"Car Bomb Kills Dozens Outside Iraqi Police Station"
--New York Times headline, July 28, 2004
"Calm in Baghdad Is Shattered as Car Bomb Kills at Least 10"
--New York Times headline, July 14, 2004
"US Troops Discover Car Bomb Factory in Iraq"
--New York Times headline, July 3, 2004
Forty bleeding bits of shrapnel erupting from a camoflagued explosive.
The mafia made the car bomb public as a means of personal retribution. You need a key to start the car, and the car's starting detonates the explosive--thus the car bomb is a safe way to guarantee a certain person dies. It's a brutal but contained death.
Terrorist groups have flipped the car bomb around. Cars are everywhere. They can go everywhere. If you add enough explosive, you have spherical death on wheels. By the time inspectors are close enough to realize the threat, the bomb goes off.
No matter what the target, everyone dies: the driver, pedestrians, passers-by. Believers and infidels, extremists and moderates, killers and lovers.