Remember when you got your first 64-count box of Crayola Crayons?  After inhaling the trademark smell, your eyes were dazzled, your left brain inspired by an eye-popping kaleidoscope of colors.  You never knew there were so many different shades of blue and yellow and red and green.  You could draw anything you wanted and you’d always have just the right color.  And when you started drawing cars – man!  That’s when you’d pull out all the best hues.  Never ecru or black or white or gray, though.  No way!  You always drew your dream cars in the brightest Technicolor hues you could find.  Too bad today’s designers don’t remember those fun times.

The moment I dropped the hammer on the Porsche Cayman S, an entirely unexpected emotion welled-up inside: fear.  I was holding the wheel of the world’s best sports car on a perfectly-groomed country road and I couldn’t fully commit to a corner.  I wasn’t afraid of crashing— the Cayman is far too accomplished and forgiving and electronically mindful for that.  I was afraid of the unknown.  What if some dumb ass pulled out of a hidden drive without looking?  What if a child’s bike suddenly appeared just beyond the apex of a turn?  My sightlines were good, but my nerves were shot.  I suppose that’s what happens when you spend too much seat time in a Honda Odyssey.  

My first car was a Pontiac Parisian Safari station-wagon. Not only could it cruise I-5 all day, but I once hauled eleven people and a drum set from Sonoma County to Sacramento and back. When one of the cylinders lost compression, the attempted engine rebuild was a testimony to the strength of our relationship. Before the block cracked, the Safari provided my family, friends and I with nearly three hundred thousand miles of motoring bliss. Sadly, the SUV craze and seat belt legislation killed off the full-size American station-wagon. Aside from the chop top, third row deficient Dodge Magnum, Ford’s Freestyle is the closest the Big 2.5 has come to reviving this classic, all-American ride.

I know, I know; there's been a lot of Ford and GM bashing on this site as of late.  All of it deserved.  As long as car companies make crap cars– and that's ANY company making ANY crap car– The Truth About Cars is ready, willing and able to provide a no-holds-barred reality check. But here's the important bit: every TTAC writer would love to see the former Big Three produce the world's best automobiles.  It literally pains us that they don't.  If and when America reclaims its mojo and produces world-beating product, be it a Chevrolet Corvette or a Ford Freestyle, we will give its maker its due.  To wit: Lieberman likes the Freestyle, Big Style.  [His review goes up tomorrow AM.]  It's both sad and symptomatic that Ford doesn't share JL's enthusiasm enough to dig down and make something more of a potentially great vehicle.  By now, Toyota would've been busy on gen II.  Will this misery never end?  Oh, and if you could please suggest a photo caption in the comments, I'd be much obliged. 

They come from around the world to duke it out in the US of A: mid-size sedans from Germany, Japan and South Korea.  Each arrives armed with a unique selling point: German engineering, Japanese quality and South Korean value.  Their upbringings differ but their mission is the same: capture the hearts and minds of Middle American car buyers– and keep them.  The clear winner in this automotive Battle Royale is the American consumer, who’s never enjoyed so much quality and choice for so little money.  Meanwhile, once stalwart American brands and models are falling by the wayside, as their “foreign” competition continues their ceaseless campaign for mid-market hegemony.  One such victim is the Buick LaCrosse CXL. 

Way back in 602, the original Pope Gregory introduced the concept of the seven deadly sins.  His text Moralia in Job was designed to help lay people differentiate between venial sins, which could be forgiven through confessions, and capital sins, which are Hell to pay. About a millennium and a half later it looks like the management at Detroit’s Big Two automakers should have paid more attention in their catechism classes.  They seem to be harvesting a whole carload of karmic grief for their past corporate indiscretions, and wonder why it’s happening to them.  Let’s run down the Big Seven in ascending order of purported theological severity and see how they stack up.

Last Wednesday, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the Ford Motor Company’s credit rating.  “We expect the company's financial profile to weaken further during 2006,” S&P declared. “A period when the US economy and U.S. light-vehicle sales are robust."  So, good market, bad products.  After spending a week driving an Explorer Sport Trac, I’m inclined to agree.  Any automaker misguided enough to try to sell this vehicle in the world’s most competitive light truck market is heading for a fall.  

As I’ve aged, I’ve begun to notice that certain carmakers are determined to enrich chiropractors and practitioners of restorative dentistry.  When driving my Nissan 350Z, I found myself avoiding pockmarked roads for fear of ceiling-related spinal compression.  Even on smooth roads, I couldn’t quaff carbonated beverages.  Since then, I’ve created a checklist of cars my increasingly fragile skeletal system cannot abide. This includes the aforementioned Z, the Acura TL, pretty much any Infiniti or Porsche product, the S4 and S6 Audis and the Lexus SC430.  There is a special sub-category— torture– reserved for the vehicles made by BMW equipped with run-flat tires.

Relax.  The news that GM stockholder Kirk Kerkorian has been playing footsie with Renault/Nissan doesn’t represent some kind of paradigm shift for GM or global capitalism.  When assessing Kirk’s secret plan— selling a minority share in GM to the Franco-Japanese automotive alliance— remember whose interests The Quiet Lion serves: his own.  This is not about GM.  It’s about Captain Kirk’s spectacularly bad investment in the world’s largest automaker.  But don’t take my word for it.  "Sometimes the news in itself is already the purpose," DaimlerChrysler's CEO announced upon hearing the news.  In other words, multinational automotive conglomerator Dieter Zetsche thinks Kerkorian is just talking-up GM’s stock price.