Ford Advice

It’s generally agreed that, when it comes to towing, the bigger, heavier the car doing that job, the better. 

The ceiling in your car is something people rarely think about. It’s up there, prettifying your roof and helping to keep the cold or heat off your head… until it’s not.

He came, he saw and he conquered Supercars racing - and now Scott McLaughlin is trying to do the same in IndyCar racing in America.

When you think Ford Ranger, you don’t exactly think performance vehicle, but that hasn’t stopped some owners from treating the mid-size ute as such, especially its formidable Raptor flagship, which is actually a lot slower than most realise.

It looks like we're going to be stuck on our island continent for a little while. Not that it's really a problem because between the exceptional beauty of places like the Victorian High Country and the remote paradises of northern Australia, we have pretty much everything we need for a great escape right here. 

The Shelby Cobra of the 1960s spectacularly blends a small British roadster with a gutsy American heart, but there’s another reason why this open-top muscle car is remembered so fondly, and is so very desired by collectors.

A key part of “celebrity life” is having a garage heaving with expensive, exotic cars to maintain that image of wealth and success. Sports stars, musicians, actors, fashion designers and others in the glitterarti have plenty of pesos in the bank to fund a lavish lifestyle, and a few of them have spent their hard-earned building seriously cool collections of cars.

Uncle Sam’s finest have been available in Australia for decades now, mainly through small-volume import/RHD conversion specialists. However, in more recent times, these giant US hay-haulers have enjoyed exponential sales growth despite the economic fallout of COVID-19.

One of our avid readers, Jasmine, is in the market for a space cab ute, but she’s been struggling to find one that has child seat anchor points in the rear seats.Most space cab (or extra cab, King Cab, Freestyle Cab or Super Cab) utes have two additional small seats behind the front seats, but the comfort and convenience varies depending on the variant. These utes offer you “sometimes” seats in the back, or alternatively, secure and weather-proof storage for expensive tools. It also means you get a longer tray - and these utes are available with either pick-up (styleside) tubs or in cab-chassis tray back design, depending on what you need. We’ll specify the options below.Surprisingly, there are many big-name omissions from this list.You won’t find a Toyota HiLux Extra Cab here, as it has no child seat anchor points in the Extra Cab models (available in Workmate, SR and SR5 trim). The facelifted model isn’t expected to have child-seat anchors in the Extra Cab models, either. Interesting tidbit: the HiLux is the only space cab model with pop-out rear windows on sale today.The Mitsubishi Triton Club Cab is available in a few trim grades (GLX and GLX+) and cab-chassis and pick-up body styles, but it doesn’t come with child seat anchor points in the rear row.The Nissan Navara King Cab models don’t come with child seat anchor points either, though there are five versions to choose from across RX, ST and ST-X trim levels.There might be 4x2 (SX) and 4x4 (SX and LS-U) Isuzu D-Max Space Cab models, but no variant in that current range has rear child seat anchors. Will that change with the new-generation model? We’ll have to wait and see. Here’s a list of the extra cab utes on sale in Australia in 2020 that have rear seats with child seat anchor points.The Ranger - which is our pick of the ute segment more broadly - has a space cab body with rearward opening back doors (often called suicide doors) with two seats in the back.The seats aren’t comfortable - it’s a pretty cramped space for adults, but that’s the case with all the utes in this story - and in the Ford Super Cab models there are two upper child seat anchor points, but because of the seat design there are no ISOFIX attachments.The 2020 Ford Ranger Super Cab is available in a number of different variants (all prices MSRP):No surprise to see the current Mazda BT-50 make the list alongside its twin-under-the-skin. This is specific to the model sold between 2012 and 2020.The Freestyle Cab model has identical rear-swinging back doors with two seats in the second row, as well as two top-tether child seat points (no ISOFIX).The 2020 Mazda BT-50 Freestyle Cab is available in a few different variants (all MSRP):

Is 2017 the year of the new car for your garage? It's pretty easy to work out what's available now, but here are the most exciting models that are yet to arrive in showrooms.