Articles by Stephen Ottley

Hyundai is confident its newest model will score a five-star ANCAP safety rating.

It’s not breaking news that Chinese car makers are putting the more established brands to the test in almost every segment of the new car market… but there is an exception.

Genesis seems like an unlikely brand to offer a ute, but the South Korean luxury firm has revealed it considered a dual-cab.The Hyundai-Kia Group has been relatively slow in entering the ute contest, with the Kia Tasman only launching in 2025 and Hyundai still several years away from its first dual-cab, despite joining forces with General Motors to speed up the process. Speaking at the recent launch of the new Genesis Magma performance line-up, Genesis Chief Creative Officer Luc Donkerwolke was asked if the brand would consider a dual-cab ute as part of its expansion. His answer was a surprise, revealing that not only has the brand considered it, it has created a design study on a potential ute model.“ Well if you wait until the January issue of Auto & Design you will see the pickup study we did a couple of years ago,” Donkerwolke said. “We do a lot of things that we don't show, but in this Auto & Design, I have decided to show some unseen projects, and we did consider pickup as well.”Despite undertaking this preliminary consideration, the Genesis team ultimately decided it wasn’t the right fit for a brand that is trying to grow in the luxury car space amid competition from far more-established brands. Crucially, he didn’t rule it out in the future, and also revealed he has a personal soft-spot for ‘pickups’.“We have decided it was not the right time yet,” Donkerwolke said. “We have some homework to do. We still have to take care of the core business, the core segments. And who knows, maybe why not? I mean, I can only tell you as a car fanatic, I have a lot of sports cars in my barn. I have also a very wide pickup as well.“So even if I'm considered as a very suspicious marginal in Europe for having a pickup with more than 600-horsepower. It just tells you that all horizons and especially mine would not limit itself for the normal segments. But this said, one thing at a time. We first do the homework, the main, and then we will look into what all the satellites we can plug in onto the brand.”But while it’s no ute for Genesis right now, given Kia already has the Tasman and Hyundai is working on several ute/pickups both independently and with General Motors for several different markets, there is potential for the luxury brand to revisit its ute in the not-to-distant future.

Car companies typically focus on selling vehicles customers want to buy. But Volkswagen openly admits its newest model is unlikely to be a big seller.

Volkswagen has dropped plans to build an electric version of its Amarok ute.

Volkswagen has conceded defeat in the fight against Ford’s Ranger Raptor.Just weeks away from revealing the details of the second-generation Walkinshaw collaboration on the Amarok ute Volkswagen Australia commercial vehicles boss Nathan Johnson has played down the notion that it will ‘attack’ Ford’s performance ute hero.“We're just trying to enhance the Volkswagen Amarok appeal in terms of what we're doing,” Johnson told CarsGuide. “We're not trying to go and say that we're gonna attack Raptor. Raptor works in its own space and we'd be silly to kind of just say that we're coming after Raptor because Raptor is such a part of the Australian psyche, everyone wants one.“We've gotta play to our own tune here and work what we think will work for Amarok. And I think we've got a pretty good package that's coming.”Volkswagen Australia first partnered with Walkinshaw for the so-called ‘W Series’ Amaroks in the final years of the previous generation ute. While there was always a plan to continue, the two parties haven’t rushed the development of this new iteration, spending more than two years developing the new hero model for the Amarok line-up.“ It's taken a while from face value because we spoke about it quite early on,” Johnson said. “Because to be quite honest with you, the day that we launched Amarok, the first question I had in an interview as a product manager was ‘when is the Walkinshaw Amarok coming?’”While he ruled out a direct challenger to the Ranger Raptor, Johnson was adamant that the long development time will result in a vehicle that is unique in the market and will have its own appeal.“ I think it's a very different scenario ,” he said. “The previous Amarok we were coming to the end of production and it was very different in terms of how we worked on that car and how we pushed it.“This one was very different in terms of, we'd only started production. We're taking a very different approach to this car in terms of the previous one we had to obviously… compromise on a few things that we really wanted to do with our car. With the time period we had and we could have made some decisions to move down different routes, but it probably would've compromised the end product and so forth. So we made the decision not to.“Whereas this time around we've got time, we've got time on our hands and we've been working with Walkinshaw a long time on this to make sure that we can assess everything and make sure that we are working with the right partners, developing all the different bits, the components of the car, and then actually doing a really strong testing program.”Volkswagen reportedly finalised the design of the new Walkinshaw Amarok earlier this year, in April, and has been testing since then.

Genesis has set itself a new target — compete with the world’s biggest performance car brands including Porsche, Ferrari and McLaren.To do so, the company has revealed an all-new, mid-engined concept car, which previews a production car set to launch in the near-future.The new Genesis GT Concept was revealed overnight alongside the showroom-ready version of the GV60 Magma, as the new performance sub-brand prepares for its global launch in 2026.Genesis has a history of building stunning sports car concepts only to never build them for customers, but Hyundai and Genesis global CEO Jose Munoz made it clear the GT Concept isn’t just an attention-grabbing one-off.“We’ll get it done for sure,” Munoz said.Luc Donkerwolke, Genesis’ Chief Creative Officer, made it clear that the GT Concept sets a clear path ahead for the brand, setting it on a new path for the next decade as it explores more high-performance cars as well as pushes higher into the luxury market with more bespoke cars.“The Magma GT Concept represents the pinnacle of our performance vision and stands as a symbol of our commitment to true motorsport capability,” Donkerwolke said.“It isn’t defined by raw aggression or uncompromising speed - it is defined by balance. This is a car that feels instinctively connected to its driver, composed under pressure, and meticulously tuned so that every component serves a single purpose to make performance effortless.”He added:  “The Magma GT doesn’t ask the driver to prove their skill; it enhances it. This is not simply a faster Genesis. It is the most complete expression of Genesis performance to date.”No technical details of the GT Concept have been revealed, but the engine note was distinctively that of a V8. This is no guarantee the production version will be V8-powered, as it could simply be that the concept uses Genesis’ existing engine, but nor should it be ruled out.Genesis wants to take the GT into sport car racing, in the popular GT3 class, which would pit it against the Ferrari 296, Porsche 911, McLaren 750S, Mercedes-AMG GT and Aston Martin Vantage, so it will need a powerful engine to compete.There was no timeframe put on when the GT Concept would become a production car, but there are indications Genesis management want it to happen sooner rather than later, which means it’s likely to happen before the end of the decade.

These days it seems like a new car brand arrives in Australia each week, so it can be easy to become ambivalent about each new name.But you should be paying attention to the latest arrival, because it has the potential to really shake things up, even if you’ve never heard of it before.Denza is the brand in question, revealing plans for a pair of new ‘premium’ off-roaders — the B5 and B8 — to hit showrooms by the end of 2025. So why should you care about Denza?Because it isn’t an ‘all-new’ brand here, it’s actually a spin-off from BYD, which is already well-established in Australia and rapidly rising up the sales charts with its mix of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, including the popular Shark 6 ute.In fact, it’s the success of the Shark 6, a plug-in hybrid dual-cab, that bodes so well for Denza. The Shark 6 is already amongst the best-selling 4x4 utes on the market, sure it may be nowhere near the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux in sheer volume, but it has already cemented a place amongst the top five utes each month.Based on the sales data available to us, it’s comfortably out-selling Ford’s plug-in hybrid Ranger, showing that a new audience is embracing new technology from new brands in the traditional ute market.Denza will be hoping to do the same in the off-road space, with the B5 and B8 clearly aimed at Toyota’s beloved LandCruiser and Prado. Like the Shark, they will offer something different, with a potent (425kW and 450kW) plug-in hybrid set-up and plenty of other technologies and luxuries.We don’t know how much they’ll cost yet, but despite all the talk of Denza being a ‘premium’ offering, history suggests this Chinese brand will be aggressive on price to undercut its more established competition.The recent strong sales performances of BYD, GWM, Chery and MG underline how important value is to the current generation of brand-agnostic buyers. In this post-Holden/Ford locally-made cars world we now find ourselves, brand loyalty is a thing of the past.Value is what Australian new car buyers are looking for and it’s the Chinese brands that are looking to provide it. Whether it is sustainable or not is an entirely different debate, and one that’s irrelevant for people looking to purchase a new car in the here and now.BYD is already up nearly 150 per cent in sales volume in the first three quarters of 2025, led by the Shark 6 but ably backed up by the Sealion 6 PHEV and Sealion 7 EV SUVs. BYD will look to gain even more of the new car market by appealing to both first time car buyers and EV bargain hunters, when the new $25k Atto 1 hatch goes on sale and undercuts not only every other electric car but also most cars full stop.It is clear that, now run in-house, BYD is looking to make sure it remains headed up the sales charts. So if you only remember a few names from this current influx of new brands, make sure it’s BYD and Denza, because they are the ones most likely to make a lasting impact.

Has Hyundai left it too late to enter the ute market?

Volkswagen has a long history of success in the commercial van market, but in recent years it has slipped well-behind the competition. A radically different new Transporter (built with the help of Ford) has now arrived to try and turn that around. We drive the new Volkswagen Transporter to find out if it has what it takes to beat the Toyota HiAce, Ford Transit Custom and the rest.