Table of contents for February 2022 in Wheels

The biggest difference between Audi and Porsche is attitude. Porsche prides itself on being lean and fast – not yet quite to the standards of Tesla and the Chinese, but certainly in comparison to the legacy auto makers. Audi, however, is a different story. In my opinion the four-ringed brand is cumbersome and slow. Its hierarchical processes are dated and accordingly inept, the operational structures need streamlining, decision-making takes too long on all levels, and the overly risk-aversive corporate strategy fails to trigger advanced new business models and grasp brand-enhancing opportunities.…

Lexus LFA 2.0 About two seconds. That’s all you’ll need to rocket to 100km/h from a standstill in the electric sports car Lexus revealed it’s planning to build before 2030. CEO Akio Toyoda describes the concept as a sports car for now, but it sounds and looks like his luxury division is preparing a full-blown electric supercar. Toyoda says to expect a driving range of around 700km, and that it’ll inherit the “secret sauce” of the LFA. But he stopped short of expanding on how exactly, even if the aggressive, cab-rearward proportions of the concept are the most obvious visual clue for now. DIESS ANOTHER DAY Volkswagen Group has saved Herbert Diess from a twist of irony after keeping him in his role as CEO. Diess came under fire from…

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) “Integra Type R was one of the best front-drive performance cars ever produced. It was the end of an era, too” TYPE R TYPER I ENJOYED YOUR celebration of the Honda Integra Type R (Modern Classic, Wheels, Dec ’21) and agree that it was one of the best front-drive performance cars ever produced. It was the end of an era, too – the last Honda with a counter-clockwise rotating engine and a rod-actuated gearshift – the titanium knob actually vibrated in your hand! I bought my Milano Red example in 2001. I loved that car but so did…

LOTUS POWER THE FIRST DOHC CHEVY SMALL BLOCK GM’s first twin-cam, small-block V8 was actually a one-off design called ‘LT5’. In the late 1980s, GM had just bought Lotus Engineering, and leveraged its expertise with twin-cam engines to build a DOHC 5.7-litre V8 for the 1990 C4 Corvette ZR-1. With 280kW, it was plenty quick, keeping up with supercars from Italy and Germany at the time. The LT5 was built by contractor Mercury Marine in Oklahoma, which had experience manufacturing high-performance, all-aluminium engines for boats. High cost ended the twin-cam dream in 1995, but lessons were applied to the engine that replaced it, GM’s new-for-1997 Gen III LS1 V8.…

When Mercedes-Benz builds a fully self-driving vehicle, it will be the Mercedes-Benz of autonomous cars, imbued with everything the three-pointed star stands for. The idea of an autonomous Volkswagen or Toyota isn’t an intellectual stretch, either, as they are brands that have long specialised in providing automobility for the masses. However, for carmakers like Ferrari and Porsche, Lamborghini and McLaren, autonomous cars present a fascinating existential challenge: Why build a driver’s car when the car can do all the driving? Aston Martin boss Tobias Moers thinks autonomous driving capability can be an opportunity for a performance brand. In his previous role as head of Mercedes-AMG, Moers envisioned owners being able to switch their cars to a high-performance autonomous driving mode during track days and have a digital version of AMG…

“WE DON’T have to take boot photos, but they want you to explain in the story why everything is so damn wet”, said a very soggy photographer Alastair Brook through the driver’s window of my MG. This shoot had started so well. Kicking off on the south bank of the Yarra in Melbourne with patches of blue sky and shafts of warm sunlight, it had ended here, 50km to the south-east at a bleak Cardinia Reservoir, in relentless precipitation and dim greyness. Credit to Brook for his commitment to snapping the images you see before you, and credit to Canon for making cameras that seemingly function underwater. Originally I figured we’d let the town-and-country theme be a visual metaphor for the dual nature of these cars, but I guess the…

Mitsubishi Outlander Super soft leather-wrapped surfaces abound in the Outlander’s cabin and make it feel properly upmarket. There’s a pleasing balance of analogue and digital but Mitsubishi’s fonts and graphics leave a bit to be desired, looking basic and cheap rather than premium. It’s the only one of this trio with wireless charging and Apple CarPlay, while the Outlander’s mouse-like gear selector actually works really well, being very easy to use. Kia Sportage GT-Line’s curved display is like the Starship Enterprise, but even the SX+ (which was supposed to be here) scores a huge 12.3-inch infotainment screen and digital instruments. SX+ doesn’t score wireless charging, though that’s okay because like other Kias only the base model Sportage has wireless smartphone mirroring (but not wireless charging). Material quality could be improved,…

In 1971, Skoda produced two examples of a 110 Super Sport concept – a radical wedge-shaped sports coupe, but one would go on to have a far more interesting life. In 1981, designer Theodor Pistek significantly modified one of the vehicles, deleting the pop-up headlights, and applying a Batman-style paint job and massive rear spoiler. It was created for the starring role in a sci-fi horror feature film entitled The Ferat Vampire in which the car ran not on petrol but the blood of the driver sucked through its accelerator pedal. Lord only knows what its emissions were but this could be the first true eco-car to wear the Skoda badge. Now that’s what we call a re-vamp.…

I’VE NEVER enjoyed geometry as much as I am right now, parked in the i30 N DCT at the bottom of Victoria’s Mount Donna Buang. I’m currently preparing my attack on its sinuous mountain road, playing race engineer on the ‘N Mode’ page within the centre screen’s infotainment display. Here I can adjust the i30 N’s individual driving parameters for the Custom drive mode, accessed with a double-tap on the N button underneath the right wheel spoke. Just like in the pre-facelift i30 N. But the ‘N mode’ page has been redesigned. Instead of tapping into a separate page for each piece of hardware, their adjustable settings are all laid out at the points of a spider’s-web chart. You can set up the adaptive suspension, steering weight, ESC, engine and…

WHAT’S IN A name? Probably more than you realise, if you were eyeing up, say, a snappy electric hot hatch named Discharge, or a seven-seat electric SUV called the Cellulite. So you probably wouldn’t have been queueing up like Elon worshippers to buy yourself a Wartburg, though there’s actually a lot more to this name than the unfortunate dermatological connotations. It originated with Castle Wartburg, which overlooks the German town of Eisenach (birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach) where the Decauville, a two-cylinder French car, began production under licence in 1898. By 1904, Wartburg had developed its own models and went by the name Dixi. After military production during WW1, in 1927 Dixi began building Austin 7s under licence. A year later, a certain aircraft and motorcycle maker from Munich decided…

IF YOU WANT a supercar that straddles the lines between exotic, sophisticated, and pragmatic, the main option you once had in Australia is on the way out. If you can still find an Audi R8 in a showroom by the time you read this, it’ll be one of the last. But it’s not for a lack of success. The R8 wasn’t a sales giant here, but nor was it by any means a failure. Worldwide, more than 40,000 Audi R8s were sold by the end of 2020. Australia makes up a modest – but not unusual for our market – portion of just under 1.7 percent. But as an exercise in image building and a showcase of engineering, the R8 was an unequivocal winner for Audi. The 2003 Audi Le…

SCAN NOW! 6 ISSUES $49 SAVE 31% 12 ISSUES $89 SAVE 38% 24 ISSUES $149 SAVE 48% Scan the code or phone our new Australian-based call centre on (02) 8315 2092 or visit secure.whichcar.com.au/wheels Savings represent the percentage discount on the newsstand cover price of $11.95. Prices are AUD and include GST. Offers are valid until February 28, 2022. Valid for new subscriptions and renewals of existing subscriptions with Australian delivery address. For more information email subscriptions@wheelsmedia.com.au…

AUSTRALIA IS shaping up as a fertile test market for China as its auto industry opens up to the global market. Chinese electric vehicles in particular are set to change the global automotive landscape as the industry gears up for exports. More desirable vehicles from China, combined with State-based EV incentives here as Australia’s charging network continues to expand, combine to make our low-volume market more attractive. By 2025, the Chinese auto market plans to be truly open as it begins to export as part of its World Trade Organisation obligations. Goals set out in 2018 included development of its supply chains, greater competitiveness and a focus on EVs to lead the industry by the end of 2020. This also saw the need for development of ‘world-class’ brand identities from…

DUE Q1 GENESIS GV70 EV All-wheel drive EV SUV has dual motors, each making 160kW and 350Nm when in its normal driving mode, leaping to a combined 360kW and 700Nm in boost mode for 0-100km/h in a swift 4.5 seconds. A 350kW rapid-charging ability allows the battery to be charged from 10 to 80 percent in 18 minutes. Korean testing shows a range of around 400km, though testing in China claims 500km. DUE Q3 AUDI E-TRON GT The local arrival of Audi’s e-tron GT has been delayed until late 2022. With an 85.7kWh battery pack under the floor, both the standard and RS variants of the five-door EV have a driving range of more than 400km, while power and torque are a punchy 350kW/630Nm and 440kW/830Nm respectively. DUE Q1 PEUGEOT…

THE STUNNING LOOKING 1M Coupe had the potential to scare the hell out of you, could fend off a well-driven Porsche Cayman, and, in an era of digitisation, put the seat-of-your-pants driving experience above all else. Which made its arrival in 2011 seem like a miracle – especially as it was never meant to exist in the first place. “It’s not a junior M3. It possesses its own character and, in real world terms, it’s probably even faster than its more expensive sibling over many roads, save perhaps an autobahn,” we said about the 1M in our June 2011 issue. The 1M was never meant to happen, let alone be able to rap an M3’s knuckles. BMW’s then Motorsport Director Mario Theissen described the E92 M3 as ‘the pinnacle of…

MASERATI’S cancellation of the Grecale launch must be causing major misery in Modena. Bad enough that plans for its global premiere, scheduled for November in Milan, had to be canned. Worse still is the delayed start of production of this smaller-than-Levante SUV, so obviously destined to be the brand’s best-seller. No prizes for guessing the reason for the Grecale’s non-appearance. Maserati is just one among many coping with the consequences of the semi-conductor shortage affecting the car industry world-wide. Microchips are what makes this SUV a more advanced Maserati. The Grecale is the first with a new electronic architecture. Among the changes is a more advanced Vehicle Dynamic Control (VDC) system, which centralises control of previously separate chassis and powertrain functions in a single ECU. It’s this tech that’s under…

LAS VEGAS, January 2009: The Audi A6 Avant cruises at 70km/h through the heavy traffic heading south on Interstate 15. The Audi engineer next to me sits behind the wheel, hands on his legs and feet off the pedals. The A6 is driving itself, automatically adjusting to the ebb and flow of the traffic, changing lanes as the engineer taps the indicator stalk. Audi calls the system Piloted Driving and says the technology will be available on a production Audi in five years’ time. Piloted Driving, says Bjorn Giesler, one of the engineers developing the system, is designed to allow drivers to let the car do the boring stuff. “Our cars will always be for people who like to drive and like performance. But driving in a traffic jam is…

Work on fully autonomous trucks is accelerating. In May 2021, an autonomous truck developed by California-based startup TuSimple travelled from Nogales in Arizona to Oklahoma City, a distance of about 1450km, in just 14 hours. With a human driver and legally mandated rest stops, it would normally have taken 24 hours. While getting a Level 5 autonomous vehicle to work in all environments is tricky, autonomous trucks are seen as being initially more viable, particularly in the US as they would travel on freeways with clearly marked lanes and relatively gentle curves and gradients. And the business case behind getting the technology to work is compelling: apart from solving the chronic driver shortage that’s now affecting most developed countries, autonomous long-haul trucks that are significantly less likely to crash and don’t…

The PHEV premise is simple: plug them in frequently and use cheap electricity to do the bulk of your commuting, while the onboard engine plays the role of a glorified generator – there to keep the volts flowing in the instances you need to venture beyond the battery’s range. On the other hand, a PHEV’s battery is not as big as what you’d get in a dedicated electric car, thanks to the need to package other heavy components like the combustion engine, transmission, exhaust and fuel tank. As a result, stated electric ranges are in the double-digit region only, but for the commutes where battery power is sufficient, that engine and its ancillaries are just dead weight. So PHEVs are a compromise, but one that might be more palatable than…

FRIGID RAIN IS pounding the granite cobblestones of Aker Brygge on a dreary Oslo Friday morning and the worsening conditions remind me why I left the northern hemisphere in search of warmer climes many years ago. But the wandering nostalgic train of thought is derailed by the arrival of photographer Adam. He’s alighting one of the 139-metre Basto Electric ferries that crisscross the Oslo Fjord, powered by a 4.3MWh (yes – megawatt) battery and dock with robotic fast chargers at either end of their passage. If this was Sydney Harbour, he’d be arriving on a floating antique powered by a pair of 14-litre MTU diesels that chug nearly four litres of dinosaur juice every minute. But this isn’t Australia, this is the world’s leading nation for transport electrification – Norway.…

IF YOU’RE BUYING a new car in Australia and don’t want a dual-cab ute, chances are you’re after a mid-size SUV. It’s the second-biggest-selling segment locally with 17 percent of the market as of November 2021 and as a consequence, it’s raining new models. Two of the highest profile appearances have been the Mitsubishi Outlander and the Kia Sportage but we not only need to compare them to each other, but also an established benchmark. That benchmark is the Toyota RAV4, both because it’s a very polished performer in its latest incarnation and also the dominant sales force. However, that popularity is both a blessing and a curse, with COVID-related supply and production issues stretching wait lists out to six months. If you’re after an all-wheel drive hybrid, as we…

Skoda is one of the oldest car manufacturers on the planet with a long and rich history THE YEAR of 1997 was marked by a number of memorable milestones in Australia. Among them, Pauline Hanson founded the One Nation party, Celine Dion released her album Let’s Talk About Love, and Melbourne’s Crown Casino finally offered an answer to the question: what am I going to do with all this cash I’ve been saving for the kids’ education? But it wasn’t all bad news. During the same year, a little-known car manufacturer opened its doors selling an affordable range of cars from the Czech Republic, offering a European marque without the premium price tag. But despite all of these things happening a quarter of a century ago, Skoda is still regarded…

NAME FOR ME, if you can, another car manufacturer that would have the audacity, in this age of model rationalisation, to spin off a compact crossover with so-called ‘freestyle’ doors? I’ll wait… Yep, you could never accuse Mazda of inherent conservatism or lacking a ‘give it a crack’ attitude. But does that make the MX-30 a desirable and practical alternative to the excellent CX-30? That’s what my three-month tenure aims to answer. You’re probably aware that the MX-30’s mission in life appears to be to provide Mazda with a style-driven EV that stands out in an increasingly populous segment. Yet the MX-30 aims for broader appeal by also being offered with the 2.0-litre atmo fourpot from the more affordable end of the CX-30 range (supplemented by a mild-hybrid 24v integrated…

SEE THIS HERE [slaps bonnet], that’s $50K worth of Japanese ingenuity,” I say as I try to convince my family to bat a collective eyelid at my loan chariot. My wife, unimpressed the Outback didn’t park itself, says, “Is this what you’d buy if I gave you $50K to spend?” I pause to contemplate the question. Does the Subaru really tickle my fancy, or should I try to ram my kids in the back of a Toyota GR86? I won’t bore you by listing the three spec levels the Outback comes in, or the fact that under the identity-confused ‘Wag-UV’, is the same platform used by the XV, Forester and Impreza. But what I will tell you is that being a father of three kids does require a certain type…

AUDI AND PORSCHE are strong performers in their own right, but corporate friends for life they are not. The same applies to the Piech and Porsche families who are almost exclusively united by their unrestrained urge to amass power and money. Under the umbrella of the Volkswagen group, both premium brands are having a tough time to set aside individual strategic ambitions while focusing on the bigger picture and the imperatively glorious joint bottom line. Following orders mapped out in Wolfsburg, they agreed to share platforms, product plans, plants, parts, processes and people. But as far as the long-term goals and the means to achieve them are concerned, Porsche is pulling out all the stops to set the pace for all high-end marques involved. This applies to not only proven…

CHINA’S EV MARKET is already larger than Australia’s total new-car market, with 1.105 million pure electric models sold in 2020. That’s been surpassed already this year despite a reduction in subsidies, with a record 1.78 million sold year-to-date by the end of September. BYD was the best seller of ‘NEVs’ (New Energy Vehicles) which includes hybrid, ahead of EVonly Tesla, while pure EV brands NIO and XPeng broke 10,000 monthly sales in September for the first time. The Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) expects the growth to continue into the final quarter and has tipped NEV sales to hit a record 3,000,000 this year, meaning beyond 2.5 million pure EV sales.…

GENERAL MOTORS has revealed the ultimate factory iteration of its LS engine, a 493kW naturally aspirated – twin-cam – dry-sump monster revving to a lofty 8600rpm and producing 493kW in the process. Codenamed ‘Gemini’ as a nod to the Apollo astronauts who favoured Corvettes in the 1960s, GM says the officially named LT6 was its ‘moonshot’ project for the LS engine family. The end result, after six years of development, is the most powerful naturally aspirated production V8 ever, trumping even the mighty 464kW 6.2-litre M159 in the all-conquering Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series from 2014. Due to make its debut in the back of the new, track-focused C8 Corvette Z06, Chevrolet engineers were given the green-light to go back to natural aspiration after the C7, whose supercharging somewhat broke…

THOSE WHO remember its Australian introduction in 2014 would be forgiven for feeling a little shiver at the mention of the BMW 2 Series. Not because the company’s little coupe was in any way lacklustre but because a completely different 2 Series Active Tourer model launched just months after, bringing a dumpy people-mover body and BMW’s foray into front drive. The decision to link two such radically different models with the same moniker still seems a little strange seven years on, but the other legacy that lives on is the model’s intrinsic connection to driven-wheel controversy. While the F22 coupe has only ever been offered as a traditional rear-drive, sports-focused model, for the second generation G42, the flagship M240i will only be available in all-wheel drive xDrive … for now.…

The car is the machine that changed the world. From superhighways to supermarkets, it’s transformed our cities and our societies. Autonomous vehicles will change it again. There’s very real potential for our cities to become less congested, more liveable. Because the vehicles we own and drive sit parked 95 percent of the time, we’ve had to make room for them, says John Krafcik (pictured right), who has headed both Hyundai’s US operation and, more recently, autonomous vehicle technology specialist Waymo. Krafcik says the US has four parking spaces for every car on its roads. “That’s about a billion parking spaces,” he says. “The amount of land in our cities dedicated to the car is significant. About 30 percent of traffic in cities like New York are cars looking for parking…

The prospect of self-driving cars – surely the biggest automotive grift of the late 2010s – is exciting. Whether you’re personally interested in how they could help the dull parts of your motoring life isn’t really the point, I would wager; rather, the huge social impact they could have. Our ageing population would be able to stay in their homes longer. Those without the physical ability to drive wouldn’t have to rely on a patchwork of public transport options that treat them as an afterthought. Being able to load yourself into a car that arrives on-demand or your own fully autonomous car, tailored to your needs, would change many lives for the better. For millions more drivers it would make the task of driving a thing of the past, where…

1. MG HS PHEV MG brand still favours its, er, ‘VW-inspired’ steering wheel and Audi A3-style gimbal air vents, but material quality and seat comfort on those sporty-looking front seats is actually pretty good. The driver’s seat is mounted quite high, even at its lowest setting, but outward vision is commanding and that panoramic sunroof and electronic instrument panel are standard-issue. 2. KIA NIRO S PHEV Niro has the most demure cabin here, with too much piano black plastic, ordinary cloth/pleather upholstery and cabin styling that no longer matches up with its more modern stablemates in the Kia showroom. That rear seat is acceptable, though the boot is rather small for an SUV. 3. MITSUBISHI ECLIPSE CROSS PHEV ASPIRE There’s good accommodation up front, but an unsupportive back seat and…

The popularity of electric vehicles is also fuelled in localised clusters by the so-called ‘neighbour effect’. In a typical scenario, one household in a street puts an EV on their driveway and other residents observe the advantages from ‘over the fence’. In the winter, while combustion-powered car owners start their day standing in the cold scraping ice from the windscreen before getting into a cold car, the EV owner jumps into a warm, frost-free vehicle thanks to pre-conditioning. It’s the same in summer with cool, comfortable cars. EV conversations raised at neighbourhood social functions further increase the appeal and, the following winter, more EVs have appeared on the street.…

We’d argue that the Sportage SX+ and Outlander Aspire variants are the sweet spots in their respective ranges in terms of balancing price and specification, but if you’re happy to forgo all-wheel drive you’ll save a handy $2500 on the Outlander and improve fuel economy, while the frontdrive Sportage costs $2000 less but also reverts to an underwhelming 2.0-litre naturally-aspirated four-cylinder engine. Subaru’s all-wheel drive ethos means there’s no front-drive Forester, but lose a couple of toys and the 2.5i Premium is good value at $41,140, a $3050 saving.…

The winged arrow Skoda badge as it’s known today started appearing on models in 1927, and was inspired by a native American Indian headdress. The arrow element represents the company’s mission to pioneer manufacturing using advanced metals, the wings are a symbol of global export and the eye is said to represent a focus on precision engineering and accuracy. The Skoda name came earlier in 1925 when the founder company Klement and Laurin merged with a machinery manufacturer adopting its name. The word skoda has unfortunate connotations in the native Czech tongue meaning ‘a pity’ or ‘damage’ but the merger was anything but, enabling the company to radically scale up production.…

WHAT IS IT with Korea right now? Who’s spiking their cereal? From the widening range of warm and hot sports variants in the Hyundai and Kia line-ups, to the growing number of electrified models and the genre-bending bold designs of their latest models, the Republic’s on a roll. I’ve just come out of five months in the new-gen Hyundai Tucson, in both 2.0-litre petrol and 2.0 turbo diesel forms – along with a week in the 1.6 turbo petrol – concluding that the diesel is comfortably the pick of the bunch for power and fuel consumption. Now I’m moving into its newly launched stablemate, the 2022 Kia Sportage, which I’ll hold onto for a few months. This again is a 2.0-litre turbo diesel, configured in all-wheel drive form with Hyundai…

IT MAY NOT have found its forever home just yet, but the Pug has at least for now got new digs – leaving the custody of former editor Alex Inwood and coming to stay with moi for a while. It ticked off ‘bring home newborn baby’ from its task list with Inwood and has now moved on to the next challenge – accommodating a three-strong family with a toddler in the midst of his terrible twos. Luckily for me, he’s not so terrible after all and he’s a sucker for a new car. On first sight, the Peugeot is impressive to behold and looks classy inside and out, thanks to its sloping roof, chrome accents and Nappa leather trim. It would be perfectly at home on the driveway of a…