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Audi A3 named 2014 World Car of the Year

As usual, the second press day of the New York Auto Show was kicked off by the World Car of the Year Awards. Rather than fluff things up, we'll cut right to the chase: top honors go to the brand-new Audi A3, which bested the Mazda3 and BMW 4 Series for the all-important award.
Of course, the wonderful thing about the World Car awards is that there isn't just one big announcement - other honors are given out for specific categories. Here are the other winners from this year's ceremony:
World Green Car of the Year: BMW i3

The VW emissions carnage assessment with an upside

Bombs cause destruction. Even if they're intelligently guided and pinpoint, there's always collateral damage. The strange Volkswagen brew, which is still spontaneously combusting in plain sight, will result in aftershocks for years. And the professional end of the corporation's top leadership will not be the only casualties. Blows are striking shareholder confidence, the residual value of the cars involved, consumer confidence, and the German economy itself. A hard rain's going to fall elsewhere, too. Here are just four damage assessment areas. The High-Compression Past and Low-Compassion Future of Diesels Despite European and especially German manufacturers' high belief that diesel engines were a way to light-duty automotive salvation, VW's scandal started the last nail in the fuel's coffin. Regulations both in the U.S. and in Europe for particulates and nitrogen oxide (NOx) are getting much harder to meet, and this is at the very core of VW's deception. Even with the high-cost exhaust after-treatment systems, sky-high fuel pressure, and sophisticated electronics, the inescapable NOx realities won't be washable by technology in an affordable way. German engineering pride will have to work a real miracle to meet these looming regs and the stain of VW's scandal did the whole diesel movement no favors. Perhaps not so ironically, the E.U. adopted more stringent emission standards this year, which closely mimic the U.S. Tier 2, Bin 5 figures phased in for 2008. Indeed, when VW announced it was able to meet the stringent US NOx emissions standards in 2009 for its diesel engines without urea injection as an exhaust after-treatment, it was a particularly high point of engineering pride for the company. No other manufacturer had figured out how to do so. One Honda official at the time remarked that they had simply no idea how VW was achieving this feat and Honda couldn't come close. Well, neither could VW. On a macro scale, European cities are also starting to face government fines for air quality violations. This is forcing those cities to find various ways to cut smog-related causes like tailpipe emissions. In fact, Paris has gone to the length of restricting car use on a sliding scale when smog persists, while electric cars are free to roam. France's longer and larger plan is banning diesel fuel for light-duty transportation entirely. But why was there a frothy focus by the European manufacturers on diesels in the first place?

2014 Audi A6, A7 and Q5 TDI diesel models get pricing and fuel economy figures [w/videos]

Last year, Audi announced that it was expanding its lineup of TDI models for 2014 with the Q5, A6 and A7 joining the diesel-burning Q7 and A8 L models already in existence. The Q7 TDI has been out for a few years now and we recently drove the A8 L TDI, but now Audi has released the pricing, performance and fuel economy details for the 2014 Q5 TDI, A6 TDI and the ever-stylish A7 TDI. Down the road, Audi has also promised a TDI version of the next-generation A3 that will debut for 2014.
Until the new A3 TDI shows up, the Q5 will be the most affordable diesel model in Audi's lineup, with a starting price of $46,500 to go with fuel economy estimates of 24 mpg city and 31 mpg highway. The closely related A6 and A7 will get identical fuel economy numbers of 24 city and 38 highway in diesel form, with the A6 TDI starting at $57,500 and the A7 TDI starting at $66,900. In the three new TDI applications, Audi's 3.0-liter V6 produces 240 horsepower and 428 pound-feet of torque, and all models are paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission. Scroll down for videos (stock running footage) and more information on the Q5 TDI, A6 TDI and A7 TDI, all of which go on sale in late summer.