Special Car, auto, cars, vehicles

Toyota won't take this disagreement sitting down. It figures the SUV craze is pretty much over, whether gas is $4.25/gal or $2.89/gal. Sales are sliding, when compared with cars, for the huge and growing fleet of crossovers, including Toyota's own three-row Highlanders and RAV4s.

So Toyota will lower the Venza for 2010, only its second model year. (It goes on sale before the end of 2008 as an '09 model.) Based on the Camry sedan, but with some Highlander parts, the Venza's 8.1-in. ground clearance tops the Infiniti EX's (5.7 to 6.5 in.), the Chevy Traverse's (7.2 in.) and the VW Tiguan's (6.9).

It won't be enough to make the Venza a car. The '10 model will be lowered about 0.8 in., so at 7.3, its ground clearance remains in SUV territory. Toyota figures it will give the crossover a more carlike appearance, making it a kind of modern wagon or large D-segment hatchback, two identifiers that haven't moved much metal in the U.S. recently.

Toyota may do this only with the front-drive version of the Venza, as the AWD's hardware may be hard to package at a lower ride height. Even if it's just the FWD version, that's likely to make up a majority of Venza sales. Chevrolet expects to sell about 65% of its new Traverses with FWD, for example. But then, Chevy isn't trying to pass off the Traverse as a car.

To the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the '10 Venza will still be a truck -- it doesn't need to meet all eight of NHTSA's criteria to be grouped in with other trucks for Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. Remember, Chrysler got the PT Cruiser and Dodge Magnum classified as trucks, thanks largely to their flat load floors, to help balance out Hemi Rams and Durangos for CAFE. Optional rear privacy glass is the telltale sign.

Do you think this ploy will help Toyota move the Venza as a car? I don't. It still quacks just like a crossover sport/utility vehicle.

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The engine is a 2.2L DOHC 16-valve all-aluminum engine running modest 16.7:1 compression and featuring a Honeywell variable-nozzle turbocharger and common-rail direct injection. A balance shaft setup helps the big four run smoothly. In the Civic, the output is rated at 138 hp at 4000 rpm and 250 lb-ft of torque at 2000 rpm. That's 74% (106 lb-ft) MORE twist than Europe's hot-rod Civic TypeR produces! The test car has a six-speed manual -- the only transmission available at the moment, though Honda introduced an all-new homegrown automatic tailored to the high-torque of its diesel engines.

But what struck me as most interesting about my drive in the Civic was the way this so-called i-CTDi engine delivers its power and torque. Most diesels feel a bit like electric motors. They produce huge thrust at very low revs, but then the pressure on your backside steadily diminishes and is mostly gone by the time the engine reaches its low redline (typically 4000-5000 rpm). In this Honda, acceleration is modest until you reach 2000 rpm, at which point the tidal wave of torque hits, pressing you into the seat with uniform pressure right up to the 4500-rpm redline (and, truth be told, it continues fairly strongly up to 5000 revs -- I tested it, strictly in the name of science).

On day one, I reset the average fuel-economy meter and drove it the 12 miles to work on city streets in hyper-miler mode, shifting below 2000 rpm, skipping gears, driving the speed limit (45 mph max) and driving in the highest gear possible at all times. This was aided by a series of LEDs just to the right of the speedometer readout that lit up to indicate how economically I was driving. The computer display read 3.9L/100 km. That's 60 mpg, in a proper five-seater! Then for lunch I drove it 43 miles west to Ann Arbor and back at 80 mph on the freeway. That dropped the reading to 4.7L/100 km (50 mpg). The next day I drove it like a Type R, keeping my foot in it and recording the observations above. The reading dropped to 5.0L/100 km (47 mpg). I swapped with MotorCity Blogman for a while, and when I gassed it up at the end, the official reading was 41 mpg. I suspect the trip computer might be a tiny bit optimistic (Todd's not that big a lead-foot), but the overall result is impressive.

The U.S. will get a variation on the second generation of this engine (now dubbed iDTEC). Refinements include the latest ultra-high-pressure piezo-injectors, more efficient exhaust-gas recirculation, and a diesel particulate filter. To meet U.S. emissions, a new two-layer de-NOx catalyst will be used, with one layer converting diesel fuel to ammonia and the other using this ammonia to reduce the NOx .

Power in the new iDTEC engine is up 10 to 148 hp, and torque rises 8 to 258 lb-ft. Estimates put the U.S. EPA Combined economy at 42 mpg in Euro-spec trim, though cleaning up the NOx is likely to drop that a little in the TSX, presuming that vehicle gets the engine.