From a too powerful Mazda to a gutless Subaru and 0-100km/h time of 30 seconds, these are the cars Drive definitely didn’t love in 2006.
Story by Bill McKinnon originally published in Drive on 16 December, 2006.
Dim the lights, cue Ride of the Valkyries, curtain up. Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a big, busy year in the car business, so without any further ado let’s proceed to one of the highlights of the calendar, Saturday Drive’s Non Car of the Year Awards for 2006.
A rough count suggests that we have driven and/or tested more than 250 new cars this year. Most have been 2006 models but in all classes we compare fresh metal with established players to see whether the latest really is the greatest. Often it is but sometimes it’s not. Planned obsolescence is a mid-20th-century contrivance to keep the wheels of capitalism turning. Nothing brings this into focus like the launch of a new car.
The previous model’s shortcomings, formerly apparent to only a few vindictive, misguided motoring writers, are suddenly obvious to everyone concerned, including the engineers who built it and the marketers who sold it. The new model, though, fixes everything. It’s beautiful, desirable and you must have it. Right now.
Well, not always. Our Non Cars of the Year are proof that they can still get ’em wrong, sometimes in spectacular fashion.
May we present …
Subaru’s big blue
The Subaru Tribeca four-wheel-drive is a shock NCOTY award winner because it comes from an outfit that usually picks up gongs for well-sorted hardware.
The idea behind the Tribeca makes sense. Subaru’s large, loyal following includes many people who outgrow the brand when they have a few kids. The Liberty and Outback were previously the largest vehicles in the Subaru range, so if it wanted to keep its customers and win new ones from other makes, it had to have a larger wagon, especially in the United States, where the Tribeca is built.
Bigger, though, is not necessarily better. How? Let’s count the ways.
Subaru hired a gun designer from Alfa Romeo a few years back to put some Euro chic into its cardigan and slippers wardrobe. One look at the Tribeca’s truly apoplectic front end indicates that Italian sensibilities and Japanese collegiate conservatism do not mix. A glance at its equally chaotic back end confirms it.
But a car needs to be more than just ugly all over to qualify for NCOTY honours.
Subaru scrimped on the Tribeca by using the existing 3.0-litre engine from the Liberty-Outback. In a 1.9-tonne wagon such as this, it doesn’t stand a chance. The 3.0 can’t talk the torque, so the Tribeca in many situations is gutless and thirsty.
Subaru is already working on a larger, more powerful engine for the Tribeca’s first update.
Interior packaging is severely compromised by using a stretched Liberty platform, again to cut costs. The futuristic dash disguises several ergonomic inefficiencies, including a touch screen that’s too far from the driver and no reach-adjustment for the steering wheel. The floor is too high, which compromises legroom and comfort. The back seats are particularly cramped and uncomfortable, even for kids.
Finally, Subaru claims the Tribeca will tow up to 2000kg. That would be downhill and as long as towball download does not exceed 100kg.
Ooh aah Nissan Tiida
When they were trying to work out how to get the Tiida noticed, Nissan’s marketing department and advertising agency came up with a groundbreaking approach. They hit on the idea of using sex to sell their new car. Brilliant! Why hasn’t anybody thought of that before?
So they hired Sex and the City‘s blonde bombshell Kim Cattrall to make out like she’d really like to make out in a Tiida. Given that cars such as this usually have a 60 per cent or more female buyer base, we can’t understand why it didn’t work.
Hold it, we can. Nissan Australia pleaded with its Japanese parent to be allowed to keep the longstanding and still credible Pulsar name for this market but HQ wouldn’t be in it.
The car itself also proves that the Japanese can still turn out a mediocre drive. The 1.8-litre engine goes okay but is quite coarse, the manual gearshift makes weird noises, it doesn’t handle, steer or stop with conviction and quality is just passable.
Basic items such as a lap-sash belt for the centre position in the back seat, conveniently located child restraint anchors and anti-lock brakes (on the base model) are not provided.
Tiida bombed at starting prices of $19,990. It’s now discounted to a more realistic $17,990 now that it’s about to be imported from Thailand.
Myth and Legend
Automotive engineers are hired to understand, develop and employ technology to make our cars safer and better to drive.
The propeller heads who did the Honda Legend forgot about that idea and instead decided to show us how clever they are.
The Legend demonstrates that supposedly rational, analytical engineers, left to frolic unattended, can do some exceptionally dumb, indulgent things – such as using a devilishly complex all-wheel-drive system, supposedly to mimic a rear-drive car’s characteristics, and ending up with a Camry-sized sedan that weighs 1.85 tonnes.
Then fitting it with suspension that’s unable to cope with this weight, so it handles and steers like a Manly ferry in an afternoon southerly.
That’s why they called it Super Handling All Wheel Drive. Surely, they aren’t serious? Then again, the Legend is designed primarily for the US market, where handling is an altogether more laissez faire concept than it is here.
The 3.5-litre V6, five-speed auto also does it tough dragging this sort of weight around.
In the cabin, the screen-cursor system for the air-conditioning-audio controls defies belief with its lack of logic and clarity. A trick air-conditioning system uses GPS to track the sun and automatically adjusts the temperature. So what?
Get outta Dodge
When I was a kid in the 1970s I used to load Dodge trucks at my grandfather’s soft drink factory. A brief (but not brief enough) drive in the new Dodge Caliber, which marks the return of the brand to this country after several decades, showed that it hasn’t progressed a great deal since.
The Caliber’s interior is swathed in those hard, sharp-edged, tacky plastics that Holden last used in mid-1980s Commodores. Fit and finish quality, aesthetics and ergonomics are comparable with that era too.
Our test car’s 2.0-litre engine was matched with a continuously variable automatic transmission. It made more noise than meaningful forward progress, yet they’re asking $29,990 for it.
Test drive a Caliber back-to-back with a Mazda 3, VW Golf or just about anything else in this class and you’ll be amazed at how they do it at the price.
Too much of a good thing
The regular Mazda 3 is a beaut device, as evidenced by the Maxx version’s success in Drive‘s 2006 Car of the Year (the awards the car makers really want to win, as opposed to today’s gongs).
However, the Mazda 3 MPS demonstrates that there is such a thing as too much power. Mazda wanted to produce the ne plus ultra of hot hatchbacks, so it installed a 190kW, 2.3-litre turbocharged screamer under the bonnet, which certainly did the trick.
There’s more to performance than a swagful of kilowatts and sheer straight-line speed, though, as we found in our mid-year hot hatch comparison.
Sending all this grunt to the front wheels only made for severe torque steer, especially on rough roads.
Mazda’s engineers acknowledged this by using electronics to reduce peak torque in first and second gears, or when the steering wheel was turned beyond a certain angle.
This one is for enthusiasts or professional drivers only.
Proton pill
The Proton Savvy came last – by the length of the straight – in our 10-model small-car comparison test this year. Why? How long have you got?
Which sums up the Savvy’s performance, really. Its 1.2-litre engine manages just 55kW of power and 105Nm of torque. If you’re technically challenged take our word for it – this is not enough.
With four on board in the manual, the Drive team took nearly 30 seconds to get the Savvy up to 100km/h on the timed section of our test loop. We’d still be trying to coax it past 80km/h if we’d had lunch beforehand. The gearbox didn’t help, having a very heavy, stiff action.
Quality is poor, excessive engine, wind and road noise make the Savvy below par by today’s standards. Bill McKinnon
So, what happened next?
It seems we weren’t alone in our distaste, with discerning buyers giving most of Drive‘s choices for Non Car of the Year a wide berth.
It’s somewhat telling, of the six ‘awarded’ models, only one nameplate remains on sale in Australia today – the Mazda 3 – which remains as popular as ever with buyers in the small car segment.
The Subaru Tribeca lumbered on until 2013, having received a hasty facelift in 2007 to address that polarising grille treatment while under the bonnet, Subaru’s 3.0-litre six-cylinder made way for a bigger 3.6-litre unit making 190kW and 350Nm, up 10kW and a whopping 53Nm over the boxer-six it replaced. But the reputational damage was done and the Tribeca disappeared quietly from Subaru’s line-up globally after just a single generation in 2014.
Similarly, the Honda Legend left our shores in 2013 with its tail between its legs, ending a 28-year run for the nameplate in Australia. The Legend legend lived on in Japan, however, with a fifth generation launched in 2014. But with the appetite for mid-size luxury sedans waning around the world, Honda called time on the Legend in 2021.
It seems 2013 was a popular year for retiring models, with Nissan also pulling the pin on the unpopular the unloved Tiida name in Australia. It was replaced by the second-generation Tiida, albeit rebadged in Australia as Pulsar, a name that had resonated with Aussie buyers since 1985. It seems Nissan HQ in Japan had finally seen the light when it came to marketing its compact hatchback and sedan range in Australia. No word on whether Nissan Australia sent a big, fat, ‘told you so’ in the general direction of Japan. The Pulsar remained on sale in Australia until 2017 while the Tiida name lives on in China, the only market where it remains in production.
The Dodge Caliber exited not only Australia in 2012, but the rest of the world as well, including its homeland, the United States. A five-year production run speaks volumes about a car that simply failed to spark much interest in buyers. Reviews in the US were scathing and included gems like “the car displays all the grace of a sumo wrestler on figure skates”. Ouch.
It wasn’t just Australia that didn’t love the Proton Savvy very much (although it did win the Best City Car award at the 2007 Indonesian Car of the Year), the rest of the world didn’t exactly embrace Malaysia’s compact hatchback either. Australia called time on the Savvy in 2011, two years ahead of the rest of the world. It was replaced in its Malaysian homeland by the Proton Iriz, a model still going strong. Somewhere. RM
Time to fess up. Did you ever own one of these cars? Tell us a bit about your experience in the comments below.
The post The cars we loved to hate in 2006 | Drive Flashback appeared first on Drive.
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