Auto News 5

Mileage to Date: 15,573
Months in Fleet: Six

The Miata turns twenty this year, and from the looks of its cartoonish face, it's never been happier. The front fascia's wide-eyed smile isn't the only smirk you'll be seeing, though, as the diminutive roadster has been tweaked to deliver even more fun behind the wheel.

Mercedes Benz has revealed the slightly tweaked styling of its flagship model. However, the real improvements are in the bits you cannot see.

Many of us grew up believing the American cultural imperative that "bigger is better." Even in the age of nanotechnology, as physical dimensions of electronic devices shrink, we are exhorted to be impressed because quantitative descriptives are bigger, thus better. Megapixels? Bigger is better. My digital cameras range from 1.1 to 6.6 Mp, far behind the state of the art; point-and-shoot cameras now seem to require at least 10 million pixels. And so it is in cars, where we demand more, whether we can use it or not. Horsepower? Of course bigger is better, so how about 500 hp or 600 or, the production pinnacle at the moment, 1001?