No comment needed.

It is fair to argue that a car isn’t a car until it has been driven on the Nürburgring. A 20+KM public road in Germany, it is driven by professionals and amateurs alike in every road-worthy car imaginable.  The current record for a production car is 6:48 in a Radical SR8LM sports car. Gumpert’s Apollo sports car comes in at a still brisk, 7:11. A slightly altered MINI Cooper E concept car – well, just watch and see!

Not amazingly quick, but at least it outpaces a Ford Transit van as demonstrated by the great Sabine Schmitz in this video:

It’s hard enough to get past the weirdness of the “unveiling” of the new MINI Countryman. The world’s most unusual product announcement begins first with two giant hats covering a MINI Cooper S and the all-new MINI Countryman, which is meant to be MINI’s foray into the cross-over SUV segment, or something. At first blush, it is hard to see what they are on about as the cars appear to be the same height. But MINI is clearly trying to make a statement. Maybe it’s that the Countryman is the car for the neo-luddite non-urbanites who wouldn’t touch a MINI with a ten-foot pole, or maybe MINI still feels the need to prove itself as the alternative fun brand for those with just a bit of cash.

Anyway, once the hats came off, the erm dancing begins and thus begins two minutes of the strangest product launch you have ever seen. If you doubt us, just click play.

That seen, one really has to wonder if Mini owners of old are rolling in their graves. Of course, if you think they are bad off, BMW has just announced front-wheel drive for their low-end cars, so perhaps at the next product launch we’ll see a BMW-branded car covered in a Bavarian flag with some dancers clogging to Das Deutschlandlied.

Radar Love...

So Haley’s comet has passed overhead again, or so it would seem, because my mother just had me arrange a new car for her. To preface this article it is worth mentioning that my mother suffers from what I like to call “look-aholism”. That is, she sees a car on the road that she likes and then she mulls it over repeatedly, until finally, something catastrophic happens with her current car and she is induced into buying a new one.

She started this trend with the Chrysler LeBaron convertible, by no means a looker, but nearly as gnarly as compared to today’s Sebring. It was a 1989 model, and before you ask, it was not the Maserati-produced version with the goofy removable hard top. It was the run-of-the-mill LE model with white exterior with maroon interior. I hated that car. Oh sure, it was a bit of fun to drive, but to sit as a passenger, especially in the back, where I inevitably got placed, was a painful experience. Exposed to the cool summer elements in the wild west of Nebraska, my senses were assaulted by the noisy, cold, and face-distorting speed produced by that 4-cylinder turbo racing down dirt roads at 80 miles per hour. So now you know the answer to the question: why not the Mazda Miata? Because my mother likes to torture her children in the back seat (a feature distinctly lacking in the Miata).

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Gathered, in part from LeftLane:

Volkswagen says its diesel TDI vehicles are selling well. An impressive 81 percent of Jetta SportWagens were equipped with the TDI, as were 40 percent of Jetta sedans and 29 percent of Touaregs last month. Volkswagen, sales were down 18 percent to 19,027.

Volvo saw a 0.6 percent increase in sales compared to June 2008, though the Swedish marque is still off 35.6 percent for the first six months of the year. The all-new XC60 sold 1,032 units.

Porsche had a disastrous June; just 902 of the automaker’s sports cars left dealer lots, a 66 percent decrease that brought the automaker’s year-to-date sales down 36 percent for the year.

BMW, down 20.1 percent to 16,744.

Maserati, down 47.9 percent to 111.

Mercedes-Benz, down 22.6 percent to 15,155.

Mini, down 21.2 percent to 4,105.

Saab, down 58.4 percent to 779.