Toyota’s new Rav 4 doesn’t quite slot into the cross-over market that recently released soft-roaders are targeting, but it is nonetheless a capable city vehicle and a comfortable bundu-basher. The current range of crossover SUVs were undoubtedly inspired by the Rav 4, which was first launched in 1994.
"The all-new Mazda MX-5 is designed by those clever Japanese folk who make everything seem so simple. Given that Gauteng is permanently dogged by rain clouds, I wasn’t given much opportunity to drive with the top down, but when I could, taking the roof down and putting it back up was simple," writes Sukasha Singh.
Competition has become fierce in the entry-level sedan market, with Tata’s Indica and Indigo, Hyundai’s Atos, Kia’s Picanto and the Chevrolet Spark all taking huge chunks of market share away from their long-established opposition. Of these , the Corsa is by far the most modern package, and stands the best chance of survival.
Where three players have for years been used to taking 95% of half-ton bakkie sales, the rules have suddenly changed. The arrival of Fiat and Proton’s small pickups has caused a moderate stir, and Ford, General Motors and Nissan will in future all have to work harder for smaller slices of the growing sub-one-ton pie.
You could take a modern sports car and add or subtract 100kg of ballast without the average driver feeling the difference, even when driving it to the limit around a racetrack. Motorcycles, especially superbikes, are a totally different kettle of fish. They’re now so technologically advanced that designers of new models battle to trim any weight at all.
Cash-strapped Zimbabwe is running out of Aids drugs, with less than a month’s supply of anti-retrovirals left for 20Â 000 patients on a government treatment programme. "We understand that drugs are competing with other items, like fuel, for foreign currency, but the picture is not encouraging," said National Pharmaceutical Company boss Charles Mwaramba.
Recent moves by the Zimbabwean government to allow white farmers whose land was confiscated to resume farming have drawn a variety of responses. "They killed people; they threw them out of their farms, they destroyed the economy. Now they want us to rescue them," says Gerry Whitehead, whose land was seized in 2002.
HIV/Aids organisations in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, have warned people to be on the lookout for individuals selling fake anti-retrovirals (ARVs). Doctors have been shown ARV capsules filled with maize meal, bought by unsuspecting members of the public at prices far lower than the market rate.
Mea culpa time, I guess. A reader writes in from Pretoria (of all benighted places) to advise me to check my facts before putting my big mouth into gear and letting rip. Mary Moffat Livingstone did not pine herself to a gin-soaked death in Kuruman, the reader says, but joined her husband on his safaris into the African hinterland and died of fever on the banks of the Zambezi.
With less than 21 months to go before the expiry of his disputed presidential tenure, President Robert Mugabe last month got his beleaguered Zanu-PF government to launch yet another economic recovery plan called ”National Economic Development Priority Programme” in a bid to revive Zimbabwe’s collapsed economy.