There’s no car more perfect than the BMW E30 M3, in my Germanic eyes. It is perfection. Lightweight, boxy, RWD, powerful and agile. For some people, though perfection just isn’t enough: The Mona Lisa could use one extra brush stroke (a moustache), the Steak N’ Shake steakburger could be grilled a little less crispy; Scarlett Johansson could have a better singing voice. If everyday Jack American approached the Mona Lisa very casually with a paint brush and box of water colors he would be publically bounced and trounced. If everyday Jack American returned his steakburger for one in ‘medium rare’ his replacement would be spit on, or worse. And if everyday Jack American asked Scarlett Jo to please take singing lessons before recording another album she probably would not have sex with him.

But there is a loophole. How much money do you got, son?

You’ve always known your snooty granola neighbor’s Prius sucked, but you never knew how to really stick it to her. “My car is faster than yours” doesn’t work. “My car handles much better than yours” doesn’t even make her flinch. Well, I’ve got some ammunition for you, buddy.

Independent commodities consultant and strategic metals expert Jack Lifton says hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius are the biggest users of rare earth metals in the world. Put that in your hash pipe and smoke it, granola neighbor.

The U.S. Department of Transportation just doled out $100,000 to upstart company Solar Roadways to develop “Solar roads,” i.e. sturdy, 12×12 solar panels built specifically to be embedded into roads. The Department of Energy and, of course, Solar Roadways hopes that these solar roadways will push quite a bit of power into the energy grid. Each panel can develop around 7.6 kwh of power per day. The panels may also be include heating elements to keep the road from freezing over and glowing LED road markings to help people finally act out TRON based fantasies in the real world. For a mere $7k per panel!

One of Nigeria’s 13,524 kings, whom moved to Long Beach in the 80s in search of a wife, is selling his personal vehicle, a 1987 “MOST ROYAL CUSTOM IL750″ which is somehow half from Germany and half from the U.S. It has been customized in a most royal fashion with the finest in car entertainment system Radioshack has to offer, a set of very distinguished looking low-rider style wire wheels and an amalgam of real imitation gold badges.

Take that, colonials!

Steam, you know, that stuff between your girlfriend’s ears, is good for more than just blowing money on Express jeans or heating archaic buildings. In your Grandpappy’s day it was used to power automobiles, fast automobiles. Back then steam-powered cars regularly blew (or scalded) the paint off of their internal combustion counterparts. Ask anybody besides Jay Leno about this business and you’ll get a pretty odd look.

The Lutz is tweeting! The Lutz is tweeting! Try to get that awful, avian nightmare-vision out of your head…

It’s been going down on twitter today. GM officials are letting it hang low and exposed through the wonder of digital, 140 character news bursts.

It’s been a while since automobile manufacturers have developed a vehicle destined to become the sort of quirky, underdog cult object that the likes of Volkswagen’s original Beetle or BMW’s original Isetta have, a rare occurrence in the past twenty years but it has been done. Diamler/Swatch’s Smart Car line is the best modern example I can think of. It meets all the requirements: small, underpowered, strange looking, often referred to as cute…

The R35 Nissan Skyline GT-R has spent more time careening loose and mean around the Nürburgring than just about any car over the past two years. As a result of such consistent corporate sponsored hoonery the brute currently holds a hotly debated production car lap-time record. This did not go unnoticed by officials at the legendary Green Hell.

Recently, between a second helping of wursts and a sixth helping of weissbier, the Big-Heads at the ‘Ring picked the R35 Nissan Skyline GT-R to fill in as the new, official Nürburgring rapid response rescue vehicle — much cooler than the old Skoda Octavia wagons I saw plowing headlong around the track when I was there two summers ago.