With the 2010 Ford Mustang set to be unveiled in November, time is running out for tuners to put out special edition Mustangs. Saleen seems to have saved its best for last and will be unveiling a “Dark Horse” Mustang next week. The super-Stang will feature the 620 horsepower V8 from the S302 Extreme plus the SuperShaker system that combines a functional ram air system with Saleen’s twin-screw supercharger system – a first for a Saleen production car. The “Dark Horse” will sport the Heritage body style and have additional features exclusive to the model. Production will begin in the Fall of 2008, and only 25 will be produced. Our best guess for the “Dark Horse” moniker is that the car will feature an all matte-black paint scheme. We’ll bring you all the details of the car after its official debut next week.
As you may know, Pontiac has finally decided to sell the Korean-built G3 five-door hatchback in the U.S. On sale elsewhere in the world as a Daewoo and as the Pontiac Wave in Canada and Mexico, the G3 is basically a Chevy Aveo5 with a different nose and red gauges. It’s brand rebadging in the grand old GM tradition. Jim Hopson, Manager of Pontiac Communications, has recently attempted to defend the G3’s insertion into Pontiac’s lineup on the GM Fastlane Blog. Let’s take a look…
Gas/electric hybrid vehicles present a conundrum for many car shoppers. They typically deliver the best fuel economy in their class, but they’re also priced higher than similar conventional cars. So it has been difficult to know whether a hybrid will save money overall.
Not anymore. With gas prices soaring, our latest analysis of owner costs shows that you can save more than $4,000 over five years by choosing a hybrid over a similar conventional gasoline-powered vehicle.
Six of the 12 affordable hybrids we looked at can save you from about $500 to $4,250, even without tax credits, and pay back their price premium after only one year. They are the Toyota Prius and hybrid versions of the Chevrolet Malibu and Tahoe, Ford Escape, Saturn Vue, and Toyota Camry. For several, you can save even more by taking advantage of federal tax credits.
The Honda Civic, Nissan Altima, and Saturn Aura hybrids will cost you a little more than their conventional counterparts—from $250 to $750 over five years—but some consumers might find it worthwhile to drive a more environmentally friendly car. With federal tax incentives, all three come out ahead after just one year.
Three hybrids—the Lexus GS 450h and RX 400h and the Toyota Highlander Hybrid—cost significantly more than their counterparts in the first five years.
Hybrid payback
Interest in hybrids has been on a parallel trajectory with gas prices. Hybrid sales jumped almost 40 percent last year. According to a recent Consumer Reports survey, 32 percent of active car shoppers are considering a hybrid for their next vehicle. And this past summer automakers had a difficult time keeping up with demand for the most popular models.
Array 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid
2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid
It would take many years for most hybrids to pay back their premium price just on fuel savings. But fuel costs are only a relatively small part—25 percent—of the overall owner costs in the first five years. Other factors include depreciation, insurance, interest on financing, maintenance and repairs, and sales tax.
In this affordable hybrid analysis, we compared the five-year owner costs of 12 hybrids with those of similar conventional vehicles, using Consumer Reports’ new-car owner-cost estimates.
The Toyota Camry Hybrid, which got 34 mpg overall in our tests, saves the most money, about $4,250 over five years, compared with a similarly equipped four—cylinder Toyota Camry XLE, which gets 24 mpg.
The Saturn Vue Greenline Hybrid can save about $3,000; the Toyota Prius and Chevrolet Tahoe save $2,000 and $1,500, respectively. With tax credits, the Vue and Tahoe come out ahead by about $4,500 and $3,700. Federal tax incentives are no longer available for Toyota and Lexus hybrids.
The Lexus models and Toyota Highlander Hybrid show five-year losses ranging from about $1,250 for the Highlander to $5,500 for the GS. All three are positioned as the flagship models within their model lines and offer extra features and/or performance at a significantly higher price. The Lexus GS 450h, which emphasizes performance over fuel economy, is priced more than $8,000 higher than its all-gas sibling, a hefty premium despite saving about $1,500 in gas over five years. The Highlander Hybrid and RX 400h are priced about $6,000 and $4,000 higher, respectively, than their all-gas siblings.
Source:autos.yahoo
Honda was the first automaker to put a hybrid on the road with the original Insight in December 1999 and it wants to reclaim its place at the big kid’s table with the resurrection of the name on an all-new hybrid.
The automaker provides this first official look at the five-door hatch that will be formally unveiled in October at the 2008 Paris auto show. It will technically be a concept, but appears more than production-ready.
The Insight rides on an all-new platform as a bespoke hybrid, as opposed to offering a hybrid version of an existing vehicle as is the case with the current Honda Civic hybrid and the Honda Fit hybrid planned by 2015.
The Insight will be smaller than a Civic and CEO Takeo Fukui says it will be priced significantly below current hybrids. We expect it to start about $19,000, in keeping with the automaker’s goal of pricing it competitively against conventional small vehicles in its segment. “This new Insight will break new ground as an affordable hybrid within the reach of customers who want great fuel economy and great value,” Fukui says in a statement.
The on-sale date for the Insight is April 22—Earth Day—and the automaker is projecting global annual sales of 200,000, half of which are for the North American market. But Honda is known for erring on the conservative side, and given that it will go head-to-head with the Toyota Prius, which has sold almost 120,000 in the first eight months of this year in the U.S. alone, we would not be surprised to see Honda exceed these modest forecasts.
In looks, the new hatch bears a familial resemblance to Honda’s other poster car for alternative fuels—the FCX Clarity fuel-cell vehicle, but the Insight also shares an aerodynamically raked front, stubby tail, and an overall profile with the Prius. Both offer five-passenger seating and plenty of cargo space inside a relatively small body. The Insight’s folding rear seats further accentuate the cargo hold.
In terms of propulsion, the Insight gets a smaller, lighter—and less-expensive—version of Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist hybrid system that is in the Civic. The smaller pack of nickel-metal-hydride batteries is stored under the trunk floor. Honda says lithium-ion batteries aren’t yet a viable option.
Honda officials in the U.K. have been quoted as saying the new hybrid will achieve 60 mpg, but that is on the higher-yield Euro cycle.
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Leading UAE based magazine and one of the world’s most established and authoritative motoring titles, CAR Middle East, has named the Chevrolet Lumina SS as “Best Sports Saloon” for 2007. The ‘Car of the Year (COTY)’ awards were launched this year to coincide with the 9th Middle East International Motor Show.
According to Shahzad Sheikh, Editor of CAR Middle East, “The Chevrolet Lumina SS has a 6.0-Litre V8 Corvette engine under the bonnet. Need I say more? This all new-car from ‘down under’ is a fantastic reinterpretation of the cult Lumina SS. No other car offers this level of practicality, performance, and potential tail-sliding fun for the money.”
This is the first time the influential Middle East edition of CAR magazine has presented awards in the region and Sheikh added that: ‘The Lumina SS edged ahead of some fierce competition to deservedly take the ultimate sports saloon award and perfectly demonstrates GM’s renewed commitment to giving us the cars we really want to drive. Well done!” A jury of six regional automotive experts carefully picked the winners from 125 cars in total judging on quality, innovation, engineering, style and relevance to the Middle East market to crown the winners.
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Barely weeks after Audi first showed the Q5 officially, the German marque has revealed an S Line version of the Q5.
The car attracts a sportier demeanor through a number of exterior changes. Some of these are 19-inch wheels which if you didn’t know, would certainly put you off the idea of going off-road in the swashbuckling Audi SUV.
An optional 20-inch alloy is available, put around 255mm of black rubber. A groovy grille with a matching mesh pattern of air vents around the fog lights accentuates the aggression of S Line.
Interior features layons of brushed aluminium with the three-spoke steering wheel featuring multi-function capability and wrapped in perforated leather.
[Source]
Driving pleasure has been written large at AC Schnitzer for 20 years. And happily, nothing will change for the 62nd IAA. But this goal can be reached in a totally alternative way, as the superb AC Schnitzer GP3.10 GAS POWERED shows.
This high-performance coupé has LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas) drive, where power and efficiency, economy and ecology, meet in an exciting study.
As if the extravagant exterior of the project vehicle, based on the current 3-series coupé, were not enough, under the bonnet growls the V10 engine of the current M5/M6 which AC Schnitzer is presenting at the show for the first time in bivalent design: The vehicle has a fully sequential LPG system with two parallel 5-cylinder vaporizers.
There’s no loss of power or dynamics. The engine, tuned with a remapped control unit and modified exhaust tract with sports catalyst and exhaust manifold, develops 552 HP/406 kW and produces up to 540 Nm at the crankshaft. In itself, that’s 45 horses more than the M5/M6. But why power this with LPG?
[Source]
Mistubishi’s Evolution X, known to us mere mortals as the Evo X or simply goddess, is getting even feistier.
The Evo X MR (Mitsubishi Racing) edition is set to hit the streets of Japan later in 2008, but not after going through the normal channels of spec upgrade.
Evo X’s engine has been looked at and found to be underperforming, even at its current highly-strung levels.
Therefore engineers have reworked things to their better liking to squeeze off 20 more bhp out of it than what you have in the standard car, adding up to 305 bhp in total. Driven by an uprated version of the brand’s SST double-clutch transmission, the Evo X MR remains less powerful than the FQ-330 and FQ-360 UK spec cars, but is the most powerful SST-driven Evo X in the range.
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Sometimes, timing is everything.
When DaimlerChrysler announced in 2006 that it planned to bring the Smart Fortwo micro car to the United States after nearly a decade in Europe, gas prices had reached about $2.80 a gallon. Now, Americans are paying more than $4 a gallon at the pump, SUV sales are plummeting and consumers are hungry for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
The little Smart has been riding a wave of consumer interest, attracting thousands of shoppers willing to put down $99 and wait about nine months for the two-seater. So when I sat in the driver’s seat of a blue Smart Fortwo last week, turned, and touched the back window with my finger tips, I had to wonder: Do Americans really want to go this small?
Without question, the pint-sized, whimsical Smart makes a statement.
At a traffic light near the Washington Monument, a group of school kids clad in blue T-shirts cheered when they walked past the car. One boy whipped out his digital camera. When I drove up 14th Street, a young girl screamed, “Nice car. Woo hoo!” Near a construction site, a group of workers in green hard hats and reflective vests huddled around the car to take a closer look.
“They’re making the space age come real quick!” exclaimed another man, who pulled over in his SUV to ask me about the pod-shaped car.
Friends and colleagues had their doubts and wondered how I would handle the highway. No car can repeal the laws of physics, and at 1,800 pounds, the Smart would be no match for a big truck, they said.
The fortwo received the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s top rating in front- and side-impact testing, and it’s equipped with standard side air bags, anti-rollover technology and a reinforced steel cage structure, but the car is dwarfed by the competition. So when I merged onto the Washington Beltway at the tail end of rush hour, I saw their point — in the form of a massive tractor trailer bearing down on me.
I hit the brakes and stayed in the merge lane as the truck blew past me and then steadily (the Fortwo does zero-to-60 miles per hour in 12.8 seconds) drove into suburban Maryland. Even when I surpassed 70 miles per hour at times, I felt comfortable.
This is not a car built for a quick getaway, however. I can’t imagine Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron outrunning the bad guys in a fleet of Smarts, like they did aboard Mini Coopers in the 2003 remake of “The Italian Job.”
And the 70-horsepower, 1-liter, three-cylinder engine felt somewhat lacking as I was left in the dust, simultaneously, by a Honda Civic on my left and a Saturn SL on my right.
But most car shoppers want to use the Smart’s size to their advantage. In a town where finding a parking spot can turn into a 30-minute Tour de DuPont Circle, the Smart offered instant attraction.
The vehicle is so tiny — its length of 8 feet, 10 inches is about three feet shorter than a Mini Cooper — that it can easily fit tight parking spots. The sight of a Fortwo parked in a space marked for “compact only” vehicles evokes laughter. I could even turn into the curb at a right angle and not worry about the back sticking out into the street.
It gets good gas mileage, about 33 miles per gallon in the city and 41 mpg on the highway. While it lags behind hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic hybrid, it gets better gas mileage than larger compact competitors like the Toyota Yaris and the Honda Fit, but not by much.
I found the transmission could be sluggish and halting at times, sometimes jerking the car forward as it shifted between gears. It occasionally struggled to muster the strength to climb hills, and even with its suspension, I could feel practically every bump on the road.
The Smart does have a surprising amount of interior space. I’m about 6 feet tall and had plenty of head and legroom. It sits higher on the road than most passenger cars, and the sunroof gave me the feeling of a larger interior.
Even without a national advertising campaign, Smart has sold 11,399 vehicles in the United States through June and helped boost Daimler’s U.S. sales last month. The Fortwo is within the reach of most car shoppers. A basic version will cost little more than $12,000. A convertible costs around $17,000.
The company says it has more than 30,000 customers on a waiting list and about 80 percent are buying when they reach the front of the line.
This is not a family car or the best set of wheels for a weekend trip to Home Depot or Sam’s Club. But for people wanting a fuel-efficient second or third car, empty-nesters who no longer need to haul around children, or city dwellers, it’s worth a look.
If nothing else, you’ll certainly spark conversations — and maybe more.
When I pulled out of a downtown garage one afternoon, a young man paused to admire the car with his girlfriend. She tilted her head, looked at the Smart like it was a puppy, and smiled. As I drove off, she grabbed her boyfriend’s hand, planted a kiss on his cheek, and they walked off arm-in-arm.
A car that’s a prelude to a kiss. I mean, did the Yugo ever have this kind of effect on people?
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What’s fun right about the Concours is the staggering variety of cars on hand. Finned classic Cadillacs shared the grass provided a especially clean Allanté, whose Pininfarina lines hold that much aged pretty nicely, thank you remarkably much. The circle of Lincolns and Mercurys featured Tony Kotula’s gorgeous yellow ‘70 Cougar XR7 (above), a reminder of a opportunity when Mercury was not only a branding afterthought celebrated additionally for its Jill Wagner commercials as opposed to the cars properties advertise. Tony graciously exhausted a few seconds forecasted during his pride and joy, that he is frequently endeavoring on when he’s not at his day job. From taping off the vertical slats in the grillework so he should ideally spray the inner servings matte black, to endless searches for larger depleted and NOS replacement parts, each painstaking hour depleted on the total attempt is visible. One of the newly drafted additions, the green steering wheel in on its proper (and hard-to-find in this condition) Cougar badge, was just now one of several examples. You’d own never predicted too it was remarkably black when he got it not for a long while ago. You are able to eat off of the 351 it packed underhood, and it is continued made to be driven — the clutch is modern, Wilwood brakes lurk behind the pristine wheels, the underbody is coated amongst Rhino Liner for protection, and it is got making an attempt A/C.
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