Car News

With the Holden Commodore ute and Aussie-built V8s now consigned to the history books, the taller pick-up ute has become the new love of those yearning for freedom with space and load-hauling practicality. It’s no surprise then, that in Australia the sales of utilities are now approaching almost 20 per cent of the total market. The two top-selling vehicles are the Toyota Hilux and the Ford Ranger, many in top-specification Wildtrack Ranger and SR5 Hilux form.

Suzuki is furthering its electrified vehicle rollout, embarking on a testing program led by its India-based, partially-owned subsidiary Maruti Suzuki. Maruti Suzuki is committed to bring an electric vehicle (EV) to India by 2020, and in the lead-up has commenced a nation-wide fleet testing program. The test cars are based on the Japan-market Suzuki Wagon R but made at the Gurugram Plant in India.

The Mercedes-Benz Vision Urbanetic is a conceptual self-driving vehicle platform, which supports interchangeable people carrier and cargo lugging modules. Although it looks quite small in the supplied photos, the Urbanetic is actually rather large, measuring up to 5.14 metres from head to tail. The two bodies seem to be at least two metres tall.

The quad-turbocharged 1103kW W16 engine powering the Bugatti Chiron, and now also the Divo, will likely be regarded as the pinnacle of internal combustion outputs by future generations. It will also be the last of its kind. Power outputs for the monster mill have grown steadily since it was introduced in the Veyron 13 years ago, and may well expand further, but Bugatti CEO Stephan Winkelmann has confirmed it won't be replaced once its time is up.

Three smaller challengers to the perennial German luxury leaders all grew in a cooling luxury market in August, with Alfa Romeo, Infiniti and Volvo all posting meaningful increases over their 2017 results. We'll start with Volvo, which shifted 689 cars and held a 0.7 per cent market share, for 83.7 per cent growth over the same month last year. The XC40 was its best-seller with 266 registrations, followed by the XC60 (252) and XC90 (108).