Automotive News NZ

Wheelchair vehicles: High Court rejects NZTA attempt to kill case

November 30 | Comments Off
Skoda Superb police vehicles run Volkswagen Golf GTi engines

November 26 | Comments Off
Research ship has tech to unveil ocean’s deep secrets

November 25 | Comments Off
EVs in the future, when the car itself WILL BE the battery

November 22 | Comments Off
Ute leader Ford back in car race with new SUVs

November 5 | Comments Off
Sir Stirling Moss’ watch and its signature ‘SM’ band for sale

November 3 | Comments Off
Solar cells in ute cover provide on-the-job power for tradies

November 2 | Comments Off
Electric car ‘Luca’ is made from recycled ocean plastic

October 20 | Comments Off
It’s feeding frenzy – three out of four new cars are SUVs

October 19 | Comments Off
The ballad of Hilux and Ranger – new models add to rivalry

October 18 | Comments Off

Volvo crash tests – from the air …
Solar cells in ute cover for work and play...
Meet Luca, the EV built from recycled trash
Lister’s go-faster Jaguar F-Pace …
The story of performance house RUF …
1932 – the invention of the Ford V8 engine
Giving new Land Rover Defender the once-over
Why the Chevvy Corvette is such a fast sprinter...

Volvo crash tests – from the air …

November 16, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Volvo Cars has dropped several new models from a height of 30m in a crash test first designed to help rescue services save lives. Volvo says the test helps to simulate forces that erupt in the most extreme crashes, beyond what can be simulated with traditional crash tests in controlled environments. Watch it here …...

Solar cells in ute cover for work and play …

November 2, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Canadian company Worksport has developed a folding tonneau cover for pick-up trucks that contains a cutting-edge solar charging and storage system...

Meet Luca, the EV built from recycled trash

October 20, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

It took 18 months to build and has a range of 220km …...

Lister’s go-faster Jaguar F-Pace …

August 28, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Former Fifth Gear motoring show host and Formula One driver Tiff Needell gets behind the wheel of the Stealth, Lister’s limited-edition version of the Jaguar F-Pace &#...

The story of performance house RUF …

May 1, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

This film tells the story of performance house RUF, how, over the past 80-odd years, it’s gone from a small local repair shop in Pfaffenhausen, Germany, to continued building cars for one sole purpose – the love of the automobile...

1932 – the invention of the Ford V8 engine

April 16, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

This video deals with the development of Ford’s early line of V8 engines...

Giving new Land Rover Defender the once-over

September 11, 2019 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

The 2020 Land Rover Defender has been unveiled and British motoring writer Paul Hudson takes us through a first look at the new 4&#...

Why the Chevvy Corvette is such a fast sprinter …

July 25, 2019 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

The eighth-generation Chevrolet Corvette, the first factory-backed right-hooker and the first mid-engine model, will join Holden’s line-up in Australia and New Zealand. This video deals with how the layout of the 6.2-litre V8 engine helps the C8 Corvette achieve its claimed 0-100km/h time of under 3 seconds...

Skoda Superb police vehicles run Volkswagen Golf GTi engines
Research ship has tech to unveil ocean’s deep secrets
EVs in the future, when the car itself WILL...
Ute leader Ford back in car race with new...
Sir Stirling Moss’ watch and its signature ‘SM’ band...
Solar cells in ute cover provide on-the-job power for...
Electric car ‘Luca’ is made from recycled ocean plastic
It’s feeding frenzy – three out of four new...

Skoda Superb police vehicles run Volkswagen Golf GTi engines

November 26, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Skoda NZ general manager Rodney Gillard will next week meet with senior police officials over the choice of the Superb station wagon as the force’s main patrol vehicle. “They haven’t told me exactly what the meeting is about, only that they want to get together,” said Gillard. The Superb, the Czech carmaker’s premium model,...

Research ship has tech to unveil ocean’s deep secrets

November 25, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Blockbuster movie maker, ocean explorer, and New Zealand resident James Cameron had a hand in turning what was a survey ship for oil companies into the most advanced marine research and multi-media production vessel on the planet. It’s called the OceanXplorer, an 87-metre vessel gutted and retrofitted by Netherlands outfit Damen...

EVs in the future, when the car itself WILL BE the battery

November 22, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Let’s take a couple of upcoming electric vans to New Zealand as an example, the Ford Transit and LDV’s eDeliver 3, if only because they are square shaped with lots of sheet metal and serve a visual purpose. One day, the battery pack that sits under the floor of each van won’t be there. The [&hellip...

Ute leader Ford back in car race with new SUVs

November 5, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

It had gnawed away at Ford New Zealand managing director Simon Rutherford and his team for a few years – the company was becoming a victim of its best selling model, the Ranger ute. Pretty much everything about Ford was about the Ranger. It was front and centre on every dealer’s forecourt. Ranger consistently accounted [&hellip...

Sir Stirling Moss’ watch and its signature ‘SM’ band for sale

November 3, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

The popular story was that Sir Stirling Moss didn’t like wearing a leather or linked strap on a watch because it invariably got soiled by grime, either when he was at the wheel in a race or mucking about in the pits. His watch strap of choice was a solid-gold, twin-bar bracelet (pictured here and [&hellip...

Solar cells in ute cover provide on-the-job power for tradies

November 2, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Canadian company Worksport has developed a folding tonneau cover for pick-up trucks that contains a cutting-edge solar charging and storage system. The cover, called TerraVis, uses solar panels to pull in the sun’s energy and send it to removable batteries packaged in the truck’s bed. It is capable of storing up to 1000W of useable...

Electric car ‘Luca’ is made from recycled ocean plastic

October 20, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Meet Luca, an electric car build almost entirely from recycled trash by students at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. The project took around 18 months to complete, said group spokesman Matthijs Van Wijk. The chassis itself was made from ocean plastic. “I’m so proud that we could make the chassis with ocean...

It’s feeding frenzy – three out of four new cars are SUVs

October 19, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

The growth of SUVs in New Zealand goes a long way to explaining the old maxim that car ownership is not about what we truly need, but more a combination of what we want and what we think we need. The traditional car – sedan, station wagon, hatchback – has been shunted aside over the [&hellip...

Ultimate boys’ toy – submarine about as big as...
Car of the year? Has to be the Toyota...
Numbers game: the real story behind record 2017 sales...
HSV lines up flash Colorado ute, Chev Camaro, Silverado...
Land Rover responds to clean air critic that ‘diesel...
Kia and Isuzu the go-getters in 2013-2017 sales figures
At the wheel: an open and shut case in...
Holden Astra – European flavour blended with a ‘taste...

Ultimate boys’ toy – submarine about as big as two jet skis

April 23, 2020 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

The jet ski might indeed be one of the best watersport toys going round, but it has nothing on the lightweight Nemo submersible from U-Boat Worx, a specialist company in The Netherlands. Both craft do have one thing in common, however – they can be towed by the family station wagon or SUV, although Nemo [&hellip...

Car of the year? Has to be the Toyota ZR Hybrid Corolla

January 2, 2019 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

The new Toyota Corolla didn’t make the cut in mainstream 2018 car of the year awards in New Zealand, mainly because it arrived late in the year and didn’t meet judging deadlines. But I spent enough time behind the wheel of both the 2.0-litre petrol and 1.8-litre petrol-electric Corollas to choose the ZR Hybrid Corolla [&hellip...

Numbers game: the real story behind record 2017 sales year

January 18, 2018 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

If you believe the public relations guff, every distributor in New Zealand last year sold record numbers of new vehicles. But that wasn’t the case. Okay, it was an overall record year, with 159,871 new vehicle registrations. But quite a few brands didn’t do as well as the PR people claim. Press releases saying this [&hellip...

HSV lines up flash Colorado ute, Chev Camaro, Silverado truck

December 8, 2017 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

The Chevrolet badge returns to New Zealand next year on the bonnet of the all-American Camaro sports car and Silverado pick-up truck. Both vehicles will be converted to right-hand drive by Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) at its new 28,000 square-metre plant in Melbourne. It’s where HSV will also prepare two versions of the Holden...

Land Rover responds to clean air critic that ‘diesel is the devil’

September 13, 2017 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Jaguar Land Rover has defended its diesel engine technology after criticism of the fuel from the founder and director of Clean Air London, Simon Birkett. “Diesel is the devil, and we do need to ban it,” Birkett told a panel of automotive experts at the inaugural Jaguar Land Rover Tech Fest, a three-day event in [&hellip...

Kia and Isuzu the go-getters in 2013-2017 sales figures

September 6, 2017 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Registrations of traditional passenger sedans and hatchbacks have tumbled over the past five years, as New Zealanders move towards SUVs and utes. In August 2013, for instance, the Holden Commodore sat at No. 5 on the top 15 list. Last month it was No. 10. A month earlier it was No. 11. Five years ago [&hellip...

At the wheel: an open and shut case in top-down Merc

May 29, 2017 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Hard-charging Kiwi motorcycle great Graeme Crosby tells the story of racing in the Isle of Man TT for the first time in 1979. He sort of ‘smelled’ his way round the 48km circuit. “It’s such a long way that it’s hard sometimes to remember exactly where your are,” he once told me. “There is one [&hellip...

Holden New Zealand - Astra RSV 2017, 15 February 2017

Holden Astra – European flavour blended with a ‘taste of Kiwi’

March 3, 2017 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

Holden has tasked its award-winning advertising agency, Special Group, to change how Holden is perceived in New Zealand. It wants the agency to help transform the brand, give it a taste of Kiwi, point it more towards premium space. It’s not that Holden has gone away; just that, over time, the brand has lost its [&hellip...

September 26, 2015 | Alastair Sloane | Comments Off

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