Price: $38,470

Major equipment: Touring Trim, Sport Package, Sirius Satellite Radio

In the fleet: 12/01/2009 – 12/08/2009

Approximate mileage driven: 650

As often happens when we receive a sporty press car here at Speed:Sport:Life, winter paid a visit during my time with Nissan’s latest Z-car. No matter. When snow and slush threatened to spoil a weekend plan filled with back roads bombing and general hooning, I simply adapted. Instead of back roads, I spent some time in a back lot, as you can see above. With the stability control disabled and a fresh layer of slushy accumulation in front of me, I set about making snow art. I call it “Snowrifto Blues.” No wheels or curbs were harmed in the production of this entry.

Continue reading Speed:Sport:Life Speed Read — The 2009 Nissan 370Z Touring

Price: $52,400
Major Equipment: “Prestige” equipment, navigation, DSG transmission, uprated leather interior.
Approximate mileage driven: 800

M. MITIAS: Since being introduced in 1998, the Audi TT has been known more for award-winning design than race winning performance, developing a loyal following among stylish urban professionals and little interest amongst hardcore track rats. Devoted Audiphiles wishing to devour sweeping turns and late apexes along with their creme brulee and mochaccinos typically opted for the street-cred approved S4, which rapidly became the tuner Audi of choice.

Meanwhile, Audi continued their steady march to introduce an S model of each car in their line to keep abreast of the dizzying performance arms race amongst luxury automakers. The Beetle in a black dress was sent off to martial arts class, and the result is less Laura Ashley and a lot more Lara Croft. The TTS package features an upgraded 2.0 direct injection gasoline engine, now producing 268hp and 258lbft of torque, Quattro AWD and six speed S-tronic direct shift transmission, along with electronic stability control, handy for keeping your TTS shiny and undamaged during those times when you get it all wrong.

In an attempt to do exactly that, we took our bright red test car to historic Waterford Hills Road Racing course for a few hours of very private lapping. There are few things in this world which make one feel as utterly privileged as having a race track entirely to oneself, and I’m unlikely to experience any of them. When it comes to track testing a car, an empty track is a luxury with purpose, however.

Continue reading Speed Read: 2009 Audi TT-S 2.0T Quattro

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Price: $52,425
Major equipment: : Premium Plus Package — bi-xenon headlamps, LED running lamps, auto-dim side mirrors, 18-inch wheels ($1,500)

In the fleet: 6/23/2009 – 6/29/2009

Approximate mileage driven: 750, including 30ish laps of Nelson Ledges Road Course

J. BARUTH: Johan de Nysschen, Audi’s dashing head honcho here in the United States, has repeatedly stated his desire to move Audi into pole prestige position among German luxury brands. Consider this supercharged A6 a toe dipped into the water. At more than fifty-two grand, this midsizer is priced head-ups with the BMW 535xi and just three grand short of a V-8 Mercedes E550. That’s pretty rarefied air, but in the “Premium Plus” trim sampled here, the A6 is decidedly short of equipment. There’s no navigation system, no backup screen, no keyless entry, and no flappy paddles on the steering wheel. Those of who are fans of mid-Eighties Buicks — and who isn’t? — will recognize this as “Custom” trim, rather than “Limited”.

This sedan’s a little light on the goodies, but it does have one feature to pique our collective interest: Audi’s new supercharged six-cylinder, debuting here ahead of its arrival in the upcoming S4 and revamped S5 models. For A6 duty, the engine is tuned to deliver a round 300 horsepower, just about what the previous-generation A6 4.2 turned out and well above the power level of the previous 2.7T twin-turbo V-6. Did we mention it was supercharged? Yes we did. So why is is a “3.0T”? Who knows? Audi is positioning it as a performance model, however, so we took it to the fastest road course on the East Coast to find out just how it performs.

Continue reading Speed Read: 2009 Audi A6 3.0T Quattro

Price: $22,165
Major equipment: 2.5-liter Duratec four-cylinder, six-speed manual transmission, sunroof, SYNC, autodim rear-view mirror.

In the fleet: 5/15/2009 – 5/22/2009

Approximate mileage driven: 450

J. BARUTH: Remember all the things we used to love about “foreign” sedans back in the dino-sized Big Three days of the Eighties? They were good-looking, reasonably-sized, fuel-efficient vehicles that offered manual transmissions, interesting equipment, decent handling, and bulletproof durability.

So now here we are in 2009, and the average “Camcord” is a bloated, cost-conscious, automatic-transmission sled. Meanwhile, Ford has a car that reminds us more than any current mainstream Japanese sedan of what those great Accords and Stanzas used to be like. It’s not overtly sporty, the convincing-looking wheel covers aside, but it’s an acceptably rapid, very spacious, rather pleasant conveyance. To make things more interesting, you can now choose the option of a six-speed manual transmission to help the 175-horsepower Duratec kick the Fusion down the road.

Continue reading Speed Read: 2010 Ford Fusion SE 6-speed

Carl Modesette: The thought hit me somewhere along the lazy, post-rush-hour, 12-mile drive home from picking up the 2009 Challenger SRT-8: “This may be the last fun car Dodge, as we know it, ever makes.”  It’s not exactly the kind of thought that cheers you up, but, as Barney Stinson so wisely admonishes on How I Met Your Mother: “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead.”  And how to be awesome instead in a 425 horsepower car?  Drop 3 gears and flatten the accelerator, of course.

Continue reading Speed Read: Challenger is Challenging

Vehicle: 2010 Kia Soul Sport

Price-as-tested: $18,345 incl. $695 destination

Major equipment: 2.0L inline four-cylinder engine, 5-speed manual transmission, power sunroof ($700 option)

Approximate mileage driven: 175

If ever there was a car doomed to fail in the American market, surely it was the first-generation Scion xB. The underlying idea — hastily converting a Japanese-market “room-on-wheels” based on the showroom-poison Toyota Echo to left-hand-drive — was so terrible that one wonders exactly what kind of blackmail took place behind the scene to make it happen. Of course, the little xB turned out to be Scion’s success story. Nominally aimed at artsy college kids and even-artsier bohemians, the xB turned out to be a massive hit with small businessmen, housewives in search of a shopping-cart-sized shopping car, and older people who appreciated the basic utility of Toyota’s no-frills wagon. The xB’s runaway success was an object lesson in the fact that some people really do want an affordable urban utility vehicle, but Toyota chose to ignore that lesson by making the second-gen xB half as again as powerful, hundreds of pounds heavier, and utterly devoid of the original car’s simple charm.

Continue reading Speed Read: 2010 Kia Soul Sport

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Photography by Dave Everest

Price: $43,965
Major equipment: : Panoramic Vista Roof ($1,495), rear console fridge ($760), navigation system ($2,375), rear-seat DVD entertainment ($1,995)

In the fleet: 12/04/2008 – 12/11/2008

Approximate mileage driven: 1,850

J. BARUTH: The assignment we gave this “crossover utility wagon” sounded simple: Transport four people, plus all their gear, plus a full complement of tools and supplies for an eight-hour endurance race, from Powell, OH to Braselton, GA, in the dead of winter, on bad roads, in a single ten-hour stint the night before the race… and then turn around and do it in reverse two days later.

Oh yeah, a few more things. At least two, and usually three, of those people would want to be operating their laptops at all times. If they weren’t working, they would want to be entertained, and since there would be no time to stop for meals, there would have to be room in the car for everybody to stretch, eat, put their laptops aside, and take the occasional nap. Plus the roads would be unfamiliar, so we’d need a decent nav system. Everybody brought their iPods, but not everybody wanted to hear music.

In other words, it was a typical family road trip, except the “family” was a hastily assembled race team… which is the most dysfunctional family of all. An Explorer would have been too cramped; a Suburban would be too noisy, big, and bouncy; a Mercedes R-Class could probably do the job, but you’d need to spec one up to seventy-five grand to get the features. So we tried Ford’s avant-garde station-wagon-that-isn’t. Would the Flex be equal to the task? Could any Ford car be worth nearly forty-five grand? If so, why?

Continue reading Speed Read: 2009 Ford Flex Limited

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Story by Zerin Dube & Michael Mills
Photography by Zerin Dube

Price: $60,380 (est)
Major equipment: : 6.2L V8 engine, AMG SPEEDSHIFT PLUS 7-speed automatic transmission, AMG seating package: premium leather, memory seats, 4-way power steering column ($2,980 option), Premium Package 2: rear sunshade, bi-xenon headlamps ($1,100 option)

In the fleet: August 2008

Z. DUBE: Anyone who has known me long enough knows that I lust after family sedans that have been pumped up with a healthy dosage of horsepower. My love affair for sedans on steroids started with my former “B5″-generation Audi S4; it started life with the factory-provided 250 horsepower, but through some careful part sourcing and a bit of fiscal irresponsibility, my relatively calm family sedan turned into a 400+ horsepower monster. There’s nothing more satisfying than stomping a Corvette or Mustang Cobra in a four-door luxury sedan. Unfortunately, all this power came at the cost of a voided factory warranty. Pumping up a B5 S4 to those horsepower levels required that the engine be pulled out of the car, painstakingly tweaked, and then stuffed back in so it could generate enough heat to roast a pig. Back then though, this was the route you had to take if you wanted that level of performance in a sedan.

More on the C63, and on-track timing/impressions from Grand-Am/NASA GTS driver Michael Mills, after the jump.

Continue reading Speed Read Plus: Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG

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Photography by Zerin Dube

Price: $33,030
Major equipment: : 1.3L RENESIS 6-port rotary engine, 6-speed manual transmission, Bilstein shock absorbers, HID headlamps 19-inch forged alloy wheels w/ 225/40R19 tires, R3 specific aero kit, Recaro seats, Sirius satellite radio ($430 option)

In the fleet: 12/11/2008 – 12/18/2008

Approximate mileage driven: 170

Z. DUBE: When the original Mazda RX-8 was launched in 2003, rotary fans across the world rejoiced. Mazda’s famous rotary engine design had found a new home, by way of a very unique four-door sports car. Since 2003, Mazda has changed very little on the RX-8 with the exception of a few special edition models to keep interest fresh. This lack of change comes with good reason, as Mazda has managed to form a very tight knit community of RX-8 loyalists that simply love their cars.

For the 2009 model year, Mazda has refreshed the design of RX-8 to bring it more in line with the current corporate design language. A new front fascia and subtle body treatment changes like new mirrors and LED taillamps add some much needed aggressiveness to the design. The RX-8’s passenger cabin received a subtle update as well, starting with an all-new steering wheel that resembles those found on MX-5 and CX-7. Front and rear seats have been updated across all trim levels, and the dashboard layout has been restyled to achieve a better flow between the gauge cluster and the center stack. Under the skin, Mazda has fitted the RX-8 with a trapezoidal strut-tower bar and a revised front suspension tower to help improved body stiffness. The rear suspension has been updated to provide better handling while enhancing the ride quality.

More on the new R3, plus a competitive prediction from an SCCA National Solo driver, after the jump…

Continue reading Speed Read: 2009 Mazda RX-8 R3

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Price: $54,950
Major equipment: 6.2L LS3 V8, 6-speed manual transmission, dual-mode performance exhaust, 5-spoke forged chrome aluminum wheels, transparent removable roof panel

In the fleet: 12/04/2008 – 12/11/2008

Approximate mileage driven: 285

Continue reading Speed Read: 2009 Chevrolet Corvette 2LT 6-Speed