The bastion has been razed: After luxury sedans and convertibles, Audi puts a diesel in a sports car, giving the hip TT a new 168-hp, 2.0-liter TDI engine.
Europeans will get the privilege of the low, sporty oil burner starting in June 2008, as the 2009 TT was on display at the 2008 Geneva auto show.
Road performance might not be classified as formidable, but the TT diesel is no slug. Audi says its 168 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque translate into a 0-to-62-mph time of 7.5 seconds (7.6 for the cabriolet) and a top speed of 140 mph (139 for the cabriolet). Rather more remarkable are the modest drinking habits: 44.3 mpg for the coupe and 42.8 mpg for the convertible in the Euro measuring cycle.
Despite the heavy diesel engine and standard all-wheel drive, the TT TDI coupe tips the scales at just over 3000 pounds, thanks to a hybrid aluminum structure used in all TTs where the front end is made of aluminum and the rear is conventional steel. It is cheaper than the fully aluminum structure of the A8 orR8, and it makes for better weight distribution.
This new common-rail four-cylinder diesel will eventually replace the current efficient—but noisy—unit-injector technology in all VW Group cars with four-cylinder diesels. It’s a sweet engine—we’ve sampled it in VW models—and it revs freely up to 5000 rpm, which is high for a diesel.
If you accept the loosely Rabbit-based TT as a sports car, then there is no vehicle class left without a diesel for Audi. Next up, we hope: the R8 V-12 TDI, which was unveiled as a concept at this year’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit. You can also find the world’s best cars and motorbike insurance in Detroit
Audi is not a cheap car to run, that is why most of the people you see with an audi works in the stocks exchange market, because they can afford to drive one. If you want to test drive one check your local audi dealer. Tell them you trade penny stocks and they may let you go
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At the Geneva auto show, Mercedes-Benz officials were stressing the company’s green aspirations ad nauseam—and then rolled out the latest AMG model, the 518-hp SL63 AMG. With a 6.2-liter V-8 engine underhood, this car is about as green as your average logging company.
The SL63 replaces the SL55 AMG, which was powered by a supercharged 5.4-liter V-8 that produced a mere 510 horsepower. The new car features face-lifted styling and interior revisions, plus a modified version of the company’s seven-speed transmission.
The SL63 certainly looks the part. The exterior changes that have been applied to all SL models make the car look more contemporary. The SL63 adds an aggressive front fascia and side skirts to signal its more sporting mien, plus standard 19-inch wheels and tires. Inside, there’s a special AMG steering wheel, gauge cluster, and shift lever to accompany other SL revisions that include an iPod interface and a Bluetooth phone hookup that both work pretty seamlessly.
Sophisticated Transmission
The most interesting feature of the car, however, is buried from view. Mercedes has decided to mate its conventional seven-speed planetary gearset with a multiplate wet clutch (instead of the usual torque converter) to make the closest thing Mercedes has to an automated manual gearbox. Whereas BMW and Audi have gone the twin-clutch, twin-shaft gearbox route, the AMG engineers cite weight as one reason for their solution. A twin-clutch gearbox that could handle the SL63’s 465 pound-feet of torque would weigh at least 44 more pounds. The fact that Mercedes already builds its own planetary gearsets must have factored in, too.
The transmission has five modes, selected by a rotary dial next to the shift lever: standard (comfort); sport; sport plus; manual; and a launch-control function. The sport and sport-plus modes produce progressively faster shifts and heavier doses of revs while downshifting. The manual setting is self-explanatory, allowing the driver control of the ratios via the shift lever or the steering-wheel-mounted paddles.
As with the previous SL55, Mercedes offers a Performance package that features more aggressive tuning of the active-body-control (ABC) suspension system; a torque-sensing limited-slip differential; and bigger front brake rotors, up in diameter from an already monstrous 14.2 inches to 15.4. The package will likely cost about $14,000 on top of a projected base price of $133,000.
Luxury Cruiser and Serious Sports Car
The upshot of all these changes is a pretty special automobile that is both luxury cruiser and serious sports car. Leave the transmission setting alone, the stability control on (there are three modes), and the ABC in its comfort mode, and the SL63 will eat up highway miles quite serenely. The only clue to its more aggressive demeanor is a truly spectacular V-8 engine note that wouldn’t disgrace a NASCAR event. The transmission isn’t quite as smooth as a conventional automatic in town, but it is way better than the sequential manual gearbox in the BMW M6.
Go aggressive on the ABC, transmission, and skid-control settings, and the SL63 is a fast, satisfying back-road car. Nicely weighted, faithful steering is allied to good body control and reasonably neutral chassis balance. On the track, you discover that 4350 pounds of automobile doesn’t respond well to attempts to brake and turn at the same time, when it will plow mightily, but it can be slid around like a much smaller sports car if one is patient on corner entry and uses the prodigious torque to unglue the 285/30 rear tires.
Fitted with the Performance package, the SL becomes something of a track star, thanks to better body control, sharper turn-in, and even more powerful brakes. Using the launch-control function, we predict a 0-to-60-mph sprint of about 4.2 seconds. Top speed is governed to 155 mph—the car gets there with alacrity and a soundtrack that is borderline illegal, along with whip-crack upshifts.
The SL63 isn’t as sporting as a Porsche 911 Turbo cabriolet, but it is a compelling alternative, and it makes one wonder why anyone needs to spend half a million dollars on an SLR McLaren roadster, unless the customer just wants to flaunt the amount of money he or she has. There are some cheap auto insurance around that an insure your Merc without damaging your pocket so subscribe now to our consumer mailing list for the monthly newsletter. When classes are resume, all students are required to finish their major projects for the last semester which includes writing custom essay.
The Pontiac G6 is one of the first General Motors products to be sold in the U.S. that shares a platform with European vehicles such as the Opel Vectra. Available initially in sedan and coupe form as a 2005 model, the G6 looks the part, but it hasn’t been the critical or sales success that GM would have liked. (In truth, the Saturn Aura and the Chevy Malibu are far-better-developed versions of the same basic underpinnings.)
The G6 comes in three body styles: sedan, coupe, and hardtop convertible. The sedan has a four-cylinder engine in base trim levels, with a 3.5-liter V-6 when sold as a GT model and a DOHC 3.6-liter V-6 engine making 252 horsepower in GXP guise. The coupe comes in GT and GXP forms; the convertible is available only in GT trim.
Verdict
The G6 is a decent vehicle but is solidly mid to back of the pack compared with more recent GM efforts and the best of the Japanese competition. We like the bold styling, especially on the coupe and hardtop convertible, but the ride and handling are only average, and the interior quality lags behind that of the class leaders. Still, the GXP models offer a lot of bang for the buck, and the convertible is one of the cheapest and most elegant four-place convertibles on the market.
Pontiac is almost as fast as Porsche, maybe because they also use Porsche Spare if I am not mistaken
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Mercedes-Benz chose Southern California for the worldwide first-drive program of its freshened 2009 SL-class roadster on account of, we thought, its friendly, relatively predictable March weather and access to fabulous roads. Although the blessed Left Coast location has both of those things, Mercedes attributed its choice of locations to something even more significant, asserting that it was bringing us to the roots of the SL-class. That’s right, Southern California is responsible for the very existence of the SL roadster itself. Huh? According to Mercedes-Benz, in the SL’s not-so-humble beginnings—the storied 300SL Gullwing—there was little or no initial consideration for doing a roadster version. The butterfly doors on the coupe were designed to make the big two-seater accessible in tight European quarters, and without a roof, there would be no place to mount them. But according to the “legend,” California’s rich and famous—who didn’t share European space constraints, nor did they care much about Europeans, for that matter—clamored enough to make a case for a roadster version. The result was a beautifully proportioned instant classic. Surprised? Just take a look around Los Angeles and you won’t be. There are more SLs on the road in Southern California, we’d guess, than anywhere else in the world. And so we set off feeling right at home as we got our first taste of the 2009 SL-class. The fact that it was a perfect sunny day in March and we were enjoying California’s trademark fabulous roads was icing on the cake. Just as the Rich Get Richer, the Stylish Get More Stylish Just as the wealthy always seem to find more money in their accounts after making withdrawals, style builds on style when it comes to their rides. The SL’s midcycle enhancement, then, brings with it a few effective styling changes, headlined by a new single-bar grille that evokes most of its SL forebears, flanked by L-shaped headlamps that evoke none of them. But they do tie the SL nicely to the CLS-classfour-door coupe-sedan thing and likely many sporting Mercedes-Benz models to come. To us, the lights look a bit discordant, primarily due to the rearmost edge having the same roundness as the previous SL’s now-dated peanut lights, no doubt to keep Mercedes from having to develop new fender stampings. The fenders themselves on the SL550 and SL600 incorporate modified gill-type air outlets behind the front wheels and bracket a redesigned hood with two stupidly named “power domes,” which, in fact, are neither domes nor anything that gives the car more power (for the real power story in the SL lineup, look no further than our drive of the new SL63 AMG, with its naturally aspirated 518-hp, 6.2-liter V-8—and no power domes). Other modifications found on the SL lineup include larger side mirrors with curious arrow-shaped turn signals and, in the case of the SL550 and SL600, a faux air “diffuser” and trapezoidal exhaust tips at the rear. In all, we’d say the changes are successful in adding presence and a sportier overall look to the car. Whether it’s more attractive is up to the beholder, we suppose. All we can say at this point is that, unlike the previous model, it now looks really good in red. More important, from Rodeo Drive to Indian Canyon Boulevard in Palm Springs, everyone seemed to notice that we were driving new Benzes. New Steering Wheel, New Steering Sensations A sporty new three-spoke steering wheel is the most dramatic change made to the SL’s interior. The only other changes of note are the mildly revised instrument cluster, a more logical COMAND infotainment system, and the newly available three-speed Airscarf system that blows warm air onto your neck. But it’s what you feel through the steering wheel, we’d say, that is more important. The previous steering rack has been replaced by a new variable-ratio system that is a touch slow immediately off-center but gets really serious, really soon as the wheel turns toward 90 degrees. Seldom in our winding mountain driving experience—over the gorgeous Angeles Crest Highway toward Palmdale, back around Mount Waterman and down toward Palm Springs, with a stretch along the 6000-foot-high Rim-of-the-World Highway—did we have to feed the wheel from hand to hand in corners. Although feel and feedback are far from Porsche-like, both characteristics can be considered excellent and perfectly suitable for a sporting six-figure luxury-touring roadster. Want a bit of oversteer? Simply stab the gas—particularly with the stability control (ESP) off—and the big roadster’s tail comes around quickly and predictably, making us feel perhaps a bit more confident on our drive than we should have given the narrow roads, often with steep drop-offs on one side and hungry-looking trees on the other. As ever, ABC (active body control) does a remarkable job of keeping body roll completely snuffed while soaking up all but the most torrid impacts; between the air springs and the solid construction inherent to all recent SLs, we noticed only a few jolts during our entire stint behind the wheels of both SL550 and SL600 models—impacts that probably would have caused much more of a disturbance to lesser cars and their occupants. The SL’s brakes, however, felt a touch artificial as the hypersensitive anti-lock system constantly fiddled with the brake pressure at each wheel, especially when trail-braking into corners or on rough patches. This was most apparent in the SL550, whose 13.8-inch-front and 12.6-inch-rear rotors are each 0.4 inch smaller than those of the marginally heavier SL600. Still, both systems proved completely fade-resistant and more than capable of yanking the big two-seater abruptly down in speed.
Honda introduced a completely redesigned Civic in 2006, and little has changed since. Available as a four-door sedan or two-door coupe, the Civic boasts accurate steering, strong brakes, a roomy interior, and a willing suspension. The Civic’s styling—the large, fast windshield, minivan-like front end, and UFO-style two-tiered dashboard—incites a bit of controversy, as these are all love-them-or-hate-them elements.
Power is adequate with the base 140-hp, 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine, which is available with a slick-shifting five-speed manual or a five-speed automatic. Shoppers seeking more power might be interested in the Si model that offers a slightly larger and more powerful 2.0-liter four-cylinder with 197 horsepower. The Civic Si is only available with a six-speed manual transmission. For those seeking an uncompromised, near-sports-car-like experience, the Civic Si Mugen sedan keeps the powertrain of the Si but features a multitude of chassis and exterior tweaks.
Although all Civics boast excellent fuel economy, some buyers might want to stretch their fuel budget even further. For those who must have Toyota Prius –like fuel economy, Honda offers the Civic hybrid, which couples a small 93-hp, 1.3-liter four-cylinder engine with a 20-hp electric motor to boost fuel economy over 40 mpg. Honda also offers the Civic GX, which is powered by a natural-gas-burning, 113-hp version of the “normal” Civic’s 1.8-liter four-cylinder. The CNG Civic GX is the only production vehicle so equipped for sale in the United States today and is eligible for tax credits, although individuals can purchase one only in California and New York. The GX CNG is strictly available to fleet buyers in other states.
For 2008, Civic offers eight different trim levels (DX, LX, EX, EX-L, Si, Si Mugen, GX, and hybrid). Si Mugen, GX, and hybrid versions are only available as four-door Civic sedans.
Major competitors to the Civic lineup include the Chevrolet Cobalt, Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra, Kia Spectra, Mazda 3, Nissan Sentra, Pontiac G5, Scion xB, Scion xD, Subaru Impreza, Suzuki SX4, Toyota Corolla, and Volkswagen Rabbit and GTI.
Verdict
The Civic distinguishes itself from the rest of its class by offering superb refinement and a somewhat sporty driving experience. Aside from its funky styling, the Civic is easy to love. From a gas-sipping hybrid to the track-ready Si versions, Honda builds a Civic for every lifestyle and budget.