2005 Acura TL vs. 2005 Audi A4, 2006 BMW 330i, and Five More Entry-Luxury ... - Car and Driver (blog)
While the buffaloes in C/D 's head office in Ann Arbor bumped heads over which vehicles to include in our annual "Just-Try-to-Beat-the-3-Series Test," eyes out in the West Coast bureau watched the burning skies of July with real trepidation. ") Back in the Midwest, candidates were proposed, debated, explored, rejected, reconsidered, rejected again, suddenly adopted with no warning following a few particularly dry martinis, re-rejected because a test vehicle wasn't available with... Staffers threatened to quit, or worse, just take the rest of the day off. When the list was finally set in concrete, our comparo destination — the high desert north of Los Angeles — was registering 100 shimmering Fs by 8 a. m. By noon the temperature was bursting the mercury right out the tops of our 89-cent Car and... Managing editor Steve Spence was in L. A. just one day before he managed to incinerate his face. With air-conditioning performance now destined to be a major factor in the test, we called to order this annual festival of circa-$35,000 sports sedans, pleased by the attendance of so many new faces. The Audi A4 is an important one, packing a newly available 3. 1-liter direct-injection V-6 behind its beaver-tail grille. So is the BMW 330i, which now hacks through traffic in a fully Bangle-ized body with larger dimensions and a new aluminum-and-magnesium engine, light of weight and vitalized to 255 horsepower with BMW's nifty Valvetronic variable. Source: www.caranddriver.com
