Table of contents for October 2023 in Wheels

CRIKEY. AN all-new Alfa Romeo supercar has been rumoured – and officially hinted at – for some time now. But we’re not sure anyone expected it to look quite like this. Meet the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale, a reincarnation of its Sixties namesake, but a thoroughly modern one. This is no overpriced restomod. Well, when they’re expected to cost three million euros apiece (so around $5m), perhaps the first part of that statement is up for debate. But all 33 cars have long since sold out, each going to customers hand-selected by Alfa and who have played a crucial role in the design of their car. No two will be the same. Indeed, there’s a stark choice that each buyer will have made at the very beginning of the process,…

IN A SWIFT and decisive verdict, Justice Jonathan Beach ruled on August 30 that “I have found against those four applicants [the Mercedes-Benz dealers] and their claims are to be dismissed”. A total of 38 dealers took the German company to court last year seeking a combined $650 million in compensation saying they were forced to sign new agreements under duress when their old ones were terminated. The case is particularly significant as it could influence the Federal Government to make further changes to the Franchising Code of Conduct, a fact Justice Beach acknowledged in his judgement today. “Given the facts of this case leading to an adverse result for the applicants [the Mercedes dealers],” Justice Beach said, “it may be that further consideration needs to be given to the…

DID YOU KNOW that speed cameras aren’t a thing in California, America’s most populous state? As I write this, there isn’t a single one in all of California. They’re literally illegal. “They’re all red light cameras,” says my Uber driver as I get a lift from LAX to downtown LA where I’m staying, fresh off a direct Melbourne flight. He’s talking about all the new-looking, white cameras on poles at intersections, identical to those occasionally hidden behind road signs in Victoria. “We don’t do speed cameras in California” he shrugs. Days later, I find myself on one of LA’s monstrous eight-lane freeways – during a rare period when they aren’t choked with traffic. Cars and giant pick-ups hammer down the far left lane at up to 90mph – 145km/h in new…

TWENTY-SIX YEARS ago, the original Honda CR-V defined the compact crossover in Australia. Now known as The Medium SUV, Honda’s strength in this segment has waned in the last 12-18 months, with Toyota’s RAV4, Mazda’s CX-5 and Nissan’s fantastic new X-Trail having entered the picture. As the CR-V has swollen in size for its sixth generation, Honda decided to employ the middleweight ZR-V – or HR-V in America – for Australia’s most popular market segment. Smaller than a RAV4 or CX-5, the ZR-V is still bigger than the Skoda Karoq and Toyota Corolla Cross. Available with two rows of seating, three trim levels and your choice of turbo-petrol or hybrid powertrains, the fixed-price ZR-V range spans $40,200-$54,900 drive-away. It seems Honda is more on-the-money with its list prices than when…

ALMOST EXACTLY 18 months after its Australian release, the Polestar 2 has been brought in for a major update. Not for the vanity tweaks usually associated with a mid-life facelift, mind you, the Polestar 2 is almost entirely unchanged in appearance. Blink and you’ll miss it. What’s underneath though? That’s a different story. The Swedish-designed, China-made Polestar 2 now claims the longest WLTP range of any car sold in Australia, beating the 100kWh-plus battery-packed Mercedes-Benz EQS (631km) and the Tesla Model 3 LRDM (602km). More on this later. It’s not that much more expensive than before, either, up by between $2400 and $3500 depending on the variant in question. For that, you get stacks more power from new electric motors, as well as a retuned chassis, lower carbon footprint (down…

AS THE countdown begins towards the baton pass from petrol power to all-electric propulsion, some unexpectedly intriguing options are beginning to present themselves for hot-hatch fans. All of which begs the question: “Should my next spicy five-door be a rasping turbocharged petrol or should I explore what’s out there from the new ‘silent generation’ – the torque-rich battery electric vehicle?” Performance purists will argue that buying a proper performance hatch while you still can is the only answer. The eighth-generationVolkswagen Golf GTI you see here will likely be the last all-petrol model in a lineage that stretches back almost 50 years – apart from an imminent (and final) mid-life facelift for the Mk8 – before the iconic Golf nameplate transitions towards electrification. But from the greaterVolkswagen Group’s own stable comes…

Two things brought the P25 to life: the 25th anniversary of the Impreza 22B’s arrival and the recent jump in the prices of used examples. Prodrive chairman David Richards recognised an unmet demand for a small batch of continuation cars whose rarity and careful re-engineering would justify a stratospheric price. “Several years ago, I set out to buy a 22B at auction,” said Richards. “I was prepared to go to £125,000, maybe even £140,000, but the car went for much more. Then I had the idea of making some cars that would show how the 22B could have progressed if it had stayed in production, starting with genuine two-door shells. This car is the result. We’ve finished up with something that’s way faster than a Porsche 911 GT3 RS on…

PRICE Recommended retail figure at time of publication (asterisk indicates driveaway price) ENGINE TYPE L, in-line; V, vee; F, flat. Number of cylinders. T, turbo; S, supercharged; D, diesel; H, hybrid; E, electric SIZE Litres or kWh POWER kW TORQUE Nm TRANSMISSION M, manual; A, auto; D, dual-clutch; C, CVT WEIGHT Kerb, kg 0-100 km/h, acceleration in seconds (Wheels as-tested figures in italics) FUEL CONS Consumption in litres, or kWh, per 100km RON Octane of fuel required, as numbered, or D for diesel RESALE percent, 3-year resale in Glass’s ISSUE TESTED month/year DRIVE A, all-wheel; F, front; R, rear. Any figure in bold is our own estimate.…

LAMBORGHINI’S FIRST ever electric car has been revealed at Monterey Car Week in California and it’s a low-slung, high-riding ‘Ultra GT’ that produces more than 1000kW. Yikes. Called Lanzador, which translates as ‘lancer’, the new model is a two-plus-two and will become Lamborghini’s long awaited fourth model line alongside Revuelto, Urus and the soon-to-be-announced Huracan successor. The Lanzador is officially a concept car – the production model won’t be built until 2028 – but Lambo says it provides a “concrete preview of the production vehicle that Lamborghini will present.” It also, says Lamborghini, creates an entirely new segment for high-performance EVs that it has labelled “Ultra GT”. As for size, the only dimension Lamborghini has provided is a roof height of 1500mm, which is about the same as an Audi…

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 108km/h I was clocked at didn’t feel an outrageous velocity. But I knew as soon as I saw the police car that I might be in trouble” BUSSED A MOVE I GOT BANNED from driving a couple of months back. No, I wasn’t high on meth or drunk as a skunk. Instead, I was enjoying my car on a very quiet rural road and was clocked driving at more than 45km/h over the limit by police. It sounds a lot, doesn’t it? 45km/h over the limit seems a terrible speeding offence. What I hadn’t realised was that…

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SHOULD WE be surprised that the long-awaited successor to the elegant and iconic BMWM1 supercar of the 1970s is a gigantic and obscenely powerful SUV? Not really. Love them or hate them, SUVs are what people are buying in 2023, so who can blame BMW for wanting a bigger slice of the ‘super SUV’ pie? It’s clearly a lucrative segment and one bursting with other eye-catching rivals like the Lamborghini Urus, Aston Martin DBX, Porsche Cayenne, Mercedes-Benz G-Class and the Bentley Bentayga. No, what’s more surprising about the new BMW XM is that it’s not terribly convincing. That in itself is odd. BMW M is on a roll at the moment. The new M2 is brilliant, the M5 CS is a future classic, and the the M3 and M5 Tourings…

VISION CIRCULAR, Vision Dee, Vision Neue Klasse - three concept cars in only two years, one overriding message: BMW is fully committed to a tailpipe emissions-free future. True, so are the other key players in the car industry, but the Bavarian Mobility Wizards are quick to point out that the next-generation models destined to populate the roads of tomorrow do not only qualify as reassuringly clean but also as personalised ultimate driving machines. Vision Circular lifted the art of recycling to a new level, Vision Dee introduced the panoramic head-up display along with an on-demand low-voltage colour-changing paint substitute dubbed E Ink, and now Vision Neue Klasse is about to showcase an advanced cell-to-pack architecture crammed with breakthrough technologies in a fresh low-drag signature wrapping. Like the original Neue Klasse…

AS FAR as corporate glow-ups go, Mazda’s has been fascinating to watch. Now deep into the most transformational period in its history, the Japanese automaker’s premium product offensive is in full swing – and the first results of it have charm, glitz and glamorous good looks in abundance. But our first experience with the CX-60 – the first of Mazda’s all-new (and we mean “all new”) vehicles to utilise its freshly-minted longitudinally-engined Large Product platform – produced mixed emotions. On the one hand it rewards keen drivers through its powertrain and chassis talent, but a brittle ride and poor refinement means the rest of the driving population arguably won’t be as impressed. And now, less than a month after the Australian launch of the CX-60, we have its bigger sibling…

SUBARU OUTBACK SPORT XT Price as tested $52,190 This month 1523km @9.2L/100km Overall 3259km @9.2L/100km THINGS THAT ANNOY me with this Subaru Outback? None. Well, nothing that makes me want to beat it to death with a shoe. Of course, there are a few low-wattage irritants. The wireless Android Auto set up occasionally fails to register a phone until a few minutes into a journey. The positioning of the rear view camera lens is such that it gets dirty quickly. The indicators can be finicky to cancel. There’s no wireless charging pad in the convenient pad-sized orifice. Oh, and a turbocharged version of an Outback should have a bonnet scoop. Really. It just should. Fortunately, that’s about it, which, for a person who’s liable to flare up like a pack…

RIGHT PRODUCT, RIGHT PLACE and the right time. Only occasionally in the automotive world do these three factors converge as harmoniously as they did for the Honda Civic, launched in Japan in 1972 and the US and Australia in early-’73. It was neither Honda’s first small car, nor the first transverse front-drive littlie, but the Civic – “created for citizens and cities” – nailed the sweet spot in a time of energy uncertainty and expense. It went on to be a major and enduring influence on the world’s small-car buying habits, and on the success of Honda and Japan. The 1.2-litre, four-cylinder Civic was attractive, space efficient and well equipped, and delivered big-car build quality. In 1973, however, even these were secondary to its fuel economy of 5.9 litres/100km (a…

JAGUAR’S BIG ZERO Gerry McGovern, JLR’s chief creative officer, is rarely short of something to say. Most of the time it’s some impenetrable guff about digital luxury or similar but Prof. McGovern really shook a group of investors to their boots at a conference when he claimed that the Jaguar brand possessed “no equity whatsoever”. He then dialled back the hyperbole with “pleasing every type of customer leaves you with mediocre products”. Strong stuff indeed. EIGHT BULL AMG has moved to tamp down rumours that it’s set to return a V8 to its C63, ditching the 2.0-litre four-cylinder for 2026, per a news story in Car and Driver. AMG CEO Michael Schiebe quashed the story, and was at pains to “definitely deny” the fact that the V8 was returning when…

LAST MONTH, THE good people at VicRoads informed me that I had been nominated for another speeding award, and won. I’ve taken to calling them awards as part of a self-preservation strategy that’ll hopefully prevent me going all ‘Cool Hand Luke’ on the council one evening and reclaiming the equivalent value of fines in destroyed parking meters. This latest acknowledgement of my exceptional speeding ability was, once again, not the result of a wanton flouting of the law but a simple misunderstanding of a speed zone – how was I supposed to know this particular industrial estate was 50km/h as opposed to all the other 60km/h zones, other than the signs dotted everywhere? The award letter that now sits proudly on display (paid) in the shredder has got me thinking once…

WHAT WERE YOU doing on Christmas Eve in 1994? If you were a Lotus engineer, you weren’t settling down in front of the box to watch a Christmas special. The team had been burning the midnight oil in order to get a running prototype of ‘Project M111’ to perform a lap of their Hethel test track before the business shut down for the holiday season. And things weren’t exactly going to plan. Deadlines were tight. Customers had been promised their cars in 18 months and everything about this vehicle’s bones were new. The first aluminium chassis had arrived from Norsk Hydro a month before and was a thing of wonderment for a company that was still building steel-backboned Esprits – a car whose origins dated back to 1975. Of course,…

A DVANCING THE auto industry is often tasked to the Mercedes-Benz S-Classes of this world, with technology then left to trickle down to more prosaic metal. But change comes in many forms. The real champions of the car world are those that revolutionise the mass market. The original Volkswagen Golf is a perfect example. And the 2024 MG 4 Essence? Well, for Australians, it may be the car that makes electric motoring truly accessible. For this test, we nabbed an MG 4 fitted with the medium 64kWh (gross, 61.7kWh usable) ternary lithium-ion battery pack for 435km of WLTP range in Essence trim – the highest spec until the XPower hot hatch arrives. It costs $47,990 before on-road costs and government incentives, so splits the difference between price leader and more premium…

THE WORLD may have gone SUV and EV crazy, but that hasn’t prevented Mercedes-Benz from investing all its talents in the seven-generation SL – its new-from-the-ground-up, two-plus-two roadster, wholly developed by the brand’s AMG performance division to make this the most focused and engaging SL since the 1950s original. Featuring a composite aluminium structure with an aluminium spaceframe, the beautifully proportioned R232 SL delivers best-possible rigidity for its comparatively modest 1895kg kerb weight (given all the tech it includes), with 18 percent greater torsional rigidity than the previous folding-hardtop R231 SL, as well as 40 percent higher longitudinal rigidity. It reverts to a cloth roof for the first time in two decades, and when compared to the similarly featured AMG GT roadster it effectively supersedes, offers 50 percent greater transverse…

one 1972 - BMW E12 5 SERIES A combination of Paul Bracq and Marcello Gandini was always going to come up with something bold and exciting, but this time round it was something that signalled the end of the original Neue Klasse and the start of a design ethos that would last until the end of E34 production in 1996. two 2001 - BMW E65 7 SERIES Chris Bangle’s design language was bold and shocking when it first appeared with the E65 Seven. With the benefit of hindsight, it aged well, with the E60 5 Series and the razor-sharp Z4 emerging as particular highlights. Bangle re-established Munich’s reputation for progressive design. three 2013 - BMW I3 The current Vision Neue Klasse’s use of advanced materials, bold use of fabrics and…

A SINGLE LOUD report from a big-bore titanium exhaust announced the Prodrive P25’s arrival. We had started hearing the growl of an approaching car a little earlier, definitely something with a decent helping of horsepower, but perhaps, we thought, it was some other potent machine, just passing by. However, properly bred rally cars generally produce a characteristic crack, when the engine ignition is cut to facilitate their near-instant gearchanges, and that sound was unmistakable. Within a minute, front and centre, its exhaust ticking from the heat, stood the final prototype of the P25, a restomod of Subaru’s ultra-rare 1997 Impreza 22B STi. It had been driven on shakedown by Prodrive’s founder and chairman, David Richards, who will soon start delivering cars to customers in earnest. We had arranged to meet…

FORD RANGER RAPTOR Price as tested $87,490 This month 448km @13.4L/100km Overall 5012km @13.0L/100km ‘WELL THAT doesn’t sound good…” The warning message first appeared just as I was parking the Raptor up after a long day at the office. ‘Drive control malfunction. Service required’ read the pop-up window on the digital dash, which sounded pretty serious. Everything felt okay, though, and when I switched the ignition off and back on again, the warning didn’t reappear. Phew. Full of optimism, I chalked it up as a software glitch, walked inside and did my best to forget about it. Which was easy, until, a few days later, the message appeared again. This time I was further from home so I was able to perform some quick diagnostic checks. Engine? Still as smooth…

IF THE KIA STINGER is not dead in Australia by the time you read this, it’s certainly on life support with a finger hovering over the switch. Kia imported 150 cars back in May and that was the final batch to be delivered to these shores. It has vanished from Kia’s local configurator, its flagship sporting car status usurped by the EV6. A car whose star burned so brightly for such a short period of time is about to blink out, and that is a bit of a shame. In truth, the Stinger was never a great performance sedan. I ran the range-topping GT for a while and it was one of those cars with a respectable turn of pace, but which always seemed happier the gentler you were driving it.…