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 [讨论]买日车还是美国欧洲车？不要总盯在钱上 |
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两款美国车 -- 强力推荐 2007 Ford Fusion -- 随风而入 - (213 Byte) 2007-1-16 周二, 11:59 (1482 reads) |
随风而入
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头衔: 海归上校
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加入时间: 2006/08/02
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作者：随风而入 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
A New Aura at Saturn
November 3, 2006; Page W11C
Saturn hopes buyers consider the Aura alongside the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord in the hotly contested midsize sedan market, but its interior may not be up to snuff.
After attracting an almost cult-like following with innovative small-car designs and no-haggle pricing in the early 1990s, General Motors' Saturn division has spent the past decade trying to persuade consumers that it still makes unique vehicles worth considering.
Saturn's sales have stagnated despite the company's moves into larger cars in 2000 and SUVs in 2002. But now Saturn has a model that could help it generate more mainstream interest than its early plastic-bodied models. No, it's not the sleek Sky convertible. We're talking about the new Aura sedan.
Saturn is betting a lot on the Aura. The car is meant to compete in the highly contested midsize sedan market, where picky, frugal buyers seek an exacting combination of comfort, features, styling, gas mileage and price. For several years the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry have dominated this segment while cars from U.S. makers have fed on their scraps. Many of the American contenders -- including the recently departed Ford Taurus -- ended up going to rental-car fleets at steep discounts.
Yet some recent entries, chiefly Ford's angular Fusion, are giving the two Japanese rivals more competition. Now the Aura hopes to join that pack. The new Saturn is modern and handsome on the outside, with a wedge-shaped body featuring nicely rounded edges, flared fenders and large, wraparound headlights. The dark blue me<x>tallic paint and two-tone brown interior of our test car also helped it look more like a stylish European sedan than the close relative of Pontiac's low-budget G6 that it is. The Aura is evidence that vehicles built on the same chassis using the same mechanical components can be quite different.
Despite its rich looks the Aura is surprisingly inexpensive. Our top-of-the-line tester, in the XR trim level, had a starting price of $23,945. Adding a sunroof, heated leather seats, leather-wrapped steering wheel and a few other upgrades brought the sticker to $26,170. That makes the car a strong competitor to Toyota and Honda, at least on paper.
To see how it stacks up on the road, we drove the Aura for a week of day-care runs, errands and commuting. The first thing we noticed is that the car is peppier than we'd expected. The XR comes with a 3.6-liter V6 engine with a modern, sophisticated design that puts out 252 horsepower, eight more than the Honda and 16 fewer than the Toyota. (By contrast, the ba<x>se Aura XE has a 3.5-liter engine that has more in common with motors used in 1980 Chevrolet Citations than those found in today's competing models.) While the XR's engine and six-speed automatic transmission aren't as smooth and emit more mechanical noise than those in the Toyota and Honda, they work well together to provide quick acceleration and 28 miles per gallon in highway driving, according to EPA ratings.
But the Aura has its warts, chiefly on the inside. Some of the molded plastic trim pieces had rough edges, and a pointed, protruding ledge on the door frame bruised our thighs. Our tester had what the company calls "leather appointed" seats, but every piece of upholstery seemed as stiff as cheap vinyl. The armrests on the doors even had fake stitching molded into the plastic, a cheesy, 1970s throwback. But the shape of the seats is comfortable and the interior overall is intuitively laid out, from the gauge cluster on the dashboard to the radio and climate-control buttons.
As cars get more complicated and filled with gadgets that end up being more annoying than useful, the Aura was refreshingly straightforward. Indeed, we'd have been happy to keep our test car for many more miles. That's something we rarely say about even the most expensive and technologically advanced cars we've driven lately.
PERFORMANCE ANXIETY
Here's how the Saturn Aura compares with other family sedans with front-wheel drive.
MAKE/MODEL base PRICE ENGINE/HORSEPOWER WEIGHT (POUNDS) CARGO SPACE (CU.FT.) EPA MILEAGE (CITY/HIGHWAY)
Saturn Aura XR $23,945 V6/252 3,647 15.7 20/28
Honda Accord LX V6 $25,200 V6/244 3,413 14.0 20/29
Ford Fusion SEL $21,975 V6/221 3,280 15.8 20/28
Toyota Camry SE $24,615 V6/268 3,483 14.5 22/31
Nissan Altima 3.5 SE $23,600 V6/250 3,227 15.6 21/27
作者：随风而入 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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