SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8
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.
*To read one of our road tests, just select from the menu on the left.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Published in Weekend Witness Motoring on Saturday December 29, 2012
Back when your dad was a lad, American cars came from the USA, British cars came from England and so on. These days, everything is multinational. Take the subject of this review for instance. It’s a Fiat Fiorino panel van, developed in co-operation with PSA who call their little delivery wagons Citroën Nemo and Peugeot Bipper respectively. To confuse you even further, it’s built by a firm called Tofaş in Bursa, Turkey. Only the diesel version uses a Fiat engine; the 1248 cc Multijet. The one we drove was fitted with a 1360 cc, PSA TU3 petrol motor.
Whatever its pedigree, it’s a very pleasant and manoeuvrable little machine offered, like most commercials, either in very basic form for use by the staff or more comfortable versions to be driven by the boss. We were let loose in the workers’ model, so you can imagine the culture shock; no air conditioning, no windows in the back doors, fully manual window winders and outside mirrors, no side doors, no backup alarm and no Bluetooth. We were allowed a basic radio and CD player although that’s an option too. The biggest adjustment lay in relying only on side mirrors, because without rear windows, there isn’t much point in having an inside rear view mirror is there? We learned new respect for truck drivers.
No frills, perhaps, but it does cover the basics with power steering, central locking with autolock, a smokers’ kit (is it pc to mention that?), ABS with EBD, two airbags, an onboard computer and a full half-ton of chutzpah. All the kit listed as “missing” above, plus internal partitions, a roof rack and a load mat, can be added from the options list.
Its loading deck is at knee height, so it’s easy enough to step right inside to stack goods the way you want or to lash things fast using the six rings provided. The doors co-operate too, opening in two stages to almost 180 degrees, so you can back it up close to loading docks. Making it even more versatile, the passenger seat can be folded and pushed down so that its closed back lies flush with the rear load floor. This makes a portion of the storage area almost a metre longer and increases cargo capacity from 2,5 cubic metres to 2,8. If sufficiently agile, you could walk over it from the driver’s seat to the rear of the ‘van if you needed to.
Even if you choose not to add one of the partition options, the driver is protected from shifting loads by a sturdy ladder frame behind the seat. We used this to lash a 9 kg gas cylinder in place by using motorbike tie straps, on one occasion. Use it, don’t use it; it’s up to you.
Despite a few quirks such as the typically French window winders that work back-to-front, Fiorino is an “f” word of the nicest kind. It’s light, nippy and easy to park, has good top gear pulling power and, for a commercial vehicle, is frugal with the fuel as well. Despite its very basicness, it was fun. With a fitting selection of reasonably inexpensive options added, it could graduate to fabulous.
The numbers
Price: R129 900
Engine: 1360 cc, 8-valve, SOHC, four-cylinder
Power: 54 kW at 5200 rpm
Torque: 118 Nm at 2600 rpm
Maximum speed: 157 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 7,9 l/100 km
Emissions: Euro 5
Tank: 45 litres
Unladen Mass/GVW: 1070/1680 kg
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km
Service plan: Optional
Service intervals: Annually or 20 000 km
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!
Comments?
Want to ask a question, comment or just tell me you thoroughly disagree with what I say? That's your privilege, because if everybody agreed on everything, the world would be a boring place. All I ask is that you remain calm, so please blow off a little steam before venting too vigorously.
This site is operated by Scarlet Pumpkin Communications in Pietermaritzburg.
Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are courtesy of www.quickpic.co.za
Copyright this business. All rights reserved.
SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8