The last time we reviewed a Toyota Sequoia, George W. Bush was the president of the United States of America. The recession had officially hit, and the nationwide average price for a gallon of gasoline was $3.27. Great timing for a new truck that's rated at 15 mpg combined. 

Fast forward about 12 years, and we land at the 2020 Toyota Sequoia TRD Pro. Not a whole lot has changed in the interim — it's even painted green like that '08 model (though its Army Green is undoubtedly superior to the old Timberland Mica). Toyota played Tetris with some engines in the model's early years, but has settled on the 5.7-liter V8 as the only option at this point. Some minor tech upgrades were added over the years, and it got the closest thing to a mid-cycle refresh for 2018 — there were some small styling changes, new headlights and a bevy of driver assistance features added, but the truck remained largely the same.

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. 

Japanese business giant SoftBank Group found about 0.4 percent of people tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in a survey it conducted. Having antibodies means that the person has contracted the virus in the past.

The group released the preliminary results of the survey in a live-streamed event on Tuesday.

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?

You've seen this particular Toyota 4Runner before because it was the subject of the first Suspension Deep Dive I wrote for Autoblog. It's still hanging around my driveway and available to make the occasional repeat appearance because, well, it's mine. I chose the TRD Off-Road for a couple of reasons, some of which will come into play on my Flex Index ramp.

First, it's the only model other than the TRD Pro that comes with a push-button locking rear differential, electronic crawl control and multi-terrain select. Second, it can cost as much as $10,000 less than a TRD Pro, particularly if you're content with cloth seating and no sunroof, as I am. I used some of the money I saved to buy the third item: an option called KDSS, the Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System. Importantly, this clever option can only be fitted to a TRD Off-Road; it's not even available on the TRD Pro.

Toyota is prepping a few significant updates for the eighth-generation Hilux, which has been in production at factories all over the world since 2015.

The 2020 Nissan Kicks is a refreshingly honest tool for people who know what they honestly need from a car. It doesn't have all-wheel drive, but you know what, most people don't really need it -- front-wheel drive and a useful extra bit of ground clearance will be just fine to access that campground, and if snow is in the forecast, snow tires will mean more than all-wheel-drive anyway. It doesn't have much power, but you know what, the Kicks is probably going to spend most of its life in traffic and the general urban grind, and in that setting, its engineers have made it feel surprisingly spritely. That it's reasonably quiet and comfortable on the highway should make that weekend trek to the campground sufficiently pleasant. 

And what about all the stuff you'll be bringing to that campground? The Kicks may have comparable exterior dimensions to most subcompact SUVs, but it's packing a shocking amount of cargo room. On paper, it has 25.3 cubic feet of space, whereas nearly all its competitors are in the teens. Only the Honda HR-V comes close at 24.3. And as you're about to see, it lives up to that promise in person.

The Mazda Miata would not be my first choice for a road trip car. Would probably be in the bottom 10, in fact. The interior fits me like a coffin, the seats pinch my back and the amount of passenger legroom is laughable. It's not exactly the most serene car, either. 

But hey, there are sadists out there who may want to venture somewhere in it. I work with some of them. So, as they were the ones who requested this, here is the answer to the question: how much luggage fits in the Miata's trunk?

Everything you're about to see and read about the 2020 Honda Pilot and its interior storage applies to every trim level. However, this test was conducted on the new, range-topping Pilot Black Edition, which as the implies, blacks out virtually all exterior trim and makes the wheels black. Inside, since everything's awfully black to begin with, red is added to the seats and center console tray/cover.

To fully immerse myself in the mindset of a Black Edition owner, I dressed entirely in black (also, why not?) and brought along some suitably black beverage containers to fill the 16 cupholders. Oh and my wife's black purse. She's not using it these days anyway; didn't notice it was gone. 

There's no need to explain the Toyota Land Cruiser, one of Toyota's earliest successful products. The 2020 Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Edition celebrates some 60 years of popularity of a vehicle that has survived the segment's "mall wagon" phase and the rise of crossovers. Its already-sterling reputation has received an additional recent push from the rise of overlanding — an outdoor pastime that has always existed but only recently got a press agent.

By comparison, the Lexus LX is a more recent development. Debuting in 1996, the LX 470 was little more than an 80-series Land Cruiser with cladding, a Lexus badge and a higher price. The amount of styling differentiation and luxury specialization has increased over the years to the point that the newest LX 570 actually seems like a completely different vehicle.

To date, the Volkswagen Atlas has managed to swallow more pieces of my luggage behind its raised third row than any other three-row crossover. The Hyundai Palisade came close as it was able to fit the four biggest bags in my travel arsenal. In this segment, I have also tested the Mazda CX-9 and Toyota Highlander, both of which are at the bottom of the segment in this one area. 

On paper, the Honda Pilot should be among that smallest group, providing 16.5 cubic-feet of space when the third row is raised. The Highlander is 16 cubic-feet, while the Palisade has 18 and the Atlas 20.6. In practice, however, the Pilot turns out to be far closer to those class leaders. Let's see why.

Somewhere in Hiroshima, a parade of nearly finished Miatas glides along a track waiting to receive their beating hearts, the powertrains that'll let them ply their road-carving talents the world over. One – let's call him Fred – is eager to begin his new life as a 2020 Mazda MX-5 Miata, bringing joy to his future owner and just generally being awesome, even if the RF power targa-ish roof that's already been applied to him is a tad dweeby. Visions of hairpins and power slides and expertly executed heal-toe downshifts dance in his head … and then it happens. He is given the one thing every new Miata dreads: an automatic transmission. Poor guy.

This will not, entirely at least, be yet another diatribe in the ongoing Quixotic campaign to Save the Manuals(!). Automatic transmissions can be quite good and even beneficial in sports cars, especially on the track where removing the need to operate a clutch and expertly execute those heal-toe downshifts lets you better focus on the steering, what the chassis is doing and just going faster. That the computers can shift quicker than you can is another obvious advantage.

When I got our long-term Subaru Forester back from the shop to fix a mysterious source of moisture, I also happened to have a Honda CR-V Hybrid taking up temporary residence in my driveway. After testing out my large son's car seat in each to these two right-sized vehicles, I moved on to the examine their capacity for the second-most-precious cargo they could carry: beverages. 

I counted eight cupholders in each of these cars, which amounts to two per outboard passenger. Two front cupholders on the center console, one in each front door, one in each rear door, and two in the center armrest that folds down in each rear row. That's not Subaru Ascent levels of beverage storage (19 cupholders!), but it should be plenty to keep a family hydrated on a short-to-medium drive. Though these two appear to be equal in quantity, let's take a closer look and see if they're equal in quality, too. I brought along a Klean Kanteen bottle that's about the same size as most other brand of metal water bottles folks carry around, a big Corkcicle 24-ounce insulated tumbler, a standard 12-ounce soda can, and a skinny, 7.5-ounce soda can that's the same width as a lot of canned energy drinks. As a bonus, I — the man known to Twitter as "that one dude with the Nalgene bottle" — brought my trusty 32-ounce Nalgene to see if it fits anywhere.