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On The Other Side Of The Tasman Part 2: North Island Drives
Those who plan on visiting New Zealand to follow the Wallabies during their upcoming Rugby World Cup campaign are likely to have one North Island road trip on the agenda: a trip down from Auckland (where the Wallabies play Ireland) to Wellington (where they’re highly likely to beat the USA). This trip can be done in one day, but it pays to allow a night’s break in the middle. The trip from Auckland to Wellington is one of the classic New Zealand road trips, and you’ve got a number of ways to go about it.
The most straightforward way to get from Auckland to Wellington is via State Highway (SH) 1. This takes you down the middle
of the North Island for the bulk part and then the lower western side. It’s by far the most popular route, as it’s more direct. However, you don’t have to stick on this highway the whole way – you can choose to go down the east of Lake Taupo on SH1, or you can turn right south of Tokoroa and go down the less popular western shore following SH32, which has a lot more forest. The two routes meet up again at Turangi. After this, you get to what’s known as the “Desert Road”, but if you come from, say, Alice Springs, try not to snigger when you hear the locals calling it this – it’s not that much of a desert, but at least it has a striking cluster of active volcanoes. The volcanoes are unlikely to go up and close the roads, but the Desert Road can be closed by snow. This is unlikely in the middle of September, but isn’t impossible, so keep and eye on the weather forecast and take warm clothing if the weather looks a bit iffy. As you keep going south, things get a little tame (and the roads a little more crowded) as you get south of Bulls, but if you head east along SH3 to Palmerston North (notable for the wind farms – you can’t miss them) and through the Manawatu Gorge, you get onto SH2, which is more interesting from a driver’s perspective, as it’s got more hill work and corners to have fun with.
If you take SH2 all the way down, it’s a lot longer, but it goes through some more rugged bits of the country, and is the route to take if you like cornering and hills, as SH2 has plenty of these. This follows the coast of the Bay of Plenty and then cuts through the hill country to Gisborne, the first city in the world to see the sun, thanks to the International Date Line. If you’re really keen, you can go around all of East Cape via SH35. Fill up with petrol at Opotiki, take picnic food rather than expecting takeaways and book a night at Gisborne if you do. After Gisborne, SH2 crosses a few more sets of steep hills (watch out for wild goats on the road and for the very impressive railway bridge at Mohaka) before getting into tamer country around Napier and Hastings. If you’re fed up with hills at this stage, you can cut through the Manawatu Gorge to Palmerston North and get onto SH1 again, and get onto the highway into Wellington.
An alternative road trip starting from Auckland is to head north along the rest of SH1 to the very top of the North Island at Cape Reinga. You have to take a dirt road to get to the very northernmost tip, but a 4×4 isn’t necessary and you can do it in a little hatchback if you like.
Lexus- Big Changes on the Horizon
The Lexus motor company is really hitting the pavement running with its all new designs and model line ups, or at least the planning and endless chitchat about such changes are becoming rife. This includes a rumoured BMW X1 rival being planned as well as a newer ‘ES’ version which will no doubt be based on the next model Camry, like its predecessor.
Lexus needs a bit of a refresh as its sales numbers have dropped off in recent times. The ‘Sports Hybrid’ CT 200h has got the ball rolling, averaging around 150 units per month in Australia, similar numbers to the established IS250.
The next change we can see in showrooms is the next Lexus GS model which is set to make great changes into the 21st century of ‘fun’ motoring – FINALLY. One of the world’s most boring cars is now being tweaked to within an inch of it ‘old-man’ status into a mid-sized interesting driving experience.
The design is still strong and very ‘GS’ in this 4th generation styling but its true performance comes with its engagement of the driver. The Australian market will be receiving the GS350 and the GS450h, but not the lovely F Sports which is only designated to the cold countries at this stage.
The designers have obviously looked at the LFA supercar for styling and performance cues. It is bolder, stronger and nearly confidently shouting ‘look at me’. That is what Lexus has been lacking in the past few years – something to shout ‘hey look at Lexus”. We all know the Lexus is reliable, practical and generally very sound. This is not all we want or we would all be driving Prius’. A great reliable car that handles like it is on rails…and fits all the kids – now that’s a winner.
This has obviously come from the Toyota Corporation ‘internationalising’ the Lexus brand and making it a separate and individual division which includes engineering, design and marketing.
Peter Evans, Lexus’ Australian Marketing Director, has said that there is will be a much broader offering including 4-cylinder and diesel models to compete with the Mercedes E220 and BMW 520d. For a brand that currently starts at just short of $100K that is good news to allow more people to even consider looking at the wonderful Lexus brand.
So next time you are looking for a new family sized sedan put the GS Lexus on your list, as it is an up and coming star in this market space.
Safety Systems Are Hotting Up
Sometimes it’s pretty hard keeping up with all the new doo-dads that are part of a new car’s comprehensive safety equipment list. Some of the new names are new for the sake of being new – to disguise the fact that they are safety systems that have been around for a while – sure, over time, the old has been refined. However, the new safety systems that Toyota, and others, are working on are pretty cool. Get a load of these features.
Toyota has announced that they have some vehicle safety advancements that focus on the older drivers and pedestrians. This is in response to the accident statistics, in Japan, that reveal that more than half of traffic deaths are of people aged 65 and over. Incredibly, Japanese statistics show that pedestrians account for more fatalities than vehicle occupants.
As well as protecting people inside and outside the car when a crash occurs, cars like Toyota are looking at monitoring the occupant’s health and helping them to avoid a crash in the first instance.
Toyota’s Emergency Response Technology deals with a driver who collapses at the wheel because of a heart attack or a sudden blackout. Obviously, this is a scenario that can cause very serious accidents. What the new technology does is it monitors cardiovascular functions through the driver’s grip on the steering wheel. This can detect risk situations. Toyota will continue their research on this amazing technology.
Pre-Crash Safety (PCS) is another biggie that Toyota is working on. PCS incorporates collision-avoidance technology to create a vehicle that is less likely to become involved in an accident. Toyota have progressed their system to the place where the system will predict when a collision is imminent and will initiate measures to reduce damage and the risk of occupant injury. With the use of radar and a miniature camera, the vehicle will monitor the road ahead and apply brakes if the driver doesn’t. How effective the end result is depends on road conditions and circumstances. Additions to this will be a system that will help the driver steer a safe course in an emergency. PCS would monitor locations of roadside obstacles and approaching vehicles to analyse, and respond, to collision risks and change any action, accordingly.
An Adaptive Driving Beam system has already been employed by many premium car manufacturers. This is a system that automatically dips the headlights when taillights are coming into view in your lane ahead of you or when the system detects an oncoming car in the opposite lane. Once no cars are detected ahead in either lane, the system automatically switches the headlights up to full beam again.
Jaguar has employed a pop-up-bonnet system that looks to protect pedestrians who are on course for a collision with the car’s front end. As the system detects the pedestrian ahead of the car, the rear-bonnet section rises up to create a gentler slope at the time of impact. This technology makes for a better impact (no impact is nice) and reduces the level of head injury for the unfortunate pedestrian.
On The Other Side Of The Tasman Part 1: Plannung a Trup Un New Zealand
Quite a few Australians are thinking of heading over to the other side of the Tasman during the upcoming Rugby World Cup. And quite a few of them are considering hiring cars to get around while they’re over there. What do you need to know about driving in New Zealand and what are some good road trips to do while you’re over there?
Driving in New Zealand is pretty similar to driving over here, and you can use your Australian driver’s licence without any problems if you’re only over here for the Rugby World Cup. You won’t have any hassles about remembering what side of the road to drive on – it’s just the same. The give way rules at intersections and roundabouts are considered to be unique but it’s not that different to what happens over here: if you’re turning left, give way to anything that’s going to conflict with you. If you’re turning right, give way to things going straight through. If you’re going straight through, give way to anything going straight through from your right. If you want more details, you can read about it on the NZ Transport Agency’s website.
Regarding fuel, you have the choice of 98 octane unleaded, 91 octane unleaded, diesel and LPG. CNG is available in the North Island only. Oddly, New Zealand doesn’t seem to have cottoned onto the idea of ethanol and ethanol blends much (at least not yet), so don’t go looking for these at the bowser. Fuel prices are higher than over here, even when you take the exchange rate into account, so it could be wiser to hire a more frugal vehicle – a little hatchback might be all you need. The garages tend to warn you if they’re the last one for a big stretch, although their big stretches aren’t as big as ours.
That’s the required stuff – now for the fun bits. What’s a good drive to do while you’re over there? New Zealand is tiny compared to Australia, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get some good drives with good scenery. You can get from one end of the country to the other in a couple of days (provided the ferry crossing in the middle works out right), but most visitors like to take their time. Australia will be playing in a number of places: Auckland, Wellington and Nelson. Two of these are in the North Island, and one’s in the South Island, so you can plan your drive depending on where you want to go.
However, don’t feel limited to stick to the cities and towns where the Wallabies will be playing. There’s a lot of the country to
see, and you may as well make the most of it while you’re over there, especially if you’re down south. The fishing season will have just started, and you can probably find a bit of time to do a Lord of The Rings movie location trip if the fancy takes you that way.
If you want to take in both islands, give a little thought to how you’re going to get from north to south or vice versa. You can put a hired car on the ferry, but it may be easier to hire separate cars on each side of Cook Straight, depending on how much luggage you have – if you have a fair bit, keeping to the one car might be the easier option.
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