“I hate the way people use “hybrid” as a verb. Cadillac has an ad where this guy driving a Escapade ranting about how hybrids are always small cars and says “You know what they should hybrid? This! This is what they should hybrid.” I feel sorry for the actor; I’m sure he’s a decent guy. But he sounds like a complete idiot for misusing a common English word. Leave it to brainless marketing to abuse common words (hybrid) and pieces of music (United Airlines and Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”).”

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Well, this is a feature of English. Get over it. It’s not uncommon for nouns to become causative verbs.

“You know what they should hybrid?” < “You know what they should make a hybrid?”

I like leather as much as the next guy but in both the Miata and Subaru it has the texture of an old canvas sail. I am told if it were buttery and soft like my coach briefcase it would wear out too fast.

Just because you have a Jetta don’t try to drive it like a BMW. Wait that’s an insult to BMWs. Havinga 5-10 YO Jetta even with an oversized exhast isn’t going to make you go much faster, lowed or not. So stop trying to cut in and out.

And yes paddle shifters NOW gring my gears. I guess I felt better not having an automatic but it’s a poor substitute for a true stick. (You can’t get the revs up between downshifts) That said (sorry) Auto is a pleasure for the traffic

I detest Detroit management that for 30 years has lost market share pretty much every year and considered it “business as usual.” Yeah, I’m looking at you, GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

I detest the use of the word ‘competitive’ when the product is not. “Our new Pontiac Troglydite is class competitive with Camry and Accord.” No, class competitive is selling at least half as many. If you sell 20% as many and half go to Avis, you are not ‘competitive.’ You are toast.

I detest buzz by PR. I don’t care if you are going to be selling the Millennium Falcon in 2010, don’t run your PR mouth about it until I can buy it in the showroom. This goes double or triple for hybrids. Especially if the competition for your $40k car prices at $25k, has been selling them for 15 years, sells them in massive numbers, and makes money.

Okay, they should be saying bimmer, but what’s the hate for the X5 owners? I test drove a couple of them. Went a different direction, but I think they were both nice vehicles and very BMW.…

Sorry, no “hate” intended. The X5 is good, but when I hear some talk about how great it performs – like a M3 that goes off road…IMHO a Range Rover off road it is not. That is all I meant.

+1 on the “wouldn’t be caught dead in a mini-van” comment. I don’t own one either, but it’s getting to the point where I wouldn’t be caught dead in the vehicle that most of the m-v haters likely drive – the SUV.

+1 on the engine covers. WTF? I guess since these days your really not meant to work on your own car anymore, or at best chuck-and-replace, they just part of deal now-a-days. (and why I trogoloditically prefer older cars).

What Grinds my Gears are most car commercials. From the SUVs supposedly letting you conquer mountain tops to the luxury car that clearly you must have to defin your own wonderful sense of self-importance, they just give me a weird sense of embarrassment to watch.

Lexus had this test driving event, and they had a section called “Hybrid living”. What the heck is “hybrid living”??? Buying a 5000 lbs 22 HW mpg $110K luxo-barge and equipping your penthouse flat with bamboo coffee tables!

And what’s with GM putting their newest high-tech two mode hybrid drivetrain into full-size SUVs? All that accomplishes is to make an ungainly, heavy vehicle even heavier and more ungainly, with a slight improvement in fuel economy. Anyone who is really concerned about fuel economy isn’t going to be shopping in this market segment.

For some reason, new Mercedes leather smells like a petro chemical plant. I sat in a showroom E-class and almost vomited from the noxious smell. And I’m an in-car smoker, that’s how awful it was. The poor salesperson just didn’t know how to react – I suspect he was just peeved that MB was making his job that much harder.

Some of the most buttery leather I encountered was in, of all things, a used BMW 528i. I think it was a 2000 or thereabouts. It was firm but had a perfect surface texture, it felt like silk with a touch of gun oil. Mmmm. Next up was my father’s 2003 Altima, which was very similar to the 528 – firm but soft to the touch. Surprising considering the leather was probably sourced from a McDonalds abattoir.

Then there is the inch-thick everlasting leather you get in a truly hewn-from-granite car. Not as comfy, but so reassuringly well crafted. Best here was the W140 S-Class. Those interiors were simple but felt so good – thick carpet, thick leather, Teutonic slabs of wood, and double paned windows. My Infiniti Q45 has a similar type of leather (17 years and 150 000 miles and it still isn’t cracked or faded), but the rest is JapanInc and the dash fascia is falling off.

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As for engine detail, every engineer should be given a picture of a Ferrari 250 TR engine bay and told to beat that. If that’s too spartan then emulate the 365 Daytona.

Oh, and tying certain trim levels and engines to bodystyles. If I wanted a Mazda3, for instance, I can have the 2.0L in the sedan for $15,000 or the the or the 2.3L in the sedan for $18,500 or the 2.3L in the hatchback for $19,000. Why can’t I have the 2.0L in the hatchback???

Are cars better in every respect than 100 years ago? Absolutely and undoubtedly without question.

Have cars changed, fundamentally and conceptually? Not at all.

If you came from an alien planet that didn’t develop cars, a ‘32 Ford Model A and a Bugatti Veyron, would appear to be conceptually identical: Metal enclosures on four doughnuts of rubber or a similar petrochemical product.

Enter through a hinged door, sit on a seat. An operater manipulates a large circular gear which manipulates the direction of the front two doughnuts. One pedal controls the ICE, which compresses and ignites a vaporized mixture of air and combustible fluid, converting it into motion through metal rods and a shaft. That is, in turn, transmitted to the rubber doughnuts via a set of gears to create motion in one of two directions. The other pedal, mounted to the left side in both cars, applies friction materials (via hydraulics) to scrub forward motion into heat. Even things like radiators are the same: Forcing fluid around the combustion chambers and through a series of metal tubes.

(I’d still take the Bugatti)

Agree completely on the term “crossover”. Transvestite would be a better word.

I drive a CR-V. I don’t think of it as a crossover or an SUV. It’s either a station wagon or a five door hatchback.

2. The overwrought overstyling trend that Bangle brought upon us. The Dame Edna headlights and bustle-butt trunk of the 5- and 7-series and the slash-wounds on the Z4 have “liberated” designers from making handsome cars, freeing them to inflict upon us abominations like Acura’s MDX/TL/TSX shield-grill fest and misshapen RDX, Audi’s gapmouth grille obsession and woefully awkward Q7, Mercedes’ ugly wheel wells and lumpen shape of the S-class (as well as the awful lines of the new C-class), Honda’s tumor-infested and proportion-lacking Accord, the asphalt-barnacle-look of Toyota’s Matrix Corolla and Camry, the blob-of-cirsscrossed shapes and lines that is the Sebring, and countless other design disasters. Thanks, Chris!

3. SUV’s that are more compromised in interior space than smaller cars. When cars like the Fit, Mini Cooper and Versa can offer headroom and legroom that bests a Yukon, what does that say about sloppy engineering in the Yukon? As a 6′6″ guy, I’m constantly shocked at the wide range of cars I don’t fit into (e.g., Yukon, GM Lambda’s) and those that I do (the aforementioned three).

3. The word “crossover”. 95% of the vehicles to which this new marketing-inspired word are assigned are SUV’s, and a good chunk of those are bigger than true body-on-frame trucks. Which brings me to “SUV” – aint nothing sport about one of those, unless you’re talking about the Cayenne Turbo or an AMG Benz.

Also,I got an new DTS for work, there is such a strong smell of whatever it is inside, i have kept the windows open for a week now! I am positive that it is an added “scent of new car”, which got spilled all over buy accident.

And I MUCH prefer fabric in cars. My uncle had a mid 80’s lincoln sedan that had wonderful cushy cloth seats.

Really? Just drive a keyless ignition car for a week, and then wince when you have to fish your keys out of your pocket after you get belted in….the convenience is well worth it…now buying a Lexus ES is a ridiculous prospect, key or not! ;-)

When I was a kid in the 70s I always thought the big Buicks and Oldsmobiles my grandparents drove were the epitome of luxury. Wire wheel covers and deep red cushy velour were as good as it got.

I’m still a little bummed that they sold the ‘79 Delta 88 to one of my cousins and not me.

2a. Car commercials with a shot of the driver ’shifting’ the automatic transmission and the car surging forward.

2b. Manumatics – exceptions exist but most act like a cold shower.

3. Centre-mounted gauges. They’re wrong on every continent.

4. The new TSX.

Oh come on. You can’t really believe that.

Sorry, but I don’t think we have much proof that lot’s of people like the Bangle lines. Just because folks buy them, doesn’t mean they aren’t buying them IN SPITE OF the Bangle sheet metal.

If you ask me, it’s not so much the Bangle influence (the subtler butts look ok) as some of the other touches that really went south, like the headlights, ugh.

Golden,

Okay, they should be saying bimmer, but what’s the hate for the X5 owners? I test drove a couple of them. Went a different direction, but I think they were both nice vehicles and very BMW.

You know what grinds my gears?

The fact cars haven’t changed a lot in 100 years. You’d think we would have thought of something better by now.

Special advertising sections in car magazines printed in the same font as the rest of the mag, with too-nice PR photos of a car, along with ludicrous faux-reviews about how wonderful and perfect the car was, while inserting brand names and trademarks where possible to the point of becoming garish and hilarious.

Deriding hybrids for no real reason other than how they drive and their lack of speed and towing capacity. Most people care more about 41 mpg, than 10 seconds to 60.

Advertising for cars that don,t and very well may not exist. No fingers need to be pointed for this one.

That works. You take the Camry and I’ll take the “fun” car.

Ain’t diversity great?

But while we’re ranting, how about references to “Bangle-butts” and comparable Bimmer-bashing? OK we get it: you don’t like. Obviously, lots of people do. There it is again, more of that annoying diversity of opinion.

And speaking of design, what’s with the humongoid grillage on this year’s models? First Audi, then Cadillac and Acura, and now Aveo. Aveo?
Do you think maybe it has something to do with the cars behind the grills being completely generic? Do you think maybe if the car itself had even a detectable hint of style it wouldn’t need Jimmy Durante’s nose to be picked out of a crowd?

Oh, but I like leather. Could be it’s a San Francisco thing.

I’m with you on the questionable aesthetics of the new ZR1’s hood window, but the hood is carbon fiber, not plastic….and the window gives you a view of the top of the intercooler, which is aluminum, not plastic.

Still cheesy, IMHO, esp compared to the view of an F430 or Ford GT, but at least you’re seeing metal, and not plastic!