Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i Leisure Wheels

If, 10 years ago, you had compiled a list of companies that wouldn’t even think about building an SUV, Maserati would have been on it. But times change. Yes folks, Maserati is the latest in a long line of premium sports car manufacturers that have jumped the fence and joined the dark side of handling, where space, practicality and all-wheel drive is king, and performance is a sort of afterthought. But, as we’ve seen many times over the last few months, it is possible to blend all of these things into one package. Cars worth mentioning include BMW’s SUV line-up, the Porsche Macan, Audi RSQ3 and Jaguar F-Pace. The latest sporty SUV to hit South Africa’s shores is called the Levante and it looks superb from every angle. Getting a…

BACK in 1995, the Rugby World Cup was hosted in South Africa. Big, burly and muscled rugby players travelled from all over the world to compete for the William Web Ellis trophy. Among all that testosterone, there were players who seemingly defied the laws of nature, the laws of Newton – the laws of everything. One such player was the late Jonah Lomu. The All Black wing was 1.96m tall, weighed 120kg and he was fast. Memories of Lomu running over most of his opponents will remain forever with rugby supporters across the globe. Simson and BronX, the two 4×4s on these pages, are battering rams like Lomu was. They are bigger, stronger, faster, meaner and more imposing than their more subdued, standard siblings. When they arrive at a 4×4…

SOMETIMES, I feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world. The wilderness in the southeastern lowveld of Zimbabwe has seen its fair share of bad times. In early colonial days, hunters like Bvekenya Barnard shot what they wanted: in his case, about 300 elephant. Before the proclamation of the national park in 1975, in efforts to rid the area of tsetse fly, about 13 000 wild animals were shot and forests and pans were bulldozed. The land was enclosed with wire fencing, and sprayed with pesticides like dieldrin and DDT, which progressed up the food chain, killing off apex predators like fish eagles. When the park was proclaimed, wildlife populations began to rebound. But then came the Mozambican civil war, when soldiers often fed themselves by snaring wild animals.…

1) TRANSFORMER TX Imagine a flying Humvee armoured troop carrier… this is essentially what the Transformer TX aimed to be. This R1-billion research project brings flying car tech to war zones, with the proposed TX effectively a four-person, armed troop carrier that is a cross between a helicopter and a Humvee. So it’s a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) machine with a range of 450km (on land or in the air) that can be flown by just about anyone – it has semi-automated flight controls so any GI Joe can fly and drive it. The TX should have been able to do about 100km/h on land and 240km/h in the air. The vehicle had a 4WD drivetrain for ground operations and also has a silent ‘creep’ mode for added stealth.…

The Volkswagen Tiguan has been with us since 2008, but it doesn’t feel that long. This is mostly due to the fact that it was pretty much near the top of its segment, even at the end of its rather long lifespan. There were lots of reasons to love the first generation Tiguan, chief among which was the overall feeling of quality. We’ll never forget that satisfying ‘thud’ its doors would make when they closed. You just knew from the get-go that it was put together properly. In terms of style the new model is a giant leap forward, depending on how you specify the vehicle. In its standard configuration it’s a fairly sedate and inoffensive product, but that changes when you tick the box marked R-Line on the options…

It wasn’t the rocky track, or the water crossings, or the ruts, or the absolutely stunning Maluti Mountains that made the biggest impression on us initially. It was the looks on the faces of the drivers of Cruisers, Prados, Pajeros and Patrols and Hilux bakkies, heading down the pass. They all shared a look of sheer disbelief, rounded off with a tinge of “what the hell is that doing here!” Honestly, on the access road that leads towards the South African border post and the official start of the famous pass, we also shared that thought: what the heck were we thinking, driving a front-wheel-drive hatch up a mountain pass upon which only 4×4s are supposed to venture? This new Beetle is not even a high clearance 4×2. Blimey. Who’s…

HEAR YE! HEAR YE! Went on an amazing overland trip or adventure? Snapped some high resolution photos along the way? Then send us your story and you stand a chance of winning some great camping gear, courtesy of Front Runner, if your story is published. The monthly prize, worth R2 685, includes a Front Runner Flip Pop Tent (two-person tent that pitches in seconds) as well as two of the company’s nifty Expander camping chairs. More information on these products at frontrunner.co.za or Tel: 011 466 0155. Please send your stories to editorial@leisurewheels.com. OUR first taste of adventure was the Put Foot Rally in 2012. We completed that African adventure in an old Leyland Mini and it was brilliant. For this adventure, we wanted to do something similar, but more…

Let’s kick this off by stating the obvious: a highway terrain tyre fares best on the road; an all-terrain tyre is a compromise between road and dirt; and a mud terrain tyre is the choice tyre in a tough off-road environment. This is a logical, and obvious deduction. But how much better is the highway terrain tyre versus the all-terrain versus the mud terrain tyre on any given Sunday on say, a wet road? Which one should you fit? The answer to that is, well, rhetoric: hhow long is a piece of string? In other words, it very much depends what you intend doing with your 4×4. Do you intend driving the Rubicon trail every day of the week? Easy, fit the mud terrains. With their superior off-road grip and…

Engine: 4.2-litre inline six petrol Capacity: 4 169cc Power: 135kW @ 4 400r/min Torque: 320Nm @ 3 200r/min Gearbox: Five-speed manual Tare weight: 2 473kg Drive system: Part-time fourwheel drive (2H, 4H & 4LOW) Traction aids: Differential lock 0-100km/h: 15.7 seconds Top speed: 150km/h SOME cars are just, well, cars. Other vehicles are members of the family. They form the basis of every adventure story worth telling, as is the case with this 1989 Nissan Patrol. It’s owner – or family member rather – is Frans van Niekerk. Frans purchased the Patrol in 1992 with 122 000km on the clock for a modest R92 000. Over the last two decades, he has added more than 100 000km to that tally. “I bought the Patrol, because I had purchased a rather…

Steve’s Auto Clinic has introduced upgrade packages for the VW Amarok and Isuzu KB. The package for the Amarok, called the Mission Impossible upgrade, utilises a Plug & Play chip. The unit is plugged into the vehicle’s wiring system and can be unplugged at any time in a matter of minutes. It’s equipped with various engine maps, including a setting that pushes the power up to 170kW and 515Nm of torque. That’s as much as the 3.0-litre V6 diesel engine VW will be offering in the facelifted Amarok once it arrives in SA. The maps include a security option, which renders the engine completely powerless. When selecting this mode, the driver can remove the in-cabin map selector and anyone trying to steal the vehicle will be incapable of driving off…

Kennis Caravans & Motorhomes recently joined forces with Motorhome-World, presently South Africa’s leading manufacturer of motorhomes. “Kennis Caravans & Motorhomes have the ideal infrastructure and experience at this level of supply, and is a household name in the industry, still selling several units every month even in the current challenging economic conditions,” says Kennis Motors Group’s Allan Vos. “We are proud and also very excited about this new development and we hope to merge into Motorhome-World’s production capacity as early as market and production conditions will allow,” says Allan. Motorhome-World’s Dennis Bouwers, says: “We are very excited about the new partnership. We know the long history of Kennis in our industry and the wealth of knowledge that they bring to the table, not to mention the high level of customer…

IN the space of a few hours, the Toyota Fortuner catapulted me out of the humdrum of routine and into a vibrant, refreshing and adventurous experience. The luxury SUV dutifully and easily digested various scholarly items, such as backpacks, tog-bags and hockey sticks and my paraphernalia. Then it swallowed the children themselves (with one seated happily in a fold down seats in the rear). After a short commute, the 4×4 spewed them out at their various schools, so that we (the ‘Tuna and I) could get on with the fun bit. I headed for the R300 and then on to the N2 highway, cruising comfortably in the Eco (fuel-saving) mode. In this mode, the reduced torque is noticeable as I geared up manually, but the vehicle carries out the task…

LAST month we took a closer look at the second-hand market to see how much metal we could get for the price of a brand-new Suzuki Jimny. As it turns out, there are thousands of options out there, which meant we accidentally stumbled onto a fairly interesting concept. This time round we scanned the Buyer’s Guide to find the cheapest SUV we could find, which turned out to be the Mahindra KUV 100. Prices start at around R150 000 and for that amount, you get thousands of interesting alternatives. As we wanted a real challenge, we subtracted an additional R50 000 from our imaginary budget. At this point in time you’re probably thinking that there can’t be many viable options available at that price… and you’d be 100% correct. With…

HOLD ON! Chan Kwok Hung (Gary Chan) is a selftaught photographer, based in Hong Kong. He won a Sony World Photography award for this image of a water buffalo race. Chan Kwok Hung (chankwokhung.com) EYE ON THE PRIZE A yellow-billed oxpecker sizes up a juicy insect, hitching a ride on a buffalo. Thys van der Merwe RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT Water chalets in Pomene, Mozambique. With the chalets literally in the water, and not next to it, taking that early morning swim is all the more convenient. Mike Slater ZEBRA CROSSING? Zebra grazing in the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya. The park is almost 40 000 hectares in size, and straddles the Kenyan and Tanzanian borders. Jannie Herbst MEAL TIME A white-faced Scops owl…

More information: Tel: 011 314 0055; sales@zoneoffroad.co.za; zoneoffroad.co.za IT’S all in the (shopping) day of a typical Jeep Wrangler owner: bigger wheels, bigger suspensions, bigger… well, everything. As one Wrangler owner readily admits: buying a basic Wrangler is like buying a starter kit. Thereafter, you are kind of obliged to customise it with this, that and then some more of that. And it apparently never quite ends – there are always more accessories on that bucket list. There are some owners though, who have fitted all the bells and whistles, and then some. Often featuring hundreds of thousands of rands worth of upgrades, these machines are massively capable – what is a grade five obstacle for an average 4×4 is a big old yawn in one of these machines. Even…