Ward's Auto Announces the 10 Best Car Interiors of 2011

Like every year, Ward's AutoWorld magazine picks the best interiors the automotive industry has to offer. For 2011, the publication chose 10 the ten best interiors the offer after editors analyzed 51 vehicles that were all-new or featured significantly upgraded interior. Ward's Auto picked the 10 winners from all segments, with the finalists including three luxury brands, three economy cars, a sport sedan, a minivan, an SUV and a family sedan.

If you’re still with us, the top 10 winners for 2011, in alphabetical order, are:

Audi A8
BMW X3 xDrive35i
Chevrolet Cruze 2LT RS
Dodge Charger Rallye Plus
Ford Focus Titanium
Honda Odyssey Elite
Hyundai Elantra Limited
Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland Summit
Kia Optima EX
Volvo S60

These cars were chosen after editors completed score sheets for each one based on materials, ergonomics, safety, the human-machine interface, comfort, fit-and-finish, overall value and aesthetics.

“Auto makers are so focused on the smallest details that it’s hard to find a bad interior these days. Still, some are better than others, and we’re recognizing the best of the best,” says Ward’s AutoWorld Editor-in-Chief Drew Winter.

Scroll down to watch Ward's Auto editors reviewing four of the ten cars' interiors and check them all out in the picture gallery.

By Dan Mihalascu

PHOTO GALLERY

Ward's Auto Announces the 10 Best Car Interiors of 2011

Like every year, Ward's AutoWorld magazine picks the best interiors the automotive industry has to offer. For 2011, the publication chose 10 the ten best interiors the offer after editors analyzed 51 vehicles that were all-new or featured significantly upgraded interior. Ward's Auto picked the 10 winners from all segments, with the finalists including three luxury brands, three economy cars, a sport sedan, a minivan, an SUV and a family sedan.

If you’re still with us, the top 10 winners for 2011, in alphabetical order, are:

Audi A8
BMW X3 xDrive35i
Chevrolet Cruze 2LT RS
Dodge Charger Rallye Plus
Ford Focus Titanium
Honda Odyssey Elite
Hyundai Elantra Limited
Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland Summit
Kia Optima EX
Volvo S60

These cars were chosen after editors completed score sheets for each one based on materials, ergonomics, safety, the human-machine interface, comfort, fit-and-finish, overall value and aesthetics.

“Auto makers are so focused on the smallest details that it’s hard to find a bad interior these days. Still, some are better than others, and we’re recognizing the best of the best,” says Ward’s AutoWorld Editor-in-Chief Drew Winter.

Scroll down to watch Ward's Auto editors reviewing four of the ten cars' interiors and check them all out in the picture gallery.

By Dan Mihalascu

PHOTO GALLERY

BMW X3 Buyers will be able to see their Vehicles Being Built through an Online Video Portal

BMW wants to turn an ordinary sale into an emotional experience that drives brand loyalty and retention by offerings U.S. buyers of the 2011MY X3 a unique access to the creation of their crossover through an online video portal that will show them footage of their customized X3 being produced at the company’s plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

“Customization is essential to the new BMW X3. With more than 10 million distinct configurations available, we wanted to get customers excited about the birth of their unique vehicle,” said Trudy Hardy, Manager, BMW Marketing Communications and Consumer Events, BMW of North America. “This production footage of the BMW X3 vehicles from our Spartanburg plant enhances the overall customer experience that is part of the BMW brand.”

BMW makes use of a total of seven cameras which track the X3 through the various stages of final assembly. The company added that the videos do not have an expiration date and can also be downloaded and shared.

To watch or download the footage, customers will have to create a My BMW account on bmwusa.com website and entering their X3 order number or VIN. The BMW X3 Customer Video Portal program kicks off today, January 20th.

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4-Cylinder Turbocharged BMW Engine, this time for Z4 Roadster

Last time we reported about BMW's long-rumored family of turbocharged 4-cylinder engines, it was in the summer of 2010. Meanwhile, the German manufacturer hasn't revealed anything on the matter, giving the whole affair an almost mythical status.

However, a new rumor has surfaced, with Automobile Magazine tweeting that the entry level BMW Z4 will soon get a new, 4-cylinder force inducted engine, as a replacement for the naturally aspirated inline-six.

The exact tweet was “BMW new 4-cyl coming this year in Z4 roadster. Replaces nat asp 6, so at least 200 hp” and, seeing that average fuel consumption regulations and emissions standards are getting stricter by the day, it sounds like a logical move for BMW.

The Bavarian company sure knows how to build a fine turbocharged engine and there are many models in its line-up that could benefit from a more frugal, and equally if not more powerful four-pots. The 1-Series and 3-Series are just two that come to mind right, although we’re pretty sure that X3 owners wouldn’t mind better fuel economy as well.

Clearly, the question here is not “why”, but rather “when”, and at the rate things are going, we’d say let's meet up again this summer and we’ll hopefully have some more official info for you.

By Csaba Daradics

Source: Automobile via Bimmerpost

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VIDEO: BMW Teaches us a Lesson about Winter and Summer Tires

When we shared with you a list with winter driving tips in our previous post -see here- we stressed the importance of using winter tires. The reason? Summer tires will lose most of their elasticity at 7 degrees Celsius (44.6 F) and it only gets worse as temperatures drop further. Grip will be almost non-existent and having four-wheel drive doesn’t help either. If you still have doubts, follow the break to check out a video from BMW showing the new X3 with summer tires rendered useless in the snowy Austrian Alps.

By Csaba Daradics

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VIDEO: BMW X3 vs. Audi Q5 in an all-wheel drive man-made hill climb

Who would have thought that BMW's all-wheel drive systems were enough to shame Audi's famous quattro system? Not the average consumer, that's for sure (though BMW certainly has had enough time to get it right). BMW, which has actually been making AWD cars for the past 25 years, has decided to begin more aggressively targeting consumers who live in harsher climates.

According to this video, BMW's xDrive is vastly superior to Audi's quattro - at least when driving up metal inclines built by BMW... In the clip, we get a glimpse at what appears to be some sort of BMW press event and a hill climb-off between two small-ish diesel-powered premium soft-roaders: Audi's Q5 and BMW's X3.

Although the X3 depicted here may not be the first pick on a lot people's lists, the comparison below is just used as an example. After all, xDrive is now available on a variety of products in BMW's lineup. Could it be that BMW has bested Audi at its own game?

By Phil Alex

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BMW Announces Snow and Ice Training Courses, Celebrates 25 Years of AWD Models

Driving in the snow can be a lot of fun if you know what you're doing. But not everyone is an ace behind the wheel and even if they are, there's always room for improvement. Enter BMW's Winter Driving Experience event that offers special training courses all over Europe, in a variety of road conditions.

For starters there's the BMW Snow Intensive Training course in Sölden (Austria), where you can fine tune your braking and steering technique driving the new BMW X3, 5-Series and the M3, on both uphill and downhill routes.

After mastering the basics, you can switch to the BMW Snow Drift Training, also held in Sölden, where you can drift for a half a day in a 420 hp M3, yodeling all the way.

Finally, you can go to the Artic Circle and take part BMW's Ice Fascination Training, held at the famous Arjeplog (Sweden) test facility. M3s with spikes will be at your disposal as you'll try to hone your skills over specially prepared areas of ice. You will learn when to turn into a corner, how to counter-steer and stabilize a rear-wheel drive car. Or maybe not. Maybe you'll crash all day into the snow banks.

Either way, there's lots of fun to be had for four, five or six days, depending on what course you opt for and previous experience. For more information on bookings and prices, you can visit BMW's dedicated website at www.bmw-drivertraining.com.

Now, all this talk about snow and drifting brings us to the second item on our list: the 25th anniversary of all-wheel-drive, or xDrive, as BMW likes to call it.

It all started in 1985, when the Bavarian engineers fitted the E30 BMW 325iX with permanent all-wheel-drive.

Today, xDrive has an important place in the company's portfolio, as one in four BMWs sold are equipped with the AWD system .

Currently there are 45 models which benefit of the variable distribution of drive between the front and rear wheels, from the compact 3 Series all the way up to the luxurious 7 Series.

By Csaba Daradics

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