Drive Wire: June 16, 2016
Audi spy shots, Dubai supercar confiscations, a powerful Civic, a beautiful speaker, and sandboarding.
What’s up guys, it’s Marisa Hunter and this is Drive Wire for Thursday, June 16th.
We have spy shots of the new Audi SQ2 and it’s one of the nicer-looking crossovers we’ve seen. These pictures show the performance version of the Q2, with a blackout treatment and some flares going on. The design has good lines and carries its mass well, with more of a hot-station-wagon look than upright SUV. Power for this model is likely to come from the two-liter turbo four from the S3, which makes a tad under 300 horsepower. In order to keep power down, this model will likely be Quattro all-wheel-drive only. Actually, if Audi goes nuts and does an RSQ2 model with their 360-horsepower five-cylinder, we may forget all about their much-lamented hot “Avant” wagons of years past. Ok, we’d never forget them, but it would still help.
In the real life Fast and Furious world, law enforcement in Dubai have seized 80-plus cars for illegal street racing. Apparently, locals from all walks of incredibly wealthy yet bored life have been staging runs on the long, arrow-straight desert highways. Clearly, the Dubai police department’s Veyron wasn’t much of a deterrent. Dubai’s police chief claims the cars were confiscated when their owners were caught racing or preparing their cars for use in racing. The chief says car owners have 90 days to pay $27,000 fines before their cars are auctioned off, and the operators have been fined another $13,500. Which means, reading between the lines, that some car owners hired drivers for these races. Dubai – go for the racing action, stay for the police auction.
Listen up Civic fanboys, it seems the Honda Civic Type R has been absolutely tearing it up on the hallowed tarmac of Europe’s top tracks. Honda’s been taking their hot hatch on a barnstorming tour of the continent’s most famous courses, and setting front-wheel drive lap records at each one. That Civic Type R is now the top dog at Silverstone, Spa, Monza, Estoril, and the Hungaroring. The big name missing from this list, you may notice, is the Nurburgring where the Volkswagen Clubsport GTI stole back the record from the Type-R a few weeks back. If it wasn’t a rivalry before – and okay, it was – it’s a better rivalry now. .
Today’s gear is for audiophiles. The Naim MusoQB is not just a great-sounding wireless single-speaker audio system, but a gorgeous piece of modern design. With a lovely cube shape and speaker grilles in different colorways, the speaker utilizes a unique shape to provide a crystal clear sound. Plus it’s an app-controlled 300-watt musical powerhouse. Go to naimaudio.com to gaze upon its loveliness and find a retailer near you.
In today’s ridiculous video, we have more great, marginally sane stuff from the latest trend of snow sports on sand – in this case, Polish snowboarders being towed behind Dakar rally cars, because that’s a thing now. Be careful out there, guys, we hear the desert cops are on a bit of a rampage.
That’s it for today’s edition of Drive Wire. For more, be sure to come back to thedrive.com, and follow us @thedrive on all your favorite social media platforms.
