Hasta La Gadget!

Some cars don’t have built-in navigation screens this big. The Magellan RoadMate 9055, $300 list, has a 7-inch diagonal display. It’s ideal for larger vehicles or for drivers who simply want big, legible maps. If your car or SUV has a steeply raked windshield and deep dashboard, the foot-long mounting arm brings the touchscreen display back within reach. The RoadMate 9055 includes spoken street names, free lifetime traffic, and Bluetooth.

No one’s buying Chevy Volts. And even less than no one is buying the Nissan Leaf. Sales figures for the electric cars are a dim bulb, indeed. In February, GM moved 281 Chevy Volts–a figure that, as Autoblog points out, the manufacturer wasn’t exactly eager to share when it issued Chevrolet sales figures for last month.

Of the top 10 cars in Consumer Reports April annual cars issue (online and shipping to subscribers now, on newsstands March 8), we agree on one: the Hyundai Elantra, which also made our pcmag.com Gearlog Digital Drive Top 10 Cars list. The discrepancy is simple: Consumer Reports’ testers love cars, just as much as the car guys at any other magazine or website. But Consumer Reports gets hung up on reliability scores where we believe most every car is reliable enough. So to us, a deciding factor often is technology, particularly standard or universally available iPod adapters and Bluetooth, and affordable in-dash navigation.

Honda continues to have the best automaker website, says J.D. Power and Associates, followed by Mazda, Mini, Porsche, and Acura. That’s based on four measures: speed, appearance, navigation and information/content. Biggest gainers were No. 18 Cadillac, up 15 rank positions to just above average; and No. 4 Porsche, up 14 rank positions.

Kelley Blue Book’s list of Top 10 Family Cars of 2011 acknowledges our love affair with big. Seven of the 10 are SUVs or crossovers although Kelley and KBB.com, its online arm, say “safety, comfort, economy of operation, child-friendliness, a reasonable purchase price and good resale value” are also key. Tech didn’t appear to play much of a role: no mention (in their writeups) of cars with standard Bluetooth or iPod adapters. Below, the KBB Top 10 Family Cars, excerpts from their comments, and our notes on what else you should know about this top 10.  See bottom-of-story for the three cars that should have made the list.