian magazines, radio and TV stations, websites and newspapers meet once a year and vote for the North American Car and Truck of the Year [NACTOY].

You'll have to wait until January to find the winners for the 2012 edition of the North American Car and Truck of the Year, but the three finalists for each category were announced on Thursday in Detroit.

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VW Passat Goes Off-Road with Alltrack Version, will Debut at the Tokyo Motor Show

The VW Group, and more specifically Audi, was the one that started the high-riding estate craze with its A6 Allroad in 1999. Based on the regular A6 Avant, the Allroad featured an all-wheel drive quattro system, higher ground clearance, an adjustable-height air suspension, all-terrain tires and flared fenders, gaining a more adventurous appearance.

Now, Volkswagen has released the first-ever crossroad version of its Passat mid-size model, named the Passat Alltrack. It will receive its world premiere at the Tokyo Motor Show on December 3 and will go on sale in early 2012.

A successful recipe is not meddled with so the (European) Passat Estate-based Alltrack has all the goods one expects in the segment: raised suspension height, stainless steel-look front and rear underbody protection panels and plastic covered wheel arches that house 18-inch alloys.

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Consumer Reports Questions if VW's Press Cars are the Same as the Ones Found in Dealerships

Credibility is like virginity: once you lose it, you never get it back. Therefore, motoring journalists try to be as objective as possible (well, most of them, anyway) and report all their findings, good or bad alike when they take a car for a test drive.

However, Consumer Reports [CR], asks a rather intriguing question concerning this issue: are the press cars driven by motoring journalists the same as the ones bought by the public?

It's true that, despite quality control, two cars of the exact same make, model and specification that roll out of the same plant may differ in certain aspects such as fit and finish or actual engine output by a few ponies, but those differences are most of the times imperceptible to the human eye.

Earlier this summer, Volkswagen gave Consumer Reports a 2012 Passat from its press fleet for a first drive. CR's Jon Linkov noticed at the time that, unlike the Jetta, the U.S.-built 2012 Passat sedan's trunk hinges were dressed up in plastic.

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Rumors: VW's 2.5L Inline-Five to be Replaced with New 1.8-liter Turbo in the U.S.

With such a large arsenal of turbocharged gasoline engines in all sorts of sizes and states of tune, one could only wonder why Volkswagen is still holding on to the naturally aspirated 2.5-liter inline-five in the States – especially since even GM and Ford have gone ahead and introduced smaller displacement force-fed fours.

It appears that VW also believes it's time to replace the old-school five-pot with a more modern turbocharged four. Citing two sources from within the German company, Car&Driver reports that the 2.5L unit will soon be dropped from Volkswagen's U.S. range with a new 1.8-liter TSI four-cylinder engine taking its place.

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Facelifted 2013 Volkswagen CC Makes its World Premiere at the LA Motor Show

What’s in a name? Not much, according to William Shakespeare who in Romeo and Juliet, wrote, “A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet”.

Apparently, Volkswagen does not feel the same way. That is why when the time came to freshen up its four-year old Passat CC sports saloon, it chose to delete the “Passat” moniker from its name in order to signal its upmarket move and severe any ties with the mid-size family sedan.

To reinforce its point, VW has made some changes to the styling of the 2013 CC that made its world debut this week at the LA Motor Show.

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