Still hot after all these years

The Cindy Crawford Award for ageing gracefully goes to Audi's R8, now fortified with 10 essential pistons and 5.2 litres of sugar-coated sweetness.

It's fairly easy to wow us men. Pen an aggressively angular shape, equip it with fetching rubber and a vroom engine and for about, oh, 10 seconds, it will be all we can think about. Much more difficult is maintaining our attention beyond the introduction of newer, more enhanced models. This is where Audi's supercar shines more brightly than any other.

It's been around for almost three years and, though it's been enhanced with 525 horses, it's still that outrageous shape that sells. Park any other run-of-the-mill supercar beside theR8-- from the Nissan GT-R to Ferrari's 430 --and it disappears. The quattro GmbH-designed coupe is the best-looking car of the decade and almost assuredly a future classic.

The Scrooge Always Rules Award for the car I'd buy with my own money goes to Mini. Though it is far from being the universal automobile (I guess that would be the Camry, God help our souls), it does everything I require of an automobile.

Now that the basement troll is all growed up (and most importantly, possesses a TTC pass), I only need two seats. The Mini also handles a hoot, at once being as manouvreable as a go-kart and yet as stable as a limousine. It's quite a trick. If you opt for the John Cooper Works edition, it will even humble many a more powerful supercar and will do so while quite literally sipping our dwindling natural resources.

In a year marked with the bankruptcy of the world's once largest car company, the hubris of one of the planet's smallest car companies (that would be Porsche) trying to swallow one of the largest (that would be Volkswagen) whole and the ignominious sale of once storied and proud brands, it would be impossible for the excitement of the actual automobiles to match the high-stakes dramas unfolding in the boardrooms. Nonetheless, some managed to stand out so that your immensely thankful for the headline-generating news Motor Mouth might pontificate on something other than the soap opera that was the automotive industry this past year.

The Extreme Makeover Award for makeup-free cosmetic enhancement goes to Land Rover's well disguised but thoroughly redesigned LR4. Though the '10 model looks virtually identical to its predecessor, the LR3, the new Land Rover is significantly revised if not quite all new.

Rather than raving about a flashy new dress, a sultry hairdo and new fender flares, the Land Rover's ameliorated attractiveness is based on its completely new direct-injected 5.0-litre V8. Making almost the same power as the supercharged 4.2L that used to power the top-of-the-line Range Rover, the LR4 stresses performance upgrades over esthetic enhancements.

Coupled with an interior that goes from well to wow, it's enough to make you think that, even in this jaded world, substance can still triumph over style. It's certainly enough to make the LR4 my new favourite sport-brute.

The icing on the cake is that, almost 10 years after its rejuvenation, the Mini is still on my "hot" list. And, as every successful marriage can attest, anything that can still turn your head after 10 years of close cohabitation is a keeper.