A recent visit to London coincided with surprisingly good weather, and as I had some time to spare, I went for a walk along Park Lane. This is the street running along the eastern edge of Hyde Park. Being one of the most expensive parts of London, the car dealerships there are less than standard. I knew about the McLaren F1 shop, where they sell the world's most expensive road car at £500,000. There's also an Aston Martin shop, and I was looking forward to seeing the new Jaguar X350 further up the road (it looks better in real life than in pictures). However, since last time I was there, a Rolls-Royce shop had sprung up as well.

Given the prices of real estate in the area, these aren't full-blown dealerships, but just cars in a window. The Rolls-Royce shop was no different: just a big new Phantom standing there on its own. More bizarre was the spec sheet in the window. It was a plain piece of A4 paper, listing the features of the Rolls, starting with "beverage holders front and rear." It ended with the quarter-million pound price tag. Very incongruous and tacky.

This was the first time I'd seen the new Rolls-Royce in real life, and I spent considerable time looking at it from all possible angles as best the window permitted (it was after closing time). It's huge. It's really, really big. But Rolls-Royces have always been big cars, so that in itself is not surprising. Although I am a fan of big cars in general, this one did not do much for me. It was big and bulky without being refined, subtle or beautiful. Looking closely at the car there are some styling elements that you can't see well in pictures. The headlights are more than just plain quandrangles, but this can't make up for the sheer angular appearance of the car in general. The effect of the Phantom is too overwhelming for that.

The proportions are wrong. The grille is too big, the lights too small, the windows too compact. It it lacking in grace, and goes for bulk for bulk's sake. It remains to be seen how it does on the road, as a car's true impact can only be judged in relation to its surroundings. For instance, the Jaguar X-Type looks a lot better in isolation than it does on the road, when it becomes obvious that it's a small car, and nothing really special. It's the differential in design with the rest of the cars that determines how good a car looks in the wild. Showrooms can be deceptive.

Rolls-Royces have a tradition of being huge. If you ever see a Silver Cloud on the road, you'll know what I mean. The Silver Cloud is a true classic in terms of design, and epitomizes the Rolls-Royce aesthetic. The Silver Cloud series dates back to 1955 with the introduction of the Silver Cloud I, which also was produced in beautiful drophead versions. The Silver Cloud III was marked primarily by the quad headlights. What I can't judge is these cars' impact when they were new; most cars on the road in those days were smaller (at least in Europe) than they are now, and the Silver Cloud must have made an imposing sight as the sailed down the streets. But even while the Cloud was in production, it was not the only Rolls-Royce on sale. There was the even bigger Phantom V, which was meant for those who could still afford a driver. It's interesting the the new Rolls picks up the old name of the Phantom and marks a break with the "Silver" series. The current Phantom should perhaps be called the Phantom VII to be consistent. The Phantom VI was in production until 1991. It's big enough to be a passenger-in-the-back car rather than one for people who enjoy driving themselves. Perhaps Rolls-Royce will bring a second, smaller car to the market to complement the Phantom.

Still, the design of the Phantom, despite its retro styling cues cannot entice me. Rolls-Royce had been improving with the Silver Seraph and the Corniche after the dreary and unimaginative Silver Spur series of the 1980's and 1990's, which marked the low point in Rolls-Royce design; not only were they lacking in aesthetic virtue, what's worse, they were bland and forgettable. The current Phantom may be ugly, but it's not a car you'd overlook. Any publicity is good publicity, right?

BMW's first attempt at creating a Rolls-Royce is less than an overwhelming success aesthetically. They tried too hard. The Phantom has all the classic Rolls-Royce features, such a big grill, front wheels very far forward, a huge engine, a flat compartment floor in the back, lots of leather and wood even waftability... but while they managed to identify and assemble the individual features that make a Rolls a Rolls, they never managed to synthesize a coherent whole out of it. The new Phantom is a paint-by-numbers Rolls Royce.

When I hear the name Studebaker, I think of something like this or this. Which makes the new Studebaker something of a, well, not quite shock, but certainly it takes some getting used to. It would certainly have been useful in the great storm that hit the northeast, but it does bear an eerie resemblance to the Hummer. So much so, that GM is suing Avanti, the maker of the new Studebaker.

At $75,000 it's not even outrageously expensive. It's not something I would buy (parking would be a problem, especially this side of the Atlantic), but given the size and specs I had expected it to be a whole lot more expensive. Coming soon to a suburban soccer mom near you.... 6000 pounds of metal!

It's now been a while since Jaguar officially unveiled the new XJ, currently better known as the X350. It will be badged as either an XJ6 (six cylinder) or an XJ8 (eight cylinder), with an XJR (supercharged V8) version coming too. The technical specifications all look OK. The V8 engines will have plenty of horsepower, although the 3-liter V6 looks rather underpowered for a car that big. On the other hand, the current XJ8 also comes in a 3.2 liter version for the European market and is selling well. My main concern about the smaller engines is "waftability," a term that is most used by Rolls Royce owners. It boils down to high torque at low revs. The V6 simply can't deliver. The older AJ6 and AJ16 engines of the XJ40 and X300 were straight sixes, which I've found to be preferable over the V6. The V8 is very smooth indeed.

The looks of the X350 are what occupies me most. The pictures at the Jag Lovers site left me initially with a "so far, so good" feeling. Later on doubts began to creep in. Is it just a big X-Type? It does look a little bit like it. I don't want Jaguar to end up in the situation BMW found itself in, where the 3, 5 and 7 series were just differently sized versions of the same car. That won't work. Overall, the X350 does have the Jaguar style printed over it. On the other hand, it has gotten bulkier. The old X308 was sleeker, lower and more graceful, but the realities of the car market are probably such that more interior space was needed. Old style Jaguar buyers don't really care. If you want interior space, go buy an SUV. It's the graceful styling of the car that attracts us. A little bit of that has been lost. Especially painful is the shortened hood. That just does not look right.

Additional pictures posted on the web do allay my fears somewhat. In these shots taken at the Birmingham motorshow the X350 actually looks better to me than in some of Jaguar's own publicity shots. I also talked to a salesman at the local Jaguar dealership yesterday when dropping off my car for regularly scheduled servicing, and one of the things he pointed out is that in real life, the X350 cannot be mistaken for a big X-Type. The headlights are a lot rounder, and the car does not have the same hunched feel as the X. The publicity brochure I got also had some nice shots.

Still, I'm going to wait until I see the car in person and as a regular feature on the roads. The latter is the most revealing, because it shows how well the X350 can set itself apart from all the other cars. The current X308 is immediately recognizable as a Jaguar. There's simply no mistaking it. One of the things that struck me about the X-Type is that it looked better in the showroom than on the road. Out there in traffic it's big shortcoming is that it's small. It simply does not have the presence of an XJ or even an S. It looks OK, but it's too small too stand out.

There has been much criticism of the styling of the X350 on the forums at Jag Lovers. The traditionalists complain it's a "Forduar" which has had the traditional Jaguar design lines compromised by the evil corporate masters of Ford. Of course, without Ford's investment in Jaguar, there would be no X350 and Jaguar probably would not have survived. I still think the XJ40 was a much bigger depature from the Series III than anything we've seen since then. Had that transition occurred under Ford's ownership and had the internet existed, the reaction would have been even fiercer. This is Jaguar fans' version of Golden Agism.

Jaguar should not expand the range too much further though. It is already scraping the bottom of the barrel with the front wheel drive 2-liter X-Type. Diluting the brand may generate sales at the bottom end of the market, but the high end is not going to like it very much.

The X350 has the potential to become a worthy successor the X308. I'll reserve judgment until I see it on the road.

No, really. Who would have thought? More roads, less congestion? But that's Dogmatically Problematic, isn't it? We have all been told to believe that more roads lead to more congestion, because they'll just suck in more traffic... but now... perhaps they were smoking something. Fumes from the tar pit.

What this story is all about is the use of emergency lanes as temporary driving lanes at peak hours, effectively increasing the space available to road users. As anyone outside the Ecologically-Imperial Complex might have expected, having more lanes available reduces the congestion. So the the Dutch government is going to prioritize the building of more of these "peak-lanes" so as to reduce traffic jams.

So far, so good. Traffic minister de Boer says however, that they'll only be adding width to existing roads, not building new ones. "We don't want to become known as a asphalt-cabinet." And why not? The huge increase in mobility that the car has brought to the masses in the second half of the 20th century is a very large part of the quality of life we enjoy. Being able to get from point A to point B quickly, efficiently and comfortably is a great thing to have, and it's not one that public transport can fulfill in many cases. If we want economic growth and increasing living standards, then building more roads is going to have to be a part of it. Unfortunately, the government has fallen back on the eco-dogma that more roads should never be built.

We all knew it was coming (well, at least the Jag fans amongst us), but the new X350 is here, and wears the proud XJ badge. All the information is available at Jag-Lovers, with lots of pictures and data. It looks a bit bulkier than the current XJ, but overall they seem to have managed to keep the sleek, low XJ lines. In Europe, there's going to be a low-end 3.0L V6 engine too... who cares? The top of the line will have th 4.2L V8, with a supercharged option cranking out 400 hp. It's obvious which one to go for...