Once again, it's time for the yearly pseudo-slugfest known as The Car of the Year. Across this great country of ours, every car-related newspaper, magazine, radio station, TV outlet and website (excluding this one) are busy awarding their favorite manufacturers an automotive attaboy. Once again, both the choices and selection process fall perilously close to farce.

Far be it for me to claim that the various juries are inherently biased. Like the majority of the panelists charged with sorting the wheat from the Ford 500's, I'm also a middle-aged white man. While I don't share my colleagues' sanctimonious regard for cars whose novel propulsion systems and dubious mileage figures are their best– if not only– distinguishing characteristic, I grew up with the same infatuation for speed and style. So none of their non-PC nominees come as any great surprise.

The Scion tC and I got off to a bad start; I had the audacity to take it grocery shopping. Hey, it's a hatchback, right? Well, most hatchbacks have cargo covers with a hinge at front and stringy-things that tie it to the hatch lid. Open the hatch and the cover swings out of your way. Not the tC. The tC's cargo cover is a cardboard, plastic and faux-dog-hair affair that has three positions: 1) In the way; 2) totally in the way; and 3) tossed angrily into the back seat.

To access the tC's hatch you must lift up the cover yourself, at which time the plastic clip detaches itself and shouts to the others, "Hey guys, you gotta try this!" The other clips jump in unison and the whole affair crashes down into the trunk faster than you can utter your expletive of choice. Good luck re-attaching it. After five attempts and two dozen expletives, I placed the cover in the aforementioned Position 3. By the time I loaded my groceries, the milk was past its sell-by date.

I like Cadillac. Theirs is the perfect American success story: a failing luxury car company saved by hard work, clever engineering and gang bangers. By now, the brothers' mainline manufacturer is safe and the word is out: Cadillac is back, and it's bling. Even old white men in shiny shoes know that the Escalade is all that, the XLR is dope, the CTS is fly, and the SRX is SWASS (Some Wild Ass Silly Shit). So why-oh-why did Caddy brew up this four-wheeled Forty Dog?

For some reason, they based the STS' design on the arrow-sharp CTS– minus the sharp. While the STS' front and back ends retain a welcome measure of the CTS' aggression, the overall result looks like a fat mobster in a Brioni suit. The STS' sloping swage lines and ever-so-slightly bulging wheel arches can't disguise the fact that it's a slab-sided luxobarge from the old school, with all the blingosity of a Lincoln Town Car. Granted, that may have been the point: to build a luxury car conservative enough for Cadillac's traditional clientele, yet– no wait, that's it; that's the whole story.

My recent editorial "Death to the Stick Shift" questioned the safety of– and slavish affection for– manual transmissions. The main premise of my article was simple: it takes a higher level of driver attention to operate a manual transmission than an automatic.

This point was proven by my many critics, who argued that driving a stick shift prevents drivers from engaging in dangerous multi-tasking. This erstwhile advantage simply reinforces the assertion that a manual demands greater concentration (however subconscious). By the same token, it's disingenuous to assert that an automatic transmission is inherently dangerous because it allows drivers to talk on their cell, eat, drink or otherwise distract themselves. Inattentive drivers are a hazard, no matter what kind of car they drive.

Sports car drivers are fetishists. Where a normal person looks at the new Porsche 911 Carrera's front end and sees a pair of headlights, an enthusiast instantly discovers that The Sultans of Stuttgart have ditched the "fried egg" shape of the previous 911's illumination, and returned to the old air-cooled car's circular headlamps. Porsche-philes will also clock the subtly reshaped nose, and the new, tidier headlight spritzers. It's sad, but the 911 does that to people. The Carrera is one of those rare machines that can turn a disinterested driver into a raving car nerd.

It's not about looks. The appeal of the 911's gently evolving design is more or less lost on the non-cognoscenti. There's no question that this, the latest 911 iteration, is more attractive than the one it replaces, even if it's difficult to identify the exact cause (the smart money is on the wasp-waisted flanks and purposeful rump). Still, as beautiful as it is, the revised shape is no radical departure, no newfound siren song to lure converts into the 911 fold. No; the essence of the Carrera's transformative powers lies behind the wheel.

The automotive world has gone mad. Horsepower mad. Fifteen years ago, a car with 200 horsepower was knocking on supercar territory. These days, no Japanese tuned compact would dare show its face at a street meet without 200hp under the hood. Ford's new Mustang GT is propelled by a 300hp V8. Pontiac's latest GTO makes 400hp. Dodge's Viper boasts 500hp. It's all very impressive– until you get in to one of these cars and drive.

Here in the world's biggest automotive market, the automatic gearbox rules, with the vast majority of American electing to have their cars do the shifting for them.  This, despite the fact that automatics are inherently less efficient than stick shift systems (an autobox's torque converter squanders resources unless in full lockup). What's more, the average slushbox falls apart sooner than a manual transmission, while often being a high-cost option in the first place. But even if you stray beyond the empirical realm, the truth of the matter is obvious: manual transmissions are the more pleasurable, safer choice.

Enthusiast drivers derive much of their satisfaction by changing gears of their own accord. Even the best adaptive automatics consistently fail to respond to the sporting driver's commands with suitably efficiency. (Hence the motivations behind most racers opting for manual gearchanges, even when the sanctioning bodies under which they compete fail to mandate them.) Technological advances like "fly-by-wire" throttles and GPS-based logic may eventually eliminate the autobox' temporal shortcomings, but until then, accomplished cog swappers know the tripedal dance remains most efficient and satisfying method for conducting business.