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"  Flared Fender = Badass If you want everyone to know your car is superawesome, a towering spoiler is totally out, because flared, vented front fenders are the new rear wing. Just look at the Nissan GT-R, the Subaru WRX STI, and the Lexus IS F.   Track Cars Will Multiply Like Rabbits Like gym rats, car companies are addicted to ridiculous feats of testosterone-fueled one-upmanship. This year, that means building a track version of an existing performance car. New ones include the Mercedes CLK63 AMG Black Series, the Porsche 911 GT3 RS, the Nissan Nismo Z, and the Honda S2000 CR (Club Racer). And if you use any of these cars to commute to work, you&amp;#039;re officially as much of a mouth breather as the guy who drives a Hummer H1 to the mall. Return of the Supercar  Not so long ago, Lamborghini was owned by a bunch of Indonesians, Ferrari was hawking leftover relics from the Miami Vice era, and Maseratis were famous mostly for catching on fire. Now the factories in Italy are churning out such lustworthy items as the Ferrari 430 Scuderia, the Maserati GranTurismo, the Lamborghini Reventon, and the 450 hp Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione.  The return of the Italian supercar can be credited to Volkswagen&amp;#039;s finally providing Lamborghini with proper resources, and to Ferrari&amp;#039;s hitting its stride with its best products in decades. But perhaps the most interesting back story is the one I heard about the Competizione: Back in 2000, when GM entered into an alliance with Fiat (which owns Alfa), it agreed to a &amp;quot;put option,&amp;quot; which meant that Fiat could demand that GM buy the whole damn company. Well, that&amp;#039;s exactly what happened: Fiat demanded to be bought, and GM, already big and unwieldy enough, walked away from the deal and agreed to pay the escape fee. That penalty? Two billion dollars. Fiat was now able to do what newly flush car companies do best -- build a supercar! So if you&amp;#039;re an Alfa fan, you owe someone a big thank-you note for the 8C, and you won&amp;#039;t even need international postage.   Dark Is the New Bling The Ferrari 430 Scuderia, the Lexus IS F, and the Dodge Viper ACR all signal their bad intentions with rims of blackness where one expects to see the glint of metal. Meanwhile, all the spinners from a few years ago are now being used as lazy Susans.  Small Cars May Get an Itsy-Bitsy Amount of Respect Recently I spent more than six hundred miles behind the wheel of a Smart Fortwo, the first real microcar to test the American market. Smart&amp;#039;s U.S. introduction had been delayed for years while the company tried to figure out which cars it could sell here or whether it should even bother in the first place. After all, what is the Garth Brookslistenin&amp;#039;, Bud-drinkin&amp;#039;, F-350-drivin&amp;#039; American public gonna make of a car that&amp;#039;s more than three feet shorter than a damn Mini Cooper? The answer: good question. The citizens of Arizona, where I drove the Fortwo, certainly didn&amp;#039;t know what to make of the thing. Some asked if it was electric. Many assumed it got triple-digit fuel economy. (Not quite: I got mid-thirties.) Some girls laughed at me (which rather undermined a theory I had about the Smart representing the opposite of sports-car phallic compensation). But for all the gawking it elicits, from behind the wheel it&amp;#039;s easy to forget that you&amp;#039;re driving something other than a conventional -- albeit torturously slow -- car. The main justification for the name seems to come when you&amp;#039;re looking for a parking space and realize that you can park wherever you want -- not such an amazing perk in Phoenix, which is pretty much one giant paved parking space. I&amp;#039;m not so sure the Smart is going to have a huge direct impact on the way Americans drive. But it could have long-term pull by making being the smallish fish in the pond acceptable. This is good news for the Chevy Aveos and Honda Fits of the world, cars that are eminently sensible but that a lot of people probably reject out of hand as too small.  Warranty One-Upmanship Will Continue  When scientists unlock the key to immortality, Chrysler&amp;#039;s gonna be really sorry it came out with a lifetime power-train warranty. So will the car companies that will inevitably follow its lead. Direct-Injection Gas Engines for All!  Direct injection used to be a diesel-only technology, because it&amp;#039;s expensive, but now it&amp;#039;s showing up all over the place on gas engines, which means you get more power and better fuel economy -- especially when you turbocharge that bastard. Case in point: The Mini Cooper S got a new turbocharged, direct-injected motor last year, and without gaining any size, it produces more power and four more miles per gallon than the motor it replaced. Similar case with the Cadillac CTS. Thanks, direct injection! Green Talk Will Remain Cheap The Tokyo Motor Show is typically known for its tiny cars with recycled-bamboo bodywork. But at this year&amp;#039;s gala, essentially every single production car was a fast-as-hell gasoline-combusting beast. On the Subaru stand, you had the electric G4e (for &amp;quot;Green for the Earth&amp;quot;) concept car parked across from the new 305 hp WRX STI production car. Nissan displayed the tiny, four-cylinder Round Box concept car, but the star of the show was its insanely fast 480 hp GT-R production car. Maybe the green revolution will really take hold a few years down the road, but in 2008 the focus is still on raw, unadulterated horsepower. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/cars/a4152/2008-auto-show/>