1973 Rolls-royce Silver Shadow .... Vintage Touring Sedan on 2040-cars

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Six luxury-car features I'm ashamed to admit I love

A hot compress felt wonderful on my sore back. The methodical kneading of my shoulder blades loosened the knots that formed over several hours of driving. The Swedish-style pulses firing into my lumbar region released more tension.
I wasn't getting a much-needed massage following a recent road trip. I was getting it during the road trip.
I grew up riding in the back seat of a 1976 Chevy Nova. But once you use these lux features, it's easy to go soft.

Rolls-Royce Wraith Kryptos Collection is a car with a secret

Rolls-Royce has unveiled yet another special-edition vehicle, this one being a version of the Wraith. It’s called the Wraith Kryptos Collection, and itÂ’s a bit more intriguing than most.  That intrigue comes from the secrets itÂ’s holding within. This car is a driving encrypted cipher. Rolls-Royce designers decided to incorporate a “labyrinth of complex ciphers” outside and inside the Wraith Kryptos. “As a designer, IÂ’ve always been fascinated by the notion that you can communicate messages that are understood by only an elite few, using symbols, pictograms, and ciphers,” Rolls-Royce Designer, Katrin Lehmann said. Finding the key becomes integral to appreciating the full meaning of an item that can otherwise be viewed simply as a work of art.” A number of messages are encrypted throughout the vehicles, but youÂ’ll need to be a decent cryptographer to get anywhere with it. To be frank, weÂ’re not sure how complex Rolls-Royce got with its cipher. Perhaps the scores of folks still looking into the ZodiacÂ’s cipher could take a break and see what Rolls has in store for everyone. Whatever it is, there are only two people who own the code to read the messages, the designer, and the CEO. A paper key has been tucked away into the CEOÂ’s safe at the home of Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce probably hasnÂ’t told us everything, but you can find code on the Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament, exterior paint, the headrests, metal trim and headliner. A combination of Kryptos Green (a newly-developed Rolls-Royce color), Delphic Grey, Dark Grey and Orbit Grey paint give this Wraith its signature appearance. For the 50 owners who end up with a Wraith Kryptos Collection, theyÂ’ll be able to submit guesses at cracking the code via the Rolls-Royce application, Whispers. Feel free to drop us a line when you figure it out, too.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.