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Not to beat up on Lincoln, but were its designers eating a lot of frogs legs and pommes frites whilst designing its most recent batch of cars? Lincon C Concept Last-Generation Renault Mégane The French-inspired Nissan Micra Because if something's weird from France, it's bound to work in the States, right? -James Riswick

Enough said. Also, I think the 2010 Lincoln MKT has a little Renault Vel Satis in there too. -James Riswick

Dear Everyone, Please don't get your undies in a twist when the production version of the Cadillac Converj is introduced and it isn't a 2+2 coupe with a roof so low only Tom Cruise will fit in it. Just like the production Volt, when (or if) this thing shows up, it'll be a more practical, every-man-friendly design. Please accept that now and don't complain when GM doesn't shoot itself in the foot by making an interesting-looking but ultimately failed concept with limited mass-market appeal that wastes its eco technology...

At the annual International Consumer Electronics show Ford announced what's beyond Sync. In the future, Ford is are aiming for its vehicles to feature an advanced interactive electronics interface or electronic personal assistant, sort of like the computer on board the Enterprise. Ford says "she" will be called Eva. And if she doesn't feature the voice of EVE from WALL-E I will be greatly disappointed...

I came across this on CNN.com. It was well publicized during the Olympics how god-awful the air quality in Beijing is, but NASA decided to point a satellite in the Chinese capital's direction to see just how bad it was. The image on the right is the "before" shot from the year before the Olympics, while the one on the right shows what happened when China cut car traffic during August...

After several Southern senators, specifically Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, lobbied to stop the Big 3 bailout, a veteran GM worker from Detroit has started a Web site called Boycott Alabama Now.com, which calls for a nationwide boycott of the Yellowhammer State. "You won't go to this state," this crotchity old kook exclaimed on Detroit local news. Okey dokey...

So I was interested to read on Inside Line yesterday that GM is promising to cut eight as yet unspecified nameplates from its product portfolio by 2012. Wait a second, eight? Eight is not enough...

The Big 3 have released their lists of "reasons they need a boat load of money and what they plan on doing with it." I'm going to look at Chrysler's plan in regards to vehicle development. Here's the paragraph about that, broken up so I can make snarky comments: "Does Chrysler plan to build cars and trucks that consumers want to buy, and that support the country’s energy security and environmental goals? Our product plan features 24 major launches from 2009 through 2012...

  While I trumpeted the amputation of brands at General Motors and I trombone the complete execution of Chrysler, I don't think Ford should be so quick to jettison Volvo. Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin were basically pretty (and often times costly) baubles that didn't really do much for Ford's bread-and-butter vehicle line-up. I doubt Explorer got any R&D help from Land Rover, for instance. However, the Ford Taurus, Taurus X, Flex and Lincoln MKS are all based on a platform that dated back to the Volvo S80. That lineage almost certainly contributes to those vehicles' superb crash performance as well as their indestructable feel...

Back in 2001 when I showed up at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.,  I was appalled at what I saw at the gas station. Premium gas for my Jetta VR6 was going to cost $2.11 per gallon. When I got my car two years earlier, the price of gas in Indiana was hovering around 99 cents...