Saab 9-3 SportCombi June 25, 2006
Six months in, there is little I don’t like about my Saab sedan, but the new SportCombi model is causing a bit of buyer’s remorse. TESTED: 2006 Saab 9-3 SportCombi WHAT IS IT? A sport wagon version of Saab’s 9-3 sedan.HOW MUCH? $27,620 for the base model; $33,620 for the Aero. WHAT’S UNDER THE HOOD? 2-liter turbocharged in-line 4 (210 horsepower) with a 5-speed manual or 5-speed automatic in the base model; 2.8-liter turbocharged V-6 (250 horsepower) with a 6-speed manual or 6-speed automatic in the Aero.HOW MUCH STUFF CAN IT HOLD? 29.7 cubic feet cargo capacity behind 2nd seat; …
Green Tech: A New Wrinkle in Hybrids Does Away With Batteries
Just as drivers have grown comfortable with issues like battery life expectancy, new types of hybrids are emerging ? including one that uses no electricity at all. BY now, hybrid vehicles are familiar enough that buyers find nothing peculiar about a car’s gasoline engine getting help from an electric motor. But just as drivers have grown comfortable with concepts like regenerative braking and issues like battery life expectancy, new types of hybrids are emerging ? including one that uses no electricity at all. For instance, a United Parcel Service delivery truck the government rolled out in Washington last week was …
Behind the Wheel: So Late to the S.U.V. Party, but So Smartly Dressed
The Q7, Audi’s first S.U.V., arrives this month and Audi expects it, in its first year, to be its second-biggest seller. IN response to mankind’s unending search for the One True S.U.V., automakers have given us vehicles that were off-road tough and on-road soft, vehicles that were long, tall or small. We’ve been offered vehicles that were square, round, creamy or chunky-style, in shapes and flavors that pandered to everyone from baby boomers to Gens X, Y and Z. All these trial runs bring to mind a line from a 1938 Marx Brothers movie, “Room Service.” Groucho is trying …
David Leonhardt: U.S. Hybrids Get More Miles Per Congress June 21, 2006
A tax credit that has turned some hybrid cars into a relative bargain is about to start vanishing, a step intended to help Detroit. EVER since the first Prius rolled off the assembly line almost a decade ago at the Takaoka plant not far from Toyota City, hybrid cars have basically been a luxury item. If you owned one, you could feel good about using less gasoline and being a trendsetter, but you couldn’t expect the fuel savings to make up for the thousands of extra dollars that the hybrid cost. There was no financial reward for environmental virtue. Skip …
Technology : Using Ceramics, Brakes Are Light but Cost Is Heavy June 18, 2006
Ceramic brakes are lighter and withstand heat better than those made of iron, but they can cost as much as a new car. CHECKING boxes on an option list can quickly run up the price of a new car, but few add-ons are in the league of the ceramic brakes on a Ferrari F430: at $16,808, they cost about the same amount as a nicely equipped Honda Civic. Skip to next paragraph RelatedStopping Short(June 18, 2006) A cutaway of Audi’s ceramic brake disc, which is lightweight but very expensive. The high-tech brakes, an option on the $172,505 F430 but …
Chevy Quiz: How Many SS’s Are in Excess?
After disappearing for many years, the famous SS nameplate is now plastered on nearly every car in the Chevy lineup. BACK in my high school years, in the early 1990′s, my parents had a decrepit Subaru DL wagon. A few days before its date with the junkyard, I customized that rusty Subaru with one of the most revered badges in muscle-car history: “454 SS,” rendered in reflective mailbox stickers applied to the front fenders. Skip to next paragraph MultimediaGraphic: The Label Stands for Super Sport, but the Messages Are Mixed A famed nameplate that works overtime. Around the …
With That Saucy Swagger, She Must Drive a Porsche June 13, 2006
Most drivers’ faces and bearing give away clues that tip off their favored model of car, a study has found. Some people seem a perfect fit for the cars they drive, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Hummer, Michael Jordan and his Ferrari. Yet most drivers’ faces and bearing give away clues that tip off their favored model, a new study has found. Psychologists at Julius-Maximilians University in Wurzburg, Germany, report in a recent issue of the Journal of Individual Differences that students correctly matched photographs of male and female drivers to pictures of the cars they drove almost …
Somber Tone and Protest as U.A.W. Convenes
The change reflected the falling fortunes of Detroit’s automakers, a new reality that the union’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, laid out for members both in his speech and in a written report that the U.A.W. issued on Sunday. “This isn’t a cyclical downturn,” Mr. Gettelfinger told the convention. “The kind of challenges we face aren’t the kind that can be ridden out. They’re structural challenges, and they require new and farsighted solutions.”That statement, part of an hourlong speech, drew silence from the audience.What brought the delegates to their feet was Mr. Gettelfinger’s dismissal of comments by pundits who try to argue …
Frequent Traveler: Zen on Hot Asphalt for a Biker on Business
Atlanta to Louisville, Ky., is a six-hour drive on my BMW 1200 RT touring bike. It takes about the same amount of time to get to the airport, stand in line at the ticket counter, get screened, wait for the flight to leave, make the actual flight and then pick up my luggage after I land.Being on a bike is a Zen-like experience. You’re actually in the environment. You can smell the fresh-cut grass on the side of the road, the hot asphalt under your tires and the smoke from a faraway barbecue. It’s not at all like air travel, …
David (Car) Has Better Chance Against Goliath (S.U.V.)
The changes to sport utilities and pickups are being made to prevent them from running over smaller vehicles in a crash. A recent study showed that the modifications, which automakers initially resisted but then agreed to adopt by late 2009, sharply reduced the number of deaths of people in cars struck by these vehicles. As more Americans buy smaller cars to save money on gas, the danger of collisions between mismatched vehicles is escalating.”Why should that decision put you in significantly greater jeopardy of being paralyzed or killed when a gigantic S.U.V. slams into you and overwhelms you?” said Byron …
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