Car & Gadget Reviews
The AA provides opinions on burning industry issues, gives invaluable travel and motoring tips and provides useful information on our products and services.
| COTY Countdown 2012 - Small, but Perfectly Formed | ||
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Mirror, mirror on the wall, is the Kia Picanto the fairest of them all? Many pundits see the little Korean - the cheapest car in the 2012 Wesbank Car of the Year competition - as a likely winner. | |
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COTY Countdown 2012 - Is the Suzuki 2.4 SDLX Manual the Best Car in the Land? | ||
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Number three in our countdown to the announcement of the winner of the South African Car of the Year title on March 14 is Suzuki’s compact middleweight sedan. | |
| Peugeot Maintenance | ||
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If you’re going to talk the talk, then you have to walk the walk. And every brand out there will tell you that they’re working hard and making big strides with customer car and aftersales support. Problem it is hard to quantify this unless you’re an owner and even then, it is still a sample of one and statisticians will tell you about samples of a small size… | |
| COTY Countdown 2012 - Hyundai Take on the Establishment in Local Car of the Year | ||
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The Hyundai Elantra has just been announced as the North American Car of the Year, and I’m not surprised. In fact, I reckon it’s the hot favourite to win here, come the announcement of the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists’ COTY on March 14. | |
| COTY Countdown 2012 - Is the Audi A6 the Best Car in the Land? | ||
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Over the coming weeks we’ll take a look at the 10 finalists in the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists’ Wesbank-sponsored Car of the Year competition for 2012, focussing on them one by one - and in no particular order - as we count down to the announcement of the winner on March 14. | |
| Citroen’s C4 Makes the Grade | ||
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The business of evaluating modern cars is fraught with challenges: after living with a carefully-designed assemblage of space-age technology, advanced safety features and high-tech materials for a week, we’re meant to be able to confidently decide whether it is good, bad or indifferent and impart this information to you in a few hundred words. | |
| Beauty Maybe Skin Deep? | ||
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I desperately wanted to like the Alfa Romeo 159 1750 TBi Progression: it is a truly beautiful car, or as the Italians would say - Bellissimo! I love that long bonnet with the heart-shaped emblem at its prow, the slender light clusters and almost delicate doorhandles... | |
| The Bear Facts | ||
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In the Summer 2011/12 issue of the AA Traveller, on sale now, we evaluate four ‘chirpy cheapies’ in our Driving Evaluation section, and here’s one which we couldn’t fit into the mix due to space constraints. | |
| World's Fastest Ever Crash Test | ||
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This is the terrifying moment a Ford Focus smashes into a solid concrete wall at 120mph (192km/h) in the world's fastest ever crash test. Industry experts EuroNCAP normally crash vehicles at speeds of 40mph (64km/h) when giving production cars a safety rating. | |
| New Sedan Moves Peugeot Upmarket | ||
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Peugeot’s new 508 executive sedan adds up to 13 if you crunch the numbers, but they’re not worried about that. In fact, 50 is the number they’re after, and that’s what they hope to sell on a monthly basis. | |
| COTY Winner… Not as Good as Baby Brother? | ||
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The South African Guild of Motoring Journalists, custodians of the Wesbank-sponsored Car of the Year Competition (COTY), announced at the recent Johannesburg Motor Show its 10 finalists for 2012. And it they’re a talented bunch, almost making me glad not to be a judge any longer… | |
| JIMS to Open its Doors on Thursday | ||
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Make sure your best walking shoes are in order and get ready for a feast of cars, accessories, 4x4s and much more, because JIMS is in town! Adrian Burford gives the inside line on what you can expect at the continent’s biggest motoring show. | |
| Good Fortune With the Toyota Fortuner - Adrian Burford test drives the new Toyota Fortuner | ||
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Toyota’s Fortuner is one of the most desired vehicles on the market and the sales figures prove it. In August they sold just over 1 700 of their rugged 7-seater. Motoring Editor Adrian Burford flies to Zambia to drive the Toyota Fortuner to Lake Kariba. | |
| Toyota Adds Emotional Appeal to its Cruiser Range | ||
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AA Traveller’s motoring editor Adrian Burford has been motoring around in the Swag mobile, or to give it its proper name, the Toyota FJ Cruiser. And it is a real showstopper, creating more excitement than cars costing three times as much. | |
| Something Great is Coming - Suzuki Kizashi | ||
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Well, that’s what Suzuki would like us to think and the arrival to which they refer is of the Kizashi – which in English translates to ‘Something Great is Coming’. In terms of the cars Suzuki is traditionally known for it is great too – in physical dimensions anyway. | |
| It's Very Evoque-ative | ||
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For a few glorious hours I was part of the in-crowd, even though I don't own a Blackberry. Adrian Burford cracks an invite to the South African unveiling of the Evoque. | |
| Sun Like it Hot - BMW 6-Series | ||
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Nope, no Lotto win in this household, but I have been lucky enough to have a BMW 650i convertible in my driveway for the last week, which certainly had some of my neighbours wondering whether my luck had changed. | |
| X Marks the Spot - Adrian Burford test drives the new Subaru Forester X | ||
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Every great car needs an X-factor and I reckon the latest Subaru Forester has got it. I’ve long been a Forester fan: few other cars are so obviously functional as the Japanese all-wheel-drive wagon, combining an exceptionally rugged design with acres of cabin space…it’s exactly what you need if you have a genuinely active lifestyle. | |
| Great Wall Motors Striving for Greatness | ||
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The days when people knocked Japanese brands have long since passed, and the time when Korean cars were the butt of various jokes are also a fading memory. Fortunately, we still have the Chinese to ridicule when it comes to things automotive, but I suspect the mirth may soon be replaced by admiration. | |
| Born to Serve | ||
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Modern production methods have seen the quality gap between cheap cars and expensive cars close dramatically in the last decade, and today it is the purchasing and aftersales experience which influences long-term customer loyalty. | |
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| Bountiful Boot for Polo | ||
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Volkswagen’s much-awaited Polo sedan is finally here, giving the brand a veritable arsenal in the important B-segment battleground. The sedan joins the hatchback (available since January 2010) as one of the premium offerings in the segment... | |
| Micra's Indian Summer | ||
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Car launches are the staple diet of the mainstream motoring media and a lot of them – living year in and year out in a bubble of suspended reality where the stay in hotels and drive cars which they’d never normally be able to afford – are a notoriously hard bunch to please... | |
| Home from Home | ||
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There’s never been a better time to be a soccer mom and the latest-generation of multi-purpose vehicles make transporting kids and their accoutrements easier than ever. Not only that, but there’s a stylish new wind blowing through the sector... | |
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| Small Wonder | ||
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There’s a lot to be said for owning a really compact car, especially if you’re a suburbanite. Ease of parking and general manoeuvrability are just obvious two advantages which spring to mind, but there’s more, says Adrian Burford. | |
| It’s Showtime | ||
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Motor shows…they’re the bread and butter of the industry, acting as the perfect medium to reveal the new and the innovative, show off the weird and the wonderful, measure public response to futuristic design trends, and to give car-mad men the opportunity to check out the girls. | |
| Production Slowdown | ||
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The after-effects of natural disasters in northern Japan is starting to impact on car production around the world, with South Africa likely to be affected in the longer term. Car plants as far away as Louisiana in the USA are starting to experience fallout from Japan’s earthquake/tsunami disasters... |
| Amarok Rolls in | ||
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Technology generally moves slowly in the 'bakkie' market and the double cab has remained, to all intents and purposes, largely unchanged since Toyota introduced the first one back in the early 1980. But the latest generation – and specifically the brand-new... | |
| French Flair and More | ||
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Read a driving impression of a French car on the internet and as surely as night follows day the brickbats fly thick and fast where there's a forum for reader responses. There's nary a good word to be said about anything automotive from the land of Paris, pastis and... |
| Could This Be Purr-fection...? | ||
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Grace, space, and pace... traditional Jaguar traits and the new XJ has all three in spades. Jaguar has come out fighting in the luxury super-sedan segment with the XJ, two letters which have adorned big, luxurious cats for the last 40 years. But this isn’t... | |
| The Range Rover... 40, Not Out | ||
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The Range Rover idea was born in 1966, as was the author. It went on sale in 1970 and is still going strong 40 years on. Adrian Burford peers into the past and pays tribute to a special motor car... | |
| A Bit of a Goddess - Adrian Burford test drives the new Citroën DS3 | ||
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They're calling it the coolest car of its generation, possibly of all times. The car in question is the brand new Citroën DS3 and 'they' is the world's motoring media. I have to agree with them: Citroën's new small car is quite something... | |
| Boost Your Battery Life | ||
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Flat batteries are one of the most common reasons the AA is calling out to assist stranded motorist. Over 80,000 battery-related calls are attended to each year. To prevent you from becoming part of that statistic the AA has put together a list of tips to get the most out of your battery. | |
