16
Country Motoring
October 2011
Good Korea moves Captiva and Korando Korean car makers have made enormous strides over the past decade to now sit in the top 10 manufacturers in the world. New Zealand car buyers have not been slow to recognise the value and quality now available from the Korean brands. Best known for Hyundai and Kia there are in fact two other brands on the market. General Motors owns and markets the Daewoo under Holden badges and Ssangyong has made a reappearance after a two-year hiatus owned in New Zealand by a Taupo based company. Our test vehicles are midsized AWD’s with good ground clearance
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allowing them access to all the out of the way spots as well as across the paddocks. Of course if your destination requires some serious off roading then while these are both competent with traction controls and even hill descent on the Captiva, they do have their limitations. That said driven carefully it’s astonishing just how far they can get you – and back safely.
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KingQuad 300 4x4
• 400cc electric start oil cooled 4-stroke • Solid enclosed rear axle supported by two shock absorbers • 5 forward gears with Hi/Lo ratios (man) • Torque sensing front differential • Lever action 2WD/4WD select • Easy select reverse lever
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500cc electric start water cooled 4-stroke Independent suspension Push button 2WD/4WD select and diff lock Torque sensing front differential Easy select reverse lever
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Avon City Suzuki Epsom Road, Sockburn, Christchurch • 03 341 3490
www.avoncitysuzuki.co.nz
Holden’s Captiva 5 is so named to differentiate it from the 7 which denotes the seating capacity. The loss off two seats liberates even more carrying capacity to the already capacious Captiva. Slightly bigger overall than the Korando the Holden SUV represents GM’s only SUV in its Holden line up while Ssangyong has two other bigger siblings. Ssangyong at a recent press drive day indicated a smaller and radical new SUV would appear possibly with both diesel and petrol power. For now though the Captiva 5 AWD and the Korando are diesels with the Holden’s 2.2 litre turbo diesel developing 135kw and 400 torques while the slightly lighter Ssangyong’s 2 litre diesel turbo at a stonking 129kw and 360 torques eclipses all other Japanese and Korean 2 litre power plants. OK so on paper they are closely matched. What I was keen to find out was how they compared in the real world of everyday motoring.
Holden Captiva 5 The Captiva 1 has been a good vehicle and well thought of in the marketplace providing value for money motoring for those that need an occasional does of extra traction. Changing from the Isuzu sourced Fronterra and Monterray (in Japan known as the Wizard and the awkwardly named Big Horn) to the Daewoo for its SUV Holden has capitalised on the rise of the Koreans in the world market. The second edition of the Captiva has addressed the shortcoming of the earlier model with a more chiselled purposeful front and rear design and adding to both safety and creature comforts and has produced a very easy to live with vehicle that adapts readily to the lifestyles of both city and rural markets. Personally I like the 5 as it does away with some of the bling that the 7 in LX guise adds such as the Sat Nav’s permantly finger marked multifunction touch screen. I like the benefits Sat Nav brings and the big screens that centrally mounted are multi-functional for DVD players and info screens for the computer. I would like to see though a universal adoption of the easy reach one-touch control pads by the gear selectors as standard, which we see on European vehicles. They are cleaner clearer and easier to use. Holden does market the system on the Commodore so maybe that will migrate to the Captiva. The 5 only comes with the Diesel in AWD form though a petrol 2.4 litre, 123kw is available in 2WD versions. As such the turbo diesel fits into the very civilised Captiva and is both much quieter than its predecessor it’s also one of the quietest diesels even at idle. On the Road – Holden knows how to produce a fine driving road car and the Captiva 2 is a fine example of tweaking an already good product. We drove some 967km in the week we had this model and realised the 2.2 litre diesel with the active AWD maximising torque distribution through all four wheels varying it as road conditions and traction require.