First glance: What a dog

The Subaru Impreza WRX gets our Most Improved Player Award for 2009. The WRX was actually all-new for 2008 -- and it was good enough to earn a spot on the 2008 list -- but the reception from the public at large was lukewarm. As a result, Subaru has fortified the '09 WRX with a serious power boost (41 horsepower and 18 lb-ft of torque), a stiffer suspension, and new summer performance tires. End result: The WRX is more fun than ever, especially in the curves. The WRX is a loveable car that's gotten a whole lot more loveable for 2009.
Among car fans, the term "dog" has a negative connotation. If someone says a car is a real dog, they usually mean that it's slow, sluggish, unresponsive, or otherwise unwilling to do whatever it is that would please its human masters.
How this use of the word dog came about is beyond me. Most dogs are anything but slow, sluggish, unresponsive and unwilling. A well-trained, well-treated dog is a model of happiness. They even have a part of the body which serves no purpose other than to express satisfaction. Sure, all dogs have some bad habits. Some drool on the furniture. Others bark at the neighbor's kids. My own dog will occasionally poop on the living room floor to express her dissatisfaction with my absence. But for the most part, dogs are fur-covered vessels of positive energy. Their primary goal in life is to please their owners, and their secondary goals, if they have any -- like barking when things seem even slightly amiss -- can be incredibly utilitarian.
And that's why I say the Subaru Impreza WRX is a dog: It's well behaved, well trained, and seems to have been engineered for no other purpose than to please its owner. The WRX isn't the fastest car on the road. It isn't even the fastest Impreza -- that would be the 305 horsepower STI, an evil cat of a car if there ever was one. But the WRX is the real dog of the lineup -- man's (and woman's) best friend, wrought in metal, plastic and glass.