Why in the world would a 10-speed gearbox be useful? Is it that important that the engine never exceed 1500 RPM?

Agreed. If GM engineers hadn't fumbled the ball so badly with the C6 Z06 valvetrain, you could actually argue that they were doing a better job than Porsche's engineers these days.

This is called "Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing."

(Shrug) I'm as white as the driven snow, but frankly I feel more commonality with aspects of the Japanese culture than I do with the culture in Dearborn or Detroit.

Like everyone else, they have the government they deserve.

This. Isn't the point of the leaf-spring rear end to save space?

Yes, that comment by Walter Roehrl got my attention. Hearing him say something like that is like watching Captain Kirk shit his drawers. You don't want any part of whatever vehicle made it happen.

Nice. What's the badge on the fender?

c) Wood doesn't belong in cars

If we're going that far afield, I'd nominate the Soviet T-34 tank engine from WWII. If you didn't know what it came from, you'd think it came out of a Lamborghini. Fuel-injected DOHC V-12, four valves per cylinder, 500 HP at 1800 RPM(!)

What are the objections to this? Like Maxton86, I never had a problem with it in my Porsche.

... and then there's that thing.

True, it's getting harder to arouse any real interest with yet another high-end performance car. The original NSX had a simple, obvious mission statement: Clone the Ferrari 348, except make it not suck. There was nothing else quite like the NSX on the market, and it was drop-dead awesome. You can imagine Luca di…

The really stupid thing is that they *are* mandatory — inside the trunk, that is. My 981 has no release cable at all, except for one provided for the luckless waif who manages to lock herself in the frunk. It would have cost basically $0.00 to run a cable from that mechanism into the cockpit.

He's getting paid every time someone clicks on the article.

Pro tip: Go to the convention center on the last day of the show and dig around in the trash cans outside. You will find plenty of discarded badges.

Darwin wasn't wrong. If intelligence no longer leads to reproductive success — and nobody can argue against that point — then it will naturally become less common.

Those are speed slits

But the Panamera is so darned big and clunky that it might as well be an SUV. Same attributes, except more money, less cargo capacity, and lower to the ground.

It looks OK in person, I agree, but I don't understand why someone would buy one in preference to a Cayenne. I don't think people realize how competent the Cayenne is.