In all seriousness, this is a wonderful feature and addition to Jalopnik. A nice third stream in automotive design critique. Not as curmudgeonly as Cumberford in Automobile. Not as deliberately bizarre or desperately humorous as Clarkson.

And look, not a mention of horsepower or torque numbers! How nice.

Hey Ray, I only occasionally read now and barely comment anymore. And once, ok twice, upon a time I liked this place enough to get comment of the day and send in qs of the day. And even buy a t-shirt or two.

My interest dropped off hugely after Lieberman, Spinelli and Davey G left. We stopped getting reviews like those of the LX600h and RS4, and ended up with ones that read like Autoblog. Or Edmunds. Or any other car site.

Murille's the only truly original voice left. Guess my weekend browsing will spike.

You know, it's funny. As the content here becomes more and more generic, it's like watching what happened in the buff books all over again. Except...in digital.

He's saying that if the helicopter and the wreckage of the ship were far enough outside the event horizon to not get pulled back in time with the Island, then wouldn't Jin be as well?

In other words, if Jin, the helicopter (with fellow Oceanic survivors on board) and the sinking ship were all roughly the same distance from the island, how can we believe only one of them got sucked back through time?

Interesting observation.

Going out on a limb and prepared to get raked over the coals.

Sure, it's a fine drive, but as a concept and a product, I can't think of a more pointless, cynical vehicle in years.

It's hideously ugly, it's in no way practical from a cargo or passenger stand point, it's not efficient, it answers a question no one was asking, it's stupidly expensive, and as the drive system moves to the X5 and others in the range it moves from being merely pointless and actually becomes a black hole sucking down BMW's credibility.

Worst of all, it defames the legacy of the AMC Eagle!

The dancing on the grave is a bit premature. It's not like Hoffmeier is coming back. van Hooydonk, who was almost solely responsible for the 6 series, is the new design head.

Aside from that, love him or hate him, Bangle was the first design director to drag auto design into the 21st Century. Really, how much had changed in car design before him? We were stuck with the same basic shapes and proportions from the 1980s into the 1990s. The unending reign of the Audi 5000.

There isn't a manufacturer out there who hasn't been influenced by Bangle's designs. His finger prints are on virtually every car rolling off the plant floor today. And really, would you rather have 2001 BMW 7 Series or a fade-into-the-background 2001 Mercedes S Class?

He was divisive, and I think history will look kindly on him. I'm not about to buy a BMW, but I'm thankful that he was willing to break the mold and force other designers to up their games.

It's not just the SUVs and it's not just the women. During the week, my little Oakland neighborhood is quietly proud of its residents' ability to parallel park, stop at stop signs, use turn signals and just generally demonstrate basic driving skills.

But on weekends, all hell breaks loose as Beijing suddenly gets transported to the East Bay and I end up yelling "It's Chinatown!" like Jack Nicholson at every intersection.

Stop signs? They're not in Mandarin or Cantonese, so let's just ignore those. Parking? We can fit cars three wide right across the street. Turn signals? Those are only good in the year of the monkey. Green light? I'm not done eating this pork bun yet, so I'm going to continue to sit here for another cycle or two.

Once, my little liberal heart held one only one undying, irrefutable, unchangeable bias. But on Saturday and Sunday I come perilously close to sounding like a Korean War vet who got stuck north of the of the 38th parallel.

Take those photos down! It's like watching a snuff film. It's too much! I can't stand to look!

As a fellow Oaklander, I suggest we get a posse together and go hunt down the perps.

Thank you sir. I ran out on 99 in Seattle and barely managed to coast it to an off ramp.

Yes, brown and yellow must have been on special. In '78, while they were building a new paint shop you had three color options: black, white and mustard.

They should have just limited everyone to black.

Very close, though mines a Series II rather than the more reliable (it's all relative) III.

[www.flickr.com]

The fact that I can't insert the damn photo demonstrates my lack of http skills.

The fact that I own makes people think I'm nuts. The fact that it runs makes people think I have great mechanical skills. The fact that it's sitting waiting for me to decide whether to rebuild the transmission or just go for a V8 swap reveals the truth about my lack of major overhaul skills.

They've fallen into the same trap as virtually every manufacturer with a semblance of success -- marketers replaced engineers.

Audi, at this very moment at least, actually seems to be led by designers. The result being some lovely, if a bit cold, designs that look and feel German. Solid, reliable, fast.

Merc is slowly crawling out from the dregs that were the late '90s and early '00s. The first gen of the M-Class was the absolute nadir. But until they get over this Toyota like need to be competitive in EVERY category in EVERY country, they'll never recover their former glory.

I'm worried BMW might be so far down the "marketer" line that there is no return for them.

However, if they replace any of the original Lucas electronics they should be given the "prince of darkness penalty" and be forced to drive with a smoke machine in the passenger seat. You know, to recreate what it would have been like if they left it original.