As someone who already regularly looks up videos on the iPad for the express purpose of showing them to one of the cats – and who has installed Cat Piano – you had better believe these little games from Friskies will be installed post-haste.
(Mashable)
The Scandinavians sure do know how to get me with an introduction video. And orange leather seats.
Really, though, Audi does. And it is beautiful in this “Samoa Orange” color – that we probably won’t get in the States because, you know, Gott forbid.
In fact, we may not get any Q3 here in the US at all, as Audi has apparently put its distribution “on hold” for America – whatever that means.
It’s a real shame because I am all over the Q3 if it makes it here by February 2012. Especially with this fantastic new interior design language (and because the 2012 A3 has recently become a 2013 A3 due to more Euro-first model planning).
(Autoblog, where a gazillion photos await)
Audience Calibration Procedure from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery on Vimeo.
You had better believe I’m going to be all over this. Très cool.
Well, isn’t this a lovely little car? “What is it?” I hear you asking. Well, friends, this is Audi’s preview of the next A3. As a sedan.
This would be about when the sound of a record scratch would be queued.
As many of you know, I really am a fan of the hatchback/small station wagon body style. Thus is why I own the current A3. So seeing this wickedly sharp-looking small sedan is causing me some concerns. I like it just fine, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not really what I thought the next A3 was going to be about.
Judging by the comments on several North American auto sites, though, it definitely is what Audi needs the A3 to be if it wants to sell them like hotcakes here. The US readers, especially, are falling over themselves to claim that they’ll be the first one to line up, cash in hand, when the car launches. And that’s great!
But not without my hatch. You can call this a “notchback” or a “four dour coupé” if you must, Audi, but it’s really a sedan and you know that. “It harkens back to the B5 series A4!” you have stated, too. Which really only means the B8 series (current) A4 has gotten too big for its britches.
I get it. I just don’t want it for myself. Give me an A3 Avant, A3 Sportback, etc – just don’t leave us hanging. It would be a shame to see Ford bringing a truly remarkable European hatchback to the States just as Audi takes theirs away.
On the positive side of things, I’m really digging the new interior:
Well, we now know how one might translate some of Danielewski‘s zanier ideas into a tangible paper book.
What you are seeing here is an amazing, handmade German art book called Thoughts on Dreams that has been threaded with hyperlinks to direct readers from one important section to another. It is sublime. I also love how it really illustrates the idea of interconnected content in a way that does, actually, look like a sinewy spider’s web or neural network.
(Engadget)
First there was the deployment of a much snazzier design language and now this: Kia has unveiled its SuperBowl commercial, one that gives us aliens and temporal vortex-summoning Mesoamericans. I’d even build an Optima online (update: I have) after seeing something so keyed in to my mind.
(Autoblog)
We need more high-end hot hatches to change our perceptional relationship between size and value, or someday we’ll all be driving performance-chipped diesel pickups…
Over at Jalopnik, Mike Spinelli takes the Audi RS3 on a forbidden North American test drive and comes away with Ten Reasons America Needs the Audi RS3 Sportback. I could add a dozen other hot hatch models to that list, half of which don’t even stray out of the VW empire!
While playing Forza 3 at the height of my addiction this past Spring, I built the most ridiculous of cars – a radioactive spider-bitten Mercedes B-Class with probably four times its value worth of performance modifications. At the end of my spending spree, I took it onto the Maple Valley racetrack to see what I had produced.
The results were interesting. Namely, the car fell over at the slightest indication of a corner. Then the back window fell out.
My surprise was supreme when I saw that Mercedes had built this:
Autoweek was invited to drive it by the Benz-people, reporting on its creation and specifics.
As its name suggests, the superbly constructed one-off prototype is well removed from the standard B-class. Having started life as a humble European-market B200 CDI, it has been liberated from its standard turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder diesel engine. Shoehorned into its place and other extremities of the engine bay is the 5.5-liter V8 unit packing 383 hp and 391 lb-ft of torque.
Yes, but how did it handle? Was more time spent wondering how the ground “got up there” than actually rounding the test track?
Apart from a lack of self-centering with the steering, whose packaging has been compromised by the need to give up so much space to the engine and thus runs a smaller hydraulic pump than perhaps is required, the B55 also steers accurately, rides with impressive comfort and is free of any obvious vices.
Oh.
Well, don’t get too excited about it, because it’s never coming to the States with anything like this configuration (except in my dreams.)
From the designer’s mind to the web, Autoblog gives us a run down on this traffic light concept from Thanva Tivawong. With at least twelve of the bastards between me and my parking lot – just 2.6 miles away – I’m now on constant lookout for ways to maximize green-time and win at the white line.