Today, we possibly witnessed another such epoch-defining event in the form of the VIP Styling Honda Odyssey. It's like a BMW, but wait for it....not fat and ugly. What's that you say? It's possible to make a kidney-grille equipped automobile without making it weigh 5,500lbs and look like Manuel Urib? Again, Japan is blowing the minds of the industry establishment.

KingOfTheRing points this out, saying:

Oh those crafty Japanese! First they do motorcycles better than the British, now they make a better BMW than the Germans.

It's possible that, in 40-years time, the 5 Series GT will be sought after among collectors for its combination of limited utility and immense weight, but somehow we doubt it'll enjoy the same status the Triumph Bonneville does today.

My first time at the Nürburgring. My apologies, but an inevitable wall of text must follow.

I was young, I was stupid (wait, I still am both), and I wanted to drive the legendary green hell. I didn't have the budget or the presence of mind (or the age, mind you) to go to a specialized car rental agency.

So, off to unnamed chain rental place! I was promised a 1 series BMW or Audi A3, which turned out to be a lie. The only options available were an MPV, a Ford Mondeo or a Golf Diesel. Sadly, I had no other option - that day was my only window of opportunity.

So there I am, early November, light snow falling around, smoking in the Nürburgring's pits/parking lot, leaning on the bonnet of a MkIV Golf. Just wasting time waiting until the guy in the Ferrari, the guy in the M3, the one in the Caterham and even the one in an old, rickety alfa pass the gate, since I don't want to be an obstacle (or worse yet, damage a 360!). After the track is somewhat clear, I make my run.

It starts decently enough, with what I considered a reasonably decent performance for a first day at the track with slight snow, driving a Diesel.

Then came a chicane. I'm not sure which one, to be honest. In all my experience and wisdom (read: boneheadedly), I decided to clip a bit through the red-and-white rumblers on the side of the track - hey, isn't that what they're there for?

Well, the answer is, no, at least not in that corner. Damned things must be almost a foot high. All I felt was a shock, almost as if I had run over some animal, and suddenly the horizon wasn't, well, quite horizontal.

I had gotten a Golf Diesel on Two Wheels. At speed. On the Nürburgring. While it was snowing. Not very high, mind you, but only half the tires were touching pavement for a small while.

I'm not sure what happened. I jerked the wheel. I prayed to any and all deities that might have been hovering over western Germany. I fell back on four wheels and lost traction on the second turn of the chicane. I magically kept the car in the track and the crap in my bowels. I finished the lap cautiously. I let the car cool in the parking lot before I moved it again. I got a coffee. I chainsmoked more than at any other time of my life.

Then I got in the car, Looked at the view, and went back to the track. What can I say? I'm an idiot.

But you're our kind of idiot.

All fantastic choices, leaving me with this thought: Could citrus slice tyres really support the weight of a giant corncob roadster driven by two adult turkeys?

To quote Tanshanomi the answer is yes because "oranges are high in magnesium."

Wow, unpainted pine, really?

BTW, stars will be taken away for making any visual comparisons to Ira Glass and anyone on staff.

The Fiat 130 Coupe is the epitome of a two-door sedan. Not lissome but embracing of its own size, the Pininfarina is wonderfully gigantic.Throw in a Ferrari-designed V6 with a reasonable 160 HP and finely tuned suspension and it's undeniably Italian. You know what else says Italian? A red velour interior. It's so becoming the designers thought to add a button-actuated passenger door for the driver to ease the ingress of impressed passengers.

Sometimes two is better than four. What two-door sedan makes you want to ditch the kids and hit the open road?

(QOTD is your chance to answer the day's most pressing automotive questions and experience the opinions of the insightful insiders, practicing pundits and gleeful gearheads that make up the Jalopnik commentariat. If you've got a suggestion for a good "Question Of the Day" send an email to tips at jalopnik dot com.)

Just when we were trying to figure out why the Schu won't simply disappear into his Swiss chalet and leave our sport alone, mr_dude provided perspective. He commented on the topic with all the shrugging indifference that it deserves:

"So what? All retired people drive mercs."

Short, sweet, and to the point. Now stay at home, Mike. Go dominate something else — baseball, perhaps?

Tha Accord looks like it's about to mow down Arafat and Rabin, which come to think of it, wouldn't have made Oslo any less effective.

Too soon?

Some people have expressed shock that the Texas road that the Bugatti drove off, crashing into a lake, didn't have guard rails. That sentiment doesn't sit will with SlowMo:

One of the things I noticed when I was driving in the France and Italy was that the Europeans are far less of a nanny state when it comes to guard rails. You're driving, damn it. Stop f*ing around, pay attention and stay on the damn road. If it is slippery, foggy, dark, icy, whatever, SLOW DOWN. Drive. People, DRIVE. The state is not here to keep you from falling off the cliff.

Afterall, without the freedom to drive $2 million cars into lakes, this wouldn't really be America, would it?

Scene: A cigarette pack and lottery scratch-off filled Exxon station booth. Outside, a Veyron approaches the whirling brushes.

Assistant attendant: "Hey, man, shouldn't we stop that Fiero from going through the car wash?"

Attendant: "Nah; I'm pretty sure that's a Lambo, Dude.

Ahhh memes.

After buying a used Jaguar, I have to say that this is the most logical next purchase.

-ducks and runs-

Oh, Ben's going to get you, just as soon as he can get his car working.

Photo Credit: Vince Bucci/Getty Images [NYTimes]

A guy I used to work with leased a Mustang in 2000. Already a bad idea. To make matters worse he rolled over his debt from his previous lease into it. So before he started he had an extra $150 a month to pay on top of the already stupid high payment (his negotiation skills were basically, do you have it yellow? how much?)

He came out of the ether in 2002 when he realized he was way over miles again and basically out of cash.

So he goes into a car dealer to find a cheap car to spin off the debt, only to find he's now $10,000 upside down. (I've seen worse believe it on not, and got a bank to approve it, and we wonder what they meant by toxic loans)

Since NJ requires loans to carry gap coverage, he gets it in his head he is going to destroy the car.

So he gets a hotel room in NYC at super shady location. Parks the car out front on the street, leaves the car running and the driver's side window down.

They only took his radio. It ran out of fuel and got ticketed for violating some idling ordinance.

So now he has to find a gas station and a fuel container in a shady-ass part of town. And with the ticket is worried any insurance investigator worth his weight would figure out what was going on whenever he finally did get around to wrecking the thing.

So thoroughly peeved he drives home to the Garden State. Once he gets back to the windy back roads of the state a deer jumps in front of him, he clips it and in his attempts to dodge the deer and being hard on the brakes, he goes off the road and hits a tree. The whole passenger side is screwed up, the hood is pushed and every airbag deployed. Totaled.

The deer, having been only clipped, gets up and starts to run away.

It took him a long time to prove that it really was an accident. But there was a clump of fur in the crack between the headlight and the hood.

Needless to say, that bit of fur saved his ass from a heck of a lot of debt, and probably jail time.

Probably the first time in history a man was happy he had hit a deer

That friend, of course, a principle architect of credit default swaps.

"As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within him. There's no way around it. I am a Veyron. I am limited by nature. If I were meant to learn so much about floating, I'd have nautical charts for an ECU. If I were meant to float at speed I'd have a boat's hull, and live on wind instead of gasoline. My father was right. I must forget this foolishness. I must drive home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a poor limited Veyron."

excerpt from Jonathan Galveston Pelican

Yeah, what a downer.

Elhigh was there in today Poopsplosion article to remind us of another reason it's good to practice safe sex:

I have a kid who, while very young, developed a very regular #2 habit: Wednesday evenings. Nursed babies don't mess quite so much as bottlefed, though there are the usual number of wet diapers to deal with. But the narstier ones, not so much. Thus, the once-a-week schedule. And it was fantastic. Nothing can top having a kid who you know will not utterly ruin your trip to the park with a Superfund site in his britches.

Until he skipped a Wednesday. Then he'd gone over ten days. Then we're closing in on two weeks He's starting to get uncharacteristically cranky and fussy. We knuckle under and call Ask-A-Nurse. She says give the kid some castor oil and everything should be fine, some babies just get a little anal retentive - literally. She's never actually seen a once-a-week kid but doesn't think it's totally out of the realm of possibility, and other long-interval kids sometimes get this retention thing going, so do the castor oil and see what happens.

We did the castor oil.

About an hour later there was this...sound. And the kid's face suddenly got really horrified and relieved and inside the diaper was Mt. Vepoopius, a mountain of poo like you've never seen unless you own a Saint Bernard. We changed him on a big sheet of newspaper opened up, and some still got away. We blamed that spot on the cat, but we knew. So did the cat.

What's this got to do with cars? Not a damn thing.

Au contraire monsieur Elhigh, it has everything to do with cars. By leaving the duty of furthering the human race to other people, us car enthusiasts have more money to spend on going fast. Thanks for the reminder.

Glory to Allah; my tank is full!

We're making this joke every time we see a Ram now.

Great piece, Ben. Thanks for wrecking all of our zombie apocalypse/Mad Max fantasies about Detroit.

You're right that the article is off base. But there's more to the story, and to the idea than what you present.

Urban 'farming' isn't and shouldn't look like large scale US agriculture. It can't be done on large tracts, with large machinery and industrial chemicals - as you point out. And there are issues of preexisting infrastructure and contamination that have to be considered and dealt with responsibly.

However, land can be farmed or gardened successfully in large and small plots, from community gardens up to about an acre or so, in a scattered site patchwork approach.

Well tended smaller gardens can have values and productivity far in excess of typical large farms. People can intensively tend higher value crops, more closely planted, with multiple yearly harvest by hand, and outstrip what a typical farm can do, mainly by growing vegetables, rather than grains, corn and soy.

Maybe this is a hobby for folks, and they don't have to worry about the economics of getting paid. And there's certainly a large gap between what farmers get paid, and what the same items costs in a local market. Plus, you can grow food that tastes better and requires less energy inputs when you're doing it for yourself locally.

Detroit and many other cities and towns do have real issue of declining populations to deal with. Uses for all of the vacant buildings, homes, factories and lots have to be found. Maintaining vacant properties in perpetuity is not a solution. If Detroit cannot attract more industry, and find ways to put people to work, people will continue leaving.

It is better for there to be a strategy for how best to contend with declining populations and economies, than simply to wade about in the wreckage. Part of that solution may well include transforming some previously developed areas into agricultural, open space or forested places.

This speaks to our belief that better land use policies leads to less energy consumption, less congestion and therefore more fuel and space for us to drive vehicles with large displacement engines.

Commenter smalleyxb122 offered an insight into the reasons why Arty won't be buying a new yacht this year in our story about an Acura wearing a "We Write" vanity plate parked next to a crappy Voyager wearing a "We Read" plate (they apparently don't read EuroNCAP safety reports), extrapolating:

Just beyond the camera to the left is a Benz with the plate "WE PBLSH", and to the right is a 1987 Plymouth Reliant with "WE WCH TV".

Of course, he missed the subway pass on the ground just in front of all the cars with "WE BLOG" written on it in sharpie.

Every time this comes up, the comments destroy a little more of my faith in Jalopanity.

The same jerkholes who smugly point out the limited utility of rear spoilers on FWD cars start whining about how terrible this is.

And then there's "Why not just get a RWD car?" Why have restrictions on engine size, why race vintage cars, why race $500 LeMons instead of racing proper F1 cars?

The car itself, however, is awesomely ridiculous and helps restore my faith in Jalopanity.

Actually, we noticed quite a few commenters who appreciated it, but we get the sentiment.

I wish American executives took their business this personally. And were willing to make their feelings public, if they actually have any. They always come off as aloof, like everything happens in a vacuum and there's never any personal stake in anything. It's no wonder they're so willing to outsource their core business to the lowest bidder.

Maybe we'll see some gnashing of teeth at the New Chrysler meeting today.

If Asimo had a face, you'd be able to read the embarrassment all over it. Even humanoid walking robots know these guys are douche bags.

We wouldn't put it past ASIMO to fall down a flight of stairs to get away from those fellows.