Motorweek; 2708

Overall it's a tight mix what with the only way that you want to. See this. Place in the performance line. Next. Week. I'm going into your detail at this time on Goss's garage. What do we. Protest at least accident investigations happening. And we tell star signs all new smaller marks the next day. Literally TV's original automotive magazine. Brought to you by cars dot com. Let's say your looking for a car. Cars dot com can help research locate even contact a dealer. Cars dot com find the right car for you. My idea of a symphony a Pistons playing the to my right foot to.

Fully 100 years on. And by Dunlop tires. The search for true performance is part of our heritage. Dunlop is proud to present the Dunlop drivers coupler amateur. It's from around the world to compete head to head Even on and off road competitions of information that come up tires dot com. Your host for Motor Week. John Davis. Well hello and welcome again to motor week. We're glad to have you with us. When the Subaru Impreza w r x arrived here for 2002 the attempt was to shake up the brand staid North American image by capitalizing on their impressive international road rally success. It worked. Attracting enthusiastic drivers of all ages but with success comes rivals and Subaru knew their w r x had to evolve if they wanted to continue to excel. So can this new 2008 w r x fend off its contenders and remain ahead. With competition in the sport compact classics we say hello to the

all new 2008 Impreza wor x. A fresh version of the rally inspired contact that's become a mainstream performance standard. The latest wor X is available in both four door sedan. In our test cars find door hatchback body style it rides on an all new chassis with a three point seven inch longer wheel base which now stretches to one hundred three point one inches. The Deb your X is clad in more angular and to many less pleasing styling than before. Sharp good creases like a fully functional air scoop above a sinister ground of a grill. There's a rising character line along the flanks that looks very BMW to us while at the rear the roof line plunges over a high amount of spoiler and down sharply raked rear glass. The wheels are 17 and 10 spoke alloys with standard tire pressure monitoring all of which are driven by Subarus bulletproof symmetrical all wheel drive systems and despite its longer chassis and ended equipment the New

Wor X can weigh up to 100 lbs less than beef. For. Weight savings are always welcome since the 0 8 wor X offers none of the power increase we expected the carry over 2.5 liter turbo charged Twin Cam flat for engine delivers two hundred twenty four horsepower two hundred twenty six pound feet of torque but it reaches max power 400 rpm sooner and max torque 800 rpm sooner. Also most hot cars are moving to a six speed manual transmission. The new dumb your ex stays with the 5 speed for speed automatic with manual shift mode is optional. Not surprisingly speed runs are also a little change 0 to 60 in six seconds flat. That's actually four tenths slower than the original w r x the quarter mile was also a few tenths back fourteen point five seconds said 100 miles per hour. The turbo force still lags at low RPM but drop the clutch with the revs up and

the w r x leaps off the line. Once the turbo bills boost the engine pulls hard but the low clutch pedal release I'm on shift throws slow gear changes. Handling hardware did receive major changes with a new more compact double wishbone rear suspension and standard VDC stability control. So as with the original it's not handling that impresses us the most about the new wor x. It responds quickly to rapid steering inputs with good feel and feedback in the chassis is even better balanced with just a bit of all wheel drive push near the limit. PTC stability control is very effective at untangling scary situations but it also comes on with a bang. Braking was less impressive. Our car stopped from 60 in a slightly long average distance of one hundred thirty two feet. The standard abs felt rather abrupt. Unsettling the chassis and occasionally locking a wheel.

Open road driving on the other hand was very entertaining with the drive train spinning you down the road in a brisk but more refined manner. Ride quality is much improved over the previous wor axed as is noise and vibration control. Government fuel economy ratings for RW are x manual hard 19 city 24 highway. We average twenty two miles per gallon on premium. The government energy impact scores are respectable sixteen point three barrels of oil per year. The wor X Interior has also received a complete rework. The lines are sleeker with more curves to the instrument panel and a more efficient control layout gauges reside inside a deep glare free hood. The basic equipment catalog is also more generous. The deep transport seats now come with side torso air bags with curtain airbags front and rear. They're all automatic climate control an AC DC sound system which is pre-wired for both XM and Sirius Satellite Radio. There's an input jack for in

P3 players and portable gaming devices can also be accommodated. Rear seat room is a few fraction smaller than before but still fits most adults. The rear seat back splits and folds to open up the generous and thanks to the new suspension. Even more usable 9000 cubic foot cargo space folding the rear seat down does produce a long 60 inch cargo floor. You are exploiting it. Jordan twenty four thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars for the sedan and twenty five thousand four hundred ninety five dollars for our front door Tesco. So to sum it up the 2008 Subaru Impreza wor X remains fast and entertaining but with a major taming evolution in ride and creature comfort. Yet you notice that the original has been smooth and some of its raw performance civil law and that will affect its appeal to hardcore sport compact purists. But to others the appeal of the new W Warrick's is now substantially broader.

Coming up. From. Cool. Cars need care from the inside out. So what better place to go for the details than Goss's garage. John this time we have a couple of tips about cleaning interiors and joining us is Mr. cliff Dewey owner of Cliff do we also detail in Silver Spring Maryland Cliff welcome to Gloucester. Thank you Pat. All right. Cleaning the interior of the car where do we start. Pretty simple. You just want to start out with a good vacuum. OK one trick and is that when most people are vacuum and they just vacuum the surface when all your seats have perforated lines and you want to get in the next thing frailties as you're vacuuming. A good little detail brush helps to loosen up the dirt and some of the grains that are embedded in the fabric and the cloth. I mean kind of

apps just scooted right we're going to move this back and forth exactly and brush it up OK. Now what about if you have compressed air if you have an air compressor that's a wonderful thing. You just put your blow tip on the end of it and the same thing. Turn your vacuum on and. Use the air as your vacuum show and that will loosen up everything. I like blow it right toward Absolutely yeah it's going to tend to go other places too but it's going to get that ground in dirt that's down in the nooks and crannies it doesn't want to come out with a normal vacuum. OK now that would work. All sorts of areas not just to see absolutely around the shifter of the console underneath the seats between the seats all the hard to reach areas. Absolutely absolutely. All right now suppose you have cloth upholstery and you want to protect it what do you do there. Get yourself a good fabric protector that she can pick up at any one of the major stores. OK now not everybody has cloth interior What about a leather

leather pretty much in the same manner you want a vacuum you want to be careful with a vacuum you don't want to scratch or damage the leather so you want to be a little more gentle a little more careful. The same routine you can get in the to take a tooth brush get in the nooks and crannies. Use the vacuum. Hold it and brush and vacuum at the same time. No leather cleaner. Good idea. Absolutely. And what about a leather conditioner. Always a leather product. You want to use conditioner after you do the cleaner two step process clean the leather conditioner and finally we get lots of people that use protect Ince inside the car. Good or bad it's pretty much a personal preference Pat. It does all your interior dressings are going to produce a little bit of a glare off the dashboard when you're driving when the sun hits it and it it does collect a lot of dust so it could be a danger. OK Cliff thank you so much. You're welcome Pat. And if you have a question or comment write to me the address is Motor Week. 1 7. In every road test we've done over the last 26

years we've used some kind of a testing device to clock speed distance and overall vehicle performance. Now that road test hardware has come a long way from a simple stopwatch to this windshield mounted computer but clocking zero to 60 is not the only thing that this black box is good for. It can also be used to unravel motoring mysteries. Ah another day at the track. Full throttle starts. Panic stops and all kinds of twistings it looks like and it is a lot of fun but we have to come back with something more than just an emotional hot real numbers and impressions that we can then convey to you in a motor week road test and much of the raw data we use comes from this unit known as a very calm 3000 performance testing computer mounted to the windshield. The very comps chips and accelerometers give us accurate speed in breaking numbers

that we then use is the basis for our track evaluations. But it's cool is that it is this little box is a more important role to play one that makes driving safer. The very common unit is also used to help law enforcement do a better job of it. It's negating accidents. It helps the police cut through the drama of a car accident by giving them an accurate way to measure the dynamics of a crash to see how that works. We recently visited Berks County Pennsylvania as police and fire training facility for an accident investigation training session led by Vera calms president Rick Jo police from all over the region came to see if computers could make one of the more agonizing parts of their job easier. Like all good motoring seminars It began with an intense classroom session where Rick gets the officers familiar with what the very calm can do to help them accurately recreate a crash. The value of the con for traffic accident reconstruction is that it measures the coffin

of friction between the tire and the road surface. And with that information they can determine the speed of the vehicle prior to the accident. By lunch everyone was ready to see the black box in action for the rest of the day the officers took turns doing short acceleration and braking runs to get used to how their units work. The idea here is to try and duplicate an accident from evidence available after a crash to try and separate fact from fiction. Was the car speeding or did it break too late or not at all. All valuable insights into any legal proceedings where technology can produce. Reliable evidence that even the best witness technology has changed our job number one by making it a little bit easier. It also makes sense for us able to collect and preserve evidence which is important to accident investigation accident reconstruction. The use of computerized data acquisition systems like the Vera com units also

make accident investigation more efficient creations can be done faster and with less inconvenience to the rest of us that have to use the roads. So the next time you come upon a serious auto accident and you're wondering just what went wrong there is a good chance that the officers on the scene will be getting a little help from our familiar black box and hopefully what they learn will keep bad next tragedy from happening at all. Every real Chevrolet fan knows what the initials SS stand for and every Chevy fan will surely want a copy of Chevy SS 50 years of Supersport at this very large format three hundred forty eight page book by Robert Janae traces the Supersport bloodline from its origins in the 1950s to the NASCAR inspired SS models of the 21st century. And all along the way photographer David Newhart delivers gorgeous photographs of some of the hottest cars ever to wear the big bow tie. It's a quick read but one

you'll come back to on a regular basis. There are more detail books available on many of these cars but few find such a nice balance between history and hardware. Bow tie groupies will surely want this plus sized volume out on their coffee table. Just make sure that it's a super strong table. Now let's check in with Jessica choccy for the latest happenings in the automotive world and this week's Motor News. Over the last couple of years sales of full size SUV have been feeling a double punch of unstable gas prices and the growing concern that there are less than spectacular fuel economy is hurting the environment. But now General Motors hopes to take the pain out of buying big waving the green flag. GM is ready to offer consumers two full sized SUV hybrids. The 2008 Chevrolet Tata hybrid and the GMC Yukon hybrid using GM to most hybrid system derived from its transit buses. These big units are designed to

maximize fuel savings for both urban and rural lifestyles like the typical gas electric hybrid vehicle. The tall and the Yukon hybrids will enjoy a substantial boost in mileage in stop and go city driving. That means they can start off and drive at low speeds on electric power alone. Plus the gasoline V8 engine will automatically shut down when the vehicle is stopped. But unlike the typical hybrid the two mode tahu and Yukon will also provide an electric motor power boost during rapid acceleration such as passing we've driven a toehold hybrid at highway speeds and the power kick is comparable to a jet engines afterburner. Along with more aerodynamic bodywork the taco and the Yukon hybrid 6 liter V8. It also gives as GM is active fuel management system. It improves fuel economy further during highway crews. By cutting off fuel to four of eight cylinders. The net result is up to a 25 percent gain in gas mileage. Government fuel economy ratings are 21 city and 22 highway for two will drive hybrid models. That compares to 14 and 20 for

the standard. When you can drive hybrids are rated at 20 miles per gallon both city and highway that's up from 49 19 striving for conservation without compromise these full size units can still throw 6000 pounds. So GM screen Giants may just be one big sport utility buyers have been craving GM plans to put their two mode hybrid system in other vehicles and closing the compact Saturn Vue utility starting next year. And that's it for this week's Motor News. We've been taken with the Suzuki has sex for five door from the start. This compact commuter perfect crossover utility blends small size and big versatility into an unusually sporty good looking package indicative of crossovers. It's modest in general. One hundred forty three horsepower four cylinder shows its limits under heavy loads but rewards that restraint with better than expected fuel economy. After two months and 3000 miles our manual

shift s x 4 is returning twenty five point six miles per gallon on regular gas. But beyond efficiency we actually enjoy driving the s export. Handling is very responsive and not that much different than a good compact car. While it may be awhile before snow tests are as X-Force lockable all wheel drive system it's handling everything we can throw at it and into it just fine for now. Another vehicle that handles everything is our Chevrolet Suburban LTD with room for eight and eight thousand pounds of trailer. Our four wheel drive Berbers an ideal choice for a big family vacation. As for efficiency at the end of a year with 27000 miles on the clock. Fuel economy. Of 320 or smaller V-8 is alone fourteen point eight miles for a gallon of regular without fuel cylinder deactivation it would have been worse. This is why GM to initial full hybrid efforts will focus on its big trucks and SUV.

But our wants for the suburban pretty much start and stop there. The interior is extremely comfortable and flexible for long trips. Plus it's high style and outstanding fit and finish have set a standard for all future GM vehicles. Simply put this 2007 Chevrolet Suburban does all that it does better than any rival. Will reveal the latest on our Toyota Tundra and Mazda C-x 7 on the next motor week long term road test update. The Cylon brand has succeeded in doing what many other brands have failed at becoming a part of the culture of the youngest hippest buyers. With all its quirks and charms and a built in ability for extreme personalized Asian Cylon made small cars cool and now with the brands first revamping well underway another X marks the spot with this all new x d. So let's see if this full bodied hatchback will stir up Cylons fanatical fans even more.

Things are indeed changing at science. Their first line up overall has eliminated the plain-Jane x a. And replaced it with a pitching new 2008 x d. And it's not hard to see where its inspiration comes from. Think of the XTi as a smaller box to go with sign on to iconic bigger box the XP. And the XTi is small at least on the outside. In fact the x these five door box is based on the more organic Toyota you're a subcompact sharing the same short ninety six point nine inch wheelbase overall link is only a bit longer at one hundred fifty four point seven inches. Competing with the likes of the Honda Fit and beat up rabbit the XTi exudes a more urban hip flair with a wide stance and stout soft figure its confident shape blend sharp lines chopped glass and squared body panels.

Sajjan genetics defined the front end with horizontal headlamps of the rectangular upper and lower grill. It's a smart design to which signals built right into the side mirror in the rear of the XT year wears a long narrow back window giving out a cloaked low key persona but not too low key. The roof lip spoiler bright exhaustive and substantial 16 inch wheels under accentuated fender flares to kick it up a notch or two. Within the modern cabin combined simple form and competent function with ample room for a youthful party of fun the focal point of the x these panels is a high styles but ometer tack combo there resides within a large radar like good. Center stack controls are clean and logically oriented. But again visually with it we found the front seats comfortable if not overly padded and positioned for optimum visibility steering wheel mounted controls cruise control and six airbags all come standard on the

XTi. But the main attraction may prove to be the upgraded pioneer audio system. In addition to full iPod connectivity this head unit has the ability to download and display pictures and moving images on its electroluminescent screen. The rear seat slides back and forth with flexible people and cargo handling. And it also reclines to five different positions and with a 60 40 split seat back folded there's thirty five point seven cubic feet of cargo room for more than twice that of a typical subcompact sedan or front drive power the XTi uses an updated 1.8 leader Twin Cam four cylinder with variable valve timing output is one hundred twenty eight horsepower. That's 25 more than the X day and 125 pound feet of torque trainees are either up by speed manual or for speed automatic with either you'll enjoy the X days thriftiness. Government fuel economy ratings for our manual tester or 27 City 33 highway. But in our real

world driving loupe we did even better. Thirty six point three miles per gallon on regular gas. The XTi has an impressively low energy impact score of eleven point eight barrels of oil consumed per year. And the XTi was not a disappointment on the track either. Zero to 60 and eight point three seconds and a quarter mile and sixteen point five seconds at 86 mph. Are both more than adequate and it feels even heavier off the line. The engine however does tend to be a little buzzy down the stretch. Our manual shifts were long with rubbery throws but held power well. Handling is defined by an independent MacPherson strut suspension up front and a solid torsion beam in the rear. Turn ends were surprisingly quick but a fair amount of understeer and body roll dulled the response. We tried to push our tester but it actually rained itself in with the x these only performance option namely vehicle stability control with traction control. Overall the XTi delivers a capable

experience with a good match between power and chassis. And stopping is governed by abs with brake assist halts were respectable from 60 to zero averaging one hundred twenty eight feet with no fade a little nosedive and for the most part a nice solid feel. And prices or a solid market. Faced with a very well-equipped XTi is fifteen thousand one hundred seventy dollars for manual and fifty thousand nine hundred seventy dollars for automatic. And from there the sky is almost the limit and personalize ation for the Nirvana spec XTi with catalogue full of dealer installed an aftermarket accessories available. Japanese brands have a genius for quickly building on the successful model. The compact XP was a hit so why not downsize it a bit and call it X date. So now there are two right angled Cylons perfectly aimed at youthful City fund culture that insists on driving fool.

I hope you'll join us next week for a longer wait. When will test Toyota's new turn on our classic Land Cruiser and our cars over the Dodge Caliber as our team. I'm John James. Well CNN. To learn more about mobile. Elements which will move me. Busy. Busy meeting is going to work. During any of your beaches copy of this program. Call 1 800 873 6 1 5 4. Motor Week has been brought to you by cars dot com. Let's say you're looking for a car. Cars dot com can help research locate even contact a dealer. Cars dot com find the right car for you. Maybe oil and water don't mix. But oil and blood do. Novel. 100 years on.

As Mike Dunlop tires of the search for truth performance is part of our heritage. Dunlop is proud to present the Dunlop drivers Cup where amateurs from around the world compete head to head you know on and off road competitions. Information at Dunlop tires dot com. This program was produced by American Public Television which is soley responsible for its content. Hockley Yes.