Table of contents for December 2018 in Wheels

HOLDEN HAS made an extraordinary decision to stop production of many of its popular models, affecting factories as far flung as Germany, Thailand and Mexico. The order to stop the boats delivering more new cars was made to address a worsening stock-oversupply crisis due to slow sales. Fresh from its worst-ever sales result – just 3927 cars in July – and months of market share below five percent, recently appointed Holden boss Dave Buttner has negotiated to halt production and deliveries of core models to clear existing stock. Holden has thousands of cars gathering dust in paddocks and holding yards, a result of excess orders placed before anyone predicted the dire position the brand would be in once it ceased local manufacturing late in 2017. “You have to be able…

What is it? The latest version of Mercedes-Benz’s variable-spark ignition system for petrol engines. While many ignition systems rely on a single spark to ignite the mixture of fuel and air in the combustion chamber, the Multi-Spark Ignition (MSI) can fire the spark plug up to five times per power stroke. Many of the German manufacturer’s engines are adopting the sophisticated system including its hero hand-built AMG 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8, which powers a wide range of potent machines across Mercedes’ passenger and SUV line-up. How does it work? In all petrol engines, as the piston rises to the top of the compression stroke, the ignition system fires a spark to initiate a controlled burning of the air/fuel mixture. This means the spark plug has just one chance to start a…

NOSE HIS STUFF ? There is always a fine line between contemporary cutting-edge design and plain ugly design. In their obsessive need to infuse the Lexus brand with a fresh style,Yasuo Kajino’s so-called ‘spindle grille’ design has given the Lexus range the most plain ugly, grossly over-styled front-end treatment that is totally out of proportion with the rest of the car. It looks as if it was intended to fit a truck or large ute. “The ‘spindle grille’ design has given the Lexus range the most ugly front end” Fact is, style is one of the three most critical aspects that influences the car-buying public. It took BMW a decade to recover from the ‘Banglebutt’ design disasters, and to see the new UX continue this polarising design style, history will…

“WE’RE really busy now,” admits Alex Ernst, team leader testing, Porsche. He’s the man heading this test of the 992, Porsche’s replacement 911, and after we’ve been out in the cars today, our seats will be filled by top-tier management for final sign-off. The pressure is on then, not least as Porsche will reveal the next Carrera at the LA motorshow in late November. However, Wheels managed to negotiate release of official images to give you a proper look at the finished car, pictured here. This test is one of the last for the new Carrera S. The cars we will ride in are disguised, though the iconic 911 shape is familiar, if subtly different. August Achleitner, vice president product line 911/718, elaborates: “There won’t be…

WITH the exception of that time I was on my way to an air-cooled Vee Dub festival in Cornwall and a group of bikini-clad girls started distributing lollies to the endless tailback of cars, and that time a hot-air balloon made a bad landing on the A303 and side-swiped a Saab 900, traffic jams have never been exciting. And yet, here I am, sitting in a queue of motionless cars, about to add a third occasion to that list. The relative silence around my little convertible is resoundingly obliterated by a swarm of lurid 1980s motorcycles. The battalion of possessed Bosozoku bikes scythe their way through the traffic, free-flow exhausts piercing my eardrums, a trail of dazzling lights and fluro airbrushed livery tracing through the traffic like a hallucination. On…

THE YEAR is 1991. Mazda has just done the unthinkable and snatched victory at the Le Mans 24 hour, embarrassing the favourites Jaguar and Mercedes in a din of quad-rotor cacophony. Later that year, the third generation of its RX-7 would start production, powered by a new sequential twin-turbocharged version of the evergreen 13B, marking the start of one of Mazda’s most successful rotary-powered models to date. It was a good year for the Japanese company’s cult-classic Wankel engine, but it would prove to be the peak of rotary power, and after the RX-7’s successor, the COTYwinning RX-8, went out to pasture in 2012 without producing an heir to the rotary crown, the bloodline of Mazda’s unique engine went cold. In the shadow of ever-tightening emissions regulations and plagued by…

Peugeot 208 GTi Peugeot was there in the seminal years of the hot hatch three decades ago and the 208 GTi Edition Definitive rolls everything the French maker has learned about compact and fast front-drive into a frenetic send-off for the current-gen. From its red interior touches, to the hunkered down chassis, grunty 1.6 turbo, manual-only spec and laser focus on the driver, there’s more than a hint of 205 GTi about this French finale. BASE PRICE: $31,490 Suzuki Swift Sport Japan left Europe to devise the hot-hatch genre before jumping on board the compact hi-po front-drive freight-train. The efficiently engineered result was historically served in a visually unsubtle, high-revving atmo machine. Yet the current-gen Swift Sport, while eye-grabbing in its signature yellow, has grown into a torquer, having adopted…

THE soft pre-dawn light has gone. The dew-ridden fields are a memory, darkness expanding as we plunge further into the forest. Now the strongest illumination comes from the shift lights; red, then a bluey purple as the V12 screams towards 8900rpm. It should be glorious, though it isn’t. Wet patches lurk in the shadows, leaf litter causes the Pirellis to shudder, and there are broken branches, smashed from the overnight storm, that jut into our lane, ready to gouge the 812’s flanks. Telling myself to relax only sees me grip the carbon-clad wheel harder as I grapple with the decision: lift and coast to the bottom or press on, revel in the speed and performance, and try to forget that this matte-grey missile from Maranello costs $800,000. I sit straighter,…

“BECAUSE IT’S THERE,” was all the justification George Mallory ever needed to climb Everest. Our aspirations are a good deal more modest than old George’s – and we’re banking on a more gratifying outcome – but the rationale is much the same. Why would you drive from sea level to Australia’s highest coach road? We’d prefer to ask why wouldn’t you, especially when that road, from Lakes Entrance on Victoria’s Gippsland Coast to the alpine resort of Mount Hotham, is quiet, testing, beautiful and irrefutably there. THE E53’S SOFTER SETTINGS EASE IT INTO AN EFFORTLESS FLOW For most of us, the route to Hotham involves a schlep down the Hume before drawing a bead on Bright and then tackling countless switchbacks up to the snow. The road less travelled from…

I CAN guess what you’re thinking: Inwood has been banging on about this white Volvo for months now. Yawn. But look closer; all is not what it seems. Yep, like many other Aussies, I’ve embraced this whole ‘downsizing’ thing and swapped out the (brilliant) XC60 T8 I’ve run since its COTY win in January for its smaller brother – the box-fresh, and highly sought-after XC40. My time in this new addition will be fleeting. It’s earmarked for Wheels online editor Ryan Lewis who’ll slip behind the wheel next month once his 3008 long-termer heads back to Peugeot HQ. For now, though, I thought it’d be useful to share my initial thoughts on how the XC40 measures up. After all, expectations are high: concentrating the goodness of the XC60 into a…

KNOW THIS. Because they control virtually everything on the vehicle, should the Touch Pro Duo screens on your Range Rover Velar go down, things go south pretty quickly. Drive modes, navigation, air conditioning settings and the ability to escape Mick Molloy on the radio are no longer within your aegis. Such a fate has befallen our Velar a couple of times this month, leaving us feeling about as hamstrung as the Newcastle Jets when the realised their marquee signing for 2014 was Emile Heskey. On the first occasion the main screens both went blank and, upon a hard reboot, the supervision screen between the main clocks locked itself into Dynamic mode and refused to budge, no matter which drive mode the vehicle was actually set to. It’s an unfortunate blip…

CARROLL Shelby once said of his most famous creation, the AC Cobra: “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – but you can make a mighty fast pig.” The fact is that Shelby had started with a silk purse, in the attractive, well-built and beautifully balanced AC Ace. AC Cars traces its history to 1901, when London engineer John Weller established a workshop to produce cars and components. Autocar & Accessories Ltd had its first success in 1904 with a three-wheeled delivery vehicle called the Autocarrier; the firm was renamed Autocarriers Limited in 1907, and AC Cars in 1921. By 1928, with motorsport successes, its own engines and seven models, AC Cars was one of Britain’s largest car makers. A year later, it went into voluntary…

When you think of James Bond, there is only one marque that comes to mind: Aston Martin. Ever since Sean Connery got behind the wheel of the DB5 in Goldfinger, to Daniel Craig driving the DB10 in Spectre, the two go hand in hand. So it’s no wonder that Bond is inspiring Aston Martin owners to modify their own rides to embody something that looks like it came straight from Q–branch, including the addition of Bridgestone’s new Potenza S007A performance tyres. Fitting. This one-of-a-kind Vantage has had the secret agent treatment, with a respray to a unique ‘Grigio’ grey and the addition of a carbonfibre front lip, grille and rear spoiler. But the real gains were made through a raft of handling enhancements, converting the Vantage from a comfortable sports…

DECEMBER-JANUARY AUDI Q8; BMW i8 facelift and i8 Roadster; FORD Endura, Focus, Mustang Bullitt and Everest update; GENESIS G70 and G80 sedans; HYUNDAI Ioniq hybrid, plug-in and EV; JAGUAR F-Pace upgrade and SVR; KIA Cerato hatch; LAND ROVER Range Rover P400e plug-in; LEXUS CT200h update and UX; MERCEDES-BENZ C63 AMG update and X350d; PORSCHE 911 GT3 RS; SKODA Fabia facelift; SSANGYONG Musso, Rexton and Tivoli FEBRUARY-MARCH ALFA ROMEO Stelvio QV; ASTON MARTIN DB11 AMR; AUDI A4, A6 and RS5 Sportback; BENTLEY Continental GT coupe; BMW 3 Series and i3; FORD Fiesta ST; HYUNDAI Veloster and Kona EV; JAGUAR I-Pace; JEEP Wrangler; KIA Cerato GT; PORSCHE Macan update; SUZUKI Jimny and Vitara Series II Ford Endura The Blue Oval’s replacement for the locally developed Territory will be hitting showrooms as you…

RUN WHAT YA BRUNG I recently read with interest an article in a local Queensland paper relating to speed cameras and the fact that the local council/government will be able to retain more of the revenue. As I’m sure many motorists will agree, the issue of speed cameras and their contribution to road safety as opposed to a revenue generator is certainly questionable. Of course, I agree that speed cameras have a certain role to play on our roads, such as in proven accident black spots as well as at school locations. However, I very much doubt that these are the only areas where they are utilized and then the question must be asked, ‘are they all being used for road safety?’ If safety on our roads is really high…

SPORTS CARS MAY be a dying breed, but the Z4 is a lively reminder of why they must be saved from extinction. This low, lithe two-seat soft-top is impressively agile and immensely entertaining. Purpose-built for pure driver pleasure, it’s everything an SUV is not, and can never be. Insatiable demand for SUVs threatens the survival of the sports car. Manufacturers know that adding SUVs will add to their profits. Meanwhile, the global audience for sports cars is diminishing. And this makes it ever more difficult to create a sound business case for them. We can thank Toyota for the new Z4, and BMW for the new Supra. Both companies insist their car would not exist without the other partner to a collaboration deal inked back in 2012. Disentangling the fine…

WE ALL have one relentlessly hyperactive mate, right? In vehicular terms, that mate is a Mercedes-AMG C63. Great for a laugh most of the time, but there are days when they (and the C63) need to be hosed down. Luckily, Affalterbach offers an alternative called the C43. It’s a fast C-Class more suited to everyday use, with a level of performance that can be explored and enjoyed without regular visits to a racetrack. For 2019, the C43 has been updated as part of the most comprehensive C-Class facelift to date. The 3.0-litre V6 found in all four C43 shapes (sedan, wagon, coupe and cabriolet) is fed more boost by larger turbos from the E43, lifting peak power from 270 to 287kW. Torque remains at 520Nm, as does sharp 0-100km/h performance…

THERE’S a highly evolved enthusiast scene for the previous-gen Jimny – a car that went on sale two decades ago and to this day remains in a class of one: a tiny, ladder-frame 4x4 with proper off-roading talent, at the expense of on-road manners. But now there’s a new one. Or perhaps a very heavily updated one, since that chassis retains its design, albeit strengthened with extra bracing to improve torsional rigidity. This two-door seats four, but only if you don’t need boot space, because its 377 litres of volume is only available with the wipe-clean, plastic-backed rear seats folded flat. Still, ferrying friends isn’t really on the agenda here. Jimny is built to appeal to keen fourby folk who need its terrain-tackling talents, but Suzuki also wants to push…

1 Power for Carrera S is up to 331kW, the engine mounts more rigidly, PDK transmission has an eighth ratio. The sprint to 100km/h will take around 3.7 seconds. 2 All Carreras will now be wide-bodied, while greater use of aluminium has trimmed weight, although exhaust filters and additional tech has put some kilos back. 3 Pop-out door handles add a little theatre, but also contribute to the improved drag figure: around 0.29, depending on the angle of the rear spoiler. 4 Wheel and tyre sizes for Carrera S mimic the stagger of the outgoing GT3, being 20s at the front and 21s on the rear. Base Carrera now on 20s as standard. 5 Newly added Wet mode uses sensors in the front wheel wells to detect water on the…

Wheels first railed against the Hume Highway in October 1954, when the story was headed “Death Road.” Since then, almost on a decade-by-decade basis, the road has been chronicled. Only when Holbrook was bypassed in June 2013, was the road finally duplicated for its entire length. Originally, the highway was named the ‘Great South Road’ in NSW and ‘Sydney Road’ in Victoria, only becoming the Hume Highway in 1928. It was named after Hamilton Hume who was (with William Hovell) the first European to travel a cross-country route between Sydney and Melbourne (then Port Phillip). ALSO IN WHEELS, November 1963 The Lotus Cortina graces the cover, with its “amazing” 110mph (177km/h) vmax impressing Paul Higgins, who is taken by the mixture of high performance and sedate aesthetics. Peter Hall meets…

Banging the drums Self-taught racing car builder John Tojeiro designed a straightforward, steel tube ladder chassis, with a steel tube frame to support the alloy body. Suspension was independent front and rear by transverse leaf springs and lower wishbones with telescopic dampers. Brakes were drums at each corner (front discs from 1957), not much troubled by the 760kg kerb weight. They put a lid on it The Ace was naturally a showcase for AC’s long-established aluminium coachbuilding skills. The interior was simple and graceful, with wood-rim wheel, basic instrumentation and upholstered dash. Later cars gained a lid on the glove compartment. Soft-top was a simple side-curtains and clip-on affair that stowed (with the space-consuming spare tyre) in the boot; buyers seeking practicality had the option (from 1954) of the attractive…

AN INTERNATIONAL WRC driver, bearing one of rallying’s most famous names, meets a local lass during Rally Australia. Romance blossoms, marriage and kids ensue, and eventually, they settle in Perth. That’s how it happened for Alister McRae, 47, though there’s a lot more light and shade to his story – including the bright star of his older brother, the late Colin McRae. Alister is the middle of three sons to Jimmy McRae, five-time British rally champion. Alister raced motocross from age 13 before making his rally debut, in 1988, on the local Kames Stages rally, as had older brother Colin three years earlier. “My career then progressed from Scottish championship to British championship, to doing some WRC rounds with Nissan and Volkswagen Formula 2 … In Formula 2 we won…

IF THE incoming McLaren Speedtail is a window into the British brand’s future, then you best strap in. There’s a good chance the future is going to look a little bit weird. Because, and there really is no tactful way to say this, the mightiest McLaren to date looks somehow unfinished. It’s as though some crucial elements (you know, pesky things like wing mirrors and alloy wheels at the front, or even some kind of downforce-inducing protuberance) have been forgotten in the rush to get it ready for its unveiling, and that, mere moments after the black silk was whipped back, someone at head office must have surely been receiving an Olympic-level bollocking for the cock-up. Not that it’s hurt sales, mind you. Just 106 will be built, and each…

“WE WERE annoyed by this notion that we’re all going be riding around in white boxes,” smiles Renault senior design VP Laurens van den Acker. “I’m not saying we won’t – for most of us, 90 percent of the time, that will be the reality – but we won’t only be doing that. I like to think there is hope for design, even in this new world. Who wouldn’t want to be driven in this? Tell me this is a white box!” There’s nothing like a deadline to set minds racing and change in motion. But when CEO Carlos Ghosn announced that a Renault robo-taxi would be a reality by 2022, you can’t imagine van den Acker and his design team were very inspired. Isn’t the ride-sharing, electrified, connected, autonomous…

Little SUVs increasingly big players HIGHLIGHTS Booming baby SUVs continue to be the growth segment, climbing by 14.1 percent compared with the same month last year to account for 12.6 percent of the total market in October. Medium SUVs, meanwhile, still make up the largest chunk of total SUV sales – they contributed 18.1 percent of SUV sales in October. Sports utility vehicles made up 43.9 percent of the market in October and account for 38.5 percent of the market year-to-date. But the growth of SUVs couldn’t offset the passenger-car decline... LOWLIGHTS: The total national market for October was down 5.3 percent compared with October 2017. Passenger cars (27,802 units) led the sales decline – they were down 23.6 percent compared with the same month last year, and among these,…

Making a model car out of Lego bricks is like trying to sculpt Kim Kardashian using nothing but fence posts, yet the designers at Lego have done an incredible job recreating arguably the most famous of James Bond’s rides. The 007 Aston Martin DB5 uses 1295 bricks – none of which look particularly like an Aston by themselves – to build a construction toy masterpiece. Not only does the kit evoke the iconic car’s looks that starred alongside Sean Connery in the 1964 film Goldfinger, it even pulls some of its neat spy-car tricks. Machine guns pop out of the wings with the pull of a lever, there’s a functioning ejector seat, and we’re certain Ian Fleming was predicting speed cameras when he created the rotating rego plates. Lego Creator…

IT’S ODD to think of a new car launch as the end of something, but this feels just that. In its latest 508, Peugeot has delivered – in concept at least – a broadly conventional petrol-powered sedan and estate with no electric tech, no high-riding all-wheel-drive version and no voguish ‘lifestyle’ frippery. Shorn of pretence, the 508 stands or falls on its substance, which is just as well, because beneath the slinky styling is a vehicle that’s refreshingly long on good old-fashioned talent. The sedan version we tested is both lower and longer than its bloated predecessor and its light too, the EMP2 chassis helping shave 70kg model-for-model off the kerb weight, the sedans weighing in at 1420kg. That’s less than a Ford Focus 1.5-litre hatch, so it’s no great…

THE PRICE tag isn’t the only thing absurdly large about a Rolls-Royce. Making them look and feel bigger and more impressive than every other car has always been a core principle. Ask, or perhaps force, its designers to produce an SUV like the Cullinan, then, and you’re going to end up with something that would belittle a behemoth. As one crayon-wielder admitted, they basically looked at the basic, two-box design of other modern luxury SUVs and decided it wasn’t big enough (and nor was the 7 Series platform BMW offered), so they built an all-new, unique three-box design that’s meant to capture “capability and elegance”. It certainly captures attention – at 5341mm long, 2164mm wide and 1835mm tall it would want to – and never more so than when it’s…

THE CITROEN C3 Aircross isn’t a car that does great first impressions. Its minor controls seem putzy, the ride and handling are nothing to write home about and the unremitting hard interior plastics lack the sort of quality sheen you’d get from something like a Mazda CX-3. Then you hear that Citroen is planning to price it somewhere in the $30K to $35K bracket and you figure it’s dead in the water right from the get-go. That sort of money buys you top-spec rivals like the Toyota C-HR Koba or Mazda CX-3 Akari which, like the Citroen, drive the front wheels only. That’s quite some company to be rubbing up against. Riding on the same 2640mm wheelbase as the Opel Crossland X, the Pierre Authier-styled Aircross is powered by an…

TINY DANCERS: Mazda CX-3 Maxx Sport AWD and Toyota C-HR 2WD AUSTRALIA’S second-best-selling small SUV has much going for it – striking design, stylish interior, great seats, strong performance, quality engineering – but the Mazda CX-3’s biggest ace is choice. Nothing else in its class offers the dazzling smorgasbord of petrol, diesel, front-drive, all-wheel drive, auto and manual flavours. Sixteen all up, in fact. Lots of choice, and within that lies some real gems – namely the AWD, since it upgrades the rear suspension from the FWD’s torsion beam to a De Dion set-up. Yes, it’s also auto-only, but in this case that hardly matters. In late 2015, an sTouring AWD auto chase car in our Mazda MX-5 meets Toyota 86 GTS comparo astonished all with its ability to keep…

SEVENTY years ago, to the very day this issue hit the stands, a nervous General Motors unveiled the first Holden, a cream 48/215 sedan. Based on a rejected wartime Chevrolet proposal out of Detroit, it was exactly what our car-starved nation craved. Of course, the ‘FX’ and every one of its 31 locally manufactured successors have since woven themselves into our social fabric, but today, post factory shutdown with only imports from Thailand, Germany, Poland, England, Mexico and Korea to rely upon, ‘Australia’s Own’ is stumbling and our car-saturated country no longer cares. Now, with the past a cross for the brand to bear, a worried Holden is once more looking to the US to find its way, with what many may be surprised to learn is the company’s first-ever…

WHEN I really drill down into the whole ‘weekend away’ thing, it’s possible that I enjoy the journey more than the destination. Sure, there’s plenty about camping that I do really like – a crackling campfire, being able to delight my camp-mates with a delicious meal made from just three ingredients, then horrifying them when I eat it like that feral kid from Mad Max 2. And how great is it to have a semi-legitimate excuse to abandon all personal hygiene for a few days? Ah, but then … eventually the reality of ants, flies, the lack of a comfortable lounge and Netflix documentaries can conspire to make me feel like an Akubra-wearing fraud. However, with the Jag cleaned and fuelled, I was at least confident that the journey part…

I WENT to school with a French kid for six months almost 20 years ago. His name was Lucien. I have never forgotten Luc because as a young Aussie everything about him was weird to me when we first met. We were both foreign students at a secondary college in England, and that gave us a bond, even though Luc’s English was no better than my French. His family had a left-hand-drive Peugeot 504 that had come across the Channel with them, and that was the first Gallic car I ever rode in. It seemed so much more interesting than my family’s Mazda 626, and by the time he left the school to go home I was really quite fond of that beige sedan. In fact, it’s the memory of…

BLAME THE Griswolds in National Lampoon’s Vacation. Their horrid 1979 Ford LTD is one of the most hideous examples of a wagon I’ve ever laid eyes on. Not only did it sear my retinas, it also put me off the body shape for over a decade. It wasn’t until Audi came through with the RS4 in 1999 that I paid any attention to cars of that shape. The clean design and brutal performance (mostly) had something to do with it. Since then I have developed a soft spot for wagons and the possibility of actually owning one has become very real. Enter the Mazda 6 Atenza I’m currently the custodian of. For a car that’s been around for almost eight years, its design is doing well to stand the test…