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Holden's Triple S Barina; Smart, Small, Slow.
Much like a birthday sneaking up on you, it’s a bit of a shock to realise that the Barina nameplate has been around for nigh on thirty years. Coming from a variety of manufacturers such as Suzuki and Opel, the current model is brought in from Korea. The current model has a two level strategy, the Spark being an “entry level: and the slightly bigger version sedan and hatch, CD and CDX. The main seller is the hatch, with a 1.6 litre petrol engine and six speed automatic transmission with electronic manual shifting, via a toggle button on the gear lever. There is a five speed manual option. I say option as most of these will be sold with the auto. Sadly. More on that later…
The CDX tested comes with Holden’s new MyLink system (http://www.holden.com.au/vehicles/barina/interior) 
allowing you to connect to Apple’s Siri voice assistant, Pandora internet based radio and more. It’s smart and fun and looks good on the seven inch touch screen. The driver’s dash view is of a motorcycle style readout (highlighted in electric blue at night time) whilst the layout is clean and simple to use. The heated leather wrapped front seats are ok in side and back support but would be a little lacking in comfort for a long drive. Bearing in mind it’s a city car long drives are not its forte. Nor is calling it a five seater a wise thing, unless the rear seat is populated by dolls. It’s a small car, just on four metres total length for the hatch (the sedan is slightly longer) whilst interior front shoulder room is 1360mm, giving more weight to a rubbing shoulders argument. Bootspace, unsurprisingly, isn’t huge, with the foldable rear seats up and won’t take a new flatscreen TV above 40 inches in size. On the outside it’s good enough, with a family resemblance to the Captiva by virtue of the quad headlight cluster, leading to a pert backside via some smooth sheetmetal on the four passenger doors.
The wheelbase is just on two and a half metres whilst the track (distance between wheels left and right) is 1495mm; this, plus the wonderful Continental tyres, sourced from Europe, give the Barina CDX a decent enough handling package and allow the car to run hard into a corner with a surprising level of ride comfort and grip. It’s certainly more capable on the road that the drivers that will buy it. It brakes well, handles well enough and is quiet enough around town……except 
when pushed hard…..the engine shows the lack of refinement with a buzzy, raucous cacophony, sounding like it’s giving you plenty of urge when, in fact, a drunken snail would win a drag race.
It’s a 1.6L fuel injected engine, needing 6000 revs to produce peak power and 4000 revs to give you peak torque. Matched with an electronically controlled six speed auto, it’s zero to one hundred in a calendar week. Using the gear lever mounted manual switch doesn’t help either, with a shift from gear to gear measured in tenths of a second, rather than blinks of an eye. In a market crowded with small cars, it’s unforgiveable. And sad, as the chassis provides a decent ride, the new MyLink system is pretty smart and economy is ok for what it is. In the market segment it sits in though, the buyers won’t be fussed by the lack of refinement and added aural assault, being swayed by its looks and chicness.
Click here: http://www.holden.com.au/forms/view-brochures?Vehicle=Barina for a downloadable brochure.
Names For New Cars: What Will Work And What Won’t
Let’s imagine that we have been contracted to some new Asian car manufacturer who wants to get it right when it comes to car names and not come up with something ridiculous like the perfectly genuine Mitsubishi Mini Active Urban Sandal. What is going to work and what definitely won’t?
Of course, we could always go with the tried-and-true method beloved of European car manufacturers: that of using a combination of numbers and letters that tell you the engine size, the general class or type of car, and maybe the fuel type. This method works perfectly well for BMW, Mercedes and Volvo, with Lexus also getting on board.
But that’s so boring, even if it is safe. What’s more, those alphanumeric things don’t stick in the mind and the imagination in the same way, so from an advertiser’s point of view, something that isn’t just a combination of random letters and numbers works better.
The big thing when it comes to picking a name for a car is to find something that suits the image of the car and the sort of target market. The name ought to say something about the car and what it does. It should be memorable – but for the right reasons, not for the wrong ones.
Car type: 4x4s
Image and atmosphere needed: Things to do with the wilderness, the great outdoors, exploration, adventure, rough and toughness… Wild places on the earth, people who discovered them.
Names that have worked: Nissan Safari, Nissan Pathfinder , Landrover Discovery, Ford Ranger, VW Tourareg .
Names that could work: Locator, Granite, Tundra, Pampas, Trek, Prospector, Quest, Colombus, Shackleton, Amundsen, Livingstone, Viking, Magellan.
Names that won’t work: Anything that overplays the dangerous bit or is named after an explorer with a name that can sound odd or wimpy: Risk, Hazard, Stanley, Cook, Eric.
Car type: Eco-friendly small car, preferably a hybrid or electric. Usually a hatchback but not always.
Image and atmosphere needed: Something from the natural world that’s pretty to give the right sort of fun, green image, preferably something that moves quickly.
Names that have worked: Nissan Leaf, VW Beetle, Suzuki Swift, Nissan Bluebird, Datsun Sunny
Names that could work: Dolphin, Sparrow, Marten, Aspen, Maple, Arroyo, Spark.
Names that won’t work: Swallow, Fish, Frog, Whale, Lizard, Toad, Puddle, Banana, Platypus.
Car type: Fast sports car.
Image and atmosphere needed: Something dangerous and aggressive, or possibly high temperature.
Names that have worked: Jaguar, Alfa Romeo Spider, FPV F6 Tornado, Porsche Cayenne, Hyundai Tiburon.
Names that could work: Mako, Barracuda, Mamba, Redback, Brumby, Piranha, Tabasco, Fever.
Names that won’t work: T-Rex, Brontosaurus, Hammerhead, Rhino, Explode, Muscle, Poison. Anything that’s just too try-hard.
Car type: Luxury executive saloon.
Image and atmosphere needed: Something classy and sophisticated with an overtone of prestige, wealth and opulence. Some European marques tend to use classy women’s names.
Names that have worked: Holden Statesman, Holden Commodore, HSV Senator, Renault Megane, Subaru Legacy.
Names that could work: Platinum, Kaiser, Marquis, Baron, Tiara, Imperator, Viscount, Heritage, Catriona, Sabine.
Names that won’t work: Anything that’s just too in-your-face ostentatious. Precious, Autocrat, Aristocrat, Dictator, General, Pope, Archbishop, Pontiff, Caesar, Prince, Rex, Jenny, Maria.
Anything involving adjectives can get on shaky ground, especially if the adjective is the sort of thing people naturally call a car if they’re giving it a rave review. So Wonderful, Awesome, Brilliant, Amazing, Marvellous, Incredible and Fantastic just aren’t going to work. They’re just asking for trouble and mockery.
More Than 2.5 Children?
Those with large families – and even those with average families with the standard 2.5 children – often go in for big MPVs with six or seven seats so everyone can sit in the car comfortably without squishing poor little Two Point Five who has to sit in the middle seat that’s been designed for 0.5 of a person in the average sedan (although I’m pleased to note that in larger sedans such as the Ford Fairlane sitting in my garage, there’s room for three kids over the age of ten plus the dog in the back seat, and nobody’s got knees in the driver’s kidneys).
Anyway, the MPV is the car of choice for a lot of families, especially if they do have larger than average families. The MPV is certainly a lot more stylish for getting about in than the standard thing you saw large families driving back in the 1990s: the van. In some circles, you occasionally heard about the “white van brigade” as a term to refer to families that (a) had more than three kids, (b) were usually somewhat religious in their outlook on life and/or quasi-hippy types and (c) homeschooled their many children. They all had white vans, such as the good old Mitsubishi Express or its earlier incarnations, the Mazda Bongo, etc, and you’d see a right row of these lined up in the car parks of some churches on Sunday mornings. They were good vehicles but they tended to be a bit bland and boring, even though they were practical. The MPV has changed all that, adding style and colour as options for big families.
However, if you are a parent of one of those larger families, don’t just rush out and buy the first MPV you see in the car yard or read about on our car reviews page. Always test drive the car first – and don’t just test-drive the engine. See how the car goes with the various family members in it, booster seats, car seats and all.
This is where I need to mention the cautionary tale that happened to a woman I know – let’s call her Catherine (not her real name). Baby number three had just arrived and, of course, the baby had to go in a proper rear-facing car seat in the back. Catherine’s MPV was of the type that had a sliding panel type of back door, with a seat that folded up to allow access to the back row. Child number one could go in a booster seat in the front without any problems, but Number Two had a problem. There wasn’t any room for the booster seat and the baby seat in the middle row, unless you had ultra-thin hands to reach down and operate the seat belt plugs. So Number Two had to go in the very back seat. However, the only place that the baby seat could go and still be reached was that fold-down seat, as Catherine’s arms weren’t long enough to reach the other side of the car – the sliding panel was the only way in to the back bit, apart from the hatch into the cargo area. Just as well the hatch into the boot was there, as this was how number two had to get into the car. I have no idea what Catherine is going to do if Number Two throws a hissy fit and refuses to get in the car.
If a lot of your children are quite large, then hop into the very rear seat to check out the legroom. One teenager of my acquaintance was recently riding in the rear row of a Volvo XC90 (which contained a horde of other teenagers) reported that the rear seat hasn’t got a lot of room for long legs, and this tall young man and his friend had to be pretty flexible to fit in. This wasn’t the latest sort of Volvo XC90, and later versions may have corrected this issue – but do check out what the space is like in the very back and ask yourself how you’d like to go on a long distance trip inside it.
As always, the test drive is a must – and take the whole family with you, no matter how much they moan.
Giving An Indication Of Your Intentions
My fellow-blogger Adam has recently written a few posts about in-car information and the battery of gadgets in modern cars to let you know what, when, where, how much, and so forth. Too much in-car information drives me bonkers, too, especially if some of the in-car information is not just being provided by a beeper or a light but by my teenage son sitting in the back seat and telling me how to drive (and he’s not quite old enough for his licence yet).
What I really would like to know and what I would like to see in cars which probably would make our roads a lot safer would be some way of telling me what the car in front of me is about to do. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss about the optimal level of revs to maximise my fuel economy when I’m approaching a busy roundabout or when I’m driving in heavy traffic; I want to know what the contractor in the Ford Transit in front of me is about to do. If car manufacturers really loved us and gave us what’s good for us rather than (or as well as) the fun things we want, they’d give us more ways to communicate our intentions to our fellow drivers.
Some of these have already been invented. In fact, they were invented a long time ago. In spite of this, an awful lot of drivers don’t use the darn things or else they use them improperly. Those orange flashing lights on the side of your car are there for a purpose, people! Use them!
The worst misusers of indicators are seen on roundabouts. The rules state that when you approach a roundabout, you signal which way you are going. This means that if you’re turning right, you indicate right, and if you are turning left, you indicate left. If you are going straight through, you don’t indicate when you first enter the roundabout but you do indicate left when you are about to leave the roundabout. You DO NOT indicate left as you come up to the roundabout if you are going straight through, or else all the cars, bikes and pedestrians who ought to give way to you as you go straight through will think you’re turning left and go ahead. I’ve had a number of close calls thanks to people doing this wrong, to the point that I don’t believe that a car indicating left at a roundabout is actually turning left until I actually see the change in direction. Holds up the traffic behind me and has made me late but avoids crashes.
The other invention that is out there to tell other drivers what you’re doing is the brake light, which lets the person behind you know that you’re stopping. I guess the horn is another one, as this lets the person in front of you who is ogling the flash Porsche that just went past that there is a queue behind them and the traffic light has turned green. From time to time, I’ve wanted a few extra lights to let other road-users what I’m doing as follows:
- An accelerator light – to let the person who is tailgating with the hope of overtaking me as soon as they get a clear bit of open road that I am speeding up so we don’t end up inadvertently racing.
- A Sorry light. Everyone stuffs up from time to time. It would probably help ease road rage if you could flash an apology to someone you have held up, cut off or had a close brush with.
- A light to show that you’re going slow because you’re trying to read the road signs because you’re new to this bit of town.
Level 2, 9 Help Street