Small car shootout: Ford v Holden v Mazda v VW v Peugeot
Little cars are big business as buyers downsize. We test five of the best.
Big house, big TV, Big Pineapple, big car. When it comes to big, we Australians are big fans.
Actually, scratch that last one. We might still build big cars but most of us buy small ones. They account for almost a quarter of total vehicles sales and when you throw light cars into the mix, you're looking at close to 40 per cent of the market.
Yep, small is big business.
And that means an unprecedented array of brands and models fighting it out, whipped into a mind-boggling mix by the winds of constant change.
There has certainly been plenty of that happening. Earlier this year, Ford launched a new Focus, which recently won the Best Small Car gong at Drive's annual Car of the Year awards. Mazda and Peugeot are now fielding revised versions of their respective 3 and 308.
Holden, too, has just launched a long-awaited hatch version of the locally built Cruze, which promises to strengthen its already prominent position in a segment where hatches are preferred. And the status quo? Well, that's what we're here to establish, so to keep these newbies honest we're throwing in Volkswagen's tried-and-true Golf as a benchmark.