Weekly Roundup: There's A Generic Available For This Prescription Edition

There is a long and well-respected tradition of Japanese automakers copying the styling of German automakers. Sometimes it's blatant: think quad-headlamp RWD Corolla sedan. Sometimes it's semi-blatant: think Nineties Civic coupe. And sometimes it's not copying at all. The eighth-generation and ninth-generation Accord coupes look quite a bit like the Mercedes W204 C-Class Coupe --- but in this case, it was the Accord that arrived first, by four years.

Of course, if you're a true snob of the Fatherland you can always point out that both of these cars owe quite a bit to the BMW 8-Series coupe. There's always a bigger fish...

At Road&Track, I suggested the creation of mass-market performance crossovers and ranked all of the currently-available Challengers by trackday prowess.

For TTAC, I asked a question about electric cars on track, wondered about the soft science of reliability measurement, and tried to talk a reader out of "saving money" with a diesel Golf.

Next week, we might see some contributions by Brother Bark. I hear he is coming out of his shell, albeit slowly...