Is there a greater joy in motoring than piloting a brilliantly conceived sportscar along your favourite stretch of road?
As much as the CAR team is enthusiastic to drive every new vehicle launched in our market, when the January issue comes round, sensibility is traded for giddy excitement as we unleash the year’s best performance cars on some of the greatest routes in a country teeming with sensational mountain passes and heady (often deliciously deserted) country roads.
This year, we returned to our home province of the Western Cape and our familiar stomping ground: Clarence Drive to Hemel-en-aarde and onwards through the interior to Gydo Pass before indulging in giggleinducing drag races on an airfield outside Saldanha.
As is custom, our line-up was eclectic, spanning anything from a little supercharged Japanese hot hatch to a British aristocrat, with a sprinkling of German and Asian muscle cars sandwiched in between. The Performance Shootout feature kicks off with a bang on page 38 but, before you sit back and immerse yourself, I’d like to tell you about a change to our long-term test programme.
We’re replacing the 12-month formula with shorter three- and six-month tests. This wasn’t a decision we took lightly but we feel it’s the correct one. When CAR introduced the long-term programme, vehicles required servicing as often as every 5 000 km, which offered the opportunity to assess servicing standards up to four times in a year and 20 000 km. They also broke – regularly – giving us loads to report on.
These days, however, service intervals can span 30 000 km – thus falling outside the remit of the old programme – and modern vehicles are fantastically reliable. Therefore, the original motivations for running cars for a year disappeared. With the new, shorter spans, you’ll still get in-depth coverage of the vehicles used like you would your own car – to take your kids to school, drive to work, go on holidays – but there’ll be more variety, more often. And that means the content will be fresher and more relevant. I would love your feedback on this change at the details below.
Happy motoring!