Since winning Le Mans with a diesel R10, Audi has been surprisingly shy about emphasizing diesel motorsports as part of its brand. That's starting to change; Audi's been showing versions of its R8 supercar with a 6.0-liter diesel V12 at auto shows. Und now… the A3 TDI Clubsport. This oil burning trackmeister is set to debut at the Lake Warther tour in Austria. Powered by an uprated version Audi's 2.0-liter TDI four-banger– making mit ze 224-hp and 332 lb-ft of torque– the hot hatch should scoot to 60 mph in 6.6 seconds. Quattro all wheel drive, a six-speed transmission and six-piston ceramic brakes round out the formidable platform. The usual boy-racer accoutrements adorn the exterior, from giant bolt-on wheel arches to a DTM-style spoiler, to 20" rims and a custom paint scheme. You want to buy one? Dream on– although Audi is prepping a roofless TT Clubsport for sale in 2010. With a TDI TT on sale now in Europe, there's a chance the TT Clubsport will offer the breathed-on diesel as an option. Or better yet, Audi may actually build the A3 TDI Clubsport as part of a whole line of Clubsport models. Normal, S-line, S and Clubsport. You pays you money, you take your depreciation…

Nobody I know drives a convertible. That's because unless you are young and pretty a droptop makes you look like a tool on exhibit. Unfortunately, the young and pretty usually can't afford a cabrio– unless they are rich socialites, trustafarians or enjoy the company of impotent older gentlemen. ADAC (that's the ubiquitous German driver's club) found another reason to dismiss convertibles: you better be pretty short if you want to survive a roll-over crash. Spiegel Online reports that of three Euro-minis tested by ADAC, only the MINI was safe enough for a roll in the hay (or anywhere else you choose to disregard the laws of physics). The oldish Citroen Pluriel suffered from a severely bent A-pillar. The new Peugeot 207 CC was equally flimsy, but offered longer and stronger roll-over bars. Even the MINI's dummies looked unhappy (don't they always?); their seat belts didn't hold them down as well as they should. ADAC says every convertible should have ESP, since the electronic nanny strongly reduces the (already low) probability of a rollover. (German-language video of test results at link.)

The AP [via The Auto Channel] reports that Nissan is teaming-up with electronics giant NEC to mass produce lithium-ion batteries for the "next-generation of green cars." The Automotive Energy Supply Corporation is charged with making advanced li-ions for electric vehicles, hybrids and fuel cell thingamabobs. The plant should be up and running by 2009, producing 13k batteries annually. Eventually, AESC hopes to crank-out 65k batteries per year. Nissan's Executive VP Carlos Tavares says the Franco-tinged Japanese automaker wants to be a global leader in zero-emission vehicles. (Hey, who doesn't?) The man whose last name reminds us of the song "That's the sound the loneliness makes" insists that Nissan will introduce an electric vehicle in the U.S. and Japan, as well as its own hybrid, in 2010 [yes, there's that date again]. Nissan also plans to produce a zero-emission vehicles in Israel and Denmark by 2011, and market electric vehicles on a global scale by the year 2012. We would like to take this moment to remind Nissan of "Crazy" Henry Ford's maxim "you can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." Thank you.

Why is gasoline so damn expensive? The mainstream media has rounded up the usual suspects. They demonize oil companies (for excessive profits), lambaste environmentalists (for blocking domestic drilling and refining), and sock it to speculators (for fear mongering over supply). Simply put, the current crisis is a speculative bubble whose impact to American consumers is exacerbated by domestic economic conditions. I fully expect crude oil will trade below $80 a barrel in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, let’s tackle this one myth at a time. 

Chrysler's told its suppliers to cut their prices by 25 percent and get the Hell out of Dodge. ChryCo Purchasing Czar John Campi unveiled his employer's latest supplier initiative to hundreds of Chrysler suppliers. Here the deal [via Automotive News, sub]… ChryCo promises to give its suppliers 30 days' notice of its production schedule (rather than seven), share more parts among nameplates, and reduce late engineering changes. Suppliers will split the savings with Chrysler– unless they fail to reduce component costs by 25 percent. If not, they'll have to cut prices and eat the loss. (The 25 percent reduction benchmark applies to parts both old and new.) With "the vast majority" of Chrysler components coming from America, Campi is encouraging suppliers to move operations overseas to facilitate the costs. Holy shit! It's bad enough that Chrysler's driving itself into the ground, but pwners Cerberus seem hell-bent on taking its entire American supply chain down with it. You can't squeeze blood from a stone; with the price of nearly every raw material rising, Chrysler's audacious cost-cutting will only yield more bankruptcies. And lower quality products. And American job losses. This will not make Chrysler any friends when it hits the bankruptcy buffers, nor should it.

Porsche has categorically denied nearly every speculative report recently revealed on the internet– and there've been lots. Stateside Cayenne SUV production? Nein. A Porsche spokesperson reminded Automotive News [sub] that the model's supply chain is in Europe; production can't be moved to the states. (At least not until the next generation Cayenne debuts in 2015.) Baby Cayenne? Chilling with Auto Motor und Sport, Porsche's Sales Boss says the "Roxster" is a non-starter. "We don't want to chase volume," Klaus Berning soothed, ignoring the whole Cayenne deal. "We'd rather make money on every car we sell. The larger the segment, the harder it is to make money, so a small SUV is certainly not Porsche's way forward." Rumors of a two-door Panamera (news to us)? What's German for fuhgeddaboutit? The Panamera provider said why would we? The four-door Porsche will increase volume by 25 percent. Which kinda contradicts his "no-volume chasing for us" assertion, but never mind. We're just happy to set the record straight. Until next time.

Photochop by Andrei Avarvarii

Those are poster texmin’s thoughts on AutoblogGreen’s report on the latest update from our friends at Tesla Motors. (BTW Daryl, we seem to have been inadvertently omitted from your email list.) The letter reveals Tesla’s revised production schedule (surprise!): a 600-car 2008 model run by April 2009, followed by the 2009 models. Reader Chris H isn’t impressed. “Three cars in 9 weeks…. Three weeks to build one car? At this rate it will take over five years just to get through the Founders Series and the Signature 100.” In other news, Tesla’s testing a new electronics module in preparation for the yet-to-see-daylight one-speed gearbox; both will be a “running production change.” The standard 3 year/36k mile warranty can now be extended to 4 years/50k miles– at a price (the 2008 Roadster Club members get free extended coverage). Tesla Roadster owners living more than 100 miles from a service center no longer have to pay $8k up front to cover service transportation. They just pay for as few (or as many) trips as needed. By this time next year, Tesla plans on having stores in L.A. (done), Menlo Park New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Miami and Seattle. And finally, if you want a 2009 Roadster, the base price has risen from $98k to $109. To which leroy replied, “Save yourself $90,000 and just buy a used Lotus Elise. 90 grand will buy a hell of a lot of gasoline.”

The mind boggles. What environmental or genetic factors are making parking increasingly difficult? Surely it's not space size. Municipalities have been accommodating gas-guzzling behemoths (a.k.a. full-sized SUVs) since the 70's. Less competent drivers? What about all the millions of teens who can lap the Nurburgring's Nordschleife in under nine minutes, albeit in a videogame? According to VW [via ForbesAutos.com ], the answer is… "As vehicles grow larger and parking lots more crowded, getting in and out of parked vehicles becomes increasingly difficult." Ah, getting in and out! So it is a genetic thing. That's code for more fat people, right? And now that I think about it, maybe VW's talking about the Eurozone, where governments never met a revenue maximizer they couldn't justify with some treehugging spiel (buy a smaller car, you CO2-belching bastard). Anyway, yada yada Lexus' expensive, largely useless and unloved self-parking system trickling down to VW. At least Forbes asks the question: does anybody actually want this shit? Well, no, obviously. Next up, will these kind of toys break and suck the cash right out of your wallet? Well, yes, obviously.

According to The Star [via Wheels.ca], Canadian new-car sales rose a bit over nine percent vs. the previous financial quarter. This represents the strongest single-quarter sales gain since way back in the middle of 1998. Analysts attribute the growth to lower prices, incentives and a one percent reduction in the goods-and-services tax (GST). The largest gains (17.8 percent) came from sales of passenger cars. Meanwhile, driving.ca reports on April sales, noting that GM's share of the Canadian pie slipped 13.5 percent. GM said "the drop was a planned reduction in low-profit sales to daily rental fleets." The company spun the news by pointing out that retail sales of The General's passenger cars went up by 23.8 percent in the month of April. Anyway, Ford's Canadian sales slipped by 4.5 percent last month. Winners include Chrysler, up eight percent in April, thanks to a 38 percent increase in the number of minivans driving off the lots. Chrysler Canada adds that it enjoyed its 21st consecutive increase in monthly sales, noting that (just like GM), the company deliberately cut back on fleet sales. Not bad, eh?

I mean, how much worse can the UK's anti-speeding jihad get? Aside from actually making shit up, oh wait, that's what they did. Kent County's police officers issued speeding tickets to people who weren't speeding. (More than this and the fact that a member of the force was suspended, the police will not reveal.) So how can the Kent County constabulary act even more reprehensibly towards motorists? By not reversing the speeding fines and points illegally "awarded" to drivers. And yet, Pistonhead reports that Kent police "have dropped 200 speeding charges after allegations an officer rigged roadside checks – but do not plan to notify the rest of the motorists caught." You must be joking. Nope. According to Motorcycle News, a serving Kent officer said that not everyone caught by the operator will be notified because "files are only kept for one year and the cost would be very significant." Folks, keep in mind that one speeding conviction in the UK puts you two speeding convictions away from license revocation, with all of the economic hardship that implies. And ANY points on your license translate into higher insurance premiums. Not to mention the erosion of public confidence in/support for the police. What's it going to take to get the UK government to end this self-financing holy war against its own, otherwise law-abiding citizenry?

"Nice Audi." Every time I rolled up in the glossy red A5, I heard the same refrain. Young, old, rich, poor– if the onlooker had a tongue, they wagged it at me and my Audi. And there you have it. The people have spoken. I find this curious for two reasons. First, das volk haven't driven it. Second, the A5 is a two-door variant of the new A4. Has anyone other than a nurse or desperate housewife looked at an A4 and exclaimed, "Nice Audi?" Perhaps so, but the ad hoc A5 admiration society still raises an important question: is it a nice Audi?

GMNext "team member" (and former AutoWeek freelancer) Chris Terry "reveals" what we've known since we hung out with Maximum Bob in a small, windowless room at The New York Auto Show: the Camaro is looking at a turbo-four. While the pony car faithful are still choking on their Cheerios, ADD-afflicted GM's echoing hybridcars.com's claim that turbos could well be the "new hybrid." "As Europeans have known for the better part of a decade, turbos are tomorrow’s 'replacement for displacement' (although Europe’s inclination towards the turbo has to do with emissions laws and fuel taxes that favor diesels, almost all of which have turbos)… The enthusiast in me says, 'If this is the future of motoring, I’m all for it.'" It's kind of creepy to know that a PR flack is possessed by a car enthusiast. And you'd think Terry would acknowledge U.S. fuel economy and emissions regulations in his ode to blowers. But most importantly, he doesn't answer his headline writer's question. To fill that gap, we offer: turbo-charged engines' [manufacturer-recommended] preference for premium fuel (currently .25 per gallon more expensive than regular), the fact that turbos are most efficient when you don't actually use them (say, during federal fuel economy testing), the possibility of higher maintenance costs and, well, other stuff. 

Autoblog is asking if the "Volkswagen Tiguan Diesel Launch Delayed in US?" I'm happy to answer that question for them. No, it's not delayed. If your flight is supposed to get in at 2 PM, the fact that it is not getting in at 1 PM doesn't make it delayed. It makes 2 PM the time the plane is supposed to land. Autoblog is hypothesizing that there probably won't be a 2009 model year VW Tiguan with the 2.0-liter TDI engine. This was the plan was all along– not that it's a good plan, mind you. But Europe is really, really loving VW's 2.0-liter TDI engine right now, especially in the Tiguan. VW can't build 'em fast enough. So while the Tiguan 2.0-liter TDI would be a somewhat hit here in the States, it's a grand slam home run (game-winning penalty kick?) for VW in Europe.The 2.0-liter TDI engine will eventually make it stateside in the Jetta and Jetta Sportswagon. But you knew that back in March, when I asked one of VW's execs, and then passed the news along to you.

Channel 4 reports that GM will unveil their Next Big Thing, the Hail Mary upon which The General's hope for an American ressurrection reside, in Paris. Oui, c'est la vérité! "Chevrolet will also make an announcement in Paris [this autumn] over production of the Volt- another car on the Delta platform. The Volt will be seen in Paris in US production specification, with its electric powertrain and auxiliary petrol engine said to be very similar to that of the original concept. GM is planning also to offer a version with a diesel engine, as in last year's Opel Flextreme concept; this may be sold as a Vauxhall or Opel, with the petrol-electric Volt taking the Chevy badge." So, a diesel Volt avec un peu de badge engineering. More importantly, we'll finally get to see the discrepancy between the chopped show car's heavily advertised look and the production-ready hybrid's design. Frank's money is on a new Malibu-esque retread. Can GM Car Czar Bob Lutz sing? Why or why do I love Paris? Because my love is near. [thanks to Dinu Uscatu for the link]

Union problems, soaring gas prices and a faltering economy made April the worst month for new vehicle sales since 1995. Continued production in the face of diminished demand helped maintain the manufacturer's cash flow, but it lead to the inevitable: swollen inventories. In other words, even as U.S. new car sales go down the toilet, the toilet's backing-up. Fix the number 60 in your mind (the ideal number of days' supply for a new vehicle on a dealer's lot) and take a look at what's going down at your local dealer's lot.