Five-door A3

Fuel-thrifty, smaller cars aren't always plain, utilitarian and boring. Audi's entry-level car, the A3, proves it.

For the first time since its U.S. introduction in 2005, the five-door A3 adds a diesel-powered engine and now boasts a federal government fuel mileage rating of 30 miles per gallon in city driving and 42 mpg on the highway.

The five-door, five-passenger A3 was a compelling compact-sized car before the fuel-sipping diesel went under the hood. Now, the A3's solid German road handling, premium looks and "recommended buy" rating from Consumer Reports magazine make for an even more appealing package for buyers looking to spend $30,000 to $36,000.

Though classified as a small wagon by the federal government, the A3 has the feel and some of the look of a hatchback.

Starting retail price, including destination charge, is on the high side for a hatch, though, and the diesel model is even higher than the base 2010 A3.

Starting manufacturer's suggested retail price, with destination charge, is $28,905 for a 2010 base A3 with turbocharged, four-cylinder gasoline engine and manual transmission.

The new turbocharged, diesel-powered A3 starts at $30,775 and comes with automatic transmission only. An A3 with all-wheel drive has a starting retail price of $31,675 but is available only with the gasoline four cylinder.

By comparison, the 2010 Volkswagen Golf, which has the same diesel engine with the same performance numbers, starts at $24,809 for a five-door model. A performance-oriented, 2010 Mazdaspeed3 five-door model starts at $23,945.

The A3 was positioned as a premium small car when it arrived in the United States, and the image hasn't faded, despite the fact the A3 stretches just 14 feet from bumper to bumper. The diesel has been in European A3 for years but only now comes to the States.

The A3 is a nimble car for fitting into parking spaces and slipping into cramped home garages.

The car's has the upscale Audi exterior style, and it has a substantial appearance even if it is the smallest Audi sold here. Light-emitting diode daytime running lamps, which were on the test car and are part of a $2,000 premium plus option package, are the perfect touch of jewelry.

So are 10-spoke alloy wheels, also in the premium plus package.

At first, I couldn't believe the fuel mileage display as I tested the A3. I was scooting around town, zipping down highways and not driving at all for fuel economy. Yet, the car registered just over 36 mpg.

With more fuel-conscious city/highway driving, I got it up to near 38 mpg, and the fuel gauge needle moved very slowly toward empty.

The fuel tank in the A3 can hold 15.85 gallons, so the mileage I was getting could get me some 580 miles before a fill-up.

The two-liter, double overhead cam, turbodiesel four cylinder does have a raucous diesel sound at times.

Horsepower peaks at 140, which is less than the 263 horses in the Mazdaspeed3 with 2.3-liter, turbocharged gasoline four cylinder. It's also less than the 200 horsepower in the base A3 with two-liter turbocharged gasoline four cylinder.

But I didn't notice a lack of power, especially since the diesel's torque is so forceful, and that's the power I used day in and day out in regular travels.

The A3's peak torque of 236 foot-pounds comes on at a low 1,750 rpm and makes for a spirited drive.

This compares with 280 foot-pounds of peak torque coming on at 3,000 rpm in the Mazdaspeed3. Meantime, the fuel mileage rating for the Mazda is 18/25 mpg.

The A3 doesn't feel like a lightweight car, and at more than 3,200 pounds, it's on par with the weight of a base Toyota Camry, which is much larger.

The A3 interior can seem cramped for hefty folks, especially in the back seat where a large hump in the middle of the floor detracts from the middle seat room. But two average adults back there do fine with 52.8 inches of shoulder room and 36.9 inches of headroom.

With optional power-adjustable driver seat, the A3 provides easy positioning and comfort for a range of drivers. Front-seat headroom is 39.3 inches, which is more than what's in the front seat of a Camry.

The A3's interior appeals to the serious driver, with straightforward gauges and, in the test car, a beefy steering wheel.

The interior isn't as luxurious as it is in some higher-priced Audis, though the optional dark walnut wood trim on the test car added an elegant flair.

A3 seats were supportive and a bit firm and provided comfort all through a tiring, bumper-to-bumper trip.

Rear seatbacks fold down, so maximum cargo space is a commendable 39 cubic feet. There's not a high liftover, either. With the back seats in use, cargo room is 19.5 cubic feet.

There have been two safety recalls of the 2010 Audi A3.

One includes A3s going back to the 2006 model year and involves an internal spring for the fuel tank ventilation valve that might not keep fuel from leaking during extreme driving conditions. Fuel leakage could lead to a fire, and 10,200 vehicles, including Audi TTs, were recalled.

The other recall, for 16,000 cars, including the 2009 and 2010 A3 as well as TTs and some Volkswagens, is for a heat sensor for transmission oil that could mistakenly detect high oil temperature and automatically cause the car to shift into neutral.

Geneva Motor Show

HTML clipboardOpinions differ on whether Audi’s A1 at the Geneva Motor Show is just a cynically manipulated VW Polo designed to pander to base badge snobbery or whether it is a genuine attempt to seriously compete with BMW’s MINI. Either way, this A1-based electric-drive concept aimed at urban travel is undeniably clever.

Its tiny Wankel engine under the boot floor is used as a range extender running at a constant speed, which solves the inherent problems with a rotary engine of tip sealing, excessive thirst and emissions. In battery electric driving, the front-drive A1 e-tron has a range of 31 miles. The petrol engine extends that by another 124 miles.

The vintage motorcycles

You would be more likely to see these motorcycles in a museum than on the streets of Daytona Beach during Bike Week.

There's a Munch Mammut of 1970, part of a rare line of motorcycles built with a car engine which reputedly made it the fastest bike of its era.

A 1929 Indian 45ci Hill Climber, still bearing its original paint, is on display. There's a 1950 replica of the Harley-Davidson that Norman Rockwell painted for a Saturday Evening Post cover. And there's the main showpiece, a rare 1929 Harley-Davidson JDH once owned by the Hollywood stuntman for actor Steve McQueen.

The vintage motorcycles are among the 200 to be auctioned off in DeLand at the 23rd annual Daytona Antique and Classic Bike Show and Swap Meet, at Stetson University — a sideshow to the Daytona Beach street party.

"Where else can you see an accumulation of such rare motorcycles in one spot?" said Glenn Bator, the southern California motorcycle restorer running the four-day show at Stetson's Edmunds Center. "This is the history of motorcycles."

It's not like other Bike Week shows, which usually feature flashy new Road Kings or choppers with elaborate paint schemes.

These bikes hail from European manufacturers, hard-to-find production lines or long-lost brands coveted by history buffs and high-end memorabilia collectors.

The auction was originally founded in 1987 by Jerry Wood of Crystal River, well before the business of vintage motorcycles became lucrative. The market for classic bikes boomed in the mid-1990s, as motorcycles became more mainstream and as baby boomer riders sought out the motorcycles of their youth. Wood's auction outgrew its original Daytona location and was moved to DeLand, as city officials there became more interested in drawing Bike Week crowds.

Last year, Wood announced he would fold his long-running show, but Bator stepped in to take it over. This year's events include a trade show and swap meet, a vintage motorcycle show Friday, with the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association and Saturday's auction.

Bator's own career in motorcycles started with one such collector, the late Otis Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

About 1980, Chandler attended a vintage car-racing event in Palm Springs, Calif., where Bator was selling a 1957 Harley Sportster that he had personally restored.

Car in Geneva 2010

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If you're a lover of high-end machinery designed for ultimate driving fun, three of your favoured marques could well be Ferrari, Porsche and Lotus. None of these three is a name you would immediately associate with the green-tinged motoring that our legislators would like to force upon us but, at the Geneva show, all three revealed cars designed specifically to tackle environmental sensibilities head-on.


So, meet the hybrid supercars. First up, that rare thing: a complete show surprise. No one outside Porsche knew of the 918 Spyder, and only 100 people inside. It looks broadly like a slightly shortened Carrera GT, the car whose open, mid-engined layout and carbonfibre structure it shares, but in place of a V10 engine is a 4.6-litre version of the V8 originally built, in 3.4-litre form, for the RS Spyder customer race cars.

The key point is that there are also three electric motors, one for each front wheel and one for the rear wheels built into the PDK transmission. Between them they produce up to 218bhp, using power suppled by a lithium-ion battery behind the rear bulkhead. Added to the engine's 500bhp, this allows bursts of over 700bhp – which is one reason why the 918 can lap the Nurburgring Nordschleife in seven-and-a-half minutes.



That's impressive enough, but driven with the delicacy dictated by the official EU fuel test regime it generates a scarcely-credible 70g/km of CO2. This is partly because it can cover the urban cycle section of the test on electric power alone. At the opposite extreme is a 'race' mode designed for instant and hefty helpings of additional torque, like a KERS system in Formula One. This is a hybrid of the plug-in variety, so the battery pack can be charged overnight to give up to 25km of electric-only range if needed. Other techno-cleverness includes the ability to vary the torque of each motor to act as sophisticated electronic differentials, enhancing both stability and agility.

“We considered such a car two years ago, without the plug-in feature,” says engineering chief Wolfgang Durheimer, “but the board did not approve it. However, last summer, aided by some… let's say… turbulence in the company, we decided to make a statement by adding a lot of the technology available at Weissach.




The 918 is a truly remarkable machine. Its unveiling stole some of Ferrari's thunder, for the Maranello company also showed a hybrid concept. Based on the 599, it is three years away from production but does reduce the 599's profligate 415g/km CO2 output to a commendable 250g/km. It is not a plug-in hybrid, and its batteries have a lower capacity than the Porsche's. These are the reasons why its CO2 figures are merely impressive rather than miraculous.

This time there is one electric motor, of 100bhp, mounted on the back of the double-clutch gearbox and driving the shaft that accommodates first, third, fifth and seventh gears. The lithium-ion battery packs are flat, very thin and mounted under the floor. As with the 918, the motor also acts as the petrol engine's starter and there's no separate 12-volt battery. Again, the urban cycle is run on electricity alone.

In the 599's case, the battery is as electrically flat as it is physically flat after the urban cycle, so for the extra-urban cycle the engine has to work harder than it does in a regular 599 in order to recharge the battery. This is a good thing, because an engine running under higher load with a larger throttle opening is more efficient, with lower pumping losses. One reason why supercars tend to score especially poorly on the drive-cycle tests is that all cars are measured under the same, almost ludicrously gentle acceleration rates, where a supercar's engine is at its least efficient. So we can expect to see more cars tailored, like the Ferrari and Porsche, to suit the official tests.




The Evora has an intriguing sound-synthesis system called HALOsonic, which generates the notes of a V6, a V12, a futuristic agglomeration of whines, whooshes and throbs, or a combination of 'future' and V12. It's mainly for the benefit of the occupants but it's also clearly audible from the outside, allaying fears that pedestrians won't notice near-silent electric cars. Lotus makes the Tesla, of course; the Evora 414E is the next step along a very intriguing road.