http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FullTests/articleId=131557 --- Think about the quickest road car you've ever driven. No, wait, scratch that. Think about the quickest road car you've ever heard of. No, wait. That won't do, either. Think about the quickest road car that's ever been. That's more like it. Now you're in the right area code. Here's why: This highly modified 2005 Ariel Atom with its supercharged, 375-horsepower, 2.0-liter Honda engine hits 60 mph from a standstill in 2.8 seconds. Two-point-eight seconds! With an exclamation point! (And we never use an exclamation point.) Measure its time to 60 mph with 1 foot of rollout like they do on a drag strip, and the Ariel gets to the mark in a scant 2.6 seconds — less time than we require to decide between paper and plastic. For those of you keeping score at home, this makes this 2005 Ariel Atom quicker than any car we've ever tested — any Porsche, any Viper, any Vette and any other specialty marque like the Noble M400. But it gets better. T
Genre: Auto Videos
by: Insidelinevideo
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=125573 --- Honda knows the difference between revision and improvement, and you can see the evidence in the 2009 Honda Pilot. It looks different, only the same. Or maybe it's the same, only different. But what you can't see are the dozens and dozens of places within this utility package where the Honda engineers have fiddled with the details. It's easy to imagine the Honda engineers swarming over the 2009 Honda Pilot, relentlessly improving space-efficiency, utility, fuel economy and performance. It is the Honda Way, the thorough refinement of a mechanical device into a form that is supremely functional, pure and simple. Only these particular Honda engineers are a bunch of guys from Ohio at Honda R&D Americas, and they've tried to make the 2009 Honda Pilot into the right kind of crossover for Americans.
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FullTests/articleId=126177 --- South Grade Road and East Grade Road aren't the sort of evocative names you'd expect from the best driving roads to be found anywhere. But these smooth, flowing ribbons of asphalt, known locally in San Diego County as S6 and S7, are as good as anything we see on press junkets to Spain or Italy or Germany. No, really. Best of all, they're part of a nearby network of roads in the mountains above San Diego that make this region a weekend stomping ground for the car clubs, enthusiasts of high-strung Italian motorcycles (who have about six months to live, we figure) and the kind of drivers who can appreciate the supercharged 2008 Lotus Elise SC.
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=126092 --- "Our sole Challenger has just broken the ring of evil the deep blue meanies have so righteously wrought — get through em baby, get through em." — Super Soul, Vanishing Point 1971
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=125172 --- The 2009 Nissan GT-R is strapped to the floor, but it's tugging at its leashes with all the power its twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter V6 can muster, moaning to itself in the way a car does when it's at full power. We can feel the air vibrating. Only a few engineers at Nissan know what the true output of the 2009 Nissan GT-R's engine really is, and so far they're not telling. So we're inside a futuristic dynamometer cell at Harman Motive in Torrance, California, to find out. It's part NASA space lab and part Dr. Frankenstein's lab, as a huge intake duct blows air across the car and two big fans in the ceiling suck the engine exhaust out of the room. A rack of computerized hardware is poised next to the driver-side door, reading the GT-R's vital signs. We can hear the hollow rasp of the twin-turbo V6's intake, the low resonance of the exhaust, the rush of the big tires on the dyno's rollers. Finally the long, hard pull from the engine is done,
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FullTests/articleId=126103 --- For a few seconds, you give in to the spectacle of driving a 2009 Nissan GT-R. This car attracts its own entourage and then takes you along for the ride. It's not just the Skyline mystique, either. It's the fact that even in production sheet metal, the R35 GT-R looks like a one-off concept stolen from a Southern California design studio. It has as many hard contours as a Porsche 911 has soft curves. You have the key fob, and still you ogle it. Soon, though, you point the GT-R down an on-ramp and plant the throttle. The effortless brutality with which the 2009 Nissan GT-R gathers speed is what you'll describe to your friends — once everyone's tired of talking about the styling, that is. What you won't tell them is that you suspect your supercar might be a sociopath. It doesn't flow around corners like your E46 BMW M3 did, nor does it transmit feedback through the steering wheel for the sheer pleasure of it. Instead, the 200
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/dc/Search?q=saab sport combi&rP=1&Go=Go# --- Everyone has that fun ex-girlfriend you keep going back to even though you know she's all wrong for you. Or that reality show you can't stop watching even though you know it's rotting your brain. You like them, but doing so doesn't make any rational sense. Well, welcome to the 2008 Saab 9-3 Turbo X Sport Combi, a really fun car with a really long name that makes as much rational sense as Jenny and America's Got Talent. It's a sport wagon with Mt. Denali high points and Death Valley low points. We walked away liking it, but knowing that we could only recommend it to a guy named Sven who has two kids and lives at the top of Latigo Canyon Road. Of course, the 9-3 Turbo X is only going to be produced for 2008 in teeny-tiny numbers — 600 sedans and Sport Combi wagons, to be precise — which might make you wonder why we're even bothering to road test it in the first place. Well, for most folks, the sorta-mass-produced 9-3 Aero Sport
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FullTests/articleId=125872 --- It would be easy to dismiss the 2009 Infiniti FX50 as completely irrelevant, a mutant crossover vehicle. Going on past sales figures alone, you'd be right, because total 2007 sales of the Infiniti FX45 numbered just 1,598 units, about a tenth of the 2007 Infiniti FX35s that found their way to the street during the same period last year. But this wouldn't be entirely fair. The all-wheel-drive FX came to market in 2003 as one of the first crossovers that had morphed into a high-performance vehicle — a kind of personalized coupe, only with cargo capacity. The FX looked like a Bionic Cheetah, showcased some segment-leading technology and delivered road-going performance on par with European-brand sport-utilities the BMW X5 and Porsche Cayenne. Unfortunately, no one seemed to care. Yet now people are talking about personal-style crossovers. Have times finally caught up with the 2009 Infiniti FX50?
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/autoshows/newyork/2008/kiakoupconceptnews.html --- The Koup is the work of Kia Motors America's Irvine, California, design center. The exterior design is in a wedge shape that Kia calls "uncomplicated, yet dynamic." It's notable for a "swoosh" along the sides. There's a set of prominent wheel flares and LED headlamps with carbon fiber and black chrome trim, as well as tuner-style additions including a chin spoiler and carbon-fiber inserts in the wheel spokes.
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/autoshows/geneva/2008/2008minijohncooperworks.html --- The Mini John Cooper Works is back — and with 218 horsepower it is wilder than ever. Revealed here in the first official photographs prior to its first public outing at the 2008 Geneva Auto Show, the new range-topping Mini has been thoroughly reworked for 2008. It features an upgraded turbocharged 1.6-liter engine, revised chassis tuning, distinctive body kit and plush new interior helping to set it apart from lesser second-generation Mini models.
