2011 Audi R8 4.2 Quattro Spyder on 2040-cars

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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Audi bringing new TT Roadster to Paris

The TT may be first and foremost a coupe, but in presenting the third-generation model, Audi has toyed with all sorts of body-styles. There's been the prototypical coupe, of course, but also shooting brake and crossover concepts. The one thing it hasn't shown us is the convertible model, but that ends today as Audi takes the wraps off the new TT Roadster and TTS Roadster.
Set to be unveiled at the Paris Motor Show next month, the new TT Roadster naturally follows its fixed-roof counterpart's lead closely, but with the addition of a folding fabric roof mechanism. Made of magnesium, aluminum, steel and plastic, the mechanism weighs 6.6 pounds less than its predecessor's, helping keep the center of gravity lower. It also folds flatter to allow for more luggage space, and can deploy or retract in ten seconds at speeds up to 31 miles per hour. With the roof up it's also quieter, and with a drag coefficient of 0.30, Audi claims it's the slipperiest in the segment.
Of course, Audi's also worked to keep the weight down and rigidity up. As a result, the 0-62 sprint only takes an extra 0.2 seconds, quoted in the TTS Roadster at 4.9 seconds instead of 4.7 in the TTS coupe. Top speed remains pegged at 155 miles per hour. That, of course, is with the top-spec, 310-horsepower 2.0-liter turbo four, but Audi will also offer the less potent 184-hp version as well as a 2.0-liter TDI, mated to either a six-speed manual or six-speed DCT, though specific performance figures for each version were not disclosed in the press release below.

Audi pits S3 against Ur-Quattro on gravel

If you had to pick a winner between the latest Audi S3 and the original Audi Sport Quattro, which would it be? Both hot hatches pack around 300 horsepower and all-wheel drive, but they're separated by a good thirty years of development.
To find out, Audi took both to the old rally circuit in San Remo. Behind the wheel of the Ur-Quattro they put none other than The Stig himself - no, not the Top Gear test bot, but Stig Blomqvist, the Swedish former rally driver who drove the Quattro to the World Rally Championship in the mid-80s. In the S3 they put someone named Hermann Müller, who as best we can tell was one of Auto Union's original Silver Arrow drivers - but he died in 1975, so it's probably the guy who writes for the Audi magazine. Regardless, the contest was pretty close, so it's worth checking out in the 2:26 video clip below.