If I buy it, crazy design is unacceptable.

For those of you who don't live near a major city, Eyebrows McGee nailed it. Check your nearest public university or community college. I grew up in a small town with a crappy library, but I was a short drive to two excellent college libraries that would lend to anyone with a driver's license.

America is the world leader in efficient, low-emission cars, right? Um...

I'm not complaining about another supercar coming to the market, particularly one with such a great pedigree. I'm just disappointed that it seems so... ordinary. If a V10 Nürburgring-killer can be called ordinary.

And I'm sure all of this enhanced access will lead to greater productivity. Not just more websurfing and busy-work emails.

Besides, I don't think anyone would call the NSX a "car you could put your grandmother in and tell her to hold the gas pedal".

Everyone who suggested HBO as the logical Top Gear home is right - this show needs editorial freedom to succeed, and it can't get it on a major network.

I'll never forget when I was walking through Astor Place in NYC and saw that the traffic light was out. That's a reasonably busy intersection - it was total chaos, a very dangerous situation in my opinion. So I called 911. The 911 operator told me " 911 is for emergencies only. This is not an emergency, you'll need to call the local precinct." I said it sure seems like an emergency - there's bound to be a car accident here, so why wait until one actually happens to send an officer to direct traffic? " Call the local precinct". I pointed out that I was on the street and don't usually carry a NYPD precinct map on me, so she told me the precinct number. Thanks, that's helpful. "Can you connect me?". " No, sir, I can't." "Can you tell me the number?" " FINE, it's XXX-XXXX." So I call the local precinct. I explain the situation to the desk clerk. "Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay. We'll get right on that." . I eventually gave up on waiting around for someone to show up. Not the last time I ever saw an inoperative traffic light, but definitely the last time I ever bothered to call the police about it.

Don't get me started about the time I got punched in the head in Midtown (on a weekday afternoon, at Christmastime no less) unprovoked, by a complete stranger, and the cops who eventually showed up didn't even bother getting out of their car to talk to me - they couldn't wait to get on with their "real" police work. (No civilians stopped to help me either, FWIW - definitely didn't help my faith in humanity.)

I think police officers these days have seen a few too many cop shows - the actual day to day work of maintaining law and order just isn't exciting enough. If guns, drugs and gangs aren't involved they can barely hide their boredom. Plus they clearly hate the people they serve - the commanding officer in this case just couldn't wait to indict the character of everyone at the scene by claiming no one called 911 (without bothering to check first). And I think your everyday good Samaritan has taken a cue from that.

Who buys this shit?

Detroit is stuck, just like the first Malaise era - it can't produce competitive small vehicles in the timeframe it needs to produce them (i.e. RIGHT NOW). But it can't stop building big, crappy, undesirable cars (SUV's) either, even if they nominally lose money on each one - with their large fixed cost base, they would lose even more if they stopped building them. So they're going to keep pumping out cars people don't really want, but they will sell them so cheaply that many people will be compelled to buy them. And the domestic manufacturers will cut every corner possible to try to limit their losses, so the crappy cars will become even crappier. And with negative cashflows, they will be unable to invest sufficiently in future models, perpetuating the cycle. Thus the malaise deepens and continues - more crappy cars that no one likes, sold so cheaply vs. better imports that people keep buying them even though they'd rather have something else if they could justify the expense.

Sounds a lot like Malaise II to me.