Still, with a mid-cycle update due in January, 2009, Porsche was able to tweak a bit of extra interest in its “budget” Boxster line by creating a limited edition run dubbed the RS60.

Read the full review here and comment below.

Witness the 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X MR. It’s not really derived from “racing” as such but rather “pro rally,” which is a cross between a drive down a dirt road in Spain or a snow-covered fire-trail in Michigan, and the Indy 500, except that rally cars have a navigator who gets what’s basically a TripTik because neither driver nor navigator has seen the road before.

A specific breed of cars has resulted from this form of competition, and they’re all small, powerful and have incredible handling. The rules state that they must be derived from standard production vehicles, with special “evolution” models for the top pro rally class.

That’s where the Lancer Evolution gets part of its name. The “X” denotes—in Roman numerals—the current generation of the model. And the MR says that it’s the most radical of all the Evo trim levels.

Did we mention fast? The Evo is that. Find out what else we think of it by reading the authentic carbuzzard.com new car review of the 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X MR…then come back and tell us what you think.

George P. Bloomberg brave the crumbs to tell about a recent drive in the Rolls Phantom Drophead Coupe, so put your top down and ride along for the experience. The come back and comment below. Tell us what YOU think.

Not bloody likely. The only reason Sir Paul McCartney—knighted not for slaying dragons but for being eminently taxable—is being chauffered about in a Lexus LS600h is because it looks green to do so. Could not Sir Paul better leave a Bambi-sized carbon footprint by riding about in the back seat of a Prius? Case closed.

But the rich are different from you and me. Al Gore may want us to live in tiny houses and ride in tiny cars—or better yet, ride bicycles—but he’ll buy carbon credits so he can ride guilt-free in a private jet. So the matter is really not about being green, but rather looking green.

One doesn’t have to be a Daddy Greenbucks like the former Vice President*, who took up the environmental cudgel only after being out of office, losing an election and made even more irrelevant that John Nance Garner’s “bucket of warm piss”**, to want to appear in public in greenface.

No, the annual marginal cost of gas even doubling in price—from, say, $2.50 to $5.00 per gallon—will have less effect than the annual chardonnay budget of the rich, much less the super rich. If the old rules of flaunting it if you got it still apply—and by visiting, well, driving through neighborhoods more affluent than mine suggest they do (and even those in lower economic strata do the same thing, only more modestly)—Ahnold would still be driving his Hummers.

No, it’s looking green that’s all-important, whether intentionally or otherwise, whether riding up to the Academy Awards—or My Little Genius pre-school—in a Prius. Or now, a Lexus hybrid. Or a more fuel efficient and less carbon impactful Mercedes-Benz. It’s what the soccer moms of the green, rich and famous (or not) are driving.

*Media mogul Ted Turner has traditionally known as Daddy Warbucks by radical environmental groups for his being a big source of their income. However, the appellation better applies to Gore who, instead of giving away money to eco-rad groups, makes money from global warming like a Daddy Warbucks makes money from war materiel.

**Not “warm spit,” as is commonly said, and certainly easier to accumulate.

So it was with great anticipation that we scheduled our 2008 Mazda MX-5 Miata with the power retractable hardtop for a road test. But we didn’t ask about the transmission. Egad! An automatic!

So we were testing three things in one: the Miata, as an entity compared to those that preceded it; the power retractable hardtop, and what it does to this sports car; and what’s with the automatic transmission anyway.  We’re happy to say that, yes, the Mazda Miata is still a happy warrior, and yes, the PRHT works but we think we’d rather have the fabric roof because we’re cheap and we’re traditionalists; and then there’s the automatic. But why tell you all this here when there’s a whole review, including video, on carbuzzard.com. Check it out here then tell us your opinions down below.

Technically it’s a parallelepiped, defined as “a solid with six faces, each a parallelogram and each being parallel to the opposite face,” or more colloquially, a rectangular solid. Or more simply, a box. Who says you don’t learn anything here?

We have more to say about this parallelepiped on wheels, of course. Click on Nissan Cube for our full take then come back and tell us whether a parallel…Cube is in your future.

The “bloodletting” I’m referring to in the first sentence, of course, is the recurring cry of automotive pundits that this or that (almost always) American manufacturer should eliminate this or that division or nameplate. The argument is not whether it should be done but whether which should be eliminated. At GM, they say, Pontiac and GMC should go. They’re already laying flowers on Mercury’s grave.

Not that the manufacturers themselves haven’t been a party to all this. After all, Chrysler pulled the plug on Plymouth and GM dumped Oldsmobile. Perhaps those were good decisions. Maybe GM had plans at the time to make Saturn the new Oldsmobile because the original Saturn model wasn’t working anymore and Saturn had more value as a brand than did Oldsmobile. It’s hard to get the young to go to Olds, but who wouldn’t want to go to Saturn. The young and adventuresome certainly would.

Plymouth, on the other hand, had become Chrysler’s budget brand. Unfortunately that had come to mean “cheap,” but that was more a reaction to Chrysler’s overall cheapo-looking materials that infected not only Plymouth but Chrysler branded and Dodge models as well. A market exists for inexpensive—dare we say frugal—wheels. That’s what Plymouth could have been, teamed with premium Chrysler, mainstream Dodge and “trail-ready” Jeep brands. But Plymouth is an opportunity missed.

The problem is not too many brands. The problem is brands that don’t mean anything. Back in the good old days, each of the GM divisions had its own powertrains, for example, and each had its own proponents and champions inside and outside the corporation. A Chevy small block was not an Olds V-8, a Buick motor was different from Cadillacs, and Pontiac had its own engines. Not all of the ideas were good ones—usually more because of marketing or market realities. Pontiac’s overhead cam six is one example of innovation that didn’t have a place at Pontiac or even in America where its sophistication was unnecessary compared with simpler and more powerful overhead valve V-8s: too much cost for too little power.

This wonderful diversity disappeared during the emissions/oil embargo fiasco in the seventies.  GM (and others) had to reduce engine choices just to meet the latest round of emissions requirements. Ford was almost put out of business in 1975 when emissions testing cars broke down (with problems unrelated to engine/emission systems) midway in EPA’s 50,000-mile emissions durability test. Exit engineering diversity, enter Cadillac Cimarron and a Pinto that long overstayed its welcome.

Diversity (of product) sells. Walk down the breakfast cereal aisle at a grocery store. There are, it seems, hundreds of choices, but they’re primarily made by three companies, Kellogg’s, General Mills and Post. Those companies didn’t get that way by cutting product. Indeed, just the opposite. There are nine different varieties of Cheerios alone, from the original to “Berry Burst Cheeries,” “Multigrain Cheerios” and of course, Frosted Cheerios.

To the argument that cars are different than cereal because cars are an expensive long-term purchase, we say bosh. Both are consumables, and applying the mathematical field of topology to marketing, they share primary characteristics. They’re end products on sale to the general public. That they’re not under the same roof, well, of course not. They’re bigger so they’re spread further apart. Though what city of any size doesn’t have an “automobile row”?

The trick is not to have as few products as possible but to have good product that people want to buy. “Sawdust ‘n Woodchips Cheerios” won’t sell—except to the most hardcore tree-hugger perhaps– even if General Mills were to “Fiber One” cereal. How many different kinds of cereal does General Mills make? A bunch. Any first year marketing student will tell you that one way of increasing sales is to increase the amount of space taken in the cereal aisle.

It’s not the only way, of course, and simply putting identical cereal in different boxes won’t help. That’s badge engineering, practiced at its worst by British Leyland when, for example, it slapped the MG brand on Austin products and the moribund Riley label on anything that made the remotest of sense. Or not. BL’s biggest problem was that that its product simply wasn’t very good, inspiring among others the bumper sticker that read, “The parts falling off this car are of the finest British quality.”

Kellogg’s, however, offers “The best to you each morning.” With General Mills it’s “The big G stands for Goodness.”

Thank goodness, the other GM from Michigan seems to be catching on.

Toyota didn’t rise just because it had just one nameplate. It grew because its product was good. And to the contrary, Toyota found it necessary to add brands, as did Honda and Nissan. With Prius, Toyota is poised to add another.

So talk about which division stays and which goes is so much proverbial rearranging the deck chairs. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler should capitalize on the decades of goodwill earned over decades and expand it by building good cars that people want to buy. Then the rest will take care of itself.

Bloodletting is so out of medical fashion.

The boat we’re talking about is that the “premium sports sedan” description somehow misses the fact that the 2009 Acura TSX is smooth. Smooth as velour pavement. Smooth as cream on strawberries. Smooth as that guy your daughter brought home from college. Though with the TSX you do not have to spend the evening checking the function of your shotgun.

We’re just kidding about the shotgun but not about the supersmothness of the 2009 Acura TSX. Take a ride with us and we’ll tell you more about Mr. Smoothie, then come back and tell us what you think.

As such, it doesn’t seem like there’d be much to talk about with the 2008 Corvette: front engine, big horsepower, plastic body and, especially in recent years, a tenacious grip on the road. What more needs be said?

Quite a bit, actually. While the 2008 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 continues with its impressive particulars and 505 horsepower, the “ordinary” Corvette Coupe and Convertible have a new engine dubbed the LS3. There’s more, of course, so click here to read the authentic carbuzzard.com new car review of the 2008 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible (and don’t miss the new carbuzzard.com RoadSkill Report video!).

Don’t forget to come back and tell us what you think. 

And why do we say that? The law of supply and demand says the current price bump is from the well-known effect of supply and demand. Pardon the tautology for a moment because in this case, much of the demand comes from future-trading speculators who are pushing the price up in hopes that the price will keep going up, a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Futures trading is like signing on for home heating fuel at a price set for the season. If the price goes up, you win. If the price falls, you’ll pay higher than market price for your heating oil. A futures trader promises to pay $X/bbl for the delivery of $Y/bbl in the futures. The more traders who think the price is going up will buy now, that that demand is what is pushing up prices.

It’s an effect that will continue as long as the prices don’t fall. Pardon the tautology, but when prices do start to fall, the speculators will get burned and oil—and the price of everything depends on it—will fall as well. That’s gasoline prices, the prices of plastics made from petroleum, product transported by petroleum fuels.

Can prices really fall? There are people who thought that real estate prices could never come down. Surprise.

We’re trying to economize our way out of the mess we’re in, but what economists call elasticity of demand for petroleum is small. Sure, sales of SUV’s have plummeted, but new cars are a tiny segment of the overall vehicle fleet, which is anything but a majority of petroleum consumed. Repeating the above, there are also plastics, plus heating oil, lubricating oil, etc., etc.

Transit ridership is up significantly as well, but again, transit serves only a very small percentage of (predominantly) commuters. And for the most part, they have to drive to the parking lots at train or bus stations. Most commuting is not periphery-to-city-center. It’s from suburb to suburb, and the only way to cut that is for workers to relocate. If you think the vehicle fleet demand for petroleum is inflexible, residence-based demand for transportation is a slab of granite.

And for home heating, there are only so many sweaters Jimmy Carter can wear.

Indeed, the quickest way to affect supply and demand is via supply. Let’s drill in ANWAR, let’s drill off-shore, let’s drill in Montana where there’s enough new-found newly-accessible oil to make a sheik turn as white as his sheet.

True, it will take a few years for the supply to come on-line. However, just the promise of more oil will cause futures traders to have second thoughts about buying with the belief that prices will continue to spiral. And when that happens, the future traders will run away from high prices like a two-year old from a big hairy spider.

What’s more, when prices start to fall, the Saudi family will get less return from the oil they sell…and to maintain their bizarre standard of living, they’ll have to pump more oil, and to do so will further depress the world price for oil.

The Saudis, furthermore, sit on top of a known quantity of oil (unless you subscribe to the theory that oil is not compressed dinosaurs but organic molecules escaping through the faults in the earth’s crust where most petroleum deposits are) that’s easy to extract. Other oil elsewhere still awaits discovery, awaits technology, and awaits the depletion of Saudi oil.

Drilling, even the announcement of an intention to drill, will lower prices. Building new refineries—did I mention that Montanans want refineries, and will get them unless some guy who goes to work in a robe and sits on a bench contravenes the will of the majority—will do the same.

There’s nothing holy about high oil prices. Keeping prices low is good for the economy, and what’s good for the economy is good for ordinary folk like you and me. Drill today, even promise to drill and keep the promise, for lower fuel and petroleum based products. You’ll be glad you did.