Nah, Nah - Toyota finally screwed something up. Not that I'm wishing Toyota any bad luck, but MAN, am I sick of their "holierthanthou" reputation in the US market. Finally, after years of hearing all about Toyota's amazing reliability, and their astronomical resale value and their magical fuel economy blahblahblah, they've finally gone and really screwed the pooch. Hard. The pooch has a broken hip.

"Wasn't that 'floor mats' thing a pretty big deal?" you ask. Well, no, not really. Zip-ties solved that problem. Here we have a real serious failure. Here we have an afront to humankind that just cannot be overlooked: The thingee that holds the spare tire in place gets a little rusty . . .. What?!? What a let down!! Is that all??! No, this rust can cause your Tundra's brakes to fail in extreme cases . . . sigh, I was hoping for some sort of grisly catastrophe that involved the Tundra completely imploding on itself, crushing the driver and the driver's dog in a cocoon of twisted metal and shattered glass . . . Toyota, you always let me down . . .

America needs a pick-me-up. A cattle-prod to the collective face. We need to go out and trounce the rest of the world at their own, uhm . . . some game of theirs. We got our Basketball "Cojones" back, now how about our Engineering-Prowess "Cojones." USF1 plans to do just that, albeit with a British co-owner and some sort of European driver.

Which is fine. Lately I don't trust us enough to assume we could dominate the most technically advanced sport in the world without any experienced help. I mean, seriously, Taco Bell invents asinine, Newspeak, adver-words and we don't out-and-out boycott them over it?! ("Melty"?! How stupid are we, really?) Eff, I had Taco Bell yesterday!

Even if I and most of the rest of us are hopeless trainwrecks, Ken Anderson most definitely is not. He's put together a world-class F1 program in North Carolina, and now he's ready to employ some drivers. The first year might not be pretty, but 2011 could be the year America wins its pride back . . .

We have provided links to Jeremy Clarkson's articles in the Times Online before, but he isn't the only Top Gear presenter who writes a semi-weekly column for a British newspaper.

Good 'ole Captain Slow (a.k.a. James May) scribes his own articles, for the Telegraph. James has a slightly different style, a little more subtle, a little less "car testing" oriented. He explores some interesting subjects, some interesting cars, and does some wildly interesting things.

Your "James May Primer" inside the post . . .

If anyone is paying attention, this is my Christmas List:

1.) Six dozen cases of Widmer Hefeweizen.

2.) 35 cartons of Marlboro Reds.

3.) 300 some-odd gallons of Dutch Brothers Espresso,

and 4.) the Hexatech C3TR six-post Racing Simulator.

. . . then I would humbly request that I be left in solitude until July . . .

Jenson Button does it all. He wins championships, has a different cast of models on his arm (arms, plural) at every race, and he has also authored a book on the 2009 World Championship - seemingly spewing out a novel in the span of two weeks. What a fancy Lad this Button is!

How do you follow all of this up? Why you simply leave your championship-winning outfit (that you have been a part of for the better part of ten years) to drive for a rival. Not because of money, not because of fanfare that comes with McLaren, but because you "want to be a member of an all-British GP team."

Balls, my friends, sheer Balls . . .

It has an interior constructed of balsa wood, formica fiber board, and goat hides. It's oddly porportioned, has a wretched driver's-left blindspot, and almost fills a two-car garage. Normally these issues would cause me to absolutely hate and mistrust a car, verbally tearing it to shreds at every opportunity. Normally. Fortunately for the Cadillac CTS, the intangibles greatly out-weight the direct by-products of GM bureaucracy. It is a fantastic car.

How could GM possibly make me overlook all the obvious quality issues that I've noticed in their vehicles since my first ride in an '88 Celebrity? For starters, build an angular BMW that actually handles like a BMW, and shoehorn a blown smallblock under its eager bonnet. Ok, we've got the near-600 horsepower, tire euthanizer - now we need to make the car cooler . . . . WAGON TIME!

The final gallery of Roar-N-Soar madness fills up the gaps in slalom competitiors. We have got a dastardly Black Corvette, a lithe Lotus Elise, and one of the quickest cars of the day - a full race-prepped MG Sprite! Many sideways, tire-crushing images inside the post . . .

The slalom portion of Roar-N-Soar was definitely not limited to Jaguar-badged participants. There were many interesting vehicles that graced the autocross last week; in gallery number two we explore some of the eclectic autos not wearing a pouncing cat on their bonnets . . .

Buick releases a car that has yet to be sullied by water-headed American designers, this new, desirable car might be too little too late, and Whitacre Jr. decides GM exec's deserve a pay raise, already . . . what is the deal with GM's crappy timing/insatible greed?!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, this is a car-blog. I'm aware. Unfortunately, pretty much any mechanical device used for transportation gets us all warm and vibraty feeling in our guttiwuts. So no articles about horses; airplanes however, massive egineering feats, and priceless works of art will get some ink.

Fantasy of Flight is an attraction designed to enlighten visitors in the ways of manned flight. Originally, Kermit Weeks had a smaller airfield in Miami. In 1994, when good 'ole hurricane Andrew rolled through, Mr. Weeks decided to store his precious (and, in some cases, priceless) aircraft in a concrete hanger farther south, in Homestead.