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| As published in The Witness, est. 1846 |
Q. So what's the best bakkie —a Hilux or the new Ranger?
A. Neither,
as the laws of efficiencies and effectiveness dictate that a small panelvan
makes more sense, like Fiat’s Doblo 1,4 that sells for about R160,000. For
this money, you could also buy two Chinese vans that will run on the smell of an
oily rag.
Drivers
who, however, insist on driving with an open load bin, should look at the range
of frugal, three-quarter-ton bakkies in SA, like the Bantam, which sadly, is
SA’s most popular bakkie among thieves (seems the tsotsis know a
fuel saver when they see one).
Last
month, the best-selling ¾ tonners were Chevrolet’s Ute, with Nissan for the
first month coming second by a nose in this category, having sold 1 340 units of
the NP200 bakkie.
But if
a big and thirsty bakkie it must be, April’s sales’ figures also show that 2 741
people bought a new Toyota Hilux bakkie, with Ford selling less than half that
of 1 322 new Rangers... and that group of 1 421 tough guys and gals who decided
on a Hilux cannot all be wrong now, can they?
Q. What car eats the most money?
A: Also known as the how-long-is-a-piece-of-rope? question, but lets answer it rather cleverly. You see, the car that figuratively "eats" the most money could soon be any Ford, for as part of Ford’s efforts to practise the three
Rs (reuse, reduce, recycle), the company is looking at recycling some of the
three to four tons of dollar notes shredded in the United States every
day. Normally,
the shredded dollars get compressed into bricks, and are then either buried or
burnt.Ford
would rather use the compressed dollars to make trays and bins, in the same way
wheat straw is currently used in the Ford Flex.
