Los Angeles Times, by Dan Neil

By Dan Neil

Not since torch-wielding peasants chased Frankenstein's monster through the town square has such a noble spirit been so mercilessly taunted. One critic compared the new $320,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom to a coffin maker's "Executive Slumber Series"; another called it the world's most majestic air conditioner.

Allow me to pile on.

Man, this thing is ugly.

Yet from the driver's seat, the Phantom is a sensational automobile. There's magic and mystery here, fistfuls of romantic motoring. I could drive it to the crack of doom.

Like Shelley's maledicted hero, the styling of the 2004 Rolls-Royce Phantom is something of a cut-and-stitch job. Rolls-Royce's chief stylist for exterior design, Marek Djordjevic, scoured the company's picture books for design cues and proportions that he considered elemental to the marque -- a visual vivisection, if you will. The long hood, the short rear deck, a rising sill line, the convergent hood lines, all poised over a long wheelbase and fronted by a chrome rictus of a grille. These elements he sewed together to form the Phantom, the first new Roller produced under BMW's ownership.

For example, Djordjevic lifted the massive "blind quarter" of the new Phantom -- the broad sheet-metal pillar aft of the rear window -- from the Hooper-bodied Phantom limousines of yore (in the glory days of Rolls-Royce, buyers would send the bare chassis to coach builders such as Hooper to be fitted with a custom body).

Djordjevic also decided that the new car needed classic coach doors, hinged at the rear. The blind quarters and coach doors combine to create one of the new car's signature pleasures: Open a rear door, which feels as heavy as one of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, and step easily into the spacious rear compartment, barely ducking your head, then settle back in the leather banquette, secluded in aristocratic privacy behind the blind pillar. So, point to Rolls-Royce. Jolly good show on the coach doors.

Other quintessential double-R design elements in the Phantom are the blade edge of the front fenders; the headlight assembly set high in the "catwalk" between the Greek temple grille and the fenders; and the round fog lights situated just above bumper level (the simulacra of polished Lucas lamps).

But certainly the features that have most thrown viewers are the car's oppressive bulk and its crazy face. This new slab-sided Phantom is more than 19 feet long (longer than a Ford Excursion) and well above 5 feet tall, possessing something of the visual grace of a container ship. Djordjevic based his design, and its scale, on Rolls-Royces pre-1972. These were some awfully big cars, and in the current context, the Phantom reads almost comically big.

And then there's the car's front. It looks like the face of one of those robotic pet dogs they sell in Japan.

What could have possessed Djordjevic? I spent an evening with the young designer in Santa Barbara some months ago, and he seemed to have had all his marbles. What gives?

To begin, ask what exactly did BMW buy when it purchased the rights to the Rolls-Royce name from Vickers (the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd.)? Rolls-Royce was a shambles by the time BMW came along in 1998. The Museum-of-the-Industrial-Age Rolls factory in Crewe, England, was dirty and dim. The cars were awful. The only thing in the pipeline was soot.

Rolls-Royce's single salable asset was its history, its book of myths and legends lavishly illustrated with gorgeous cars dating to Edward VII. For the Phantom, BMW built a brand-new factory in Sussex, on the Earl of March's Goodwood property, and started from scratch. In fact, there is no "Rolls-Royce" in the sense of a continuous business enterprise started by Hank Royce and Chuck Rolls. To think of the new Rolls-Royce as anything other than the high-tech, super-luxury brand adjunct to the Bayerische Motoren Werke is to willfully suspend disbelief.

But some fictions are fun, even necessary. And for the fiction of Rolls-Royce to remain operable, BMW needed to make the car more British than King Arthur Pendragon, more aristocratic than Lord Mountbatten, more Rolls than Henry's dear old dad.

My guess is that the styling was driven over the top by the design team's anxiety over authenticity. What began as a paean to the past wound up looking like it had bolts in its neck.

What's it like to drive? I'm tempted to say it drives like a Rolls-Royce, but that too may be a sort of wishful back formation, a trick of memory. No Rolls-Royce of the former regime was half so luscious or so purely seductive.

The pleasure begins with the way the car situates itself around you. The driver's seat is more like a driver's throne, with a commanding view outward, the long reach of the hood stretching into the scenery. The eye position is as high as in many SUVs. The central console between the seats pairs with the door bolsters to create armchair-like support at the elbows -- though it is easy to inadvertently pop open the console's compartments. Also, the power-seat controls are secreted in the console, so adjusting the seat position takes some attention.

One of the direct drafts from parent BMW is the Rolls "Command" panel, a dumbed-down version of the notorious I-Drive system operating the navigation, DVD and telephone systems. The rotary controller deploys from a compartment at the base of the seat console, while the white-face analog clock on the dash slips away to reveal the display panel. Mercifully, the basic climate and audio controls are available as rotary dials flanking the dash-mounted units.

The new Rolls carefully observes the tactile proprieties of tradition. The dashboard vents are opened and closed with sterling-silver organ stops, while the window controls are the classic violin key design. The large-diameter steering wheel is ultra-thin, like Brit cars of memory, and the steering wheel center has a glossy, piano-black roundel with the double-R emblem. The starter is a push- button affair. The woodwork is orchestra-instrument quality, with a buyer's choice of figured woods, from burr walnut to black tulip. Cabinet-style marquetry, inlays and crown-cut veneers are optional, but the lambs'-wool rugs and cashmere headliner are standard.

The rear compartment is likewise luxe, with lots of welcome extras, including adjustable ambient lighting, Jazz Era-style reading lamps and umbrellas hidden in compartments in the doors. Even so, the Rolls is not so thoroughly accessorized as the rear compartment in DaimlerChrysler's Maybach 62, which is nothing quite so much as a corporate jet.

No, the Rolls is definitely a car, a motorcar, with all the stately advance the word implies. Rolls has long invoked the term "waftability" to describe the cars' effortless, nearly levitating acceleration and deep reserves of power. The word dates to 1907, from a motor journalist's happy phrase about a Rolls "wafting" down the road. But this powertrain -- comprising a 60-degree, multi-valve, 6.75-liter V-12 buttoned to a six-speed ZF transmission with shift by wire -- has waft coming out its ears.

The stroked version of BMW's 6-liter V-12 features state-of-the art combustion technology, including direct injection, and infinitely variable valve timing and lift. Long gone are the days when an engine's inherent torque characteristics were fixed by metal parameters. The engine has been calibrated to produce an ocean liner-like 531 pound-feet of torque at 3,500 rpm, but 75% of that grunt is available at a mere 1,000 rpm, lending the Phantom a tsunami-like surge upon acceleration. Horsepower tallies a considerable 453.

It's enough to launch the 5,600-pound Rolls to 60 mph in less than six seconds; meanwhile, the thrifty direct injection gives the car an impressive fuel mileage of 14/24 miles per gallon, city/highway.

Over the road, the Phantom has all the glycerin smoothness and cathedral quiet you could hope for. The body structure is a space frame built up of aluminum and magnesium castings, riveted and glued alloy panels and exotic steel sub-frames. It is one of the stiffest chassis in production. The Rolls uses air springs at all four corners, double wishbones up front and multi-link suspension in the rear, all fastened to steel sub-frames.

There is no denying that this is a big car, and it drives big, particularly if you push it on a country road. There's a fair amount of body movement before it acquires its stance in a corner, and it feels a little ungovernable at high speed. But for the most part, the ride-and-drive is phenomenal. The Michelin PAX run-flat tires are -- get this -- 31 inches tall, centered on 20-inch rims. That's 11 inches of sidewall, which makes for a pillowy soft, if predictably elastic, ride. The brakes are monsters, and then some, at all corners.

Rolls-Royce was once a kind of shorthand for excellence, for stately British cars with unsurpassed engineering, bespoke quality, craftsmanship and superb good taste. Now, in an odd quirk of fate, a big German company has rescued the marque -- reanimated it, if you will.

Skeptics, put down your pitchforks.

*

2004 Rolls-Royce Phantom
Wheelbase: 140.6 inches
Length: 229.7 inches
Width: 66.3 inches front, 59.4 rear
Curb weight: 5,577 pounds
Powertrain: 6.75-liter V-12, six-speed automatic transmission, rear-wheel drive
Horsepower: 453 at 5,350 rpm
Torque: 531 pound-feet at 3,500 rpm
Acceleration: 0 to 60 mph in 5.7 seconds
EPA rating: 14 miles per gallon city, 24 mpg highway
Price, base: $320,000
Price, as tested: $324,000. Includes $3,000 gas-guzzler tax and $1,000 destination fee
Competitor: DaimlerChrysler's Maybach 57
Final thoughts: Return of the King

© 2003, Los Angeles Times

Plenty of pound-feet -- that's torque -- help make the ultra-performance version of Mercedes' E-Class one of the best cars in the world, if not the best

By Dan Neil

The engine of the 2004 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG produces 516 pound-feet of torque between 2,650 and 4,500 rpm. For a lot of people, this sentence means nothing. What, after all, is torque? What is a pound-foot, and is 516 of them a good thing or bad? "Pound-foot" seems like nonsense verse, like early Andre Breton or late Snoop Dogg.

You'll forgive my being didactic, but the E55 AMG -- the ultra-performance version of Mercedes' E-Class -- can't really be appreciated without some grasp of automotive mechanics. Most cars: They go, they stop, they drink gas and poop exhaust fumes. What's to explain?

The $76,200 E55, on the other hand, is the most potent production sedan on the planet. Among its parlor tricks: 0 to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds, quicker than a Ferrari 360 Modena, Corvette Z06 or Aston Martin Vanquish, according to Road & Track magazine. The E55 also blitzes a quarter-mile in 12.4 seconds, as fast as that purest of sports cars, the Porsche 911 Turbo. And although the AMG's top speed is electronically limited to 155 mph, the true top speed is, by my calculations, more like 185 mph.

What makes this ordinary-looking, 2-ton luxury grocery getter such a monster is none other than the oft-misunderstood torque, pouring out of the car's 5.4-liter supercharged engine like the business end of Hoover Dam.

Torque is, simply, twisting force. Grab a doorknob, twist -- voila, torque.

Torque is expressed in pound-feet (or in the metric system, newton-meters, but let's not go there, OK?). As Archimedes well understood, a lever multiplies force. Imagine you are loosening a rusty bolt. If you use a foot-long wrench and put 100 pounds of pressure on one end, you are applying 100 pound-feet of torque to the bolt.

The E55 engine's output shaft turns with a maximum force equivalent to 516 pounds of pressure on that same foot-long wrench. It's really pretty simple.

Horsepower -- that familiar unit of power, reassuring in its equine obviousness -- is anything but. The term was coined by Scottish engineer James Watt, who reasoned that a strong horse could raise 550 pounds 1 foot in one second. Trouble is, his unit of measure is foot-pounds -- the converse of torque's pound-feet -- and it describes linear, straight-line force, while torque describes rotational force.

These days, horsepower is calculated as a numerical product of measured torque multiplied by engine rpm, divided by 5,252 (a bit of mathematical housekeeping that cancels out minutes and seconds and turns straight-line into rotational force units). In the E55, the engine produces peak horsepower of 469 horsepower at 6,100 rpm, which is about 404 pound-feet of torque.

It all seems so innocent, like chalkboard arithmetic you might remember from high school physics. But for car enthusiasts, these numbers are, well, scary, with the kind of dwarfing immensity one associates with thermonuclear footprints and ICBM throw-weights. Imagine this scenario: You are merging onto the 10, and there's a break in traffic. Feeling frisky, you mat the throttle ... one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.... Count to five and you are commuting home at 120 mph or more. How do you look in an orange jumpsuit?

Here's a little gearhead dish: While peak horsepower has a certain marquee value, it's not especially relevant outside of top speed. Acceleration -- the sensual, guilty, giddy gestalt of tramping the gas pedal and feeling yourself shoved into the fast-forward scenery -- is the product of engine torque pitted against the mass of a car.

I'll risk one more physics equation: F = Ma. Fun equals mass times acceleration. The E55 has F in abundance.

AMG -- based in Affalterbach, Germany, not too far from Stuttgart -- is the wholly owned mischief maker for Mercedes-Benz. As a matter of company policy, an AMG-tuned model is the top offering in each of the model lines.

Obscene power is AMG's calling card, delivered by highly developed engines, each hand-built and signed by the technician who assembled it. The E55 engine starts life as a 5-liter V-8 casting, which is then endowed with longer connecting rods ("stroked" is the term of the art) so that it displaces 5.4 liters. AMG uses high-performance engine internals, including matched pistons, a reinforced crankshaft and lightweight single-overhead cams to actuate the engine's three valves per cylinder. Ignition spark is provided by twin coils over twin spark plugs.

A vast amount of binary code from the Bosch engine management system minutely adjusts the fuel-injection spray and timing for each cylinder.

All of which would make for a very healthy hot rod, but AMG goes on to add an enormous supercharger to the engine, plumbed with an air-to-water intercooler (the air consumed by the engine is cooled, making it denser and creating more power in combustion).

A supercharger is essentially a compressor -- or, as the Germans spell it, Kompressor. When fully engaged, the supercharger compresses intake air an additional 13.1 pounds per square inch, almost a full bar over atmospheric pressure.

To visualize what this supercharger means to engine power, imagine building a roaring fire in your fireplace. Now imagine pointing a leaf blower at it.

Unlike BMW's engines, which use the variable-valve timing and lift to optimize the torque over a broad range of rpm, the E55's engine varies the pressure from the supercharger to accomplish the same mission. The AMG's peak torque plateaus between 2,650 and 4,500 rpm. This accounts for the car's seemingly bottomless well of power. It just keeps pulling and pulling. At speeds well above 100 mph, the car still has enough dynamite to blow your license to kingdom come.

This torrent of power is sluiced to an AMG-modified five-speed automatic transmission. You can shift gears by moving the stubby pistol grip shifter east-west, or if you have selected manual mode you can shift with the buttons on the back of the steering wheel. This unit is probably the smartest and quickest of the pseudo-manual transmissions on the market, with none of the blowzy, off-throttle intermissions common with other auto-manuals as they consider their next gear selection.

The car bolts from gear to gear like Lance Armstrong in the Alps. The tranny is also adaptive, meaning it considers driver behavior -- lead foot or pussyfoot -- and modifies its shift points accordingly. The E55 will downshift automatically during braking and refuse to upshift during hard cornering to avoid unsettling the car's balance.

The E55 uses Mercedes' Airmatic pneumatic suspension, which automatically adjusts firmness and rebound according to road condition, speed and cornering attitude. The car also offers a sport suspension mode, firming up the corners for a full-on flog-fest, and a four-position ride-height adjustment. The car gradually lowers itself to the tarmac as speeds increase. Steering feel is heavy and accurate as a diamond cutter, and the quick-ratio rack-and-pinion system tacks faultlessly.

The brakes are gigantic vented discs with 8-piston calipers upfront, capable of bringing the E55 to a halt in 118 feet from 60 mph. I wouldn't be the first to complain about the rather numb feel of the E55's brakes, which use brake-by-wire technology with an artificial, haptic feedback in place of the gathering resistance one feels with a regular hydraulic system.

The Sensotronic system does have the virtue of exerting precise amounts of brake pressure at each brake rotor depending on brake pedal pressure, car attitude, and slip and grip, as directed by the car's ABS, traction control and stability systems.

What's it all mean? Few cars can match the E55's sheer technological density, most of which is so thoroughly integrated as to be invisible and, perhaps, unappreciated. What you cannot help but appreciate is the exquisite excess of power. Turn off the traction control, load up the torque converter (left foot on the brake and right on the gas), and let her rip. This car can lay down two 10-inch-wide streaks of very expensive rubber for 50 feet. That's fun.

Once you are done showing off -- and certainly we hope the urge passes quickly -- you are left with a car of stunning athleticism wrapped in a rather unassuming package. The E55 doesn't look much different from an ordinary E-Class. Little denotes a car that can go wheel to wheel with a Dodge Viper. It is, however, replete with nearly every amenity in the Mercedes catalog, from to Keyless Go starting (it senses the key fob in your pocket) to rain-sensing wipers to elegant ambient cabin lighting.

Given its price tag and performance, the E55 is a grand theft auto.

I am often asked what is the best car in the world (whereas I am not often asked to explain the subtleties of torque versus horsepower, but there you are). Lately, I'm inclined to answer that the E55 AMG is the car. Is it perfect? No. The styling is rather bloodless. The ride is leather-stiff. A little more mechanical grip in the corners would be nice too. But this car is an almost surreal combination of performance and luxury, neither compromised on account of the other.

Torque really does makes the world go round.

*

2004 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG
Wheelbase: 112.4 inches
Length: 190.3 inches
Curb weight: 3,990 pounds
Powertrain: Supercharged 5.4-liter, 24-valve V-8; five-speed automatic with Touchshift manual shifting
Horsepower: 469 hp at 6,100 rpm
Torque: 516 pound-feet at 2,650 to 4,500 rpm
Acceleration: 0 to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds
EPA rating: 14 miles per gallon city, 21 mpg highway
Price, base: $76,200, including $720 delivery
Price, as tested: $76,200
Competitor: Audi S6, BMW M5
Final thoughts: Snooper Dooper

© 2003, Los Angeles Times

A lighted fuse of polished elegance and high ambition, Chrysler's latest riff on the history of car design is bound to hold up well over time.

By Dan Neil

Composed and compelling, precise and polished, the Crossfire is a singularly appealing car. 

Like many great beauties -- Marilyn Monroe, for instance -- the new Chrysler Crossfire has a faintly tragic air about it. And like many consumers of beauty -- Frank Sinatra, for instance -- I'm only too happy to exploit it.

The 2004 Crossfire ($35,570 as tested) joins Chrysler's recent portfolio of low-volume, high-zoot production cars -- including the PT Cruiser and the Prowler -- that riff on the history of car design. The PT Cruiser and the hot-rod-inspired Prowler are not really serious cars but fun and frothy exercises in nostalgic styling, rendered with a kind of Toontown exaggeration that gives the viewer a winking nudge in the ribs. Alas, one's ribs get sore pretty quickly. These days, the PT Cruiser strikes me as insufferably twee. Both it and the Prowler look destined for the nearest Shriners parade.

The Crossfire, on the other hand, is deadly serious, a lighted fuse of polished elegance and high ambition. It's a small car, only 159.8 inches long sitting on a 94.5-inch wheelbase. But the Crossfire has tremendous visual presence, with its wide body raked over relatively huge 19-inch rear wheels and 18-inch front wheels. The glassed-in part of the car, the greenhouse, is low and narrowed, giving the car a sloe-eyed allure.

The most distinctive part of the Crossfire profile is its boat-tail hatchback, formed as the edges of the roof converge into a kind of teardrop shape, leaving the rear fenders to flare out over the rear wheels. It's a wonderfully organized form -- romantic and rational at the same time. But what makes the Crossfire work is its surface detailing: the Art Deco fluting, polished strakes, raised spine and sculpted surfaces, which make the car look like a piece of precision-milled machinery.

This is the kind of car that makes you set your alarm clock early so you can go stare at it in the driveway. It's gorgeous.

As a "halo" product, the Crossfire is crucial to the Chrysler brand's effort to move upmarket, to be a premium brand in the same league as Lexus or Cadillac. This is not an easy thing to do. Consumers have a pretty definite idea of how much they are willing to spend on a Chrysler, no matter how swell it is. The Crossfire argues its case well.

So what's so tragic? Only that it's not really a Chrysler. Under the artful skin of the Crossfire is the running gear of a Mercedes-Benz SLK, right down to the crankshaft in its 3.2-liter V-6 (the car is assembled by Karmann in Germany). This is the first car to come from the DaimlerChrysler merger that gene-splices Chrysler design and Mercedes engineering.

Although few could complain about the results, I confess to a little wounded nationalism; it would have been great for such a wonderful car to be American to the bone. Chrysler, more than any other American car company, could justify a revival of streamlined, Deco- flavored styling. Chrysler's Airflow sedan in the 1930s was America's first streamlined mass-production car, and what it lacked in functional aerodynamics it made up for in the expressive, streaking styling of the Machine Age. The most exciting car of the year is made of leftover Mercedes.

And there is a degree of insincerity to the Crossfire. In the same way that Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is an elaborate titanium blossom surrounding more or less rectangular spaces, the Crossfire's exterior design, as beautiful as it is, isn't essential to the car.

Of course, a few laps around the neighborhood will wring such doubts from your mind. The Crossfire is wicked fun to drive. In the transition from the SLK's open top to a fixed roof, the chassis has become substantially stiffer. The car has all the flex of a cast-iron sink and that lovely feeling of deep soundness that Benzes, at their best, have. It feels as if you have a good leg under you at all times.

Commuters, be advised: The Crossfire's suspension tuning favors handling over comfort. The ride is pretty choppy in that short-wheelbase way, and there's a steady diet of zings transmitted through the steering wheel and seat from the huge Michelins.

On the other hand, the car handles far better than I expected, with a nice even balance in S-curves that gradually and gracefully transitions to understeer. Toss it from corner to corner and the Crossfire recomposes itself without fretting, with little body roll or ungainly rebound.

Thanks to the car's low weight and its yards of high-quality rubber, the Crossfire has lots of lateral grip. The car has anti-lock brakes and traction and stability control, but on dry pavement these systems allow enough slip and slide to have fun.

Our test car was equipped with Benz's five-speed automatic transmission mated to the 215-horsepower V-6 engine. A six-speed manual is available, though most Southern California commuters will shun it. The car was pretty quick, returning zero-to-60-mph times in the neighborhood of seven seconds, though adding more power would be a beautiful thing.

It's expected that Chrysler will avail itself of the supercharged version of this engine, which in the SLK produces 349 horsepower -- a lot of ponies, by anybody's reckoning. I just don't see where Chrysler will put the supercharger. The Crossfire's hood is practically on top of the engine cover.

One curiosity is the motorized spoiler that deploys from the cam-back at speeds above 60 mph. In mixed city driving, where one often goes above and below 60 mph, the spoiler cycles continually with a very low-tech-sounding motor whine. However, considering Audi's experience with the TT -- the humpback car was quietly redesigned to include a spoiler after some Autobahn accidents revealed that the rear was lifting at high speed -- the Crossfire's spoiler is probably a good idea.

Life inside the Crossfire would be cozy. Tall drivers may have a little trouble getting comfortable because the car has limited leg room and little recline available behind the deeply bolstered seats. Yet for a car so closed in, outward visibility is quite good (you are never far from a window in a small car), and the sculptured rear fenders create open sightlines through the side mirrors.

The car's instruments are sensibly arranged; indeed, given their vintage, they have a comforting simplicity: More fan? Turn the knob to the right. More volume? It's the knob on the left. Technophobes may like the car solely for its refreshing lack of digital interface. The central console and all the switch gear are coated with a shiny metallic finish, as in the less expensive Mercedes C-Series, a sort of acrylic that is strangely warm to the touch. The same material covers the shifter. The comforts of home include heated power seats, a 240-watt Infinity stereo with two subwoofers and six speakers, keyless entry and dual-zone climate control.

Composed and compelling, precise and polished, the Crossfire is a singularly appealing car. Unlike a lot of design-intensive cars, whose appeal is so perishable they ought to come with a "best-if-used-by" stamp, the Crossfire has a bearing that should hold up well over time.

The Shriners will have to look elsewhere.

*

2004 Chrysler Crossfire
Wheelbase: 94.5 inches
Length: 159.8 inches
Curb weight: 3,084 pounds (with automatic transmission)
Powertrain: 3.2-liter single-overhead-cam V-6 engine, five-speed automatic transmission, rear-wheel drive
Horsepower: 215 hp @ 5,700 rpm
Torque: 229 pound-feet @ 3,000 rpm
Acceleration: zero to 60 mph in 6.4 seconds (with manual transmission)
EPA rating: 17 miles per gallon city, 25 mpg highway
Price, base: $33,620
Price, as tested: $35,570 (adds $1,075 for automatic transmission, $875 delivery)
Competitors: Audi TT coupe, Nissan 350Z
Final thoughts: American beauty

© 2003, Los Angeles Times

By Dan Neil

If you ever despair that the U.S. auto industry is whirling, slowly but with gathering momentum, down the tubes of history, the second-generation Toyota Prius will give you no comfort. This is a car Detroit assures us cannot be built. No way. No how. A spacious, safe and well-appointed mid-size four-door with practical performance while returning more than 60 miles per gallon? For $20,000? Are you, like, high?

Well, there it sits in my driveway, looking like a set piece from a Kubrick film but in other respects a straightforward piece of engineering. And it shames the domestic automakers and the Bush administration.

As recently as this summer, during the Big Three's annual assassination of higher mileage standards proposed in Congress, industry shills argued that the proposed increase for cars -- 40 mpg by the year 2015 -- would be impossible to meet. The technology would be far too expensive; the weight reductions needed would create flimsy death traps; consumers simply would not accept the anemic performance such high mileage requirements would impose.

Moreover, the automakers argued, requiring such increases would tie up capital, intellectual and otherwise, that Detroit needs to develop fuel-cell technology. The Bush administration and the Big Three are touting the Freedom CAR initiative -- a program to bring hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles to market, which received $1.2 billion in the Energy Department's budget for 2003 -- as a visionary alternative to the dreary incrementalism of federal mileage standards.

Have faith, America, and take another toke off your asthma inhaler. On some as-yet-unspecified date, on the golden horizon of the hydrogen economy, Detroit will deliver the ideal car, clean and powerful, trailing only clouds of noblesse oblige.

Forgive me if I'm skeptical. The most optimistic estimates put the mass marketing of fuel cells more than a decade away. It makes zero sense to give Detroit a pass on improving emissions and fuel economy now for some promised land of milk and money in the future.

Freedom CAR replaced the Clinton administration's fig leaf of hypocrisy, the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, which doled out $1.5 billion to a consortium of automakers, universities and suppliers for nearly a decade and likewise was used to stall efforts to increase mileage standards. The Bush administration pulled the plug on the partnership last year, citing its failure to reach its goal: developing an affordable family sedan that gets 80 mpg.

Well, the Prius (pronounced PREE-us) gets 60 mpg -- the highest fuel mileage of any mass-production car sold in the United States -- and Toyota did it without subsidies from the federal government and much less posturing than the Big Three's promising to save the world when they get around to it.

I can live with the scandal embodied in a national energy policy that is actually reducing tax benefits for clean-fuel cars (Prius buyers can claim a $2,000 tax deduction on cars placed in service before Dec. 31) while offering tens of thousands of dollars in tax credits to "small business" buyers of H2 Hummers.

What boggles my mind is the wasted business opportunity. Consumers want high-mileage cars. In Los Angeles, the entertainment industry's pretty young things are lining up for the Prius. The first generation of the Prius sold a modest 5,600 units in the United States in 2000. Toyota already has taken more than 10,000 orders for the second-generation Prius ahead of its launch this month and is adding capacity to meet demand of 36,000 units in the States and 76,000 units worldwide. If the Prius doesn't outsell Pontiac's new GTO in the 2005 model year, I'll eat a box of General Motors product guru Bob Lutz's Partagas Robustos.

Anybody who has ever turned a wrench will marvel at this car. Even before you look under the hybrid's hood, consider the body structure: a four-door hatchback on a 106.3-inch wheelbase, with interior room only slightly less than that of the Toyota Camry and a huge trunk (16.1 cubic feet) made all the more usable by the hatch and folding rear seats. Its coolly futuristic, maglev-like styling accounts for its slippery aerodynamics, 0.26 coefficient of drag, among the lowest on the market. And the car weighs only 2,890 pounds, 300 pounds less than a four-cylinder Camry automatic.

The Prius is spacious and comfortable in both front and back seats. I'm 6-foot-1 and I had no trouble getting comfortable in the car. Outward visibility is excellent; the car's hatch features lower glass panels to improve rearward sightlines. Toyota's use of lightweight materials for upholstery, door panels and other surfaces gives the car the feel of expensive, lightweight camping equipment. When you close the door you notice it doesn't have the thudding authority of upscale Toyota products, and the seat cushions and armrests are thin, but overall the car has nice tactility and warmth.

What makes it a "hybrid" is its powertrain -- the Hybrid Synergy Drive System -- that tandems a small and high-tech 1.5-liter gasoline engine (76 horsepower) with an electric motor with peak output of 50 kilowatts (67 horsepower) and a whopping 295 pound-feet of torque.

The system's computers and controllers blend the output of both power sources for optimum efficiency so that, for instance, in stop-and-go traffic the car often runs on electric power stored in its 202-volt nickel-metal-hydride battery. At cruising speeds, the engine output does double duty, driving the front wheels while also turning a generator, whose voltage then powers the electric assist motor. Under heavy acceleration, power from the battery comes online too. The total output of 143 horsepower is enough to accelerate the Prius from zero to 60 mph in about 10 seconds.

The Prius employs a continuously variable transmission -- no stepped gearing -- so that a foot-on-the-floor maneuver produces only a supple and drama-free gathering of speed and a whirring tenor engine note. I drove the car for a week in freeway traffic and it was quite willing until about 75 mph, above which I had to go to the whip to accelerate.

Dynamically, the car is about what you'd expect from an economy car on 15-inch tires. Competent and agile enough to get out of its own way -- independent strut suspension is used up front, while a torsion beam holds up the rear -- the Prius has a light and reactive feel in its power-assisted rack-and-pinion steering and secure assurance in the front-disc/rear-drum brakes with ABS assist. But this is an earnest commuting appliance, albeit one with more than 370 engineering patents to its credit.

You never plug in the Prius. During braking, the electric motor becomes a generator that recharges the battery, thereby recovering kinetic energy that would otherwise be lost as heat in the brakes. If the battery levels get low, the gas engine is summoned to top off the electrons. You can keep up with all this activity on two dash-mounted LCD displays: one, a flowchart, the other, a bar graph indicating recovered kilowatts and other arcana of fuel efficiency.

Most consumers, I suspect, will watch the graphs for a day or so and then flip over to the audio or climate displays, with the peace of mind that comes with knowing they are part of the solution, not the problem.

In fact, it is not the Prius' stark differences -- its fetishizing of thermodynamics -- that make the car marketable, but its sameness, the transparency of the hybrid system. The car uses an electronic key -- a small plastic module that slips into a receptacle on the dash -- that activates the start button on the dash. Put your foot on the brake and press the button; it takes about a second for the car's computers to boot up the instrument display, located near the leading edge of the windshield. The gearshift is a joystick-like unit on the dash, behind and to the right of the steering wheel. Put it in drive or reverse. The park position is engaged by a push button above the gearshift.

There is very little to remind you that the Prius is different from any other economy family car, and quite a lot to suggest it is, in fact, a commuter with upscale aspirations. Standard equipment includes anti-skid brakes and traction control; keyless entry; power windows and locks; heated side mirrors; steering-wheel-mounted audio and climate controls; alloy wheels; CD player; and the multi-function LCD display.

The options list includes high-end blandishments like a navigation system; six-disc CD changer; stability control; and curtain and side-impact air bags. The Prius would be a nifty family ride even without the virtue-intensive powertrain.

But how's this for an incentive: The dead governor walking, Gray Davis, has asked the federal government to grant the Prius -- which is a super-ultra-low-emissions vehicle according to the California Air Resources Board -- an exemption allowing solo drivers to use the car pool lanes on California freeways. A decision from the Department of Transportation is pending.

Given that the world trembles on the edge of fossil-fueled disaster -- from the Mideast to the melting ice caps -- it's hard not to see the Prius as anything less than a manifesto (the term revolutionaries once used for a "vision statement"). Lamentably, even as Toyota leads the way in hybrid powertrains, it is increasing its production of gas-thirsty sport utility vehicles for the American market.

But Toyota is pouring marvelous amounts of its treasure into efficiency research, and its achievements in mass-production hybrid technology haven't precluded work in other directions. The company has a project with UC Davis and UC Irvine to develop fuel-cell technology and infrastructure. By year's end it will have leased six of its experimental fuel-cell vehicles to the universities and given millions to fund research just in California.

It is also true that GM, for one, has a robust advanced technology division, which will deliver "mild" hybrid vehicles to market early next year. GM also will soon roll out its displacement-on-demand system, which promises to significantly improve fuel consumption and emissions on the thirstiest and most popular of vehicles -- that is, pickups and SUVs. It also is making strides in diesel and injection technology.

But fully a third of GM's research budget goes toward the far-fetched future of fuel cells. As a matter of policy, the company regards hybrid powertrains as merely an interim solution. The company may yet be rewarded in the marketplace. As a matter of energy policy, Congress should not allow attainable gains to be held hostage to tomorrow.

Meantime, people are queuing up to buy the Prius today.

*

'04 Toyota Prius
Wheelbase: 106.3 inches
Length: 175 inches
Curb weight: 2,890 pounds
Powertrain: gasoline engine and electric motor
Horsepower: gas engine, 76 hp; electric motor, 67 hp
Torque: gas, 82 pound-feet at 4,200 rpm; electric, 295 pound-feet at 1,200 rpm
Acceleration: zero to 60 mph in about 10 seconds
EPA rating: 60 miles per gallon city, 51 mpg highway
Price, base: $19,995
Price, as tested: $20,510, including $515 delivery charge
Final thoughts: Fossil fuel minimalist
Source: Toyota Motor Sales USA

The xB from Toyota's Scion brand is a kind of stereo on wheels, aimed squarely at Japanophile Gen-Y buyers barely old enough to drive. Parents won't get it, but that's the point.

By Dan Neil

After spending a week driving a Scion xB -- the ice-cube-shaped flagship of Toyota Motor Corp.'s new youth- directed brand Scion -- I would like to publicly apologize to Volvo for all the times I accused its products of being boxy. Clearly, I didn't know from boxy.

Styled with a T-square, a plumb bob and a cheese cutter, the Scion xB takes the concept of boxiness and sexes it up to new, almost platonic levels. You can well imagine somebody in Plato's cave seeing the xB's shadow on the wall and saying, "What the heck is that? ... Oh, silly me, it's just a box."

If for some reason you find the isometric design of the xB displeasing, Scion's under-25 demographic has a message for you: "Yo, old guy, get on home now, you're missing, like, 'Friends.' " This car is aimed squarely at the most subversive subset of Gen-Y, trendsetters who are abandoning the sport compact movement as it goes mainstream, a la "The Fast and the Furious."

The xB is to the sleek-and-low styling of sporty imports what chainsaw sculpture is to the Italian Renaissance.

The Scion brand was launched in California in June. (The brand will bow in the Southern and East Coast markets in February.) Thus far, the xB has outsold its more conventionally styled stablemate, the sport-hatch xA, by almost 2 to 1. And though the xB is the most radically styled, chunky monkeys including the Honda Element and the Suzuki Aerio SX also have found an audience.

So how did square get to be so dope?

It all started with the Japanese market kei mini-cars -- urban runabouts that are limited to 660-cubic-centimeter engines and narrow enough to squeeze through Japan's tiny streets. (The government encourages the use of kei cars by levying lower owner taxes and high fuel taxes.) The boxy shape -- called "tall wagon" in Japan -- was the natural result of seeking maximum cabin space over the cars' minimum footprint.

Kei-class cars constitute about half the Japanese vehicle market, and some of them -- the Honda Life, Nissan Cube and Suzuki Wagon R -- are wickedly clever little transportation gadgets. Besides being super-practical and dirt cheap, the cars appeal to the Japanese taste for a particular sort of goofy anti-styling, a kind of gothic cuteness and precious edginess.

The xB, built on the same platform as the 1.5-liter Toyota Echo, belongs to a larger class of vehicle, but the styling vocabulary is right out of the kei playbook. And considering how Asia-centric Gen-Y's tastes are -- whether for anime, electronics or "Kill Bill" -- perhaps it was just a matter of time before the mad-boxy style jumped the ocean to California.

"It's so ugly it's cute," my girlfriend, Tina, observed. (Almost makes you wonder how the Pontiac Aztek missed, doesn't it?)

The xB is, in fact, a warmed-over Japanese market car called the bB (for "Black Box"). There is talk already at Nissan Motor Co. that it might bring its Cube, scaled up by a factor of 1.2 or 1.5, to the U.S. market. If the xB hits, imitators won't be far behind.

If you have read Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" you understand the so-called Law of the Few: the select group of people who discover a new idea -- be it shoes or a band or a car -- and translate it in such a way that it becomes acceptable to a much wider audience. Old-school marketers call them "thought leaders." The existentially boxy xB is aimed right at this mandarin group inside Gen-Y, and the Scion brand rollout, first in California, reflects this staged assault on the command-and-control structure of Dub Nation.

Having grown up in a maelstrom of mass marketing, Gen-Y is naturally suspicious of ordinary advertising. Almost three years ago, Toyota approached the Los Angeles-based Rebel Organization (the marketing arm of URB magazine, the Rolling Stone of hip-hop, dub and underground music) to help the automaker connect with Scion's target audience.

"Peer-to-peer word of mouth is really key to these consumers," says Josh Levine, president of the Rebel Organization. "They are more interested in companies that they've heard about than those that get pushed on them from TV."

Rebel's under-the-radar marketing of Scion includes putting "street teams" at events like Hot Import Nights -- the Lollapalooza of the tuner world -- as well as supporting deejay contests, nightclub events, fringy art gallery showings and carwashes. The idea, Levine says, is to "put Scion where its audience wants to be."

The ironies abound, starting with the oxymoronic flavor of the name "Rebel Organization." And maybe it's just me, but there is something slightly sinister about an enormous corporation using underground music -- ever the secret-decoder ring of youth culture -- as a conduit to push its products. Imagine the Sex Pistols at CBGB, brought to you by Coca-Cola.

In any event, music is key to Scion's car-as-lifestyle message. The standard audio system is a Pioneer six-speaker AM-FM-CD-MP3 player pre-wired for satellite radio and sound-processing technology that will rattle your teeth with bass. A six-disc CD changer and a subwoofer system also are available. The cabin construction is extensively soundproofed.

The Scion is what they call "mono-spec," which is to say everything is included for the base price ($13,680 for models with a five-speed manual transmission, $14,480 for automatic-equipped models). Included are air conditioning; power windows, door locks and outside mirrors; rear wiper- defroster; anti-lock brakes with traction and stability control as well as brake assist; halogen headlamps; remote keyless entry; privacy window tinting; full "ground effects"-style body valances; and that monster sound system.

Our test car -- with automatic transmission, security system and an alloy wheel upgrade -- went out the dealer's door at $16,403. As part of Scion's effort to build an emotional bond with Gen-Y, there will be no haggling on price.

Scion does offer nearly 40 aftermarket-style accessories so that buyers can personalize their vehicles: three styles of alloy wheels, carbon-fiber-style body trim, clear tail lamps, Yakima roof rack, rear spoiler, aluminum cross-drilled sport pedals, LED interior light kit and lots more.

For those furious few who want to slam the xB, Scion has a one-stop solution: a Toyota Racing Development performance package, including 18- or 19-inch Hart wheels; Pirelli P-Zero tires; lowering springs kit with struts and shocks; front strut brace; sport muffler and quick-shift kit with performance clutch; and cold-air intake. All supported by the factory's 36-month warranty.

Meanwhile, the aftermarket elves have been hard at work too. Toyota provided designs of the xB to members of the Specialty Equipment Market Assn., whose sprawling trade show is taking place in Las Vegas this week.

What with all the context, it's easy to overlook what the Scion xB is actually like to drive. The answer: It's OK. The interior has all the spatial nuance of a handball court, with the nearly vertical windshield pretty far away. The techy-looking instruments are centrally located, leaving the area behind the steering wheel as a kind of catchall shelf.

I'll say one thing for it. It's got headroom. I wonder whether the xB might presage the return of, maybe, stovepipe hats. Also, because the car is so narrow and the sides are so high, it's initially hard to judge where the curb is when parking. The first few times I parked, I was a foot or more away.

The doors are big and swing wide for easy access. The rear cargo hatch swings neatly out of the way to reveal a pretty good storage area of 21.2 cubic feet. With the 60/40-split rear seat folded, the number climbs to 43.4 cubic feet -- about the size of a comfy loveseat. Oh, right, sorry, I'm showing my age. I mean, about the size of a double turntable and mad PA system.

The least interesting part of the xB -- at least when it comes with the automatic transmission -- is the driving. The 1.5-liter, 108-horsepower inline-4, with variable-valve timing, is certainly a competent engine and clean too (low-emission vehicle status with Environmental Protection Agency-rated mileage of 30 miles per gallon in the city, 34 on the highway).

Unfortunately, the automatic transmission smothers torque. The car is lively around town, but it labors at L.A. freeway speeds. Otherwise, it handles pretty much as you'd expect, with crisp but by-no-means- razor-sharp reactions to inputs in the steering; firm and insistent brakes (front disc, rear drum); and stable posture in corners but with a front-driver's modest appetite for hard cornering.

Aftermarket performance parts are often a waste of time, actually making factory- developed cars slower and dodgier in reliability. But the xB -- which tips the scales at a bantamweight 2,450 pounds -- just screams for kit.

Cheap, stuffed with content, the xB is a perfect starter-kit car for 16-to-24-year-olds. Naturally, many of these kids will need Mom and Dad's help to buy a car, and it's an open question whether parents will look at the xB and say, "I'm not buying you that, that thing! It's hideous!" Parents are not likely to get it, and that's the point.

But I suspect there are a lot of boomers out there who will buy the xB too. You can't beat it for value and practicality, and there's no law saying you have to use it to go clubbing with your friends. That the Scion might reach across demographic boundaries will no doubt strike Toyota as exceedingly dope.

*

2004 Scion xB
Wheelbase: 98.4 inches
Length: 155.3 inches
Curb weight: 2,450 pounds
Powertrain: 1.5-liter inline-4 engine with variable-valve timing; four-speed automatic or five-speed manual transmission; front-wheel drive
Horsepower: 108 at 6,000 rpm
Torque: 105 pound-feet at 4,200 rpm
Acceleration: zero to 60 mph in 10.6 seconds
EPA rating: 30 miles per gallon city, 34 mpg highway
Price, base: $14,480 (with automatic transmission)
Price, as tested: $16,403 (adds alloy wheel upgrade and security system)
Competitor: Suzuki Aerio SX, or a year's tuition at UCLA
Final thoughts: It's hip to be square
Source: Toyota Motor Sales, Car and Driver magazine

© 2003, Los Angeles Times

Nissan's super-sized Pathfinder Armada is aimed squarely at Detroit's most profitable piece of the SUV segment. But do bigger ends justify bigger means?

By Dan Neil

It has taken years of analysis and reverse engineering, but the Japanese automakers are now able to build vehicles just as big and stupid as the Americans.

© 2003, Los Angeles Times

By Dan Neil

Rumble Seat

With its futuristic, look-at-me XLR convertible, GM's luxury brand delivers a diamond in the rough.

The flashy fractalism that girds the Cadillac XLR has a name. General Motors Corp.'s luxury division calls it "Art and Science" design. The name always reminds me of Raphael's great painting "School of Athens," in which Plato and Aristotle are seen debating whether to clean out the attic or the basement.

People in art history classes are now falling out of their chairs.

When it first appeared on the Evoq concept car at the Detroit Auto Show in 1999, the cut-glass edginess of Art and Science looked pretty extreme -- futuristic in a "Fahrenheit 451" sort of way. A lot of people just couldn't wrap their eyes around the strange and slightly threatening shape, like a malevolent crystal grown in zero gravity. But to their credit, the designers at Cadillac -- in particular GM head of design Wayne Cherry -- remained committed to Art and Science, and eventually the public came around. Today's Cadillacs seem to live quite comfortably inside their geometric skins.

Which isn't to say that they are all great-looking vehicles. The hot-selling Cadillac Escalade sport utility vehicle looks like an enormous Chinese kite mutated by gamma rays. The style's unforgiving angularity has proved hard to scale up to bigger vehicles.

The 2004 XLR -- a compact, two-seat roadster with a retractable hardtop and a $76,525 price tag -- is closest to the well of Art and Science, and perhaps that's why it's the most successful expression of Cadillac's new brand styling. Based on the next-generation Corvette platform and built in Bowling Green, Ky., alongside Corvette, the XLR is a low, wide and wedgy car, with a severe, nose-down profile that from certain angles makes it look like a Sharper Image stapler. It is roughly the same size as its competitors, including the Lexus SC 430, Mercedes-Benz 500SL and Porsche 911 cabriolet, but the Caddie has proportionally a much longer wheelbase, which gives it a very athletic stance.

The thing practically smolders with visual heat: the recessed rear glass between the roof pillars; the wide trapezoidal stop lamp integrated into the trailing edge of the trunk; the chiseled LED taillights; the pagoda-like angularity of the front fenders as they sweep up to meet the shoulder line. Yikes.

Is it a beautiful car? Honestly, I can't tell. It looks fussed over to me, and there are enough dissonances to keep it from being a classic. But it sizzles.

Not surprisingly, the XLR plays great in Los Angeles -- a town that loves art and science so much it named its favorite academy in honor of them. I spent a day tooling around Beverly Hills and West Hollywood with the top down, listening to -- though pretending not to hear -- people react to the XLR. Conversations around the tables of open-air bistros stilled; people pointed and waved. One guy took a picture of the car with his cellphone.

The buzz at street level could be attributed to many things. I didn't see another XLR on the road during my time with the car. In L.A. car culture, the first one on the block is the winner. But it may also be due to the car's patent audacity, its gleeful showiness that is the automotive analog of star power.

The interior is as swank and formal as the exterior is brash and provocative. This is GM's best interior to date -- think midnight supper club with a steering wheel. The leather bucket seats (multi-adjustable with heating and ventilation) are separated by a broad center console surfaced with golden eucalyptus wood, matching the wood trim on the steering wheel and door handles. The pop-up panel on the right side of the central console conceals two excellent cup holders. The palm-shaped shifter controlling the five-speed automatic-manual transmission slides in a J-shaped shift gate with a light, precise action. The shifter falls perfectly at hand.

The black-faced instrument cluster, with "Bulgari" written circumferentially above the speedo, is bright and instantly readable -- but Bulgari's connection to the car is anything but obvious. The climate control console is intuitive and easy to read, a fuss-free design some Europeans would be well advised to copy. The switchgear has a clean, well-damped feel to it. Quality all around.

The interior's least lovable texture is the silk-screened printing on the metal surfaces -- the center console surround, the door-mounted panel and various switchgear. And while I'm complaining: the oversize sun visors block views of traffic signals and look rather like beagle ears flapping around when the top's down. And if I were Cadillac product planning, I might have another bash at refining the Bose Infotainment unit. The multi-function system, centered on a 7-inch LCD screen, is quite hard to see in bright sunlight and would benefit from a glare-proof screen.

But these are minor issues. The ambience of the car is well executed, sophisticated and technical, and full of surprise and delight.

For instance: The XLR employs a proximity locking and starting system. Drivers simply keep the key in a pocket or purse, and the car -- by means of radio signals -- recognizes the key holder as he or she approaches and unlocks the doors. To start the car, you put your foot on the brake and press a toggle start switch to the right of the steering column. To lock the car, all you have to do is walk away.

The XLR has lots of fun technology. There are no exterior door handles: You hook your fingers inside a cutout at the top of the door and press a rubberized pressure pad. Likewise, to get out you push a button adjacent to the door pull. On the practical side are systems like the adaptive cruise control that, once set, uses radar to maintain a set distance between you and the car ahead. This system, though not as fluid as Mercedes-Benz's Distronic system, is nice for long-distance commuters.

Also standard on the XLR are a heads-up display system that projects speed and other information on the lower windshield in the driver's field of view; rain-sensing wipers; Xenon HID headlights with automatic activation; and a DVD player integrated into the 250-watt Bose system (mercifully, the DVD system works only when the car is in park).

Suffice it to say that GM put everything that its Tier 1 suppliers had to offer on this car. Which accounts for the car's price tag, considerably more than the exquisite Lexus SC 430, for example.

Can Cadillac play in these Elysian fields? Perhaps, but it will have to rely on its styling star power, because the car lacks the refinement and polish of its German, British and Japanese competitors.

For starters, the car's levels of noise, vibration and harshness -- NVH, in the parlance -- are comparatively high. Despite a new suspension technology -- magnetorrheic damping -- which actually changes the viscosity of the fluid in the shocks to adapt to changing road surfaces, the suspension is constantly atwitter with fine vibrations that are transmitted through the steering column and seats. Also, when the car hits a big road defect, such as a manhole cover, the suspension delivers a crashing report.

The XLR and sixth-generation Corvette -- C6 -- were developed together. They share the same hydroformed steel chassis overlaid with composite and aluminum body panels. The XLR (3,647 pounds) is at least 200 pounds lighter than every class rival but the Porsche 911. In the search for weight savings -- and because of acute lack of space -- the XLR dispensed with a spare tire and instead uses Michelin ZP run-flat tires, which by dint of reinforced sidewalls can withstand routine punctures and continue for up to 100 miles. The sidewall stiffness of these tires -- though not a problem in the rawboned Corvette -- robs the XLR of the suppleness befitting a luxury convertible.

The demands and compromises required from the retractable hardtop, which the Corvette doesn't have, causes some awful packaging problems for the XLR. The trunk is small (12 cubic feet), and when the hardtop is retracted the storage space virtually disappears (down to 4 cubic feet), so that you cannot load groceries and then drop the top for the ride home without, to coin a phrase, breaking some eggs. In-cabin storage is pretty scant too, limited to the glove box, small door bins and a hard-to-access compartment in the bulkhead between the seats.

The XLR is a sporty car, no doubt about it. Under the hood is a free-revving Northstar 4.6-liter V-8, with dual overhead cams and variable valve timing, good for 320 horsepower. The car launches with authority, but it's no bracket racer -- zero to 60 mph hovers around 5.9 seconds -- and it's at its best splitting cross-town traffic with bursts of mid-rpm torque or cruising at supralegal speeds. The five-speed auto shifts with oily smoothness and -- with its wrist-flicking action -- is one of the few auto-manuals that's fun to manually shift.

As in the Corvette, the transmission is rear-mounted in order to give the car a 50-50 weight distribution. This makes the XLR stable and balanced while cornering but -- like an ice skater with her arms out -- slow to rotate, giving it a less-than-nimble feel in the canyons.

The steering, with its speed-sensitive variable assistance (in other words, the power steering boost rises at slower speeds to make city driving and parking easier) is heavy and fairly numb, but it's accurate. The four-wheel disc brakes are excellent. Anti-lock braking and traction and stability control are standard.

Overall, the Cadillac XLR is a great image car that needs some seasoning to measure up to its transglobal rivals. More Dionysian than Apollonian, more Platonic than Aristotelian, the XLR is sumptuous piece of art that yet needs tutoring in the science of luxury GTs.

*
2004 Cadillac XLR
Wheelbase: 105.7 inches
Length: 177.7 inches
Curb weight: 3,647 pounds
Powertrain: 4.6-liter V-8, dual overhead cam, variable-valve timing, five-speed automatic with driver shift control, rear-wheel drive
Horsepower: 320 at 6,400 rpm
Torque: 310 pound-feet at 4,400 rpm
Acceleration: zero to 60 mph, 5.9 seconds
EPA rating: 17 miles per gallon city, 25 highway
Price, base: $75,385
Price, as tested: $76,525 ($815 delivery included)
Competitors: Mercedes-Benz SL500, Jaguar XK8
Final thoughts: Power crystal
Sources: GM, Car and Driver magazine

© 2003, Los Angeles Times

All that's missing from the well-engineered TL is personality.

By Dan Neil

The 2004 Acura TL will raise no one's blood lust, nor will it send anyone into an eye-lolling frenzy.

The TL is Botox for the brain box.

You might think that the TL -- based on the current-generation Honda Accord and built in Maryville, Ohio -- would be cause for celebration, what with its just-about- perfect-in-every-way engineering, embarrassment of standard features, handsome exterior and starship interior.

And it is. A very quiet celebration, the kind of celebration that ensues shortly after the med cart goes by. Who -- besides the Pre-Raphaelites -- would have thought that perfection would be so uninspiring?

This $35,000 front-drive sedan -- pitted against entry-luxury choices like the Lexus ES 330, Audi A4 and Saab 9-3 -- is one lulu of an automobile, no doubt about it. The TL carries on Acura's tradition of engine-intensive performance, unimpeachable build quality and irresistible value. I drove the car to Tucson and back in 72 hours and would gladly have done another lap. Everything works, everything fits, everything goes like hell. What's not to like?

Then again, what's to love? The cars we love say something about us that we ourselves are desperate to say. I'm fun and unconventional (BMW Mini). I'm a wheel in Hollywood (Bentley Azure). Ask me about my grandkids (Mercury Grand Marquis).

What does the TL say? I subscribe to Consumer Reports? I use a discount brokerage house?

Reflecting the dimensional changes in the current U.S.-spec Accord platform (the Accord sold in Europe is smaller), the TL is slightly shorter bumper to bumper, higher and wider than the previous model. It has a kind of close-coupled blockiness that at some angles looks athletic. The deeply scored lateral line that connects the marker lights and door handles plays up a forward-leaning profile, and the chevron shape that unites the grille and the headlights -- like the face of the smaller Acura TSX -- has a droid-like sexiness about it, if you are into that sort of thing.

But with its high shoulders surrounding a spacious cabin, its generous greenhouse and its conservative rake to windshield and rear glass, the TL design places practicality over pulchritude.

It shouldn't. Look at the competition -- BMW 3-Series, Saab 9-3, Cadillac CTS, Audi A4, Infiniti G35. Pound for pound, penny for penny, the Acura TL is as good a piece of engineering as any of these cars, sayeth I. But I would gladly trade away a degree of the Acura's high-minded excellence for a little of the wanton, knickers-in-the rubbish fun these rival cars radiate.

And, by the way, Honda knows it. The company's new president and chief executive, Takeo Fukui -- a man so serious he makes the Mt. Rushmore presidents look like they are huffing nitrous oxide -- has opened a new design studio amid the pleasure domes of Tokyo's Roppongi District to help the company inject some flair and fun into sheet metal.

But these qualities are more than skin deep. The TL is powered by a purling 3.2-liter dual-overhead-cam V-6 engine with electronic throttle control and variable-valve technology to orchestrate its 24 valves. Yet another example of Honda's quartz-movement precision, this all-alloy engine -- a higher-compression version of the mill of the previous 3.2 TL Type S -- produces 270 horsepower and 238 pound-feet of torque with excellent emissions values. The TL qualifies as an ultra-low-emission vehicle, as rated by the California Air Resources Board.

This is the sort of engine you imagine provocatively posed in the centerfold of the journal for the Society of Automotive Engineers: lightweight, compact, powerful throughout the rev range, efficient and turbine smooth. Generally speaking, it's under-stressed -- which is to say it has the potential for more output with slightly different computer programming (mapping) and higher redline.

So the six-banger never feels strained or fretted, always working well within itself. Indeed, it doesn't feel very much at all. Tramp the gas pedal, and the faint thrumming you feel in the seat and steering wheel is like the mellow purr of a Sharper Image nose hair trimmer. TL drivers will just have to live without the primitive, haptic pleasure of a high-output motor spilling its guts for their enjoyment.

The timbre of the car, whether sitting at idle or running wide open with the wipers on warp speed, is roundly mute. All the big, ugly noises -- wind, road hash, driveline warble -- have been gagged by the car's highly evolved design, including triple-sealed doors, high-tech engine mounts, rafts of sound-deadening material, isolated sub-frames and heavy suspension bushings.

The question is whether all this quiet is too shapeless, like an earmuff clamped to the head, damping out all sounds, even the interesting ones. Again, I'd trade away some of the barbiturate quiet of the TL for a few of the sonorous, slightly musical snarls coming from the likes of BMW or Saab.

Think of it as the foley track for the TL's visual effects.

The TL is seriously quick for what is, after all, an attitude- enhanced family car. With automatic transmission, the TL reaches the 60-mph mark in about six seconds. At interstate speeds, the nail-the-throttle boost bleeds off a little bit, but this is a car that can comfortably cruise at 90 mph without breathing hard. The only problem I could find in the entire drivetrain -- aside from its ice-princess mien -- is an abrupt tip-in, a kind of low-speed jumpiness, of the car's throttle.

For the time being, Acura has dispensed with the "Type S" performance variant of the TL (the new engine is 10 horsepower stronger than the version that powered last year's TL Type S, anyway). Gung-ho buyers can opt for a six-speed manual transmission, which comes bundled with a limited-slip differential, sportier tires and Brembo brakes, all at no extra cost.

Our test car, with a five-speed automatic and $2,000 optional navigation system with voice recognition, lists for $35,270, including the $590 destination charge.

How does the TL handle? Exactly as you would expect of a front-drive sedan with 270 horsepower on tap and 60% of its 3,575 pounds over the front wheels. The TL clears the blocks and accelerates hard in a straight line, and moderate torque steer -- the tendency to wander off course under hard acceleration -- shunts the car to and fro. I understand the TLs with six-speed manual are crazy with torque steer; I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks to the variable-valve timing, e-throttle and other measures, the power surges through the gears in long, even strokes, like the power of a sculling team.

The TL's suspension -- front double wishbones and rear multi-links complement anti-roll bars at both ends -- is taut, well controlled and cinched down. Considering the car's heavy front, the TL battles valiantly to maintain its balance in transient maneuvering. But in front-wheel-drive cars, I actually prefer a little limberness in the front suspension, which is to say, when I breathe off the throttle, I like the weight balance to sluice forward a little more readily to give the tires more turn-in bite. Alas, the TL already has too much weight on the front wheels, leaving little room for fun with weight transfer.

The standard-issue Bridgestone Turanza tires (235/45 R17) have excellent road manners, offering a smooth and quiet ride. But, obviously, these tires don't have the big claws it takes to hang on in rowdy curve-to-curve cavorts. I'm looking forward to driving the car with the Z-rated performance tires (a $200 option on fully equipped models). The torque-sensing power steering offers a nice weight in the wheel, and it's quite accurate. The brake pedal feel is progressive and easily modulated with either right or left foot, and the standard four-wheel disc brakes on the test car -- despite the lack of the Brembo pedigree -- were tight and muscular.

My sense is that all the personality of the TL resides in the optional six-speed stick shift, leaving the automatic-equipped cars feeling dosed with Prozac.

Like the RSX compact sport coupe and the smaller TSX sedan, the TL is positively silly with standard features, including an audiophile-quality sound system centered on a DVD-audio/CD/AM-FM/XM receiver driving eight surround-sound speakers with 225 watts. In case you didn't know -- and I didn't -- DVD-audio is a high-density recording format comparable to audio masters used in the recording business. Proof positive that the acoustic engineers carry a big stick at Honda R&D.

The TL's list of standard features looks likely to be continued on the next year's sticker. Included are a full leather interior; heated power front seats with 10-way adjustment and two-position memory on the driver's seat; a locking trunk pass-through; a power glass moon roof with remote operation; speed-sensing wipers; xenon high-intensity headlights; a Bluetooth-enabled hands-free phone system; and heated, power-operated, body-colored outside mirrors with two- position memory and a driver's- and passenger-side reverse-gear tilt-down feature. And more interior lighting, mirrors, cup holders, storage bins and power outlets than you can shake a conductor's baton at.

Anti-lock brakes, traction and stability control and a full suite of air bags are, of course, standard.

The big option is the $2,000 navigation system, a big, bright, easy-to-use unit with an 8-inch display and DVD-based moving maps. It's just about the best system out there.

The Acura TL's focused precision and exceptional value could make complaints about its over-refinement seem like shadow boxing. Maybe so. But for Honda, the hardest engineering job of all is left yet to do. How do you build an emotion?

*

2004 Acura TL
Wheelbase: 107.9 inches
Length: 186.2 inches
Curb weight: 3,575 pounds, with automatic transmission, without navigation system
Powertrain: 3.2-liter double-overhead-cam V-6 engine with variable-valve timing, five-speed automatic, front-wheel drive
Horsepower: 270 at 6,200 rpm
Torque: 238 pound-feet at 5,000 rpm
Acceleration: zero to 60 mph, about six seconds
EPA rating: 19 miles per gallon city, 29 mpg highway
Price, base: $32,650
Price, as tested: $35,270 ($590 delivery included)
Competitors: Saab 9-3, BMW 330i
Final thoughts: Oy Robot!

© 2003, Los Angeles Times

The all-new Bentley Continental GT is a feast for the senses as well a drain on the wallet.

By Dan Neil

Sensible people might well ask what car could possibly be worth $150,000.

This is why I never invite sensible people to parties.

The 2004 Bentley Continental GT -- the first all-new Bentley since Volkswagen's takeover of the brand in 1998 -- is an astonishing vehicle, from its wind-sculpted skin to its soul, where resides a 6.0-liter, twin-turbocharged W-12 producing 552 horsepower and 479 pound-feet of torque.

Bored by numbers? Then conjure this: From a standing start, the 2 1/2-ton C-GT requires only 60 seconds to be three miles away, at which point it will be communing at a top speed of 200 mph or so, depending on the weather. At the drag strip, this regal and elegant, expressive and exclusive grand touring coupe eats Porsches like Emeril eats shrimp.

For the record, the all-wheel-drive C-GT has the fastest top speed of any production four-seater in the world, but its stunning pace seems almost incidental to its rich, enveloping excellence, which begins to unhinge your brain and pry open your wallet the moment you clap eyes on the car.

In its glowing silver paint, the C-GT has a kind of energy that is at once gestural and electrical, as if it were sketched in the empty air of a darkroom with a white-hot filament. Its proportions are just about perfect: long hood, short metal overhangs front and rear, a low, back-swept roofline and big wheels and tires (19 inches), upon which it sits low and flexed.

The thing looks as if it's going to bolt for the horizon at any second, with you or without you.

The redesigned Bentley cheese-grater grille flows back into a slightly raised hood cowl, creating the illusion of coach-styled front fenders. The rear quarters are likewise contoured to suggest "wings" -- what the British call fenders. The effect is classic and aristocratic.

In November the C-GT received a special design award from the Milan, Italy-based jury of the "Most Beautiful Car in the World" awards, recognizing the car's achievement in capturing the essence of the Bentley marque. Bentley's chief designer, Dirk Van Braeckel, took as his inspiration the 1952 R-Type Continental coachwork. The C-GT is a brilliant formulation of classic lines and proportions in a modern vernacular.

Brightwork is kept to a minimum, with polished metal around the pillar-less cabin glass, along the sill, the grille and the dual exhaust outlets. The C-GT is a car for grown-ups, and the more you know about cars, the more you appreciate it.

Typically, in a car capable of such ridiculously high speeds, the body contouring screams "wind tunnel," which is to say that rational aerodynamic concerns -- high-speed lift, wind noise, drag -- put the squeeze on expressive and irrational styling. The Ferrari Enzo, for example, is a supremely functional piece of machinery, but no one I know would argue it was Ferrari's most beautiful car.

The Bentley, on the other hand, manages to be artful and rational at once. If you ladled molten metal from a great height, the solidified result might look something like this.

Bentley still had to keep the thing from flying off the road, however. Cleverly concealed in the trailing edge of the rear glass is an active aero spoiler that kicks up at speeds above 65 mph. The underside of the car is designed to channel air in such a way as to prevent high-speed lift.

In one of Ian Fleming's Bond books -- I forget just now which one -- 007 refers to his Bentley as his "locomotive" (British Intelligence actually made him switch to an Aston Martin), and the C-GT certainly lives up to that legend, thanks to the rolling thunder under the hood. The W-12 engine -- that's right, W -- is essentially two sets of narrow-angle V-6 cylinder banks interlaced like the fingers of clasped hands. Both banks of cylinders are fed with their own high-boost turbocharger, and the turbo boost, fuel injection and cam timing are computer-tuned, or mapped, to produce maximum torque (472 pound-feet) at a mere 1,600 rpm, and the torque curve stays flat all the way to the redline.

What's that mean? The engine wakes with a metallic cough and settles at once into one of the most reverberant idle notes this side of a 1972 Buick Riviera. Unlike the polished metronomy of the $80,000 VW Phaeton's W-12 -- the basic structure of which the Bentley shares -- the C-GT rumbles with a dual-exhaust basso profundo you hear warming up in the bracket-racing lanes of the local drag strip.

This is not Pierce Brosnan at the baccarat tables. This is Sean Connery with a hangover, a warm gun barrel and a fresh clip. Duck and cover!

Toe the throttle and lots of interesting things happen at once. Just off idle, all the engine twist is summoned and channeled first through the ZF six-speed automatic -- which can be shifted manually by way of paddles attached to the steering wheel or with the gear lever in a separate gate, Tiptronic style. The power then is routed to a torque-sensing center differential that divvies it up 50-50 to the front and rear axles.

The all-wheel-drive system is derived from the Audi Quattro system found in the A8L and -- apart from excellent all-weather traction -- the AWD system means the C-GT hooks up like P. Diddy at the Playboy mansion. The Pirelli P-Zeros gain instant purchase on the asphalt and then -- whoa, Nellie. Zero to 60 goes by in 4.7 seconds, according to the factory. By my seat-of-the-pants reckoning it's quicker.

In any event, if you keep the throttle buried in the lush wool carpeting, the engine snarling in as it runs through the gears, you'll be illegal in the time it takes to say "Nolo contendere." With six forward gears and essentially inexhaustible torque, the C-GT doesn't have a weak point anywhere from zero to 200 mph. There is no gear-shift shock, no straining at the margins -- just mind-blowing, linear thrust.

I spent a day shooting the canyons above Malibu with the C-GT. Here the car is a little less happy, though it corners and brakes better than any 5,250-pound car has a right to. For one thing, if you leave the shifting duties to the ZF automatic, the gear selection tends to stay on the high side, which can make the car bog down coming out of turns. Also, the traction control is a touch aggressive, and even with so fine an engine, it takes a moment to spool up all 12 cylinders again.

Bentley's all-steel monocoque is assembled and painted at VW's plant in Mosel, Germany, and shipped to the refurbished Bentley works in Crewe, England -- is Rock of Gibraltar solid. Like the Audi A8L, the C-GT uses lightweight aluminum suspension pieces -- double A-arms in front, attached to a stainless-steel subframe, and multi-links in the rear -- to minimize unsprung mass.

The vibe of the car is what you imagine a tuning fork made of building girders would feel like.

Exquisitely calibrated, the ride is firm, sporty but never flinty. The weight of the car is carried by four-way-adjustable air springs. Body motions are nulled out with magnetorrheic dampers like those on the Audi A8L, so roll, pitch and dive are pretty much strangled before they have a chance to gather strength. Cornering is remarkably flat for so big a car. Ride height can be adjusted from the cabin, as can suspension stiffness.

The AWD system shunts power fore and aft up to a maximum split of 80%-20%, which, combined with traction and stability control and stupendous 15.9-inch front and 13.2-inch rear brake rotors (the largest on any production car), gives the C-GT effortless athleticism that would flatter a car weighing half a ton less. The steering is lively, quick and heavy.

Cabin appointments are what you might expect -- our test vehicle was lined with double-stitched aubergine and taupe hides, extravagantly contoured book-matched burled walnut and gorgeous carpeting. All the Bentley pieties are observed: the chrome organ-stop vent controls; the chrome ball-shaped vents; the knurled metal dials for the headlights, seat heaters, steering wheel adjustments, and so on, like those on a vintage Leica camera.

The power-adjustable, heated and massage-equipped seats are supremely comfortable. The driving position, on the high-pedestal seat, offers natural posture, with a good outward view.

The rear seat compartment is fully furnished with a walnut-trimmed center console, fold-down armrest, roll-top cup holder compartment and scalloped seating areas, but, alas, something in this car had to give, and it was the rear seat space. I couldn't squeeze my feet into the foot well. This is a 2+2 car in only the formal sense. On the other hand, the trunk space is surprisingly generous, and with its ski pass-through, you can make haste to the slopes with your skis inside the car.

The stereo system? The best I've ever heard on wheels.

Given all the capabilities of the car -- DVD, navigation, searchable virtual handbook, integrated phone, traffic reports and more -- the C-GT makes admirable use of its dashboard real estate. Higher-order functions, such as the navigation system, have their own buttons. The LCD screen is banked with eight option buttons, which will give you most of the functionality you might require. A central rotary knob allows you to adjust, intuitively, things like suspension stiffness -- turn right for stiffer, turn left for softer. This is a great system.

It is, in fact, the same system that appears in the VW Phaeton. If you look closely, you will see a lot of parts shared by the C-GT with its VW cousins and siblings, though obviously the Bentley has its own control caps and surfaces.

Here is the question: Is a Bentley, which its makers proclaim as the quintessential British grand touring car, less a Bentley for its German accent? I think not. First, without VW, there would in all likelihood not be a Bentley today, and the car world would be the poorer for it. Second, VW is one of the premier auto companies in the world, at the cutting edge of just about everything, and the C-GT's general excellence is the welcome consequence.

There are cars more exotically kitted out. For sheer density of technology, look to the Mercedes-Benz S600 or the BMW 760iL. The Bentley, for example, declines to have the hydraulic door and latch closers seen on these cars.

What the Bentley offers is its formidable presence. Not perfect but so very soulful.

Is it worth $150,000? Depends on who's buying. In Los Angeles, people who are spending $130,000 for a S600, I think, would gladly pony up the extra 20 large for a car so utterly distinctive and stylish. The C-GT price point -- roughly two-thirds that of the Bentley Arnage -- makes this beau ideal of British grand touring accessible to a much wider audience than Bentley has ever before entertained. The closest competitor is the Aston Martin Vanquish, which is no slouch but costs about $90,000 more.

Though grand-marque offerings such as the Rolls-Royce Phantom and the Mercedes Maybach are moving very slowly, Bentley has 2,800 U.S. orders for just 2,200 imported units scheduled to hit American dealerships this spring.

Is it worth the money? The question seems to be answering itself.

*

2004 Bentley Continental GT.
Wheelbase: 108.1 inches.
Length: 189.1 inches.
Curb weight: 5,250 pounds.
Powertrain: 6.0-liter twin- turbocharged W-12, six-speed automatic with manumatic shift control, all-wheel drive
Horsepower: 552 at 6,100 rpm
Torque: 479 pound-feet at 1,600 rpm
Acceleration: Zero to 60 mph in 4.7 seconds
EPA rating: Not available
Price, as tested: $149,990
Competitor: Aston Martin Vanquish
Final thoughts: The sport of kings
Source: Bentley Motor Cars

© 2003, Los Angeles Times