This diverse segment offers the widest price range. It covers everything from the $34,000 Saab 9-5 to the $130,000 Mercedes-Benz SL500. Obviously our Best Buys are somewhere in between. We think that the Acura RL is a steal at $42,000 fully equipped. Though it is a front-drive V6 in a field of V8 rear-drive models, it has a great ride, plenty of power, and is quite luxurious. Mercedes-Benz E-Class, though a bit long in the tooth, also continues to impress with its impeccable road manners and luxurious comfort.

If you are looking for something a bit more sporting we recommend the BMW 5-Series. If your taste ranges more toward the luxury end, then take a look at the Cadillac DeVille or Lexus GS 300.

No one, ourselves included, foresaw this year's new T6 Executive. It'll be interesting to see how it fares versus the regular S80 T6. As a whole, however, this line stumbled on the sales gridiron last year, orders dropping over 13 percent from calendar '99 to just shy of 29,000. There's still not much news about near-term plans for these Volvos, but the S80 is now in its third model year and that implies a freshening of some sort by 2003 or '04.

Volvo is still working on an S80-based "crossover" for introduction in calendar 2002. Lately, though, this new "V90 Cross Country," as it might be called, has been reported to be more trucklike than Volvo's midsize V70 XC wagon. Whatever its ultimate character, it definitely won't be a Volvo-ized Ford Explorer even though Volvo is now part of Ford's luxury-brand family. After all, wagons still account for the lion's share of Volvo's business, so it's doubtful the new crossover will stray too far from a car-based formula. As we've seen with V70s and the new S60 sedans, Volvo's "P2" platform is easily adapted to vehicles of different sizes, so we'd guess "V90" will be a larger, more macho-looking Volvo wagon using many V70 XC under-skin components. We'll know for sure soon enough.