Adventure Reviews

Ford is leading the charge on scrapping the Green Vehicle Guide rating system as it is getting a fraction of the government business compared to its car making rivals Holden and Toyota.That’s because most of Ford’s locally-made models fall below the cut-off mark as they have higher air pollution ratings. Bulldozing the “eco” rating system will help the Federal Government's newly appointed car salesman -- the former boss of Ford in Indonesia, William Angove -- to convince government agencies around Australia to “buy Australian”.All this as private buyers have flocked to better, cheaper and more economical imported cars. So far this year Ford has sold 3300 locally-made cars to governments across Australia compared to Toyota’s tally of 4100 deliveries and Holden’s order book of 9200 cars, according to confidential figures obtained by News Limited.Only one of the three new Fords developed with $42 million taxpayer dollars – the most basic LPG Falcon – earns a high enough rating to make it onto the purchasing lists for some government departments across Australia. For example, NSW state fleet has a minimum “pollution” and “greenhouse” score of 13.5 (out of 20) for all but emergency vehicles.But the four-cylinder Falcon (13 out of 20) and diesel Territory (9 out of 20) don’t make the grade. (The new LPG Falcon does comply, scoring 15 out of 20.) Government fleets are allowed to buy vehicles below this score, but if they do they won’t meet their environmental targets. So, this is the most likely motivation for Ford wanting the star ratings removed from the Federal Government’s website. It would cost millions of dollars to re-engineer the cars to meet the stringent standards.As it is, Australia's vehicle emissions targets fall way behind the rest of the world. Removing an easy-to-understand environmental rating system for cars would put Australia even further behind.YOUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS AT WORK:Percentage of sales to government of locally made cars (January to November 2012).Ford Falcon four-cylinder: 7 per cent (115 sales)Ford Falcon six-cylinder: 9 per cent (1132 sales)Ford Territory: 10 per cent (1424 sales)Holden Cruze: 13 per cent (3593 sales)Holden Commodore: 16 per cent (4528 sales)Holden Caprice: 20 per cent (276 sales)Toyota Camry: 13 per cent (3223 sales)Toyota Aurion V6: 11 per cent (876 sales) 

That was the (potentially very flawed) principle behind a spur-of-the-moment whirlwind trip from Brisbane to outback Birdsville, a 3200km drive I was desperate to cram into my last week of holidays.Birdsville is a very long way from Brisbane Melbourne isn't much further and it's a lot easier to fly there than drive. But after a great air charter day-trip to one of Australia's iconic outback destinations a few years ago, I'd had a serious yearning to drive there.Winter is the best time to go - glorious days, cold nights and stunning inland skies but my last (solo) attempt to get there ended badly. At Gatton, about 100km west of Brisbane, common sense battered the road trip bug into submission and I made a U-turn, returning home defeated.That was last year. This year, with my wife at work and the kids in school and uni and with my holidays rapidly expiring, I took the plunge again, loaded up the car (40 litres of water, food, sleeping bag, tyre repair kit, radiator fixing gunk, etc) and headed west, leaving the Queensland capital about 4am on a Monday. An hour later, the Gatton turn-off appeared and disappeared in the rear-view mirror as I held my nerve and kept going.Read full story and see more 360-degree views here:http://www.couriermail.com.au/travel/news/birdsville-is-a-long-way-from-anywhere-but-a-great-drive/story-e6freqwo-1226524025068 

This week, in the wilds of Morocco, Land Rover is proving you can have your car cake while still gobbling it down in huge tasty chunks. Its new Range Rover is both an omnipotent off-roader and a Benz-belting luxury car. It re-defines the top end of the SUV business.But it wasn't always like that. The original Land Rover of the late 1940s was little more than a tractor with a roof. The very first four-wheel drive runabout, the Jeep, was just plain primitive. I was shocked when I drove a World War II vintage Jeep and discovered that it was cramped and tiny in the cabin, slow and cumbersome to drive, with seats that were like upright hammocks and no sign of a heater or even a turn signal.It made a 1980s Hyundai Excel feel like a Rolls-Royce. But those were the early days of four-wheel drives, and as relevant to 21st century SUVs as the Wright Brothers biplane is to an Airbus 380. These days, less than 10 per cent of four-wheel drives ever head off the bitumen and more and more are being built with only front-wheel drive to make them more affordable for Australian families.If you also take out the people who tow horses, or drag boats out of the water, the number of hard-working four-wheel drives falls even more dramatically. That's why they are now called SUVs. Just for the record, and in case you've ever wondered, SUV stands for Sports Utility Vehicle.It's a tag that was first applied in the USA, so that people who craved a tough-looking family truck could excuse it to their friends as something more than an off-roader or a tow truck. SUV sounded like yuppie fun and was translated as Sports Utility Vehicle.I've always wondered where the Sports kicks in, particularly in a Toyota LandCruiser or a Nissan Patrol, but they are more sporty than an average American family sedan. These days, the tag twisters have also come up with SAV for Sports Activity Vehicle - could you guess BMW? - and a bunch of other labels for the new-age family wagons that dominate in most countries.They have won us over with high-rider driving positions, giant flexible cabins and styling that tells your friends you're adventurous, not bogged in a family rut. But never forget that SUVs, even something as impressive as the super-costly Range Rover, share the same roots with the humble fighting Jeep and the Land Rover that Her Majesty still likes to use for climbing through the Scottish highlands. 

With auto journalism being commonly regarded by fellow journalists as something less than journalism and by almost everyone else as something less than a real job, you soon learn to not to airily drop such bon mots as: "When I was in Frangers for the oh-five show..."It does little to banish the enduring perception image that people in this field of endeavour are ligging bastards who stagger from top end cars to the bar then back to their palatial hotel suites. In my experience, being on the road in this gig is a perennially frantic search for wi-fi to file first and shoving leviathan picture files through the constricted capillary of YouSendIt. So anyway, there I was at the 2005 Frankfurt Motor Show -- my first such occasion. At least that's where I thought I was. So ubiquitous were the female models -- up to five draped across each and every of the hundreds of autos throughout the 10 exhibition centres -- that I imagined I'd landed by mistake in Paris or Milan during the haute couture shows. "It is ridiculous," huffed the then-head of Volkswagen Australia, a lady, as it happens, of great charm. "But everyone else does it, so we must." Yet why do they when, as every indication and market survey tells us, more than 70 per cent of new car decision are made by women? Difficult to see how festooning, say, a $19K hatchback, with the skinny and the scantily clad is anything but the most reflexive sexist cliche. Worse, when you're out to spruik a family car, it's just a little self-defeating. 

This week a minor victory was won in the war of attrition waged by people who hate cars -- which is to say time-rich, underemployed people with absolutely nothing better to do.On the basis of complaints by these wowser stickybeaks, the unsmiling bureaucrats of the Advertising Standards Board censured Peugeot for a television ad in which a passenger in a 4008 SUV waves her hand outside the window. They weren't aiming an Uzi at rival gang members or even making the universal salute. They were waving."A person must not travel in or on a motor vehicle with any part of the person's body outside a window or door of the vehicle," parped the Board. The sequence is to be edited. There is some consolation that the Board rejected two other complaints -- one that the car was being driven in reckless and menacing manner.I've made it a point to see this innocuous and otherwise forgettable ad and can only suggest that the last accuser should refrain from watching TV under the influence of hallucinogens. I've been told who made one of the complaints, but have a policy of withholding from print the name of this notorious publicity seeker and sufferer or relevance deficit disorder. Giving these people oxygen only encourages them to breath.An advocacy body or even political party for and by the people who drive is long overdue. One of you, surely, must be up for it. Just think, you'll represent a hitherto silent majority, one tired of having life made miserable by government authorities and then being forced to pay them for the privilege. I'd vote for you. 

...Gonna drive past the Stop 'n' Shop. With the radio on..."So begins the most infectious piece of pop ever to address that perennial theme: An awkward young man embracing the freedom brought by driving his car through the American night, neon glaring, radio blaring; a sweet celebration of finding simple pleasure among the banality of the everyday.It's called Roadrunner, the opening track from Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers  one of those obscure early 70s proto punk rock nuggets inevitably name checked in critic's lists. Actually, Richman a Lou Reed wannabe sans the heavy drugs and misanthropy is a kitsch naif best known for his cameo in the Cameron Diaz flick There's Something About Mary. Much of this cult album makes for pretty gruesome listening. Yet in Roadrunner, Richman essays a rich vein of imagery: “The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quick. Suburban trees, suburban speed. And it smells like heaven.”I do love this joyous four minutes while recognising that, if released today (tinny organ and rudimentary guitar notwithstanding), it would very probably be refused airplay. It's simply irresponsible to promote an opus which celebrates youth and cars. Think of the road toll. Driving at night? P-Platers are subject to strict curfews. Clearly this song advocates speeding in the suburbs. Might this also be a reference to amphetamine abuse?No, let's have a nice song about riding a bicycle, bells gaily ringing, along a ruinously expensive cycle path built by a sure to be re-elected Sydney mayor intent on creating a warped vision of Copenhagen at our expense. We've certainly come a long way since the days of Roadrunner. 

"Youse journalists 'ave killed orf the Foulcuhn," reads a perpetual missive which, though sent via email, still somehow resounds of appalling diction and reeks of a beery aggro.This flagrant reality denial used to amaze and amuse me. It's the equivalent of claiming the Soviet Union collapsed because one spring day Pravda ran a narky headline. Now -- as with all shouty and empty rhetoric -- it merely bores me.Both edifices crumbled because they were no longer relevant and the people, having breathed a lungful of free choice, weren't about to go back on the collective farm.With the financial Berlin Wall that was the tariff barrier removed, suddenly state financed sedans were seen to have little allure and all the stale patriotic propaganda in the world can't change that. Look at the cars that have made up the top five since the Falcon, and of late, the Commodore, began the long slide toward oblivion.Because it has not a single fleet or rental sale, the Mazda3 can be seen as one of the world's most remarkable automotive success stories. Not much regarded in most countries, here it is truly the national car  and a more glaring polarity to those trad Aussie sixes is not to be had.The paradox is, as noted last week in Carsguide, that some versions of the big Strayan made cars have never been better. The SS Commodore is one of the world's bargain performance cars. The EcoBoost Falcon is an inspired marriage of Euro powertrain tech and made for local conditions know-how.And both are far too little, far too late, to save -- as some correspondents fancifully suggest -- either model in its current form. The people have been permitted to speak and none of them want a return to the pre-Glasnost era. 

On multi-lane roads, hands up anybody who isn't sick and tired of the brain-dead right-lane hog holding up other traffic and forcing them into dangerous "undertaking" manoeuvres.Lane hogs aren't tolerated in Europe, neither is undertaking. But drivers there know what to do and move out of the centre lanes as soon as thay have overtaken.Could our Aussie problem with driving discipline in general hark back to convict days when it was "every man for himself, or dog eat dog?". Or are we simply very bad -- and very selfish -- drivers in Australia.What do you think? 

I’ve driven no fewer than four vehicles with full or partial electric power. And as usual have enjoyed the experience. We have been running a long term test on a Honda Civic Hybrid for six weeks now and the car is going like a dream.We will spend the best part of half a year in it to really get a taste of the legendary engineering and build quality of Honda. And, of course, check out its fuel use characteristics in real life motoring. Midway through the week I swapped a little Toyota Prius c (the new hybrid city car) for a Toyota Camry Hybrid. These were both part of our routing weekly road tests and you will read more about them here soon.Later I drove the Camry Hybrid to the airport to catch a flight to Sydney for the long awaited official launch of the Nissan Leaf. The drive program was necessarily brief as there was quite a queue waiting to get behind the wheel of Australia’s first purpose-designed mass-production electric car. I’ve driven Leaf before, both in Australia and overseas and liked the experience.Sadly, a trip to Le Mans to witness the first ever victory by a hybrid car in the the world’s toughest circuit race wasn’t on my agenda. But I did manage to get my iPad to talk to my television (a remarkable feat given my ham fisted ways with modern electronics) and tuned into a continuous broadcast direct from the track.The big Audi diesel-electric hybrids used the huge braking that’s such a feature of the French racetrack to recover energy created by the cars slowing down, energy that would normally have been turned into heat and totally lost, stored it in special batteries and reused the electricity to drive motors to accelerate up the next straights.Energy recovery is almost something for nothing and is by far the biggest feature of any electric or hybrid electric vehicle. Possibly the most fascinating feature of the electrifying week I’m describing is the fact that Prime Minister Julia Gillard may also have had a trip in an electric car.Nissan and its alliance partner Renault provided many pure-electric cars for the Rio+20 conference and there’s every chance our PM was charging along in one. Are electric vehicles the way of the future? Our feeling is that they are, though proponents of hydrogen power may disagree. In any case, hydrogen powered cars usually use electric motors rather than burning it as fuel.The biggest advantage of electric cars is that the supply grid already exists all over Australia. Every building of any consequence (and most of little or no consequence) already has electric power inside and out. Interestingly, the current Australian electricity grid is already capable of charging up tens of thousands of electric vehicle - provided the charging is done during the night when demands of other electrical equipment is very low.The biggest disadvantage is that Australia’s electricity is mainly generated by dirty coal. That situation is improving and the amount of sustainable power coming from clean sources is increasing at a reasonable rate. Will the future be as electric as the week I’ve just experienced? I certainly hope so. 

I’ll use it to closely inspect any advertisements that show people walking, to see if they are walking in a dangerous manner. Or a manner that could be considered dangerous if it were happening, say, on the edge of a cliff. Or in a manner that looks like they’re having fun. Or just in any manner I don’t like.We'll get a letterhead drawn up, buy a printer, fax machine, phones, computer and get a contacts list of all the media and pollies in the country -- the shakers and movers -- so we can hit them relentlessly with our press releases.These will relate to anything remotely connected to driving a vehicle, oh, and road safety, and we will tell everybody we represent the broader driving community even though we are just a bunch of mates. We will get on the blower and start lobbying for a seat on various government and non-government road safety bodies to generate a "profile'' and access (public) funding.We will harangue car companies about their advertising and accuse them of killing women and children, and everyone else. We will drive (no pun) them into the ground if we deem it necessary. We will punish them relentlessly because they are evil doers. We will have an opinion on everything including the Aussie flag and will be the first reference point for all the flaky news outlets that want an opinion on something or other to fill holes in their thin news lists. I will become their go-to man on all matters relating to driving.I will enjoy being called a serial pest because of all the good I am doing. Though the Driver Council of Australia isn’t expert (at anything except lobbying and talking through our hat) we will become respected and will cultivate connections in high places to ensure we are always heard. After all, we represent the interests of all drivers in the state. No, in the country. No, wait .. the world.