We’ve already been impressed enough with the McLaren MP4-12C’s 3.8 liter turbocharged V8 to say it “looks like mechanical sex” and give it its own gallery. The super-compact, direct-injected engine develops in the neighborhood of 600 hp, giving the new McLaren the dangly bits to show a (similarly-priced) Ferrari 458 the way around a racetrack. And though McLaren clearly thinks the MP4-12C’s race-tested abilities will help build its brand into the new race-nerd standard, it’s also beating Ferrari at a new game that will become increasingly important with time: the C02-per-horsepower game. Ferrari’s 570 hp V8 emits 320 grams of C02 per kilometer, giving the Fezza a rating of .56 grams of C02 per km per horsepower. McLaren’s goal for its not-quite finalized MP4-12C drivetrain is a C02 emissions rating of below 300 gm per km, which would give the supercar closer to a .5 gram per km per horsepower rating. And though the direct-injected, downsized and turbocharged engine helps keep that number down, the MP4-12C’s dry weight is also 176 lbs lighter than the 458’s (2,866 versus 3,042).
I have another Ford Duratec question for Sajeev, knowing his enthusiasm [So to speak – SM] for this engine. My 12 1/2 year old daily driver, my first “real” car that I have been driving for 2/3 of my driving years – a ‘98.5 Contour SVT – has a major problem.
I was at Summit Point on Friday, and had oil starvation-no warning-just puff of smoke out exhaust, a loss of power and a noise, then engine quit – clutch in rolled off track just in time for oil to start gushing out. Oil kept dripping the next hour or two. Cannot visibly see damage, but dipstick is stuck. Mechanic today (5 days later) tried to turn over the engine to see if it would spin and if compression – said no compression and it spun a few times then he heard a bang and it locked up. Did zero disassembly.
Question 1 – is that an appropriate way to see if an engine is done for, especially knowing there is no oil in the crankcase?
Question 2 – is it worth finding someone to do a 3.0 upgrade (I don’t have the expertise, knowledge, time, or place to even fathom taking this on)?
I’m going drifting. I’m going drifting dressed in the finest English brown velour ever to roll out of Dagenham, England. I’m going drifting in what this week’s Curbside Classic should have been, a 1983 Ford Sierra. And with that, I rejoin TTAC after a long hiatus due to our wonderful country sending me to various deserts to hunt for Osama bin Laden.
I have survived, although my Hilux did not after one ill-placed Taliban rocket sent shrapnel through the radiator. I also relish returning to write for one of the finest audiences I know, the Best and Brightest.
We’ve hosted our fair share of dieselskepticism over the years here at TTAC, but the latest data on diesel take rates indicate that oil-burners are more popular than you might think. Dieseldriver.com broke down sales of every passenger vehicle with a diesel option, and found an overall take rate of 32 percent over the first three quarters of 2010, and trending upwards. In the third quarter, over half of the two Audis with diesel drivetrains optional were ordered as oil burners, and the vast majority of Jetta Sportwagons sold are diesel-powered. And no wonder. Modern diesel engines can be glorious things, offering gobs of torque, shocking levels of refinement and great fuel economy. Diesel prices may have climbed somewhat in the last year or so (it’s no longer cheaper than gas), but they’re close enough to make diesel a real option. Well, at least for buyers of German cars.
Notice a difference between these two pictures? No, not the fact that one is a sexy press shot and the other is a bush-league amateur snap. Both pictures show the 2011 Volkswagen Jetta, but one of them has a torsion beam rear axle, the other has a variation of the Golf’s multilink setup. One has a 2.5 liter blunt instrument of an engine and a slushbox, the other has a high-tech “twincharger” engine that won the International Engine Of The Year award two years running, mated to a dual-clutch ‘box. One has a nasty, plasticky interior, the other offers “higher quality materials and trim.” By now you’ve probably guessed that the less desirable of these two Jettas is the US version, and the fancy-pants version has just been announced for the European market… Read More >
Is Sergio Marchionne’s Italy-dissing getting your weekend down? Check out the Italian rebuttal, courtesy of Ferrari’s 458 Italia Challenge, the road-racer version of Maranello’s game-changing supercar. Italy may not buy enough Puntos and Pandas to keep its unions and mass-market brands happy, but it still knows how to produce some of the most viscerally intoxicating automobiles around. And when it comes to weekend entertainment, that’s good enough for us.
TTAC’s Michael Karesh inspired a good deal of jealousy in his Editor-in-Chief a few nights ago by describing his forthcoming RX-8 roadtrip into the hill country along the Blue Ridge Parkway. A zinging rotary engine in a legendarily well-sorted chassis simply screams (literally) for these kinds of driving adventures, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t briefly donsider ditching my editorial responsibilities and inviting myself along. After all, the RX-8 has been marked for death in Europe and the USA, thanks to the glorious amounts of C02 emitted by its rev-happy rotary mill. This, I thought, is a truly unique car with an engine that might well never be seen again in civilized auto markets. Best to enjoy one while you can, right?
It may not be the most pragmatic approach for a tiny automaker facing independence in a scary-competitive global market, but dammit, you have to respect Mazda’s dedication.
[Update: Ooops; I didn’t notice that Sajeev already has a post questioning these oils’ testing regime. In case you missed it, or just want the heads up before you join that discussion, here it is, in the less-controversial version]
Few subjects stir up more controversy than motor oil. Now it’s time for the latest perpetual changing of the current required new oil for new cars. AutoNews reports that GM, Ford and Chrysler are making the switch to a new generation of oils for their 2011 vehicles, known by their grading as GF-5, SN, or in GM’s case, Dexos 1. Be aware: using any oil other than one of these may void the powertrain warranty. (I might have thought GM would have retired the “Dex” moniker). Read More >
Porsche has made much of its hybrid drivetrain development efforts, pointing out that its founder helped create the world’s first hybrid drivetrain one hundred years ago. But thus far, the talk has centered on Porsche’s “rolling hybrid laboratory,” the 911 GT3R Hybrid, and the Hybrid Cayenne, with the plug-in 918 Hypercar lurking across the horizon. But, Porsche’s development chief Wolfgang Duerheimer tells Automotive News [sub]
In the future, we will have hybrid drive in every model line
First up will be a Panamera with the Cayenne’s hybrid V6 drivetrain, arriving sometime next year. Duerheimer won’t give a timeline for hybrid versions of the 911, Boxster and Cayman, but he does admit that hybrid drivetrains aren’t the only way for a sportscar firm to shave off the 41 grams of C02 per kilometer that Porsche needs gone by 2015. Read More >
Aston Martin’s decision to sell a worked-over Toyota iQ has raised some serious questions for “brand values” advocates across the internet of late. Does an aristocratic sportscar brand need to take on the problems of urban congestion and carbon intensity? Does the Cygnet’s noblesse oblige PR value outweigh the furor of countless Aston Martin aspirants at the thought of their beloved brand becoming a glorified Toyota tuner house? The answer to both of these questions is apparently yes… Read More >
If the recent flap over the Volt’s drivetrain has taught us anything it’s that A) GM’s internal-combustion-assisted plug-in is more complicated than we thought, and B) GM is fine with simplifying its complex reality in order to make it appear as attractive as possible. Which is just fine: they’re the ones trying to sell a $41k car, and as such they’re entitled to do what they can to make it seem worth its many shortcomings. What the automotive media needs to take away from the brou-ha-ha isn’t necessarily that GM’s hesitance to bring forward “the whole truth” is an intrinsically big deal (let’s just say this wasn’t the first time), but rather that knowledgeable writers should focus on explaining the Volt in ways that are both comprehensible and fully accurate. In this spirit, the most important question isn’t “what should we call the Volt?” but “how efficient is the Volt in the real world?”And on this point, there’s plenty of room for some truthful clarification.
There’s no replacement for displacement? Sure, as long as you own an oil well. If you want to save gas, there are three ways to do it:
Make the car as light as can be (you can’t fool Newton.)
Use the smallest amount of displacement you get get away with, and make it up with direct injection, a turbocharger, and computer smarts.
Combine 1 with 2.
And what’s the easiest way to reduce displacement? Lose cylinders. That way, you also lose a lot of internal friction. If “Laufkultur” is part of your vocabulary, don’t read further, you’ll get sick. If you want to sick it to Big Oil, by all means, read on. Read More >
The autoblogosphere is agog at the revelation that the Volt’s gas engine occasionally powers its wheels. The GM-created “category” of Extended-Range Electric Vehicles (EREV, or E-REV) as uniquely epitomized by the Volt is suddenly revealed [by Motor Trend via GM] to
[have] more in common with a Prius (and other Toyota, Ford, or Nissan Altima hybrids) than anyone suspected.
So, why did the putative “Father of the Volt” (aka “Maximum” Bob Lutz) tell the car’s primary fan site gm-volt.com that the Volt was born because
My desire was to put an electric car concept out there to show the world that unlike the press reports that painted GM as an unfeeling uncaring squanderer of petroleum resources while wonderful Toyota was reinventing the automobile, I just wanted something on the show stand that would show that hey we’re not just thinking of a Prius hybrid here, we’re trying to get gasoline out of the equation entirely.
For some people (you know who you are), the 200 horsepower provided by the 2011 Hyundai Sonata’s 2.4-liter four-cylinder base engine just isn’t enough. The traditional solution: a V6. But Hyundai, taking a page from Chrysler’s Iacocca-era playbook, has opted to offer a turbocharged 2.0-liter four instead. The specs look good: 274 horsepower at 6,000 rpm and 269 pound-feet of torque from 1,750 rpm. The pricing? Even better. The Hyundai Sonata SE 2.0T lists for $24,865, only $1,550 more than the regular Sonata SE. Are these the cheapest horses new car money can buy in a midsize sedan?
There it is, Subaru’s all-new gen 3 engine, its first new boxer since 1989, and only the third since 1966 (full history here). As is obvious at first glance, Subaru has reverted to a DOHC head, after switching to a SOHC back in 2000. What’s not so apparent is that the internal architecture is very different: the boxer loses its oversquare (large bore/short stroke) configuration for… the opposite. Long strokes are in (again), favored for their compact combustion chambers and ideal torque curves. The new engine has a host of other goodies, and is expected to be 10% more efficient. But direct injection is not on the list. Nor is piston slap, hopefully. Read More >
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