Author archive
Where You Don’t Want To Fill The Tank
So there you are, stopping off at the petrol station to top up the tank of your good old family Toyota . Like most people, you’ll roll your eyes at the amount that whizzes up on the bowser and remember back in the Good Old Days (I must be getting near middle age if I’m starting to use that phrase) when filling up the tank didn’t cost nearly as much as half a week’s groceries… which is only a slight exaggeration.
And it’s certainly a fact that Australia is a pricey part of the world to buy petrol in, especially premium petrol. In the OECD countries, it’s in the top ten most expensive places to fill the tank with premium. At the end of the December 2012 quarter, the countries in the world where you don’t want to fill up were:
- Spain
- The Netherlands (no wonder bikes are so popular over there)
- Hungary
- Luxembourg
- Slovak Republic
- Australia
- Sweden
- Germany
- Ireland
- Canada
(This list doesn’t take taxes and levies into account – these vary from country to country and make true comparisons a bit harder. It just looks at the actual stuff your car burns.)
What about regular or non-premium? Things look a little bit different for Australia here, thankfully. In fact, we’re the country with the third biggest gap between the price of regular and premium, with Canada and Mexico having bigger gaps (the smallest gaps between premium and regular are in Germany and New Zealand). A lot of countries don’t have regular petrol, either, and are stuck with premium – and this includes the poor old Spanish and Dutch. The worst places for regular petrol are:
- Denmark
- Germany
- Czech Republic
- Austria
- New Zealand
There’s always diesel, of course. Again considering the plain price of the fuel rather than anything with any taxes or levies shoved onto it, Australia comes out very well indeed. Here’s where you can get the fourth cheapest diesel prices in the OECD – only beaten by New Zealand, the USA and Mexico. The places where diesel was priciest were:
- Turkey
- Norway
- The UK
- Italy
- Sweden
- Ireland
- Finland
- Hungary
- Germany
- Denmark
You might ask where the cheapest places are in the OECD are. Well, the graphs I found with these fascinating figures only had room for 24 countries so they went for the most expensive 24 in each category. However, the following seem to be good places to fill your tank:
Premium petrol: USA, UK, Austria
Regular petrol: Mexico, USA, Canada
Diesel: Mexico, USA, New Zealand (although the Kiwis clap a whopping big tax on diesel).
The moral here seems to be that driving the way they do in American movies is a really bad idea.
And spare a wee thought for our trans-Tasman rivals. At one point this year, their government was considering increasing the per-litre tax clapped on petrol on the grounds that the public had changed their fuel consumption habits (buying cars with smaller engines like Suzuki Swifts or looking out for hybrid vehicles like the Nissan LEAF, etc.) and The Powers That Be weren’t getting enough revenue from petrol tax as a result. Not sure if this bit of lunacy went through or not in the end – lobby groups didn’t half kick up a stink – but here’s hoping that our government won’t get funny ideas as well.
New Cars For Finishing 2013 Out
There are still a number of exciting new models to come in 2013, and for car fans, like me, this is always going to be great news worthy of investigation.
Keep your eyes out for Aston Martin’s new Vanquish Volante. If you are into James Bond style cars, the open top Volante will be a hit. This should arrive at the end of the year.
Audi’s new S3 will heat some rubber in both hatch and sedan form. The sedan will be able to take on the BMW 1-Series M Coupe. Also to arrive in Australia shortly will be the very quick Audi RS6 Avant. The 0-100 km/h sprint should be cut down to under four seconds.
BMW’s 3-Series GT is just around the corner, as is the newly designed X5. Maybe the highlight for most BMW fans will be the updated Z4 Roadster – a great handling package with plenty of power.
For those who can afford it, the Bentley Flying Spur with a twelve-cylinder engine will grace our roads shortly.
Fiat’s new Grande Punto and tiny Panda models are due in Australia later this year. For the performance nuts, the ankle biting Fiat Abarth Punto Evo Supersport packs a nippy 132kW.
Ford‘s entire Fiesta range gets a facelift, including the feisty new turbo-charged Fiesta ST. One other very interesting addition for the Blue Oval is the cleverly designed Ford Ecosport SUV, due at the end of the year. The small SUV shape is a very tidy-looking little machine that rides high and is very efficient.
Holden has their Trax due shortly – see Private Fleet review.
Watch out for the stylish Infiniti Q50 Sedan. Deceptively quick and luxurious, you’ll need to be quick to get your hands on one of these top models from the recently introduced Infiniti brand.
One of the most exciting cars that is arriving in the next few months is one from Jaguar: the new F-Type Roadster. Deemed to be a great handler and in the same league as a Porsche 911, this one’s got acceleration times of between 4-to-5 seconds from 0-100 km/h – depending on your choice of engine. The V8-S runs up to a maximum speed of 300 km/h.
Jeep is looking good with the launch of its revised Grand Cherokee range in Australia.
Lexus has their gorgeous new IS models. Check out our review on the range of Lexus IS variants. What a great car, with performance to match the looks and luxury, not to be outdone by its little brother, the large Lexus ES Sedan is due later this year.
Maserati has their new Quattroporte sedan for sale in Australia. Expect plenty of get-up-and-go from turbocharged V6 and V8 engines.
Mercedes Benz has just a few new entrants. The big S-Class luxury sedan will launch toward the end of the year in Australia. However, you’ll notice the classy small CLA four-door coupe on our roads now – take a look at our review.
Nissan’s quirky new Juke Crossover is sure to be a hit with the ladies (and the gents), while Nissan provide the off-road fraternity with a nice looking new Pathfinder.
Peugeot have their showy new 2008 SUV available at the end of the year. Expect a frugal diesel to get the job done.
Jag’s F-Type has obviously been watched by the class leading Porsche brand, as the Germans have got their act together and come up with the new 911 range, which includes the GT3 and 911 Turbo.
Back to the small hatchbacks… Renault provide their Nissan-collaborated Clio range at the end of the year. The quick RS is sure to be great entertainment value.
Not a new motorbike this time, but a brand new SX4 SUV will be promised to the buyer on the lookout for new Suzuki cars. It should be here before the end of 2013.
Lastly, Volvo will have all of their new range ( XC60, S60 and V60 vehicles) in Australia by the end of the year.
All-in-all, this is a range of cars (budget-priced to expensive) that keep the interest levels high enough for the new car enthusiast. It has been a quieter year, as last year there were a huge number of products rolled out by many of the big names in car brands. Next year looks busy.
Mazda's New i-Stop Here
Coming to that dreaded stop at the red traffic lights can be a flustering experience for most. If the truth be told, and you’re anything like me, then you’ll never enjoy the red light experience, which is an invisible hand that reaches out and says, “No, no further,” for what seems like an indefinite time period. It’s worst when you have to come to a halt in the night when there are few cars on the road and you end up waiting for at least a minute as you count zero cars crossing the T-intersection in front of you. Just as well, then, that in the bid for making cars ever-more fuel efficient, there are systems like start/stop in a number of new cars which cut out the engine while you sit fuming at the time it takes you to wait for the red light to turn green again. You personally are fuming – your car isn’t. Mazda has a new type of system that fires the engine back up again a lot quicker and smoother than the conventional start/stop systems found in other autos.
It seems that car manufacturers are turning the heat back on fuel efficiency for being the main priority for selling cars. It’s little wonder, as we see fuel prices continue to increase. Stop/start or idle stop systems are becoming more common in cars. They activate when a car comes to a halt, shutting down the engine and quickly restarting the engine again when the brake is released. This saves the driver on fuel and is better on the environment… two great reasons why we should want something like this type of technology in our cars.
Mazda has designed and developed a unique system which it calls i-stop, and the system is part of the company’s very clever SkyActive technologies resources which it uses in all of its new cars. Mazda’s i-stop system uses a “combustion start method” to ignite the engine again after a period of waiting at the lights. Instead of using the starter motor alone to crank the engine, i-stop cleverly ensures that the cylinders stop in the optimum position to re-fire the engine back into life. Direct injection then squirts fuel into the appropriate cylinder and ignites it, which forces the piston down to start the engine again. Mazda’s i-stop still employs the starter motor; however, the i-stop system is easier on the starter motor and quicker than any other system on the market – particularly for diesel engines. Mazda’s engines with i-stop technology take just 0.40 seconds to burst into life. The experience is very quick and discreet, which adds to Mazda’s smooth, seamless operation.
Mazda’s i-stop technology has an information screen that shows the time the engine spends switched off when you’re driving from A to B. If you do a lot of city driving, then the i-stop could end up revealing close to five hours of stoppage time every 10,000 km you travel. Imagine how many litres of fuel will have been saved compared with a car that just sits idling at the lights in between the red and green cycles. Now that gives drivers without stop/start technology even more to get frazzled about!
How To Really Piss Off Other Drivers
I recently read a post on Facebook that read “Pleasing everybody is impossible but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake.” Now, most of us try to be good drivers and to keep everybody else on the road happy – especially that white Holden with a few extra antennae and lights that you strongly suspect to be an unmarked cop car. Plenty has been written about good driving etiquette and how to be a nice courteous driver. But instead of inflicting yet another one of these on you, let’s work out how to really annoy other drivers.
When deciding on the best methods to induce road rage in others, remember the old safety first rule. You don’t want to drive on the wrong side of the road or play chicken with a B-train. Randomly rear-ending people in traffic is also out – no point denting the emblem sitting proudly on the nose of your new Audi, after all. And remember to keep your door closed when some red-faced person with swinging fists comes up to your car.
Ten ways to lose friends and irritate your fellow road users:
- Go round and round a roundabout several times, making everybody else give way to you.
- Overtake someone right at the end of a double lane and cut in front of them as the traffic merges. Then pull over abruptly to the left onto the shoulder of the road to take a phone call that requires your hands.
- Do all of the actions in Point 2 with minimal use of the indicators.
- Wait until the very last minute before dipping your lights for an oncoming driver when driving at night.
- Drive well below the speed limit (i.e. more than 10 km/h below the limit) and sit right out in the middle of the lane. See how long a line you can get building up behind you.
- Throw rubbish out the window where it will fly backwards and narrowly miss the driver behind you. Bonus points if the rubbish is old chewing gum or a cigarette butt and it hits the person in question. Double points if the person behind you is a motorcyclist or a bike rider.
- Slow down in front of other people if there is no passing lane and the road rules have turned into Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad-dum (“You! Shall! Not! Pass!”). Then speed up when passing is possible.
- If you are held up in any way possible even for half a second, lean heavily on the horn.
- If you’re the person behind, get as close as you possibly can to the car in front so you can overtake at the next possible opportunity. Even if you make the other car jam on the brakes when you’ve completed the manoeuvre because you didn’t quite have enough space to overtake the three cars in front of you.
- Use the bike-only lane as a left-turning lane and get into it early. Cyclists are safe to irritate because they will go out of their way to avoid a collision.
Level 2, 9 Help Street