Not everything needs to come with a warning label. A bag of peanuts shouldn’t have “Warning: contains nuts” on it. You know what I’m talking about here. But when I shyly asked the infamous “Agent 001” of Autospies to be my co-driver for the next day’s 2010 Taurus SHO twisty-road press preview, perhaps I should have had excerpts from my “Maximum Street Speed” editorials stapled to the functional sleeves of my Gulf-blue Kiton linen jacket. Kind of a warning label, you see. It would have saved him more than a little worry the next day . . . To say nothing of the dry heaves. But don’t worry: Ford’s latest SHOmobile isn’t nausea-inducing. Unless, that is, you are sensitive to the odor of disc brakes when their pads catch on fire.

On paper, the Audi A3 TDI is an exercise in futility. The model shares platform bits with a Golf Rabbit. It’s smaller than a Jetta Sportwagen. It carries a lofty price premium; the diesel-powered A3 “boasts” the same engine that can be had across the street at the Vee-Dub for thousands less. It’s not as fast, sporty or capacious as the rear wheel-drive BMW 335d. By any rational measure, the A3 TDI is an answer to a question that few Americans even thought about asking. Which is why it’s better to judge the A3 TDI “in the flesh.”

Let’s get one thing straight: There are very few inanimate objects which inspire my personal appreciation, respect, and interest as much as the 2010 Toyota Prius does. It’s a happy faced, slick, aerodynamically-optimized, practical, comfortable and dead-reliable vehicle which exists for the sole purpose of letting concerned Americans feel like they are making a small but genuine difference in their efforts to reduce their consumption of the world’s finite resources.

Summer 2005. My plans for a Vintage Car Rally Vacation evaporate. Rebuilding a very poorly rebuilt engine vacuums funds allocated for the purpose out of my wallet. What started as an odd knock became a horror show. My fussy ex-pat Yorkshireman mechanic in Chilliwack, B.C. removed the head and found the forensic remains of a car-related massacre not seen since Pol Pot rode around in his ’73 Mercedes. Just when I had given up on my dreams of a vintage vacation, the phone rang with an offer to co-drive an event in what many have called the world’s first supercar: the Mercedes-Benz 300SL. I accepted the offer faster than Mr. Fangio could frustrate Mr. Ferrari.

After a few seconds in the Mindset, I was thinking: Whoa, this thing is fast. And Goddamn, it feels good. And then I remembered a movie I hadn’t thought of in a decade, and it struck me: this doesn’t seem like 2009, this is more like Gattaca. You know: the sci-fi movie starring the Studebaker Avanti, Rover P6 and Citroen DS Décapotable—all running with electric motors. They are breathtakingly, inimitably beautiful cars. In the movie, they only make a whirring noise. It’s all very 2030, and somehow, it works. Of course, if you had an electric droptop DS at your disposal, then why would you drive a Swiss-made, electric Mindset? But I’m getting ahead of myself. So, what is this car about?

Don’t believe the hype. The 1986 Taurus was not “the car that saved Ford.” Trucks saved Ford in the late Eighties and early Nineties, as consumer tastes moved away from the one-sedan-fits-nearly-all market in favor of the newly popular SUV. Nor can the 2010 Taurus save a Ford beset by problems on all sides. There are no longer enough potential mid-sized car buyers to make a huge impact on the company’s bottom line, and most of those buyers are really better candidates for the smaller, more affordable Fusion.

The propaganda literature that accompanied the little batch of sleeping pills—complete with a waiver absolving the USAF of all liability—promised that I would awake refreshed and ready to battle desert ninjas. Sure enough, I awoke alert. But mentally, I wasn’t all there. I was fully aware of my full potential, and could access it at will, but there was a disconcerting disconnect. No, I didn’t drive the Cayman PDK in this altered state. It’s the same feeling created by the German two-door. Yes, the paddle-shift Cayman is a full-on Porsche. It offers precise handling, a jewel of an engine and magnificent brakes. Yet the Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe stood in the way of the Porker’s legendary man – machine interface. It created dynamic doubts that I’ve never experienced in a Porsche before.

In the autumn of 2003, DaimlerChrysler introduced their first co-developed product: a “segment buster” called the Chrysler Pacifica. According to the official spin, the Pacifica married a minivan’s utility with an SUV’s machismo. In reality, the Pacifica was a six-seat station wagon on stilts, closest in concept to Audi’s slow-selling Allroad Quattro. While the Allroad pulled a Hasselhoff (more popular in Germany than its intended market), the Pacifica was born under a bad sign, raised with great expectations and expired stateside without fanfare or corporate hand-wringing. RIP Pacifica or good riddance to bad rubbish?

I love technology. I was an early adopter of the microcomputer (8” SS/SD floppies, anyone?). I spent way too much on a TI calculator in college because it could *gasp* do square roots. My car has rain-sensing wipers, self-leveling headlights and power headrests. However, spending a week with an Infiniti FX35 made me wonder if, just as electronic calculators have given us a generation who can’t do simple math in their heads, the technical fripperies in our cars are going to produce a generation of drivers who can’t drive.

Let us drive then, you and I, while the morning is spread out against the sky like a crash victim autopsied upon a table. Let us drive, up winding rain-slicked streets, the chattering traction control and sideways exits in too-narrow lanes . . . All apologies to T.S. Eliot, but what you are about to read can only be characterized as The Love Song of A Supercharged Viper. I was a fan of the 500-horsepower new-generation SRT-10 when it arrived in 2003, fell in love with the variable-cam 600-horsepower variant in 2008, and was utterly smitten by the final Viper ACR when I drove it at Chrysler’s proving grounds last year. With this 750-horsepower, ACR-inspired droptop, however, PRI has created the fastest rental car available in the United States, and that means it is interesting.

I was expecting to dislike the new E-Class Coupe from Mercedes. AMG versions aside, the outgoing CLK was about as interesting to drive as a Toyota Solara, and Mercedes has already announced that there would be no AMG versions of the new car. From the early photos of E-Class Coupe, I had already determined that the large glass sunroof with its meager mesh sun protection would curry little favor with me, and the little rear quarter window spoiled the look of this frameless coupe. To make matters worse, the 2010 E-Class Coupe’s engines are carryovers from the CLK. Mercedes claims our fuel quality isn’t suitable for the new direct injected engines offered in Europe. (Translation: the US is a dumping ground for some old engine inventory.) The E-Class nomenclature is another sleight of hand, as the chassis is still derived from the C-Class. Harrumph.

When Jay Shoemaker reviewed the 2010 Prius, he castigated it for its dead-feeling controls, strange operating procedures and total lack of soul. He concluded: “But I have a feeling that one day soon we will be able to drive something that gets outstanding mileage while stimulating its operator in the process.” Mr. Shoemaker, your car has arrived. May I present the Volkswagen Jetta TDI?

Though the Mustang and Camaro will forever be linked in the public imagination as “ponycars”, the truth is that only twice in history has the Camaro been explicitly aimed at the Mustang. The first time, of course, was at its introduction; the Mustang had caught the General napping and the first-gen Camaro was a simple “me-too” response to that success, as craven in its copying as the Russian faux-Concorde that would debut two years later.

My first car was a 1970s–era Opel Rekord. It was one of the most beautiful cars GM ever made. It was also roomy, reliable, as well as cheap to own and service. Those typical brand values made Opel a star player in Europe, and demoted Ford and many others to the status of also-rans. Later, Opel lost the reliability and beauty part of the plot. Is today’s Rekord – the Opel Insignia – good enough to lead an almost-dead company to the future?

They say that “Less is more”, whoever they are. The Lotus Elise would seem to be a reasonable proof of that statement. Most of the Elises sold in the United Kingdom are 134-horsepower models powered by the same Toyota engine which, bolted to a base (in all senses of the word) Pontiac Vibe, permits America’s daytime strippers to make their late-morning commutes without mechanical incident. From what I’ve read, the base Elise is a stimulating, wonderfully balanced sporting car that permits man and machine to operate in perfect “B-road” harmony.