Auto News 5

There are classics in car design, such as Ford's Mustang and Porsche's 911, whose shapes have persisted with subtle variations for forty years. Jaguar's XJ sedan is almost equally long-lived, but sales have dropped as it passed through many iterations that were all much too closely based--even the last all-aluminum model--on Sir William Lyon's original design. Now, finally, the XJ has a completely new shape, impressively handsome and vastly better, in terms of space and comfort, than any of its forebears.

I know this isn't the first thing I should be commenting on after my first-ever drive in a Porsche 911, but, wow, what a gorgeous interior. The no-nonsense, leather-swathed cabin says "expensive and fast" better than our Audi R8, with all of its carbon fiber trim, or our Nissan GT-R, with its multiple electronic display screens.

The AMG Driving Academy at the Nürburgring is a trifecta of automotive scholarly brilliance: there are cars and then there are AMGs; there are tracks and then there's the Nürburgring, and there are schools, and then there's the AMG Driving Academy. But I'm not yet aware of this as my shuttle picks me up from the Frankfurt airport. As we get closer to the famed 'Ring, Porsche after tuned Porsche drives by in the other direction, a gaggle of Nissan Skylines buzz past us, wastegates whistling. An old bi-plane flies by, doing loop-de-loops in the sky above us into the sunset. I smile as I realize that I'm at Ground Zero in the promised land of engine-powered mayhem.