Gadgetory

I'm Brian coolies we've seen that on cars with a top five that took us a whole year to make its CNET's top five highest rated cars of calendar year 2015 these are various model years but we reviewed them in 2015 and they are being ranked by their highest CNET editor's review scores as well as each one being a winner of CNET's vaunted editor's choice let's go number 5 is the 2016 Ford Escape now they got great new looks on this car a 2-liter EcoBoost engine that we liked a lot available with all-wheel drive it's got the new sync 3 infotainment head unit a triumph and a long time coming from Ford self-parking technologies available now roll that all together and you can be paying $36,000 plus for an escape that can be a little rich but to be honest this is a compact crossover that does nothing badly number 4 is the 2015 Audi a3 Cabriolet great outtie looks and handling of course on top of that you've got 4G LTE tied in to really sophisticated Google services and you've got a top that is like a tank since when is a convertible going to be so solid so quiet and never make you worry about leaks on the other hand this guy leaves out any trace of voice command that's a little frustrating and the trunk isn't about big enough for lunch beyond that though if you want an everyday compact sedan with a truly useful top and some of the best tech in the business this is your 1 number 3 is the 2015 Mercedes S Class hybrid now we gave its standard gas engine brethren and eight point six a higher score than this guy which gets on 8.3 but only the hybrid version gets our vaunted editors choice label as well because he gets in the high 20s in everyday driving and does all the other great stuff that a basic gas engine s550 does if you've got to get around and ostentation and you want to be efficient this is your car number two brings us a tie between two cars that have almost nothing in common the first of which is the 15 tesla model s p85d this is the dual motor car even faster at zero to 60 under three seconds all-wheel drive in a sophisticated dual motor fashion and this is the car where Tesla really began to do over-the-air updates that grant the vehicles ever-increasing self-driving ability it's no wonder you can't pull into any artisanal coffee joint in Silicon Valley and not be parked next to one of these the other car tied for number two also with an 8.8 score like the Tesla is the 2016 Audi TT Roadster completely revised finally to my eye at least a great looking Audi TT you've got an advanced virtual cockpit like no other in the world all LCD and reconfigurable great handling of course it's a premium car or the convertible top like the a3 we just saw that is a work of art and never leaves you worrying if it's gonna be leaky noisy or boat on the other hand it's a diminutive little ride there's barely room for one set of golf clubs let alone two so when you go somewhere on the weekend you got to figure out what the other person is gonna be doing our number one highest rated and most loved car that crossed our garage threshold in all of 2015 is the 2016 Mazda Miata the mx-5 completely redone and still an absolute winner this is the most fun you can have on the road without being rich nothing about it is terribly technically sophisticated but they've hung on to their roots and continued to refine great straightforward unfiltered driving joy there's more room inside for tall people thank you and while its no cabin tech tour-de-force it's no longer embarrassing in that category either we want to have fun on the road and it's our money paying for it this is our huckleberry