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It's a cold, windy, rainy day as we head out of Amarillo on our way to Denver -- the final leg of Wave 2 of the Audi Mileage Marathon. After our stop in the mile-high city in Colorado, Editor-in-Chief Chris Paukert will take over for the NextAutos team, while my co-driver (Sam Abuelsamid from AutoblogGreen) and I head back home.

Yesterday's stint was a mostly uphill drive from Dallas to Amarillo. In fact, we climbed nearly 2000 feet, but surprisingly, overall fuel economy wasn't hurt too much. The leading Q7 driven by Jim McCraw and Kevin Kelly took the top ranking of the day, with 29.5 miles per gallon at 62 miles per hour. The NextAutos Q7 wasn't too far off, though, averaging 29.1 mpg at 60 mph. The top A4 team achieved 40.6 mpg, the best Q5 got 35.3 mpg, and the sole A3 came in at 48.4 mpg.

Today's drive from Amarillo to Denver is also an uphill adventure, so we'll see how the teams' fuel economy numbers are affected by this. As always, stay tuned for more updates.

Yesterday's drive took us west from Memphis, passing through Arkansas and making our way into Texas. After a night at The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas, we're back on the road. This time, however, we will not be following major interstate expressways, and will instead be driving on rural highways to get to our final destination in Amarillo.

Yesterday showed some pretty impressive numbers from all vehicle classes. The leading Q7 was able to obtain fuel economy numbers of 30.3 miles per gallon with an average speed of around 59 miles per hour. The NextAutos Q7 didn't do quite as well, only managing to get 28.6 mpg with an average speed of 58 mph. When we asked the winning team what their secret was, they mentioned that driving the Q7 in manual mode and using the wheel-mounted paddle shifters let them keep low revs in each gear. Also, they were fortunate enough to find a semi truck driver who was willing to play along and let the team draft behind them for over 100 miles.

For the rest of the cars, the winning A4 achieved numbers of 43.3 mpg at 58 mph with the number one Q5 observing 37.9 mpg at 60 mph. The little A3 made the trip at an average of 60 mph, averaging 48.4 mpg along the way.

As always, we'll have more updates later. We've got a few tricks up our sleeve which might make today's drive a bit more interesting (and efficient), so we'll be sure to let you all know how everything works out.

After a lovely dinner at B.B. King's in downtown Memphis and a good rest, we're back on the road with the Audi Mileage Marathon. Today's drive will take us from Memphis to Dallas by way of Little Rock, where we will stop for lunch.

So far, our Q7 has averaged fuel economy numbers of 28.8 miles per gallon. One other car got the same readings, so we're tied for best fuel economy. Our average speed, however, is a bit below the curve. We've averaged 60 miles per hour thus far, though our attempts at drafting behind semis and using the adaptive cruise control have indeed aided our MPGs.

As for the other cars, the leading A4 is averaging 44.8 miles per gallon at 61 mph, the leading Q5 is averaging 38.5 mpg at 59 mph, and the (only) A3 is getting readings of 41.1 mpg at 59 mph. Stay tuned to see how these numbers change throughout the rest of our drive.

We've now driven about 250 miles on our way from Chicago to Memphis in the Q7 3.0 TDI and things are going well. We haven't made any attempts to draft behind eighteen-wheelers or do any other sort of fuel-saving techniques, and we've been able to observe fuel economy numbers of 28.6 miles per gallon. This seems to be in line with some of the higher MPG numbers that the Q7 groups achieved on the first wave of the event.

We'll be sure to give more updates as we continue on with the Audi Mileage Marathon, and hopefully the NextAutos team can win the first place rank for fuel consumption in the Q7.

We've landed in Chicago and are eagerly awaiting the start of the second leg of the Audi Mileage marathon. So far, the Q7s, Q5s, A4s, and A3s have traveled from New York to Chicago by way of Washington, D.C. and Cleveland. We depart tomorrow morning for our first stint of the drive which takes us from the Windy City into Memphis, Tennessee.

We'll be sure to post more updates from the road about our time in these Audi diesels, including how our fuel economy figures are holding up. Stay tuned.

Great news! We took delivery of our long-term Volkswagen Jetta TDI this morning, and we're quite excited about spending the next 365 days with the little diesel-burner. Since we normally only keep cars in our test fleet for a week or two, it will be interesting to see how our Jetta holds up after one year of driving. More importantly, we're curious to see what kind of overall fuel economy numbers are observed.

Since the Jetta will indeed become a trusty steed for our staff, we'd like to give it some extra personal touches, including a name. Thus, we're looking to you, our readers, for suggestions on what to name our Laser Blue Jetta TDI. Leave a comment with your best suggestion for a name, and if your name is picked, we'll send you some free Winding Road swag, including a couple of t-shirts, mugs, pins, and keychains.

Click through the images in the gallery above to see a bunch of shots of our new long-term Jetta TDI.

Today marks the start of the 2008 Audi Mileage Marathon, a cross-country drive featuring the latest clean diesel offerings from Audi, including the U.S.-bound Q7 3.0 TDI set to hit dealerships next year. This drive will cover more than 4800 miles between October 6th and 20th and twenty-three Audi TDI vehicles will participate in the rally.

Other vehicles included in the Mileage Marathon are the new Q5 3.0 TDI, A4 3.0 TDI, and A3 2.0 TDI Sportback. While it's not confirmed if any of these models will be making their way to the States, we're looking forward to experiencing the performance and fuel efficiency that these TDI cars offer.

The NextAutos team will be jumping on board the Mileage Marathon later this week. We'll be posting pictures and impressions live from the road, so stay tuned for further updates. In the meantime, click through the post to read Audi's official press release -- and check the list of towns we'll be stopping through, as well.

When we first stumbled upon spy shots of the Chevy Tacuma MPV, we knew that General Motors was in the process of creating a new family-oriented hauler. Now, official images and details have been released about the Chevrolet Orlando Concept set to debut at the Paris Motor Show later this week.

The Orlando rides on a modified version of GM's Delta II platform, shared with the new Cruze sedan. The Chevy seven-seater is powered by a 2.0-liter turbo-diesel engine which produces 150 horsepower and nearly 200 pound-feet of torque. The Orlando's interior closely follows the new design language found in the Cruze's interior, too. No word yet on if we'll see a version of the Orlando Concept in our market anytime soon, but look for cues from this concept to potentially appear on the next Chevrolet Equinox.

We'll have more details after the live unveiling in Paris, so stay tuned. Also, click through the post to read GM's official press release.

—Santa Monica, California

As recently as just a few years ago, Volkswagen sold a wide range of diesel vehicles in the States. In fact, the company has a long history of selling oil-burners in the U.S. that dates back to the 1970s. These models were slowly jettisoned throughout the years due to stricter emissions laws, and by 2007, the Touareg V-10 was the only diesel Volkswagen that Americans could buy. However, in light of today’s higher fuel prices, the automaker is once again getting serious about broadening its turbo-diesel offerings in the States.

(Click through the post to read the full review.)