In 2002, Nissan’s X-Trail entered the market right when the craze for small SUVs started, subsequently becoming one of the most popular examples of these vehicles that, at the peak of its lifespan, owned a third of the local market. Sporting attractive, purposeful looks, good engines, outstanding practicality and sufficiently credible off-road capabilities, it appealed [...]

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Red Hot!
Drive Magazine, December ‘09

Alfa Romeo as a brand can hardly be classed as a volume seller in South Africa. An Alfa has always been seen as a car that you buy with your heart not your head. Alfa is the defacto Italian car that puts style ahead of practicality, driving experience ahead of outright [...]

Continue reading " Drive test – Alfa Romeo MiTo "

In the past year I have had to make peace with the fact that the Chinese are coming to SA with even more vehicles. Not just Nissan/Isuzu rip-off bakkie combinations, but passenger cars as well. Some are blatant design rip-offs, which the Chinese are famous for, but then there are others that actually show a [...]

Continue reading " Quick Test: Chery J1 "

The Triumph Speed Triple is a street fighter without compromise. It’s fast and agile. It rewards competent riders but doesn’t suffer fools gladly. And that’s a good thing, exactly what a street fighter should be. And it’s not just my opinion, the buying public seem to agree. Truimph has sold them by the bucket load [...]

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A few weeks ago when Steve tested Volvo’s S80 2.5, he made reference to the fact that South Africans seem to have an eerie loyalty towards products of German origin. Sure, the Germans make some excellent cars, but so do the Japanese, the Swedes and the Koreans. For some reason, you’ve not arrived if your [...]

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A Car for life
Alternately, read the full test in Drive Magazine.

Volvo seem to have a problem with resale value in this country and I’ve never really been sure why. In Europe the Swedish limousines are considered to be right up there with German premium brands. Volvos are also built like the proverbial brick outhouse and [...]

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I love movies that feature cars, especially when they drive the specific car in a way you would rarely – if ever – see in reality. Think what Jason Statham and Liam Neeson did with Audi’s S8 in Transporter 2 and Taken respectively. Or that one Bruce Willis movie in which he drove a 7-series [...]

Continue reading " Quick Test: Volvo C30 T5 "

Konfusing Koleos
Read the full article in Drive Magazine!

Renault’s Koleos SUV is one of those vehicles that’s fairly easy to overlook. In fact, when it arrived we’d not only completely forgotten about the booking, we nearly didn’t recognise what it actually was!
And yet, it’s actually quite the handsome machine. We had figured it, considering the extent [...]

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Supercar Shaker
Read the full magazine article here.

An interlude in the action. A brief pause for a comm’s catchup and some sleep in a busy two-day schedule. There was a lot to get through.
Tomorrow things will be getting serious. Rather than the same old comparisons, we’ve foregone the Porsches and Astons and GT-Rs for something, well, [...]

Continue reading " Drive Test – Audi R8 V10 "

More than just green
For the original Drive Magazine road test, click here.

The upgraded Toyota Prius is not a car normally associated with passion, at least not of the motoring kind. If you’re passionate about saving the ice shelf, polar bears or rain forests, then one would expect the environmentally friendly Prius to stir up emotions.
But [...]

Continue reading " Road Test – Toyota Prius Gen 2 "