Special Car, auto, cars, vehicles

Aston Martin is no stranger to the ALMS series, having contested both the 2005 and 2006 seasons, scoring a total of six wins. Meanwhile, Corvette Racing has won the GT1 class for the last seven consecutive years, narrowly beating Aston Martin during the 2006 season at the final race at Laguna Seca Raceway. An E85-powered Aston Martin Vantage GT2 will contest the GT2 class for the 2008 ALMS season, campaigned by Drayson-Barwell, where primary competition will come from Ferrari and Porsche. Together, the two entries signify a strong return for Aston Martin to North American road racing.

"We hope we can make things interesting this year for the Corvettes and especially fans," said Jim Bell, team principal of Bell Motorsports and an ALMS competitor since the series' inaugural race. "They have clamored for competition, and we intend to give it our best shot."

The season-opening 12 Hours of Sebring will be televised live by the SPEED network on March 15.

Rain greeted us as we departed San Diego for the twisting roads northeast of the city. As we climbed Highway 79 toward the small town of Julian, the rain transformed into sleet. By the time we'd reached Warner Springs (elevation: 3130 feet), it was snowing. Hard. We'd barely dug into lunch when it became evident the snow wasn't abating; in fact it was getting worse. Change of plans. Stop lunch. Get in cars. Back to sea level. Now.

I can hear the vast number of you laughing. Snow? Big deal. Get on with it. And you're right: The snowfall wasn't any worse that what I regularly encountered back when I lived through Michigan winters. But Michiganders are accustomed to driving through the white stuff. Most San Diego locals are used to . . . blue skies and 72 degrees. How are they supposed to know that snow and ice are, you know, cold and slippery?

We'd barely departed our lunch stop when we ran into our first accident. Or should I say, when it almost ran into us. Crawling along in a line of cars going 20 mph, I looked up to see two sheriff's Expeditions approaching rapidly in my rear-view mirror, sirens and lights ablaze. I pulled over. Just as I did, the lead Expedition suddenly skidded under power, rocketed up the opposite embankment, and flipped with a huge crash! back onto the highway -- landing on its side. Just as the first Ford stopped sliding, the second black-and-white Expedition flashed past doing more than 50 mph . . . the sheriff just managed to squeeze between me and her wrecked partner (another foot to the right, and she'd have wadded up my poor little TSX and me like a chewing-gum wrapper).

I carefully climbed out of the car, tip-toeing across the icy surface to the crashed Expedition. It looked like a wounded T-Rex: feet in the air, broken wipers flailing wildly like miniature claws, massive bulk cast cruelly across the road. I peered in the windshield, fearing the worst. The cop was sitting on the passenger window -- now the floor -- his foot hooked in the steering wheel and his expression dazed. "Are you okay?" I pounded on the windshield. He yelled back, "I'm fine!" As in, "leave me alone." He was in shock, but seemed coherent and more or less intact. By now his partner had stopped her Expedition and was running toward us, frantic. "He's okay," I yelled. "Did you call it in already?" She nodded. "Backup is on the way." By now the crashed sheriff had unwound himself and was standing on the passenger door, his head poking out the driver's window. "Boy, was than an E-ticket ride," he said, looking more sheepish than hurt.

With help already arriving, our caravan pressed on. Not fifteen minutes later we reached another wreck. This time, a car had spun across the two-lane mountain road, blocking both the northbound and our southbound lanes. We had to park and wait for an hour before a tow truck cleared our lane; the northbounders remained struck in the rapidly accumulating snow. We pressed on at a crawl.

Soon we reached yet another crash -- and another road blockage. After waiting about ten minutes, a few of us had had enough. We turned around, detoured onto a nearby side road, and headed downhill. Within 20 minutes, after we'd descended about 1000 feet, the snow had turned back into rain, and the road cleared. Ninety minutes later we reached base camp -- er, our hotel -- in San Diego.

I'm happy to report that all the TSX test cars arrived back safely and in one piece. Many on the mountain weren't so fortunate, though: In addition to the crashes we witnessed, news reports the next day confirmed that hundreds of motorists had been stranded on the mountain overnight.

Version 2.0 suffers from none of these indignities. The clatter has been virtually eliminated -- oh, sure, it's still there, but no more so than the telltale rumble of a V-8 under the hood of a Mustang GT -- the pollution has been eliminated with trick technology designed to meet California's stringent emissions regulations (unlike Europe, the U.S. has one single standard for diesel and gasoline engines), and the mechanical problems look to be a ghost of the past.

We've already sampled offerings from three of the four major European players in the diesel game -- Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen. Last month, we took a brand-new Mercedes-Benz ML320 BlueTEC on a cross-country voyage from Los Angeles to New York with an old 190D playing Robin to the M-Class' Batman. El Jefe MacKenzie has just finished putting major miles on a brand-new 2009 BMW 335d in Europe that will eventually be spending a year in our garage, joining the recently arrived 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI. Now its Audi's turn.

Auto Union will enter the fray next year with a 3.0L turbodiesel V-6 under the hood of its Q7 SUV. The engine makes 225 hp and over 400 lb-ft of torque and can hit as high as 25 mpg. To prove that the latter figure isn't just an empty boast, Audi is putting on the Audi Mileage Marathon, a 13-day, four-leg adventure taking journalists from New York to Los Angeles, but in a manner about as direct as our Mercedes adventure. Yours truly is on Leg Two, which runs from Chicago to Denver -- by way of Memphis, Dallas, and Amarillo. As the name implies, fuel mileage will be paramount, but there won't be any silly hypermiling tricks involved and no semis will be drafted since speed counts as well. The winner will be the person who achieves the highest average fuel economy with the highest average speed.

To ensure there are no shenanigans, Audi has brought IMSA along to monitor the action. For the uninitiated, IMSA -- the International Motor Sports Association -- is the sanctioning body for the American Le Mans Series among others. The ALMS is the most relevant since Audi's R10 has been dominating the LMP1 class there for several years. At the start of each day, the cars are given to us journalists with fully filled and sealed tanks, and there are instruments on board that monitor speed and fuel consumption. Topping off at the nearest Chevron is not an option. Besides the Q7, Audi also has A4s and Q5s on hand that feature the same 3.0L V-6, as well as a pair of A3s with a 2.0L I-4, though only the Q7 is a concrete part of Audi's North American product plan at this point.

The folks at Audi have been cagey about what fuel economy the first wave was able to achieve, merely saying it was "remarkable," but the aforementioned 25-mpg figure doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility. Tomorrow's leg to Memphis is the longest of the entire escapade, with around nine hours of travel time scheduled. Is 25 mpg a reality in a full-size luxury SUV weighing north of two and a half tons? We shall see.

Considering the Audi R10 TDI diesel's impressive racing record, I asked whether diesel might figure into a future Audi RS model. After all, AMG has sold diesel models in Europe and Audi tantalized us with the screaming V12 TDI in an R8 concept at the 2008 Detroit show. Mr. Hatz reiterated that transmission and packaging problems ultimately killed the idea of an RS8 TDI variant, but pointed out that putting that engine in the (European) Q7 makes that a Q7 RS in everything but name. It is a quattro Gmbh product, but the company is loathe to apply the RS designation to any tall, heavy SUV. He admitted, however, that the 500-hp, 738-lb-ft V-12 monster DOES indeed fit in the Lamborghini Estoque's engine bay, and Lambo literature hinted at the possibility of diesel power. But as for the normal range of RS products, the diesel engine's characteristics don't fit very well with those of the target Audi buyer. This could change, though, and if demand is strong for the forthcoming TT TDI (again in Europe only), maybe something will change.

What about hybridizing an ultra-high performance car? Too much weight, says Mr. Hatz, referring to traditional battery-electric hybrids. But what about non-traditional hybrids that might weigh in a bit lighter -- like the flywheel kinetic-energy-recovery system some Formula 1 teams are feverishly readying for the 2009 racing season? Surely the racing tie-in would make this type of hybrid ideal for RS duty. Hatz and Reil are unconvinced that a flywheel could be A) upsized to provide meaningful acceleration in a coupe or sedan weighing three times as much as an F1 racer and B) packaged safely and conveniently in the engine compartment.

From the standpoint of the average Q7 diesel buyer, the answer is more than likely no. Few if any Q7 TDI shoppers will be resorting to tactics like drafting semis or sticking to 65 mph with the dedication of a Buddhist monk. Instead, they'll set the adaptive cruise control to 75-80 and forget about it until the nav tells them it's time to exit and fuel up. On a drive as long as this one, the difference between 65 and 80 is about an hour and a half. Time, unlike fuel, can't be bought at the nearest Shell station. My partner for the trip, Jennifer Geiger of Consumer Guide, feels the same way. Conflict of interest avoided. Both of us have agreed to drive our diesel chariot the way we'd drive any other car -- since that's how it will be driven by Audi's customers.

On trips of this length, misadventures are always a possibility. But they usually don't happen within the first mile or two. As pilots of Q7 No. 1, we were told to lead the caravan and follow the video car. Unfortunately, the video car was on a different wavelength from everyone else and chose to take what can be best described as the scenic route through downtown Chicago. Jennifer, a Windy City native, repeatedly expressed her concern that we were going in every possible direction except the right one. Once everyone got in sync and the journey to Memphis finally got going, the rest of the trip has proceeded without a hitch. We've made several pit stops along the way, including lunch at the Depot Supper Club in Salem, Illinois. The closest we've gotten to another misadventure was when Jennifer had an unexpected lunchtime encounter with a German TV crew who asked her why Americans don't like diesels.

On our route through Illinois, the seemingly endless horizon of cornfields is interrupted by the occasional curiously placed subdivision. Further south, a span of various trees is replaced by more farmland. In Missouri, cotton has replaced corn. Quite a difference from what I'm used to in Southern California. We've also had several encounters throughout the day with folks curious about our heavily decaled SUV. One gentleman, who's spent some time in Europe, recognizes the TDI acronym and proceeds to praise the oil burner. Several other people, including a friend with whom I speak on the phone, pose the usual questions upon finding out we are driving a diesel: Is it loud? Does it smell? The answer of course is no. Those misconceptions are relics of a bygone era, but these encounters underscore the challenges Audi and others face in getting the mainstream public on board.

Far from being loud and rough, the 3.0L V-6 is smooth, quiet, and plenty powerful. On the highway, it's impossible to tell that the Q7 is in fact a diesel until you put the pedal to the floor and it hustles forward without much fuss. On city streets, the engine note is just different enough to give it away as different than a gas-burning V-6. Besides the engine, the diesel Q7 is remarkably similar to our since-departed 2007 Audi Q7 long-termer, which was powered by a 4.2L V-8. Though official prices won't be released until closer to the Q7 TDI's early 2009 launch, word on the street is the base price will be far less than the Q7 4.2's $60,000-plus asking price. Before options, of course.

The much shorter 450-mile journey to Dallas first took us back over the Mississippi River into Arkansas via the I-55 and then onto the I-40 toward Little Rock and much needed lunch. The Arkansas capital proved far more pleasant than I had ever expected and good eating was had at Mike Selig's Vermillion next to the river walk. After lunch, we were commandeered by another German television crew, this time they wanted to use our Q7 as a background for an interview with Gunter Schiele, one of two TDI development engineers on the trip. After they finished interviewing Schiele, they turned their attention to my driving partner Jennifer, who unexpectedly ended up on the business end of a camera yet again. Yours truly, happy to say, escaped unharmed.

After Little Rock and a detour to a local Wal-Mart for some necessities, the journey to Dallas is uneventful, though the scenery in western Arkansas transforms from cotton-filled flatlands to slightly hilly terrain with mixed forests on either side, offering much better scenery. In Texas, however, the flatlands return, though the cotton fields do not. In their place are strip malls and large parking lots filled with unsold pickup trucks. It is truly a sign of the times when dealers are having problems moving pickups in the truck capital of the country.

Two more encounters with civilians today. The first at an Arkansas rest stop with an older gentleman who is apparently an ALMS fan since, during our conversation about the TDI and its fuel economy, he brings up the mighty Audi R10. The second is at our scheduled gas station stop just outside downtown Dallas. While our car is being filled, a diesel aficionado in an early '80s Mercedes-Benz 240D pulls in to fuel his car. Based on his reaction, seeing the Q7 has made his day.

Day Two's mileage should be better than that of Day One. There are no city detours, we go at a slower pace due to an advance warning about a substantial Arkansas State Trooper presence on the state's freeways, and less maneuvering is needed due to thinner traffic. Tomorrow we head for Amarillo, Texas, where we're apparently scheduled to attend a rodeo. Beyond catching the occasional tail end of a bull riding event on Versus before a hockey game comes on, my experience with rodeos is nil. It should be interesting. At around 360 miles long, the Dallas to Amarillo segment will be the shortest of our four-day trek. The shorter distance is a welcome reprieve.