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/ 17 October 2006
I’ve long maintained that if I came into some toy money, the 350Z Coupe would be my weapon of choice. The car looks great, it goes well and, I believe, offers serious value for money. When I drove the pre-facelifted model with its 206 kW and 363 Nm, I reckoned that it felt like a true musclecar, although another 30 kW would have been welcome, writes Gavin Foster.
For nearly four years South African motorists have been spoilt for choice, with a seemingly endless stream of keenly priced new makes and models arriving virtually monthly. The honeymoon is now over. So should we emulate the property writers who constantly urge readers that the time is right to buy? In this case, yes.
Ever since the Hyundai Getz arrived in South Africa in 2003, it’s been a winner for AMH, importers of the Korean brand. Although Hyundai doesn’t report sales figures, rumour has it that about 1 000 of the little cars are sent off to new homes each month, which makes it a serious player in a hotly contested segment — for every Getz sold, there’s a Volkswagen, Toyota, Renault or other brand salesperson crying into their tea.
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/ 13 September 2006
Being different is good — car dealers’ showrooms are overflowing with boring vehicles that all look the same. ”Oh, look! They’ve given it a big silver grille and moved the cab right forward. We must remember to do that next time!” A couple of years later all the offerings in the class look the same, and the designers are hard at work crafting something a little ”different.”
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/ 13 September 2006
Call me eccentric if you like, but I’m a large man who loves small cars. Add to that my passion for three-cylinder engines and the new Toyota Yaris T1 just has to appeal. Still, I had reservations about the ability of the little one-litre unit to motivate the Yaris very well — as small cars go, the Toyota is comparatively heavy, thanks to all the bells and whistles.
Toyota Motors South Africa is fiercely protective of the reputation of its products and for years refused to introduce diesel-engined passenger cars to the local market because our diesel fuel contained an enormous amount of sulphur — up to 300 times the amount that is considered acceptable in Europe and the United States.
Just imagine if the Lexus brand was owned, not by Toyota, but by Eskom. This thought popped into my head as we flew into Cape Town for the launch of the new Lexus GS300 and IS250 models. We were handed fancy "Western Cape Energy-Efficient-Zone" passports, issued at the airport by the national power company, writes Gavin Foster.
The King is dead — long live the King! Nah — that’s not really true. The Camry never was King in this country. It was a big car that often didn’t match the specification levels of its rivals, and it lacked something in the desirability stakes, so it never sold in huge numbers here.
Whatever else you can say about maverick motorcycle millionaire Simon Fourie, he’s never boring. As a penniless law student and apprentice public prosecutor in Durban back in the 1970s, he moonlighted as a taxi-driver to fund his expensive motor-cycle racing addiction. He soon discovered that most of his clientele were sailors who wanted to be taken first to a bottle store, then to a brothel.
Come on, admit it. There wasn’t a diesel car owner in the country who didn’t have a tear in his eye when Audi won the 2006 24 Hours of Le Mans in their diesel R10 sports car. After years of being condemned to use the leaky old diesel pump around the back of the service station, drivers of oil burners have finally earned the right to be accepted at all levels!