Auto Trends

Looking for any (not-so-last-minute) Christmas gift for yourself this year, well if your budget is in the $65,000 to $70,000 price range, then the 2009 Audi TTS surfacing on showroom floors this November is looking to be a good potential specimen.

Well, we say potential specimen, but really with the recent sports car heavy hitters coming out (Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger), the TT had little choice but to up the ante, and you cant bet your 2008 Mustang GT they have. The current TT is already heckled at about every stoplight in some towns around the US.

Why is it heckled so bad?

Well, somewhere between 200 to 250 horsepower will get you a cheap donut and a stale cup of coffee in a world of Danishes and mocha latte’s. The current 2008 Audi TT is tired. It has been around for nearly 10 years now, and car years are very similar to dog years to the consumer.

We need a fresh face to the world. Well, it’s not so much that face that is tired. You either like the appearance of the Audi TT or you don’t. It’s the engine that needs an upgrade. Going back to its 185 horsepower 1.8T on up to its current 200 horsepower 2.0T, it just has never caught the attention of the true enthusiast.

You’ve got the 3.2 liter V-6, but with its 236 ft-lbs of torque, it just doesn’t have enough grunt to give it any real sports appeal. This is where the 2009 Audi TTS fits in…

Even back in the days of the old 1.8T there were after market turbos that could boost the K02 Turbo’s 225 horsepower on up to 300-plus. Audi has taken these higher boosting turbocharged designs and created their own version and attached it to their 2.0, giving it a solid, reliable 272 horsepower and 258 ft-lbs torque.

The entire 2.0 has been slightly redesigned to work with the new turbo. It has an all new block, cylinder heads, pistons, and connecting rods. All this will be attached to the familiar face of the paddle shifting S tronic dual clutch transmission, offering sports appeal, quick shifts, ease of driving, and good fuel economy.

What do all these numbers really mean to the average consumer?

Somewhere between 4.9 and 5.2 seconds 0-60 by most reviewers accounts. With all this newfound power it is easy to see why the new Audi TTS is being compared loosely with the Porsche Cayman S. With this said, many reviewers are being rather hard on the TTS’s turbo lag and electronic suspension when comparing it to the highly refined Cayman S.

You have to keep in mind that you are dealing with a rather small engine (2.0 liter) as compared to the Cayman’s 3.2 liter V-6. There is going to be some turbo lag before the little 4-cylinder can reach its peak horsepower.

While this has not proven to be the most easy to drive configuration in history, such as in the Porsche 930 turbo, which had tremendous turbo lag, the Audi TTS is certainly a capable drivers car, which means in the right hands, it will run with the best of them.

Much of its fussy tendencies due to the small liter configuration and lag will be compounded by a high tech suspension that offers a complex system of stability control, magnetic dampening shocks, stiff springs, and anti-roll bars.

Audi is trying to overcompensate for Audi’s weak points with all this new technology, but the worry here is creating a car that will have no real driver because it will be too controlled for the enthusiast driver, yet too fussy for the inexperienced newcomer.

But we’re being a bit too nit-picky about the new 2009 Audi TTS because either way you look at it, it is worlds above the original prototype. Nothing is perfect, but for $60,000-plus of your hard earned dollars, it better be close… and it is!

You might be expecting the Bugatti Veyron, which has tipped the scales this year at a whopping $2 million. And what exactly does $2 million buy today. Well, you get the top of the line luxurious interior, seats, safety harness, steering wheel, smooth suspension, chrome wheels, jet fighter precision engineering, a 1001 bhp V-16 quad turbo charged engine, and the capability to knocking a tick off your shoulder without even touching it.

The Bugatti Veyron is said to shoot off faster than Simon Cowell’s mouth with its claimed 0-62 in just 2.6 seconds. But as fast as the Veyron can spool up, it is still no match for emptying the wallet of any B-list sitcom television star as the Maybach Exelero.

The three year old Maybach Exelero was recently boosted to $7.8 million status earlier last month. While its 700 horsepower bi-turbo V-12 would hardly seem to do its price tag justice, you must realize you are not paying for the ultimate horsepower that has been put into the engine, but rather the number of bashed fingers coupled by choice four letter words ($#*!) that went into wrenching it together.

Yes, the Maybach Exelero is 100% hand assembled, from its plush leather seating to its beautiful HVAC control knobs. Every sexy curve has practically been hand carved out of its carbon fiber body panels. Not one robot arm has touched these vehicles in any way. Each car is an original Rembrandt masterpiece of sorts, and that is what each of those nearly eight million smackeroos is going towards.

With all that hand shaped bodywork, the Maybach Exelero is not quite as aerodynamic as one might think that kind of money should buy. With its 0.28 aerodynamics coefficient, both the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight beat it with their a 0.25, and the aged 1990 GM Impact (a.k.a. EV1) slaughters it with its 0.195.

But when your making 700 horsepower, pulling three tons, and punching holes throughout the atmosphere with its 2.4 mpg, it shouldn’t much matter.

Why are we being so hard on such a beautiful, well built, and executed car?

Well, because it costs $7.8 million dollars… and we want to make sure should we ever win the lotto, that we’d be getting our moneys worth!

Maybach Exelero Specifications:

• Length 19.3 feet
• Width 7.0 feet
• Weight 5864 lbs (yeah, you’re going to need 700 horsepower alright)
• Engine Bi-Turbo V12 (700 horsepower, 737 lb-ft of torque)
• Top speed 218 mph
• 0-62 mph 4.4 seconds
• Tires 315/25 ZR 23 Fulda Exelero
• Preferred Fuel for top speed 110 octane
• Cost $7,800,000 USD (and a free t-shirt that says ‘I Spent $8 Million Dollars and all I got was a Lousy 700 horsepower’)

The introduction to this post has two meanings attached to it. The most obvious is that the new 2009 Nissan GT-R is fast… actually it is real fast. Edmunds.com was able to get their hands on one recently for a test run, and reported a 3.3 second 0-60, using the Nissan’s new launch control system. We’ll give more on this later.

Onto the other meaning of the phrase, The new GT-R is set to be released upon American soil in just a little over a week, and if this is the first that you have heard of it, then it is probably already getting to be too late to get your name on the list to receive on of these production beasts.

Over 70 percent of these vehicles have already been bought and paid for, which adds up to approximately 1,700 of the 2,500 that are scheduled to be here this July 7^th, 2008. Only 671 Nissan dealers will be given the prestige to display these on their lot, and to find if one is going to be anywhere near you, you can check their dealer listing at www.Nissanusa.com.

The starting price on the GT-R will run you a base of $70,850, which is actually a steal for the performance and collector status that this vehicle will have. The premium version will run $72,900, adding to it such features as higher-performance tires, 11-speaker Bose audio system (two subwoofers), heated front seats, and full-length side airbags.

The options list beyond the premium model is actually rather minuscule in comparison to many other sports cars, which says to us that it was loaded right in the first place. The tiny list of options include a $3,000 silver paint job, which is opposed to the “cop buster” bright red. $360 for an all-important iPod converter, and the standard $280 for custom premium GT-R floor mats (certainly not necessary, but always a cool touch).

But before you get too excited over the leftover 800 GT-R’s up for bids, keep in mind that they will be just that… up for bids. It will probably be not all that unlikely for these to be auctioned off in the six figure digits.

But if none of that has got you down, then let’s open up to some gushing over the new 2009 Nissan GT-R. The GT-R is powered by a small yet potent 3.6-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engine that is capable of 473 horsepower and 434 lb-ft of torque. It is also has a variable four wheel drive, and is about as custom made as you can get today with a mass produced vehicle.

For starters, each gearbox is actually custom mated to the engine, of which is also predominantly hand made to todays standards. The tires themselves are inflated using nitrogen, in order to help reduce the amount of expansion and contraction that is experienced with normal O2.

The GT-R is no stripped down production racer either, weighing in at 3,836 pounds, it offers such conveniences as 20-inch alloy wheels, Brembo brakes, xenon headlights, electronically adjusted suspension, leather upholstery, power seats, aluminum-trim pedals, leather-wrapped steering wheel/shift knob, automatic climate control, a six-speaker sound system, Bluetooth capability, XM Satellite Radio, in-dash flashcard reader, 30 gigabyte navigation system, and driver-configurable information monitor.

With all this praise, we do feel it appropriate to give the GT-R a B+ on its body style. For some buyers, the angular and smooth body style will be less than attractive. It is sort of shaped liked the 300Z crossed with a Toyota Celica, and has those two chrome fender vents that frightfully remind us of similar ones on the 2008 Ford Focus.

The GT-R is also so well behaved that some testers have had to admit that the car is actually a bit boring to drive and had to rely on their test equipment to believe that they were going as fast and pulling as many G’s as they were. While some may say that this is the sign of a truly well-designed vehicle, others may find the strict response too tame (or dare we say lame) for its name… GT-R!

But hey, you can’t please them all… but this one gets pretty darn close for the money!