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Acura NSX is industry's first supercar with a female design lead

Michelle Christensen. Unless you've been casting about the web for some behind-the-scenes takes on recent exotic car launches or were unusually curious during the early days of the sport crossover trend, her name probably means nothing to you. She grew up in Northern California, where her family drag-raced. Venerables like the 1932 Ford, Plymouth GTX, and Dodge Super Bee rolled through her family garage. And Christensen grew up designing prom dresses for friends and dreaming of working in a pit crew. In fact, she didn't even realize car design was a real profession until junior high, when her father pointed out Chip Foose at a car show. After that, she was hooked, so she went to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where she reimagined the Plymouth Barracuda as her senior project. Today, Christensen can add the title of lead exterior designer on the 2016 Acura NSX to her resume. The first woman to lead the shape of a supercar, Christensen actually opened up her "First!" account with Acura in 2005 when the company swooped her up the night of graduation and she became its first female exterior car designer. Her first sketch on the job was a concept for the ZDX, and the bigwigs chose her design for production. She joined the NSX team after the mid-engined concept was introduced at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show, replacing the front-engined V10 concept (we encourage you to go back and look at what was versus what is). Christensen thereafter led a crew of eight through a rework of the sheetmetal, with the focus being to keep the "emotional, 3-D kind of feeling." Reminiscing about her family's utterly unadorned '32 Ford hot rod, she said the NSX team was committed to keeping the design simple and light. Wind tunnel work led to larger bumper, hood and side intakes for better airflow on the production model. That, along with a switch in engine position, gave them a chance to go aggressive and to not only "punch more holes in it and make it more exotic," but also "take it to the gym and beef it up." In line with its decidedly un-retro rebirth, the third brake light that runs across the decklid is about the only nod to its predecessor. At age 34, we're certain we haven't seen the last of Christensen or her designs. Related Video:  

Hands-on with Acura's novel touchpad infotainment interface

After Acura's Precision Cockpit was unveiled here in LA, I sat in the, uh, driver's seat of the wheel-less interior mockup to get a feel for how this new touchscreen-free touch interface works. There are a lot of good ideas inside. Here are 11 things you should know. It's less like a trackpad and more like a remote-control tablet. So instead of letting you move a cursor relative to its last location like the trackpad on a laptop, each point on Acura's trackpad is mapped to a corresponding point on the center display. If you want what's in the upper right corner of the display, you touch and click in the upper right corner of the trackpad. Simple. I figured it out in two minutes. Maybe less. The whole thing is surprisingly intuitive. The ease of use is helped by the fact that the targets on the screen are pretty big – no tiny "buttons" to fiddle with. The clicks are real. The trackpad actually moves when you press down, so no need for simulated haptic feedback. In their research, Acura engineers found that accidental touches and presses are a real issue. We could have told them that – hit a bump while using a finicky remote interface like Lexus's all-but-abandoned joystick thing, and you select an item half-way across the screen from the one you intended. The placement of the trackpad in this concept interior also helps avoid unintentional inputs – it's not in the middle of the center console where it might get brushed or bumped, but instead in its own little cave at the base of the center-stack waterfall. (Acura's low-profile button-based transmission selector suddenly makes a whole lot of sense.) View 13 Photos Lots of cues cut down on distraction. You hover over the option you want before positively confirming the selection with a hard press. There's no cursor to find and reposition like in the Lexus trackpad system The red highlight gives the necessary visual cue that you put your finger in the right place. The pad is slightly dished to give you a tactile cue of where the center and edges are. It allows you to build up muscle memory, sort of like how you know generally where the "keys" are on your smartphone or tablet's virtual keyboard by now. Or at least I do on mine. You look at the screen, not what you're touching. The problem with touch screens is that they have to be low down in the car so you can reach them. That means you have to look down from the road to stab at what you want.

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee earns Seinfeld four more seasons

We're going to be talking about Jerry Seinfeld and his excellent web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, for quite a long time, as it's been picked up for four more seasons. Considering the show just wrapped up its third season a few months ago, this marks quite a big win. The new order, reported by Variety, calls for 24 episodes, with Acura carrying on as the show's sole and primary sponsor. CICGC is already slated for a fourth season this summer, which includes five episodes, and a seven-episode fifth season in the fall. Guests for season four include Aziz Ansari, Jon Stewart and Sarah Jessica Parker, although we've no idea what sort of cars are in store. It's unclear when seasons six through nine will air, but if 2014 is any indication, we should expect the bulk of the episodes to arrive some time in 2015. News Source: Variety Celebrities Humor Acura Videos jerry seinfeld comedians in cars getting coffee