Special Car, auto, cars, vehicles

After only a mile on the road, I realize I'm in for a week of utter mayhem. The traffic is heavy, seemingly without rule, and of, well, a diverse variety. Naturally, there are the usual suspects, i.e. cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, and buses. But in India an array of other vehicles, including tuk-tuks (three-wheeled, motorized rickshaws), motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles -- all of which toot their horns and ringers as if performing Beethoven's Fifth -- transform the streets into a mosh pit of wheels. Add in throngs of pedestrians and a potpourri of on-the-loose animals -- dogs, cows, goats, and pigs, to name a few -- and what you get is a blend of traffic jam, walk-a-thon, and zoo. Making things worse, there appears to be no right of way on the road; rather, it's first come, first go, be it on two, three, or four wheels, or two or four legs.

As we near the hotel in Fisherman's Cove, a lovely stretch of beach along the Bay of Bengal, the city landscape proves equally incongruous. Shacks and tents and dilapidated dwellings mix with brand-new factories and car dealerships, well-kept colleges, and pristine pharmaceutical plants. The scene looks like a tornado ripped through, scattering trash and damaging buildings, sacrificing only the ones the wealthy constructed. Arriving at FishCo, as the locals call it, I begin wondering, What will it be like to drive a $300,000 Ferrari through these towns, villages, and cities where conditions are a striking juxtaposition of future and past, first-world and third-world? Only one way to find out.

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.

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.