Car News Articles

Why are carmakers in Australia so unwilling to share information with prospective buyers?

In the United States, consumers can get a huge amount of information about a new car just by reading a sticker on the windscreen.

The US stickers have information on key features, safety equipment, the car’s crash rating, fuel consumption and smog ratings. In contrast, ours only have information about average fuel consumption.

The US labels, which are compulsory on all new cars, even tell you where the parts on your vehicle are sourced from. They also have highway and city fuel consumption ratings and a sliding scale that shows how a certain vehicle compares with competitors in its segment. On top of that, you get a dollar estimate of the annual fuel costs, details of how many airbags are fitted, whether the car has stability control and even whether it has air-conditioning and a CD player.

If that’s not enough information to make an informed decision, the label also has the retail price, including any options that may be fitted.

Which begs the question – why are carmakers in Australia so lukewarm about including crash rating figures on windscreen labels?

Australia’s independent crash test body NCAP has been offering to print safety star rating labels for brands since September last year, but no-one is taking them up on the offer.

While their parent companies have embraced the compulsory safety ratings, the local operations remain suspicious and critical of NCAP.

The same applies to customer satisfaction and quality surveys. While all the major players are happy to have their results published in the US, our results are kept from the public.

I reckon the Australian car buyer deserves a better deal.

What about you?

Richard Blackburn

V8 Supercar driver Todd Kelly will link with Larry Perkins’ Jack Daniel’s Racing in 2008 after his split from the Holden Racing Team.

In doing so, Kelly has passed up a chance to defect to Ford, and a potential place with the Toll-HSV Dealer Team alongside his brother Rick.

“I am genuinely happy with this,” Kelly said yesterday.

He rejected suggestions he has been made a scapegoat for HRT’s failings over the past two years.

“I beat (teammate Mark) Skaife for the past five years in the championship. I had three pole positions this year,” he said.

“One of my goals will be to finish further up pitlane than HRT. But it’s not entirely that. I want to be the best driver I can be.”

He is confident he will be more competitive with Perkins, where he will be the No. 1 driver with youngster Shane Price as his teammate.

He did not say it, but Kelly believes he will do better once he steps out of Skaife’s shadow at Team Red.

“I don’t think I’ve been the best driver I could be at HRT. I was looking to get more out of myself. Larry’s team is ideal,” Kelly said.

He has been eased aside to clear space for Garth Tander, who won the V8 Supercar championship on Sunday, but rejected any suggestion he was dumped.

“I had been there for 10 years. It’s good timing. I would probably have been interested in having a change of scenery anyway,” Kelly said.

“This has been a good chance to do a full review of my performance. I had the chance to move to Queensland, the chance to move to Ford.”

Instead, he spent more than a day looking at Perkins’ operation at Moorabbin before signing on Tuesday night.

“In this environment, I reckon I can get a lot more out of myself. I can actually spend every day in the workshop looking at the car and coming up with ideas to go faster,” Kelly said.

Told in the week before the final round of the V8 Supercar series that he would be moving out of HRT, Kelly said it was an emotional time.

“I’m pretty passionate about HRT, and loyal. It was hard at PhillipIsland over the weekend because I knew that was going to be my last race with the team,” he said.

“It was pretty sad to line up for the last time. Just driving around on the cool-down lap and looking at the dash, looking around the cabin, and thinking it was the last time I would drive an HRT car. That was pretty sad.

“Walking into the new team and seeing the enthusiasm was great. The new challenge has got my complete focus.”

Kelly, 28, has been racing V8 Supercars since 1999 and has had 18 race and nine round wins from 106 starts, including victory at Bathurst in 2005.

He has been in the top 10 drivers for each of his seven full-time seasons.

Perkins talked up his new team leader yesterday.

“He’s someone who can contribute to the team and its performance, both on and off the track, and he’s excited about working with us. I think he’ll fit in perfectly,” Perkins said.

Kelly showed his honesty when he talked of how he got started through a junior development program with Team Red that was organised by then team manager Jeff Grech and company chiefs John Crennan and Tom Walkinshaw.

“I was 16 when I first met Jeff, now I’m 28. I started there packing T-shirts in plastic bags and then got promoted to sweep the floor at HRT. And that was the best day of my life,” Kelly said.

“I’m thankful to Tom because I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now without it.”

Kelly has only signed a one-year deal with Perkins and is open about the reason.

“I just wanted to do 12 months,” he said.

“I told Larry if I was not happy after a year I could go, and if he thought I was a boofhead or not performing he could let me go.

“I reckon that’s the fairest way to do it.”

- Herald Sun

The brand that trumpets itself as the safest catches up.

The car brand trumpeted as the world’s safest will catch up with the pack next month.

Volvo is at last making sure every car it sells in Australia is equipped with ESP and traction control as standard.

It has yet to confirm details of the ESP upgrade, including prices, though all Australian cars coming off the production line this month – which means deliveries in June once they are shipped from Sweden – will have the system.

“We can confirm that dynamic stability control and traction control will be standard on all Volvo models from May production,” says Laurissa Mirabelli of Volvo Cars Australia.

While Volvo is talking up its ESP upgrade, it is also working to finalise details of next year’s model line-up after an upgrade last week in Europe. They should be here by October, and the all-new XC60 all-wheel-drive wagon will be the headliner.

The most obvious change, on everything from the baby C30 to the C70, is a larger Volvo badge on the boot. It picks up the prominence of the badge on the XC60 and the latest mid-sized wagons.

The only other change across the range, though not confirmed for Australia, is exterior mirrors that fold flat for parking.

“There will be some minor changes to Volvo’s MY09 line-up this year, as there is with its models every year,” Mirabelli says. “The MY09s won’t be here until much later this year and we’re not in a position to confirm the extent of the changes yet, given we’re still going through the business case process.”

She says there are only minor tweaks to the range, apart from the XC60, and nothing big on the technical front. In Europe, there are minor tweaks to nine models and one of the best is an optional system called Homelink. It uses buttons integrated into the sun visor to operate remote-controlled home appliances such as garage doors, house alarms and lighting.

There is an upgrade of the optional satellite navigation on the S40 and V50, a hard load cover is now standard on all C30s and the climate control is upgraded in the C70 with the addition of the Powershift gearbox already fitted to the C30, S40 and V50.

The S80 flagship gets heated washer nozzles and chronograph-style dials in the dash.

- Herald Sun

After Fisker and Tesla, another manufacturer called Liberty Electric Cars Ltd announced that it will invest £30 million in developing an electric drive-train platform which will be used to power a wide range of large vehicles. This will include an electrically powered Range Rover which will cost between £95,000 and £125,000 depending on model and specification.

The Liberty Range Rover will be able to be driven approximately 200 miles before needing a recharge and according to the manufacturer the electric motor will provide superior acceleration while the torque will be available at all times.

“It ain’t that hard folks — make better cars.” That’s the word aimed at Detroit from Jay Leno, the late-night television host and avid hands-on car nut. According to Leno, nobody builds trucks as well as Americans, as he cites the Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado as examples. Same goes with performance cars. “The Corvette Z06 has 505 horsepower, comes with a big warranty, and can hit 200 miles per hour. It weighs almost exactly the same as a half-million-dollar Porsche Carrera GT and gets higher mileage - 26 miles per gallon,” states Leno.

However, Americans just can’t seem to build a low-bucks economy car. “In order to make the more expensive car more appealing, U.S. companies feel as though they have to dumb down the cheaper car,” the comedian reasons. “When you get into a high-priced, well-made American car today and the key is in the ignition, you hear a melodic bong, bong. But when you get in a cheap American car, like a rental, and the key is left in, it goes plink, plink, plink. It’s just horrible. Every time you use the turn signal, it’s like breaking a chicken leg.”

Leno suggests that Detroit follow the example of Harley-Davidson, which turned around its quality-control problems and re-established itself as a market leader. Leno adds, “I believe that, all things being equal, Americans will buy American. It just has to be as good as the competition; it doesn’t have to be better.”

[Source: MSNBC]