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Car companies spend a lot of time talking to young people. They aim ads at them, target jingles at them, even go so far as to build entire cars for them. From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense — get someone young, latch your hooks into them, hang onto their business forever.

Problem is, young people don’t always know what they want. (Full disclosure: At time of publication, the author of this review is 30, which makes him neither young nor old but still losing hair at an alarming rate. Also, it makes him really uncomfortable when he refers to anyone as “young people,” as he sounds like a senile Amish grandmother.) Building cars for this crowd is a mixed bag — you have to balance appealing to a short attention span and fad-friendly taste with actually building a consumer good worth a damn.

In the best of all worlds, you end up with a good car that happens to be charmingly different. (See: Honda CRX.) In the worst, you end up with a rolling, trend-happy gimmick that no one over the age of 25 would be caught dead in. (See: Any Scion loaded down with tasteless dealer “aftermarket” options.) Either way, you’re treading a fine line between genuine style and cynical marketing, one that even the dumbest of admen won’t pretend to understand.

What, then, to make of the three-door, uniquely shaped 2012 Hyundai Veloster? Hyundai launched this oddball in Portland, Oregon, city of hipster progress. Company execs hoped the city’s fixie-forward crowd and put-a-bird-on-it culture would rub off, or maybe just remind journalists of who they wanted to buy the car. Either way, the Veloster looks like nothing else on the market.

Let’s take inventory: A hatchback. Three doors, four if you count the rear hatch. A 28/40 city/highway EPA fuel-economy rating, and a 138-hp, 1.6-liter four-cylinder powering the front wheels. MacPherson struts up front, a non-independent torsion beam — think old Volkswagen or Honda Civic here — in the back. You get your choice of a six-speed manual or six-speed, dual-clutch transmission (the latter is Hyundai’s first), as well as a shockingly low curb weight of 2,584 pounds with a manual transmission. Funky 1970s stick-on body stripes are optional, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this means something. Perhaps that funky 1970s stick-on body stripes are currently hot in South Korea. Here, they just look a bit too Starsky and Hutch.

Hyundai is cagey on the Veloster’s mechanical origins, insisting only that its chassis is largely new, albeit peppered with a few Accent and Elantra parts. This is odd for a small, inexpensive ($18,060 base) economy car, in that most machines of this nature share a platform with something else in order to keep costs down. Car magazines will tell you the Veloster’s unique parts are important, that they herald the arrival of something new, or perhaps Hyundai brewing up some kind of secret engineering plan. No matter. All you really need to concern yourself with is how the Veloster drives. And it drives impressively.

This is not a sports car. Sixty mph comes up in 8.5 seconds, or just fast enough that you don’t find yourself getting run over by traffic during merges. The chassis is astonishingly rigid and free from scuttle shake or resonance; a Toyota Camry and Honda Civic driven on the same day felt limp and noodly by comparison. The steering offers little feedback, but decent feel and resistance. The chassis is nimble without being twitchy, which means it essentially fades away in traffic, the car shrinking around you. Winding roads are dispatched competently but without any real sense of fun; the engine drones a little at high rpm, but both transmissions work relatively well when pushed. Around town, the twin-clutch box actually falls down compared with the manual — it seems sluggish and jerky.

Oh, and that third door: It actually makes getting into the back seat easier. There’s room back there for a grown man, but the car doesn’t look big or bulbous in back. This is significant, as it’s almost unheard of in a car this size.

Regardless, what counts here is what you get for the price. In addition to standard Bluetooth with voice recognition, an auxiliary and USB input jack, Pandora/iPhone compatibility, you also get optional park-distance sensors, a panoramic glass sunroof, a rearview camera, navigation, and pushbutton start.

The Veloster looks great, it offers a crazy amount of positives for the price, and chiefly, it’s stylish without being faddish. It oozes that most ethereal of consumer-good qualities: cool.

In other words, young people will probably flock to it in droves. Which is good, because it means they’ll be out driving their new car and will likely stay off my lawn.

WIRED Looks the business. Implies you know something everyone else doesn’t. Reminds you of the legendary Honda CRX. 40 mpg paired with sheet metal that doesn’t make you feel like a heinous dork.

TIRED Still drives like an economy car, albeit a very good one. Dual-clutch transmission feels unfinished. Cargo area is a bit tiny with the seats up.

Photos by Sam Smith/Wired

Two ninjas: Airblaster Ninja Suit (gray, left) and I/O Bio Contact Pilot Suit (black)

Few things are cooler than dueling ninjas. Few things are warmer than dueling merino wool ninja suits.

Merino wool is widely regarded as the ideal base layer for its ability to adjust its properties to differing situations. It keeps you warm when it’s cold outside, it breathes well when it’s hot outside, and it wicks away sweat when you’re exerting yourself. Heck, it doesn’t even pick up body odor.

As a big fan of merino wool, I’ve always said that if I could drape my whole body in it, I would. Turns out that I can. Two companies, I/O Bio Merino and Airblaster, both offer one-piece baselayers made entirely of merino wool to provide warmth for snowboarding, skiing, mountaineering, infiltrating castles, and other cold-weather pursuits.

Ninja suits. Made of what is arguably the finest performance material ever. Excellent.

The two suits share a host of similarities: Both are made of the soft wool of the Merino sheep; both are full-length, one-piece suits; and both have tight-fitting hoods, thumb loops, and drawstrings around the waist. Both companies make men’s and women’s versions.

A friend and I first tested the Airblaster Ninja Suit on a Summit of Mount Shasta, a 14,162-foot volcano in Northern California, and then took the I/O Bio Contact Pilot Suit on a weeklong trip through Colorado’s Rocky mountains.

On Mount Shasta, the Airblaster proved more than capable of handling the temperature swings that come with the higher elevation. When using it as a base layer, my tester found that he didn’t need any other layers under his shell jacket and pants to provide further insulation. The thin merino provided heat when it was cold and kept him from overheating when he started pushing uphill toward the summit.

In the Rockies, the temperatures dipped below 30 degrees at night, but the I/O Bio Pilot suit did a great job of keeping me warm. The form-fitting hood and thumb-looped sleeves kept warm air in the suit. The merino wool wicked away sweat and made it through the whole week without picking up any odor. The stitches started to show some gaps after a week of abuse, however, which doesn’t inspire confidence in its durability.

You’re probably wondering: “How the heck do you go to the bathroom in these things?” Glad you asked, because each suit tackles that problem in very different ways, and therein lies the main difference.

I/O Bio’s Contact Pilot suit sports a U-shaped zip that runs from the front of the waist (think belt buckle region) down under the legs up to the back of the waist. Airblaster’s Ninja suit uses a zipper that goes around the waist from the left to right and a brief-style opening in the front to accommodate the standard male peeing posture.

After extensive testing, I found that the Pilot Suit has the slight edge in convenience; the u-zipper stays out of the way a lot easier than the Ninja Suit’s butt flap, the positioning of which keeps you on guard with the slight yet terrifying chance of crapping into your pants.

However, the danger factor in zipping the Contact Pilot suit up just about negates any other conveniences. If you’re squatting in the snow at high elevation, or even if you’re trying to go about your business in the middle of the night and you’re only half awake, there’s way too much of a chance for an accidental reenactment of There’s Something About Mary. The women’s version has the same mechanism, but women may find such dangers to be more easily avoided.

Airblaster’s Ninja Suit’s pee-hole and behind-the-back zipping style pretty much eliminate any chance of bloodletting. I declare it the winner by a deuce.

Airblaster Merino Ninja Suit

$180, myairblaster.com

WIRED Regulates temperature in cold weather. Lots of insulation in a thin package. Easy to poop while wearing it.

TIRED Material feels a bit scratchy. The fit is baggy.

I/O Bio Merino Contact Pilot Suit

$200, io-bio.com

WIRED Soft wool feels great on skin. Form-fitting. Doesn’t pick up body odor.

TIRED Shows wear after a few uses. There’s a very real danger of zipping up your goodies after dropping the kids off at the pool.

Photos by Keith Axline/Wired

Not the recommended playing position, but why not?

Moog Music is known for making some freaky instruments. The company started out in 1954, producing a theremin, an instrument you play by moving your hands through thin air, and later became famous for hulking modular synthesizers that were controlled by messy and confounding patch bays.

However, Bob Moog’s legacy as an electronic music innovator was cemented by a few key products: 1970’s Minimoog, a small, stage-ready version of those huge early synths; the Taurus, a floor-bound bass synthesizer you play with your feet; and the Voyager, an updated take on the Minimoog released in 2002.

Join us as we step away from the daily gadget deluge to review some of our personal favorite products

This particular keyboard I’ve been testing, the Moog Little Phatty, is destined to one day also sit at the top of Mount Moog.

It’s simple and easy to play, so it’s great for newcomers or the synth-curious. Compared to the massive Voyager and Taurus synths, it’s easy to schlep, making it an attractive synth for gigging musicians. And while it isn’t cheap (street price is around $1,300), it’s certainly easier on the wallet than other Moogs, which cost twice as much.

It’s a standard monophonic synth, and fairly stripped-down (hence “Little”). On the base are 37 keys, a mod wheel, a spring-loaded pitch wheel and switches for changing octaves. Up top are knobs for controlling the dual analog oscillators, modulation, filters and envelope generators. There are 100 preset voices, and the keyboard is loaded with fun sounds for all tastes — classic funky leads, super-fat bass tones, wooshy-washy psychedelia and plinky percussion.

The Little Phatty has been around for a spell — the original version was released in 2006. On this model, the Little Phatty Stage II, some key features have been updated (so excuse me while I geek out for a moment).

There’s a new arpeggiator that can be applied to any preset, with a selectable latch mode. The tempo of the arpeggiator can be set using tap-tempo, or by using the new MIDI clock sync feature that matches the rate of the arpeggiator or LFO with your other MIDI sequencers. If your world is strictly post-five-pin, there’s a MIDI-over-USB function. The addition of the USB port means the LP Stage II can also be used as a USB controller for whatever software you’re using. In my tests, I never had to install a driver.

Oh, and one other new feature here: all-black side plates have replaced the wood-clad design of yore. So it looks a little more “nouveau goth” than “British prog.”

Most of those updated features will probably only appeal to synth-heads or serious electronic musicians. To everyone else, all that really matters is what it sounds like when you turn it on and start playing it. And that’s where the Little Phatty really shines.

I’m no Geddy or Herbie, but I’ve fiddled with a lot of synths. This is one of the easiest synths to grok, and, consequently, one of the most fun to play. You just switch it on, touch a key, and it starts making cool sounds. You don’t really need to know much about how the knobs work — in fact, there are so few knobs, the intimidation factor is very low and it’s easy enough to reach up and start experimenting. When demonstrating the test unit it for friends, a ten or fifteen-second orientation was all that was required.

The simplicity of the thing can feel limiting in the age of the does-it-all digital synth. Newbies ask why you can’t play a chord (it’s monophonic, and only sounds one note at a time), and there aren’t any digital representations of pianos or organs.

But while those digital synths do more for around the same price, they don’t have this much charisma or personality. And the Little Phatty has that special sauce, that “natural” quality that Moog does so well. As you flip through the Little Phatty’s 100 presets and surf the dual oscillators, you’ll find dozens of those classic sounds that are all Moog, just dripping with pure analog authenticity.

Moog Music chief engineer Cyril Lance says this is because Bob Moog’s DNA is inside the Little Phatty.

Development on the keyboard began in earnest when Lance first joined the company in 2005, he tells me in a phone interview. Unfortunately, company founder Bob Moog died soon after the team got started. Because everyone knew this would be the last Moog instrument actually designed by Bob, the team took great care in making sure everything about the Little Phatty was spot on — not only the aesthetic and the sound, but also the deeper, intangible aspects of what makes an instrument special.

Bob’s passing gave the project an unprecedented weight. “It was the product that was going to show to the world what Moog would be like without Bob Moog. Everyone involved poured their hearts and souls into the project as a tribute to Bob,” says Lance.

Once a working prototype had been created, Lance took it home and plopped it onto a table in his house. It was nothing more than a bunch of circuits and wires connected to a keyboard and an array of knobs.

“My neighbor’s four-year-old son came over. His eyes got wide and he immediately started playing with it. He was totally consumed for the next hour and made incredible sounds,” he says. “That was my confirmation that we got it right.”

WIRED An honest-to-Bob analog synth in a stripped-down package. Portable and compact, great for performers. USB features make it feel more at home in modern, software-based situations.

TIRED Simplicity of the design is somewhat limiting. Quality is expensive. Menus on the tiny LCD are tough to decipher, you gotta RTFM. I kind of miss the wood side-pieces.

Photo by Jim Merithew/Wired