Who says the car industry’s in the doldrums? Distributors realise that new models bring potential buyers through their doors, and the launch schedule has picked up accordingly.

This week, VW Touareg and a quick look at the Amarok ute, fly to Australia for Citroen C3, and back for Ford’s stonking FPV V8 sedans on road and track.

Next week, Nissan Micra and Kia Cerato; some then fly to Australia for Honda’s Insight, others sample Ford’s Thai-built auto Fiesta; I hope to ride to Invercargill’s Burt Munro rally. Hope to, as there’s a hiccup with the planned press bike.

But first those launches must be written up, most importantly including how the cars feel on Kiwi roads.

Most memorable moment from last week? Finding out just how easily one can get the FPV ute’s tail to waggle then gather her in through the bends at Hampton Downs race track. Ford had mandated a strict speed limit. Wonder why?

Just spent a week as chief judge for the Automobile Association Motoring Excellence Awards. With 60 cars entered in eight categories, it was pretty full on.

Any car currently on sale is eligible, though companies only enter those they think have a chance of winning. Still, the judges often miss something they think should have been entered; this year it was Nissan’s 370Z. Surely its handsome good looks and phenomenal bang-for-buck made it a performance class contender? Clearly Nissan thought not.

Meantime we were left to evaluate everything from the $18,990 Barina Spark to a $254,000 Audi A8.

How to judge between such widely diverse cars? We look not only at performance, design and handling, but how well each car performs the task for which it’s designed, and its value. A $40,000 compact might do a better job than a $20,000 competitor, but is it twice as good?

Come the finals, when we’re judging the winners from each bracket against each other, we also must consider how far a car pushes what’s expected from its bracket.

So a $35,000 compact that over-delivers for its class and price can beat a $135,000 executive car which doesn’t.

The result? No idea. Watch out for the announcement on December 3.  

(Photo: Mike Stephen) 

At the relaunch of the Renault brand in Australia; rather sad to see a dynamic young line-up of new marketing execs facing a barrage of hard-bitten motor noters who’ve been to two previous relaunches and struggled to take this one seriously.

NZ piggy-backed on the event, which gave us a brief drive of the handsome new Megane hatch, the spacious Fluence sedan and CC Sunday cabrio-cruiser. Then fast laps in the Megane R250 Cup hot hatches round a tight and technical motorbike testing track, spiced by hot laps with the great Jim Richards in the Megane Trophy built for one-make racing in Europe.

If Renault can transmit this sort of excitement along with a mainstream price, today’s generation of Renaults should make an impact downunder.