Monthly Archives: January 2026

Pricing Your New Car: Is “Prestige” Necessary?

As you know, I have the rare privilege of being able to test new cars for one-week periods, and there’s something unique and interesting about each of them. The boxy SUV shape doesn’t vary all that much, so don’t expect much on styling, but I’m still getting sedans in 2026. So here is the current crop, with a focus on special packages and what they do to the bottom line. I’m not making this up, there are five “Prestige” cars on my recent list. Since you pay for upper-trim models, is the extra outlay worth it? Think long and hard about this, because the average transaction price for a new car has climbed to near $50,000.

Let’s start with the sedans:

2025 Hyundai Sonata N Line. The more sober money would probably be on the hybrid version of the Sonata, which offers a Prius-like 50/54 miles per gallon city/highway. The N Line’s rating is much lower, 23/33. What it offers instead of saving money at the pump is a powerful 2.5-liter turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine generating 290 horsepower and 311 pound-feet of torque. Coupled to an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, a 5.3-second zero to 60 time is possible. Just spitballing here, but this should allow you to get to the local gas station/convenience store for a quart of milk five to 10 seconds quicker. Sure, I realize you will have a bit more fun, but my father told me, “A car is to get you from point A to point B.” The N Line, priced at $36,745, is also about $4,000 more than the hybrid.

2025 Audi S5 Coupe Prestige. The A5 and S5 sister cars are true state-of-the-art German performance cars, with the latter offering a turbo three-liter V-6 that produces 362 horsepower and a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission with standard AWD. They don’t give away cars like this—the 2025 S5 starts at $63,995, and the Prestige package on the test car adds $7,750 but adds a huge number of features you’ll probably want, from adaptive cruise to B&O stereo and Nappa leather seats.

In America today, the number of people who can afford $70,000 cars is actually increasing dramatically (as is the number of billionaires), but their upper ranks are offset by the much larger number whose declining net worth wouldn’t pay for its spare tire. The have-not army is growing much faster than the elites at the top. Audi’s North American for 2025 sales were down 12.2 percent in North America. Audi’s strength—you may not have heard—is in no-longer-in-fashion EVs. Sales globally were up 36 percent to more than 223,000, fueled by cars like new A6 e-tron and Q6 e-tron. Electric vehicles sales globally continue to climb.

CES this year was focused on AI and more digital in-car assistance, and Audi just announced some enhancements for the 2026 A5 that include more functionality in the steering wheel, an optional integrated dashcam, “expanded driver assistance” and parking assist features, and upgraded voice control.

2026 Toyota Prius Nightshade Plug-In Hybrid. What’s a Nightshade, you ask? It’s a trim package adding blackout trim on wheels and badges, carbon fiber dash accents, special seats with gray stitching, and “exclusive” colors such as Karashi Yellow (see the car above), Wind Chill Pearl, and Midnight Black Metallic. The trim sits on top of the XSE version, and it’s one of the rare occasions in which the manufacturer is not gauging you to get the goodies. The Nightshade price is $38,990, adding only $770 on the XSE. There’s no way you “need” it, but at that price it won’t break the bank.

The Prius PHEV is now up to 40 miles of EV range, which is quite useful. Oddly enough, the lower trims can go 44 miles on a charge. Why? Different wheel sizes.

2025 Volkswagen Golf R Black Edition. The offering here is very similar to that of the Prius Nightshade, meaning that automakers can charge extra for blacking everything out. There’s no special performance advantage, by the way. The Golf R Black gets black trim, wheels, mirror caps and a front badge that lights up. Inside, there are the aforementioned “carbon fiber accents.” The package is pricier than on the Prius, adding up to $1,500 to the $48,325 of the base model R.

The Golf R is a pretty ferocious car, with performance torque vectoring and drift mode should you choose to indulge your inner Keiichi Tsuchiya or Tanner Foust. The R’s two-liter turbo punches above its weight and produces 328 horsepower, coupled to 4MOTION AWD. The Akrapovič exhaust is an option.

2026 Genesis GV80 Coupe 3.5T Prestige AWD. Yes, automakers like the word “prestige” almost as much as they like “black edition.” So, in the Prestige Black Genesis GV80 Coupe you get 22-inch black alloy wheels, dark chrome accents, blacked out grille and trim, spoilers and, oddly, no rear wiper. I like rear wipers! This car is really loaded to begin with, including Nappa leather, massage seats, B&O sound, a curved OLED display, and 409 horsepower from the twin-turbo V-6 if you go with the optional mild hybrid e-Supercharger. This is an SUV, of course, and “coupe” in this case is relative, referring to a slightly sporty roofline. Adding the Prestige Black Package means a $1,500 to $2,000 boost to a very hefty $91,545. The package doesn’t add much to the regular 3.5T, but if you can afford the base car you might want it. Additional consumer tip: The GV80 can tow 6,000 pounds.  

2025 Lexus GX 550 Overtrail. This thing looks like the direct descendant of the rugged Land Rovers that used to traverse the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan with jerry cans strapped to their front bumpers. It’s got mammoth 33-inch wheels, the biggest ever fitted to a Lexus, and in the Overtrail+ a one-inch lift to get over boulders. Back in the 60s, music was provided by the distant call of mountain yaks, but this is 2026 in America, so you can pay $1,140 for the 21-speaker Mark Levinson sound system. The GX Overtrail+ adds pre-wired aux switches and an emergency-ready onboard air compressor. The big GX was redesigned in 2024

Anyone who buys one of these beasts, on a truck platform and powered by a 3.4-liter V-6 turbo with 349 horsepower, and doesn’t take it off road is just being a poseur. It’s ridiculous for tooling around suburbia. Going to waste are its full-time AWD, Torsen limited-slip center differential and electronic locking rear diff. The pavement-bound owner will never use Multi-Terrain Select, Crawl Control and Downhill Assist Control. And they’ll probably never tow 9,000 pounds, either. But if you want to look like Indiana Jones at the local country club, by all means spring for the ball mount ($80), the rock rails ($990), the cat-back performance exhaust ($2,270) and the off-road roof rack ($1,580). The car itself starts at $67,900.

2026 Volvo XC90 B6 Prestige AWD. This particular Prestige is a mild-hybrid three-row SUV whose two-liter four gets electric assist from a 48-volt system to produce 295 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque. Of course it’s AWD.

This is another luxury SUV in a crowded field—you won’t miss the classy crystal shifter every time you shift gears, and the top-level sound system, available in the Ultra trim, is Bowers & Wilkins. Volvo’s new designations are Core, Plus and Ultra, with pricing that starts at $66,000. The Ultra starts at $71,045.

Go for the top trim and it includes a 27-inch OLED display with instruments and navigation in one screen, Nappa leather, open-pore wood trim, a suede headliner, and more. These wagons are popular supermarket cruisers in well-to-do suburbs such as Shaker Heights, Ohio, West Hartford, Connecticut and Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and I expect you will see a bunch of them around LA too. If you crash, you’re safe as houses.

2025 Audi Q5 Prestige. The Q5 SUV is not the performance rocket—for that you want the SQ5, which has 350 horsepower. The Q5 puts out 268 horsepower, up just seven from the previous model. The power hits the road through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. The smart money would likely stick with this version, which is just fine for commuting and going out around town.

Quattro AWD is standard. The Q5 base model, which may be just what the doctor ordered, starts at $53,495. But the prices climb quickly: The Q5 Prestige is $60,600; the SQ5 Prestige $71,200; and the Q5 Sportback (with a coupe roofline) Prestige $62,700.

Automakers have been at their trade for more than 120 years, and they’ve learned many and manifold ways of separating you from your hard-earned money. The lesson here is that prestige is nice, but not strictly necessary.

Chinese Cars: They’re Coming, and They’re Better Than You Think

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) can be a stressful whirlwind, and it’s hard to tear oneself away from the crowded show floor for outside activities, but an invitation to drive some Chinese cars at Las Vegas Motor Speedway could not be ignored.

And these were cars from Geely, a Chinese giant that has in its orbit Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr, Proton, the venerable English brand Lotus, the Geely brand itself and Lynk & Co. The auto journalists have already driven the Volvos and Polestars, sold in the U.S., but actual chances to drive models headed for the Chinese domestic market and a burgeoning international audience (Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Australia, the Middle East, Africa) are rare in the U.S., a/k/a, land of tariffs.

The media swarms the Geely cars. (Jim Motavalli photo)

There were nine Geely cars on the track, and I drove three of them, representative of the platform agnosticism (and EV favoritism) in China today: a battery EV, a plug-in hybrid, and a gas car. My Autoweek colleague Mark Vaughn said about the cars on the track, “They were all just fine. Panel gaps, fit and finish, materials, acceleration, steering, and braking were like just about any car sold here now.”

The Zeekr X punches out 428 horsepower with dual motors. (Jim Motavalli photo)

The battery car was a Zeekr X two-motor AWD. Zeekr was a standout at CES last year. This year, with few U.S. brands in evidence amid even more Chinese cars, Zeekr still stands out. The X in dual-motor form (Privilege) is a compact SUV with a punch: 428 horsepower, 400 pound-feet of torque, with a 66-kilowatt-hour CATL battery yielding 273 miles of range (a bit anemic). It can reach zero to 62 mph in 3.8 seconds, and there’s nothing anemic about that.

The Chinese have been betting heavily on auto driving, infotainment and on-board safety, and the X has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 chip and, for ADAS, the G-Pilot system with LiDAR sensors. There’s an AR head-up display. In single motor form (ME) is has 272 horsepower and a 5.6-second zero-to-62 time. There is 150-kilowatt fast charging, which means a 10 to 80 percent charge in around 30 minutes.  

The X came out in China circa 2023, and sales have been modest there: 8,692 last year, 13,316 in 2024 and 22,372 in 2023.  The price is rather eye-opening: The Zeekr X starts around $21,000 after subsidies in China for an entry RWD version with a 49-kilowatt-hour battery. Even a top-trim car like the X I drove is only around $30,000. An export-to-North-America X would be a lot more without the Chinese subsidies, but we would still find it a bargain.

And believe me, the X is definitely a sign of a maturing auto industry in China. It felt like a mature EV, with excellent road manners (very quiet), fast acceleration and good handling, including in evasive maneuvers around the test track. The interior was nice enough, though Chinese automakers need to get the details right. I saw a supposed “brushed aluminum” console that looked like, and was, cheap plastic.

The Lynk & Co. 08 comes in many forms, and is on the road in Europe. (Jim Motavalli photo)

The Lynk & Co. 08, also from 2023, is a mid-sized crossover plug-in hybrid with a combined 345 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque from a 1.5-liter turbo engine and two electric motors. The 124-mile battery EV range was impressive, via a 39.6-kilowatt-hour battery. Lynk & Co. is a brand that Geely is trying to establish in Europe, and the company recently entered the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland, making 25 markets there. The 08 was launched in Europe last June.

The 08 was impressive on the road, with 4.6-second zero to 60 times, but marred by some hesitation in the drivetrain on rapid acceleration. Interior finish was very good. Drivers of this rig, despite the performance aspects, can expect 42.8 mpg on a U.S. scale.

It’s interesting the price differences on the 08. Europeans pay a hefty $57,000 for a loaded version of the car, but in the Chinese market it starts around $25,600. The European model undoubtedly starts off in a higher trim, but still. Even in twin-motor deluxe form the 08 is only around $36,000 in China.

Geely’s own Starray GF+ offers 218 horsepower and a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. (Jim Motavalli photo)

And finally, I sampled a Geely-branded Starray GF+. This ICE car had a two-liter turbo four under the hood, with 218 horsepower and 240 pound-feet of torque. The seven-speed dual-clutch transmission was a modern touch. Colleague Mark noted slow two-second downshifts, and it was certainly no ball of fire. But definitely adequate as a fuel-sipping commuter car. There are two screens, a 10.25-inch digital cluster, and a 13.2-inch horizontal center screen.

But this is only one variant of the (popular in China) Starray—there are also diesel and PHEV variants, and a 1.5-liter turbo entry model. AWD is an option in some markets. For some reason, the Starray is called the Boyue L for export models. Overseas, there is no less than four variants of the Boyue.

Get this, the Starray in China starts at $14,000 to $16,000, with higher trims only $20,000.

The Zeekr 001 is a road rocket. (Jim Motavalli photo)

I didn’t get to drive the vaunted Zeekr 001 EV because every other journalist was grabbing the keys, but colleague Vaughn said it was the best of the bunch, with up to 536 horsepower from twin electric motors. “Zero to 62 mph is listed at 3.8 seconds—very good for a vehicle that weighs 6,281 pounds. And it held on with minimal body roll in corners,” he said. Range is up to 384 miles by Chinese measurement, and the price of a base model AWD is an affordable $38,000. If you want even more, there’s the ultra-fast 001 FR, a cool $100,000 in China.

the 001 FR, that stickers for about $100,000 in China, so when you add a 100% tariff, the FR gets costly. But the AWD I drove had performance to burn and—let’s assume a $70,000 price tag?—would only cost somewhere near what a Hyundai Ioniq 9 costs and a lot less than a Lucid Gravity.

The bottom line is that Chinese cars are here (well, waiting at the border). They’re getting better, they’re remarkably affordable, and the only thing holding them back from a challenging position in the American market is Mr. Trump’s tariffs. Also, of course, they’re eating our lunch on EVs.