Table of contents for Wheels Year Book 2017 in Wheels

CARBON REDUCTION Brake discs are iron in all corners (400mm front, 360mm rear) with no carbon-ceramic option yet announced. LIVE CARCASS Pirelli P Zero boots were developed specially for the Vantage. It runs 295/35 rubber at the back and 255/40 rollers on the front axle. AERO Functional aerodynamics feature far more than in the previous Vantage with ffront splitter, side gills, boot duck-tail and underbody a all contributing to downforce and high-speed stability. ASTON MARTIN has tossed its cookie cutter in the bin. The unapologetically styled Vantage you see here is a dramatic departure from the previous-gen model and not only slashes another tether to the fading Ford ownership era but silences sceptics who predicted the new version would simply downscale the DB11 design language. But, as important as the…

A CLOSED ARGUMENT Peter Robinson’s “Cultural Vacuum” arguably best describes what we have really lost with the demise of automotive manufacturing in Australia.The job losses will prove to be far more extensive than simply the workers who were employed by Ford, Toyota and Holden. It will extend to all the suppliers, from raw materials including aluminium and steel, to foundry workers producing wheels, manufacturers of carpets, seats, light assemblies and an endless list of components. And then there are the logistics-chain workers who transport all those items and then transport finished products. How long before our highly skilled engineers will have nowhere to get their basic grounding if they are not picked up by overseas companies? And what happens if overseas supply costs increase significantly or if there is a…

SAVIOURS can come in many forms, but could one really emerge packaged as a premium mid-sized SUV? BMW Australia sure hopes so, as the company could use a heavy lifter right now. The 2017 year has not been kind, with sales down around 16 percent on this time last year. But BMW is playing it cool, assuring anyone listening that the “new product onslaught!” will slam the downward trend into reverse, starting right here with the all-new X3. The need-to-know is this: X3 launches with three models, all featuring all-wheel drive – a base 20d diesel ($68,900), 30i petrol ($75,900) and 30d oiler ($83,900). Those are rises of between $2000 and $4000, but each variant is claimed to be better value due to plumper equipment levels. The rest of the…

THE LAST time Wheels reviewed the Hyundai Sonata we delivered a rather blunt verdict: “As a work in progress, Sonata is on the right track”, we wrote, before handing it eighth place in our 10-car family sedan megatest back in 2016. Our review, which praised the Sonata’s space, equipment and fluid handling, finished hopefully, suggesting an imminent replacement could address its lack of dynamic verve and all-round appeal. Well, fast-forward 12 months and the updated Sonata has arrived. Now boasting overhauled styling that ditches the old car’s restrained and slightly dour look for a sportier and sleeker appearance with a cascading front grille, the 2018 Sonata also brings important tech and safety upgrades and a rationalised, two-tier model line-up. The mid-spec Elite variant is no more,…

LET’S cut straight to the chase. Even with a recent $8000 price chop, there is still only one car in the sub-compact hatchback segment that costs more than the Abarth 595 Competizione, so you’d expect to feel quality and value at virtually every touch-point in the little Italian, right? Hop aboard, though, and you’re met with a cabin not far removed from the $17,990 entry Fiat 500. Some hard plastics, a tiny touchscreen and only one-way steering adjustment forces a seating position not unlike that of a Land Rover Defender. At least the utterly fantastic Sabelt carbonfibre racing seats redeem the situation to a degree. But wait, they’re a $2000 option. Then there’s the practicality; or lack of it. Technically, there are four seats but the full capacity is only…

 AUDI can’t build a sports car. Everybody knows that. Everyone apart from the engineers who built the revolutionary ur-Quattro, the borderline genius B7 RS4, the disruptive R8 coupe and the astonishing R10 TDI racer – a diesel that dominated at Le Mans even when Ingolstadt voluntarily used the same engines in the 24-hour race as it used in practice and qualifying. So it ought to be obvious that there’s a pool of hugely talented chassis and powertrain people at Audi. What’s truly frustrating is that this rich vein of dynamic know-how has all too often been neutered by the might of marketing and design, the power of the brand going rogue and often bringing us some strangely compromised road cars. On a gnarly cross-country route, the others wouldn’t see which…

JOCHEN Haab sees like a car. Having spent years poring over radar and camera data, Mercedes’ driver assistance guru seems to instinctively know what his car can and can’t see. “The radar knows that trees are a certain percentage water, a certain percentage cellulose. They have a predictable radar return. The camera doesn’t know what a tree is, they all look different,” he says. Spend any time with him and you start to see like a car too. He’s not touching the steering wheel. The new Mercedes S560 seems as happy taking instructions from its own bank of sensors than from the lump of gristle behind the wheel. Three years ago, this technology seemed like black magic in a Tesla Model S. Now we get a similar suite of technology…

“CAR MAKERS NEED TO SPOT THE ‘UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES’ OF THE COMING REVOLUTION” EVERY year for the last three years, the leaders of the global car industry and the most senior figures from the biggest technology companies have met for a one-day automotive version of the Davos summit in which they try to predict the future of the car. They’re not obliged to keep the meeting secret but nobody seems to talk about it publicly; perhaps because the discussion is so searingly honest and revealing that if word got out, everyone would want in. The conversation itself is secret, though. To encourage the CEOs to talk freely about their fears for the future, the meeting is held under the Chatham House rule, which allows those attending to act upon what they…

WHEN Honda executives first revealed the company’s Civic-based compact SUV concept at the Tokyo motor show in 1995, they couldn’t possibly have imagined that their so-called ‘Compact Recreational Vehicle’ would go on to become a worldwide best seller and one of the company’s most important models globally. The arrival in Australia earlier this year of the fifth-generation Honda CR-V coincided with the model surpassing 8.7 million sales in more than 130 countries including this one, where the soft-roader has been a consistent strong seller and category standard-setter since launch in October 1997. Ten years and four generations on from the arrival of that first model, the versatile Honda has become a familiar mainstay of our Aussie motoring landscape, and a trusted favourite of drivers won over by its versatility, affordability,…

ON 19 January 1932, in a hospital in Modena, Italy, a 33-year-old Italian racing driver became a father for the first time. The birth of Alfredo Ferrari, later to be nicknamed ‘Alfredino’ (little Alfred), would be the catalyst for Enzo Ferrari to hang up his driving gloves and focus on managing the Alfa Romeo grand prix team. In 1947, as we all know, he began making cars under his own name. Enzo’s business was good enough for young ’Dino to study mechanical engineering in Switzerland. However, after only two years an elusive illness forced him to cut short his studies and return to Modena. There, he joined his father’s company and was involved in the design of the four-cylinder 750 Monza of 1954. Dino also proposed a V6 engine –…

WHEN IT dropped, the announcement of Tesla’s Roadster 2 caught everybody on the hop. As Elon Musk unveiled the company’s much-anticipated semi-truck project, the rear doors opened and out rolled the Roadster, the successor to the car that established Tesla’s bona fides back in 2008. “It turns out there was some cargo in the truck. We thought we’d bring it out,” Musk hammed, before introducing the Roadster as “the fastest production car ever made, period.” That may be up for debate. What’s not is the scale of Tesla’s ambition here. “This is the base model,” explained Tesla’s frontman. “We’ll talk about things beyond base maybe next year sometime.” The figures, at first viewing, appear beyond feasible. Zero to 160km/h will take 4.2 seconds. By comparison, the $2.8m Koenigsegg Agera R…

The New Zealand proving ground is already working on plans to build a “fully autonomous testing facility” THE MARCH towards an autonomous future isn’t just speeding up, it’s set to start slipping sideways and possibly spinning out of control with the world’s first winter-testing facility for self-driving cars to be built just across the ditch. Steve Gould, a manager at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Ground, just outside Queenstown in New Zealand, told Wheels that planning is well advanced for the facility, and hints that several companies have already approached them about starting autonomous winter testing. The reason, Gould says, is that the idea of self-driving cars, which use cameras to read lane markings and road signs, having to deal with total white-out conditions doesn’t just worry the world’s car makers,…

If the devil really does find work for idle hands then this miniature 51-gram rotary engine trinket might just keep you from doing something demonic. See how many revs you can chase with the tiny rotor, or bore others into submission with a protracted explanation of how brilliantly the divisive Wankel engine works. The manufacturer does not guarantee apex seal integrity or fuel consumption figures. Rotary engine key ring $14.24 aliexpress.com The only way this Porsche 911 Turbo wheel clock could be any cooler is if there were ten hours in the day. As the price suggests, it’s made from the genuine 20-inch Porsche article and owners can expect to read only the highest quality time from its red hands. Porsche 911 Turbo wheel clock $2226.85…

IT’LL make you a straight-line hero, the GLC63 S. And then, just moments later, it’ll turn you into a cornering coward. SUVs are like that. It may be true that Mercedes’ development budgets are measured in cubic Euros and that AMG can probably afford the very best chassis engineers that money can buy, but the laws of good, old-fashioned Newtonian physics remain stubbornly inflexible. It takes serious chutzpah to install an engine like AMG’s twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 in an SUV weighing around two tonnes, but this is a quality that’s not in short supply at Affalterbach. The brand’s twin-turbo 5.5-litre V8 has already featured in a bunch of bigger and weightier SUVs; the GLE, GLE Coupe, GLS and, nuttiest of all, the ancient G-Class. The new GLC63 S, due to…

LIKE a farmer’s grandkids who grow up as prissy townies, many SUVs have lost touch with their rural roots. The third-generation Kia Sorento was one such city-slicker, which excelled in its urban comfort zone, but flinched at the prospect of negotiating corrugations or spoon drains. But Sorento has been to boot camp, bringing upgrades that usher in new capabilities on unsealed surfaces, as evidenced on the rugged roads hugging the foothills of the NSW Blue Mountains. Kia’s Australian engineers have taken advantage of the Sorento’s new suspension set-up, which features numerous changes to the rear subframe and bushings, resulting in markedly upgraded handling and stability, including reduced bodyroll. Ride comfort is noticeably improved on rougher surfaces. Sorento now absorbs bumps well, which is great news, especially for anyone sitting in…

YES, you read that right; Mercedes-AMG has updated its theatrical hot rod, the GT S. No, you probably didn’t notice because the differences are minimal, and Affalterbach’s intramural two-seater felt as fresh beforehand as the day it launched, which – remarkably – was almost three years ago. But since debuting the GT S to establish the range in Oz in 2015, Mercedes has expanded the local GT family to include another five variants, leaving the GT S Coupe in need of a mild refresher to bring it up to speed. It now sports AMG’s signature Panamericana grille and a lightly restyled front apron with active cooling vents. Elsewhere it’s the same dramatic beast as before; cab-rearward silhouette, low roofline and a road presence that oozes menace. Lurking beneath its long,…

As the pace of automotive change inexorably accelerates, logic would dictate that our ability to predict the future would occupy ever shorter horizons. Instead the opposite is true. We’re more certain of what motoring will look like in thirty years than we’ve ever been before. The autonomous electric pod is an endpoint that’s long been a goal of many industry visionaries. It’s accepted as an inevitability, but is that really the case? If there’s one truth regarding disruptive technologies, such as driverless vehicles or electricity as a power source, it’s that they are just as prone to being disrupted as the status quo they usurped. Yet that is the future to which billions of dollars are being invested, with traditional car companies scrapping in a new gold rush of tech…

MINUTES earlier, DS Performance technical director Thomas Chevaucher had leaned into the Formula E car’s cockpit and asked me not to crash. This, we agreed, was a great plan. DS Performance had brought just one of its DSV-02 all-electric single seaters to Circuit Dreux near Paris, I was about to be the first journalist to drive it, and we were interrupting DS driver Sam Bird’s test. Crashing would be expensive, inconvenient and embarrassing. It seemed like a really bad idea. But now I’m heading down the back straight, closing rapidly on a hairpin, and as I go from full acceleration to full braking I see the top of the treaded tyre stop rotating before I actually feel that I’ve locked the brakes, and sense the back of the car stepping…

SINCE the i30 SR joined the long-term Wheels fleet in August, it has been unanimously winning fans. Every time the keys are returned to me after the Hyundai has had a stint on someone else’s driveway, they are accompanied by compliments and praise. The feedback ranges from a mention of its eager and efficient engine, the compliant but involving ride and the pointy handling and obedient front end, but the general consensus seems to focus on its sense of familiarity. Right from the first steer, the Hyundai feels like a car you have been driving for months. But it’s not just occupants of the driver’s seat that the Hyundai has been impressing. Three other seats have recently been filled on a more regular basis and the praise keeps coming. In…

SOCCER season has ended. After waking up most Sunday mornings for the last four months wondering which far-flung corner of Gippsland we would need to be in for the 1:15pm kick-off, there’s a sense of relief that we can now sit back and enjoy Sunday brunch rather than bolting down breakfast. Throughout it all, our true blue Subaru Impreza relished the chance to stretch its legs to visit remote, windswept grounds at Rhyll, or rain-lashed, mud-plugged pitches in places as exotic as Wonthaggi and Mirboo North. Sometimes two-up, sometimes with three and even at times four on board, the Impreza knuckled down and got on with the job of delivering its occupants on time and match-fit. The ride in the Impreza, already quite supple with just one body onboard, settled…

IN A RADICAL move, Jaguar’s iconic two-door sports car will soon do without an engine. A top-secret project currently underway at the brand’s design and engineering centre in Gaydon will see petrol engines dropped altogether for the radical all-electric F-Type replacement due as early as 2021 or 2022. Despite the lack of internal combustion, the futuristic Jaguar two-door sports car will be the fastest car ever to wear the leaper badge courtesy of electric motors and a bespoke new architecture tailored to take advantage of the design freedoms offered when a traditional drivetrain is not part of the equation. The bold decision to drop petrol engines is in line with Jaguar Land Rover’s promise of ensuring every model features some form of electrification by 2020. It’s that promise that also…

Kia Stinger Coke-bottle hips, a rear-drive chassis and a thrusty twin-turbo V6 give Stinger a heart vote. But can it also convince hard-bitten judges tthat it does enough to move the game on? Volvo XC60 Fifty percent like the XC90, and 50 percent better too. And more rewarding to drive. Here’s hoping the Swedes have also nailed XC60’s finesse. Mazda CX-5 A complete refresh for Australia’s best-selling SUV carries the weight of two consecutive COTY wins for Mazda on its s shoulders. And no manufacturer has ever won three on the trot. Alfa Romeo Giulia Passion and panache have been propping up Italian cars for decades, but this one is actually good. Really bloody good. But are we talking COTY good? GIVEN the intensity of Wheels…

DECEMBER-JANUARY AUDI RS5 and Q2 2.0TFSI quattro; BMW 3 Series facelift, 6 Series GT, and X3; CITROEN C3; FORD Focus RS Limited Edition; JAGUAR F-Type 2.0 and XF Sportbrake; JEEP Compass and Grand Cherokee Trackhawk; LAND ROVER Discovery Sport update and Range Rover Evoque update; MASERATI Levante S; MERCEDES-BENZ S-Class facelift; MITSUBISHI Eclipse Cross; NISSAN Qashqai; SKODA Octavia RS245; SUZUKI Swift Sport; TOYOTA Camry FEBRUARY-MARCH ALFA ROMEO Stelvio; GENESIS G70; HOLDEN ZB Commodore; HYUNDAI i30 N and Ioniq hybrid; JAGUAR E-Pace, XJ update and XJR 575; LAND ROVER Range Rover Sport facelift and Range Rover facelift; MAZDA MX-5 update and MX-5 Limited Edition; SUBARU Forester; VOLKSWAGEN Mk6 Polo and Golf GTI Original DUE DECEMBER Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross The final car off the GS platform that’s been spawning offspring since Howard…

THE Jaguar E-Pace has it easy. Jag’s new ‘compact performance SUV’ comes with none of the heavy baggage that weighed on the larger F-Pace’s haunches – the idea of a Jaguar SUV back in 2016 seemed like Cayenne-gate all over again. Now we’re all used to the idea, in strolls E-Pace, safe in the knowledge that F-Pace is comfortably Jaguar’s biggest seller. It’s even been able to dust off existing Range Rover Evoque underpinnings, though the long-serving D8 platform does get a significant makeover. The wheelbase stretches 21mm, the front subframe is solidly mounted at the rear, and there’s the new Integral Link rear axle among many other detail suspension changes. Hanging panels as well as the roof are aluminium, but the bodyshell is steel and the kerbweight heavy at…

VOLKSWAGEN’S ‘Premium for the People’ marketing mantra certainly makes for an ambitious mission statement. Almost as ambitious as the crisp, sleek and undeniably attractive Arteon that it’s attached to. Priced at $65,490 and offered in a single, highly specified configuration that throws VW’s cutting-edge infotainment and safety tech together with the 206kW 2.0-litre turbo and AWD driveline of the Mk7 Golf R, the Arteon definitely exudes a premium aura. But badge cachet matters when you’re selling a mid-size sedan for luxury money. Is the Arteon good enough to justify a premium price of entry? Is it good enough that you’d overlook a base model 3 Series, C-Class or A4? It’s certainly got the visual presence to make you forget about entry-grade luxo-sedans. With sharp bodylines, a broad chrome grille that…

A CAN opener is often all it takes to turn an accomplished coupe into a floppy, drop-top dud. But fortunately that’s not the case with the Mercedes-Benz E400 4Matic cabriolet, which joins the new E-Class range alongside its sedan, coupe, wagon and All-Terrain brethren. We struggled to see the relevance of the 4Matic all-wheel-drive system beneath the coupe. It’s clear from other models that the new E’s rear end is capable of dealing with the 245kW/480Nm from Mercedes-Benz’s 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 and besides, coupe drivers may occasionally aspire to a little tail-out action. But it makes more sense when handling the footwork of the convertible. Top-down motoring is all about grace and composure, and that’s precisely what this rag-top E400 offers. The nine-speed auto is eerily intuitive, the claimed 0-100km/h…

T’S NOT quite a gasp, more a sharp, involuntary hiss that rushes through my teeth as I hit the brake pedal at 290km/h and watch, wide-eyed, as the shimmying silver rump of a 918 Spyder grows ever larger through the windscreen. Porsche’s reborn 911 GT2 RS is fractionally better under brakes than its four-year-old hypercar (thank a lighter 1440kg kerb weight), but for a heartbeat I panic, worried I’ve left it too late to hammer the left pedal. A finger of white hot fear flashes up my spine as I quickly calculate the cost of this potentially monumental cock-up ($1,500,000 + $645,700 = $2,145,700) but then the GT2’s Michelins bite, the moment passes, and we’re off again: me in the GT2 chasing Porsche’s test driver as we climb and turn…

 IND-WHISKED rain falls from grey clouds hurrying across the sky near Gundagai. This day is not one to linger for a look at the Dog on the Tuckerbox. The modest monument to Australia’s pioneering spirit was once the chief reason to stop at this place between Sydney and Melbourne, but a small bronze dog isn’t what the driver of the white Model S seeks. It’s the row of six Tesla Superchargers, all of them vacant, he needs. He connects his car and then, hunched against the weather, hurries into the nearby Oliver’s Real Food. NEXT-GENERATION CELLS STORE MORE ENERGY WITHOUT ANY CHANGE IN BATTERY-PACK VOLUME Except for one detail, it’s an utterly routine scene. Countless drivers make comfort stops at places like this all across rural Australia every day. But…

AT LAST, the medium SUV tide appears to be turning. What was once a motley collection of automotive mediocrity, populating the periphery of mainstream transport taste, has become a new-wave charge towards becoming the total family-car package. Don’t want your SUV to look like a shed? Check out Peugeot’s sleek new 3008, with a designer interior that’s polished enough to back up its concept car-inspired exterior – a look that utterly rejects its bloated and boring MPV predecessor. And if it’s imposing real estate you’re after, then Honda, Nissan and Holden still know how to dress-up a contemporary four-wheeled McMansion with all the mod-cons that bring families to the yard. Indeed, it’s those four SUVs that prompted this shootout, six months after an exhaustive nine-car Megatest, simply because none of…

SOMETHING good is happening at Lexus. After years of building cars designed to appeal to the rational side of our brains, or to people who enjoy golf and lawn bowls, the company is steadily shaking free of its snoozer shackles. My first encounter with this shift in philosophy came a few years ago at the launch of the then-new RC F in America. Lexus had taken the bold step of holding the event at a circuit, and while the RC F wasn’t quite as sharp as a BMW M4 or AMG C63 (blame a circa 2000kg kerb weight), its rev-hungry V8 and desire to blaze its rear rubber to smithereens left an indelible mark. It wasn’t just exciting; it was fun too. Then came an entire day at Sandown with…

THOSE of you with sharp memories may recall that, before he was appointed Labor’s Minister for Voter Dissatisfaction and Cock-Ups, lanky chrome-dome Peter Garrett was the frontman for a little Aussie pub band called Midnight Oil. Despite them having delivered precisely zero new music in 16 years, it turns out I was not alone in being quite keen to see Midnight Oil on their Great Circle reformation tour. A few hundred thousand Aussies felt the same way, leaving both Sydney shows – and one in the Hunter Valley – sold out. Only one course of action, then: load the Volvo for a final roadtrip, and point north to the Oils’ Coffs Harbour gig about six hours away on the NSW mid-north coast. This, I figured, was the sort of role…

1 FERRARI 812 SUPERFAST  355km/h-plus Takes the title as the fastest car available to buy in Oz with an V-max of beyond 355km/h and, with 588kW, a second title as most powerful naturally aspirated production car. 2 LAMBORGHINI  AVENTADORS 354km/h Has the same 6.5-litre atmo V12 engine configuration as the Ferrari but manages a mere 544kW, fed to all four wheels, and cloaked in a body built for Satan. 3 FERRARI GTC4LUSSO V12  345km/h Not only is the GTC4Lusso the third- fastest road machine in Australia, it’s also the fastest that can accommodate four people, has AWD, and a decent boot for those trips to the snow. 4 McLAREN 720S 341km/h Takes a new 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 and pumps 530kW to the back wheels for blistering speed and acceleration. At…

ALL IN THE FAMILY Kyle Winkler, 17 (middle, below), is on the fast track to an F1 engineering career. Cars are in his blood: his dad, Michael Winkler, headed Porsche in Australia for 18 years and more recently, Bentley in the US. “My earliest memories are of dad bringing home all these exotic Porsches, and weekend drives in his classic 911 … My favourite car? Totally not a Porsche! I’d go a 427 AC Cobra. Big engine in a little car.” MOTORSPORT nerd alert: how many times has an Australian F1 team won the drivers and constructors world championships? If you answered “twice” – thinking Brabham-Repco, 1966 and ’67 – you’re sort-of right. But step down to the 20cm-long, CO2 cartridge-powered cars of the brilliant F1 in Schools program, and…