Technology: How To Turn on a Dime

The ins and outs of four-wheel steering

"Let me explain it to you," says Jackie Mason in his television commercials for the new Honda Prelude with four-wheel steering. Jabbing his elbows this way and that, the Borscht Belt funnyman proceeds to confuse a subject that is already complicated: "The car is going like this, the wheel is going like that, you're going like this because you can't figure out where did the back go?"

The pitch may be skewed, but the viewer gets the message: something new and strange is happening to the way cars are steered. Like so many technological advances these days, this one was made...

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