I read somewhere that less than two percent of Americans own a passport. As someone who spent 18 years abroad, I can fully understand the average citizen's reluctance to experience the joys of surly service, high prices, questionable hygiene and murderous Muslims. Still, as a journalist covering a multi-national industry, I do my best to keep an open mind about other lands, other cultures– or at least ignore them as best I can.

Sciontologists are scary people. Who else would re-package a Toyota Echo and sell it to American twenty-somethings? We're talking about a Japanese sub-compact with all the edgy excitement of a five-year-old Readers' Digest (large print edition). You couldn't imagine a more cynical marketing ploy. Still, props to Toyota for having the stones to foist the "new money for old rope" routine on the world's most style critical audience.

Raging against SUV's is still all the rage. Despite the vehicles' continued popularity, the auto industry has heard the drum beat. And so they're developing and marketing eco-friendly alternatives to America's super sized SUV's. While none of these new vehicles will liberate the US from its dependency on foreign oil or scrub our skies clean, you gotta give Detroit credit for boldly going where they really don't want to go. And the results are not as dynamically dull as you'd imagine….

"Sports wagons" are an excellent example. The acceleration, braking, and handling of today's station wagons make SUV's look like yesterday's station wagons. Extreme machines like Audi's blistering S4 Avant, Mercedes E55 AMG estate and Dodge's Magnum SRT-8 will not only embarrass every SUV on the road, but many thoroughbred sports cars as well. Granted: the sports wagons' cornering abilities are limited by their extended wheelbase and gross curb weight. But none of them sports the SUV's 'tipping over truck' icon on the driver's visor. Nuff said?

The word "cobalt" comes from 'kobolt', variant of the old German word 'kobold', meaning 'goblin.' As the story goes, German silver miners of yore believed that goblins would come and steal their booty, leaving worthless cobalt in its place. Not exactly an auspicious choice of names for a car, then. Still, one can hardly fault [...]

That clatter you hear is the sound of new diesel engines for passenger cars, promising greater efficiency and better mileage. The smell accompanying that clatter represents a major step away from the clean air standards that contributed to the major reduction in air pollution in the US.

Diesels, even the newest and cleanest, are inherently dirty engines. Particulates and NOx compounds are the worst offenders, but diesel exhaust is laced with other carcinogens like benzene, ring compounds and aromatics. The distinctive smell of diesel exhaust is largely a function of aldehydes, another family of unpleasantly harmful compounds.

Our main man Daniel Howes of the Detroit News recently asked 'what the Hell happened to mass customization"? Mass customization means building a product to a customer's exact specifications, then delivering it before they get pissed off. As the choice of three trim levels seems to satisfy most sheep– I mean people, I don't thing the Big Three's lack of a Dell-style manufacturing system is a major problem. But the wider point is well taken. When will the auto industry wake up and realize that it's the 21st century?

Honda must know that "street cred" and "minivan" go together like "50 Cent" and "country club". The preliminary sketches for the updated Odyssey show a vehicle bristling with sporting intent. Unfortunately, the finished item is another boxy behemoth with no more sex appeal than a shopping cart. This time out, Honda indented the Odyssey's lower doors and creased the nose. The cinched waist fails to moderate the slab sides while the rhinoplasty makes the Odyssey look like a snake with a half-eaten Acura TL sticking out of its mouth.

Here's an idea: revive the fabled "Mark" model designation, slap the badge on a Ford pickup truck, whack on a Lincoln grill, and call it good. Yes, that's right: the new Lincoln Mark LT is a pickup truck. It's also tangible proof that Lincoln-Mercury's marketing department has completely lost their way. Admittedly, it's been seven years since the Mark VIII rolled out of the company's Wixom plant– a lifetime in the halls of the glass house. But there's no getting around the fact that the new Lincoln Mark LT luxury pickup truck is the wrong name for the wrong vehicle for the wrong company.

When I asked Horacio Pagani how he can compete against Ferrari, Porsche and Mercedes, he said "It's better to be the head of a mouse rather than the tail of lion." It's a nice Italianate metaphor (especially for an Argentinean), but it's not strictly accurate. If the Pagani Zonda is a "mouse", then an F15 is a "plane". Plant your right foot in a C12S and the AMG-fettled Mercedes V12 barks, roars, howls and then screams like a wounded grizzly. Any lion with an ounce of self-preservation would run for his life.

And not make it ten yards. When thrashing the Zonda on the twisting two-lane highway above Modena, there was one long straight. For the first and only time, I was free to explore the mystery known as "third gear". Those of you who've driven a race car flat out might appreciate the resulting rush. I doubt it. On a track, you don't need to watch out for Italian truck drivers coming from the opposite direction (using the racing line). Flooring the Pagani Zonda on a public road hurts your brain, blows your mind AND loosens your bowels.

In 1986, pop rockers Huey Lewis and the News grabbed America by its blue collar and unironically proclaimed that it was "Hip to Be Square"– a rather peculiar assertion given that rock and roll music has historically stoked the fires of nonconformity. Almost in spite of itself, this ode to the joys of orthodoxy became a smash hit. And though it's taken the better part of twenty years to come to the fore, automotive design now finds itself deeply enthralled with Mr. Lewis' orthogonal ideology.