【今日在线12.23】我们乘奥迪Q3从北京走到上海

lilyma06

Getting in the Q
            
We take Audi's smallest SUV on a 2,100km ride from Beijing to Shanghai
by Daryl Lee            
            
http://www.todayonline.com/Cars/ ... 13/Getting-in-the-Q


      STANDING on the Bund and looking out at the Shanghai skyline with its behemoths of metal and glass lit by a setting sun, we felt the same euphoria that must have struck famed explorer Roald Amundsen, when he trekked to the South Pole and planted a flag there.

      Okay, that might be laying it on a little thick, but you can't blame us for being giddy. You see, we had just stepped out of an Audi Q3, the brand's latest compact sport utility vehicle (SUV) offering, after driving it nearly 2,100km in four days from the seat of China's political power, Beijing, to the centre of its economic power, Shanghai.

      Hardly a short jaunt to the shops, but it merely comprised the first leg (of four) of Audi's Trans-China Tour, an epic road trip taking place across 5,700km from Beijing to Hong Kong, crossing eight Chinese provinces along the way with more than 200 participants in attendance.

      That might seem a huge distance but it is still nothing compared to China as a whole, with its landmass of 9.6 million sq km. (Singapore has a land area of around 700 sq km.) The Audi Q3 itself has somewhat more humble dimensions, being 4.385m long (slightly larger than a mid-sized hatchback). It's due to arrive here by the middle of next year.

      A massive country and one of Audi's smallest cars make a seemingly odd pairing, but its compact dimensions paid big dividends when negotiating the white-knuckle terror that is Beijing during the morning rush hour with cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians all seemingly wanting to occupy the exact same stretch of road at exactly the same time.

      Against the Q3, China's mega engineering projects seem all the larger. There's Shanghai's 101-storey World Financial Centre, one of the tallest buildings in the world, and the 42km-long Qingdao-Haiwan bridge, much of it built over the sea. There's also the 200m-long LCD screen forming a canopy under which the Tour kicked off in Beijing.

      And in a country that large, its landscape too, is hugely diverse. While we didn't traverse the desiccated Gobi Desert or the balmy tropical climes of Hainan, we did see the ultra-modernity of Beijing and the city of Qingdao (where the beer comes from) with its 19th century colonial German architecture.

      Which segues quite well with the Q3, actually. It fulfils the compact SUV promise of being nippy like a regular car and with the practical convenience of an SUV. A large loading aperture allows awkward items to fit easily in its boot, all wrapped up in Audi's usual granite build quality.

      And did we mention it's quite quick? It gets 211bhp from a turbocharged 2.0-litre engine and its 0-100kmh time is a hot hatchback-esque 6.9 seconds. And with peak torque of 300Nm from just 1,800rpm, the Q3 makes easy work of summoning enough acceleration to squirt past slower traffic.

      Outside of the city, the Q3's lack of size perhaps wasn't the best thing in a motoring landscape where the only applicable laws are those of the jungle. (You just don't argue with 18-wheeled trucks about lane propriety, you know?)

      There were no flags to be stuck in China, even after being nearly put to the mortal peril all great explorers endure, but what they offered us when we arrived in Shanghai was a nice, cold beer and a spectacular view of the skyline.

      We gladly accepted, and suspect Amundsen would have approved.



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彩虹族

认领了。。。。。