IN the world of motoring, emotion often overrules good sense such that people buy cars that are impractical and fast-depreciating, and perhaps even unreliable. The lure of flash styling means the heart overrules the head, but for years, the high-performance Golf formula has provided buyers with a blend…

REGULAR readers may recall my musings on the original 4.2 litre V8 Audi RS4 saloon that I spent many, many happy hours in traversing the UK and French autoroutes over a number of years. It wasn’t just the outstanding engine that impressed – without any shadow of doubt…

FOR reasons that are very hard to fathom, South Africans have deserted station wagons in their droves and made a beeline for SUVs which to me are little more than station wagons on stilts. Sure, that SUV fetish is rapidly becoming a global phenomenon, but in the UK…

THERE can hardly be a person alive who is not aware that Wolfsburg (wolf’s castle) is the home of Volkswagen but how many know the origin of the model name Amarok? (more…)

I GUESS all manufacturers are guilty at one time or another of slapping a badge on the back of one of their products because the badge in question has more equity value than the badge that was previously employed. (more…)

ANYONE with a modicum of knowledge of the SA bakkie scene simply has to be perplexed at the gulf in sales between the top two and the rest led by the Isuzu D-MAX. They should be perplexed not just by the distortion in sales but by the fact…

LAST week, I joined a huge gathering at Nissan South Africa’s Rosslyn plant outside Pretoria to learn about a massive investment the company is making in expanding its light commercial vehicle output. Read on for the official story about upcoming plans to produce the Navara bakkie, a venture…

I CAN''T be the only one who wonders about the origins of some vehicle model names and none more so than the moniker “Sprinter” as attached to the portly rump of a Mercedes-Benz van. The name, after all, conjures up visons of a lean athlete about to unleash…

EVERY time a Volvo passes through my hands, I am reminded of the fact that the South African car market is driven by perception to an unusual degree, so much so that potentially undeserving vehicles may sell in significant numbers, but brilliant vehicles are conspicuous through their scarcity.…