Jim Kenzie's The Driver's Seat

The ‘solamente Jaime’ lane

Creeping centre-lane-ism appears to be a global epidemic.

A couple of days booting about on the ‘autopistas’ (freeways) of Central Spain suggests there are 'Jim-only' lanes there too.

(I was there testing the new Mercedes-Benz E Class sedan; details in next weekend’s print edition of Wheels.)

The default lane on Spanish freeways seems to be the middle lane, leaving the right lane available for those of us who value safety, courtesy and efficiency.

Sadly, not many of us around any more - anywhere in the world, it seems.

So, you pass on the right, you get a dirty look.

But 'Hola', Senor - I'm not the lane hog here.

Traffic in Spain is, as you might expect from the stereotype of the Latin temperament, a shade on the aggressive side. I'm not saying they all think they're former Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso, but neither do they exactly hang about.

Many of the cars are made by SEAT (pronounced SAY-at). It's an acronym for 'Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo', or in English, 'Spanish Passenger Car Company', and is now the Spanish arm of the Volkswagen group.

Most SEATS are gorgeous, at least in part a legacy of Walter da Silva, who was pirated away from Alfa Romeo to head up SEAT's styling studio (he's now in charge of Audi and Lamborghini design too).

I've always thought that because Volkswagens are moving up the price ladder, the company could bring the stylish SEAT line to North America as a price-leader, hire Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony as spokespeople to appeal to hip, design-conscious young people - they'd make a killing, especially to the burgeoning Hispanic-American demographic.

And to think, I GIVE these ideas away...

Elsewhere, Spain appears to have benefited more from membership in the European Union than just about any other country (others have suggested maybe Ireland, but I could not say, not having been there since it joined).

Infrastructure construction is everywhere - many of the roads and bridges are new or nearly so, and about half of Madrid's road network appears to be a Work in Progress.

Lots of private construction in Madrid too - the national bird appears to be the Construction Crane, with new buildings going up all over, despite the economic slowdown which also is clearly global in scope.

Plus, the Spanish seem to value "street art", and architecture that really pleases the eye. Well, mine anyway.

The Hotel Eurostars Madrid Tower where we stayed and the adjacent Torre Espacio are two of four gigantic new buildings which can literally be seen from about 50 kilometres away.

Madrid is simply gorgeous, at least partially I assume because both the Spanish Civil War and World War II were essentially "road games"; Madrid's older centres weren't bombed into oblivion like so many European capitals were.

One of my journalist colleagues asked if I knew about Madrid's 'Retiro Park'. He said it was one of the great urban parks of the world.

I told him I slept in Retiro Park one night, in a Citroen DS21.

But that, as they say, is a story for another time.

I’m hardly the architecture critic, but…

...surely, Toronto’s streetscapes are fair game for a motoring columnist?

I mean, we drive along these streets - we occasionally look at what we’re driving past.

I hadn't driven along Bloor Street near Avenue Road for a while.

WHAT THE HECK DID THEY DO TO THE ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM??

It looks like somebody was transporting a brand-new modern pre-fab office building somewhere, it fell off the truck and smashed into that gorgeous old building.

OK, so maybe I’m an architectural Philistine. Maybe Daniel Libeskind is too hip for me.

Or is that hep?

But holy crap that's ugly...

The ab-ROM-ination even made a recent Wall Street Journal story on ‘architects trying too hard’.

I’ll say.

It made me think of what has to be my favourite Simpsons episode of all time.

Marge writes to Frank Gehry (a Canadian architect who also has a heck of a lot to answer for) asking him to design a new concert hall for Springfield.

Gehry takes her letter, crumples it up into a tiny little ball, and tosses it away.

Somehow – I didn’t pay THAT much attention – the crumpled ball of paper makes its way back to Springfield. The contractors build a perfectly nice concert hall, then bring in huge wrecking balls and pound on the new building until it looks like the crumpled ball of paper.

That’s not even the funniest bit; during the opening night concert, Marge announces that the next musical work will be a ‘tone poem’ by Philip Glass. The terrified audience stampedes to the exits like they’d announced a plague or a bomb or something. Followed immediately by the equally terrified musicians, carrying their instruments on their backs.

So, if we can have enlightened cross-cultural criticism in our cartoons, why not in our car blogs?

You can take the car out of Germany…

Was driving a brace of Porsche Cayenne SUVs a few weeks ago.

No, this is not another diatribe against big SUVs. The economic melt-down and fuel pricing situation have accomplished what intelligence and logic could not.

Both of those units had Satellite Navigation, as we have come to expect in up-scale vehicles, although the near-universal adoption of smart phones with built-in SatNav surely is a harbinger of the buggy-whip status of that automotive option.

The Porsche system works pretty well, and is reasonably intuitive to operate.

But I swear, when the lovely lady buried somewhere behind the dashboard means to tell you to "Please make a right turn onto Commercial Avenue", she actually says, "Please make a right turn onto Commercial Allee" - "allee", pronounced "al-AY", being the German word for large urban road.

I had several other people confirm that I wasn't hearing things.

Well, that I WAS hearing things, but they heard the SAME thing.

Everything else in the system is properly translated. Inge (I called her 'Inge') does not otherwise speak with a CHUR-mann accent. In fact, like many German English speakers, there's more of a British cast to her voice.

She gets "street" and "road" fine.

But "avenue" becomes "allee".

Ich verstehe nicht…