January 16th, 2012
拡張シェードとファストバックのボールト、サルバドールダリの砂時計のいずれかのような形グリルを通じ、レクサス"LF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile – LCユニバーサル喜びのクーペは、それが年に解毒剤として販売されているSCの高級感のクーペと交換を戻すために2ドアプロトプラスト旗艦に向かってボルトの思考への窓です。
ニューポートサンズ、カリフォルニア州にあるトヨタのCaltyデザインのワークショップを通して書いた、LF – LC二+二クーペはガラスのカバーがあり、明るいアルミの非難を行った。内部は、オーディオおよび気象文字の興起からサイドビューミラーにブライダルすべてに液晶ディスプレイと複数の味の画面の二つのような油性の革、スエード、メタリックなデザインと高度なコントロールにより、グローブを組み合わせた、ロックと窓が意味しています。
フロントエンジン、後輪が発進ユニバーサルがレクサス"雑種ドライブトレインのlectionを使用して、さらに交際は多くの電力やどのようなエンジン、モーターや、使用する電池を意味するかによって宣言ではありません。
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January 12th, 2012
It’s always been easy to make fun of a Rolls-Royce. “At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise is from the ticking of the bomb planted by the IRA.” But drive a new Phantom drophead coupe and the wisecracks will, ahem,
drop right out of your head.
There is a 453-hp, 6.8-liter 48-valve V-12 making the car capable of zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds (much faster than the IRA moves these days) and producing a top speed of 148 miles per hour. Computer limitation keeps the Rolls from accelerating further. I did not quite reach limited velocity on the corduroy- and moon crater–textured squiggle of my local New Hampshire roads. Or, if I did, I’m not saying so within Google-reach of small-town police departments.
But I will say the goes faster than the stink of how rich you’d have to get to buy one. It handles with the educated precision of the Nobel Prize–winning physicist that you’d have to be to repair it. And, thanks to brake discs the size of precious and irreplaceable Edith Piaf original vinyl LPs (14.7 inches in front, 14.6 in back), the Phantom comes to a halt as abruptly as the fall in net worth among Rolls-Royce’s customers while the drophead coupe was in its poorly timed production-planning stage.
Combine the Phantom drophead coupe’s cardinal performance virtues with a 0.37 coefficient of drag (better than an E-type’s) and a six-speed automatic (two more gears than I can usually find when I’m trying to drive fast), and you get a car that makes you feel like you could win Le Mans. And you probably could win Le Mans, at least back in the day, before Gurney and Foyt and their Ford GT40 got into the act (and assuming Gurney and Foyt were driving your Rolls).
Such praise should come as no surprise for a car that starts at $448,000. It better be good. What’s shocking is not the enormity of the price or the enormity of the speed but the enormity of the enormity. A Phantom drophead coupe is almost as long and wide as a GMC Yukon XL and within one fat child of the same curb weight. Yet the Rolls drives like a Porsche—a Cayenne, at least. Wayne York Kung, product communications manager for Rolls-Royce North America, said it definitively: “The faster you drive, the smaller it gets.”
That, however, brings us to the conundrum of the Rolls. I can put myself, wife, three children, three dogs, and everything we own except the swing set in a
. The Phantom has only two seatbelts in the back and less than a
worth of legroom. We’ll have to find our dogs a new home at a Pan-Asian restaurant and downsize family middle management. Muffin, the 11-year-old, has been blasting her iPod’s Miley Cyrus tunes through the car radio lately. Looks like she’ll be the one cashing in her 401k.
Those who are driving a drophead coupe to attract members of the opposite sex obviously aren’t getting to first base or they’d need room for the natural results of what they’re trying to get up to. And if sex isn’t the point, well, then, don’t people who drive $448,000 cars have friends? I do not object to an 18-foot land yacht. (Ostentation? Eighteen feet wouldn’t count for much among the yachty set.) But shouldn’t you be able to invite your pals aboard?
The cover for our Phantom’s convertible top is made of handsome marine teak—part of a $17,550 package, with the stainless-steel hood—that I’m told was inspired by the J-class America’s Cup of the 1930s. A sleek and fast “street sloop” is not unheard of. There was once a gorgeous 1929 Lancia Lambda tourer with three full rows of bench seats. You could give a ride to most of the remaining Republicans in Congress. And then you could take them someplace until they get a clue. But the GOP is going to have to really mess up in 2010 to fit in the Rolls.
Maybe the Phantom drophead coupe inhabits a stratum above utilitarianism (the way the Smart Fortwo inhabits a stratum below it). Maybe the Phantom is simply a thing of beauty, an end in itself, automotive
ars gratia artis.
If so, Rolls-Royce had better get its
ars in gear. Viewed side-on, the Phantom is indeed achingly beautiful. It’s almost as pretty when seen from above (no easy matter since the beltline is up around the elastic on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s shorts). The brushed stainless-steel hood and A-pillars are impressive feats of engineering and craftsmanship. But this metalwork seems aimed to appeal to the small group of people who are both hopeless car nuts and avid fans of the 1950s sculptor David Smith, who worked in similar abstract monumental shapes of steel. This group is so small that I think it consists of me and David Smith (whose welding skills were learned at the Studebaker factory). And David Smith is dead.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/09q4/2010_rolls-royce_phantom_drophead_coupe-road_test
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December 11th, 2011
At the Geneva auto show, Mercedes-Benz officials were stressing the company’s green aspirations ad nauseam—and then rolled out the latest AMG model, the 518-hp SL63 AMG. With a 6.2-liter V-8 engine underhood, this car is about as green as your average logging company.
The SL63 replaces the , which was powered by a supercharged 5.4-liter V-8 that produced a mere 510 horsepower. The new car features face-lifted styling and interior revisions, plus a modified version of the company’s seven-speed transmission.
The SL63 certainly looks the part. The exterior changes that have been applied to all SL models make the car look more contemporary. The SL63 adds an aggressive front fascia and side skirts to signal its more sporting mien, plus standard 19-inch wheels and tires. Inside, there’s a special AMG steering wheel, gauge cluster, and shift lever to accompany other SL revisions that include an iPod interface and a Bluetooth phone hookup that both work pretty seamlessly.
Sophisticated Transmission The most interesting feature of the car, however, is buried from view. Mercedes has decided to mate its conventional seven-speed planetary gearset with a multiplate wet clutch (instead of the usual torque converter) to make the closest thing Mercedes has to an automated manual gearbox. Whereas BMW and Audi have gone the twin-clutch, twin-shaft gearbox route, the AMG engineers cite weight as one reason for their solution. A twin-clutch gearbox that could handle the SL63’s 465 pound-feet of torque would weigh at least 44 more pounds. The fact that Mercedes already builds its own planetary gearsets must have factored in, too.
The transmission has five modes, selected by a rotary dial next to the shift lever: standard (comfort); sport; sport plus; manual; and a launch-control function. The sport and sport-plus modes produce progressively faster shifts and heavier doses of revs while downshifting. The manual setting is self-explanatory, allowing the driver control of the ratios via the shift lever or the steering-wheel-mounted paddles.
As with the previous SL55, Mercedes offers a Performance package that features more aggressive tuning of the active-body-control (ABC) suspension system; a torque-sensing limited-slip differential; and bigger front brake rotors, up in diameter from an already monstrous 14.2 inches to 15.4. The package will likely cost about $14,000 on top of a projected base price of $133,000.
Luxury Cruiser and Serious Sports Car The upshot of all these changes is a pretty special automobile that is both luxury cruiser and serious sports car. Leave the transmission setting alone, the stability control on (there are three modes), and the ABC in its comfort mode, and the SL63 will eat up highway miles quite serenely. The only clue to its more aggressive demeanor is a truly spectacular V-8 engine note that wouldn’t disgrace a NASCAR event. The transmission isn’t quite as smooth as a conventional automatic in town, but it is way better than the sequential manual gearbox in the BMW M6.
Go aggressive on the ABC, transmission, and skid-control settings, and the SL63 is a fast, satisfying back-road car. Nicely weighted, faithful steering is allied to good body control and reasonably neutral chassis balance. On the track, you discover that 4350 pounds of automobile doesn’t respond well to attempts to brake and turn at the same time, when it will plow mightily, but it can be slid around like a much smaller sports car if one is patient on corner entry and uses the prodigious torque to unglue the 285/30 rear tires.
Fitted with the Performance package, the SL becomes something of a track star, thanks to better body control, sharper turn-in, and even more powerful brakes. Using the launch-control function, we predict a 0-to-60-mph sprint of about 4.2 seconds. Top speed is governed to 155 mph—the car gets there with alacrity and a soundtrack that is borderline illegal, along with whip-crack upshifts.
The SL63 isn’t as sporting as a , but it is a compelling alternative, and it makes one wonder why anyone needs to spend half a million dollars on an
, unless the customer just wants to flaunt the amount of money he or she has.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/08q1/2009_mercedes-benz_sl63_amg-first_drive_review
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