Auto News 5

It was 100 degrees when I landed in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but it was a dry heat. Wait a second. After checking my notes -- no, it wasn't. It was a disgusting, moist heat, the kind where sweat pours off you like an angry geyser and you start wondering where you might find a nice, heavy torque bar to smash in your face on account of the ungodly humidity, and you're also asking yourself why people bother living east of the Rockies in summer. Down South proved, disturbingly enough, to be indistinguishable from my New York home -- no wind, 110 percent humidity, and not even raining. Although I didn't know it, the fact that it hadn't rained for some time here was to impact my life in ways I could never have anticipated.

The readers of Automobile Magazine might think that we editors get to drive Ferraris frequently, but that is not the case. True, I've been to Maranello more than once, and I've driven more than one Ferrari on Ferrari's famous Fiorano test track. In fact, I attended the media launch for the 458 Italia back in November 2009 and stayed at a hotel that was across a roundabout from the Ferrari factory. However, we have plenty of editors and staffers who have never been to Maranello, among them copy editor Rusty Blackwell, who solemnly informed me that, in his entire six-year tenure at Automobile Magazine, we'd never had a Ferrari in the office test fleet. Thankfully, Ferrari North America Public Relations Manager Matteo Sardi sent a 458 Italia test car our way for four brief but brilliant days in mid-July. We made the most of it because this was a Very Big Deal here at 120 E. Liberty Street.

When Acura unveiled the ZDX prototype at the New York auto show in 2009, the company glowingly described it as a type of vehicle never before seen, something completely unique in the marketplace.