The Impreza WRX comes with a full-house complement of luxury and safety features, but the interior, like the body shell, is conservatively styled.
The aluminium-bodied Jaguar XKR is one or the very few cars I’ve driven that feels almost like a superbike when you pour on the coals.
The Ford Bantam always was and still remains a popular vehicle that drives and handles like a car, but does sterling service as a pick-up.
Honda, famous for building motorcycles that go very quickly, also knows how to make them stop, writes Gavin Foster.
Gavin Foster’s praising a car that’s too powerful, too expensive and — most tellingly — too American for most South Africans.
I came away from the launch enormously impressed with the new VW. It looks quick and feels even quicker, it handles superbly and it’s fun to drive.
It’s big, it’s brash, it’s American and you can’t afford it. Or can you? Gavin Foster comes to grips with the car environmentalists love to hate.
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/ 29 January 2009
Gavin Foster’s list of Car of the Year finalists, in alphabetical order, and his opinions on how likely they are to win …
It’s not often that a politician proposes a change to the law that will loosen the state’s grip on ordinary people’s lives.
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/ 31 December 2008
Who cares that the Mini brand, now owned by BMW, is no longer, strictly speaking, British?
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/ 21 December 2008
The motorcycle I went to Pietermaritzburg to drool over and photograph was a humble little beast, even when it was new, 45 years ago.
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/ 3 December 2008
By towing a trailer illegally you’re risking more than just a fine. If you have an accident, the legal consequences could be devastating.
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/ 28 November 2008
The South African Guild of Motoring Journalists has announced nine finalists for the 2009 Car of the Year competition.
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/ 26 November 2008
The sleek Honda CB1000R, conceived and born in Atessa, Italy, offers top performance and a comfortable, fun ride.
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/ 14 November 2008
The Daihatsu Terios posed, until recently, a bit of a conundrum for South African buyers.
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/ 11 November 2008
The Volvo C30 delivered to me for evaluation was the basic Essential version, which comes with most of the gadgets ‘n gimmicks you’d expect for your money.
So how does the Nissan NP200 compare, firstly with its predecessor, as well as with the other nominally half-tonne bakkies out there?
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/ 23 September 2008
The Z4 Coupé is a fun car to drive, whether you settle for the three-litre version or splash out on the 3,2 M model.
The Nissan 1400 bakkie is going out with a bang, writes Gavin Foster.
The latest Fiat shares little with its predecessor of 50 years ago except, to some extent, its styling. It’s also nowhere near as cutesy-wutesy.
Suzuki Auto South Africa recently kicked off its newborn enterprise by launching two new models, writes Gavin Foster.
I suppose Mercedes-Benz South Africa would get very grumpy if I described its flashy new C-Class estate as a "depot hack", writes Gavin Foster.
"Four kilograms lighter and with five horsepower more than last year, the new Honda Fireblade is capable of delivering performance at a level far higher than 99% of the riders who are likely to ride it are ever going to be capable of coping with," writes Gavin Foster.
The Mazda2 1,5 Individual is the South Africa Guild of Motoring Journalists’ Car of the Year for 2008 — marking the inaugural win for the Japanese brand in the country’s premier automotive competition. The announcement was made on Tuesday evening at a gala dinner held at Kyalami, near Johannesburg.
"The Honda Jazz’s 1,5-litre engine feels like a buzzy little unit, but at 120km/h it’s turning over at just more than 3 500rpm, which means that you’d be doing over 210km/h before you hit the rev limiter at 6 500rpm in fifth." Gavin Foster is halfway through a six-month relationship with arguably the finest car in its class.
Stuart Johnston, one of the most knowledgeable motoring scribes in South Africa, has released the 2008 edition of the <i>Motorheads Diary</i>. Edited by Johnston and beautifully designed by Gauteng classic car buff Heide-Marie von der Au, the second edition of this page-per-day diary for car and bike enthusiasts is an absolute gem.
Proposals being punted about at the moment to make Formula One more environmentally friendly involve reducing engine size and power, and other regulations that have been put in place over the years to reduce speeds in the interests of safety can be relaxed to liven up the game a little, reports Gavin Foster.
"For me, the most difficult part of judging at the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists’ Car of the Year competition is not losing sight of the fact that I’m judging the cars not so much against each other as against their direct competitors in the market place." Gavin Foster rounds up the Car of the Year finalists.
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/ 25 January 2008
The cars we buy and the service we get are still getting better and better each year. That’s the conclusion reached in the fourth JD Power & Associates/<i>Car Magazine</i> 2007 South Africa customer satisfaction index (CSI) study released earlier this week.
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/ 25 January 2008
Arilia South Africa will soon take delivery of the Italian manufacturer’s highly futuristic automatic motorcycle the Aprilia Mana for evaluation. Unlike earlier self-shifting motorcycles that faded into oblivion due to lack of interest caused by sluggish performance, the lively Mana offers riders the option of using any of three fully automatic modes.
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/ 23 January 2008
So you think today’s Formula One cars are fast? How about 70 years ago, when drivers wearing cloth helmets and short-sleeved shirts wrestled massive cars shod with skinny little tyres around grand prix circuits, reaching speeds of more than 320km/h?
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/ 5 December 2007
<i>Ballington Unkorked</i>, the story of South Africa’s first motorsport world champion, was well worth the wait, writes Gavin Foster.