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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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We took the 2012 Suzuki Grand Vitaras on a charity drive

Putting foot for footwear

Published in Weekend Witness Motoring on Saturday November 3, 2012

A launch with a difference; two new vehicles driven by regional crews of four with a Jimny for the support team, in two-day legs across South Africa; raising funds for the Put Foot Foundation. If you thought the name indicated speeding, it doesn’t. The organisation collects money to put school shoes on the feet of rural kids who don’t have any. 

Megan MacDonald, assistant marketing and PR manager for Suzuki Auto South Africa, explained: “There are so many worthy causes that unless a charity is high-profile and fashionable, it tends to get lost between the cracks. We believe wholeheartedly in the Put Foot Foundation and what it does and were lucky to find a fundraiser already involved with a well-known charity. The payoff is that the primary organisation already covers its operating costs, so they agreed to place every cent raised for Put Foot into its core purpose of buying shoes.”

Days one and two of the road trip saw four journalists from Gauteng driving from Pretoria to Durban, while your writer and three others from KZN took the vehicles through to East London. After a series of interviews with local media people and two radio stations, the Suzuki team drove through to George, where they met Cape Town journalists for the final legs through to the Mother City and the formal presentation of the cheque.

From the dealership at Umhlanga, we locals took the coast road via the old Transkei, detouring at every opportunity to put the pair of Grand Vitaras through the kinds of conditions for which SUVs with full-time awd were designed. The weather was wet and miserable throughout the first day, so that even if we happened to be on asphalt at the time, conditions were less than ideal. On dirt sections, cross drains, water-filled potholes, mud and rocks just made things more interesting. Although not a punishing off-road test, it helped one appreciate the cars’ compliant suspension, all-wheel drive traction and inherent stability while driving four up with full loads of luggage.

While journalists drove, stopped for comfort breaks and drove again, pairs of Suzuki representatives in the back of each car were busy with phones and tablets, contacting possible donors. Having crossed the old Pondoland Bridge into Port St Johns, the cars were refuelled before heading for Coffee Bay and our overnight stop. After persuading the hotelier to part with a donation, the teams split up with us journalists, now in one car, making tracks for the airport at East London.

As for the cars the drivetrain, with its 2,4-litre engine and choice of five-speed manual and four-speed automatic transmissions, remains as it was with its automatic central differential. This distributes torque as needed, but can be locked in either high range or low when conditions get really tough. Styling changes include a new grille, revised front bumper with new fog lamps and a more aggressive lower air intake.  It was also decided to create two specification levels named Dune and Summit.

Dune models give you a radio and single CD combination with MP3 capability, electric windows, remote central locking, automatic air conditioning, 17-inch alloy wheels with 225/65 tyres and fabric upholstery. Safety equipment includes all-disc ABS brakes with EBD and brake assist, six airbags and ISOFix anchorages. Summit models add upgraded trim, 18-inch wheels with 60-aspect tyres, automatically levelling HID headlamps with washers, front fog lamps, cruise control, ESP, hill hold and hill descent control with the automatic transmission, combination leather and vinyl upholstery and a six-CD player.

Finally: Feedback from Megan after it was all over -

We are back from a fabulous journey around our beautiful country.
It was truly an honour to be a part of a journey which took us from Johannesburg, to Bloemfontein, to Maseru, to Durban (in a bit of a rush!), to Coffee Bay (with some challenges), to East London, to Grahamstown, to Port Elizabeth, to George, to Oudtshoorn and finally to Cape Town.
Our mission was to test the pace of our Grand new vehicles and raise money in a shoe drive for the Put Foot Foundation.
Mission Accomplished! The Grand Vitaras proved durable and didn’t have so much as a flat tyre on the journey.  We raised R16 000 for the Put Foot Foundation, and there is more still rolling in.
To all  of you, thank you so much for joining us, for having a sense of adventure, for playing along when things didn’t go quite as expected, for your donations (and for donations from family and friends), and most of all, for your sense of fun.
We are sure you’ll agree why we keep saying that Life is Better in a Suzuki!
 
If you would like to contribute to the Put Foot Foundation, here are the banking details:
Put Foot Foundation. Acc: 62348571656. Branch: 250655. Bank: FNB. Type: Cheque Account. Reference:  Suzuki

The numbers
Prices: R298 900 to R373 900
Engine: 2393 cc, DOHC with VVT, four-cylinder
Power: 122 kW at 6000 rpm
Torque: 225 Nm at 4000 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 11,7 seconds (m), 12,0 seconds (a)
Maximum speed: 180 km/h (m), 170 km/h (a)
Fuel consumption (claimed): 8,9 l (m) or 9,9 l/100 km (a)                                                  Tank: 66 litres
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km
Service plan: 6 years/90 000 km

Top left: A lighthouse along the way    Top right: Veronica Wainstein and Charl Grobler demonstrate a real water splash and bottom: Sea view at Coffee Bay

What We Do

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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