Ford Five Hundred looks like just another conservatively styled family sedan. But peel away the Passat-like sheet metal and you will find a well engineered, highly competent chassis, much of it lifted from the Ford-owned Volvo S80. The Five Hundred sedan will be sharing this new Volvo-derived platform with the Ford Freestyle untapped markets.

Overall, it feels cushier than other compacts, both in terms of its comfortable seats and its soft suspension. It's fun to drive, however, with agile handling. It's comfortable on long trips and stable at high speeds. The Focus is among the best of the compacts in terms of ride quality and has been lauded by the enthusiast publications for its handling.

Along the way, Ford has made some 500 changes to the Taurus, changes that were already scheduled for the mid-cycle freshening of the Five Hundred. The general body shape of the new Taurus is the same as that of the previous Five Hundred, a large, front-wheel-drive family sedan, but almost everything else has changed for the better.

Though they were what most people drove in the 1950s and 1960s, full-size cars like the Ford Crown Victoria are now an anomaly. But Ford's biggest sedan still offers significant virtues, including affordable V8 performance and room for six people. Today, the Crown Victoria's passenger and cargo volumes compare favorably against fashionable SUVs.

The Mustang remains one of the most widely recognized, respected, and desired nameplates in the automobile business. The Ford Mustang defined the pony-car segment in 1964; Plymouth's Barracuda may have beaten Ford to the showroom by 16 days, but it was the Mustang that set the sales records. The 'Cuda is gone now leaving Ford's pony to prance alone.

Powered by a 550-horsepower V8, fitted with a six-speed manual transmission and capable of speeds in excess of three times the legal maximum in most states. Although bordering on what some might consider Spartan in amenities, it's surprisingly comfortable and accommodating for a high-performance sports car.

The Ford Fusion is an excellent choice among midsize sedans and should not be overlooked. The Fusion was introduced as an all-new vehicle for 2006 and it's a superb car. It handles well, looks purposeful, it's comfortable, and it delivers good value. Furthermore, the all-wheel-drive Ford Fusion extremely stable on wet pavement.

The Ford Freestyle's roofline stands at 68 inches off the ground, and Ford has declined to put a label on it, either SUV or sedan. Keeping the Freestyle tall and offering all-wheel-drive seems to be attactive to non-SUV and non-Sedan car owners, and the Freestyle comes with low ground clearance, unibody construction, independent suspension and a overhead cam engine.

Ford thought they'd take their own stab at the nostalgia business. There are quite a few last-century icons that wear the blue oval. For a revival subject, why not use a car famous enough to have been the subject of Beach Boys songs, starred in George Lucas movies, and has been gone long enough to be missed? Why not indeed. In 2002, the Thunderbird was reborn.