The performance leader in this group is also our Best Buy. The Honda Prelude will hustle two large adults and their luggage in comfort and luxury to a weekend getaway. Prelude has plenty of power, excellent road manners, and gets reasonable fuel economy.
We also recommend you take a look at the Chrysler Sebring (which will be redesigned for 2001 in coupe, convertible, and sedan form) and the Volkswagen New Beetle. The Sebring offers the most room in this class, while the New Beetle has interesting styling and a nice mix of comfort, performance, and economy.

The 2001 Cougar should get a mild freshening and, possibly, a new performance model. Ford is known to be mulling a sportier Cougar, though it hasn't yet given the go-ahead. However, a Cougar S concept seen at various recent auto shows provides a hint of what might be in store. Among its features were big wheels and tires beneath a lowered body, racy side-sill and fascia extensions, metal-look interior accents, sport bucket seats--and, surprisingly, all-wheel-drive. The concept also had a tuned V6, but Ford was mum on modifications and outputs.
Does a Cougar with bigger claws have a chance? Hard to say now. Though Cougar scored an impressive 48 percent year-over-year sales increase in calender 1999, orders in the first four months of 2000 were down nearly 32 percent, leaving Mercury's coupe in a near dead-heat with Mitsubishi's latest Eclipse coupes. A performance model could be a timely sales tonic, but Cougar's platform parent, the Ford Contour/Mercury Mystique sedan, is going away, which makes it tougher for planners to make a credible business case for a performance model that would likely sell in fairly small numbers. If a go-faster model does appear, it will be another effort of Ford's in-house performance arm, SVT (Special Vehicle Team), though it may not wear those initials. So far, SVT has tweaked only Ford-brand models to produce the F-150 Lightning pickup, Mustang Cobra, and the soon-to-be-deceased SVT Contour.