The overriding temptation, when seeing some guy (usually a guy with a mustache -- why is that?) rolling down the sidewalk on a Segway, is to shake one's head and ponder how any self-respecting adult could be caught dead or alive on such a dorky looking machine.

Of course, that superior feeling usually only lasts until one actually gets a chance to try riding one for him/herself. Then the derisive laughter turns to a sort of wonder, accompanied by the obligatory query, "How the hell do these things work, anyway?"

The question we've been asking ourselves lately, however, is how in the world did we miss out a while back on the introduction of a concept ride, vaguely similar in theory to the Segway, called The Embrio, a one-wheeled motorcycle from Bombardier that looks like it could orbit the Earth, whip up a banana-yogurt smoothie, and blow in the doors of an IROC Z -- all at the same time.

As Bombardier poetically put it when the company rolled out the idea a few years back:

"The Embrio concept is a recreational and commuting vehicle that uses gyroscopic and electronic technology. It is a means of transportation, as well as a way of enjoying transportation as a positive activity. The main power source is a hydrogen fuel cell. In stand-by configuration, the vehicle's front wheels deploy to the ground like a jet plane landing gear to increase longitudinal stability. Thus stabilized, the Bombardier Embrio looks perfectly at home in the urban landscape, displaying the beauty of its sculptural lines until it's time to go for a ride."

Wheels that "deploy to the ground like a jet plane landing gear to increase longitudinal stability"? 

Sexier words have rarely been uttered! (Or scribbled in a press release.)

Again, we acknowledge that we're coming a little late to the Embrio party, but as motorcycle and Schwinn Stingray fans who, as kids, dreamed of being able to ride around in a state of perpetual, high-speed wheelie-ness, we feel that the concept smacks of genius.

Most of us have a friend or colleague or crazy aunt who enjoys pointing out, in light of how confused and stressful so much of contemporary life has become, that "Things were just better back then!"

The notion of "back then" is, of course, a rather fluid construct, referring to an imagined period in the not-too-distant past when life itself was simpler, more cohesive, and generally less crappy and downright horrible than in the modern world.

But that sort of thinking is simplistic, if not delusional. Surely life has always been crappy and downright horrible, yes?

But then, every once in a while, we glimpse a token of that lost, idealized world, and we're forced to admit that yes, okay, perhaps there was a time when certain apsects of life -- or at least people's conception of certain apsects of life -- possessed a simple beauty that has, in large part, vanished.

Case in point: A map of the Eisenhower Interstate System, initiated by Ike in 1956, which lays out a national highway network captured in the graphic equivalent of a few strokes of the pen. (Thanks to Design Observer for reminding us of that wonderful site, "Strange Maps," on which countless marvelous creations like the Eisenhower map receive new life.)

As the Strange Maps entry points out, the EIS rendition of an almost inconceivably vast and intricate matrix is a "diagram so simple that it looks rather more like a subway map than a road map."

Things might not have been better back then --- but they sure looked an awful lot easier to wrap one's head around.

--BEN COSGROVE

Germans and cars. They just go together, somehow, don't they? Like gin and tonic. Or Strum und Drang.

Thankfully, at least some of our Teutonic brethren also have a sense of humor about not only the "Germans sure like to drive fast!" stereotype, but also about that other well-founded cliche -- the one that declares anyone and everyone from Germany to be half-hip, half-dorky fans of uber-intense techno, a la bands like Kraftwerk, Nitzer Ebb, etc.

Case in point: The marvelously self-promoting and unpretentious Porches on the Autobahn, a techno band so relentlessly uncool and excellent that no one with any musical taste could possibly dislike them.

How can you hold anything against a band with a frontman, Otto Jayayyemmri, who earnestly lays down the law in language that reads like a heady mix of Kerouac, Rilke, P. Diddy and Hasselhoff?

Of the band's current U.S. "2007 Fastest Drivers Tour" Otto declares:

"This is the tour to make my heart grow. We meet to a lot of new friends who is the most cool. The other USA to be more different. Nature, stiles [sic], hardness, courage, and dancer to all come hard. I think to myself why is love to us fast, and next to be dancer for all? I know to it to be Jerich Bloodroot! For the next of the USA I find to it and kill to it! Oh, yeah, this place is the HAMMER!"

Drive fast. Rock hard. Get jiggy, Deutschland-style.

--BEN COSGROVE

Once disdained as hopelessly dorky, the golf world and its ancillary lifestyle are ascendant. Unconvinced? Explain then, if you can, the resurgence of the visor as acceptable public headwear.

Need yet more proof? Consider the GEM.

A street-legal vehicle equally at home on fairways, the GEM (Global Electric Motorcar) is part golf-cart, part Citroen 2 CV6, and over the past few years they've been popping up all over the place: Theme parks, resort hotels, airports, museums, and even the 2006 G8 summit, where world leaders got to putter around and pretend to be interested in global warming.

Here in Atlantic Beach, Florida, an oak-shaded little town 20 minutes up the coast from the golf Mecca of Ponte Vedra, "Neighborhood Electric Vehicles" like the GEM are an increasingly frequent sight: silently snaking through supermarket parking lots; gamely trying to keep pace with monster pick-ups and gargantuan SUVs on surface streets; shuttling passengers to and from the beach.

As a California dealer's site notes, the GEM is meant for short trips, or a few rounds at the links.

"Sixty-five percent of U.S. families own a second car, and fifty percent of urban trips last less than ten minutes, and eighty percent of all trips are within ten miles of home."

Trying them out, however, can prove difficult. Though GEM is owned by Daimler Chrysler, only a handful of dealerships have them on hand. Lucky for me, a neighbor had just been given a GEM by his wife as a retirement present, and he offered to let me take it for test drive.

Operationally, there's not much to the GEM. A circular hood emblem flips open to reveal a socket where you connect a chord to any old 110-volt outlet in your house. If the battery (which is stored under the colorful fiberglass hood) is completely drained, it takes approximately eight hours to recharge. Once fully juiced, you can expect to travel about 35 miles at a speed of no greater than 25 mph. At present electricity rates, that translates to about one penny per mile.

The GEM's "interior" -- if one can refer thus to a vehicle with no doors or side windows -- consists of vinyl seating, a steering wheel with an LED, and recessed cup holders. A switch on the steering console determines whether you'll be traveling at golf-course speed or higher. Every car comes with blinkers, mirrors, and seat belts. Everything's silent until you punch the accelerator. Then the motor kicks in, sounding about as loud as a salad spinner at full tilt. (Stealthy enough to inadvertently startle two girls carrying surfboards as we glide up behind them at a stop sign.)

The GEM rides higher than its older, fat-wheeled golf cart cousins, and handles much cleaner, too. You don't feel in danger of tipping it on tight turns, and, just like with any go-cart, there's a grown-up thrill to weaving your way around town.

Hell, with its Citroen-style lines, the truth is you don't feel all that embarrassed when somebody spots you driving one, either.

-- DAVID KNOWLES

We've all been there. We're hanging out with friends, trying to casually impress one another with our obscure and utterly useless knowledge of pop culture trivia, when our brain freezes up.

"Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about. It was that Cagney movie, he plays some guy named Cody something, and he and his ma are driving ... uhm ... they're driving ... heh heh. Well, it's either a Ford or a Chevy. Or maybe a Studebaker. Or a Tucker."

Fortunately for the passive-aggressive, know-it-all movie geek in all of us, some even geekier movie geeks have created the Internet Movie Cars Database -- a brilliant, handy, vast, and utterly addictive compendium of cinematic automotive arcana.

Want to see photos of the cream-white Dodge Challenger Barry Newman drove in that melodramatic, existential '70s road movie, Vanishing Point?  They got it. (And we have it here, atop this entry.)

James Bond's Aston Martin? Of course.

McQueen's iconic Highland Green 1968 Mustang GT 390 from Bullitt? Duh.

Tell your boss that you're working on a really important project and can't be disturbed, then hunker down for a few hours with your favorite actors, actresses, cars, and motorcycles. The IMCD is big and pointless and self-deprecating and enormously fun -- the way the Web was always meant to be.

(By the way: Cagney's car in White Heat? A 1941 Buick Special. "Made it , ma! Top of the world!")

--BEN COSGROVE

A 1941 Buick Special from the 1949 Warner Bros. classic, White Heat, often driven by Cody Jarrett's equally sociopathic mama, played to creepy, Oedipal perfection by Margaret Wycherly.

It's been out there for weeks, now, but unlike so many other TV-based irritants that either fade or grow weirdly endearing with time -- Oprah, Geraldo, CSI, the list goes on -- that godawful commercial for the Ford Edge has somehow, improbably grown only more annoying the longer it sticks around.

It's not only the desperate, pseudo-rebellious pose ("I like to live on the edge-uh") of the car's theme song that rankles -- although we happily concede that the music is, indeed, a major component of the commercial's lameness. After all, as Eminem so sagely informed us all (and especially Moby) years ago: "Let go, it's over -- nobody listens to techno."

No -- what's even sillier and sadder than the audio portion of this disaster is the cheesy, car-driving-on-the-edge-of-walls-and-buildings video that accompanies the song.

Ford execs wonder why they're losing billions of dollars every quarter, and then they pour millions of dollars into ads that look and sound like they were made ten years ago -- commercials (invariably for American-made cars) that were laughable even back then.

The Edge might be a smart, well-put-together, reasonably priced small SUV. And that's fine. But until Ford can figure out a way to make the vehicle seem like a rational consumer choice, rather than an already dated, obnoxiously hyped punch line, we'll keep our distance.