North East Motor Guide

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N O R T H E AST V I C TO R I A

FEBRUARY 23 - MARCH 01 | 2018

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ON THE IMPROVE: The Kia Sorento is keen on keeping up with the opposition with a mid-cycle freshen-up.

Customers speak Sorento listens

DESPITE walking away with a range of motor industry awards since its launch more than two years ago, Kia’s sevenseat sports utility vehicle, the Sorento, had, according to some observers, a few shortcomings.

The South Korean manufacturer has taken these on board and has come up with mid-cycle changes that address these.

The changes include Kia’s in-house eightspeed automatic across the range, a new larger capacity long-stroke petrol engine, a higher and longer body for increased internal space, revised and improved ride and handling characteristics to better suit Australian conditions, as well as multi-

By DEREK OGDEN media upgrades incorporating Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

On the safety front all models have automatic emergency braking (AEB), Lane Keeping Assist and Driver Attention Alert. There’s a 360-degree camera on Sorento GT-Line.

Pricing for the petrol variants opens at $42,990 (an increase of $2000) for the Si; Sport is $44,990 (previously called Si Limited, +$1000) and SLi is $46,990 (+$1000).

Diesel pricing starts at Si $45,490 for the Si (+$1000); Sport is $48,490 (previously Si Limited +$1000) and SLi $50,490

Conversely, inside the cabin are more soft touch materials and leather for a more premium cabin ambience. Customers can specify single-tone (black) or two-tone (black and stone beige), with cloth or leather upholstery. Optional brown or light grey leather upholstery is also available.

The driver and front passenger seats are equipped with four-way and two-way adjustable lumbar support respectively for enhanced comfort. A newly-designed steering wheel and driver instrument cluster, as well as a new climate control LCD display add to the upgrades, while the dashboard also features a new audiovisual aspect to satellite navigation.

(+$1000). Platinum has been replaced by the GT-Line at $58,990 (+$500). On test was the 2.2-litre diesel Sport with eightspeed automatic transmission.

In a bid to give the Sorento a bit more street presence – after all it is built to take seven occupants – the front end has been rearranged with new bumpers, as has the rear, with new tail-lamps too.

The characteristic Kia ‘tiger nose’ radiator grille has been given a new dark metallic finish while new Rich Espresso and Gravity Blue paint finishes are available for the body.

Sorento now has a range of moderndesign 17, 18 or 19-inch aluminium alloy wheels

ONLY

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Serving the community as your local Mazda dealer for over 50 years!

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Continued page 2

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2

Feb 23 - Mar 1 | 2018

Mazda MX-5 RF

By EWAN KENNEDY

MAZDA has introduced a limited edition to its MX-5 RF retractable fastback range. A serious car the Limited Edition features the Kuroi Sports Pack, aerodynamic additions, Brembo brakes and significant suspension upgrades.

Small winglets near the front of the wheelarch openings direct air away from the wheels and along the sides of the body to smooth out the rush of air created by the little sports machine.

A front strut bar links the front suspension towers to increase chassis stiffness. New design 17-inch diameter BBS alloy wheels are part of the package.

Brembo’s opposed-piston, four-pot front brake calipers not only provide harder braking in heavy duty use, but also reduce unsparing weight by a significant two kilograms.

The Brembos can increase fade resistance

by as much as 26 per cent. A significant advantage if you want to take part in track days.

The MX-5 RF Limited Edition colour choices are: Soul Red Crystal Metallic, Machine Grey Metallic, Snow Flake, White Pearl Mica, Ceramic Metallic and Eternal Blue Mica. A nice choice, however, every car has a black roof.

Mazda set up a testing drive route from Melbourne airport to the Yarra Valley and back, with a pause for lunch. It really showed off the Limited Edition to best advantage as this is exactly the sort of drive that keen Melbourne car enthusiasts are likely to take - well perhaps without visiting the airport…

Handling is sharp and feedback through the wheel and the seat of your pants is excellent. You can control it on the throttle to really balance it beautifully in bends and

Limited edition

HEAD-TURNER: Aero changes and BBS are the biggest visual

changes in this Mazda MX-5, but there are also plenty of changes under the skin. it simply cries out for an interesting series of tight twisting up-hill-and-down-dale roads.

Want a Mazda MX-5 with an automatic transmission because you can’t be bothered changing gears yourself? Tough luck - this Limited Edition only comes with the lovely slick-shifting six-speed manual. Love it.

The MX-5 RF Limited Edition is priced at $55,748 driveaway and is on sale now. Only 110 have been produced for Australia so it might be smart to contact your Mazda dealer quickly if you’re a serious driver that wants something pretty special.

Customers speak From page 1 Focus of the system is the latest Kia 8-inch touchscreen, with navigation and Kia Connected Services powered

by TomTom. This offers Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, allowing for full smartphone integration.

Android Auto is designed to work with Android phones running 5.0 (Lollipop) or higher; Apple CarPlay, for iPhone 5 or newer. The centre console now incorporates a wireless smartphone charger, allowing users to fire up the apparatus on the run.

Buyers can upgrade their Sorento with a new Harman/Kardon 640-watt, 10-speaker surround-sound audio system incorporating Clari-Fi music restoration technology, which rebuilds audio signals lost in the digital compression process, returning high-fidelity quality to digitallycompressed music.

The system’s QuantumLogic surround sound technology extracts signals from the original recording, redistributing them into a refined and detailed playback of music.

The 2.2-litre diesel engine comes with a new eight-speed automatic transmission, replacing the six-speed auto. It has quicker shifts than the outgoing sixspeed.

A further bonus is a greater choice of gears for more responsive acceleration

and lower carbon dioxide emissions, down from 172 to 159 grams per kilometre.

International studies have shown driver fatigue to be a key factor in up to a quarter of all fatal traffic crashes. So the Sorento is available with Kia’s latest advanced driver assistance systems, designed to combat distracted or drowsy driving.

The system monitors inputs from the vehicle and the driver, sounding a warning chime and displaying a graphic in the instrument binnacle if it senses a lapse in concentration from the driver.

Other safety features include lane keeping assist and LED headlamps, with bending light on GT-Line, making the Sorento one of the safest vehicles in its class.

As a five-seater, getting in and out of the Sorento is easy enough, with ample fore and aft travel of the front two rows of seats. With this configuration, leg room is good and cargo carrying space adds up to 605 litres.

Access to the back, despite long travel of the middle row, is quite an effort to climb up and once seated adult occupants’ knees and backs can be put under stress, particularly on a long journey. Luggage space is cut to a miserly 142 litres too.

With seat backs on all but the front row folded, the reverse is the case, with a vanlike 1662 litres of room for cargo on a flat floor. The manual liftback requires little effort to operate.

The driver and passengers can enjoy a ride to fit their mood, with four modes – Eco, Comfort, Sport and Smart – in the offing through Kia’s electronic drive select via a button on the centre console.

Each enables the driver to dial up fuel economy at the expense of performance, and vice versa and adapts the weight of

Sorento listens

the steering. The new Smart mode seeks to second guess the driver’s steering preferences to suit road conditions, automatically switching between the other three modes.

In comfort mode, fuel consumption was recorded at 4.9 litres per 100 kilometres on a sustained motorway run and, at worst, 11-plus around city streets. With

a turning circle of 11.36 metres getting in and out of parking spots was with a higher degree of difficulty. The reversing camera and audible warnings helped.

Kia Sorento is driving headlong into one of the most congested segments of the industry, so it’s going to be tough.

However, it’s hard to go past the generous seven-year, unlimited kilometre warranty.

At a Glance NOTE: THESE PRICES DO NOT INCLUDE GOVERNMENT OR DEALER DELIVERY CHARGES. CONTACT YOUR LOCAL NISSAN DEALER FOR DRIVEAWAY PRICES.

Sorento Sorento Sorento Sorento Sorento Sorento Sorento

Si petrol $42,990 Si diesel $45,490 Sport petrol $44,990 Sport diesel $48,490 SLi petrol $46,990 SLi diesel $50,490 GT-Line diesel $58,990

Premium paint $595

SPECIFICATIONS

(Kia Sorento 2.2-litre turbo-diesel auto 7-seat wagon)

ENGINE: Capacity: 2.199 litres Configuration: Four cylinders in line Maximum Power: 147 kW @ 3800 rpm Maximum Torque: 441 Nm @ 1750-2750 rpm Fuel Type: Diesel Combined Fuel Cycle (ADR 81/02): 6.2 L/100km CO2 Emissions: 164 g/km

DIMENSIONS, WEIGHT AND CAPACITIES: Length: 4800 mm Wheelbase: 2780 mm Width: 1890 mm Height: 1690 mm Turning Circle: 11.36 metres Kerb Mass: 1991 kg

BRAKES: Front: Ventilated disc Rear: Solid disc

DRIVELINE:

STANDARD WARRANTY:

Eight-speed automatic

Seven years / unlimited kilometres

3

Feb 23 - Mar 1 | 2018

New Jeep Wrangler

By EWAN KENNEDY

AHEAD of its arrival in late 2018, the allnew JL Jeep Wrangler has just completed its first Australian engineering assessment in some of our country’s most unforgiving driving conditions.

A two-door Wrangler Rubicon powered by a new design 2.0-litre, four-cylinder engine with 201 kW of power and 400 Nm. And a four-door Rubicon with the latest version of the 3.6-litre Pentastar V6(213 kW and 353 Nm), came Downunder.

These vehicles are the first test units of six prototype stages that are built before the final ‘job-one’ production version.

The key objective of the technical evaluation program was to collect a range of specific vehicle performance data prior to the commencement of right-hand drive production of the new Wrangler, which begins later this year.

Two engineers from Jeep’s engineering section based themselves in Alice Springs to cycle through an intensive test program that primarily focused on suspension calibration and extreme hot weather engine performance. This follows extensive testing in major international markets including China, India, Brazil and Russia.

“Australia presents some incredibly unique driving environments so it was in our best interest to visit and understand if there were some new learnings that we could apply to the development of the new Wrangler – specifically for this market,” Wrangler program manager John Adams said.

“Explicitly, we were looking at the effect of Australia’s corrugated roads on long-range and high-speed drives which are common for much of the country’s population outside of the cities – and how our suspension tuning processes these inputs, combined with the extreme heat effects on our engine, transmission

By EWAN KENNEDY SALES of four-door pickup trucks continue to soar in Australia, so Ford, one of the big movers in the scene has revealed further details of the highperformance Ranger Raptor that’s coming to Australia later in the year.

Designed by the Ford Performance team the Raptor is aimed at the enthusiast off-roader. It has increased ride height, wider track and steeper approach and departure angles aimed at extreme off-road capability. An all-new Watt’s linkage rear suspension with coilover rear springs helps ensure rear axle lateral stability. Fox Racing Shox shock absorbers front and rear show this tough vehicle means business.

Jamal Hameedi, the chief engineer at Ford Performance says, “The Ford Performance team is excited to extend the Raptor name from our flagship offroad performance F-150 to Ranger.”

Ford Ranger Raptor features a large new grille with styling cues from the F-150 Raptor. The huge FORD lettering certainly shouts this vehicle’s intentions.

Using composite materials, the front guards not only look tough, but resist dents and dings often associated with off-road usage. Their flared shape is to house the long travel suspension and oversized tyres.

Colours are Lightning Blue, Race Red, Shadow Black, Frozen White, as in the standard Ranger range. There’s also a

Hammered downunder

FIT FOR PURPOSE: Serious Downunder testing will result in an even better Jeep Wrangler. and cooling system management temperatures.

“We understand there’s an expectation from the Australian market that their vehicles are appropriately tuned to the country’s driving conditions and it’s for that reason we initiated the program to investigate if there’s anything we could be doing differently when it comes to delivering the Wrangler for Australia,” Adams added.

Prior to its production in the United States, the all-new Wrangler underwent more than 6.2 million kilometres of testing. Extreme-weather testing occurred in various environments, including the blistering Arizona heat (58 degrees) and acute cold of Alaska (-40 degrees) for months at a time.

Test JL Wranglers have already taken on the famed Rubicon Trail in a completely unmodified guise – a mandatory capability test for the Wrangler to wear

Ford

the Rubicon moniker.

With daytime temperatures in excess of 45°C, Alice Springs provided Jeep’s US engineers with a challenging proving ground in which to put the Wrangler through its paces, serving up a variety of tough and technical terrain – including high-speed corrugations, washouts, soft sand hills and low-range rock climbs. Both Wranglers performed flawlessly in the extreme conditions.

Jeep’s off road development lead engineer, Bernie Trautmann, was pleased with the progress made during the Australian evaluation. “Our mission here was to collect as much data as possible, from as many different driving conditions as possible and the Australian outback certainly delivered this opportunity.

“We were really happy with the way the vehicles performed and were able to gain some valuable accelerometer and engine data to take back to our US headquarters

for analysis, before determining our next steps,” Trautmann said.

Newly-appointed head of Jeep brand for the Asia Pacific region, Steve Zanlunghi, said that this development program further highlighted the importance of the Australian market.

“Thanks to feedback from our customers and dealer network, we have been in discussion with our US headquarters for some time now regarding local testing of our vehicles.

“Last month’s program is a clear illustration of our commitment to providing our customers with vehicles that are not only fit for purpose, but exceed their expectations when it comes to quality, comfort and an exceptional driving experience no matter how demanding the conditions.”

The 2018 Jeep Wrangler will commence right-hand-drive production later this year. A sale date is yet to be announced.

Ranger Raptor

Hero colour for the Conquer Grey that’s unique to the Raptor. Contrasting Dyno Grey accents certainly accentuate the Raptor’s appearance.

This is a big pickup: 5398mm long,1873 mm high and 2180 mm wide. Front and rear tracks are 1710 mm. Ground clearance is a huge 283 mm. Approach angle of 32.5 degrees, ramp over angle of 24 degrees, departure angle of 24 degrees. Towing capacity is 2.5 tonnes.

Inside, you get blue stitching and leather accents in the trim. The steering wheel has a Raptor logo embossed into it and there’s a race-style red stripe to indicate top-centre of the wheel.

Lightweight magnesium paddle shifters are part of the package.

The engine has a smaller capacity than

Aussie lovers of hot pickups would have expected. Those who go by the old school that says “there’s no substitute for cubic inches” may cringe at the thought of a 2.0-litre turbo-diesel. However, high-tech engineering using twin turbos can get a lot out of smaller engines and 157 kW (213 horsepower) and 500 Newton metres of torque should give Raptor good, though hardly searing performance.

Some tech notes on the engine: A smaller, high-pressure turbo is connected in a sequence to the larger, LP turbo and is controlled with by-pass valves that determine the operating mode depending on engine speed. At lower engine speeds, the two turbos work in series, enhancing torque and

EXTREME FORD: In case you hadn’t noticed the Ranger Raptor is built by ‘FORD’.

responsiveness, while at higher engine speeds, the small HP turbo is bypassed, and the higher LP turbo provides boost to deliver more power.

A 10-speed automatic transmission sits behind the engine and that number of ratios should see the engine sitting at its best revs all the time.

All-terrain BF Goodrich 285/70 R17 tyres have been specially developed for the Ranger Raptor. They have tough sidewalls and what Ford describes as, ‘a super grippy tread’.

Ford Ranger Raptor comes with a Terrain Management System (TMS) offering six modes for various driving conditions, which can be selected by a five-button switch on the steering wheel. Modes are Normal, Sport, Grass/ Gravel/Snow, Mud/Sand and Rock.

Finally there’s the ultra serious mode Baja, which is tuned for high-speed offroad performance, just like drivers need in the famous Baja Desert Rally.

Ford Ranger Raptor will be built in Ford’s manufacturing facility in Thailand.

That country produces virtually all pickups sold in Australia and has a long history of good quality output.

On-sale date? Ford Australia is keeping us in suspense. All it will say is, “Coming in 2018”.

However, if you get onto www.ford. com.au/commercial/ranger/raptor/ Ford will keep you updated on what is happening.

4

Feb 23 - Mar 1 | 2018

Renault Koleos special edition

CLASSIFIEDS CARAVANS & CAMPERS

CARAVANS & CAMPERS

„ KOLEOS: This special edition features an exclusive metallic paint colour, Black Amethyst, rides on 19-inch wheels.

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2012 FORD TERRITORY TS diesel wagon, (ZKI476), RWC, 141,000km, 5 seat, set up for van towing, heavy duty tow pack, Redarc brakes, Anderson plugs, roof racks, service records, excellent condition, $18,800 ono.

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RENAULT has added a special edition of its Koleos SUV to gather further sales in what is arguably the hottest section of the car market in Australia. Koleos already accounts for almost one in three passenger vehicles by the French giant Downunder and obviously would like even more.

The special edition, tagged Renault Koleos Initiale, sits above the toplne Intens variant.

Priced at $49,490 driveaway, it come in an exclusive metallic paint colour, Black Amethyst, rides on 19 inch alloy wheels, has a panoramic sunroof, the cabin features leather trim with distinctive stitching.

It has Renaultâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pure Vision LED headlights, an automatic power tailgate and a chromed grille

that adds to the existing French flair.

Koleos Initiale carries across the major features from the Intens on which it is based. These include heated and ventilated front seats, dual-zone climate control, customisable ambient interior lighting, and automatic headlights and wipers, The 8.7-inch portrait orientated touchscreen includes satellite navigation, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay smartphone replication.

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bluetooth audio streaming and hands-free connectivity.

Peugeot recently introduced its new 5008 SUV so itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s good to see the two French giants competing so strongly on the Australian market thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s currently dominated

by Asian and German SUVs. Long may this continue.

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