Articles by Isaac Bober

Nissan Pathfinder Ti550 and Jeep Grand Cherokee go head-to-head in this comparative review.

VW Polo Trendline and Kia Rio S Hatch go head-to-head in this comparative review.

Hyundai i30 Active and Mazda 3 Neo go head-to-head in this comparative review.

Nissan X-Trail and Subaru Forester go head-to-head in this comparative review.

Renault Koleos Dynamique and Peugeot 4008 Allure go head-to-head in this comparative review.

Skoda Octavia 103TDI and Volkswagen Jetta 103TDI go head-to-head in this comparative review.

VALUE from $42,990VALUE from $54,990Making the S60 look horribly over-priced, the Allure is standard with front and rear parking sensors (and parallel parking measurement), heated door mirrors, Bluetooth and iPod connectivity, quad-zone climate control, rainsensing wipers, daytime running lights and much more.At $12,000 more than the Peugeot, the Volvo is awfully pricey. It gets, as standard, all of the usual equipment such as Bluetooth and iPod connectivity, electrically adjustable front seats and leather. But satnav is a $4K-plus option and it gets only rear sensors. Front sensors add $325. Hmmm.TECHNOLOGYTECHNOLOGYThe 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo diesel makes 120kW/340Nm with almost 80 per cent of the grunt available from just off idle. The smooth six-speed automatic helps with impressive fuel use of 5.7L/100km. Its electrically assisted power steering is miles better than the Swede's.The 2.0-litre five-cylinder turbo diesel puts out 120kW/400Nm via a six-speed Powershift transmission - Ford's excellent take on a DSG. Fuel use is 5.7L/100km. The electrically assisted steering is far too disconnected. For $4175 you can add Volvo's active chassis control, Four-C.DESIGNDESIGNInside and out, Peugeot's designers have excelled and the 508 in either sedan or wagon guise is stunning.There isn't a single hiccup in the design. There's a heap of room front and rear and the quality of the materials is impressive, as is the boot space, 497 litres.The S60 has a swooping coupe-like look. The dash layout is pretty good but it lacks the quality look and feel of the 508's interior. There's decent room front and rear and ample steering and seating adjustment, yet you never feel totally comfortable behind the wheel. Boot space is only 380 litres.SAFETYSAFETYIt has a five-star ANCAP rating and six airbags as standard. Passive safety elements complement its active systems. The steering column and brake pedal are collapsible and there are seat belt pre-tensioners, stability and traction control among many other items.It's a Volvo, so just how safe is it? The S60 gets a five-star ANCAP rating and, as standard, City Safety (to avoid rearenders at up to 30km/h), six airbags, stability control, ABS with Ready Alert Brakes, seat belt pre-tensioners and Intelligent Driver Information System.DRIVINGDRIVINGThe typically French well-damped ride doesn't fall apart when you ask more from the car. There's barely a shudder on coarser bitumen. The steering is well weighted, the brakes are strong, all adding to the sense the 508 is more expensive than it really is.The chassis allows for spirited driving with impressive body control. Plenty of grip, too. The brakes are strong, even if the pedal is a little dead. The wellmatched engine and gearbox deliver strong, smooth oomph to flatten hills and make overtaking a cinch.FINAL POINTSFINAL POINTSVerdictThe 508 makes sense fiscally, it makes sense visually and in a driverly sense. As for the Volvo, well, it's good, but the Peugeot really does hit it for six.  

Looking tougher and with more firepower, Ford’s Focus ST might just be the new king of hot hatches...Set to go on-sale in around 40 countries, the Focus ST is billed as Ford’s first global performance car. It’s also, and apologies for getting all gushy so soon, flipping marvelous.My seat of the pants impression after a spirited drive along the Route Napoleon in the mountains around Nice is that it’s more flexible, more thrilling, and better sounding than its key rivals (Volkswagen Golf GTI, Renault Megane RS, and Mazda3 MPS).While there’s no word on pricing just yet (we can expect that to be announced in the next couple of weeks), or how many Ford Australia expect to sell, you’d be reasonably safe betting on it costing around the $40k mark (about the same amount as a VW Golf GTI). And at that price, it would represent excellent value for money.Fitted with a weapons-grade 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder EcoBoost (184kW and 340Nm), this engine, is, more or less, the same engine nestled beneath the bonnet of the Falcon EcoBoost.As mentioned there’s been no word on pricing, but the Focus ST is Ford’s attempt to steal the crown from Volkswagen’s Golf GTI (priced from $40,490+ORC) and so a price point of around $40k should be expected.Final specification, also, hasn’t been finalised for Australian-delivered cars, but there’s a fair chance our cars will have figure-hugging, partial leather, Recaro seats and dual-zone climate control, an alarm, sat-nav (that will hopefully be recalibrated for Australia, as, at the international launch it proved notoriously slow), auto headlights, auto-dimming rear vision mirror and rain-sensing wipers.Under the bonnet is a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder EcoBoost engine which makes 184kW and 340Nm (overboost to 360Nm) from 1750rpm, is mated to a smooth-shifting six-speed manual, and returns 7.2L/100km.But what really impresses about this engine is, and it’s the same as the 1.0-litre EcoBoost, its off-idle, diesel-esque drivability - a signature trait of the EcoBoost family. And it doesn’t fall away either; the gearbox, which is well matched to the clutch, offers rifle-bolt precise shifts and a near seamless pouring-on of power.Plant your foot and while it doesn’t exactly snap your head off it does, as it reels in the horizon, leave you thinking it could happily keep on accelerating into next week... The Focus ST will get to the legal limit in 6.5 seconds, but it feels faster than that, and its in-gear punch is truly impressive. Indeed, it happily hauled itself out of tight corners in fourth-gear from 1500rpm.Looking more muscular but not tacked-on aggressive than a standard Focus, the ST gets a one-piece version of the trapezoidal grille featured on the rest of the Focus range. More than that it gets a bodykit and 18-inch alloys wrapped in 235/40 Goodyear Eagle rubber.There’s a subtle reworking of the interior, too, with darker headlining and trim on the pillars, the figure-hugging Recaro seats, which offer the perfect blend of grip and comfort, a specially-designed steering wheel, gearshift and pedals.Up on top of the dash is a set of three guages displaying water temperature, turbo boost, and oil pressure - they seem a little tacked on, and if they weren’t there we wouldn’t be disappointed. Other than that, the interior is typical Focus, with quality materials and impressive fit and finish.Thanks to reach and rake on the steering, and plenty of adjustment on the seat, it’s a cinch to get comfortable behind the wheel. There’s plenty of room in the front seats, and decent room in the back. In terms of luggage space, and Australian-spec cars will most likely be fitted with a space saver spare wheel, you’ll get around 316 litres, drop the 60/40 split-fold rear seats and this grows to 1062 litres.Like every other Focus, the ST is eligible for a five-star ANCAP crash safety rating, and it gets a raft of active and passive safety systems. There are front and thorax-protecting airbags for driver and front-seat passenger, as well as side curtain airbags for front and backseat passengers.It also features stability and traction controls with three-stage settings (Normal, Sport and Off), ABS with electronic brakeforce distribution, and Enhanced Dynamic Cornering Control, and much more.Our drive route (as well as some excellent mountain roads) took in a considerable amount of suburban roads and, ordinarily, these highly-strung hot hatches can leave you shaken and stirred, but not the Focus ST. The suspension is sporting, sure, but it’s got just enough compliance to knock the hard edges off any and all bumps and ruts, and there were plenty of those on our drive - it’ll have no problem on our roads.The electronic power assisted steering (with variable ratio steering rack) is direct (you can go from lock to lock without taking your hands off the wheel), well-weighted and consistent, and while you do get a slight tug at the wheel (courtesy of torque steer under hard acceleration) it’s minimised thanks to Ford’s Torque Steer Compensation... And so grippy is the front end, and so flexible is the car that you’d have to have fists of ham and fingers of butter to get the nose to run wide out of a corner.Thanks to its off-idle grunt it feels just as rapid as the Ford Focus RS, but is much more refined and drivable in all situations. It leaves both the Mazda3 MPS and Renault Megane RS250 in the dust and, in my opinion is better balanced and with a lot more low-down oomph than a Golf GTI. Indeed, it’s just plain better than that car.

While we probably won't see a Ford Focus 1.0-litre EcoBoost Down Under until at least 2014 we won't have to wait that long to sample the Blue Oval's award-winning engine.See, when Ford's tiny-tot SUV, the EcoSport, hits dealerships late next year (2013), it'll be the 1.0-litre three-cylinder EcoBoost engine that'll headline. And what a brilliant engine it is. Currently available in two states of tune (74kW and 170Nm with a five-speed manual or 91kW and 170Nm, and up to 200Nm on overboost for 30 seconds, and a six-speed manual) an dual-clutch transmission, or Powershift in Ford-speak, is being developed to suit the tiddler engine......since launch in Europe a couple of months ago, this engine has made an instant impact accounting for almost a quarter of all Focus sales.This is a tricky one. See, because there's so much time between now and when the Focus 1.0-litre EcoBoost arrives in Australia Ford is remaining tight-lipped about pricing.But, given 70 per cent of our market in Australia is centred on automatics you can imagine this vehicle won't launch until the Powershift transmission is available, and that it'll be sometime after the EcoSport goes on-sale. Ford is hoping to make that vehicle a hero for the brand (via the engine). So while we can't be 100 per cent certain, we're pretty sure you can expect, as standard, things like Bluetooth and iPod connectivity, 16-17-inch alloys, auto headlights, dual-zone climate control, and much more. Given the extra cost involved in building this clever little engine, pricing will probably see it sit at the upper end of current Focus pricing, so, somewhere between $25,000-$35,000. Maybe. We really can't be sure.Under the bonnet is a 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine. We drove the bigger, metaphorically speaking, engine that makes 91kW and 170Nm from just off idle at 1300rpm - 4000rpm. This was mated to a six-speed manual, and returned an impressive 5.0L/100km (on the combined cycle). But what makes this engine truly remarkable is its level of refinement and drivability, and not just for a small capacity engine, but for an engine full stop. Because of the inherently unbalanced nature of a three-cylinder car, Ford's engineers came up with a handful of firsts, like purposely unbalancing the crank pulley and flywheel to balance the engine - there is absolutely no vibration transferred to the car's structure - there is no balancer shaft. It also runs an offset crankshaft to reduce piston friction and thus improve fuel consumption, and the cam belt, made from a mix of glass fibre and rubber, runs through oil and lasts the life of the engine.One interesting side effect of making the engine smaller has been in weight saving (around 33kg when compared with the old 1.6-litre four-cylinder in the Focus) over the front-end of the car. And this has helped improve steering and handling, making a car that was already at the top of the small car handling tree even better.There haven't been any changes to the exterior of the Focus for this EcoBoost model, nor to the interior. And so, it's the same old well laid out dashboard with quality materials and fit and finish. There's plenty of room in the front and the back of the car.Given the Focus 1.0-litre EcoBoost is just an engine dropped into the Focus, it's as safe as any other Focus (Ford says the smaller engine actually improves front-end crushability). That means it gets a five-star ANCAP crash safety rating, and all of the usual active and passive safety systems. So, it gets, as standard, stability and traction control, hill-launch assist, ABS with emergency brake assist, airbags for front and back seat passengers, and much more.This is where the 1.0-litre EcoBoost shines. Thumb the starter button and there's a slight off-beat shudder and then, nothing... it settles into a smooth, and quiet idle that, with the radio playing, you can't help but wonder if the start-stop function has cut in. Under hard acceleration, the engine growls with a delicious beat that reminds you of a five-cylinder. Our substantial launch drive saw us tackle plenty of steep and winding roads in the Eiffel mountains, and the countryside around Cologne. From the get-go, the 1.0-litre EcoBoost offers diesel-esque off-idle pulling power, and allows for lazy driving. It would happily pull from 1000rpm in fourth gear, and that's despite running relatively tall gearing. Even on the autobahn, the triple (three cylinders) was happy to run with the big beemers and Mercs rocketing along the outside lane. Squeeze the throttle at 140km/h in sixth gear, and the Focus EcoBoost pulled, and pulled hard.

Honda Civic Sport and Subaru Impreza 2.0i-L go head-to-head in this comparative review.