SA Road Tests

Welcome

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.


This is a launch report. In other words, it's simply a new model announcement. The driving experience was limited to a short drive over a prepared course chosen to make the product look good. We can therefore not tell you what it will be like to live with over an extended period, how economical it is, or how reliable it will be. A very brief first impression is all we can give you until such time as we get an actual test unit for trial. Thank you for your patience.

We were sceptical, but the second reinvention of VW’s Beetle could actually be worthwhile…

Retro can work

Published in Weekend Witness Motoring on Saturday October 20, 2012

The Coke bottle, Ray-Ban Aviators, Fender Stratocaster, M-series Leica and Volkswagen Beetle: All are instantly recognisable design icons of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – not to be messed with. VW tried, during the ‘nineties, to reinvent the Beetle in order to drum up sales. They sold almost a million worldwide including 2600 in South Africa, but most fans dismissed it as being simply a Golf engine in an expensive and funny-looking body. It was an interesting exercise, but not a continuing success.

Walter de Silva and his design team believe that the little car that put the world and his sister on wheels, wooed generations and captured hearts, still has a place in the hard-headed world of today. Once again, they turned to Golf for the basic floor pan but this time they shortened it by 50 mm and instead of messing with the formula, sought to design a new original.

The result is a car that’s 152 mm longer, 84 mm wider and 12 mm lower than the triple-hemispheric design of Beetle ll. It looks more like the original, albeit bigger, and is bolder, more dynamic and a lot less girly than the 90s version. It is a car in its own right; practical, economical, reasonably spacious and with a style of its own. Leg- and shoulder room was increased, while the boot has grown almost 50 percent compared with the previous model. It now measures a useful 310 litres that expands to 905 with the seatbacks folded.

Three models are available; a turbocharged 1200 in “Design” trim with six-speed manual transmission and a pair of twin-charged 1400s in “Sport” trim with choice of six-speed manual or seven-ratio DSG gear cases. Design trim gives you 16” alloy wheels, remote central locking, alarm and immobiliser, height-adjustable fabric seats, Climatic air conditioner, cruise control and fog lights. Sport trim adds bigger wheels, XDS electronic differential locking, leather upholstery, Bluetooth cellphone preparation, Porsche-like rear spoiler, twin exhausts, aluminium pedals, Climatronic air conditioning and a roof-mounted antenna.

Front suspension consists of McPherson struts with coil springs, telescopic dampers and anti-roll bars, while the back end is controlled by means of a torsion beam with trailing arms, coils and anti-roll bar. Brakes are discs front and rear, with the by-now mandatory ABS, braking assistance, EDS, ASR and ESP. Other functional kit includes hill hold assist, six airbags, ISOFix child seat anchorages, electric windows and mirrors and an eight-speaker, beetle design, RCD-310 sound system.

Available options include leather upholstery for Design-trimmed cars, sunroof, Bi-Xenon headlights, RCD-510 and RNS-510 sound systems, a 400-Watt, 10-channel Fender outfit with Class A/B amplifiers and nine speakers, keyless access, a retro three-instrument pod and ParkPilot. This is a camera view of the top of the car, showing all the potential obstacles. It comes with sound.

We got to drive manual cars with both engines, over a variety of roads and over quite a distance. Unsurprisingly, they have plenty of power and drive beautifully – at heart, they are Golfs after all. It’s just that the sort-of retro body has become a viable contender. We could live with it.

The numbers
Prices range from R235 400 to R311 100
Design 1,2:
Engine: 1197 cc, turbocharged, eight-valve, four-cylinder
Power: 77 kW at 5000 rpm
Torque: 175 Nm between 1550 and 4100 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 10,9 seconds
Maximum speed: 180 km/h
Fuel consumption (claimed): 5,9 l/100 km
Sport 1,4:
Engine: 1390 cc, turbo- and supercharged, 16-valve, four cylinder
Power: 118 kW at 5800 rpm
Torque: 240 Nm between 1500 and 4500 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 8,3 seconds
Maximum speed: 208 km/h (m), 207 km/h (a)
Fuel consumption (claimed): 6,6 l/100 (m), 6,2 l/100 km (a)
Warranty: 3 years/120 000 km
Maintenance plan: 5 years/60 000 km, at 15 000 km intervals

For a review on the VW Beetle 1.4 TSI Sport, click here

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!

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.