Audi BMW

Investigators say foul play may have been involved in an early morning fire at a local car dealership. Two convertibles were destroyed at Desert BMW on Sahara and Rainbow.

Investigators say foul play may have been involved in an early morning fire at a local car dealership. Two convertibles were destroyed at Desert BMW on Sahara and Rainbow.

The most exciting time in an IND Portfolio project’s development is the day I fly out to inspect our work in person. Making a Portfolio build go well involves so much more behind the scenes planning than many people can understand.

The teaser photo of the Dakar Yellow E92 M3 that we posted last week, received a lot of attention and appreciation from the BMW fans. As they promised, our friends and sponsors at IND Distribution are back with the entire photoshoot catalog showing us one of the best looking mod jobs we have seen in a very long time.

While yellow has never been a favorite color of ours on any car, the Dakar Yellow is just another story. From time to time we still see an E46 M3 sporting this color and it’s quite stunning.

So, let’s see what IND Distribution has to say about this new project:

“The most exciting time in an IND Portfolio project’s development is the day I fly out to inspect our work in person. Making a Portfolio build go well involves so much more behind the scenes planning than many people can understand.

From consulting with Grand Am Cup winning race teams to determine the perfect ride height, to debating for hours about tiny, subtle details like the color of the finishing pieces on the car, to coordinating a completely one-off set of Brembo brakes directly with Brembo, to obtaining a set of HRE wheels designed specifically for the Fall Line motorsport program, completing an IND Portfolio project like Scott’s Dakar Yellow E92 M3 is no easy task. That’s exactly why those few hours spent on the airplane are both so exciting, and so nerve-racking. You think about each modification, each part installed just one more time. Will the ride height of the KW ClubSport coilovers work well with the 275/35/18 Nitto NT05 race tires sitting at each corner of the car? Will the higher spring rate at the front of the car work well with the extra grip available because of the hugely wide front tires? How will the gloss black mirror caps, side markers, grilles, and Vorsteiner front lip work with the Dakar Yellow paint? No matter how many hundreds of hours you spend thinking, planning, and researching, nothing is proven until you meet your client and see the car in person- this is the real moment of truth.

I met Scott in a busy airport parking lot after a long flight from Chicago. Portland’s busy airport could do nothing to conceal this M3, and even though there were cars and SUVs strewn about the parking area, my eyes were instantly drawn to BMW’s classic yellow color. As striking as the car is at first sight, it’s amazing how perfectly the details come together. When designing Scott’s car, Nate and I kept two themes in mind- the car is to be competition inspired, and the car is to be subtle and mature. The gloss black Vorsteiner lip, IND sidemarkers and grilles; the fully painted Vorsteiner bootlid- all of these details work together to give the car a put together appearance that hides the performance that lurks underneath the sheetmetal. The only real giveaway to the driver’s sporting intentions are the strangely huge Nitto NT05 tires and the custom powdercoated Brembo calipers, designed in collaboration with Brembo to mimic the brake calipers used in Brembo’s racing program.

Our first task was to leave Portland for the mountains of Oregon. With thousands of turns, sheer drops, and some of the smoothest road surfaces available in the US, the roads leading up to Oregon’s famous Mt Hood are at least as frightening as they are beautiful. Watching the Dakar M3’s competition proven components work together in harmony over the turns and constant elevation changes leading up to Mt Hood was truly amazing. The Brembo brakes never failed. The KW ClubSports and square 275 tires provided sure footed handling with perfect steering response, and eliminated the understeer inherent in the stock E92 M3. Being able to hear the sonorous exhaust note of the Eisenmann Sport exhaust as the M3 powered through the mountain roads confirmed things for me- this car was absolutely perfect. Watching Scott drive the car, I could tell that the Dakar project that we’d built together was perfectly in tune with his tastes, both visually and with regard to the car’s awesome handling and braking performance.

The amount of beautiful scenery in Oregon is really too great to describe adequately here, and I hope that these photos by my friend Johan can express the feeling of awe that these mountain roads impose on anyone who can make it all the way to the top. I truly felt on top of the world as we had dinner at the Timberline Lodge, looking over the snowy peaks of Mt Hood.”

And since we love you so much, we’ll be working on getting some higher resolution photos, maybe some of you would like to use it as a desktop wallpaper.

Audi makes 100 this year, and the company commissioned Gerry Judah to create a work of art for the occasion. Unveiled at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Judah's 40-ton, 115-foot-tall steel sculpture features a swoop of racetrack--Hot Wheels-style--capped off with two Audi beauties: a 1937 Auto Union streamliner and the Audi R8 V10. (Symbolic, ..

MiamiHerald.com

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Even though many of the auto journalists and car fans are already starting to compare the BMW X1 to Audi’s upcoming Q3, we are going to take a different approach and actually compare it against the Q5.

The reason for that is that X1 jumped into the BMW line-up as an entry level SAV, a replacement for the current X3 which will relaunch next year with a new design and larger size.

By taking the  proportions of the first generation X5, the X3 has left an empty spot that BMW has quickly filled it with the new compact SAV X1. As you will see in our short comparison, the exterior dimensions of the two cars are close to each other and since we don’t have the specifications of the future Q3 model, this will have to do for now.

Exterior Dimensions

The BMW X1 measures 175.35 inches (4,453 mm) in length, while the Audi Q3 measures 182 inches(4,622 mm). The width different is even less, 74 inches(1,879 mm) for the Q3 and 70.78 inches(1,798 mm) for the X1. In height, the Audi Q3 measures 65.1  inches(1,653 mm), while the X1 stops the measuring tape at 60.82 inches(1,545 mm).

The difference between the two cars shortens even more when we are looking at the wheelbase length. The X1 has a wheelbase of 108.6 inches and the Q1, 110 inches.

Even though we don’t have the ground clearance exact dimensions, judging by these photos, we can clearly see that this is an area that the Q5 differentiate itself more from the X1. The Q5 gives more an impression of an SUV, while the X1 stands out as a combination between a Touring and SAV model.

Pricing

Since only the X1 German pricing is available at this time, we will going to compare them against the German edition of the Q5. And here is where the two cars start to differentiate more. The 34,400 euros X1 xDrive20d could be compared to the Q5 2.0 TDI which has a base price of 38,800, a significant difference that tells us that we’re looking at two different classes..

The most expensive X1 model is the gasoline powered xDrive28i with a price of 41,500 euros. In contrast, the high-end 3.2 FSI Q5 stops the money count at 46,900 euros.

The conclusion that can be drawn from here is that the two cars are not meant to go head-to-head against each other and that they indeed target different customers. When the Q3 will be out, we should have better metrics and be able to make a more fair assessment.

And to spice up things even more, we decided to make some comparative photos of the BMW X1 and Audi Q5, hoping that we will get your input as well.

Porsche/VW showdown looms by July 16-sources Reuters DE) supervisory board meeting on July 15, and a day later for the centenary celebrations at VW unit Audi (NSUG.DE), the people said. ... Wiedeking Era at Porsche Runs on Fumes as Volkswagen Takeover ...Bloomberg all 7 news articles »

BMW launched yesterday their X1 minisite and we poked around to see what’s new. The BMW Joy campaign is pretty much present on all their marketing materials, but that wasn’t something we were interested today.

What we wanted to find out for you were the exterior colors available for the X1. So far, we knew that Marrakech Brown is an exclusive color for the X1, then we saw the now classic and beautiful Alpine White, but all the others were still an unknown for us.

Courtesy of one of our reader, Ignace, we are able to show you the entire palette, with some shades more exciting than others.

So without any further ado, let’s enumerate them: Black non-metallic, Black Sapphire metallic, Titanium Silver metallic, Deep Sea Blue metallic, Vermilion Red metallic, Space Grey metallic, Cashmere Silver metallic, Graphite Blue metallic , Tasman metallic and Sparkling Bronze metallic.

And since we always like to state our favorite color, this time we’ll go with the Vermilion Red metallic, for some reason, the design lines are more obvious and accentuated by this color and that makes it our first choice.

The numbers 265, 6, and 36 add up to something sweet when the first is the horsepower of a sport sedan, the second is its zero-to-60 time in seconds, and the third is its highway fuel economy in miles per gallon.