10 Biggest News Stories of the Month: Hyundai Palisade, Veloster N, Ram 1500 Aim to Be Best

What do the Hyundai Palisade, Hyundai Veloster N and Ram 1500 all have in common besides being motorized vehicles from mass-market brands sold in the U.S.? They all earned Cars.com’s highest honor this year for being best in their respective categories — and they’re all featured among our most popular news articles of the past month. Chief among them was funky, fast, three-door cheap-speed champ the Veloster N hot hatch, which took home the Most Fun-to-Drive Car of the Year prize in our Best of 2020 awards lineup and, subsequently, the No. 1 spot on our most-read-stories list below.

Related: 10 Biggest Pickup Truck Stories of the Year: 2020 Toyota Tundra Freezes Out Chevy, Ford, Ram Trucks

Sitting comfortably at No. 2, meanwhile, was our story on Cars.com’s 2020 Luxury Car of the Year, which this year went to the Ram 1500 Laramie Longhorn/Limited. A pickup truck earned an award for best “luxury car”? We’ll forgive you if you’re left scratching your head — but if you ever sat in the Laramie Longhorn/Limited lap of luxury, you might just find yourself itching to indulge yourself with one.

And finishing at No. 4 among all other Cars.com coverage during the first month of the new decade was our overall Best of 2020 winner, the all-around-awesome Hyundai Palisade SUV. As has been our practice since the start of Barack Obama’s second term in the White House, once the Palisade earned our top prize, we turned around and bought one for our long-term test-car fleet to drive for a year and will immerse ourselves in the ownership experience, reporting our findings along the way. You can follow along here all year with that coverage — much of which will likely wind up on future editions of our top 10 stories list in the months to come.

Rounding out this month’s top five were a pair of our rapid-fire rundowns of all the things we like, and likewise like less, about a given vehicle. At No. 3 is the 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid, boasting smooth hybrid power, nimble handling and good gas mileage, but an annoying all-wheel-drive surcharge and resistant regenerative brakes. And in fifth place was the 2020 Lincoln Corsair, which treats occupants to a well-controlled ride, a quiet and classy cabin, and plenty o’ power, but gets points deducted for a slow-rowing transmission, overeager adaptive cruise control and so-so-sized multimedia touchscreen.

Meanwhile, you can still get your fair share of coverage on the 2020 Mazda CX-30, Toyota Highlander, Honda Ridgeline and Hyundai Sonata in the No. 6 through 10 spots — so now’s not the time to go halfsies. Here are the top 10 news stories Cars.com readers couldn’t get enough of in the past month:

1. 2020 Most Fun-to-Drive Car of the Year

2. 2020 Luxury Car of the Year 

3. 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid: 7 Things We Like and 2 Things We Don’t

4. 2020 Best of the Year

5. 2020 Lincoln Corsair: 8 Things We Like (and 3 Not So Much)

6. 2020 Toyota Highlander: Everything You Need to Know

7. What’s the Best New-Car Deal for January 2020?

8. 2020 Mazda CX-30: 5 Things We Like and 3 Not So Much

9. 2020 Honda Ridgeline: Which Should You Buy, 2019 or 2020?

10. 2020 Hyundai Sonata: 8 Things We Like (and 3 Not So Much)

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