Auto News 5

The family in the apartment above mine squabbles quite frequently, but as I arrived home with the Elantra Touring, it turns out they were arguing as to who manufactured this slick wagon. Kudos to mother dearest, who didn't think something so shapely could be a Hyundai but threw the possibility out anyway.

Before we could drive the 2009 Roadster, a brief tour of the HQ and "factory" was provided. Two curious things about the HQ's location; the first was that it's in Menlo Park. Thomas Edison did much of his most notable work in Menlo Park--only Edison's Menlo Park was in New Jersey.

It costs about $450,000 and delivers a monstrous 670 hp, but the meanest Lamborghini since the legendary Miura SV must do without such modern conveniences as direct injection, a dual-clutch transmission, bixenon adaptive headlights, active differentials, a starter button, a radio, and stability control. Lamborghini engineers even considered eliminating four-wheel drive, which would have shaved another hundred pounds off the grand total. But in the end, they refrained from creating an even more radical rear-wheel-drive Murciélago, which might have made the 42/58 percent weight distribution unwieldy in the wet.

The ichange, the latest Frank M. Rinderknecht concept car creation, is backward but definitely not retro. It nicely recapitulates the fender profile of 1942-48 Buicks but applies it back to front. In other words, backward. As a kid, I admired those swoopy lines on Buicks and find they still look just fine here, especially as contrasted with the big bubble canopy, the teardrop shape of which gives the necessary directional thrust to the overall design composition. As an adult - or at least as someone of adult age - I have also admired the many multifarious Rinspeed concept cars without ever liking any of them very much. Every year, as reliably as the bird in a Swiss cuckoo clock, a new one pops up at the Geneva show. They are always interesting but also always a bit skewed from mainstream lines technically and more than a bit unrefined in style.

What if a Hummer suddenly became one of the greenest cars on the planet? This could happen given the right scenario, and two companies are attempting to align stars and planets to make it happen.