Talk about best-laid plans, been looking forward to the Husqvarna Nuda all week, then find it's lost an argument with a car. Plan B - Aprilia Tuono. Sounds like a pack of pitbulls, accelerates like a greyhound from a gate, and entirely unsuited to the rain falling as soon as I collected it... yee haa!

Bit of a contrast to the Volvo XC60 wagon that replaced the Pajero, too. Looks like a soft-roader SUV but no all-wheel-drive, so it takes a bit of momentum to get up the driveway without digging in where some muppet spun his wheels while the latest fill was still compacting. Nice soft spot there now...

The XC will take me to the airport for Australia and Mercedes' M-class launch leaving the driveway clear for my quirky French house-sitter then returns in favour of a Toyota Camry which will carry four women, four backpacks and a lot of chocolate to Whakapapa for a weekend tramping.

Somewhere in there I'll be riding the Tuono again, cross fingers for dry roads as 'rain mode' cuts 40kW-odd of peak power. 

Another busy week that started with Honda's Civic hybrid which I swapped for a Mitsubishi Pajero ten times its size, driving it only as far as the airport – to fly to Tasmania for the Ford Falcon ecoboost launch.

Back Wednesday, take the Pajero for a drive Thursday – in search of affordable bicycling gear to replace the hot pink board shorts I showcased at Woodhill on Sunday – then return that Friday in favour of Volvo's XC60 T5.

That'll be a quick turnaround as I'm also due to return Triumph's mighty 1.7-litre Thunderbird Storm, a matte black beast of a bike that executed a lurid slide into the uphill off-camber entry to my driveway on Saturday, creating a mighty berm before I over-corrected and nearly launched it off the bank into the trees.

Think I'm exaggerating?  The chap opposite, whose house is out of sight of mine, heard the skid and prepared himself to join  the chain gang I'd need to lift it.

If I'd gone off the bank? We'd have had to manoeuvre it through the trees to the neighbouring downhill driveway, there'd be no hauling it back up.

But all's well that ends well, and what's a little adrenaline between friends... 

Drove around 290km with a budding engineer in the back this weekend. During the first trip he and his five-year-old sister, kept their eyes glued to the central info screen with its electric-petrol usage graphic; its average fuel and distance remaining on the tank; its useage graphs and virtual  tree-building rewards for eco driving. And they gave continual verbal feedback on how I was doing. Not well enough, according to the electronic trees we built while driving carefully - we lost too many leaves in a half-hour traffic jam.

Next day's drive saw just me and the budding engineer and this time he was asking questions. What happens to the power you generate when the battery's showing full? Do the regenerative brakes then start to heat up? What does the rear seat vent to the back do given he couldn't detect air going in and out? How come we can hear the petrol motor yet sometimes it's showing no petrol being used? In the end I had to promise to email Honda's technical expert. I await his reply...

One of those drives was to Woodhill Mountain bike park. The Civic's rear seatbacks don't fold down, so I couldn't get my bike in (yes, Honda, protected by sheets). And the boot opening was just too narrow to admit Mister Eight's bike with both wheels on. No problem, spanner out, wheel off, his bike in my boot and mine on his parents' four-bike rack, and we were off - the budding engineer straining at the seatbelt to keep an eye on the instruments up front... 

Handed the Holden Cruze SRiV back today – that's the fancy-pants one, loaded with features from heated seats to satnav. It's a smart-looking car that drew admiring comments and comfortably fit four adults on a lunch-time outing.

This SRi-V gets the Watts linkage suspension which did a great job of delivering predictable handling without compromising comfort. It also has the smallest engine, a 1.4-litre turbo that delivers the same power and more torque than its entry-level 1.8-litre petrol sibling, matched to a six-speed auto transmission.

But forget drive quality – the big question was whether the boot would prove capacious enough to collect my new (to me) mountain bike from Mazda head office, after its arrival in a box from 

Wellington in the back of a CX-5 SUV on a transporter.

I folded the seats – it's not a flat load floor but there's no step so it's easy to slide stuff in and out; no worries, indeed there was so much space Cindy (yes, the bike has a name) slid about a bit so the drive home was fairly sedate.

I've only got two gripes. The auto gearbox sometimes delivers a rough, almost hesitant change; infrequently, but. And this car proved thirsty during daily running. It dropped from the 10.6l/100km on collection to 10.0 average after 300km so goodness knows what the previous driver was doing in it, while the 1.8 I had recently used 9.7.

That's not far off Commodore figures for my hilly commute, and for all there's plenty to recommend Cruze hatch, you can't forget there are many more frugal cars in this bracket. 

The trouble with a week like the last one is you don't want to waste time adding diary entries to a website. Or chatting to friends, sleeping, eating - pretty much the only thing you want to do is drive.

 The Porsche 911 sweetened half of last week and not just for me – my four-year-old niece had the ride of her life from daycare on Wednesday, much to her dad's disgust. And yes, one of the two child seats she has access to did actually fit!

Swapped that for the Abarth 695 Tributo Ferrari (call it a Fiat and the brand's PR manager sends the boys round). This is the car made as a loaner for Ferrari buyers; it's an $80,000 Fiat 500 with the looks, frills and performance to justify the price. Rock-hard suspension only starts to make sense at 'go straight to jail' speeds, but by golly is it fun.

This week's drives are a whole lot more sedate, with a Holden Cruze hatch in the drive (handsome, drives well and delivers good spec-for-dollar but a tad thirsty), and the Audi Q3 launch (great little family-focussed SUV, the up-market answer to last week's Mazda CX-5). That took in the super-cool lunch venue pictured right, meanwhile a Honda Civic will soon replace the Holden.

Along the way Yamaha's 125cc Beewee scooter was swapped for a Triumph Thunderbird Storm, matte black with a 1.7-litre engine, 339kg of heft and a very naughty soundtrack from those cut-off mufflers.

Maybe the week won't be so sensible, after all... 

It struck me during the recent Subaru Impreza launch just how good most mainstream cars are to drive nowadays. This wasn't the WRX or STI hotties, it's a bread-and-butter everday sedan or hatch designed as a family (or business) runabout so reasonably priced, with an adequate engine; it's nothing to set the world alight.

Yet get a rush of blood to the head, start flipping the steering wheel-mounted paddles to lift the revs then point it through a tricky series of bends and it's nimble enough for a lot of fun. And Impreza is not alone; most mid-range mainstream cars  aren't designed for hoonery, yet a keen driver can enjoy hustling them through the swervery without getting bitten, or falling asleep at the wheel.

That makes our job harder of course - cars that stand out for their brilliance, or because they're memorably bad, are easy to write about. Those which do everything well enough for the price are the ones that leave our fingers hovering in mute frustration over an untapped keyboard...

Talk about contrast. Just returned a $22,000 Suzuki Jimny Sierra and collected a $262,000 Porsche 911 CS2.

The Jimny may look like a city compact on stilts but it's got a low-range gearbox that with the right tyres, is capable of taking it a long way off road. It climbed the drive with ease and even managed two full-sized child seats and a compact baby buggy; the Porsche will turn a jaundiced eye at either task, but given the opportunity will scratch my speed itch...

This week also sees the press launch for Mazda's CX-5 SUV and I'll test the boot by tucking a boxed mountain bike inside it for the Wellington-to-Auckland return trip on the transporter - I hope. I'll be on a plane and if it doesn't fit the Mazda, the bicycle box may tax Air New Zealand's luggage rules...

Then comes the weekend, and the Fiat Abarth 695 Tributo Ferrari, a 500 variant that I'm promised is so hard core it'll make the Porsche seem sensible, an assertion that hardly seems possible. Watch this space!

Seem to have a rash of white vehicles at the moment. Monday started the week with a white Jaguar XF in the drive and a white Yamaha 125 Vity scooter in the garage.

Swapped the XF for a Holden Cruze hatch on Monday in yes, you guessed it, white and the Vity today for a Yamaha 125 Bee Wee, white, with white springs. Can see where the extra two grand over the Vity has gone - in the higher-quality suspension, which proved quite compliant over my rural commute while the engine has a throatier note and feels a tad more capable at open road speeds. Must look up the tech details!

Today off to Aus for the Mercedes B-class launch, then back in time to swap the Cruze for a Jimny over Easter weekend. Always had a soft-spot for the Jimny, its cheeky little footprint as useful when seeking a city car park as it is threading through trees in the rough. Just hope it's not white...