2006 Audi A6

If your car-purchasing motives include impressing the boorish burghers of the County Orange, there are plenty of flashy cars at the $50,000 price point that bounce the needle more.The A6 Avant is a car for people with money who would really rather not make an issue of it -- your anonymous-opera-benefactor types.

It's also quietly gorgeous. Redesigned for 2006 and just hitting the market, the station wagon has a newly sleek skin that looks curried by the wind, a restyling that buffs out any linearity of the previous design, which wasn't exactly boxy to begin with. All the exterior detailing is vacu-formed, sucked into the bodywork: The glass and polished window surrounds are nearly flush; the door handles are embedded into the sheet metal; the lighting instruments (including the new LED tail lamps) wrap around like a military contractor's sunglasses.