Audi let us drive its ground-skimming $3 million R8 TDI Le Mans concept car in Manhattan during the New York Auto Show. The main difference between the R8 TDI Le Mans concept and the standard R8 is its V12 diesel engine in place of the regular V8. There's only one of these experimental vehicles in the world, so it was our responsibility not to turn that number into zero by getting into a head-on collision with a cab or hitting one of Manhattan's Grand-Canyon-sized potholes. As it turns out, both we and the R8 TDI Le Mans survived the experience, and the nervous Audi engineer riding shotgun even cracked a few smiles. Read our full test drive of the Audi R8 TDI Le Mans here. And check out a slideshow featuring New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady warming up the seat for us the night before we drove it. Thanks, Tom!
Will anyone actually buy these diesels that are suddenly being pushed on us?
As you may have noticed, a bunch of major automakers introduced diesel vehicles at the Detroit auto show in January. Some concepts, like the Segway-toting, turbodiesel hybrid Saturn Flextreme (below), don't exactly cry out for mass production. But others, like the Mercedes-Benz GLK Freeside, look very showroom-friendly. Then there were production diesels like the BMW 335d and X5 diesel, both already scheduled for the assembly line. It seems that diesels have been thrust into the battle for alternative fuel supremacy along with hybrids, electric cars, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, cars that run on E85, and models powered by hamsters running their hearts out on tiny wheels.
So will anyone forgive the soot-belching stigma that's been stuck on diesels since the '80s? (My dad's friend's Mercedes diesel wagon was a classy ride back in the day, but it was also a rolling smokestack and useless in cold weather.)
One hurdle to diesel's potential comeback is a skeptical public. A Kelley Blue Book survey of car buyers in January showed that only 6 percent thought diesel would become a mainstream fuel option. The support for diesel was even lower than it was for biodiesel--which is basically recycled vegetable oil. You can read more about the survey results here here.
But here’s a better question: Never mind what "anyone" would do, would YOU drive a diesel? If so, what will it take to put you in one? Sure, a gallon of diesel isn't cheap, but it would be impolite to put a price on something so emotional as the stump-extracting low-end power in a vehicle like the Audi Q7 TDI, which packs 550 pound-feet of torque.
Check out our slideshow of all the diesels from the Detroit auto show and tell us what you think in the comments below.
Auto show concept cars should typically be taken with a grain of salt. No wait, make that a boulder of salt. It's too easy to get excited about their crazy newfangled technology and LSD-inspired design elements, only to be disappointed later when the manufacturer determines that there is no market for a diamond-encrusted one-wheeler that runs on olive oil. One of our favorite more radical concepts from the 2008 Detroit auto show was the swoopy Mazda Furai, which is closer to a racecar than anything meant for the mass market. And if that YouTube video of the car accelerating full-bore on a racetrack wasn't a hoax, the Furai sounds as incredible as it looks.
Some other wild rides appeared in D-town, but for the most part, a lot of the concepts smacked of future production. Two years from now (or maybe even sooner) we wouldn't be surprised to see the Audi R8 V12 TDI, Cadillac CTS Coupe, Ford Explorer America, and Mercedes GLK Freeside in showrooms. Encountering them at that point might even cause some nostalgia for the days when concepts were totally impossible, and purposefully so. Read more about the concept cars of the 2008 Detroit auto show, and while you're at it, be sure to check out all of ForbesAutos' Detroit coverage.
After seven years as king, silver has been dethroned by white. Now, don't get me wrong, I like white on classics that have chrome--like Paul's 66 Mustang. And I think the white GTIs look pretty hot. But for the most part, white cars with integrated body colored bumpers make me think of Tic Tacs, or the cars in Woody Allen's movie Sleeper. More at Forbes Autos.
Many think that the current Mitsubishi Eclipse does a rather lackluster job of upholding the performance legacy established by the turbocharged, all-wheel-drive, highly moddable Eclipses of decades past. But the Concept-RA that Mitsubishi unwrapped at the Detroit auto show may send enthusiasts' hearts a-fluttering yet, even if it doesn't end up replacing the Eclipse in the brand's model line. The big news about the Concept-RA is that it's a diesel. The 2.2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder makes 204 hp, which doesn't seem like that much until you consider that 310 pound-feet of twisting action is on tap. That's enough to make you glad that you got caught at a red light, since taking off again will be so much fun. Although no fuel economy figures have been released, the Concept-RA is one of those "clean diesels" you may have heard about, which means it can run on ultra-low-sulfur fuel and its bumper isn't going to turn black from soot. Best of all, the Concept-RA will emphasize high-performance driving dynamics thanks to a low curb weight (there's a great future in plastics) and Super All Wheel Control. The latter is like combining all-wheel drive with an advanced traction control and then putting the whole system on steroids. The results just might be spectacular.
IBM predicts that cars will be driving themselves sooner than we think. The tech company argues that there’s enough technology already out there, such as GPS, real-time traffic monitoring, sonar sensors, back-up cameras, Bluetooth, and the like, to make self-driving vehicles a reality. What remains to be done is simply to tie everything together into a single system. One particularly useful innovation is the potential introduction of WiMax—which, as Juan found at CES, is like wi-fi on steroids—into vehicles. This network may be able to monitor road conditions and warn drivers of patches of ice, accidents, or speeding cars around the corner. Now if it could only detect available street parking in NYC...
Driving a 27-year-old car with a high stance and a big, gnarly roof rack means never having to make a mental note of where you parked—step out into the lot, scan briefly, and no matter how many cars there are, the beastly silhouette will just jump right out at you. Today's forgetful drivers don't have it so easy: faced with the task of spotting a generic silver road-pod amongst a sea of generic silver road-pods, those who don't bother to remember where they park can often find themselves in an embarrassing situation. Hoping to bring us the next milestone of electronic dependence is Chevrolet, working with UK company Loc8tor to develop a mini underhood megaphone that'll enable your misplaced car to cry out to you: "Here I am!" The device will be called K.I.T.T.Y., which stands for "Key Innovation That Talks to You" (and which, as Forbes Autos points out, bears no relation to the talking car K.I.T.T.). Loc8tor has thus far been in the business of manufacturing tracking devices for children and car keys, so moving on to cars themselves seems like the next logical step.
Oh Audi, how you tease us so. First you renege on the twin-turbo V10 RS8 (so a few cars caught fire, what's the big deal?), and now you dangle the A3 Cabriolet in front of us like an exquisitely engineered doggie treat, only to put it back in the box and say, "Nein! These are for European pooches only!" Audi is indeed going to make a convertible version of the A3, but the sad news is that North American buyers won't have the privilege of owning one. The reason, Audi says, is that the three-door A3 on which the Cabrio is based was never certified for the U.S. market--only the five-door currently for sale got the go-ahead. Thus we might interpret that it would be too complicated and expensive and generally annoying for Audi to put the A3 Cabrio through the big U.S. legal machine when it wouldn't be a volume seller. It's also possible that Audi doesn't want to cannibalize Volkswagen Eos sales, although now that I think about it, I'm not sure why anyone would choose the likely more expensive soft-top A3 Cabrio over the Eos and its slick retractable hard-top. And what about the A3 Cabrio that was supposedly spotted testing in Arizona? Perhaps it was just a heat-induced mirage. See the slideshow and read more at ForbesAutos.
I've never understood what's so difficult about staying on your own side of the road. Yet every year, hundreds of thousands of motorists insist on veering into the oncoming lane, causing horrendous carnage and maiming and killing themselves and others. A good portion of these people, it turns out, are asleep. The NHTSA reports an estimated 100,000 sleep-related crashes a year in the US, and in a terrifying poll on msnbc, at last count, 64% of respondents reported having fallen asleep at the wheel. Apparently it's not bad enough that our roads are full of idiotic drivers—now it turns out that we can't even count on them to be conscious. Ugh. Enter Saab and Volvo, ever at the forefront of automotive safety, now developing eye- and face-scanning devices to monitor and correct driver drowsiness. Forbes Autos reports that Saab's driver-inattention package will use a pair of infrared cameras to monitor eye movement, and a dashboard display that chimes and flashes a series of increasingly severe warnings each time the eyelids slip closed. Moreover, the driver's seat will sternly vibrate if the system notices the driver's head oriented toward anything other than the "primary attention zone." Volvo takes a gentler approach, monitoring the vehicle's movement in relation to lane markers and cheerfully warning the driver with an icon of a steaming cup of coffee any time the vehicle leaves its lane without signaling. I really don't know if this is all going to be enough to thwart the most ambitiously sleepy drivers; maybe electric shocks would do a better job.
Our buddies at Forbes Autos asked us to cook up a list of the top 10 trends at SEMA. We were pretty thrashed when we wrote it, but they managed to make us sound half-way literate anyway. Thanks guys! You can read the full article here. Or if you want, just look at the pictures.
By Jason
Marketing Lackey
The big news of the day is Chrysler picking up Jim Press, a Toyota executive and board member, to run marketing and product strategy. Mr. Press is also quite the swimmer. Congrats, Chrysler. Here's the news:
- Pics of the upcoming Mazda 6 have been released, and it's looking pretty good. Maybe it's time to trade in my Protege: km77.com via Jalopnik
- If you're in the market for an affordable luxury car with design elements stolen from other auto makers and boasting questionable safety performance, Chery will take care of you...in 2009: Leftlane News
- Check out Forbe's list of the world's most coveted cars, and let us know which ride you want more than anything in the world: Forbes
- The plug in version of Volvo's Efficiency is going to be really, really green: Top Gear
