Minnesota’s ‘First Finn’ shuts down UMD women
Goaltending is not a shortcoming for the University of Minnesota women’s hockey team in this Olympic-depleted WCHA season, with returning sophomore Alyssa Grogan and junior Jenny Lura back and ready to go, So when coach Brad Frost decided to go with freshman Noora Raty in the Gophers big intrastate series against Minnesota-Duluth, it seemed curious at the outset.
It didn’t seem curious for long, as Raty allowed only one goal in a 3-1, 3-0 sweep over the Bulldogs at Ridder Arena — a sesries that might prove pivotal if the Gophers are to ultimately win the WCHA championship this season. Raty’s instant stardom at Minnesota emerged from two factors: Frost’s decision to go overseas to recruit for the first time, plus Finland’s decision to not centralize its 2010 Olympic team.
Minnesota, UMD, and perennial contender Wisconsin all lost key players to the standing national teams of the U.S., Canada, and Sweden, when the hockey federations from those three nations decided to gather their players for season-long training. Interestingly, the only previous time any women’s team was centralized was when the U.S. won the first-ever Olympic competition in 1998 at Nagano, Japan, and the U.S. cloistered its players at Lake Placid. After a long season that glowed with victory after victory, including repeated triumphs over Canada’s occasionally-assembled team, the U.S. brought its undefeated team to Mariucci Arena for the 1999 World Championships, where it lost to Canada in the gold medal game. So Team USA won every game it played, except the one it played the whole season to win.
This, then, is only the second time Team USA chose to spend the whole season together, and Canada and Sweden decided to do the same. Finland, however, chose to not centralize its players. After upsetting Sweden to win the bronze behind the traditional 1-2 of the U.S. and Canada last spring, Finnish officials realized that at this stage of women’s hockey, any national team would be hard-pressed to find regular competition that could match the intensity of WCHA games week after week.
Finland hockey officials were eager to have Raty and defenseman Mira Jalosuo come to Minnesota as freshmen, and Mariia Posa, another freshman defenseman, joined junior captain Saara Tuominen at UMD. They are not alone. Raty earned WCHA defensive player of the week honors for her play against UMD, and MSU-Mankato sophomore Emmi Leinonen was offensive player of the week with three goals and an assist last weekend, while freshman Minttu Tuominen of Ohio State was rookie of the week. So while Team USA took a well-deserved week off, three of Team Finland’s players were sweeping the weekly WCHA awards with exceptional performances.
Incidentally, Gopher sports information specialist Michelle Traen may also deserve all-WCHA status this season, because after dutifully putting out pronunciation guides for such names as Wendell, Darwitz, Curtin, Brodt, and Marvin over the last decade, she now must convince the media that Noora is “NEW-rah,” but Raty is actually pronounced “RAH-too.”
Until this season, the pronunciation challenge has mostly gone to UMD, because of coach Shannon Miller’s decade-long skill at recruiting elite European players to Duluth. This is Minnesota’s first venture “across the pond.” Along with Posa from Finland, Miller brought in Jennifer Harss, a skilled German freshman goaltender, and she also knew all about Raty, having tried to recruit her before Raty chose Minnesota over UMD and Ohio State.
The Bulldogs don’t need a pronunciation guide to remember Raty. The image of her, positioned low, with her glove held high, and the puck ensnared within, should be indelibly burned into their memories, at least until their rematch series in early February in Duluth.
Raty gloved all of the toughest UMD shots, and got her pads in the way of almost all the rest, making 22 saves in the first game and blocking all 29 in the second. She was beaten only when UMD senior Emmanuelle Blais knocked in a loose puck during a scramble in the first game, and that came with only 0 minutes left, and with Minnesota having three goals on the board. Raty wound up with 51 saves on 52 shots against the team most consider the Gophers top challenger this season.
Minnesota dominated the first two periods of the first game, but after rallying in the third period the first night, UMD played the Gophers evenly through two periods in the second game. “They started the way they finished the first game…and so did we,” said Frost. “Fortunately, when we were at our worst, Noora was at her best.”
Tuominen, UMD’s smart, hard-working center, is also the captain of Finland’s national team, and she was victimized by her future teammate on two first-game bullets high into Raty’s glove.
“I know Saara very well because she is captain of our national team,” said Raty, after the first game. “I’m enjoying playing college hockey, because I love playing when there is pressure. They started getting some shots in the last 10 minutes. Saara always tries to score on me in national team practice, and usually she tries to beat me high to the glove side. So I was anticipating that she’d shoot there.”
She couldn’t have anticipated that almost all the Bulldogs, while playing much for forcefully in the second game to trail only 1-0 after two periods, all seemed stubbornly determined to also shoot high to the glove side. UMD coach Miller knew all about Raty’s glove, and specifically provided video-enhanced evidence before the second game to indicate why the Bulldogs shouldn’t shoot high on Raty’s glove side. It didn’t work.
“The Gophers have the best talent in the league, and they’re much bigger and stronger than our players,” said Miller. “After the [second] game, our team was exhausted, but I told our players I was proud of how hard they played, and I thought we were the better team for the first two periods. But I also asked how many had followed the plan to shoot low, and only one player said, ‘I did, once.’ ”
In past years, the scenario of UMD’s success against the Gophers, and the propulsion for the Bulldogs’ unsurpassed four NCAA championships, has been the ability of Miller to recruit sensational goaltenders from across the Atlantic. The UMD goalie record book shows students from Finland (Tuula Puputti), Switzerland (Patricia Sautter and school victory and save record-holder Riitta Schaublin), and Sweden (Kim Martin) — each of whom led UMD to national championships while also starring for their homeland national teams. This season, with Martin gone to the gathered Swedish team, Miller landed Harss, a very skilled goaltender from Germany, who played well while being thoroughly challenged by 75 shots for the two games at Minnesota, and it might have been worthy of a weekly award if Raty hadn’t completely shut down the Bulldogs offense.
{IMG2}
The Gopher attack was alive in the first game. Anne Schleper’s first-period goal, Terra Rasmussen’s in the second, and a power-play goal by Sarah Erickson in the third — which gave her a nation-leading 6 goals at the time — was a minimal reward for Minnesota’s dominance. In the second game, the Bulldogs played much more assertively, but were done in by their inability to get past Raty, and also by their own power play. Emily West scored the game’s first goal on a shorthanded breakaway midway through the second period, and, after Kelli Blankenship found a rare opening in goal-mouth congestion to score early in the third, Chelsey Jones scored on another shorthanded breakaway to seal the 3-0 verdict,
Frost tried to brush aside any talk of his Gophers zooming into the favorite’s role, with Wisconsin having lost early games to both North Dakota and Bemidji State, and now UMD harnessed with two losses too, while the Gophers stand 4-0 atop the league.
“It’s still early,” Frost said. “The thing I love about us is that we’re a great TEAM. We have players like Sarah Erickson, who have been put into a role she didn’t need to play before, and has scored so well. But we expect everyone to contribute, and we’re going with three lines and six defensemen, and letting the game dictate.
“Our goaltending situation is interesting, and we’ll continue to evaluate it. Grogan played early, and Noora looked good, and then Noora played so well in practice, I decided to start her against UMD. I’m really happy for her to get a shutout. Not because a shutout was so important to her, but she doesn’t like to get scored on.”
Raabe comes home, makes Grandma’s his 1st win
DULUTH, MINN.—Christopher Raabe didn’t plan to break out in front of the field at Grandma’s Marathon Saturday, because setting a fast early tempo along Highway 61’s North Shore Drive invariably leads to a fade later in the race. It would be especially faulty this year, because it was too hot, and far too humid.
And yet, Raabe had to smile at the irony, because he did exactly what he didn’t intend to do, and won his first marathon because of it.
Raabe only intended to keep pace with a couple of African runners who broke ahead near the halfway point, he said, adding that he was surprised when he noticed a gap to the rest of over six thousand runners. More surprising, he somehow steadily extended his lead, and by the time he ran smoothly to the Canal Park finish line, Chris Raabe had won by a margin of three minutes and 23 seconds.
His time was 2 hours, 15 minutes, 13 seconds — a personal best — and he became the first Minnesotan to win Grandma’s since Dick Beardsley set the all-time Grandma’s record in 1982.
Charles Kanyao was second, leading the crew of hired-in African runners who normally dominate Grandma’s. As the temperature rose toward the 80s, catching a humidity figure already that high, the biggest news of the day was that a Minnesota native enjoyed the sweltering heat while some of Kenya’s top distance runners faded and faltered from weather better suited to the crowd that lined the 26.2-mile course starting at Two Harbors.
The weather also affected the women. Mary Akor collapsed into a wheelchair as soon as she staggered a bit after the finish line, but she won her third consecutive women’s title in 2 hours, 36 minutes and 52 seconds. Akor, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria, said she loves to run in hot weather, but she held on to win by six seconds — the second-closest women’s finish — because she knew “they’d have to revive me anyway.”
By winning, Akor duplicated the three-straight women’s titles of Lorraine Moller, an Olympian from New Zealand who ran — and won — her first marathon at Grandma’s in 1979, setting a record of 2:37:37. Moller went on to win seven consecutive marathons, returning to dominate Grandma’s. Akor was inspired to match Moller by dedicating her run to her father, who died unexpectedly in Nigeria last week.
While exhaustion slowed most of the runners, Raabe, who was born in Tyler, Minnesota, seems to have a lasting appreciation for the heat. “I’m always cold,” said Raabe, wearing what may have been the only knit cap in Canal Park over his close-shaved head after the run. That was a tip to his comfort level, possibly traceable to his chilly springs running track at Sauk Rapids High School, and later at North Dakota State University.
The Raabe family moved to Washington, D.C., where Chris is a patent examiner. He runs the streets of the nation’s capitol, including the monument-lined area near the White House. He insists he’s too old, at 30, to think about becoming a professional runner, and he’s quick to claim he was never a top track athlete, even though he reached the state track meet once. He said he decided to try marathons because “I couldn’t keep running 5K or 10K…I was too slow.”
Raabe’s first victory came in only his sixth marathon — half of which have been Grandma’s. Two years ago he was 12th, last year he was sixth, but he had no illusions of winning in his third try, over the course he used to visit while watching his dad run. In a role reversal, Bill Raabe ran the preliminary Garry Bjorklund Half-Marathon before witnessing his son’s fantastic feat. But as for his winning “strategy?” Forget it.
Chris Raabe said that when two African runners broke away, just before the halfway mark, he decided to go with them. After he edged ahead, he said, “I looked around, expecting to find one or both of them within 10 yards or so. When I noticed there was a gap, I thought I’d try to see how long I could maintain it.”
Kanyeo said he noticed when Raabe and the others moved ahead but chose to stay conservative. “I stayed with the pack,” Kanyeo said, “because they were going too fast. I was sure they couldn’t keep up that pace.”
{IMG2}
Raabe said staying in the pack was the better strategy. “That makes sense, to stay in the group that early in the race,” said Raabe. “You can be up by a few minutes and come back quickly. But when I saw I was alone, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I figured I might start slowing up, but I hoped I’d have enough of a gap. I kept waiting for the push to come.”
But he never heard the footsteps he anticipated, because the push from the lean, swift group of African runners never materialized. Not that Raabe knew how large a lead he had as he ran through downtown Duluth.
“You don’t want to look back too much,” he said. “It gives the guys behind you the idea that you might be having trouble. I was hoping that if anyone caught up to me, it would only be two or three. When I got to the Radisson, and turned down the hill, I looked back.”
And he saw — nothing. By then his lead had gone from a minute, to two minutes, to two and a half minutes. As he made the turn at the Radisson to head down Fifth Avenue West toward the harbor, Raabe said, “All I thought was that it was nice I only had a mile to go.”
Raabe didn’t falter. When he made the final turn and headed for Canal Park, many in the crowd chanted “USA…USA…” as the slim, 5-foot-11, 125-pound Raabe headed for the finish to become the first U.S. native winner since Mark Curp claimed Grandma’s in 1985.
Akor said she almost bypassed Grandma’s when her father died unexpectedly in Nigeria. Instead, she dedicated her try for her third consecutive Grandma’s title to her father, and the oldest of nine children was scheduled to fly to Nigeria for the funeral.
Akor battled Janet Cherobon of Kenya as her prime challenger, and said she told herself she had to stay ahead of her. As Akor led the way toward the finish, she saw Alina Ivanova was closing in. “I said, ‘Oh, no!’ ” But again she summoned all her strength, veering slightly as she hit the finish line six seconds ahead of her Russian pursuer. She said she had trouble locating the finish line, and asked where Cherobon had finished. Cherebon had collapsed on the course about 100 yards from the end and had to be brought to the finish by wheelchair.
Timing or not, Camaro finally joins ponycar battle
Then there were three.
Ford’s Mustang must have felt isolated when it survived as the only remaining “ponycar†in the once-burgeoning U.S. stable of sporty coupes. It helped when the Dodge Challenger came out, offering an even more striking retro-look to the segment. And all the while, Chevrolet kept showing off preproduction versions of the upcoming Camaro.
Now, eight years after it was first planned, the Camaro is landing in U.S. showrooms and it makes a terrific trio with the Mustang and Challenger to give both aging ponycar fans and younger driving enthusiasts the chance to choose their hot, rear-drive sporty coupe, depending on which marquee they prefer.
As performance fanatics eagerly wait to get their paws on either of the two available V8 SS models, with their fire-snorting 6.2-liter pushrod Corvette engines, real-world customers should abruptly stop at the RS model – loaded with the superbly high-tech 3.6-liter V6 with its overhead camshafts and direct injection.
The V6 is strong and swift and handles superbly, but if you need two sensational reasons to prefer the V6, they are $28,825-$31,040 (the price of the basic V8s, including the Corvette’s Tremec 6-speed manual), and $23,040 (the sticker on the V6 model with its Aisin-designed 6-speed stick). The strong impression made by the V6 on my driving introduction came at my first chance to get behind the wheel of the new Camaro, at a regional introduction at the Abbey Resort in Fontana, Wis.
The resort was a classy cross-section of modern escapism and traditional down-home values – much like the Camaro itself.
The Camaro is the latest of what I prefer to call “future-retro,†because the inspiration is clearly the 1969-70 era ponycars that used to fight it out in Sports Car Club of America, yet after being erased from the scene, their comeback is blessed with high-tech design, safe structural engineering, and updated features.
The question of course is: timing. General Motors is faced with a critical issue of bankruptcy for being caught with outdated technology and a profit-thirsty tendency to make huge trucks and SUVs that were high on profit but low on both technology and fuel-efficiency. When gas hit $4 per gallon, the bottom dropped out of the truck/SUV market, and GM is scrambling for its automotive life to prove it can return to being up-to-date in the marketplace, which is zooming toward a high-tech and fuel-efficient or alternative-fuel future.
So is this the best time to introduce a new muscle-car, even a muscle-car that the dwindling retro-muscle-car folks have been awaiting? Showroom success will tell the tale.
The media raves are rolling in. Motor Trend is running a cover story on its June issue of the Camaro, the Challenger and the Mustang. Surprise! The Camaro won. Of course, Motor Trend chose to use the SS Camaro with its 426 horsepower and 420 foot-pounds of torque, but it chose the Challenger R/T with 376 horsepower rather than the potent SRT8 model that would have matched the Camaro output, and it chose the GT version of the Mustang with 315 horses, rather than the Shelby model which also is Ford’s high-powered specialist.
But enough about comparisons. Driving the Camaro is a pleasant, fulfilling experience. It holds curvy roads with smooth agility, especially for a 3,859-pound car. In fact, the Challenger, which is on the larger Charger platform, and the Mustang also are relatively heavy, when import competitors have gone the way of lighter weight for better fuel economy.
The two models of the Camaro are actually three. Starting at the top, there are two 6.20liter V8 engines, both under the SS badge. The L99 engine comes with a 6-speed automatic and has a cylinder deactivation that can drop it from 8 to 4 cylinders when cruising. It has 400 horsepower at 5,900 RPMs and 410 foot-pounds of torque, peaking at 4,600 RPMs, against a 6,200 RPM red line.
The bad boy is the SS with the stick, because it is the LS-3 V8 and the Tremec 6-speed – both directly out of the Corvette bin. It has 426 horsepower at 4,900 RPMs, and 420 foot-pounds of torque at 4,600 revs, off a 6,600 red line. Surprisingly, the statistics show only a slight edge to the hot one, with a 12.9-second time in the quarter mile against the automatic’s 13.2, while both have 4.7-second runs from 0-60.
Driving both of those cars was fun. The automatic has improved paddle shifters, with the left paddle downshifting and the right device upshifting, compared to other GM cars that allowed both switches to go one way up and the opposite way for downshifting. Chevy is calling it “Tap-shift,†and it works well. The automatic has a high-performance algorithm, with a sport mode that matches revs on downshifts and holds revs to keep the torque smooth in cornering.
The stick, though, makes you feel as though you have been flashed back to one of those hot 1969 Camaros, only with vastly improved tires, wheels, brakes, steering, suspension and body stiffness. The brakes are massive Brembo discs, with the FE-3 high-performance suspension.
{IMG2}
Both cars manage that delicate balance between precise steering-handling around corners, and no noticeable harshness in skimming over road irregularities. That’s another change from 1970, and the three decades after that, when you had a choice of good-handling firmness accompanied by teeth-rattling harshness, or compliant comfort on bumpy roads accompanied by near-rollover squishiness in cornering. Chevy designers did lapse on one count, offering a tiny horizontal hood scoop on the SS. True, it does distinguish the SS from the RS, but, believe it or not, it is phony.
Later, however, I climbed aboard the RS, which offers the same look except for the little badge on the grille. This one is armed with GM’s 3.6-liter V6, a dual-overhead-camshaft gem that came out to power Cadillacs and later other front-wheel-drive crossover SUVs, and trickling down to the Aura and Malibu. The first refinement of the engine is to add variable valve-timing and direct injection, which meters dosages of air-fuel mixture into each cylinder’s combustion chamber that are precisely measured for pressure and combustible temperature. My first experience with that engine was to be impressed more with the added power than with the decreased fuel economy.
In the Camaro RS, that direct-injection V6 is hooked up to rear-wheel drive. Instead of the Corvette and Cadillac CTS-V Tremec 6-speed, the RS gets a different 6-speed stick, this one built by Aisin, a Japanese company that has worked to build some buttery-smooth stick shifts for Mazda, among others. The red line on the V6 is 7,000 RPMs, which easily accomodates the 304 horsepower peak at 6,400 and the 273 foot-pounds of torque, peaking at 5,200.
The V6 runs 0-60 in 6.1 seconds, giving up just over a second to the V8s, which it swaps for improvement of three or four miles per gallon. The V6 RS boasts of EPA fuel economy estimates of 18 city/29 highway with the automatic, or 17 city/29 highway. On our road test around the curvy Wisconsin rural roads was 18.2 miles per gallon on the car’s computer.
Perhaps the best compliment to the new Camaro is that if buyers didn’t know the screaming V8 SS models with their launch-control drag-racing tricks were out there, they would be more than thrilled by the performance of the RS V6 and the improved agility of the lighter RS.
New Prius goes ‘way beyond being ‘science project’
There were three of us, sharing a 42-mile test loop on the highways surrounding Orlando, Fla., in order to evaluate the new 2010 Toyota Prius. We were on rural and suburban roadways, and our speed and routine varied considerably. We drove with a bit of care, hoping to get optimum fuel economy, and when we got back, a Toyota official located the proper button to get the proper meter to read our proper performance.
We had gotten 59.3 miles per gallon during out test run of the restyled hybrid sedan. That wasn’t good enough to win the media high-mileage contest – somebody on the previous wave had gotten 77 miles per gallon, and we figured he must have paid for a tow – but 60 miles per gallon is sensational in its own right. The Prius EPA figures claim 50 miles per gallon in town. We proved that is definitely attainable.
The new-for-2010 Prius is improved in virtually every characteristic, befitting the third generation of the car that has sold 700,000 units in the U.S., and 1.2 million worldwide, in its campaign on changing the way drivers drive. When you shop for a hybrid, make sure it has a small engine and can attain high gas mileage numbers. The beauty is that the Toyota system could be adapted to any and every model.
The new car is 90 percent all new, and will also make it an easier transition for skeptics who haven’t yet accepted that the electric energy generated by the gas engine in a hybrid is cleaner and more potent than the power from the gas engine. As if to underscore that, Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive system has advanced its battery-pack technique to gain power while losing weight and size, while the interlocked system remains uniquely the same – a concept many journalists and even major auto magazines apparently continue to misconstrue.
The gasoline engine in the Prius, or any Toyota/Lexus hybrid, will NEVER turn a wheel on the vehicle by itself. It only serves to send power through a generator, which generates the electricity to power two electric-drive motors that propel the car. The explanation at the press briefing was slightly confusing, because in EV mode, the Prius is all-electric up to 25 mph and can go that way for about one mile, with the hybrid batter working through the electric motors. In ECO mode, power is combined with input from the gas engine increased and working with – but still through – the generator for smoother throttle and power adjustments in congested traffic. And in Power mode, increased power allows more punch for easier access to freeway entries and added sportiness.
While many apparently think that means the Power mode is gas-engine only – as it is in Ford’s system – it isn’t. I simply asked the Toyota engineers, at the press briefing, and they acknowledged that even when the gas engine is used at its maximum, it still is combined with electric and runs through the generator.
The 1.8-liter gas engine is free of accessory belts, because Toyota designed it to make the power steering electric, and, coupled with improved suspension design, it allows the new car to have a much improved on-center feel compared to the fairly numb feeling of its predecessor.
As for moving the Prius, the system has a much smaller inverter, but as for the power, Motor Generator 1 (MG1) is lighter, smaller and more effective in starting the car and controlling the gas/electric coordination; Motor Generator 2 (MG2) is also smaller and has higher RPM capability; the battery pack itself is the same as in the current car. That, in fact, is the 10 percent of the renovated car that is not all-new.
If you don’t believe we have to switch from driving large-engined, hefty vehicles for everyday use, check the news for the daily crisis reports about General Motors, and how the government has had to make shocking moves to prevent what it feels could be a total collapse of the company – bailout loans or not. We also have to change our mindset, because it’s become trendy for large-vehicle drivers to treat hybrid drivers with scorn, for being tree-huggers, and “environmentalists†– a word gas-hog drivers spit out as if it’s the lowest form of wimpism.
It tells a lot about U.S. society that we bought a steady stream of Prius vehicles until gasoline spiked at $4 per gallon, and then we bought every Prius and Honda Civic hybrid available and created a waiting list. However, when gas prices subsided in recent months, we quit buying the Prius and other small, high-mileage cars. Of course, we quit buying any cars. Thankfully, we didn’t return to buying enormous trucks and SUVs, because there is an excellent chance gasoline prices will rise again as summer approaches.
Some cynic challenged Toyota officials because hybrid sales dropped more than the norm; obviously, because they had increased by a greater margin during the gas hike, they had more to decrease when the prices went back under $2.
In a capsule, the most significant improvements to the new Prius include: three selectable driving modes, EV for low-speed electric operation when fully charged, Eco for normal traffic, and Power for more performance; it has standard 4-wheel disc brakes, traction control, antilock brakes with electronic brake distribution; it has a solar-powered ventilation system that can exchange interior air via the energy from a solar panel’ in the roof; remote pre-air-conditioning ; lane-keep assist to warn if you wander across the lane-dividing line without signalling or turning the steering wheel; intelligent parking assist with an amazing hands-off system that parks itself, just like the big Lexus LS600; dynamic radar cruise control, which can set and maintain a safe interval behind the car ahead; and a precollisin system that warns you if an object is in the way ahead, and will prepare for a panic stop and even apply the brakes if necessary.
These are major upgrades, although it hit me that maybe one of the reasons that Toyota wasn’t ready to divulge the price of the new car is that some of those features are also quite expensive to install. For the first time, the Prius is available with a sunroof, and adding the solar panels means the interior will be ventilated by solar energy without using the air conditioning. Holding the remote button will activate the air-conditioning, which will run off the hybrid batteryfor three minutes, or until the door is opened.
Toyota has done a fantastic job creating the hybrid Prius and placing it high on a pedestal , and it has done an even more fantastic job of marketing to Prius, in its hand-to-hand combat with Honda’s top hybrids. So good has Toyota’s marketing been that many people know the Prius as the only true hybrid available, which helps explain why the Prius accounts for 50 percent of all hybrids sold.
By comparison, many consumers don’t even know the Honda Civic comes in a hybrid version and is extremely competitilve with the Prius for performance and fuel economy. Honda is about to bring out its new Insight, a smaller, sleeker 4-door hybrid sedan, although I’ll have to test one to convince myself it will get the same fuel economy as I’ve been able to attain with the Civic Hybrid.
Toyota has now come out with an entirely new and revised Prius, and while it retains the distinctive angular shape, it is improved from virtually every angle. Its roofline now reaches its peak 4 inches rearward from where the current car hits its highest spot, improving rear seat head and legroom slightly but significantly. The grille is smaller, but the lower airscoop under the bumper is larger and more boldly styled. The side has a slightly altered silhouette, and it comes to a higher, flatter rear deck.
Underside trays improve the aerodynamics and disperse the passing wind with strategically located splitters. It is longer and wider, but by less than an inch in both cases. Careful wind-tunnel testing has delivered a Prius with a sensational 0.25 coefficient of drag.
It seems odd that the Prius has, of all things, a larger gasoline engine, but the 1.8-liter, which has a valve-altering Atkinson Cycle system, has more torque and works less strenuously on the highway.
It might be quicker, it handles better, and for certain it will get better fuel economy, and the Toyota marketing machine is charging full-speed ahead.
{IMG2}
I like the existing Prius, angular shape and all. Honda, which took a different path since being first on the U.S. market with the Insight 2-seat hybrid, makes the Civic Hybrid as a model of the Civic, so it looks the same as other Civics. Whether it’s better to make your hybrid look mainstream, like the Civic, or distinctly difference, like the Prius, is open to debate. But without a doubt, the new Prius is better than the current model.
The last time I drove a Prius for a week’s test in Minnesota, I was able to coax it up to 43 or 44 miles per gallon. I know owners who have gotten better than that, but I was driving it on my normal swing that includes driving in both the Twin Cities and Duluth, as well as the freeway drive between the two cities and back. I got 47.7 miles per gallon with the Civic Hybrid, but the fact that it is comparatively unknown comes under the heading that if a hybrid car is capable of 50 mpg, but nobody knows it exists, does it really happen?
The Prius was introduced in its latest form at Orlando, Fla., home of Disney World. Which was fitting, because Fantasyland seems a great regional attraction for a car that runs on both a gasoline and electric power, with the gas engine rejuvenating the electrical energy while you drive.
The lone drawback to the Prius, and the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive in all applications, is in extreme cold, if the car is left outside. Power from the batteries can drain to zero, and the gas engine will start up, but will not move the car. Similarly, if anything happens to the electric system, the car won’t budge and you need a tow.Thw Honda system will keep running on the gas engine even if the eectric system fails. But in either vehicle, the electric power system is pretty much bulletproof.
Living with a garage at home and at work, and avoiding lengthy outside parking when it’s 20 below in Minnesota, can lead to a long and profitable relationship with any Prius. In 2008, 1,734 Priuses were sold in the Minneapolis area, which is 8 percent of the size segment, and makes it second highest in penetration in the Upper Midwest to Madison, which sold enough Priuses to make up 14.2 percent of midsize sales. In Chicago, by comparison, Prius sales were 5.6 percent of the segment.
The third generation Prius is better than ever by comparison. Which is saying something. As Toyota small car manager Ed LaRocque said: “The Prius has become an icon, and has proven that it’s not some kind of science project.Ââ€
Hyundai Genesis Coupe is pure performance bargain
Hyundai struck gold when its new Genesis sedan won the North American Car of the Year award in January, and now the South Korean company is mining another vein, boldly taking on the world’s most fun-to-drive sporty vehicles with the Genesis Coupe.
The unrelated-except-by-name Genesis Sedan and Coupe are seriously altering Hyundai’s reputation, which has always been for simple and inexpensive vehicles with great warranties. The new wave of Hyundais has taken a decided step up the technology and quality ladders – while retaining the amazing low-price and high-warranty features that have vaulted Hyundai to the upper echelon of all the satisfied-customer ratings.
The new Coupe is not embarking on its journey meekly, but instead is stating flat-out that its targets are sporty coupes that include the Infiniti G37, and the BMW 3-Series coupe – both among my personal favorites, if you choose to buy your sporty coupe with winter-risk rear-wheel drive. As far as that challenge goes, the Genesis Coupe is lighter than the Infiniti G37, and its chassis is 24 percent stiffer in bending rigidity than the M3, BMW’s ultra-stiff performance 3-Series model.
It goes without saying that the Genesis Coupe also will welcome comparisons with Ford Mustang, the Dodge Challenger, the yet-to-be-released Chevrolet Camaro, and the Mitsubishi Eclipse.
The Genesis Coupe has a nicely chiseled nose, flaring up from the grille, and from the side, the front has its own wedgy angle outlined by a firm contour, while a second groove runs from the rear and comes in above the first, complementing the sloping roofline, which kicks back for the rear window opening. The rear is nicely designed too, with an optional spoiler atop the hatch, and a blacked-out lower valence that outlines the dual exhaust tubes. With a low side sill and a thin line of windows, the Coupe is attractive and distinctive from every angle.
Hyundai is preying on the word “Genesis†much more than building a coupe off the sedan. Genesis, insiders say, is code for front-engine/rear-drive performance, which is a departure for the company. Until Genesis, all Hyundais – from the luxury Azera, down through the midsize Sonata to the compact Elantra and the subcompact Accent, with sidetrips through the SUVs such as Veracruz, Santa Fe and Tucson – have been front-wheel drive or front-drive with all-wheel drive variations.
Obviously, in Minnesota, front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive remains a very important asset, and it does seem that the Genesis Sedan might add an AWD model. But there are those who like the performance feel of front-engine/rear-drive, and they insist that because hard acceleration makes a natural transition of power to the rear, and traditional sports cars and German luxury cars have featured rear-drive, it should be the norm. It is those traditional performance drivers Hyundai is aiming at with the Genesis siblings, more than Minnesota winter drivers.
The Genesis Sedan is large and luxurious, measuring 195.9 inches in length, and 4,000 pounds, while the Genesis Coupe is low and slinky at 182.3 inches in length and 3,300 pounds. The Genesis sedan has a potent and extremely high-tech 4.6-liter V8 and a well-refined 3.8 V6 for power; the Genesis Coupe instead uses that revised 3.8 V6 as its optional upgrade, to go along with its basic 2.0-liter 4-cylinder.
Before scoffing at the smaller engine, however, know that it has dual overhead camshafts with dual variable valve-timing on both intake and exhaust valves, which are whipped to a proper frenzy of action by an intercooled Mitsubishi turbocharger, so it makes 210 horsepower at 6,000 RPMs, and 223 foot-pounds of torque at only 2,000 RPMs.
The 3.8-liter V6 also has dual overhead cams and variable valve timing and delivers a potent 306 horsepower at 6,300 RPMs, and 266 foot-pounds of torque at 4,700 RPMs. Enough to vault the Coupe from 0-60 in down around 5 seconds, but the 4 won’t be far behind, as the turbo spools up and zips the Coupe right along. The V6 model has an electronic cutoff at 149 miles per hour, and the 2.0 Turbo at 137 mph.
Another surprise is that both engines are tuned to run on regular gas – an enormous benefit, when you see some gas stations charging 20 cents or more higher for premium.
Maybe the power, performance, tightness and crisp handling were all pleasant surprises, compared to Hyundais past, but the biggest and most-pleasant surprise to me was that the Genesis Coupe with the 4-cylinder and a 6-speed manual transmission starts at only $23,750. That’s a good price for a decent midsize sedan, and an absolute steal for a sleek, attractive sports coupe.
The V6-powered upgrade can be had for $25,000. Both versions come in basic form, with the 2.0 Turbo moving up to a Premium level, and then a top Track level. The 3.8 moves up to a Grand Touring middle-range model, then a top level 3.8 Track. with option-gusts up to $35,000. The Track version of both get firmer suspension settings, the 6-speed sticks, and enlarged Brembo brakes.
Those prices are bargains by any comparaison, especially when you examine features, and hold that 10-year/100,000 mile warranty in reserve.
The introduction of the Coupe was held in Las Vegas, and we got to go out to Spring Mountain Motorsports Park, a road-racing track out in the desert, to put the Coupes through all paces. Included were repeated laps around half of the road-course, plus a fairly tight and fast autocross. There also was a separate circular area set apart for “drifting,†which is the recent sport that has found popularity with younger enthusiasts. In drifting, you spin the rear tires until the smoke, then you zoom around a circle out of shaps but without losing control while your rear tires send off plumes of blue smoke.
I apologize here, but I’ve bought too many tires to engage in the drifting, even though Bridgestone officials were standing by, smiling enthusiastically as thousands of miles of treadlife went up in smoke. Watching it was so unappealing that it made me slightly ill. There are a lot of ways to have fun in a car without such blatant waste.
{IMG2}
Driving to the track in the turbo-4 and driving back to the Red Rock Resort in the V6 model proved both were impressive, although my partner was more bothered than I at the vibration of the 4. I don’t mind a little buzziness from my 4s. But he had a point, and Hyundai engineers acknowledged that they considered it but decided against installing counter-balance shafts because the engine already has a dual-mass flywheel, plus the compromise in cost and weight.
At the road-racing course, both versions of the Coupe were fun to drive, and to push to their limits. The V6 pulled hard in every gear, either with 6-speed stick, or the slick Z-F (say “Zed-FÂâ€) 6-speed automatic and the easily shifted manual paddles reachable from the steering wheel. The turbo 4 ran out of steam on a couple of the turns, where I found I was either out of torque or out of revs. That was more due to the spacing of the gears, perhaps, because I liked the idea that the gears were spaced for optimum highway fuel economy, rather than drag-racing-type close ratios.
On the multi-turn and zig-zagging autocross course I was most impressed, because it was there that I worked to get my best time down to the 23-second bracket with the V6 stick. When I switched to the V6 automatic, I was surprised that I matched my best stick-shift time, and I found that if you paddle it to first, it upshifted by itself once at the first turn when you got to red-line – and idiot-proof assurance against over-revving – and then second gear was perfect for the rest of the run.
I was even more impressed when I took the 4-cylinder stick out on the same track, and found that I was able to again match the V6’s best under-24-second times with the 4. That’s real-world performance, and proves that you could save a lot of money, particularly on fuel economy, where the 4 can reach 30 miles per gallon.
Handling is precise and stable, with a dual-link MacPherson strut suspension up front and a five-link independent rear suspension arrangement, complete with standard electronic stability control and traction control, and available Torsen limited slip governing the rear axle.
Inside, the driving position is very good, with firmly bolstered seats and all the controls laid out with ergonomic efficiency.
There can be no denying Hyundai’s rapid emergence within the industry. Hyundai only started building cars 22 years ago, licensed to recreate the Mitsubishi subcompact as the Excel. It sold so well that Mitsubishi bought some back to sell as its own entry-level Precis. At any rate, Hyundai started building its own engines, which were pretty conservative for a few years.
But consider that Honda, Toyota and Nissan, for example, have been making cars for over 50 years, and their first cars were nothing to write out a check about. They improved dramatically through the years, which made more vehicles and more challengers out there for Hyundai to strive to meet.
In 2001, market research showed that 12 percent of all auto buyers said they would consider a Hyundai; now that figure is 26 percent. Honda and Toyota stand at over 50 percent, though, and that’s where Hyundai wants to get.
All auto makers are struggling against the faltering economy right now, although there have been months where Hyundai was one of very few to show an improvement over the same month a year ago. Overall, sales are down for every company, but Hyundai’s overall loss of sales in the past year has been small enough that it actually gained market share. Its market share is only at 4.1 percent, but that represents an increase of 70 percent.
And that’s without a full year of the Genesis Sedan, and before anybody has driven away in a Genesis Coupe.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
For those who want to keep up with John Gilbert's view of sports, mainly hockey with a Minnesota slant, click on the following:
Click here for sports