While recent OEM sales numbers have shown continued strength and indicate a slow-but-sure recovery in the auto segment, another data point is worth noting in this regard.

According to the Specialty Equipment Market Association, the organizer of the annual SEMA Show in Las Vegas, they’re expected some 150 manufacturers to be exhibiting wheels at this fall’s event, which runs from October 30 to November 3. This is notable because it will be the biggest number of exhibitors in the Wheels & Accessories area ever. Of course, given that the area was established in 2010, that’s not a whole lot of history to draw from.

Velocity Wheel display at SEMA (SEMA photo)

That said, the “Global Tire Expo, Powered by TIA (Tire Industry Association)” (no, we don’t understand that “Powered by,” either), and the Wheel & Accessories area will fill the entire lower level of the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is no small space.

This wheel-related activity should be of interest to designers—given the fact that wheels are among the most highly stylized exterior features of a vehicle, aftermarket or OEM—as well as to machine tool manufacturers, given the amount of complex turning and milling that is necessary to create these exotic objects.

As most of us won’t be attending the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in Lake Como (May 25-27), we won’t have the opportunity to see one of the storied concepts in automotive history: The first concept car ever built by BMW.

So here it is:

The BMW Turbo debuted in 1972. The car was designed by Paul Bracq.

The first BMW concept car in 1972?!

Yes. According to a BMW spokesperson, “The company had done one-offs before then, particularly in the 1930’s, but those were race cars, usually built for the Mille Miglia.”

Arguably, eight years later that concept took form in the 1978 BMW M1, as is apparent from this:

While it is now the norm for concept cars to be damned close to what shows up in production, clearly BMW was ahead of its time.

This is the Renault Twizy. It is an electric vehicle. Yes, it is a real vehicle.

Some people might think that, well, it doesn’t look particularly safe. But what’s interesting to note is that Autoliv has developed a supplemental seatbelt system for the Twizy, one that is used in addition to the conventional three-point seatbelt.

What they’ve developed is a two-point shoulder belt, which what you can see on the left side of the photo below (if you look closely, you can see the three-point belt on the upper right).

The point of this is that in the event of a crash, the load is more widely distributed on the occupant. One consequence:  rib strain is reduced by as much as half.

Another benefit of the two-point belt is that the occupant is protected in all directions, and because with the three-point belt, the occupant has both shoulders strapped in, thereby keeping the occupant in the vehicle and while in the vehicle in place, not potentially flung into the other occupant (assuming that it is in a car, unlike the Twizy, that has more than one occupant per row).

Some might think that a four-point belt might be a better solution (like the things that race car drivers or flight attendants use), these generally take two hands for buckling up, which people, apparently, are resistant to. (Apparently they need the other hand for texting.)

This two-point belt simply requires that the occupant slip an arm under it, then buckle the three-point belt per usual.

Although it is well known that diesel engines are comparatively powerful and fuel-efficient, it is that latter characteristic that really come to the fore in a recent undertaking by uber-hyper milers Helen and John Taylor.

Consider: they climbed in a Volkswagen Passat TDI SE (manufactured in Chattanooga, TN). The car--a regular consumer model, not something specifically set up for what the Taylor's undertook--features an in-line four cylinder diesel engine that produces 140 hp and 236 lb-ft of torque. There is a Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) system as part of the exhaust system that assures that what comes out of the tailpipe is clean enough to meet the regulations in California (and the other 49 states, as well). (You may have heard of some vehicles being referred to as "Clean Diesels"; this is one of them.). The Passat is equipped with a six-speed manual.

While regular drivers can achieve 43 mpg highway with the car, for the Taylors that would be profligate.

On May 3 they departed Houston with 120 lb. of luggage in the trunk and a full tank of ultra-low-sulfur fuel. They drove during daylight hours and for no longer than 14 hours per day.

On May 5 they arrived in Sterling, VA.

That's 1,626.1 miles later.

That's a new record of 84.1 mpg.

(The previous record was 1,526.6 miles, set in Europe in a Passat 1.6 BlueMotion diesel.)

So even though you may see the price of a gallon of diesel being hirer than regular, there is nothing regular about the fuel efficiency that the compression-combustion diesel can provide--even if you don't drive like the Taylors.

While I don’t have the facts to support this assertion, I’m guessing that a pretty high percentage of the people who buy Camaros and Mustangs and, yes, Chargers, are a few decades away from how old they were in the 1960s and early ‘70s, when they lusted—yes, full-on, hard-core lust—for cars of this type. Or maybe they aren’t quite that late Boomer, but still of an age where the word “responsibility” actually means something, something like “the spouse and kids.” (I’m guessing that this is primarily a male thing, but that’s not always the case.)

So if you think about it, the Camaro and the Mustang both have two doors. The Charger has four. All of the cars have back seats. But the Charger actually has one that real people can actually get into sit in, not contort themselves in like someone in a Circ de Soleil performance. Yes, the spouse and the kids, perhaps.

The Charger that I had the chance to drive for a week has an optional paint job. “Redline 3-Coat Pearl.” Or said more simply: a red-hot red paint job. A depth and richness of red that makes you know that this is a car that gets after it. It is a car that looks fast, standing still.

But then I saw that it has a 3.6-liter Pentastar V6. Pause for a slight groan. And then a smack upside the head because this 292-hp engine has the stuff needed to move. It is connected to an eight-speed ZF automatic (think of this for a minute: an eight-speed transmission when most cars available for less than the price of a modest house have six, and some even fewer), and if you want to manually run through the gears, it will oblige you. Then there is one other thing that brings us back to “responsibility” and the like, and that’s the fact that the car is rated at 19 mpg city/31 mpg highway, and in my real-world driving, I came down approximately in the middle.

Which is to say that assuming that you have other people besides yourself to drive here and there on more than a random basis, and if you don’t have the scratch to have a muscle car as your weekend-only driver, then know that the Charger is a car that gives you the best of both worlds: a car with performance and a car that is actually, well, useful and comfortable. (Yes, the Charger is available with a 370-hp HEMI, but have you seen the nearly $4.00/gallon signs? Cylinder deactivation or not, that’s still a lot of dough to contribute to Shell or BP or whatever.)

It isn’t just the doors that make it the kind of car that you can have as your daily driver. With the SXT Plus package, which adds $2,000 to the base MSRP of $28,495, the Technology Group ($900) and the Driver Convenience Group ($575), you are getting everything from Nappa leather seats to heated and cooled cup holders (silly idea? Nope. Imagine going to Starbucks on a frosty morning and then putting your hot cup of coffee into a cold cup holder. That ability to heat the cup holders is actually brilliant) to blind-spot detection to rain-sensitive wipers.

So there you are, in a car that has sophisticated technology and an array of amenities. Why wouldn’t you want to drive it all the time?

It once was that you’d think of “muscle car” as some sort of thing that was all about nothing more than what happened when the light turned green. Comfort—naw. And while this probably won’t win drag races on Telegraph, seriously: why would you care when you can have a car that provides all this?

Selected specs

Engine: 3.6-liter DOHC V6

Material: Aluminum block and heads

Horsepower: 292 @ 6,350 rpm

Torque: 260 lb-ft @ 4,400 rpm

Transmission: Eight-speed automatic

Wheelbase: 120.2 in.

Length: 199.9 in.

Width: 75.0 in.

Height: 58.4 in.

Curb weight: 3,996 lb.

EPA: 19/31 mpg city/hwy