Not sure what to do with your old minivan? Turn it into a Belgian Waffle Van. This is an old Renault and it's fit with CNG for powering the generator that runs the waffle presses and the freezers. These things are all over Belgium: you see pretty much anything of this shape converted with the fibreglass tops and a generator set. The fanciest ones are (duh) VW Transporters and old Citroen Traction Avants. But this one has that patina that only an old Renault could have. Can you imagine being cooped up in this thing all day with a waffle iron? Not me!

My hometown of Düsseldorf is not exactly the capital of the German auto industry. We're south of the Ruhrpott (the rust belt of Germany), and north of the southern band of Stuttgart, München, and Ingolstadt. Regardless, Daimler picked our little town to build the Sprinter, their capable workvan that is available in a dizzying array of configurations, from 18-passenger van to flat-bed truck. During the Chrysler years, Dodge sold a version of the Sprinter in the US that competed against Daimler's Freightliner version. In Europe, VW purchased Sprinter bodies as part of an agreement that sent T5 Transporter bodies to Daimler. The Sprinter below is decked out for the Karneval parade from earlier this year.

I can never get enough of cheesy replicas. Like the A-Team Espace I found at the Nürburgring last fall, this is another Renault, although one of somewhat less stature. It's a first-generation Twingo, one of the weirdest looking cars to come out of the 90s. Known as the "elephant shoe", this one got a full A-Team workover, and the owner loves it so much that they don't drive it during the winter, as evidenced by the seasonal license plate. The Twingo seats four, has room for about two bags of groceries, and has questionable safety ratings. It came to market as an experiment in how cheap you could go and still have people actually buy the thing. It worked, there are thousands of them on the roads. There is even active mod culture - Germany's biggest Twingo fan club is Twingo Fever, which hosts annual Nürburgring track days for these little buckets. Another pic after the jump!

Look what I found at the VW dealer - a 2011/2012 VW Lifestyle book, full of goodies that are targeted at the European market. Europeans in general are not shy about branding, so I'm not surprised that there is a lot of stuff in there. However, this is a TWO HUNDRED page catalogue, not the usual flyer we get in the States. It's not just a catalogue, either. It's a full-blown brand book with gear for everyone from babies to professionals. I don't know what's crazier - the fact that there is a market for 10 different VW-branded leather wallets, or that you can order anything from skateboards to (totally killer) racetrack-decorated baby clothes. It includes the coolest pair of socks in the entire automotive world, too. Hit the jump for pics of some of the good stuff.

As Jen mentioned last week, Nissan is considering bringing back the Datsun marque and there was another article on it recently in The Wall Street Journal (heady reading there). First launched as a car in 1933 in Japan by DAT Motor, one of the firms that were taken over become Nissan Motor, it would become a strategic brand for Nissan, filling the small car niche. Nissan entered the US in the late 1950s to take advantage of the small but growing demand for smaller cars and did pretty well by not ignoring the sports car market. While the 240Z is the icon we all remember, I'm a wagon nut. Nissan did not disappoint: the 510 arrived in coupe and wagon forms. Check out Cruezz's super-sweet take on the 510, and tell us: Should Nissan bring Datsun back? And what would that mean for Infiniti?

I thought that the trend of deliberately rusting your car was confined to the US, specifically NJ. But no, now it's infected Germany, too!

I was cruising home from Willingen this weekend, and just around Holzwickede, I spotted this half-rusted Skoda hatch. The owner appears to have done a decent job of confining the mess to specific parts of the body, but I have a hard time saying it looks good. Even if the car was going bad to begin with, did you have to go and accelerate the problem? This is a trend that needs to go away. What do you think of the purposely-rusted thing?

Those little letters car companies use to spell out car names come in various fonts, just like the text on your computer. Some are boring, like the block all-caps font used by VW, some are artsy, like the Judge logo used on the GTO, and some are downright stunning, like the font below, used by Lancia. Lancia is a low-numbers part of FIAT, selling odd-looking, seemingly French-inspired Alfa rebodies with distinctly mid-century-modern luxury interiors. The Lancia/Alfa platforms are being introduced to Chrysler right now, and what I hope they keep is the gorgeous font Lancia uses for its cars. The Ypsilon (/oop sil on/) badge below is an example. I can't get enough of it: although borderling unreadable, it's beautiful! Another example after the jump. What's your favorite badge font?

This is the BMW dealership in Düsseldorf, Germany. Yes, that is a McDonalds in the middle of it. It's not just a regular one either: it's a drive-through, which is actually quite rare over here. I did a triple-take when I saw this. Somehow I have trouble imagining anything less than a full-blown Morton's in a BMW dealership in the US. Crazy Germans!

I found this old Marbella hiding in a parking garage in Liege, Belgium. It's a SEAT from before the VW days, which means it's really a FIAT Panda. The most interesting thing about the car is something we take completely for granted today: it lacks any glass curvature! The windshield (after the jump) is especially strange looking. Have a look!

The German driving test is not meant to be messed with. After 16 one and a half hour theory lessons, you get to take your theoretical exam: thirty questions pulled from a pool of over 1100. No, I didn't add an extra zero. There really are 1100 questions that they pick from. The questions range from "what does this sign mean?" to pretty complex situational assessments, like these three. In the photo below, you have to choose from the following answers:

1. I have only to worry about the bus.

2. I should be aware that there might be a car in front of the bus.

Two more after the jump!