Innehållsförteckning för June 2024 från Wheels

COLLECT ALL OF THE ICONIC GREATS AUSTRALIAN CARS THE COLLECTION Discover an exceptional collection of 1:43 scale Australian car models, vividly bringing to life the rich motoring heritage of Australia. ISSUE 1 $6.99 inc. GST HOLDEN MONARO HK GTS 327 (1968) With each model, a magazine where you will find specially selected archive articles from different Wheels magazines, Australia’s ultimate reference for motoring journalism. STEP INTO A FASCINATING WORLD WHERE YOU HAVE THE UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO DISCOVER THE INITIAL IMPRESSIONS OF AUTOMOTIVE JOURNALISTS AS THESE VEHICLES FIRST HIT THE ROAD. SCAN ME! AT NEWSAGENTS NOW! ISSUE 02 CHRYSLER VH VALIANT CHARGER R/T E49 (1972) ISSUE 03 FORD XC FALCON COBRA (1978) ISSUE 04 HOLDEN EH SPECIAL SEDAN (1964) ISSUE 05 FORD XY FALCON GT (1970) ISSUE 06 CHRYSLER VALIANT S-SERIES (1963)…

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 cannot look at a Ford with any fondness. When my son bought an Everest, I was devastated” THANKS FOR the great story on the Holden Museum – a real Australian motoring story. My Grandfather owned an FJ and it was the first car I ever drove in. Later, when my uncle bought an EJ, I thought it was so modern and exciting. That was when I became a firm Holden man, or a Holden boy at the time. I loved everything about Holden, especially when they won on the Mountain. Still to this day I cannot look…

VOLVO HAS BEEN in a relatively quiet product period after delivering a cracking trio of SUVs between 2015 and 2019, but now comes a pivotal smaller SUV to sit below the XC90, XC60 and XC40. Predicted to become Volvo’s best seller, the EX30 is a battery compact SUV pitched at a younger audience that continues the Swedish brand’s transition to an all-electric line-up – from 2030 globally and, even more ambitiously, 2026 locally. Direct rivals aren’t in short supply. They include the Cupra Born, VW ID.3, Hyundai Kona Electric, Peugeot e-2008, and Renault Megane E-Tech. There’s also the upcoming Mini Countryman Electric. Despite being Volvo’s smallest model, the EX30 isn’t its cheapest. The three-strong EX30 line-up starts from $59,990, positioning it five grand above the petrol-powered entry-level XC40. The mid-range…

Model Kia Sportage GT-Line Hybrid Engine 1598cc 4cyl, dohc, 16v, turbo + hybrid System Power 169kW System Torque 350Nm Transmission 6-speed automatic Weight 1738kg Economy 4.9L/100km (combined) 0-100km/h 8.0sec (claimed) Price $55,420 On sale Now IF YOU’RE CONCERNED about energy consumption but aren’t ready to take a punt on an EV purchase just yet, then the burgeoning number of hybrids on offer should make your wallet tingle and your inner efficiency nerd titter with delight. Take the new Kia Sportage Hybrid. This front-drive, turbo-petrol hybrid has been two-and-a-half years in the making for Australia, but it’s a case of better late than never given its excellent 4.9L/100km combined fuel consumption, its punchy 8.0-second 0-100km/h acceleration claim, and its relatively attainable $46-55K pricing. True competitors remain relatively scarce – Toyota RAV4…

Model Porsche Macan 4 Electric Motor Two permanent magnet synchronous Battery 100kWh (net) Max power 285kW Max torque 650Nm Transmission 1-speed reduction Weight 2330kg 0-100km/h 5.2sec (claimed) Range 516km (WLTP) Price $133,700 On sale Q4 2024 THE NEW PORSCHE Macan Electric has an unambiguous but also potentially thankless assignment ahead of it. It needs to be The Porsche Macan, just powered by electricity. If only this was as simple as it sounds. For many, the existing combustion version of Porsche’s junior SUV represents a class-dominating spider chart of performance, space for the family, long-distance road manners and just enough fun to ensure you don’t regret passing up that Cayman build slot – not to mention residuals of a strength that makes King Kong look like the Sugar Plum Fairy. The…

HYUNDAI MOTOR Company Australia (HMCA) has very different ideas about the powertrain DNA of its forthcoming ‘ute’ – set to launch around 2026. Unlike Kia’s workhorse, the Hyundai ute will be a more premium offering and will be entirely electric – confirmed by current CEO and President Jaehoon (Jay) Chang at the 2023 CEO Investor Day – riding on the next generation of HMC’s bespoke electric architecture as it will be able to support a pick-up. “In the modular architecture, our second-generation dedicated EV platform will play an important role. The new dedicated EV platform will significantly expand vehicle segment coverage compared to [the] current E-GMP platform – widening the segment coverage from small to super-large SUVs, pick-up trucks, and the Genesis brand… totalling 13 models by 2030,” said Chang.…

THERE IS A particular intimacy about sharing a driving seat. Your hands, usually bare when driving a road car, are in direct, constant contact with the same steering wheel as all who have driven this car before you, some of them long passed. Your feet work the same pedals and the bolsters and belts clamp you into exactly the same physical space. I was once lucky enough to drive the Aston Martin DB5 used to film the action scenes on the Furka Pass in Goldfinger. The knowledge that the young Sean Connery’s somewhat firmer buttocks had once graced the same patinated hide made it seem worth the huge premium being asked for it at auction: to a Bond obsessive, at least. That connection is more significant when you’re in a…

MAZDA CX-60 G40e AZAMI SP Price as tested $75,750 This month 437km @ 10.7L/100km Overall 437km @ 10.7L/100km “Gee whiz, this is F-L-A-S-H!” She doesn’t know it but my friend, who is now gazing around the tan-trimmed cabin in disbelief — “Are you sure this is a Mazda?” — has just perfectly encapsulated Mazda’s hopes and dreams for the CX-60. A premium push has been on the brand’s radar for years and this kind of reaction, where buyers start to compare a humble Mazda with richer rivals from Volvo, Volkswagen and even BMW and Mercedes, is exactly what CX-60 was designed to do. So why has it been elusive, until now? This is the third CX-60 to join the Wheels garage (our grand plan was to try a different engine…

IF THE SEEMINGLY relentless push towards electrification and downsizing has you feeling glum, we suggest you wrap your peepers around this. It’s Ferrari’s all-newV12 flagship; a futuristic and surprisingly different-looking replacement to the brilliant 812 Superfast that is so obsessed with its own, even more powerful 12-cylinder engine that it has named itself after it: the Ferrari 12Cilindri.i. Italian a little rusty? Translation: the Ferrari 12 Cylinders. As you’d expect for a flagship GT, the 12Cilindri is packing some serious performance numbers. Power comes from Ferrari’s venerable F140 6.5-litre V12 but heavy modifications and fresh internals have lifted power to 610kW at a heady 9500rpm. That’s a 22kW jump over the 812 SF but it’s the higher rev limit that will elevate the driving experience. While the 812 SF made…

HAVING COMPLETED the hilarious nomenclature piss take that is the Tesla line-up – Models S, 3, X and Y – Elon Musk has delivered his biggest joke of all; the Model Why? Or, as it’s more commonly known, the Cybertruck. It’s hard not to be offended by the existence of this wildly otiose and onanistic assault on the senses, a three-tonne pick-up truck/Mars explorer (Musk has declared a desire to die on Mars: “but not on impact”) made of stainless steel and clearly designed by someone whose idea of beauty reflects too many hours staring at a Rubik’s Cube. What was even harder was driving it and discovering that, in many annoying and unexpected ways, it is something of an engineering triumph. And, as long as you’re not foolish enough…

Model Mazda MX-5 GT RS Roadster Engine 1998cc 4cyl, dohc, 16v Max power 135kW @ 7000rpm Max torque 205Nm @ 4000rpm Transmission 6-speed manual Weight 1053kg 0-100km/h 6.5sec (claimed) Economy 6.8L/100km Price $51,640 On sale Now IF YOUR internal motoring clock is telling you it’s about time for an all-new version of the Mazda MX-5, then well done, you’re absolutely right. Mazda tends to give us a new generation of its iconic roadster every 10 years or so (the original debuted back in 1989) but now, in an age where sports cars are harder to justify and Mazda has admitted it’s considering going pure EV for the next instalment, it seems the current ND MX-5 will soldier on for a few years yet. The good news is that despite it…

Remember when the Australian motoring media and the general public would lose their collective minds over an unsolicited reveal of a new-generation Holden Commodore or Ford Falcon interior? Well it’s happening again Mr Wembley, only this time with an all-new ute – the forthcoming 2025 Kia Tasman. If you needed evidence of just how dramatically our world can shift in such a short period of time, perhaps this is it. With separate-chassis utes occupying three of the top four spots in Australian vehicle sales so far in 2024, it’s no wonder that Kia’s first commercial vehicle since the death of the Pregio van in 2006 is causing such a stir. Its nameplate is Australian (put forward by Kia’s local product planning department and overwhelmingly well-received in head office), its engineering…

YOU’D BE FORGIVEN for thinking that the motor show, in its traditional sense at least, is going the way of the manual gearbox. Once the leviathan of shows, Frankfurt IAA was the place to be for all the key brands in Europe, but it has now moved to Munich and attracts a fraction of the manufacturers. An Australian equivalent is long gone, Geneva is back in Switzerland after a panic move to Doha, and Detroit’s dates were muscled into a different end of the year by the growing might of the Consumer Electronics Show. The motor-show world is now a very different space. Whether it be a post Covid-19 society nervous of large gatherings or the various brands favouring smaller satellite presentations where they can more carefully control their marketing…

VOLVO XC90 ULTIMATE B6 DARK Price as tested $119,800 This month 110km @ 11.0L/100km Overall 400km @ 11.1L/100km IT’S ONE OF those cherished, proud-parent moments when your child starts to ride a bike for the first time without either stabilisers or your guiding hand. The next milestone is venturing onto the open road, followed by longer rides (which don’t threaten any “I’m tired and wanna go home, Dad” protests). For a few years, we simply lobbed our boys’ two bikes into the back of our Mazda CX-5 (now sold), of course taking extra care if my prized racing bike was also in the cargo mix. With Seb now 10 and on a bigger bike, and seven-year-old Eddy also stepping up in size by taking Seb’s previous bike (as the youngest…

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. ALFA ROMEO – BENTLEY BENTLEY – FERRARI FERRARI – HYUNDAI HYUNDAI – KIA KIA – LEXUS LEXUS – MERCEDES-BENZ MERCEDES-BENZ – NISSAN NISSAN –…

LOOKING AS chiselled and sexy as a mid-sized dual-cab has probably ever looked, BYD’s all-new plug-in hybrid Shark ute has been revealed in Mexico, with Australian sales confirmed for late-2024 or early ’25. It will debut Down Under as the first PHEV in its class, beating the Ford Ranger plug-in to market and joining the LDV eT60 Electric and GWM Cannon Alpha hybrid as one of the few ‘green’ pick-up options currently available. Pairing a 1.5-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder engine with two electric motors, BYD says the Shark is good for “more than” 320kW and a 0-100km/h time of 5.7 seconds, which compares favourably with the 292kW twin-turbo Ranger Raptor’s 6.1sec. A 29.6kWh lithium-ion phosphate ‘Blade’ battery is embedded between the chassis rails, the fuel tank and the e-CVT transmission. Shark’s…

HAS THERE EVER been a more elegant exercise in creative cost-cutting than Porsche’s original Boxster? Upon first acquaintance, that might sound something of a pejorative – an accusation that a company peddling premium products is somehow short-changing its customers but, as we delve into the situation in which the Boxster was born, you’ll discover it’s anything but. In order to set the scene, let’s press rewind and head back to 1991-1992. It’s no understatement to say that Porsche AG was in chaos. It was building the 968, the 911 and the 928, three coupes with no shared componentry that were in a race to see which could lose the company the most money. Realising that the company was on a fast track to bankruptcy, manufacturing boss Wendelin Wiedeking ordered a…

Model Skoda Kodiaq Engine 1984cc 4cyl, dohc, 16v, turbo Max power 150kW Max torque 320Nm Transmission 7-speed dual-clutch Weight 1860kg (est) Economy 8.2L/100km (est) 0-100km/h 8.2sec (est) Price $60,000 (est) On sale November 2024 IS THE 2025 SKODA Kodiaq a big deal? You better believe it. This is the new Kodiaq, the difficult second album after a blockbuster debut. Not only has its forebear shifted more than 800,000 units globally, but it’s perhaps the clearest example of Skoda’s rise to popularity. A supremely talented family car that cohesively blends neat dynamics, smart materials and shedloads of space. Not to mention one of a small band of alluring seven-seaters on sale. You wouldn’t blame Skoda for deploying a modest facelift and declaring this a new car, afraid to mess up a…

THERE SEEMS to be no stopping BYD right now. Sales are soaring and its line-up is swelling, so perhaps it’s only natural that such success has bred enough confidence to launch a luxury offshoot. It’s probably reductive shorthand to say Yangwang is the Lexus to BYD’s Toyota when this Yangwang U8 SUV aims to swim in a different pool entirely (all too literally, as you’ll discover). Priced at the equivalent of $230,000 in its native China, this truly is evidence BYD is punching upwards. See one up close and you might assume it’s worth its stocky price in materials alone, so vast is the U8. It measures 5.3m in length, more than two metres in width and tips the scales at 3460kg – almost enough to warrant additional training and…

GUARANTEED NO ONE at Kia head office had heard of the uniquely Australian Austin Tasman/Kimberley X6 sedan when they fell for the ‘Tasman’ name for their new ute, but long-time Wheels readers will remember this promising but ill-fated creation. Launched in late 1970 as a development of the four-cylinder Austin 1800, the Australian Tasman/Kimberley X6 debuted a transverse six-cylinder engine – one that would later appear in several British Leyland cars in the UK – with the Tasman being the single-headlight, single-carburettor base model. But the car was developed so hastily, on such a measly budget, that it was plagued with debilitating reliability issues, burying the X6 in just two years. It was the polar opposite of Kia’s painstakingly developed new ute. And the Austin’s replacement? The Leyland P76……

IT’S NO SECRET that double-cab 4x4 utes are now the biggest selling vehicles in Australia. Be they for family, work, or adventuring, these light trucks have taken over as the rig of choice for so many Aussies that auto-makers are flocking to join the rush as more brands and models flood the segment. In terms of sales, it’s been a two-horse race for the past five years, with Ford’s Ranger challenging the long-standing top dog, the Toyota Hilux, for sales supremacy. A decade ago, Toyota had the market lead to itself but in 2023, Ranger overtook Hilux as not only the best-selling 4x4 ute in Australia, but the best-selling vehicle overall. While Toyota and Ford duked it out for number one, it was daylight to third place – a position…

MG 4 4 EXCITE 64 Price as tested $45,690 drive-away This month 4613km @ 17.5kWh/100km Overall 7570km @ 17.4kWh/100km FOR ITS FAREWELL month, we threw the MG 4 into the deep end – sending it on two huge interstate journeys (Sydney to Brisbane, then Melbourne), just as you would a regular small hatch, to truly put EV ownership into perspective. The MG 4, as a car, performed well – comfortably accommodating us in its cloth-upholstered buckets, despite their rudimentary manual adjustment (including no height-adjust for the front passenger). Its deep cowl and vast windscreen framed the pink sunsets on the picturesque Pacific Highway beautifully, and even its 350km real-world range at 110km/h didn’t seem too horrendous given that this is essentially a city car (with a WLTP claim of 450km).…

IT TENDS TO be forgotten that the original Mini wagons from the Sixties never wore Clubman badges. Dubbed Morris Mini Traveller or Austin Seven Countryman, the first wagon versions of Issigonis’ Mini featured decorative wooden sideboards and were steady if unspectacular sellers. In that era, it seemed that the Mini could be repurposed for virtually any task. Check out the Mini Wildgoose motorhome for evidence. The first Clubman wagon debuted in 1970, sharing the same Roy Haynes-designed squared-off front end as the Clubman sedan and 1275GT sports variant. It did away with the wooden frames, replacing them with wood-mimicking adhesive plastic film. The dual barn-style rear doors were retained to ease loading and unloading. It enjoyed an 11-year production run under the Clubman name, or 12 if you include the…