Ferdinand Piech is cultivating long standing traditions. He always liked to watch a good catfight between his people. In the olden days, he did let plants in Europe compete and bid for cars. Now for the battle royale: Who will develop the basics on which all future sports cars in the Volkswagen empire will be built? Porsche or Audi? The answer should be obvious: Read More >
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TTAC Contributor David Holzman writes:
Sajeev, my friend Polly, an avid sheepdogger, wants to know how much weight her early to mid-80s Vanagon can pull. Specifically, she is interested in buying a 700 lb trailer, in which she would haul up to six sheep, each of which weighs 100-150 lbs. Thus, she could end up pulling as much as 1,600 lbs, and who knows, maybe more. How much can she pull without damaging her pride and joy?
The Vanagon has a ’94 engine from a Subaru Legacy–she doesn’t know which engine–but is otherwise all old Veedub. 212k miles on the car, less on the engine, but how much less is unknown. No rebuilds that she knows of. I don’t believe she’s going to be doing any major hill climbing.
Right now, the [Volt’s] propulsion system is too expensive, even with using an existing engine… We have a strategy to go rotary engines or a two-cylinder [gas] engine making 15-18 kW. I have driven the car already. Rotary has a higher fuel consumption but here’s the advantage [holds up his hands to form round, frisbee-sized shape] — packaging.
GM’s Karl Stracke talks Volt 2.0 with InsideLine, and yet never quite explains why a less fuel-efficient rotary generator would even be on the table. Or how a rotary (let alone the also-mooted diesel generator) would be the solution to high drivetrain costs. How much room does the (implicity and reputationally) more-efficient two-cylinder really take up? Wasn’t the only mass-market rotary-powered car left in the wild, the Mazda RX-8, just canceled for flunking European emissions standards? Can’t the rotary engine die with a little dignity?
Common decency demands that this flagrant of fanbaiting be reserved at least until the first-gen Volt hits the streets.
John writes:
What do we know about the 1.8L V6 used in the 1990s’ Mazda MX-3 sport coupe? Why such a small engine and where did Mazda get it from/how did they design it and market it in the MX-3?
Whoever said there’s no replacement for displacement? French Peugeot surely doesn’t think so. Brazil’s Bestcars makes us salivate with the news that Europe will get the chance to fawn over Peugeot’s new medium compact, the 308 GTI. And what do we get? Definitely not that one. The car has 200 hp and torque of 275 Nm. All from a puny 1.6L mill. That’s 125 horses per liter. Read More >
The auto enthusiast community is far too fragmented to ever achieve real consensus on any issue, but if there’s a single authority on performance-oriented cars, it’s Britain’s enthusiast bible evo Magazine. So when evo bashes an enthusiast-targeted model, it’s usually worth taking note of. The latest print issue of evo includes a Chris Harris review of Audi’s range-topping RS5 coupe [online summary here], the 444 hp, V8-powered flagship of its A5 lineup, and from line one the reader can tell that something is rotten in the state of Quattro GMBH. Harris describes an attempt to blow the doors off a 328 hp S4 camera car, only to find that, three gears later, his $15k more expensive coupe had barely gained any ground on the supercharged V6-powered S4. So, what gives?
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Despite breaking new ground in the field of brand leverage with its Ferrari World Abu Dhabi theme park, Ferrari does seem to have lost the plot a bit in relation to its “other” business building expensive sportscars. Ferrari’s abandonment of the manual transmission might be justified by faster lap times at Fiorano, and the lightning-fast, dual-wet-clutch transmissions that replace them certainly seem to help keep the Scuderia at the bleeding edge of technology (even if they’re designed and built by Getrag). But underlying the faster times, higher speeds and “digital supercar” honorifics from the motoring press, there’s a sense that Ferrari’s progress must accommodate an ever-more ambitious business plan as much as design the world’s most capable and emotive sportscars. And it’s starting to bear some troubling fruit.
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Lithium-ion batteries aren’t the only automotive cleantech that appears to be getting cheaper. Toyota’s head of advanced autos, Yoshihiko Masuda, tells Bloomberg that the Japanese automaker has cut the cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) by 90 percent in the last five years or so. Mid-decade, Toyota’s per-car estimates for FCVs ran near a million dollars per car. With costs now closer to the $100k mark, Toyota says it plans to cut that number in half by 2015. If they can make that happen, Masuda says, a $50k hydrogen FCV will be on like Donkey Kong.
CAFE got you down? Worried that it’s only a matter of time before the feds come for your V8? You can relax a little, as General Motors is announcing that it will spend nearly a billion dollars rolling out its next generation of small-block V8 engines. According to Automotive News [sub], GM is dropping $893m to upgrade or renovate engine plants in Tonawanda, NY; Bay City, MI; Bedford, IN; Defiance, OH; and St. Catharines, Ontario. These new plants will build GM’s next generation of all-aluminum V8 engines, which will use direct-injection and a new combustion system for improved efficiency.GM won’t say what vehicles these new V8s will be offered in, but expect this to signal the end of the road for the Northstar family of engines as well as replacing the outgoing small-blocks. And what of GM’s commitment to reducing emissions? According to The General’s presser, all of its future small-block V8s will be E85-capable, meaning they qualify for the CAFE ramp-up’s Flex Fuel Vehicle credit loophole. As such,
their fuel economy is determined using a special calculation procedure that results in those vehicles being assigned a higher fuel economy level than would otherwise occur.
Which helps explain why Sen Chuck Schumer (D-NY) doesn’t mind publicly lobbying for V8 production at Tonawanda despite his strong belief in Global Warming: the regulatory fix was already in.
Yes, Ferrari recorded the fastest “production-based, non-street-legal” lap of the Nürburgring today, breaking the hallowed 7-minute mark with a 6:48:16 time in its 599XX. The only question I have is why did they bother? Is it possible that Ferrari is having trouble selling enough copies of the $2m+, track-only version of the 599 GTB? Not likely, considering the Scuderia won’t sell you one (regardless of how much you’re willing to pay for it), unless you’re on an exclusive invite list for the Enzo-powered track toy. So why trumpet a non-production record at all? Isn’t the very significance of a Ring rooted in the idea that it’s the ultimate test of a road car, packing nearly every imaginable on-road condition into each wrenching lap? Shouldn’t Ferrari have at least tried for lap time in its new fastest road-legal car, the 599 GTO? Especially considering it’s debuting today, at the Beijing Auto Show? Oh well, at least the 599XX makes some serious earcandy noises… if only for six minutes, 48 seconds and change.
Long time readers of this series know I’m a big fan of modifications to achieve a vehicle’s maximum potential. And there’s no better example than a switch to GM’s now legendary LSX small block V8. To prove the point, I saw an LS6 powered, 1980s vintage, Porsche 911 partnered with a LS1 powered 914 at the 2005 Houston Autorama. Lo and behold, that 911-LS6 arrived at a recent Sunday morning cruise-in. So I got to touch it. And then it started up for me. It was Epic.
Ford’s relationship with hybrid technology has been an on-again-off-again affair, since Bill Ford first pledged to build 250k hybrids by 2010. And it’s probably a good thing the Blue Oval backed away from that promise, as the firm sold only 33,502 hybrids last year. Meanwhile, Ford still has yet to claim profitability on any of its hybrids (last disclaiming such an achievement (sort of) in 2008). Perhaps because Ford has paid dearly to tag along in the import-dominated hybrid segments, it’s getting a bit jaded about the power of high-cost, high-tech green halo cars to deliver real results. Or, perhaps Ford’s VP of powertrain engineering Barb Samardzich is simply channeling old Henry Ford, when she says:
We are focused on sustainable technology solutions that can be used not for hundreds or thousands of cars, but for millions of cars, because that’s how Ford will truly make a difference
We’ve heard this before, but today’s news puts the four-cylinder future into perfect context in just five words: Four. Cylinder. Explorer. This. Year.
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