Behold and Wonder: The 2012 Audi A7 3.0 TFSI quattro Auto Tiptronic Sedan

Is it cultural differentiation, or the car-makers' take on genetic manipulation? Maybe it’s going hybrid as applied to auto bodies -- or nothing more than novelty for its own sake. Regardless of what's behind it, taking its cue from the International Kongo Kruiser Motor Gypsy (or whatever that is) above, the DNA of traditional car models has undergone a freakish shuffling of late.

Good Goth: The 2012 Audi A7

Thus the hatch-backed and richly named 2012 Audi A7 3.0 TFSI quattro Auto Tiptronic Sedan joins with crossovers, roadster pickups, sport wagons, other four-door coupes and the rest of the shape-shifting vehicles to have emerged from Dr. Frankenstein’s Unconventional Car Windmill.

Awaiting the 2012s

Shiver Me Skid Plates: On the X-Trail of Pirate Jamaica, Part I

Within the archipelago that runs from Cuba's promontory to the Venezuela coast, Jamaica loomed over the Spanish Main like a watchful hawk. This wasn't lost on maritime England, which, after seizing the island from Spain in 1655, used its predatory perch to fall upon that country's gold-laden galleons as they sailed Caribbean sea lanes for Cadiz.

To relieve Spain of its New World gold, the British commissioned pirates* -- the rag-tag nomads and swarthy misfits who had long preyed on Isabella's ships. It was in the Jamaican city of Port Royal where such bandits as Blackbeard and the doubly fearsome Francis L'Ollonais were masters of the "Brethren of the Coast." After his sacking of Spain's Venezuelan stronghold of Portobelo in 1668, they and all Jamaica would be governed by the pirate-king-turned-privateer, Sir Henry Morgan.