Category: Vehicle Reviews

Posted on

Walkaround: 2011 Chevy Volt

There has been a lot of contriversy about the Chevy Volt, it is an electric car, is it a hybrid car, is it something inbetween.  Who cares, what it is, is brilliant!  We are in the middle of our week with the car, and we think it’s a 5 Star kind of car.

We will have more in a few weeks, but what we want to do now is take your for a walkaround of the car and have a look at some of the features and highlights.  This video is a bit long, but it is very through.

Our thanks to Scott Vandekerckhove from ESI for helping us out and walking us through.

Posted on

Quick Drive 2012 Prius v The Next Car In The Prius Family

Hybrid sales in the U.S. account about 2.5% of total sales, of that amount, 53% of those sales are Toyota Prius’.  There are 16 other car companies building hybrids and 30 other hybrid models on the market, but none of them can hold a candle to the Prius when it comes to sales and market acceptance.  The next question then becomes, is this level of sales all the market will hold, or are their opportunities to expand, sales and a brand.  Toyota is setting out to answer this question with the Prius v. 

There is no doubt, and Toyota executives acknowledge the fact that the Hollywood crowd had a significant impact in getting mainstream people interested in and purchasing Prius’.  However, as families grew, many outgrew their Prius and needed something with more space for said family and their related gear.  Sure some moved up to Toyota’s RAV4 or other crossovers and small SUV’s, but Toyota wanted an option for those that still wanted to drive a hybrid, or something with superior fuel economy.

What they have come up with is the Prius v, the first extension of the Prius family.  While the Prius v looks very similar in size to the current Prius, it is actually larger.  The Prius v has a three inch longer wheelbase, is six inches longer overall, 3 inches taller and one inch wider.  This all adds up to 58% more cargo space for the car which equals or exceeds 80% of CUV’s and small SUV’s in the market.  The extended wheelbase has a noticeable effect on rear seat room.  Rear seats can move forwards and backwards to alter legroom and or cargo area.  With the drivers seat adjusted for a 6’4” person, there is still plenty of room behind the drivers seat for that same 6’4” person to ride comfortably.  The Prius v weighs in at 236 pounds more than the current Prius and has an drag coefficient of .29 versus .25 from the standard Prius.

With additional width and height of the Prius v it makes a difference in how airy the cabin feels.  There is plenty of headroom for front and back seat passengers and the additional shoulder room is welcome.  Three adults should be able to fit comfortably in the back seat.

A few other things of note in the interior.  The Prius v carries the first sunroof offered in the line.  It is made of a resin that is 40% lighter than conventional glass and reflects 99% of all UV rays to keep the interior cooler and materials from fading.  The seat material used is a synthetic leather like surface that has a good feel to it yet is 50% lighter than conventional leather.  Toyota have also worked with JBL Audio on the sound system.  Not only are the related amps and speakers lighter than normal, they also draw less power.  At 100dB, a conventional system might draw 7.6 amps of power, the JBL Green Edge system only draws 3.9 amps.  If you crank up the volume to 105dB that difference grows to 11.7 amps for the conventional system versus 4.8 for the JBL system.  JBL claim that the 120 watt system available int eh Prius v is equal it a 600 watt conventional system.

Also debuting on the Prius v is Toyota’s new telematics system called Entune.  It works with iPhones and Android devices to provide connectivity for the system.  There are apps built into the Entune system, Bing for searching the navigation and other apps, but not the internet, Pandora, Open Table, iHeart Radio and others.  Entune requires that you download the corresponding applications onto your smartphone and then syncs them together to work seamlessly.

If you’ve driven the current generation of Toyota Prius then the driving dynamics of the Prius v will be very familiar.  The Prius v does seem to ride a bit better, tar strips, bumps and pot holes don’t seem as noticeable, the Prius v also rides a bit quieter as well.  We did notice a difference in sound level between the drivers seat and the passengers seat.  In the drivers seat we noticed more wind and road noises then we did in the passengers seat, and the person we did the drive with made the same comments.

Both of us felt that a big culprit to the ride and noise issues were the tires selected for the car.  Just like the standard Prius, the Prius v has low rolling resistance tires that aren’t the most compliant of rubber.  We’d like to see what effect to the mileage a set of “conventional” tires would have, and what difference that would have for the ride and comfort of the car as well.  Tossed into corners the Prius v understeers as you would expect and the back end can get a little light as well, but we don’t believe anyone has illusions of this car being anything resembling sporty.The Prius v has electric steering and while providing a very light feel, provides little feedback.  The front end of the car feels “out there” as in, input goes into the steering wheel and the car turns, but there is no connected feel. 

If you like and enjoy the current Prius then you will like the Prius v as well.  If you are a fan of the Prius, but your family needs more cargo space and room, but your don’t want a traditional crossover or small SUV then this might be your answer.  The Prius v is rated by the EPA at 44 city, 40 highway and 42 combined.  The Prius v is also classified by the EPA as a midsize wagon.  In our 40 mile loop of two lane back roads we saw 41 mpg, and we weren’t taking it easy.

There will be three trim packages available the 2, 3 and 5 which correspond to current Prius options packages.  Other markets will see the Prius v sold as a seven passenger vehicle, but not in North America, Toyota’s market research said that people were more interested in cargo room then extra seating.  Also by going with a five passenger rather than a seven passenger configuration, Toyota were able to charge several thousand dollars less for the vehicle. 

The Prius v will go on sale in the fall with mid October being the target time frame.  Toyota believe that they will be able to sell 25,000 to 30,000 of the Prius v’s a year without having any impact on current Prius sales, pricing when it goes on sale will be slightly higher than the current Prius, but no official pricing has been announced.

If you’d like to see the rest of the photo’s for the Prius v please check out the photo gallery

Posted on

Reviewed 2011 Volkswagen Jetta: Sometimes The Auto Critics Are Wrong

Some times the car critics are wrong.  That should come as no shock, after all, 75% the people who do car reviews are writing it for themselves and for their peers.  What the public in general might be looking for is irrelevant, it’s what THEY decide is important is what really matters, and if you aren’t on board 100%, well then, you can’t play in their sandbox.

If you never had any dealings with the previous generation of the Volkswagen Jetta, then you would have to wonder why there are few good words in the press about the new version of the car.  Even Consumer Reports has called it one of the most disappointing updates to car in recent memory.  Here is the thing, while the previous generation Jetta was a great car, it didn’t sell all that well because, even in lower spec trim, it was often as expensive, if not more expensive then other cars in it’s class when they were fully loaded.

For the 2011 Jetta, Volkswagen took a different tact.  Since most people say they will spend more money for quality, but never do when it’s time to pull out the checkbook, VW called their bluff.  The new Jetta has some materials in it that are not up to the level of the previous generation, it comes with a twist beam rear suspension rather than an independent rear suspension, and it’s driving dynamics have been softened, the level of the materials in the interior aren’t class leading, yet the car is selling in record numbers, mostly because it stickers for $3,000 to $5,000 less than the previous generation.

95% of the people who own and buy the Volkswagen Jetta couldn’t distinguish the difference between an IRS and a twist beam rear suspension if you let them drive them back to back, nor do they care.  While some people still viewed the Jetta as a 3 series BMW at a discount, most viewed it as a mid-sized car that was a bit smaller on the inside then it’s peers.  In increasing the size of the new Jetta, it is now on par or larger then most everything else for interior room.

The interior is pleasant enough.  Again if you were to read a number of reviews you’d think it was all hard plastic from the mid 1990’s, but that’s not the case.  Sure there are cars in this class that might have a slightly higher grade of materials, but there is plenty of soft touch surfaces inside.  Yes, everything could be a bit better, but VW tried that before and it didn’t work. 


If there was something that did frustrate us with the car it was the infotainment system.  It was not very intuitive, and the direction, once you could find them in the owners manual, were as clear as squid ink.  We did figure everything out after a time, but we can’t say there weren’t a few not for prime time words used in the process.

Something else that the critics would have you believe is that the 2.5 liter five cylinder is as smooth as 16 grit sandpaper.  OK, so it’s not silky like a 4.2 liter Jaguar inline 6, but what is?  The five cylinder runs well, has really good torque, paired with the five speed manual transmission we described the performance to to others as “plucky”.  As we said the car has really good low end torque, not V8 level torque, but with the number of small four cylinders we’ve driven of late that have NO power below 4,000 rpms, it was nice.  There was torque steer, but it wasn’t objectionable.  In fact, it was enjoyable to drive.

The styling on the new Jetta has also been very controversial because it is so safe.  Again, Volkswagen took the temperature of the market with this car, it looked at what the best selling cars in the segment are, Civic, Altima and Corolla, and decided that bold styling is not something that people look for.  Ford with the new Focus and Hyundai with the new Elantra are trying to change that, but if you look at the Mazda3, it hasn’t worked  for that model.

Fuel mileage for the Jetta was also good.  It is rated by the EPA at 23 city and 33 highway.  We put 400 miles on the Jetta, and saw 27 combined and 34.5 on a 90 mile highway loop.  As always we did not try to drive for maximum mpg, rather we drove this car as if it were our own.

In the end we came away very surprised with the new Jetta given everything that we had read, and had been told by other colleagues.  It is a very solid car, and very good value.  Our SEL model stickered at $23,065.  It had an upgraded touch screen stereo with SatNav, 17” alloys, sunroof, and electronic limited slip differential.  It is almost the same price as the Hyundai Elantra Limited we tested a couple months back, and while the Hyundai has better styling, and may cost a few dollars less, the Jetta was more fun to drive and returned the same gas mileage, even though the Hyundai is rated MUCH higher.

So, as we said at the top, sometime the critics are wrong, VW took a shot in judging that what the market wanted was good value, and they have been rewarded with sales of the Jetta up 70% over the previous model!  Customers often say they want one thing, but when it comes time to scratch a check actual cost and perceived value end up being  the deciding factor.  Sure the new Jetta could be higher spec, but at what cost to the sticker price and at what cost to total sales?

Go drive a Jetta and decide for yourself, but we think you will come away thinking, “what was all the bashing about from the automotive elite?”  If VW wants to send us another one for review we’d be happy to drive it, just this time can we get the TDI please??!!

Check out our photo gallery to see all the images of the 2011 Jetta.

Posted on

Reviewed 2010 Ford Raptor 6.2 – A Thirty Gallon Bucket Of Awesomesauce

Nothing succeeds like success, and few things are as enjoyable as excess and that, in a nutshell, is the Ford Raptor.  Built to give people a street replica of a Baja racer, but something far more than just a sticker job with some “special-edition-badging”, the Raptor feels as if with just a little prep, you could go out and run it in the 8100 class.

The Raptor starts out as a short bed, extended cab (crew cab available for 2011) and then goes in for some serious gym work.  There are 12 inches of suspension travel in the front and 13 in the rear, 35” tall BF Goodrich off road tires and some killer FOX Racing shocks on all four corners 

The front grill is unique to the Raptor, along with some additional running lights both on the front and in the back.  Our test unit came with the optional $1,075 graphics package, which is a blocky representation of dirt being thrown up on the truck.  It’s something that we’d skip.  We’ve seen the Raptor in several colors, our black test unit, Blue and in Silver without the graphics package and we prefer the cleaner look.  If we want the look of dirt on the side of the truck, we’ll take it into the dirt and mud and put it there the traditional way, thank you.

The five and a half foot box on the Raptor seems small and perhaps it is, but there is an optional bed extender that we would probably get. Also, Ford offers the integrated tailgate step as an option.  Neither was on our test vehicle but we can say, unless you have a 38” inseam, we’d highly recommend that tailgate step.  With the truck sitting as high as it does, getting up into the bed is not the easiest of tasks.

 

Not only does the truck sit high, but also, it is quite wide.  Our driveway is seven feet wide and the edges of the tires went over the edges and onto the grass on both sides!  Being that wide, it takes a bit of getting used to driving down the road as it takes up almost the entire width of the lane.  If you live in an area where the roads are narrow, it’s something that you’ll have to be mindful of when traffic approaches in the opposite direction.

There is a nice slab of steel for you to step up into in the cabin of the Raptor.  The step serves three purposes, (a) a step duh! (b) a nice skid plate when you go off roading to protect your doors, and (c) a payback mechanism for door dings.  If someone opens their door next to hou without paying attention, rather than your door getting a nick in it, their door will get a nice dent in its edge, coming against that nice bit of plate steel!

 

Once you climb up into the cabin, you have a lot of room. Driver and passengers are separated by a wide center console, which has a very deep storage bin.  There are also four auxiliary switches built in for your future modification needs like auxiliary lights,  winches, etc. Our test unit had the optional orange seat accents that are a take-it-or-leave-it thing.  They offered a nice contrast to the rest of the interior, but it may be a bit too much for others.  The steering wheel has a nice meaty feel to it and when you hold it at the ten and two position, it feels custom molded to your hands.

Being an extended cab model there is a back seat for three.  It’s a fairly useable space, though we wouldn’t want to ride back there for a long time unless the people in the front two seats were on the shorter end of the scale.  With the seats adjusted back for a six-foot plus person, legroom is tight; set for people of normal height, it’s okay.

 

Our test unit was also equipped with the 700-watt Sony sound system with full SYNC and navigation system.  This is not a cheep option at $2,430 but it’s so well done, it’s hard to argue not ordering this.  One thing that will be very useful is that SYNC, with the nav system, can direct you to the nearest gas station via voice command.  It’s a place you’ll become very intimate with, owning and driving the Raptor: the gas station, that is.

The big upgrade that came later in the 2010 model year was the availability of the 6.2-liter engine, which is now the only available engine for 2011.  While the old 5.4-liter engine can trace its roots back to the early 90’s 4.6 V8 that appeared in the Crown Vic, this is an all-new engine for Ford.  411 horsepower and 434 lb/ft of torque are the ratings for the 6.2 and unlike the 5.4, it has power across the entire range.  While we would never complain if more power was available, we can say that we were very happy  with what was on tap for this power plant, save one thing and we’ll get to that in just a second.  Driving in the city, getting on the highway, or just when you feel the need to romp on the gas, the 6.2 has power on demand and makes life oh so enjoyable.

 

When you buy a truck like the Raptor, fuel mileage is probably not high on your list of concerns.  If you can afford a $48,525 pickup truck, you aren’t worried about a trade off of gas in the tank or food on the table for your family.  All that said, when the window sticker says in bold face type, “FUEL ECONOMY RATINGS NOT REQUIRED ON THIS VEHICLE,” you know people at the Whole Foods store aren’t going to be smiling at you when you park in their lot.

To see what we could do for mileage, we went on the highway at night so there was little traffic, set the cruise at 75-mph and drove for 45 miles.  According to the readout on the dash, 14.1mpg is what we got.  There is an upside; in city driving, your mileage will only fall off about 2-3mpg.  Therein lies the rub: the motor has enough power to make the truck feel great yet the problem is that it comes at a pretty big cost in fuel economy although the 5.4 was not any better.

The engine we’d love to see under the hood of the Raptor is the EcoBoost V6.  Not that we’d expect it to get 20mpg, but if it could get something close to 18, that would be huge.  The EcoBoost is about to come on line for other F-150 trucks and Ford is going to run it in this year’s Baja 1000 so maybe, for 2012 or 2013, it will be an option.  It has similar power and torque numbers to the 6.2, but at a higher efficiency.  We’ll have to wait for the official EPA numbers to come out on the EcoBoost F-150 before we can calculate what that would mean for the Raptor.  Look: save it, we know where you are going.  Yes, we’d kill to have a turbo diesel, but you can find the PowerStroke Raptor at notgoingtohappen.com, all right?

The Raptor is equipped with a six-speed automatic transmission and it does a good job.  In our highway mileage test, 75 miles an hour in sixth gear was 2100 rpm.  The transmission shifted smoothly and precisely and there was no slushy vague feeling in it.  It also had a tow/haul mode and an option to shift it manually.  While our test unit did have the trailer-towing package with brake controller, we didn’t have the opportunity to hook it up and pull anything in our few days with the truck.

 

On the roads and on the highways, the Raptor rides firm but it’s not jarring.  This is no Town Car pillow top ride; it is an off road truck after all but it is a comfortable ride.  For as high of a center of gravity as the Raptor has, and as tall as the tires are, it handles fairly well.  It’s nimble enough to handle tight parking garages and just fits under the 6’8” height limit of most parking structures around us.

While we didn’t get to truly run the Raptor off road on trails or fire roads, we did find a few fields to rip it up on, and the s&*t eating grin on our face didn’t go away for hours!  There were hidden ruts and holes in the field and the Raptor went over them like it was nothing.  Given what we believe the shock valving and spring rates to be, to a point, the faster you go, the smoother the ride should be.

There is one dangerous aspect to the Raptor: to your driving record that is. The truck goes 90 on the highway like most cars go 60.  There were several times we looked down on the speedometer and had to do a check up.  The Raptor is smooth and quiet at those speeds.  Most tires geared for off road are also quite noisy at highway speeds, not so with these BFG’s.  They made no more noise than your standard all season radials on the family sedan.

 

People love the Raptor. It doesn’t matter if it’s the young kids in the neighborhood, people in the Costco parking lot, or just driving down the road; people look at you and smile, tell you that it’s a cool truck and give you a thumbs up.  When you buy something like the Raptor, it’s doubtful that you are looking for affirmation from others about your purchase, but it is a nice thing to have.

The Ford Raptor is everything you hoped it would be and more, that’s why we describe it as a 30 gallon bucket of awesomesauce.  It’s a truck that exceeds your expectations, and you are always looking for an excuse to go out and drive it, even if it’s just on surface streets.  We wish we would have had the time to head out to Chrysler’s off road course in Chelsea, MI to really pound it on some trails and mud, but it wasn’t in the cards and couldn’t be arranged.

Would we buy this with our own money, you bet!  It’s a truck that’s worth $48,000?  If you consider that a similarly optioned F-150 FX4 is $43,000, then you would have to add wheels, tires and suspension, etc., to bring it up to the Raptor’s level, you are coming out at the same or higher cost, so yes.  Almost $50,000 for a pickup truck is amazing, but Ford, Chevy and Dodge, can all get you into three quarter and one ton trucks from north of $60,000 these days, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. 

If you get the chance, go drive a Raptor 6.2, you won’t be able to wipe the smile from your face for weeks and that, more than anything, is why trucks like this exist.

Posted on

Reviewed: 2011 Toyota Prius – The Hyper-milers Bugati Veyron

The Toyota Prius is an interesting vehicle in that it draws very strong reactions. For certain group of enthusiasts the Prius is a coming sign of the apocalypse, for another group of enthusiasts, it is as if it came down from the hand of the Almighty himself. For yet another group of people, it is a tool for them to shout out loudly that they are morally superior to everyone else in the world, because they drive a hybrid.

 

Believe it, or not, the Toyota Prius is a hard-core enthusiast machine. It just doesn’t happen to be the hard-core enthusiast machine one would think of if you come from a traditional gearheads mindset. And yet, it is to the hyper milers what a Ferrari 458 or Bugatti Veyron would represent.  Go to a gathering of hyper-milers for any competition they put on, and you will find people who have tricked out Prius’  just like a hot roder might trick out a 5 liter Mustang. The funny thing is, the group of people who would trick out said Mustang to run 10 second-quarter miles on pump gas hold as much disdain for the Prius and its owners, as the Prius owners do for the Mustang crowd. And yet, their passion, their ingenuity, and their commitment to their cause is exactly the same, it’s just that they come from totally opposite ends of the spectrum.

 

The Toyota Prius has come a long way in the decade plus it is been on the market.  Even in the last couple years, before this current iteration, while one could marvel at the engineering of the car, it felt as much like an appliance, as it ever did in automobile. Because the focus was always on engineering and fuel mileage, everything else took a backseat. The exterior design was often best described as awkward, and the interiors used more plastic than the Fisher-Price aisle at Toys “R” Us. The latest generation of Prius’ has sought to fix some of these issues. The exterior design of the car has certainly been crafted in a wind tunnel with little regard for aesthetics. That said, the unique shape of the Prius makes it stand out, which from Toyota’s point of view, may have been the point from the start. When you see a Prius go down the road, you won’t mistake it for any other car. To the douche bag crowd it screams, “look at me look at me I’m driving a hybrid!” These are of course the same people who drive their Prius Hybrid in the HOV lane, by themselves, at 85 to 90 miles an hour, not exactly being kinder to the environment than the four people riding in an SUV.

 

Compared to previous generations the interior of the current Prius is light years ahead. While it still contains quite a bit of plastic it is of much higher quality and much more tastefully done. In fact,  the quality of materials inside the Prius are almost up to the level of what  one would expect in this price range. It’s still a bit stark, but it no longer feels like a low-grade appliance, it feels like an automobile interior. Some of the materials feel a bit thin the layout of the center console is still a bit odd the placement of the switches for the heated seats is a head scratcher, placed as they are in an open space underneath the console between the seats.

 

The dashboard arrangement itself is a bit odd, rather than instrumentation being in front of you, it’s off to the center, not exactly in the direct line of sight. If you are trying to keep an eye on the power meter to maximize your battery usage, or see how high you can keep your instant fuel economy, it’s difficult to both do that, and pay attention to what you’re driving down the road. If any vehicle called for a heads-up display the Prius certainly has to be at the top of the list. The quote enthusiast unquote who try to maximize mileage i.e. the hyper milers, pay attention to this power meter more than anything else in the car. This means, that they aren’t paying attention to what’s happening on the road in front of them. It becomes a bit of the video game, and that’s not exactly what you want going on as you’re driving on the road.

 

The whole purpose of owning a Prius, is very high fuel economy. In the time that we spent with the Prius, the mileage that we got, was ordinary at best. Ordinary, from what the EPA sticker says it should get, what the hyper miler enthusiasts get, and what a comparable modern clean diesel can get. We put over 700 miles on the Prius during our time with it, and what we saw on our highway runs was a high of 44 miles to the gallon. In the city where the Prius should get better mileage we saw about the same number. While 44 miles to the gallon is nothing to sneeze at, we can think of other cars that can get the same or better mileage, that we would prefer to drive. Our 44 mpg on the highway was with the cruise control set at 75 mph. Some will claim that if you wanted to maximize fuel mileage that speed is too high, and that you should not use the cruise control. Perhaps they have a point, but in us reviewing the Prius, our goal was not to drive it for maximum mileage, rather, it was to drive it like any other ordinary car, and see what the results were.

 

Because every effort was made to maximize mileage in this car, it’s not the most comfortable highway cruiser. The car is sprung rather stiffly, and the low rolling resistance tires mounted on the car don’t exactly provide a supple ride. In fact, you pretty much feel every expansion joint, pothole, and road imperfection, transferred right into the seat. Also, in an effort to save weight, there is not an abundance of sound deadener in the car.  While level of road noise transferred into the car is not objectionable, it was more noticeable than other cars in its peer group.

 

One very positive note we have for the Prius is that it can haul quite a bit of stuff. We had our Prius over the Christmas holidays, and it handled not only all of our luggage, but quite a few packages and other related things that we needed to take along with us. With the back seat folded down, which do fold flat, there is a very useful amount of cargo room in the Prius, even with the hatchback cutting into some of the room.

 

No one can deny that the Prius is a very successful car. In the US market, hybrids account for 2.5% of all vehicles sold. Of that 2.5%, the Toyota Prius accounts for 50% of those sales, 50 percent! In fact, the Toyota Prius sells about 125,000 units a year, that is nearly half of the total volume of sales for the Camry, which is the best-selling car in the United States. The Prius also has a very loyal ownership group. Most of the people who have owned Prius’ have bought or will by another one. So in this matter Toyota knows exactly what they’re doing and is executing well on it. The question then becomes, can they expand sales of the Prius and the Prius brand to more than this segment of the market?  Toyota is certainly going to try as the Prius V will be coming out in the summer and Toyota also looks to expand the Prius brand with other models in the very near future.

 

The Toyota Prius is certainly a remarkable feat of engineering and a brilliant bit of marketing.  As we have said earlier, to a certain group of its ownership it is the ultimate hard-core performance automobile, just not the hard-core performance automobile that would typically come to mind. The problem for us is that we are the traditional gearhead, so this car is a bit lost on us. While we certainly can acknowledge the feat of engineering, for us, and this is the most important point, we can find no passion in with this car. 

 

While it certainly has come many steps forward from literally being an automotive appliance, we just cannot find any enthusiasm for the car. That does not mean that the Toyota Prius is a bad car, because it’s not, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do, for the group that it’s intended to.  And, based on the passion and loyalty of its owners it’s right on target. For us, we are not in that target market and no matter how objective you try to be, you are who you are. For us we would bypass the Toyota Prius for several other options, but for the group of people, and they are a large group of people, who view automobiles as nothing more than a tool, the Toyota Prius is an excellent vehicle which has great versatility for hauling the family around, commuting to and from work, and being a fine all-around car, and it also get very good, though not spectacular fuel mileage.  You certainly could do much worse than the Toyota Prius.

If you would like to see the full gallery of pictues just click this link


Posted on

Reviewed: 2011 Lexus RX 350

 

 

Go to any upscale community, and you are likely to find a plethora of Lexus RX 350s. In fact, they are so ubiquitous, that Audi made a great commercial a couple years ago, about how when you went to look for your Lexus you couldn’t find them in a sea of sameness. The question then becomes, is the Lexus RX 350 so popular because it’s a good SUV, or just because it’s the safe choice. This is what we set out to find out.

Our all-wheel-drive test unit arrived just after a big snowstorm. When it arrived, it was a perfect example of what you would find at any upscale high school soccer match. Our test unit was white with a cream-colored interior. If you were to go to one of the local upscale malls, it definitely would be important to remember where you parked because, you are likely to see 30 or 40 other cars that look exactly like this test unit.

When you look at the styling of the Lexus RX 350 certainly doesn’t do anything wrong, but then again there is nothing to distinguish it either. Like most vehicles that sell well, styling that doesn’t it’s stand out is often a key factor.   For some however, in not trying to offend anyone with conservative styling is in itself somewhat offensive. You could say much the same about the interior of the RX 350 as well. The materials are nice, fit and finish are excellent, as you would expect from a Toyota product, and the whole package itself inside is nice.

When we had the RX 350 in for review, it was a particularly cold week here in Metro Detroit. The extreme cold weather pointed out two glaring issues we had with the interior of the Lexus RX 350. Number one, was that the wood trimmed steering wheel had no heat element in it, therefore gripping it with un-gloved hands, in single digits to below zero Fahrenheit temperatures, was rather uncomfortable. We found ourselves  using the sleeves of our coat to hold on to the steering wheel until the interior came up to temperature. We would gladly trade the wood rimmed wheel for leather wrapped one that had a heated steering unit for occasions such as this.

The second issue, was the fact that the seat heaters took forever to warm up, and on their highest setting of three, is what we would call in any other vehicle a low setting. Again, sitting down on a cold leather seat on a single degree Fahrenheit temperature day is not the most pleasant experience. The fact that it would take five or or ten minutes to feel any heat coming from the seat, this, certainly didn’t win any marks in our books.

With those two exceptions we had no other real gripes with the interior of RX 350. The the ride was very quiet , the telematics system worked good enough, once you got use to the “mouse” for navigation, the stereo was good though not exceptional, and for the kids our test unit had dual rear seat DVD players.

Driving the RX 350 was a rather unremarkable experience. Again, in typical Toyota fashion, it’s not that the Lexus does anything wrong, it’s just that nothing stands out.  The Lexus drives down the road just fine, handles well, sucks up the potholes of Metro Detroit just fine, and transports you to your destination safely and comfortably.

The difficulty in evaluating this particular Lexus is that we don’t follow into its key demographic. Most of the people who drive the RX 350, are upper-middle-class soccer moms, who live in suburbia where conformity is the norm. What we mean by conformity, is that they all send tend to shop at the same big-box stores, watch the same home-improvement shows, and have the same aspirations for their children. If you’ve ever seen the movie Pleasantville it’s kind of like that, just a bit more upscale.

As you can imagine, as a 41-year-old white male with no children, save one large dog,  it’s not exactly the vehicle that with appeal to us. However, we can say, that the RX 350 does do a good job of hauling an eight-year-old English mastiff around. In any SUV that comes to us for testing, this is one of the most important test for us. After all, since we have no children to haul around, no school runs to make, and are more likely to head to the Home Depot or Lowe’s, rather than hardware restoration or the Pottery Barn, these are the measurements that we had.

Fuel mileage for the Lexus was reasonable during our time with the vehicle. In very cold conditions in mixed driving, we saw 22 miles to the gallon. While this is nothing that stands out in the class, it is right in line with the norms. The V-6 engine provides plenty of power, sure, it would be nice to have more, but for 95% of the people who will buy this vehicle, it would be pointless. The RX 350 accelerates away from stoplights just fine has plenty of power for merging onto the freeways, and will roll down those freeways at 80 miles an hour with nary a worry.

Trying to come up with an overall evaluation of the RX 350 was fairly difficult for us. It’s a vehicle designed for people that we aren’t. Lexus’ tend to be for people who view cars as appliances, but like a little bit of luxury with their appliances. Think of it this way, the Lexus RX 350 is like going into Best Buy, and getting a Samsung refrigerator, but buying the stainless steel model, rather than the white one. It’s not a Viking, or SubZero, or a Wolf, it’s just a very nice refrigerator with an upscale finish.

The idea with the RX 350, like most Lexus’, is to offer a comparable non-offensive way to transfer yourself, and your family,  in a bit of luxury. The RX 350 will do nothing to offend you, and for most people that’s exactly what they’re looking for. People who buy Lexus’ are not enthusiast, and therefore you can’t look at the Lexus through the microscope that an enthusiast would. For an enthusiast, it’s hard to imagine buying a vehicle, that doesn’t either excite you, or make you look forward to driving it. For a vast majority of America, they just want something that gets the job done. The Lexus RX 350  certainly does that. If you like to blend into the crowd, want of vehicle that’ll never have to worry about, or not have your neighbors shocked by the choice of vehicle showing up in your driveway, the RX 350 certainly qualifies.

The best way to sum up the Lexus RX 350 as this, it is Häagen-Dazs French vanilla ice cream. It’s very good, it’s much better than the store brand, it’s a great standby, it’s just not something that’s going to get you excited.

If you’d like to see the rest of the pictures of the Lexus RX 350, please have a look in our photo gallery here.

 

Posted on

Reviewed: 2011 Ford Edge

Rumblestrip.NET had a chance to spend a week with the refreshed 2011 Ford Edge.  This Crossover is a keystone in Ford’s lineup, and we wanted to see if Ford could take this from just another Crossover to something that would stand out against the rest.

Ford has been on a huge roll these past couple years, will this newly sharpened Edge continue the trend?  Find out in our video review.

Posted on

Reviewed: 2011 Hyundai Elantra

Hyundai has been on quite a roll these past few years, and with the new 2012 Elantra, they are looking to to move the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic aside to become the leading compact car from Asia.  The U.S. manufactures are on the case this time though as the new Chevy Cruze and Ford Focus are very strong competitors in this market now.  So how good is the new Elantra?  Watch the video and find out.

 

 

Have a look at the slide show of all the pictures we took of the Elantra as well.

 

Posted on

Reviewed: 2011 Scion tC

In the middle of the recent Michigan snowpocolypse we had a chance to spend a week the 2011 Scion tC.  It’s been a long time since Toyota produced a car that was really fun to drive, you have to look back to the MR2 for that.  So, what did we think of this Scion, have a look at the video to find out!

Posted on

Ford F250 Super Duty Powerstroke Diesel: A 21st Century Clydesdale

According to Wikipedia, the Clydesdale is “a breed that was extensively used for pulling heavy loads in rural, industrial and urban settings.”  If that doesn’t fit the 2011 F250 Super Duty Powerstroke diesel like a custom measured Savile Row suit, then nothing does.

Like the Clydesdale the F250 Super Duty is large and imposing.  It’s a truck that you don’t get into so much as you climb up and mount.  Unless you are driving an 18-wheeler, you will be looking down at all the traffic around you.

Short of hooking up a 53 foot semi trailer, there is little that you can think of that the this truck couldn’t pull with it’s 800 ft/lb of torque at the ready.  The motor has so much power and torque you often think it could tow the Space Shuttle to the launch pad.

What this truck was meant for though, was not runs to the local big box home improvement store, so much as it was for pulling 24-40 foot long trailers full of tools and construction equipment, racecars and horses.  Even then, you get the feeling that the truck would shrug that off as if it was just a light workout.

From the front of the car the F250 Super Duty has a strong presence.  The big two horizontal chrome bars give it a very muscular appearance.  If you see the grill of the F250 coming up quickly in your rear view mirror, you’ll move over right away.

Climbing up into the truck you are greeted by a wide-open, spacious cabin.  It’s a comfortable place to do business from with a commanding view of the road.  The revised instrument panel has a new LCD screen between the speedometer and the tach,  which has six different menus for the driver to choose from.  There are the ubiquitous fuel readings for instant mileage, average mileage, miles to empty, and there is a bar graph in it that tracks the information to give you a different take on it.  There are also menus, if you are going off roading, that show you pitch, roll and yaw angles graphically which is a cool touch.

With the new layout for the I.P. there is also a new layout for the buttons on the steering wheel to control the center LCD as well as the 7” touch screen with SYNC.

 The center stack has a seven-inch touch screen, which does a good job providing information but inside the massive cabin it feels a bit small in scale.  The center stack also includes four auxiliary switches for trailer lights or other off road lights.  There are inputs for USB, 1/8th inch aux and several 12V plugs as well.

As everything in the Super Duty is larger, not only is the center console extra wide, it’s about two feet deep!  There are also four cup holders between the two front seats rather than the usual two.

Outside of a Maybach 62, there are few vehicles that have more back seat leg room than in the Super Duty Crew Cab.  If you are bringing a crew with you to a job site, out to the lake towing a boat, or to the racetrack, throwing three full size adults in the back will draw no complaints.

With a three quarter ton truck this large you’d be surprised if the ride wasn’t a bit rough without any weight in the bed, or a trailer hooked up, but you would be wrong.  The ride is no worse than any standard SUV these days, the only exceptions were on some choppy freeways at times but it wasn’t too objectionable.  You would have no complaints if this was to be your daily driver.

Let’s make no mistake about it: this is a very large truck, in height, width and length.  We’ve talked about how you don’t get into the truck so much as mount it: it’s so tall that even with the tail gate step down and the grab bar up, it’s still a really tall step to get up into the bed.  In width it is right at seven feet wide in the rear track, with the side view mirrors brought in all the way you can add another eighteen inches to that, push out the telescoping side view mirrors to their full extension and it’s 28” wider!

If you live in an older neighborhood as we do where driveways are narrow, street can maybe fit one car down the middle if cars are parked on both sides, and if someone parks up close to your driveway, game over.  There were multiple times we had to execute a seven-point turn to get into the driveway.  The rear view camera was indispensable in situations like this since it’s difficult to judge those distances behind you.

Let’s talk about the all-new PowerStroke engine that’s in the Super Duty.  This is an all-new design by Ford.  The 7.3 PowerStoke that was designed by Navistar is still a well regarded engine, but the 6.0 and 6.4 had multiple problems that are still involved in litigation and ultimately killed the long standing relationship between Navistar and Ford.

This new engine is a world-class effort.  It is quiet; not something that could be said for the Navistar engines.  When you go through a drive through you don’t have to turn off the engine so you can place your order.  On the inside you occasionally get some noise from the injectors, but that is fairly subdued, and there is almost no diesel clatter that comes through into the cabin.  You aren’t going to mistake it for a gasoline engine in sound, but it’s not what you are used to from a big truck.

Power-wise, with the factory ECU re-flash, the engine produces 400 horsepower and 800 ft/lb of torque.  You can tell just how much power this is when you put your foot into it with the traction control fully engaged.  By 1,900 rpm, you can feel the power being pulled pack and if you stay in the throttle you can really feel how much the computer is holding back the truck.  Turn off the traction control and it’s night and day.  When the turbo builds up to full boost, which it does very quickly you can smoke the rear tires at will.

Pulling away from stop lights or merging onto the freeway, you never have a problem getting where you need to go, and with a truck this big, when people see you coming they tend to yield to you since they know they aren’t going to win that fight.

The other part of the engine is the fuel mileage.  When we had the Ford Raptor with the 6.2 V8, we were light on the throttle and just squeezed out 11mpg city and 14 highway; there were often times we were seeing single digit numbers for fuel economy.  With the SuperDuty diesel, which is a larger truck that weighs another 1,500-2,000 pounds more than the Raptor, we never tried to take it easy with the throttle, and still we saw 15.5mpg in the city and 19mpg on the highway!  You see that and you no longer have to wonder why so many people want to see a diesel in the Raptor or any half-ton truck.  Our highway loop is a 90-mile run where we can set the cruise control at 78mph and never touch it, and with that we got 19 mpg on the highway: for us, that is an amazing number for an 8,000 pound truck.

When you see a $60,000 sticker price on a pickup truck it’s a bit shocking to say the least.  But when you look at the level of equipment and technology that comes with that sticker price, it’s a little easier to take.  Compared to the SuperDuty’s peers from GM and Dodge, the price is right in line, and for the people that would buy a crew cab 4×4 diesel truck, you know what you are getting into.

Would we buy this truck?  Not at the moment as we don’t have a racecar, boat, RV or heavy equipment to move.  If we did, this truck would be very high on the list because it does everything you could ask of it, and does it with style and class, and if you are going to drop sixty larger on a truck, you are going to demand perfection, and the F250 SuperDuty comes very close to that.