Jace to Face

A couple of years ago, Top Gear reviewed the Noble M15. Like the handful of the breed that had come before it, the M15 won the approval of the show's hosts. As I hadn't been previously aware of any company called Noble producing any sort of car, the M15 handled the introduction - and it won me over too.

If you haven't heard of Noble, it's probably a good thing. You're not a car nerd, and you may well be a better person for it. They're a tiny manufacturer of religiously simple, focused sports cars. They don't do pretty or luxury or electronic wizardry, but they are master practitioners of fast.

After watching the M15 dance around the Top Gear test track, I forgot about Noble for a year. A few months ago I watched Richard Hammond's power test again, and it rekindled my interest in the brand. Weirdly, I couldn't find information about any sort of M15 production run. I just saw whispers of some new Noble in development testing - the M600, out in the Mojave with a Carrera GT for a playmate. Confounded, I did some more digging. It turns out the M15 never actually made production. Noble decided it wasn't fast enough, so they took it back and dialed the whole project up to eleven. The M600 is the result.

Noble revealed the new car a month ago, and the automotive press have since been effervescent in their praise of it, lauding its blistering speed, crisp handling, and composed ride. The M600, as it turns out, doesn't play with Carrera GTs. It spanks them and sends them back to Zuffenhausen weeping. It's an amazing achievement for a company as small as Noble, but it comes at a cost. 200,000 GBP, which converted is about a million billion U.S. dollars. And being a Noble, it's not svelte or sexy, so it won't seduce the money from anyone's pocket. The M600's success rather rides on two sorts of customer, with the obvious prerequisite being considerable wealth. They are: the speed freak and the pure-hearted car lover. The first will be drunk with lust at lap times and zero-to-sixty sprints. The latter though...I fear that these are a dying breed. The M600 forgoes ABS or satellite navigation, full leather interiors or airbags. It does without a fancy badge and name-brand prestige. Like the Carrera GT, it will endlessly frustrate poseurs because it fails to flatter the butterfingered showoffs when road and track get twisty. The uber-Porsche can still sit in the garage and impress with its supermodel looks and badge, but the Noble won't work here. You'd really have to love the car for its bare essence to appreciate a Noble. Indeed they make a habit of churning out cars that are this essence, distilled. Moreover, with the M600 costing as much as a government bailout, you'd have to harbor a deep-rooted hatred of the established brands for selling out to moneyed fools.

I love the Noble M600. Its well-sorted ride means it's both comfortable and agile, so it wouldn't spend any time in my garage - just out on whatever road fits my fancy. Its twin-turbocharged V8 and lean curb weight mean nobody will see it for long enough to consider its badge or looks. As an interpretation of the sports car's essence, it's incredibly successful, and I desperately hope that it finds enough takers, both speed freak and true car lover, to succeed financially...because the world needs more cars like Nobles.

People, BMW and Lexus released some new photos today. BMW caved in and showed us the new, F10 5-series. It's better looking than the one we've got, but that's not saying much. Let me be frank. It's retarded. It's far too conservative, far too much like a stretched 3-series, and far too ugly. What exactly was wrong with the Gran Turismo concept, you witless, balls-less Germans?


Oh, and Lexus has given us the new GX SUV. It's officially the ugliest car on earth.

I went to Tennessee last weekend. My family has an old farm up there. We don't grow anything there anymore; there aren't chickens or dogs or cows. There's an ancient tractor that - unbelievably - still works. A house that mostly still works, and some barns that don't. It's all very nice. I'm ashamed to say this, but I'm very much a city boy now. That's done something truly unfortunate to my soul, because something about the wild human essence is undone by the city. It's a tragedy. Going back to my family's roots up in the Tennessee boondocks reminds me that I've let go of something precious while I've become a worldly metrosexual. Here's an example. Here in Atlanta, the night sky often holds the moon, Jupiter, a few of the most extroverted stars, a gazillion airplanes, and the glaring glow of the city lights. Up at the farm, I could see the entirety of the freaking universe - or at least the half of it visible from the Northern Hemisphere. Human progress has removed that spectacle from the ever-increasing chunk of our population that's been sucked into urbanity. Progress, indeed.

Look at my taste in cars for more evidence of my urbanization. I love the fast ones with big grip in corners, six speeds, a clutch pedal, a low center of gravity, and an engine that spins at near relativistic speeds. I like coupes, sedans, hatchbacks, sport wagons, and crossovers. Last weekend, I didn't see many of those. I think we had the only Honda Civic EX Coupe in the whole of Humphreys County. Everyone else had a truck. Rams, Silverados, F-150s, Titans, Tundras, Tacomas, Rangers... These are the wheels of America's put-your-back-into-it men and women. Five or six times a year, I'm overcome by a love affair with the truck. This is one of those times. Hand me the cash, and I'll go out and come back with an F-150 SVT Raptor. It won't be my zippy sports chariot; it'll be my throne, the seat of power with a commanding view over any street or offroad trail. It's the same up in the mountains. Appalachian, Rocky, or Sierra Nevada, it's all trucks and Subarus: cars that mean business.

Give me a week, and my love affair will have waned. I'll return to my long-term relationship with the likes of the BMW 135i, the Ford Focus RS, and the Volvo XC60. Like I said, it's a tragedy.

DON'T SELL VOLVO TO THE CHINESE!

Thank you. That is all.

I think the last-generation BMW 5 series sedan was one of the best looking cars of all time. It isn't pretty, isn't sexy; it's 1000% handsome - every line just right. I have less positive things to say about the current 5. It's ugly. Only its proportions are correct; everything else sucks. Even the M5 is a piss poor thing to behold.


Right on the horizon though, there's a new 5er coming. Based on a shortened 7-series platform, the new 5 promises to undo the wayward curves imposed by ex design chief Chris Bangle and impose more reason and order on the mid-range Bimmer. It will be - I promise - better, even if marginally. Despite having talked about the new car's looks like I know what I'm on about, any information about the design isn't really concrete. Unless you're on the inside, all we know is what spy pictures of pre-production models indicate and what the odd loose-lipped executive has let slip. And one more thing. A future 5 has already debuted, a newbie in the model range called the 5 series GT. It's BMW's effort at a crossover that is two parts coupe and one part SUV (or, in BMW speak, SAV for Sports Activity Vehicle...), and it's a controversial thing, especially for the American market. Ignoring the strange proportions, the basic design theme for the GT, both inside and out, is an encouraging hint for the more traditional sedan and wagon debuting next year. Those proportions, though...



I love a good hatchback. Unlike most of my fellow countrymen, I like the way a good, aggressive hot hatch looks. I love the practicality. I love the equal measure of committment toward serious and fun. I even love a wagon every now and again (the XC70 and Subaru Legacy are fine-looking things and are eager to play ball with even the most outdoorsy among us). This new BMW though - I'm not sure what to think. I gagged initially and thought it looked awful. Now, though, I'm not so sure. If I'm ever looking to buy a 5 series - and one day I might well be - I wonder if I'd roll out of Global Imports BMW in one of these.

It's certainly the most controversial car of the moment. The $400,000 Lexus LF-A supercar. Appeared as a concept many years ago, then again, and yet again with moderate stylistic alterations. Now, it's a production reality. Five-hundred examples.


It's not what I thought it would be. I saw that it had showed up at Tokyo, and I was immediately consumed in a nervous panic - years of built-up anticipation felt in full force. This subsided immediately when I saw the pictures of the production model, giving way to confusion and some disappointment. The real LF-A is much less graceful than the concept and much uglier. It's also much more expensive than predicted, by nearly a factor of two. I didn't expect these things. Nor did I expect it to be as racy as it is. The V10, developed with Yamaha, has an astonishing 9,000 rpm redline, and long before the needle hits the big 9, the car is spewing fantastically loud and brutal noises from under the hood and out the back. It's not all noise, either. It's zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds and is claimed to round the 'Ring in 7:24, a second faster than the Ferrari Enzo.

So it's $400,000 fast. (GT-R fanatics can talk to me when Nissan fits it with a transmission that doesn't explode and a Launch Control that doesn't invalidate the warranty). It's $400,000 exclusive. But it isn't $400,000 beautiful...or sexy...or brutal. It looks like a Supra grew up a bit. It's lost those kickass taillights from the concept and any finesse that may have graced the front end. Really, the only aesthetic compliments I have go for the interior, which is spectacular, and the side scoop at the window line that comes straight from the concept. The triple exhaust configuration is cool too. Ultimately though, the styling is a terrible letdown. As impressive as the LF-A's numbers and vocalizations are, the absence of art in the execution may prove damning. I don't doubt the production run will sell. Five-hundred rich people would buy a piece of poo at half a million dollars each if Porsche sold it. I just doubt that the racy Lexus will end up occupying sacred space among the automotive greats, and it's a real pity that it may have missed it by a margin so tiny as its appearance, especially when the concepts showed so much promise. It's doubly tragic because it's high time a Japanese manufacturer made a wholehearted attempt at this exclusive club, and Lexus is really the only reasonable contender.

There is some silver lining, though; some good news. The LF-A seems to be, on the whole, excellent so long as you don't actually look at the outside. This is the first production evidence since the Lexus IS-F and the most compelling indicator so far that Toyota is serious about putting some balls back in their cars. And this is good news because Toyota is enormous and influential, and the world will be a better place if Toyota can hit the sweet spot among build quality, greenness, good value, excitement, and sex appeal. For my part, I hope they find it.

This is another supercar post (two in a row, in fact) following my angry rant against their kind. Yes, I still think dumping four-hundred grand on a car is ridiculous. But I'll be honest: I like the LF-A. I'm somehow more impressed by it than disappointed. Weird, I know, and hardly explicable. On that bombshell...

For anyone who follows cars much (or Top Gear), this car will already be familiar to you:

Otherwise, you're probably just now meeting the Gumpert Apollo for the first time. Hello, how d'ya do, etc. You're thinking it, I know. It looks like a huge turd! Yes, and it's a colossally expensive one, starting at about $450,680 at the current EUR to USD conversion rate. Fortunately, it's also a very fast one. The Gumpert may look a bit daft, but it's got legs. It sits atop the Top Gear Power Board and recently lapped the Nurburgring's Nordeschleife in 7:11:57. For the unlearned, this is either the record for a production car or very close to it. It's beyond fast. For comparison's sake, the Ferrari Enzo does a 7:25, the Porsche Carrera GT a 7:28. If you're a Bugatti Veyron fan, that does a 7:40. This is fairly astonishing considering Gumpert is a miniscule company next to these hypercar powerhouses. The man behind it all used to be an engineer at Audi, and it's their excellent 4.2 liter V8 that sits in the Apollo. Admittedly, they skimped on the styling and creature comforts for the interior, but I'm not actually convinced it looks all that bad. Actually, I don't think the Enzo looks all that good, nor the Veyron.

This all comes hot off the heels of my rant against supercars, which is fine. I blame ADHD. Fact is, I love the ugly duckling Dumpert. If I squint, it's almost handsome, so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that I might think it attractive after I've had a bit to drink. It's raw and noisy - too rough and obscene for poseurs, too brutal for amateurs. If I had to buy or be shot, it's the supercar I'd choose.

Let me preface this by saying that I love cars. I'm a fan, as in fanatic. I'm obsessed. I would sooner spend a wild night with a good car than Kate Beckinsale. This will be relevant a few paragraphs down.

Automotive shouty man Jeremy Clarkson recently blogged on supercars. You can read his thoughts here.

For the most part, I agree with Clarkson on this front. I'm glad supercars exist. They are an assault to the ears, a feast for the eyes, and a riot to drive. I must be clear: they're rarely good cars, but the greatest of them maintain a level of stupidity and ridiculousness that make them legendary. I found further common ground with J.C. when he says that the Audi R8 is probably the lone vehicle sitting at the intersection of good car and supercar. It's the only one that does damn near everything you could ask of a road car...and does it well.

So I'm glad we have supercars to ogle at, to fondle, to lust over, but I really can't see the point of owning one. In fact, I'll take a more aggressive position and admit I'll judge any supercar owner...and not favorably. What owners of these cars have done is spend generally in wild excess of a hundred thousand dollars on a car. Lamborghini Reventon owners have spent $1.6 million for their exotic blend of carbon fiber, aluminum, and gasoline. Aston Martin One-77 owners have spent at least $1.7 million on each example of that piece. It's worse than stupid. It's approaching shameful.

Starting with stupid: men who buy supercars are generally thinking with their penis instead of their brains. A Ferrari Enzo cannot perform better on a public road than a $30 thousand Golf R32. In fact, it'll probably do worse. Show an Enzo a speed bump and you'll see that zero-to-sixty times are irrelevant in the real world. Same is true of potholes. Roll a Lamborghini down tenth street here in Atlanta. You'd dislocate every joint in your body and every body panel on the car. And don't bitch to me about fun-to-drive factor. I'd have at least as much fun in a Focus RS because I'm happy with the size of my manhood and don't need to compensate by having people worship my car. Also, at $30k I could replace my whole car for cheaper than it'd cost Lamborghini man to replace those missing body panels. The Focus RS is a good car...a total package. It's a quarter the price of an R8 and just about as good.

Now it gets intense:

Your stereotypical Republican will forever say that people with money should be able to spend their hard-earned greenbacks however they like. From a governmental standpoint, I more or less agree; I don't think Uncle Sam should get too involved on that front. In every other respect though, a man's attitude toward money speaks volumes about his character. What he spends his money on - or more inclusively, puts his money toward - is enormously important. A $150,000 R8? A $1.2 million Bugatti Veyron? This is clearly the property of an individual purposefully ignorant of reality - intentionally blind to the human condition and by extension, willfully disrespectful toward the Divine. The Las Vegas Strip, Buckhead, Monaco...these little dream worlds with their ritzy venues and endless exotic cars...the rest of planet Earth doesn't look, sound, or feel like these. The people that put their money towards keeping their personal fantasy lands rolling? Helluva shame.

I've recently logged some hours on Youtube (recent medical studies indicate a correlation between excessive Internet use and depression, by the way). I've been watching The Long Way Round, a television documentary featuring Ewan McGregor and his best bud Charlie Boorman as they try to circle the globe on two BMW R1150 GS Adventure motorcycles.

I'd just like to gush about how much I want to do this: to go from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, or Britain to Singapore, or Norway to South Africa. Do some intense preparation, hop on badass bikes, meet new people, and undertake a grand adventure with some mates. I know it will be unimaginable difficult in practice - the TV show reinforces that frequently and very dramatically, but I can't resist the romance of the idea. This is something I definitely intend to pursue - a big life goal.

As a hybrid, absolutely not. I'm staunchly opposed to those things. With an ordinary gasoline or diesel powertrain, hellz yeah!

Nothing turns out quite like I've got it all lined up in my head right now. Horrific. Or perhaps providential, since the lineup shifts every damn day. In my mounting frustration, I want to offer a not-so-subtle suggestion that this isn't working - the swirling, tumultuous thick of the universe is not moving toward some happy equilibrium.

Yes, my little speck of a point of view is a bit infinitesimal, and the universe never told anyone its final destination was any sort of equilianything. Oh, and my life isn't the sum total of all there is. What? Don't lord these details over me; my life is the extent of the known universe - my known universe. So get your facts straight.

It's a bit of a letdown that I know I'm wrong.

Big auto shows are always fun. Especially the ones with crazy concepts. You know, the ones that won't get anywhere close to production. The Hondas that actually look good. The Toyotas that are exciting. The Audis that everyone slobbers over...wait they made those.

So Frankfurt is big. Real big. Especially for the Germans; probably something to do with home turf and "Heil Deutchland" and all. But lets cut to the chase. Germans don't mess around with engineering, and they've unloaded the offensive on the ever-pressing environmental (and related legislation) issues that are giving the auto industry so much hell these days. And unexpectedly, actually...it's epic.

Let's start with the rest of the world. Just about everyone is hopping on the hybrid bandwagon. Boring, underpowered, heavy cars. Sh-t, basically. And batteries will do a number on the environment too. Tell a hippie that. They'll literally eat their own brains. It's disgusting yet ever-so-slightly entertaining to watch. I'll make no secret of it. I hate hybrids.

But I like the BMW hybrid concept, and it has two batteries! I lavish this favor on the Vision EfficientDynamics mostly because it's very light and blasts to sixty from naught in 4.6 seconds. To save you the trouble of checking: yes, that's as fast as an M3 will run that sprint. The VED can do thirty miles on just electrons and uses a fuel-sipping, torque-rich diesel when you break out the heavy foot. It's drag coefficient comes in at 0.22 Cd, or, in plain english, uber low. Engineers say it's aerodynamics, but it all boils down to the fact that it looks sexy. And watching the designers gush about it, they'll say unabashedly that this is the vision they have for BMW in the future. I've already praised BMW's committment to environmental stewardship and performance, and I'll amplify that praise having seen their new concept car.

Still in the BMW group, there's exciting expansions to the Mini lineup. The Mini philosophy: small, fast, well-built, efficient. More Minis results in a better world. Period.

The Rolls-Royce Ghost is uber-luxury done right. Modern, beautiful, advanced. No, its engine won't do the environment any favors, and about a million cows died to upholster the interior. But hey, cut it some slack. It looks good.

Mercedes unveils its SLS AMG Gullwing. Yes, it's a sucker retro throwback, but it looks like a Mercedes should. And it'll be good. And by good, I mostly mean fast. Combine that with 18 mpg in the combined Euro cycle, and you've got one of the most efficient supercars on the planet. That's an affirmative: that means no gas guzzler tax. Savior for the polar bears? Not really, no. Beautiful progress? Yes. As for the plug-in S550 hybrid, ignore it. It's useless. Ditto for the 7-series and X6 ActiveHybrids.

VW group. I don't know what sort of world-domination, Pinky-and-the-Brain thing they've got up their sleeves, but they pulled out all the stops for Frankfurt. I should clarify: VW hates hybrids, too. We're kind of kindred spirits on that subject.

VW unleashed two eco-friendly (that's ecosystem and economy friendly) concepts. The all-electric Up, the latest in the ongoing Up saga. It returns to the original philosophy for the Beetle. Cheap, do-it-all machine. So the Up's powerplant is in the back, and it'll be ruthlessly efficient. Not an exciting amount of power, but good steering and road feel. This latest Up is the most old-school Beetle-like yet, with the hood shape echoing the Beetle's trademark nose. Then, the L1 successor to the 1-Liter concept from a few years back. This sucker uses 1.3 liters to go a hundred kilometers. It weighs 838 pounds. 196 miles per gallon. And this isn't the Volt's fake, formula-generated number. This is real. Put a gallon in, go 196 miles. And the interior is like a jet fighter cockpit, even down to the tandem seating. This concept is testing the waters for a possible limited-production model. I know it only has thirty horses, but I'd pay real money for this thing. I love it.

Add the BlueMotion production models debuting, and VW is putting it's weight behind new diesel technology.

Way over at the other end of the spectrum, there's a Bugatti concept: the 16C Galibier. It's got four doors, and it's basically what the Panamera should have come out of Zuffenhausen looking like. This engine won't just club baby seals, it'll eliminate the species in one swift stroke. It's a supercharged, 16 cylinder, 8-liter chunk of sheer power. It's got eight tailpipes. Eight! I know it's a controversial-looking thing, but I love it. Again, ultra-modern global flagship model.

These are the new-tech highlights. There's more. The next-gen super-hot Golf, the R20, will show up. Think 280ish horses from a 2-liter turbocharged engine. Mid-20's combined mpg rating. And Golf VI is World Car of the Year. Not bad.

The point? Really, it's more evidence that the car as an emotive and passionate expression of design and engineering need not disappear. Great ingenuity has always addressed real problems with uncommonly inventive solutions. The car world is headed for enormous change, but we need not fear it. As consumers, we wield weighty input on what gets made. As we move to become better stewards of our little blue orb, let's move with a new generation of efficient, exciting cars. Porsche has contributed this great little tidbit: "Efficiency demands Performance." Let's take this concept party in a Frankfurt convention center out to the streets and all get in on the action.

Again, sold today in the U.S. of A. In increasing order of price, they're:

1. Honda Civic EX Sedan
   
2. Mini Cooper S
   
3. Subaru Legacy GT
4. Mercedes GLK 350 4matic
   
5. BMW 135i
   
6. Ford F-150 SVT Raptor (no, it's not a fighter jet)
   
7. Mustang Shelby GT

Some cars didn't make it for relatively obscure reasons. If you were wondering:

The GTI? New one in less than a year. Mustang V6 and GT? Engines are useless; new ones in less than a year. Camaro? I'm a Mustang man. Mazdaspeed 3? I really want the GTI or upcoming R20, and I'd cry every time I pulled up next to one. Subaru Impreza WRX STI? Same as Mazdaspeed 3 and too ugly. M3? I know it's a bargain for the masterpiece it is, but it's still too expensive. 911? It's a Porsche, and I'm not touching them with a ten-foot pole while the company is in the state it's in.

Here's my top 10 cars of all types currently sold in the United States and in very loose descending order. These aren't all cars I'd actually buy or put a penny toward - that's a very different list. Here goes:

1. BMW M3 Sedan - It's cliche, but it's a performance benchmark that'll accommodate daily life. Well, it'll corner fast enough to turn back seat passengers into mush, but for the driver and whoever's shotgun, I think it's the best sedan on earth.
2. Mini Cooper S - The definitive pocket rocket. Fast, efficient, and eminently parkable.
3. Porsche 911 GT3 RS - A brute with class and pedigree, the GT3 is the only 911 that matters. And how it matters! Honestly, I'd buy the RS for the wing, red rims, and decals. The rest of the car is a nice added bonus.
4. Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 - An adrenaline pump with honest, down-to-earth roots. The best American muscle car. Seriously, get it for the stripes and the way it screams "badass."
5. Audi R8 V10 - Supercar thrills with none of the drawbacks. A bold design statement and epitome of "sweet ride." An "it-car" with staying power.
6. BMW 135i - Premium pocket rocket! Styling aside, it's damn near perfect. Again, will make backseat-ers sick or dead, and it won't help that they will have had to remove their legs to fit.
7. Subaru Legacy GT - The enthusiast's family sedan with controversial styling and a better-than-the-next-guy attitude. BMW? Standard AWD, good interior, and a turbo-boosted four. Audi? Nope. No fancy-pants badge required.
8. Mazda Mazdaspeed 3 - 263 turbocharged horses in a front-drive hatchback at $24k. Absurd. Great.
9. Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SV - Hypercar bargain and last of its breed. A sensual, aggressive package all but gone from the rest of modern car-dom.
   
10. Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe - Otherworldly standard of excellence. Pictures don't do it justice. Try to forgive the ridiculous pricetag.

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.

I'm reading a new book. It's Sex God by Rob Bell. And when I say read, I mean I'm listening to it. It's my first audiobook. I know, I'm so hardcore. So far (Disc 2 of 3), it's better than I'd expected, which isn't saying much because I was fairly terrified it would be awkward and terrible. It does* offer a broadened view of some of life's important elements. For starts, Bell vastly widens the idea of sex and sexuality to include all heart connections - so the loving interaction among family, between friends, with God, etc. I thought it was all very flash and attention-grabbing, and I'm still not entirely with him on that front, but I guess I struggle to think of another English word that could take its place and adopt this new meaning.**

And it's ugly. Let's get that established nice and early. Recent Ferraris have been rather too conservative and bland, all coming up considerably short of beautiful. Ferrari once basked in the world's admiration for the wild and sensual aesthetic of its cars as well as for their engineering and success on road and track. It's really just been the last bit of late. I'm not much of a Ferrari fanboy, but I still think this vacuum of bellezza is a tragedy because I acknowledge and feel the marque's considerable presence deep in the essence of everything it means to love cars. The Ferrari F430 is a prime example of all this. It's an amazing, orgasmic piece of engineering. But it's wrapped in a body that deserves, at best, a "pretty." Even the Scuderia's sheetmetal can only get a "mildly badass" descriptor. Unfortunate really since it delivers a hugely badass driving experience.

And now the F430, which set the benchmark in its class, has sold in record numbers and has (for better or worse) come to define the modern Ferrari, is due for replacement. The F430 was at least a technical and sales home run, and stepping up to the plate: the 458 Italia. Nice name. And it'll be an amazing technical achievement, I promise. It uses more exotic materials and more fancy electronic bits than its daddy, and it will boast more power while achieving better fuel economy. And get this; there are even some black plasticky bits in the front air dam that deform beneath the weight of the airflow at high speeds to become more aerodynamic for those conditions. WOW! I'm not joking that bit genuinely turns me on. So it's shaping up to be a great car then. Except for just that: it's shaped up rather poorly. See for yourself:

I'm going to start with Microsoft, a greedy and gluttonous collective with a singular focus on making dollars. Many moons ago, Bungie Studios crafted a game called Halo: Combat Evolved. It was wildly successful and paved the way for Halos 2 and 3, both more advanced and creative than their predecessor. In 2007, Bungie and Microsoft Game Studios split ways (on 7/7/07 or Bungie Day 2007, if you must know). And Microsoft predictably couldn't restrain itself and collaborated with other studios to make Halo Wars, a real-time-strategy game released in North America in March of this year, and the upcoming Halo Legends, an anime. Let's be honest: Halo Wars was not well-received, a mediocre offering in a crowded market with superior, more well-established titles. And Halo Legends, so far as I can tell from the preview, is rather unimaginative in its artistry and, I suspect, its story as well. I don't really mind the idea of a Halo anime. It's more that Legends' style doesn't fit. It doesn't make sense. It's too standard an anime approach, and that doesn't see eye to eye with everything we've seen and come to love about the story and its characters. The same goes for the Halo novels. There are more than there need be, and the ones without Bungie's stamp of approval don't always mesh quite right in the established Halo universe. Writing style is off. Characters are off. Stories don't match. These other games and stories do Halo the detriment of diluting its essence and character.

The way I see it, Bungie is Halo's creator and ultimate caretaker. They have a vision for the story they've told and the universe they've built. Beyond this, the studio does a fine job interacting with its fans, allowing them to be active participants in Halo's development. All this is wonderful. Great. Everyone else just needs to stop messing with it.

I'm going to take something a bit abstract and try to condense it into some words. It's one of those thoughts-on-life, wandering, stream-of-consciousness messes. So bear with me. Or read something more coherent. Save yourself before it's too late!

I've thought for many years that life should be easier than it's been. I don't mean easy, really. I mean simple. Simpler. I entertain the notion that you, me, and people in general are not complicated beings, and the lives we lead are equally straightforward. To be clear, I do think we're profound. The universe is. Its Maker certainly is, and our inherent, dim reflection of his nature bestows that on each of us. We've all said something like, "it's complicated" or "look, my problems are a really complex mess." And maybe it looks that way from a lot of angles, but at heart it's achingly and profoundly simple. So many human messes boil down to the heartache of loneliness, the human need for closeness with God. In fact, I struggle to think of examples that aren't a product of this universal suffering.

I also said life is profound. It has meaning; it's deeply colored with purpose. That's critical considering another universal human trait is a desire for this sort of significance. But oh-so-many things come between us and our significance. We are God's beloved, purposed and empowered. Life is a fantastic journey that dwarfs the bounds of our imagination. This is truth. But we - I - am limited by fear, by the limitations imposed by society and its closed-mindedness, by my own dreams and desires, by distractions ad infinitum. And it's pathetic. It's a sad, tragic little tale of my little life that I, myself, have belittled and bound and bordered and broken. And now I see the great gap between what is and what was purposed to be. The journey to bridge it begins, and it's comforting to know that I'm guaranteed love, grace, company, and victory to keep me buoyant in the equally certain rough bits.

Tangentially related to all this is my recent and cheesy obsession with motorcycles. See, I'm going to get one eventually. Because they are great fun and fascinating engineering, yes, but also because I've always been too afraid to. Like most men, I suppose, I've always wanted a crotch rocket. It's hardcore, badass, and not-so-vaguely sexual. But statistics say 117% of motorcyclists die three times or more on public roads, and this teamed with practicality issues involving storage space and passenger capacity eventually kill the dream stone dead. See but that's ridiculous. There is a reasonable and responsible way to ride the things, and despite the statistics and the legitimacy of my fears, I will. And I'll love it when it's good, hate it when it's raining, and always be excited and emotional about it. And if I die, so be it.

Don't misunderstand me. Like Lewis Hamilton said in his Top Gear interview, "I'm not looking to waste my life." But consider this: living by fear is living small, and that's the worst waste of life.

Simple. Profound. Good living to you.

America has somehow failed to embrace the hot hatchback. Spearheaded five Golf generations ago by the original Volkswagen Golf GTI, the market gradually grew to include offerings from Honda, Ford, Renault, Seat, etc. The idea is: take your average smallish hatchback - replete with all manner of convenience features, technology, and a dollop of practicality - plop a powerful engine in, and make assorted engineering and aesthetic modifications that make it exciting (possibly dangerous). The product is a pocket rocket, a jack of all trades...all things to all men. And to top off the brilliance, proper hot hatches don't break the wallet. They're incredible - the best kind of car there is.

Let me explain. There are more flashy, flamboyant, and extreme cars, and most are hugely expensive. People that can afford them generally want to show off and be oogled by the masses. So they're shallow. Admittedly, some want them for a heightened level of driving excitement. But for the enormous price and considering the limitations of public roads, there's no justification for their purchase. So they're stupid.

The best of the hot hatch breed are fantastically exciting. They're powerful, well-equipped, good-looking, and unique from each other. Consider the VW Golf GTI, a turbocharged and FWD German with reasonable engineering in a reasonable and conservative package. Or consider the GTI-on-steroids Golf R32, which packs a V6 with a mighty wallop, four-wheel drive, and a properly meaty vocal range. Or the new Ford Focus ST with its curvy angle-ness and turbocharged inline-five. Or it's Creatine-chugging sibing, the Focus RS, which throws three-hundred turbo-manaical horses at its front wheels. Or the Honda Civic Type-R or even the watered-down-for-Americans Civic Si, both with screaming, rev happy powerplants and snappy, short-throw gearboxes. And these are just a few. There are so many more. Some genuinely good and some terrible but great.

The excitement is there. As is the attitude, the character, and the pedigree. Only now the cars are also pleasingly practical, prudently priced, properly equipped, and possibly reliable. I'm sold. I'm all for them.

I desperately want to like BMW. They take engineering seriously. They take quality seriously. They take driving dynamics seriously. They take the car seriously. Recently, though, they've tried to be less serious about car aesthetics. They've tried to add flair and panache, sex and candy, but they're German so it's all gone badly wrong. A few years ago, the revamped styling of the 7 and 5 were so controversial that the subsequent 3 committed a worse sin: it's boring looking. Among their most recent efforts, the all-new 7 and Z4 are far better resolved than their predecessors, but inside and out, they're still far off the beautiful bullseye. Somewhere down the BMW model continuum, the new X1 SUV is, inexplicably, appallingly hideous. How can the company that produces the inoffensive, even handsome X5 and X6 have gotten the X1 (and the X3) so badly wrong? How can they make the absurdly expensive and technologically obese 7 so mundane? There is clear, rock-solid evidence that BMW designers are brilliant. Look at this:


Behold, everyone: the BMW Concept CS. It's real. They were going to make it real for people like you and me, but then they decided not to. Explain to me, though, why that isn't the new 7. Why? Not practical enough? Too showcar-ey? Don't care. Not when it looks like that. I would gladly cut off my head to fit in the back so long as the rest of my body can be transported around in a car like the CS. And I think millions of dollars worth of consumers and their wallets would happily concur. So BMW, here's a tip. Hang whoever is coming between your talented design team and us. Then, draw and quarter their carcass. If you produce the CS with the cleverness and quality you're renowned for, I promise you will enjoy the financial reward.

I'm going to make a radical departure from the norm and play serious for a moment. The Christian church, or at least its more conservative elements, is perceived as the archenemy of the homosexual. It is, for the church and the world observing it, a ridiculous position. The message of Christ is love for all men, flawed as we are. Homosexuality is wrong because God created man-woman intimacy as the sacred right, and as with "let there be light," the rest became darkness. But for all the spotlight on gays, the error is the same for heterosexual ignorance of God. The lonely human heart is driven to terrible ends to soothe itself. But for all of us, the message of Christ is Love rather than condemnation. A homosexual can't help his sexuality nor a heterosexual his own lusts. But the Kingdom offers Love regardless, Love that heals hearts and makes men new. God is compelling because he wins us with his Love. The Christian commission is to do no less for the world.

My mom has told me I'm fickle for years. Every time I tell her I like a new car, she has a standard comeback that reminds me that my opinion on the subject has accumulated negative worth over time.

So it bugs the hell out of me that Porsche's ridiculous Panamera four-door monster is beginning to grow on me. First, I blasted it for being ugly. Despite my mother's insistence otherwise, it really is hideous, especially viewed from the side. Then, I blasted Porsche for selling out again and building a car that only rich posers will buy and drive. I slammed them for further solidifying their growing reputation as a vain and petty man's marque. Most recently, I railed on Porsche for having such a poor standard equipment list on a ninety-thousand dollar car. Bluetooth, for example, is standard on cars a third that price. Wake up, Porsche.

Gradually, though, I've felt an increasing tug toward the Panamera. Yes, there's a lot to hate about it. But somehow, there's something strangely lovable about Porsche's new, enormous bastard. It's stupid, but that's the quality that's starting to grow on me. It doesn't hurt that it's stupid fast, especialy in top-line Turbo trim. I've just read reports that it's recently bested the Cadillac CTS-V's seven minute, fifty-nine second lap around the Nurburgring by three seconds. And the Caddy was the fastest four-door production car around that track. I know, CTS fans will counter that the Porsche is twice as expensive. Look, kids: learn how to lose gracefully. When Cadillac grows the brand image and balls to build a one-hundred and thirty thousand dollar sedan that can run with Ferraris, come back and pick a fight. Until then, if I had money, it'd be with the Porsche. Fickle? Yes, but I blame the Panamera.

The recent smattering of large, luxurious four-door cars has abandoned the traditional gauge cluster in favor of a digital representation of a set of analog gauges. This began, as is custom in Cardom, with the Mercedes S-class. BMW's 7-series and Jaguar's new XJ are following suit. I understand the motive: pressure to convey more and increasingly diverse information to the driver in a meaningful and ergonomic fashion. And though I credit these manufacturers for their fairly convincing fake gauges, I'm sad to see the old school technology depart. There is something fantastic about a cleanly machined, artfully simple set of gauges. Like a good timepiece, they convey more than information - they emanate a sense of quality and beauty. So then, this is where technology can let us down; where the endless quest for more and better can take an odd turn and go awry. It's information's efficient delivery and quantity rather than the beauty of its presentation. And the way I see it, it's a tragedy.