I just returned from Cincinnati, where I spent Thanksgiving with my extended family.

Since I was going to be shuttling an hour and a half between Cincinnati and a small town in Indiana throughout the weekend, I decided to drive. The beauty of driving across multiple states is that one can compare the different roads conditions of each state, and see what works and what doesn’t. West Virginia seems to do it right… 70 mph, smooth pavement, and they don’t skimp on a third lane in the rural mountains. Pennsylvania has some of the worst road conditions and an ill-conceived interchange at I-79 N and I-70 W where the maximum safe speed is 20mph and the backup can be miles long.

And then there is Ohio. The bulk of my drive was spent in Ohio. The problem with Ohio is not its road conditions, nor its interchanges. Ohio has a HUGE pet peeve of mine: Two lane highways with dual speed limits. In Ohio, the automotive traffic can cruise along at 65mph without fear of the fuzz. Commercial trucks are supposed to suffer at 55 mph. We all know that most folks use speed limit are loose guidance, but on a holiday where the boys in blue are on the highways in force, traffic generally sticks a little closer to the speed limits. Dual speed limits, while disappearing, are still somewhat common. I personally think dual speed limits are inherently unsafe, as it creates two types of vehicles intermingling with large speed differentials.

Dual speed limits are especially annoying on busy 2 lane roads over holidays. The right lane becomes the de facto truck lane, and the left lane becomes the de facto car lane. Each lane inevitably becomes as slow as the slowest driver in it. Through much of Ohio I was stuck going no more than 65 mph… and I almost NEVER drive speed limit unless I have the long arm of law behind me. To make matters worse, occasionally a truck driver, obviously as frustrated as I, would decide to pass the pokey 55 mph truck ahead, and slow down the left lane even further. Other than some of the highways around cities, everything in Ohio has 2 lanes. Except…

Both I-70 and I-71 have an odd stretch in the middle of nowhere where they temporarily go to three lanes, only to merge back to two. They’re not around any steep hill, nor any busy interchange. It almost feels as if Ohio DOT is just taunting drivers, giving them false hope, only to take away the third lane and create a slight back up around the merge.

If Ohio had one speed limit, or a third lane on their interstates, I’m fairly certain that my 9 1/2-hour trip would have been closer to 8. Avoiding the erratic acceleration and deceleration, I estimate I would have saved around 10% of the gas used on the drive there. Also, I would have contributed less pollution.

Luckily, I returned after the holiday rush was over and during an off-peak time, so the drive back to DC was much more tolerable.

I thought that the Chrysler Imperial, at least as shown in concept form, would be dead. Apparently not. According to many reports, they are trying to decide whether to build it or not.

Chrysler already has less than spectacular numbers, and quite honestly, not much appealing in the pipeline. In fact, their latest disaster introduction already has cash on the hood.

My advice to Chrylser: Don’t build it! If you just MUST have something pricier and more luxurious that the 300, just coat the new 300 LWB in chrome trim, add fancy new taillights, headlighhts and grille and call it the Imperial. Less money invested development, less money invested in tooling, and probably better sales prospects.

Kicking Tires (yea, Dave!) reports that BMW is bringing back the manual transmission on the M5. Amen, alleluia.

I’m hoping that this is another step for BMW to return to it’s roots. Over the past several years, they have seemed to lose their direction. The Ultimate Driving Machine became the Ultimate Doohickey Machine, with lots of weird gadgets, and styling to match.

The new 3 Series, especially, gave me hope that BMW understood that they were losing the core constituency, and that they were working to bring back the faithful. One only has to compare the interior design evolution of the 3 Series, E46 vs. E90, to see that BMW is no longer building for the driver.

Adding a manual to the M5, at least in my mind, confirms they understand the error of their ways.

And before some yahoo tells me BMW hasn’t lost any customers: Two years ago, my father was looking for a replacement his E39 5 Series. He narrowed it down to the 545i and a M-B E500. As I usually do, I “helped” him test drive each (tee hee).

The 545i was hands down the better handling car, and much more fun to drive at speed. But… the Active Steering made the 545i terribly uncomfortable to drive at low speed. My father felt he would never be able to use iDrive except to set up some defaults at first. My parents felt the styling was more like a barge than a BMW. And finally the interior was decidedly cheaper looking than something costing around 70K. When push came to shove, the E500 was a car that was much more liveable than 545i.

Who knows, if BMW works hard, they may win him back.