Sommaire pour July 2021 de Wheels

AUSTRALIA’S POOR quality fuel is bad news. Bad for our health, bad for our environment and bad for our car industry. Figures released by the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare show that 2566 deaths in 2015 were linked to vehicle emissions, while the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) in 2019 said improving fuel quality would offer a ‘three to five percent’ improvement on CO2 performance ‘overnight’. Then there’s the impact on the local car market. The high level of sulphur in our fuel, among other factors, means we’re missing out on cars with more advanced petrol engines which produce lower emissions. Some manufacturers claim they can’t import their best engines in large numbers due to the cars already being optimised to run on premium unleaded petrol with 10…

POLESTAR IS preparing a model onslaught with enough hardware to threaten Tesla. The first to arrive locally will be the delightfully Scandinavian Polestar 2 liftback (above), which borrows its platform from Volvo’s COTY-winning XC40. The first cars will land in November 2021 for an official launch before order books open in January 2022. Customer cars will be delivered from February. The Polestar 2 has been on sale since 2020 overseas, so there won’t be a spike in demand for Australia to contend with. Top spec will be all-wheel drive with a 300kW and 660Nm output from two motors, drawing power from a 78kWh battery pack which provides a range of up to 480km. This variant will hit 100km/h in a claimed 4.5sec. A 64kWh, front-drive version will have a range…

TWENTY YEARS after it was first introduced, signs are starting to appear that the Luxury Car Tax (LCT) is reaching the end of the road. As part of trade negotiations with the UK post-Brexit for both nations to phase out taxes on imports, it’s thought Australia’s whopping 33 percent tax levied on cars over a certain cost threshold could steadily disappear over the next 15 years. In recent weeks, the UK has put an offer on the table to Australia’s Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Dan Tehan, with an outcome of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) discussions expected by the end of June. While the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) remains tight-lipped, insisting trade talks are strictly under wraps, it did not rule out that changes to the…

STEP INSIDE the spacious cabin of Haval’s midsize SUV, slide into the generous, leather-look seats and hit the keyless start button and you’re met with a pair of high-resolution displays… and a sneaking suspicion the Chinese car maker took a long, hard look at the technological approach of Tesla when designing its new model. The crisply rendered central 10.3-inch screen offers access to an impressive array of technology and applications. The second 10.3-inch screen forms the driver’s instrument cluster and features a digital speedo, tachometer and even a real-time vehicle/lane position feature that’s very similar to Tesla’s innovation. The result is an incredibly clean and tidy interior and, with just seven switches on the entire centre portion of the dashboard, the Tesla similarities continue. Actually, one or two functions –…

MARKET RESEARCH is a such a joyful and insightful guide to consumer behaviour, we should try a little of it here. Let’s begin. Raise your hand if you have over a quarter of a million burning a hole in your trousers and, hi-po SUVs be buggered, you’re ready to drop it on a full-size sports sedan. Hold that hand high and steady if you’ve test-driven the likes of BMW’s M5, Mercedes-AMG’s E63 S and maybe Audi’s RS7 and rejected them on the basis of, I dunno, being too clever, too polished, too tech-heavy. Now keep your hand up if you have a hankering for an Italian brand with a rich 106-year history, delivering a car with a twin-turbo V8 developed by Ferrari, driving the rear wheels only, and with a…

There’s whumping torque, sharp steering and real balance to the chassis, too IT’S CLEAR THAT Hyundai’s mantra must be ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Being among quiet pioneers of family-friendly electric cars already with the original Ioniq and Kona, the brand is about to smack us across the chops with a whole new range of EVs under the Ioniq sub-brand, starting with this: the Ioniq 5. We’ve driven a near-finished prototype in the UK for our first whack. So does Hyundai advance the EV cause? Actually, yes₀ Hyundai says the exterior design is inspired by the Pony Coupe of the ’70s but, unlike so many car brands looking to its past to guide its future, design-wise, this is no slavish pastiche. It’s an eye-popping piece of design, shaped…

VF E34 First revealed last January as the VF 31 concept, it was given a new name for production because smaller vehicles starting with the yet-to-be-seen VF e33 and VF e32 are now planned for release. The e34 compact SUV powers its front wheels via a 110kW/242Nm motor fed by a 42kWh battery pack. The claimed range is about 300km and the start price is equivalent to A$39,000. VF 32 To be badged VF e35 in production, this mid-size SUV has so far only been shown in concept form. But what you see here is pretty much what buyers will get when it starts rolling out in 2022. The base version comes with a single 150kW/320Nm motor, while the premium version doubles up for 300kW/640Nm and all-wheel drive. The battery…

It was the buy-out and rebranding of the Racing Point F1 team that saw the debut of Aston Martin F1 racing for season 2021, but it hasn’t been a seamless transition. Rule changes to the aero package of the 2021 cars hurt so-called ‘low-rake’ cars like the Aston (and dominant Mercedes), and the team only managed to score five points from the first four rounds. However, the result in Monaco suggests they’re on the right trajectory (at least on ‘slow’ circuits) with Sebastian Vettel managing to take P5, and Lance Stroll holding on for eighth place. If the team, which is powered by engines supplied by Moers’ former employer, can continue to claw its way back to the pointy end of the constructors’ championship, it will be one less thing…

COULD YOU SUM up the reason for buying your car in seven words? It’s like the ultimate car-enthusiast elevator pitch, but here’s the kicker. In order to make it truly compelling, it has to move beyond the purely personal. ‘The best solution for my needs’? Get out. I’m not interested in your needs. Sell me the benefits in a way that gets my attention. With the Lexus IS300 Luxury, that pitch is really easily made. The best quality sedan for the money. That’s it. If you want to argue that one, you’re likely to lose. Lexus has the warranty claim data to back that one up. So why don’t you see thousands of these cars clogging Australia’s arterials in the same way that you do, say, Merc C-Classes, BMW 3…

THE MORE observant among you may have noticed that the hulking matte-grey GV80 that has graced these pages for the last few months has now been replaced by a gleaming white example. But can you spot the other, more significant changes? Admittedly that’ll be tricky, given they’re all lurking under the skin. The biggest difference concerns the engine. Press the starter button and listen (very) closely and you’ll discern that the slightly hollow flare of revs we’ve grown used to with the twin-turbo petrol donk has been replaced with a deeper, slightly coarse clatter. It’s subtle, for reasons we’ll get to in a minute, but it’s definitely there. Yes, we’ve switched into the diesel GV80, which has a 3.0-litre turbo oiler producing 204kW and 588Nm. This is good news for…

THE BEST-SELLING vehicle in America, the Ford F-Series is now available as an EV, and our Stateside friends are absolutely lapping it up. But, as we’ll get to in a moment, Australia’s car companies aren’t even talking about EV utes yet, and likely won’t be for some time. In the USA, in just one week, more than 70,000 orders were placed for the Ford F-150 Lighting, a vehicle at polar opposites to the gas-guzzling stereotype we might associate with this segment. For context, consider that Ford sold 203,797 F-Series trucks for the first three months of 2021, so Lightning needed only seven days to account for over one third of F-Series’ quarterly sales. It’s a significant shift for the EV segment in the USA, which, up until Ford’s entry, has…

Keep it tight (no more than 200 words) and do include your suburb if via email: wheels@wheelsmag.com.au You can also have your say on Facebook (search for Wheels Australia), Instagram or Twitter LETTER OF THE MONTH “You can tow heavy things with coil springs. Stop watching Clint Eastwood movies and move on” BROKEN CARTED THERE’S A FANTASTIC old western carriage hanging above the forecourt of a friend’s farm up in Queensland. And every time I see underneath it, I think to myself, ‘this could either be a 19th century horse-drawn cart… or a 2021 dual-cab ute.’ Solid leaf springs connected to one very solid axle. A ladder frame holds the bit where you sit in place and it looks about as comfortable as, indeed, a dual-cab is to be a…

ONE OF THE most mystifying aspects of the 2021 F1 season to date is the struggle Daniel Ricciardo is having at his new berth of McLaren. Recently in Monaco – where he went out in Q2, almost a second slower than teammate Lando Norris, who qualified fifth and who lapped him in the race – was the furthest off he has been all year. Most recently in Azerbaijan, as we went to press, he was again outqualified by Norris by 0.8sec, and finished ninth to Norris’s fifth place. So what’s happening? In a Sky TV interview in Monaco, Ricciardo explained how he’d bumped into his McLaren predecessor, Carlos Sainz, who asked Ricciardo, ‘What do you think? Strange, eh?’ talking of the car. “Thanks for telling me!” Ricciardo responded. What they…

THE Kia Niro is the Korean carmaker’s first electrified model to arrive in Australia, and is offered with a choice of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and battery-electric powertrains. We tested the plug-in hybrid (PHEV), which sits in the middle of the range in terms of pricing and eco-friendliness, to see whether it offers a happy middle-ground – or otherwise. The first thing you notice about the Niro is that it looks a little dated because, well, it is. While new to Australia, it has been around since 2016 when the hybrid (HEV) was first launched overseas. The plug-in hybrid arrived in 2017 and the battery-electric version – known as the e-Niro in other markets but Niro EV here – arrived a year later. All three versions have just landed in Australia,…

one LIGHTLY GRILLED Driving position is slightly elevated compared to a sedan; steering fast with natural weighting; wheel boss styled on a speaker. Hmm₀ two GET INTO GEAR Transmission selector is a rotary stalk on the steering column. Putting it here allows for the moveable centre console section three FAST CHARGER On (admittedly rare) 350kW fast chargers, the Ioniq’s battery can surge from 10 percent to 80 percent in 18 minutes four PLAY AND DISPLAY The vast rectangular display panel incorporates two hi-res screens, but unlike some rivals, doesn’t bury the HVAC controls in there five HELP A STRANGER Hyundai calls it vehicle-to-load; we’d call it a big mobile power bank. Use the Ioniq to charge anything, or even help an EV owner with a flat battery six PACKING HEAVY…

THE FIRST THING you want to know about the Rimac Nevera is how it feels to launch-control an electric hypercar with twice the power of a modern Formula 1 car. I wondered that too, and casually decimating the Bugatti Chiron’s production-car standing-quarter record was very nearly the first thing I did in a Nevera. I was given mine on the runway of a quiet provincial airport in Croatia, its nose already pointing down the strip towards the cones that marked the end of the quarter-mile. Mate Rimac was there and quite happy for me to knock out a new record with my very first push of the throttle, so confident was he of the ease and safety with which his car will do it. That might have made for a…

THIS CIRCUIT AT Balocco in northern Italy isn’t unpaved. The Giulia GTAm just makes it feel that way, painting black smears and leaving wisps of white smoke in its wake. This car instantly earns a place in the shrine of sideways, and Alfa Romeo is sure to be adored for producing it. What have they done? The GTAm is basically a Giulia Quadrifoglio Verde, with modifications. These are extensive. And so they should be. The price of the GTAm is $288,000, not far below supercar money, and double the cost of the Quadrifoglio Verde. There’s a touch of the exotic to the Alfa Romeo’s engine, at least. The 690T is a 2.9-litre V6 twin-turbo that shares vital bore and stroke dimensions with the version of Ferrari’s excellent F154 V8 for…

OKAY, I WAS both a bit uncharitable and factually inaccurate last month when I suggested the Palisade is big enough to have its own postcode. If we go to the tale of the tape, we see it’s 4980mm long, so yes, nearly 200mm longer than the Santa Fe from the class below, but nearly half a metre (!) shorter than the Rangers and Hiluxes which masquerade as family SUVs these days. But having recently attempted to fold myself into the third row in the name of science – imagine a raw sausage being squeezed into a matchbox – I’m a bit unconvinced of the Palisade’s ‘eight-seater’ ability. Yes, there are three seatbelts back there, but I would have thought that kids small enough to fit three-abreast would surely need booster…

Come in spinner IT’S A STORY worth retelling, about how Mazda got to be so weird through the 1960s and ’70s – a whiff of which remains to this day. Being isolated in its rebuilt hometown of Hiroshima explains some of Mazda’s mentality, but in 1960 the maker of small trucks had only just launched its first passenger car, the tiny, rear-engined R360 Coupe, when government officials mooted a forced merger with Nissan and Toyota. Mazda president Tsuneji Matsuda knew that independence meant having something unique to offer. In January of that year, a triangular-shaped saviour had appeared in the NSUWankel rotary engine. Matsuda inked a licence deal for the still-premature rotor-motor and in 1961, Mazda was approved to develop the engine – and its own passenger cars. The rest…

FOR 4X4 UTE buyers with no inclination to switch to electric, the new 2022 Ford Ranger hears you loud and clear. By the end of the year, Ford Australia will confirm details of the next-gen dual cab, which Wheels readers will have already seen via our exclusive leaked photographs. But while we do know the next Ranger will be plug-in capable, Australia won’t likely see a piece of that action at launch. Instead, with the five-cylinder diesel gone, a turbo-diesel V6 seems likely (probably a variant of the 3.0-litre Powerstroke unit offered in the F-150), as well as an updated version of the current 2.0-litre twin-turbo diesel. For the Ranger Raptor, there’s tipped to be a twin-turbo petrol V6, though we’re not expecting to see this until at least 2023.…

DETAILS ARE emerging about the EV models Hyundai is planning to launch as follow-ups to the excellent Ioniq 5. A leaked presentation, which was shown to investors in the US, has revealed rough timings and specification details of the upcoming Ioniq 6 sedan and Ioniq 7 large SUV. And they look promising. Hyundai has confirmed both models are on the radar for Australia, with the Ioniq 6 to launch first with a mooted arrival sometime next year. Built on the same e-GMP platform as the Ioniq 5, the 6 will be strongly influenced by last year’s swoopy Prophecy concept. And given how closely the Ioniq 5 resembles the retro-cool 45 concept, we wouldn’t expect the Prophecy’s bold look to be overly watered down. A 73kWh battery pack is tipped to…

CAR BUYERS hunting for strong value will soon have another brand to consider, with Dacia set to join the Aussie marketplace early next year. The budget-focused brand, which leapt into the global spotlight through a series of running jokes by Top Gear co-host James May, is aiming to launch locally with at least four models ranging from a small hatch through to light commercials. All will major on value, with the Romanian-built Dacia Sandero expected to be the cheapest of the lot with a sticker price tipped to start below $20K. While Aussie pricing is yet to be announced, the Sandero costs from £7995 in the UK, which equates to around A$14,600. If such a price is possible, it would see the Sandero significantly undercut the Kia Picanto to become…

DUE Q4 KIA SPORTAGE Fifth-gen RAV4 rival gets new styling, closely related to that of the Kia EV6, as well as new single, long-screen infotainment/instrument set-up. A hybrid version is inevitable, though we expect for now to see similar drivetrains to its Hyundai equivalent, the Tucson. A 1.6-litre turbo-petrol and 2.0-litre turbo diesel version are likely, as is a 2.0 N/A petrol base model. Kia yet to confirm. DUE Q4 BMW iX BMW has now confirmed its EV SUV line-up will start with iX xDrive40 ($135,900) and iX xDrive50 ($169,900) available from launch, with the range-topping iX M60 due in 2022. The ’40 boasts 240kW/630Nm, and a 425km range, while ’50 has 385kW/765Nm, and a claimed 630km range. DUE Q4 CITROEN C4 Will come to Australia with one engine and…

PEOPLE CLAIM, FOR not entirely sane reasons, that Ferraris should only ever be red, but we would argue that statement rings truer for the original Lamborghini Diablo. Sant’Agata’s supercar may have also been offered in yellow, white, silver, blue or black, but if ever a colour was perfectly matched to a nameplate, it’s ‘Diablo Rosso’. Unveiled in January 1990, the Diablo kicked off a great decade for outlandish supercars. Four years in development, Lamborghini named its long-awaited Countach replacement After a famous Spanish fighting bull – continuing a tradition that began with the ’66 Miura – though ‘Diablo’ is also Spanish for ‘devil’, which could’ve been a metaphor for this car’s journey from Italian-styled prototype to American-restyled production car. As a successor to the legendary Miura (1966-’73) and Countach (1974-’90),…

HOMOLOGATION issues kept the Audi SQ2 away from Australia after its 2018 global release, but with that resolved, the arrival of the sportyflagship is an obvious highlight of a refreshed Q2 range. It arrives as the German brand’s most affordable performance SUV. Priced from $64,400, it’s more than $25,000 cheaper than the RSQ3. Naturally, the SQ2 looks the sportiest variant of the Q2 line-up, if not by a significant amount. The quad exhaust pipes are arguably its most purposeful visual enhancement, though the 19-inch Audi Sport rims are also exclusive to the range-topper. Audi’s clever and fancy Matrix LED headlights are also standard, where optional on the regular Q2. Metallic paint is also included in the SQ2’s price – rare for a premium car. The Q2/SQ2 cabin hasn’t dated as…

SPORTY Bentleys have traditionally been big, heavy cars with heroic engines, a certain brutishness lurking under that aristocratic veneer. Driving a sporty Bentley fast, especially in the modern era, has meant using its effortless power and immense torque to simply crush the distances between the corners rather than dancing it through them, as you would in a Ferrari Roma or an Aston Martin DB11. Until now. The 2022 Bentley Continental GT Speed is a Bentley that can dance. On paper the GT Speed ticks all the traditional Bentley boxes. Big? Yep. Measuring 4850mm from bumper to bumper and 1954mm across the body, this two-door coupe occupies quite a lot of real estate. Heavy? Uh-huh. Although the GT Speed is on the lighter end of the Bentley weight spectrum, it still…

IT’S MARCH 25, 2021, and Kevin Yardley is talking to Wheels via computer link from VinFast’s headquarters in the Vietnamese city of Hai Phong. A mop of black hair, a big smile and lots of enthusiasm are signatures of the former Holden and General Motors exec, who established a technical centre for the ambitious start-up in Port Melbourne in 2019 and then championed the purchase of the Lang Lang proving ground in 2020, creating or preserving over 100 auto industry jobs. For more than an hour, VinFast’s product development chief expansively answers questions about the company and his involvement with it, dives into detail about the future product roll-out and explains the core role Australian automotive engineers will play in it. The chances of VinFast eventually selling its cars in…

MEETING THE BOSS at Aston Martin’s headquarters always used to be a collarand-tie sort of deal. Tobias Moers ambles into the room wearing jeans, suede desert boots and a black Belstaff jacket over a dark blue shirt, settling down onto the sofa with a world-weary grin that betrays 16-hour workdays and flights to and from home in Stuttgart every weekend. But the corporate dress code isn’t the only thing Aston’s new CEO is shaking up. For most of its 108 years, Aston Martin has flirted with financial disaster, hauled back from bankruptcy by a succession of well-heeled benefactors. David Brown, Victor Gauntlett, and the Ford Motor Company, among others quickly learned the way to make a small fortune in the bespoke luxury sports car business was to start with a…

ONE OF THE UNSUNG success stories of the last decade has been the Subaru XV Chunky, pretty and accessible, it regularly hits the top five on the small-SUV charts, is the brand’s number-two performer after Forester and accounts for about one-quarter of all Subaru sales. That the Japanese marque has managed to make tens of thousands of Aussies believe the XV isn’t just an Impreza in stilettos is quite a feat, and raises an intriguing question: given the XV’s enduring popularity, why aren’t our roads clogged with jumped-up, plastic-clad and bigger-bumpered Mazda 3, Toyota Corolla and Hyundai i30 crossover hatchbacks? Oh, hang on, someone has. It’s the wallflower from the Fatherland… please step on up, Ford Focus Active. Launched in mid 2019 – some two years after the G5X XV…

WHEN I WAS growing up dazed and confused in 1980s Australian suburbia, cultural binarism engulfed us like a plume of hairspray on a poodle perm. Labor or Liberal, male or female, Coke or Pepsi, Summer Bay or Ramsay Street… there was no middle ground and tough titties if you didn’t fit in. Or, worse still, refused to. Such black-and-white thinking even applied to the family transport tucked away behind the B&D roller door. Local or imported. Holden or Ford. Cars or 4WDs. Except for Subarus, the latter were universally ladder-frame off-roaders with names like LandCruiser, Patrol and Pajero, but began splintering off into cheaper pick-up-derived wagons during the decade, led by the Hilux-based 4Runner. Then somebody created a car that looked like a 4WD, the world went crazy for SUVs…

HOW FAST IS IT? Few questions loom larger in my mind after I meet something that has a V8. So when the video team asked if they could borrow my Jeep Grand Cherokee S-Limited as a camera car at Heathcote drag strip, I obliged with one condition. An experienced tester was to run the S-Limited down the strip and record the figures. I got my wish. Editor of sister magazine MOTOR, Andy Enright, forwarded me the data the next day. And there were surprises, to say the least. It turned out the S-limited accelerated to 100km/h from rest in 8.1sec and needed 15.8sec to cross the 400m line at 142.5km/h. For comparison, a Genesis GV80 with a twin-turbo V6 producing 279kW/530Nm can deliver 5.9sec/14.1sec 0-100km/h and 400m runs, respectively. I…

YOU NEED TO be of a certain age to remember what life was like ‘before Liberty’ for Subaru. And you need to be even older again to truly comprehend why Subaru’s game-changer landed here minus its global ‘Legacy’ nameplate (‘Legacy Australia’ is a century-old organisation that supports military veteran’s families). Still, calling its new mid-sizer Liberty was no obstacle to Subaru achieving an enviable level of classless desirability in this country. The Japanese brand had built its reputation on hard-working, honest, slightly oddball vehicles that worked their way into Aussie affection, but it wasn’t until the Liberty – launched here in October 1989 – that Subaru truly came of age. Retaining much of the character of the past (such as frameless doors and a throbby boxer engine), the Liberty added…