Indice dei contenuti per December 2022 in Wheels

LESS STUFF is more affordable – at least that’s the car-making credo of Dacia, the successful European low-cost brand that importer Ateco plans to bring to Australia wearing Renault badges. But what to leave out? “You will not find in our cars today an electric seat,” says Denis Le Vot, fast-talking CEO of Renault Group-owned and Romania-based Dacia. “This we consider not essential.” “Our job is to make choices, so we choose for the client. We don’t offer everything. We just keep what is essential.” One Dacia essential is the recycled Renault technology that provides the basis for its all-small five-model line-up. Some versions of the Sandero – the VW Polo-sized hatch Renault Group says has been Europe’s best-selling car to private buyers since 2017 – even come without an…

Model BMW iX1 xDrive30 Motors dual (front + rear) Max power 2 30k W Max torque 494Nm Transmission single-speed reduction Weight 2085kg 0-100km/h 5.7sec (claimed) Economy 18.4kWh/100km Price $80,000 (estimated) On sale Q1 2023 BMW’S SMALLEST SUV is back, larger and more grown-up for its third generation. And following into Australian showrooms a few months after pure petrol X1s will be this, the fully electric iX1. It’s BMW’s third wholly plug-in SUV, after the iX3 and ultra-luxe iX, and filters an impressive amount of the brand’s technological prowess into a smaller, neater and more affordable package. BMW expects around a third of new X1 sales to be the fully electric version, but with petrol and EV models coming down the same production line, the factory can be flexible to demand.…

HYUNDAI’S CHIEF STYLIST Simon Loasby has just three seconds to sell a new vehicle concept to one of the busiest, richest and most powerful men in Korea. Once a month, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung visits Loasby’s Seoul design studio. According to Loasby’s three-second pitch, the new all-electric Hyundai Ioniq 6 is “the most aerodynamic car we’ve ever done”. Fair to assume, then, it got the big boss’s attention. Created around the same purpose-built E-GMP 800-volt dedicated electric architecture that underpins Ioniq 5 and the Wheels Car of the Year-winning Kia EV6, the Ioniq 6’s 0.21 Cd drag coefficient is one of the lowest of any production vehicle. Mercedes’ own EQS – its first-ever dedicated electric vehicle – is the most aerodynamic series production car in history at…

IT’S GETTING EASIER – and cheaper – to join the electric vehicle revolution. The entry point for a new electric car in Australia is now $45K, and the competition for a spot in your driveway is intensifying thanks to the intriguing new, and very cheap, BYD Atto 3 electric SUV. Fresh off the boat from China, BYD – short for ‘Build Your Dreams’ – is one of the many upcoming new Chinese car brands either eyeing off, or just-arrived in, Australia. A small SUV built on a dedicated electric vehicle architecture, the Atto 3 is the first BYD model in Australia. It seeks to steal sales from the also Chinese-made MG ZS EV which has been on-sale in Australia since late 2020. Recently facelifted, it remains Australia’s cheapest electric vehicle…

SUBARU WRX SPORTSWAGON Price as tested $57,490 (+ORC) This month 327km @10.2L/100km Total 548km @10.1L/100km THERE ARE PLENTY of ways to get fans of affordable performance cars all riled up, but there’s one sure-fire method that Subaru just can’t quit: packaging a continuously variable transmission (CVT) with its now legendary WRX. This WRX isn’t blessed with an STI badge – indeed, no second generation WRX will ever be, sadly – but it’s still sold as a sporting car, and it still packs a formidable 202kW, 350Nm turbocharged four-cylinder boxer engine. Buyers of the new WRX sedan can opt for a six-speed manual – which most drivers do, but only just, with the sales split currently hovering around 55/45 in the manual’s favour – but in the wagon, it’s the CVT…

DUE 2022 PEUGEOT 308 All-new Peugeot 308 rolls in on the latest version of the brand’s EMP2 platform. Four-strong line-up opens with the GT hatch at $43,990; above that sits the GT Premium ($48,990) and GT Premium wagon ($50,490). All three run a 1.2-litre turbo triple making 96kW/230Nm. Price of the 165kW plug-in hybrid hatch yet to be announced. DUE 2023 SUBARU CROSS TREK Subaru’s XV nameplate has been given the axe. The company’s new compact crossover is called Cross Trek, and will be offered with two familiar powertrains when it arrives early in 2023. Volume seller will be the 2.0-litre boxer flat-four mated to a CVT, or there’s the e-Boxer hybrid which teams a 110kW/196Nm petrol four with a 12.3kW/66Nm electric motor. DUE 2023 ALFA ROMEO TONALE Sharpish pricing…

THE COMBINATION OF the popular Corolla badge with the on-trend small SUV form factor should, in theory, make the Toyota Corolla Cross nothing but a runaway success. But you’d be right in thinking Toyota already sells a car that nails this brief: the C-HR. The Japanese-built Corolla Cross even shares its TNGA-C platform and 2640mm wheelbase with that Euro-centric small SUV. For now, Toyota says, both will co-exist in harmony. And if we’re honest, the Corolla Cross’s looks aren’t particularly exciting, so its conservative design at least leaves a style-forward slice of the market open for the C-HR to live on. What matters is that the Corolla Cross addresses the practicality concerns of the hatch and C-HR – combining a boot big enough for more than a Shih Tzu and…

Sorento’s chic ‘GT-Line’ name against big-gulp Grande sums up each SUV’s approach PICKING between a Toyota Kluger and Kia Sorento was, historically, not very exciting. Both seven-seaters served a purpose – that being the ability to carry the parent’s quintuplets in relative comfort and safety – if little more. Launched in September 2020 and June 2021 respectively, the new Sorento and Kluger truly evolved – especially the Kia. With chiselled good looks, an engaging chassis and lashings of USB charge points, the Sorento impressed at launch, even if its 3.5-litre petrol V6 and 2.2-litre turbo-diesel didn’t move the game on like the cabin did. That became a problem when Toyota’s new Kluger debuted on TNGA-K underpinnings packing a self-charging hybrid based around a 2.5-litre petrol engine. The hybrid promised to…

JAGUAR’S F-TYPE has been battling an invisible enemy for some time now – objectivity. It haunts the F-Type, masking and distorting the way we perceive Jaguar’s stylish and dramatic coupe. When the Wheels team conducts a comparison test, we must be objective. The road testers can’t let our personal biases influence the end outcome, instead measuring each vehicle pragmatically and through a sometimes-dogmatic lens. This is an issue for the F-Type. Not because it is a sub-standard car, quite the opposite. But because objectively, it can often be outmatched by rivals. Fresher competition may have greater standard equipment, more refined power delivery, updated engine technology, or a wider dynamic ability. But objectivity be damned. Throw the logic out the window and let the F-Type’s true nature reveal itself. Purely rational…

CUPRA FORMENTOR VZE Price as tested $60,990 (+ORC) This month 306km @2.5L/100km Overall 306km @2.5L/100km THE VOLKSWAGEN GROUP has a new brand in town, and that made Cupra an obvious choice for a new addition to our long-term garage. And the Cupra Formentor, as the brand’s flagship model, was the shoo-in as the model to feature. We’re intrigued to discover the characteristics that will make Cupra, a spin-off from the Spanish Seat brand, different from stablemates Volkswagen and Skoda. Awareness is the name of the game for Cupra at this early stage, for a brand with ambitions of reaching 7000 sales by 2025. For perspective, it took VW’s Czech brand Skoda 12 years to hit such a milestone. There’s no surprise that, of a dozen or so people who’ve asked…

I REMEMBER LICENCE plate P79OAH very clearly. It was attached to Lotus’ first Elise press demonstrator, first registered on December 1, 1996, and I got to drive it on my very first multi-car test as a young journo. The effect it had was profound. I had no clue that cars could feel like that, could be as agile, as communicative, as infectious. It genuinely was a case of forgetting everything you thought you knew. Landmark cars will do that, and the Elise was exactly that. So perfect was the recipe that, just over a quarter of a century later, the final car which rolled out of Hethel would have felt little different to that orange original. There were three main Elise variants. The purest, the Series 1, was produced from 1996…

TOILET INCIDENT A JAPANESE bloke got himself in all sorts of s**t when he reversed his Toyota Will through the wall of a 700-year-old buddhist temple ending up in its ancient lavatory. Luckily nobody was hurt (no monks were doing any sacred business at the time) and miraculously, the stone toilets themselves were spared. The Tofukuji temple will require repairs to its wooden exterior, but fortunately the driver is well placed to help patch things up, being an employee of the Kyoto Heritage Preservation Association in charge of protecting such cultural relics as the very temple he erroneously selected reverse and ploughed into. THE ELECTRIC UTE – FROM APPLE? THE TAIWANESE company that made your iPhone now wants to make you a dual-cab EV. Foxconn, which manufactures devices for Apple…

EVs may be the future, but current lithium-ion battery technology is not the answer EV’S BIG PICTURE HAVING READ read Andy Enright’s big drive of the Mercedes EQS, ‘Change we can believe in?’ (Wheels, October), I suggest he’s presented only one side of the very complex EV equation. Here’s the ‘darker’ side. Whilst EVs may be the future, current lithium-ion battery technology is not the answer. Such batteries require the mining, processing, transport, refining and manufacture of large quantities of lithium salts, cobalt, nickel, graphite and copper; often from poorer countries at heavy environmental and social cost. (In the Congo, impoverished families pick through rubble for ‘blue’ cobalt nuggets which currently earn them a pittance.) Then there’s the increased battery and vehicle weight problem: should we include the manufacturing/environmental impact…

Model Ford F-150 Lightning Engine Dual (front+rear) Max power 433kW Max torque 1050Nm Transmission single-speed reduction Weight 2950kg 0-100km/h 4.5sec (claimed) Consumption 24kWh/100km Price $150,000 (estimated) On sale Not confirmed for Australia WHEN FORD announced it would produce a fully electric version of its iconic F-150 plus-sized ute, it prepared its books to take about 40,000 orders. Yet just a short time after the Lightning broke cover, the company had amassed more than 200,000. That’s why there’s currently a massive project underway at the Dearborn plant in Michigan to upscale its factory output to 150,000 per year by July 2023. The expansion of the Rouge plant just a short drive outside Detroit is historically significant for the Blue Oval, as the electric vehicle line occupies the very same land that…

MUSCLE MEMORY has me instinctively reach to indicate left. I’ve been at this intersection countless times, and almost all of them see me pointing my nose west. I’m at the helm of the 2022 Ford Ranger Raptor – a vehicle with promise so outlandish it seems like something dreamt up by a hallucinating toddler – with Reefton Spur at my back. Reefton is one of Melbourne’s greatest driving roads, as well as one of its most well-known. This, in turn, results in plenty of traffic, particularly on weekends. If you tackle C511 from Warburton, the done thing once you reach Cumberland Junction is take an easy left, transition to C512 (Marysville-Woods Point Road) and follow the winding black ribbon to the excellent Lake Mountain. Not today. Instead, we are eschewing…

MITSUBISHI OUTLANDER PHEV Price as tested $68,490 This month 1695km @8.4L/100km Overall 2276km @8.3L/100km ADMISSION TIME: I’ve been a rubbish PHEV owner so far. Almost to the day since this Diamond White Outlander PHEV arrived in the Wheels garage, my life has been a whirlwind of interstate trips, airport carparks and multicar comparison tests mostly held in the boonies outside of Melbourne. All of this has made plugging the Outlander in quite tricky, as least on a regular basis. And then I packed up the family for a holiday in the sticks and that made plugging it in virtually impossible. A plug-in vehicle that I’ve hardly plugged in? Told you I’ve been rubbish… Still, risk of having my ‘plug in card’ revoked aside, it has been an instructive case study…