[Bonhams via Hodinkee]

Name: No, Speed Racer, No

Motto: "To Boldly Slow…Where No Man Has Wanted to Slow Before."

Club Principles: A support group for people with too many points on their license to continue speeding. You probably know the feeling, even if you haven't bumped up against your state's license-pulling limit: The first ticket is almost a non-event, more a speeding tax than a deterrent. By the second, you begin to analyze how, where, and why you haul ass. By the third, you're well and truly paranoid, eyeing overpasses and frantically glancing into the trees. ("The pigeons. They have radar guns." "Honey, they're just birds." "Are you kidding? That's what they want you to think.")

Have six months left before it's safe to flat-foot it? Your next five-over going to get you arrested? Everyone needs a hand to hold on to.

Name: The Zipcar Abstinence Group

Motto: "Keep it Zipped."

Club Principles: Exactly what it sounds like-a club dedicated to stopping people in big cities from using Zipcars for prostitution and random sexual acts. (This happens. Seriously.) Achin' for some on-the-go bacon? Dying for a good old-fashioned game of Hide the Shift Knob, only without the time-consuming cleanup? Sorry, pal—some of us actually use these things to get around in, and nothing ruins the morning traffic slog like the smell of someone else's man-butter. Do the rest of us a favor and stick to your own garage—or at least the nearest bus station.

Name: We Bad

Motto: "You suck. Admit it."

Club Principles: A club for bad drivers who want to improve their skills behind the wheel. Don't worry—this isn't you. It's never you. It's always the other guy, and if he weren't such an asshat, you wouldn't have driven your car over that cliff and into that orphanage and ruined little Timmy's Christmas and now you're in jail and wait until your lawyer sees what you did to that guy with the shiv you made out of that iPod, only seriously, it wasn't your fault…

Name: (No) Love and Theft

Motto: "Steal my car. Please."

Club Principles: A club for people who drive vehicles so desperately crappy that they would literally be better off walking. You may not have been here, but you probably know someone who has. This is for the folks who avoid driving like the plague, the people who hate their cars with a passion. Ford Topaz catch fire on a daily basis? Datsun Honey Bee once give you the Hanta virus? Welcome home. Leave your conscience at home, leave your keys on the table, and leave the building before your insurance company finds out.

Name: Art and Science, My Ass

Motto: "Get off my lawn!"

Club Principles: A club for people who think old-school, front-wheel-drive Cadillacs are just fine, thank you very much, and who don't like the division's current styling direction. There are several thousand of these people, and they all live within a hundred-mile radius of Boca Raton, Florida. Most of them drive a gold-plated DTS and believe the internet to be a compellingly old-fashioned mystery show featuring Angela Lansbury. Which is probably just as well.

[Bakersfield.com]

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

I am not much of a mail person, with one exception: I tend to mark my travels around the world with a single postcard sent to my maternal grandmother. Most of them make it to her house in Southeastern Hungary, with the exception of one from New Orleans which I mailed off on the afternoon of September 10, 2001. That one got lost.

After our Woodward Dream Cruise team returned to New York City from Detroit in our garish yellow Camaro, it was time for another postcard. I picked one of those stichable maps which come with a needle and a length of thread for sewing in your itinerary.

It was only after I’d left the store that I discovered the complete absence of Detroit. As you can see on the scanned postcard, this cannot be explained by either typography or layout. And even though the population of Detroit has fallen precariously from its 1950s peak of over 2 million to its current 900,000, the designer of the map has found space for such metropolises as Glasgow, Montana (population: 3,253) or Tonopah, Nevada (population: 2,627).

Do these people hate America or what?

I did what any red-blooded Euro boy with space aplenty in his heart for America would do: I took a Sharpie to the card. Just so my grandmother won’t be misled. It’s rather indecent to do that to a nice old lady.

You will know Kozyndan as the people whose lapine reimagining of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, along with other rabbit-themed work, was used without credit by Sony for their similarly bunny-infused Bravia television ad.

The husband and wife team of Kozue and Dan Kitchens have a serious thing for rabbits. Not only does their work feature various terrestrial and marine rabbits, their proposal against the scourge of the SUV also utilizes giant rabbits. Here’s how they describe their above piece, titled Thank the gods for Public Transportation:

Everyone with SUVs should be crushed by giant sleeping rabbits until their eye balls pop out of their heads, no?

If you happen to own an SUV, please don’t take this personally. Admire instead the casual ease the giant rabbit snuggles up to the hot engine with.

Source: Kozyndan

Describing the building, architects 3GATTI say, "A building to be dedicated to the automobile, where the automobile is also the vehicle to visit the space. You visit the first external ramp of the museum with your own private car, like a SAFARI, you park your car on the roof and visit by foot the internal ramp going down. The building could seem to appear as an urban car exhibitor, with its corners and angles filled with tempting shining exposed automobiles."

The idea is that you'll be able to drive on the building's roof, park, then walk down into it through an internal ramp. Check out the gallery for a diagram of exactly how they get the cars onto those precarious ramps. [via + MOOD]

Hakimullah Mehsud became the leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban—the Afghan Taliban’s Pakistani franchise—sometime this fall, after his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud got the Predator treatment from the United States.

Baitullah left office similarly to how he had acquired it: the Pakistani Taliban’s founder, Nek Mohammad, met his fate in a very similar manner in the spring of 2004, handing over the reins to Baitullah, who expanded the insurgency into the very heart of Pakistan.

In a recent profile, the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan recalls meeting Hakimullah in South Waziristan—the Pakistani Taliban’s heartland—in October 2007. The 28-year-old commander had already had a reputation with cars and guns:

[Hakimullah Mehsud] was already famous within the Taliban for his skills in battle – his ability to handle a Kalashnikov and a Toyota pick-up were legendary. “He is the best after Nek Mohammad,” our Taliban driver told us during a hair-raising journey before the meeting in 2007.

Of said hair-raising journey, the author offers a vivid recollection:

He took us for a drive. To demonstrate his skill with the vehicle, he drove like a man possessed, manoeuvring around razor sharp bends at impossible speeds. He finished the demonstration by braking inches short of a several hundred foot drop. While the rest of us sat in stunned silence, he just laughed chillingly and stuck the car in reverse to smoothly continue the journey.

To imagine that cruising in blood-curdling detail, remember that mountainous South Waziristan is not exactly known for its road network. In that tribal borderland wedged between Afghanistan and Pakistan, this is where you do your driving:

Source: BBC, Photo Credit: A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images, John Moore/Getty Images

According to a representative for the charity, the program is called Leo's Chop Shop and is "a scale-model car building class that teaches students the techniques of building quality replicas." The concept itself seems harmless, although our biggest problem is with the name itself — "chop shop."

A chop shop, as defined by Merriam-Webster is "a place where stolen automobiles are stripped of salable parts." There are no other positive definitions.

These kids likely have a hard enough time as it is and putting "chop shop" on a college application or resume probably isn't going to help.

Human beings aren't strictly rational animals. Car enthusiasts, for all their emphasis on numbers and measurements, are roughly equal parts rational and rationalizing, and there's no end to the myths that have grown around car culture. We believe that many of those myths, while perhaps not strictly true, are beneficial and help make car culture a fun place to be. We therefore choose to live as if these myths are pure truth, and we fully support all those who do. Click Next to see some of our most cherished.

MYTH: Cars were just plain better in the old days.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT: Cars are safer, more reliable, more efficient, and perform better today than they were in any version of "the old days."

WHY WE BELIEVE IT ANYWAY: Because there are different versions of "better," and one definition has to include some sort of subjective measure of soul. As many have said, the rear end on that '59 Bel Air has enough soul for a Motown collection. And we believe that almost any older car, from AMCs to old Volvos, can have more soul, charisma, personality, or what have you have you than something modern designed to do nothing more than hold four sets of golf clubs and then crash. Plus, owning an older car almost invariably means you're working on it, and working on your own car makes your car more yours as well as making you a smarter and more capable person.

MYTH: Ferraris are the ultimate automobiles.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT: The overwhelming Ferrari mystique obscures the fact that these things are overpriced, overstyled, breakdown-prone pose-mobiles.

WHY WE BELIEVE IT ANYWAY: So who gives a damn? Frankly, the question of Ferrari ownership is probably never going to be one of our problems, and it's good to have someone at the epicenter of automotive lust. Even if you're not a Ferrari person, you probably have some equivalent ultra-car marque as the angel on top of your imaginary lottery-winning Christmas tree, and the same logic applies-someone has to be the ultimate, and the ideal of the ultimate will always be more important than the reality. At least this ideal comes with its own F1 team.

MYTH: The Indy 500 is one of the greatest races in the world.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT: It's been trading on its storied history as it slowly becomes a boring and expensive spec race.

WHY WE BELIEVE IT ANYWAY: Because we believe there's still a chance that it could return to its innovative, anything-goes, world's-best-drivers glory days. Exactly how this may happen is unclear to us, and it won't happen by next year if ever, but we hold out hope. And it's still much more fun and interesting to watch than the other Greatest Race traditionally held on the same day, the glitzier but far more past-its-prime Grand Prix of Monaco.

MYTH: Car dealers can't be trusted.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT: With contemporary consumer protection and access to information, you can probably trust them now more than ever before.

WHY WE BELIEVE IT ANYWAY: Because consumer skepticism, at least educated consumer skepticism, is a good thing, especially on major purchases. Trust must be earned, right? Now, this doesn't mean prospective car buyers should walk into dealerships and say "Prove to me you're not a crook!" because for one thing, you can't prove a negative. What it means is to do your research, don't let car lust carry you away, and always, always, always take a Jalopnik reader with you when buying a car.

MYTH: The Prius sucks.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT: The Prius is a perfectly competent automobile that delivers very good fuel economy and has thousands of satisfied owners.

WHY WE BELIEVE IT ANYWAY: In its quest to save precious energy resources it's created a shortage of material resources. It's hideous. For the first successful hybrid, it's remarkably uninteresting from a tech point of view-when our sister site Gizmodo featured one at their gallery and ran its 12-volt battery down showing off its flashy dashboard, we were a bit miffed to find that it couldn't jump-start itself. And seriously, we'd rather be taken out and shot out behind the storage shed than spend $28,000 on a perfectly competent automobile that delivers very good fuel economy.

MYTH: LeMans is a great movie.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT: LeMans is a collection of racing footage inside of a really terrible movie.

WHY WE BELIEVE IT ANYWAY: Because that's a really, really stupendous collection of racing footage in that terrible movie. Also, the terrible movie includes Steve McQueen, which softens the blow somewhat. It really seems like making LeMans was an excuse for the director, cast, and crew to hang around the Circuit De La Sarthe with race cars for a few days, and that's something we can all understand.

MYTH: Manual transmissions are better than automatic transmissions.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT: Automatics are catching up; the dual-clutch units can outperform manual boxes in many cases, and even their fuel-economy advantage may be disappearing.

WHY WE BELIEVE IT ANYWAY: Again, there's better and there's better. In this case, being in total control of your car is fun and interesting, and more fun and interest are better. To many, learning stick is still an achievement-although maybe it shouldn't be, heck, it isn't all THAT hard, but no matter-and being more capable is better than having everything done for you. We could really give a damn if the Porsche PDK systems are a tenth faster to sixty or whatever the numbers are; we didn't bother to look them up because we don't care. We would rather drive to
sixty a bit slower than ride there.

MYTH: Gaze upon my works, ye not worthy, and despair; for I am Bob motherfucking Lutz.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT: What, Bob Lutz? So-called Father of the Viper? He's just a marketing guy.

WHY WE BELIEVE IT ANYWAY: Listen, we need colorful figures in this world, and Bob Lutz is the most colorful person we have in the American car business. Perhaps in any business. His is a tradition going back as far as Barnum, or at least Don King. Are auto writers worried that Fritz Henderson will land a helicopter in their backyard, walk into their house, and yell at them? Is Alan Mulally or Scott Monty going to challenge us to a duel anytime soon? Nope. And seriously, without Lutz, we wouldn't have so much of modern car culture, from the phrase "The Ultimate Driving Machine" to the aforementioned Viper. Yes, there's way too much marketing in the world today, but that's not the problem. The problem is that Lutz isn't doing all of it.

For those of you prone to fits of epilepsy, please proceed with caution, the frame-rate does not appear kind. To watch it in HD, click through to Vimeo.

See if you can play spot the Fiat in the gallery above.

Capristo Exhaust Systems GmbH - Capristo Day 2009

More then 80 Ferrari-driver from all over Germany arrived on Saturday 12 September in Sundern to rev up their engines. But not only bolides from Maranello came to meet in Sundern a few Lamborghini and Maserati were seen as well. The invitation came from Antonio Capristo, owner of the worldwide known company Capristo Exhaust Systems GmbH, where customized exhaust systems for sports cars are produced.

For about 7 years Capristo Exhaust Systems GmbH produces superlative exhaust systems and muffler. Everything is developed in the in-house technology centre. The sport exhaust systems are produced under strict exhaust, quality and safety regulations and are made of the finest high-grade steel (heat-proof - high-grade steel T309). They are also known for their fitting accuracy, sound and the excellent visual appearance. This do the Ferrari driver know very well! A remote control also belongs to the formula for success of Antonio Capristo. After having programmed the exhaust system, the remote control operates and changes the sound of it while driving.

Already around lunchtime the "Ferraristi" met on the premises of Capristo in der Kalmecke 5 in 59846 Sundern, Germany. But also a lot of people came to see the motorcade from Capristo Exhaust Systems GmbH through the city of Sundern.

At first the sports cars gathered at the town hall, where the mayor Friedhelm Wolf and pastor Michael Schmitt greeted the guests in front of the town hall. All sports car fans had the chance to peer the noble sports cars. Almost all models Ferrari ever built were there to be admired. After that they went towards Schirigswalder Platz respectively to Absolu Concept, a noble furniture store, where the "Ferraristi" received little refreshments.

In the late afternoon they went towards Langenscheid. There was a boats trip on the Sorpesee on the programme. At 9 p.m. a show with Italian music and dancer was presented on the Seebühne. The dancer arrived specially from Italy for this event. As good-bye there were fantastic fireworks above the Sorpesee.

[Capristo via WCF]

Exhibit A

The problem:

We see a young lady trying to place a bag of groceries inside her Audi R8 V10. She is prevented from doing so by the R8’s 5-liter V10 engine which gives off enough heat to prepare an instant meal from the chicken and the produce in her shopping bag. This is undesirable as her dinner guests are yet to arrive and she would hate to serve them a less than fresh meal.

The Jalopnik solution:

Invite dinner guests to parking lot. Produce copy of Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine! and find a recipe. Prepare chicken on intake manifold of engine. Serve piping hot. Initiate highbrow petrolhead conversation by pointing out Bernd Rosemeyer’s 1936 Auto Union Type C racing car on shopping bag.

Exhibit B

The problem:

We see a bike rack installed above the 5-liter V10 engine of a Lamborghini Gallardo, with a bicycle clipped to it. Even if this is a high-end racing bike made of titanium with a melting point of 3034 °F, the immense heat from the engine will cause it to melt and splatter said engine with molten metal. This is undesirable, as a Lamborghini with a melted engine will quickly come to a complete stop.

The Jalopnik solution:

Take off bike rack. Take off bike. Get on bike. Find skilled driver. Hold on to passenger side rearview mirror. Acquire balls of titanium. Enjoy 200 MPH ride on skinny bike tires.

Model: Natalie Polgar. Photo Credit: Balázs Fenyő (Audi), Milano Fixed (Lamborghini)

Here's the data he runs, based on the "peak" horsepower available, which ignores that most vehicles don't frequently use their peak horsepower:

I decided to run the numbers for today's overpowered vehicle fleet. (The math is below.) Turns out we have something on the order of 51 billion peak horsepower sitting in our driveways. That's an incredible 38,276 gigawatts of power available. That absolutely dwarfs the nameplate capacity of our electrical power plants, which total up to a mere 1,087 gigawatts. In fact, each week of 2008, a horrible year for car sales, almost 38 gigawatts of capacity rolled into the streets of America.

Unfortunately, this is where things go awry. After pointing out that we were able to defeat Hitler with 80% less horsepower, which makes little sense, he comes to three conclusions.

The Tata Nano Argument
One, the current size and power of our cars and trucks is just stupid. The Tato Nano, with its 33 horsepower engine, is the way to go. (If all of the world's cars looked like that, going electric would also be a lot easier.) Let's merely note here that the average American passenger car has 7.5 times as much horsepower as the Nano and yet both vehicles will get you to the grocery store or to Nevada or wherever.

Technically, this is true, but with a top speed of 65 MPH it's not going to get there as quickly. Nor does the Tata Nano have to carry the same amount of safety equipment as a comparable car built in Europe or the U.S., so if that Nano gets into an accident the chance of injury is much, much higher (but none of his arguments work if you factor in progress). And if we're concerned about energy efficiency, the new Toyota Prius gets approximately the same mileage as the Tata Nano and will get there faster and with more comfort, more safety equipment, and more style.

The We Don't Need It Argument
Second, the people of just one hundred years ago would be awed by the amount of horsepower every American has access to. The funny thing - the irony, perhaps - is that we no longer need that amount of horsepower to do anything useful. The people of the prairie were scratching and clawing for every kilowatt hour of useful work they could wring out of some oil or the wind. The people of Omaha these days don't need anything like the direct energy services of their forerunners.

Yes, pity the poor people of Omaha with computers, air-conditioning, live-saving equipment like MRIs, and televisions. Clearly, it would be better if we went back to living without as much electricity.

The Insanity Argument
Third, and here's the hopeful part - no sane country would encourage its consumers to get on the technical and performance treadmill that led us to this point. Who would want this piece of the American technological infrastructure and set of consumer expectations? It's resource inefficient and expensive. I wouldn't expect the Chinese to follow our path to the American car anytime soon.

First of all, the Chinese are in fact doing all they can to mimic American cars and it is a growing market for American cars. So, they're apparently as crazy as we are.

But what's really missing here is that American cars are becoming more efficient in large part because of power increases. Automakers are using lightweight parts, direct injection, turbocharging, and other technology to increase power and, at the same time, lower fuel usage. The 2010 Ford Flex with Ecoboost (direct-injections plus twin-turbo) nets 355 HP, an increase in power of 93 HP over the naturally aspirated V6 model, while actually improving the mileage of the vehicle. We've engineered V8 power with V6 fuel efficiency.

Better efficiency is a good thing, but so is comfort, safety, and reliability. People in India aren't buying Nanos because they've made the conscious decision to limit themselves to 33 HP, they're doing so because they can't afford anything else. They're going in the opposite direction by trading the efficiency of bikes and motorcycles for something bigger. Americans can afford bigger, nicer, safer, more powerful cars for the simple reason that we, as an economy, have sought out progress, not rejected it. [Greentechhistory]

Wonder what they’re like on the inside? Not too spacious, decked out with a tile floor and stuffed animals:

Human passengers are welcomed by loud pop music and kretek smoke:

Image and Video Credit: Zsolt Molnár, with a hat tip to Kari

It's difficult to judge the attitude of a million people, even if those million people share a common interest in the form of tens of thousands of amazing cars. There was no question everyone was having a blast at Woodward. People were happily falling all over themselves to tell you when they'd bought their cars or where they'd found them, explain what they'd done to them, and tell you stories and lies about them. But although there was no question they were having the time of their lives, there was an undercurrent of pessimism, and perhaps even a little anger. In addition to the usual They-Don't-Build-‘Em-Like-This-Anymore and The-Golden-Age-Of-Cars-Is-Over-Forever harangues you get whenever classic car guys get together, there were a lot of angry jeers directed towards Cash for Clunkers, hybrids, environmentalism, safety measures, and other carpocalyptic trends in the broader society — not to mention a strong undercurrent of Kids-These-Days-Would-Rather-Play-Video-Games.

It hardly needs repeating that no — the evident immortality of the small-block and the solid rear axle aside — they don't build ‘em like they used to. And this isn't the place to go into how, with more reliability, efficiency, and survivability, this isn't all bad. What's worth discussing is whether any of today's cars are the sort of machines that will patrol Woodward in 30 years, God willing, and some folks just don't see it happening. A look at the showrooms is inconclusive, because while you can get a meat-eating monster of a Camaro or a Mustang, can you really afford it if you're just out of college, the way you could with many of the originals? Looking at it another way, in ten years the young rodders of the future will have the opportunity to buy and mod the cast-off new cars of today. What will they have to choose from? Next year's new Fiesta, maybe, but what else? And make no mistake, customization is key; even the folks behind the Scion offerings recognized that, never mind that their kits were oriented less to performance than making sure the driver was dramatically lit. If you can't make your car absolutely your own, demonstrate some creative ownership instead of just being a car owner, you aren't part of the scene.

And will there be a scene at all? You may have noticed that the Dream Cruise took place on an Ozone Action Day, an air-quality alert thing declared by regional governments; as forty thousand engines idled proudly beneath signs telling us not to fill up our car's tank during daylight hours. Easy to laugh it off, but you had to be prepared to do so coughing and with watery eyes, because the air was soupy with unburnt hydrocarbons and we don't mean the smell of bacon. Sure, gasoline is the next best thing to bacon for a lot of us, but not to everybody, and certainly not to the people who keep going on about how the petroleum is running out while we're trying to have a good time. Which is annoying, because so many of those people are so young, and so many people keep telling them cars are evil.

And in the end, that is the big worry. If we're honest, we care more about car culture than we do about cars; says so up top there. Will car culture survive all this?

We say yes, it will. It will get harder-face it, when gas was cheap and cars were somewhat cheap and they taught driver's ed and auto shop in almost every school, it was easier to be a gearhead, and you could fall into it almost by accident. But kids will always love cars. We're not all that worried about today's kids having nothing to work on, not after the love we saw Pacers and Pintos and Vega wagons getting at Woodward; people are adaptable, especially car people, and they will modify anything. We're not too worried about people giving kids the message that cars are evil, because kids love evil. But we're not worried at all, not the least little bit, about the "kids these days" because of this fact: Throughout history, whenever anyone's disparaged the "kids these days," they've been wrong. They've just been afraid of being out of touch, of the world going on without them, and of change, technological and otherwise. The car guy you hear complaining about Today's Youth at Woodward is feeling the negative part of nostalgia-that realization nothing stays the same-and down deep, he's probably just worried that someday they'll stop making replacement jets for his Holly double-pumper. Car guys don't get much more afraid of change than that.

Two instances of a behavior may not count as a rigorously observed pattern, but it appears as though high-profile conductors have a thing for high-powered automobiles.

First there was the great Austrian Herbert von Karajan and his penchant for Ferraris, especially the sound of their V12 engines, which he considered superior to anything he could make a symphonic orchestra deliver. Von Karajan owned a Ferrari 250 GT Lusso, which you could observe first-hand at the Chromjuwelen exhibition in Vienna last year if you were lucky. I was lucky:

(This is the same car which was owned in chestnut brown by Steve McQueen and was featured a few months ago in Jalopnik.)

Then there’s Carlos Kleiber, also of Austrian origin, with his disdain for written contracts and the public eye. A 1996 story from the magazine Culture Kiosque describes his conducting the Bavarian State Orchestra in Inglostadt in exchange for an Audi A8, “a four-wheel-drive sportscar fitted out with an 8 cylinder engine, worth more than $100,000” as described by Culture Kiosque, somewhat blurring the line between all-aluminum executive sedans and sports cars.

While fully researching this would consume years of library time, I would not be surprised if this proto-pattern was the ground zero of the Ferrari-symphony metaphor.

If you’re aware of any more examples, whether it’s Harnoncourt in love with a Testa Rossa, Furtwängler racing a 750 Monza or Fricsay motoring about in a Superamerica, do let us know.

Photo Credit: Sveriges Radio, Zsolt Csikós, S. Lauterwasser/DG

They say:

Are you a single woman looking for Mr. Right? Forget online dating, the awkward blind date, or scouring the grocery-store aisles for single guys. There's an untapped resource right at your fingertips – your car.

But if we're to believe them the right car will snag you a winner, the wrong car could make you a loser and here's the ten to avoid. Girl power!

Car: Chevy Cobalt Coupe

What it says about you: Your boyfriend forces you to cook meth.

Why men don't like that: Meth dealers have guns and rampant paranoia.

Car: Chrysler Town and Country

What it says about you: You're ready to give birth.

Why men don't like that: Nothing is more frightening to a man than the prospect of fathering children.

Car: 2010 Acura RDX

What is says about you: The ugliest car on sale does not make a good first impression.

Why men don't like that: Men are shallow.

Car: Lexus HS250h

What is says about you: Only managing 35 MPG combined and costing $34,200, the little Lexus hybrid says gullible, eco-freak and boring in equal measures.

Why men don't like that: Think of one of Hillary Clinton's pant suits. This is the automotive equivalent.

Car: Toyota Camry

What it says about you: It won't have a chance to say anything about you, it's so boring that it will literally make you invisible.

Why men don't like that: Men like cars, not beige.

Car: Ford Mustang V6 Convertible

What it says about you: that in addition to cheerleading, you think blowies are a competitive sport.

Why men don't like that: While the prospect of easy sex will initially attract most men, the Herpes breakout will ultimately prove a turnoff.

Car: Chrysler PT Cruiser

What is says about you: That you eat dinner at 5pm and have a closet full of orthopedic shoes.

Why men don't like that: men prefer women that use pantyhose as a way to make their legs look tan, not as a medical aid.

Car: VW Beetle

What it says about you: not only do you have a bedroom full of stuffed animals, but if you were to bring a man home, you'd hold conversations with him in their voices.

Why men don't like that: they think you'll murder them in their sleep if they accidently push Mr. Nibbles off the bed.

Car: Subaru Outback

What it says about you: that you wear Birkenstocks, baggy cargo shorts and fantasize about Rossie O'Donnell

Why men don't like that: men like women who shave their legs.

Car: Hummer H2

What it says about you: that you consider Ron Jeremy and Peter North "colleagues."

Why men don't like that: Oh they like that, it's just that their computer screens are too small to show all the stretch marks and surgery scars.

Clinton arrived in Pyongyang in an unmarked plane and was greeted at the airport by North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan and vice president of parliament Yang Hyong Sop.

Following the reception of a bouquet from a Young Pioneer, he proceeded to climb into a vehicle which certainly did not come on his plane—a monster W140, which you will recognize as the ride of choice for post-Communist gangsters.

Say what you will about Clinton, it must have taken chutzpah aplenty to sink into the belly of that beast. It is also curious fodder for reading the tea leaves of the Hermit Kingdom as the W140 does have a history in Communist countries—but that history is tied to the periods which followed the fall of their Communist regimes.

You can watch the Benz in motion at the BBC.

Photo Credit: BBC, KNS/AFP/Getty Images