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Top Gear drag races VW Golf R against McLaren 675LT and Porsche 911

Top Gear's latest quarter-mile drag race in the collects three very different performance vehicles: the 296-horsepower Volkswagen Golf R, 424-hp Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, and 666-hp McLaren 675LT. While each of these cars sit near the top of their segment, they each come from totally different rungs of the sports car price ladder. Spoiler alert, the Golf R doesn't win. But the final results illustrate the diminishing returns of price and performance. For example, the McLaren is only about a second quicker than the Porsche to 60 miles per hour, but the 675LT costs over 2.5 times more that the GTS. Related Video:

VW consumer site finally gets configurator tool back

The traditional vehicle configurator is back on the Volkswagen US consumer website, and it works very well. The company now lets visitors create a virtual model to their own specs and then search for a match among dealer inventories, as is the norm from most automakers. Last summer, Volkswagen tried to break the mold with its thoroughly redesigned consumer website in the US. It sported a slick design but made the highly controversial change of removing the configurator. Instead, visitors were narrowing their selection from a searchable database of models already at dealers. While the streamlined approach immediately told users if their desired car was available, the system also largely hid the prices for options and packages. The newly tweaked design retains the previous tablet-oriented layout, but after clicking a model, the site immediately offers "Build Yours." From there, visitors select a trim, and then the vehicle pops up with options to choose things like colors and packages. The whole layout is clean, features large buttons and works quickly. At the summary page, there's still the opportunity to search for the user's choice in dealer inventories. This is definitely a major improvement.

VW Jetta TDI dyno shows HP loss trying to recreate cheat mode

Volkswagen is working on a fix for diesel-engined vehicles that are out of compliance with emissions regulations in the US and other countries. We're told that engineers will be presenting a solution internally sometime this month, but that doesn't mean we'll actually see it in the wild this month. One big question we have about the coming fix is, will it affect the car's performance? That question relates to another we have about the engine as it is: How much performance would the 2.0-liter diesel lose right now if it were turned down to pass US emissions? The Fast Lane Car tried to sketch some answers by going to a shop in Denver, Colorado to run a 2011 Jetta TDI with a six-speed DSG transmission on an all-wheel-drive dyno. The thinking was that if you ran all four wheels the car would think it was on the road, whereas if you ran only two the car might think it's being tested. We'll get straight to the numbers: the stock sedan is quoted at 140 horsepower and 236 pound-feet of torque. When run with all four wheels turning it produced an uncorrected 114 hp and 214 lb-ft at the wheels. When run with just two wheels in motion the Jetta got 113 hp and 188 lb-ft at the wheels. Reading the graph, we're told that power differences between the two runs were as much as 15 hp and 32 lb-ft. You'll need to take some salt with these numbers, though, because the dyno and test protocol in the video are nothing like those used by the EPA. The shop attempts to trick the Jetta into 'emissions testing mode' by using the front wheels only for the two-wheel-drive run, but we have a feeling the software code at issue is far more sophisticated than that, since the ICCT, UVA, the EPA, and CARB investigated the situation for more than a year and couldn't figure out. Also, the technician adjusts for being a mile above sea level with a correction factor of 1.2 applied to horsepower and torque, which inflates the disparity in the final power differences over the two runs. Go to YouTube and read the lengthy comments on the video left by Andrew Price for a more thorough dissection of what could explain TFL's disparities. You can watch the video above, and feel free to try and dissect the results yourselves in the comments below. Related Video: