New Cars Road Tests

ROAD TEST: Peugeot 208 GTi

Let’s be honest here; since the original genre-defining 205 GTi, most of the Peugeots that have worn the hallowed Hot Hatch GTi badge have fallen well short of deserving it. That is not to say that Peugeot haven’t built cars worthy of wearing the GTi badge, because they most certainly have – the 306 S16 […]

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New Cars News

NZ Car of the Year finalists announced

The Top Ten finalists for the overall AA/NZ Motoring Writers’ Guild New Zealand New Zealand Car of the Year have been announced. They are, in no particular order: Subaru BRZ, Ford Kuga, Lexus IS, Holden Volt, Hyundai Santa Fe, Volkswagen Golf, Subaru Forester, Holden Commodore VF, Mazda6 and Volvo V40. The finalists will now be voted on by members of the NZ Motoring Writers’ […]

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New Cars Quick Drives

QUICK DRIVE: Lexus IS250 F Sport

For a full Road Test of the Lexus IS300h F Sport click here. It is virtually impossible to talk about any IS without mentioning those confrontational looks – personally we here at Oversteer love them, although admittedly not at first. The vibrant blue of the car we tested here perfectly suited the sweeping, aggressive lines […]

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New Cars Road Tests

ROAD TEST: Holden Commodore SS V-Series Redline

Bogan-tastic! With the release of a new Commodore comes the inevitable V8-powered SS version! And with the addition of the FE3 sports suspension-equipped Redline model to the permanent line up, things would appear to be very promising indeed for Aussie performance fans. Except… they have made it VERY quiet indeed. With the bogan in us […]

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New Cars News

End of the line for Impreza WRX. Soon.

Subaru New Zealand has announced it will mark the end of the line for the current WRX with not one, but two new special editions. The first is the final run of cars in the batches of powered-up specials it has been doing for the last year and a half, starting with the black Ace […]

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New Cars Road Tests

ROAD TEST: Subaru Outback diesel

  The current Subaru Outback diesel was a thoroughly brilliant car that was really only let down in one way: it was too expensive. Now, at a recent launch of the MY14 line up on a beautifully sunny Waiheke Island, Subaru have fixed that particular issue by gouging $5K out of the Outback diesel’s asking […]

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New Cars Quick Drives

QUICK DRIVE: BMW 320d Touring xDrive

The 320d Touring xDrive is every bit as brilliant a car as the more powerful 330d variant we tested previously. Just in a different way. Where the 330d is all power and aggression channeled through a beautifully balanced chassis and a formidably good AWD system, the 320d is more of a finely-honed, precision tool that […]

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First Drives New Cars

FIRST DRIVE: Peugeot 2008

So what makes a vehicle a “Crossover”? Well, apparently “because we say it is” is enough these days. Traditionally accepted thinking on the subject would suggest that a “Crossover” would generally be based on a car platform, with attributes that put a foot in the SUV and People mover camps, such as a high ride […]

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First Drives New Cars

FIRST DRIVE: Skoda Octavia

We here at OVERSTEER have always been quite fond of all things Skoda-ish. The Superb is just that, the Fabia is a wonderfully unpretentious supermini, the Roomster was just brilliantly quirky, the Yeti just plain cool and anything with a RS badge on it was just awesome. And the previous Octavia was just one of […]

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