After the euphoria of an end of financial year inspired all-time monthly record in June, Australia’s new vehicle sales came back to reality in July, with 86,641 vehicles walking out the door.
The official VFACTS figures show there’s still a strong demand for SUVs. Although at least buyers are downsizing their SUVs and even keen to take up diesel-powered models.
Year-to-date a total of 634,495 new vehicles have been sold in 2012, an increase of almost 10% compared to the same period in 2011.
Toyota (17,780 sales) maintains its stranglehold at the top of the monthly sales charts, ahead of Holden (8,936) and Mazda (7,951). The top three selling models last month were the Toyota HiLux (4,163), the Mazda 3 (3,355) and the Toyota Corolla (2,985).
Bimmerpost user E92Alpine328i brings us another rendering of the forthcoming F80 M3. We don’t have much else to add after we showed you last Friday’s rendering, other than to say the lower spoiler and air curtain treatment on this one is ever so slightly less aggressive than before. Likewiese with the bonnet’s power bulge. Oh, and we reckon both renderings look pretty good, we’d be happy if either solution became reality.
Any thoughts of a truce in the unofficial power war waged by the big German manufacturers has been put to rest with reports suggesting the all-new Audi RS6 will have 420kW. That’s slightly more than the current BMW M5 and also tops the competitors wearing a Mercedes-Benz AMG badge.
Power for the next RS6 will come in the form of a 4.0 litre V8 with a pair of turbochargers. In the S8 luxo-express the same engine is good for 382kW, so it shouldn’t prove to tricky for quattro GmbH to turn up the wick and find an extra 30-odd kW or so.
We expect the RS6 will be a fair chance to use the new 7-speed S tronic now found in the facelifted R8 range. Although, it’s worth noting the best the normally aspirated R8 can come up with is 404kW/540Nm in the 5.2 litre V10 Plus model. The RS6 will top that torque figure by a healthy margin—the S8 has 650Nm—so if the S tronic isn’t up to the task, expect to see an 8-speed slush box used.
Word is we’ll be seeing the RS6 debut at the Geneva Motor Show next March.
The move is likely to have as much to do with marketing and model positioning as anything else. Now that it has been confirmed the next M3 will lose its V8 in favour of an inline six, it makes sense for the junior M2 model to have a smaller engine configuration than the M3.
BMW’s N20 four cylinder appears the most likely candidate to adapt for use in an M2; currently the N20 has a maximum spec of 180kW/350Nm. It begs the question, where will the M2 engine performance sit given it is replacing a model with 250kW/450Nm?
It’s quite possible the M2 will have less power than the 1M, if BMW’s unofficial insider is to be believed. Quoted on the 1Addicts forum Scott26 said the M2, “is known as the ‘Downsized’ M because BMW M are investigating the concept of a completely reworked N20 based four cylinder in terms of the successor to the 1M offering the same recipe as before but with lower weight but still offering the entry to M ownership with the key of precision rather than outright power.”
Assuming the M2 does follow expectations and employ a four-cylinder engine; we wonder, what is the long-term future of the six cylinder M135i?
We’re a bit late with this news, but we couldn’t let it go unmentioned. A couple of weekends back Audi completed its third 24 hour race victory in 71 days when it won the Spa 24 hour race.
Head of Audi Motorsport Dr Wolfgang Ullrich was pretty happy with what he saw: “Winning three 24-hour races within just 71 days is another milestone in the successful motorsport history of our company. The field at Spa was unique and enormously competitive. There were more than 20 vehicles in contention for victory. In the end, the combination of quality, reliability and speed for which Audi is known prevailed yet again.â€
It was a typically wet day in the Ardennes and at times the rain was so heavy the Safety Car was brought out until conditions improved. Audi’s official word along with a dozen pics of the winning car can be viewed after the break. They’re complemented by an unofficial highlights package thanks to Mattzel89.
Cleaning your wheels can be a hard, time consuming job, usually the one you look forward to least. The reason being is that brake dust is ultra fine and sticks to the rim surface very well. This is then baked on by the heat generated from the brakes, add some road grime, sun and removing all this is not easy.
However with the correct tools, products and techniques producing gleaming rims is fairly effortless.
Tips before starting:
Always try to work in the shade or inside and ensure the car and wheels are cool. Most people will like to clean their wheels before washing the car, so that any splashes during the process do not waste previous hard work.
What you need:
A good quality wheel cleaner, such as Duragloss, P21s or Autoglym. A soft microfibre mitt and a wheel brush or two, such as Vikan, Autoglym or Swissvax. A hose or preferably Pressure Washer.
Directions:
Always clean and rinse one wheel at a time.
Firstly rinse off your wheel, tyre and arch. A hose with spray nozzle is ok for this job, but a pressure washer makes cleaning rims it a lot easier.
Next take a safe Wheel Cleaner, especially if you are cleaning chrome or polished rims, and spray it over the entire rim and tyre.
Quality Wheel Brushes make life easy. For example the Vikan wheel and arch brush has rubber sides so it does not mark and is excellent for cleaning the face of the rim, the tyre and inside your arches. If you want perfection the long bristled brush has rubber coated wire, so again it does not scratch the wheel, and is perfect for cleaning behind the spokes and right into the rims.
So after agitating all the areas of your wheel, tyre and wheel if required, simply rinse the solution off well from different angles, ensuring all of the cleaning product is removed.
After this the wheel can be dried with a waffle weave drying towel, and the tyre can be coated with your choice of dressing to really make the wheels stand out.
Australian F1 star Mark Webber, currently second in the drivers’ championship, is enjoying the mid-season break by taking in as much of the London Olympics as he can. But he’s also found time to have a crack at the critics of his team, Red Bull Racing. It’s not the first time Webber has fired a shot this year either.
Red Bull has attracted unwanted scrutiny for its holey floors and ECU engine mapping. There’s also been questions over the ride-height system on the RB8 and that its adjustability may not meet the FIA’s regulations.
“I think it’s incredibly boring for most people,” Webber said. “All we can do is keep passing every single test and we have… it’s not a one-make series, you can design a car to the regulations and that’s what we do.”
So far, Red Bull has not been penalised for any of the controversies it has been involved in, but in the case of the holey floor and ECU mapping, the FIA has forced the team’s hand into a change.
Mark reckons Red Bull seems to find its issues in the public view, whereas other teams don’t seem to attract the same attention.
“I know other teams have been asked to address things with their cars, but they (the FIA directives) are not for general consumption. And some of ours do make the general consumption, which is just the way it’s been,” he said.
Webber went on to praise the genius of Red Bull’s chief designer Adrian Newey, even comparing him to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. He also said he expects Red Bull will continue to be closely watched.
“We know there are a lot of teams that copy what we have and there’s a lot of things where the interpretation of the rules gets changed and we take it on the chin as well.
“Whether it’s with the wings or whatever—and there’ll be something else I promise you that will pop up—we will always pass every single test.
“Not one single team has protested us, because they know it’s within the rules,” Webber concluded.
One of the edicts of the Olympic Games is that there shall be no advertising on view inside any Olympic venue. But MINI has found a cheeky way around that hurdle for the London 2012 Games thanks to its remote controlled Mini MINI.
You may have already seen the 1100mm machines, approximately one quarter scale, darting around the Olympic stadium where they are used to return javelins, discuses, hammers and shots to athletes from the field of play.
The cars were created at the request of LOCOG and MINI says they will help save valuable time. A small fleet of three electric powered 10hp Mini MINIs will be used during the Games and each is expected to cover around 6km per day.
We say bravo to MINI for managing to get a very visible and typically cute mobile advertisement inside the most high profile of all Olympic venues!
At this stage NEVS has not released a statement explaining why they have not proceeded as planned. Although, NEVS spokesman, Mikael Östlund, has told Swedish newspaper TTELA they expect the purchase to be delayed by at least a month, possibly longer, but they still plan to have the deal completed by the European summer.
Östlund also said NEVS will not release any official statements on the delay until the papers have been signed.
Suddenly, the future of the Saab brand has taken an altogether familiar and disheartening phase.
Talk of a new tyre war in Formula One has been quickly quashed by Pirelli’s Paul Hembery. Since returning as the sole supplier in 2011 Pirelli has had to continually answer critics who bemoan the rapid rate of tyre degradation, even though that was part of Pirelli’s brief after replacing Bridgestone.
Hembery said Pirelli would not be interested in continuing to supply F1 if the sport allowed another tyre company to compete.
“We work for the sport. The sport has to decide what it wants,” said Hembery.
“If it wants a tyre war and procession racing again, like it did in the early 2000s, when the audience disappeared, then that’s one approach. It’s not for us to decide.
“We will wait and see if the rules change. If they change, then we will consider it. At the moment the teams are certainly not interested in a tyre war.”
Hembrey says the addition of a competitor would cost both suppliers more money and that due to the variables from team to team that the performances of each tyre would be difficult to judge.
“What does it really mean to have a tyre war? If it means spending 100 million Euros to go half a second quicker—and you can’t even prove that you have the better tyre, because the teams will dominate still—it is pointless,” explained Hembery.
“Ultimately no-one could really make out what tyres were on what car when there was a tyre war. Nobody knew, because all the money was being spent on trying to find performance that the public couldn’t see. And if the public can’t see it, we don’t understand it.”
When Audi launched its latest generation A3 at the Geneva Motor Show back in March they only gave us the three-door layout. Word is we won’t ever see a three-door A3 in Australia again (we hope our info is wrong, by the way), so aside from getting a good look at the general style and the interior, it wasn’t much use for readers down under.
Now, though, a new A3 Sportback has been spied for the first time and we can see that, as you’d expect, Audi has played it by the book. With virtually no camouflage on the prototype photographed, the styling clearly follows suit from its three-door sibling. Indeed, at first glance, the side profile view doesn’t look a lot different to the 8P Sportback.
Thanks to the adaptable nature of the car’s MQB platform the five-door A3 will have a slightly longer wheel base than the three-door. We should be seeing official pics of the new Sportback sometime in 2013.
The next-generation Volkswagen Golf is due to be launched on Tuesday 4 September in Berlin, German newspaper Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung reports.
According to the paper, Museum Neue Nationalgalerie has been booked for the event and it means the Golf VII will debut ahead of the Paris Motor Show, where it was previously expected to debut.
Having ownership experience with Mk1, Mk4 and Mk5 Golfs means we’re pretty excited about the new Golf here at AUSmotive. Assuming this report is accurate we look forward to bringing you all the photos and information as soon as they come to hand early next month.
