Private Fleet Car Review: 2016 Mitsubishi Triton GLS Manual.
Big, boofy, simple. Kinda like Lenny from “Of Mice and Men” or the Warner Bros. cartoon equivalent. That’s an easy way to think of Mitsubishi‘s revamped Triton range, especially with a manual in the GLS.
This is not damning with faint praise, however. Steinbeck’s classic novel has Lenny as one of the twentieth century’s iconic characters so to draw the parallel between the two is fair. Triton has been around for some time; the name plate goes back as far as 1978. In current guise it’s big (over five metres in length and one point seven in height), reasonably roomy but not without quirks.
It’s boofy, in that you CAN take it off road (with an advanced electronic four wheel drive system) with barely an issue (one team took the Exceed to the Simpson desert) and simple, in that you get exactly what you see and there’s no pretentiousness about it.
The Buzz About The Electric Car
If you were to read the typical review of an electric car – a Nissan LEAF, say – you’re likely to be left with the impression that electric cars are a brand new technology that’s never been seen before. Unfortunately (or should that be fortunately?), this impression is incorrect.
This is only one of the misconceptions about the electric car. The other main one, which typically got heard in the 1980s and 1990s before electric and hybrid vehicles git the market, was a juicy conspiracy theory about big vehicle manufacturing companies or oil magnates finding out about plans for an electric car and taking steps to rub out either the invention… or the inventor. Seeing as most big car companies are putting out hybrids and electrics these days, we now know that this sort of story probably needs to go in the thriller fiction category.
Those Fuel Consumption Figures…
I don’t know what you look at first when you think about buying a new car and comb through all the stats in a car review to see what it’s like. For me, the fuel economy figures would have to be just about top of the list, jostling for space with details like the size of the boot and the number of doors and seats. However, have you ever noticed that when you actually purchase your new car, you never seem to get the same fuel economy figures that the sticker on the windscreen says?
Sometimes, the reason why you’re not quite wringing the same economy out of your little car is obvious: you may like to accelerate and go fast, you may do heaps of towing, or you may do heaps more stopping and starting and idling than the average driver. However, even if you’re a light-footed driver who does the average commute, you still might not match the figures in the review or brochure. So what on earth is going on? Are you a worse driver than you think you are? How do they get those fuel consumption figures anyway?
Private Fleet Car Review: 2015 Toyota Aurion Sportivo.
Once upon a time, Australia was home to Holden and Ford and some assorted imported brands that made small cars. Toyota sold Corolla, Corona, Land Cruiser and that was pretty much it. Then a car called Camry came along, with a four cylinder engine. It changed shape but didn’t really grow much, even with the addition of a V6. However, time eventually caught up with the Camry and it put on weight, getting bigger and bigger. In 2007 a decision was made to separate the four cylinder Camry from the V6 and to give the bigger engined version its own name. And lo, Aurion was born.
Aurion had big but relatively unsuccessful wheels to fill, with Toyota’s previous attempt at a V6 “big” car, the Avalon, scarcely lighting the fires of desire for Aussie drivers. Aurion, clearly based on Camry, inside and out, survives to this day but the writing is on the wall for the big car, with demand for SUV style vehicles leaving the traditional Aussie big six struggling to find a toehold.
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