Ask The Guide

There are still plenty of great small cars around within your budget, Agnes, and they all have good safety packages (or we wouldn’t recommend them). Look at offerings such as the Suzuki Swift Navigator (with the optional autonomous emergency braking) for around $17,000 (plus on-road costs) or the Kia Rio S at around $19,000 or Kia Picanto S (one size smaller than the Rio) at closer to $16,000. Both the Kias also feature the brand’s excellent seven-year warranty, capped-price servicing and free roadside assistance which is great peace of mind.

The Volkswagen Polo is a classy drive but a little more expensive at closer to $21,000 for the 85TSi Comfortline. Actually, to be honest, you’ve missed the boat on bargain small cars by a couple of years. Firm favourites such as the Toyota Yaris and Mazda 2 have both been updated relatively recently and have recorded big price jumps in the process. The cheapest Yaris with an automatic transmission is now around $23,000 (it was less than $17,000 back in 2018) while the Mazda 2 Maxx went from being a sub-$17,000 proposition in 2018 to a $23,000 car by the time you add an automatic transmission in 2020.

This very website has an absolute wealth of information on this topic. Follow this link: https://www.carsguide.com.au/kia/cerato/2016 and you’ll find everything from pricing guides to performance data, dimensions and even towing capacities. It’s all there in black and white and one of the reasons CarsGuide is the best in the business.
 

The answer will come down (somewhat) to whether the car dealership you buy from wants your car as a trade-in or not. Even if it’s agreed that your Sportage will act as a trade-in, if the car yard in question doesn’t really want it, they won’t offer you much for it. Sometimes, a car dealer will even give you what’s called a no-trade bonus which is a few dollars off the price of the new car on the basis that you’re not lumbering them with a trade-in they don’t want to have to sell on.

You stand to make a little more by selling the Sportage privately, but only if you can be bothered with placing an advert and then having a stream of strangers in your driveway on a Saturday morning. Trading the old car in on the new one is the simplest, easiest way of switching cars, but as with any deal like this, don’t be star-struck by the trade-in price, because the extra you think you’re being given for the car will almost certainly be added on to the price of the new car. The important number with this type of transaction is the change-over figure; the actual amount of money you need to stump up to swap from one car to another.

I haven’t heard of a local class action against Toyota for this problem. It’s a mistake to assume that Australian and USA consumer laws have too much in common, so what happens in North America regarding recalls and fixes isn’t always mirrored here. But it is a fact that Toyota in the USA and Canada has agreed to repaint some of its models that were originally painted in either of two shades of white. In those cases, the paint delaminated from the undercoat and literally fell off the car.

What’s much more common in Australia is that the clear-coat (the outer layer of clear paint that gives the finished car its gloss) fails and starts to peel or flake off. By the time that’s happened, the actual colour-coat is usually compromised, too, and repainting the vehicle is the best bet. Metallic colours are notorious for this happening (they are the most likely to use a clear-over-base paint finish) and it’s by no means a Toyota-specific problem.

It happens because the paint used can’t handle Australian levels of heat and UV radiation and it simply fails chemically. Cars from the 1980s and 90s were probably the worst offenders, but some newer cars also suffer the same problem, usually when they’re out of warranty, of course. And just as it isn’t limited to Toyotas, nor is the problem specific to imported cars; plenty of Aussie made Fords and Holdens suffered the same paint deterioration.

The most expensive new Land Rover in Australia is the Range Rover SVAutobiography LWB supercharged V8 petrol which lists at $403,670 and boasts 405kW of power. A high percentage of that cost, however, is down to luxury-car tax and other import duties, and the Australian government loves to slug car lovers. That said, countries such as Singapore which have extortionate fees and taxes just for the privilege of buying a car would have higher Land Rover and Range Rover prices.

However, my money for the world’s most expensive Landie would be on the original Land Rover prototype used to develop the original off-roader way back in 1947. This protype actually featured a central driving position and had the nick-name the Centre Steer as a result. Opinions differ on whether it still exists as some say it was broken up as production started in 1948 while others surmise that it could be hidden in storage somewhere in the UK. If it does exist, it would surely be the most valuable Land Rover in the world.

Beyond that, I’d say another prototype named Huey (named for its registration number HUE 166) from 1948 would be a close runner-up in value terms. Huey now resides at Land Rover’s Classic workshop in Coventry in the UK.

Assuming your car is a V6, I’d recommend a quality brand of oil with a viscosity of either 5W30 or 10W40. Provided you buy a quality, known brand, it will have all the additives that make modern multi-grade oils so much better than the oils that went before them. If your car runs on LPG (as many Commodores do) then you need to buy an oil that’s designed for use with this fuel. Fundamentally, though, the same rules apply: Stick to the correct grade and weight of oil and only use a quality brand, not the generic-branded supermarket stuff.

The actual oil capacity for a V6 Commodore of that vintage is 5.3 litres, so if you buy a six-litre pack, you’ll have enough for tops-ups between oil changes. Don’t forget to change the oil filter, too. While some mechanics reckon changing the filter every second oil change is enough, the wisdom of putting nice, clean oil through a dirty filter is beyond me, especially considering an oil filter costs only a few dollars.

Changing your engine’s oil is probably the best engine insurance you can buy. But you need to do it properly, so a workshop manual is probably a good thing to have as well as it should walk your through the process (important the first time). You also need to be able to dispose of the old oil and filter in an environmentally responsible way, too. But this is a great first maintenance job for the budding home mechanic and can really save you some money over the years. Good luck with it.

I wouldn’t be taking the car to a transmission specialist…yet. Since the car is still under warranty, you need to give Kia every chance to sort it out for you. The good news is that this won’t cost you a cent, whereas taking it to an independent repairer will start emptying your wallet.

You’re doing the right thing by keeping a close watch on the transmission temperature readings (provided that’s not at the expense of watching the road) and if overheating was what caused the warning light to illuminate, then I’d be of the view that the transmission fluid should be changed (at the very least) and an investigation carried out into why the transmission overheated in the first place.

I haven’t heard of a rash of problems with the Rio GT-Line’s seven-speed DCT transmission in Australia, but Kia’s DCT gearboxes in other models have been known to give problems in other countries. Given our typical summer ambient temperatures, we probably won’t be immune from the same problems. This is not a Kia thing, by the way, but seems to be one of many problems that have plagued DCT (double-clutch) gearboxes over the years from a variety of car-makers.

The clutch packs in these gearboxes have to slip to work and that’s a well-known cause of heat in any transmission. If they slip enough, they could conceivably cause the transmission to overheat at which point it will trigger the warning light you’re seeing as well as not operating properly and potentially doing internal damage. Both Ford and Volkswagen have discovered this the hard way, replacing many double-clutch transmissions under warranty over the years.

It’s a bit hard to see why so many manufacturers are persisting with this technology, especially when the modern, multi-ratio conventional automatic is so compact, light and efficient these days.

There are many, many things that can make a car overheat. A faulty radiator, collapsed radiator hose, jammed thermostat, blown head gasket, low coolant level, incorrect ignition or camshaft timing, faulty fuel injectors, the list goes on and on. So you need to have the car scanned electronically to see if a fault code is offered up that could be the cause or part of the problem. First, though, I’d have a close look at the obvious stuff like a leaking radiator or blown radiator hose to make sure that it’s not a really simple fix. Even a faulty radiator cap – as simple as that sounds – can lead a car to overheat.

To be honest, a 34-dgree ambient day should never be enough to make a modern car overheat, especially not one like a Holden Commodore which was designed here to easily cope with our weather and temperature extremes.

It’s interesting to note that you bought the car from a dealer, so it would be worth going back and checking the paperwork to see if the car was sold with any warranty. It’s doubtful, however, as a 2005 model car falls outside the boundaries of Victoria’s statutory warranty legislation (generally a used car must be less than 10 years old and have travelled less than 160,000km before a statutory warranty applies from a licensed car dealer). A good mechanic who knows this type of car should be able to sort it, but have it checked soon; continuing to drive it with an overheating problem is a sure way to make small problems bigger ones.

The Yaris Cross will be more than capable of maintaining a speed of 110km/h on the freeway, Fred. The hybrid driveline, however, is all about saving fuel, not making it the performance leader of the Yaris Cross family. Bear in mind, you have two options with a Yaris Cross Hybrid; two or four-wheel-drive, and the latter is going to be a bit slower to reach cruising speed thanks to the extra mass of that driveline in what is already a relatively hefty (hybrid) hatchback.

Given you’ve nominated some gravel-road use (not to mention shallow water crossings) I reckon the all-wheel-drive Hybrid might just be the one for you (and your wife). The extra grip of all-wheel-drive when it could be of most benefit (which will be relatively often on loose gravel surfaces) buys you an extra safety margin. As for water crossings, even though it has lots of batteries, controllers and an electric motor on board, Toyota tells me that the Hybrid version of the Yaris Cross has been tested to the same standards as any other Yaris Cross version.

Symptoms like this one are often traceable to a faulty stepper-motor which is a small electric motor that controls the position of the car’s throttle and, therefore, the speed at which it idles. If this little electric motor goes awry, the idle speed can stay too high, which is precisely the symptom you’re reporting.

The other likely culprit is a vacuum leak from somewhere on the inlet side of the engine which is allowing too much air into the engine and causing the idle speed to increase. Check for split hoses around the engine bay and don’t forget to check the plumbing associated with the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) valve which can also crack and allow excess air into the intake manifold.