According to the nice entertainers at Top Gear the “Sub-Zero Fridge Coolest Car” at the moment is an Aston DB9. That makes perfect sense because the display on my Sub-Zero at home keeps going out and I anticipate the same fate is likely to strike every display screen on the DB9 much more quickly than the nine years it took my Sub-Z to start showing the freezer temperature as “88” all the time. When the speedometer on the DB9 gets to 88, you’re going to see some serious shit, man. Like a $3000 repair bill.

I’m willing to accept TG‘s verdict on car coolness because I have no idea what makes a car truly “cool”. I do, however, have some opinions about what the most uncool car on the market might be. I’m thinking the Toyota Venza is certainly among the podium finishers there and possibly worthy of the top (bottom?) spot. Why is it uncool? Well, it’s a Toyota, and Toyotas are the vehicles of choice for uncool people around the world. Along with the Avalon, it’s one of the Toyotas most obviously aimed at old people, and old people are rarely cool unless they are murderers turned blues musicians. It’s a jacked-up fake-SUV station wagon that replaced the very cool Camry real station wagon. It’s the most forgettable-looking vehicle on the road, which makes it less cool than the rolling freakshow competitor known as the Honda Crosstour. It has a standard four-cylinder engine and front-wheel-drive. I can’t think of any way in which the Venza could suck it harder than it does right now. It’s the most cynical, depressing, worthless entry on the market.

Uncool, brother. But the DB9 and the Venza, eternal opposites on the cool scale, have one fairly uncool thing in common, don’t they?

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Many years ago, I was bombing my Zoke-Z1-equipped Klein down a trail in Ohio’s Caesar Creek park when I took a wrong turn and found myself heading towards a farmer’s field. I saw a flash, a glint, in midair fifty feet ahead of me and I jammed both brakes, coming to a heaving halt an arm’s length away from a brand-new bit of barbed wire strung across the trail, presumably at the farmer’s property line. It was at about the right elevation to catch me across the chest, but it would have caught a child at the neck.

Lacking a tool with which to cut the hazard down, I twisted up two large branches in the wire so it would be obvious to the less attentive then went on my way, my general contempt for man’s inhumanity to cyclist freshly reinforced. When I quit racing bikes and started focusing on cars, I figured I’d never see anything like that again. It would appear I was wrong.

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The perennially shy Alex Roy took delivery of his Morgan Trike last year and has dutifully operated it under all conditions, including during the arrival of Hurricane Sandy. There’s something awfully charming about the “Three Wheeler”, even if the price of it would also put you in a brand-new six-speed Corvette Grand Sport. As far as not-quite-motorcycles go, I much prefer it to the Can-Am Spyder, anyway.

Much of the appeal of the Morgan is its novelty value; we didn’t get very many Morgans of any type in this country, much less three-wheeled ones. The T-Rex is probably the only other non-bike-based trike on the market. In the UK, however, the “Moggie” is just one in a large field of competitors. Some are closer to the original Morgan design than the Morgan itself, while others are futuristic in the creepy Seventies sense of the word. The Telegraph recently put eleven of them together for a short test.

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H.J Mulliners gave this model design the name “Flying Spur” which is well documented as the heraldic symbol of the Johnstone Clan in Scotland. The “Flying Spur” was awarded to the Johnstone clan for their help in allowing Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape on horseback.

That’s authentic British heritage, no Bentley-by-Breitling-by-Bentley-by-Brietling-by-Volkswagen needed. You’re looking at one of seven Flying Spurs for sale, from the collection of a Hungarian who escaped that Communist state to become an engineer, succeed beyond his wildest imagination, and acquire top-shelf examples of the Flying Spur wherever they could be found. That’s even cooler than the cars themselves, right?

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Rising star Evan York shared this on Facebook, noting that the crash was due to “tucking”. But before you start picturing Ted Levine in Silence of the Lambs, let’s figure out what that really means, and why it’s done…

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We’ve yet to see a production-spec 918 Spyder on an auto-show display, but if the latest pricing report is accurate, many would-be buyers might want to take a look at the alternatives in the market — such as a sack containing more than thirty pounds of gold bullion, or a nice solid early Beechcraft King Air.

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Psst! Hey, you! Yes, you! The guy with the gold Bentley-By-Breitling-Celebrating-Bentley-Brand-Breitlings diamond-studded watch! With your arm around two Estonian working girls! I know you’re about to step into a fresh new Aston Vanquish, but perhaps Sir would be interested in something authentically English and genuinely bespoke? An individual creation from a man whose contribution to the automotive design scene is beyond question, a man who designed the car to which your current matte-finished whip is about to pay homage? Surely you’re interested, right? And here’s the good news: it’s far too expensive!

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I want to tell you this, although I know many of you will not believe. I want you to close your eyes and give me the gift of your trust for a few minutes, to travel through memory and dream and ambition with me. I want you to experience the “theater dim” of the interior lights. To open the throttle on the Bose-by-Nissan stereo. To feel the perfect response from the small sedan’s leather-wrapped steering wheel, to catch a slide as the four-wheel-steering kicks in at the most bizarre time during an irresponsible freeway maneuver. To pose Yakuza-style in the baddest sedan on the block, B-pillars swimming barely seen beneath the glass. To feel the 276-horsepower, quad-cam V-8 punch you back into the impeccably tasteful interior.

Then, and only then, if you can dream with me, if you can believe what I believe, then you might be able to look through the stupid Q-names and the dumb-assed rocks-and-trees marketing and the aftermarket Skyline badges and the unfocused-looking Pathfinder rebadge and the Jersey shore types crowding each owner’s meet and just hold this idea in your head:

Infiniti didn’t always suck.

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Your humble author has usually struggled as a National Solo driver, but I’m not ashamed of losing to these guys; some of them are the finest technical drivers in the world and even the worst National Solo driver is usually pretty decent. If you’ve ever wondered how you would stack up, now’s the time to find out.

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We’ve taken a fair number of potshots at the General lately, but some times the company and its ad agencies get it right. Watch this and tell me you don’t kind of want a DTS at the end of it….

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TTAC’s Alex Dykes didn’t fall in love with the Dodge Dart in his initial meeting, although he did refer to it as “class competitive”. In its first half-year on these shores, the Alfa-Dodge has struggled to keep inventory levels down despite great advertising.

Ten or twenty years ago, Chrysler might have let this state of affairs continue for a year or two before adjusting the product mix and/or changing the marketing approach, but in the lean-and-mean era they don’t play that game. The Dart GT is meant to restart the model’s momentum, and it does it the old-fashioned way: with high content and reasonably aggressive pricing.

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The introduction of the C7 Corvette is almost certainly the biggest splash expected at this year’s Detroit show. It will almost certainly be a good car; no surprise there, the Corvette has been a pretty good car for nearly its entire production run. By common agreement, there are two “dark period” in the model’s history. The original “Blue Flame Six” cars were priced above the Jaguars of the era and couldn’t come close to catching them on a track or open road. It took the why-didn’t-they-think-of-that addition of Chevy’s then-new small-block V-8 to make the ‘Vette a legend. Corvette fanciers are also eager to forget the later “C3” cars, which were awfully heavy, rather indifferently assembled, and frequently found sporting “PRNDL” markings. The nadir was probably the 1980 California Corvette, which offered buyers a mandatory encounter with the much-despised 305-cubic-inch V-8 and automatic transmission.

When they aren’t ruthlessly dissing their own stuff, GM marketing and advertising people almost universally react to the arrival of disastrous products by placing said products into ads with classic cars — anybody remember those Cadillac ads which juxtaposed the great old Caddys with a Zep tune and the rather sterile early-2000s lineup? The above effort isn’t a surprise, then… but how accurate is it?

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When Joni Mitchell finally agreed to release a Hits album, she did so with the stipulation that the label also release a Misses album full of music that she was happy to have made even if the critics and buyers didn’t dig it.

So. What follows is five bona-fide, hit-counter-spinning hits, and five how-dare-you-turn-your-nose-up-at-my-talent misses. Let the second-guessing begin!

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“Everybody uses the road and if some pay and some don’t then that’s an unfair situation that’s got to be resolved,” said Jim Whitty, manager of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding.

Ah, yes. As with any number of current governmental activities, the rationale for per-mile taxation will be fairness.

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The replica-car business is the authentic and despicable cloaca of the automotive world, attracting scammers, liars, shade-tree hacks, shady African fiberglass molders, soon-to-be-disappointed owners, and lawsuit-addicted former poultry farmers in equal measure. A quick glance at the Gotham Garage website won’t reverse your opinion of the game, but the company, and it’s tatted-up owner, Mark Towle, are at the center of a rather interesting lawsuit.

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