The Motor Report Auto News Blog

It appears that Ford Australia is not the only colonial outpost of the big American manufacturers to be given the red light for developing future large rear-wheel-drive sedan platforms.

Automotive News is reporting that a GM source has indicated that a similar program led by Holden has been shelved. Under the plan, Holden would have had the starring role in developing large rear-wheel-drive platforms for the likes of Chevrolet and Buick, including the 2011 Chevrolet Impala (artists rendering above), development of which will now be scrapped. The 2011 Impala was to be based on the VE Commodores platform.
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While we Australians are served a diet of lukewarm, insipid and frankly boring car commercials along with our daily meds to ensure compliance, our friends in North America are treated like adults and have the pleasure of watching car commercials like the one above; designed to make them feel like kids.

The latest ad for Pontiac’s G8 warps time and takes viewers back to the days when they raced Scalextric slot cars in their parents’ lounge rooms and pushed Hot Wheels cars around roads that only existed in their minds. Yes, I remember those days well.

Lordy, the boys from Pontiac even have the G8 in the clip spinning, seemingly out of control. How do they get away with it?

Recently while trawling the various automotive news websites—as one does—I came across the website for a local automotive liftout published by a well-known international news conglomerate. They’d published an article about a gathering and ‘cruise’ for a certain model of performance-oriented Fords. It was a puff piece written by a “regular reader”, about how joining a car club is a good way to meet people.

The article described the story of dozens of car enthusiasts meeting up and going for a drive around Sydney’s hinterlands. The author talked about how he was happy that most of the cars didn’t have exterior modifications, but acknoweldged that most had modified exhausts and engine management systems. Later, it turns out one of them was pulled over by the police for speeding. » Read Article

We recently reported on the Nissan D40 Navara, which was handicapped in a 2007 ANCAP crash test due to incorrectly calibrated airbag software. The Navara has since been retested in Europe and fared better. Now ANCAP have released safety ratings for a number of locally available utility vehicles, including the Holden Commodore ute, the Mazda BT50 4×4, the Nissan Navara D40 4×4 and the Mahindra Pik-up.

Leading the results was the new VE Commodore based ute, which achieved a 4-star result and provides a range of standard safety features, including anti-lock brakes (ABS), electronic brake distribution (EBD) and electronic stability control (ESC).
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