Sufferings of long-distance truck drivers and American Diogenes

1. The Swedish company Einride is going to begin release of the pilotless T-Pod truck in 2020. The truck will have no cabin at all, it allows to release an occasional seat for freight. However many this device costed, it will pay off very quickly – the autopilot replaces five drivers working for 8 hours a day, and the salary of five long-distance truck drivers in Sweden will be just space

The Best Cars at the New York Auto Show

It's a good thing mayor Michael Bloomberg is paying more attention to sugary sodas than he is tire-shredding horsepower—the copious amounts of horsepower on display in New York makes the soda hazard pale by comparison

Porsche 911 GT3

We'll be wearing protective clothing when we hit the North American debut of what has long been one of the most hardcore 911 variants. Sparks will be flying when the faithful see that the newest GT3 comes only with Porsche's seven-speed PDK—that's right, an automatic transmission. A 9000 rpm redline, a 3.3-second 0-60 time, and a 195 mph top speed ought to limit the buzzkill, however, while rear-wheel steering will help it corner faster than any ordinary 911. But, slushbox mandatory? Aw, c'mon, Herr Doktors.

A Brief History of Retro-Mobiles

Jamie Lincoln Kitman breaks down the car world's obsession with remakes, rebirths, and rehashes.

The Real Retros
Some things never change, including these cars.

Land Rover Defender

Land Rover Defender
The most basic of Land Rovers has evolved much since its direct ancestor's debut in 1948, but it's also stayed a lot the same. One of the world's most long-lived automotive icons, it's fresh from a turn in the new Bond film and still bouncing down the road. A replacement is planned for 2016, but we can't imagine a satisfactory one.

Hindustan Ambassador
Still in production in India 53 years after England's Morris Motors stopped making it, the Amby remains beloved on the streets of both these two intertwined lands. Though rarely seen in the UK, where appalling performance, handling, and safety could be seen as liabilities, it still graces Indian new-car showrooms.

Every Man's Second Car Should Be a Beater Truck

Oh, you dream of owning a Ferrari one day? So does every pimply teenage boy and hedge-fund junior exec. As Peter Behrens argues, the more discerning man lusts after something a little more humble but with just as much personality: the dusty, worn-in pickup

Something about well-used American pickups grabs most guys right where they drive. Old trucks are stoic, cheap, empowering; own a truck and you discover all sorts of things to do with a truck. Furniture is moved, lumber is bought. And finding the right one is like bringing home a great mutt from the pound. You won't win points at the show, but you'll end up best friends.

I learned to drive in a 1960 Chevy pickup with a suicide knob on the steering wheel, and I fell in love on the bench seat of a Dodge Power Wagon a decade older than me. My first car wasn't a car but an early-'60s Apache with a permanent crust of prairie gumbo (caked black soil) on a $299 paint job.

When I got married, I shoved my obsession deep into the closet. We moved to Maine, had a son, and drove a matched pair of aging Volvos. Then we started spending winters out in Far West Texas. That first year, we drove a long-term-rental car with the soul of a washing machine and a nav system that kept ordering us to Houston. I felt like an astronaut being scolded by mission control.

The Texas desert is a nature preserve for old trucks, and temptation was all around: battered, dusty, and handsome as hell. I suggested to my wife that we really could use one, but old trucks make women anxious. They like reliable. With beater trucks, reliable is not a selling point. Driving one is like sailing—you're never quite certain you'll get where you're headed. And if the road is long enough, something always breaks or leaks or sounds funny. It's adventure travel.

I've found that no matter what, you'll end up spending about $5,000 on a worthy truck. If you find one cheaper, you'll use the difference to get it running and street-legal. A clean old truck with a seized engine or balky transmission is still a smarter buy than a machine with excellent mechanicals and a rotted body or frame. You can fix anything except rust. If you live somewhere that roads are heavily salted, get online and look for a pickup in a drier part of the country. Shipping a beater cross-country can be cheaper than driving it there, though truth be told, the road trip is part of the fun.

When my wife flew north to work on a photo shoot, I sensed my moment. Within an hour, my son and I found our truck in Bee Pierce's used-car lot in Marfa, Texas: a '76 GMC Sierra Grande 15 with stalwart lines, a sturdy frame, and a decent asking price. And it had that old-truck aroma that comes as standard equipment: a heady compound of engine oil, dust, orange peels, vinyl, and the Swisher Sweets the original owner smoked back in 1981.

A couple of grand and a handshake later, we were proud owners. My wife returned and, after a little thunder and lightning, graciously learned to live with the truck. We shipped it to Maine and bought another last year, a 1986 Chevy Custom Deluxe we'll keep in Texas. Now I've got my eye on a sunburnt, well-weathered 1977 Ford F-150 that needs only two new tires and a tune-up. So many mutts out there, looking for a home.

More Power, Less Flower

The New Beetle arrived in 1998 with an image problem. From the roly-poly body style to the doll-eye headlights to the non-optional dashboard-mounted vase, it was concentrated cutesiness—the drivable equivalent of a YouTube video where a puppy hugs a kitten while a baby panda looks on knowingly. In 2010 only 44 percent of New Beetle buyers were men—no other car on the market had a lower percentage of guys behind the wheel.

So when the time came for a replacement, it makes sense that VW would have wanted to butch things up. Its inspiration: that bastion of masculinity, the original Beetle. Wait, wha?

VW took the basic silhouette of the first People's Car (born in 1938), then injected it with automotive HGH. You can see the hallmarks in the new 2012 Beetle: the stretched nose, the flat roof allowing for deceptive amounts of backseat headroom, the bulging fenders. Except now the design is lower, wider, more lithe. The newest Beetle is hunkered down and inclined to ignore posted speed limits.

Which it very much will do, so long as you tick the box for the optional 200-hp turbocharged engine—the same hunk of metal you'll find under the hood of the sporty Volkswagen GTI. Tick. That. Box. While the Beetle Turbo won't smoke a Camaro SS off the line, I can verify that it's happy to hold triple digits on Germany's Autobahn.

The original Beetle, not so much. My first car was a '73 baby blue model, a 26-year-old antique by the time my parents bought it for me just before my senior year of high school. My record for maximum velocity: eighty-two miles per hour. That triumph required two traffic-free miles of highway, a downhill, and a tailwind. Once, I lost a drag race to a Saturn. And he spotted me fifty yards.

But I will say this: My wheezy blue hunchback, so light and nimble, could dance through corners—and when it comes to handling, the newest Beetle very much takes after its grandpa. As I was hustling it through the curves of a tree-lined back road north of Berlin, with "sport" mode engaged and the Beetle Turbo's six-speed DSG transmission keeping the engine on full boil, I grinned. This retro-ballsy coupe is just as fun as the original, but meaner in all the right ways. That's exactly the kind of attitude adjustment it needed.

Price: $23,395
Horsepower: 200
0-60 mph: 6.8 sec
Top speed: 130 mph

Favorite Gangster Rides

Cars know no morality. Sometimes their owners don't, either, but that doesn't mean they don't love their cars. A preferred status symbol for gangsters, lowlifes, and hoods, cars are also the ticket for when the crime is done and the two choices are getting away, or going away (for a long, long time). Here are some of our favorites

1928 Cadillac Town Sedan
The official car of Al Capone, its paltry 90 horsepower seems feeble by today's standards, especially when you factor in the mobster's bespoke additions: 3,000 pounds of steel and thick glass, which brought this early exercise in home armoring in at 9,000 lbs in its stocking feet. And it was smartly painted green and black to blend in with the Caddies owned by the City of Chicago—because it sure wasn't outrunning much.

Rolls Royce Silver Ghost (1907-1926)
If you think owning a Roller is a big deal today, imagine the infamous 1920s bootlegger Enoch "Nucky" Johnson (now of "Boardwalk Empire" fame), whose reported $500,000 yearly take on illegal booze sales floated him one of the last of the original Silver Ghosts—at a cost of $14,000, or the price of almost 50 new Model Ts. Considering that any punk with a few grand can rent a Phantom for a day now, we have here proof that social mobility has come a way since Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties. It has, hasn't it?

1929 Bentley 4½ Litre "Blower"
Though he'd not run afoul of English law, Woolf Barnato's fortune stemmed from the diamond trade (his father's firm became part of DeBeers's infamous cartel), a business arguably more destructive than rum running or hooking. While England's working classes stayed poor and Apartheid South Africa profited the few, Barnato and his crew, the Bentley Boys, spent their profligate days far, far away from the site of their shame, except when they were racing about (even against locomotives) in their Bentley motorcars. Doing good while doing badly, Barnato served as the unofficial patron of Bentley through the 1920s, but the Depression forced him to sell out to Rolls-Royce in 1931. The so-called Blower Bentleys were riddled with problems both on and off the track, but if you were a well-heeled rogue in the pre WWII era, this was the steed you needed.

Ford Model 18 "V-8" (1932-1934)
The world's first accessibly priced V-8, introduced by Ford in 1932, it was instantly memorialized by diverse miscreants on the lam, but especially by bank robbers John Dillinger and the Barrows (Bonnie and Clyde), who each wrote to Henry Ford thanking him from a criminal's perspective for his innovation. With its iconic "flathead" design, the Ford V-8 brought accessible power to thieves on the go. Another no-goodnik, Baby Face Nelson, liked them so much he would, along with Dillinger and the Barrows, wind up dying near one

Citroën Traction Avant (1934-1957)
With one of the first successful applications of front-wheel drive, and among the world's first monocoque bodies, the Citroën Traction Avant makes most everyone's list of significant cars, but it's here for a more ignominious reason—it became a quick favorite of the Gestapo in Occupied France, remaining as well the default choice of Gallic organized crime, who liked the low-slung Citroën's forgiving ride and superior handling. Indeed, the car was so advanced for its time that it actually drove Citroën to bankruptcy in 1934 (founder Andre Citroën died the following year), and ownership by tire giant Michelin ensued. That's not criminal, though—that's capitalism.

Mercury Eight (1946-1951)
With most automobile production halted in America during World War II, the return of the Mercury Eight ushered in a bold new era. Powered by the Mercury L-head V-8 (à la the Ford L-head V-8) but lower, longer, and meaner than its Ford counterparts, it became the car of choice not just for scammers and stick-up guys but for outrageous custom car builders like George Barris and others, who'd stick a finger in the eye of prevailing cultural values of the time—James Dean drove one in Rebel Without A Cause, and that's you all you need to know.

Jaguar MK VII-IX (1951-1960)
Stateside, Jaguar was best known for swoopy sports cars, but across the pond, the firm's voluptuous four-door sedans—whose 6-cylinder engines the XK sportsters had been designed to showcase—quickly acquired the underworld's seal of approval. Winning the Monte Carlo Rally with a top speed around 100 mph, the Mark VII and successive iterations were fast, capacious and loud (as in just this side of vulgar), making them a preferred ride for the Brothers Kray and a generation of British criminals

Chevrolet Impala (1963-1964)
In its day, the Impala was an everyman's car, with an audience ranging from hard-working family men with crew cuts to civil rights workers to country-clubbers with Republican party memberships to grifters, pimps and con artists. How fitting then that decades later the Six-Four Impala remained an ubiquitous icon, appealing to both South Central gangbangers and drug-dealing Chicano lowriders, at a time when the main thing they had in common was a mutual enthusiasm for women with Kardashian-sized rears. Watch any West Coast rap video from practically any era and you're bound to see one. Go to any Sunday American Legion game in Middle America, and you'll find one there, too. The wifebeater won't be far off.

Ford Lotus Cortina (1963-1966)
Jim Clark. Graham Hill. Colin Chapman. Car enthusiasts will recognize these famous names associated with the Lotus Cortina, but here's another one you should know: Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind behind the Great Train Robbery, a heist which saw thieves make off with the equivalent of $7 million in used bank notes in Britain's largest robbery to that date, back in 1963 when $7 million really was $7 million. While Reynolds and his gang ended up using Land Rovers to haul the cash, his own Lotus Cortina was famously used for reconnaissance. When it was go time, we suspect, the flashy white and green paint scheme was a little too conspicuous.

Jaguar XJ (1969-1987)
If the Mark VII Jag is a car Michael Caine might have driven around East London in the underworld cinema of yore, then the XJ would be the ride of choice for the bumbling, shearling-clad henchmen of more recent Guy Ritchie outings. Sure, the '70s and '80s constituted a dorky interlude for the entire auto industry, and Jaguar's build-quality trangressions were never more evident. But the classic styling and engineering briefs laid out by the XJ would, along with epic depreciation, help to usher it on its way for a preternaturally long run down in the street-level world of hoodlums who'll pay any price for a little class, as long as that price is not much.

Lincoln Continental Mark III-VIII (1969-1998)
What's the point of being a successful criminal if you can't flaunt your wealth with a loud and proud display of good ol'-fashioned bad taste? The older Sicillian mobsters of "Donnie Brasco" might have dismissed the Lincoln Continental over comparable Cadillac Eldorados, but Lincoln's baroque personal luxury coupe, with its acres of prow, vestigial spare tire hump, and propensity for hideous, vinyl "landau" half-roofs replete with opera windows, was always the big-pimping alternative. A stylistic departure from the coolly elegant, four-door Continentals of the 1960s, the Conti coupes were the ostentatious, menacing symbols of Cosa Nostra big earners through four decades. Insert outsized funeral wreath here: RIP, Continental Mark.

Mercury Marquis (1967-1974)
Back in the day, it seemed like every cop show ("The Streets of San Francisco," "Cannon," "Hawaii Five-O," "Starsky and Hutch") featured a baddie driving one of these FoMoCo barges. Anonymous yet with overtones of evil, they ticked all the boxes in that they looked grim, and had plenty of room for perps, automatic weapons, contraband, and dead guys. It was only when they cornered hard in chase scenes—squealing and kneeling on their soft, bias-ply whitewalls and understeering like ocean liners, that you realized that choosing machinery like this, the criminal classes weren't always as bright as they were malevolent. To be fair, the lawmen often drove the same hopeless sedans, underscoring the enduring psychological truth: Sometimes all that separates criminals from cops is the color of their Mercury.

Lamborghini Countach (1974-1990)
Many an adolescent boy had the white Countach poster on their bedroom wall, but a few lucky "commodities traders" in South Beach had the real thing along with all the trappings said teenage boys dreamed of, like a mobile phone, gold Rolex, and artificially enhanced girlfriend. The 12-cylinder Countach was a ludicrously impractical car with little to redeem it beyond aesthetics, but the machine remains infamous and so evocative of the decadence of the '80s that it's a first-ballot immortal from the era's criminal motor pool. Usually finished in garish psychedelic hues, a matte-black example, painted in radar-resistant stealth-bomber paint, is rumored to have had a successful if short-lived career running drugs between Miami and New York .

Porsche 911 Turbo (1974-1989)
If the Countach was the sports car for people who dealt only in cash, the boosted 911 was for people who didn't make money ethically but still filed a tax return. The 930 Turbo (as its known among Porschephiles) was nicknamed "the lawyer killer" for its propensity to wrap itself around trees when its operator caught a nasty wave of panic-induced lift-off oversteer. The Porsche Turbo available today has seen the rough edges removed and is a far cry from its savage ancestor, which was the living embodiment of the fuck-you money its owners helped themselves to.

Mercedes Benz S-Class (1991-1999)
For a time, one could make the case that the W140 S-Class was the best car in the world, but its psychological impact may have been eternal. Marking the cusp before Mercedes's shift from vault-like solidity to over-technological unreliability, this brickiest of brick-house S-Classes was a battle cruiser par excellence, finding favor with captains of industry and criminals—organized and disorganized—as well as a growing band of gangsta rappers, the self-proclaimed criminals whose sales grew in direct proportion to how often they were vilified by the media that underwrote them. Puff Daddy made the big-body Benz the ride of choice for youthful hood denizens back in the '90s, and since these big old S-Classes rarely die of natural causes, that legacy endures.

Lincoln Navigator (1998-present)
Even before the Escalade and quite unlike the upward-mobility time-traveler Range Rover, the Navigator was the original luxury SUV for the made man, combining heft, aggression and less than tasteful luxury cues in a package that strongly appealed to the well-heeled thug's practical side as well as his underlying reptilian sensibility. With all the utilitarian appeal of an SUV, plus the price tag and chrome-tastic flashiness of a luxury car, it didn't take long for automakers to rally around the genre and the absurd profit markups that could be generated. Like any criminal enterprise, the whole scheme came crashing down when fortunes reversed, but just think where we'd be without luxury SUVs.

Cadillac Escalade (1999-present)
So ubiquitous and sinister-looking that its name alone conjures images of shady enterprises and disreputable characters, the Escalade vanquished its Lincoln rival and took its place alongside the S-Class as THE ride of choice for those on the sales end of the urban pharmaceutical business. In a sense, the car almost got too popular for its own good, and as used examples started trickling down to the underclasses, Reaganomics style, they came within reach of even the lowliest dirtbag bounders. As a young friend cogently observed, "When people like The Situation start jocking your swag, you know its time to move on."

Maybach 57/62 (2003-present)
The Maybach was created in part because the S-Class had started suffering a similar problem to Escalade—it was too accessible and hence over-exposed. The solution evidently was to take an even older S-Class chassis, make it look like a Hyundai while bloating it in evey direction, and then sell it for exponentially more. While it quickly became a favorite of third world dictators, record executives, and Wall Street robber barrons, it never achieved the sales figures Mercedes had hoped—even the deeply cynical get it wrong sometimes. Nevertheless, infamously profligate media mogul Birdman recently added a 62 Landaulet model (estimated price: $1.45 million) to his collection, where it joins his similarly introvert Bugatti Veyron. Only in America...

Ferrari F360/F430 (1999-2009)
You'd think that your brightest criminal minds would appreciate the advantages of discreet transport and low depreciation, but no. We left off Ferrari's cash-incinerating Testarossa from our '80s segment because the Countach is arguably the more iconic Italian exotic, but in the 2000s, the F360 and its niftier F430 follow-up ruled the roost. Lamborghini's Gallardo lacked the marque's trademark swing-up doors, but the first 21st century Ferrari was all Ferrari, with carnal styling and an exhaust note that could be heard for miles. The F1 paddle-shift transmission meant clutchless shifting via steering wheel controls, and the ability to snort coke bumps off the hand-stitched center console. Clearly, some criminals just want to go out in a blaze of glory. Top of the world, Ma.

Drive Her Crazy: A Guide to Date Cars

Dodge Caravan
Many girls like guys who don't give a crap what other people think. But there's still such a thing as caring too little, and these sexless appliances suggest just that. Deploy with extreme caution.

Right for: Flea market aficionados, potters, harpists, single mothers with more than three children.
Wrong for: Everyone else.
Note: Homeless lotharios could do worse.

Chevrolet Aveo
Frugality is in, and the Aveo's cheap to buy and great on gas. But if you're already planning on going Dutch, avoid rides like this—gals seeking obsessive cheapskates are thin on the ground.

Right for: The chronically underemployed, next-wave environmentalists, the willfully down market.
Wrong for: Safety- or fashion-conscious, Buy American types.
Note: Made-in-Korea-Aveo could unlock Pacific Rim pride points, where applicable (but don't count on it)

Volkswagen Eos
Girls dig ragtops often enough, but like the far worthier Mazda Miata, the strangely dull-witted VW Eos might be a little too femme for her. Don't forget to purge copies of Details sitting in the back seat, or the Eos's folding roof may be the only top that gets removed tonight.

Right for: Big haired secretaries, fresh air- and origami- enthusiasts
Not for: Autocrossers, mechanical engineers.
Note: Fahrvergnügen ain't what it used to be.

Jaguar E-Type
The most famous automotive phallic symbol of all time seemingly escapes all negative connotations of its hyper-stylish Italian counterparts. Credit the underdog cachet of being British, being an object of enduring beauty, and a reputation for being more tempermental than a bi-polar Vassar co-ed gone off her psycho-pharmaceuticals.

Right for: Anyone with a pulse and an appreciation of style, pre-microchip engineering, and/or the timeless appeal of money.
Not for:: Anyone who expects to be on time, the physically handicapped.
Note: Unexpected roadside breakdowns can cool ardor quickly.

Volvo 245 DL
Slap a couple "MV" stickers (for Martha's Vineyard) on the rear bumper or some East Hampton dump stickers in the rear windows of one of these classic wagons and you'll be dating Upper East Side prep-school chicks faster than you can anglicize your ethnic surname.

Right for: Old money, old hippies
Not for: New money, upscale suburban mall rats
Note: De-mildew the rear compartment and lose the bong-water smell before attempting to assess rear accommodations, or assuming prone position with your date.

Land Rover Series IIA
Crude and arcane, but authentic with a capital A, the Land Rover's spartan interior may be a tough sell as you and your date bounce into its safari roof hitting bumps in the road, but you can always regale her with stories of building wells in Malawi, and how you couldn't bear to part with the local tribal folk—or this Land Rover, which you shipped back on a Peace Corps trawler.

Right for: Nature lovers, adventurers, alcoholics.
Not for: Priss-pots, hypochondriacs, spinal injury sufferers.
Note: Save terror-inducing demonstrations of low-range hill descent capabilities for second date.

Porsche 911
The gentleman's sports car, with only a fraction of the vulgar baggage of a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, and the older the better. Ersatz rear seats give her somewhere to stash the Birkin bag, while challenging oversteer tendencies of early examples should keep your eyes focused on the road, where they belong.

Right for: Driving enthusiasts, status-seekers, money-lovers, physical-fitness freaks, fastidious anal-retentives.
Not for: Hardcore Hadassah members, do-gooders, full-figured gals.
Note: Avoid embarrassing oversized whale-tail spoilers, the neon codpieces of Porschedom

Lincoln Town Car
With the Town Car, you can pay a buddy $20 and a case of Natty Light to play chauffeur. She doesn't have to know that you borrowed it from your grandparents, and the extreme body roll of this classic, shabbily handling land yacht will ensure she falls into your arms at each corner.

Right for: City dwellers, aspiring professionals, CPAs.
Not for: Baristas, performance artists.
Note: Optimal when designated driver situation is anticipated

Dodge Challenger
There'll always be a self-selecting female audience for American muscle, but if you want to cast the net a little wider, the genus' excessive macho-ness gets offset in the new Challenger by unabashed Dazed and Confused-era styling. If it has to be a muscle car, this is it.

Zimmer Golden Spirit
This baroque masterpiece of '80s vulgarity is strongly recommended for those who wear fur coats and straighten their hair with lye. Pull it off right, and you can expect to have assembled a veritable harem by daybreak.

Right for: Fallen women, the morbidly ironic, old ladies.
Not for: Shy, sensitive types, social workers, clinical psychologists.
Note: Be prepared for jealous outbursts from big-pimping individuals who thought they ruled the roost.

Ford SVT Raptor
Pick up trucks cut a wide swathe through the American psyche—and it's no different for girls. Everyone likes an old pick 'em up (in theory), and for a night on the town, no gal south of the Mason-Dixon line should ever be expected to step into anything riding lower than a pickup truck. Might as well make it the baddest one on the market.

Right for: Southern belles, equestrians, mountain girls, construction workers.
Not for: Greenpeace activists, occupational therapists, New York Times editors.
Note: Who says moving a couple of refrigerators or hauling a small bulldozer does not a great first date make?

Toyota Prius Nothing says social responsibility like a Prius. Cheap to run yet not particularly cheap to buy, it hits the sweet spot where a ladies' taste for men with post-scarcity consumption habits collides with their quiet appreciation of spare cash.

Right for: Midwives, human resource personnel, law professors.
Not for: Liability lawyers, roller bladers, drug dealers.
Note: Prius' alleged runaway acceleration tendencies can help explain away a variety of aberrant date behaviors.

Cadillac Escalade
Like insects attracted to the light, some gals can't help themselves in the face of something large and in charge. Good taste is another thing. So while a big-black 'Sclade might work at the Jersey Shore, so will reeking of Drakkar Noir and Camel Lights. Ironic, self-deprecating asides likely essential when used to troll Ivy League doctoral candidates.

Right for: Housewives of New Jersey, anesthesiologists, professional escorts.
Not for: Ministers, ethicists, Ralph Nader aides.
Note: If she doesn't like the 'Sclade, chances are the full smoked glass treatment, 22" dubs and atomic subwoofer won't help.

Any Red Ferrari
Just as Hollywood tearjerkers give women false notions of romance, the media-driven collective male consciousness has convinced guys that red Ferraris are chick magnets when, in fact, except to a narrow band of cheesy sluts, they are anti-magnetic. Unless you're in Mötley Crüe and courting groupies. Which you aren't.

Right for: Impressionable youth, spinning instructors, cosmeticians.
Not for: Architects, librarians, sociologists.
Note: Old Ferraris are often beautiful and they're worth stupid money, so a gal really would be a fool to hold one against you...

Morris Minor
If it's true that gaudy supercars lead women to question the size and worthiness of your manhood while sniggering behind your back and asking what you are compensating for, then it follows that those with the most humble wheels ought to be presumed ones with nothing to compensate for. Select something old and humble like the 0-to-60-in-27-seconds Morris Minor, and ladies can only conclude that you are supremely confident in your dude unit and know exactly what to do with it, no smoke screens needed.

Right for: Short story writers, mental patients, graduate students.
Not for: Doctors, portfolio managers, law enforcement professionals.
Note: Choose your dates wisely—When your old car tops out at 66 miles per hour with a tailwind, they're perforce going to last longer.

The Gay Parade

Because not all of us hope to date ladies, we asked our friend, Brett Berk, the rambunctiously gay car columnist at our, erm, sister organ, Vanity Fair, for suggestions for readers dating gaily. His thoughts herewith:

Honda Element
Its flexible cargo space is perfect for antiquing, Honda's unusual dash-mounted shifter means there's nothing in the way if your passenger wants to... lean over while you're driving, and the whole interior is rubbery, so when you're done, you can simply hose it out.

Tesla Roadster
This electric sportster's nimble, silent, battery-powered operation makes it the ideal vehicle for stalking your love object.

Mercedes 300 TD
If I could bottle the scent of Cape Cod sand, diesel (or biodiesel) fumes, warm horsehair, and old money, it would smell like one of these, and I could make a fortune selling it as a gay aphrodisiac.

McLaren F1
An subtle reminder that a date doesn't have to be limited to just two guys. Three seats = three way.