Subaru Impreza: Holding the line

The Sport edition is the last Impreza standing.

Subaru Impreza Sport

Price:  $32,490
Powertrain and performance:  2.0-litre four-cylinder horizontally opposed petrol engine. 115kW/6000rpm, 196Nm/4000rpm. All-wheel drive. 6.6 L/100km.
Vital statistics: Length 4460mm, height 1480mm, width 1775mm, wheelbase 2670mm. Luggage 345 litres. Wheels: 17-inch alloys with 205/50R17 89V tyres.
We like: Solid boxer engine performance, helped along by SI Drive. All-wheel drive for an economical price. Excellent safety specification.
We don’t like: Body design is getting a bit dated. Car competes in a shrinking market segment.

HELLO old friend – how’s life?

In the case of the Subaru Impreza, things are a bit lonely these days.

When it was first introduced back in 1992 as a replacement for the Leone, small cars including five-door hatchbacks were very popular, and as a result at one stage there were up to 16 different versions of the Impreza to choose from.

But now the selection is just a single $32,490 Impreza Sport hatch.

It’s the fault of those darned SUVs, you see, which are now so popular with New Zealand motorists that compact and medium-sized versions currently make up 37 percent of all new vehicle registrations.

In fact this popularity is so great that a year or so ago it prompted one member of the Impreza family to change gender and become a compact SUV called XV.

 Over the years the Impreza  has also been the basis of creation of a couple of the motoring world’s great performance cars, the WRX and STi.

Not only that, but the Impreza’s platform has  also been used for development of several other Subarus currently on sale, including the Levorg wagon and the Forester SUV.

So as the Impreza Sport  sits there all on its own as the only five-door hatch on every Subaru sales yard, it can reflect on the fact that over the years it has been responsible for development of a good many other models.

And – importantly – the Impreza isn’t finished yet. In fact a few months ago it received a facelift in an effort to remain competitive in the small car category of the kiwi new vehicle market.

It’s had an exterior cosmetic overhaul via changed frontal design and new 17-inch alloy wheels, performance potential has been improved thanks to installation of Subaru’s Intelligent Drive (Si) system, and safety has been improved via the marque’s EyeSight driver assist feature.

That’s significant improvement to a hatch that appeals as perhaps the value package of the small car sector – remember, the model is all-wheel drive which usually adds several thousand to the price of any car.

From a performance perspective, on paper the Subaru doesn’t look to be anything special. It’s 2.0-litre horizontally opposed engine offers 115kW of power and 196Nm of torque, which is bettered by a number of other small cars including Ford Focus, Hyundai i30 and Toyota Corolla.

But boxer engines are inherently excellent performers, because their lower profile in the engine bay provides a more even distribution of power to the rest of the drivetrain.  That’s the case with this Impreza, which can turn on quite robust performance when required, particularly when the SI Drive is moved from the everyday Intelligent mode to Sport to enhance performance.

The Impreza’s Lineartronic continuously variable automatic continues to be one of the best around, and it offers manual mode, and I personally enjoy a push-button hill hold function that can be used to remain stationary when stopped at, say, a set of lights on a hill.

I also very much enjoy the EyeSight driver assist system, which uses a pair of ‘eyes’ located on the windscreen in front of the rear-view mirror to continually scan the road ahead and if necessary warn the driver of potential danger ahead. Sometimes I tired of the system’s lane departure warning, but at the end of the day I would much rather have it than not.

It’s worth remembering that the Impreza Sport is a vehicle that retails for less than $32,500, yet standard specification includes an eight-inch infotainment touch-screen, Bluetooth hands-free with both Apple Carplay and Android Auto, dual-zone climate control air conditioning, and reversing camera.

I have a soft spot for the Subaru Impreza, because it has consistently been a very good car.

The first-generation model was launched in 1992 in both four-door sedan and five-door hatch forms, built using a shortened platform of the Legacy. It was immediately recognised for the quality of its drive, which explains why these days there are still plenty of them used by enthusiasts in club rallying events.

The second-generation version launched in the early 2000s wasn’t available as a hatch, with Subaru preferring to go the way of the sedan and wagon instead. But that changed six years later when the third generation model was offered as a sedan and hatch.  When the fourth-generation model was launched in 2012 the body shapes continued to be restricted to sedan and hatch, with the wagon duties passing on to a new model Subaru named Levorg.

We’re now on to the fifth generation, released worldwide in 2016 and which was the first Subaru to be built on a new global platform that offered more than 70 per cent more torsional rigidity, and which is now used on all Subaru models.

And now that model has been facelifted – even though the constantly changing preferences of the motoring public have forced a reduction in the Impreza selection in New Zealand to just the single model.

So how’s life, old friend? It’s a bit lonely, but that one hatchback is keeping alive a strong Subaru pedigree.

Subaru XV: In search of middle ground

Where is the centre of the North Island? We use the smallest Subaru SUV to reach that spot.

Subaru XV Premium
Price:  $42,490.
Powertrain and performance:  2.0-litre four-cylinder horizontally opposed petrol engine; 115kW/6000rpm, 196Nm/4000rpm. All-wheel drive.
Vital statistics: Length 4465mm, height 1615mm with roof rails, width 1800mm, wheelbase 2665mm. Luggage 310 litres.
Wheels: 18-inch alloys with 225/5 R18 tyres.
We like: Balanced ride and handling, ground clearance, substantial feel, safety specification.
We don’t like: Body shape starting to date, so is the engine.

SORRY Wellington,  but we’re reminded of that old joke.

Question:  How many Wellingtonians does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: Just one – they simply hold on to the bulb and the whole world revolves around them.

While Wellington often seems to regard itself as the centre of everything, in fact our capital city isn’t even the centre of New Zealand – well, geographically anyway.

That honour goes to Nelson, which has a monument on the top of Botanical Hill which proclaims the spot to  the geographic centre of our country. But that’s not entirely true either – the official spot is actually about 50km away in the middle of Golden Downs Forest.

Mind you, even Nelson’s claimed central location is better than that suggested a few years ago by scientists who said that if all of New Zealand’s continental shelf is included in the calculations, then the country’s geographic centre should be located 11km north-west of Greytown in Wairarapa.

It’s tempting to think that if said scientists regard the sea bed as part of New Zealand’s land mass, then maybe they should attempt to live there...

There’s always been some debate about the exact location of the centre of the North Island, too. Because of its Te-Ika-a-Maui shape, various claims have been made that the centre is at Waharoa north of Matamata, and at Horahora near Cambridge, and at the base of Mt Titiraupenga in the middle of Pureora Forest Park.

Personally we’re in favour of the Pureora location, because we love the story about how it was located.

In 1961 a Taupo surveyor created a cardboard cut-out of the North Island, bent it slightly to take into account the curvature of the earth, then suspended it using a pin and thin nylon. When a perfect balance was obtained, the spot where the pin was stuck was deemed the geographic centre of the island. As good a way as any, huh?

During our research we discovered there’s a plinth deep in the Pureora Forest that marks that spot – so we decided we should find it. And we further decided that to find this perfectly central location we should use a vehicle brand that is all about balance.

So we chose Subaru. After all, all its models are all-wheel drive. They are all powered by boxer engines with low centres of gravity. As a result, all the brand’s vehicles are among the most balanced on the market.

Our research further told us that actually getting to the official centre of the North Island is a bit of a mission, especially in the middle of winter, because there are several kilometres of rough unsealed road to be negotiated. So we felt that removed Subaru’s lower-riding Impreza, WRX, Levorg and Legacy models out of the selection, leaving an SUV choice of XV, Forester or Outback.

We got our hands on an XV, which in essence is a jacked-up and SUV-ised version of the Impreza five-door hatch, complete with hard plastic bodyshell protection, bigger wheels and tyres, and perhaps most importantly a 220mm ride height.

Our XV was a good one, too. A top $42,490 Premium model that has just undergone a minor facelift that has seen a bit of cosmetic change, some minor powertrain adjustments, and improvements to the brand’s EyeSight driver assist technology.

The XV is one of two Subaru models – the other is the Forester – that have recently also become available as an eBoxer mild hybrid.

But for our assignment our XV was the conventional version, powered by a 2.0-litre four cylinder boxer engine that offered 115 kW of power and 196Nm of torque.

So where to go? We were instructed to drive along SH30 between Te Kuiti and Whakamaru, turn off the highway at a dot of a place called Barryville to end up at a DOC facility at Pureora, then enter the forest park itself along an unsealed route called Link Rd.

This we duly did, and it wasn’t long before we were really appreciating the extra ground clearance as we picked our way along a route that got increasingly rough.  The, just as we were beginning to worry that somehow we’d missed our destination, we reached a turnoff signposted Centre of North Island Rd.

Then after a short drive down an even rougher piece of roading, we reached a carpark where we parked our XV and walked 300 metres through bush to the plinth.  It was located in a little clearing, sitting alongside DOC signage that indicates various walking and cycling tracks in the area.

Truth be told, it was all a little underwhelming. Maybe, we thought, considering just how the location had been found close to 60 years ago, the centre of the North Island could have been better marked not by a concrete plinth – but by a big sculpture representing a pin....

So we turned around the drove home again, scrabbling our way along the rough and very wet Link Rd, before finally getting our by now very muddy XV Premium  back onto SH30.

The Subaru XV is an unassuming sort of small SUV. It does come in for criticism from some quarters for a lack of power, but we feel this is often because the critics don’t quite understand how boxer engines work.

Granted, our XV would no doubt offer improved performance if it were fitted with  the 2.5-litre engine from the slightly larger Forester SUV – which is going to happen in North America where the XV is called Crosstrek – but even with 2.0-litre power the vehicle has a strong feel about it.

In typical Subaru fashion, this vehicle enjoys being worked, both on the road and off it. Which is just as well, because the boxer engine does need to be worked.

Even thought the XV’s interior dimensions are the same as the Impreza hatch, it feels a lot more substantial. Maybe it’s the higher ride height and the fact that at the Premium level it is shod with 18-inch wheels and tyres, but this Subaru feels a lot bigger than it actually is.

And that potentially positions the XV as the most offroad-ready small SUVs currently on the market, to the extent we’d be happier taking one off the seal than we might do in such product as Mazda CX-3, Hyundai Kona, Kia Seltos and Hyundai Venue.

Toyota Corolla Hybrids: Form versus function

Twin-test time, with the Toyota Corolla hybrid in sedan and hatchback formats.

Prices: GX hatch (as tested) $33,490, SX sedan $35,490. An SX version of the hatch has also just been introduced, at $35,490.
Powertrains and performance: 1.8-litre four cylinder  petrol engine, 72kW at 5200rpm, 142Nm at 3600. Combined with Toyota hybrid system for total system output of 90kW. Front-wheel drive. Hatch 4.2 L/100km, 97 g/km CO2, sedan 3.5 L/100km, 81 g/km CO2.
Vital statistics: Hatch: length 4370mm, width 1790mm, height 1435mm, wheelbase 2640mm. Sedan: length 4630mm, width 1780mm, height 1435mm, wheelbase 2670mm. Luggage: hatch 208 litres, sedan 470 litres.
We like: Hatch: better looks, better drive. Sedan: more interior room, superior fuel economy.
We don’t like: Hatch: That lack of interior room. Sedan: Those conservative looks. 

THIS is a tale of two Toyota Corolla hybrids – one a hatch, the other a sedan.  We’re comparing one model against the other because it could be said that while one body style puts form before function, the other puts function before form.

The comparison had its beginnings back in 2018 when Toyota New Zealand launched the new 12th generation Corolla hatch, which went on sale in petrol and hybrid forms.

This powertrain choice was important, because it represented the latest step in Toyota Motor Corporation’s grand plan to offer a hybrid version of every popular model by 2025. And especially important for TNZ, because it was known that the Government intended introducing a proposed Clean Car Initiative from 2022.

Remember that? The initiative, introduced in July last year, proposes a Clean Car Standard (a fuel efficiency standard) and a Clean Car Discount (a feebate scheme that would apply a rebate or penalty depending on exhaust emissions), all with a target for 2025 of exhaust emissions of no more than 105 grams per kilometre (g/km) of CO2.

Not much has been heard of a proposal since.  Submissions closed in August last year and presumably are now being considered. Then in February New Zealand First took action to put the kybosh on the whole plan anyway, but the Greens countered by saying they would make it an Election issue.

MMP politics, huh? But what is a constant through all this proposal, submission and debate is the acknowledgement that something has to be done about the role transport plays in the level of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. After all, light vehicles – which are all vehicles of 3.5 tonnes gross vehicle weight or less – account for almost two-thirds of our country’s transport emissions, which in turn account for 20 per cent of all emissions.

So with that background, it was good that Toyota NZ launched the 12th generation Corolla hatch with a choice of variants with petrol-electric hybrid powertrains.  In hatch form the Corolla hybrid has an official average fuel consumption of just 4.2 L/100km and exhaust emissions of 97 g/km of CO2.

That’s way below the Clean Car Initiative’s 105 g/km target for 2025. Corolla has also helped Toyota NZ reduce the average CO2 emissions  by close to 10 per cent across its entire vehicle fleet, because the hatch immediately became among New Zealand’s most popular passenger vehicles, with a high percentage of sales (current 68 per cent) the hybrids.

But as popular as the new Corolla hatch has been, it also has some glaring faults. It has a lovely exterior design, particularly the rear where the hatch gracefully sweeps down from the roofline. But these swept lines also translate to the car’s biggest design issue – a lack of rear space.

The rear seats are cramped for legroom, and with all seats in use there is a mere 208 litres of cargo space under the tonneau cover (300 litres in the top ZR model which carries a tyre repair kit rather than a spare).

In every other respect the new Corolla hybrid is a really good car that offers an excellent drive and which carries leading-edge technology. But the vehicle’s interior function has been compromised by its exterior form, and the end result is a Corolla hatch that is not quite as good as it should be.

So what to do about it? Toyota has come up with an obvious solution – it has released a sedan version of the Corolla that offers a lot more interior room. Even better, it includes a hybrid variant that is cleaner than even the hatch, with claimed average fuel consumption down to 3.5 L/100km and exhaust emissions a low 81 g/km of CO2.

By the way, as I wrote this article, the news broke about the UK couple who had been allowed to breach the Covid-19 lockdown requirements and had apparently driven non-stop from Auckland to Wellington to attend a funeral. This prompted the mainstream media to speculate whether it was possible to drive this 640 km distance on one tank of fuel.

Well, the Corolla sedan hybrid is so economical that despite the fact its fuel tank carries just 43 litres of petrol rather than the usual 50 litres, theoretically  it could not only be driven from Auckland to Wellington on one fill – but also back to Taupo. That’s impressive. And I’ve got to admit it’s a comforting feeling when you fill up the vehicle and the onboard computer tells you your distance to empty is 1032km.

The sedan is able to achieve better fuel consumption than the hatch not only because its body design is more slippery, but also because whereas the hybrid hatch at GX and SX level has 16-inch wheels shod with conventional Dunlop 205/55 R16 tyres, the sedan (which is only available as an SX) has 15-inch wheels shod with low rolling resistance Bridgestone 195/65 R15 tyres. Overseas experts say such tyres can achieve fuel savings of as much as 15 per cent.

Mind you, I have to say that during a long trip in this sedan, I was unable to achieve an average fuel consumption that was any better than  4.0 L/100km, which is what my wife and I regularly achieve with the Corolla hybrid hatch that we own. And I tried hard, too – I was really looking forward to seeing if I could get the consumption down to at least the claimed 3.6 L/100km open road figure.

I suspect it was all because low rolling resistance tyres or not, it is impossible to achieve any vehicle’s official consumption figures when driving on coarse chip sealed roads that wind through New Zealand’s rolling landscape.

 The sedan is also 260mm longer than the hatch but slightly narrower, and its wheelbase has been extended by 30mm to 2670mm. All this has allowed the load space in the boot to be 470 litres, more than double that of the hatch.

A personal test of any vehicle’s load space is to load my golf clubs into it – you’d be surprised how many vehicles, even some substantial European SUVs, can’t accommodate a bag and clubs side-on.  With the Corolla hatch this task is impossible without first taking the woods out, but with the sedan there’s heaps of room.

Let’s go to the back seats. There’s more room in the sedan back there, too. In the hatch, the gap between the rear of the centre console to the front of the rear seat squab is 230mm, while in the sedan it is 300mm.

Both the hatch and the sedan are powered by the same Toyota hybrid system that combines a 1.8-litre petrol engine with an electric motor to provide a total system output of 90kW, and which is mated to what has to rate as one of the best CVT transmissions on the market.

Overall, it all presents an interesting choice. From the visual perspective, personally I feel the hatch is the more appealing of the two body styles – it has more character to it, while the sedan body shape is smooth to the point of being just a little boring. The hatch is also the more entertaining drive, because it is lighter and has the bigger wheels and tyres.

But what the hatch lacks, the sedan certainly doesn’t.  The hatch doesn’t have sufficient rear legroom or rear cargo space, but the sedan does.  The sedan also has the superior fuel consumption, which is saying something because the hatch is quite capable of returning figures of less than 4 L/100km when driven quietly.

So there we go. In many respects the Corolla hatch leans towards form over function, while the sedan favours function over form. And they’re both hybrids. It’s an excellent choice presented by one (or should that be two?) of the best small cars on the market.

Mazda CX-30 Ltd: Chocks away in best-dressed baby

A flying visit allows new smooth to meet vintage industrial

Base Price:  $50,990
Powertrain and performance:  SkyActiv-G 2.5-litre four cylinder DOHC petrol engine with i-Stop and cylinder deactivation, 139kW/6000rpm, 252kW/4000rpm. All-wheel drive. 6.8 L/100km.
Vital statistics: Length 4395mm, height 1540mm, width 1795mm, wheelbase 2655mm. Luggage 430 litres. Wheels: 18-inch alloys with 215/55 R168 tyres.
We Like: Very attractive styling, sophisticated level of specification, secure and safe drive.
We don’t like: Slightly lumpy ride at the lower speeds. It’s not a coupe, Mazda.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – a phrase that came to mind during this stint with Mazda’s swish new compact SUV, the CX-30.

That’s because we used the vehicle to head to Tauranga and introduce it to a machine 77 years its senior – a Boeing Stearman biplane.

When we parked the smooth Mazda in front of the more industrial American aircraft, the contrast between the two was starkly apparent, because one was streamlined to the extreme, while the other was definitely not.

Of course they are totally differences pieces of transport technology in that one is a new-age motor vehicle and the other is a vintage aircraft, but they are both the result of industrial design excellence of the day.

And visually, they are both highly attractive.

Maybe you ask: How can a 1943 biplane, with its big undercarriage, wings made of wood and fabric that are joined together using struts and wire, and which is powered by a nine-cylinder radial engine that burns through 46 litres of fuel and up to three litres of oil an hour, be considered attractive?

Well…- it just is, that’s how. With its bright yellow wings, silver fuselage and red tail (the US Navy painted them those colours so they were easier to spot whenever one crashed), the Stearman is one of those aircraft that simply looks like it is meant to fly.

And it did too – in its thousands. More than 10,000 of them were built in the 1930s and 1940s as primary trainers, and following the end of World War II a large number were sold on the civilian market for recreational flying. As a result there are a number of them in New Zealand, this example operated by Classic Flyers New Zealand.

Mind you, it has to be said that the Stearman doesn’t offer particularly comfortable flying. It’s interior is spartan to the extreme. An open cockpit means the environment is noisy and windy. When taxiing forward visibility is so limited the pilot has to weave from side-to-side to see where to go.

But once the biplane is in the air, the experience is a joy. As the aircraft trundles along at not much more than New Zealand’s open road speed limit, you appreciate the fact that the Stearman was designed and built for a purpose. As a primary trainer, introducing thousands of young pilots to the world of aviation.

And that makes you wonder if these days, with so many vehicles registered for use on New Zealand’s roads that we have among the world’s highest car ownership statistics, can motoring also still be a joyful experience?

Mazda certainly thinks so. It believes it is still possible for an emotional bond to be created between car and driver. It’s all to do with personal freedom, travel, and the appeal of actually being behind the wheel of a car.

As a result, the Hiroshima-headquartered company aims for autonomous technologies to support, not replace, the driver. While other carmakers might be heading towards ‘machine-centric’ automation, Mazda takes what it calls a ‘human-centric’ position by developing all sorts of electronic aids that are there to help, not dominate.

All of that is the reasoning behind a vehicle design philosophy the company calls Kodo – Soul of Motion.  Call it marketing hype if you will, but it’s a fact that in recent years this philosophy has resulted in creation of some outstanding vehicles.

The latest is this new CX-30. In essence this vehicle is the SUV version of the new Mazda3 hatch. As such it plonks itself into a gap on Mazda’s SUV fleet between the smaller CX-3 and the larger CX-5.

That gap needed to be filled, too. The new vehicle enters a market segment officially known as SUV Compact, which is growing so quickly it is due to take over from SUV Medium as New Zealand’s most popular vehicle segment.

As at the end of April both these segments held a 19 percent market share. But in April itself – albeit a very bad sales month due to the Covid-19 shutdown – SUV Compact claimed a massive 26 percent market share, while SUV Medium held 14 percent.

CX-30 cabin rather more comfortable than Stearman’s …. .but comes second-best for all-round visibility.

The CX-30 has been designed using the Kodo principle, and as a result it has perhaps the best exterior simplicity of form of any of the compact SUVs currently available in this country. In stark contrast to the old Stearman biplane which could hardly be described as streamlined, this Mazda is very smooth to the eye.

It offers a smooth drive, too. Our model for test was the top CX-30, a $50,990 2.5-litre Limited. That’s quite a bit of money for a compact SUV, but it does  carry a lot of kit, particularly from a safety perspective – including Mazda’s i–Activ electronic all-wheel drive system, and a wealth of passive and active driving aids.

These include lane-keep assist, active cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, front and rear cross traffic alert, and active emergency braking that recognises cyclists and pedestrians.  Little wonder then that all this has contributed to the CX-30 being awarded a five-star Ancap rating which included a 99% score for adult occupant protection, the highest ever recorded.

Powering the CX-30 Limited is Mazda’s 2.5-litre SkyActiv-G engine that a lot of New Zealanders have already experienced aboard such product as the CX-5, Mazda3 and Mazda6. In this application it offers 139 kilowatts of power and 252 Newton metres of torque which is ample for a vehicle of this size.

Mazda’s SkyActiv technology has been developed with economy in mind, and as such the 2.5-litre engine features an i-stop system which automatically stops the engine running at places such as the traffic lights, and cylinder deactivation which runs the vehicle on two cylinders when circumstances permit.

All this helps the CX-30 boast an official fuel consumption of 6.8 L/100km – which seems a bit low to me. I rate myself as a careful driver and I couldn’t get better than 8 L/100km. But still, it has to be said even that is very good for a vehicle that is all-wheel-drive.

The CX-30 sits about 45mm higher than a Mazda3, but despite that higher ride the vehicle still offers a secure ride. This is helped along by Mazda’s G-Vectoring Control Plus system that helps make cornering as smooth and comfortable as possible by tweaking engine torque and gently braking the outer front wheel.

The vehicle is also shod with a new concept tyre which has smaller sidewalls and a more rigid tread, which Mazda claims helps give a smoother ride because the tyre distorts less when hitting a bump.

A feature of the new CX-30 is its interior, which is very good. It’s slightly different in design to the Mazda3’s, but offers the same level of specification, including an Active Driving Display with a wide-screen centre display, and a rotary Commander Control on the centre console.

At the Limited specification level the vehicle has a black cabin theme that includes black leather seat trim, which is pretty much the same as that aboard the hatch/sedan.

All in all, the new Mazda CX-30 appeals as an outstanding new entry in the compact SUV market, and it should immediately play a major role in taking that market segment to the lead in the new vehicle sales statistics.

The MMNZ marketing people are advertising the vehicle as combining coupe styling with SUV practicality. I wouldn’t go quite that far, even though the CX-30 definitely appeals as a very good-looking vehicle.

 That’s especially the case when you park it alongside something as lumpy as an old WWII biplane. But then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, huh?