But but but...the Bimmer or Benz looks more impressive when pulling up to the valet!

A note on whether or not cursory looks at dealer inventory reveal how quickly vehicles are selling: the two are hardly related. When I sold Toyotas last summer, we always had a minimum of 20 Camrys on the lot. They were always selling and Toyota always shipped us new ones. The total time between when the first '05 showed up on a truck and the last '04 was sold was less than a month. You can still have a very low time to turn even with high inventory. The reason the new Odyssey is not selling as amazingly as the original is because Toyota has upped its game, not because Honda is slacking. When the previous Ody came out, the Sienna was a freakin joke. The Ody was the only minivan which offered both the size and flexibility of a Chrysler van and the reliability of a Japanese marque. Toyota came out with the revised Sienna, and it too, offered the same things. The XLE does have some nice interior bits but it's pretty pricey. Most of the Siennas we moved were pretty basic LEs going in the mid-high 20s. The reason the Odyssey still sold so well against the new Sienna was because once you wanted anything above plain ole cloth seats in a Sienna you ended up at like 4 grand more than an Odyssey with leather because leather in a Sienna comes with a bunch of other gizmos and packages and whatnot. Honda also had a crazy good subsidized lease deal going on the Ody to move out the '04s in time for the '05s. I'm sure the new one is selling just fine, but it'll be tough to have a home run outta the park hit like the last one now that Toyota has thrown its full might into the segment.

I do agree with some of the comments about the RL, when it first came out I thought it was kind of bland compared to the TSX and especially the TL. But the TL was designed in America specifically for this market whereas the RL was designed back home at Honda of Japan for sale in several different markets including Japan. Still, a videoconference and a couple of emails of preliminary work on the TL as work on the Legend/RL was happening in Japan, would have perhaps given home base a little incentive to make the design of the Legend/RL a bit more interesting. The other point the article makes is that the RL is a big jump in price over a TL w/ navi. That jump is about 15 grand, so again I agree. But despite these objections I would hardly call it one of the most disappointing new cars of the year, especially since it is quite a nice car.

The other stuff, I don't feel like commenting.