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Sweet-sounding sub-30 contenders
What new car sounds the best for under 30k? I know most people like the roominess of a car’s cabin, the funky stereo, the leather seats or maybe the way the car drives. But which of the readers, like me, enjoy the sound of a rorty engine? There are lots of neat things that make up a good drive, but one of the features that sits at the top of the list for some has to be the sound of a sweet engine responding to the right foot. I can just imagine two boys in the playground at school arguing over whose car sounds the best!
Mulling this one over took a bit of time, but there were a few cars that came to mind.
Mazda know how to make a drive fun, and with their latest Mazda 3 SP25 sedan, there are few cars that can match the car for pure driving pleasure – and still have price tag of under $30,000. Effortless performance from the 122 kW, 2.5-litre engine makes this car move very quickly when required. The rorty engine note is a pleasure.
Honda makes some of the finest and most reliable engines. The Honda Civic VTi is very well priced, roomy and exceptionally reliable. The other nice thing about the VTi engine is that it has a nice tone when pushed hard.
Make sure that you have a drive in the Fiat Ritmo 1.4T. This is a fireball capable of 110 kW from a very sprightly 1.4-litre engine. Great fun to drive, the little hatch looks hot, goes hard and has superb handling to match. Not only is it well equipped, but also the car’s price is under the 30k mark – and when linked to a slick six-speed manual, the engine sounds like a baby Ferrari.
An in-line, four-cylinder, 2.0-litre engine sits under the hood of the Chunky Dodge Caliber SXT. The engine note has a pleasant rasp, while the under 30k price tag buys you plenty of luxury features, space and some nice roadholding to match.
This leaves me with two other contenders for the best sounding new car for under $30,000. These two marques have been battling it out on the rally circuits for a long time now. Perhaps it’s the racing prowess that has filtered down through these particular cars, but whatever it is, they both sound very good under a hard throttle. The Mitsubishi Colt Ralliart has a super quick turbo-charged 1.5-litre engine under the hood. What you have the power to do is embarrass bigger engines, on a regular basis, at the traffic lights. Stylish and sporty, the Colt Ralliart also has a comfortable driving position.
You might have already guessed, but the other car that has an engine that sounds very good is the safe and practical Subaru Impreza. Few cars can hold the key of Gee-wow like a flat-four engine, and what the Subaru Impreza R, RX and RV do have is a burbling flat-four at the right price.
Have I missed any sweet sounding sub-30k contenders out? Inform me if I have.
The Road to Nowhere, Somewhere or Anywhere.
A road trip in and around Australia is an excellent way to go about meeting new people, making new friends and tasting some of the best food (and beer) the country has to offer. Australia has many wonderful sights to see and experience. Wildlife is abundant in many places, and it is quite a rush to experience a croc, koala, wombat or wallaby – not to mention all the seabirds – first hand. Did you know that Australia has its own camel? Where do you reckon are some of the best places to take a road trip in Australia? You may have lived in Australia for quite some time and know where the special drives are. How about hearing about your favourite tour – and adding a few tips for those who might like to retrace your steps. Some of the best road trips need an overnight stay or a couple of nights away, so these are ideal for a short holiday. Longer trips are the special ones that require you to fill up the car with all the luggage in preparation for taking a week or two off work.
I reckon Canberra is a nice area to take some time out. From Sydney, you can travel southwest on the Hume Highway to Goulburn – the largest city on the Southern Tablelands. Also known as the ‘City of Roses’, Goulburn has a number of interesting attractions, which include a number of special cafes. From Goulburn, you can take the Federal Highway (Route 23), which passes Lake George before bringing you to the heart of Canberra, the national capital. There’s heaps to do, with over thirty national institutions, parks, bushland, some great restaurants and a thriving arts scene. Canberra offers fantastic activities and sights to see and experience for all the family. This would make a nice run in a Peugeot 407 or maybe a Mercedes Benz CLS-Class, where you can sit back in some premium comfort and allow the engine to purr along while you take in the sights and experience the people.
If you like to rough it a bit, then maybe a Northern Territory Outback adventure trip in a Mercedes GL-Class or Nissan Safari 3.0 TDi would tickle your fancy. The 2700 km trip from Augusta to Darwin is a sensational journey through the heartbeat of Australia. Be sure to go as part of a team, as it’s always wise to put safety first.
And don’t forget what would have to be one of the classic Aussie road trips: the Nullabor. This isn’t the prettiest drive or the most challenging from a motoring perspective, but it is still a classic, even though it’s a dead straight road with few features. That’s the whole point – getting through the trip is an achievement in itself. Some people give themselves an added challenge: trying to do the Nullabor on as few gallons of petrol as possible by using “hypermiling” techniques. Not a bad thing to try in a smaller economy vehicle.
So, handing over to you lot then. Suggest a fair dinkum Aussie journey, tell us what the good bits are, propose what safety awareness might need to be taken note of and recommend the vehicle for the trip you have in mind.
Oranges Not Lemons
A car that goes from A-B every day without breaking down has got to be considered as a usefully reliable vehicle. Servicing has to be done on any vehicle to keep it safe and functioning at its best. Regular servicing also ensures that the car will last a whole lot longer and be reliable for an extended period of time. So, assuming that the manufacturers servicing has been carried out and the WOF checks done, when it comes to reliability, which makes and models of motorcar seem to be stand out performers? Let’s take a look.
Now, how could I go about gathering a useful wodge of information on this topic? On line… of course! ‘Gizmag’ was a useful site to find information relating to the reliability of cars in the last decade. The best place to find useful data was actually via a UK insurance company that took care of automotive warranty. As a privately owned insurance intermediary, Warranty Direct, were able to collect lots of data about warranty issues. These warranty issues are not so easy to prise out of the car manufacturers themselves, so with the help of Warranty Direct, a reliability index – an independent comparison of frequency of failure across the 55,000 vehicles the company insured proved very helpful. Take a look at the reliability index here.
You’ll muse over the interesting outcomes!
The Warranty Direct Top 100 Most Reliable Used Cars Of 1996-2006 (data from UK):
1 Honda Accord 2 Subaru Forester 3 Mazda MX-5 4 Mitsubishi Carisma 5 Toyota Yaris 6 Honda Civic 7 Nissan Almera 8 Honda CR-V 9 Toyota RAV4 10 Nissan Micra 11 Lexus IS 200 12 Mazda 626 13 Jaguar X-Type 14 Toyota Landcruiser 15 Volvo S/V40 16 MINI (BMW) 17 Suzuki Vitara 18 Mazda 323 19 Toyota Carina E 20 Saab 9-5 21 Lexus LS400 22 Ford Ka 23 Rover 45 24 Hyundai Lantra 25 Mercedes SLK 26 Citroen Xsara 27 Ford Cougar 28 Subaru Impreza 29 Skoda Octavia 30 Audi A4 31 Nissan Primera 32 Toyota Avensis 33 Volvo 850 34 Vauxhall Corsa 35 Seat Toledo 36 Volkswagen Golf 37 Daewoo Lanos 38 Fiat Brava 39 Hyundai Coupe 40 Mitsubishi Shogun 41 Rover 25 42 Mercedes CLK 43 Fiat Marea 44 Ford Focus 45 Peugeot 106 46 MG TF 47 BMW Z3 48 Hyundai Accent 49 Volkswagen Polo 50 Fiat Punto 51 Vauxhall Zafira 52 Mercedes C-class 53 Volvo S60 54 Toyota MR2 55 Mazda Xedos 6 56 Ford Puma 57 Vauxhall Astra 58 Vauxhall Omega 59 Chrysler Neon 60 Audi A2 61 Ford Fiesta 62 Ford Mondeo 63 Vauxhall Corsa 64 Citroen Saxo 65 BMW 3 Series 66 Vauxhall Vectra 67 Isuzu Trooper 68 Mercedes M-Class 69 Subaru Legacy 70 Rover 400 71 Fiat Ulysse 72 Mercedes E-Class 73 Renault Clio 74 Toyota Celica 75 Peugeot 306 76 Peugeot 406 77 Volvo S70 78 Rover 75 79 Daewoo Matiz 80 Peugeot 206 81 Mazda MX-3 82 Vauxhall Tigra 83 Seat Ibiza 84 Peugeot 106 85 Renault Megane 86 Peugeot 406 87 Saab 9-3 88 Audi A3 89 BMW X5 90 Mercedes S-class 91 Toyota Corolla 92 Seat Alhambra 93 BMW 5-series 94 Daewoo Nubira 95 Alfa Romeo 145 96 Saab 900 97 Mazda MX-6 98 Jaguar S-Type 99 Daewoo Leganza 100 Porsche Boxster
Knowing What You’re Torquing About
If you’ve ever taken even the slightest look at any car review, some of the key bits that tend to be described and compared are the engine stats and specs. Some specs are easy enough to understand – the 0–100 km/h sprint is a measurement of how long it takes the car to go from not travelling at all to going at full open road speed. It’s a measurement that is easy enough to picture, and it’s easy enough to convert to and from metric units, if you’re not too fussy. If you want to get absolutely precise, 100 km/h is equivalent to 62.14 mph, so if you are presented with an Imperial measurement looking at the 0–60 mph sprint, it’s roughly the same as the usual nought-to-the-ton metric figure. Get out your calculator if you want to be absolutely precise.
However, some specs are a bit harder to get a mental picture of. The key figure is power. Power is defined as the rate at which work is done, or else the rate at which energy is converted into motion. In cars and vehicles of all types, the formula for calculating power is a little more complicated and the power output (measured in kW (kilowatts) using metrics) is the force times the velocity (physics-speak for speed!). If you want a formula, it’s Power = work/time = (force x distance)/time. Force, of course, is derived from the mass, so small cars (and motorbikes) tend to have engines with fewer kilowatts of power – you don’t need as many kW to get up to speed. All sorts of things go into the power, such as the number of cams (pistons) in the engine, the number of combustion chambers in the engine and the size of the combustion chambers. Power used to be measured in horsepower, which was originally used to compare how well a steam engine or traction engine could work in comparison to a big Clydesdale. And here’s some handy little figures so you can compare that European car that measures the engine power in kW against an American car that’s measured in horses:
- 1 kW equals 1.34 hp
- 1 kW equals 737.56 foot pounds per second
- 1 hp = 550 foot-pounds per second (ft lb/s)
- 1 hp = 0.75 kW
Power is closely related to torque. Torque takes into account the fact that although power is produced in a straight line inside the combustion chamber(s), it is applied around an axis – the whole set-up with transmissions and drivetrains involve rotational motion (and is then converted back to straight-line motion when the rubber applies a force to the road). It’s measured in Newton-metres (Nm or, if you want to be really picky, N.m).
Now, we all know that engines run at different speeds, depending on how far you press down the accelerator. No engine produces the same amount of power or torque at all speeds. You often see a graph that shows the level of torque produced by the engine at various engine speeds (measured in rpm (revolutions per minute)). The place where the graph reaches its highest point is the peak torque – and this helps you know where the engine should be running to get the maximum oomph to the wheels when you need it to accelerate or pull things. Power curves exist, but the engines torque is what really counts when the old girl is fully laden with the family and towing the caravan to your camp site. The idea of gears is to make sure that the engine purrs over at the right speed – the right number of revs or rpm – so the engine gives the right amount of power and/or torque for what you need.
Newton-metres are the SI (metric) units used for torque. The non-metric unit used for American cars is in pound-force feet, also known as pound-feet. Just to be confusing, pound-feet are used for torque, while foot-pounds are used for power, something that’s likely to drive you half dotty. The formula for converting is 1 pound-foot = 1.356 Nm.
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