@CurisosityAteMyCat: Financially, you'd be far better off getting scammed out of the purchase price than actually taking delivery of a used Audi A8.

@RX-Elise: That's still 10% less than the current Z4.

@snap_understeer_ftw: They're entertaining if you're a self-flagellating city dweller that has never driven a car at speed and thinks your inferiority complex makes you clever. For the rest of us, they're just self obsessed bores that spend a lot of time around cars without learning much about them.

@YellowDucati: Chryslers actually have much better durability than VWs, as does everything else on the US market except Hyundais. So that makes Chrysler the 3rd least durable car in the US, almost imperceptibly worse than GM. Based on my experience, something plastic in the Chrysler is more likely to break the first…

You could have an all Audi R8 demolition derby and I'd laugh like Michael Schumacher, but watching the Sport Quattro flip hurt.

@Ileee: Sadly, it wasn't destroyed. It sure didn't come off unscathed from its meeting with the mighty styrofoam though. You'd think a two ton two seater would be a little more stout. The lower right rear wishbone wasn't impressed with Audi's weight reduction efforts.

@littlephiish: Tanner Foust beat new WDC Vettel at the ROC this year. Can any of the original Top Gear dorks claim to have beaten any real drivers on a track?

@M44Power: It seems to me that the two best Japanese companies still build durable cars. My father replaced his last BMW with an Acura TSX in 2004. This years it developed an intermitent problem with a power lock solenoid. That's it. It has had no other defects or wear issues. I replaced my last BMW with a 2007 Civic…

@M44Power: They were still nice looking cars that drove well, but they were not good cars to own in the long term. That wasn't my point though. The real problem is that BMW had changed their design priorities by then and nothing in the pipeline would ever register with people who liked their earlier BMWs for reasons…

@rb1971 - E39M5 + E9 CSi: There were at least some good qualities to every BMW built from about 1962 until 2002. If I make it to my parents' place for Christmas, I'll look for my media kit from the E39 M5's introduction. I've moved so many times in the past decade and given away so much of my BMW stuff that I'm not…

@rb1971 - E39M5 + E9 CSi: The E9 is a beautiful car, but I consider the E30 to be the peak of BMW's car building expertise before they started to take shortcuts on materials and then lose the plot on all fronts entirely. E30s were the most rust proof BMWs, they were reasonably light, they didn't suffer from highspeed…

@rb1971 - E39M5 + E9 CSi: I can hear it rusting from here!

@Mr.Wilson: They're $2 plastic shoes that Nike is selling for $90 and getting a ton of practically free press out of. Absent minded like a fox.

How can the Volt damage Motor Trend's credibility? Look at their past winners. They have none to lose.

@Totoros Porsche: It was certainly the best BMW of all time.

@M44Power: I'd say they lost the scent a decade ago.

@imiss2xwishbones: People do often die in single vehicle crashes, but if you read the post I replied to you'll see that its author seemed to think that a 3 star pickup would lose in a crash to a 5 star hatchback. Lots of deaths occur in accidents between vehicles of disparate masses. The occupants of the larger…

@Ethenal: It would drive through any 5-star midsize car with superficial damage. These are non-deformable barrier crashes, and not applicable to too many real world impacts between vehicles.

The Coke Bottle character lines are an EPIC FAIL on a car trying to conjur memories of the Quattro. This car comes closer to summoning the image of the 1974 Ford Torino. It just neeeds a Starsky and Hutch stripe, and a nose job. That isn't a front end, it's an affront end!

@KillerRaccoon: Many of the European cars of the era were actually fitted with yellow headlights, probably for the same reason.