Car of the Decade

At the end of every year, auto journalists are beset with a famine of newsworthy content. With the brunt of consumers focused on gift-giving — and their soaring credit card balances — very few are salivating over the prospect of financing a new car. To fill the gaping chasm that is their front page, columnists sometimes churn out reviews about cars nobody particularly cares about, like the Bentley Mulsanne and the new Merc Gullwing. Your local newspaper stands as a testament to this.

So in an effort to give readers something almost relevant before NAIAS rolls into Detroit, writers often open their December playbook and remember how conveniently appropriate it is for them to recount the top 10 something from the expiring year. This year, the slog artists have an entire decade to make unobjective assessments on. This one is no different.

Marin County Car of the Decade

If you think that "mountain view" is a place, or if you've ever been ticketed by your garbageman for failing to recycle, then the car of the decade is obviously a Toyota Prius. While it's true that the Prius was released in the 90's, it didn't see US shores until the year 2000 and conveniently qualifies for this award. Now in its third design iteration, the Prius has become a symbol of the "green" undercurrent, including the daft parts.

I put "green" in quotation marks because most consumers know that the Prius has become a symbol of hidden excess. You can only strip mine Canada and China for the rare earth metals needed to build the hybrid for another couple decades. Also, the cost of buying a car with two engines is thousands above a gas-only equivalent, taking generations to break even. Were you really concerned about saving the environment, you'd buy a Yaris and use the money you saved to help third-world citizens get out of the business of murdering trees. But you won't, because strangers who see you driving a Yaris wont think you're saving the planet. They'll think you're cheap.

Belated Car of the Decade

With the advent of OBD-II in the early 90s, many high-performance cars in the American market took a nosedive. The iconic Camaro and Mustang were being offered in their softest version ever. Meanwhile, the number of Corvettes being sold with an automatic transmission suggested that fat old men and turkey-necked women were the only people interested in owning anything with horsepower at all. Real driving enthusiasts only had one option, the Miata. Unfortunately, mere mention of this car's name prompts sniggers from the back row and causes young men to cough the word "gay" into their clenched fists.

There was an obvious market for an Americanized version of the Miata. Something a little more spacious, a little more powerful, and a lot better looking. All we needed was for GM or Ford to smell the profits to be made by peddling in performance 4-bangers. We wouldn't see the fruit of this realization until 2006, when the first concepts of the Solstice GXP hit the auto show circuit. An amateur racer's wet dream, the Solstice was a carefully refined touring car platform that also happened to be the best sports car you could buy in the 20k range. Pontiac was finally "driving excitement" again. Then, a decade of trying to sell rebadged Chevrolet products at an unjustifiably higher price finally caught up with them.Pontiac went belly-up. Ah, Solstice GXP. We barely knew thee.

Sweet Sixteen Car of the Decade

Imagine standing in the front lot of a car dealership, trying to pick out a car for your daughter's graduation present or sweet sixteen. You want her to drive something dependable, so European and American cars fall off your list like flies. You (secretly) want your daughter's car to be a projection of your own wealth, so a trendy micro car or hatchback wont fit the bill. You want to make sure your daughter can handle mud, snow, and moving curbs, which serves to eliminate sports cars and coupes from the list of possible selections. You also recognize that when your daughter is driving, she is a danger to herself and those around her — keeping her out of a three-ton SUV will surely save at least one life over the years. Finally, you want to prepare your little angel for all of life's uncertainties, which you can do by buying her a car with floodlights, a safari style luggage rack, and a built-in first aid kit.

That brings us to the Nissan Xterra, the "xtreme" crossover that was a runaway hit with American women. The brilliant minds at Nissan must have recognized that men in the United States who already owned a 7-passenger Hummer H2 also needed another car for their wife and teenage children. Not convinced? Consider that the top selling paint colors for the H2 mimic the most common color selections for North American Xterra sales as well.

World Government Car of the Decade

Deep down, we all acknowledge the fact that shadowy figures regularly convene underground and plot how to institute a world government that will abolish capitalism, free speech, and Glenn Beck. Nothing serves as better evidence than the Audi R8. This "young money" supercar came to be when an ordinary German disassembled a Lamborghini Gallardo and couldn't figure out how to put it back together in a way that made sense. It took the combined efforts of the Porsche/Audi/Volkswagen/Lamborghini supergroup to reassemble it, which involved throwing away 95% of the original car. Porsche made it beautiful, Audi made it predictable, Volkswagen made sensible(ish), and Lamborghini made sure that it will still eventually kill you.

In case that unlikely alliance isn't proof enough of a rising world government, consider that the Audi R8 costs half of what you'd pay for other supercars in its class. Clearly a result of nefarious meddling from George Soros.

Stupid Car of the Decade

The last car on our list is an almost-practical four door sports car with surprising styling and a charming personality. Engineered within an inch of its life and set up to oversteer faster than an insurance lawyer can cringe, the EVO VIII was America's introduction to the joys of homologized rally racing. Monster horsepower, giant aero effects, and teenager-killing handling? That's a big 'ol check. What the EVO (and perpetual nemesis, STI) brought to America was a realization that we can drive faster than we've ever imagined, and that only the stupid will try.

The only prior vehicles that consumers could even try to compare the EVO to were the old Taurus SHO and Grand Prix GTP — which is a bit like comparing Usain Bolt to meatloaf. What you realize a few years into owning an EVO VIII is that Mitsubishi has taken a perfectly sensible Lancer and turned it into a gaudy, expensive, twitchy shadow of its former self. Like trading in Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie, the EVO is a wild over-the-edge romp that will drive you insane as it simultaneously terrifies and emasculates you, but at least it's never boring.