First Car

Even the starting price Lancer ES immediately gets you thinking about the Evo X speed machine.

A record number of Mazda baby cars delivered last month helped drive the company to an all-time sales record and its 10th straight month of rewritten records.

The little Mazda 2 is the second generation of Mazda's smallest car but it has all the good things the company's deserved reputation promises.

I PLAN to buy my first car in the next 12 months. Should I buy used or new? Which models (from which years) should I look at?

Getting value for money and being able to keep their new car; and new-found freedom; on the road has proved to be the biggest factors for first time car buyers.

Small vehicles are bulging out to the mid-size boundary, while mid-size is threatening to spill into the large class. And increased safety features are generally adding more poundage.

Rear legroom also continues to be generous for this size sedan and there are three child restraint anchor points in the backSuzuki has halved its drivetrain and added a boot to give its SX4 small car a sales lift.The SX4 all-wheel-drive hatch was launched here in January as a small car with youthful and aggressive attitude.Now Suzuki is looking to broaden its appeal with the addition of a sedan and a substantial drop in price to a sub-$20,000 starting price.The AWD SX4, which attracted only 5 per cent import duty because of its clearance and all-wheel drive, costs $24,390 for the manual and $2000 more for the auto.Now, despite attracting import duty of 10 per cent, Suzuki has saved enough on the less complicated drivetrain to offer the five-speed manual SX4 hatch and sedan for the same price of $19,990 in GLX base trim.The better-equipped S trim level adds $3000 and the four-speed auto is an extra $2000. There is no price premium for the sedan right across the range.Suzuki Auto Co general manager Keith Carroll said the SX4 had been a success, representing about 10 per cent of sales, but the addition of two-wheel drive and a sedan option would further increase its share.“We would expect that SX4 will be about 12-14 per cent of our total sales this year,” he said.“It will add to the younger end of the market because of the price, but with the boot we have a car that will appeal to either end of the age range.”With lower clearance than the AWD SX4, the tidy small car looks neater and less gawky. While the AWD SX4 sits 200mm off the ground, the hatch is 175mm and the sedan lower still at 165mm.However, older drivers attracted to the higher hip entry point of the AWD SX4 will still find the hatch and sedan easy to access because of their generous roof height.The sedan variant has a massive boot for this class of car with little intrusion from the torsion beam rear suspension, a flat and serviceable cargo floor, wide and low access, but a temporary spare under the floor.Rear legroom also continues to be generous for this size sedan and there are three child restraint anchor points in the back.Carroll predicts they will sell about 840 SX4s in Queensland this year with 640 of those being hatches.Standard features are airconditioning, electronic power steering, steering wheel-mounted audio controls, eight speaker sound system with MP3 capability, electric windows, power door locks, and remote key entry and locking.On the safety side they get dual front airbags, anti-lock brakes, electronic brake force distribution, emergency brake pedal assistance and a four-star Euro NCAP safety rating that includes pedestrian safety.The S adds leather-wrapped steering wheel, cruise control, 16-inch alloy wheels, smart key entry, fog lights and side curtain airbags that go back to the rear seat.While the Suzuki's top-selling Swift Sport now gets electronic stability program (ESP) thrown in for no extra cost, the SX4 goes without this vital safety feature.Carroll said if ESP became available on the vehicle, it would be offered.“I would be hopeful that if we get it, it would be at a similar price,” he said.The chassis and suspension were re-tuned for the front-wheel-drive version, but the engine remains the same with peak power of 107kW at 5800rpm and maximum torque of 184Nm at 3500rpm.Suzuki service manager Mike Turner described the powerplant as 'bulletproof.'“Amazing but true. In Australia, we have never had a mechanical failure of this engine assembly,” he said.“This engine, with very few changes and the addition of a turbo charger, will power Suzuki's SX4 World Rally Car, due to make its debut later on this year.”Queensland's Suzuki importer, Suzuki Auto Co, this year expects to sell four times the number of vehicles it did three years ago.Their sales to the end of July were 5026, compared with 3970 for the same period last year.“That means we now are tracking more than 1000 vehicles ahead of last year,” Carroll said.Internationally, Suzuki would increase its 'fire power' by building new plants, he said.“There are new plants underway in Hamamatsu and even Russia where a plant is being built in St Petersburg.“The Russian plant is scheduled to come on stream in late 2009... They will boost our ammunition significantly and allow us to sell more than 3 million cars a year in 2010 . . . which will give us five per cent of the world market.”

I BOUGHT my first car, a 1928 Graham-Paige, at age 16 in 1952. I knew nothing about these cars when I bought it. Can you tell me something about them now?

It's fair to say the Mazda 2 has never really lived up to expectations. Competing against the likes of Toyota's renamed Yaris and the popular Hyundai Getz, it languishes near the middle of the light c

Its new baby car, Splash, is aimed straight at Europe and Asia and will also be coming to Australia in a worldwide move which will see production spread through Hungary, Japan and India.The Splash was previewed as a concept car at the Paris motor show last year and follows the successful introduction of the Euro-style Swift and SX-4 wagon.An SX-4 sedan is coming later in the year and Suzuki is also expected to unveil at least two other all-new models before the end of 2007, including the Camry-sized car, which company executives spoke about to CARSguide in Japan last year.“Over the next three years we will have a half-dozen new models in segments where we don't currently participate,” the general manager of Suzuki Australia, Tony Devers, says.“We'll have the mini-car segment with Splash and further down the track we'll have the mid-sized car. And then other products that I don't want to talk about at present.“It's a big push for Suzuki.”The Splash is based on the same mechanical package as the Swift, a former winner of the CARSguide Car of the Year award, but is significantly smaller. It is only 3.7m long but stands 1.6m tall.The safety package includes six airbags and electronic stability control.The Splash will be sold in Europe with both 1.0-litre and 1.3-litre petrol engines, as well as a 1.3-litre diesel — and Suzuki has forecast sales of some 60,000 cars a year from its factory in Hungary.However, sales will not begin until early in 2008 and the final production car will not be unveiled until Germany's Frankfurt motor show in September.Suzuki will not confirm the Splash for Australia, but senior Japanese executives have already said it will be imported.The only likely change is that local deliveries will be of Japanese-made cars, rather than from the new Splash production line being established in India.“We are evaluating it, but we would only get it out of Japan,” Devers says. “It will probably come in around 18 months to two years.”Devers says there is real potential for the Splash, which would be a sub-$15,000 car and smaller than most of the existing cars in the light-car category, such as the Hyundai Getz and Kia Rio.“It's positioned under Swift and that's a segment that's starting to grow,” Devers says.“The cars are quite small but large inside. For Australia, the whole trend in the industry is towards fuel efficiency and smaller cars.“There has been a trend for five to 10 years. If you look at Corolla ... it is not a small car these days. Swift is the size that Corolla and Civic were five years ago, and the Splash will be in the new mini segment. Our consumers are moving towards where Europe has already gone. The light segment is going to boom and this is probably under that.”Devers says the Splash is also a sign of Suzuki's commitment to its globalisation, moving away from the super-small Japanese Kei-class cars it has built for decades.“Suzuki has made a strategic decision,” he says. “It has been the mini-car leader in Japan for 15 years but is now looking to build bigger cars for a global push.“It's a big, big decision. But it's being done so they can tune the production for larger cars and a worldwide push.“Suzuki already sells more cars than Honda, Mazda and Subaru in Europe. It's only Australia and America where it lags.“There is an American focus, but Australia is important too, because we're now a million-vehicle market.”