Labor Day weekend traditionally marks the end of summer, and many Americans are hitting the roads for one last blast of warm-weather fun. So you'll probably hit traffic.

A nice shot of the Ferrari 458 Italia by the tracks in Vancouver.

It took a second for the news to sink in when I read that Jack Pitney died yesterday. I scanned past the announcement so fast, my brain took a second to put it together. Naw, I thought. I must have read that wrong.

Let's not lie: we automotive journalists have a pretty sweet gig. No matter how expensive a car is, we usually get to put it through its paces; better yet, we often have the car companies deliver the vehicles directly to our door and pick them up when we're bored with them.

Dear "Curt" from Carmichael, California: It is very, very unlikely anyone will pay your requested price of $110,995 for your steroidally souped-up 2000 BMW M5 with 98,500 miles on it.

Early impressions are important. That's why we work so hard to make them count—especially when it comes to attractive members of the opposite sex. For that first date, we brush our teeth, we shower, we spend more time deciding what to wear (up to an entire minute in some cases). But does it matter what you're driving when you pull up to her house? And does it matter what she drives if she's picking you up? To find out, we took a quick survey to see what the 0-60 staff would choose for that all-important first date.

Last week, we took a quick office poll to find out what car each of us would choose for a non-stop drive across the country, and who we'd choose for our co-driver. It was quite an informative experience: for example, we learned Tony likes his cars equipped with stick shifts and an esoteric, Scooby Doo-like crew, Crenshaw apparently has a limitless appetite for bad jokes and Burt Reynolds impersonations, and our intern Ray Ray is the most street person we know.

It's a question that's probably been around ever since there was more than one model of automobile on the planet: what car would you choose for a road trip? It's an important question (in the sense that it's inspired millions of hours of drunken heated argument around the world), but an awfully open-ended one. How long is the trip? Are speed limits being enforced? Do I dare reveal that I secretly love the roomy seat of my granddad's Town Car? So to simplify things, I posed the following question to the staffers here at the office today: On a non-stop trip from New York City to Los Angeles, what car would you take, and who would be your co-driver? In no particular order, the answers.