Jace to Face

I haven't been a BMW fanboy for many years, but I respect the company's engineering vision and commitment to producing exciting performance cars that incur a minimum environmental impact in their production and everyday use. I haven't liked any Bangle-era cars save the new M3 sedan, X5, and new Z4. Flame surfacing, Chris Bangle's most notorious contribution to BMW's design language, altered the look of cars across the globe. Unfortunately, that design characteristic seems to have been perfected by a host of other marques while BMW languished in awkward executions of its own brainchild. Now Mr. Bangle has left, and we're thrust into the von Hooydonk era. The opening act: The Vision EfficientDynamics Concept.

63 mpg. 0-60 in 4.8. Cd of 0.22. Yes. Just yes. BMW, darling. Sweetie, dearest, please take a leap in this direction. No incremental, creeping steps. Launch out to this design language and engineering paradigm. It'll work, and I'll be a fanboy again.

Way back in the late 1930's, today's luxury powerhouses Bentley and Rolls-Royce combined. Their marriage lasted more than seventy years. They grew old and senile together, living happily ignorant of the technological and aesthetic winds that altered the surrounding world. Then - as if out of the pages of their history together - Germany invaded. Volkswagen bought the companies. Then, in soap operatic style, BMW seduced Rolls-Royce, and they eloped together and are today happily married. These two companies, locked in a decades-long, ever-increasing stagnancy, split. And as all such stories go, they were left to rediscover how to go about life on their own.

They chose very different paths. The elopement gave Rolls-Royce an injection of renewed youth and energy. The first new Rolls under BMW's reign was surprisingly ballsy. The Phantom's looks were fantastically controversial and the engineering and quality both brilliant in the extreme. They charged a premium for this new pinnacle of automotive achievement: $400,000. Meanwhile, Bentley went the opposite direction. Borrowing platforms from the Volkswagen Phaeton and Audi A8, Bentley made 'budget' models, the Continental GT coupe and GTC convertible and the Continental Flying Spur sedan. These were brilliantly built but...not so controversial and more sort of...boring and German. Bentley's noveau riche models were essentially upmarket VWs. To keep the geriatric end of their fan base happy, they continued producing re-energized, facelifted versions of their decades-old Arnage and Azure. Like Bob Dole with Viagra though, they still weren't going to be winners when it all got down to business.

So it hasn't looked quite so peachy for Bentley. And to make matters worse, Rolls-Royce unleashed the Phantom Drophead Coupe and Phantom Coupe, both home runs in the same vein as their parent model and - if anything - more modern and captivating. Now though, the battle heats up anew. Rolls-Royce is dipping downmarket into the $300,000 range with the new, BMW 7-series-based Ghost (200EX), and Bentley is casting a line upwards with the all-new Mulsanne. Just look at the names. Think about how they make you feel - it gives a good idea of where each company is going with these newbies.

Honestly, I'm with the Ghost. It's what an uber-car should be. It's a daring foray into the future that manages to maintain a connection to its venerable roots. The Mulsanne, while relatively new and daring for Bentley, still looks like a page straight out of history. Despite an all-new platform and vastly reworked engine, it looks like an Arnage with more metalwork and Mark I Mini headlights. The Mulsanne frustrates me. I prefer the Ghost despite a personal and irrational prejudice for Bentley as a company. I prefer the Ghost despite its dull interior and despite the Spirit of Ecstasy that I don't much care for on the hood. I prefer the Ghost because it is a huge slab of tradition with the guts to sport a design of our time for our time, and anything less is a regression into senility and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge and live in this new and changing world. I didn't even want to like the Rolls. But I do. So wake up, Bentley. Rip van Winkles like yourselves miss out on a lot while the world whizzes by.

I've spewed endless criticism of Mercedes Benz for years. I attacked their vanilla styling, shoddy build quality, preposterous pricing...even their moneyed and annoyingly cliche consumer base. Everything about the marque had gone down the poopy pipe, and I'd had it with them. There was this irritating sense that the Mercedes folk had given up on making cars for drivers - that this was a company that catered to people who would be chauffeured if at all possible.

But Mercedes has been whispering of late about some soul searching, some re-invention. It's not something they'd mention publicly or shout about. No, they're above admitting having gone astray. Fair enough, but money is monsooning at R&D faster than Flo Rida could shower on a strip club, and build quality is creeping toward acceptable. The styling is still vanilla, but it's gone all chunky - so maybe vanilla with vodka. It's an alkie's car it is. And it's like they've actually listened to my whining because a stick shift is sitting in the base C-class, and they've started condensing their ridiculous, alphabet-soup model lineup. Joy of joys. And marketing's subtle hint at all these changes has come out thus: "This is the new E-class. This is Mercedes-Benz." All they need is Gerard Butler in a skirt, lots of camera filters, copious CG, and "we're rolling." Cue eight-pack Gerard. "THIS...IS......SPAARRR....wait..."

So the E-class, then. Generation nine is the latest and greatest sign of awesome returning to the em bee. All indications are that it's engineered properly for a change. It's definitely bursting at the seams with technology from Star Trek, and it's appropriately zoomy (even with the base V6) so you in your platinum-plated, warp-speed chariot can pass all the mere mortals in their tardy oxcarts on the highway. I even like the way it looks.

I just wanted to throw this tidbit out there: that life is wonderful and I'm loving it. For anyone even remotely familiar with me, this is obviously a fantastic and unexplored frontier for J. Whizzle. Maybe it's a bit early to celebrate - a bit premature. But I'm not so sure. See, I'm sitting across the street from the Georgia Tech Parking office and I'm still sticking to my happy guns, so there's some resilience to them yet!

I'm sensing a bit of a paradigm shift in the works. A move toward - dare I say it - optimism? I don't know, but yesterday I saw a North Face backpack in fabtastic eighties-era hues (from North Face?!), and I'm madly enamo(red) of it. Ordinarily I would feel incomplete and lacking (see previous post on lust). But today I feel energized. I'm excited by that ridiculous backpack; enlivened by desiring it. And I'm somehow confident that I don't actually ever need to possess it to keep living. It's epic: the backpack and my new paradigm.

Look! Now I see a Nissan 350Z convertible and my day hasn't been ruined! And a pretty girl just talked to me (asked if she could plug in to my socket), and everything's still...that's plug her laptop into the wall socket...geez, people. Calm yourselves.

Further exploring this new ground, recent revelations have given me confident knowledge of something I am called to in life. I don't want to spoil the fun by telling just yet, but it's very exciting. I have no idea how to do it - no idea how to begin. The who, what, when, where is very much up in the air. So lots of unknowns then, but this is not an uncertain thing. It's an eventuality. It's a God-thing, and my passion for it is deeply rooted. So I eager to launch into it, but here in the meantime, I'm going to have fun and enjoy the pre-flight party.