The Redline

Author: Peter Anderson

  • 2025 BMW X3 30e Review

    2025 BMW X3 30e Review

    BMW’s mid-sizer adds a plug-in hybrid variant to ride the hybrid wave. It’s not the first plug-in hybrid X3, but this time BMW is putting in some real effort to let people know it exists.

    Just a few weeks back we had the quickest G45 X3 you can buy right now, the X3 M50. It’s a ripper of a car – quiet, composed but also genuinely quick and huge fun to drive. So few complaints there. It’s mild hybrid so it uses a bit less fuel and things happen without the engine that otherwise would need the IC bit of ICE to being going.

    But we don’t all want the fun stuff or, just as reasonably, we can’t all afford it. Even more nobly, we’d rather have something that can waft about on electrons but not worry about range anxiety when wanderlust takes over. Again, we had a BMW M5 recently that can do the same thing while also tear out your vertebrae. Except that’s nearly three hundred grand on the road and quite obviously not an SUV. But monstrously large.

    Then there’s the problem of doing it properly and getting an iX3. Well you can’t have one – yet – because they’re still cooking that. But just to make sure, they’re cooking it on a completely different platform, the Neue Klasse, rather than the long-serving Cluster Architecture (CLAR) setup. BMW’s CLAR EVs are excellent despite their attendant compromises so the next-generation platform is going to be something else.

    So we come to the X3 30e. It’s a plug-in hybrid with a claimed EV-only range of up to 91km. Which seems like a good start, don’t you think?

    How much is a 2025 BMW X3 30e and what do I get?

    BMW X3 20 xDrive: $84,500 + ORC
    BMW X3 30e xDrive: $104,800 + ORC
    BMW X3 40d xDrive: $109,600 + ORC
    BMW X3 M50 xDrive: $129,600 + ORC

    The 30e is the second of four current models in the G45 X3 range. Starting at $104,800, it’s a hefty increase on the X3 20 nearly twenty grand below but, crucially, nearly five large short of the 40d diesel. That’s pertinent because folks love a diesel for its thrift and sometimes for its towing. Diesel isn’t always cheaper than petrol and when you’ve got a hybrid, you’re using even less of the cheaper stuff, even if it’s 95 RON. And to find a five grand saving over a few years of ownership is going to be troublesome. Electricity, even at egregious Australian prices, is cheaper than diesel.

    The standard equipment list is long:

    • 20” M light alloy wheels 
    • 3-zone auto climate control 
    • 6-speaker 100-watt Hi-Fi system
    • Acoustic glass
    • Acoustic protection for pedestrians 
    • Adaptive LED headlights
    • Adaptive Suspension
    • Powered tailgate
    • BMW Digital Premium (90-day trial)
    • BMW Iconic Glow illuminated kidney 
    • BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant
    • 14.9-inch digital dash
    • 12.3” curved widescreen display with Operating System 9
    • Comfort Access and Digital Key Plus
    • Driving Assistant Professional inc. Steering and Lane Control System, Active Cruise Control inc. Stop&Go and Blind Spot Monitor
    • DAB Digital radio
    • Electric Seat function, front row
    • Head Up Display 
    • M headliner in anthracite
    • M Sport package inc. M Sport brake system with blue callipers
    • M Sport leather steering wheel
    • Mirror package, incl. anti-dazzle function
    • Mode 2 & 3 Charging cables 
    • Parking Assistant Plus incl. Surround view camera, Reversing Assistant and Drive Recorder
    • Panorama glass sunroof (fixed)
    • Remote Software Updates
    • Tyre pressure monitoring system
    • Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
    • Wireless phone charging
    • Comfort Package:
      • Active seat ventilation
      • Heated steering wheel
      • Cargo net
      • Privacy glass
      • Seat heating for first and second rows
      • Sun blinds for rear-side windows

    Often these lists are full of things like “seatbelts”, but given everything has gotten insanely expensive and also given there aren’t any silly inclusions in this list, that’s a lot of stuff. The six-speaker stereo as standard is a bit weak at this price point, but as you’ll shortly discover, you can improve that with the savings on the diesel.

    The Enhancement Pack wraps up metallic paint ($2000 on its own), an alarm system and a Harmon Kardon speakers for a total of $4000. Not many people are going to go without metallic paint (the only freebie is white), so in all honesty, the extra two grand for the speakers is the real extra cost here and I think it’s worth it.

    M Sport Pro adds a bunch of gloss black stuff on the outside, red brake calipers and M seat belts for $2000.

    If you want to tow, you can add the tow bar for $2200, which works out neatly as $1.10 per kilogram of towing capacity. Before GST, anyway.

    If you need to tow slightly more (2200kg) or for tow very long distances, this may be the only reason to go to the diesel. The long distance concern is because once the battery is out, you lose a fair bit of torque, which might be a problem if you’re on the hilly bit of your journey. Having said that, the battery never goes completely flat, so you know, just have a think about it.

    This Arctic Race Blue metallic X3 30e came out at $108,100 with the Enhancement Pack, before on-roads.

    Look and feel

    I’m pretty sure Blake still doesn’t like it but I really don’t mind it. I’m not totally sold on the headlight-to-grille ratio, but I do like the geometric vibe of the design. I think this is probably BMW’s more successful recent car to date and it doesn’t look anywhere near its actual size.

    The illuminated grille does rather remind you how big it is at night, too, but on balance I’m pleased it’s there because I do like a bit of lighting bling. The front end aside, it’s a pretty cohesive and convincing design and there’s something I really like about the rear lights that I can’t quite put my finger on, but I like them.

    These wheels almost fill the huge arches, too, and I quite like the chamfered look of the arches at both ends, a kind of aerodynamic look that speaks to me.

    No, it’s not pretty, but BMW is more interested in setting tongues wagging and, truth be told, doing pretty with all the regs and SUV mania is hard.

    Say what you like about the outside of BMWs, the cabins are great. Again, you don’t have to like the look of them but they’re so well designed, even if the occasional material choice doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The design is coherent, bold and inherently useable.

    The big chunky wheel is great in the hand, the dashboard clear even if the graphics aren’t to your taste. The big sweep of the now-familiar double screen layout looks grand and techno-cool and in the newer cars is lower set so it doesn’t feel like they tower over you.

    It’s very comfortable in both front and rear seats and the boot is huge, BMW choosing to sacrifice 15 litres of fuel tank space to hold on to most of the boot volume, which drops from 470 litres to 460. It’s a good flat space, too, with a slot to put the cargo blind under the floor when it isn’t in use.

    The week we had with this car and the foul weather that went with it passed by in another universe. It’s really nice in here. Like, a segment bigger serene.

    Drivetrain and Chassis

    This is obviously the most interesting bit of this car.

    BMW starts with the B48 2.0-litre twin-scroll turbo four-cylinder – confusingly dubbed TwinPower – spinning up a modest (for this engine) 140kW and 310Nm. The eight-speed ZF automatic sends power to all four wheels and that’s all fairly normal and straightforward.

    BMW then adds a 135kW/250Nm electric motor fed by a 19.7kW lithium-ion battery under the floor. This knocks a very decent couple of seconds off the 0-100km/h time, down to 6.2 seconds and several litres off the pretty terrible ADR fuel figure, coming out with an official 1.6L/100km. That’s obviously very silly, but really the main story here is the 91km of claimed EV range which probably works out at about 70-80km in the real world.

    That’s pretty good. You’ve probably heard this story before, but if you’re disciplined like a friend of mine who keeps his PHEV charged (an Outlander with not too dissimilar claims), you can get 3000km out of a tank of petrol if your daily use is pretty average (30-45km).

    Riding on the CLAR platform means all the usual things like a multi-link rear end and struts up front with adaptive dampers all round. The 30e is a bit of chonk compared to the other cars, falling over the two-tonne mark to 2065kg, about 265kg heavier than the straight-six turbo M50 and 310kg more than the 140kW X3 20 (is the lack of i on 20 annoying you too?).

    Battery and Charging

    As I’ve already mentioned, the X3 has a 19.7kWh battery hidden away under the floor. That’s a decent size and is par for the course for non-Chinese brand PHEVs.

    Charging is via a Type 3 cable (the car comes with Type 2 and 3 cables in a bag). As you can see from the image above, there’s no DC, so the fastest you’ll be going is 11kW. Don’t panic – with a 19.7kWh battery and an optional wallbox, two hours is all you’ll need.

    Charging at home without an 11kW wallbox (which itself requires a three-phase electricity supply)(if you know, you know) will take around seven hours from nothing to everything, so that’s your classic, “Hi [insert affectionate term], I’m home!” to “See you tonight!” proposition.

    Energy fiends wknow some retailers will offer an EV charging deal of around 8c in the wee small hours and that’s a bargain. If you get 70km out of your charge, that’s the genuine equivalent of covering the distance on a single litre of very cheap fuel, about $1.50. If you buy a plug-in electrified car of any type, it is very important you shop around for a better electricity deal.

    Real energy fiends who use Amber (get a $120 bill credit for me and you, click here)(come on, you know you want to) will know that during many afternoons, solar feed-in is small and/or grid power is cheap, so that’s a good time to charge. If you’re on the cartoonishly evil Ausgrid network, some days your feed-in tariff goes negative, meaning you have to pay them for the privilege of giving them power they can’t be arsed putting into storage themselves, so that’s when to charge if you’re home.

    Sadly the X3 30e doesn’t come ready with vehicle-to-grid or vehicle-to-home (both if which remain largely unavailable in Australia) so you can take advantage of that when it happens.

    Driving

    Having not long since driven the M50, I felt that this was going to be a good one. The X3 platform found its feet in the G01 guise (you may recall my love for the M40i) and every single one of them was eminently ownable. The G45 should probably be the last gasp for the CLAR platform in this form factor, but it doesn’t feel like BMW has given up. Not at all.

    This really is a terrific thing. Swift, quiet and efficient, it goes about its business in excellent comfort, whether you’re bombing around town or firing up the freeway. The hybrid system is almost imperceptible most of the time, whether you’re in full EV mode or you’ve exhausted that and you’re in hybrid mode.

    Energy recovery is smooth and seems to work well, pulling a kilowatt here and there out of downhill runs. The digital dash keeps you informed of how fast you can go before the motor kicks in and the theoretical maximum is 140km/h, which is an improvement on most PHEVs I’ve driven. I quite liked that and as with so many cars with meaningful electrification, you get to enjoy yourself a bit playing the energy game.

    The steering is pretty light as you might expect and even in sport mode doesn’t do much to let you know what’s going on underneath. It’s handy fun, though, with a decently keen turn-in and body control that keeps everything in check, despite the extra weight.

    Braking is strong but the pedal is a bit inconclusive. The transition between energy regeneration and physical braking is pretty good but the pedal feel is not confidence inspiring. It’s not awful, there’s merely a bit of marshmallow stuck in there somewhere.

    I really like the cut of its jib, though. The Michelin Primacy EV tyres had a decent amount of grip and were excellent in the wet. The suspension is really quiet and that’s partly because these aren’t run flats. But the suspension feels really well isolated from the road. The trashed roads in Sydney give cars an absolute hammering but they were just distant thuds and clunks in the 30e. It really is quite lovely.

    Redline Recommendation

    This is the all-rounder in the range, so if you’re not going for the M50, this is the one to go for. Yes, it’s in the six figures but it’s so nice to be in and get around in you won’t begrudge the outlay. More to the point, everyone involved will be comfortable because it’s got that easygoing, serene vibe about it that hides its reasonably athletic capability.

    I came away thinking a whole lot more positively about than when I went in, which as I said at the start, was already pretty positive.

  • MY26 Lotus Emira Details announced

    MY26 Lotus Emira Details announced

    The supercharged V6 makes a welcome return while the auto-only Turbo and Turbo SE continue with a big new safety package.

    Emira-curious buyers now have absolutely no excuse to take the plunge as the supercharged V6 returns to the lineup after disappearing in early 2024, the range now three models strong. V6 buyers can choose from a six-speed manual with limited-slip diff or a six-speed auto.

    If you look closely, you can see the exposed linkage behind a mesh cover in the centre console, a proper old-school Lotus touch that I really like. As is the exposed throttle actuator which was one of my favourite details in the Evora. With which this car shares its 400 horsepower engine.

    Lotus Australia says that the V6 will be rather more limited in availability than the Turbo and Turbo SE which come with the Mercedes turbo four in two states of tune as well as the eight-speed twin-clutch.

    Safety Uplift Across the Range

    The main change to the specification is a big uplift in safety systems. This means you get forward AEB, road sign recognition, lane departure warning, lane change assist, blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control, rear cross-traffic alert, exit warning and high beam assist.

    This is a very solid set of features and forward AEB and reverse cross-traffic alert are incredibly welcome.

    Lotus Emira Turbo – $207,990 (+ORC)

    2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder
    8-speed twin-clutch
    Power: 269kW
    Torque: 430Nm

    The entry level Turbo lands with 10-Spoke lightweight cast alloy wheels in gloss silver, new technical sports fabric interior, single piece brakes, 4 piston black brake calipers, 12-way electric seats with memory, LED headlights with DRL, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, 7-speaker 190-watt audio system and Touring suspension and Emira-specific Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport tyres.

    Lotus Emira Turbo S – $223,990 (+ORC)

    2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder
    8-speed twin-clutch
    Power: 294kW
    Torque: 480Nm

    The more powerful Turbo S picks up 20-inch forged alloys, new colours, red brake calipers, Sport suspension as standard (Touring suspension is a no-cost option), Lotus Drivers Pack and cross-drilled two-piece brake discs.

    Lotus Emira V6 – $252,990 (+ORC)

    3.5-litre supercharged charge-cooled V6
    Power: 298kW
    Torque: 420Nm auto/430Nm manual.

    The supercharged V6 returns to the line-up in limited numbers and has basically the same spec as the Turbo S. This is the heaviest of the range but is a fan favourite. Power is only a modest 4kW increase over the Turbo SE and torque matches the Turbo. But it sounds a heck of a lot better and you can row your own.

    The MY26 configurator will be on the Lotus website late this month for Australian deliveries in Q1 2026.

    Watch the Lotus Emira Turbo Review:

  • 2025 Ford Mustang GT Auto review

    2025 Ford Mustang GT Auto review

    Ford’s heavily-upgraded V8 fastback continues to be a tale of two transmissions. We spent a few weeks on board to tease out the nuances of the self-shifting pony car.

    Words: Peter Anderson
    Images: Blake Currall
    Co-pilots: Blake Currall and Mark Dewar

    It has been a long time since I actually had this Mustang and for that I apologise to everyone involved. Ford for being so generous – at the last minute no less – in handing me the keys over Christmas and New Year. Like so many of us, 2024 was A Year to Remember and not all for good reasons. The second half of the year was absolutely helter skelter, if I’m honest, and didn’t really let up until…well…this week, actually.

    I will cheerfully declare myself an unlikely Mustang fan. I am not interested in Americana at all – although I contend that the Mustang transcends that label – but the rebirth of the Mustang in 2015 caught my attention. As I said last week in the Supra review, one of the reasons Mustang is transcendent is because you don’t need to put the word “Ford” before it. It’s a Mustang and Ford rides on the halo the name creates. And doesn’t mind doing that, because there haven’t been Ford badges on this car for a decade now.

    Interestingly, I wasn’t a fan of that 2015 car. I drove a manual back in my Carsguide days and I came away mildly disappointed, my general disdain for Americana notwithstanding. Was that it? The slightly crappy interior, the way-too-squishy seats, the far-too-distant exhaust? What? Why? How had this happened?

    It was fun, though, and so ridiculously loose on even a dry road. How the Mustang got past legal is anyone’s guess, even more so the supercharged ‘Stang I drove for the aforementioned Carsguide that I had during a particularly filthy week. The traction control light was never off.

    Anyway, in 2019 I drove a Mustang I liked and I kept liking it all through its sixth generation. I drove an auto in 2021, a bright yellow abomination but once I got into the swing of what it’s supposed to be, it made sense.

    The seventh-generation arrived in 2024 and while it wasn’t the huge global phenomenon of the 2015 rebirth, it was clear that things had been seen to. So a couple of weeks with a relaxed, naturally-aspirated V8 was, as I say, welcome respite.

    How much is a 2025 Mustang and what do I get?

    • 2.3-litre Ecoboost 10-speed auto: $71,990
    • 5.0-litre V8 6-speed manual: $83,990
    • 5.0-litre V8 10-speed auto: $86,990
    • 5.0-litre V8 10-speed auto convertible: $86,990

    Mustang prices ain’t what they used to be, starting far above where they first landed in 2015. That’s to be expected, obviously, but $86,990 is an easy $35,000 more. As I’ve already mentioned, they’re a much nicer machine than those early ones, so you can wear a bit of the uptick just for that alone. There’s a lot more technology and we had some hefty inflation but you’re still looking at a decent extra whack in real terms. The fact it’s now well inside both Luxury Car Tax and NVES emission penalties thresholds explains more of the price rise.

    You get a fair bit of stuff, though. You roll on 19-inch wheels, a limited slip diff, auto LED headlights with auto high beam, 12.4-inch digital dash, 13.2-inch media screen, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, sat nav, wireless phone charger, DAB digital radio, FordPass embedded SIM card, 12-speaker stereo, leather wheel, dual-zone climate control and ambient lighting.

    The spec is basically the same across all versions, with the V8 also adding an extra oil cooler and Pirelli P-Zero rubber.

    The Recaro seats continue as an option for $3835, with the odd mix of electrical and manual adjustment. These replace the standard seats with their heating and cooling.

    You can add the Bronze Pack, too, which adds bronze wheels and a bronze pony in the grille and actually, yes, I’ll have that on the right colour car. Magneride and red Brembo brake calipers land at another $3835.

    Only red and white are free, the rest of the reduced colour palette is $910. That isn’t bad for a premium colour, but you’re already paying a premium price, let’s face it.

    When it comes down to it, though, this is the only V8 sports coupe left under $110,000 once you’re on the road. The supply of six-cylinder performance coupes under that price is rapidly dwindling too.

    Look and Feel

    Wanna know something? I think I like this better than the last one.

    I like the fact it’s a tiny bit sharper and the nose is less awkward, particularly in profile. The signature haunches look superb, even in this very muted colour (which I liked). Blake and enjoyed wandering around it. I think my favourite detail are the rear lights, from just about any angle. I don’t know what it is, but they look great.

    The surfacing is way less fussy, too. A look back at the car it replaced revealed creases and bulges and lines that have been banished. There’s that strong line over the rear wheels that reinforces the idea that it’s rear wheel drive and is very much a reminder of the first Mustang. Less sophisticated, in a sense, but simple.

    Only the wacky, strutted grille is a bit jarring. I really do like it, it looks so long and ready to pounce.

    Inside is a very reasonable improvement.

    The handbrake is still awkwardly placed on the “wrong” side of the transmission tunnel and that unsatisfying shifter is largely the same. But it’s way more modern and, critically, nicer.

    Everything looks a lot better and the materials – most of them anyway – are better. The crap seats were binned in 2019 for Recaros and then remain, ever so comfortable and good-looking.

    As you can see from the photo, there’s a Mercedes-style sweep of two big screens for dash and media system as well as a strip of physical buttons above the wireless phone charger.

    You can still find some scratchy plastics, but those horrible chrome switches are gone and I don’t care if they were retro-cool, they looked and felt awful.

    Drivetrain

    Ford’s lovely 5.0-litre V8 continues on in the Mustang, producing 345kW at 7250rpm and 550Nm of torque at 4850rpm. It’s a totally unstressed engine, with a lovely, lazy feel but without the inertia that word suggests.

    Power goes to the rear wheels through a ten-speed transmission. That’s a lot of gears. The only other ten-speed I’ve driven is in the Lexus LC500 and, uh, yeah. There are some parallels.

    There’s not much to say about this package because it’s very familiar, having been around for, as I keep saying, ten years. Power us up a bit and torque is down a bit over the previous car, but nothing to get too fussy about.

    Chassis

    As the Mustang is an evolution of the sixth-generation car, there’s not a huge amount to talk about. The optional Brembo brakes feature six-piston calipers at the front gripping 390mm discs. The four-psiton rear calipers grab 355mm rotors.

    The 19-inch alloys are clothed in Pirelli P-Zeros which are pretty good tyres if a bit on the noisy side. Some previous Mustangs wore Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tyres, so that’s a small tweak.

    A limited-slip differential promises some good fun times – which I can attest to having been graciously allowed to take a sixth-gen car to a skid pan – but more to the point, it’s almost mandatory given the power on offer.

    Driving

    Like I said at the start, 2024 was A Year. Long, stressful, filled with drama I won’t bore you with (all of it came out in the wash and for the better, thanks for asking). But I can’t tell you what a delight it was to spend Christmas and New Year with a V8 Mustang.

    Things I forget about the Mustang are legion, but I’ll go with the edited highlights. The doors are really long but the roof is relatively high, so getting in and out is easy. Not like a Supra where all of us ended up with dents in our heads. The Recaros are comfortable for all body shapes and the interior is cosy without being claustrophobic.

    Well, it’s over-cosy in the back, but only a lunatic would spend time there.

    The new flat-bottomed steering wheel is a bit racier than the old car’s and thank goodness too. I felt it was a little big, before, and the half-hearted dish effect (had to be, airbags and dished wheels don’t mix) meant it was a bit meh. Other than that, the feel of the car is familiar in a good way. Even the handbrake’s annoying position made me smile. I know this car.

    Except the dash is all-new. The digital dials have been refreshed and are less frantic than before. You can decide how they look – including 1960s reproduction retro style or a pretty good rendition of a race dashboard, at least one from a video game. It’s pretty good.

    A lot of the buttons have been swept into the central screen which is less good. I have to say, however, that even the climate controls are intuitive and easy to use and this is because the screen has a crap ton of real estate to spread out the functions. Except if you’re in CarPlay or Android Auto you have to get out of it, but still, better than most.

    Firing up, the sound is close to perfection.

    It’s not too obnoxious or loud but pleasing and appropriately menacing. I really like the setup of the active exhaust since the 2019 facelift brought the sound of the Coyote to the fore without painting you as a douchebag. If you want more, plenty of aftermarket folks will help, but Ford’s no-doubt painstaking work is excellent.

    The automatic in all other ways is quite different in character to the manual. The gearing is so long and the transmission is really a tad too keen to find tenth. You’ll occasionally pull the paddles four, five or even seven times to get it down to the gear you want. It’s way better than it used to be and in normal driving, it’s so smooth you barely even know it’s there.

    Work your way up the modes and things sharpen up, including the shifts, but it’s never super-convincing as a sports coupe. And that’s okay, because it’s big and heavy and not really meant to be a sharp tool. It never has and even though I’ve said it’s quite different to the manual, it’s still a Mustang. Because one of my favourite things about this rig is that it’s so delightfully loose when you crack open the throttle in anger.

    In the dry, it’s a bit of a hooligan when you boot it with more than a tiny bit of lock, although it doesn’t get lurid. It sounds great and I love the way the engine revs cleanly to its peak power. It’s just lovely.

    The steering is nicely weighted, too, with the kind of gearing that will keep you out of trouble both on road and track. There isn’t a lot of life in it though, Blake declaring “as lifeless as a fish on a sun lounger.” Quite.

    When you’re pressing on the Brembo brakes are really excellent and I reckon paired with the Magneride well worth the money. The brakes can take a bit of a hammering (and they did on various mountain passes) and the feel is terrific.

    All the time, too, the Mustang remains composed on its springs and dampers, whether you’re cruising gently or shredding the P-Zeros. Blake was a lot more complimentary of the suspension, going so far as to call it great. I agree.

    Redline Recommendation

    I do like the Mustang very much. The automatic was the right car for me at the right time, and if you want a super-solid cruiser that will do literally any number of miles comfortable and fuss-free, it’s terrific.

    You can have some fun and it will drift very enthusiastically on a skid pan and you can then drive it home in air-conditioned comfort with some calming Enya on the stereo. It’s good like that – a comfortable companion with a great sense of humour.

    Regular co-pilot Mark was a big fan of the sound and, as ever, less than complimentary of the Moon Dust Metallic paint. It didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for the driving experience, though. While we were all impressed at the much-improved ten speed, we’re all united on the manual being the one to go for.

    It’s just the right thing to do.

  • 2025 Toyota Supra Review

    2025 Toyota Supra Review

    The six-speed manual Toyota Supra seems like the obvious choice for folks who really like to drive, but not everyone is a fan.

    Words: Peter Anderson
    Images and co-pilot: Matt Gerrard (@mattg81)

    Supra. It’s a brand all of on its own. The Toyota part is unnecessary given it’s so strongly embedded in people’s minds. It’s like Mustang is to Ford – no, really, – you just call it Supra. The GR bit…well…it really ties it to the 86/Yaris/Corolla set but, again, nobody calls it the GR Supra.

    The A90 has been an incredible success, at least as far as awareness and the generation of brand cachet goes. It eclipses the car with which it shares so much – the BMW Z4 – here in Australia in a way I didn’t think possible. You tell people it’s a Z4 with a hat and they shrug, telling me it looks like a Supra.

    It’s an astonishingly bold and intelligent design. The body is stretched tight over its underpinnings and is so curvy and muscular it looks absolutely nothing like its under-the-skin sibling. The idea that hard points would define the way it would look is out the window, they don’t even share a windscreen. It’s as different from the Z4 as the 86 and BRZ are similar. Or shares as much with the Z4 as the Yaris GR does with your mum’s hybrid hatchback (that’s just a little joke to make you click on a story I loved writing).

    The references to the fabled FT-HS and FT-1 concept cars are so clear, too, but not a straight-up rip-off. More came from FT-1, which generated a vast amount of excitement when it appeared. It has a wonderful fluidity to it and has proved to be an incredible base for aftermarketeers keen to pump the looks even more. As ever, some of it is awful but some of it is superb. It can cope with addition but looks amazing without it. This is a controversial opinion to some, I know.

    I am a particular fan of the way the bonnet rolls so far down over the arches. It screams race car clamshell without actually being a clamshell. When Matt asked me how I wanted it shot I said, “At rest. We don’t even need shots of it driving, really.” The rain and mist and Matt’s undeniable eye have made me love this car even more. If I was allowed, one of these shots would be on my wall, right next to one of Blake’s shots of the Vantage.

    Interestingly, my description of the Supra being a Z4 with a hat comes from one of the early cars and echoes a reference I once made to the Jaguar F-Type coupe. Both cars are based on convertible-first structures and are internally compromised as a result. Strict two-seaters, not much room for luggage and a roof that liked to squeak.

    The first Supra I drove many moons ago – how my wife loved that car and how that feeling was ruined by ute-driving yahoos screaming at her – squeaked madly, in a very un-Toyota way. In squeaked in a Jaguar F-Type coupe way, which is to say it did but you forgave it because good lord it was pretty. This 2024-built example was tight as a drum and I assume this propensity to squeak was fixed long ago.

    Just look at these gorgeous details – the shape of the lighting elements, the bevelling of the exhaust pipe, the Supra script on the boot, the F1-like1 fog light with the LEDs for the reverse light as a frame. Just some incredibly fine work that we see because it’s there and it all just works. You can just see the designers had so much fun and freedom, led by Nobuo Nakamura. Yes they had the FT-HS and FT-1 inspiration to work from but this is a rare 2020s-era car that is genuinely beautiful. And it’s under a hundred grand in Australia, at least in GT form. And only a bit over in GTS form.

    Under that long bonnet is BMW’s gorgeous B58. I have mentioned the B58 in my X3 M50 review and I don’t care if you made fun of me. It’s an incredible engine and here in the Supra is good for 285kW between 5800-6500rpm (the early cars had 250kW and the Supra was almost immediately upgraded for 2021 in line with the Z4’s power bump). Torque is a nice round 500Nm between 1800 and 5000rpm.

    For the manual, Toyota had to work hard. It took the same ZF six-speed in the Z4 and, er, made it nice. To be fair, in the Z4 it’s ok but the clutch placement means my size 10 (Euro 43) brushed the steering rack. Co-pilot Mark didn’t like the manual Supra at all and when he had a brief spin in this exact car before I had it and came away with the same opinion – he doesn’t like it. He disliked it so much in fact, that he didn’t drive it this time. He was happy for me to lead the way.

    I, however, did love it. The pedal placement seems better in the Supra, which honestly wouldn’t be hard. The clutch action wasn’t exactly to my taste and the ZF is like it is always was – good but not great. Not Fiesta ST great, not Mazda MX-5 great, just good. Feels unburstable, though.

    Working so well with the revvy straight-six, the Supra is just perfect for a midnight blast. The big LEDs light the darkness, the big Michelins bite the ground and only come unstuck when you tell them to. The power on a hard launch is perfection but never feels overdone – I don’t need more, it’s exactly where it should be.

    The seats are supportive, everything works fine and the stripped back mix of Toyota and BMW is still a bit odd but nothing you can’t live with.

    When you are on it, this car just delivers and delivers, with a lovely front end that just wants to go where you point it. I love practically sitting on the rear wheels and being down so low. Not just because I seem to spend my life six feet in the air in a Chinese SUV wondering how I’m going to explain the terribly calibrated safety systems but because it’s so right.

    I love the way the brakes feel great and haul the speed off. I love the way the rear hangs on if you want it to and the front stays where it is when you punish the rear tyres. The diff is beautifully set up for the road.

    As is the suspension. It works so well under duress as well as on the commute. Potholes aren’t terrifying and the solidity and stiffness of the chassis is a testament to its fundamental engineering depth.

    Sales are falling, however, all over the world. The US and Europe have lost interest and it’s a sign of the ailing sports car market that just isn’t interested in things that aren’t Porsches. Very often great cars fall by the wayside and this is most definitely a goodbye to the Supra, hence my intention to have the photos portray a stillness.

    The imminent departure of the Supra is a genuine shame because this thing can take it to cars a lot more expensive. It’s more fun to drive than most things on the road and given its petite cabin, still manages to be practical enough to be a daily. And that’s not something to sniff at – in these pricey times, having a car that can be this much fun but also drag you to work in the morning without either being compromised means you don’t have to compromise. No, it won’t take the family to the beach but you know what I mean.

    I would have a Supra in a heartbeat. I want to own a Supra before I get too old to enjoy it. Would I have the manual? No, I don’t think so. If we were talking about the 86, it’s no contest. But the Supra’s eight-speed is everything you could ever need and plays along with you the way you want. While Toyota worked hard to improve the frankly dire manual gearboxed Z4s, I’m not quite sure it was enough for me.

    Either way, though, the A90 Supra remains utterly desirable six years into its life. It feels shorter than that – partly because of the pandemic, partly because life is moving fast these days – but the Supra has made its mark on the automotive landscape once again. The Z4, with which the Supra shares its Austrian production line at Magna Steyr, will die next year with no successor in sight.

    The Supra, though, looks to be headed for a new life as a hybrid, rear-wheel drive four-cylinder. It might be good, it might be great. But with the last of the mighty six cylinders fading into the night of emissions regulations, the A90 will surely be endlessly sought after.

    1. Yes I know they’re rain lights in F1, but it looks like the rain light. ↩︎
  • 2025 BMW X3 M50

    2025 BMW X3 M50

    Munich’s new mid-size SUV has arrived and with it the M Performance M50. The old one was the best X3 you could buy, how does the new one stack up?

    Words: Peter Anderson
    Co-pilots: Blake Currall and Mark Dewar
    Images: Blake Currall

    The previous generation X3 was a really good car. From the entry-level 2.0-litre sDrive right through to the all-electric iX3 (a criminally underrated vehicle), that car managed to be all things to all people. That meant, of course, the S58-equipped X3 M was the daddy, right?

    Right?

    No. The (at launch) $99,000 X3 M40i was the X3 to have. The X3 M was a bastard of a car – fast, yes, but the ride was absolutely punishingly, inappropriately hard. Some could live with it, but I sent many a folk to drive both back-to-back and every one of them chose the M40i. It does everything, including not being very much slower than the X3 M. The X3 M is, thankfully dead, with BMW taking the M badge from the CLAR-based car and waiting to launch it on the Neue Klasse electric iX3 variant. Should be beauty.

    But for now the quickest X3 is the M50. It’s not cheap – few cars are anymore – and some have criticised the looks (not me as it happens)(Blake, I’m looking at you) but it’s not that much more than the car it replaces. A lot is new though, so while it has big boots to fill, given how much has been thrown at this machine, it’s going to give it a red-hot go.

    How much is a BMW X3 M50 xDrive and what do I get?

    BMW X3 20 xDrive: $84,500
    BMW X3 30e xDrive: $104,800
    BMW X3 40d xDrive: $109,600
    BMW X3 M50 xDrive: $129,600

    When first announced a year ago, the X3 range was just the 20 and M50, but the gap between has since been filled by the 30e plug-in hybrid and the 40d 3.0-litre turbodiesel straight six. Never mind about that for the moment, though, we’ve got the B58-powered M50 at nearly $130,000, but it’s only a scooch more than the M40 was, so BMW has exercised some restraint. In fact, when it launched, it was the same price as the outgoing M40i give or take a few bucks. So the price rise since has been relatively small and in company it seems about right.

    The spec is actually really good for the money and builds on the generous feature list of the 20i and 30e. There is a stack of stuff in here but the highlights are multi-zone climate control, panoramic sunroof, heated front and rear seats, ventilated front seats, excellent synthetic leather trim and a 15-speaker harmon kardon system.

    • 21-inch alloy wheels
    • Metallic paint
    • M-specific kidney, mirror caps and aerodynamic elements
    • Quad exhaust outlets
    • M Sport Pro package
      • High-gloss Shadowline with extended contents
      • Radiator grille frame and struts
      • Tail light trim detailing
      • Tailpipe trims
      • M Lights Shadow Line
      • M Sport brakes with red calipers (blue also available)
      • M seatbelts
    • M braking system with red calipers
    • Fixed panoramic glass sunroof
    • Roller blinds for rear side windows
    • Heated steering wheel
    • Power-adjustable front seats
    • Heated front seats
    • Ventilated front seats
    • Heated outboard rear seats
    • Privacy glass
    • M Shadowline headlights and extended contents
    • 15-speaker Harman Kardon premium sound system
    • M seatbelts
    • Run-flat tyres
    • M Sport package
    • Adaptive suspension
    • Adaptive LED headlights
    • BMW Iconic Glow illuminated kidney grille
    • Acoustic glazing
    • Power tailgate
    • 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster
    • 14.9-inch touchscreen infotainment system featuring Operating System 9
    • BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant
    • Remote software updates
    • Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
    • DAB+ digital radio
    • Wireless phone charger
    • Head-up display
    • Tri-zone climate control
    • Anti-dazzle exterior and interior mirrors
    • Comfort Access and Digital Key Plus
    • M Sport leather steering wheel
    • Anthracite M headliner
    • Veganza upholstery

    Look and feel

    The G45 X3’s cabin is something else. BMW has of late gone with a bit of a spaceship vibe as it slowly works its way through replacing its line-up. The previous car was pretty unadventurous inside and out which made sense for this middle-of-the-market offering. Yeah, screw that. I really like the new direction and while I love the simplicity of my tatty old E87, the X3’s interior (and the M5‘s and 1 Series/2 Series Gran Coupe) looks amazing.

    BMW’s twin screen layout has been refined and moved off the top of the dash meaning a better view out. I really like most of the interior detailing but the success of the translucent and LED-lit surrounds on the doors and phone-charging cubby is debatable. BMW calls it the Jewellery Box but I’d be happy with a nice satin aluminium finisher around it.

    Ergonomics could be better throughout as it’s not amazing once you’re off the driving controls. There are some baffling parts like the vent controls and there are too few physical buttons. BMW would counter with voice control but I’m not a fan.

    Some have complained about the iDrive’s depths and lots of clicking about. I will always defend the iDrive system but that’s because I’ve used it since almost day one and can only say it has got better over time, so…you know.

    I really like the steering wheel, which is a gentle evolution of the old M wheel and the cheek of the 12 o’clock marker made me laugh. It’s chunky in the BMW way, but not too chunky.

    My wife isn’t a fan of the angular dash graphics – and it would be nice if a set of classic dials were available Mustang style – but they’re clear and concise as is the excellent head-up display.

    The big 14.9-inch screen is lovely to look at and use and the X3 has retained an iDrive controller, unlike the 1 and 2 Series. Blake and I had a long debate about the door handle/seat memory/vent units in the door that are sprung to stop them shattering but Blake felt that it made for a flimsy effect as they move when you prod them. The lengths we go to ensure you’re up to speed on things.

    The rear seat is great for adults, super-roomy in all directions and the seats are well-shaped and comfortable. Even the middle seat looks bearable although the transmission hump is consequential to comfort. The boot is massive at 570 litres/1700 with the seats down, well shaped and behind a powered tailgate.

    The thing is, it feels a lot more expensive than the old interior and so your money feels better spent.

    As with all BMWs these days, there has been the usual chorus of disapproval. The company is damned if it does and and damned if it doesn’t, so I’m kind of pleased it’s just decided to do whatever.

    The rear three-quarter view of the X3, both close-up and at a distance is where it looks best. This design you’ll be shocked to learn is polarising as every BMW is. Blake despises the lit outline of the grille but I like it. The grille itself is a bit out of proportion to my eyes and could have done with being a touch smaller. Those who don’t like it will be pleased to discover that the Neue Klasse cars will have tiny bonces by comparison.

    In person the X3 looks smaller than it is and I think that’s a good thing. Too many cars are big and designed to look it so it’s nice to see some effort made to reduce the visual bulk of an SUV. I am also a particular fan of the taillights, they just really work for me. I’m also a fan of not being able to see the radiator supports like you could in the old car.

    For the record, Blake hates most of it, I don’t. This colour really works.

    Drivetrain

    I am unashamedly on the record as a fan of a straight-six BMW. I have owned three petrol straight sixes (two N52s and an N55) and one diesel (an M57 I think). Glorious. The B58 turbo petrol, however, is an absolute ripper of an engine.

    BMW has persisted with the confusing TwinPower nomenclature to refer to a twin-scroll turbo. It doesn’t matter because it spins up an impressive 293kW and 580Nm. Peak power is available between 5,200 and 6,250rpm while peak torque is smeared across 1,900 and 4,800rpm. That’s a properly flexible range.

    Power goes to all four wheels via the indomitable ZF eight-speed automatic resulting in a 0-100km/h time of 4.6 seconds, two-tenths quicker than the M40i. It’s also a mild hybrid, so fuel economy on the freeway is mighty impressive and mildly improved in town. You really notice the mild hybrid at work around the burbs and it’s quite well integrated with the drivetrain. It won’t save the planet – heck the car can’t move under electric power – but it certainly reduces consumption.

    Chassis

    Despite looking smaller, the G45 is bigger in every direction. Starting with length, it’s 34mm longer taking it to 4.755 metres. Which is big. It’s wider at 1920mm (up 29mm) and 35mm lower, which is by far my favourite statistic. A downward migration is always good and given this car will never go off road, sensible. Coupled with the wider 1636mm front track (up 15mm) and 1681mm at the rear (up 45mm!), it looks a lot more purposeful and promises even better handling.

    For reference, the length now falls between the first-generation X5 and second-generation X5. The first-generation X3 was almost a foot shorter in length than the G45.

    BMW says the body is lighter (which is also promising) with an overall kerb weight of 1980kg which seems slightly lighter than the M40i depending on where you look. The double-joint spring strut front end and five-link rear end has been modified (BMW uses words like kinematic and elastokinematic to describe the bits they’ve changed which isn’t super-helpful). Caster angle is up by 19 percent to improve straight line stability, or so the press release says. Basically, the adaptive M suspension has been tweaked and is better and it’s not because the wheelbase is much longer. Because it isn’t.

    What I can say for sure is that the X3 M50 rides on quite attractive 21-inch alloys with Goodyear Eagle F1 rubber all round. Not sure if that’s the only tyre you’ll see on this car. The front tyres measure 255/40 R21 and the rears a hefty 285/35 R21.

    M performance brakes – the calipers in red rather than blue in this instance – weigh in at 328mm at the front and 320mm at the rear, with 28mm thickness up front and 22mm at the back. The red calipers come with the standard M Performance Pro package and are four piston fixed calipers for’ard and single piston floaters aft.

    Driving

    One of the great things about testing a BMW is that as soon as you leave the pick-up location, you’re in deeply annoying traffic on poorly-maintained urban roads. This means you get yourself into a good position to understand the kind of car this is. I was not expecting BMW to fall into making it more like the old X3 M – the criticism was vast and wide of that car’s liveability – but a new car sometimes means someone can go rogue.

    In the plushest mode, the X3 is firm but fair, with just a little bit of aggro at the rear on the worst surfaces, but that’s really only between about 20 and 40km/h. As you build speed, that melts away. I take the back way home, bombing through Surry Hills, Waterloo and Botany. The roads through there are varied and irritating and the X3 got through them without any molar-mashing drama.

    You have to frame that, however – it’s on 21-inch alloys. That’s a lot of wheel and tyre for a car even this size so the ride will fidget and fuss on, as I say, the low-ish speed stuff. Sport mode obviously throws away most of the pretence and is only for the smoother stuff, at least when you’re just driving around.

    Like its forebear, however, this really is the complete package. Comfortable and (mostly) very refined, it’s the kind of mile-crusher that few cars can genuinely be. I said this about an Audi Q8 over at Drive (well, I will have said that when it’s published) and the X3 is not far from being as comfortable as that big ol’ air-suspended beast from a segment higher. That’s high praise from me because the Q8 is a continent-crosser I’d cheerfully point at Perth and go.

    Anyway.

    The other thing the M50 can do is go fast and be very enjoyable. I may have mentioned in passing earlier in the review that the turbo straight six might be a good engine and good gracious it’s fantastic. It’s a happy revver and so much nicer than the high-powered fours that sometimes end up in performance cars. While Mercedes’ M133 is an incredible engine producing prodigious power, it never feels as together as BMW’s straight-six. It kills me to think this engine will never grace a 1 Series again because BMW went front-drive for the small hatch. I get why they did it, but let me mourn it.

    Working up the modes, the steering becomes much better weighted and it’s a joy to fire the X3 into bends. The big brakes easily haul it down to a sensible speed and the weight does not seem to trouble them. With a little blip of torque from the mild hybrid system (up to 200Nm and 13kW), the turbo lag effect is well minimised and so corner exits are brilliantly rapid.

    The left paddle features a boost function to ensure electric and combustic worth together to give you full whack and it really moves.

    The car doesn’t feel anything like its size when you’re on it and that’s quite an achievement, one mirroring the M40i. Yes, I keep mentioning it because yes it was that good.

    It turns in obediently, is largely unruffled by mid-corner bumps and defies physics the way the SQ5 first did all those years ago. Cornering is remarkably flat and composed and you’ve really got to be going for it to feel like it’s as tall as it is.

    The brakes are very strong and have great pedal feel, which is impressive given the energy recovery built into the system. While I wouldn’t send it too hard on a track day, fast road use will not rustle the M50’s jimmies. The grip from the Goodyear’s is excellent and you only bemoan these tyres on a coarse motorway run because they’re a bit noisy. Not quite Pirelli P-Zero, but noisy enough for me to mention.

    Redline Recommendation

    I have no hesitation recommending this car. I’ll be keen to see how the new Audi SQ5 stacks up against the M50 because that was also an absolute ripper of a car that lasted longer than it had any right while still being enormous fun to drive. This M50, though, will take a lot of effort to match let alone beat – it’s fast, quiet and safe for a family hauler. But it has a little bit of a sense of humour, too – it knows it’s a vaguely ridiculous car and loves being ridiculous when you’re on a road that invites sit.

    So yeah, if you have to own an SUV and have this kind of cash, put it on the list.

  • Cityhub Reykjavik Review

    Cityhub Reykjavik Review

    We test out the interlocking sleeping boxes in Iceland’s famously expensive capital and then eat some food and drink some coffee in the surrounding streets.

    Words and images: Peter Anderson

    Reykjavik is expensive. Really expensive. I spent weeks trawling around the various sites looking for a decent night’s accommodation in Reykjavik. You have to put a lot of things together when you’re there on the cheap. There’s a bargain to be had a bus ride or cab ride away from town but that bus ride or cab ride might be – and I am not joking – €27.

    Local buses are cheaper, but you get my meaning. If there’s more than one of you, double the bus fare. And so on. A taxi from the city to the airport, Keflavik, is around $A300. It’s expensive. So I had to balance my costs because I had given myself a very small limit to work with.

    And so I kept coming back to CityHub. I was travelling on my own (I went a day early to write this) so I didn’t have to worry about anyone’s preferences but my own. I had no plan of what I was going to do in Reykjavik aside from exploring by walking, seeing the midnight sunset and drinking decent coffee.

    CityHub is a small chain of what I guess you could describe as capsule hotels. They can be found as of July 2025 in Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Copenhagen and shouldn’t be confused with CityBox.

    Disclaimer:

    I travelled to Reykjavik with Ford Australia for an event related to the Ford Ranger PHEV. Ford covered my air travel and one night’s accommodation the night before event and the night after at other hotels as well as meals from the evening of 12 June 2025 to the morning of 14 June 2025.

    Everything mentioned in this review was paid for by me and none of the places I reviewed had any idea I might be reviewing them. I stayed at Cityhub from 11-12 June 2025.

    Check-in and payment

    It’s very straightforward. Before you arrive you can download the Cityhub app and punch in your booking. That comes up as a QR code and when you arrive you can scan in, select a wristband and activate it. The wristband is connected to your payment card and I found that a bit annoying – you can buy stuff in the lobby bar/cafe area and the vending machine with your wristband but I use a different card for daily expenses so I thought that was a bit limiting.

    The wrist band idea was great, though, and it gets you into your room, the bathrooms and the hotel itself if the host isn’t at their station near the door. The host was very friendly and helpful.

    The tablet check-in is very slick and offers you all of the available rooms and you can choose which one you’d like. Quite by chance I chose 4.09 on the fourth floor, on the opposite side of the floor from the lift and bathrooms. The Hubs take up the centre of the floor plan while the Movie Hubs are along the internal walls – they seem to book out first.

    I booked directly with Cityhub and paid €131 for one night, flexible with 24-hour cancellation. It was among the cheapest in Reykjavik and I thought it was solid value. Rooms in August were priced significantly higher, with one night in a Twin Hub (same layout, just two mattresses and separate bedding) for ISK39,960 which is wild.

    The Room

    There are two types of room or “Hub” but the place is dominated by these one-up/one-down capsule-ish rooms. To be fair, it’s under-selling them as capsules because they’re way bigger than that. When you open the inward-swinging door using your wristband, you see right in front of you a small desk, a high shelf and a coat hanger rack that snakes around and features two kimonos.

    The other rooms, known as Movie Hubs, are selectable during the booking process and cost around ISK2000 more per night (~A$25/€14/US$16) or more depending on the time of year. They’re a more traditional room but still very small. Both room types are about having enough room to shut the door and get into bed.

    The desk has two towels, two hand towels and a magazine. As you can (just) see I could store my bags under the desk. The weird blue-green lighting is configurable via the app and an in-room panel, with plenty of mood lighting options. The window to the side of the bed overlooks the corridor and has a set of shutters so you can block out the light.

    The bed has fresh linen and the quilt/duvet/whatever you call it in your area is bundled up ready for use. By the side of the bed are a couple of USB-C chargers which is very handy and there are more points at the desk. The temperature is centrally operated, but given most hotels with temperature controls seem close to useless, that’s probably not a big deal.

    The bed is really comfortable and queen sized, so there’s plenty of room for two. Taller folks could conceivably hang off the end, but there’s enough space to sit upright on the bed and there’s even a phone holder on the wall for shots of you on or in the bed.

    There wasn’t much noise room-to-room but cretins all over the hotel let their doors slam which was easily the worst thing about Cityhub.

    The Facilities

    For what I expected to be quite a bare-bones kind of place, the Cityhub was a pleasant surprise. The bar/cafe/workspace that faces out on to the street is very comfortable and what you can’t see in the photo is another row of tables along the back wall and some self-serve coffee/hot chocolate and vending machines. It’s open all the time as well, so jet-lagged me made a phone call home from there at 3am so as not to bother anyone on my floor.

    In the more civilised hours it was quite busy and hummed a bit as people came and went. It’s extremely handy to have this space as there’s not really enough space for much in the rooms themselves.

    Bathrooms are split in to male and female, so I can only tell you about the male bathrooms. The entrance to the showers has the three basins, a urinal, a hairdryer and some soap we well as three individual mirrors. Very clean, too.

    The bathrooms are shared but were absolutely spotless. The photo doesn’t quite show how short on overall space the shower is, but it’s enough and has quite nice shampoo in it, four hooks to hang towels and clothes and little shelf for your own stuff.

    There’s a larger accessible bathroom but I’m not 100 percent convinced it’s as accessible some might hope. There are assistance handles on the toilet but none in the shower and entry into the shower looks a little awkward. Again, super-clean and well maintained.

    There is an ironing corner and iron outside the bathrooms. And on the third floor there’s an outdoor hot tub and a sort of hangout area. You can tell I’m hip with the way the modern kids talk.

    If you don’t have your own flip flops, there’s a vending machine offering those and other things on the ground floor. You’re not far from a few 24-hour shops a block up the hill on Laugavegur, so if you’re in dire need of supplies, you’ll be fine.

    You can take the stairs or the lift to each floor and the lift is big enough for four or five people. The only view you’ll get is from the windows at the back of the building (which also overlook the hot tub) and the front of the building overlooking the street.

    On the ground floor are lockers which are free to use and accessible with your wristband. They’re all the same size and as you can see from the photo will take a pretty decent sized bag and easily fit my cabin bag and cabin-compliant backpack. There’s even a handy step ladder for the higher lockers. You can leave your stuff in here after checkout and there didn’t seem to be any hard time limits and certainly no extra charge. These are also useful if you’ve too much luggage for your Hub.

    Location

    Random street art
    Skólavörðustígur Rainbow Street
    Hallgrimskirkja

    Cityhub Reykjavik is found at Hverfisgata 46, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland. This is one of the main streets of Reykjavik with plenty of food and retail and just a few moments walk from the notorious Skólavörðustígur Rainbow Street and the incredible Hallgrimskirkja cathedral. I say Rainbow Street is notorious because it is lined with shops selling absolute tat. The photo above was taken at 4am which explains the lack of hordes of tourists.

    Reykjavik is very walkable and there is plenty to see without spending a cent. Street art appears on walls of houses and public buildings, there are little streets and nooks and crannies, a spectacular grave yard and a sculpture garden, all of which I took in on my early morning stroll.

    There is plenty to do that you can pay for and a Reykjavik Card will help control your costs. Remember too that during the summer Reykjavik is regularly swamped with cruise ships. On the final day I had there, three large ships berthed in the harbour and there were a lot of people around. On my “free” day there I heard people being incredibly rude to staff in cafes and shops and will definitely try your patience.

    Food and drink

    Kemuri interior
    Reykjavik Roasters

    Reykjavik Roasters: Kárastígur 1, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland (two other locations)

    Close to Cityhub is Reykjavik Roasters, easily the best coffee I had in Reykjavik. There are three locations, but I only made it to this one, housed in a building dating back to 1929. It’s very cosy inside, with a few tables and one big communal table. In my two visits I made new friends on both occasions, so the Icelandic friendliness must rub off on people. Hello Gunther, if you’re reading this.

    Except that mad person who asked if she could get cheap coffee at “a gas station” who I would have fired into the sun but the person in charge on the day politely talked her down. Interestingly the price difference between good coffee and crap coffee is negligible. I went to one other place where the coffee was pretty poor and it was only ISK20 cheaper than Reykjavik Roasters. Two sips and I returned to the latter. No, I won’t name the bad place, they could just have been having a bad day.

    I had breakfast and coffee at Reykjavik Roasters and while it wasn’t cheap – nowhere is in Reykjavik – it was excellent and the coffee was also brilliant (both the latte and Kalita pourover I had were beautifully made, the latter from a guest roaster). Breakfast and two coffees was ISK2800 (~A$35/€20/US$23) which isn’t bad by Nordic standards.

    It’s a great place to sit and while away an hour or two planning your day as they’re open reasonably early and stay open for most of the day.

    Kemuri: Hverfisgata 82, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland

    Kemuri serves vegetarian or vegan options, although I think the latter is mostly to do with whether the dumplings came with butter. They’re famous for Polish-style pierogi dumplings and won the Reykjavik Grapevine’s Best Vegan Meal award.

    I had some dumplings and a flavoured mineral water at Kemuri which was a sobering ISK4390 (~A$55/€31/US$36). There’s also soup and on the day I was there, it was borscht. I was sorely tempted.

    The food was spectacular and the person behind the counter, Gringo (I think), was brilliant, doing me a special so I try could a wider-than-usual variety of the dumplings. One of my choices was out of stock and he was most apologetic. I didn’t mind a bit.

    I didn’t say I was a journalist or intending to review, he was just really nice and very patient with me as I managed to get myself a bit confused in my tired state.

    There are a couple of tables or you can sit in the window like I did. The day was sunny and it was a nice place to sit. In addition to the dumplings and soup, you can enjoy some cakes and sweets as well in the sunshine. Some cool art on the wall, a bit of neon lighting and a relaxed vibe made it a really nice place to hang out. Great taste in music, too.

    Brauð & Co (many locations in Reykjavik and Copenhagen)

    A very good cinnamon roll at Brauð & Co was ISK890 (~$A11/€6.50/US$7.30) which is, again, reasonable when compared to nearby countries that don’t have to import everything. They bake all day every day and will also sell you a pretty decent filter coffee.

    The website says they don’t use any preservatives or other nasties and only organic flour is used. Icelandic butter and sea salt reinforce the idea that this is not a bakery that bakes any old thing.

    Don’t be a jerk and buy your baked goods at Brauð & Co and then take them into Reykjavik Roasters like so many idiots I saw doing. Just rude.

    Reykjavik

    Getting to Reykjavik is pretty easy – Icelandair connects the country with many European and North American cities. A variety of full and low-cost airlines fly in from all over Europe, Canada and the US and also from places such as Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

    Reykjavik’s international airport is Keflavik, about 50km out of town. The best way in to Reykjavik is a choice of two buses. One takes you to and from the bus station, the other does the rounds of the hotels. They cost around €27 per person.

    A taxi to or from the airport is a startling €180.

    You can buy a public transport day ticket in Reykjavik but you may not need it. The city is very compact and easily walkable.

  • 2025 Aston Martin Vantage Review

    2025 Aston Martin Vantage Review

    We spend a week with the V8-powered Aston Martin Vantage – deliberately in bright orange – to see how it stacks up against the competition.

    Words: Peter Anderson
    Images and co-pilot: Blake Currall

    I’ve not had a lot of experience with the Aston range, and that’s mostly on me. I admired the Rapide, DBeverything and Vanquish from afar but just never brought myself to pick up the phone and ask nicely. Thankfully, Aston asked me where the hell I’d been all these years, especially after my first drive of one back in early 2022 that I really rather enjoyed.

    I loved the Vantage F1 and ever since I’d wondered what the car was like without the go-fasterish bits on it. Sure, it’s had an update since and brought with it a bunch of features missing in action on the older car like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto but it’s still a vanilla-ish Vantage.

    Amazingly, I had a choice and those of you who know me in real life will be further astonished that I chose this Cosmos Orange unit over a more traditional green. Because you only live once.

    How much is an Aston Martin Vantage and what do I get?

    Aston Martin Vantage Coupe: $410,000 + ORC:

    The Vantage coupe kicks off at $410,000 which is around the price of a Porsche 911 GTS, give or take. Even a cursory glance at the photos on this page will suggest a liberal application of options and ya-huh, that suggestion is reality:

    • Bowers & Wilkins Audio System
    • Black Wings Badges
    • Brake Disc Type – Carbon
    • Centre Finisher – Satin Carbon Fibre
    • Leather Colour – Contemporary
    • Carpet Colour – Contemporary
    • Paint – Q – Special
    • Headlining – Contemporary Alcantara
    • Lower Trim inlay – Carbon
    • Carbon Fibre Lightweight Seat
    • Roof Panel – Carbon Fibre Gloss
    • Contrast Stitching
    • Smoked Rear Lamp
    • Carbon Pack – Upper
    • Carbon Pack – Lower
    • Upper Trim inlay – Carbon
    • 21 Y Spoke Forged – Satin Black DT

    So there’s not a heap left standard, with a lot of carbon fibre added in and some bling removed. Despite the plush seats getting the hoof and replaced with carbon buckets, it remains comfortable. If you spec this up on the website, you don’t get a price, so I’m assuming it’s a lot and down to negotiation.

    The exterior colour is a Q colour. Q is the advanced personalisation department at Aston, sort of like Ferrari’s bespoke department where you can pretty much choose any old colour you like and match it with your favourite tie or socks or yacht or whatever. And yes, Q is a Bond reference.

    There is an impressive level of customisation in this car, more than I thought practical for such a small company, but I guess when you’re asking people to stump up north of four hundred grand, you better be able to give them exactly what they want.

    Do you like coffee? I’ve done something a bit different on the Youtube channel, so have a look here: https://theredline.com.au/2025/07/10/video-london-coffee-adventure/

    Look and Feel

    The refreshed interior is much nicer than the pre-facelift car’s although the hefty options applied to this one may have muddied the waters a little. Carbon fibre bucket seats are very hit and miss but these were a hit, although you have to be extremely careful about rushing an entry as my poor wife found out the hard way. Once in, though, they were beautifully comfortable, the blue Alcantara somehow working despite the flashes of blue leather and orange stitching.

    I much prefer the reorganised centre stack. A new 10.25-inch screen – it looks small because it’s quite wide – is clearer and backed by less ambitious and therefore less terrible software. The ageing version Mercedes’ COMAND system has thankfully been shown the door. I still think Android Automotive would be a better choice here (and I’m an Apple guy) but it’s still better than the old clunker.

    Instead of the previous orthogonal wheel, there’s a more traditional flat-bottomed round wheel and I don’t know how I feel about that. I really liked that wheel in the F1 I drove…anyway, it’s a nice wheel, I just liked the other one, felt racier.

    This interior also feels more special with fewer obviously cheap plastics and if there are parts from other cars, they’re hard to spot, apart from the Mercedes stalks but as I say in the Emira and Elise videos, who cares? You want stuff that just works and these work.

    The interior door handles are a pain to see in the dark and they’re really small but that’s about the worst of it.

    For the update, Aston redesigned the front end. I personally felt the old one was a bit weak, with a lot of Ferrari Roma mixed with Nissan Z. it wasn’t ugly but it didn’t have the presence of its predecessors or its brethren. The new grille is more Aston, the lights make more sense in the sheetmetal and I like it a lot.

    The side strake in the front quarter panels is back and looking superb as it integrates with the doors. I love the way the doors open, the trademark Aston swan movement.

    I can’t believe how much I adored this colour. I would not buy this car in this colour, let me be clear, I would prefer it in something more muted, more Aston, but it was so much fun just to look at. It works beautifully with the lines, as though the inherent beauty of the proportions and the loudness of the colour worked hand in hand rather than against each other. It’s a neat trick.

    There is some beautiful detailing on this car’s exterior and I love the ducktail wing at the rear, no messy extra accoutrements for this machine. The diffuser looks properly aggressive, the quad exhausts a signal of intent and if you don’t black out the badges for Cosmos Orange you’re doing it wrong. It really is spectacular, from grille to exhaust tip. This is the sort of car people build houses around so they can look at it.

    And incredibly, between the ducktail and the diffuser, Aston says there’s 70kg of downforce at just over 320km/h. This thing can do 320!

    Chassis

    The Vantage rides on Aston’s long-serving aluminium-intensive platform and in this particular car, the steel brakes are replaced with expensive carbon ceramics. These lop 27kg of unsprung mass off (the Vantage has a 1700kg kerb weight), so are not a bad investment if you want to reduce the standard car’s bulk.

    Tyres are courtesy of Michelin, with AML-coded Pilot Sport 5S rubber, measuring a massive 275/35 R21 at the front and 325/30 R21 at the rear. It’s quite something seeing over two feet of rubber from behind the car (if you’re crouched low enough). 

    There is also a recalibrated active diff, a new Launch Control system (untested, the week I had this car, the weather was horrific)(okay the real reason is that I hate using launch control systems, I have too much mechanical sympathy) and the ability to dial in how much wheelspin you get out of the launch system.

    Aston also says the new dampers have five times the “bandwidth of force” of the previous model and these dampers work together with structurally stiffer rear end (up 29 percent) and new under trays front and rear which both add more rigidity. The extra bandwidth means the engineers have more choice on damper settings.

    Front brakes measure a colossal 400mm and the rears 360mm. In standard guise and carbon guise the discs are drilled and Aston says the pedal weight has been tweaked for increased feel. One thing that had me laughing every time I saw it was the handbrake caliber which is larger than the front calipers on a Corolla.

    Engine and Drivetrain

    The Vantage’s AMG-sourced M177 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 remains one of my favourites of all time. Flexible, indomitable and with a torque reserve you’ll never exhaust, it’s also incredibly characterful. In this iteration it offers up a thunderous 489kW at 6000rpm and 800Nm between 2000 and 5000rpm.

    Aston says power is up by 30 percent and torque 15 percent and claims it’s the biggest power jump between models the company has ever implemented. My only complaint. is that the engine bay could be more attractive and with neater welds but as co-pilot Mark Dewar reminded me, we’ve seen worse on a Ferrari. The black triangular brace, though…phwoar.

    As well as the brace, Aston has fitted bigger turbos, more aggressive cams and a whopper of an exhaust system in concert with a bunch of detail changes. 0-100 is over in 3.4 seconds according to Aston and I have no reason to disbelieve that.

    The engine is really burrowed into the car, too, responsible for it being front mid-engined and therefore giving the Vantage a claimed 50:50 weight distribution.

    Aston chose the ZF eight-speed – honestly, you could write a doctorate thesis on how good this gearbox is – for transmission duties, sending power to the giant rear wheels. Compared to the previous version of the Vantage, there’s a shortened final drive (3.083:1) and recalibrated shifts (ie they’re faster). The gearbox itself is located at the rear axle to help push the weight rearward

    Driving

    This thing is an absolute treat to drive. Getting in reminds me of its obvious competitor, AMG’s own GT family, but this car feels more together (admittedly the last time I drove a GT anything was 2020). The carbon seats are so good but as I’ve already mentioned, you need to be careful you clear them on the way in.

    There is plenty of adjustment, with the optional seats losing powered sliding but I can’t be bothered caring about that. The new wheel is lovely if a bit fat for some folks but I really love the paddles which have a lovely haptic clunk when you pull them, unlike say, an Audi R8 (RIP) or Lotus Emira.

    Firing up, the engine has a lovely little whirr and the 4.0-litre barks into life. The toddler-tongue gear selector works well and is easy to understand, rocking back and forth depending on the gear you want. You also get a gear quickly which is important when you’re manoeuvring a car that isn’t exactly endowed with a small turning circle.

    In Sport mode – which is as low it goes, apart from wet – the Vantage is quite happy. You do get a lot of road noise on bad surfaces because there is a phenomenal amount of rubber underneath you, but it’s comfortable and easy. The chunky torque is well managed by the ZF’s calibration and what I like about this transmission is that it’s more obedient to commands than in the current M3 or M5. Or Audi RS6 for that matter. It’s like Aston is more confident in its ability to shift hard and fast.

    Annoyingly, the Bowers and Wilkins stereo’s extra speaker on the middle of the dash means that sunny days deliver even more reflections. Given the weather was vile when I had it, I didn’t notice that until the morning I returned it. On the upside the lovely wing mirrors are surprisingly big and therefore functional. Which is handy given the limited over-the-shoulder visibility.

    I did find a break in the weather and took it somewhere fun and the same fun place I took the F1 I drove a couple of years ago. I found the F1 to be excellent to drive, I really loved it. The power in that car was somewhere between the old and the new but this updated V8 is something else.

    The new gearbox and diff work the rear wheels very hard out of corners. There is an appreciable difference between Sport and Sport+ (no Track on the road for me)(fight me) but there’s enough slip in Sport+ for the Vantage to feel just the right kind of loose.

    Its V8 bark really dominates the experience but I really feel the new car has more in the chassis and it feels more of a cohesive piece. The faster steering, the little bit extra out of the diff, the more cooperative gearbox all prove very entertaining but it’s more controllable. While the F1 was better, my colleagues said the standard car bordered on wayward when under pressure. Not so much in this car.

    The brakes are colossally effective, of course, and turn in is further aided by the clever diff and the updated braking system. It’s so much fun to hustle and as the weather closed back in, I was left frustrated I couldn’t explore more.

    Redline Recommendation

    This car is vastly more convincing both in itself and in company. It feels more aggressive than the Roma, more comfortable than the AMG GT and more interesting than the 911, all while keeping up with each of them. It must be incredible on track with all those detail changes. And if it wasn’t Cosmos Orange but a more traditional Aston colour, it would be superb as a sleeper.

    It’s fast, it’s fun and it feels more luxurious and expensive than before, better matching its substantial price. The more powerful and even sharper Vantage S was just announced a couple of weeks ago so that thing will be bonkers. But as more of an all-rounder – at least as all-round as a two-door sports car can be – the Vantage is incredibly competitive.

  • Video: London Coffee Adventure

    Video: London Coffee Adventure

    The first Redline coffee/travel video is live.

    London doesn’t have good coffee, heaps of people tell me that. And yet…it does. Join me for a cool spring day wandering around London and navigating through three different cafes and a few free things you can do on a spare day in London.

    I spent a day in London a little while back and had a day to myself wandering around and navigating by coffee shops.

    I am notorious in both my motoring line of work and my day job line of work for being an insufferable coffee snob so I thought I may as well turn that into something useful to other people. Let me know what you think!

  • Side by side: Toyota Corolla GR and Yaris GR

    Side by side: Toyota Corolla GR and Yaris GR

    Two hot hatches. Three drivers. A whole lot of fun. The team takes on the two Toyota Gazoo Racing hot hatches, the GR Yaris and GR Corolla.

    Words: Peter Anderson
    Images: Blake Currall
    Co-pilots: Mark Dewar, Blake Currall

    Two hot hatches. Three drivers. A whole lot of fun. The team takes on the two Toyota Gazoo Racing hot hatches, the GR Yaris and GR Corolla.

    Toyota, typically, has been methodically beavering away at A Thing. For the first twenty years of this century – give or take – the Japanese giant stamped out the dullest, most dependable machines on planet Earth.

    They were crushingly dull but sold by the millions and rightly so. Most folks couldn’t give a rat’s what makes their car go as long as it turns on every time you start it. The company basically invented hybrid and their whole go to market strategy for hatches and sedans marched towards electrification.

    But the barbs were starting to stick to Toyota and the board were getting a bit antsy about the brand’s image. President Akio Toyoda (yes, related to the founder) had been in charge of the company since 2009 and weathered a recall of 8.5 million vehicles and being hauled in front of the United States Congress in 2010 to tell them how things would get better.

    That all took a while. In 2016, without any of us really knowing, Toyoda-san signed off on a car that would change the way a lot of people would look at his company. The Yaris GR was born. Toyoda was already famous for being a massive hoon, partly because of his involvement in the delightfully bonkers V10-powered Lexus LFA. Toyoda even carries the status of Master Driver at Toyota having raced under the name Morizo Kinoshita. He was heavily involved in the development of the Yaris, too.

    Then there was the (in)famous and now-legendary public pronouncement – no more boring cars. In the space of a few years, Toyota went from having nothing interesting for people who like driving to having a portfolio of performance cars and a flagship performance brand in Gazoo Racing.

    In the rear-wheel drive sports car corner we’ve got the A90 Supra and second-generation GR86. In the all-wheel drive rally weapon corner we got the Yaris GR. And finally we got the Corolla GR, a classic hot hatch in the GTi mould.

    We think buyers roll into a dealer looking at both of those cars. So we put them together to see what’s different and why you’d choose one over the other.

    Please bear in mind that we tested the pre-facelift MY2024 versions of both cars. Yes, I’ve been busy.

    Toyota GR Yaris

    MY2024 Yaris GR: $51,390
    MY 2024 Yaris GR Rallye: $56,390 + ORC

    MY2025 Yaris GR GT: $55,490
    MY2025 Yaris GR GTS: $60,490

    The Yaris GR is like a modern-day Ford Escort Cosworth, a car I was obsessed with as a teenager. I nearly wrote kid, but I’m too old to get away with that. The Escort was a Frankenstein car, knocked together from (mostly) Sierra bits, right down to having a longitudinal rather than transverse engine.

    While I wouldn’t say Toyota went that far with the Yaris, it is half-Yaris, half-Corolla with a purpose-built turbo three-cylinder and barely any shared body panels with its nameplate base car. It was made for the WRC but a little global health crisis pretty much killed that version of the rules, leaving the GR Yaris a bit of an orphan. A homologation special for homologation that never happened.

    But, when it comes down to it, the bewinged Escort and chunked-up Yaris were both built for rally stages. So yeah, I reckon the description holds.

    The Yaris comes in two flavours, the entry-level and the Rallye. I asked for the Rallye spec partly because last time I drove one, it had the Dunlop tyres from the basic car rather than the Michelin Pilot Sport 4s. On the base car, they allow for an extremely solid level of hooliganism that I appreciate, but I wanted to see what PS4s did for the sharper Rallye in the real world.

    The Rallye’s upgrades from the standard car include the tyres, 18-inch BBS wheels (replacing the Enkeis), limited-slip diffs front and rear, red brake calibers, uprated springs and dampers heated seats and a few bits and bobs. It’s mostly about the mechanical package to deliver a sharper drive over the standard car.

    Toyota GR Corolla

    MY2024 GR Corolla GTS: $64,190 (manual)

    MY2025 GR Corolla GTS: $67,990 (manual) $79,490 (automatic)

    Pretty much as soon as the Yaris landed, the internet started screaming for a GR Corolla. It made a lot of sense. The Yaris is tiny, impractical for families and both the i30N and Golf GTI exist. The Corolla’s global appeal endures, even in our SUV-mad world and as a hatchback, doesn’t look half bad.

    Toyota had less to do making the GR Corolla. For a start, it’s actually a Corolla rather than the mix-and-match build of the Yaris. Technically it should probably be cheaper than the Yaris because it would be less expensive to build, but that just wouldn’t be cricket, Yaris owners would howl about their resale getting smashed.

    So it’s basically a tough-looking Corolla with new front and rear ends, skirts and wings along with a lot of plastic cladding to widen the body and fit everything in. Wheels you won’t see on any other Corolla and of course, the Honda-style triple exhaust.

    The interior is largely the same as a ZR Corolla but has nicer, grippier seats, alloy pedals and a manual shifter, something you won’t find anywhere else in the Corolla range (I think). It has all the same pros and cons as any other Corolla hatch – including the tight rear seat – but overall it’s a more comfortable car than the Yaris.

    I mention the ZR because the GR is based on just that spec, with LED headlights, auto high beam, LED fog lights front and rear, dual-zone climate control, keyless entry and start, a heated steering wheel and heated front seats.

    The GR also gets 18-inch Enkei alloy, Yokohama Advans, triple exhaust outlets and Torsen LSDs at both ends like the Yaris Rallye/GTS.

    What are they like to drive?

    GR Yaris Rallye

    Engine: 1.6-litre turbocharged three-cylinder
    Power: 200kW
    Torque: 370Nm
    Transmission: six-speed manual, all-wheel drive.

    Let’s start with the Yaris. Before this, I’d had a good amount of seat time in both versions as well as a week with the Rallye on the wrong tyres (on that point, I think Michelins weren’t always easy to come by after the Yaris’s initial launch and the thrashing these cars got meant they needed whatever rubber was available).

    Stepping into the Yaris, you sit quite high, like the Recaro-equipped first and second-gen Ford Fiesta STs. It does limit taller folks a little from enjoying the delights of the smaller car, so bear that in mind if you’re a towering inferno of a person. It also means a slightly awkward position for the rest of us, with a funny wheel-pedal-shifter relationship that takes a little bit of getting used to. But it works. And whatever you do, make it work.

    The day we had to thrash was damp and dismal but the rain had held off long enough for dry tarmac. Settling in took all of ten seconds and I was immediately able to absolutely throw the Yaris down the road without having to think too hard about it.

    It’s one of those cars that activates your sixth sense for keying the performance to the conditions, something I noticed the first time I drove one around the Sutton Road facility in the ACT so beloved of Toyota. It takes no time at all to find a comfortable level and give it the whip.

    It’s an incredibly quick car for its size, the turbo three-cylinder conjuring up an improbable amount of driveable power. It’s not what you’d call super-linear but it gets up and goes surprisingly quickly and you’ve got a ton of torque to play with so you don’t have to constantly change gear.

    The Rallye/GTS’s pair of Torsen LSDs make it a much sharper machine, with a lot more mechanical grip over the Dunlop-shod/open-diff GT. That car definitely has its charms – it’s delightfully loose even on dry tarmac – the GTS counters with a very different, sharper drive. That in itself is a genuine, colossal achievement if you ask me. The same car with two distinct characters, yours to choose. I really like that.

    More grip, better turn-in, better exit. The car rotates happily in just about any situation. There’s a twisty dial on the console that takes you from Normal to Sport to Track. I was perfectly happy in Sport all of the time. Track made the car feel tighter and given I like a bit of movement, I stayed away from Track, but quickly understood the point of it.

    It’s a ripper of a car and if we had to wait this long for something this good, it was worth it.

    GR Corolla GTS

    Engine: 1.6-litre turbocharged three-cylinder
    Power: 221kW
    Torque: 370Nm
    Transmission: six-speed manual, all-wheel drive.

    Next, the Corolla. Immediately this car feels more normal. It probably helped I hadn’t long before had a Corolla ZR hybrid, a car that we’re not supposed to like but I do. Everything is easy to find and as a daily, it’s more refined overall and easier to live with. Bigger boot than the Yaris, better seating position, a few more little niceties.

    On the face of it, the Corolla seems more like the Golf GTI of more recent years (I have not driven the most recent Golf 8 refresh, so restrict your thinking to 8.0 back to 6). A car aimed at folks my age and a bit younger, but who have given up a bit and are more on the luxury end of buying, treating themselves. Hmmm. Let’s see how this pans out.

    Like the Yaris, the interior is a bit plasticky and Toyota just can’t help themselves with Fisher Price rocker switches I thought had long since been banished, but there are still a couple, as there are in the Yaris. The seats are great and Toyota is doing well with front seats in there upper-end cars these days, I feel like at some point someone bought a Peugeot and went, “Yeah, like that.”

    You feel a bit of Yaris in the clutch action as you dip it for the start, and the suitably notchy shifter feels instantly familiar. As does the mild rasp of the turbo triple as you fire it up. Start it rolling and oh my goodness, how did I get to be going this fast already?

    So much of the Yaris DNA is in this car, so much that I think it’s just plain GR DNA. The Supra feels great really quickly, too, so the range feels like that golden period of BMW M cars when Albert Biermann was put in charge, before he went to play with Hyundais on the Nurburgring. The consistency across the GRs feels like the M2, M4 CS and M5 under his leadership – same but different and clearly built by hoons for hoons.

    Its extra weight is smothered by the extra power. The 5.3-second 0-100km/h is testament to that, the extra power coming from freer flowing exhaust with that extra central outlet, bigger fuel pump and oil cooler capacity and just plain old more boost (up to 25 psi).

    The Corolla loves corners and given its longer wheelbase, inspires even more confidence. You feel like it’s more likely to catch you than throw you off the road. You can cover ground very quickly in this car, but it feels more together in the sense that there’s less movement – and, as you might expect, an ever-so-slightly softer turn-in. We’re talking two tenths of bugger-all here, but enough to notice.

    The Yaris feels like it gets off corners better, but honestly, they’re difficult to split. And that is where we come to say the glorious words:

    Choosing one over the other is not going to be a mistake.

    Unless there is a super-niche reason you’d need one or the other, they’re both incredible fun. The Corolla is more liveable day-to-day, no question, but nobody who has a Yaris GR is buying another car because they can’t stand it in traffic. Degrees. Tiny ones.

    I would – just – choose the Yaris. I don’t have to carry kids around, it’s usually just me and my beloved. The Yaris is tiny, which is my kind of car – I love these small hot hatches having owned a Clio 172, a Peugeot 205 GTI and 306 GTI-6. The Yaris is as special to drive as each of these in the right time and place but with all-wheel drive, less scary.

    And my co-pilots Blake and Mark?

    Mark, with whom I have spent a lot of time in all kinds of machinery and who is a very accomplished driver, was more in favour of the Corolla. “I liked the Corolla as the Yaris is mischievous. Fun and involving but more likely to bite if not well-guided. Corolla is a bit less on edge for me. Second run on 30/70 [front-rear drive bias] was the best.”

    See? It’s a split decision.

    Blake, snapper extraordinaire and former-now-sometime racing driver says the Yaris is hands-down more fun, more up on its toes, more of a scamp that feels a little unhinged thanks to the short wheelbase. He concedes the Corolla is arguably the better car, but a bit too sterile and grown up for his taste.

    Blake drives incredible cars all the time and looked like he was having the time of his life in these things.

    And so as the day drew to a close and weather brought with it mist and rain, I sent them both ahead of me on a stretch of road we all know well. Entirely coincidentally, I followed them in a GR-adjacent machine, Mark’s immaculate second-gen BRZ, the Subaru version of the GR86.

    Yeah, the GR86 is more different these days, but close enough for my purposes. Same easy-to-use gearbox, very different character but a car you can grab a hold of and send, although in this weather with a lot more care and caution.

    The Yaris and Corolla? Long, long gone. Nothing can stop you having fun in these things.

  • Roma-replacing Ferrari Amalfi unveiled

    Roma-replacing Ferrari Amalfi unveiled

    Ferrari’s entry-level Roma has had its time and has been sent to the sweet life in the sky, replaced by the coastal-themed Amalfi.

    It’s not really a replacement, more of a medium-level facelift, but the new Amalfi looks pretty good. Ferrari says it’s their grand tourer – and who am I to deny them? – going up against things like Aston’s Vantage and if you squint a bit, the Bentley Continental GT.

    The Roma’s exterior design was something of a departure for Ferrari, with McLaren-esque surfacing that I thought worked quite well, but not everyone was convinced. It was good fun to drive and I liked the minimalist interior.

    The front end has had a mild reworking, with an updated face echoing the 12 Cilindri but more successful and resolved. The rear looks roughly the same and if I were in charge, I wouldn’t touch it either.

    Inside is where the bigger changes have been wrought, but again, it’s not revolutionary. There are still three screens laid out across the dash, with the instrument pack and media screens both updated and another screen in front of the passenger. But it all looks a bit more sleek and in place, if that makes any sense.

    More exciting for a lot of buyers will be the return of physical buttons on the steering wheel and not those idiotic touch-sensitive ones. Glory be.

    The annoying gear selector slider, set among three sliders to look like an old gated shifter, remains. It all looks good but I don’t like it.

    The Amalfi’s interior, like the Roma’s, presents a lot better in the flesh, I would say, and it is a really lovely cabin, working to focus on the drive rather than how much crap they can cram into a luxury car.

    Engine and Drivetrain

    Bizarrely, Ferrari hasn’t offered up a picture of the engine which is a colossal shame because Ferrari is that rare company that knows how to dress an engine.

    The twin-turbo 3.9-litre V8 continues its glorious life spinning up 471kW at a lovely 7500rpm while delivering 760Nm of torque between 3000 and 5750rpm. Ferrari’s eight-speed twin-clutch also continues on.

    Ferrari says it will headbutt 320km/h and complete the 0-100km/h sprint in 3.3 seconds. 0-200km/h is over just nine seconds.

    Chassis

    Front brakes are 390mm, the rears 360mm and contribute to a claimed 100km/h to zero stopping distance of 30.8 metres (no doubt the 245/35s and 285/35s are useful here). 200 to zero stopping distance is 119.5, both impressive. With a 50:50 weight distribution and a dry weight of 1470kg (let’s call it 1600-ish with a full tank of fuel and fluids on board), it’s light for a modern car.

    The Amalfi will be along at some point in Australia as European and American customers no doubt hoover up this lovely evolution of an already-lovely car.