Hyundai Ioniq 5 2025 News

Sorry, Swifties. While we appreciate the cultural phenomenon that is singer/songwriter, artist and philanthropist Taylor Swift, this is not a paean to a great pop star, but, rather, a reference to the year that marked Japan’s stellar ascension as the biggest threat to the established carmakers of that time. Their fear was existential as well as actual.

Hyundai is about to move to a seven-year/unlimited kilometre warranty in Australia, up from its existing five-year/unlimited kilometre item.

We're lucky, us car journalists. We get to drive oodles of exciting new cars throughout the year — sometimes so many you start to forget your favourites — so making this list was a nice walk down medium-term memory loss lane.

Is the Toyota bZ4X a sales disaster in Australia? Is Toyota failing at electric vehicles (EVs) generally? And why does senior management reckon there is a stink in the air for all the naysayers?

It’s been a long time since someone who’s not that interested in cars gushed to me about how much they like Tesla (it doesn’t help that the man in charge of Tesla has done less and less for his own reputation as time rolls on), so if Tesla isn’t the brand at the cultural forefront of electric cars then, who should be?