Back in the first golden age of sports cars during the 1950s and 60s, automakers had a habit of producing their sports cars in a basic version, a super-duper hot rod version, and then a kind of in-between version. The in-between car was often idiosyncratic and nearly always reflected the factory design team’s conception of how the car really should feel. In other words, those cars hit the sweet spot between performance and comfort at an attractive price.
Just Right
Thus, cars like the Porsche 356SC and 911SC were perhaps not as fast as the Carrera models, but had a certain balance of comfort, performance, and longevity that made them the favorites of those who really knew and understood the breed. Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, and other serious sports car players also made these special low-production models. If you check your trivia, you’ll find that people like Sergio Pininfarina, Enzo Ferrari, and Ferry Porsche tended to drive these special cars rather than the all-out performance models.
The Audi R8 is the state of the art in German supercar technology. It’s got 420 horsepower and 317 pound-feet of torque pumped out of a normally-aspirated direct injection 4.2-liter DOHC V8 engine. Power is delivered to all four wheels through Audi’s advanced R-Tronic 6-speed “clutchless manual” transmission and legendary Quattro all wheel drive system. The car will do 0-60 in 4.4 seconds, and has a top speed governed to 187 MPH. The least expensive R8 comes in at $109,000, and the R8 we tested is priced at $137,000 - that’s what it costs to take home the finest engineering that European automakers can provide.
I want to hit fuel economy head-on this week and as everyone knows, if you’re going to hit something head-on you should be driving an SUV. Luckily, I’ve been cruising around town in the Mercedes ML550 this week, and it’s one of the nicest SUVs you can buy.
Great Looking Mercedes-Benz Crossover
The ML550 has a 5.5-liter, 32-valve, 382 horsepower, 391 pound-feet of torque V-8 engine, mated to a 7-speed all-wheel-drive automatic transmission with several useful modes, including hill descent control. This crossover-style SUV will do 0-60 in a tire-blistering 5.6 seconds and has a governed top speed of 136 MPH.
And the ML550 gets about 15 Miles Per Gallon. And therein lies the rub. When the marketing and design people at Mercedes-Benz agreed that the ML550 was a car they wanted to build, gas was probably in the low $2 per gallon range. I saw prices creeping towards $5 per gallon this week in Los Angeles, and nowhere in a road trip through California was it lower than $4.25. V-8 powered trucks and SUVs are sitting on dealer lots everywhere, unsellable at any price.
A few weeks ago, we reviewed the MINI Cooper Clubman and found it generally good, but substantially underpowered to suit our tastes. We believed that the MINI Cooper S Clubman would be the Clubman to have, and we're happy to say we got our chance to put the S Clubman edition through its paces in beautiful Carmel Valley, Calif. this week and it lived right up to our high expectations.
The Cooper S Clubman is the real thing
The second year of the turbocharged engine has lost none of its zip, and the Clubman's long wheelbase makes for a quick, yet stable platform. We're still not fans of the new dash design, but if you're shopping Clubman, you really need the S version to keep the Sport in the world's best real Sport Utility Vehicle.
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