Articles by Tim Robson

Australians love performance vehicles of every shape, size and colour – and the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is pure performance packaged in a particularly peculiar form.

For fans of hot hatchbacks, Peugeot is synonymous with the genre's birth. The 308 GTi of 2015 showed glimpses of the magic the French company was capable of. So, what does this mid-life update bring?

Volkswagen's Golf range might not have the same market reach as rivals like Mazda, Toyota and Hyundai, but the new Mk VII.5 Golf is definitely worth a look.

There's a reason that racing drivers wear more layers than Lady Gaga during second encore – and South African racer Mike Schmidt just used up every one of them.During practice for a sports car event at the Nezzi Circuit, near Durban in South Africa, Mike split a fuel line in his VW-engined enduro prototype during Friday practice, flames instantly filling the cockpit.Moving faster than CarsGuide staff going after a communal birthday cake, Mike managed to wriggle free from the cockpit and escaped without injury.“The engine died unexpectedly and the next thing I knew was that I was literally sitting in a fire pit with flames all around me,” Mike told South African website Wheels24.What's even more remarkable is that his Bateleur Motorsport team managed to repair his car in time to race the next day.Mike is now reportedly planning a holiday in a location where there is lots of snow and not a sign of an open fire anywhere.Is this your worst nightmare? Tell us in the comments.

VW has lightly tweaked its potent Golf R in line with the model's mid-life Mk 7.5 update, but has largely left the important stuff alone. This is a good thing – that stuff is still as good as it gets.

Volkswagen has whipped the covers off an updated version of the Golf GTI and Golf R this week, as well as revealing a new, limited edition model known as the Performance Edition 1.

The Subaru XV is more closely related to the Impreza than it is to the Forester. The second gen car doesn't stray far from the template, but it's what's underneath that makes all the difference.

Toyota's wildest weapon since... well, ever caught testing in tarmac trim.

The new i30 isn't just a basic device. Hyundai has managed to turn a stock hatchback into something more, for not a lot of money.

Question; what has 3700kW, 23,000Nm and cover 400m in less than four seconds? Well… nothing yet, but it's coming.Meet the crew from Top EV Racing in Western Australia, who are setting out to build an electric dragster that is capable of going up against the fastest Top Fuel cars in the world.It's not just a pipe dream, either. Local drag racing governing body, ANDRA, will let the car run against 7000kW nitro-methane monsters once it's approved – and the team's owner, electrical engineer Michael Fragomeni, reckons it'll even do a pass at half the speed of sound - in excess of 600km/h – if they can find a runway long enough.We already know that electric cars – like the Tesla Model S, for example – are pretty capable of outrageous acceleration. But the Top EV car is at a whole new level of crazy.Top EV's car isn't the work of a moment – there's simply nothing on sale in terms of basic electrical bits that can handle the forces and demands that a dragster requires. And the aim is to make this a viable business, and not just a garagista's plaything."We're talking about enough potential power, mounted within a foot behind my head, to run a whole suburb of houses with lights and appliances switched on," Michael told newatlas.com."We've spent a lot of time on this project, and we're in for the long haul, because we want to do this right, we want to do this safely and we want to promote the sport."The car is still a year away from turning a volt in anger, but we're already pretty charged. Charged? Get it? Never mind.