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 world?s 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, they?ll 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 . . .

Remember when Volvos were boxy but good?  That was then, this is now.
Photo: Volvo USA

by Stephan Wilkinson

Volvo's newest model, the smallest Volvo ever, is the three-door (two doors and a liftback) C30, a fabulous-looking whatchamacallit that can be termed a hatchback, a stubby wagon, a sportback, a three-door . . . you name it.  Or, like George Harrison's hairstyle, you can call it Arthur.

Anybody old enough to remember that line from the famous Beatles press conference probably feels that "hatchback" is synonymous with "cheapo," but the C30 is anything but.  From the windshield forward, the C30 is identical to the $30,000-plus S40 T5 sedan and V50 T5 wagon, including the very same five-cylinder lightly turbocharged engine.  From there aft, it's a truncated four-seater with a surprising amount of room in the rear seats plus the capability to fold them flat and use the car as a miniature station wagon.  It's a very European concept, though SUV-besotted older Americans probably won't get it.

Volvo doesn't mind, because they're aiming at a different -- read "younger" -- audience.  The ideal customer?  Parents who are sending a teenager off to college and want him to have a reasonably economical car with a legendary record for safety.  How can you tell?  The two basic trim levels of the C30 are called not "Limited" and "DeLuxe" nor any of the other so-1950s terms the car industry's middle-aged white guys still use, but "Version 1.0 and "Version 2.0." 

(Kids: Don't tell Mom, but this thing is quick: with 227 horsepower, it'll do zero to 60 in 6.2 seconds.)

Now, about that trip to Sweden . . .

In the Far East, is the U. S. Interstate
Highway  symbol a mark of respect or a
copyright violation?
Photo: Mercury Books

by Stephan Wilkinson

Look at a UN map of Asia and the continent is spiderwebbed with an enormous system of highways, the secret roads of the Far East, Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the various 'Stans.  It's an 89,000-mile network of roads through some of the most inhospitable, motel-deprived, slow-food-eating, gas-station-challenged countries on the planet. 

These are interstates?  Well, not exactly.  Some of them exist only in their national planners' imaginations, some are dirt tracks, some are primitively paved two-lanes choked with jitneys and ancient diesel trucks (including the ones I negotiated in India during a Conde Nast Traveler Great Drive).  A few are, briefly, actual highways.

But wherever there's a road, there's somebody waiting to set a record on it, and Guinness ready to memorialize that feat.  Asian Highway 1 goes from Tokyo to Istanbul and there connects with European autoroutes and motorways all the way to London.  Nobody had ever driven its entire length, until now.

Read on to find out who did it, why...and, incredibly, what kind of vehicle they used.

by Stephan Wilkinson 

Rental car companies do everything they can to make the car pickup process painless for business travelers. There are frequent renter clubs, special privileges for Mister Big, red carpet treatment at the airport rental car lot, and more, but for the vacationing occasional renter, it can still be a matter of standing in line at the counter, figuring out insurance options, signing contracts, and then the endless van ride to space Z398 after all the high rollers have debarked at valet parking.

Hertz has taken its cue from the increasing ease with which airline boarding passes are automatically processed at electronic kiosks and has started a new subsidiary, Simply Wheelz, that will allow--make that "require"--customers to (1) make reservations via the Internet, (2) print out a bar-coded reservation form, (3) have it and a driver's license scanned at an airport kiosk, then (4) go straight to the pick-up lot to collect the car.

Here's what else sets Simply Wheelz apart (other than the cutesy name--"Simply Wheeze"?):

by Stephan Wilkinson

What's the most dangerous thing the Chinese make?  No, not lead-painted toys, cat food, farm fish, or anti-freeze-laced toothpaste but a car, the Chery Amulet.  (Can we assume they want people to hope it's actually a Chevy Amulet?) 

An amulet is something that's supposed to protect you, but a Russian car magazine recently crash-tested the automotive Amulet, which is a midsize, 1980s-technology, made-in-China sedan that is both cheap and popular in Russia.  AutoReview Magazine ran the car into a concrete barrier at 40 mph, and if you watch the video of the debacle on YouTube, you can see how well the Chery fared.

Not well at all.  It crumpled like a popped paper bag, but the crash-test dummy did even worse.  Eviscerated, decapitated, gutted, and generally the worse for wear, he/it had to be removed from the wreckage in pieces.  A European crash test of a more expensive Chery model, a Brilliance -- don't you love these names? -- had equally predictable results.

Read on to hear what a proper crash test should accomplish.

Last leg of the trip: stairs to the summit from the parking lot at the end of the Mt. Washington Auto Road.
Photo: Mount Washington Observatory

by Stephan Wilkinson

It claims to be the oldest man-made tourist attraction in the U.S.: the scary, hairy Mt. Washington Auto Road, a snaking two-lane track up the highest mountain in the Northeast.  (It's the third highest east of the Rockies, slightly topped only by Mt. Mitchell, in North Carolina, which is 396 feet higher, and Clingman's Dome, in Tennessee, 355 feet higher.)

The road opened to vehicle traffic exactly 146 years ago, on August 8, 1861, when horses rather than horsepower were the motive force; it was originally called the Mt. Washington Carriage Road.  It predates Coney Island's first amusement ride (1876), the decidedly non-U.S. Eiffel Tower (1887), the first Ferris Wheel (1893), and Pikes Peak's similar tourist road (1915).

Still, I'd edit the "oldest" claim to make it a little less inclusive, for certainly there are man-made artifacts -- Jefferson's Monticello, Anasazi ruins in New Mexico, and lots else older within the U.S. -- that have become tourist attractions, though obviously none were built specifically to woo travelers.  "Oldest man-made tourist attraction built as such," however, doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?  And as my cynical wife asked, "Is the tourist attraction Mt. Washington, or is it the road?"

Well, never mind, I know what the Mt. Washingtonian spinmeisters mean, and their road certainly makes for a challenging, remarkable, and spectacular side trip.  Here's why some cars deserve those classic "This Car Climbed Mt. Washington" bumper stickers:

Day and night, Germany's pioneering superhighway system carries an enormous amount of traffic. Expect congestion more frequently than unfettered top-speed freedom.

Photo: Uwe Lein/the Associated Press

by Stephan Wilkinson

The first stretch of Germany's legendary high-speed highway system, just 20 kilometers between Cologne and Bonn, opened on August 6, 1932, which makes the Autobahn more than 24 years older than the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Like the interstates, the Autobahn is one of the safest highway networks in the world, despite the fact that about half of its 7,700 miles have no speed limit. 

And I do mean no speed limit. The German company Ruf, which manufactures highly tuned supercars based on the Porsche 911, tests every Ruf on the Autobahn to assure that it will exceed 200 mph. And my friend Csaba Csere, the editor of Car and Driver, to this day vividly recalls a tire blowout in a modified Callaway Corvette on an Autobahn just after the car reached 195 mph. I've routinely done 150 and more on Autobahns . . . and been passed by Ferraris.

There's a stretch of Autobahn approaching Frankfurt from the east where you top a rise and only then can fully see the road ahead. Years ago, I remember it being as black with the marks of skidding tires as the touchdown zone of a JFK runway, for it was where morning commuter traffic backed up, and cars coming over the hill had to lock their brakes. The direct result: German manufacturers developed ABS, antilock braking systems for cars, and it's one indication of how and why the Autobahn system is an inextricable part of Germany's automotive industry.

In the late 1970s, when as a car writer I first visited the BMW factory in Munich, I remember one manager telling me, "In Japan, engineers go to work on the tube. Our engineers come to work on the Autobahn." The Autobahns indeed have a lot to do with the way German cars have long been built: Whether it's a 32-hp 1951 VW Beetle or a 604-hp Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG, the car needs to be able to run for hours on end with the throttle pedal flat on the floor -- which is how many Germans drive on the Autobahn.

Here's how you should do it:

What you might find on the 18th green at Pebble Beach during the annual Concours d'Elegance weekend: a 1931 Daimler drophead coupe.  What's it worth?  If you have to ask...
Photo: Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance

by Stephan Wilkinson

For serious automobile enthusiasts, the biggest travel weekend of the year isn't Indy 500 time or Speed Weeks in Daytona, it's "Monterey Weekend": three mid-August days (August 17-19 this year) on the Monterey Peninsula of California where for over 50 years the most fabulous contemporary, classic, vintage, historic and antique collectible automobiles from all over the world have gathered.

Some of them are parked on the Pebble Beach Lodge golf course to be judged for best-of-show awards.  Others race in serious competition on the nearby Laguna Seca racetrack.  The investment-grade four-wheel blue chips answer to the auctioneer's hammer.  And thousands of casual, owner-driven classics from all over the country simply preen along the Peninsula roads. 

There also are classic-car auctions, automotive-art shows, California-cuisine spectaculars, automotive symposia and an Italian-cars-only gathering.  (We're not talkin' Fix-It-Again-Tony Fiats, the Concorso Italiano features only six-figure Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis and the like.)

You won't see Nascar buffoons with beer coolers, but you will see milady in her bonnet and summer silks, for this is an upscale weekend.  Read on to learn why.

Yes, conventional tires very occasionally go flat, but they're easy to fix.

by Stephan Wilkinson

Don't believe the hype about run-flat tires.  Tire companies -- and the car companies that sell them as an option -- would love you to believe that run-flats make you immune to punctures and blow-outs.  The truth is that expensive, rough-riding, fast-wearing, short-lived run-flats allow you to drive maybe 50 miles after a puncture, at a poky maximum of 50 mph.

And you'd better pray that somewhere within that 50 miles is a car dealer or a very well-equipped tire retailer with the expensive special equipment needed to dismount your run-flat, and hope that he also has a replacement for your tire.  (Run-flats often can't be repaired but must be replaced, and they can cost half again as much as the equivalent conventional tire.) If you're road-tripping in rural Wyoming or northern Michigan, say, you could be stuck overnight while your car is flat-bedded to a dealer and a replacement located and shipped.

Here's why I'm wary of run-flats:

There's a right way and a wrong way to perform every driving task, but a good start would be to consider a partially battery-powered car like this Ford Escape Hybrid.

by Stephan Wilkinson

Mother never told you...because she didn't know:

*Never drive onto the breakdown lane of a major highway -- or, far worse, one of those areas like the triangular no-man's-land between the Interstate and an off-ramp. Your chances of getting a flat or a blowout are greatly increased there.  These are the places where everything that has fallen off cars and trucks gathers -- wayward nuts and bolts, jagged pieces of metal, nails, broken bottles, old hubcaps, all blown there by the 80-mph passage of a steady stream of traffic.  Don't go there if you can help it, and if you can't, look very carefully where your tires are treading.

*If you see a car ahead waiting on a side road to merge with or cross oncoming traffic, keep your eye on its left front wheel, not the car itself.  You'll see that wheel beginning to rotate precious microseconds before you sense that the entire vehicle is moving forward because the driver doesn't see you.

Want more?  Read on...

A speed camera -- common in the U.K. -- nails a lead-footed driver.
Photo: de.wikipedia.org

by Stephan Wilkinson

Question from reader SuzR:

"We spent two weeks in May touring Wales, Scotland, and England in a rental car, and I just got a notice from the rental company saying we were caught by a speed camera doing 42 in a 30-mph zone. The rental company charged our credit card 23 pounds [$47] for supplying our information to the police. Will the U.K. police pursue this since we live in the U.S.? Will we have problems next time we visit the U.K. and try to rent a car?"

The short answer is that the cops don't have to pursue this in the U.S., and that no, you won't have problems next time you try to rent a car. But you will pay the fine. (Unless you want to go to England and fight it, which would be silly since speed cameras don't lie.)

Here's why...

Take your new Mercedes-Benz CLK63 AMG to the famous Nurburgring racetrack, which is open to the public.  Just don't crash.
Photo: Mercedes-Benz North America

by Step