Dan Neil

Desire, the Buddha informs us, is the root of all suffering -- also, a leading cause of alimony, but let's move on. The craving for comfort, luxury, prestige and me-first acceleration drives us to buy more car than we absolutely need to go from point A...

With the 2007 Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon, Natty Bumppo has traded his buckskins for some designer jeans. Yes, Natty Bumppo, hero of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales," the great woody prose of which has prompted many an undergraduate to...

Generally speaking, Californians are pretty lucky. We have Yosemite, we have Big Sur. Our state leads the nation in Anna Nicole baby-daddies. And we have the California Air Resources Board, a bunch of bureaucratic do-gooders who actually do good when...

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is Man." -- Alexander Pope Want to know thyself better? Gauge your reaction to this car, the Smart Fortwo, a four-wheeled flea built by Smart -- a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler --...

A couple of months ago I found myself in the vicinity of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, standing in front of a high-end cheese shop where customers were lined up out the door. Got that? Cheese shop. Waiting. Out the door. It's fair to say the consumers...

The Maserati Quattroporte is the most beautiful, best-handling super-sedan on the planet. Oh, if that were only enough. This effortlessly gorgeous hunk of Italian swank, this sinister spark from coachbuilder Pininfarina's grinding wheel, ignites envy and...

Six weeks hence, our collective fore-lobe will be obsessed with the large and loud summer movie "Transformers," a film based on an irredeemable and just plain odd Saturday morning cartoon that ran briefly 20 years ago and was created specifically to...

Launched more than 50 years ago as a social gathering for the upper echelons of auto collecting and racing, the Pebble Beach weekend has evolved into an entire "holy week" for the motoring faithful. With auto-related events spread out across the entire...

The Internal Revenue Service said this week that Honda's FCX qualified for a $12,000 federal tax credit. That would be good news for the owners of the hydrogen-powered car — if there were any. Only two of the futuristic fuel-cell vehicles are in...

To my co-workers with whom I share the company garage, I'm sorry. The recent presence of the 2007 Jaguar XKR test car left you so breathless as to be practically hypoxic. The resulting blue-faced befuddlement may have been responsible for an uptick in...

As it happens, I have driven a car billed as the "World's Fastest Volvo." It was a late-'70s 242 GT with a 900-hp Chevy big-block V8 punched through the hood, a transbrake, full cage, trac bars and monster slicks. Some crazed digger in Tennessee decided...

DETROIT — With the economy crashing, Americans are tightening their belts and automakers are ready to sell them smaller pants. On Sunday at Detroit's auto show, General Motors Corp. revealed the , a tiny two-door hatchback that the company says...