regfootball

Test Drive: 2010 Volkswagen Golf 2.5 and Jetta TDI Stock Image Shown Got out in the cold yesterday and took out a couple VW's. A 2010 3 door Golf 2.5 / manual and a 2010 Jetta TDI / manual. I wanted a Golf TDI but none was available. I will add more to this tomorrow, since i forgot to get this up earlier Saturday evening. You would be surprised to know that I think my preference of the two is the gas model. I have driven the TDI Jetta now with the manual and the DSG and neither time did I come away thinking I would enjoy the vehicle long term, when i began to consider the main benefit of the diesel is basically fuel mileage....a benefit that comes at a greatly increased cost and therefore opens up a lot of interesting comparison issues based upon the car's price. Besides that, I found myself really preferring the revvability of the traditional gas mill and its power delivery more to my liking than the somewhat unwilling diesel. Keep in mind the behavior of the diesel may have entirely been because of the weather conditions, it was below zero and the car hadn't sat idling for like an hour to get up to operating temp. Diesels take longer to get smooth. I get that. I can only comment on what I experienced today and I hope to follow this up with a Golf TDI test drive down the road in better weather. The 2.5 is no refinement peach either, although its mid range grunt helped to keep it from having to be floored nearly as much as the TDI and therefore didn't feel like you had to beat on it like you did the TDI to get anything out of it. The major annoyance of the 2.5 was the lack of the 6th gear for highway cruising. 3000 rpm at 65-70 mph is a bit much IMO for a car with 170/177. The 5 cylinder is a growler as well, its not a harsh growl, its just an odd sort of groan that nice four cylinders do not make. I would not really call it deal breaker although most competitors have four cylinder motors that are more pleasing (GM that includes your Cobalt engine). I did find the gearbox on the 5 speed and its clutch to be smoother than the TDI and 6 speed, but maybe again the TDI needed more time to get comfy. I found the engagement point on the TDI's clutch harder to get right away than the very easy feeling 5 cylinder. The 5 cylinder shifted very snick snick and not much (just a little) notchyness. The TDI's shifter seems a bit fussier in comparison although I would not call it out as bad. Both would likely satisfy an experienced stick driver in that regard.... I just have determined the TDI diesel is really not my cup of tea. I felt you had to lay into it far too much to wake it up at a stop light or on roll on. Of course with one extra gear you can hook the powerband better, but to get the diesel to scoot you really need to prod it more. The diesel I felt should have quieted down a bit more at the 65-70 mph pace, at least it had the 6th gear. In the 5 cylinder you can still pass aggressively in 4th. With the TDI the top two gears you are not gonna get much passing power out of....you totally need to drop it to 4th to weave in traffic and get bursts. I suppose the 6th gear is how the TDI scores its mileage rating. I felt that with the exception of no 6th to bring the rpm down on the 5, that in fact had more flexibility in all driving conditions. Keep in mind I believed the diesel had similar traits when i drove it with the DSG. More tomorrow. What both cars needed IMO was one engine to share, a really good basic 2.2 litre 4 cylinder motor with about 155-170hp and a very nice well matched 6 speed. i.e. a very revvable behaved flexible four cylinder like the motor in the Cobalt, paired with a great 6 speed. Between that and the steering I hesitate to call either car a must buy. I would rate them good to very good, but I left thinking that neither was 'compelling' enough to make me not consider the myriad of other choices in the segment. One thing about the cars that is very well done to exceptional is the interior....although a couple beefs i had about that as well.

a few months back i test drove a 2010 fusion S (i think) manual. i was extrememly impressed and i used to hate the fusion. i prefer the fusion to the accord and over the malibu as well.

no bimmer here should be fwd. none of the US bimmers should have anything less than a turbo 4. i thought i saw a test that had a 1 series at 3600+ pounds. I will need to look into that. 2011 mustang v6 is under 3500 pounds and over 300 hp.

i would do tahoe suburban. that is your best chance of finding a well kept one.. sturdiest vehicle and it will still have appeal to a future buyer when you are done with it. how about an expedition or navigator? I have been considering one these days actually. all the crossovers have gone whacko price wise (go price and build an Ecoboost MKt), and some of the early decade big SUV's are so cheap it might just pay to have one to take long trips and haul with since the crossovers don't get that much better mpg. was their an Expedition diesel? that is what I have been trying to find out.. or was it only an Excursion? I would guess the Excursion would be a bit of a cockroach, built like a tank, could outlast anything.

over xmas busting drifts in the snowstorms with the taurus x, my wheelwells and wheels got plugged up with wet slushy snow and i really would have appreciated more clearance to be honest. it was undriveable actually after i had parked it overnight and they snow did not melt off in the garage. i got a horrible vibration until i beat the tar out of the wheels to get every last bit of snow out of the wheels, brakes and wheel wells. if the clearance had been more the chunks would have cleared out better on their own. curious as to how y'all think the base equinox front drive compares to the base fwd CX-7 and base fwd Subaru outback. all very similarly priced, actually.

very nice interior.

everything is now 75-90% off, although there really isn't any clothing left. very little of anything in fact but i did get 4 more bistro mugs and some pens. couple more hats and an Aura shirt this time. i should check the saab site and see if they have any deals going on.

does that one series weigh more than a mustang? you did not acknowledge that indeed BMW is likely bringing a front drive model and a 3 cylinder here wearing BMW badges. a three cylinder, front drive, ULTIMATE DRIVING MACHINE! that is almost too much EXCITEMENT!

Amen! Satty, let your friend do some flesh wave surfing to ring in the new year. ! Happy new year everyone!

just curious as to how visible it is when you are seated, driving the car. just sayin.

it was odd. when i test drove the saturn vue a few months ago, after driving the 4 and 6 back to back, they behaved so much alike, i really had no idea the 4 was a 4. now with all the nox/terrain refinements, i can imagine the 4 cyl being just as nice for most driving. the 6 i would prob need to get with awd.

considering that BMW wants to bring front drive bimmers and 3 cylinders to the US, it appears that they will be attempting to go as much downmarket as anyone. and yes, the 1 series is a flop. But if the 1 series can be a flop in 20 other countries as well, and it still sells ok in the motherland, then they can justify the extra sales globally by selling a few k here and there. A3, same deal.

in tan that seat cloth looks really nice, almost euro. one of the best cloth interiors i have seen recently. anyone who disagrees hasn't shopped enough lately to see a lot of the really poor seat cloth that is out there in these price classes lately. the eek and terrain cloth seats are the exact same i think. just like the G6, Malibu, Aura cloth seats were identical.

x2 the folks are grabbin at straws

admit it, mr. OOD, its those glorious intake runners that make your pulse race........

winter. cold. no time to try to find the hole!

that is a blanket statement just like saying cars should get much better mpg. so it also falls under the 'if they had a magic solution for doing it they would already be doing it' as i know you know regarding electrical mechanical etc. are designed for different 'load' criteria. analogous to crash test standards and such. if the facility is designed for 'x' people, and is performing certain functions in a room 'x' large (occupant load can either be a function of square foot or actual users, doesn't matter, the restaurant owner will want to say how many customers he wants to accommodate to make his business plan work) then the mechanical load calcs are pretty much a direct mathematical computation of what ASHRAE and code dictate. There is a means by system design to reduce electrical load with better system design and more efficient units and such, but I sort of use the analogy of 6 speed trannies or CVT's. Yes, they work better, more mpg. But they require more precise and expensive manufacture and probably more maintenance and such. And their savings are incremental. We constantly read about the new trannies with 6 or 8 speeds or DSG yet they only achieve 6-8% mpg improvements. Every little bit helps, but it just highlights that if there truly were a golden nugget to reduce energy usage in buildings it would be being used universally and we'd see major savings. What actually is the bigger problem is something i studied a lot when i was like 8-9 years old. Passive siting techniques that maximize climate and sun etc are virtually ignored still in the design community....but that is because commercial real estate and clients and the public in general is very resistant culturally to what buildings with real climatic orientation would look and function like. You would end up building a whole bunch of unrentable office space etc. Not to mention the construction community only wants to build and warranty what is simple, typical, and easy. I think electronic building controls have the greatest potential to save energy in buildings along with passive siting and climate techniques. Solar responsive or programmed window screening, lighting and hvac controlled more by building occupation and peak times etc. And even then we're not gonna save 50%. Buildings may use 85% of energy but what people fail to think about is they probably spend 85% of their grown lives INSIDE A FREAKING BUILDING. Buildings are shelter, a basic need right up there with food and sex. So DUH we're gonna use energy to fulfill a basic need. Also, think about what goes on in a building. We make food, we make all sorts of things we need to live. So everyone needs to stop villifying buildings. We'd all be dead if it weren't for safe comfortable, functional buildings. That said, maybe if they want to use less energy, lets build a lot less office buildings and more of us can work from home. IF half of us worked from home, then we wouldnt need half the offices and we would save half that energy. These are paradigms I prefer to think in. Solve the greater problems. Or cars. We all drive all over the place to work. Well maybe if more of us lived closer to work. Not everyone can commute to a congested downtown. It would make a lot more sense if employment places were interdispersed to the population so more folks in the remote areas were closer to their jobs.

thank you for seeing the light in the distance so clearly

geothermal loops can go vertical (down) and they also often are buried beneath parking paving. you don't need much latitude anymore to do geothermal.

no way you can say that from these pics. it looks fine.

VERY HOT!

restaurant = power usage and heat generation. if there are two things we should use energy and fuel for, food and drink would seem to be high on the list. most buildings are in cooling mode most of the time anyways. a lot of this is due to the fact that humans themselves create heat. the interior environment becomes harmful if proper heat, and humidity are not maintained. if you imagine the heat added by cooking food, that needs to be exhausted. i don't think we have done near enough with solar and geothermal, although solar is simply not cost effective at this point and this is why the US needs to have tax incentives to fund our companies to become global leaders in this. Geothermal is efficient in that energy exhange through fluids is very efficient. buildings also degrade if proper interior environment is not maintained. better to spend on that then replacing degraded facilities. with all that stimulus money, instead of ppumping AIG, and instead of throwing a ton at a useless health care policy, some tax incetnives and research money to keep the leading edge in electric power generation, solar, alt fuels, and incentives for green building as opposed to a contrived rating system would make a lot more sense. there is so much rhetoric about global warming from so many, it would be refreshing if these people lined up the plans and funding to make actual progress as opposed to trying to manipulate people's behavior.

LEED in concept is admirable but the whole BS has been commericalized and turned into marketing rhetoric. And I can tell you, generally the purseholders will pursue only the 'cheap' LEED points.....which is fair. In my opinion, if you are a big green building banger, than YOU come up with the $$$$$$$ to pay for all the really expensive stuff. In my opinion, the govt should be providing tax incentives to develop energy efficient tech for buildings so the companies can offer and amortize the costs on an attractive scale so it becomes commonplace through market forces. NOT legislation. The huge windmill I am stuck looking at now everyday as i drive home, really makes me wish they would add more ordinances to keep them out of populated residential areas.

they tell you its from buildings so they can fuel their own leftist agenda to remodel and make sustainable a bunch of decrepit old buildings....because they never figured out how to make any kind of living from designing new buildings to meet typical market demand. they can't make it doing what they should be doing so they are in essence creating a set of 'reasons' to expand their services beyond basic process because they aren't bright enough to figure out how to make a decent living doing just that. volcanoes are climates worst enemy i thought.

my mom gave us an unused starbucks card yesterday, today i got a double shot with dark roast and my wife got a chi. there is anough left for two drinks tomorrow on our trek back. the taurus x did fine busting huge snow drifts the last few days and got us around fairly safe, and has done so without fuss. last friday before last some guy called and asked for my resume, he got my name from an excoworker and even though he said there was not hiring he just wanted to see it, so after a year of 'there's nothing' at least to have someone show a blip of interest was in intself interesting. wifes family was almost all together this xmas. rare, and nice considering mom/grandma passed away this spring. might be able to get hammered on NYE. i assume there's been some good things, it will just take some digging to ressurect all of them. right now they are outnumbered but 2010 it can only go up. and 2010 is an election year. i am presuming it will end with the great opportunity to throw out all the bums on their ass, despite whether they get rich off the corporates and lobbies first. people need to take the country back.