Weekly Wrap-up (5th May 2019)

Now that we’ve all juggled that unusual – but quite welcome! – set of public holidays around Easter and ANZAC Day, we’ve settled in for the long grind up to the Queen’s Birthday long weekend.

No rest for the wicked, though; despite the holiday periods, WhichCar.com.au has notched another tremendous month, again breaking through the 1.1m barrier for unique visitors for April.

The synergies across our variety of automotive brands continue to strengthen, and we’ve got more to come as well – stay tuned.

One of those brands continues apace, with WhichCar TV back on your tellies this Sunday at 3.30pm. You can watch all 14 episodes we’ve already done at Tenplay Catch-up TV.

We're on New Zealand TV, too.

Our Melbourne team will also bring you the week's biggest stories direct to your ears, hosted by WhichCar's resident radio jock, Daniel Gardner and featuring a panel of commentators from Wheels, Motor and 4X4.

From the various news desks across the group, we’ve covered the various gaffs and goofs from our increasingly desperate politicians, who obviously aren’t getting the right briefing notes around electric cars.

At the other end of the green scale, one of the biggest stories of the last ten days has been the discovery of a HSV GTS-R in the United States, while closer to home, a lot of our social media fans had a bit to say about the ZB Commodore’s performance at Wheel’s Car of the Year judging.

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Commodore at COTY. Well, for a little while

Our mates at 4x4 Australia released the results of a comprehensive towing test with Australia’s best-selling dual-cab utes which also touched off a bit of a reaction.

Speaking of 4x4s, Mitsubishi confirmed that its stalwart Pajero would live on locally despite being axed in Japan and Europe, while Ford tuners revealed a worked-over Ford Ranger that can beat a Porsche to 100km/h. Handy if you’re late to grab offset angle brackets for the job site…

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Settle down, it's not coming here

In the performance world, Mercedes-Benz has pretty much admitted that the next C63 won’t be V8. Or rear-wheel-drive, for that matter.

In a good week for Ford tuners, a Queensland retiree has built himself a 620kW, carbon fibre-adorned Mustang, while on the race track, the fur is still flying around the Mustang Supercar’s rapid start to the 2019 season.

Jaguar Land Rover has been busy, too, revealing that it’s trialling a system that will reward drivers for reporting potholes and traffic snags will cyber-money that can be used to pay tolls and even buy the Better Half a roadside coffee.

It’s also taken more wrapping off the incoming Land Rover Defender 4x4, giving us the best view yet of this highly anticipated off-roader.

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Camo is an optional extra

Travel-wise, we’ve rounded up five of the world’s wildest roads, and taken off for a long weekend down to South Australia via the road less travelled. There’s also an excellent piece that covers driving in Japan.

We’ve driven a load of cars, too, including the perky Kia Picanto GT, Audi’s mighty RS4 Avant, Jaguar’s updated XE and the Hyundai Kona EV, as well as our own fleet of machines that includes the Suzuki Jimny and Volkswagen Tiguan Allspace.

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A cavoodle in an Allspace, yesterday

Proving that it’s not all about horsepower and flashy alloys, we’ve also covered new vans from Peugeot, compared boot sizes to see who’s doing it best, pulled apart a catalytic converter and talked about teaching kids to drive.

The biggest story of the week, though, is based on the humble roundabout… and how none of us are using them properly.

There are also reports on the new Renault Megane RS280, Isuzu’s updated ute and wagon range, a full review of the Mazda 3 line-up and much more.