Silverado LTZ

General Motors is introducing its next-generation full size pickup trucks, the 2007 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, two trucks that could help lead the General out of its financial doldrums.

GM says the trucks have been redesigned from top to bottom: They have new exterior and interior designs, new engines and new chassis.

The Silverado and Sierra are offered with three cab styles, three cargo box lengths and several suspensions setups. GM hopes the range gives customers more choice when trying to suit their needs, particularly with the heavy duty models.

The Silverado and Sierra light-duty models will arrive in the fourth quarter of 2006. Sierra Denali and Silverado and Sierra heavy duty models will be available in the first quarter of 2007. The heavy duty trucks offer more powerful gas and diesel engines.
The new pickups are sleeker and more aerodynamic, including a 57-degree windshield angle designed to reduce wind noise and improve fuel economy. Tolerances between panels are greatly reduced - including a 50-percent reduction in the space between the cab and cargo box.

In addition to the trucks' three cab designs (regular, extended and crew cab), there are three cargo box lengths, including short (5 foot 8 inches), standard (6 foot 6 inches) and long (8 foot). The pickup boxes have been redesigned with enhanced versatility, increased strength and greater capacity. A one-piece wheelhouse and inner box side adds strength and smoother, more integrated appearance. The boxes are 1.18 inches (30 mm) deeper in the front and 1.57 inches (40 mm) deeper at the rear, with stronger inner walls that offer improved performance when fitted with ladder racks, tool boxes and other accessories. New tailgate designs include locks and torque-rod assist for easier operation. A standard end cap on each tailgate features an integrated spoiler lip that enhances aerodynamics.

2007 BMW X5

“Don’t think of it as a truck, think of it as a performance machine.” Those are the words of BMW North America boss Tom Purves, and the car he was talking about is BMW’s new X5. And by the way, adds Purves, don’t call the new X5 a sport/utility vehicle, either. It’s a sport/activity vehicle.

Whatever Purves wants it called, this X5 is significantly different from the outgoing model, which stayed in the market essentially unchanged for a whopping seven years. The latest X5 might not look all-new at first glance, but park a new one next to the old one, and you’ll see the new car is longer and wider. Specifically, the wheelbase is up 4.5 inches to 115.5, the total length has grown 7.4 inches to 191.1, while the center of gravity has been lowered slightly. Chassis stiffness is up 15 percent. The end result is a new X5 that drives more like a BMW, offering a better compromise between comfort and handling. Those who felt the old car’s ride was too stiff and the overall feeling too high-effort or trucky will like the changes.

BMW’s plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, has been and will remain the one source for all X5s sold globally. The area surrounding the plant is where we spent a day trying out the new X5.

Two engines are available, both mated to a six-speed automatic transmission. The six-speed manual previously available with the six-cylinder engine has been dropped. The aluminum 4.8-liter V8 produces 350 hp and 350 lb-ft of torque, while the 3.0-liter inline-six produces 260 hp and 225 lb-ft. BMW says the I6 will power the car to 60 mph in 7.8 seconds and claims 6.4 seconds to 60 mph for the V8. The company figures a 50-50 split between V8 and six-cylinder sales.

BMW had only the V8-powered models available for driving, as the first preproduction batch all had V8s. The front suspension is a double wishbone design; rear is multilink. BMW dropped the strut front suspension because engineers felt ride and handling could be improved upon. The V8 is quick (by SUV standards, at least) and emits a satisfying growl when you get on it.

The X5 rides on fourth-generation run-flat tires. We’ve complained about run-flats on the 3 Series for making the ride too harsh. But BMW engineers were right when they told us the fourth generation on the new X5 wouldn’t beat us up so much. The ride was fine on the freeway, and much of the old X5’s jarring ride has been eliminated. In the twisties around Spartanburg, the handling was pretty much neutral, biased toward understeer. Steering was precise, and the brakes were excellent—exactly what you expect from BMW. A drive in Detroit will tell if the new run-flats really get the job done.

A third-row seat is optional, though we tried it and found it suitable mostly for kids—people more than five feet, six inches tall won’t want to spend too much time back there. Other options include active steering, active roll stabilization, electronic damping control and a rearview camera.

BMW aims to sell about 40,000 X5s a year, roughly 45 percent to women, and hopes to get a few more families interested, thanks mostly to the third-row seat. Prices start at $46,595 for the six-cylinder, $55,195 for the V8.

This is a more competitive SUV—sorry, SAV—than the one it replaces, and with the new Acura MDX, new Mercedes-Benz ML and GL, and Audi Q7, the bar just keeps getting higher.

2007 BMW 335i

There are two sides to this story. First, there is a coupe version of the latest 3 Series, arriving predictably after the sedan as the latest in a multi-sequel movie franchise. Then there is the subplot: The range-topping 335i coupe is the first BMW with a turbocharged engine in 20 years.

Of the two aspects to this story, BMW’s return to forced induction is probably the headline. Having pioneered street-car turbocharging with the 1974 2002 turbo sedan, BMW gave up on it after the deeply unloved flagship 745i was dropped in 1986. Fitted with a turbo version of the company’s 3.2-liter straight-six, the 745i was infamous for laggy power delivery and excessive thirst. Since then BMW hasn’t been above dropping sniffy comments about those of its rivals who have resorted to forced induction to increase performance, so the 335i is a car with plenty to prove.

From a design standpoint, the 3 Series coupe looks pretty much as you would expect. The previous two generations of the drei coupe sold by the boatload, so BMW has wisely opted not to frighten the horses with anything too radical. That means a slightly wider stance than the sedan and similar front end styling—though if you look hard, you’ll see the hood, headlamps and front fenders are unique to the coupe and the windshield angle is shallower. Xenon lights with BMW’s “Corona light rings” are standard.
That’s right, turbochargers—plural. The 335i goes into the world with not one but two compact turbines. The low-inertia turbos work in parallel, each supplying compressed air to three cylinders, and are designed to eliminate turbo lag. In conjunction with gasoline direct injection, the net result is 300 hp at a relatively low 5800 rpm, accompanied by 300 lb-ft of torque all the way from 1400 to 5000 rpm.

On the move, the flat torque plateau quickly proves itself the 335i’s defining characteristic. It does not feel particularly quick off the mark, but the engine’s smooth manners shine through as it gathers momentum. Turn up the pace, and the engine responds in good humor, feeling more than capable of matching or beating BMW’s official 0-to-60-mph time of 5.3 seconds with a manual, or 5.5 seconds with the smooth six-speed Steptronic auto (that’s not much off the 4.8-second 0-to-62-mph time of the Euro-spec M3). The 335i enjoys more mid-range torque than its M-badged sister, and on the tight roads of the Austrian test route it proved phenomenal at passing slower traffic.

2007 Ford Edge

Here’s a pun-ishing thought: It is entirely possible that Ford chose the name Edge just to make headline writers freak out. So many choices, what to do? “Ford Edges Into the Future,” “Ford Reaches the Edge,” “Ford Edges Out the Competition,” “Going Over the Edge,” or, for the pessimistic, “The Edge of Night.”

Wordplay aside, we can begin the obligatory second paragraph where we talk about the definition of this new crossover segment. Anybody not heard that one yet? Show of hands? Okay, one guy in America hasn’t heard. Everyone else, skip ahead. Sir, you continue reading.

Crossovers ride on car-based underpinnings with SUV/minivan-looking bodies, thus satisfying the utilitarian need for a minivan without getting the minivan’s massive social stigma. At the same time, crossovers offer a cursory suggestion of off-road ability, thus increasing their utility. Granted, a crossover’s off-road worthiness is limited to nicely graded flat dirt with less than a half-inch of snow, but still. And crossovers usually come with an all-wheel-drive option, usually in the form of a viscous center differential that doesn’t do anything at all 99.99 percent of the time—until the one day a year when it snows and the diff locks up so that your rear wheels help drive the car.

The new photos of 2008 Audi R8

Remember the so-called “concept” Volvo C30 and how close it was to the production car? Well, it looks like the Ford-owned Swedish carmaker will play another round of that game with the XC60 concept slated for introduction at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Volvo is positioning the production XC60 as a step up for C30 owners who find a need to carry more cargo, perhaps in the form of a car seat and diaper bag. Volvo promises a vehicle that is “equally sporting and exciting, but with more cargo capacity.” Volvo isn’t talking powertrains yet, but the 3.2-liter inline six found in the S80 and platform-mate Land Rover LR2 seems likely.

Details are scarce at this point, but expect the exterior of the production vehicle to look very similar to the concept when it hits the streets in 2009. Also look for the City Safe braking system to prevent collisions at speeds up to 18.6 mph. When an imminent collision is detected, the system will automatically apply the brakes to scrub off speed before impact.

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Lambo MURCIELAGO 0/190 MPH !!

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

And if the thing of beauty can go 175 mph with the top down, so much the better.

We got an early peek at such a thing—the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster set to debut at the Los Angeles auto show—and found that it is not only a thing of beauty from a distance but up close as well.

Viewed from afar, the proportions of the roadster are a little wider in the rear, compared with the coupe, to accommodate the power-retractable soft-top. But from any angle, the car is still sublimely seductive.

With the top down, the panels retreating behind each headrest are not only integrated nicely into the whole as they were on the DB AR1 Zagato Coupe of 2003, but they are actually covered with the same leather trimming the new roadster’s interior.

Design credit for this one goes to Englishman Marek Reichman, who has been design director at Aston Martin for the last year and a half. And what a year and a half it’s been. First thing he did was the highly successful Rapide concept, followed by the C8 Vantage Roadster, the DBS from the new movie Casino Royale and now this. And he’s only 42.To accommodate the top, the Roadster is “slightly, slightly heavier” than the coupe, according to a spokes-man. The powertrain is the same 4.3-liter, 380-hp V8, with the same six-speed transaxle mounted in the rear. Whether the roadster will maintain the coupe’s 49/51 balance is not yet known, but it can’t be far off.

As with the V8, price is another plus here. Based on the differences between the DB9 coupe and convertible, we expect the V8 Vantage Roadster to sticker for about $120,000 to $125,000. Granted, it isn’t right to call any six-figure car a “bargain,” but that price is downright affordable, in a bizarre way.

Can you get one? Not immediately. The car arrives in summer 2007. Depending on how many roadsters Aston Martin makes out of the 3000 V8 Vantages it produces in a year, we in the U.S. could get as many as 840 V8 Vantage Roadsters annually. If that’s the case, you might actually be able to buy one without a terrific wait. And even if you do have to wait, from our first look here, it appears as if that wait would be well worth it.

Sixty years ago, Italian sports carmaker Maserati teamed up with Italian designer Pinin Farina to produce the first Gran Turismo. Based on a racing chassis, the original Gran Turismo was Maserati’s first road car.
Maserati and Pininfarina will remake history at the coming Geneva motor show with the world premiere of the 2008 Maserati Gran Turismo.
Like its predecessor from 1947, Maserati says the new Gran Turismo should be hailed for its advanced technical features and cutting edge style. The 2+2 will be powered by a 4.2-liter 405-hp V8, linked to the same six-speed automatic transmission Maserati revealed on the Quattroporte at the Detroit show in January. The gearbox’s adaptive control system adjusts the gear shifts to the driver’s style and the conditions.No word on when Gran Turismo goes on sale, or how many copies will be available—just 58 were built in 1947. Expect prices to be somewhere in the $125,000 to $135,000 neighborhood.

2007 LAMBORGHINI MURCIELAGO LP460 ROADSTER

The Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 was already indefensibly outrageous enough and now this, the LP640 Roadster, with the same svelte body and 640-hp V12 engine but no roof! Mama Mia!

Yes, yes, it is still uncomfortable as hell and awkward to drive and costs more than your first house and your first divorce combined, but what it does do it does soooo magnifico that you don’t even care about its flaws. It’s like owning a supermodel that you can keep in the garage.

But we were only taking photographs. There would be no track testing, no taking it to its claimed 204-mph top speed at Italy’s Nardo high-speed circuit, no using it for luring strumpets. Just a one-afternoon drive and then right back it goes to Lamborghini Orange County with no scratches anywhere.



Sure. This is what we promised ourselves and Lamborghini. But when the photo work was done and we found ourselves going against traffic on relatively empty roadways with many, many lanes in our direction and no cars on them and no O.C. Sheriff’s and well, what could it possibly hurt to bump that E-gear down a couple notches and wail? What? What? So…

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2007 Maserati Quattroporte Automatic

No one would complain about a trip to Monte Carlo, but it did seem like a long way to go to test-drive a new automatic transmission. Even if that transmission is attached to the latest Maserati Quattroporte and this year celebrates 50 years since a Maserati driven by Juan Manuel Fangio won the Monaco GP, the first presided over by Princess Grace.

Using the latter as a metaphor to say that the Quattroporte exhibits a blend of the company’s high-performance tradition with regal elegance was a stretch, but Roberto Ronchi, Maserati CEO, was candid on another point. Why did his company wait so long (the Quattroporte debuted at the 2003 Frankfurt auto show) to offer a fully automatic transmission in addition to the oft-criticized semi-automatic DuoSelect, nee Cambiocorsa?

“We have sold around 9000 with the DuoSelect transmission that emphasizes the sportiness of the car,” said Ronchi. “We gained our niche as a sporty sedan because our customers preferred the DuoSelect, but we need the fully automatic transmission to increase our business. The U.S. is our target market, where we estimate that 80 percent of sales will be the automatic. We took over 18 months to develop an automatic because we must keep the sporty nature."


Technical director Jean-Luc Brossard explained that retaining the Quattroporte’s “sportiness” with an automatic transmission was complicated by the 4.2-liter, 400-hp V8’s 7000-rpm redline and a drivetrain layout with a transaxle at the rear for a handling-biased 47/53 front-to-rear weight distribution. The car was designed around the Duo-Select, adapted from Ferrari’s F1 paddle-shift transmission. The full-automatic project entailed more than contracting ZF Friedrichshafen AG to develop a Maserati-specific six-speed automatic that could deal smoothly with the high-revving engine; the car had to be reworked to mount that transmission forward, right behind an engine that itself was also significantly amended.

While horsepower rating, compression ratio and displacement are the same for Duo-Select and automatic versions, the V8 in the latter has been converted from dry sump to wet sump lubrication and has a new air intake system, revised intake cam phasing, modified pistons and a redesigned cylinder head. The cylinder head is painted in traditional Maserati blue, not red. This engine produces a peak 339 lb-ft of torque at 4250 rpm, as opposed to 332 lb-ft at 4500 rpm—the difference looks minor, but the fatter torque curve at low-rpm ranges matters more than peak output.

Curb weight is up about 44 pounds. Top speed drops from 172 mph (276 km/h) to 168 mph (270 km/h), while 0 to 62 mph takes 5.6 seconds, as opposed to 5.2 seconds. The good news is, even though the transmission is now sitting behind the engine, the weight bias is an agile 49/51 front to rear.

2007 CHRYSLER PACIFICA AWD

Back in early 2003 when Chrysler rolled out the Pacifica, it was such an anomaly on the automotive scene that the folks in Auburn Hills tried to create a new segment for it called “sports tourer.” We all chuckled to ourselves, suggesting that it was as much a station wagon as anything else. But in retrospect, what it really represented was another take on what is now the biggest growth segment in the business: crossovers.

So today, four years after the first Pacifica rolled into showrooms, how does the old boy stack up against the onslaught of crossovers of every style and size running up and down our nation’s highways? Having driven most of what’s offered out there today in the burgeoning crossover segment, from the new Ford Edge to the Infiniti FX45, Pacifica’s formula for a “handsome protector” still works surprisingly well—even better thanks to upgrades in recent years.




Probably the biggest improvement comes in the powertrain, which was always a weak point with the original Pacifica. On paper, the 4.0-liter 255-hp, 265-lb-ft V6 doesn’t gain much over the old 3.5-liter 250-hp, 250-lb-ft V6 that powered Pacifica back in the 2004 model year when it launched. But the engine is far superior in practice, and way more powerful than the base engine, now a 3.8-liter 200-hp, 235-lb-ft V6 that comes standard with the front-wheel-drive Pacifica. The upgrade to a six-speed automatic transmission adds to the powertrain’s newfound prowess to move the 4500-pound Pacifica (a four-speed is standard on the fwd 3.8-liter model). Put it all together with a solid all-wheel-drive system and this Pacifica still merits the short list of crossovers for consideration.

As I was running the car back and forth for several nights during our most recent Midwestern snowstorm, the Pacifica performed flawlessly and never once had me concerned about losing control due to slippery conditions. The thing hauled like a dog sled through deeply snow-covered streets and over icy interstate overpasses, never breaking stride. I found the AutoStick particularly handy to help in maintaining speed in traffic without constantly braking, and to help control the car on snowy back roads.

Pacifica still feels solid as ever, but doesn’t feel quite as heavy as its curb weight suggests. It can get a little ragged in the suspension when pushed, and understeers with regularity, but I’m not sure any of these big crossovers are any better. What I like about Pacifica vs. the competition is that it remains one of few choices (Freestyle, er, Taurus X comes to mind) that starts out low to the ground. That lower center of gravity certainly helps it feel a lot more stable and secure, especially amid the sport/utility carnage on the highway that bad weather usually induces.

If there’s a downside to the Pacifica, it lies in content—or lack thereof. It seems like some of the frills—navi, uplevel upholstery, auto-climate control and some of the sound deadening—may have been stripped out of the Pacifica to save some money. Other than what seems like added road noise, I didn’t really miss most of the missing content, however.

I’m not sure what Chrysler has in the plans for a next-generation Pacifica. The irony is that there may not be a place among the crossovers for one of the vehicles that played a major role in creating and defining the segment. That’d be too bad.