Articles by Stephen Corby

Imagine someone turning up for a New Year's Eve celebration on January 30th, 10 years later, and it will give you some idea of just how late Jaguar is in coming to the sporty SUV party.

Jack Pyefinch road tests and reviews the all-new Passat at its international launch.

You may be able to squeeze child seats in the back of that two-door coupe you’re lusting after, but you won’t want to do it every day.

Like criticising Lara Bingle for not being erudite, or knowing what erudite means.But let's do it anyway.The thing about the C30 is that it's not supposed to be like other Volvos - ie staid, shoebox like and slowly steady — and the T5 version I was driving, in particular, was rumoured to be quite the jigger.Sadly the C30 is a 'nice, but...' car — not to be confused with a nice butt car, which it is clearly not. Indeed, it has the rear end from that bug-ugly conveyance seen in Wayne's World.The boot is also a triumph of form, or malform, over function. The big goggle eyed rear window looks unique, but it has reduced the boot to the size of a bootie, and the luggage cover makes it still smaller.Strangely, I was approached in a small country town by people who declared that I was driving `a mighty fine car'. This was because they'd approached it front-on, an angle it does actually look pleasant from.I invited them to have a walk around the back and then watched them hack up their pipe tobacco.Visual violence aside, the T5 had its share of problems in our week together.For a start, the driver's seatbelt seemed to be imitating an Anaconda. It was either looping out of the spool and piling up in my lap, or trying to asphyxiate me.Then there was the brilliant, ingenious Blind Spot Information System, which didn't work. Well, it did, because its tricky radar eyes did spot cars in my blindspot and alert me to them by illuminating a light, but it also started returning false positives.This made me think I as being followed around by a Christine-like ghost car, haunting my blind spot.Then there was the smooth road harmonic resonance at 2300rpm, or, sadly, somewhere between 100 and 110km/h. This vibrant vibration was so powerful it made my speaking voice sound like Stephen Hawking.And yet... And yet I still found myself almost liking the C30 at times, almost on alternate days.This is partly because the interior is quite charming — everyone loved the “floating” dash and the Ikea-style blonde wood panelling.Somehow it also just felt like a nice car to be driving, with a slick little gearbox, reasonably communicative steering and a turbocharged five-cylinder engine good for 162kW and 320Nm.Apparently the vigorous Volvo will even sprint to 100km/h in 6.7 seconds, but somehow it doesn't feel that fast.In short, if you try to drive the C30 in a sporty fashion, it reacts like a woman who's been dragged to a five-day cricket Test match.Sure, it will go, but you're going to be well aware it's not that happy about it.Volvo seems to think its sporty spice car is up against BMW's 1 Series, the VW Golf, Alfa Romeo's 147, Audi's A3 and the Mini Cooper S.Only it's not, because all of those machines are more genuinely sporty and none of those buyers would really cross shop against it.And here we come to the nub of the dilemma. Who would actually buy one?The badge puts off anyone young or cool and Volvo can claim its adding youthful vigour to its brand until the moose come home, it just ain't.So we're left with, perhaps, old women who don't need much space for their shopping. But then they wouldn't have much need for turbocharged engines or lairy wheels, either.Then there's the price, which would tend to scare most people.While the range starts with the C30 S at $34,450, the version I was driving was a simply silly $42,450. You could have a Subaru WRX for that money, although it's unlikely that anyone who would darken the door of a Volvo dealer would consider such an alternative.So, in the end, I'm confused. But not half as confused as the people at Volvo.

There was a time when it was quite acceptable for SUVs to handle like a beach ball full of wet porridge, but those days are gone.Outside of men who wear flannelette and fish hooks in their hats, Australian buyers of urban trucks are desperately in awe of “car-like dynamics”.This means that, essentially, they don't want an SUV at all. They just want a really big car with a high chair in it.The modern SUV, typified by Mazda's CX-7, is so much more car than off-roader that it demands a new acronym, Sports Utility Car perhaps — which would provide the plural a bunch of SUCs.Mazda folk have distilled the essence of these vehicles as “a car-like driving experience while retaining command-of-the-road driving position”.The result is something that looks, from front and rear, like a Mazda3 on stilts. Funnily, though, from side on the pinched headlights make it look like a Ford Focus writ large.But you've got to love the shape of the glasshouse, or the “unique window graphic” as they call it. Overall, it's a slick, sleek bit of SUC-ing up.The interior is roomy, rattle-free and reasonably stylish, except for the strange crocodile-skin strip down the middle of the seats, which are comfortable rather than luxurious.Mazda has attempted to create an SUV that goes, and feels, like a sports car — which is like building a snow plough that spits out ice sculptures.Or, as CX-7 program manager Shunsuke Kawasaki novelly puts it, this is a car that's more Keanu Reeves than Arnold Schwarzenegger.A cruel person would take this to mean Kawasaki's creation is a talentless but pretty dullard. He may have been in Speed, but that doesn't mean he's quick.Unfortunately, Kawasaki-san didn't explain whether he meant the Reeves of Bill And Ted fame or his later work (in The Lake House, for example), so it's one to ponder.Fortunately, the car is more convincing than the actor, with a wonderfully taut chassis, minimal body roll for a high-riding vehicle and a handy ride/handling balance, even on rough gravel.Really big impacts do upset it more than a proper off-roader — but you don't get many really big impacts in Woollahra, so that should be fine.The CX-7's steering is also pretty sharp, although it's obviously not in the league of a Mazda6 MPS, for example.It does, however, share that car's engine, a 2.3-litre DISI turbo with 175kW and 350Nm, all of which is available at just 2500rpm, meaning it surges hard — and a little noisily — off the line and accelerates meaningfully. Well, meaningfully for a SUC: the sprint to 100km/h is dismissed in 8.5 seconds.Noise, vibration and harshness are also crushed under the weight of Mazda's technological know-how, although some road noise from the tyres is evident on coarse-chip stuff.And, despite the CX-7's luxurious size and keen performance, we actually saw close to the claimed 11.5 litres per 100km economy figure.This must be because I was driving like an 80-year-old farmer with a hangover — my 11.9 litres per 100km was well and truly trumped by a colleague who recorded 14.9 litres and looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust.My excuse is that I find driving SUVs, particularly on dirt, as exciting as The Lake House.On proper roads, however, the CX-7 turned out to be roughly seven times more fun than you would think possible.The steering is reasonably involving and it corners quite well, until the point where its size and 1745kg weight eventually push it into understeer.The six-speed auto is a typically Mazda-smooth unit, but it's disappointing that there's no manual option.This is because the CX-7 was (in case you can't guess just by looking) designed for Americans, and their arms are too fat to change gears.The Yanks are also quite happy with a skinny spare wheel — but apparently some Australians do take their SUCs out of the city, because Mazda Australia is doing a special fitting of a full-size spare, which will be available from March.As far as off-road ability goes, this is no low-range mountain-climber. The Active Torque Split AWD system automatically adjusts front-rear distribution between 100:0 and 50:50.In other words, it's a front-wheel-drive bus, but it can grip and rip — at least a little bit — when it needs to.Six airbags and a five-star crash rating from the US make it a safe investment as well.Mazda says the CX-7's competitors will include Toyota's RAV4, Nissan's X-Trail and Murano, and Honda's CRV.The car comes in two trim levels, with the base model a highly competitive $39,910.The $45,560 Luxury version throws in fruit like leather seats, a sunroof, heated power seats and a Bose stereo.Mazda may be a little late on the compact SUV scene, but keen pricing and savvy road manners will make the CX-7 an attractive proposition.It may be a SUC, but the CX-7 doesn't suck. 

Pulling on a race suit is a transmogrifying experience, much as one imagines peeling on the blue lycra and red gumboots and underpants is for Superman.

Logic tells me that German engineers are infallible, and that the BMW 650i I'm driving will stop itself from rear-ending everyone, thanks to its Active Cruise Control with Stop & Go Function.

The first words you hear when you tell someone you’ve just been rocketing around a race track are always the same: “Wow. How fast did you go?”Sadly, my answer to this is always a disappointment: “I have no idea; I was too scared to look.”So, last week, when I was invited to tackle BMW’s mumbo-tastic M3 for the first time in the challenging environs of Eastern Creek, I decided to fix this.As hard as it was to keep the speedo needle in focus, because it moves clockwise at such a fierce pace, I did my best. And the numbers I saw do tell at least part of the story about what a beast this car is.Coming out of the hairpin Turn 9 and pelting towards the kinky Turn 10, the M3 rocketed to 180km/h… in third gear. Yes, “wow” is the appropriate response to that, although I think it sounded like “ow”, or “ow my God” from the driver’s seat.The way the bravura Beemer went from a lazy 120km/h coming out of the final Turn 13 to 220km/h down the straight (I think it was in fifth by then, sixth gear being, obviously, for cruising at its limited top speed of 250km/h) can only be described as effortless.A proper driver would have been going a lot faster before dropping back to fourth – a down-change I struggled with several times, which probably has more to do with my shaking hands than any gearbox foibles – and hurling into the Creek’s testicular Turn One. Glancing away from the blurring horizon for a split second, I noted that we were doing a ballistic 170km/h at the midpoint of the corner. Again, wow, but nowhere near as wow as the pro steerers, who would easily carry 200km/h plus through there.And there’s so much torque, everywhere that you have to reassess your gear choices. You really don’t need second at all around the Creek, unless you just want to make a lot of noise.The new, V8-throated M3 is quick, then. Quick like Adam Spencer, or Robin Williams. Quick like Ben Johnson. Quick like a Porsche, but much cheaper.I’d known this would be the case, of course, because I’d salivated over the specs like the rest of you – 0 to 100km/h in 4.8 seconds, a full 0.4 seconds faster than the already awesome old car.You know that’s fast, but you have to feel it to believe it, just like the fact that it can go from 100km/h back to zero in 2.4 seconds. What makes the car such a terrific track weapon is that braking ability. You can go harder, deeper and later than ever before, and that makes for one adrenaline-surge of a lap.I’d also seen the pictures before we met, but they don’t do justice to just how hulking the presence of this new super coupe is. The bonnet bulge, the flared nostrils, the quad pipes and rear spoiler. This car has all the visual aggression that early Q car versions of the M3 eschewed, and then some.It’s also got the sexiest roof in the business – not a phrase I’ve written very often – because it’s made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic, to reduce weight and lower the centre of gravity. And to look very cool.Beneath that bulky, hulky bonnet sits the raging heart of the new machine – four litres of pure goodness, producing 309kW and 400Nm, and revving to a stop-it-my-ears-hurt 8400rpm.Only your ears don’t really hurt, in practice, they just sing. Particularly from 5000rpm upwards, the point at which all eight throttle bodies open and the beast is let fully off the leash.It’s a deep, sonorous scream but, as lustrous as it is, I still prefer the unique note of the old, comparatively weedy six-cylinder M3, which sounded heavy metallic.Of course, now that this version exists, you’d never really want to go back.The best news of all, though, is that what really made the old car, and the M3s before it, so good is still what’s best about the new one – the way it steers and handles.The new uber 3 feels heavier in the hands, but not in an unpleasant way – it just seems beefier than before, like you’ve gone from wrestling a steer to throttling a wildebeest.This car is beautifully balanced and wonderfully chuckable, and the sport settings for the traction control allow you to let it slide out the tail just enough to be exciting.Heart in your cheeks, sweat on your backside exciting.In fact, the new M3 is so track-tastic that, I must admit, it intimidated me for, ohh, about 10 laps. Then I had about five laps where I was really, really enjoying myself – hooting and hollering with joy at how good it felt to corner, how hard it kicked my spine under full throttle – and then a final three laps where I thought “Hey, you should really go back into the pits before you get hurt, Mr Thinks He’s a Boy Racer.”Of course, all these speeds and thrills are a million miles away from the real world, and I’m yet to drive BMW’s new hero on an actual real-world street, but first impressions are very important.And my first impression is that, for $157,000, BMW is offering you a superlative, semi-supercar for what is, relatively speaking, a bargain price.And it’s not often you see the words “bargain” and “BMW” in the same sentence.

I thought I would hate driving this huge, hubristic hunk of Americana – and, to be fair, I did – but it did have unexpected benefits. For a start, I saw a lot more of Sydney that I have in any other week, as I circled, endlessly, looking for somewhere to park this brash behemoth. Unfortunately, I work in Surry Hills, where the streets are reluctant to give up space to anything bigger than a bicycle, which meant that, on two days out of five, I had to ring my boss and tell her I was unable to make it in because I couldn’t stop anywhere. I also feared for my safety because a lynching party had been formed by environmentally concerned locals and I felt it unlikely the Hummer could outrun them, even though they were on sandalled foot. The fact that the tank I’d been lumped with was painted the same colour as the cheese you find on McDonald’s burgers wasn’t helping my feeble attempts to remain incognito. Still, I did rediscover parts of my CD collection that had been long forgotten, because the lumpy ludicrousness of the Hummer made me feel like I could only listen to ZZ Top, Def Leppard and Led Zeppelin. I also discovered that there is nothing particularly wrong with my left knee, thanks to the handbrake, which is cunningly positioned so that it gives you an arthroscopy every time you enter the vehicle. It’s also accursedly difficult to use, which led to the venting of spleen that was probably building up dangerously inside me. Sadly, that’s about it for positives. Hopeless handbrake aside, the cabin annoyed me from moment one, mainly because it achieves the rare reverse-Tardis effect. While the Hummer looks big – to engage in mild understatement – it is ridiculously small inside, with less headroom than one of Russell Crowe’s hats. It also feels like you’re sitting in your grandmother’s living room, because there’s virtually no natural light, thanks to the windows – and the windscreen for that matter - being roughly the size of a lunchbox lid. Speaking of Tupperware, that’s what the centre stack of the dash feels like, which comes as a surprise in any $50,000-plus car, but more so when it’s one based on a rough and tough military vehicle. Mind you, I was shocked and awed by how ugly it was, from every conceivable angle. It even has a plastic picnic table glued to the bonnet, for reasons unknown. Then there’s the 400kg the rear tailgate, which is heavy enough to knock any woman foolish enough to mess with it flat on her back. Oh, and somehow, in their ingeniousness, they couldn’t find room for a footrest, so your left leg is always hovering over the clutch. That is, of course, one of the least annoying things about driving the H3 – the baby of the Hummer range and, thankfully, the only one available down under, thus far. The fact that it feels as wide as a terrace house is off putting, but things get worse when you try and drive it around a bend. The Hummer corners like a… well, like a terrace. The ride is also unfortunately firm and fidgety, yet too soft at the same time. This should be impossible. Driving over speedhumps can induce mild nausea. It’s also very, very slow, as you would expect from a 2198kg (for the five-speed manual tested, the four-speed automatic is 2303kg) vehicle powered, if that’s the word, by a 3.7-litre, five-cylinder engine. It doesn’t take a Newtonian scientist to work out that 180kW and 328Nm are not enough for the task of moving so much metal. The one thing that a car this intimidating shouldn’t be is underpowered. The manual gearbox also reminded me of my grandfather’s old tractor, for some reason. And yet… while I couldn’t think of a single thing to recommend it, everyone else loved the damn Hummer, and it attracted almost exactly the same amount of attention as driving a Ferrari. Possibly more, in fact, because when you’re in a sports car people just hate you from a distance and stare daggers, but in the Hummer, everyone wants to talk to you. I had one guy walk up to me while I was parked in peak-hour traffic in the CBD and ask where he could get one. As I drove off, he ran alongside me, still asking questions, despite my having refused to tell him any details, for his own good. Children who drive past you make Christmas-morning faces and whoop “Hummmmmer” out car windows. It’s also the only non-Porsche I’ve ever been asked to take people for passenger rides in. Mind you, no one was impressed. With all this inexplicable interest, however, it’s no wonder they reckon they can sell 700 of them a year. With prices starting at $51,990, that’s not a bad business case. Then there are the anti-Hummer types, who don’t talk to you but glower and think to themselves, what sort of person buys a vehicle like that? I had to have a t-shirt made up that said: “It’s not mine. I am the Stig.” The environmental question comes up a lot, too, and most people were only mildly surprised to hear that, if you run out of petrol, you can actually run the Hummer on shredded Toyota Prius pieces for short distances. Buying this car shouts: “I’m with John, there’s no such thing as global warming”. In fairness, it should be pointed out that the H3’s official rated fuel consumption is 13.7 litres per 100km, the same as a Mitsubishi Pajero. It’s also 12cm shorter and sits 1cm lower than a Pajero – but it is 12cm wider. It does, however, make a Pajero look like Megan Gale. So, in summation, people are going to buy this car, no matter what I say, because a lot of people really like big things, and other people staring at them. I think they’d be better off buying Mardi Gras floats, but each to their own.  

And another few grand that you’ve just remembered you left in those ski pants you wore to St Moritz.  And, because you’re a bit bored and you’ve already got too many plasma screens, you feel like buying a BMW. Should be simple, right? Sadly not.These poor rich bastards are faced with a plethora of choices that must make it an almost painful process, the latest of which is the newly upgraded and tweaked 6 Series, a $212,000 executive coupe (or a $228,800 convertible) that leaves this scribbler utterly baffled (those prices are up $6000 on the model they replace, in case that worries you).Buyers in this rarefied air can, after all, scrape just a bit more money out of the change bowl on top of the fridge and buy an M5, for $231,500.The M5 is perhaps the most practical supercar on earth, because it has four doors, a boot and genuine seating for four adults, as well as a ground-wobbling, mind-boggling V10 engine under the bonnet which can send all of those four adults into paroxysms of delight, effortlessly. Alternatively, they could spend $157,700 and buy what is arguably an even better, or at least more purely enjoyable, BMW – the M3.Again, they can thrill their friends and themselves at the same time, because it’s a genuine car as well as a genuine sports car. And with the change they could buy a 1 Series for the wife, or another week’s skiing.So why would anyone choose the 6 Series? Well, after driving it, that’s a question I still can’t answer.In isolation, it’s a fine vehicle indeed, powered by a delicious, creamy 4.8-litre V8 that’s good for 270 cultured kilowatts and 490Nm.It can dash from a standing start to 100km/h in 5.2 seconds, which is down from 5.5 seconds on the model it replaces (5.6 seconds for the convertible, down from 5.8).It’s also quite phenomenal to drive, for a vehicle that looks, and feels, as hefty as James Packer.At 1650kg, it’s no lightweight, yet it changes direction and deals with difficult road surfaces with almost arrogant aplomb.Only when zig-zagging sharply are you aware of all that weight shifting from side to side, but the car is so damned clever, and so perfectly balanced, that it never feels like it’s going to get out of control.Push it, as hard as you dare, and it will merely stifle a yawn and take everything you throw at it, leaving you with very little sensation of severity in your cloistered cabin.It also has the kind of steering that BMW is justifiably famous for, with plenty of weight and just the right kind of feedback to keep you involved. And yet… it’s not that fast, or, to be fair, it just doesn’t feel that fast, because everything it does is slightly reserved.The engine probably could sound fabulous, like the V8 in the M3, but it seems like it’s been swaddled in sound-deadening materials.There’s also a constant sense that you are in a very big, very wide car – an impression intensified when you get out and look at its slightly disturbing shape.Impressive and regal from front and side-on, the 6 falls down rather badly at the back, where it looks either like a mastodon with a broken nose or someone with an awful hair lip.But it certainly has presence, and that seems to be what the 175 buyers who shell out for a 6 Series each year in Australia are after – something different, something that sets them apart from the BMW-buying herds.It’s fair to say this car is also more of a cruiser than a bruiser, so perhaps it’s aimed at slightly older motorists, who want class and quality and power, but not too much excitement, thanks very much.It’s certainly easy to see why they might enjoy the convertible, which is a boulevard stroller par excellence.The windscreen is just the right height that the wind lightly tousles your hair, like an affectionate uncle, rather than ruffling it and the heated seats are so good that we enjoyed top-down motoring, even on a 13-degree day.It’s also one of those new breed of convertibles that makes you wonder whether scuttle shake is just an old blokes’ tale.The changes to this 6 Series are quite difficult to see, unless you’re a complete trainspotter, but they include new “sportive” side skirts, new headlights and blinkers, new materials for the uber posh interior and – the admittedly very cool and Buck Rogers-looking – new gearknob. There’s a new gearbox of tricks attached to that, of course, which allows the vehicle to change cogs almost imperceptibly, and apparently faster than ever before.Push the sport button and the changes get even faster, and the gearbox won’t even touch sixth gear, just to keep you charging hard.The interior also gets the new iDrive “favourite” buttons, which aren’t, we’re told, and admission that iDrive is too difficult to use. Just as the “fairness test” wasn’t an admission that WorkChoices was too onerous.There are also plenty of groovy options, like Heads-Up Display, which works brilliantly, and night-vision, which doesn’t.For $1200 you can even have a “lane departure warning” system, which vibrates the steering wheel to wake you up if you dozily drift.This is effectively paying $1200 to admit to people that you’re a crap, inattentive driver. But if you are one, please do get the system, it might save the rest of us.Another $4500 will get you the Active Cruise Control system, which is a way of saying that you’re such a lazy, dozy driver, you’d prefer the car to do everything for you. It could be, in fact, the first nail in the death-of-driving coffin.Of course, if you option it up with all these things your 6 Series will now cost as much as an M5, which you should have bought in the first place.