Thursday, March 23, 2006

Lost in All the March Madness

R10 Kwalif Rx-Resized
Audi entered a diesel-powered race car at the 12 Hours of Sebring road race (that's real racing to NASCAR fans, with right hand turns and everything). One of the oil-burners set a track record during qualifying. Its No. 2 R10 racer took the checkered flag, too. This is a huge deal -- diesels are known for being the pack-mules of the automotive world -- efficient, reliable and torque-y. But they are not known for being fast. Trust me. My mother had a grey-market 1984 Mercedes 300D. It was a lot of things, but sporty wasn't one of them.

Now, Audi is promising to bring its diesel to the US. The upcoming Q7 will feature both hybrid and diesel drivetrains. Indeed, Autoblog believes that Audi will even bring the diesel to California, home of the nation's most stringent mobile-source emissions limitations. Hopefully this will make the SUV a bit more efficient and a bit cleaner, too.

[posted with ecto]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had heard that a diesel was going to be racing. This is pretty neat stuff.

and oval racing is just as much racing as road racing is.

i wonder why the F1 types never try to call out the IRL (or "indy" if gene simmons gets his way) for the oval track racing.

:hmmm

:D