OPINION: Rumble Seat

This, my 163rd column for The Independent, is my last. Yes, well, I know 163 isn't a round number.

WADI RUM, Jordan--The desert stretches for 3,000 years in every direction. To the west is the city of Aqaba, where Saladin warred against Richard the Lion-Hearted and T.E. Lawrence led the Arabs against the Ottoman Turks.

JUAREZ, Mexico--In the two decades since the original Beetle was last sold in the United States, the car that was a paisley-powered right of passage for millions of driving Americans has faded from memory. Whatever lingering and unrequited affection there was for the old dumpling, it might be fair to assume, was satisfied by the introduction two years ago of the New Beetle, a glossy, postmodern rendition of the adorable Bug that has almost nothing in common with the original.

This is a story about two cars that wouldn't start, two cars from different sides of the automotive universe, one old, one wet-paint new, one a schoolboy's locker-door fantasy, the other the ultimate mom-mobile. And in a strange Doppler effect of fate, both cars wound up disabled at the bottom of the same hill in the same week.

Welcome to the new century, the new millennium. You may have thought you had crossed those thresholds last year, what with the round-the-world "millennium" celebrations--the crowning of the Great Pyramid of Cheops with a golden cap, the exploding of the Eiffel Tower, the making of "millennial" snow angels by children in Greenland.

BITHLO, Fla.--The mayor of Bithlo (pronounced "biflo") is fixing to do some cutting. It's dark, the night falling out of the sky like poisoned buzzards.

Information does not necessarily beget understanding. Go to Microsoft's CarPoint.com, or to Edmunds.com, or to a half-dozen other heavy-hitting Web sites, and you can summon vast tables of data that compare, point by arcane point, the Mercedes C-Class with its competitors: the BMW 3-Series, the Audi A4, the Acura 3.2 TL, and the Lexus IS 300.

Darren Holman, DVM, started his day early, as always, in his veterinary hospital on Tryon Road between Raleigh and Cary. A few minutes before 8 a.m., the phone rang.

The pickup truck as fashion statement has been with us for a long time. Last year's Nissan Frontier was earnest and practical, like Dickies overalls.

By this time next year, several car models will be available with wireless-style Internet connectivity, allowing drivers to check e-mail as well as stock prices, and browse news, sports and weather content in reduced, WML format. Some systems will play MP-3 audio files or download same onto flash cards; exchange address book information and audio memo files with their Palm Pilots and--did we just hit a dog?