Motorweek; 2123

This time on Motor Week a quartet of family four doors a more powerful x Bonnie and Craig's adventures in Auburn. So come drive with us next. Little. Boy no matter what you drive Boyce's over 27000 items in stock virtually any part for any car with all the name brands you know plus service space staffed with certified technicians boys parts tires accessories service. For motor week. Welcome again to motorway. Glad to have you with us. This by the popularity

of sport utility. The mid-size four door family sedan is alive and well and hardly selling in the numbers they want for doors like cars you see right here are still the bread and butter of the car business. But which one should you spend your money on. Well we decided to bring the four most popular mid-sized to dance together to see which one might be right for you. Not an easy call since all four of our test the six family four doors are solid performers on the road and on the sales tour. Take the 2002 Honda Accord for instance the best selling car for calendar year 2001. And while always one of Hondas most conservative models it has a handsome unoffensive look that is viewed as safe by a wide range of buyers and superb mechanical. Quality point through leader for a standard car yaks tester features a Hondas smooth three leaders single overhead cam B6 with variable valve timing. It makes 200

horsepower and 195 pound feet of torque. And is mated to a ripple free for speed automatic transmission accord underpinnings are actually among the most sophisticated of our group front double wishbone rear multi links suspect. Just tiny for teenage wheels are standard. But most models wear 15 atures in steel or aluminum. Our car has two of 565 tires all well-balanced and engineer Nissan's all new 2002 all to my is anything but conservative. This third generation Nissan mid-size are where's the most in-your-face styling in its segment. It's clearly aimed at a youthful buyer looking for something more aggressive than the nor can it deliver both to the standard 180 horsepower in line for time with this three point five leader Twin Cam V-6 with a variable valve timing and a variable induction system. Ratings are 240 horsepower and 246 pound feet of torque making it the most powerful of our quartette. And unlike most B6 competitors there's a

choice of transmission. Either our test cars for speed auto or a well match 5 speed manual. The new all time of platform runs on a striped front suspension and multi link rear 16 inch wheels are standard with our SE wary 17 inch alloys and fat 215 55 tires. Hardly mom and dad's kid carrier is it. But this is the long running 2002 Ford Taurus a controversal restyling in 1996 cost Taurus its number one car. New sheet metal for 2000 cured the critics and made Taurus a high content high valued family choice. The flared headlamp front Bleich roofline and bob tail rear actually showed the way for others. If you can fall Taurus styling for anything it's hitting the mark a few years too late. I asked a high value Taurus has the group's only standard V-6 an automatic transmission to 3 liter V-6 as are available. The stronger of the two is our SPL test cars Twin Cam 24 valve. You're a tech P6. It makes 200 horsepower and 200

pound feet of torque similar to a core. Car chooses a straight forward stride suspension both front and rear. Except for the base elex model. All Taurus wheels are 16 inch alloys and 215 60 series tires are standard. Nothing groundbreaking but a lot of car from the get go. Giving up its number one status to Honda last year is the 2002 toy the camera. Completely redesigned in sharing its platform with the Lexus vs 300 the latest camera has a good dose of stock. Unclear to its benchmark if somewhat boring family sedan attributes to look his bigger bolder more flowing this year with an obvious debt to the era like profile of the e-s 300 the Camry packs refined V-6 in addition to a popular four cylinder the 3 liter dual overhead cam V-6 an ar se makes 192 horsepower and 209 pound feet of torque. That's a little more grunt than Taurus an Accord and the engine is the quietest of our group. The V-6 hooked up to a four speed automatic that generally shifts

smoothly but tends to stutter a bit if you're wishy washy with your throttle application struts reside up front upper and lower control arms in the rear. Standard rims are a 15 inch with our SE wearing 16 and two 15 60 tires Camry lovebirds dependability and now totally up to date. While the lichen goals put this foursome on the road you find four very different automotive personalities. The Hondo court is Mr Reliable conservative company man that's solid and predictable. The drive train is very well mannered in all kinds of traffic. But we did notice a bit more exhaust noise than we expected under heavy throttle fuel economy as 20 city and 28 highway. Overall the group. That's. Right Paul The is very good and handling is totally predictable with moderate understeer and very little body roll. Accord feels even. Better than. The Nissan Altima is like the rowdy new kid in the office the one that doesn't even own a tie. It's punchy V-6 and solid shifting transmissions have a more visceral feel than the

rather cerebral look for it. No surprise that if you use 19 city and 26 highway as a little less than the other. The ride is firmer yet very comfortable and handling is sharper with quick turn and lots of steering feedback. It's as much sports sedan as family hauler. But the Ford Taurus is definitely a family haul it has a heavier more American higher in feel than its Asian badge competitor. Less refined to be sure but solid and sturdy sturdy willing power train is rated 20 city in 27 highway handling is not as sharp as the others with heavier understeer but ride quality and noise control are very good. An old favorite They can still get the job done as can the Toyota Camry which is a staunch favorite of those seeking a higher than average level of refinement in their family sedan. The engine is Suki smooth and very strong and except for that off throttle starter the shifts are very crisp. Mileage ratings are the same as Taurus 20 city and 27 highway.

Handling and ride show the Lexus Link its luxury car plush and while not as sharp as the Ultimo or port feels safe and is predictable. Of course no car is enjoyable to drive if you're not comfortable. And all these cars are known for offering first rate accommodations. The Honda Accord has an interior that's modern straightforward but a little plane passenger space is the smallest overall with a total of 100 1.7 cubic feet of space. The dash layout is very sensible with plenty of large well marked controls. The rear seat has the least headroom of our cars but trails only Tarsem rear leg room. The truck is also the smallest with fourteen point one cubic feet of space. The Nissan Altima on the other hand is the style leader of the group. It also has more interior room one hundred three point two cubic feet than all but the Taurus. The dash is slick and stylish with a stereo controls can be a little on the busy side and some dash plastics looked like they came from Detroit. It has the same rear headroom as a cord but comes in last in the leg room while the trunk

volume measures a healthy but mid group fifteen point six cubic feet. The Ford Taurus interior like the exterior has no rear faults. It just needs a little updating. It tops the ultimate upper overall passenger room at one hundred four point seven cubic feet center stack controls are mostly large well marked and intuitive. What we'd like to see a little more separation of a stereo and climate control is the rear seat is more headroom than a cord or Ultima and more leg room than any of the others. This is a true five adult sedan trunk space is also topped with a huge 17:2 big feet. The toilet a Camry ranks behind the Ultimo and Taurus in passenger room matching accords one hundred one point seven cubic feet. The dash is clean and well organized though our car's optional navigation system had touchscreen stereo controls that did take getting used to rear seat headroom is the best of the bunch for trails accord and Taurus and rear leg room. Likewise trunk space is sixteen point seven cubic feet. Just a tad less than the tux.

But the most important numbers used when buying a family sedan are usually the price number. And for the Honda Accord the least expensive V-6 in elex goes for twenty three thousand forty dollars a price that puts it squarely in the middle of our little four door V-6 group. The Nissan Altima V-6 starts at twenty two thousand eight hundred eighty nine dollars for an SE equipped with a five speed manual transmission a four speed automatic bumps to twenty three thousand six hundred eighty nine dollars. The Ford Taurus takes the V-6 price honors the L.A.X. with its 12 hour engine starts at only nineteen thousand three hundred seventy five dollars. Move up to the 24 valve Dura tak an R S E L and the price is still the lowest at twenty two thousand three hundred dollars. Toyota's B6 products it's always been known for being reliable and a little pricey. The Camry confirms that with the base price for the V-6 powered se a twenty four thousand one hundred eighty five dollars the highest of all four cars. So after driving our four door family car Cortef to work school and everywhere in between.

Our staff huddled and picked their favorite the new Nissan Altima. It's stylish powerful and just plain fun to drive without sacrificing real family car utility. The Honda Accord and Toyota Camry both garnered praise for their overall refinement interior and roll liability. While our Detroit connection the Ford Taurus 1.4 its standard V-6 big interior room and low. Right. So the SUV may be the new family key but these cars prove that the mid-size four door sedan still offers buyers a tremendous amount of style utility and comfort. Indeed the family car is alive and well and offers more bang for your buck than ever before. Plus driving pleasure an SUV can match. The best kind of car accident is the one you will avoid active handling and stability programs are often called EFP or electronic stability programs are designed to help you do just that. EFP works by monitoring a car speed

and direction as well as the driver's actions and then automatically applies the brake to one or more wheels to correct unstable cornering conditions. It's high tech hands off. Keep it on the road peace of mind and it's as easy as ESPN coming up. Just a car today but a classic tomorrow. Time now for a stop by our local garage Gus's garage that is for this week's gripping car care advice. John whether you live in a part of the country where it snows or travel into one of those areas during the winter you need to be prepared to be safe. That means that you have to have warm clothes a jacket gloves a hat and so on. You also should have some sort of shovel preferably a folding one so it doesn't take up too much space. But here's one of the most important things you can have in a car these days and that is your cell phone with a fully charged battery and a cigarette lighter adapter so if you get hung up you can call for help. Traction big problem. Well

everybody knows that you can carry kitty litter or you can carry sand and that'll help give you traction to get yourself out of the snow but here's a variant. Mix it with salt. That way the salt will melt the snow and ice under the tires. The kitty litter in the sand. Well that'll give you traction works very well. Another way to get traction is to carry some carpet remnants a couple of them with you. Now you go to the carpet store you buy the remnant you're looking for the carpet that has the most coarse or rough back on it. Possible see the more rough it is the better the traction. Now you put these in front of the drive wheels. They make good contact with the ice and snow and the tires get you out of trouble many times. Speaking of getting out of trouble why not stay out of trouble. Read your owner's manual because a lot of cars will have switches on the console or on the day and they may have a winter mote. Ok

winter mote. You know how to use it. The transmission will probably start out in second gear that reduces power and it keeps you from spinning and spinning keeps you from getting stuck. Oh here's something that really works for snow tires. And yes snow tires are dramatically different than the tires that come on your car. The compounds are different the tread patterns are different and so on. You can buy four of them in a package for many of the mail order houses and they're surprisingly inexpensive. They do a great job. Now no matter what you drive whether it's four wheel all wheel to wheel drive sport utility makes no difference driving technique is critically important. You need to be light on the throttle and on the brakes as well. Nothing happens quickly. I know it's going to do is it's going to reduce the tendency of the vehicle to spin and lose control. And remember if you have a sport utility or something with four

wheel drive maybe you can go faster. Maybe you can go better but you cannot stop better than the average car you still only have 4 wheels to stop with. So don't go too fast. Use common sense. Stay out of trouble. If you have a question or a comment write to me. If I use your letter I'll send you a motor week T-shirt. The address is Motor Week and wings Mills Maryland 2 1 1 1 7. Cars that we define as classics today were not always regarded as such when you could buy the new. But as time passes we have a chance to evaluate the true impact of an automotive design. Pricing has recently got a chance to look at the evolution of some of today's most prestigious cars and how they went from not all that special to the crammed into a crown but a vintage cars. When you think of automotive history most people tend to think of the Big Three in Detroit. But there was a time when all Berne Indiana was a top

contender for automotive capital of the world. Seventy five years ago America's top luxury and sports cars were manufactured in aubergine. And these were the most coveted cars of their day. To all burn the cord and yes that magnificent Duesenberg. Every Labor Day. Exquisite examples of these harsh return to the town of Auburn for the annual all burned board Duesenberg festival. Thousands of visitors flock to Auburn for this incredible event that features some of the most extravagantly sure use automobiles ever built. The weekend features a car show. The rage. The crew's international car auction cars on the south and a hundred thirty thousand and of course there's a fabulous permanent collection housed at the Auburn or Duesenberg museum.

In Cardiff after the world's greatest car show and festival and we put together the celebration for people to come to our community and see the cars that were made here. Seventy. But here is the file. People find it almost amusing that the top luxury and sports cars with the highest prices the most coveted highs of their day didn't come from a metropolitan center they were built in a tiny modest very humble factory and farm town kind of out in the middle of nowhere back then. Believe it or not in the early days of the Auburn core Duesenberg club reunion there was not a lot on the staff for these cars in the town of all burn itself. I think the people coming back to the town of Auburn for their sentimental reunion. And gathering together were viewed as eccentrics and nothing more. The people in town were not receptive. And anyway at all at that time a matter of fact that many of the older people in town had animosity but feeling chord because they felt he had pulled out

all burn and left them holding the bag owner IIO chord had sold out the Albany auto company in 1937 like so many other automobile companies. A victim of the Great Depression. And so the once grand all burns chords and Duesenberg were now only a painful reminder of the past. It would be decades before anything like nostalgia began to develop. It took an actual revival an actual resurgence of interest in the cars for a club such as the Army Corps used to be formed and a festival such as the Army Corps do summer festival to be also formed and it was only with the passage of time into the 60s and 70s that there was a real respect for car collecting. Car preservation and car restoration and that the work that these car owners were doing was something noble. Today. Everyone welcomes the return of the club members to the Labor Day festival. It's like a homecoming.

Coming out here to Auburn is like coming to an old family reunion every year we have celebrating a 50th anniversary and we still have a lot of original members and charter members. From that time period that are still with us after 50 years and they come year after year. One of the highlights of the ACD festival is the fabulous Cruise car auction which is perhaps the festivals of greatest success story in 1071 and members of the Auburn Corps December festival board of directors went to Dean Cruz and Russell Crowe who are local talent of real estate auctioneer's and said it would be nice to put together a car auction so the first car auction took place and an empty lot on the west edge of Auburn and it was hugely successful. So from 1971 forward a collector car auction was part of the current design work best one of the many events at the festival during Labor Day weekend and I think the rest is history. Chris is now the world's greatest collector car sales organisation but in 1071 when the festival invited

Chris to do an auction with them and that family was a group of talented real estate auctioneer's right here a few miles. From auctions to parades to club gatherings. The annual core Duesenberg Labor Day weekend festival has it all. It's a dazzling testament to the most glamorous era in the history of the automobile. Now let's check in with general purpose now for a look at some possible future classics and the latest news to many car buffs all Ferrari's are special vehicles. Some however are destined to be more special than others. One of those is a Ferrari 550 Barchetta pinin Farina with only four hundred forty eight produced the 550 Barchetta is a salute to the great 12 cylinder Ferrari roadsters of the past. Like the 250 GTA California. And. 365 VTES for Daytona. It's also a tribute to cars that were aimed

exclusively at open air motoring with a manually operated soft top that's more for emergency use than everyday wear and tear. In addition to the styling cues it shares with the hard 550 Nello the barcode also shares the same engine a powerful four hundred eighty five horsepower B-12 that produces four hundred twenty. Pound feet of torque at 5000 rpm and can easily spirit you to 60 in four seconds flat. The parkade also uses a six speed gearbox with braking handled by enlarge from those at the. Corners with abs. Electronic damping and traction control with a sports setting keep it connected to the road. The 18 inch rims and rubber leather and carbon fiber racing style seats adorn the interior and leather trim roll bars and a high strength windscreen surround are in place. Should you be unfortunate enough to row you little green. With a limited number produced your chances of finding a new 550 Barchetta are most likely slim to none. And that's it for this week's Motor News.

BMW is a company devoted to continually refining and improving their products. Take a popular X5 sports activity vehicle for instance. Although on the market for just a little over two years its engine lineup has already expanded a manual gearbox has been added and there's even a sports suspension package but for 2002 it adds our favorite upgrade. More power. And you know I was anything with more power it usually receives two enthusiastic thumbs up and the 2002 BMW X5 4.6 I ask is no exception. The extra boost of adrenaline comes from boring and stroking the X5 stock 4.4 leader of the ATO might do four point six liter compression is also up slightly hotter valve timing and more aggressive mapping of the engines electronic control system is utilized and a modified exhaust system is hung underneath. The results are 340 horsepower at 350 pound feet of torque which at the

track translates into a neck snapping zero to 60 run of 6.1 seconds. That's a half second faster than the 4.4 on. Likewise the quarter mile run of fourteen point seven seconds at 95 mph. That Serious off line punch. But the sport tune by speed step trying to transmit easily. Higher stall speed torque converter and more aggressive programming handles the brute force smoothly wisely this more power mentality is accompanied by more breaks. The 4 wheel disc with MIDI banded 14 its rotors in front created some serious g forces of their own by pulling us in from 60 in just 117 feet. Very capable and stable are the key words here. Two words that also describe the X5 Standard Sport suspension and handling characteristics at our low speed slalom. When BMW first introduced the X5 it delivered an SUV that handled like a sport wagon and that's a promise the 4.6 builds upon a 4.6 high ass uses big speed sensing rack and pinion steering as opposed to

the engine speed sensing unit found on the other X-Box steering wheel is very light but turn ins are spot on. The 4.6 I ask also rides on huge 20 by 9 and a half inch rims with 275 40 our tires in front 20 by 10 a half inch wheels mounted with 315 35 hard tires in the rear. This more theme is also carried over into the 4.6 I-S is interior where in addition to special trim just about every option available on the 3.0 I and the four point four I model is standard fare. Only the navigation system retractable rear load floor and rear airbag protection system are 4.6 I.S. options and as you might expect more. Montrose also encompasses the 4.6 diocese pricing base sticker on the 2002 X five four point six I asked the sixty seven thousand one hundred ninety dollars. That's almost identical to the pricing on Mercedes hot rod sport you DML 55. So for those that simply must have the speediest BMW on

the block but can't shake the SUV have it. A 2002 BMW 4.6 I ask is the ticket to ride. And it's also comforting to know in this age of hype and overinflated expectations when someone like BMW says more they really mean war. I hope you'll join us next week for more on motor week when we'll track test the latest Porsche 911 and taste Honda performance in the new Civic. I'm John Davis. Well CNN. To learn more about Motor Week TV's original automotive magazine visit PBS online at PBS dot org or America Online keyword PBS. Motor Week has been brought to you by Pep Boys. No matter what you drive Pep Boys has over 27000 items in stock virtually any part for any car. With all the name brands you know plus service based staff with AMC certified technicians that voice parts tires accessories service and to buy

what are you looking for a month or so. This is PBS.