MotorMouths

Perfect? Committed sensualists will miss some degree of adventure. Gone are the adrenaline chinchillas running up and down your spine. The 458 Italia is spooky fast without the haunting of mortality.

Hugely civilized, desperately fast, drenched in high-tech amenities and executed with the kind of spirit and joie de vivre than makes the competitive German products look positively Amish, the new Jag is now the presumptive favorite in the full-size premium sedan category.

Make no mistake: In the 458 Italia Spider, you will be seen. Fascinating design, exquisite stick-and-rudder handling, raw power like Samson on Rogaine, the Italia is absolutely one of the two or three best sports cars in the world. Cutting the top off doesn’t make it any subtler, however.

The Aventador is ferocious, with incredible lateral grip and wonderful mechanical balance, and its design is outrageous. For a company that prizes extremity above all, I think they got this about right.

The 2011 Mercedes CL63 AMG, a tail-dancing cyclone of a luxury coupe that does everything well but does one thing so grandly that it borders on the surreal, the uncanny. It accelerates. A lot. Imagine God plays jai alai, and you’re the ball.

Lotus has patented a kind of easy, predictable balance and directness so even average drivers walk away from the Evora feeling like Mario Andretti. At $73,500, what you have here is the everyman’s Ferrari.

The McLaren MP4-12C is now the best sports car in the world, an era-defining work of technical intelligence and jet-fighter performance that will—be warned—make you look at other cars in your garage like they were lawn mowers.

The Nissan GT-R is a serious piece of machinery, a brooding masterpiece of computer-enhanced handling, sophisticated all-wheel-drive and quaint, galling force.

Bugatti built a sportier version of the Veyron—because, obviously, the Veyron was such a sissy cupcake of a car. The result? The hackneyed comparison would be to say the Super Sport looks like some kind of space ship, but if extraterrestrials exist, I seriously doubt they are this cool.

Bentley’s tag line for the Mulsanne is quite pointed: “The opposite of mass production.” All that steel, the leather and lumber? Yeah, that’ll be around forever.

I present to you perhaps the most fun available on four wheels: The 2010 Lotus Evora. No, not fun. Joy. Inexpressible, diamond-showering, running-naked-through-a-field-of-virgins ecstasy. Handling perfection. I am going to buy one.

Is the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 fast? Even though straight-line speed is not the most interesting thing about this vehicle, the answer is oh, yeah, immoderately so. And if this isn’t the best-built American vehicle, you’ll have to show me one better.