Articles by Joshua Dowling

Boxy cars are back in vogue, if the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show is any guide. But how many will actually make it to showrooms?

Joshua Dowling reviews the Honda NSX ahead of the 2015 Tokyo motor show.

The car world is in overdrive about autonomous vehicles and making all sorts of claims. But finally someone has brought some sanity to the debate, and it's come from an unlikely source.

Read it and weep. The hottest Honda hatchback of all time won’t come to Australia after all.

Testing has found counterfeit wheels can buckle after hitting a pothole at just 50km/h -- and car owners may not even realise they are driving on fakes.Safety experts are concerned there are “tens of thousands” of counterfeit car wheels on Australian roads that can buckle or break if they hit a small pothole at suburban speeds.But there is no way of tracking them down because most were imported from China by independent distributors, some of whom pose as private sellers on online auction websites.More than 500,000 wheels are imported from China each year, but none are tested to see if they meet Australian Design Rules, and the regulations are not enforced.A test of just some of the suspect wheels -- conducted inside Holden’s top secret proving ground last month -- found a range of alloy wheels on a variety of popular cars cracked after hitting a pot hole at just 50kmh.Not all counterfeit wheels buckle or have a chunk taken out of them.Some develop subtle cracks near the centre of the wheel that initially can’t be seen by the naked eye.An investigation by News Corp Australia found a counterfeit wheel made for the Holden Commodore had a long hairline fracture near the hub.While the face of the counterfeit wheel looked identical to the original, the crack was caused because the underside of the hub lacked the proper support.Experts say most cheap or counterfeit wheels from China are made from a blend of scrap alloy and raw material -- but alloy wheels should be made solely from raw material to guarantee their strength.The black market in counterfeit wheels has spiked in recent years because genuine parts are so expensive and most of the fakes can be bought for just $250 each, or $1000 for a set of four.A genuine replacement alloy wheel on a new Mercedes can cost up to $2500 each -- or $10,000 for four.The wheels on certain VW Golf models can cost up to $1900 each -- or $7600 for four.Budget-priced cars are also vulnerable to having their genuine wheels replaced with fakes.The alloy wheel on a top-of-the-range Toyota Yaris hatchback is $1000 each -- or $4000 for four -- but look-a-likes cost just $1000 for a set.The Toyota Yaris alloy wheel is so expensive because it is imported from Japan.A genuine replacement alloy wheel on the locally-made Toyota Camry costs about $300 because it is made at ROH Wheels in Adelaide, Australia’s oldest and only surviving wheel manufacturer.Not all Chinese-made wheels are of substandard quality. Holden and Ford now fit Chinese-made wheels to cars on their Australian production lines, but the wheels are tested to strict internal standards that exceed government requirements.However, the majority of Chinese wheel manufacturers supplying the spare parts market have no quality control standards and the Australian government does not test them.“Some of the Chinese wheel suppliers might put a ‘QC’ (quality control) sticker on it, but that doesn’t mean it’s been tested. It just means they’ve put a sticker on it,” says Ian Raymond, an expert wheel repairer.

American Ram pick-ups will be on Australian roads in right-hand-drive soon — with factory-approved conversions by the company that builds Holden Special Vehicles.

If you thought house prices were going through the roof, there may be another way to make fast money.

This will go down in automotive history as one of the weirdest automotive recalls of all time.

The Toyota HiLux accounted for more than one-in-four ute sales at its peak. But that dominance is fading under the pressure of new rivals.

Joshua Dowling road tests and reviews the Jeep Renegade with specs, fuel consumption and verdict at its Australian launch.