It seems like it has been forever since Chrysler has been planning a replacement for the slow-selling Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger. According to Automotive News, Chrysler’s new management is now wrestling with that very decision.
IT’S a lot like 1969 again. The Dodge Challenger, with styling that draws heavily on a sport coupe Chrysler introduced in late 1969, made its return last year. The Chevrolet Camaro, whose shape evokes the popular 1969 model, recently went back into production. Each is a clean and lean interpretation of its ancestor from the muscle-car era.
Meanwhile, Ford’s retro-futuristic Mustang, based on a late 1960s fastback model, has been around since the 2005 model year — and is beginning to look as droopy as a Fu Manchu mustache. So for the 2010 model year, a sartorial segue to a more ripped look, to stay current with the competition, was in order.
None of the period-perfect charm of its predecessor has been lost in the newest edition of Ford’s seminal pony car. But you’d probably need to park a 2009 next to a 2010 to see how truly different they are. The redesign seems to have carved away about half the body fat; what’s left is, appropriately enough, all muscle.
Vollkswagen is secretly readying an even harder, faster Golf GTI to launch in autumn 2009. Badged the VW Golf GTI-R, the hotter hatch will follow the classic performance recipe of more power and lighter weight to switch the Golf GTI (Mk6) from slick and sensible fast hatchback back into a proper pocket rocket again.
Our sources in Germany indicate that the R version will not use the outgoing R32’s V6 engine, preferring a lighter four-cylinder turbocharged motor with some 266bhp. Sounds suspiciously to us like the Audi S3’s engine, also tipped for the forthcoming Scirocco R20T.
Of the 20 exclusive Lamborghini Reventons produced to date, there was no doubt that one had to make it into the hands of an uber-rich Saudi man who likes to go fast (and we’re sure someone else who likes to go fast owns one in Dubai, UAE as well).
Watch as he guns it on an open highway in the dead of night multiple times until finally getting an unobstructed opportunity to get it up to an indicated 356kph, or 222mph. (Way cool dashboard gauges on the Reventon, by the way.)
Note: Please don't try this on an American highway... Not only because it's silly illegal and dangerous (just like it is over there), but rather because American highways sadly aren't up to par for high-speed driving of this caliber. Why, you may ask? Two reasons: first, drivers here aren't taught to keep right and will refuse (or be oblivious) to yield when you flash your beams from the inside lane at high-speed, so you will most likely rear-end them (with a difference of speed of 150mph+) and everyone in both cars will very quickly be dead. That's one reason.
Second, the majority of highways here aren't safe enough for 200mph speeds due to shortcomings in construction as well as design. For example, asphalt-to-concrete bridge transitions for some maddening reason are never completely seamless in America as they are most everywhere else in the world I've been in, but instead have huge humps and bumps that will throw a car going 200mph clear off the road. The other thing: If you keep in mind that America has the largest highway system in the world by far at well over 40,000 miles of pavement (and that we're in a huge national deficit), it's clear that it's simply too costly to invest in, operate and maintain the latest über-expensive German asphalt road-making machines that are responsible for the smooth-as-glass surfaces seen on the Autobahn and many other motorways around the world, including the new ones in the Middle East.
