CultureMap Auto Awards

Sport Sedan of the Year: 2014 Lexus IS 350 F-Sport breaks BMW stranglehold

Editor's note: In the second annual CultureMap Auto Awards, our automotive correspondents Nic Phillips and Kevin McCauley bestow honors in 10 categories for the top cars and trucks of 2013/2014. Next up:

Sport Sedan of the Year: 2014 Lexus IS 350 F-Sport

The hotly contested sport sedan segment was invented by the venerable BMW 3-series, which dominates the category with its balance of performance, driving dynamics, efficiency and entry-level luxury. Most recently challenged by the Cadillac ATS, last year's pick for outright CultureMap Car of the Year, now Lexus has a legitimate alternative with its all-new 2014 IS 350 F-Sport.

We say legitimate in that the IS isn't new to the market; it's been boring us since 1998 with unremarkable dynamics, forgettable styling and the signature numbness that made the Lexus brand most known for having been no match for the BMW.

Well, forget all that.

This new IS is the first of Lexus' self-proclaimed "car guy" and boss Akio Toyoda's "Wow! I want that!" plan, and it drives like no other sport sedan in its class. With a hefty feeling inspiring confidence, one gets the notion this car is buttoned up nose to tail. Interior fit and finish is on par with the flagship LS sedan, last year's CultureMap Luxury Car of the Year, with an industrial robustness more akin to a 1990s-era Mercedes Benz than the overly plastic finishes of the BMW 3-series.

The IS 350 F-Sport's exclusive Adaptive Variable Suspension and Variable Gear-Ratio Steering paired with a 306-horsepower V6 and smooth shifting eight-speed automatic makes a unique match for the otherwise predictable 3-series.

The IS range starts in mid-$30s, and the IS 350 F-Sport starts in the the mid-$40s — comparable to the Cadillac ATS and BMW 3-series.

Sport Sedan of the Year Runner-up: 2014 Audi A7 TDI

Although the Audi A7 couple-like sedan isn't all that new, it's now available with a fuel-saving TDI clean diesel engine, making it the best-looking, most fun to drive "eco-friendly" sport sedan out. The 3-liter V6 diesel is rated at 240-horsepower and a whopping 428 lb-ft of torque — more torque than even the V10 gas engined Audi R8 supercar.

That monster torque, channeled through an industry-best eight-speed automatic transmission, along with Audi's legendary Quattro all-wheel-drive, gets the full-size beauty to 60 in just 5.5 seconds — about the same as the Lexus IS 350 F-Sport.

The difference? The A7 delivers that acceleration along with a real-world 38 miles-per-gallon highway compared to Lexus' at-best 28 mpg.

Equipped with our recommended options, the eco-motive Audi is a $70,000 luxury sport sedan proposition.

CultureMap Sport Sedan of the Year: 2014 Lexus IS 350 F-Sport.

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Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

job market texas wallethub jobs

CultureMap Auto Awards

Sport Sedan of the Year: 2014 Lexus IS 350 F-Sport breaks BMW stranglehold

CultureMap Sport Sedan of the Year: 2014 Lexus IS 350 F-Sport.

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Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report