Initial thoughts on the new VW Jetta TDI

Odometer: 2662 mi

Say hello to the newest member of the Motive long-term test fleet, a 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI dressed in attractive Campanella White. The options on our Loyal Edition model, which comes standard with leatherette seats, are limited to just one: a six-speed dual-clutch gearbox. Along with destination, the $1100 transmission brings our tester up to a sticker price of $24,190. There's a point to the minimal option offerings — skip the sunroof and a few other luxuries, and the premium Volkswagen charges for the diesel engine becomes less relevant. Instead of just calling it a more expensive powertrain, think of it as the "Extended Range, High Torque Option Group." Our purpose for spending a year with this Spartan little Jetta is to answer the question: Can speed freaks, green freaks, and cheap-asses all ménage a trois in one single car, and is this unnassuming Volkswagen it?

To that end, we've already made one small modification to the car in its first month of service. The stock steering wheel was thin and covered in stiff, cheap vinyl, and when a Jetta GLI wheel magically fell into our hands, we didn't hesitate to do a swap. The new flat-bottomed unit is contoured for a better grip, and it has paddle shifters to work the DSG with two hands on the wheel.

With a 5000-rpm redline and a 140-hp, 236 lb-ft diesel that's willing to rev, shifts come rather often. And that's already been a hot topic of discussion. "I'm not sure that DSG is the best match for this engine," one editor writes in the logbook. "The old TDIs used a four-speed automatic, and the torque of the diesel was enough to give it some serious scoot between 0 and 30 mph. First gear on the six-speed DSG is short and seems to rely on the engine's willingness to rev, when it feels like it would be better served by a taller gear that lets the engine stretch its legs more." While we all agree that first gear runs out too quickly, some of us are impressed by the overall engine/transmission match; the smooth torque of the TDI and the quick, unobtrusive shifts of the dual-clutch work in harmony.

Transmission issues aside, we all agree that Volkswagen's new 50-state clean diesel is a wonderful block of metal. Questions like "Why doesn't it smell?" or "Why isn't it noisy?" have been so common we've considered putting the answers on a small dash-mounted placard. Says production editor Wes Grueninger, "The clean-diesel engine is so far-and-away better than the old TDI in terms of NVH that it makes me forget the old engine even existed. At idle, it's nearly impossible to tell that it's a diesel. Cold starts fire off without a hitch, and unlike the old TDI, this one doesn't hiccup on tip-in until it gets a few miles under its belt."

Early fuel economy reports have been floating between 30 and 45 mpg, depending on the driver and situation. One editor claims to be getting 41 mpg no matter the situation: "Last week I did my commute from downtown Chicago out to Lombard and got 41 mpg in mixed driving. This past weekend it was all highway to Detroit and I returned the same 41. I guess that's just my number. But the last time I drove a Jetta GLI to work, I got an indicated 23 mpg. That's huge jump for the same basic car with the same transmission."

And while that's true, the actual cost savings can vary. In the Chicago area, diesel is just 20 cents or so more per gallon than premium fuel. On that editor's drive to Detroit, Michigan's price margin was closer to a dollar. For some buyers, the final gas bill will likely be a complete wash between cheaper gas and more efficient diesel. As such, our early inclination is that diesel is a preference-based decision, not a cost-based one.

Right now, our preferences are leaning toward the diesel. It boast a noticeable performance advantage over hybrid economy cars like the Prius or Civic Hybrid. On hills, in traffic, and while passing, the diesel is able to stay in one gear and silently use its torque to muscle its way through traffic, while most small four cylinder gas engines in the same situation get noisy and feel peaky. In that regard, the Jetta TDI feels like it is powered by a very small, very efficient V-8. All our little Jetta needs is a different wheel and tire combo, along with a sportier suspension kit, and we think we may find that cheap, green enthusiast car we've been looking for. Stay tuned.

Cuban wants to put on one-of-a-kind All-Star Game

By EDDIE SEFKO / The Dallas Morning News
esefko@dallasnews.com

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wants to throw "the biggest event this country has ever seen."

NBA commissioner David Stern has somewhat more modest goals for the 2010 All-Star Game, which will be played at the new Cowboys' stadium that February.

"I don't know what the largest crowd ever to see a basketball game in the United States is," Stern said Thursday. "I think it's about 78,000. We're going to top that. If Mark wants to push it to 100,000, God bless him."

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said the stadium could easily handle that crowd, adding that "the court will literally be on the star."

There was no limit to the excitement of the franchise owners and the league as the announcement was made at Victory Plaza before the Mavericks opened their season against the Houston Rockets.

Cuban said he wants to put on a show that has never been equaled.

"There ain't no party like a D-FW party," Cuban said.

"I don't think people realize this is the country's largest weekend destination by far," he said, referring to the NBA All-Star weekend. "It's amazing, and you don't really understand it until you go to one."

Mavericks' president Terdema Ussery was the guiding force behind the scenes. He worked more than 14 months, planting the first seed with the NBA that the Mavs were interested in hosting the event.

While the All-Star Game will be in Arlington, virtually all the other events will be in Dallas. The Friday night and Saturday night festivities will be at American Airlines Center. The Fan Jam will be at the Dallas Convention Center.

The league also envisions a series of events starting early in 2009 that would serve as momentum builders toward the big weekend, which will bring thousands of visitors from the sporting, fashion and entertainment industries.

Stern said the partnership of Jones and Cuban is unique.

"We have a very good working relationship with the NFL, but this was very much a local collaboration," Stern said. "I'm very proud that Jerry and Mark and the NBA could work together on doing it.

"This is not part of some larger blueprint because who knows what the next improvement will be. But this is a pretty big step, and it's going to be a lot of fun."

FILLING UP FAST

Events confirmed for the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington after it opens in 2009:

September 2009: Cowboys' first home game

Oct. 3, 2009: Texas A&M vs. Arkansas (football)

December 2009: Big 12 football championship

Jan. 2, 2010: AT&T Cotton Bowl

February 2010: NBA All-Star Game

Feb. 6, 2011: Super Bowl XLV

Oct. 5, 2013: Notre Dame vs. Arizona State (football)

STARS IN THE DALLAS AREA

The All-Star games that have been played in the Dallas area:

League Year Location Result MVP NBA 1986 Reunion Arena East 139, West 132 Isiah Thomas MLB 1995 The Ballpark in Arl. NL 3, AL 2 Jeff Conine NFL 1973 Texas Stadium AFC 33, NFC 28 O.J. Simpson NHL 2007 AAC West 12, East 9 Daniel Briere

Now we're talking- Supercharged Hyundai Genesis

Hyundai's Ann Arbor, Michigan, development center isn't like most others you'd find in the area. There's no mandate to "drive whatcha build," as there is at some GM, Ford, or Chrysler buildings. No second parking lot on the other side of a thorn bush where you park if you do buy a competing vehicle. The lot here is littered with Mustangs, Camaros, and other American brutes. I say this because I think it has a lot to do with why I'm here today to begin with — a guy driving an Accent doesn't get inspired to slap a supercharger on Hyundai's first V8, just for the sake of terrorizing southeastern Michigan.

Please don't tell Hyundai's engineers I just diluted this project down to slapping something somewhere. This Genesis 4.6, being shown for the first time at the 2008 SEMA show and built in conjunction with RKSport in SoCal, has been in the making for over half a year. Pistons were burned. Seven engines were retired. Various supercharger designs sit forgotten on shelves littered with old parts. This project has been going long enough that as I'm talking to Marcus Oubre, a Hyundai fabricator, he's swapping the entire drivetrain into a new car. The original testbed was an early, non-production mule. Too much has changed in the meantime to show that car to the public.

Marcus is one of the guys responsible for squeezing all the go-fast toys into the space the Genesis can offer. Underneath, he's welded up a set of three-inch pipes to follow the path from the engine back to a set of stock mufflers. Before I interrupt him, he's busy re-wiring the engine compartment. "We had to move the power distribution box just to fit everything under here," he tells me. "We also had to hand-fabricate a supercharger cooler tank and wire in a pump, plus we added a vacuum reservoir for the 'charger." He points it out and then guides me under the raised car. "We added a custom, bigger driveshaft and bigger U-joints at each end, but the axle is stock." Marcus also fabricated the oil cooler hiding behind the grille, plus all the tubing for the new intake system. Dual pipes start at a stock airbox, wrap around each side of the supercharger and enter at the back. Somehow, it all fits under a stock hood.

Part of that squeezing has to do with the supercharger design itself, and just as I start asking questions about that, project manager Mark Shirley joins us in the garage to see how the engine swap is coming along. (Hyundai's garage, by the way, is a car guy's dreamland of tools and lifts, and they apparently benchmark everything — this project Genesis is sitting between a Pontiac Solstice GXP and a Lexus IS-F.) I've been anxiously awaiting Mark's arrival because he's the first guy who can tell me the most important figure of the day — horsepower output. "About 440 at the engine or 385 at the wheels." Mark tells me, though I'm told later by PR guy Dan Bedore that Mark's number was conservative — the official output figure is 460 hp. The dyno run wasn't done at a high boost level out of fear of breaking something this close to SEMA.

I ask Mark how the whole supercharger package squeezes under the hood, and he leads me to a small teardown room to show me. The supercharger is sourced from IHI, the producer of superchargers for past Mercedes AMG models and the current SLR supercar. The one Hyundai is using, lovingly called the "big mouth" supercharger, is the company's most advanced model. The nickname is derived from the larger-than-normal opening for air to be drawn in, and flow through the screw-type charger has been optimized for higher efficiency over earlier Mercedes versions. That's all well and good, but what if it doesn't fit on the engine?

"Because of the narrow width between the heads," Mark explains, "we faced some packaging issues and spent three months finding the right answer. The intake runners are mounted right to the supercharger. It's the first time that has been done." By integrating the runners and the 'charger into one unit, the Hyundai team was able to save valuable millimeters necessary to squeeze all the components in place. In addition, an intercooler and the routing for the air intake snakes under the supercharger, in between the two banks of cylinders. Besides the packaging advantages, Mark says that earlier designs with the intake above the supercharger were subject to a lot of heat bleed.

The Tau 4.6-liter V-8 itself didn't undergo too many modifications to accommodate the force-fed power. Jets tapped into the main galley blast oil at the bottoms of the pistons for cooling purposes, and the pistons themselves have been "optimized," as Mark puts it. That's to say that the design is the same, only beefed up for the extra forces. The rods, too, have been optimized. Mark shoves his spare parts back on a shelf and we head back to the garage where the engine re-wiring is almost done. I look at my watch and see that the day will end before this project is ready for the street. Maybe tomorrow.

September 19, 2008

It's late on Friday when the whole project finally comes together. The engine is in the car, the upgraded drivetrain components are bolted in place, and the engine fires up with a triumphant purr. The thick air intake tubes, laced together with flexible red rubber joints, wrap around the complicated intake/supercharger combo, the whole package looking more like something built by NASA, not Hyundai. The team is ecstatic, and Marcus pulls a nickel out of his pocket and leans over the engine. After a few failed attempts, he gets the nickel to stand on end with the engine running, balancing on top of the smooth-running supercharger. A job well done.

But there's a second half to this day of reckoning, and Mark Shirley returns to do the duty of driving the car outside for a few test runs. (You've maybe seen evidence of this, as an Autoblog reader with a camera caught the guy getting gas.) We couldn't go along with Mark, but he returns with an impressive 4.9-second 0-60 time with the car running a conservative 11 pounds of boost. Tests with earlier prototypes and more road returned a quarter-mile time of 13.58 seconds at 108 mph. Still, the Hyundai guys aren't satisfied. "Needs summer tires," Dan Bedore tells me. "Plus, we can't push the car hard. Breaking it at this point would be a real bummer." Indeed it would be — call us after the show, Dan.

October 29, 2008

RKSport President Bob "R.K." Smith and his team have been hard at work designing an exterior with the power to match the supercharged Genesis' engine since just a few days after I left Mark, Dan, Marcus, and the rest of the Hyundai crew in Michigan. Technically, they've been working on it before — the hood on the car in Ann Arbor is an early phase of the final product. But today the tone at the shop is more in tune with the easy-going Southern California stereotypes you know. That's because here in Murrieta, the project is wrapping up and the car is just about ready to be shipped to Vegas.

RKSport's Trevor Medina explains to me that the team's goal was to establish "a European look and feel that builds on the strong OE lines and concepts originally presented by Hyundai's designers." We don't think that's a bunch of hot air, either. The changes are nice and subtle; the lower bodywork builds off the existing bumpers and side sills instead of throwing them in the dumpster. The ride height (Eibach springs hide behind the new wheels) is low but not slammed. It holds promise for SEMA as a whole this year. If we have one complaint, it's that the side skirts make the stock strips of chrome along the door seem too prominent, too high up along the bodyside. The hood vents are the most extroverted details on the car, but they're a strong reminder of the work that's taken place under that hood.

I ask the RKSport team where the highlights and struggles have been with the car: "With all new concept builds," Trevor tells me, "there are always challenges. With this particular project, designing issues and finalizing the fitting processes were our main hurdles." What exactly does that mean? "Everything is done by hand from the ground up. After all the designing has been completed, the products are laid up in a clay composite material, then shaved and sculpted to a point where they can be pre-fitted. The molds are also created by hand and several parts are made to ensure a proper it. This was especially tough considering the small window we have prior to SEMA."

What about the best moment? R.K. Smith and Design Director Eliseo Garcia agree that no moment is quite like seeing the car done, to "see all of the hard work and time in building the components come to fruition — from a concept and rendering to visibly seeing them on a car." Smith is also excited about the opportunity to work so closely with a major manufacturer like Hyundai, and is excited about the audience it might draw to his business. The composite hood, polyurethane fascias, side skirts, composite roof, and trunk spoiler will all be offered to anyone willing to pay.

RKSport's Genesis parts will be among the first offered for Hyundai's new game changer, and our early look has us feeling that Hyundai's picked a good place to start. It's a fine looking kit that makes the car look more dynamic and less like a middle manager's transport. But that's the good news. The bad is that Hyundai has no plans to put the supercharged Tau in any product, meaning six months' worth of work will be set on a shelf somewhere in a dark Ann Arbor closet. Isn't that terrible? Here's what you need to do and we'll do the same: go into every Hyundai dealer in your area and tell them you want the supercharged Genesis you saw at SEMA. When they give you a clueless look, throw a fit and storm out. Repeat with each salesman on the staff, spacing your freak-outs about a week apart. Maybe with enough frazzled dealers calling headquarters, we can make this thing happen.

Incredible Aerial View of Cancun, Mexico [HUGE PIC]

Cancún is a coastal city in Mexico's easternmost state, Quintana Roo, on the Yucat án Peninsula. It is a world-renowned tourist resort. The city center is located on the mainland which connects over the Nichupté and Bojórquez lagoons to a narrow "7" shaped island where the modern beachfront hotels are located.

Google Maps

Hussman Funds Weekly Market Comment-

Value Dinosaurs

New NASA capsule Orion resembles Apollo

Email Picture

Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Engineers and technician run a structural mass properties test on a test module of the Orion crew exploration vehicle at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base.

The agency unveils the test module for structural testing at Edwards Air Force Base. The capsule, designed to carry humans to the moon, looks a lot like the one that first did so four decades ago.

By John Johnson Jr.
October 30, 2008

Reporting from Edwards Air Force Base -- NASA rolled out its next-generation space capsule here Wednesday, revealing a bulbous module that is scheduled to carry humans back to the moon in 2020 and eventually onward to Mars.

Unlike the space-plane shape of the shuttles, the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle looks strikingly similar to the old Apollo space capsule that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon and back in 1969, with Armstrong and Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

There is one key difference, however. The test module, unveiled at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, is substantially bigger -- 16.5 feet in diameter compared with Apollo 11's 12.8 feet.

The craft's extra girth will allow it to carry six astronauts instead of Apollo's three.

"This is the same shape as Apollo," said Gary Martin, the project manager for the test program at Dryden. "But the extra space translates into twice as much volume as Apollo."

Still, cramming six astronauts inside will make it "pretty cozy," he said.

The test module, or "boilerplate," is undergoing structural testing at Dryden, which is located at Edwards Air Force Base north of Lancaster on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

The series of engineering tests began Wednesday with a relatively simple one: A man pushed the craft as it sat balanced on jacks and springs. Instruments then measured its momentum to make sure it didn't swing too much or too little.

"We're looking for pretty smooth motion and nice oscillations," said Cathy Bahm, deputy project manager for the test program.

In the coming weeks, engineers will truck the capsule out to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where they will test the launch abort system, an emergency escape system for astronauts.

There are years of development still to go. But if things go as planned, the capsule could begin carrying astronauts to the International Space Station as early as 2014. Orion will sit atop a powerful new rocket, called Ares.

The major goal for Orion is to send Americans back to the moon by 2020, the first step in establishing a permanent moon base.

A manned journey to Mars would probably take place sometime after 2030.

In designing Orion, NASA has shunned the space-plane concept embodied by the space shuttle as too vulnerable to flying debris during launch. The dangers of that configuration were demonstrated by the loss of Columbia in 2003, which broke during reentry after a piece of debris tore a hole in its left wing.

The return to putting the astronauts on top of the rockets will leave a four-year gap between the retirement of the shuttle in 2010 and the first flight of the new vehicle. That is unless the next administration changes its mind and decides to keep flying the shuttle, something that current NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has opposed.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, Colo., is building the real Orion, but the boilerplate model undergoing testing at Dryden, built at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, is nearly identical.

Weighing in at 14,000 pounds, it is missing only the avionics and instruments inside.

When completed, the capsule will weigh about 17,000 pounds.

Johnson is a Times staff writer.

john.johnson@latimes.com

Are Tax Credits Welfare?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama says his economic plan would offer a tax break to 95% of working Americans.

John McCain, the Republican nominee, has another name for his rival's plan: government giveaway.

The presidential campaigns are clashing over whether Obama's tax proposal, which would expand the ranks of those who pay no federal income tax but get a refund check, is akin to welfare.

Obama's opponents, calling the proposal another step in his plan to redistribute wealth, are particularly angered that he would pay for the cuts by raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000.

"Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway," McCain said at a New Hampshire rally on Oct. 22.

Obama supporters, however, say that those who would receive the tax breaks do support the government. All the refundable credits have either a work or community service requirement, his advisers say.

"These pay people taxes - payroll taxes, gas taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, airline taxes and many others," said Austan Goolsbee, Obama's senior economic adviser. "They are workers. It is completely offensive to say giving them a tax cut on income taxes is welfare."

Expanding refundable tax credits

At issue is Obama's plan to greatly increase the number of refundable tax credits available to workers, students and homeowners. By making the credits refundable, those who owe no income tax would get money back from the federal government.

The Democratic nominee's "making work pay" credit alone would give $500 to single filers earning less than $75,000 and $1,000 for couples making double that. It will eliminate the federal tax liability for 10 million low-income Americans, according to the campaign.

Obama's other proposals - including expanding the refundable earned income tax credit and making the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable - would relieve another five million people of their income tax burden, experts said.

The number of people who don't pay federal income tax has grown over the past two decades as the government has added tax incentives for college students, families with children and those saving for retirement, to name a few. Some 47 million filers, or 33%, don't pay taxes, according to the Tax Foundation.

That number would grow by 16 million under the Obama plan, so 44% of filers would have no liability, the group said. Enacting the credits would cost the government more than $1.2 trillion in revenue over 10 years, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.

McCain, for his part, is also proposing a new refundable tax credit that would take 15 million people off the tax rolls, according to the Tax Foundation. His credit could only be used to cover the cost of health insurance premiums. His campaign says it wouldn't cost the government anything.

Overall, Obama's tax package would cost $2.9 trillion, while all of McCain's tax proposals would cost $4.2 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Raising taxes on the wealthier

The Republicans oppose sending money without restrictions on its use to people who don't pay tax, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior economic policy adviser. And the GOP doesn't like paying for it by increasing taxes on wealthier Americans, which they say is another example of Obama's ideological drive to redistribute wealth, he said.

"It's pretty clear what's going on here," Holtz-Eakin said.

Also, simply giving lower-income people tax refunds is not the best way to help them or the economy, said Bill Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

"They want jobs and higher wages," he said. "They don't want checks."

Making tax code fairer

For the most part, the government enacts tax credits to encourage certain behavior. For instance, the Saver's Credit is designed to give low-income workers incentives to fund retirement accounts.

Making tax credits refundable allows lower-income workers to take advantage of them, said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Since many lower-income workers pay little or no tax, a non-refundable credit such as the Saver's Credit isn't much use to them. Obama wants to make the Saver's Credit refundable.

"If you are a millionaire, you get the child care tax credit," he said. "But if you make $20,000, you are denied it because you don't make enough. It ends up going to the least needy."

Obama supporters also take issue with the Republican view that the refundable credits would go to people who pay no tax. Those who don't pay income taxes still support their state and federal governments through payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, sales taxes, property taxes and gas taxes.

"Most people pay more in Social Security taxes than in income taxes," said John Irons, research and policy director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Crunch at Mercedes Benz SUV Plant

Mercedes-Benz recently announced that it will offer buyout packages to workers at its assembly Tuscaloosa, Alabama assembly plant. The buyouts are to come before production cuts at the factory. The Alabama plant produces the Mercedes-Benz R-class, M-class, and GL-class SUVs. Although production will be cut, the plant will remain open as Daimler AG looks to close four Mercedes plants in Germany. The buyouts will be offered to all of the plant's employees, but the number of employees allowed to accept the packages is limited. The employees have until November 10 to decide if they are going to take the buyout or not. The buyout packages include a $45,000 lump-sum payment plus an additional $1000 for each year of service. This is the first time buyouts have been offered to the employees since the plant opened in 1997. Source: Automotive News

Brilliant! Watch 2 Different Shows On TV At The Same Time

Double the viewers, double the TV
Device to allow viewing of different shows

By Carolyn Giardina

Oct 30, 2008, 06:44 PM ET

Here's a classic dilemma: You are home for the evening. You wish to watch, say, a comedy, on TV, but your family member would rather watch something else.

Texas Instruments, the maker of the DLP Cinema chip, is developing technology that might reduce the common problem by allowing two people to simultaneously view two different programs -- on the same TV.

The company outlined some of its early developments that use 3-D technology for home entertainment, on Thursday at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers Technical Conference and Exhibition in Hollywood.

One development, which TI expects to begin to preview at year's end, is processing technology that if incorporated in a third-party home entertainment system could allow for 2-D, 3-D or "dual view mode" on the same TV. Dual view mode, similar to 3-D, combines two images, but they are two different images.

TI's Tim Simerly said that each viewer would wear different glasses -- one exposing only program "A," and one allowing the viewing of only program "B."

Simerly added that at least one of the viewers would need to wear headsets in order to get the correct audio.

Circuit City to close 20% of stores, layoff thousands

Electronic retailer Circuit City plans to shutter 20 percent of its U.S. stores by December 31 and evaluate other cost reduction initiatives, it announced today, citing waning consumer confidence and the struggling financial markets.

The move will close about 155 of its 700 stores, and result in layoffs of about 17 percent of its workforce. It will also reduce future store openings and renegotiate some leases.

“The weakened environment has resulted in a slowdown of consumer spending, further impacting our business as well as the business of our vendors. The combination of these trends has strained severely our working capital and liquidity, and so we are making a number of difficult, but necessary, decisions to address the company's financial situation as quickly as possible,” said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and CEO.

And the company isn't wasting any time with the closures. Affected stores will not open on Tuesday, and will reopen the following day with closing sales that are expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Top 10 Anticipated Movies of 2009

A new online list of the most eagerly awaited films of 2009 is either way off, or its compilers didn't bother to ask genre movie fans what they're waiting for as this year winds down.

Movietickets.com surveyed its readers and came up with "The Top 10 Most Anticipated Films" for next year. The list includes:

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros)
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox)
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount)
4. Public Enemies (Universal)
5. Angels & Demons (Sony)
6. Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian (Fox)
7. The Informant (Warner Bros)
8. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Fox)
9. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox)
10. The Taking of Pelham 123 (Sony)

No Star Trek? Are the MovieTickets.com readers not real big sci-fi fans?

No G.I. Joe? Don't they realize "knowing is half the battle?"

No Watchmen? Are they assuming Fox will be successful in throwing that Warner Bros. blockbuster out of The Comedian's window?

Another depressing look at the list reveals the complete lack of originality coming out of Hollywood these days. Not a single title here is an original movie based on an original fiction-based script written exclusively for a Hollywood production. Eight out of 10 are either prequels, sequel or remakes — and the remaining two (Public Enemies and The Informant) are based on non-fiction.

As one producer put it to me this week, "Studios aren't in the business of being studios anymore. They don't develop and produce original ideas into movies. With the financial crisis and everyone afraid for their jobs, they only want to deal with pre-developed, pre-packaged material. No one wants to stick their neck out."

The Chismillionaire TV-- Pioneer Elite Kuro Pro-111FD

If you can make the stretch to a Pioneer Kuro, you won't be disappointed. For the most part, TV's are TV's, but not in this case. Everything from the look feel and heft of this TV is just better. It approaches the level of TV as art. If 5 grand is too steep, step down to the non Elite Kuro offering less customization, but a great picture nontheless.

$5,000 • pioneerelectronics.com

9 out of 10

Samsung PN50A650 $2,499

Lost to the Kuro by a nose, but its accurate color and detailed 50-inch image make it a clean performer — and a hell of a deal.

Sharp Aquos LC-65SE94U $8,500
Huge 65er with great color, a bright picture, and effective motion smoothing.

Toshiba 52XF550U $3,300
The 52-inch panel pulsed visibly between dark and light movie scenes, and its noise-reduction seemed patchy.

You don't need a physics degree to coax incredible contrast and theater-perfect color out of this 50-inch beauty: The set measures your room with color and light sensors, then tweaks the TV's zillions of settings to make whatever you're watching look its best. Even the audio impresses, delivering surprisingly effective bass (for tiny detachable speakers) and clear dialog.

WIRED Evil blacks yield loads of detail in dark scenes. Four separate types of video noise-reduction kill fuzziness without culling HD detail. Setup menus have picture-in-picture — no missing the kickoff while tweaking settings. Also has before-and-after-adjustment comparisons.

TIRED Struggled deinterlacing some film-based HD video, leading to moiré and flash.

• Screen Size: 50 inches

• Style: Plasma
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080
• Manufacturer: Pioneer
• Price: $5,000

Physics the next President Needs to Know

Physics may be the furthest thing from the minds of the presidential candidates right now, but a solid grasp of the science behind some of the latest headlines will be critical for the winner.

Physics has a history of intersecting with politics in ways both large and small, from the creation of the atomic bomb to nuclear meltdowns to terrorist methods. And now, with more specialized, high-tech issues to tackle than ever before, it is increasingly important that world leaders have an understanding of the underlying scientific concepts.

But that’s not necessarily the case, says UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller, author of the book Physics for Future Presidents. For example, he argues that some terrorist threats, like dirty bombs, are overrated, while others, the low-tech stuff like natural gas bombs, receive little attention.

"I do not have a sense from the campaigns that the candidates really know this stuff," Muller told Wired.com. "And I don’t expect them to. In the past, it’s been the secret knowledge of the scientists who say, 'Pick me as your science adviser, and I’ll tell you what to do."

But Muller wants to change that with his non-partisan take on issues like global warming, energy, nuclear weapons, and space. He demurred on who he wants to see elected, or thinks will be. All that matters to him is that whoever wins brings the right approach to their policy decisions.

"What you have to do is give the president a knowledge base, so they can make knowledge-based decisions." Muller said. "I say those things that I hope will be heard."

In this Q & A, Muller discusses dirty bombs, space robotics and clean coal.

Wired.com: Do either one of the candidates have the book?

Muller: I know it is within arm’s length for each of them. I’ve gotten it to people who are close to them and see the candidates regularly. The people who have it really like the book, too. They will give it to the winner after the election.
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Q: How likely is it that either one of the candidates will take the time to understand physics, or any other scientific discipline?

A: It depends on how strong the recommendation they get is. This is a subject that is central for what they’ll be doing. They know the world is high tech and that their policy decisions will have a high tech component.

I tried to write a book with the voice that would address them at the level of providing knowledge. . . I don’t want to give them my opinions. At the end of every part of the book, I have two pages of advice. But mostly I wanted to inform them to the level where they can make informed decisions. They have to understand the threat of terrorism, what’s going on with global warming.

In my book, I did that in a way that’s clear. I’ve never found anybody who has said, “I didn’t understand that.” Never have I said anything that is unintelligible to an educated person whether they are an English major or a lawyer.
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Q: If you could sit the candidates down and make them understand the physics of three issues, what would they be?

A: Let’s begin with terrorism. In terrorism, the fact is that gasoline has enormous energy. It has 15x the energy of TNT. What that means to me is that a likely terrorist attack is going to be like the World Trade Center where the damage was done by the fuel not the planes. Beware of the low tech!

In space, the glory of the last 40 years for NASA has been in robotics. Most scientists dread the thought that they have to have their instruments on a manned flight. For the extra cost of putting them on a manned flight, they could build 2 robots, the instrument itself and a backup.

Let’s do as much robotics as possible before sending humans.
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Q: Is it just the cost of manned operations that is the problem?

A: No, most instruments work better when there are not humans walking around and shaking them. But it’s also the cost that it has to be so utterly safe for humans.
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Q: And the third physics issue for presidents?

A: Global warming. There is a consensus that global warming is real. There has not been much so far, but it’s going to get much, much worse. The thing I would tell the president is that the global warming, according to the global consensus — that’s the IPCC scientists, who won the Nobel Prize — the global warming of the future is going to come from the developing world. It’s the exploding economies of China and India and Asia that are going to be responsible for the CO2.

This causes a political problem because they are poor and have a low standard of living and shouldn’t have to pay for emissions cuts.

So, the only way this is going to work is that we pay the expense of them cutting back. If all we do is set an example, the example we’ll have set is that once you’re a wealthy nation, you can cut back on CO2. If that’s the example, they will wait until they are wealthy and then they’ll cut back and it’ll be too late.

Of course, if either one of the candidates said, we have to send $100 billion to China, they’d lose. But after the election maybe they can talk about that.

Doing feel good things in the U.S. is fine. Going to biofuels is good for energy independence. Going to solar and nuclear is also good for energy independence and also good for global warming. But the U.S. is going to contribute less than 1 degree of warming to future warming. The future is primarily going to come from China. Their economy is growing at 10 percent a year. And their carbon footprint is growing even faster, 10 or 12 percent per year. The developing world is taking off.

The OECD countries [a group of wealthier nations] are now contributing much less than one-half of the carbon dioxide. The non-OECD countries are growing and growing in their energy use. And we have to be happy about that. It’s a good thing because it means their standard of living is getting better. It’s even a good thing for population control to have people who are happy and healthy.
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Q: Of the technologies to mitigate global warming, which do you think is most important?

A: Clean coal is probably the most important. The public doesn’t understand about clean coal. They think it’s an oxymoron. But coal is so abundant in China and India and it is so cheap that we have to capture the CO2 and pump it underground.
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Q: But some geologists and other scientists have questioned whether carbon dioxide sequestration might be too difficult.

A: It’s difficult in the same way that the Apollo mission was difficult. I think there are technological solutions to all the problems that sequestration presents.

But also, if you are going to be technologically pessimistic about clean coal, you also have to be technologically pessimistic on solar, on wind, on batteries, and on other solutions.

The problems of coal are relatively straightforward. Sure, there will be problems. But beware of a bias towards some technologies over others.
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Q: But not all technologies advance at the same rate, so there could be reasons for supporting one type of technology over another.

A: Of course. The IPPC made a major study of sequestration. One issue was, if we do the sequestration, will it work? We’re talking about burying it in deep brines under land. The thing is we’ll know within a few years whether it will work. We need to try it very rapidly, so if it’s not going to work, we’ll know right away.

And there are wonderful other things going on. Wind is expanding very rapidly. Batteries are being developed. And batteries are really the hope for reducing emissions from automobiles, but they are not here yet. The Tesla roadster has 1000 pounds of expensive batteries. It’s nice to establish the name of the Tesla but these batteries are notorious for their calendar life. We really have to get cheaper batteries and batteries that can be recharged more often. There is a lot more work that has to be done in batteries. And in the meantime, those of us who are wealthy can drive Teslas.

This is I think what people forget. If you’re going to spend a billion dollars, you can do it far more effectively in China to cut back their emissions than you can to buy some expensive technology in the United States.
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Q: Let’s get back to the fun questions. You present a scenario on your website that you are the President and a terrorist has planted a dirty bomb in midtown Manhattan, but let’s say it’s in Chicago.

A: Well, the key issue with a dirty bomb is that it is extremely difficult to make a dirty bomb that will leave any bodies. . . The main effect is cancer not radiation illness.

The President needs to educate the public about radioactivity to let them know that when the dirty bomb spreads, in the worst parts of the city, the cancer rate is probably 20 percent and it might go up to 21 percent. You multiply it out over a lot of people, and that’s how you get a large number of deaths. And what people are scared of is a large number of deaths, but they will not be observed. They will be lost in the statistical noise. The president needs to inform the public that radioactivity is not as frightening as it might seem. . . Personally I’d rather see a dirty bomb than another 9/11.

Jose Padilla, the street thug, he was going to make a dirty bomb for Al Qaeda. I cover this in my book that it came out during the deposition that they said, “Forget the dirty bomb, rent several apartments in Chicago and explode them with natural gas.”

What scares me is that that shows that Al Qaeda understands the limitations of the dirty bomb much better than we do. We classify them as a weapon of mass destruction and that’s the wrong scale.

E-Voting's Biggest Test

E-Ballot: An electronic voting machine that will be used to count votes during in the 2008 presidential election. Credit: Accuvote

As the US heads into a historic and contentious presidential election, concerns over electronic voting technology could be about to stir up controversy over the legitimacy of some results.

Ironically, electronic voting machines were meant to make elections more reliable and secure. After the 2000 presidential election, when spoiled ballots and "hanging chads" sent the disputed result all the way to the Supreme Court, Congress began dispensing billions of dollars to help states replace punch-card ballots with more-sophisticated voting technology. Since then, however, concerns over the trustworthiness of electronic voting system have steadily grown.

Already in several key states, early voting has seen touch-screen voting machines "flip" votes from one candidate to another. Some voters casting early ballots in Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas say that machines have flipped their votes. All were able eventually to correct the mistake, but this has added a sense of urgency to long-held unease over the security and reliability of electronic voting systems.

Earlier this month, a report from Election Data Services (EDS), a Washington, DC-based firm that tracks election administration, said that electronic voting machine usage will drop this year for the first time ever. In Tuesday's election, 32.6 percent of all ballots will be cast using an electronic voting machine, compared to 37.6 percent in 2006, the equivalent of 10 million fewer voters. "Basically, the activists and the political scientists have kind-of won that battle," says EDS president Kimball Brace. "Most election administrators don't find it worthwhile trying to fight the battle and are trying to move on."

Nonetheless, that percentage will still be higher than it was during either of the last two presidential election races: in 2000, 22.0 percent of votes were cast electronically, compared to 29.2 percent in 2004. Also, several key swing states, including Ohio, Indiana, and Nevada, will rely heavily on electronic voting. Ohio and Indiana will use a combination of optically scanned paper ballots and electronic voting machines, while Nevada will rely almost entirely on electronic voting, according to the same EDS study.

Meanwhile, the political situation in Ohio couldn't be more tense. Republicans and Democrats are already wrangling in court about voter registration issues and so, if the race is particularly tight, the state could well be the scene of fierce legal action centered on electronic voting irregularities.

E-voting machines are receiving an unprecedented amount of attention from experts and activists. Grassroots organizations such as Black Box Voting and Video the Vote are urging voters to monitor the election and have already publicized problems with some voting machines, including touch-screen vote flipping.

Many computer security experts have previously raised concerns about the reliability and accountability of these machines, an issue that is complicated, they say, by the fact that they are manufactured by a number of different private companies and make use of proprietary (or undisclosed) computer code. In 2004, Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, Dan Wallach of Rice University, and colleagues published an analysis of an electronic voting machine used in Maryland and concluded that the machine was "far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts."

E-voting: In this year's national election (green) there will be an increase in use of electronic voting systems compared to 2004 (red) and 2000 (blue), according to Election Data Services. Credit: Technology Review

The manufacturer, Diebold Election Systems, now Premier Election Solutions, disputes the conclusion. Nevertheless, in 2007, the Maryland General Assembly voted to move back to paper ballots, although it will still use e-voting machines in Tuesday's election.

More recently, in a review commissioned by the state of California, researchers at the University of California found that electronic voting machines used in that state had security issues that made them vulnerable to vote tampering. The report prompted California to require that all voting machines also produce a paper trail.

Wallach of Rice University says that touch screens can often be poorly calibrated, causing the on-screen image to be misaligned with the touch-sensitive layer of the screen. Even a properly calibrated machine may not work well for an especially tall or short person because of their angle of view, he adds.

Critics' greatest concern about electronic voting machines, however, is that they might be vulnerable to fraud. "I think it's the complexity and the lack of transparency," says Steven J. Murdoch, a computer security researcher at the University of Cambridge. "It's certainly not apparent to the ordinary voter how it works, or whether it can be tampered with."

Murdoch thinks the move towards electronic voting was driven in part by "modernization for modernization's sake. When I was calling this a bad idea, I was being called a Luddite, but I've spent most of my life working with computers."

However, David Beirne, executive director of the Election Technology Council, which represents voting-machine manufacturers, says that electronic systems are designed to solve real problems. He says that paper ballots are expensive, cumbersome, and often "spoiled" by voters who mark them incorrectly.

"Unfortunately, I think the criticisms have reached such a point that no voting system can satisfy the critics," Beirne says. He also complains that critics often present unlikely scenarios, or ones that could easily be defended against with good management practices. And they don't compare the machines against the vulnerabilities of paper ballots.

Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at MIT who has studied voting technology, agrees that paper ballots are also vulnerable to fraud. "Right now, we know a hundred different ways to corrupt paper systems that any idiot could perform. I don't know of anything that any idiot could perform on voting machines," he says. But Stewart also argues that the industry has been slow to address real security concerns that have been apparent for years.

A number of technological schemes have been suggested for fixing security problems related to electronic voting. The most common is to require that each machine generate a voter-verified paper ballot and to audit a sample of paper ballots after an election. Some states (including California) have moved towards this method.

Another proposal is to use encryption to ensure voters and observers that votes haven't been tampered with. In one such scheme, developed by Wallach and colleagues and called VoteBox, when voters completed a ballot, their identity and a record of their vote would immediately be encrypted and posted online. Each machine would also issue an encryption key to voters so that the record could be decrypted to make sure the vote had been recorded correctly.

Patching Hearts

Growing a heart: In this confocal microscope image, living heart cells (in green, with blue nuclei) grow on a honeycomb-like scaffold (in blue) that helps arrange the cells in a pattern that more closely resembles the structure of heart muscle. Credit: courtesy of George Engelmayr

Multimedia Watch a patch of engineered heart tissue beat.

Engineering heart tissue presents particularly tough problems for researchers, since the heart is an active organ, contracting rhythmically to pump blood at high forces throughout the body. Scientists at MIT have found a new material on which to grow heart cells that better mimics the properties of heart muscle. The material, reported in Nature Materials this week, could be used to grow patches of tissue to repair heart injuries and defects, or to screen heart drugs in the lab.

Several labs have been working on ways to grow heart tissue by seeding living heart cells or stem cells onto artificial scaffolds. These scaffolds are designed to support the cells initially and then degrade over time as the cells form their own external support structures, leaving functioning tissue behind. But, says George Engelmayr, a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology who led the study, the scaffolds designed for other kinds of tissues did not have the right mechanical properties for heart tissue. Heart tissue must be flexible enough to change shape as the heart contracts, but also strong enough to withstand the intense forces generated by these contractions.

So, the researchers used a polymer originally developed in the lab of Robert Langer at MIT. "It's elastic like a rubber band," Engelmayr says, so it can withstand repeated stretching while only gradually losing strength as it degrades. Furthermore, the polymer can vary in stiffness, depending on how long it has been cured with heat, allowing the team to vary its mechanical properties with precision.

Cells of the heart are arranged in specific directions, which allows the heart chambers to be stiffer and stronger around their circumference than in the longitudinal direction. The researchers designed the scaffold to encourage cells to align themselves in the same direction to better mimic this property of natural heart muscle tissue. Using a laser cutting technique, they created a pattern of oblong holes in the polymer; the result is a flexible, honeycomb-like structure that is stiffer in one direction than another.

The researchers seeded small patches of the scaffold with heart cells from newborn rats and grew them for one week. They found that the mechanical and electrical properties of the engineered tissue varied in different directions. For instance, when the cells were lined up parallel to an electric field, they beat in sync more readily.

Frederick Schoen, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study, says that the MIT research offers a solution to a problem that has only recently been addressed by cardiac tissue engineers. Schoen says that, just as rowers line up in one direction to propel a boat forward, "all the heart muscle cells in a given region have to be lined up and contracting in the same direction" in order for the heart to beat efficiently. The honeycomb-like scaffold described by the MIT group represents a "substantial jump" toward that goal, Schoen says.

Ultimately, the goal is to create patches of tissue that can repair damaged areas of the heart better than current patches, which are made out of synthetic materials. Richard Weisel, a cardiac surgeon from University of Toronto, says that such patches are used during heart surgery in two major ways: to restore heart tissue in patients who have had damaged tissue removed after a heart attack, and to repair congenital heart defects in infants and children. But inert materials, while helpful, can't act as part of the living heart and can lead to scarring over time. "If we had a biodegradable biomaterial, which had beating heart cells, we might be able to return function to that part of the heart," he says.

But a major hurdle still must be crossed before heart tissue engineering becomes a reality: finding a reliable source of cells. While Weisel and other researchers have had luck coaxing adult stem cells from bone marrow and other tissues to turn into heart muscle cells, Lisa Freed, senior author of the Nature Materials paper, says that finding enough stem cells to generate tissue is still a practical problem. Another challenge is to expand this honeycomb scaffold to create thicker, larger pieces of tissue, which would be necessary to have practical uses in the clinic.

In the meantime, Freed believes that the technology could have a more immediate use as a better way to screen for heart drugs. She says that a three-dimensional scaffold of aligned cells offers a more true-to-life model for testing how drugs affect the beating heart than current methods that rely on cells cultured in a single layer.

A Fuel Sipping Engine

Trial combustion: A test engine from Lotus Engineering used to develop a new, efficient engine design. Credit: Lotus Engineering

A research project in the UK has developed a gasoline engine that it claims can reduce fuel consumption by 15 percent without losing power.

The key to the new design is the way in which fuel and air are separately introduced into the engine cylinders. By experimenting with different regimes for directly injecting fuel while varying the opening and shutting the air inlet valves, the researchers say they have achieved the major breakthrough in performance--and developed a "concept-car engine" that is gaining interest from big auto makers.

The aim of the project, a collaboration between two leading car engine development companies, Lotus Engineering and Continental Powertrain, and two universities, Loughborough and University College London, is to reduce losses caused by the engine throttle. In conventional engines, the throttle is kept partially closed except during full acceleration, obstructing the flow of air and reducing the pressure and density of the air that enters the cylinder. This forces the engine to work harder to pull air into the cylinder. That wasted energy can be saved by controlling the mass of air that enters the cylinder not with the throttle, but by varying the timing of valve openings at each cylinder. This also enables engines to be made smaller and more efficient.

Such adjustments aren't possible with conventional variable-valve engines, which use mechanical controls that restrict their operation. But Lotus Engineering has developed a hydraulic system that it says enables "complete control" of the timing, duration, and lift of the valves. The researchers concluded that the best configuration of valves was four for each cylinder, two for air intake and two for exhaust. According to the company's principal engineer, Graham Pitcher, engine output could be controlled by closing one intake valve and slightly opening the other.

Another important difference from previous designs is that the fuel injector is positioned centrally in the head of the cylinder, rather than in the side. This enables fuel and air to mix better, though it means that the injector is located at the hottest part of the engine and so requires improved water flow to keep it cool. An added benefit of better combustion is lower amounts of unburnt fuel in the exhaust, resulting in fewer hydrocarbon emissions.

Lotus Engineering and Continental Powertrain have already adopted the technology in a low-carbon concept car. A three-cylinder, 1.5-liter engine based on the combustion concept has been fitted to the Opel Astra and shown to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent compared to the Astra's standard, 1.8-liter, four-cylinder engine. At the same time, the concept car produces a 36-percent increase in torque and a 14-percent increase in power output.

According to Geraint Castleton-White, power-train leader at Lotus Engineering, the outcome is a car that emits 140 grams or less of carbon dioxide per kilometer. In 2007, cars sold in Europe averaged 158 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer; proposed legislation in the European Parliament would require cars to meet standards of 130 grams per kilometer by 2012.

"We have had tremendous interest from manufacturers around the world and the concept will be in production in the future," says Castleton.

The prototype engine is more cost effective than other direct-injection, "lean burn" engines, because it avoids the need for expensive equipment to trap nitrogen oxides, he says.

John Heywood, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, isn't surprised by the improvements. "There has been a nearly linear improvement in performance of internal combustion engines over the last couple of decades or so," he points out. "We need to pursue all possibilities that look promising." But he suggests there are other potential ways of increasing engine efficiency, such as reducing friction, which might end up being more cost effective. "There are questions over the long-term market attractiveness of variable-valve technology," he says.

American Power

It may be the most important question the country faces: What will we do about energy?

By Michael Moyer and Amanda Schupak Posted 10.31.2008 at 11:25 am 2 Comments

Energy is the blood that runs through our economy: the highway miles paved with crude, the kilowatts of coal, those tentative first heartbeats of large-scale wind and solar. America famously uses more energy than any other country—measured either per capita or in total—and conservation measures aside, our rising standard of living will mean that we will consume even more in the future.

The question is: From where? Will we continue to pay overseas suppliers for increasingly scarce crude? Will we continue to burn mountains of coal and hope the effects aren’t catastrophic? Or will we encourage new technologies, new domestic sources that we control (and export), new energy industries that create jobs and boost the economy? Below, we explore the data points that must inform how the U.S. moves forward. Our lifeblood depends on it.

Nissan to offer 0% Financing on Five Models + Special Maxima Lease

Amid reports that show Nissan halving its earnings forecast -- as well as hacking both production volume and workers - the Japanese automaker will take a cue from much of its competition and offer special financing and leasing options in an attempt to drum up business for the remainder of the year. The offers include 0% factory financing for 36 months on Nissan's Altima, Rouge, Sentra, Versa, and Murano vehicles through January 5 in addition to lease rates of $199 per month for Altima and Rouge, and $339 per month for the all-new Maxima. Nissan will also introduce a budget-oriented version of its Versa compact sedan that will start at $9,990 - roughly $3,000 less than the current base-level Versa. The offers target the automaker's volume-leading sedans and crossovers. Early this month, rival Japanese automaker Toyota announced it would offer 0% financing on 11 of its most popular models, while Honda announced 1.9% financing on its Civic loans up to 36 months, along with $189 per month lease rates on the same model. Sales dropped 38 percent for Nissan last month, yet Nissan remains ahead of the industry curve for the year, with sales dropping just 3.3 percent compared to an industry average of 13 percent. Naturally, both financing and leasing offers are extended to those only with acceptable credit - given today's economy, this typically means a credit score in the Tier 1 level. Source: Nissan

Jaguar XF Supercharged- Jaguar is at least Jaguar Again

S-type? What's an S-Type? Jaguar's luscious new XF four-door obliterates all memories of its Lincoln-based, J-gated predecessor. The XF, like the illustrious E-Type, is a real Jag. In last July's Motor Trend, the top-model, 420-horse XF Supercharged also dusted off rivals from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Lexus, handily winning our "Private Reserve Cabs" sport-lux comparo and inspiring every test driver to mutter, "We gotta get ourselves one of these."

So we did. A Liquid Silver XF Supercharged (with interior resplendent in "Spice/Char" soft-grain leather) has joined our long-term fleet. In barely a month, it's racked up more than 3400 miles.

The XF Supercharged, based at $64,475, arrives with every worthwhile goody standard: touchscreen nav, oak-veneer trim, air-conditioned seats, rear-parking camera, full iPod integration, 440-watt Bowers & Wilkins audio that could even make the Jonas Brothers sound good. To that our test car adds only adaptive cruise control (for, ahem, $2200), which managing editor Rusty Kurtz calls, "one of those features you'd never imagine needing until you try it."

Immediately upon the Jag's arrival, bachelor-about-town Mike Suggett graciously offered to sign out the car for important study in socio-cultural anthropology. "Evidence reveals that women particularly enjoy the XF," Suggett notes, "as three female friends independently offered outspoken praise for the exterior design ('It looks like the Aston Martin's smarter older sister') and the chic interior ('The W Hotel on wheels')." At night, the look is glamorized by phosphor-blue backlighting that, Suggett says, "makes you feel like you're piloting one of those Light Cycles from 'TRON.'"

CLICK TO VIEW GALLERY

In the months ahead we'll monitor the sturdiness of the XF's whiz-bang: the round automatic-transmission selector (rises up from the console after engine start), the hidden air vents that rotate open, the touchscreen display (controls navigation, audio, climate, and more), the blind-spot monitoring system.

Gripes have cropped up: "The rotating vents are fun to watch, but what's the point?" asks Kurtz. "Why does Jaguar insist on using that growling Jaguar logo on the steering wheel, rims, and front grille?" asks Suggett, undoubtedly steamed after picking up another dinner check. "It looks like a high-school mascot."

Ah, but 0 to 60 mph in five seconds flat. Sublime steering and handling. That peerless lan. No question: Jaguar is Jaguar again.

Our Car
Base Price	$64,475
Price as tested	$66,675
Vehicle layout	Front engine, RWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan
Engine	4.2L/420-hp/413-lb-ft DOHC 32-valve V-8
Transmission	6-speed automatic
Curb weight (dist f/r)	4204 lb (53/47%)
Wheelbase	114.5 in
Length x width x height	195.3 x 73.9 x 57.5 in
0-60 mph	5.0 sec
Quarter mile	13.5 sec @ 104.8 mph
Braking, 60-0 mph	106 ft
EPA city/hwy econ	15/23 mpg
CO2 emmisions	1.23 lb/mile
Total mileage	3437
Average fuel economy	15.8 mpg
Unresolved problem areas	None

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