Shipping a car by air, according to Gary Rumbold, the director of the British arm of co2balance, a group that helps people and businesses in England judge their carbon footprints, "[is] like driving the car 300 times around the world."

That 1.3-gallon Lexus engine
Rumbold made his remarks in an interview with the Associated Press, which wrote, "Rumbold also questioned whether a high performance car such as the LS Lexus 600h -- with a powerful 1.3-gallon (5-liter) V-8 engine and a top speed of 155 mph (250 kph) -- is actually the best use of promising hybrid technology." We're assuming an AP copy editor was only following orders when he or she converted the LS 600's metric engine displacement to terms familar to Americans, and didn't have the car smarts to realize our equivalent is cubic inches -- 305 cubic inches -- not quarts (5.3) or gallons (1.3) when describing engine displacement.

McCartney has had an ongong relationship with Lexus, which sponsored his 2005 music tour. While he doesn't do many endorsements, McCartney praised Lexus and its hybrids for being environmentally sensitive, and Lexus built a one-off McCartney-insired SUV that was auctioned off for a charity (an anti-land mine group) that McCartney supports.

Some critics of the LS 600h say there's no way a car like that -- with so much time and materials and carbon footprint built in -- can ever be environmentlly neutral, that's it's a salve on the conscience of the ultra-rich. But around town, it neatly trumps a BMW 7 Series, Mercedes-Benz S-Class, or Audi A8 on fuel economy. On the highway it's a different matter, where diesel engines -- offered just about everywhere but here -- rack up better mileage figures than gasoline-powered hybrids.

McCartney's animal-friendly Mercedes-Benz
Automakers love to have high-visibility stars seen driving their cars. (Sales soar when impressionables see pix of Lindsay or Britney pulled over on a suspected DUI?) But some can be high-maintenance stars. When McCartney got a Mercedes-Benz previously, he made them jump through hoops (as insiders at Mercedes describe it) to remove all traces of animal products from the car before it was fit for use by McCartney, a vegetarian who won't wear leather products, even leather shoes. That's one version of the story. There's also this: the Germany chapter of PETA (people eating tasty ... sorry, make that people for the ethical treatment of animals) put enough pressure on Mercedes-Benz, saying four to 15 cows are sacrificed to outfit the typical car interior, that Mercedes in 2005 agreed to offer fabric or synthetic leather options for customers who want it. Now, no more endangered Alcantaras, spiritual sucessor to the 1970s Nauga.