Wheelsの March 2022 の目次

THE TYPICAL WAITING time for a new car in Australia increased by 250 percent since the start of the pandemic, with the average time for many models extending beyond six months, according to figures released by vehicle pricing advice website PriceMyCar.com.au. The data, compiled from dealers, vehicle brokers and buyers who enter the price of a vehicle and its estimated delivery date, shows the average national waiting time for a new vehicle had increased from 36 days in January 2020 to 126 days in January 2022. The estimated delivery dates, which are collated by make and model, and by state, reveal the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) group topped the list last month with an average 218-day wait, followed by Volvo (199), Isuzu (189), Toyota (180) and Kia (173). JLR Australia…

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) “The Territory and Ranger have shown we can design and build great world vehicles if left alone” TURTLE-NECKED THANK YOU TO ANGUS MacKenzie for your column that provided a history lesson on Australia’s competitiveness in the automotive market. We were always going to find it hard to compete in the world market for financial resources, especially with a Government that saw few votes coming from an ‘old industry’. We have had some great products over the years, but with a market under a million a year, Australia just couldn’t attract long-term funding. Relying upon the Americans didn’t help…

WHETHER THE CT5-V Blackwing is a swansong for performance Cadillacs or a straight-up beatdown on the competition from Europe, this American super sedan is a marvel of luxury-focused performance. The Blackwing replaces the CTS-V, which was a formidable four-door in its own right, and brings modern technology and the latest in gofast engineering to the mix. Still, with General Motors now focused on becoming a serious EV player, this quickest of all Cadillacs might very well be the last of the internalcombustion breed. Under the sculpted bonnet is a development of the supercharged 6.2-litre V8. Relative to the CTS-V, this engine benefits from improved intake tuning, titanium intake valves, as well as efficiency improvements for the supercharger and intercoolers. Each LT4 is assembled by a single specialist engine builder, tuned…

NAPOLEON COMPLEX, small-dog syndrome – whatever you want to call it – it all means the same thing. Let’s just go with the dictionary definition: “A domineering or aggressive attitude perceived as a form of overcompensation for being physically small or short.” Examples? How about the Ford Fiesta ST and Hyundai i20 N? No matter what you’re driving or how much power you have, on a tight, twisty road you can guarantee these little terriers will be sniffing your rear end inappropriately with headlights ablaze. But which is best? The Fiesta ST has had a stranglehold on this segment for almost a decade. The previous generation WZ defined cheap and cheerful, effortlessly batting away challenges from the likes of the VW Polo GTI, Renault Sport Clio RS and Peugeot 208…

IT’S DECEMBER 1988. You’re about to buy a Ferrari 328. But what about this new mid-engined Ford, claimed to best every other sports car, at any price? It’s grippier than even a Testarossa and Countach and outhandles a 911 through a slalom – no surprises there: F1 champion Jackie Stewart helped develop it. And its Yamaha-Ford V6 sounds like a ripper. Not to mention everyday usability thanks to good vision, convenient access, a proper boot and Ford-size bills. The Ghia-designed targa body looks the business, too; right up there with the Testarossa for a third of the price. Too good to be true? Well, it came close to reality. Through the ’80s, a skunkworks team at Ford Special Vehicle Operations conceived and developed a supercar called GN34. It would utilise…

The new Defender is crammed with technology to make its forebear look foot-powered and from the Flintstones THE BRIGHT pink truck with black flames heaves to a halt, the sun illuminating a trailing cloud of dust for a truly ethereal sight. Having heard “truck coming” crackle through the two-way radio from photographer Alastair Brook – hiding in the bushes somewhere – I’ve reversed our Land Rover Defender test car on to a grassy verge in this remote pine plantation many miles east of Melbourne. It’s not the first logging truck to come past, but it’s the first one that’s ominously stopped. A stocky, middle-age man with forearms the size of bowling pins climbs from the cab. He’s wearing a mask (surgical, not hockey) so I can’t tell his expression, but…

KIA SPORTAGE GT-LINE Price as tested $55,510 (inc paint; D/A) This month 421m @ 9.0L/100km Overall 873km @ 9.5L/100km THERE are three powertrains in the new Kia Sportage line-up, but only one of them is properly deserving of your attention: this 2.0-litre turbo diesel. The naturally-aspirated 115kW/192Nm 2.0-litre petrol mill and six-speed auto combo at the entry end of the range is a stressed price leader, while the usually impressive 132kW/265Nm 1.6 turbo petrol and seven-speed dual-clutch auto occasionally feels overwhelmed in a family SUV that weighs a few hundred kilos more than its best application in the Cerato GT hatch. So where the 2.0 petrol is best left to corporate fleets, and the 1.6 turbo petrol at least deserves consideration, this 2.0 turbo diesel with its eight-speed automatic is…

THE GUILLOTINE HAS fallen on Australia’s cheapest car. For almost a decade the current generation Mitsubishi Mirage has survived tumultuous sales and a shaky segment only to be left with a target on its back thanks to a legislation change that’s landed a few cars in our Driven to Extinction series. We’ll get to that. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that Australians were met in showrooms by the Mirage nameplate, the fifthgeneration CE replacing Mitsu’s previous-gen light hatch, the Colt. The three-door hatchback sibling to the Lancer is affectionately remembered much the same way other Mitsubishis of the era. It was hard to go wrong with a sub-$15,000, 1.5-litre four-cylinder (and often manual) hatchback, making it a tempting first car for many Australians. A shade short of 70kW and a…

THINK OF THE BEST cars Australia’s missed out on. There are fantasy garages full of virtual metal that never made its way here, cars we could only buy on Gran Turismo like Nissan’s R33 GT-R, Ford’s Shelby Mustang or the original Audi RS2. Yet there’s one car that we and our mates over the ditch in New Zealand shared with Japan and nowhere else: the 1999-2002 Nissan S15 200SX. The S15 – 200SX here but Silvia in Japan – remains the last affordable, front-engine, rear-drive Japanese sports car that delivered more thrills than rivals costing several times as much. A crescendo of Nissan goodness, it was also a perfect tuning platform for an entire culture – and is now the most winning car by a substantial margin in Japan’s D1…

THE once-beloved sports sedan has suffered a fall from grace over the years. SUVs rose to fashion and, since the demise of our local car industry, development of notable new examples has grown fewer and farther between. Now, N Division has released the Hyundai i30 Sedan N. A slick, featurefilled performance sedan keenly positioned at $49K (before on-road costs), representing one of the most compelling cases for a circa-$50K sports sedan in recent times. With just one highly equipped model offered, the only additional equipment you can opt for are the sunroof ($2000) and premium paint ($495). As standard, you get: automatic LED front lights and LED rear lights, active variable exhaust, e-LSD, eight-speaker Bose sound system, 10.25-inch digital cluster, 10.25-inch infotainment screen, Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, keyless entry, wireless charging…

FASTER, MORE powerful, more capable and bristling with high-tech systems and hardware. Even if this is roughly what you were expecting from Ford’s all-new super ute, the second-generation Ranger Raptor, the man in charge of creating it reckons a further recalibration is in order “It’s a quantum shift, I’ll tell you that,” says Justin Capicchiano, Ford Performance program manager. “The step change is huge; it’s a different thing altogether. You guys aren’t ready for it.” As ever, the devil is in the engineering detail but let’s start with the headlines. The biggest change, and the one that will most obviously alter the Raptor’s personality and performance, is its engine. Gone is the controversial (and arguably underpowered) 2.0-litre twin-turbo diesel of the first-gen Raptor. In its place slots the same 3.0-litre…

TREVOR WORTHINGTON arrives at the gate of the Ford Proving Ground driving a Twister Orange Mustang Mach 1 and, as far as metaphors go, it’s not a good one. Unlike the lurid coupe he’s piloting, Worthington is a humble bloke and doesn’t shout about what he does, and I wonder how many drinks it would take before the mild-mannered Aussie finally hinted he’s one of the biggest names in the global automotive landscape. No-one alive today deserves greater recognition for some of the Blue Oval’s most successful models, while Ford Australia’s rise to a developer of global models can also be largely attributed to the current vice president of global product development operations and vehicle programs. But while Worthington now resides nearer Ford’s heartland in the USA, the engineer started…

CONVINCING SOMEONE that electric vehicles are exciting is not hard. Chuck them the keys to a Rimac, point them at the nearest circuit and you can be certain they’ll be flying the zero-emissions flag for the rest of their days. But the conversion becomes a little more challenging if you don’t have access to one of the world’s fastest EVs and a private race track – and it’s made harder still by motorsport. Most car manufacturers are transitioning into majority (if not exclusively) purveyors of EVs, claiming that the brightest future is electric. And yet, when the weekend rolls around, race tracks are a cacophony of combustion. At worst it’s hypocritical; at best it’s simply inconsistent. Either way, petrol power in motorsport is damaging the message that battery is best.…

HYUNDAI i30 N DCT Price as tested $52,000 (+ORC) This month 1038 @ 10.8L/100km Overall 6125km @ 10.3L/100km TOURING ability is essential for the modern sports car. With the best roads, racetracks and hillclimbs often in the middle of nowhere, long hours behind the wheel are usually necessary. And whether they leave you relatively fresh at the end – or with ringing ears and homicidal urges – depends entirely on your vehicle of choice. Today, that’s our Hyundai i30 N DCT long-termer which we are going to fire up the Hume Highway from Melbourne to roughly Wangaratta and back, a 1038km experiment to find if the experience is more Qantas First Class or Backwater Airlines Economy. Our first moments behind the wheel of the i30 N are, with the prospect…

MAZDA MX-30 Price as tested $42,480 (+ORC) This month 685km @ 8.6L/100km Overall 1023km @ 8.5L/100km THE LADY WALKING her doe-eyed Labrador paused to ask me a simple car question, but I was momentarily (almost) too thick to realise we had a misunderstanding. “What sort of range do you get from that?” she wanted to know. I was about to answer, “Around 500km, depending on how hard I thrash it…” when I realised where our wires had become crossed. “Ah, you think this is an electric car, right?” I asked her. She pointed to the small, blue triangular decal on the numberplate with the letters ‘EV’, and shot back, “Isn’t it?” I had to explain that the EV sticker is actually a warning designed to advise emergency service workers responding…

THE VISION EQXX is how we imagine the future of electric cars,” says Mercedes-Benz chairman Ola Källenius. “It underlines where our entire company is headed: We will build the world’s most desirable electric cars.” That’s quite some mission statement, especially for a carmaker that effectively established the template for the modern internal combustion motor vehicle more than 120 years ago. Put simply, the Vision EQXX represents a profound intellectual and technological inflection point for Mercedes-Benz. A fully functional prototype that explores the outer limits of electric vehicle efficiency, connectivity, and production feasibility, the EQXX shows what’s possible when a pillar of the automotive establishment turns its massive research and development resource entirely to thinking about designing and engineering a better electric vehicle. This Mercedes puts over-hyped, over-valued electric vehicle startups…

DUE JUNE RANGE ROVER This fifth-gen will be the first Range Rover to go EV, though not until 2024. For now, prices start at $220,200 for the SE D300 running a mild-hybrid 3.0-litre twin-turbo diesel inline six producing 221kW/650Nm, topping out with the SV P530 LWB (petrol V8; 390kW/750Nm) from $391,800. The P440e ($229,200) and P510e plug-in hybrids ($292,900) provide just over 100km of electric driving. DUE Q2 HAVAL H6 GT Haval is bringing a sloping roofline (à la BMW X4 and Audi Q5 Sportback) to its popular H6 mid-sizer. A roof spoiler, Brembo brakes, sports seats, and new trim elements enhance the sporting vibe, though its 2.0-litre turbo four with 150kW and 320Nm remains unchanged. Expect pricing near $45,000. DUE H2 CUPRA ATECA Offered only in high-spec VZx trim,…

WHEN IT comes to infusing Porsche DNA with an SUV, the Macan arguably does a better job of it than the Cayenne. The Macan is lighter, lithe and with a shorter, sportier wheelbase – which is why the Porsche look works better on the Macan as well. To keep the Macan feeling fresh before an EV version arrives alongside it in 2023, Porsche has activated another update comprising interior, exterior and performance tweaks. The changes build upon the Macan’s 2019 facelift and redesigns the front bumper around a new grille. Meanwhile, at the rear, the new bumper insert is separated into sections that better accentuate the outboard exhaust tips. The range has also been consolidated to three variants, for now, starting off at $84,800 for the base Macan, then jumping…

LIGHT RAIN HAS been falling steadily over Sydney Motorsport Park for the launch of the new 2022 Subaru BRZ, so I figure it may be pertinent not to attack the South Circuit like a tubby kid at a confectionary buffet. Still, I’m a bit startled by how relative caution and a modest entry speed bring a big oversteer moment through the fast downhill left-hander flanking Corporate Hill. The quick steering and innate chassis feedback make tidying things up pretty straightforward, so I mash the throttle for the exit down to the tight left. The flat-four whirrs and thrums, but beyond 6000rpm the power is tailing off and the tacho needle is in no rush to look the limiter in the eye at 7200rpm. Doesn’t sound like an especially auspicious opening…

IT’S TRICKY TO pinpoint exactly when the world’s luxury car brands hit their respective panic buttons, upon realising the Tesla-inspired and emissions-influenced electric-car revival was neither another GM EV1 moment nor an industry anomaly. Audi, BMW and Mercedes are all just about on an EV roll in the catch-up game, yet only now are we seeing the first battery vehicles from Lexus and Volvo. The lateness of an electric Lexus is particularly surprising when you consider its parent company pioneered hybrid technology more than two decades ago. Electrification seems a natural fit for a brand as wholesome as Volvo, too, and the Swedish company, after stating in 2017 it would offer a mix of variously electrified vehicles from 2025, has since declared all its cars will be fully electric from…

01 ROSBERG X RACING (RXR) Founded by 2016 F1 champion turned eco-entrepreneur Nico Rosberg, RXR is the inaugural winner of the 2021 championship. Molly Taylor, 2016 Australian Rally Champion, is the only Australian driver to compete in the championship, while teammate Johan Kristofferson comes to the squad with four World Rallycross championship titles. 02 X44 Continuing the F1 ace theme, X44 was formed by seven-times F1 champion Lewis Hamilton and is run by three-times WRC champions Prodrive. Driver Cristina Gutierrez was the first Spanish woman to enter the gruelling Dakar rally in 2017 and she joined forces with nine-time WRC champion and allround driving legend Sebastien Loeb. 03 JBXE JBXE brings yet more Formula 1 heritage to the Extreme E series via founder Jenson Button. Button drove in the first…

SUBARU OUTBACK TOURING Price as tested $47,790 (+ORC) This month 551km @ 8.3L/100km Overall 1443km @ 9.4L/100km LAST MONTH, the Scientist and I handed our top-spec Outback Touring to our mate Sebastian Quirit, as we were keen to see what the owner of three actual children (as opposed to the furry kind) would make of Subaru’s big wagon. Seb was impressed with both the Outback’s ability to comfortably accommodate his brood, as well as the efficacy of the car’s EyeSight driver assistance tech. And as an avid club racer, he was also pleased to find the Outback is as entertaining in the twisty bits as one might hope a mass-market family car to be. While I regained custody of the Outback for Christmas, Omicron nixed our planned jaunt up the…

THE STORY OF the Valiant Charger R/T E38 is, like the Valiant Pacers before it, forever that of a great car hobbled by a threespeed gearbox and missing Bathurst glory – but one of a great car nonetheless. The E49 of the following year should have made amends, with its four-speed helping the six-cylinder Charger to even quicker acceleration times than the fabled Falcon GTHO Phase III. But it couldn’t run from Chrysler Australia’s problems; the company would be sold to Mitsubishi by the end of the decade. The Valiant commenced local manufacturing in 1963 and gained a promising foothold, the VE-series taking Wheels’ Car of the Year in 1967. However, the locally styled VH of 1971 was a marketing and packaging misstep, with buyers spurning its bloated styling. In…