Dan Neil: Rumble Seat
DAN NEIL
Dan Neil: 2010 Ferrari 458 Italia: Dashing through the snow in a red Italian sleigh
Snow is a beautiful thing.
ADVERTISING
Dan Neil: Super Bowl takes U.S. pulse in seconds
The Super Bowl, which apparently is some sort of sporting event on Feb. 7, is a unique media happening: a moment when the nation comes together to adjudicate the meaning of advertising and to ratify its absurd, over-scaled importance in our culture.
DAN NEIL
Dan Neil: Ecstasy-to-drive Lotus Evora leaves one question: Take a check?
Every time I write about a high-performance sports car, I'm guaranteed to get letters from readers to this effect: "How can you possibly glorify the Badminton Dual-Cowl 87B? No one needs a car that goes 200 mph, costs $300,000 and gets five miles per gallon. With all that's going on in the world [climate change, war in the Middle East, balance of trade etc.]. For shame. For shame!"
MAJOR-DOMO
Dyson Air Multiplier meets fandom
With his company's various cyclonic gizmos -- track-ball vacuum cleaners and wall-mounted hand dryers and the like -- industrial designer and inventor James Dyson has emerged as the people's aerodynamicist, a tamer of vortexes and laminar flow, the Edison of air.
BOOK REVIEW
'When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present' by Gail Collins
When Everything Changed
Dust-Up
The Patriot Act: Looking back to 2001
Today's topic: In hindsight, did Congress and the president react too hastily in 2001 by passing the Patriot Act just weeks after the 9/11 attacks? Did the revisions in 2005 adequately address concerns that the act went too far or didn't go far enough? Jena Baker McNeill and Julian Sanchez finish their debate on the Patriot Act, key provisions of which Congress is considering reauthorizing.
Dust-Up
Have any Patriot Act horror stories come true?
Today's topic: Where are the demonstrated examples of abuses of liberties because of the Patriot Act? Are there any provisions of the law that civil libertarians would find acceptable? Julian Sanchez and Jena Baker McNeill continue their debate on the Patriot Act, portions of which Congress is considering reauthorizing
Dust-Up
The Patriot Act: Does it actually work?
Today's topic: Where can you point to the Patriot Act's success in stopping terrorists? Wednesday through Friday, Jena Baker McNeill and Julian Sanchez discuss the Patriot Act, portions of which Congress is considering reauthorizing.
BOOK REVIEW
'Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman' by Jon Krakauer
Pat Tillman, unlikely football hero and unlikelier warrior, went to Afghanistan and got accidentally wasted by the men in his own Ranger platoon. It happens. Among the many shadows Jon Krakauer illuminates in his compelling and dispiriting book, "Where Men Win Glory," is the commonness of fratricide in high-tech warfare. Thus the military's bleak poetry of misadventure: FUBAR, SNAFU, Charlie-Fox.
ADVERTISING
Dan Neil: IKEA's Burbank store and the guerrillas in housewares
For reasons known only to the pop-culture gods, IKEA -- the Swedish retailer of cheap, lingonberry-flavored furniture and other shinola -- has suddenly become a ubiquitous presence in the ether. Example: in August, when the 2010 IKEA catalog came out, people went utterly bonkers because the designers had changed the print font from the familiar Futura to Verdana -- an esoteric difference, to be sure. The story rocketed to No. 2 on CNN.com's most-read list, according to Mona Astra Liss, IKEA's director of public relations. But for the passing of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the story might have gone to No. 1.
Architectural Digest to feature America's Garage-mahal
An MRI exam of Holger Schubert's head might reveal an inner space of bare, winter-white walls, polished concrete, wall-to-ceiling glass and halogen lighting. "I like very pure, minimalistic, empty space," says the 41-year-old product designer. Schubert's home, under construction on two acres in Brentwood, will be a symphony in spareness: three glass boxes as the main living quarters, a pool house with cantilevered roof, a Japanese tea house and a glass-walled guest house facing an enormous Zen stone garden.
MAJOR-DOMO
Yard work cleaned up
The filthiest, most polluting, most awful thing in your home is not your kid's hard drive. It's your lawn and garden equipment, which is, even as you read this, outgassing carcinogens into the atmosphere as a result of a charming process called "evaporative emissions." Millions of these atmospheric cesspools are stewing away in garages and tool sheds across the state, venting volatile organic compounds into California's already troubled skies. And that's before you even pull the string to start them. Ick.
MAJOR-DOMO
Jonathan Beauty Water shower filter pampers hair, skin -- and saves water too
My hair is lustrous, full bodied, glossy. My skin is smoother and my eyes clearer. I'm thinking of registering myself with the AKC.
BOOK REVIEW
'On Tarzan' by Alex Vernon
The cover art for Alex Vernon's slim cultural biography "On Tarzan" is a photo of winding green tendrils and vines, vines being the equivalent of the cross-town bus for the Lord of the Apes.
MAJOR-DOMO
Compost in your kitchen
Composting is the bright green line that separates well-intended but lazy liberals (and their soy-based clothing and macrobiotic cars) from true greeniks. There's no disputing that composting -- the process of banking organic matter such as food waste and yard clippings until it disintegrates into a nutrient-rich soil enhancer -- makes great sense.
MAJOR-DOMO
Fingerprint-scan deadbolt can eliminate need for keys
YOU KNOW, people don't take enough time to sit outside alone and just think. Listen to the birds. Feel the wind on their faces. Wonder when their spouses are coming home to unlock the door.
Cadillac CTS-V is full of sound, fury -- and grace
With 556 horsepower under its tented hood and a cross-wire grille that looks inspired by the maximum-security wing at Chino, the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V seems, well, sort of aggressive. Remember when Cadillacs were soft and pillowy and ambled around town in a kind of Vicodin haze? Remember when you felt like you needed to slip into supportive undergarments to drive one? Doesn't that seem a long time ago?
MAJOR-DOMO
Porsche's Kitchen for Men
You're an evil genius, bent on world domination. You have a nuclear weapon simmering away in the basement of your underground lair, deep within some Polynesian volcanic island. You still have to eat.
RUMBLE SEAT
Fiat 500: Budget-wise and Mini-splendored
Where are the hot-cool small cars, the drive-all-night cars, the panties-on-the-mirror cars? Where they've always been: In Europe. Here's a look at two of them: The Fiat 500 and the Alfa Romeo MiTo.
RUMBLE SEAT
The Alfa Romeo MiTo finally lives up to the fantasy
Where are the hot-cool small cars, the drive-all-night cars, the panties-on-the-mirror cars? Where they've always been: In Europe. Here's a look at two of them: The Alfa Romeo MiTo and the Fiat 500.
RUMBLE SEAT
Ford Flex crossover: A square deal
In absolute terms, the Ford Flex is squarely brilliant. Here is a six- or seven-passenger spawn hauler with none of the minivan stigma that so evidently traumatizes suburbanites and their delicate eros. Actually, with its blacked-out roof pillars and "floating" white or silver roof, the Flex looks like the star of Roger Corman's "Attack of the 50-Foot Mini Traveller." How could this not be a Nobel-winning idea?
RUMBLE SEAT
The Think City: In Norway, they're building your first electric car
Ingvil Ladehaug is battery challenged.
RUMBLE SEAT
2009 Audi A4
In 1995, Audi was hanging by a burning thread in the U.S. Thanks to some spectacularly bad cars and a meta-scandal concerning mysterious "unintended acceleration," U.S. sales of VW's luxury division had spiraled down to around 7,000 cars, and it was no feat to imagine Audi exiting the American scene with its Teutonic tail between its legs. The subsequent turnaround -- all those sexy and beautiful cars like the TT and the R8, the foundational leaps in technology such as direct injection, the eight wins at Le Mans, the toe-to-toe-ing with Mercedes and BMW, all of that -- began with the release of the Audi A4.
RUMBLE SEAT
Pontiac G8: An Australian import
If you ever have occasion to share a drink with an Australian -- your luck is bound to run out, sooner or later -- do yourself a favor, mate. Don't offer to buy him a Foster's beer. Though Americans might think they are just being sociable, the lager made famous in the U.S. ad campaign as "Oostraalian fer beyr" is plague-ridden creek water, the downstream effluent of an upstream kangaroo petting zoo. Foster's makes Pabst Blue Ribbon seem like the scintillating golden cataract from Bacchus' boundless fountain.
RUMBLE SEAT
The Subaru Forester: For Sunbelt drivers too
It has been brought to my attention that there are places in the United States where it snows. I was, at first, incredulous. Well, fine, says I. That may be. But why would anyone live in a place where ordinary water turns to a slick, frozen and uncooperative substance that collapses roofs and makes important body parts turn blue, especially when there are so many nice overpasses to live under here in Southern California? I mean, snow, right? You can ski on it.
800 WORDS
Please Don't Go
Here's a discouraging metric: Google the phrase "endangered places" and you'll get more than 30,000 results. The Natural Resources Defense Council wants to preserve the white water of Patagonia's Futaleufu River; the World Wildlife Fund urges saving the Bering Sea; Concierge.com (the digital imprint of Condé Nast Traveler) encourages adventurers to see the Swiss glaciers before they succumb to global climate change.
Dodge Challenger: A blast from the past
Let's get the unpleasantries out of the way: The Dodge Challenger is to our current economy-and-energy nexus what a bull fiddle would be to Nero's burning Rome. This reimagining of the Chrysler's E-body classic, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, is very close to the last thing the world needs right now, as instantly ludicrous as a campaign to repeal the 22nd Amendment (presidential term limits) or a health-and-beauty book by Amy Winehouse.
RUMBLE SEAT
2008 Saturn Astra XR: Call it Euro brash
I come from a long line of Europeans -- illiterate, mud-eating Europeans from the Outer Hebrides, to be exact, whose idea of a good time was to go down to the firth and watch the plague victims wash out to sea. Even so, I've always had an affinity for the Continent. Between New Orleans and Amsterdam, I prefer Amsterdam. I'll take Rousseau over Jefferson, Beck's over Budweiser, Formula One over NASCAR, and Heidi Klum over my knee.
OUTDOORS & ADVENTURE
A desert hike through Joshua Tree with high tech
Joshua Tree National Park
RUMBLE SEAT: ACURA TSX
2009 Acura TSX: bells and whistles, but no charisma
If we accept that there is something interesting about every car, then the 2009 Acura TSX tests this proposition to the breaking point. Is it well made? Are Oprah's diamond earrings real? Of course, it's well made. It's a lux'ed-up, Euro-spec Honda Accord, re-badged as an Acura and aimed at America's young and upwardly mobile petit-bourgeoisie, assuming we have any left.
RUMBLE SEAT
Suzuki SX4 Crossover
As a company, Suzuki often seems a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, stuffed into a slightly shoddy handbag that smells of cheese. On the one hand, you have the motorcycle side of the company, maker of end-times miracles such as the Hayabusa and the GSX-R. These are completely and utterly fantastic bikes, virtually without peer, especially if you like going 300 mph in first gear. The company also makes scooters, ATVs and outboard motors, and I hear they are pretty good too.
RUMBLE SEAT
Rumble Seat: 2009 Nissan GT-R
I know what you want from me. You think I'm just your little word slut, that I'm here just to arouse you with steamy descriptions of the new and instantly legendary Nissan GT-R. You want me to parade around in frilly verbiage, like: "The acceleration of the twin-turbo, all-wheel-drive, 480-hp GT-R is much like a 50-yard field goal in the NFL, wherein your butt is the football." Sigh. I feel so used.
RUMBLE SEAT
2009 Jaguar XF
Jaguar's reputation for luck -- which is not to have any -- continues with the 2009 Jaguar XF, the company's new and utterly pivotal midsize, V8-powered sedan. In the best of times, launching a luxury sedan against the likes of established winners such as the BMW 5-series and Audi A6 would be a scary proposition, and these aren't the best of times. The XF lands just as the U.S. economy is in a flat spin, premium gas is hitting $4 per gallon and the luxury car market is falling on its posh butt.
RUMBLE SEAT
2008 Porsche GT2: Brute almighty
You may recall from your psychology classes the name Harry Harlow, a controversial researcher known for his wire monkey-surrogate mother experiments. One group of baby rhesus monkeys was taken away from its mothers and given a maternal figure made of terry cloth; another group was given a figure made of just bare wire. These experiments demonstrated the famous Harry-Harlow-was-a-toolbag principle.
RUMBLE SEAT
2009 Nissan Murano
I would like to give my Nissan Murano test vehicle an Advil, or Tylenol, or perhaps I should Simoniz its hood with that HeadOn stuff that you apply directly to the forehead. This thing looks like it's suffering from the world's worst migraine.
RUMBLE SEAT
A BMW only a mama could love
Let's begin with a verity, an undeniable truth that is evident from 3 feet away or from the cold distance of outer space: The new 1-series BMW is ugly. Seriously ugly. Ugly with X-wings locked in attack formation. Spare me your E.H. Gombrich or Helen Gardner. I know an ugly car when one blows past me at 100 mph.
RUMBLE SEAT
Taking the Mini Cooper to the max
It's my considered opinion that the BMW Mini Cooper is the most successful car design of the last 20 years. What can touch it? Here's a car that puts a spearmint thrill through you every time you turn the key, a larking, capering, glass-and-steel nymph that nicks past other traffic like it's mired in molasses. On top of the giddy charge of merely wheeling the thing, you've got this utterly charismatic styling, a po-mo masterpiece, a rolling tribute to the iconic Mini (1959 to 2000) designed by Alec Issigonis and built by the British Motor Corp. That's Sir Alec to you, you peon.
RUMBLE SEAT
Bullitt: Chasing the detective's mystique
Not to go all Pauline Kael on you, but "Bullitt" -- the 1968 crime drama starring a Ford Mustang GT390 and some guy named Steve McQueen -- is a fairly tedious bit of Aquarian cinema: the chicka-chicka-waah soundtrack, the inscrutable plot, the anaerobic dullness of every second that McQueen is off-camera.
RUMBLE SEAT
A Lexus in fast company
In the style of BMW's M3, the new Lexus IS-F is the brand's toe in the water of the factory-tuner segment -- though it's less like a toe than a fiery cloven hoof. This car started life as a Lexus IS350, a roundly capable and syrupy smooth sport sedan of no great note or interest. Boring, actually. Then it got rabies.
RUMBLE SEAT
Hipster Moderne
IF you want to see a car designed for designers, you need only turn your oversized Philip Johnson-style spectacles toward the Audi TT.
RUMBLE SEAT
The 2008 Volkswagen R32 hatchback
Wolfgang Schreiber is smart like you wouldn't believe. Scary smart. I-vill-crush-you-like-bugs smart. Best known as the technical director of the Bugatti Veyron program, Schreiber is one of Volkswagen Group's most prolific engineers (ultra-exotic Bugatti is owned by VW). It is rumored that Schreiber -- whom I met on a recent trip to Europe -- has the power to affect the tides with his mind, listen in on encrypted wireless signals by cocking his ear to the wind and cause women to spontaneously disrobe. Personally, I am very glad VW has harnessed this German super-genius' abilities for good, assuming it has.
RUMBLE SEAT
Nissan Cube: The right angles
Behold the cube, that most forthright and earnest of the Platonic solids, the noble hexahedron, the proverbial box that it came in, whatever "it" happens to be. The cube is one of nature's transcendental shapes: Salt crystals are cubic, as are molecules of some of your better elements, such as aluminum, silver and gold. From ice to dice, from Picasso to Braque, cubism is very cool.
RUMBLE SEAT
Its refining moment
The car you see on this page is subtle. No, seriously, ignoring the blown-out front fender deltoids, the heinous sacrilege of sport tires and roof-extending rear wing the size of a snowboard, and ignoring the Talmudic specificity of the name -- Subaru Impreza WRX STI -- there is a lot of nuance here. It's nuance fired out of a howitzer at point-blank range into your face, but you could still easily miss it. Yes, that's what impresses me after a rib-bruising half-hour with this 305-hp, all-wheel-drive samurai license-killer: its deep allusiveness and indirection. It's practically Pynchon-like.
RUMBLE SEAT
EX35, in control
The prospect of autopilot in automobiles has been with us for some time, reaching back as far as Jules Verne. But it's quickly gaining currency. This week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, for instance, General Motors is showing off a self-driving Tahoe, a rudimentary preview of autopilot technologies coming to market, perhaps as soon as 2018, according to company execs.
RUMBLE SEAT
Just right, yet wrong
The Chevy Tahoe Hybrid is as provocative and political a vehicle as you'll see this year. Why, it's practically a polemic. And those are just the "P's."
RUMBLE SEAT
Volvo 2008 XC70
A couple of weeks ago, when the temperatures dipped into the 40s -- or as we call it here in Southern California, the extremes of human endurance -- I went shopping in West L.A. It was like base camp at Annapurna. High-heeled hotties had turned in their sex spurs for pairs of Merrell hiking boots. Guys were walking around in zero-degree quilted Marmot jackets. I'm sorry -- I just don't think crampons and bottled oxygen are necessary to make the traverse to the valet stand.
RUMBLE SEAT
2008 Chevrolet Malibu LT
Verdi composed no soaring arias about ordinary competence. Petrarch never penned a paean to a lady's just-OK looks. Hemingway's marlin was larger than average, at least.
RUMBLE SEAT
Doing well, not good
If I may, a detour on the way to the new Mercedes-Benz GL320 CDI:
RUMBLE SEAT/DAN NEIL
An incredible lightness of being
For reasons that scarcely require elaboration, "lubricity" is one of my favorite words. It is, first of all, fun to say, all slippery with sibilance. Second, many fine things are lubricious in nature. Easy dinner conversation, for instance. The balanced slickness of a well-oiled pistol (caution: Avoid combining dinner conversation and pistols). In fact, lubricity might even be counted as one of the universal cues of quality. Whenever a thing has a heft and substance that nonetheless yields to effortless operation -- a Waterman pen, for instance, or the stout zipper on Prada boots, or the gliding drawers of a Pegaso desk -- that registers as a thing well made.
RUMBLE SEAT
Review of the Mercedes-Benz C300 Sport
On average, the angriest e-mails I get are from former Mercedes-Benz owners on the occasion of my saying something nice about the company's products. I imagine an irate reader pounding away at his keyboard in the wee hours of the morning, with a shiny Lexus in the driveway and a Stuttgart-made knife still quivering in his back.
RUMBLE SEAT
Head of the family
For the purposes of this article, I will dispense with my usual sphinx-like air of mystery to tell you something personal. I am a new father.
RUMBLE SEAT
Something wicked-fast this way comes
Let's assume there's a bright side to the universe, a place where mercy and justice prevail, where the good are rewarded and the bad punished with equal alacrity. On this sunny shore, public school teachers make six figures, all stray kittens find good homes, and yard gnomes never get their little ceramic heads caved in.
THE WAITLIST
'It' car proves the need for speed
Bentley Continental GT? Seen it. Aston Martin DB9? What else you got? Maserati Quattroporte? Wasn't that, like, so last year's product placement on "Entourage"?
RUMBLE SEAT
Dad's new dreamboat
I was sitting at a red light when they rolled up beside me, the guy riding his Suzuki Do-Me 8000 with his hot female companion on the back, her thongage pouring out of her low-rise jeans. Her blond hair fell from beneath the helmet and fluffed weightlessly in the hot breeze. Her skintight ballistic-armor motorcycle jacket was unzipped down to her navel. It's a good look, I guess, if you go in for that sort of thing.
RUMBLE SEAT
The 2008 Infiniti G37
All fields of criticism have their vernacular. Music critics might refer to "sonority" and the skimming reader might wonder what a musician's sorority has to do with anything. "Sonority" is shorthand for a luscious, felt-in-the-breastbone resonance of a performance.
RUMBLE SEAT
GM's Saturn Vue: finally, a winner
I would like GM executives to grab hold of something so they don't hurt themselves when they fall down.
RUMBLE SEAT
Top to bottom
To Cerberus Capital Management, the New York-based private equity firm that just bought Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler, congratulations and … what do you mean I'm being laid off? I don't even work for you guys!
RUMBLE SEAT
Sexy, sporty . . . Swedish?
Carl Linnaeus was born to a Lutheran pastor in the province of Smaland in southern Sweden in 1707, which is why you never hear anyone say, "I wish I were like Carl Linnaeus." Linnaeus was a brilliant man, a physician to Sweden's royal court and the preeminent naturalist of his time. Despite said brilliance, Linnaeus was astonished to discover you couldn't grow coffee and bananas in Sweden. His Lutheran minister father could only roll his eyes.
RUMBLE SEAT
Audi comes charging out with the R8
No fewer than four Audi employees in shiny suits escorted the 2008 Audi R8 to the L.A. Times' garage a few weeks ago, a veritable task force of handlers to introduce me to the company's new six-figure, mid-engine supercar. Once they arrived, there wasn't much for them to do but stand around and Armor-All their lapels. Despite the R8's evident exoticism -- the car is low, wide and mirthless, its gimlet eyes fixing you with white-hot LEDs like it was brooding on ways to wreck your marriage -- the car required no special instructions. There were no gear-shifting paddles attached to the flat-bottomed steering wheel (though they are an option), no hydraulics to raise the front end as there are in the nose-grinding Lamborghini Murcielago, no wing-setting launch sequence as in the Bugatti Veyron. Just turn the key, drop the clutch and go.
RUMBLE SEAT
Lincoln MKX could take on the Lexus
The Lincoln MKX is the upscale version of the Ford Edge crossover, Dearborn's tidy people mover with a 3.5-liter V6, six-speed transmission and available all-wheel drive.
RUMBLE SEAT
2008 Scion xB -- Boxy trumps foxy
I suppose others have a more highly refined sense of aesthetics, but I just can't get behind the debate over the old vs. new Scion xB, the funky five-seat space wagon sold by Toyota's Gen Y-oriented brand. Aren't they both ugly?
RUMBLE SEAT / DAN NEIL
On the fast track
THERE are many things we do not know. We don't know if there will ever be peace in the Middle East. No one can say if physicists will find the elusive Higgs boson. We can't be entirely sure what the deal is with John Travolta.
Standard SLK 55 upholds standards just fine, thank you
SOMEWHERE in Germany, rich guys are geschwinging around in their 400-hp, mega-dollar Mercedes-Benz SLK 55 AMG Black Series, the excessively excessive version of the company's yar little roadster. And yet, for reasons that remain mysterious (well, I suppose I could ask), Mercedes elected not to bring the first creation of AMG's "Performance Studio" to these blessed shores.
RUMBLE SEAT
Toyota builds trucks like a big guy
Raleigh, N.C. — IT doesn't surprise me that, after 14 years of stalking the American pickup market, Toyota has finally unleashed full-size pickup hell with its monstrous Toyota Tundra, a truck that goes nose to nose with big-ugly domestics Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado. Now that I have driven the redesigned 2007 Toyota Tundra — in its most gawdamighty-large configuration, the CrewMax 4X4 SR5 with the 5.7-liter V8 — I can't even raise an eyebrow. It's exactly what I thought it would be: a half-earnest, half-mocking tribute to the American pickup truck, bigger and saccharine-sweeter than its competitors, with major-league engineering (1,590-pound payload capacity in 4x4 trim) and focus-group features galore, including half a dozen of the biggest cup holders this side of the NFL.
Temples of vroom
In a town where the car is God, there's a new cathedral. Silvery and enigmatic, the Mercedes-Benz museum sits just off the B14 highway as it dips into a gentle fold of the Neckar Valley. Designed by Dutch architects Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, the 15-story building looks like a loosely interleaved stack of postmodern pancakes, its bands of aluminum and glass rising in an undisciplined kinetic wobble above a granite pavilion. Mercedes-Benz has long had its stamp on Stuttgart's sky — a three-pointed star rotates above the Hauptbahnhof, or train station — but now, with the $50-million edifice planted on the outskirts of the city as a kind of ceremonial gateway, the company's dominion seems more ecclesiastical than corporate.
RUMBLE SEAT / DAN NEIL
Speed freak
IT'S taken me this long to recognize what I love about a Porsche 911 Turbo. And no, it's not the internal-combustion volcanism — now up to 480 hp in the 2007 model — or the claws-in-the-carpet grip, the carbide-steel stiffness, the perfect steering or land-anchor ceramic brakes.
RUMBLE SEAT DAN NEIL
Hare raising
TO pump up the marketing volume for its redesigned Golf, VW decided to revive the name "Rabbit" for the North American market (the first-generation Golf, circa 1975-1984, was also called Rabbit in die Staaten). I suppose that makes a certain kind of sense — car names having a curiously indelible equity all their own (e.g., Charger, Impala and, of course, Beetle). And yet, anyone who fell in love with the Bunny back then would be a whole generation older and likely several tax brackets wealthier by now. These people would have left the Rabbit demographic behind with their bongs and cinderblock bookshelves.
RUMBLE SEAT/DAN NEIL
A real roadster in its blood
THE Saturn Sky — the celestially seasoned version of the Pontiac Solstice roadster — reminds us that there is no idea so good that GM won't toss it in a burlap sack and beat it with reeds. Such a notion was the Saturn Corp. Set up in the pastoral Podunk of Spring Hill, Tenn., in the late 1980s, Saturn was supposed to be anodyne to all things wrong with Detroit. At a time when GM's other divisions shared more DNA than the Habsburgs, Saturn was a fresh-slate approach to car-building, with its own cars, reflecting its own engineering and design philosophy. It had its own customer-focused, no-haggle retail environment, inviting you to join the "Saturn family," with all the podpeople overtones the phrases implies.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Guilty pleasure
IN a less-than-persuasive bid to be socially responsible, German automakers (with the exception of Porsche) limit the top speed of their vehicles to 155 mph (250 kilometers per hour). At that — my current velocity in the Mercedes-Benz CLK 63 AMG Cabriolet — 227 feet of chlorophyll-green German countryside streams past every second. In the words of the Bhagavad-Gita, I am become death, destroyer of bugs. The early morning sky is gray, the traffic is light. I have the top down and it's rather windy in the cockpit. Actually, at a buck-55, it's like being inside God's own novelty whistle.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Could this be love?
I suppose Acura's new crossover SUV could be better. It could, for instance, run on recycled Victoria Secret catalogs or the renderings from Star Jones Reynolds' recent weight-loss program. It could fairly reapportion congressional districts every time you turn the key or make sure Steven Seagal never-never-never makes another blues album.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
The sport's gone from this wagon
IF you do any research on the new Dodge Caliber, you'll run into a curious example of duck speak, a kind of echo-chamber thinking to the effect that the Neon — the Schmoo-styled compact sedan that the Caliber replaces after more than a decade in production — was somehow awful and out of date, a low-functioning relative that Dodge would just as soon cut from the family album with an X-acto knife.
CARS / 125 YEARS / COMMEMORATIVE EDITION
Before the Rumble Seat
EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SIX was a very big year. John Stith Pemberton invented Coca-Cola. Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty. King Ludwig II of Bavaria died, much to the delight of Bavarians. Also having a good year were mutton chops and diphtheria.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Good News, Bad News
HIS nickname is M.K., but you can call him Johnny Drama.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
After a nice stretch, Kia comes up short
THE Kia Sedona minivan is a huge steaming pile of who cares, and I for one couldn't be more relieved. I was beginning to worry that the Korean carmakers — Kia and its corporate parent Hyundai — could disgorge vast quantities of handsome and precision-engineered vehicles pretty much at will, and sell them for the price of gum. Consider, for example, the absurdly overachieving Hyundai Sonata and Azera sedans, and even Kia's indecently decent Optima. For those considering holy orders, there's even the nifty Kia Rio — if poverty and obedience are giving you trouble, at least you'll have chastity locked up.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
There's somethin' fishy going on
THE crossroads of government regulation and car design has seen some nasty pileups. Please avert your eyes from the 1981 Fiat X 1/9, in the early days of 5-mph bumper regulations, which forced Bertone to bracket the edgy little car with moronic rubber parentheses. The current Pontiac Solstice is a lovely roadster unless and until you attach a front license plate — required by California law — on its bullet-smooth nose, after which the car looks like it has buckteeth and is pronounced "Pontiac Thol-sthith."
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Married with children?
ALTHOUGH Mazda avoids the term like the Florida GOP avoids Katherine Harris, the Mazda5 is indisputably a minivan — a three-row, six-passenger vehicle with sliding doors along the fuselage. Given this morphology, what else could you call it? The company favors, rather lamely, the term "multi-activity vehicle." What, casino gambling, Zen archery, pagan sacrifice? Please.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Saab hits a home run
FEW commercials in history are more cringe-worthy than those of Saab's current "Born From Jets" campaign, in which a Swedish-built Saab Viggen fighter morphs into … wait for it … a Saab 9-7X SUV — Yah, Sven, dat's a guut one. As most devoted Saab-omites know, the 9-7X is born from the rather less-than-jet-like Chevy Trailblazer, built and re-badged in that famous Scandinavian enclave of Moraine, Ohio. For a company purchased by General Motors in 1999 and drowning in badge-engineered inauthenticity, these commercials throw the Saab image a big, rusty anchor.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Requiem for a heavyweight
THE sun-scrubbed desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas scrolls by with an empty whisper, a high-def silent movie panning past double-thick acoustic windows. East of Barstow, the Volkswagen Phaeton W12 is running at speeds best reserved for those with diplomatic immunity, and yet the big dreadnaught — with a 12-cylinder, 444-hp butter churn under the hood — is eerily unstrained, purring along in top gear, levitated on the four-corner air suspension. Scheherazade only wishes she knew such flying carpets.
RUMBLE SEAT
Into the mainstream
By certain lights, the 2007 Camry Hybrid is not particularly revolutionary. Here we have a nicely equipped, 3,637-pound, five-passenger sedan with 192 horsepower, costing about $30,000 (final pricing has yet to be confirmed). Styling reminds me of the old Merle Travis song: So round, so firm, so fully packed. The ride and handling are straight-up Pink Floyd: comfortably numb.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
For the Civic-minded
IN the two years since I began working for the Los Angeles Times, hybrid automotive technology has matured dramatically. I can't say as much for the automotive consumer.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
BMW's bigger, better Rolls
Not since torch-wielding peasants chased Frankenstein's monster through the town square has such a noble spirit been so mercilessly taunted. One critic compared the new $320,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom to a coffin maker's "Executive Slumber Series"; another called it the world's most majestic air conditioner.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
E55 AMG: Twist and shout
The engine of the 2004 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG produces 516 pound-feet of torque between 2,650 and 4,500 rpm. For a lot of people, this sentence means nothing. What, after all, is torque? What is a pound-foot, and is 516 of them a good thing or bad? "Pound-foot" seems like nonsense verse, like early Andre Breton or late Snoop Dogg.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Caught up in the Crossfire
Like many great beauties -- Marilyn Monroe, for instance -- the new Chrysler Crossfire has a faintly tragic air about it. And like many consumers of beauty -- Frank Sinatra, for instance -- I'm only too happy to exploit it.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Toyota's spark of genius
This is a car Detroit assures us cannot be built. No way. No how. A spacious, safe and well-appointed mid-size four-door with practical performance while returning more than 60 miles per gallon? For $20,000? Are you, like, high?
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Thinking inside the box
After spending a week driving a Scion xB -- the ice-cube-shaped flagship of Toyota Motor Corp.'s new youth- directed brand Scion -- I would like to publicly apologize to Volvo for all the times I accused its products of being boxy. Clearly, I didn't know from boxy.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
What would Gulliver drive?
It has taken years of analysis and reverse engineering, but the Japanese automakers are now able to build vehicles just as big and stupid as the Americans.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Caddy's wedge with an edge
The flashy fractalism that girds the Cadillac XLR has a name. General Motors Corp.'s luxury division calls it "Art and Science" design. The name always reminds me of Raphael's great painting "School of Athens," in which Plato and Aristotle are seen debating whether to clean out the attic or the basement.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
An Acura that rolls but doesn't rock
The 2004 Acura TL will raise no one's blood lust, nor will it send anyone into an eye-lolling frenzy.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Mighty Aphrodite
Sensible people might well ask what car could possibly be worth $150,000.
DAN NEIL RUMBLE SEAT
Santa's little helper
More than a few readers have sent messages questioning what, exactly, I value in an automobile. These inquiries have often included helpful suggestions concerning the kind of flying leap I can take and where.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
