Hot from Autoblog’s child labor press: we now have the prices for Buick’s Regal.  The mid-level CXL will be the only Regal at launch, starting at $27,000.  That starting model will include GM’s 2.4 L inline-four that’ll squeak out 182 hp.  The optional turbo 2.0 will up the price to $29,500 and bump up horsepower to a modest 220.  Both CXL powertrains will come with a 6-spd. auto tranny.

Hard to believe: the NSX has been dead for three years–and was obsolete nearly a decade longer.  The ol’ Acura may have been slammed by snobs as lacking soul, but it was a brilliantly-engineered exotic.  Telling that Honda still doesn’t know what to do with the high-end vacancy left by the two-seater.

Which is why we chose the HSC as our #9 pick.

The HSC was unveiled six years ago in Tokyo.  From all accounts, the HSC was the logical step forward for the NSX.  The aging Honda exotic had long fallen behind its Italian (and even American) competitors.  The HSC’s similar exterior hid some progressive innovation, including a center-mounted “dial” shifter and an early rear-camera/nav display now commonplace in the industry.  A V-6 was still in play, but now a lighter unit with 3.5 L and 300 hp.

Somewhere within the higher levels of Honda management, the HSC was dropped.  Instead, we received a flurry of meaningless ideas that usually amounted to nothing.  The travesty here is that HSC wasn’t anything radical.  It had some freshness, but nothing beyond the means of Honda’s engineers.  The years since have brought us Lexus’s LF-A and Nissan’s GT-R as leaders in Japanese performance.