One of the most puzzling cars at last year's SEMA show was a boosted Toyota Avalon. Yes, boosted as in relying on more than mother nature to stuff an engine cylinder full of air. The car was sporting a TRD supercharger with an Eaton Gen 6 TVS rotor assembly along with a slew of suspension and appearance modifications. Toyota apparently decided to leave it with the guys at Motor Trend to put through the tests. A couple of days ago, Motor Trend posted their tests and the numbers were.. interesting. Handling improvements are nothing short of impressive. 6-piston front brake callipers and 4-piston rear ones along with larger, cross drilled rotors help bring the car to a stop from 60 mph in 106 ft, which is sports car territory. Motor Trend was able to record an average lateral acceleration of 0.92 g. To put that into perspective, that puts it right in between two trims of an excellent RWD sedan, the Cadillac ATS. When tested by Motor Trend, the 2.0 litre turbo model was a
Before getting into this, I have to confess something... I had never driven an Audi TT before. Not until this one, anyway. But that hasn't stopped me from forming an opinion about it from the comforts of my own couch while reading and watching reviews online. After all, if you've never done that, do you even know what the point of the internet is? Now, we all interpret reviews differently. Call it confirmation bias if you will, but if you like a car, you'll read a review and look at the positives as what makes the car great and the negatives are but a few quibbles you have to live with. If you don't like a car, the positives are a few things the manufacturer got right while screwing up everything else. It's a bit harsh to put the TT in the latter category, but that's where it ended up for me... I never took the TT seriously. The problem with the TT for me isn't that it's a Golf underneath, per se. There is nothing wrong with a performance car sharing a