Autoblog

For the past few years General Motors has been competing in the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) with a car based on the Daewoo-built Chevrolet Lacetti. Top Gear fans will of course recognize the Lacetti as the current Reasonably Priced Car for Stars to demonstrate their track abilities. As the road-going version of the Lacetti grows long in the tooth, the General will be supplanting the budget people mover with the new Chevrolet Cruze. And that means in 2009, GM will replace the Lacetti with a new, Cruze-based WTCC challenger. The WTCC Cruze is already being tested in preparation for its debut in Brazil next spring. Cars running in the WTCC are based on compact and midsized cars with 2.0-liter four-cylinder engines. Touring car racing has been popular in other parts of the world, but has never caught on in the U.S. in spite of being more closely related to stock cars than the ones that run around in circles under the banner of NASCAR.


[Source: General Motors]

I feel so affirmed right now after reading Jeremy Clarkson's latest car review in the Times of London. After the rightfully-deserved savaging Clarkson gave the Chrysler Sebring last week in addition to some of the things he 's saidover the years on Top Gear, you might have the impression that the man hates American cars. Apparently, nothing could be further from the truth. He just hates bad American cars. Put the guy behind the wheel of a truly great car built here and he might just fall in love. So when the time came for Jezza to recommend a new car for the tamed racing driver known as the Stig, the obvious first choice was the vaunted BMW M5.

Well, it's obvious until you start considering gas costs nearly $10 a gallon in Britain now. Since any suitable car would not get significantly better fuel economy, the other option was to go with a less expensive machine, in this case the Cadillac CTS-V. While the first-generation CTS-V was not as sophisticated as one might have expected, the new model can reasonably be said to be better than the M5 in almost every respect. Equally important in this context is the £19,000 savings compared to the M5. The slightly light steering is easily overlooked given everything else it does so well and so quickly that Clarkson affirms our first driving impressions of the CTS-V. Thanks to Mike for the tip!


[Source: Times of London]

Photos Copyright ©2008 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.

As the AMM fleet rolls across north Texas, my co-driver Steve Ewing and I are currently on the tail of the Q7 piloted by Kevin Kelly and the legendary Jim McCraw. Jim, a veteran of four One Lap of America events, is used to these long slogs. Actually, for Jim this is more like a luxury cruise. On the One Lap, the teams circumnavigate the country in only a week, often ending up sleeping in cars and cheap motels. For us, the longest leg was the run from Chicago to Memphis, a trek of nearly 550 miles (more for those whose nav systems got confused among the Chicago skyscrapers).

Jim and Kevin managed to top the charts yesterday on the stage from Memphis to Little Rock to Dallas with 30.3 mpg while Steve and I only got 28.6. Jim managed to get hooked up behind a semi that was cruising at a good clip for an extended period of time, while we had trouble finding any trucks running faster than 60-65 mph. The day before, on the trip from Chicago, we tied at 28.8 mpg although Jim and Kevin had a slightly higher average speed at 63 mph vs our 60 mph. We've since become aware of a couple of tricks that seem to be helping, which I'll divulge at a later time. Never let it be said that journalists aren't competitive. As I finish writing this paragraph, a slightly faster truck passed us, and Steve has slipped in behind it. As we slid past, I glanced over to see a very unprofessional finger gesture from Mr. Kelly. Kevin and I will be discussing that tonight over steaks in Amarillo.

You never what you're going to spot when you go for a little joy ride across America. Just moments ago as we crossed from Missouri into Arkansas on Interstate 55, a low slung black car with a big wing rolled by. After a quick double take I grabbed my camera and snapped off a few pics of the first Porsche Carrera GT I've ever seen on the street. If I was going to see one of these I certainly wouldn't have expected it in eastern Arkansas.

Day Four is upon us and we're on our way out of Chicago. We've got one of our longest days of the trip today, with a 550-mile run to Memphis for some BBQ. In Chicago we had our first driver crew swap. The first of four legs is over and a predominantly new group of drivers is taking over the diesel Audis as we move on to Dallas, Amarillo and Denver on Sunday. The nature of this trip is predominantly highway running punctuated by lunch and overnight stops in the various cities along the route. That means the diesels are truly in their element... and it shows. Diesels love steady state running and there is no way even the sophisticated two-mode hybrid system in the Chevy Tahoe can get anywhere near 30 mpg even on a long highway cruise. We're seeing up to 33 mpg in the Q7s and 38 in the Q5s. The A4s and A3s are topping 44 and 50 mpg respectively. Of course, around town those numbers drop off, but they still turn in very respectable mileage in the low 20s. Having said all that, read on after the jump to find out who was victorious in over the first leg and what I think about driving across America in a Q7.


Photos Copyright ©2008 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.

Hard as it may be to believe, the word "hummer" didn't always bring up visions of obnoxious, polarizing SUVs. In fact, there was a time not so very long ago that uttering that word evoked something entirely different, namely cars powered by Wankel rotary engines. For the past three decades, the world's sole purveyor of rotary-powered automobiles has been Mazda. The "Zoom-Zoom" brand has always been a little different from its compatriots. Back in 1963, a young Kenichi Yamamoto was heading up the research department at Mazda and latched on to the concept developed a decade earlier by Felix Wankel.

Just as two-stroke engines were all the rage for a time in the early 1990s and fuel cells in the middle of this decade, the Wankel rotary seemed to be the next big thing in the 1960s and early '70s. For a time it seemed every major automaker had licensed the design from Wankel and was trying to commercialize it. Some like NSU did build rotaries while General Motors and Daimler Benz built an assortment of concept cars. By the mid-'70s, all had given up except Yamamoto-san and Mazda. From the original 1967 Cosmo, Mazda has built an unbroken string of hummers culminating with the recently updated 2009 RX-8 R3. The pony-keg sized power plant isn't the only unique element of the RX-8, which you can read all about that after the jump.

Gallery: In the Autoblog Garage: 2009 Mazda RX-8 R3

Photos Copyright ©2008 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.

One day down, oh so many to go! Actually, only six more days for me as we prepare to leave Capitol Hill this morning on our way to hook up with Autoblog team captain and coach Mr. Neff in his hometown. Over the first day my co-driver Jason Allen from Kelley Blue Book and myself managed to cover the 250 miles from Central Park to Capitol Hill with a fuel consumption of just 28.8 mpg! Not too shabby for for a 5,400-lb SUV. Along the way we spent nearly 40 minutes covering the few miles from the Tavern on the Green to the George Washington Bridge along with a hefty backup just north of DC. For anyone that's used to sitting next to Cummins-powered Ram or Power Stroke Super Duty at light, the level of quiet and refinement in these modern diesels is just startling. This diesel Q7 actually seems quieter than the gasoline powered version. Elsewhere in the fleet there were even more impressive mileage numbers. The Audi A3 piloted by youngsters Denise McCluggage and Kate McLeod got 46.7 miles from every gallon of diesel and Todd Kaho averaged 40.1 mpg in an A4 sedan with the same 3.0 TDI that's in this Q7. Stay tuned for more updates as we head westward.

We first told you about Ford's new Mustang Cobra Jet factory drag car in June of 2007 and last week Ford posted a video on YouTube of a test session with the new car showing its stuff at Milan DragWay. Now we've received some fresh high-res pics of the Cobra Jet in our inbox from Ford. Last we heard Ford is only building 50 of these drag race specials all of which are powered by a blown 5.4-liter 32-valve V8 based on the GT500 motor. This engine has been breathed on a little more heavily then the GT500 and the car looks like it's been stripped down. With the usual drag combo of skinny front and fat rear tires, this Cobra looks like it might be a contender.

At 9AM Eastern on Monday morning, a fleet of 23 diesel-powered Audis will roll out from Manhattan's Tavern on the Green on a trans-continental trek to demonstrate diesel efficiency. I'm in Manhattan this afternoon preparing to spend the next week in an Audi Q7 TDI on the way to Denver and will be checking in regularly from the road as we pass through Washington, Cleveland, Chicago, Memphis, Dallas and Amarillo along the way. Audi plans to launch its fifty-state-legal Q7 TDI in the US market next spring and it seems likely that some of the other vehicles on this trip may not be far behind.

I'll be on the first two legs and Sebastian, Damon, Drew and Jonathan will take over for the second week of the trip to Los Angeles. You can also follow along at the Audi Mileage Marathon site where there's a Twitter feed following the participants as they cross the continent. There is also a live map showing our location on the road along with two blogs, including one from Audi of America boss Johan de Nysschen. Twitter users can follow audimarathon to see what some of the 200 participating journalists are saying.


[Source: Audi Mileage Marathon]

They say you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, even with the second release of the Audi A4 Driving Challenge for your iPhone or iPod Touch, the price tag is still fairly representative of the quality of the game. According to Audi, 370,000 people downloaded version 1.0, but we'd be curious to know how many of those copies were still on the devices 48 hours after the user first tried it out. Our guess would be not many. Version 2.0 is certainly much improved. Audi has added new vehicles that can be unlocked, including the A4 3.2 and the mighty R8.

The graphics are also better, compared to the original. Unfortunately, like so many other games on other platforms, graphics and good features don't necessarily equate to great gameplay. Compared to Crash Kart, the vehicles in this Audi game are hard to control, and the game simply isn't much fun because the scale speeds are so slow. Since it's free, go ahead and download the Audi A4 Driving Challenge and try it yourself. Thankfully, not all of the free apps on the iPhone and iPod Touch are of the same quality of this one. Perhaps for v3.0, Audi should hire someone with more experience in driving game design.


[Source: Audi]