Índex per November 2022 a Wheels

FORD HAS PULLED the covers from its seventh-generation Mustang sports coupe and convertible, revealing an incremental evolution of the iconic Pony Car design rather than a daring ground-up overhaul. Full details for the 2023 Mustang are yet to be released including exact power and performance figures, as well as an Australian launch date, but Ford Australia says late 2023 is most likely at this stage. In the meantime, the Blue Oval has now offered a first full view of the next-gen model along with some high-level technical information to keep us keen. Like the sixth-generation Mustang that launched in 2014, the new model will continue to be offered as the performance hero GT with a naturally aspirated 5.0-litre V8, while a 2.3-litre turbocharged four-cylinder will power the Ecoboost. Power and…

DUE 2023 FERRARI PUROSANGUE The car Ferrari said it would never build stands to be one of the most thrilling and anticipated releases of 2023. This four-door, four-seater will be the only crossover in the ultra-premium segment powered by an atmo V12, with the 6.5-litre unit cranking 533kW/716Nm to all four wheels. Expect dynamics to set new standards for the class, and a price tag over $700K. DUE 2023 MG4 Big news about the MG4, confirmed for Oz towards the middle of 2023, is the debut of its dedicated rear-drive EV platform. The crossover hatch is powered by a single rear-mounted motor that makes 125kW, fed by a 51kWh battery good for a driving range of 350km. There’s also a 64kWh battery, which may become available later, that boosts power…

We know. Flying cars are pie-in-the-sky nonsense, right? It’s been over a century since Glenn Curtiss built his Autoplane and there still isn’t a flying car that has been commercially viable. The next generation of flow batteries could change that thanks to their light weight, superior energy density and non-flammability. But only to a certain extent. Why? Because that thing still looks to us a good deal more like a helicopter than a car. Until it drives as well as it flies, we’re yet to be convinced.…

Model BMW X1 xDrive20i Engine 1998cc 4cyl, dohc, 16v, turbo + mild hybrid Max power 150kW @5000-6250rpm Max torque 300Nm @1500-4500rpm Transmission 7-speed dual-clutch Weight 1625kg 0-100km/h 7.1sec (claimed)) Economy 7.4L/100km Price $65,900 On sale Q4, 2022B BMW’S SMALLEST SUV has grown up. While the X1 launched in 2009 as a slightly awkward-looking entry point to posh crossover ownership, it’s matured nicely into its third generation. Its dimensions all but match the original X3, much in the same way a 3 Series now fills the footprint of an old 5. While we might normally chastise a carmaker for needlessly enlarging its cars, the X1 wears its growth very well, in both its styling and practicality. This is one of the smarter, less controversial BMW designs of recent years and boasts…

Model Ford Everest Sport Engine 2993 V6, dohc, 24v, turbo-diesel Max power 184kW @ 3250rpm Max torque 600Nm @ 1750-2250rpm Transmission 10-speed automatic  Weight 2492kg 0-100km/h 8.2sec (estimated) Economy 8.5L/100km Price $69,090 (+ORC)  On sale Now FORD AUSTRALIA’S 2023 Everest wagon is now on sale and available in four model grades and a choice of 4x4 and 4x2 drivetrains, and inline four-cylinder and V6 diesel engines. Everest Ambiente and Trend models are powered by the 2.0-litre 4-cylinder bi-turbo diesel engine, while the Everest Sport and Platinum exclusively get the 3.0-litre V6 diesel. All Everest models use the 10-speed automatic transmission, while only the lower-spec Ambiente and Trend models are offered with the 4x2, but all grades can be had as 4x4. Ambiente Everests come standard with just five seats as…

THE NEWS story highlighting ‘The problem with new cars’ caused the expected stir on Facebook. ‘New cars’? EVs, presumably. But the car pictured wasn’t new, nor an EV. It was a several-year-old first-gen Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Its owner had run a long extension cord from their house to charge the PHEV, which was parked on the street. Like most of us, they’re probably just dealing with high fuel prices and the spiralling cost of living. Oh, the outrage! Yet what really stood out from the comments was how little awareness the average non-Wheels reader has about not only plug-in hybrids, but EVs, hybrids and the sustainable motoring big picture. That’s not too surprising. The Outlander PHEV debuted in 2014 as the world’s first plug-in hybrid SUV and even now with…

The Cayenne Turbo GT is Zuffenhausen throwing all it knows at a pure internal combustion-engined super-SUV THE FIRST TIME I ever drove this road, there was no traffic coming the other way and it was fantastic. Apex right across the road, skim your right-hand guard up against the Armco and the car hunkers into the camber. Feel everything unweight as you launch across the crown of the road and then compress, tyres keying into bitumen, fictitious forces feeling very real. That was Targa High Country which is, for the time being at least, a thing of the past; an event stricken from the calendar courtesy of a run of horrors at its sister event across the Bass Strait. Today we’re back on the road that comprises nearly 40 percent of…

FOR A TIME, this comparison test looked impossible: a new, modern Nissan Z facing down a reborn Toyota Supra. But here I am, standing in front of both cars, resplendent in their respective yellow hues, turbocharged six-cylinder engines humming at idle, having just demolished a challenging mountain road. What was once thought impossible wasn’t due to logistics or a world-altering health crisis, but rather because neither model seemed fated to even exist. Until relatively recently, the tea leaves of future product planning appeared to tell us that both legendary nameplates – Fairlady Z and Supra – would be confined to the history books, mortal coils sufficiently shuffled. Life without the Supra had begun to feel normal, the fourth-generation cult hero A80 having ceased production before the start of the new…

ONE OF the most interesting things about having a plug-in hybrid is that you spend a lot of time explaining to people what that actually means. That’s fine – I’m absolutely not complaining – but it has got me thinking about what exactly is the point of a PHEV. I have written before that it takes a degree of discipline to get the most of a plug-in hybrid and the fact that it has a combustion engine is the enemy of discipline. “Battery’s flat,” says the car. “Time to recharge.” “Ah, bugger,” I reply. Well, not really, this is just some expositional, fictional dialogue to illustrate the point. I don’t talk to cars. Much. “So I’ve switched on the engine,” the car quickly reminds me. “So now I’m a normal…

IT’S BEEN A bit of a love-in with the Subaru BRZ of late, so I thought I’d redress the balance somewhat and iterate what irks me about living with EQL89C. On balance, I reckon this is the best affordable sport car I’ve ever driven. It’s not perfect – an MX-5 has a sweeter transmission and the FA24 flat-four isn’t the most melodic partner – but it gets so much right that it earns itself a stack of credit. Drive one hard and it’s about as much fun as you can ask of a road car. The niggles start to appear when you dial things back a bit, such as those occasions when you have somebody in the passenger seat who doesn’t approve of ‘exuberant’ driving. Remove that element from the…

THE LOW DOWN 05 THINGS WE LEARNED THIS MONTH THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW LAST MONTH 1. The Ferrari Purosangue has suicide rear doors. And as much as we try to be offended about a Ferrari SUV, it hasn’t exactly been clobbered with the ugly stick 2. The new BMW M2 is divisive. Its rear end features more bumps and welts than a seniors cycling tour but a rumoured 333kW is some compensation 3. ANCAP safety tests will get tougher from January 2023. AEB and lane-keeping systems now need to see motorcycles. Five-star results will be harder than ever 4. F1 super licences are tough to get. A string of IndyCar wins for Colton Herta weren’t enough. Was this the FIA slapping Red Bull for sinking the Porsche deal? 5. Choose your…

1. SAFETY Influit has already conducted safety tests. A simple puncture test shows that when the anolyte and catholyte mix, the temperature elevates slightly and then returns to ambient. There are no exhaustive gases, explosions or flames. 2. REPLENISHMENT Rapid refueling pods utilising renewable energy storage can facilitate refuelling in under five minutes. NEF battery can also utilize existing e-charging stations to plug into and recharge NEF fuel that is already in the car. 3. CONTROL The battery control system (BCS) is designed to not only control the pumps and performance envelope, but the system is no different than any other rechargeable battery system. One simply plugs the BCS into any charging outlet.…

Model Mercedes-Benz GLC300 Engine 1994cc 4cyl, dohc, 16, turbo + mild hybrid Max power 190kW @5800rpm Max torque 400Nm @2000-3200rpm Transmission 9-speed automatic Weight 1820kg (estimated) 0-100km/h 6.2sec (claimed) Economy 7.2L/100km (estimated) Price $100,000 (estimated) On sale H1 2023 FOR TWO YEARS in a row, the GLC has been the best-selling Benz. Its replacement is fully hybridised, but there is no EV version in sight. And prices are to increase by 15 percent. For decades, the global Mercedes hit list was dominated first by the E-Class and then by the C-Class. But not anymore. In the era of the SUV, the GLC is now the most popular starship by a healthy margin, and in its wake demand for the GLA, GLE and GLB is also rising. When a car manufacturer…

AT FIRST GLANCE, the Hyundai N Vision 74 is pure motorshow whimsy; a design exercise that celebrates a Hyundai that was never built, the 1974 Hyundai Pony Coupe concept designed by the legendary Giorgetto Giugiaro. But it’s much more than that. The drivable, fully functional N Vision 74 signposts the company’s thinking on the future of the high-performance car in a post-internal combustion engine world. What’s more, Hyundai says the N Vision 74 is entirely production feasible. Visually, the N Vision 74 is a passion project of Hyundai design chief SangYup Lee, who has spent most of his professional career working outside Korea for non-Korean carmakers. “I’ve sketched N Vision 74 ideas for years,” says the man who at one stage worked in Australia on the design of the 2010…

FORD ESCAPE Escape’s decent boot holds 556L behind the seatbacks with an underfloor space saver spare but no dedicated charging cable space. Flippers at each side drop the 60/40 seatbacks for 1478L. Four tie-downs, curry hooks, a 12V outlet, a subwoofer and a fabric cargo blind complete your guided tour of the boot, which is alone in featuring a powered tailgate (ST-Line pack). MITSUBISHI OUTLANDER The Outlander’s boot holds 485L behind the second row and provides four tie-down points, curry hooks and a lever at each side that flips the 40/20/40 seatbacks to take capacity to 1478L. There’s a 12V outlet, but no spare wheel – you get a tyre repair kit instead – and there is a dedicated storage space for your charging unit/cable beneath the floor.…

It would have been so easy for Porsche just to jack the boost up a bit and publish a sexy headline power figure. Unfortunately, the engineers got a bit carried away. To that end, the Cayenne Turbo GT’s engine does indeed have more boost, to the tune of a minuscule 0.1 bar, but it also features uprated timing chain drive, crankshaft, conrods, pistons, and torsional vibration dampers. The injectors flow 10 percent faster, gearshifts have been sharpened and there’s additional cooling for the gearbox transfer case. Although the engine is built in Zuffenshausen, the design work comes courtesy of Weissach.…

Toyota Supra GTS 01 LOCKED DOWN Wireless phone charging pad has a clever plastic cover that acts like a sort of holster, stopping your phone from being launched out during spirited driving. 02 ONE GOOD TURN BMW-sourced infotainment system comes with the rotary dial to navigate menus. It’s a quick way to flick through selections without prodding the screen. 03 COUNT IT Unlike the Z there are no changeable displays for the instrument cluster, instead you get a fixed, single rev counter front and centre. We didn’t want for anything else. Nissan Z 01 CARRY OVER Look closely and you can see the bones of the 350Z in the Z. The most obvious indicators are the door handles, side air vents, and a blank placed over the old ignition. 02…

WAKING UP with the Jaguar F-Type P450 R-Dynamic in the driveway is liberating. Not for the themes of freedom and luxury exuded by its captivating coupe form. But for the fact that every time I slip into its cabin I can tweak and change its personality as I see fit for the day. This is thanks to Jaguar’s Dynamic-I settings, which in more common parlance is a configurable individual mode. In Dynamic-I you can tweak the F-Type’s damper firmness, engine response, transmission calibration, and steering weight. It has resulted in me playing god and adjusting and testing every possible configuration to find the sweet spot for my needs. What has been most impressive is the breadth of ability available. The dampers in the softest setting breathe wonderfully over the road,…

10 DUTCH POLICE CARS MADE 356 SPEEDSTER PRODUCTION 4145 259 GLÄSER-BODIED CABRIOLETS 7000 RPM REDLINE OF FOUR-CAM 356 CARRERA 1948 PORSCHE 356-1 DEBUTS FLAT FOUR WITH MORE The 1964 production year was the 356’s biggest, the C being refined and quirkily comfortable for daily driving and finding more than 10,000 buyers in that year. The 356SC (like our pictured coupe) is typical, its 1582cc pushrod flat four equipped with twin Solex carbs to produce 71kW and 119Nm, through a four-speed transaxle. TAKE A RUNNING JUMP The 356 is often dubbed the ‘bathtub’ Porsche, and the lumpen curves, tall sills and sunken seating position underline the impression. Low-backed front buckets present a view of the painted steel dashboard, and here began the Porsche traditions of a central tachometer and the ignition…

UNKNOWN VOLTAGE Barn finds don’t get much stranger or more intriguing than this C4 Corvette built in 1987. At some point in the early ’90s, the V8 was pulled and replaced with a 300kW electric powertrain developed by Motorola Automotive, with a load of technical detail showing it to be an officially engineered prototype. The car is now for sale from a scrap yard in Gurnee, Illinois, USA. BYO charger. Or trailer. CAN’T DODGE EVS So this is what it’s come to for Dodge to convince buyers that ‘EV muscle cars’ really are a thing. The electric Charger Daytona SRT concept is intended to replace the outgoing V8 Charger and Challenger which get the axe in 2023. But a muscle car can’t whir like an EV, so this tough coupe…

HERE IT IS: the biggest personality shift the Mercedes-AMG C63 has undergone in, well, ever. Finally revealed after years of rumours, teasers and spy shots, our first official look at the all-new C63 S E Performance confirms what we all knew was coming: the V8 is no more. Cue outrage, waggling fingers and fighting in the streets. A C63 without a V8!? It’s like the Beatles without McCartney. The Stones with no Jagger. But let’s not focus on what we’re losing; let’s drink in what we’re gaining. And that’s a colossal step forward in performance. And weight, but more on that one soon… We’ll start with the outputs. Powering the new C63 is the combination of AMG’s frenzied M139 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo and a single electric motor mounted on the…

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) “Many EV owners use their home solar systems to charge their cars” SUNNY SIDE UP I APPRECIATED the details and explanations in Andy Enright’s excellent Car v Road feature with the Mercedes-Benz EQS 53 (Wheels, October ’22). I too recently drove my electric car around the Yallourn Power Station contemplating the irony of Australia’s dirtiest power station adjacent. However, Andy’s feature omitted one important detail: that so many EV owners, even in Victoria, use their home solar system to charge their EV. My five year old Tesla S75 (RWD) is fully charged by my home solar system for around…

Model Lexus RX 500h F-Sport Performance Engine 2393cc 4cyl, dohc, 16v, turbo, mild hybrid Max power 273kW @6000rpm Max torque 551Nm @2000-3000rpm Transmission 6-speed automatic Weight 2155kg 0-100km/h 5.9sec (claimed) Economy 8.2L/100km (estimated) Price $110,000 (estimated) On sale Q1 2023 UNTIL 1998, the only time the word ‘premium’ was used in the same sentence as ‘Japanese’ and ‘SUV’, was to describe a distinct absence of anything fitting that bill. In fact, aside from the venerable Range Rover, there wasn’t really any vehicle in the mid-’90s that could offered a high-riding seating position while treating its occupants to a little luxury. That was until the Mercedes-Benz ML and the Lexus RX 300 arrived in 1997, creating a rift in the high-rider landscape that other brands simply couldn’t ignore. Today, virtually every…

Mitsu’s cabin feels both fresher and constructed using higher quality materials than that of the Ford. Front seats offer decent support, but manual adjustment in this ES spec. In the back, relatively low base is a bit short on under-thigh support leaving Outlander a bit less cosseting than Escape. Headroom is ample, and leg and toe room are good. When flipped down, the centre backrest becomes a substantial armrest with two cupholders. You can now opt for an occasional seven-seater PHEV (Mitsubishi calls it a 5+2) while Escape is a five-seater only.…

FINALLY, THEY fixed it. You know the bit I mean. The chrome window trim of the previous Subaru Levorg, the way it ran along the window sills and stopped abruptly at the rear quarter windows? Ridiculous. Okay, yes, this is probably the last factor anybody would or should consider when buying a new car – nothing’s perfect, after all – but the thing is, the Levorg was imperfect in too many ways. The interior was fussy and too busy, the infotainment was spread across three poorly conceived displays, the CVT transmission performed a desperate and unconvincing impression of a torque converter, the suspension was wildly under-damped, and… well, this isn’t a review of the 2017 Levorg. Here we’ve got the new one, still sold overseas as the Levorg, but smartly…

IS THERE A powertrain that generates more furrowed brows and curious expressions than a plug-in hybrid? I’ve been in possession of this white Outlander PHEV for a few weeks now and the questions have been coming thick and fast. “What’s the range like?” “Isn’t it heavy?” “What happens when you run out of electricity?” “How fast does the battery degrade?” These are just warm-up fodder, though. The thing most people really want to know comes later when they learn this particular Outlander PHEV, which is the flagship Exceed Tourer, costs $68,490 before on-road costs. “Oh,” they say with a polite tilt of the head. “Wouldn’t you be better off with an SUV that’s fully electric?”. It’s an intriguing thought. You can slip into our reigning Car of the Year, the…

FROM JUNE 1948 to March 1951, in a former sawmill in Gmünd, Austria, about 300 employees produced 46 examples of Ferry Porsche’s seminal 356 sports car. Each effectively hand-built, these aluminium-bodied coupes and cabriolets relied heavily on VW running gear, although their 1.1-litre engines produced 30kW against the standard VW’s 19kW. Where Ferry Porsche’s first 356 prototype had been a mid-engined, spaceframe-chassis roadster, these ‘356/2’ models were rear-engined and intentionally more production-oriented. In 1950 the fledgling carmaker relocated to Stuttgart, traditional home of Ferry’s father Ferdinand Porsche’s engineering consultancy. Coachbuilder Reutter was engaged to produce 500 bodies in steel. The first production example, a coupe, was completed at Easter 1950 and featured bespoke aluminium cylinders and heads. The search for performance and reliability would quickly drive the 356’s evolution of VW’s…

SUZUKI’S VITARA AND Grand Vitara nameplates have, at various times in history, been two names for the same car – introduced initially in the late-’80s and positioned above the Jimny compact 4x4. Like many of its ilk, the original Vitara was a low-powered and light, but immensely capable, ladder-frame 4x4 that could punch well above its weight when venturing off the beaten path. But as buyers matured, and the industry evolved, the Vitara would slowly take on a more soft-road approach, with Grand Vitara ultimately sprouting a standalone model for 2023. That recently-revealed model won’t be coming to Australia, with Suzuki’s local arm fearing sales cannibalisation with the existing Vitara and S-Cross, silently retiring a nameplate enjoyed by Aussie motorists for decades. The original segment-breaking Vitara launched in Australia in 1988,…