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My CAA Magazine review of the the 2010 Lexus RX 450h hybrid crossover:

2010 Lexus RX 450h review | CAA Magazine.

Got a new set of golf clubs for my birthday. I don’t really understand why I’m so eager to try them out. But I am. In the past year I have golfed twice, and didn’t play well, at least not in traditional sense. By my own metric — in which I count the number of balls I lost — there has been some improvement. As I said to my good friend, Fishbelly White, maybe, in my previous golf-playing life, I didn’t have the right mindset. Maybe now I do.

The changing typography of the Web

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The Realist Idealist: Charging up an electric car with solar panels

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The North American International Auto Show takes place this weekend (sadly, it goes on without me.) Look for the usual gushing coverage from the enthusiast books. I’m hoping for more critical coverage from Winding Road and the U.K.’s Car.

Got to see some of my favourite behind-the-wheel behaviours during the holidays: driving while talking on the phone (which includes, but is not limited to no-signal lane changes and one-handed turning); and the hothead in a Chevy Malibu who hurtles into a three-lane wide pack of cars only to suddenly stomp on the brakes as if the cars appeared from nowhere. Nice.

I’ve been driving a 2006 Kia Sportage for the past couple of weeks while our regular car gets repaired (it was accidentally bashed by a neighbour.) I wanted to like the Kia, and while it has many things that I like about it — good seats, engine sound, fog lamps, powerful heating system, dual exhaust — it falls short in a few areas. First off, it’s kind of ugly and to me looks a bit like a design project gone wrong. Second, the V6 is a bit too thirsty for my liking and doesn’t produce enough low-end power. There’s a lot of competition in the compact SUV market and Kia (“The Fastest Growing Automaker in the world”) will have to work on the Sportage before it can compete with Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

Been a bit busy the past while. But I will return.

Okay, I still believe it’s great to see an F1race live. But, watching the French Grand Prix this past Sunday made me almost rethink my interest in the sport. Michael Schumacher won the race for the 8th time — and that’s all you need to know. With the exception of the start and a brief battle with Fernando Alonso, the outcome was pretty much predetermined. Hopefully, the auto manufacturers will continue to push the FIA to increase competition on the track, although we’ve heard similar promises before. It’s been so long since we’ve seen Schumacher actually race against someone that I’ve forgotten what made him great in the first place. Soon, I fear, I’ll be writing the same thing about Fernando Alonso.

The Volkswagen Passat campaign continues the current VW trend towards really sharp, smart advertising. The end line “Lowest ego emissions of any German sedan” is spoken so plainly, almost flatly, that you might miss it the first time you see the spot. Car ads this good don’t come around very often.