Car news, 25 February ’25: AMG’s four-cylinder flop, shock sporty EV pricing, cut-price Kluger rival revealed and Ram’s new ‘secret weapon’

Ferrari has finally brought back the iconic gated manual gearbox. Except it hasn’t – not quite. The 12Cilindri Manuale is the first three-pedal Ferrari in The gated shifter and clutch pedal are back at Ferrari – but the conventional manual hasn’t made a full return. The distinction matters, but not as much as you’d think

Leapmotor has struggled to make its mark in a market swamped by affordable Chinese electric vehicles. At a time when rivals are experiencing explosive With lots of tech and a pricepoint to turn heads, is the new BO5 hatchback the car to firmly put China's Leapmotor on the map in a crowded EV market?

Swedish-branded, Chinese-built hyper GT is huge on style, manic in pace and reasonably priced. But can it seduce with enough charisma to find Aussie buyers?

Kia’s petrol-powered K4 hatch appears to be fighting a losing battle against the wave of sharply priced small Chinese EVs. But for the purists, there’s still plenty to like

Volvo puts itself in the key midsize electric luxury SUV buyers’ conversation with first electric equivalent of its best-seller

On the July morning that our newest long termer, the 2026 RAV4 GXL AWD, landed in the Chasing Cars garage, Toyota’s medium SUV was about to celebrate its Australia’s most popular SUV, in desirable yet affordable GXL trim, has rolled into the Chasing Cars garage for a proper long-term test. Can it live up to the hype?

Sharing its impressive all-new 800-volt architecture with the third-generation CLA, the new five-plus-two-seat GLB champions space efficiency, driving comfort, refinement and EV tech

Not quite the full-on, game-changing, low-cost EV we were promised, cut-back Model 3 RWD still delivers superb value

The Nissan X-Trail has never been a bundle of laughs … unless the original model’s dogged understeer and wobbly body shimmy over corrugations fuelled your With front-drive versions of hybrid medium SUVs making up more than half of sales, Nissan Australia has doubled its X-Trail e-Power line-up with three new FWD variants, lowering prices and fuel use.

In a twist for Mazda Australia, executives believe the brand’s new made-in-China CX-6e electric SUV could become its best-seller, displacing the Latest China-sourced Mazda shows potential, if falling short in execution — particularly the touchscreen

Polite indifference? Cautiously optimistic? We were somewhat kinder on Mercedes-AMG’s initial turbo-four-pot forays of the current-gen X254 GLC SUV (and Key mid-life update sees Affalterbach’s go-fast medium SUV backpedal to older-school turbo-six power: a rawer change, both good and bad

The phenomenon of a front-wheel-drive car switching to rear-wheel drive has been a rare occurrence over the past 60 years – starting with the FWD Triumph You wouldn’t know from looking at it but this Atto 3’s mildly updated appearance hides a dramatic uplift in electric architecture, chassis capability, performance, range and value

Despite its conservative styling and its image as yet another cookie-cutter Chinese EV, the BYD Atto 2 has so far impressed us in review with its painless BYD continues its quest to become the Chinese Toyota by launching Australia’s cheapest plug-in hybrid – the Atto 2 DM-i, offering 90km of electric-only range for under $30K.

Remember the diminutive, fuel-sipping Japanese ‘Kei’ cars that used to populate Aussie roads during decades past? They never sold in huge numbers but they Unlike everyone else, Honda’s new small EV happens to be a tiny Kei-car on steroids – an engineering-led marvel that prioritises urban agility, space utilisation and driving fun

Earlier this year, after sampling a Range Rover with fully electric propulsion for the first time, we found ourselves coming to a definite conclusion: Compared to the stately, soft-riding Range Rover Electric, the slipperier Sport EV variant gains some trick handling tech you can’t have on the full-fat model

With pure-ICE variants dropped, the cheapest Sportage is now a pricier hybrid option. Is it an enticingly thrifty family choice?

Honda’s American and Canadian branches have announced subtle updates to its Civic Type R hot hatch. The heavily re-engineered sports version of Honda’s

Nissan’s motorsports skunkworks, Nismo, has opened its first workshop outside Japan, in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs. Attached to an existing Nissan

An all-new Mitsubishi Outlander is due in two years, says Japanese media. Though its strong Australian sales might mask its age, the current,

Toyota has released a teaser image of its incoming hydrogen-powered Hilux and backed it up with a target of 400 kilometre of range and a 2.5-tonne towing

Volkswagen has set new efficiency and aerodynamic benchmarks with the near-production-ready Mission Efficiency. The super-streamlined concept car uses as

Ford has quietly revealed a six-wheeled Ranger Super Duty that Chasing Cars understands could eventually make its way to Australian showrooms – if enough

Car of the Year is all about the winners, both overall and in our nine segments. To pick a winner though, we need to test these vehicles and much of that Rigorous Car of the Year testing involves performance evaluation of all competitors — here are the fastest and slowest of 2026

XPeng says it is ready to launch its VLA 2.0 supervised full-self driving technology outside of China, with the rival to Tesla’s FSD technology set to be VLA self-driving tech relies on new triple-Turing AI chipset hardware that will launch with Mona L03 SUV in Australia, but not all new XPengs will get the tech

BYD Australia has confirmed its Shark 6 plug-in hybrid dual cab will soon gain a new ‘Crawl Mode’ to boost the ute’s low-speed off-road ability. The A much-needed ‘Crawl Mode’ has been added to the BYD Shark 6’s off-road arsenal, with the software update said to significantly improve technical capability

Toyota Australia has confirmed it will offer a factory-fitted and certified GVM upgrade kit for select grades of Hilux ute, increasing GVM to 3500kg Factory optioned $4000 GVM upgrade kit for Toyota Hilux promises to raise GVM to 3500kg and increase payload past 1.5-tonnes on select variants

GWM’s Haval has confirmed this is the next generation H6 medium SUV, due for Australian launch in early 2027. The revised model – GWM’s second Larger, better equipped and modernised, Haval’s popular medium SUV offers compelling numbers as a plug-in hybrid

The Volkswagen Group is moving to a new Google Android Automotive-based operating system that will debut in the Cupra Raval electric hatchback from Radical overhaul to in-car hardware and software will see Cupra and other Volkswagen brands adopt connectivity-ready, Android-based VW.OS system

Mazda has blamed the rising cost of Toyota’s hybrid system and the pursuit of its own ‘Jinba Ittai’ philosophy as key reasons for pursuing the development At a time when petrol pricing is soaring to $2.50 per litre, Mazda has justified its decision to cut ties with Toyota and develop its own hybrid system

Cupra will continue to produce cars with petrol, plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and electric powertrains for the foreseeable future as the Spanish brand navigates Pivot to multi-pathway powertrain strategy will see petrol, plug-in and electric Cupra models supplemented by new Volkswagen Group hybrid tech in future

While Toyota Australia has not confirmed we will be getting the 2026 LandCruiser FJ, it’s safe to say the demand is there for a smaller, more affordable The 2026 LandCruiser FJ has fired the internet up, but how much does it actually have in common with the FJ Cruiser, and does it even deserve the nameplate?

As Mazda Motor Corporation continues to fine-tune the dynamics and overall calibration of its Chinese-made, all-electric Mazda 6e sedan in preparation for Mazda admits that lessons have been learned about launching its Large Product Group architecture models before they were ready for market