Motorweek; 2301r

We start a new season of motor week with Nissan si roadster a serious five series and riding low and slow to come drive with us next. With little TV's original automotive magazine The Blind Boys wear car people Motor Week starting it's my kind of show. It's our kind of show all about cars and trucks and the cool stuff people put on their cars and trucks. And there are tips on tires and service and maybe we should just watch. I agree right with you. And to buy what are you looking for a motorist. Your host for Motor Week. John Davis. Well hello and welcome to the start of the 23rd season of motorways. We're glad to have you with us.

Over the years we and others have consistently proclaimed the BMW 5 series as the best sports sedan in the world. So when a new one comes along it certainly has big tire treads to fill. Now at first glance this all new fifth generation 5 series certainly looks up to the challenge with spicy or styling more luxury and the most advanced engineering in its class but will Die Hard 5 series fans embrace all this change and more importantly is it still simply the best. Thanks to every visual aspect of the new from the ground up 2004 BMW 5 series has been punched up to reveal an even stronger and clearly more imposing look. Then after clearing the canvas of their seven year veteran BMW embarked on a mission to rejuvenate all the mechanical bits as well. The new five is all about innovation beginning with a hybrid aluminum steel chassis BMW chose to make only the front unibody and suspension from aluminum.

The goal was to save weight and achieve the desired 50/50 weight distribution for perfect handling without the cost of an all aluminum structure. However the most intriguing mechanical innovation is in your hand the new 5 series active steering system is very impressive despite having variable staring right shows it's very intuitive you always feel like you're steering just the right amount and make slow maneuvers very easy and at high speed it takes the fear of oversteer out of the equation so emergency lane changes are really done. But at any fair at all. All in all it's a very important new turn in driving safety. The five series lineup will include three U.S. sedans. The 530 I will be first with a two hundred twenty five horsepower three leader in line 6. But one hundred eighty four horsepower five twenty five I will follow a five forty five eye which replaces the current By 40 I with the same three hundred twenty five horsepower 4.4 leader V8 as the seven forty five I will top the series

until a new M5 arrives. Another ode to the seven series comes in the way of styling and while the new longer five series is definitely a toned down version of designer Kris Bangles controversial 7. The resemblance is unmistakable. It is now much more to our liking. The elegant yet muscular and most distinctive styling is home for available adaptive headlights that steer up to 15 degrees inside the four doors highly appointed cabin the five mimics the visual and luxury appeal of both the seven series and the Z 8 roadster. Power seats with memory are standard gauges are modernized to BMW large round and clear but the 5 series will be available with BMW as first stab at a Head Up Display. And it works well. Automatic climate controls and AM FM CD audio system and a big siddur dash display complete the picture. All interface with a simple or ion drive system. It controls entertainment navigation communications and

climate. It's much more intuitive than in the seven series and the control knob resides on the console with the gearbox shifter on that all transmissions are six speeds. A delightful manual an automatic and an SMG sequential manual gearbox to areas of significant improvement in the new 5 series are the rear seat and trunk rear seats now can accommodate three adults comfortably and there is an available pass through to a more usable trunk. But enough about trunk space. What's the new 530 I like to draw. Well we had a chance to drive the new car at two venues on the twisty but smooth back roads of the island of Sardinia and on the rougher byways of our home state of Maryland. In both cases we noticed a vastly improved ride smooth yet solid with not a hint of structural twists or bending. In Italy we drove sport package cars with active steering an active roll stabilisation but we went to our local test track without these innovations.

Still the new 5 series is every bit as skilful at switchbacks as its predecessor. Turn ins are spot on and it's easy to induce just a hint of oversteer. The standard DSC stability system comes on gradually as traction decreases. Nothing alarming here until it has to be. Then it clamps the brakes hard which you are imposing on their own big disk with anti-lock stops from 60 took a short stable 125 feet with no noticeable fade. Jamming the accelerator to the floor produced even less drama. Zero to 60 runs average 7.3 seconds. That's little change from the previous car. The quarter mile elapsed and fifteen point six seconds at 92 mph on the go pedal again smoothness replaces brute punch. The first of the new five series the five thirty I arrived here this fall followed soon after by the five twenty five I and the five forty five on a wagon is expected next year and an M5 after that.

And while they've really got the new five prices or less so base price for the five twenty five thirty nine thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars that's up about 4 percent. The 530 I will fetch forty four thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars. And finally the forty five I started fifty four thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars. So after making our way around the roads on two continents we're ready to cast our votes. We give BMW all thumbs up for applying so much new design without spoiling a classic. But is the 2004 BMW 5 series still the best sports sedan in the world. Yes it's still the tire tread and we don't think that Crown is going anywhere else soon coming up. The lowdown on rotten low. Time now for our weekly stop by Goss's garage.

Let's see what our top deck has for us this time. John no matter what you do around the house sooner or later you're going to have a cleaning job that well it could be made a lot easier and a lot better by sandblasting see parts even for the lawn more for instance that need to get cleaned or all rusty and dirty and so on. Sandblasting is an ideal way to do all sorts of things not just automotive stuff but marine and you name it. Now sand Blasters are very inexpensive. They've come down in price over the years and the most inexpensive one is a type like this. This doesn't have a cabinet or anything with it. So before you use this one of the things that you have to remember is that you need proper attire gloves you need face protection. You need to be really covered up with this because the sand goes everywhere.

You also have to be careful where you do it because you're going to have seen where you never thought sand could possibly be. Anyway there are numerous types of media materials for doing sandblasting we call it sand but in reality the media material can run from walnut shells to glass beads to silicon carbide and several others. Along with that one of the things that you have to be careful of is water. Whenever you see him blasting you don't want any water in the mix and that means that your airlines need to have dryers in them like these Ingersoll-Rand dryers that we have here. This does away with more Easter because moisture will cause the sand clump up and doesn't do a good job of cleaning. Now the more Easter is also why you don't use play sand because the place sand has a lot of water in it and it'll clog everything up plus it doesn't do a good job of

cleaning either. So if you wanted to use that well you'd probably have to have it in the oven for several hours before you could use it or air dry it for possibly a week or more to get it dry enough. Now here is something that well this is much much better. This is from Eastwood tools and this is a blast cabinet and it's similar to what the professionals use. Inexpensive couple hundred bucks gets you into the into the game. The things that you have to remember here is that you have to keep it closed naturally unlocked so that you don't get the same coming out of it and you also want to hook it up to a shop vac like so and what that's going to do is your sand blasting. There is dust. This is going to draw the dust away and keep you safe you should also wear a respirator while you're doing any of these operations.

If you have a question or comment write to me. The address is Motor Week Owings Mills Maryland 2 1 1 1 7. If there's one thing we've learned in all our travels is that the love affair of the automobile is not just an American phenomenon. It's global. From Bangkok to Budapest paused to L.A. It's not hard to find someone with a unique perspective on cars. Well this week Craig Singh Haas introduces us to a remarkable family of Master customize ors and quickly found himself immersed in a melting pot of cultures and cars out on the highway. Fantasy paint jobs hydraulic suspension and a style all their own low riders are a world apart from the cars I grew up with. My street rods were fast but low riders are customized to go low and

slow. To tell you the truth I could never figure out what low riders were all about. They seem so different. That is until I met up with one of the most respected low rider clubs in America. You can't really talk about low riders without hearing about one club in particular that Dukes known for their outstanding workmanship and their long standing family commitment to the tradition of the Dukes are legendary amongst low riders. They're kind of like the elders and the few not hundreds everybody knows them everybody respects them. You know it's over 50 years old and it's got back to school history. Take him up and put you through the five who were there with you it's more like it's an art

you have to be a craftsman to fabricate and put things together and put about in the show circuit and win first place. The Dukes are brothers. Each of them were skilled in a particular aspect of the park. Some icing you know one specialized in paint one specializing in clear line especially like the ones in where the dudes are kind of like get ahead of me and when the writing that lives on and then you know three generations of low riders in their family car this car and what it means to me one is something a part of my culture. First of all my family has the feel. You know he by name enough. Yeah yeah. Who knew him like their mother says there is nothing more important for the rule of the family unit to plan words this is your second time you know to me they want to keep the family going for their children for them they're all about passing you know the field passing the love from the writing to the generation who are some

young kids are picking up their star with the Bicycle Club fixing a bicycle and you just basically want to take all of the car. We're going to have all the stripped not only chose my kids from you work but you've got the club members kids will come here and they're based on like anybody else from the bottom up. They see that what they do is important to the younger the younger kids on us and they want to inspire. We're proud of being the father of the best the guy with the automobile. We got the idea with our group of friends that started 40 years ago. He's been a good role model. He's got the father look to him just like kind of a magnet they can draw our kids content just to look at a car and just start talking. They see themselves and what they do as being intimately connected to the community and helping the community. They love you know I think that. And about the writing we do this more for the younger population the younger kids and generations and then hopefully they get into college that's been our

whole objective all these years to get the young kids into this get a lot of those things going and getting training in this country this is the mark here. Eleven months and fifteen thousand four hundred miles after we took delivery of our Subaru Baja we can say it still turns heads and gets lots of what is it. Our answer probably the most useful small crossover vehicle on the market. Sure we'd like a bigger cargo bag but with the bed extend her an interior access panel that can handle most sports gear and even a couple of bikes and the rear seat is pretty tight to be considered a crew cab. But then we expect most to ride here will be under aged crew members. Logbook notes praise the fine rod and power from the standard 165 horsepower two point five leader flat four is adequate despite a new take. We here at idle the boss is also rolling more in corners as the suspension where but here something Subaru should fix the fog lights are supposed to

have decorative grills over them but fell off long ago. No complaints on mileage however. Twenty two point six is on average now and it's still climbing even at this late stage of the test. Try to find any other utility vehicle this versatile that will do better. There isn't one that we know of. One more reason why the body is yet another Subaru winner. When we heard that Mitsubishi was replacing the rugged truck based Montero Sport with the car based endeavor we held our breaths. There was another true SUV going the ultra civilized route. We're off roading means gravel driveway as well while the endevor crossover utility is based on the new galon sedan. We found that Mitsubishi didn't forget their SUV heritage totally. Our long term endeavor Ltd is an extremely smooth highway performer but it's instant on all wheel drive system and eight point three inches of ground clearance is up to light duty off road work.

The 215 ors powered B6 is very responsive and after 6000 miles our economy average of eighteen point two miles per gallon makes it one of the more frugal of midsize sports use. Plus the endeavor doesn't look like other SUV with Mitsubishi's in-your-face styling working well on both the exterior and the interior. So right now the endeavor is proving easy for us to endure. How are we enduring this Mazda 6 sedan and this Toyota four runner SUV. We'll reveal all on our next motor week long term road test update. You know our lot is always full of new cars and trucks but every so often we like to revisit the best of grace our parking lot in the past and see how they're fairing in today's used to be ical market. So we asked Jennifer Kesse Navas to check in on one very popular model and see if it's caught it's second wind. Minivans may not be chic but they remain among the most useful of all multi-purpose vehicles

and one of the best is in big demand both new and used that in-demand minivan is the Honda Odyssey for 1999 Honda finally got serious about minivans and introduced the V-6 powered Odyssey. It included just about every clever feature other minivans had. And as a few of its own features like a third row seat that folds flat into the floor and it was the first minivan with TPF navigation. A good design plus the Honda quality and mystique has kept its North American assembly lines running at full tilt. That means previously owned 1999 to 2002 Odyssey minivans are also in demand. Yes the Odyssey isn't perfect motor weeks Pat Goss warns those in the market for the operation of the power sliding doors thoroughly. They must open and close smoothly and completely or expensive repairs could be in order. There was also a recall in some 1999 in 2000 odysseys to replace the ignition switch that could cause unexpected stalling.

Then be prepared to pay a premium. We found 999 Odyssey retail prices range from sixteen thousand four hundred seventy five dollars to seventeen thousand nine hundred fifty and twenty three thousand fifty to twenty six thousand three hundred seventy five for a 2002 odyssey that's well above rivals. Obviously the Honda Odyssey minivan is so out that it's in sometimes being square never goes out of style. But if you intend to keep the classic arrow by Beverly Ray condoms on your coffee table it better be one strong table. That's because it takes a big book to provide such a comprehensive history of the great luxury cars of the 20s 30s and 40s brands like studs Arbor in my pocket Duesenberg and many more are all covered in a crisp readable style. Plus there are hundreds of fine photographs of almost every brand and model classic reference book about a classic automotive era. Last year about this time we welcome Nissan 350 Z to our Test Track

and found a Z car legend indeed continues. This year the legend adds another new chapter with the drop top zeroed. It promises all of the power and prowess of the 350 Z coupe Plus a tan but removing the top of a gray coupe to let the sun shine and often takes the performance out. And that's the big question. Can you cut away so much of a great story yet leave the legend intact. You can if you compensate with more great engineering from the start designers knew the 350 would eventually go topless so they made sure that no matter how it was sliced the 2004 Nissan Z roadster would emerge with its driving fun and scratched. And after surgically chopping the top and grafting on more than the normal chassis re-enforcements a fully automatic power soft top was added complete with heated rear glass window. The top is low and quite aerodynamic so much

so that head clearance could be a problem during Top operation. So after releasing the header lock the driver must lean forward to hold the dash switch the passenger seat tilts forward to avoid head contact with the top frame then the structure disappears beneath a stylish hard cover with twin pharynx a tempered glass when deflector keeps cockpit turbulence to a minimum with the top down the Z roadster styling is super clean and everything except its very well-executed showing off aggressive character lines even better than the coupe aggressive styling that backed up by the same potent drive train the 3.5 leader dual overhead cam B6 pumps out 287 horsepower and two hundred seventy four pound feet of torque. It's mated to our car standard six speed manual gearbox a 5 speed automatic is an option. The clutch of the roadster sprints to 60 in six seconds flat despite carrying an extra two hundred thirty one pounds.

That's only three tenths slower than the hard Tom. Likewise the quarter mile which rocks by fourteen point six seconds at ninety seven miles per hour. What fun. Andy power is strong from the word go with a real punch in the midrange. The manual shifter is accurate with a slightly notchy feel. First gear is shorter than we'd like but the rest are perfectly spaced. They keep you right at the engine's 4000 rpm sweet spot and sweet describes the handling as well. Other than a touch more push on turn in a highly rigid zero exhibits the same sharp precise performance as the 350 coupe balance is superb. The speed sensitive rack and pinion steering giving great feedback and body roll is practically nonexistent. Breaking is by big for Will desk with standard abs. They stop a Z roaster from 60 and a grade average of one hundred twenty one feet. The ABS system is rather noisy with lots of pedal poles but stability is top notch. In fact performance in general is top notch.

This is one fine sports car top or not and a fine road car as well since there's little of the noise and body flex that we find in so many other rag tops. In fact top up this is the Roadster is actually quieter than our long term 350 coupe. But do watch out for the Blind Spot. The Z roadster delivers are firm but surprisingly smooth ride even on pavement that would tie mini convertibles in knots and also delivers respectable fuel economy for a high performance car. EPA estimates for the manual are 20 city 26 highway. We average 20 mpg in some very enthusiastic mix driving. Naturally the sporty exterior carries over to the inside. This aluminum axin and Dash has the same industrial unit found in the hard top. Have added support that is welcomed on quick switchbacks fluff is standard on the enthusiast model while our touring grade test car had leather buckets with four way power and to a manual adjust optional on the touring model are burnt orange

with vents in the seat backs for total airflow. There's no dash glovebox in the sea but plenty of small item storage behind the seats. Good says the trunk measures a mere four point one cubic feet so packed very light but leave room for your check book. Busy roadster carries a base of thirty four thousand three hundred ninety dollars for the enthusiast model with a manual transmission. Go for the automatic in the price is thirty five thousand three hundred sixty dollars. Step up to the touring model with a manual and pay thirty six thousand seven hundred sixty dollars while the line tops out at thirty seven thousand seven hundred thirty dollars for the automatic equips touring. Those are quite reasonable prices for a car that delivers all the power and prowess of the 350 Z coupe Plus its own fun in the sun character. The 2004 Nissan 0 easily lives up to the reputation of the previous Z cars and proves you can indeed get into a great sports car and still leave the heart of the legend intact.

Well I hope you'll join us next week for more motorways check out a trio of the latest models to kiss the pavement. Road test for its all new F-150 pickup and the hot Cadillac Xcel our roadster. I'm John Davis. We'll see you then. To learn more about Motor Week TV's original automotive magazine visit PBS online at PBS dot org. To order a video cassette of this program call 1 800 873 6 1 5 4. Motor Week has been brought to you by Cowboys where car people. We love cars we live cars we breathe cars. That's why we're such big motor weight fans cars after all they love cars too. Proud to support Motor Week on PBS boys where car people and buy what are you looking for a motorcycle.

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