Tag: Vicki Butler-Henderson

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smart Toyota

smart fortwo mhd makes Prius green with envy

smart fortwo mhd

According to the Federal Government’s Green Vehicle Guide, the smart fortwo cabrio mhd (micro hybrid drive) can lay claim to being Australia’s greenest car. This is on account of the mhd scoring the lowest greenhouse and air pollution emissions of any car currently on sale in Australia. Yes, even better than Toyota’s Prius, albeit by the barest of margins!

Despite the marketing trickey in its name, the smart fortwo mhd uses a conventional internal combustion engine, there’s no electric power hidden away. The smart fortwo mhd achieves its credentials, in part, by utilising start-stop engine technology. When driven in traffic the mhd system switches the engine off when stationary and restarts when the accelerator is next pressed. The mhd was featured on last week’s episode of Fifth Gear in the UK, and a YouTube clip of this segment can be seen after the jump.

The smart fortwo mhd only has a meagre 52kW of power, but with that comes impressive fuel consumption. Its combined cycle is 4.4l/100km (according to ADR 81/02) and carbon dioxide (CO2) output of the two-seater is a low 105g/km. Comparatively the Toyota Prius rates the same for fuel consumption, but a solitary extra gram for CO2 emissions at 106g/km.

However, the bar for fuel consumption and CO2 emissions is set to be lowered even further when the MINI Cooper D goes on sale in Australia in the second half of this year.

Horst von Sanden, managing director of Mercedes-Benz Cars in Australia was delighted with the news and said, “The goal of sustainable mobility lies at the heart of the smart concept, and it’s this very car, along with new developments such as the electric smart ed, that have made some of the biggest steps towards the ultimate goal of emission-free motoring.”

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Fifth Gear Volkswagen

Fifth Gear – Series 14, Episode 6

Volkswagen Australia, are you watching! Even Tom Ford, all the way over in England, knows the deal—bring the Scirocco to Australia in place of the three door Golf GTI. While GTI production is in limbo prior to the launch of the MkVI model the case for the Scirocco is even stronger. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

So we know how Episode 6 started, read on to see what else the Fifth Gear had in store.

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Fifth Gear

Fifth Gear – Season 14, Episode 5

The shootout saw Jason Plato in a Lexus IS-F with Tiff Needell in a BMW M3 saloon. The Bimmer was quicker round the track. Just. But no surprise that the Toyota felt softer and more distant. Tom pitted the new Subaru Forester against a Land Rover Freelander II. He reckoned the Forester was tinny and under powered. He wasn’t much of a fan of the auto transmission either. A weclome addition to the cast this week was the Nissan GT-R and the Porsche 911 Turbo. Oh yeah, and Bruno Senna. Fittingly, he was fanging the cars around a wet track in conditions that his uncle would have loved (see clip above). I say, flick Tiff and replace him with Bruno.

Vicki filed a report from a tribute to Colin McRae which saw 1086 Impreza WRXs spell out his name. She also got a fang in McRae’s 1996 WRC winning car. Very tidy indeed! Tom had a go in the Dodge Challenger SRT8. I have to say it looks pretty damn good—for an American coupé. Vicki got the keys to a Vauxhall Astra VXR Nürburgring and a Ford Focus ST (XR5 to us Aussies). Geez, they cram a lot into these episodes. Plato finished the show with John Prescott in a racing Jaguar XK-R. The first three episodes of this series were a bit testing at times, but the last couplf have been much better.

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Fifth Gear

Fifth Gear – Series 14, Episode 4

Apologies for the late update to this week’s show. Jason Plato—AUSmotive’s preferred Fifth Gear presenter—started the show comparing the JDM Honda Civic Mugen RR v the UK spec 2000 GT. The Japanese Civic was the quickest around their test track, and by some margin, plus it sounds bloody good, too.

I didn’t want to mention Tim Shaw this week, but given he covered the revised CO2 taxes UK residents will be paying shortly, I thought it would be worth raising, given our federal government’s recent issues with its proposed Luxury Car Tax increases. I’m guessing it won’t be long until we’re paying taxes based on emissions here in Australia too. They highlighted a Volkswagen Golf 1.6 and a Citroen C4 XS, the French car expels 13 grams less in CO2 emissions, but when the new tax laws are introduced, the Citroen will cost almost AU$200 less to register. I daren’t mention the funky and frugal MINI John Cooper Works again (6.9l/100km, 165 g/km), but, well I just did.

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Fifth Gear

Fifth Gear – Series 13, Episode 10

my what an ugly butt you haveThis was the last episode in Series 13 of Fifth Gear. The Anglesea shootout was between the early 1990s Ford Escort Cosworth and the early 2000s Ford Focus RS. Interestingly the older Cossie took the honours and was around 1.5 seconds quicker around the track than the RS. Amazingly, and somewhat surprisingly, as seen on last week’s show, my wife’s shopping trolley (Mk5 Golf GTI) is faster than both of these, haha.

It’s new, but it still didn’t keep me awake. Lucky, then, Tiff took the wheel of the new Impreza STi. Well, maybe not if you work for Subaru. He wasn’t exactly glowing in his praise of the car. Seems that, as well as hitting the new Rex with the ugly stick, Subie have hit it with the softly, softly stick as well. Shame.

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Fifth Gear

Fifth Gear – Series 13, Episode 9

Oops, a bit late with this precis (Episode 10 aired last night)! Fifth Gear‘s Series 13, Episode 9 kicked off, as usual, with a shootout at the Anglesea track, and we saw the current hot-hatch du jour, the Mk5 Golf GTI take on the newly launched Subaru Impreza WRX. It seems the new Rex has been hit with a curse worse than the ugly stick. (See below for YouTube clip).

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