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FRESH FACTS FIVE THINGS WE LEARNED IN THE CAR WORLD THIS MONTH 1. It’s the start of the long goodbye for the venerable Nissan R35 GT-R. On sale for nearly 17 years, it’s finally bowing out of production. Axed here in 2021, the final GT-R is scheduled to leave the lines in August next year. 2. Hyundai has raked in nearly $14m in preorders for the Ioniq 5 N. While the company won’t be drawn on its allocation for Australia for the performance EV, a spokesman has claimed that supply is not an issue. 3. The double-cab version of the Ineos Quartermaster ute was unveiled, priced from $102,000 before on-roads. 4. More details emerge about the eagerly awaited Kia Tasman ute. It’s now likely that the entry-level engine will be the 148kW 2.2-litre CRDi diesel…

WE’REVERY very far along on our next-generation low-cost vehicle,” said Elon Musk in Tesla’s fourth quarter earnings call, spruiking what we’re calling the Model 2 – a vehicle he claimed would “achieve a unitsper-minute level that is unheard of in the auto industry”. But Project Redwood, as the affordable smaller Tesla is known within the walls of Austin, may not be quite the slam dunk many have thought it would be. Industry analysts have downgraded its production forecasts for 2026 and have pointed to EV market stagnation in 2023 that, as Morgan Stanley has claimed, could spark “continued negative revisions at Tesla to ultimately trigger price increases to protect margin.” Despite the gloomy predictions, it’s worth pointing out that despite Tesla’s recent share-price slide, the company still built 1.85 million cars last…

Keep it tight (no more than 200 words) and do include your suburb if via email: wheels@wheelsmag.com.au You can also have your say on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter (search for Wheels Australia) “He would take his standard 911s off the beaten track to go camping or farming” THE ARTICLE Rock Star with the specialised Porsche 911 going off main road was a good read, but hasn’t it been done before? Showing my age, and how long I have been reading Wheels, I recalled from the memory fog occupying my brain the stories Jeff Carter wrote for Wheels back in the ’60s/’70s where he would take his standard 911s off the beaten track to go camping or farming. There was a particular fix he had to cure one 911’s propensity to jump out…

CONSTRUCTING THIS issue’s suite of battery-electric road tests meant my typical testing routine was abandoned. A four-car comparison would usually see us escape Sydney by as great a distance as we could, yet when you have four cars that can realistically travel less than 350km between ‘filling up’, you’re at the behest of charging stations. And while 15 minutes sounds short, in reality, it’s between two to five times as long as you’d spend at a fuel bowser. Plus, with less than four spots in most locations and an increasing fleet of amp-heads to feed, the expected experience is a long way from reality in Australia. I was pleasantly surprised when researching New Zealand’s public charging infrastructure that there was a commitment in place to have fast-chargers every 75km – something that…

WHICH CAR BRAND made wagons cool? I’ll come back in 25 years when you’ve all finished arguing the answer because it’s a tricky one isn’t it? Like the ‘missing link’ in humankind’s anthropoid evolution, one day the world woke up and the once proportionally awkward, often daggy and utilitarian station wagon had turned into a genuinely desirable option. An option which, in many cases, you’d pick over the sedan and even coupe equivalents. Candidates deserving of credit are numerous. With the soundtrack of a turbocharged five-cylinder engine blended with unapologetically angular styling, theVolvo 850 T-5 R was already cool. Then it started hunting down crims on the UK’s highways at 250km/h dressed up in blue flashers and high-vis, and it went through the stratosphere of cool. The Skoda Octavia RS introduced something that…

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MARCELLO GANDINI was a man who confounded easy definition. His shapes were striking, at one moment voluptuous and sensual, the next brutally architectural. He remained the designer of the aesthete, yet proclaimed that “just styling is not fun,” preferring his influence to permeate into the philosophical and engineering concept of the car. His was statement design, writ large and brave. Time and place favoured Gandini. He was born in Turin, the cradle of Italian car manufacturing, in 1938 – a year that also gave us Leonardo Fioravanti and Giorgetto Giugiaro. Between them, these three would be responsible for almost all of the classic Italian designs of the late-60s, the ’70s and ’80s, and their stories are inextricably interwoven. Giugiaro didn’t care for Gandini. When the latter applied for a position with Carrozzeria…

Overrun FORD SUPERVAN IT’S THE IMPROBABILITY of it all that grabs you. When you’re told Ford is gunning to break the lap record at Australia’s most fearsome racetrack, the rather hilly and unforgiving Mount Panorama, your mind fills with images of a sleek, GT3-style racing Mustang. Not an enormous, brick-like van. Which is why it takes a moment to process the hulking, bewinged, and frankly enormous Supervan 4.2. For while it is undoubtedly a van — the bodyshell is taken from an E-Transit — it’s also unquestionably a pure, unadulterated racing prototype. It has slick tyres, a gulping front splitter, a stripped-out, carbon-clad cabin, and an aero-honed body adorned with a rear spoiler so huge it rivals even the unhinged Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak car for size. “It’s also by far the most powerful…

THREE WORDS CAME to embody the development program for the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, forming a mantra that latterly informed every engineering and calibration decision. They were originally appended to the end of an email in an exchange between Albert Biermann and a group of engineers, one of whom was becoming frustrated that the project was in danger of drifting from its original goals. These three words created a sudden and focused course correction. “DRIVING STILL MATTERS”. Biermann’s title today reads Executive Technical Advisor. You may well have heard some reports that have suggested the German has taken a bit of a back seat with regards to vehicle development at Hyundai, but it’s clear that he’s still deeply involved, more recently with the scope of an even bigger challenge than Ioniq 5…