DC Car Examiner

You're just being silly at this point. I think I've already made it perfectly clear why I didn't put E85 into a Fusion: there are few places to buy E85 in this area, and it would be difficult or impossible to convince someone to give me a Fusion to put E85 into.

The V6 sounds much better. The four-cylinder is a 2.0-liter, I believe just a turbocharged version of the engine used in the Elantra and some other Hyundai/Kia products, and it's not too quiet or especially pleasant sounding. The 4-cylinder car I drove had the stiffer suspension, so I don't know what handling difference there might be between the comparable cars, but as long as they're close I think I'd prefer the V6 model. The advantage to the 2.0 model is the value and the tunability.

That was the same site I looked up, and only two of those seem to be public stations. In addition to the Baltimore station, Fort Meade is a military base and the Rockville station is a municipal school bus parking facility.

I just got to drive a couple of these today (4-cylinder manual with "Track" package and V6 automatic) at Hyundai event and can try to answer any questions about them.

So you're suggesting that I ask a dealership to lend me car long enough to drive across the state to find an E85 station and then fill their car's tank with E85? I would think they would have some objection on both of those counts. Testing with E85 would be neither particularly useful -- because few people can use it -- nor logistically possible, for the reasons listed above. If you're so interested in Fusion E85 performance, how about you drive one that way and get back to everyone?

The Milan engine was noisier than in any of these three.

Last month, the Fusion was indeed behind only the Accord and Camry in midsize sales.

That would be the part where you said I would hold an Asian car to a different standard. As your "proof" you quote me saying I would call the Nissan VQ a carryover, say in the 2007 vs. 2006 Altima. Good point.

It's on the free portion of their website. No login needed. http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2009...know-about.html

I have already said that's not the case. You may not agree with what I call a carryover, but I am consistent on that point. I don't know where you would get that idea except from a general frame of mind that everyone is unfair to American cars.

What 40 horsepower boost? I see a difference of less than half that.

What I'm reading says the Toyota 3.3 and 3.0 were essentially the same engine but that the 3.5 is not.

It now reads "largely carried over."

I write for the Washington, D.C. edition of Examiner.com. The target audience is indeed local. Furthermore, it means getting E85 to test with isn't especially easy.

There are only two public E85 gas stations in all of Maryland, making E85 capability something of a dubious benefit here.

It is not an error, mentioned in that context and in passing. Ford fans just seem to be extremely sensitive to the word "carryover" under the common misconception that an older design is necessarily a negative. Ford, more than most automakers, is very big on updating existing designs (be it for engines or entire cars), yet it hasn't stopped them from having a strong product line.

Carryover doesn't mean it wasn't changed in any way, it means it was essentially the same. I also described the interior as largely carryover, which doesn't mean that there was not one change. It's the same engine. Everything I'm seeing, including in this thread, supports the idea that it's the same engine. If I had been writing a review of a 3.0-liter model I would have more thoroughly discussed the spec upgrades, but in the same way I've referred to Toyota's 3.5-liter V6 being shared across many models (though they definitely have some differences between them), the Fusion 3.0 is carried over from 2009.

There are a lot of engines that change over time that continue to be the same design. Nissan's VQ, for example, gets lots of little changes over the years, but I'd never hesitate to call it a carryover engine.

Astra = Focus Corsa = Fiesta

Everything I've read said it's the same engine with a bit of extra power. If it's not, what is it really?

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-1017-DC...0-Mercury-Milan I also have many photos of the four 2010 Ford products (Fusion, Milan, MKZ, Mustang) at the dealerships. There was already a thread for those, so I won't post the mass, but if there are any specific angles or colors you're interested in seeing, I might have them.

Just the sedan, I thought?

The Excelle isn't a Chevrolet Cruze. It's a Suzuki Forenza.

Easily. Saturn sold around 188k units in 2008, while the S-Series alone was at nearly that level as recently as 2001 and peaked far higher.

There's only so much that one car can do, especially a relatively low-volume one.