Long-term reviews

by Tom White

At any given time, the CarsGuide editorial team is running several long-term test cars. While it’s one thing to be able to drive every new model on the market (for roughly a week at a time), it’s quite another to properly live with one and dig deep beneath the surface as owners will.

From everyday annoyances to unexpected surprises, our long-term test cars are driven longer distances, carry more people, used how you might use your own car, and seen by more eyes, giving us a more thorough understanding of the car’s suitability for intended function. The format of our long-term reviews allows us to talk beyond our eight standard review subheads that form the basis of all other CarsGuide reviews,, giving these tests a more casual tone and allowing us to discuss some of the smaller details at length. We can also commit to tracking information for longer and answering some harder questions. For example: How much does it really cost to charge an EV? Can you really trim your fuel consumption down meaningfully by changing your driving habits? Are those seats as comfortable on a road trip? Is the boot actually large enough for family life? These reviews usually run between three and six months and the idea is to give in-market buyers who spend months deciding on their next big car purchase a more in-depth piece of content and answer more of the lifestyle questions they might have, arming them with the information they need to make a decision on model or variant. We often address specific questions, comments and feedback from readers too, giving these reviews a dynamic quality that launch coverage or other tests often can’t match. When it comes to the cars themselves, it’s a bit of a mix, but as Australia’s EV-curious population becomes ravenous for more information, you can expect more electrified vehicles to feature. We know many Australians want to buy an electric car or hold on to their combustion car until there is the right EV available to them. Our long-term tests with EVs (like my Nissan Leaf e+ review, or Justin Hilliard’s Audi e-Tron review) seek to answer the common questions around range, charging, and other quirks of converting to a zeroemissions life.