A Volvo sports car is like a porno star wearing a condom: it makes perfect sense, and none at all. And yet, for reasons lost in the notes of a Ford strategy session gone bad, the brand best known for passenger fortification has developed an ongoing need to engage in protected sex appeal. Currently, the 300 horse S60R and V70R are the lead characters in this oxymoronic endeavor. Snicker if you must, but Volvo has publicly proclaimed that their R’s are suitable competition to BMW’s unassailable M3. Them’s fighting words!

At last week's DaimlerChrysler stockholder meeting, a man named Ekkehard Wenger stepped up to the microphone and said his piece. "For nine years you have been sitting on this scrapheap called Chrysler. Nobody has learned anything. To call this a sale is a euphemism. If you pay for the garbage man to empty the dustbin, does that mean you have sold something to the garbage man?" While calling Chrysler a "scrapheap" is a bit harsh– the American automaker supported Mercedes for several years when the Germans were losing money– one wonders how Kirk Kerkorian feels about being called a garbage man.

Since 1969, Porsche has developed three vehicles with Volkswagen/Audi: the 914, 924 and Cayenne. While we can debate the contributions these vehicles have made to Porsche’s corporate survival, they’re not vehicles that have brought greater glory to Porsche's sports car cred. And yet Zuffenhausen's zealots want us to believe that their decision to take control of Volkswagen is a good thing for both automakers. How credible is that?

Slide into the snug, over-bolstered leather seat. Push the chunky key fob into a slot labeled “start/stop.” Tune an ear to combustion as smooth as a baby’s backside. Grab hold of the three-spoke leather-wrapped helm. Engage first gear. Mash the throttle and drop the clutch. Brace for wheel hop, snick through the gears to triple digit speeds, then slam on the brakes. Escape through the heavy driver’s door and slam it shut. Glance back at the Volkswagen Passat 2.0T.

GM circa 2007: bad investments and expensive labor contracts; excess capacity and crushing debt; a surfeit of brands and products. It’s also GM circa 1910, 1920, 1973, 1980, 1991 and 1998. In fact, wandering through GM’s history is like watching an endless loop of “Groundhog Day.” Clearly, The General doesn’t share Phil Conners’ ability to learn from its mistakes. Can there ever be a happy ending for The General?

At seventeen, I finally joined the ranks of legally sanctioned drivers. I could have taught the drivers-ed class by then, including certain advanced techniques well outside the usual curriculum. Speaking of which, as part of this rite of passage, I retired the implements I’d used for hot-wiring the family Dodges. More importantly, I got a job where I could indulge my love of driving and get paid for the pleasure.

There are some amongst us who hate auto shows in general and any given auto show in specific. They see the pistonhead conclaves as a soulless smorgasbord of automobiles in aspic, with side tables filled with deep fried hype. I don't share the antipathy. Where else can you go and see PR flacks spinning each other? It's like Paris after 911, when French café waiters were forced to be rude to each other. Oh yeah, and there are lots of cars for dissing, dismissing and, occasionally, drooling. Live, from New York! It's Here's What You Missed!

Badge engineering is the bane of the pistonhead’s existence. Or is it? Actually, bad badge engineering is the pistonhead’s pariah. Most adventures in grille-swapping produce soulless cash grabs like the Mercury Monterey and Chrysler Aspen. But some automakers “leverage synergies” in such a way as to respect– dare I say advance– the identities of the brands involved, and produce a genuine bargain. Case in point: the Acura TSX.

In the first three months of his employment, Ford CEO Alan Mulally earned himself a cool $28.2m. So how’s the high flying ex-Boeing exec doing in his campaign to save the embattled automaker? According to Big Al, “it’s going pretty well." He’s “reduced complexity” (i.e. paid bureaucrats to leave), sent Aston packing, unloaded the first of thirteen surplus-to-requirements Visteon plants and started to make good on cost savings targets. On the income side of the ledger? Not so hot.

It’s déjà vu all over again. GM’s sales sink, the PR flacks weave a tangled web and the product guys dangle shiny objects in front of the easily distracted press to prevent them from focusing on the company’s ongoing, unstoppable rot. It’s got to the point where Buickman, the original tin foil hat guy, can’t be bothered to pen his usual protracted rant. All we get is three sentences, the first of which proclaims “Need anything more be said?” Well, yes actually. It’s time, once again, to talk about small cars.

Never mind all that “buy American” and “Asian cars are the enemy” rhetoric. The United Auto Workers (UAW) would love to get their hands on the transplants’ southern redoubts. With their numbers dwindling due to Detroit’s plant closures and buyouts, the UAW realizes they have to go trolling in the transplants’ ponds to stay alive. Last Saturday, they tested the waters with a small group of Toyota workers at the brand’s Georgetown, Kentucky plant. The UAW is smacking their lips at the prospect of dining on catfish sushi.

The last time Toyota sold sex-on-wheels it came arrived in the form of the flying flagship known as the Supra. The Supra holstered an inline six with twin turbos sending over 300 horses to the rear wheels (335i anyone?). But Toyota’s mid-market meteorologists knew which way the wind was blowing. So they sent their one trick pony car back to the factory to be made into rubber and glue. Now Toyota has two flagships with the combined excitement of rubber and glue: the granola Prius and the grandpa Avalon.

A couple of months ago, Autoblog revealed that you could open a locked Mazda3 by smacking the door panel. Shortly afterwards, they posted a video demonstrating how to unlock a car using a tennis ball. Car owners and manufacturers greeted the revelation with indignant outrage. How dare these “anyone with a keyboard” communicators tell the whole wide world how to commit an illegal act? Clearly, the automotive community hasn’t grasped the lessons learned by the computer security industry.

Fair disclosure: I love Buicks. More accurately, I’m a big fan of Buicks from the ’60 and earlier. For the last forty years or so, the “near luxury” brand has forsaken me at the altar without so much as a text message. Me and everyone else. The carmaker that cranked out overlapping, maligned, completely functional automobiles like the Regal, Park Avenue, LeSabre and Century is in dire straits. This year, the average Buick dealer sold fewer than seven units per month. So when Buick brass invited ttac.com to check out their rescue plan at a Manhattan bank vault-cum-restaurant, I was good to go.

"We are absolutely going to do what it takes to keep our product fresh and keep it relevant in the market.” Now THAT’S what I’m talking about! A Ford exec making a public commitment to ongoing excellence. No more cut and run. No more vehicles dying on the vine or losing out to some new “flavor of the month.” Oh wait. Ford's truck marketing manager wasn’t talking about keeping it real for the core models. Ben Poore was celebrating the company’s decision to offer a Chip Foose edition F150. Oh dear.