by Wendy Perrin

Remember my trick for getting free Wi-Fi in airports by sitting right outside an airline lounge club? Well, a couple of days ago my husband figured out how to get free Wi-Fi in a car during a road trip: Drive behind a Wi-Fi-equipped bus.

On his way from San Francisco's airport to Santa Rosa, California, Tim found himself trailing an Airport Express bus that advertised "free Wi-Fi." While stopped at the many stoplights on 19th Avenue, he was able to switch his iPhone over to Wi-Fi and check his e-mail. Had I been sitting in the car next to him, I could have blogged on my laptop the entire time from SFO to Santa Rosa. Which is why I may be stalking Wi-Fi-equipped buses on future road trips. (Kidding!)

Hero driver, on the track in an Aston Martin DB9.  For $5,000, this could be you.
Photo: Supercar Life

by Stephan Wilkinson

It's all very nice to rent a supercar from one of the proliferating upscale services such as Gotham Dream Cars, about which I blogged recently, but then what?  After you're through showing "your" temporary Ferrari or Aston Martin to the neighbors and wowing your sigother, you're out on the highway bound by the same speed limits, laws and simple commonsense that fetters every Toyota Corolla commuter.  Wouldn't it be nice if you had a race course where you could open up that whip legally, take it well into triple-digit speeds, corner on the limit and drive it like you stole it?

You, pal, need to talk to a new company called Supercar Life.  They own 10 of the worlds most exotic two-seaters -- Ferrari F430, Lamborghini Gallardo, Porsche 911 Turbo, Aston Martin DB9 and Mercedes-Benz CLK63 AMG Black Series, two of each -- and for $5,000, theyll let you spend an entire day driving each of them on a track.  And that five grand includes luxury-hotel accommodations, meals, airport ground transfers, pro-driver instruction and an in-car video of you making like Michael Schumacher.  (Having been subjected to racetrack videos by various brothers and friends, I can tell you that if you have a DVD player at the office, the put-your-coworkers-to-sleep potential is enormous.)

Here's the deal:

Not a bad car. In fact, a very good car.
Photo: Chevrolet

by Stephan Wilkinson

The most controversial car in the country right now is the new Chevrolet Malibu.  Not because it's an arrogant, antisocial SUV or a pious, counterculture icon but because it's a straightforward, middle-of-the-road, midsize, economical, fairly basic, four-door, $19,995 sedan.  A Detroit sedan.

Detroit hasn't produced many of these recently.  There's a good Ford that too few people are aware of, since it was introduced with a small flurry as the Ford Five Hundred but then the marketing experts decided to rename it the Ford Taurus (wait, wasn't that the dreadful rental car?) and now we know it, if we do at all, as the "new Taurus."

We used to make sedans like the Malibu all the time. Every so many years, Dad went down to either the Chevy or Ford dealer, occasionally the Plymouth store, and bought the family a new Detroit sedan.  Those were the days when Mercedes-Benzes were sold as a sideline by Studebaker, Jaguars and BMWs were imported by the hundreds, and "made in Japan" was a joke. Detroit made Cars. The rest of the world made Morrises, Opels, Renaults and Toyopets.  Feh.

But why is the Malibu controversial?

Bet you don't know what this little icon
is trying to tell you.

by Stephan Wilkinson

One of the newer "forward this email to everybody you know or the sky will fall" virals taking up all too much bandwidth on the Internet is this piece of advice: The little gas pump icon that denotes the fuel gauge on your car's dashboard has hidden meaning.

Huh?

The icon is in the shape of a gas-station pump, with a hose and nozzle snaking out of one side. It of course indicates which of your instruments is the gas gauge, and on most modern cars, an identical one lights up orange somewhere on the dashboard when you're low on fuel.

But wait, there's more.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. I'll take that one.
Photo: Gotham Dream Cars

by Stephan Wilkinson

Car-rental services that offer Ferraris, Porsches, Aston Martins, and the like are proliferating, particularly in L.A., New York, Miami, London, and a variety of other trend centers, so the Manhattan-and-Florida firm Gotham Dream Cars has  offered us a list of cautions for would-be fancy-wheels renters. Obviously, Gotham has an agenda in doing so, which is that they want you to rent Ferraris from them and not the competition, but their warnings make a lot of sense in what is still a largely unregulated, minuscule industry.

And here they are.

The fastest, most powerful, most expensive car Mercedes has ever sold.
Photos: Saks Fifth Avenue

by Stephan Wilkinson

Somebody recently asked me what was the most expensive car I've ever tested as a car writer. No contest: a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. I've driven lots of Ferraris and Lamborghinis that sell at the $200,000-to-$350,000 counter and a Porsche Carrera GT that went for $445,000, but the $450,000 Mercedes McLaren two-seat coupe is my conspicuous-consumption champ. (I was offered a chance awhile ago to drive a $1,400,000 Bugatti Veyron, but it required a ride-along company driver, so I turned it down; I get nervous when anybody's watching.)

You, dear reader, can put me on the trailer and send me home with my wallet between my legs by buying from the Saks Fifth Avenue holiday catalogue a Mercedes McLaren that is not a plain old coupe like the one I tested on the wide-open roads of South Africa but a roadster, a brand-new open version of the car. Click the "add to cart" icon, go to checkout, and $542,000 on your Amex card (plus tax) takes away the sexy Saks version.

So what do you get for half a million and change?

Tires: Round, black, and full of air? Not necessarily.

by Stephan Wilkinson

The newest marketing scheme to separate car travelers from their money: facilities that, usually for a fee, will fill your tires with not just plain old compressed air but nitrogen gas. Some charge $5 per tire, some as much as $25. Some do it for free if you buy the tires from them, but the expense is doubtless factored into the cost of the tires.

Why would you want to fill your tires with nitrogen? Well, that's what airline, military, and corporate jets use. And race cars. Must be a reason, right?

Right. But it has nothing to do with the way an ordinary passenger vehicle is operated.

The nitrogen hustlers claim that nitrogen molecules are bigger than atmospheric-air molecules, so they won't worm their way through the slightly porous rubber, and your tire pressure won't slowly drop. But the air with which we conventionally fill our tires is 78 percent nitrogen anyway, so how much difference can it make? Not much. Besides, some of the inevitable air leakage occurs where the tire and rim meet, and the leaks there are more than molecular.

They also say the nitrogen prevents oxidation of the tire rubber from the inside. Nonsense. The safe life of a tire, even if you never drive on it, is about six to nine years simply from exposure to ozone and sunlight. When your thumbnail can no longer dent the tread, the tires are junk, and that will happen years before the innards oxidize.

Go here to read an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of nitrogen use among a knowledgeable bunch of automotive enthusiasts.

So what about those jets and racers?

This Chevy Equinox runs on hydrogen. What a gas.
Photos: Chevrolet

by Stephan Wilkinson

Chevrolet is looking for a thousand drivers willing to gad about for free in one of the company's revolutionary fuel-cell-powered Equinox SUVs, each for three months. In return, GM asks only that the lucky recipients tell them frankly what they think of the car.

No bull. Free car, free fuel (gaseous, high-pressure hydrogen), free insurance, free XM satellite radio, free OnStar, and the car comes with leather, a nav system, and other top-of-the-line options. It's also rarer and more valuable than any Ferrari or Porsche sold, since only 100 have been handmade. (The program goes on for 30 months, 10 driver cycles per car.)

General Motors is hoping that the hydrogen-powered fuel cell is the Next Big Thing -- an electric car that never has to be plugged in or recharged because it creates its own electricity and produces zero emissions. Because unlike a hybrid, it doesn't use any gasoline at all. The hydrogen gas flows through something call a "fuel cell" that creates electricity (go here to learn how, if you're a techie), which then drives an electric motor and also gets stored in a big battery for when it's needed for hard acceleration or hill-climbing. What comes out the tailpipe is tepid water vapor, nothing else.

I drove an Equinox FCV last week, and it was a remarkable experience, largely because it was in fact unremarkable. Turn the key and nothing happens other than the dash gauges coming alive. Press the accelerator and the car silently moves off. Press it harder and the roomy four-seat SUV silently accelerates (all the way to 100 mph, if you wish -- and I did briefly consider becoming the first person in the world to get a speeding ticket in a fuel-cell vehicle). Acceleration feels surprisingly strong, because the electric motor's torque is instant, although the car's actual 0-60 time is a poky 12 seconds.

Here's the hitch:

Not your father's Buick, She Devil is a '65 Riviera, one sharp short.
Photos: Sal Vargas, Lowrider magazine

by Stephan Wilkinson

If you're in Los Angeles anytime during the next seven months, one of the world's most unusual collections of important automobiles and rare motoring artifacts, the Peterson Automotive Museum, is hosting a precedential car-and-culture display: "La Vida Lowrider: Cruising the City of Angels."  The exhibit opens on November 1 and will run through May 2008.

Lowriders are the remarkable custom cars originally developed in the 1960s by Southern California Chicanos, first in East LA, to display their wild taste, talent as fabricators and interest in automobiles, while at the same time making it crystal-clear that they were not white-bread hot rodders. 

The American Graffiti kids who built hot rods typically jacked them up, raised their rear ends on tall shocks and springs, made them look macho.  So the people who actually invented macho did exactly the opposite, just like young African-Americans today who make the brims of their ball caps as flat as porch roofs while rednecks roll theirs into tight little tunnels.  Lowriders have tiny wheels and are lowered to belly-scraping extremes in a kind of up-yours Latino-pride statement.

Lowriders are far more than just cars.  Wherever they gather, and they typically gather in clubs, there's Latino music, food, pretty girls, sex, vibrant color and vivid folk art.  (And sometimes, it has to be admitted, street feuds and gang-banging.)

Cadillac is back in the top rank of carmakers.
Photos: courtesy of Cadillac

by Stephan Wilkinson

I do love a car that offers an alternative.  There are plenty of mock-Mercedeses and wanna-BMWs out there, but the new-for-2008 Cadillac CTS is absolutely and distinctly one of a kind.  You may prefer the austerity and somber good taste of German interiors, the cool techno-challenge of Japanese cars or the anonymity of luxury sedans in general, but the CTS comes down the road braying "outa my way" and looking all-American.  You'd swear "It's a Grand Old Flag" was somehow playing in the background.

The CTS's interior is unashamedly American, with touches of chrome, swoopy design, and a bejeweled brashness that you'll never mistake for minimalism.  (I lent our nice new Volvo to a Cadillac-driving friend, who later said, "It's a very nice car, but it's so plain.")  Best of all, the quality of the cabin materials and what carmakers call fit-and-finish is superb.

There are better midsize luxury cars than the CTS, but they're way more expensive, and the CTS is better than any of the direct competition in terms of quality plus value.  Having just put 800 miles on a top-of-the-line CTS, I found that there's a lot to like, and a few things not to, about the best four-door sedan General Motors has ever made.

All-American in this case doesn't mean a thirsty, muleish machine with an oversize V8 engine.  The CTS has a very sophisticated V6 of "only" 3.6 liters, which Europeans would consider large, that nonetheless produces 304 hp in the optional direct-fuel-injection version (258 hp base).

Read on if you care what direct injection does for you, plus a tip on how I used the Web's best car-analyzing site to confirm the CTS's value.

One of a kind: The Hackney Basecamp Expedition Vehicle.
Photos: Courtesy Douglas and Stephanie Hackney

by Stephan Wilkinson

Most of us rent a car, maybe even an RV, if we're traveling by road far from home.  Not Doug and Stephanie Hackney, who are two of the most intrepid and far-ranging travelers I know.

They built a BEV.

What's a BEV? Well, you're lookin' at it, but it stands for Basecamp Expedition Vehicle. It's a totally self-contained and autonomous global exploration module, at the same time a base camp and a traveling machine, designed to be self-sufficient and "self-extracting." Meaning that since you can't call Triple-A in the middle of Mongolia, you'd better be ready to winch or otherwise extract yourself from a wide variety of emergencies.

The Hackney BEV is equipped to voyage for two or three years without any outside support other than the necessary fuel, food, and routine maintenance, and to do it in the Third World, far from North Face outlets, Zagat Guides, Lexus dealers, airline ticket counters, high-test gas (or any gasoline at all, in fact) or HBO.

Here's what went into it:

Does my airplane have anything to do with cell phone parking lots? Absolutely!

by Stephan Wilkinson

"Just call me on your cell phone when you walk out of the baggage area and I'll be there in two minutes," my friend Alfred said as I confirmed plans to fly to Richmond, Virginia, to start my Great Drive for Conde Nast Traveler's Twentieth Anniversary issue by spending a night at the splendid Scott manor with two classic Virginians, Alfred and Meredith Scott. Meredith happens to be a dead ringer for Emmylou Harris, and Alfred happens to own Sequoia Aircraft, the company that supplied me with the parts and plans from which I built a proud example of the world's most fabulous kitplane, the Sequoia Falco.

As always, I digress.

This was the first I'd heard of cell phone parking lots. "We have a new cell phone lot," Alfred said. He would be lurking in exactly that holding pen until my ring alerted him that I was not only on the ground but out of the airplane, through the terminal, finished with the baggage carousel, and ready to split.

What a great idea! At a time when coordinating airplane-arrival and passenger-pickup times requires a sundial rather than a wristwatch, here was a way to avoid the old circle-the-terminal-loop method of passenger pickup, as well as the short-term-parking option: "I thought I'd only be here for 15 minutes and 50 cents, but it turned into two hours and eight dollars."

You don't need a Porsche. At the Nurburgring, your
rental car will do.
Photo: Wikimedia.org

by Stephan Wilkinson

The most dangerous motor-racing course in the world is Germany's old Nurburgring, in the Eifel Mountains near Adenau, not far from the Belgian border. (Frankfurt is the nearest major international airport.) Built in the late 1920s as a public-works project where German race cars could reign supreme, it is 13 miles long and has 73 corners uphill and down. Closely bordered by a forest filled with big-trunked, driver-killing trees, it's popularly known as the Green Hell. The Nurburgring's history of accidents and fatalities is so sobering that Formula 1 race cars haven't touched the track since 1976.

So what do the Germans do with the Nurburgring? Dig it up and make it a mall? Bury it under condominiums? Turn it into a ski resort? Hell, no! They use it as a tourist attraction: For 19 euros per lap (about $26.50), anybody can show up and drive the Nurburgring.

If you kill yourself, tough. If you spin off the track and punch through one of the metal Armco barriers, you (or your estate) will get a hefty bill to replace that railing. (The record repair charge reportedly was a bit over $20,000.) If you hurt yourself badly enough to need paramedics and an ambulance, maybe even the medevac helicopter, you'd better reach for your Platinum Card.

Is it worth it?

This Toyota Prius was converted to a plug-in hybrid for California environmental activist Felix Kramer.
Photo: calcars.org

by Stephan Wilkinson

A hybrid car such as a Toyota Prius or a Honda Accord hybrid that gets its motive power from two energy sources, gasoline and battery electricity, needs to have its battery recharged overnight.  True or false?

If you answered true, BRAAACK, you're wrong.  Hybrids never get plugged in for a recharge.  But don't feel bad, you're not alone.  One of Toyota's marketing challenges has been making potential customers aware that hybrids are not electric cars and don't need an extension cord.

An electric car runs purely on battery power, which juices electric motors that turn the wheels.  When the battery is empty (i.e. discharged), the car stops dead and must be recharged, just as a conventional car stops when its gas tank is empty.  An electric car's battery is typically only good for 50 to 100 miles of driving, which is why there are no electric cars on the market.  (Calm down, electric-car mavens.  Granted there are a few modified golf carts for driving around gated old-folks communities, and I know there's the $98,000 all-electric Tesla Roadster sports car, but none has yet to be delivered to customers.)

When you drive a real hybrid, like a Prius or a Lexus GS 450h, the car is continually recharging its on-board battery.  Sometimes the car's gasoline engine is turning a generator that feeds current back into the battery, sometimes the car is recapturing energy from the brakes when you slow down, and sometimes coasting with the throttle closed puts more energy back into the battery than is being used.  Which is why you never plug in a Prius.

Now it gets confusing, though, because Toyota and a number of other manufacturers are working on what are called plug-in hybrids, and here's why . . .

Where's the spare?  Nowhere.  That's why I
need Ride-On.  (You might too.)

by Stephan Wilkinson

I've discovered the answer to flat tires.  Might that answer be the new generation of run-flat tires?  Definitely not.  Particularly since several weeks ago, I blogged right here about how cumbersome, expensive, and impractical run-flats are.

Mark Farkhan read that post and got in touch with me. "I've developed a tire sealant good for the life of the tire called Ride-On. You put it into conventional tires and it will seal 95 percent of the typical punctures you might get in the tread area." Farkhan has been selling it to fleet and heavy-equipment operators for years, and it's now available to retail customers through his Web site.

So I bought some (just under $60 for four tires), and here's what I learned . . .