Índice para July 2020 em Wheels

DUE SEP HYUNDAI PALISADE Thinking of buying a Mazda CX-9 or Toyota Kluger? Best pay attention. After months of uncertainty surrounding its availability to RHD markets, Hyundai has confirmed its full-size Palisade SUV will arrive Down Under. Two engines will be offered (3.8L V6 petrol and 2.2L 4cyl diesel) and the option of seven- or eight-seat cabin configurations. Expect pricing in the $50-70K bracket. DUE AUG TOYOTA YARIS The first all-new Yaris in over a decade arrives with cutting-edge safety tech (including an airbag between the front seat passengers) and the option of hybrid assistance to its standard 1.5-litre three cylinder petrol. Prices are tipped to jump sharply and start close to $20K. DUE AUG FORD PUMA The Puma’s arrival finally means the miserable Ford EcoSport is no more. Where…

Model Porsche Macan Turbo Engine 2894cc V6 (90°), dohc, 24v, TT Max power 324kW @ 5700-6600rpm Max torque 550Nm @ 1800-5600rpm Transmission 7-speed dual-clutch Weight 1945kg 0-100km/h 4.5sec (claimed) Economy 9.8L/100km Price $142,000 On sale Now SO YOU WANT a Porsche Turbo but can’t quite stretch to the $500K for the new 992 911. Plus, you have some rugrats that need ferrying to soccer practice. Well sir, step this way. This facelifted Macan Turbo is the most affordable way into Porsche Turbo ownership, and forgetting for a moment that $142,000 is a lot of money (and a richer ask over the previous model’s $133K tag), it also represents strong value when measured against its competitor set. You’ll need an extra $16K for a BMW X3M and $23K more for the…

SUBARU IMPREZA TURBO Made two litres, a turbo and all-wheel drive a classic formula. Still the most accessible of all the rally-reps, the Impreza is destined for Modern Classic status BMW 2002 TURBO The original turbo sports sedan undone by geopolitics. German press criticised its “provoking aggression” but its 127kW was limited by the gearbox, not turbo tech JAGUAR XJ220 A turbo icon, but was originally slated to have an atmo V12. Managed a 7m46s lap of the ’Ring in ’91. Jaguar didn’t find that noteworthy and told nobody MITSUBISHI CORDIA TURBO Surprised? Don’t be. Did more than most to move the meter on the power Aussies expected from a turbo hatch. Hit 400m in 15.9s in ’84, rewriting bang-for-buck…

OF ALL THE Ford Sierra RS500s in the world, none were as fast as the six Shell-liveried hatches that rolled out of Dick Johnson Racing’s small Acacia Ridge workshop in the late 1980s/early ‘90s. Powered by a 1993cc 16-valve four-cylinder Cosworth, these racers didn’t so much have a power curve, as they did power cliff. Think the Ferrari F40 has sledgehammer power delivery? Try driving one of these. Off boost, just 67kW worth of grunt was available to the driver. Once fully spooled, however, and all 34psi was being pumped into the engine, 507kW was sent to the rear treads. In a car weighing 1100kg. According to Johnson, the transition was “like a light switch.” If that sounds exciting, imagine piloting one of these grenades around Bathurst, in the rain……

IT’S SAFE TO SAY THAT 2020 is a year Marty McFly would never input into a time machine. Right now, the world is in desperate need of a bit of fun and if any new-car segment is ripe for the challenge, it’s the diminutive hot hatch class. Its remit is to excite and delight in all facets, whether you’re grimly hanging on at ten-tenths or hanging on grimly to the last bottle of hand sanitiser on your way home from Coles. This trio, then, could be the perfect antidote to the doom and gloom. If you’re going to be so fashionably late that you almost miss the entire party, then you had better bring the goods. Luckily for Ford Australia, the $32,290 Fiesta ST does just that and more. Wheels…

FORD FIESTA ST Price as tested: $32,940 This month: 519km @ 7.9L/100km THE ROAD snakes away into the gloom, its slippery surface climbing and disappearing into the low-slung tree cover. Puddles shimmer in the weak morning light and even from here, parked as I am on the hard shoulder, I can just make out wet clumps of leaf litter lurking in the shadows. This isn’t a road to be trifled with. Get it wrong here and you won’t run wide; you’ll run into a jagged earth wall or shoot into the ether before plummeting into the thickly grouped trees below. Fast running in conditions like these requires confidence, both in your ability to read the road and in the car beneath you. The Fiesta is relishing the challenge. This is…

VOLVO V60 T5 INSCRIPTION Price as tested: $72,390 This month: 437km @ 11.7/100km AS I’M A DESIGNER, and something of a design nerd, I really struggle to tolerate certain things. For example: the use of Comic Sans, bad Photoshop in furniture catalogues, and poorly designed cars. Not only do these burn my retinas, they also slowly kill a small part of me. At the other end of the spectrum, though, I greatly appreciate design that is well thought-out and elegant. This has resulted in a strong attraction towards early BMWs, which I find to be clean and restrained (unlike the brand’s modern efforts). To my eyes, the E30 M3 is a true stunner, though even now a well-kept 318i gets a long admiring gaze. In contrast, Volvo’s offerings from the…

YES, IT IS real. No, we can’t stop staring either. Welcome, dear readers, to our first official look at the polarising G22 4 Series which, quite obviously, has a gargantuan grille. But let’s put a pin in that for now because there are more important things at play here than how this car looks. BMW is pitching this second-gen 4er as its mid-sizer for drivers and has given it new engine tech, a stiffer chassis, and subtle dimension changes. Think of it as the 3 Series’ hunkered down, sportier sibling and you’re most of the way there. And if you squint, and imagine a tougher stance and bodywork, you’re looking at the next M4. Compared to the 3 Series, this coupe is 23mm wider and 57mm lower, which helps drop…

IT SITS beneath a dust cover in the back of a hangar in Hullavington, UK. James Dyson’s billion-dollar folly is an SUV with seven seats, sleek styling, some beautiful interior design quirks, a claimed range of 965km and no viable business case. “Electric cars are very expensive to make. The battery, battery management, electronics and cooling are much more expensive than an internal combustion engine,” he told the Financial Times, rueing the fact that the car would need to retail at $300,000 in order to break even. At that price point, it would be hopelessly undercut by its rivals. The three-year development project, which employed 500 workers was quietly shelved last October. What went wrong? Others “are making huge losses on every electric car they sell”, said Dyson. “They’re doing…

OUR TOUR GUIDE for the Porsche Museum is Michael Mauer, Porsche’s chief designer. Towards the end of our tour, Mauer is showing us the many cars he was responsible for designing. They include the 991 and 992 versions of the 911, the 918 Spyder, the Macan, the Panamera, and the latest 718-generation Boxster and Cayman. In fact, Mauer is responsible for every new Porsche since he took over as design boss in 2004, replacing Dutchman Harm Lagaay. Michael Mauer showing us around the Porsche Museum is a bit like Salvador Dalí or Andy Warhol giving us a tour of the Tate Modern, or Caravaggio showing us around the Uffizi. A star showing us his work and those of his peers. Porsche has had only four design directors in its history.…

Model Volkswagen T-Cross 85TSI Life Engine 999cc 3cyl, dohc, 12v, turbo Max power 85kW @ 5000-5500 Max torque 200Nm @ 2000-3500rpm Transmission 7-speed dual-clutch Weight 1240kg 0-100km/h 10.2sec (claimed) Economy 5.4L/100km Price $27,990 On sale Now VOLKSWAGEN is beyond fashionably late to the small SUV party. While the segment’s popularity has been exploding, and early adopters like Mazda, Subaru and Hyundai have been making hay with now-established nameplates like CX-3, XV and Kona, Wolfsburg has been noticeably absent. Enter the T-Cross. Swanning into Aussie showrooms this month, it’s the opening salvo in VW’s small-SUV offensive which also includes the soon-to-arrive (and slightly larger) T-Roc. The T-Cross is largely based on the Polo light hatch, which means MQB underpinnings and a 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbo with 85kW/200Nm powering the front wheels. At…

REDUCED TO its simplest form, a turbocharger isn’t hard to understand. Two fans sit at either end of a metal shaft so that both spin around in unison. One of these fans, the turbine, sits in the stream of exhaust gases exiting the cylinders. As the engine blows hot gas past the fan blades, they spin up, in turn rotating the shaft and the other fan, called the compressor. This fan is mounted in the car’s air intake so, as it spins faster and faster, it sucks more air into the vehicle’s cylinders. With more air in, you can throw in correspondingly more fuel. Bingo! More power. Anyone who has ever tried pumping up a road bike’s tyres using a handheld pump will appreciate that as you compress a gas,…

AUSTRALIA CRASHED the turbo party almost by accident. Put that down to the Commodore VL Turbo. The last of the line of the original Commodore shape was an odd thing; a stop-gap model that should have staggered to obsolescence given it was replaced just three years later by the brave new VN. Yet it earned a place in the hearts of enthusiasts via the fickle hand of legislation. Unleaded fuel rules spelled the end for the old Holden Black straight-six engine, so a deal with Nissan was done to fit the Skyline's RB30E in the 1986 VL. This was followed six months later by the turbocharged RB30ET variant. Available in SL, Berlina and ritzy Calais trims, it's fair to say we liked it. Back in August 1986, Wheels wrote: “The…

YOU’D LIKE Tim Rogers. As the 66-year-old accumulated his first fortune, from buying in fuel and selling and distributing it to 7-Eleven stores around America, he and his wife, Twanna, dreamed big. Sitting in bed one morning, drinking the first coffee of the day and peering through the window at the perfectly manicured garden of their country club villa, they imagined a members club for those who found California’s existing country club scene rather pedestrian. Just like the hundred-plus country clubs dotted around the desertscape of the Coachella Valley, at Tim and Twanna’s imagined club, members would be able to rub shoulders with like-minded, high-flying individuals or retire to their multi-million dollar luxury villa. However, the sound of a driver striking a ball would be replaced by the sound of…

IN A BID to prop up a share price that looked to be in a death spiral, Tobias Moers, the former head of AMG, has been appointed CEO of Aston Martin, bringing to an end the six-year tenure of Andy Palmer. Moers won’t formally take up the position until the start of August, with Keith Stanton, Aston’s former head of manufacturing, taking up the reins as an interim Chief Operating Officer, reporting to the Executive Chairman, Lawrence Stroll. While Moers’ resume is unimpeachable, doubling the size of AMG’s product portfolio while quadrupling its sales, his vision in strategic product planning has cemented his reputation. The company’s move to downsized turbo engines has been exemplary, but industry rumour suggests that Moers was only comfortable going so far along this path, leading…

YOU MIGHT remember Gabriel from our May issue. He’s the 13-year-old guitar player who wrote to the Wheels Inbox to tell us how much he loved the magazine, and how he especially loved Ferrari. Gabriel is such a passionate Tifoso that when he busks at the local market he has a sign on his guitar case that says “all proceeds to my Ferrari”. We applaud such dedication and entrepreneurship, so with help from Ferrari Australia, we wanted to fast-forward his timeline a little. Which is how we found ourselves at Gabriel’s front door on a chilly autumn morning, the deep bass of a red F8 Tributo doing its best to give away our position. Our arrival was a surprise (Gabriel’s parents were in on the plan) and seeing the unbridled…

But please, 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 failed to mention Australia’s largest state, which bats well out of its league!’ WIN! WILD WEST IS A DRIVING ROAD GOLD MINE! IT’S ABOUT TIME you did a road trip West to broaden your horizons. The post lockdown road trips you ran in the June issue of Wheels failed to mention Australia’s largest state, Western Australia. It bats well and truly out of its league in many things, including excellent driving roads! Having driven the lap, all 45,000km of our great nation, I can speak with authority about great drives. You…

FERRARI F40 (1987-1992) The F40 wasn’t Ferrari’s first turbo car and nor was it Maranello’s best. It’s neither as light nor as beautiful as its predecessor, the 288 GTO, but its appeal lay in its aggression and its undiluted charisma. While Porsche was building complexity into its 959, Ferrari was paring it back to deliver a visceral driving experience. McLaren designer Gordon Murray criticised its 1950s chassis tech and ‘marketing Kevlar’ but to drive one is to be awed by the savagery of its turbo power delivery. That’s why, for many, it remains the most desirable Ferrari of all. PORSCHE 930 TURBO (1975-1989) Consider this: In 1975 a Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 made 147kW. Add a single KKK turbo and suddenly a fast car turned into a 191kW rocket. This…

OPEN-WHEELERS Benetton B186 IT’S EASIEST TO think of the BMW M12/13 engine that’s nestled between the axles of the Benetton B186 as Formula 1’s version of The Mountain; the Icelandic weightlifter who made a habit of crushing people’s heads on Game of Thrones. Even now, 34 years after blasting onto the grid, this engine is unmatched in terms of outright power. Designed by BMW engineer Paul Rosche, the 1.5-litre four cylinder unit revved to 11,500rpm and was subjected to such incredible internal forces that it was built around used road-car engine blocks that had travelled more than 100,000km. The thinking was that if the blocks were going to break, they’d have done so already. “The car was like a bomb,” Gerhard Berger said of the B186 – the only driver…

THIS LITTLE FRENCH hatch was the most successful car in Group B, but unlike the short-lived top-flight rallying regulations, the engine that powered it went on to have a successful racing career for more than a decade. Codenamed XU8T, the 1.8-litre four-cylinder that powered the 205 Group B car actually started life as an ‘XU’ diesel engine for road cars of the time. A modified head was placed atop the engine, a KKK K26 twin-scroll turbo strapped to the side, and the whole thing was transversely mounted in a custom chassis with most of the bulk behind the co-driver’s seat to allow easy access come service time. The 205 was immediately successful, winning six-straight rallies between late ‘84 and early ‘85. A second ‘E2’ evolution of the 1775cc engine was…

HYUNDAI VENUE ELITE Price as tested: $25,940 This month: 367km @ 10.7L/100km I FELT LIKE I’d just won the lottery on Christmas morning. I even refreshed the web page a few times, just to be sure, but there it was in black and white: Victorian residents were now permitted to have five guests in their house as part of the first round of loosening social distancing restrictions. At that point, I hadn’t seen my friends for two months. Usually, I’d see them every week or so to play niche board games, drink copious quantities of wine, and then argue about the complex rules of niche board games. Problem is, my personal stocks of wine and new niche board games were running low. A trip for both was needed. Thankfully, I…

MAZDA CX-30 G25 ASTINA Price as tested: $42,490 This month: 1317km @ 6.3L/100km I’LL FREELY ADMIT that I was surprised that BFN872 has covered over 1300km for this report. It seems that even when used infrequently, essential journeys for a motoring scribe can tot up. So I thought I’d try to cover some of the CX-30’s finer details that you’d only discover with an extended spell with the car. So here – drum roll, please – are the Five Mazda CX-30 Facts You Won’t Find in the Road Test. 1) If your new Mazda isn’t getting the fuel economy you expected, just wait a while and it’ll get better. Throughout its tenure in the Wheels garage, the CX-30’s fuel figures have steadily improved, from 9.7L/100km to begin with to a…

“AH YES, the Ford Mondeo,” nodded the industry observer with a sad smile. “Another excellent car that Ford Australia failed to market correctly. It was practically invisible!” Think about it. When was the last time you noticed a billboard promoting a new Mondeo? Or watched a television commercial, glanced at a Google ad, or flicked past a print promotion spruiking the Mondeo’s greatness? Well, now you never will. Yep, Ford’s venerable mid-sizer is about to cop a bullet and once remaining stock disappears, it will be no more in Australia. It’s too simplistic to blame a lack of marketing spend for the Mondeo’s demise, of course. Like the Holden Commodore, Mazda 6 and Toyota Camry, the Mondeo has fallen victim to a shift in buyer tastes towards SUVs. Plus, there’s…