Car Advice

We talk a lot about road, tyre and engine noise when reviewing cars, applauding the quieter vehicles for their clever sound-deadening measures. But these days, it's not enough just to minimise noise in a car – you have to eliminate it entirely. Enter the era of noise cancellation in cars – the same concept utilised in those fancy headphones everyone uses on planes, but extended to an entire car.

In efforts to keep diesel-fuelled engines on the right side of emissions laws, manufacturers are turning to more and more aggressive means of reducing the kind of bad stuff coming out of the tailpipe. And when things like exhaust gas recirculation and diesel particulate filters aren’t cutting the mustard, something called selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is employed.

Learners drivers got a jump start in Sydney this week, getting a practice run at being stopped at a roadside random breath test site with the help of the NSW Police Highway Patrol. The learner driver exercise was part of a monthly event run by the Australian Racing Drivers Club (the operators of Sydney Motorsport Park at Eastern Creek) and Driving Solutions (an advanced driver training company).

With increasingly affordable options available and battery sizes and ranges on the rise, electric cars are becoming more of a mainstay in the Australian car industry. We’re past debating the merits of the cars themselves – we know they’re up to the task, and they’re only going to improve – but questions remain about charging them.

If you're shopping for an SUV, it's likely you want to know a few important things. A good number of seats, an ample amount of power, an affordable price point, reliability, safety and – possibly most importantly – how much of your life you can cram into the boot. Supermarket bags, golf clubs, the family dog, old furniture, new furniture, half of a hardware store – plenty of us will put our car's cargo space to good use throughout its lifetime.