As part of the latest marketing campaign for Vespa, Piaggio have launched a number of radio stations on the online radio station: Pandora.
You will be able too listen to the Vespa radio station at the start of June.
Part of The "Vespanomics" campaign, its all about pushing the environmental benefits of Vespa ownership.
"Turns on a Dime, Runs on a Nickel"
"Smart Looks, Smarter Purchase."
If you register with the Pandora Vespa radio station then you will also get a chance to win a new Vespa S50. I think we also saw the possibility of getting a vintage Vespa t-shirt but i am not sure how you do it.
The main stations are called:
“Vespa Mods and Rockers” – Which i can only assume will have some decent mod mod music – I will listening to this one.
“Vespaliscious” and “Vespa Liberate” – Will wait for the stations to go live, to find out what they play on here.
“Vespa indie channels” – Obviously this will contain some decent indie music so another decent station.
When the music channel goes live, i think it would worth checking out to find out what Vespa related tunes they are playing.
Boldly Beautiful
Behold the new 2008 Buick Enclave and revel in true beauty. The first ever luxury crossover from Buick, Enclave radiates elegance and sophistication. Experience first-class comfort in its exquisitely spacious interior, where up to eight passengers can indulge in tri-zone climate control, available rich leather seating surfaces and an available rear DVD entertainment system. The 3.6L V6 engine along with variable valve timing, standard Xenon High Intensity Discharge headlights and standard StabiliTrak™ create a drive matched only by its impeccable style. From brilliant concept to flawless execution, Enclave represents the unrelenting attention to detail that defines Buick. The new 2008 Buick Enclave. Where there’s passion, there’s beauty.
Introduction
The Buick Enclave is an all-new crossover utility vehicle for 2008. The Enclave combines the smooth ride and responsive handling of a car with the cargo capability and high seating position of a traditional truck-based sport utility vehicle. The refined exterior incorporates organic shapes and distinctive front and rear fenders.
The Enclave comes in two trims; the CX and the CXL and both feature a contemporary design while still offering trademark styling cues associated with Buicks of the past. Both trims are available with a front-wheel drive (FWD) or an all-wheel drive (AWD) configuration. The interior features two front bucket seats and two different seating configurations for the second and third row seats accommodating a maximum of eight passengers. An impressive 275-hp 3.6-liter V6 engine is mated with a six-speed automatic transmission. The Enclave offers a luxurious interior with an extensive list of features and amenities.
For 2008, the Buick Enclave is completely new and replaces the Buick Rainier and the Rendezvous.
Mazda’s RX-8 receives minor exterior and interior updates for 2009, and the rotary-powered sports car can now be equipped with a new R3 sport package. Competitors include the Mitsubishi Eclipse and Nissan 350Z.
On the whole, the updated RX-8 looks much the same as before. It still has a longish hood, pronounced fender flares, and a cabin that has small, rear-hinged back doors to make it easier to get in the backseat.
Changes underneath the RX-8’s skin include a revised rear suspension and stiffer driveshaft. The car’s exhaust tips are larger for 2009, too.
The R3 sport package adds a sport suspension, a rear spoiler, side sills, a new front bumper and 19-inch aluminum wheels shod with high-performance tires.
The RX-8’s cabin has room for up to four people. There are bucket seats in front and back, and a full-length center console runs the length of the cabin between both rows of seats. Those seats are redesigned for 2009, according to Mazda, and the sports car also gets a new steering wheel and a tachometer with a variable redline that moves based on engine temperature.
With the R3 sport package, the RX-8 gains a Bose audio system, Bluetooth cell phone connectivity, Recaro front bucket seats and keyless start.
The RX-8’s 1.3-liter rotary engine produces 232 horsepower when teamed with the six-speed manual transmission, but its output drops to 212 hp when paired with the optional six-speed automatic. The automatic includes shift paddles on the steering wheel for driver-initiated gear changes.
Antilock brakes, side-impact airbags for the front seats and side curtain airbags are standard. An electronic stability system is optional.
For a few seconds, you give in to the spectacle of driving a 2009 Nissan GT-R. This car attracts its own entourage and then takes you along for the ride. It’s not just the Skyline mystique, either. It’s the fact that even in production sheet metal, the R35 GT-R looks like a one-off concept stolen from a Southern California design studio. It has as many hard contours as a Porsche 911 has soft curves. You have the key fob, and still you ogle it.
Soon, though, you point the GT-R down an on-ramp and plant the throttle. The effortless brutality with which the 2009 Nissan GT-R gathers speed is what you’ll describe to your friends — once everyone’s tired of talking about the styling, that is.
What you won’t tell them is that you suspect your supercar might be a sociopath. It doesn’t flow around corners like your E46 BMW M3 did, nor does it transmit feedback through the steering wheel for the sheer pleasure of it.
Instead, the 2009 Nissan GT-R bends asphalt to its will. When it talks to you about tire grip, you get the feeling it’s only bothering because you’re part of its great plan to break free of the Earth’s orbit. Should it ever achieve this, you imagine that its conversation will cease and it will simply expel you into the airless void. Until then, though, you have the conn.
Old Friends
We already know something of the 2009 Nissan GT-R’s character. We’ve lapped Japan’s Sendai Highland Circuit in a production Japanese-spec model, tested a second JDM-spec GT-R with full instrumentation on an airstrip outside Tokyo, and strapped the first R35 GT-R to reach American shores to a dynamometer. Then we lived out your ultimate automotive fantasy by driving a U.S.-spec GT-R from L.A. to Reno, with stops at a dry lake, a drag strip and Utah’s Miller Motorsports Park during a 2,000-mile adventure.
So there’s a sense of familiarity as we slide into this U.S.-spec Nissan GT-R. The suede seating surface grabs hold of our jeans and cinches us down into the proper driving position. These seats with their prominent bolsters haven’t gotten any wider over the months, so if you’re much past 200 pounds, it might be time to go back on Atkins. And although it’s assembled with care, the R35 hasn’t gotten any more opulent, either. If you want leather or wood, you’re better off loading up the options on a base-model Porsche 911.
At nearly $76,000, our test car is the most expensive Skyline GT-R you can buy, thanks to its $3,000 Super Silver paint, which is applied in seven coats, baked five times and then polished by a real human being at Nissan’s assembly plant in Tochigi, Japan. It’s also a Premium model, which means it has heated seats, Bose speakers and side airbags, not to mention 255/40ZRF20 front and 285/35ZRF20 rear Bridgestone Potenza RE070A run-flat summer tires (in lieu of the Dunlop summer run-flats on the base model, which are not quite as sticky).
My Finger Is on the Button
We reach for the red ignition button and find the initial startup tumult worthy of the twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter V6, rated (at last) by the factory at 480 horsepower at 6,800 rpm and 430 pound-feet of torque from 3,200 to 5,200 rpm. But the engine settles into a low-frequency dirge that’s nowhere near loud enough. There’s no choice, so we shut the V6 off and start it a couple more times just to hear the engine come to life until our friend in the passenger seat (who owns an Evolution IX) is ready to kill us.
We drive slowly at first, letting everything warm up, and notice that the Nissan GT-R’s six-speed, dual-clutch transmission is smoother than most automated manual gearboxes. It’s one of the few that actually feels normal in automatic mode.
That’s not to say it’s completely without side effects. You can’t really creep at low speeds amid all the automated clutching and declutching, so forget about multiple tries at parallel parking.
Also, the transmission tends to bang off upshifts like it just don’t care, even when you’re going easy. Car-guy friends comment on the positive shift quality, but the uninitiated ask, “What’s that thud coming from the back of the car?”
The Whole Point
Before you can answer, you’re deep into throttle, looking at triple digits on the auxiliary digital speedo, and then hauling down for the stop sign 500 feet ahead. Your passenger breaks into a light sweat. Only a few seconds have gone by.
You never feel turbo lag or even a power peak. You never even hear an exhaust note, just a lot of intake whoosh instead. And though you take the trouble to work the shift paddles, it all happens so quickly that you struggle to remember it later.
On a warm, sunny day at our Southern California testing facility, our Super Silver Nissan GT-R finds a little more traction than the Solid Red JDM-spec car we tested on the bumpy airstrip in Japan. With launch control engaged, it hits 60 mph in 3.5 seconds (or 3.2 seconds with one foot of rollout like on an NHRA drag strip), while the Japanese GT-R needed 3.6 seconds (or 3.3 seconds with rollout).
Our U.S.-spec R35 loses its edge over the JDM GT-R by the quarter-mile mark, though. It runs an 11.7-second quarter-mile at 116.8 mph, while the Japanese car goes through in 11.6 seconds at 120.9 mph. Note that these latest numbers reflect our transition to reporting NHRA-style trap speed, which is the average of a car’s speed over the last 66 feet of the quarter-mile. (The idea behind the switch in our testing protocol is that you can take your car to any drag strip and directly compare your time slip with our numbers; look for a feature story in the next couple of weeks on how we do our instrumented testing.)
Even if you look at the U.S.-spec GT-R’s instantaneous quarter-mile speed of 117.7 mph, there’s no denying it’s slower than the JDM GT-R. The reason is, it’s making fewer horsepower while running on our inferior 91-octane gasoline. The red GT-R benefited from the 94-to-95-octane fuel that’s readily available in Japan.
So on this day, the 2009 Nissan GT-R does not beat the Porsche 911 Turbo, which recorded an 11.6-second quarter-mile at 118.5 mph during an ‘07 test. But it’s still quicker than every other production car on the planet.
Other Records Will Be Broken
The R35 GT-R stops shorter than any other car, too. Think about a 60-mph-to-0 braking distance in the double-digits.
Really. Ninety-eight feet. On the eighth run. That’s a new Inside Line record, a title previously held by the 2008 BMW M3, which stops in 100 feet.
And yet the GT-R is not a lightweight car. Our Super Silver GT-R Premium weighs in at 3,900 pounds. Its 15-inch rotors are steel, not lightweight carbon ceramic. At the test track, everyone’s asking, “What happened to the laws of physics?”
Even in normal traffic, you can tell these brakes are something special. The bite is immediate and powerful, yet response never feels too aggressive.
And Still Others Threatened
As you turn onto your favorite back road, the Nissan GT-R shrinks around you, leaving you just enough air to breathe. You’re cornering faster than you usually do, even through the tight stuff that shouldn’t be suitable for a car of such girth.
You feel the seriousness with which the R35 GT-R approaches the mission. It doesn’t roll. It doesn’t fumble over midcorner bumps. And its steering, which is quick and loaded with feel, is also quite heavy. Hope you like it heavy.
We also hope you like cars with four driven wheels, because the GT-R’s ATTESA E-TS all-wheel-drive system exerts huge authority over this car’s cornering behavior.
Sometimes the 2009 Nissan GT-R acts like it’s a rear-wheel-drive car, but more often, the AWD system is moving power between the wheels (up to an even split of 50 percent front/50 percent rear) to keep the R35 on the proper line. The system even determines a target yaw rate based on steering input and makes adjustments in the torque split using actual real-time data from the car’s yaw and lateral-g sensors.
There’s similar technology featured by the Mitsubishi Evo X, but the GT-R’s execution feels very different, and not just because it’s built from rear-drive platform architecture and aimed at a more elite crowd. It doesn’t really give its driver a chance to make mistakes. It finds the fastest way through a corner no matter what.
Of course there’s a flip side to this sophistication. The GT-R doesn’t play. If you revel in the way a 911 can be tossed into a corner, or the way a Corvette Z06 loves a powerslide, or the way a CLK63 Black Series abuses corners of all persuasions, the R35 GT-R can seem cold, perhaps even too narrowly focused on the efficient physics of performance.
Then you watch the GT-R go through the slalom at 74 mph (1 mph faster than the JDM-spec car thanks to better surface conditions) and wonder how you could think such a thing. This is only 0.2 mph slower than the 08 Dodge Viper and that car wears ridiculously huge 345/30ZR19 rear meats.
Only on the skid pad do the 2009 Nissan GT-R’s considerable mass and slight stubbornness become liabilities — and only if the goal is 1.0g. The GT-R pulls 0.96g, just the same as the 2,000-pound Lotus Exige S.
Best Car Ever?
Depending on your drive to work, you might have some words for Nissan about the GT-R’s ride quality. There’s a center-stack switch for adjusting the Bilstein adaptive dampers, and after bludgeoning our first expansion joint, we waste no time selecting “Comf.” But comf never comes. We can’t detect any change in the damping at all.
Maybe this means we’re not hard-core enough to drive a 2009 Nissan GT-R. Or maybe it means a grand-touring suspension package will turn up in a few years. But there’s an easier solution if you want in on the R35 Skyline GT-R experience. Don’t take the freeway to work. Use the back roads instead.
Bold, meticulous, and dynamic, the new 2008 Audi S5 is destined to be one of the most sought-after luxury coupes this year. Combining speed and style, its sleek profile grabs you by the neck and commands attention. In essence, it’s a more powerful, razor-sharp version of the A5 Coupe.
A dominating engine in both character and performance, the 4.2 liter V8 with FSI direct injection delivers 354 horsepower and a 7,000 rpm redline, offering substantial low-end power and high-end stamina. It’s perfectly suited to the standard six-speed manual transmission, which has long, light, effortless throws. Those opting for the Tiptronic automatic transmission will be treating to ultra-smooth shifts and manumatic sport shift capability.
The standard quattro® all-wheel drive system provides increased traction on all road surfaces. It combines agility, excellent acceleration, and superb stability in a variety of conditions. A lightweight, aluminum five-link front suspension and trapezoidal-link rear suspension keeps the power under control and offers exhilarating handling dynamics. With a more aggressive, sport-tuned suspension calibration than the A5, it provides optimized weight distribution and tenacious handling.
The exterior’s flowing lines and wide stance incorporate a single frame grill, jeweled LED-styled headlamps, and unique 19” bright aluminum wheels with performance tires. Likewise, the S5’s interior conveys warmth and functionality. The huge, panoramic sunroof bathes occupants in sunshine. 2+2 Coupe seating embraces both driver and passenger, while aluminum optic air vents supply 3-zone air conditioning. An available Multi-Media Interface system (MMI) interface distills advanced technology, providing the driver with one-finger interactive access to the navigation and sound systems. With concert-like acoustics, a Bang & Olufsen® 14-speaker sound system with 505 digitally amplified watts incorporates microphone-based noise compensation to ensure optimum sound under varying road conditions and speeds.
A finely-honed Autobahn cruiser with raw power, remarkable design, and luxurious appointments, the 2008 Audi S5 is a true driver’s coupe that compromises nothing.
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EPA Fuel Economy
· City: 14, Highway: 21
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Question:
While I am captivated with Vespas, the Buddy seems to be a better deal, and I also like the placement of lights on the handlebars. It seems that this would be very useful for visibility. Does anyone who is familiar with both have any input on this? It just seems reasonable. Any other strong feelings people have about the two? (I know, this is a Vespa site… but I had to ask!) I’m a medium sized woman, by the way.
Answer:
My wife was initally enamored with the Buddy (”It comes in pink!”), but after some research and side-by-side comparison she went with the LX. The Buddy is a very good scoot, despite its smaller displacement, it is actually a hair faster than the LX150 because it’s lighter. It’s lighter because it’s mostly plastic while the LX is more metal than plastic. The Buddy is definitely a bargain on the front end, but after, I dunno, five or six years I wonder what the resale on it will be. The Vespa is a pretty safe bet in resale value. If you take the long view on that, I would say the price less resale value is probably about even…depends on if you can afford it on the front or back end of ownership.
The Buddy is manufactured in Asia (this is a “so what” for me), but they are well-supported by Chicago-based Genuine Scooters who are part of an excellent scooter shop called Scooterworks, also in Chicago. Genuine/Scooterworks sources and sells lots of optional equipement for both the Buddy and all model Vespas.
You probably know the drill on Vespa, made in Italy and well-supporeted by their dealer network. The LX150 has more accessories and more third-party companies making accessories than Buddy. The “captivation” factor is legit…Vespas are very cool.
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