If you are looking for a mid-sized sedan that can get your daily errands completed without killing your pocketbook at the pumps, but at the same time has a sense of style and performance, then check out the Acura TSX. Speed:Sport:Life put this baby through the paces recently and found it to be a great handling machine with some top of the line features for the price.
Check out how this sleek sedan handled the Racer Boy Review Categories.
Photography and additional driving/towing impressions by Nicole Gagnon.
“What was that?”
I crack a small grin. We’re heading east on I-495 (The D.C. Beltway, for the uninitiated) in Montgomery County. If we weren’t in the middle of midsummer evening downpour, the Washington Mormon Temple would be visible in my driver’s side mirror. Well, that is, if it weren’t raining and the truck were pointed in the proper direction, at least. And my passenger is inquiring as to why that’s not the case.
“I broke the back end loose a little bit there,” I say, checking my mirrors for any alarmed travelers who may have over-reacted to my brief scuffle with the laws of physics. “We’re good.”
“Okay,” he says, as I catch his hand exploring the various hand-holds on the passenger door. “Whatever.”
Every enthusiast has a long list stashed away, often only mentally, of vehicles they want to drive before they meet their maker. I’ve got one myself, and among the Porsche 911 GT3 RS, the Ferrari F40, and the Jaguar E-Type sits a highly unlikely candidate. It’s the Ford Crown Victoria. And not some highly tuned G-man edition or livery special either, just a bog stock Crown Vic LX. The reasoning is even more puzzling, and it’s got nothing to do with any secret service or taxi driver role playing fantasies. Everyone has a certain impression of the Ford Panther chassis. Whether it was the black Town Car that ferried you into the city from the airport, the puke-stained taxi cab that cost you an extra $50 to have cleaned up, or the plastic-seated squad car you became acquainted with after an overzealous blast down the highway, everyone has had experience with the Panther at one level or another. And after 2011, it all goes away.
Photos courtesy of Volkswagen of America.
If you read my review of Volkswagen’s 2012 Golf R, you already know I found it to be a bit of a let down. The R isn’t a bad car by any means, but it didn’t quite stack up quite the way I’d hoped it would. No small part of that is due to the other two cars I drove the same day. In fact, if the Golf R had been the only performance Volkswagen in the bunch, I probably would have thought much more highly of it. After all, just about anything can be good in a vacuum. But the R won’t exist on its own as a sporty compact in this market. Indeed, it won’t even exist as such in its own showroom. For 2012, Volkswagen will sell no fewer than four compact cars powered by some variant of their two-liter, direct-injected, turbocharged four-cylinder–the aforementioned Golf R, the GTI, the new MkVI GLI, and the new (lower case “n”) Beetle.
Mother nature can be one fickle witch. For evidence, look no further than the scorched Texas hill country landscape we’re driving through at the moment. The worst drought on record has sapped water from lakebeds, turning Austin’s sprawling Lake Travis into little more than a kiddie pool. So far this year, Austin has experienced more than ninety days of 100 degree heat, keeping both the city’s native Mexican free-tailed bat population (and fixed-gear-riding hipster population) in the shade for most of the day. The lack of green vegetation has also driven hordes of Odocoileus texanus, aka Texas White tail deer, to the roadside in search of the only suitable grub for miles. This last factoid is of particular interest to us at the moment, because my co-driver and I happen to be hurtling past the same roadsides these deer find so enticing at 60 mph. Deer carcasses appear frequently enough to serve as mile-markers, and the live ones are nearly as plentiful. At this moment, the only feature of our 2012 Kia Soul+ that is of any worth to me is its widescreen windshield.
“I see we’ve got you booked for a minivan today- how many people will there be in your party?.” As I thought about explaining to the attendant at the Alamo desk that I’d be the only one using the van, and that I’d basically be living out of it for the next 24 hours, better judgment prevailed: “Four. Thanks.”
“… for those of us who lived through these events, the only marker we’ll ever need is the tick of a clock at the 46th minute of the eighth hour of the 11th day.” -President George W. Bush
December, 2001
It’s 1:30 a.m. on Friday, but if you ask my body, it’s still very much Thursday night. I’m cruising southward on a deserted stretch of I-287 in north Jersey. It’s cool and clear, the full moon turning the sparse high clouds a ghostly shade of silver around the edges. I have the music up and the sunroof rolled back, inviting the breeze in to keep me awake, but I don’t really need it. I’ve been on the road for about six hours but I’m still as fresh as if were six minutes. As I gaze out above the trees that line the interstate to take in the beauty of the silver wisps in the stratosphere, I notice something about the coloring of the cloud layer to my east. The misty whites and grays give way to an equally bright, yellow-tinged hue in the center. That isn’t the moon.
As soon as the glare of the oncoming BMW’s headlights fades, I know I am in trouble. As my eyes refocus, they fall not upon the road ahead as I expected, but instead upon a rather unfortunate collection of roadside obstacles of the rigid and wooden variety. The uncooperative asphalt has wandered off to the left somewhere, snaking over the crest of a small hill, its freshly painted white line taunting me as it disappears behind the Porsche’s hood. You know how racers and halfway decent high-performance driving instructors always ramble on about vision? As it turns out, vision is an important thing when you’re careening around a back road at 1 o’clock in the morning.
In somebody else‘s seventy-thousand-dollar Porsche.
Yes, we’re a little late to the game. Most of the mainstream publications have already been invited to drive Volkswagen’s European market Golf R, but with your humble author’s 9-5 day job and our modest (read: non-existent) travel budget, well, we just didn’t have the opportunity. So when Volkswagen extended an invitation to sample their full U.S. line-up (caveat to be explained later) near their U.S. headquarters in Herndon, Virginia, well, I just couldn’t pass that up. Doing my best impression of modern journalistic largesse, I promptly reserved my space in the event (and my room at the hotel which, mind you, is only about sixty miles from my home outside Annapolis, MD).
What can I say? They don’t give out bonus points for good behavior. Might as well enjoy it.
Back in the day, Ford took their RoboCop starring, grocery getting, soccer player hauling, workhorse vehicle with a terrible name (Taurus) and somehow actually made it cool. It was called the SHO and that acronym stood or Super High Output. The SHO was fast and it even handled quite well. In 2011, Ford brought the SHO brand back. Would this car be just a “badge” glued on the trunk lid to try and score props from the successes of yesteryear or would the new SHO actually bring the juice?
Check out how this all-wheel drive twin-turbo-charged asphalt chewer handled the Racer Boy Review Categories and find out.
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RT @SeanRLoh: @SpeedSportLife V8 > V6 Supercharged I don't care that the V6 is a better engine lol @joelfeder RT @joelfeder: @SpeedSportLife People will complain about the lack of V-8 rumble... They'll say $4,200 was worth it.
@SpeedSportLife #Methinks @joelfeder has been thinking too much about BMW turbo inline-six engines ;)
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