Australia's premier Motoring Awards, The "P76's"

[Amaroo Park]

The winner of last year's Gold P76, Ford, bounced back with a better-looking, better-driving Falcon.

Mazda suddenly remembered how to design interesting cars, no one at Mitsubishi put his size 12s in his gob. Overall, the industry built better cars and sold more of them. For one moment we thought we might have to withhold this year's award.

Silver P76
For acquiring a complexity complex: BMW

The Bavarians put the mystery back into motoring with a system called iDrive.

Designed to integrate the 7 Series's electronic systems, it's called iDrive because if uDrive, the damn thing won't start. Indeed only two of the 30 people the Herald polled could fire up the 7 Series without taking a BMW training course. Good luck with valet parking!

Styling is normally subjective, but BMW's new Z4 roadster provides an exception. It looks attractive only when parked next to an M Coupe.

Silver P76
For too much, too late: Chrysler
At last the long-promised Viper made it downunder. Problem one: it's a local right-hand-drive conversion. Two: it has an 8.0-litre, 10-cylinder engine, weighs more than 1500kg and seats just two. Three: it costs nearly $250,000. Four: it's the superseded model, first sold in its homeland in 1992.

And did you notice the scantily clad bimbettes draped all over its bodywork at the Sydney Motor Show? This, from the only Australian car company with a female MD.

Silver P76
For crimes against fossil fuels -- and journalists: Ford
The media campaign for the new Falcon vied for the title of "world's most drawn out". It started in April, even though the car didn't go on sale until October, and included separate unveilings of such exciting things as the rear suspension. Omitted from this flood of information was that, while the rest of the world continued to become leaner and greener, the Falcon had packed on 130kg and was considerably thirstier.


Silver P76
For finding new ways to reskin a cat: Jaguar
At last, a new big Jaguar ... and it looks just like the old one. That makes it a good match for the new small X-Type Jaguar, which looks like a pre-shrunk variation on the same theme. And the $54,000 price leader (in which everything is optional) now has a front-drive system that exposes it for what it is: a reskinned Ford Mondeo.

The same company also dumped plans to build the lovely F-Type sports model.

Silver P76
For services to somnambulism: Formula One
The biggest-buck sporting show on the planet was a Noah's Ark procession with the cars running two-by-two and Ferrari so far in front it showed its contempt by deciding which of its drivers would win. The efforts of Mercedes, Jaguar, Honda, Renault and Toyota were dismal and demeaning; Prost failed to start the season, Arrows failed to finish it, Minardi teetered, we yawned.

Silver P76
For inheriting the girth: Range Rover (among others)
The new Range Rover has gained 300kg and now weighs in at an obscenely larduous 2500kg. Even green, safety-conscious Volvo spat out a two-tonne-plus family truck which, as the tarmac-only test drive during the international press program proved, is intended for city bashing rather than bush.

Porsche's Cayenne is the best part of 2400kg. It's speed-limited to 266kmh and rides on such low-profile tyres that you'd think twice about even hopping a kerb with them.

Silver P76
For continued Wajaing: Proton
Last year, we said no-one would buy the Malaysian-built, 1.6-litre Waja sedan at a monumentally loopy $28,000. But we were wrong. As we went to press, 113 cars had been registered during the 12 months the Waja has been on the market. That's nearly four per Proton dealership.

At least we weren't as wrong as Proton, which claimed at the Australian launch "our estimates indicate that we will have sales of around 1200 during the first year on the Australian market".

Silver P76
For cashing up commentators:Toyota
The company that once bought every ad in The Bulletin did another winning deal with Kerry Packer's publishing empire to flog its 2002 Camry. It sponsored the homepage of PBL's website, Carpoint, for a week, during which time there was no mention of the Camry's rivals (coincidentally, Holden launched the new VY Commodore at about the same time).

The Camry also featured on the cover of Wheels along with gushing headlines. The editor of Wheels insisted it was an "editorial decision".

As part of its Packer deal, Toyota agreed to buy 10,000 copies of the Camry edition.

Silver P76
Press release of year: Glenn Seton
A record number of spin sheets hit our desks, most cantilevered so far over the edge of truth they were at risk of bringing down the whole pile of press packs. But what caught our eye even more were the daftly optimistic and supremely un-newsworthy outpourings of V8 Supercar back-marker Glenn Seton.

Heading to the Winton round, Seton was said to be setting his sights "on moving up the order and even eyeing off a podium result". At the previous round, "if not for some minor troubles before the first race and a collision in the day's final race, he was set to finish well inside the Top 10".

Seton's relentless pursuit of bronze culminated with a spectacular Top 29 finish at Bathurst.

Silver P76
For playing both sides of the street: Holden
Holden's simultaneous push to sell safety and sporting prowess crashed and burned with a television ad depicting a father slaloming his Commodore against the stopwatch through children's toys lying on the driveway. A pediatric surgeon speaking at Holden's own child safety conference labeled it "appalling" and pointed out that driveway accidents are the second biggest killers of children aged one to five.


And the winner is...
Gold P76 for holding Australian car owners in even more than the usual contempt: the Federal Government

The competition was tough, but the winner is clear. The Federal Government excelled itself in demonstrating further contempt for the car owners that it takes advantage of at every opportunity, and the environment it claims to champion.

The big hits on each included:
. Turning every trip to the bowser into Russian roulette, by encouraging petrol stations to put ethanol (alcohol) into fuel by subsidising its cost, yet putting no limits on the dosage. Many motorists have been unknowingly copping 20 percent, a concentration which reduces economy by about 6 percent and can damage fuel systems and void engine warranties. A major beneficiary is ethanol magnate Dick Honan, a generous donor to the Coalition.

. Requiring fuel economy rating stickers to be placed on all new cars except the worst offenders: 4WDs with a laden weight of 2.7 tonnes, including all Nissan Patrols, full-size Toyota LandCruisers, the new Range Rover and the Lexus LX470. This bizarre loophole will finally close next year -- but should never have been opened.

. Continuing to give a huge free kick to 4WDs (in the form of a lower import tariff), which are an unnecessary danger to other road users and, in most cases, are not even used off-road. The purchase of responsible urban vehicles subsidises these behemoths.


They also swerved
Daewoo: Dae who? The Korean company built on debt and blue-sky optimism finally crumbled into the arms of GM. More significantly for local buyers, it dropped its Freecare free servicing program.

Ford US: Announced the revival of the GT40 coupe -- then discovered it hadn't registered the name and couldn't use it.

Honda: The Insight remained the green car no one wanted (six sales this year), while the NS-X kept its mantle as the supercar no one wanted (three sales).

Hyundai: Played yo-yo with the pricing of the Getz, bouncing between "drive-away, no more to pay" and loading it up with $2000 worth of "on road" costs (not that honest and open pricing was much in evidence elsewhere in the market). In the US, the company was pinged for 10 years of exaggerating the power output of its cars.

Maserati: Brought the Italian ambassador and other dignitaries to the opening of its Sydney showroom ... in time to see the roof leak. More pertinent: US legislation forced the change of the exquisite tail-lights of the GT coupe and Spyder. Yes, an administration that allows handgun ammunition to be sold at Walmart considered them dangerous.

Mercedes: Built the $1 million Maybach, the world's dearest Hyundai Grandeur lookalike.

Porsche: Initiated a social experiment to determine how much people would pay for a 4WD with VW badges (the Touareg) compared with a 4WD with Porsche badges (the Cayenne). Since the major difference, the top speed, is irrelevant, we anxiously await the result.

Renault: Built a car the Addams Family would reject as too weird: the Vel Satis. It was supposed to go on sale here in 2003 at $80,000. However the maker recently announced there was "a delay" and that it might not be coming.

Saab: Reskinned what is now a quirky and interesting Vectra and made it look boring and mainstream. Weren't they meant to do the opposite? What's more, the trademark Saab 9-3 hatch body style was sacrificed in the process.

Subaru: Assured the world there were no problems with the performance or looks of the Impreza, then rushed in a more powerful, facelifted car two years later.

To err is Leyland
It's nearly 30 years since the demise of the Australian-built P76, a car that changed people's perceptions about the number of faults that could be added to a fundamentally sound package. The fact that this frankly horrible car was an adventurous failure rather than a boring also-ran (and was the Wheels Car Of The Year) increases our pride to be associated with it for these awards for outstanding mediocrity.

[Airhead]

Yes I caught all that in Drive today. Funny thing is I am on the Glen Seton Racing email list. I couldn't agree more with the above comments. This is the guy that was a challenger to Skaife in the mid to late nineties. Never has done well in an AU. Let's hope the BA is more his style.

[ernysp76]

Originally Posted by colinbond

To err is Leyland
It's nearly 30 years since the demise of the Australian-built P76, a car that changed people's perceptions about the number of faults that could be added to a fundamentally sound package. The fact that this frankly horrible car was an adventurous failure rather than a boring also-ran (and was the Wheels Car Of The Year) increases our pride to be associated with it for these awards for outstanding mediocrity.

What a load of absolute rubbish!!! It is also an insult to all the marvolous young Australians that worked on it at the time. It is now openly ackowledged that many of the standard safety features in modern cars where forced on the industry by P76 here is a list:

1) Standard front disk brakes on all models.
2) Door intrusion barriers on all models prior to being mandated.
3) Crash tested.
4) Fuel tank placement was the only Australian car to comply with stringent US rear end collision until the VE Commodore in 2006!!!!
5) Crumple zones front and back
6) All alloy V8 for near perfect 50/50 weight distribution between front and back.
7) Rack and pinion steering in front of the axle on just happen in the VE Commodore
8) McPherson Strutt front supension 7 years before any other Australian family sedan.
9) forward hinged bonnet.

It goes on and on.

[Bluebottle]

Originally Posted by ernysp76

9) forward hinged bonnet.

wow!