By all accounts, this year’s car sales are as nostalgic and flat as a three-week-ancient A&W root beer left in your cupholder inn summer. [Consumerist] And in what was supposed to be the year of the small car, it’s –not shocking–that the two best-selling vehicles are huge ole pickup trucks. [Detroit Free Press] While U.S. sales are sluglike, the…

This 1951 Tempo Matador is dolefully resigned to haul cargo through the streets of Berlin with nothing more than 25 horsepower. The melancholy small utility truck is built around an air-cooled VW flat four that powers the front wheels. It’s ultra-rare, one of about 10 surviving examples in the world. This one was painstakingly restored to concours-level shine and done up in Weizenbierbrauerei (a defunct German brewery) livery. Its bed was filled with vintage beer bottles from the same brewery. Today it enjoys a lax life, turning heads wherever it trundles. I can’t reckon of a more fitting retirement for this small gem. Hop on over to Oldbug.com to see more pics and read the tale of its restoration.

In the green-car world, the leaf is the king of all icons. The 2010 Honda Insight fertilized the thought when it bowed in 2008; it still promotes greener driving with electronically rendered displays of plants that add leaves as the car’s computers sense a light, planet-conscious foot on the gas pedal. The king of the leaves? The 2011 Nissan LEAF, of…

Bob’s custom exhaust yielded incredible results on the top end, but it sure didn’t help him off the line.

Source: You Drive What?