Cressidas don't die.

Old, but going strong

Retired electricity supply worker Sket Mkwanaze (60) is the man whom new car salesmen love to hate.
Sket bought this 1979 Toyota Cressida new in Ermelo, Mpumalanga.
That is the part they love.
More than 35 years later, Sket is however still driving the same car -- every DAY.
That is the part they hate.
Three decades is a long time for a car dealer not to sell a new car to a man.
Both Sket and his beloved mid-size sedan have retired to the leavy suburbs of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal, where he now does a bit of bargain hunting at the local hospice store.
His car is still in mint condition inside, but outside the paint works shows the three decades of wear and small rust bubbles along the beading and doors hint at a lot of corrosion inside the panels.

Wiele vir ’n saamryklub

The author in the Sesfikile,
popular and durable, but not frugal.

Dit kos deesdae minstens ’n rand per kilometer om in ’n 1,8-liter motor rond te ry. Baie buurmanne vra hierom of hulle met saamryklub sal kan spaar? Die antwoord hierop is altyd ja, maar daar moet eers goed besin word watter sake-struktuur die klub sal volg; en dan watter wa die klub sal pas.

Twee bewese name

Gelukkig vir ons het die taxi-base al die huiswerk oor die wa klaar gedoen. Hulle taxis stop en versnel tot tien ure ’n dag met ’n vrag, wat baie van ’n wa vereis. Dat die taxibase elke maand ver oor ’n

Little bakkie, big performer

NEW vehicle owners in the U.S. last week named Hyundai as the wheels with the least problems, topping three categories.
Had they tested the H100 bakkie that is so popular among small business in South Africa, the Korean brand could easily have recorded a fourth category win.
Built using the same formula that made the Mitsubishi L300 bakkie the enduring legend it is today, the H100 provides a comfortable workplace for drivers — as this scribe can testify.

UD trucks Pinetown moves to the future

Dancers Revaska Govender,
Kerry Brown and
Chantelle Randales

COMBINED Motor Holdings (CMH) has moved its UD Trucks dealership from the Mariannhill truck stop to overlook Pinetown’s new M19 highway from Devon Road.

Dealer principal Ron Byng told Wheels the R45 million new facility offers UD Trucks customers sales, service, parts and finance support.

Admitting they will miss the passing trade brought by the Mariannhill truck stop, Byng said CMH owns the new shop, which is ideally placed to benefit from the future highway that will connect the industrial nodes of Pinetown and Umhlanga.

Area manager for UD trucks sales in KZN, Oliver Whitfield predicted the new one-stop shop will go from strength to strength.

Stella gets a licence plate

‘Yiihaaa as of this week Stella has a permanent license for the public road!’ This is the latest tweet from Team Eindhoven, a team of Dutch engineering students who built and raced ‘Stella’ — a four-seat family car — in Australia’s biennial solar challenge in October last year.

I said then the student’s main achievement was ‘making a solar-powered family saloon that is ready to go on sale in the real world’. Pretoria-schooled Quirein Biewenga was in charge of Stella’s electrical storage and said Stella draws most of its energy from the six square metre roof-mounted solar panels, but it also has batteries for longer distances and short bursts of acceleration. During the solar race, even the prototype Stella proved as tough as a family car needs to be. Over half the field of 22 teams pulled out before completing the 3 000 km trip from Darwin to Adelaide, but Stella soldiered on.
And such is its comfort levels, the three team members not driving, snored as they slept. It was not the results of a hangover either, assured Biewenga.
In the other low-slung, stripped-out, Spartan solar cars, not even the hardest party animals could sleep a wink as they baked in the 40-degree heat and jolted over the rough roads during the morning-after ride.

Alfa’s ‘affordable supercar’

For R870 000, this ‘affordable supercar’ Alfa Romeo 4C can be yours. Fully imported from the Maserati factory in Italy, the mid-engined 4C can be ordered from seven dedicated dealerships in SA and Namibia, including Umhlanga. The price includes a three-year or 100 000 km warranty and maintenance plan. Alfa said its TCT 6-speed gearbox with a dual dry clutch combines the instant power of a sequential shift with all the convenience of an automatic, enabling a zero to 100 km/h run in less than five seconds. Only 30 models of the 4C will be imported to South Africa a year, and the first shipment is already sold out. Dealer principal at Fiat and Alfa Romeo in Umhlanga, Naseem Moosa, said this batch is only expected from October, and any Alfisti who also wants to own one of these already collectable supercars will have to express their interest early.

It hunkers down

The new Elantra is like the 2012 Coty winner, only better.

I HAVE an acid test for a car’s ergonomic design — will the dash bash my shin as I get in?

The new Hyundai Elantra competes against the Toyota Corolla, which was the most recent car to have dented my shin as I swung my not exactly svelte self into the driver’s seat.

At the KZN launch of the new Hyundai Elantra on Thursday, marketing director of Hyundai Automotive South Africa, Stanley Anderson, got my hopes up. “The excellent ergonomics of its interior design and the roomy cabin makes it a perfect compact family sedan,” he said.

Anderson was at pains to point out the 2014

Radio Overberg précis

Ford execs announce their plans for Africa, 'the final frontier'.

This talk covered:

- SA's top young riders in the 2014 Romaniacs Enduro and the FIA's word's best young driver.

- amphibian vehicles, with the Chinese Auto Motors (CAM) importers' Isuzu-based sea-floater; Russia's Ford-based lake crawler; and the U.S. Marines, Uhac ocean trasher getting a mention.)

- Ford's plans in Africa up to 2020.

Alwyn, in jou vonkpos gister het jy beloof om te vertel hoe SA se jong jaers oorsee presteer, met een petite blondine wat haar KTM scrambler eers verdrink en toe meer as 'n kilometer ver moes stoot en 'n ander lat wat matriek op pause gesit het om die beste jong jaer in Europe te word.

Jy ken die dril, vertel die wie wat en waar?

Etios gets cross with Sandero

The Etios Cross

TOYOTA dealerships are now selling the Etios Cross, which was launched in May at the Delhi Motor Show.

Toyota said in a statement the top-selling success of Etios, which currently has almost 30% market share of SA’s sub-B passenger car segment, has enabled it fill the gap left by the Tazz in 2007.

At 66 kW, the fully imported Etios Cross 1,5 competes head on with the Renault Sandero Stepway, which is built at Nissan’s Rosslyn plant north of Pretoria.

'Oo-ha' to beach US Marines

This is the prototype of the Ultra Heavy-Lift Amphibious Connecter at a half-scale. The name abbreviates to Uhac and is presumably pronounced Oo-ha! in good Marine tradition.

Hawain-based company Navatek designed the Uhac for the U.S Marines and the craft will be tested at the biennial Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) wargames that ends in July. 

Looking like the lovechild between a Mississippi steamboat and a combined harvester, the Uhac was built to deliver a Humvee-load of American buccaneers to any defenceless shoreline with crude oil reserves in need of a pillageing — or if you take the American view, it is designed to

Night racing at Dezzi's a dizzy delight

Turtle Wax’s Dorne’ Britz during the 

match-up as the sun sets over Dezzis.

DEZZI’S Raceway near Oslo Beach in Port Shepstone hosted the fifth round of the national drifting championship, with the drivers going around the track in the dark for the first night racing at the venue.

Family-lugger shootout

Nissan’s Almera is the clear bargain buy for drivers who want

to get to point B in reasonable air-conditioned comfort.

DEAR regular reader, this shoot-out is not for you, the motoring enthusiast.
Instead, this shoot-out is aimed at the Majority Car Buyer, those thousands of motorists who know their car by its colour, rather than its kilo-Watts; and who require only that their wheels take them in reasonable air-conditioned comfort to point B. 

If their accountants add that said car also has a big boot, comfy seats, power steering, a frugal engine and a high resale value, they will buy it. These are practical moms and dads and its for them that the Toyota Corolla Quest and Nissan Almera were custom-built. 

Botterill races his best race yet in VW rally

Guy and Simon can like to go faster.

WHILE the factory-sponsored S2000 cars battled it out in front of the cameras in the weekend’s Volkswagen Rally in the Eastern Cape, young Durbanite driver Guy Botterill and navigator Simon Vacy-Lyle had their own ding-dong battle to win the S1600 class.

This class is for front-wheel drive cars with engines up to 1 600 cc, and Botterill’s has now won the race four times from four starts.

Which sportscar for her?

Clare Vale with ''Pearly''.

QUESTION: I am a successful female entrepreneur who wants to buy a sportscar that will tell the business world in which I operate that I may be sexy, but I’m not to be messed with. I also don’t want to (again) have the hassle of long wait for parts that seems to be part and parcel of driving a lesser-spotted car in South Africa. And finally I want to have fun on road trips. What do you recommend?

Radio Overberg précis

A Russian boy and his dad's
amphibious truck 

This talk covered career choices as a driver, what with the rise of robot trucks and even tractors, the various systems being tested and their timelimes; and why the new Nissan Almera from Chennai, India, is a better choice than the built-in-South Africa Toyota Corolla Quest and finally, wishing SA brand guru Johan de Nysschen well as Cadillac boss. 

Toe ek klein was, wou ek 'n treindrywer word, maar deesdae se laaities wil eerder lorriebestuurders wees. En het het vir die jong manne goeie en slegte nuus? Vertel eers die slegte nuus.

Komatsu, Merc, Scania, Nissan en Volvo se robot lorries is algar reg om self te ry.

The Congo's all purpose thsukudu

Albert Kambale reported for Agence France Presse on the transport solutions in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which I am happy to repeat here.

Photo: colognetocapetown.com

What do you do when you need to deliver several hundred pounds of potatoes, 150 stalks of sugar cane, 30 eucalyptus saplings and eight sacks of coal, without motorised transport?

For residents of Goma, in the war-scarred east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the answer to this, and many other problems, is the tshukudu.

FAQ's about Lead Replacement Petrol

A large part of the world use old bike engines
that need lead replacement petrol. (Photo:  Reuters.)

FROM what date will there no longer be lead in petrol in South Africa?

Unleaded petrol was first introduced to South African consumers in 1996. Since then, the use of unleaded petrol has increased gradually and now accounts for about 75% of total petrol sales in South Africa.

In a drive to improve air quality, by supplying fuels that enable the latest vehicle technology, anti-valve seat recession additives (AVSR) will no longer be added to petrol in the production process to produce LRP. The phase-out of LRP has already started, although on a small scale. The petroleum industry is required to produce fuel to international standards, which enable car manufacturers to introduce vehicles with the latest emission and fuel-efficiency technology. This requires the petroleum companies to optimise the current logistics infrastructure to accommodate these requirements. As the demand for “cleaner fuels” grows, the production of lead replacement fuels will cease. When the new clean-fuels II legislation comes into effect in the not-too-distant future (planned for 2017), all LRP production will cease.

For parking lot hooliganism

The 2014 Daihatsu Copen

 JAPANESE petrolheads don’t have a lot of space to have fun in, but in the Daihatsu Copen and Honda S660 they can make their own rally in a parking lot.

Daihatsu last week released the second generation of the Copen, which ­established a name for itself as a pure little driver’s car, with a new 660 cc turbocharged three-cylinder engine that makes 47 kW at 6 400 rpm and 92 Nm at 3 200 rpm.

Ladybird farm robot

The Ladybird Farm robot.

WHILE the world’s car-builders and truckers are pondering who will get sued if their robot cars go astray, Professor Sukkarieh at Sydney University has no such qualms.

He last week successfully tested the Ladybird farm robot on a farm in Cowra, New South Wales. 

The robot trundled around the farm, which grows

The rise of the robot trucker

Dr Wolfgang Bernhard

MERCEDES-BENZ has presented the Future Truck 2025, a self-driving vehicle equipped with an intelligent assistance system enabling it to drive completely autonomously at speeds of up to 85 km/h.

According to Dr Wolfgang Bernhard, a member of Daimler’s board of management responsible for Daimler Trucks and Buses, the Future Truck has already been tested in real life applications on a German freeway.

“The Future Truck 2025 is our response to the major challenges and opportunities associated with road freight transport in the future,” he said.

“[It] leads to more efficiency and better safety and connectivity. This, in turn, results in a more sustainable transport system to the benefit of the economy, society and consumers.”

At the truck’s recent world premiere, Bernhard said: “If the legislative framework for autonomous driving can be created quickly, the launch of the Highway Pilot is conceivable by the middle of the next decade.”

Mercedes-Benz’s self-driving truck follows developments by Volvo and Scania to test and change laws to allow autonomous trucks to deliver loads across Europe.

Fastest train in India yet

As India speeds up, the country wants less of this...

Sapa cites an AFP report that an Indian passenger train set a new national speed record of 160 kilometres an hour (100 miles an hour) on Thursday during a test between the capital and the Taj Mahal city of Agra.

The introduction of high-speed links and bullet trains were one of the key poll campaign promises of India’s new right-wing prime minister, Narendra Modi, who won elections in May.

Thursday’s test, part of the government’s plans to upgrade the ageing rail network, saw the train complete the 200 kilometres between New Delhi and Agra in around 90 minutes. The top speed clocked at 10 kilometres more than the previous record.

Radio Overberg précis

To save fuel, start thinking about sharing rides.

The talk covered SA's most frugal driver heading to Sweden to compete in Volvo's World Drivers Fuel Challenge in mid-September;
- an insurer's driver challenge that will give out R1 million in fuel vouchers; and

- a few novel ways to save fuel, like ride sharing, syndicate car ownerhsip, and changing driver habits.

SA’s youngest spinners ‘at da market’

Three of South Africa’s youngest spinners will be sharing the loading docks at the Mkondeni fresh produce market in Pietermaritzburg when spinning returns to the capital on July 12 after a long absence.