But as it did in its heyday of the late '90s and early aughts, the Passat drives like a special piece, a cut above the usual mainstream family sedans.
Some of its artificiality can be chalked up to the usual mainstream filmmaking imperatives, like stars who are at once recognizably real and prettier, thinner and sleeker, with whiter teeth and glossier skin, like the operative for the Drug Enforcement Agency played here by Paula Patton.
There is also some appeal in the radical roots of "queer", particularly as same-sex desire becomes more usual: while mainstream assimilation makes discrimination less likely, it does run the risk of removing the "outsider" identity of gay life, which many are keen to preserve.
Orthofer makes the usual complaints against mainstream publishing for ignoring books in translation, and he provides overviews of the publishing scenes in each country under discussion.
His poll also found that over half of Clacton's voters believe Carswell to be "more principled than most politicians", with two thirds stating that they intended to vote for him because he is the "best candidate" – reasoning slightly removed from the usual 'dissatisfaction with mainstream politics' one given by Ukip supporters.
"Like Beauty" handles Catareen's alienness with marvellous empathy but is bogged down by the usual demerits of mainstream science fiction: creaky expository monologues about how the future came to be, cringe-making references to people taking a "dermaslough" or hydraulicking their pods, and worship of concepts at the expense of narrative credibility.
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This year's nominations embraced the usual crop of mainstream crowd pleasers, including revivals of "Anything Goes," with nine nominations, and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" with eight.
The judges denied the list was more mainstream than usual, suggesting that a wider range of artists were prospering thanks to the "long tail" effect of the internet and the greater exposure of a more fragmented media.
There's the usual mix of the mainstream and the unfamiliar this year, with a host of premieres and features on Polish, Swiss and Austrian composers who are little known here.
This is, in fact, the usual fallback position of mainstream economists once they admit that free trade has drawbacks.
