Indice dei contenuti per January 2025 in Wheels

IMAGINE IF VOLVO was the second best-selling car manufacturer in Australia. It sounds faintly ridiculous, doesn’t it? After all, going by 2023’s full year sales figures, Volvo was ranked the 22nd biggest selling marque in this country. You probably don’t need me to tell you that Toyota was top and Mazda was second. It’s the latter point that’s key because Mazda was the 22nd best-selling marque in Europe that year, highlighting quite how different our tastes are to what we perceive as the nearest equivalent market. Our European friends seem mystified at the popularity of Mazda in Australia, which we’d think was odd given that they buy 3.7 Citroëns for every Mazda sold there. I was minded of such cultural discrepancies when I arrived in Australia many years ago and,…

BY NOW, you probably know that General Motors will be fielding Cadillac-branded F1 cars for the 2026 season. An astonishing USD$450m anti-dilution fee has been stumped up by the American auto giant to the other 10 teams to financially adjust for the fact that they’ll each get a smaller slice of F1’s prize money pot, a multi-year engine deal with Ferrari has been inked and there’s a clear timeline to the grid. One name that’s conspicuous by its absence in Cadillac’s upbeat press release is that of Andretti. After all, it was Michael Andretti and his Andretti Racing outfit that attempted to strong arm its way into the F1 reckoning in 2023, only to be snubbed, sparking a Department of Justice inquiry that has now been headed off by accepting…

I LOVED HER before I’d even seen her, or planted my feet on her. Indeed, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t fantasise about her and find her temptingly fascinating. I blame the opening sequence for The Wonderful World of Disney, which lit up even my black and white television as an impoverished urchin, and a Super 8 movie a primary school teacher showed us of his visit to the holy grail of children everywhere at the time, Disneyland in Anaheim. When I finally travelled to the US of A, aged 18, she turned out to be even more wide, wondrous and welcoming that I’d dared to dream, because Crocodile Dundee had sensationally laid the groundwork for me, to the point where Australians were a cherished novelty and a young…

WE DON’T TEND to think of Volkswagen as a late entrant to the EV market, having established itself with cars such as the ID.3 in Europe from 2020, but Australia is a very different market to the homeland, and we’ve skipped on the first wave of Vee-Dub’s electric products. That also included the ID.Buzz, which launched in Europe in 2022, but only now makes its way Down Under. There’s a two-phased intro for the ID.Buzz in Australia. The first vehicles to arrive, and the ones we’ve been testing, are the Pro trim level. These are rear-drive models offered in either short- or long-wheelbase guises with five and seven seats respectively. The range opens at $87,990 for the five-seat SWB version, with the seven-seat LWB Pro pitched at $91,290, barely squeaking…

Karl Reindler’s a busy man. Aside from driving the medical car at around half the Formula 1 races on the calendar, he also runs Infinite Road, a business that offers a range of expert services to the motoring industry. Fresh from overseeing the safety logistics of Wheels Car of the Year, we had the opportunity to speak to him about F1 safety and how he can bring what he’s learned at the pinnacle of world motorsport to assist car manufacturers run their various drive programs. AE: How did you come to the job as F1’s medical car driver? It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that just lands in your lap. KR: No, it’s a really unique role. There’s probably a few different things that kind of fell into…

WHILE GETTING HOLD of a Ford Everest Sport is relatively straightforward, don’t take that to mean that demand has tailed off. Quite the opposite, in fact. VFACTS’ November report showed that in the YTD 2023, Ford shifted 13,575 Everests, with the comparable 2024 figure standing at 24,018, a 97 percent improvement versus a drop of 61 percent for the run-out old Prado. The new LC250 Prado is another kettle of fish altogether, outselling the Everest in November (3590 units vs 2737). Between the two vehicles, they account for more than half the entire Large SUV Under $80K market here in Australia. That’s some duopoly. Toyota has claimed that its initial allocation of vehicles for the first year on sale is 25,000 vehicles, but there may be capacity for up to…

THE SEVEN-MINUTE CLUB at the Nürburgring Nordschleife certainly fits the description of a private members club. Until recently, there were but nine members; the very pinnacle of production performance cars that could stop the clock at less than 420 seconds for that 20.832km lap or, in simple terms, averaging better than 178km/h around the Green Hell’s 73 corners. Now there’s a 10th member of the club, and the first non European: the Ford Mustang GTD. We caught up with the driver, Dirk Müller, to discover the backstory to this remarkable achievement: “We started basically on the simulator, and later on we were using the industry pool session,” he explained, talking about the shared manufacturer bookings on the Nordschleife. “We were lucky enough, Ford Germany provided us with an entry there,…

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, Instagram or Twitter (search for Wheels Australia) “I’ve owned an Ioniq 5 N for six months and am constantly astounded by it” CONGRATULATIONS on the excellent Car of the Year issue. It was the best I’ve seen for a number of years. Of all the cars at COTY this year, I think you definitely chose the right one to carry off the win, but then I might be a little biased. I’ve owned an Ioniq 5 N for six months and am constantly astounded by it. One thing about owning the car that you really come to enjoy is not just turning the sound generator…

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MAZDA HAS launched a lot of large-ish SUVs in the past couple of years but make no mistake, as far as Australia is concerned, the CX-80 is the big ticket item. It sits alongside the now-established flagship CX-90 as the brand’s seven-seat offerings, but where the CX-90 is unashamedly premium, the CX-80 is campaigning at a far more affordable sticker price. Thing is, when you’re sitting behind the wheel, such is the impression of quality that you’d be hard-pushed to realise that fact and that could well be the CX-80’s trump card. It opens at just $54,950 for an all-wheel drive seven-seater, which means that it’s cheaper than equivalent rivals like the Hyundai Santa Fe or the Toyota Kluger. Heck, that’s mid-range Mitsubishi Outlander money. That figure nets you the…

HEAVY IS THE HEAD that wears the crown. The Ford Everest saw off all comers to win 2023’s Wheels Car of the Year crown and has been rewarded with some truly impressive sales figures. When you’re at the top, everybody’s drawing a bead on you, and there will be some who felt that Ford’s win was somehow asterisked by the fact that the ancient Toyota Prado was on run-out, ahead of an all-new model appearing. It’s time to find out whether they have a point, because the LandCruiser Prado has finally landed and we’ve put the biggest selling Everest model, the V6 Sport, up against the Prado GXL, the variant that Toyota reckons will account for just over half of all Australian registrations. The Ford offers an instant and useful…

We’re steeped in Nissan Skyline GT-R history here in Australia. It’s almost as if the history of Godzilla is somehow passed down by osmosis through generations of car enthusiasts. It’s part of the fabric of Bathurst, and all Aussie petrolheads will be able to hold forth on the exploits of Mark Skaife and Jim Richards behind the wheel of the all-conquering GT-R, and be able to quote the ‘pack of arseholes’ speech verbatim. It’s simply a rite of passage. Most will also appreciate quite how many hoops Nissan had to jump through in order to officially import the R32 GT-R and that for all of its illustrious reputation, Nissan couldn’t find 100 takers for it. Nissan Australia’s chief Ivan Deveson instead claimed, with some justification, that it wasn’t about sales…

Price as tested $78.500 This month 1574km @ 11.3L/100km Overall 1574km @ 11.3L/100km YEP, WE’VE replaced one Genesis SUV with another, in this case stepping down from the big GV80 flagship to something a good deal more affordable. While running the GV80, I lamented the fact that it had a voracious appetite for fuel and that it always felt like a very large vehicle. Say hello to what I hope is the downsized solution: the GV70 2.5T AWD, finished in Savile Silver. First impressions are promising. You expect a notable step down in interior ambience and sense of occasion when you switch from a $130K vehicle to one that’s over $50K cheaper, and while the GV70 doesn’t give off the same baby Bentley vibes of the GV80’s fantastic cabin, it’s…

LIQUID HOT MAGMA! Think of Magma as the go-faster arm of Genesis and you’d expect a range of BMW M, Mercedes AMG or Audi RS-rivalling road cars. They’re in the works but the Koreans have some very big fish to fry. They’re going to Le Mans. Lead designer Luc Donckerwoke has worked on the GMR-001 Le Mans car and aims to make it the most aerodynamically efficient car on the entire grid, with its V8 engine effectively two Hyundai WRC units sharing a common crank. Heading up the race team will be former Renault F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul who you probably recall barely surviving a brush with a tattooist in Netflix’s Drive to Survive. Daniel Ricciardo reuniting with Cyril at La Sarthe? Stranger things have happened. GRAN TURISMO AIMS TO…

I FEEL LIKE I need an apology from someone. I’m not sure who, but someone. About 15 or 20 years ago, the road toll in Australia remained stubbornly static. It was someone’s job to get it down, and they weren’t doing it. Even as the world’s automotive engineers innovated to make cars safer, the same amount of people were sadly dying on Australian roads. After yet another head-scratching, taxpayer-funded ideas session, it was seemingly decided that ‘hoons’ were to blame, and a type of war was declared. In NSW, generating worldwide interest was the 2007 ‘pinkie’ campaign from the then Roads and Traffic Authority. A series of high-profile advertisements depicted members of the public wagging a pinkie finger at people engaging in ‘hoon’ behaviour. In 2008, Victorian Police took things…

FRESH FROM claiming the title as Wheels Car of the Year 2024-25 with the truly innovative Ioniq 5 N, Hyundai is now preparing the ground to introduce its next significant EV built on the E-GMP platform shared by the Ioniq family – the Ioniq 9. Scheduled for a second-quarter 2025 release in Australia, the flagship large SUV and Kia EV9 rival will be a range beast – estimated up to 620km on the WLTP cycle – thanks to a class-leading 110.3kWh battery powering single- or dual-motor powertrains. Wheels joined a select group of motoring types on something of a magical mystery tour to the US in November to drive a pre-production version of the Ioniq 9 in the unforgiving surrounds of the Mojave Desert. Given its yet-to-be-finalised state, it was…

Ford Everest THE FORD Everest’s cabin is something that’s well executed and certainly a step up from workmanlike, but it still carries the whiff of its Ranger counterpart about it. Every Everest comes as standard with an embedded modem known as FordPass Connect that allows you to use the FordPass app on your smartphone to remotely start the vehicle, receive health checks and so on. Ford’s trailer-towing tech is deeply impressive. Input the dimensions of your trailer into the system and it’ll automatically adjust all the parameters of the lane departure system to cater for the increased length of vehicle and trailer. The Everest’s 2900mm wheelbase is a useful 50mm longer than Prado and it shows in the cabin packaging. Toyota Prado THERE’S LITTLE doubt that the Toyota’s dash looks…

Thanks to the turbo, it was more rear-biased than ever, exacerbating 911’s well-known handling characteristics I EXPECT VERY few of you will remember David Heynes, but he was a formidably rapid ‘gentleman driver’ who raced with great success for many years in historics until one fateful day at Silverstone in 2003 when, outwardly fit as an entire circus of fleas and aged only 56, he had a heart attack and died at the wheel of his Lotus 15. David was a close family friend and the reason for mentioning him now is that he was the man who first introduced me to the Porsche 911 Turbo. It was around 1978 and I’d have been perhaps 12 years old. I have no idea where we were going nor why I was in…

Price as tested $71,790 This month 1996km @ 7.0L/100km Overall 5970km @ 7.2L/100km THE RAIN LASHES down sideways as I jump puddles in my mate Kate’s driveway, desperately trying to Tetris our remaining gear into an Outlander that’s already full to the roof, apart from one rear seat saved for the Pooch. The rain slows our escape from Melbourne – the plan being to head far north to warmer weather and pristine beaches for a long-awaited family camping holiday in Byron Bay. I drive the first leg – a stop/start schlep through the last of suburbia, the Outlander in EV mode. It’s likely for the last time during our 1800km journey, and Kate notes how quiet the car is, even with torrential rain falling unrelentingly all the way to Albury,…

THIS MAY WELL be a first. This page usually farewells cars that have had a decent innings before being sent back to the pavilion. To extend the analogy a little further, the electric Ford Puma strapped on its pads and then was told to take them off again before ever stepping onto the crease. In Australia at least. Somewhere in the bowels of a press release announcing the introduction of the Transit Custom revealed “part of a broader portfolio decision that also includes the company ceasing plans to introduce the fully-electric Puma Gen-E”. Ford Australia marketing boss Ambrose Henderson said: “Since we announced that the Puma Gen-E would join the Ford Australia line-up in early 2023, the EV market, in particular for small SUVs, has changed significantly.” “There are many factors…