Articles by Owner Review

Basic multimedia with a Kenwood CD/tuner/Bluetooth unit with USB and auxiliary functions. However, it has good speakers, including large speakers in the rear of vehicle. There are minimal safety features, but it does have a rear emergency exit.There is a great seating arrangement with aisle access to all rear seats and three seats in the front of vehicle, consisting of a dual passenger seat and single driver’s seat.It is very comfortable to drive with excellent vision via the large windscreen. There are plenty of air-con vents, including ceiling vents in the rear of vehicle, allowing for a cool drive.Running costs are quite economical with plenty of kilometres per litre, especially highway driving, with the 3.0-litre diesel engine. The light weight reduces registration costs.It is generally reliable with the diesel engine handling long distance drives. The large battery keeps the vehicle starting up daily, and all accessories running properly and constantly.

The S90 has excellent safety technology for the year of manufacture!Practicality is typical for a sedan, Volvo but care must be taken to avoid overheating!The S90 is a luxurious drive if slightly underpowered considering the weight of the car.The S90's fuel costs are relatively high. Due to its rarity, servicing is very high!I've had the engine rebuilt twice in a relatively low mileage at considerable expense!

The 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe Elite Hybrid features a rich suite of multimedia and safety technologies, including a large panoramic dual 12.3-inch digital display that combines the instrument cluster and infotainment touchscreen, with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity for maps, music and apps. It also offers Hyundai Bluelink connected services and over-the-air (OTA) software updates, premium audio systems, wireless phone charging and multiple USB ports to keep devices charged and entertained. On the safety side, the model is equipped with the advanced Hyundai SmartSense suite of systems such as Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist, Blind-Spot View Monitor, Surround View Monitor with 360° cameras, Lane Keep Assist, Rear Cross-Traffic Collision-Avoidance, Driver Attention Warning and Safe Exit Warning, all designed to help prevent accidents and protect occupants.The 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe Elite Hybrid delivers practical interior space and cargo versatility that suits families, daily life, and adventures. Its cabin offers generous headroom and legroom for front and rear occupants, making longer drives more comfortable for adults and children alike, with thoughtful storage cubbies, cup holders, USB ports and a dual-access centre console adding everyday usability. The rear cargo area provides ample boot space — around 628L with seats up — and expands to nearly 1949L with the rear seats folded flat, so you can easily carry groceries, luggage, sports gear or camping equipment. The wide tailgate and flat load floor make loading bulky items easier, while flexible 60/40 fold-down seating lets you balance passengers and cargo without hassle.The 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe Elite Hybrid is smooth, quiet and confidence-inspiring to drive, especially in everyday conditions. The hybrid powertrain delivers responsive acceleration with minimal engine noise, while the electric motor assists at low speeds for relaxed city driving. On highways, it feels stable and refined, with well-controlled suspension that absorbs bumps comfortably, even on larger wheels. Steering is light and predictable, making the Santa Fe easy to manoeuvre despite its size, and overall handling is tuned more for comfort and composure than sporty driving, which suits family use well."Fuel savings and capped servicing help keep the everyday running costs more efficient than many petrol SUVs, but total ownership costs still include insurance, registration and periodic maintenance typical of a modern hybrid SUV.Its hybrid powertrain claims around 5.6L/100 km combined, which helps reduce fuel bills compared to petrol-only SUVs.Hyundai offers capped-price servicing with intervals of every 12 months or 10,000km, and pre-paid packages cost around $2405 over five years (roughly under $500 a year).The vehicle comes with a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, and the hybrid battery is for eight years or 160,000km in Australia."Because the model is new, long-term reliability trends aren’t fully established, so warranty coverage and regular servicing are important for peace of mind which I do. Manufacturer and community experiences suggest you may see typical new-model teething issues, but I am still enjoying the car without major faults.

Safety-wise, the car has everything you could hope for. I’m glad it doesn’t have all the ‘mod cons’ like lane assist etc. - in the country those additions are a death trap in my opinion. It's very much lacking in the multimedia department, whereas many other cars of this vintage had the full works.The only fault, if I have to find one, is that it does not have a telescopic steering wheel.  Everything else in the interior if fantastic, including the storage options in both the cabin and boot.Apart from being loud on country roads, the driving experience is fantastic.  It has grunt when needed and is happy to just cruise along as well. It sits on the road nicely without bouncing around. It tows like a dream.Everything expense-wise is really reasonable. Like all cars you can never achieve the factory designated L/km, but servicing, insurance etc. is all excellent. Because nothing goes wrong with them, servicing is really the only regular cost aside from fuel.I have never felt so assured I am safe and the car is not going to break down.  With all the country kilometres I do, that is a big worry for me.

Center screen is a great size, but it's only compatible with Apple CarPlay - there is no Android Auto compatibility. Screen is fast, well presented and has everything you'd want from a modern car. Safety tech is good. Not too intrusive.Rear cargo area is great. The seats fold down and create a huge amount of space for the size of the car. It seats four adults happily, and five if you really wanted to.It could do with a smidge more power. The Chinese EVs and hybrids coming out for similar prices to the MG3 really show what is possible at this market point. Steering feel is good. Suspension seems to be well tuned for Australian roads, which is a big plus.Dealership servicing - as always - is a little on the steeper side. These cars are dead simple to service. Find a good, reputable mechanic and you'll see regular servicing under $300 pretty easily. Parts are a little bit tricky to find at suppliers like Repco & Supercheap Auto, but a little bit of digging and air filters, oil filters and the sorts can be sourced quite cheaply. Wrecking yards want silly money for parts - like brake lights - due to how new the car is. Again, a little research will see you find a bargain here.Great! No major issues with the car in 70,000km. There are a few little things, though.The standard spark plugs are awful on this car and are known to need replacement around 50,000km. We were seeing misfires at 40,000km due to the spark plugs wearing out. Around $100 in parts and very little in labor sorts this out with no worries.Interior trim pieces like the third brake light in the rear window are known to fall off. A little bit of glue or a trip to the dealer under warranty will have this sorted in no time. These cars are dead simple, so even if something major were to happen, you'd still see a few grand in your pocket compared to anything made in Europe.

The multimedia system is hard to navigate.It's easy to get in and out of and very comfortable, with a good cargo area.It's easy to drive and, with all-round good vision.It's very expensive for sevicing and insurance. It had a broken headlight and the cost was all up $4760 to fix.Hard to say with only around 6000km, but I'm still waiting on software updates for three months and still no time frame when it will have one.

Big, easy-to-use multimedia screen. Front and reverse cameras with proximity signal. Phone clips and deep cupholders. All round airbags.Loads of feet and leg space with large footwells. Comfortable seating. Massive rear hatch space with underfloor storage capacity, floor protection tray. Tie-down hitchpoints for cargo.The 2.0-litre constant AWD requires no turbo boost or extra working. The power-to-weight ratio is not at the top end, but it is zippy enough and is very comfortable and reliable for constant travel.Apart from yearly logbook servicing at around $300, the car hasn't missed a beat. I spend $30 to $40 a week roughly on petrol, and insurance costs me about $12 a week. All up for a mid size SUV I'd say that's pretty good.Since owning the car I have not had any mechanical or other issue except a windscreen chip from a truck. Never been broken down stuck or otherwise inconvenienced due to car issues.

The infotainment system is decent, it is responsive and of high resolution. However, like a lot of new vehicles, it places too many functions into the screen creating a distracted driving environment. The car does come with shortcuts for the climate control (fan and temperature) on the left side of the steering wheel. However on my car, I found the controls to be odd, scrolling through the temp took a long time and the buttons for adjusting fan speed sometimes didn't work and required multiple presses. My car also had an odd glitch where the 360 camera/back-up camera display would lag heavily in underground car parks. I can only come to the conclusion that it has something to do with the in-built wifi reception. However, I can't figure out a reason why the camera and reception would have a connection with each other.The safety systems in the car are nothing special compared to competitors. The "semi autonomous driving" falls quite short. You would expect for a car that talks about all of its cameras and sensors that it would perform exceptionally - but it doesn't. Frequent phantom braking on the freeway, bouncing off the lane markings, slowing down dramatically in corners. It performs badly compared to competitors. Multiple occasions of the car slamming the brakes on when it couldn't recognise a situation, such as going around a bend on the freeway or the (I assume vision based obstacle avoidance system) picking up the barrier along the freeway as an obstacle and hitting the brakes.The system also fails in basic functions such as changing lanes with cruise control active. In most vehicles, when activating your indicator to change lanes, the lane-keeping systems will deactivate to allow you to change lanes. Not in the G6. The car will wrestle you back into your current lane. Why this is a thing is beyond me. I have to deactivate cruise, change lanes and then reactivate cruise (which can take multiple attempts). It's cumbersome and unnecessary.The rain sensing wipers are also a joke, they wipe in the sun and don't wipe in the rain.I will give credit where it's due, though, the 18-speaker sound system (with tuning in the sound settings) sounds fantastic. It's not a name brand system, so don't expect Harman Kardon or Bose quality. But it is quite good.Overall, the tech in the car is disappointing. There is so much marketing towards the vehicle being high tech and luxurious. However is lacks basic features and the features you would expect to be outstanding, are disappointing. Especially considering its positioned as a direct Tesla Model Y competitor.The car is spacious. Centre console bin is massive, and there is storage under the centre console as well. Big door pockets as well. Storage in the rear is decent with pockets on the back of the driver and passenger seats as well as average sized door pockets. The boot is huge, plenty of space for everything you would need for a road trip. No frunk, however. Which is disappointing. And no glovebox. Yes, there is no glovebox.The car drives quite well. It's smooth, riding over bumps well, considering it has 20-inch wheels. It has extremely light steering. Even on its heaviest setting it's still quite light. Which for some is a positive, and for some its a negative. However, one feature of EVs is the regenerative braking, of which the G6 has a poorly tuned regenerative braking. It's quite jerky and not very smooth. I've had a few EVs now. A Kona, Polestar 2 (best regenerative experience) and now an ID.4. All these vehicles have smoother regenerative systems than the G6. I found myself driving with the auto regen turned off 99% of the time.Being electric it doesn't cost a lot to run. And being surprisingly efficient, it gets quite a decent amount of range per charge. However, disappointingly it is a once a year service, which for an EV is odd. Most are every two years now. So servicing costs compared to others would be higher. I didn't keep the car long enough to have it serviced.I had a lot of rattles in my G6. And issues with the camera on the infotainment screen. But I only had the car for 7 months, so I can't speak for the long-term reliability. But if the six different rattles from the B-pillars and rear passenger doors are anything to go off, I wouldn't expect it to be the most reliable EV out there from the build quality point of view.

The technology is limited but enough for me. Excellent space. Easy excess into the rear and boot.I am very happy the way it drives and performs. The turbo gives it plenty for overtaking.Excellent on fuel, getting approximately 6L/100km on the freeway. Insurance is cheaper than the my last car, a Honda. Fixed service fee is very reasonable. Excellent. It has not missed a beat and does all I want it to do.

A big reason why I bought this car over other dual-cab utes was due to the lack of intrusive safety tech. This car has no lane-keep assist, no blind-spot monitoring, no front camera for autonomous braking, and to be honest I love it. The multimedia is let down a little as the interior was designed in 2010, and only given a slight facelift in 2016, but Apple Carplay and Android Auto are still standard, so points there. The Bluetooth is used for both calls and music, and acts as a great backup when i dont want to plug the phone in for CarPlay.  Being a dual-cab ute, practicality is always going to be incredible. I use this ute a lot for work, and being able to get a Euro pallet in the tray is incredible. The tub is a little shorter than I would have liked, carting motorbikes means dropping the tailgate. This could be fixed quite easily with a tray, though. The interior space is massive, and can find three adults in the back pretty well. The rear seats fold up too - making even more space in the rear of the cab. I like to tell people that the Amarok drives like an SUV with a tub, which is a stark comparison to the truck-like HiLux. The all-wheel drive is one of the reasons to buy this car, it's incredible on and off road. The eight-speed ZF gearbox goes great - just make sure to service it. VW like to say it's 'sealed for life', but don't believe the marketing, as ZF themselves say it is not. The power the V6 puts down is easily enough, I've towed a two-tonne caravan to SA from eastern Victoria plenty of times with it and not once thought it lacked beans. I just wish the manual gearbox paired with the V6 was more common in these. The manual V6 came with selectable high and low range, which would make this even better offroad. The 2H model variant (2011-2022) is starting to get up there in age now, with a few V6 variants like mine starting to stray north of 200,000km. I think if you were to pay the dealer to service this car for you after warranty has ended, this maybe isn't the right car for you. Find a good Euro specialist or do the work yourself with the factory service manual and a good set of tools and you'll be golden. The V6 is known for coolant leaks in the valley of the engine, which can add cost really fast if going through the dealer. The plastic rocker covers like to leak oil too - so check those before buying. DPF issues are plentiful too - long highway burns are this things best friend. Great on fuel though! Country driving with a bullbar and standard wheels, I return about 8L/100km which I think is excellent considering the size of the thing. Towing a two-tonne van returns about 12L/100km for me.I'm not sure reliability and German are words that ever get used in the same sentence. Look, all things considered if you buy a well looked after example, it'll treat you well. Steer well clear of anything with a patchy service history or badly done modifications. I've had very few issues with mine in the 40,000km I've owned it. I've learnt to live with very slight oil leaks and tiny coolant leaks, I mean the car has almost 200,000km on it now and is never going to be perfect. Biggest issue was a blown coolant hose that left me on the side of the highway, but plugged it back in, filled with coolant and away we went. Haven't had an issue since. Like any car, look after it and it'll look after you. There are certainly worse choices out there (looking at you, 2.2-litre Ranger). I absolutely love the Amarok to bits, and all other owners I've talked to have said the same. Get one with a good service history and you'll be smiling ear to ear.