Subaru’s North American operations have long been known for advertising catastrophes, but rarely have they laid an egg as big as the October 2010 viral campaign for the “2011 Mediocrity”. The car chosen to be the butt of the joke was an old Kia Optima, which simply proved that neither the ad agency nor Subaru had the guts to start with a brand-new Camry. If Subaru was hoping for a sales boost for the new Legacy, it didn’t happen.

The campaign’s long gone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a moment to look at some pictures and make some snarky comments, right?

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Our compatriots at AutoGuide have been covering the new B-Spec class quite a bit over the past few weeks. A variety of Grand-Am teams, including Kinetic (building a $34,000 turnkey Kia Rio racer) and Capaldi (which has been testing a B-Spec Fiesta for some time) are planning to either sell B-Spec customer cars or provide seats for “funded drivers” in B-Spec racers.

What is B-Spec? What do they cost? Where can you race them? And, most importantly, how fast are they? We’ve assembled some answers and made a few guesses after the jump.

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If you haven’t read Brendan McAleer’s very funny article in defense of press junkets, it is worth your time to do so. Brendan whips his metaphorical pen around and around in the liquefied candy of the public-relations game until a delightful froth appears, just light-hearted enough for guiltless consumption. Savor it, enjoy the sweetness of the metaphors and the tastiness of the characterizations…

…and then come back here and click the jump for your vegetables, as I explain how the PR machine creates journosaurs from idealists, use a little bit of “Freakonomics” to show how “it’s very effective!”, and tell a story about the day I decided to step off the gravy train.

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It’s probably a safe bet that at some point in the future, access to mobile communications while driving will be completely regulated throughout the Western world in general… but how will it be done? Using in-car jammers or simply blanketing the signal along roadways causes a variety of thorny potential issues, from interrupting government communications to liability exposure if someone can’t call for help.

Don’t worry, though… in the 21st century, when a government has a will to impose, private industry finds a way.

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Note: This is a not-quite-sequel to a pair of previous stories, Carless in Nashville and Talisman, and fried chicken, at the crossroads. And since this ain’t a Harry Potter book, I don’t have 300 pages to recap what’s already happened, dig? — JB

The TTAC Southern Tour was in full effect, so I booked a flight to Nashville for the purpose of meeting up with Bertel, Ed, and Steve Lang. Flying there was dirt cheap — $106 round trip — so instead of packing a guitar I packed Vodka McBigbra along. Just to make things interesting, I asked her friend Drama McHourglass to meet us, and the TTAC crew, for dinner.

It seemed like a simple, reasonable idea. How was I to know that, once again, I’d be waking up in another girl’s bed?

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Nostalgia is big business, and there are plenty of people who will pay any price and bear any burden to return to the products of their youth. Harley has CVO Springer Softails for thirty grand. Gibson has the 1959 Murphy Aged Reissues for about half that much. Patek Philippe will sell you a Large Calatrava just like the one your father forgot to hand down to you (because he was actually a hick-assed convenience-store manager and not the Duke of Worchestershiresauce) for as much as $40,000.

The Sixties-car fanaticism has arguably reached its sell-by date, a casualty of disappearing portfolios and Barrett-Jackson overkill, but Ford has something really quite nice for the remaining True Believers: a brand-new 1964 1/2 Mustang convertible shell, built (or at least approved) by Ford.

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In the post-bailout, post-giveaway, billion-dollar-bonus-baby and occupied-Wall-Street era, it seems almost impossible to correlate reported financials to anything substantive. Nor does a single swallow make a summer.

Chrysler, however, is hoping that today’s third quarter report is merely the vanguard of a Capistranian return to profitability.

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Consumer Reports announced the results of their 2011 Annual Auto Survey yesterday. Among the heroes: the oft-maligned Chrysler 200, the Chevrolet Volt, and the island nation of Japan. In the doghouse: Regal, Cruze, LaCrosse, and pretty much the entire “new lineup” of General Motors.

The biggest loser this year, however, was Ford.

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Since editor Ed and big Bertel are in transit to Nashville right now, where they will be meeing me and my girls (Vodka McBigbra and Drama McHourglass) for dinner, there’s theoretically no way they could stop me from headlining this article Jalopnik-style, “THIS is the wagon that could kill you to DEATH.” Let’s just pretend I did. Because this really IS the wagon that could kill you to death.

Luckily, you can’t buy it in the United States.

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From our source “JH” comes a curious tale, and one perhaps completely un-reported in the US auto media: Fisker’s controversial, possibly US-funded Karma assembly center had ground to a halt, with “about 400” uncompleted Karmas sitting outside. It turns out that the UAW isn’t the only group of union workers out there who are willing to strike. Were they killing the golden goose, or just asking for a fair share of the egg?

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We’ve reviewed a lot of Korean designs here lately. The Soul. The Rio. The Veloster. The Sorrento. The Genesis. The Optima Hybrid. The Cayenne S. Actually, rumors that Porsche made a straight-up trade of engineering (the original Hyundai Santa Fe’s 2.7L V-6) for styling (the original Cayenne is clearly pretty much the same as said original Santa Fe) are completely unfounded. Some of these cars may not be quite up to the standard of their competition, but others are either the critic’s choice of the segment or the actual freaking segment sales volume leader.

Price has been a big part — for a long time, maybe the only part — of Korean-brand appeal in the United States since the very first Excel arrived with “$4995!” plastered on the windshield. In 2011, however, the Hyundai, Kia, and Daewoo vehicles aren’t always the cheapest choice. Which leads us to the question:

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“You know,” editor Ed told me, “that would be, about, like, a Take Four on the Soul, we’re not gonna do that.” I’d rented a 2011-vintage Kia Soul for a LeMons race in Houston and had been quite impressed. Although the powertrain (the traditional two-liter Hyundai/Kia four-banger and a lackluster four-speed auto) hadn’t been stellar, […]

We take issues of censorship and media freedom very seriously here at TTAC. Well, I’ve been told that Bertel and Ed do, anyway. Long-time readers will recall the little tempest-in-teapot earlier this year when Detroit News editor Scott Burgess threw his pacifier out of his crib over a Chrysler 200 review and then returned to employment with the paper shortly afterwards. Many Bothans died to bring you this information, if by “Bothans” you mean “Jalopnik readers” and by “died” you mean “were bored to death by self-righteous editorials regarding”.

A TTAC reader recently pointed me to an editorial by Mr. Burgess entitled “Cruze across Europe: Loved overseas, Chevy’s efficient diesel coming to the States”. I was intrigued by this article. While it appeared at first glance to be a shameless puff piece that combined a European vacation for the hard-working Mr. Burgess (and his wife) with a vaguely-defined test loop for the diesel Cruze, I quickly realized that it was a very subversive piece. The first clue was the title. “Loved overseas?” Wink, wink, Mr. B. I see what you did there. And sentences like “Really, the Cruze should receive a hero’s welcome in America” are simply begging to be revealed for the subtle jabs that they are.

With this in mind, I decided to check a few more Burgess articles to find out what he was managing to slip past those bastards at the Detroit News. This tale of defiance and inner strength reminds me of the Dalai Lama, or that Gandhi fellow, or… I know! Oh yes. But instead of V For Vendetta, we’ll call it F For Freecar.

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Demographics, marketing, and public perception don’t play nicely together very often. Consider, if you will, the oft-repeated factoid that the GMC Yukon Denali customer base is better-educated and earns more income, on the average, that the equivalent Cadillac Escalade customer. The same was reportedly true for the previous generations of the Toyota Land Cruiser and Lexus LS400, respectively. People who are habituated to weath and success tend to be remarkably resistant to lifestyle marketing, celebrity tie-ins, and marble tiles on showroom floors.

The rather handsome little five-door you see above is, of course, a Lexus CT200h, which is more or less a Lexus Prius. There is a sported-up version of the CT200h, called the “CT200h F Sport”, and there is a sported-up version of that, yclept “CT200h F Sport Special Edition”, or “CTFSSE” for short. It rings the cash register for $37,995, and represents the very apex of Lexus compact hybrid ownership. It’s also $1,530 cheaper than the apex of Toyota compact hybrid ownership, the Prius Plug-In Advanced, which costs $39,525.

Which brand — Toyota, Lexus, or Prius — is the real premier entry into this market?

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The “War On Distracted Driving”, like most of the other wars in which the United States has participated in the past forty years, appears to be a rather muddled way of addressing an improperly defined problem. For the Ray LaHoods of the world, it has to be absolutely maddening that the “epidemic” of distracted driving has yet to lead to any sort of measurable decrease in road safety.

For them, I have some good news. While the plural of “anecdote” is never “data”, it would appear that a BlackBerry outage may have gained a crucial hill in the “War On Distracted Driving”. The problem: as usual, the hill is overseas somewhere.

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