Our long-term 2019 Subaru Forester Touring's interior is one area we wanted to really hone in on over a number of months with it. Though Subaru's interior functionality and space have long been key reasons people choose the brand, interior design and quality have been reasons they've looked elsewhere. A compromise needed to be made.

Subaru is trying to lift itself out of this rut with the higher trims of its latest models. The upmarket interiors of the Outback and Legacy are swathed in decent-feeling leather (or leather-substitute), contrast stitching, attractive trim and piano black accents. However, Subaru's best seller, the Forester, is a mixed bag of new, premium Subaru and old, sensible-shoes Subaru.

The 2021 Lexus LC 500 Convertible is a blessing in the form of a car. Its 5.0-liter naturally aspirated V8 makes one of the best sounds in automobiledom, and one look will have anybody's jaws on the ground. Climb inside, and the hits don't stop coming.

In our specific test car, the first thing we notice are the miles of Toasted Caramel leather. It's everywhere, and its expensive feel and quality are second to none at this price point. You can get black or red leather, but the Toasted Caramel tan is the classiest option available for the Convertible. Shades of tan on the doors, seats and headrests give it a mild two-tone look, making the color combo even more pleasing.

I'm in the process of reviewing the new Yakima CBX Solar roof carrier. I've mounted it to a Subaru Outback and my own Audi Allroad, while a new Subaru Crosstrek Sport will be next. Alas, the 2021 Nissan Rogue SV currently in my driveway won't get the chance to ride around with Spock's coffin on its back. 

You see, the Rogue has fake roof rails. Although they appear to be flush rails at first glance, they are in fact made of plastic and lack the grooves necessary for rack towers to clamp onto. Instead, there are little plastic covers that pop off with a flathead screwdriver to reveal static mounting points. These are vaguely similar to what you can find on various BMW sedans and even the Porsche 911 that are hidden behind little doors in their roofs. 

There is only one vehicle on the market with a roof rack system like the 2020 Subaru Outback. Literally everything else has either flush-mounted or raised rails where some form of crossbars are connected with "towers" (OK, so there's whatever you'd call this on the 4Runner TRD Pro). While car manufacturers will sometimes include crossbars, quite often it's left to the accessory catalog or third-party companies such as Yakima and Thule. In any event, keeping crossbars on your car regardless of how they are affixed increases wind noise and can harm fuel economy. They can also sully the view out your sunroof, but that's obviously a lesser concern.

The Outback doesn't have to worry about any of that, including buying aftermarket pieces. Its roof rails are the crossbars.

It's Child Passenger Safety Week in the United States. According to the global nonprofit Safe Kids Worldwide, vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death and injury for American children and correctly used child car seats can reduce the risk of death by 71%. However, also according to Safety Kids Worldwide, 60% of car seats are not used or installed correctly. 

In normal circumstances, you could take your car and car seat to some fire stations or other locations for a certified passenger safety technician to make sure you've install it correctly. While you may be able to find an in-person location that's open, there are a variety of online and virtual opportunities available. Of course, simply reading the instructions can go a long way. So can researching and then buying a seat that is well-engineered to be easy to install. I found Baby Gear Lab's testing and ratings to be particularly useful when shopping for my own infant car seat. I even bought their No. 1 pick, the Chicco KeyFit 30, which you can see in this test.

From the people who brought you the Luggage Test, it's the Stroller Test! I know, sequels, right? 

However, as someone who was recently in the market for a stroller and didn't want to buy a new/gigantic family vehicle to accommodate it (not to mention needing to potentially store it in every vehicle currently sold), knowing how big strollers were and how they might fit in cars was important. 

Welcome to the interior of the 2020 Toyota Sequoia TRD Pro, Toyota's largest SUV in its lineup. We're in the fancy off-road-ready TRD Pro (new for 2020), but that doesn't make a difference when it comes to the Sequoia's interior storage solutions. 

This truck is huge, both inside and outside. It's imposing and utilitarian, and there are many cubbies and slots for you to put your life's treasures. The video at the top of this post will give you a tour of the various places to put things, but keep reading for testing of said storage compartments.

When you drive cars from the same brand enough, you start to instinctively know how to accomplish tasks. It's like seeing the emblem on the steering wheel automatically reprograms your brain. For instance, a three-pointed star = gear shift is the stalk that usually controls the windshield wipers. 

I say this because when I got into the 2020 Lexus RX for the first time, I ignored my programming. I don't know why, but when I went to change the channel (left on Sirius Watercolors, ugh), I reached up and tapped the 12.3-inch dashtop display to do it. Just as I remembered that doing so should do nothing ... it worked! What the hell?

The compact coupe is nearly extinct, and one has to assume that the Honda Civic Coupe is just clawing for its future life somewhere in the depths of product planning. For now though, the 2020 Civic Si Coupe still exists, it's still a barrel of laughs to drive, and after a few choice tweaks for 2020 it even manages to look pretty good. 

Now, the interior is starting to show its age a bit as various new compacts have managed to up the wow factor for the segment — Mazda3, Nissan Sentra and 2021 Hyundai Elantra, just to name a few. Of course, none of those is available as a coupe and when putting aesthetic aside, the Civic still impresses with its quality and versatility. Let's take a closer look.

Valencia Red Pearl. That's the story with the 2020 Acura TLX PMC Edition. We got to see this limited edition TLX sedan at the New York Auto Show last year, but now it's in my driveway. The show lights don't do this paint justice. The setting sun reflecting off the deep and vibrant red ... now that's how this car is meant to be gazed upon.

Like I mentioned in the video walkaround above, the TLX PMC Edition is hand-assembled at the Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio. The body-in-white is trundled across town to the NSX supercar factory where those technicians do the rest to make it road-worthy. All 360 of them are being wrapped in their own special car covers and delivered to dealers on an enclosed truck to make sure it arrives without a single exterior flaw.

If there's one thing Honda is exceptionally good at, it's packaging. That includes managing to squeeze as much interior space from an exterior footprint as possible, and then from that, as much interior storage space as possible. Cupholders, bins, cupholders that slide to reveal more bins, under-floor storage ... each Honda has some trick up its sleeve to help you store and stuff more stuff inside. 

The 2020 Honda CR-V is one such stuff-stuffing champion. Besides its copious cargo capacity, the CR-V;s front center console is cleverly designed to provide more than just a pair of cupholders and a big covered hole. To test its ability, I grabbed a disparate pair of water bottles that should provide a challenge to cupholders, made off with my wife's purse (she hasn't gone anywhere in days), and of course my iPhone. 

The 2020 Honda CR-V is an all-star; a thoughtfully designed and well-rounded compact crossover that checks off virtually every box families might have. There are no shortage of reasons why Honda manages to sell so many every year, and it actually gets even better for 2020 with the addition of the CR-V Hybrid. 

However, it has one major blemish, something that can make you go "yeah, but ..." It's the touchscreen infotainment system found on all but the base LX trim level. Consumer reviews and reliability ratings have shown in abundance that it is a laggy, glitchy system. As just one example, a friend of my mother's even recently said she loved her CR-V but was reluctant to buy another because of the problems she's had with the touchscreen. During my recent week with a CR-V Hybrid (more reviews coming soon), it became completely unresponsive when using Apple CarPlay. When it was functioning as designed, it was still slow to move between menus, and it just isn't as intuitive as rival systems. It's also pretty antiquated in appearance and measures only 7 inches, versus the more common 8 inches of the Toyota RAV4 and others. 

Infiniti is slowly coming round to the modern age of infotainment systems this year, and our first taste of that is in the 2020 Infiniti Q60 Red Sport 400. This performance coupe has an updated system in it that, while it looks a whole lot like it did before, represents a step forward for Infiniti.

Most importantly, Infiniti has finally added Apple CarPlay and Android Auto functionality for 2020. Every new 2020 model year car should ship with the smartphone connection technology baked in, and Infiniti has finally gotten with the program this year on nearly all of its cars (QX60 is the holdout). The delay might have something to do with Nissan/Infiniti's reluctance to share customer data to Apple and Google, or perhaps Infiniti was waiting to roll out a broader interface update, but either way, the hardware they've applied it to would seem to be the same as before. 

The Kia Telluride has received a lot of deserved attention for its luxurious cabin that looks great and is put together using higher-end materials than is expected for the non-luxury three-row crossover segment. However, after spending time in the range-topping 2020 Toyota Highlander Platinum, I think that its materials and construction are just as good, possibly better. 

The earthy two-tone color scheme is distinctive, warm and generally inviting. The silver trim that wraps around the control binnacle like a fork is textured to make it look richer and more like actual metal. The wood trim on the dash and center console, be it real or not, is subtle and tasteful. The padded SofTex vinyl that covers much of the dash, doors and center console is pleasant to touch, while the real leather on the seats is buttery soft. All the switchgear is top notch, and I've already extolled the virtues of the widescreen infotainment system.