This weekend the American LeMans Series is making it’s first visit to the Monaco of America, more commonly known as Long Beach, California. Since the Formula One cars stopped running at Long Beach in the early 1980s, Champ Cars have always been the headliners on Shoreline Drive. This year they will be joined by the ALMS gang led by the storming Audi R10 diesels. The Audi’s will be trying to repeat their one-two finish from the St. Petersburg street race two weeks ago and continue their undefeated streak. The Audi press release is after the jump. Continue reading Audi R10s take on American Monaco for the first time
Categories:Audi
In all of recorded employment history, it has never been a good thing when the boss “requests” that employees talk up the company, especially when non-employees know that those workers are operating under orders. Nevertheless, that is exactly the road Ford appears to have taken as part of the “Way Forward,” asking each employee to become a “walking advertisement” for the blue oval. 
Last year, a pair of series-built Porsche Cayennes that were further modified by the customers who purchased them drove to victory in the 10,000km-long Transsyberia Rally. Spurred on by the success shown by those two cars, Porsche has built a small production run of at least twenty-six 2007 Cayenne S Transsyberia SUVs, all of which will compete in the 2007 rally.
The market for budget-priced, hot hatches in the U.S. has dwindled over the last two decades, with most of the major players either inflating prices or dropping out altogether. However, according to Automotive News, Suzuki execs have confirmed that the next generation Swift will finally make its way to U.S. shores, likely sometime in 2010. 
Our sibling site from across the Pacific has been covering the Shanghai Auto Show in the same fervent style that you’d expect from Autoblog. If you click on through, you’ll find a listing of the more important concepts to be debuted in the last few days, along with pictures and a translated article detailing the vehicle. 
At first we thought it had to be a mistake. General Motors is already paying customers to take the 2008 Buick Enclave off their hands? It’s not even on dealer lots yet, but Automotive News reports Buick is offering $1,000 “Conquest Bonus Cash” and 4.9% financing available on the $32k+ CUV. 
McLaren is always chasing after Ferrari. They’ve chased after them on the track for decades, and sometimes they catch up. They’ve chased them on the road, trouncing the F40 with the McLaren F1 supercar, but missing the mark somewhat with the SLR. But in the modern era where racing is only half of competition, McLaren is after Maranello on another front: branding. 
For customers accustomed to driving a Bentley, everything’s got to be leather-lined. Heaven forbid one should actually have to handle a cold metal key, even one as nice as that put out by the boys at Crewe. Fortunately for the pampered motorist, London leathercrafter Ettinger has come to the rescue with a specially-fabricated key case. 
We were wondering why BMW made such minimal changes to the new facelifted 2008 5-Series they just released, but it seems it was because BMW is planning a total overhaul for the 2010 BMW 5-Series. For some reason we don’t see much 5-Series here but if this is what the 2010 5-Series will look like, we have nothing to complain about. From the picture it seems to be a mixture of the BMW 3-Series coupe front facia and the back of the BMW 7-Series. 
We are very depressed after hearing this, in an interview with Dutch auto magazine AutoVisie, Ulrich Hackenberg, Audi’s concept car director, said that Audi will not be building the beautiful TT Shooting Brake since it will only negatively impact the sales of the coupe and would not add many new customers. The car was originally shown at the Tokyo Auto Show in 2005 to hint at the next design of the TT. 
Volkswagen today unveiled the new 2008 Volkswagen Jetta TDI at the DC Auto Show. The new 2008 Volkswagen Jetta TDI has the new 2.0 liter four-cylinder BLUETEC diesel engine that was announced in the beginning of this month. The 2.0 liter Common Rail diesel engine, used in a Jetta, uses a nitrogen oxide reservoir catalytic converter to reduce the levels of nitrogen oxide. 
I have been a travelling fool for the last few weeks with the Detroit Auto Show, Mercedes C-Class intro in Stuttgart and the Kia Rondo drive this week in Phoenix. And the schedule is not going to get any easier over the next few months…Â On my trip to Stuttgart, I heard what could be one of the biggest ‘Disses’ ever when (I won’t reveal their identity or what company they work for) threw a real backhanded slap at BMW.