SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday October 17, 2012
There’s no substitute for cubic inches. Motorheads, especially those with preference for Detroit Iron, used to say it with conviction. It’s still intoned wistfully when discussing the likes of Chevrolet’s Aussie-sourced Lumina Ute, but it’s less relevant now. As engines become more efficient and raw, stump-pulling torque less important, smaller power plants have evolved to the stage where we have to remind ourselves to concentrate less on the number of ccs and more on what the engine can do. It’s like that with the little diesel offered as an option in Chevrolet’s latest small pickup range that was developed in Brazil.
Choices include 1400- and 1800cc petrol motors, but the star of the line-up is probably the JTD 1300cc turbodiesel developed jointly by GM and Fiat during a brief technological partnership some years ago. It develops 55 kW at 4000 rpm and 170 Nm of torque from 1750 rpm.
More than just another oil burner, it revs freely to 5200 if you let it, before the limiter cuts off the fuel supply. It isn’t unduly loud either, with its gentle clicking sound more reassuring than noisy. While no breaker of land speed records or challenger of Luminas in sprints to 100 km/h, it pulls strongly and smoothly, and feels much bigger than it is. Gearing is supplied by a five-speed manual transmission.
Deceptively big, too, are its load bin and the cabin. The 1180-litre bin is 1680mm long, 1340mm wide and 525mm deep. This is 13mm shallower than the one on the previous range, so together with a higher seating position, it provides a better view out over the tailgate, for driver and passenger. Apart from being long and wide for carrying bulky loads, the bin is equipped with four tie-down hooks on the floor and three lugs on each side of the top rail, for lashing of cargo. Steps on each side and a broad rear bumper make access easier.
Generous interior space includes ample headroom and a whole raft of little slots, nooks and boxes, including triple-compartmented door bins and a pair of lidded glove boxes. There is a further 140 litres-worth behind the seats that can be adjusted really far back for tall drivers. With this engine, its rated carrying capacity is 681 kg. Designed to be less “commercial” than its Brazilian counterpart, the South African version was given longer legs because our owners generally drive longer distances in their pickups.
Equally un-industrial are the seats. They are not only supportive but remain comfortable for hours, although it must be said that vertical adjustment on the driver’s chair is like a switch. You have two choices; all the way up or all the way down. Another thing we noticed was that its turning circle was somewhat tighter than on the ex-Corsa model we drove two years ago.
Standard equipment levels vary over a range of three models; Base with or without air conditioning, Club and Sport. The diesel powered Sport version we had on test comes with two airbags, a manual air conditioner, welcoming and follow-home lighting with dusk sensitivity, a six-speaker RDS radio and CD system with all the plugs and Bluetooth, remote central locking with autolock, ABS brakes with EBD, 15” alloy wheels, front fog lamps, powered and heated side mirrors, powered windows that close automatically on shutdown, a polished aluminium roof spoiler and an on-board computer. Not too shabby for a half-ton pickup, Sheila.
The numbers
Price: R191 000
Engine: 1284 cc, four-cylinder, turbodiesel
Power: 55 kW at 4000 rpm
Torque: 170 Nm between 1750 and 2500 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 16,1 seconds
Maximum speed: 151 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 6,2 l/100 km
Tank: 56 litres
Warranty: 5 years/120 000 km
Service intervals: Annually or at 15 000 km intervals
Service plan: Optional
This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.
What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.
I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8