Auto News 5

BMW has redesigned its roadster for 2009, and the change amounts to comprehensive maturation, if not quite the obvious transformation from newborn Z3 to adolescent Z4. The new two-seater retains the name Z4, but it adopts two clumsy new model designations, the sDrive30i and sDrive35i. You'll notice there's no M roadster anymore, and word is that none is forthcoming. Nor will we see a return of the historically slow-selling hatchback coupe variant.

Hey, it's spring, so even though it was cloudy and only 53 degrees this morning, I lowered the G37's fully automatic hard top and drove the six miles to work al fresco. It takes about 20 or 25 seconds to put down the top and about the same to bring it back up, using a well-marked button on the center console. The seat heater worked quickly, and with the two front side windows up, I was quite comfortable. Once I reached town and 35-mph speeds, I lowered all of the windows. I had no problems hearing the Diane Rehm Show, and then I switched to WKAR Classical from Michigan State University, and it was coming through nicely, too, despite the loss of a predictable acoustic environment.

New Yorkers would have been impressed if we'd told them that the makers of the Aptera 2e, the two-seat, three-wheeled oddity we were driving around Soho, promised the equivalent of more than 200 mpg and a 100-mile range between charges of its battery pack. But we never got that far. The mind of every single New Yorker who saw us was blown at first sight. We could have told them anything.