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Carsales Staff29 Dec 2013
NEWS

THE AUTOMOTIVE YEAR: Gripe of the year 2013

What cheesed you off in the big, bad automotive world this year? Here's our list.

There’s more than one member of the motoring.com.au team who is possessed of a hair trigger, a short fuse and/or and a propensity to fly off the handle. So it’s with some trepidation that we open the floor on the subject of the gripes of 2013...

Read last year’s gripes if you've got time. They're rather amusing.

Mike Sinclair
Editor in Chief
@petrolhedonist
I have no gripes, the world (automotive and otherwise) is a truly wonderful place... Excepting, of course, for [redacted for legal reasons].

Bruce Newton
News hound extraordinaire
The blame game that ensued in federal parliament when it was announced Holden was closing. Pathetic.

Marton Pettendy
Managing Editor
@tumbulgumtown
Ford’s and Holden’s decision to cease manufacturing in Australia. The writing was on the wall for some time, but the announcements were still galling. And shocks in their finality. A ‘perfect storm’ of high labour costs, low tariffs and a strong Aussie dollar might have made the pull-out of both US companies inevitable, but that’s no consolation for the loss of jobs and almost a century of cumulative local car-making history.

Michael Taylor
Our ‘Man in Europe’
@wordsbyMT
The vilification of Tesla for a handful of fires in the beautifully engineered Model S feels maliciously orchestrated. There are calls for recalls, demands for action from the US National Highway Transport Safety Authority and widespread coverage of each fire, examined from every angle. Yet examination of the facts shows that each Model S fire occurred after a freak incident (such as a crash or having jagged metal pierce the battery pack). Indeed, the statistics show the Model S has far few fires per 100,000km driven than conventional internal-combustion-engine cars from Ford, Chrysler and GM in the US.

It’s all sounding like vitriolic poison driven by the established players, who should be both threatened and embarrassed by Tesla’s success. The question needs to be asked, though: Are they trying to turn Tesla into the new Tucker?

Ken Gratton
News Editor
@ken_gratton
Many avenues of scientific study have to be taken on faith by lay people; like climate change for instance. The global automotive industry has settled on the side of the argument proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change – that AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is raising average global temperatures. Something like 97 per cent of climatologists and meteorologists around the world (including the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO) agree that AGW must be slowed.

Yet Australians are still confounded by media reporting of the subject.

The Australian republishing an article from Britain's The Daily Mail – misrepresenting the IPCC's next draft report – was bound to foster further confusion and resentment. Subsequent corrections by the paper and excoriation handed out by the ABC's Media Watch program have done little to clarify the position.

It would be nice to know for sure whether your next weekend plaything is going to be a classic V8 coupe or a web-connected hybrid hatch. And be able to make that decision based on more than gut instinct and (mis)trust!

Matt Brogan
Road test Editor
@mattbroganAu
Queensland’s anti-association laws: While I might appreciate the sentiment of what Queensland’s law makers had hoped to achieve in their implementation of anti-association legislation, the fact is that the wider-reaching implications, and the execution of the law’s policing, has left a lot to be desired.

Scarier still is that the law was pushed through parliament in just one day. The “anti bikie” law has become an excuse to target any group of motorcyclists travelling in numbers of two or more.

Further, there are literally dozens of examples of heavy-handed and quite ignorant police members used to detain or otherwise harass innocent motorcyclists simply for using two wheels as a means of conveyance, or simply out enjoying a social ride with mates.

It’s dangerous ground we tread in allowing those elected to represent us to create laws that impact on the very freedoms they are supposed to uphold.

Gautam Sharma
Middle Eastern Royalty
Among the cars I was really hoping to drive in 2013 were the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder and Chevy’s C7 Corvette. Sadly, the only seat time I got in this trio was while they sat motionless at motor shows.

Feann Torr
Staff Journalist
@feanntorr
Manual gearboxes are an endangered species in this country. RIP clutch pedals in Australia.

Higher numbers of new drivers opting for automatic-only driver's licences, and more than eight out of 10 new cars sold in this country are equipped with auto transmissions. I give it five years before the manual is almost entirely absent from the Aussie new car market.

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