If one must have an automatic then why provide any option of changing gears at all. One button for forward, another for reverse and an off switch. That's all any automatic 'driver' really needs.

There's always these two...

It's certainly a pretty little thing. But is there really a market for a long wheelbase two door hatchback? Or does Volvo find something unappealing about a second set of doors for its concepts.

Nowhere on that list but somewhere around here:

Mahindra Thar

It's hard not to feel forced when you are being massaged at with six metres of throbbing Thai handiwork.

Got it in one. Up until relatively recently in this country...the car based utes had it all over the pickups in terms of driveline, dynamics and comfort.

That's because they don't want to remind the Average Punter that they've effectively killed the car based ute. But they do want to try and massage the mythology so that it can be transferred to the Ranger without anyone significant actually noticing...

GM Holden actually stopped making utes in the mid Eighties with the demise of the WB and started selling rebadged Izuzu's. Ford just kept right on going. Holden eventually came back in the late Nineties when the VN Commodore was launched.

They don't have much choice. There's not going to be a supplier base nor are there going to be subsidies.

You should try doing it in a Toyota Dyna...for real. Quite hilarious.

Toyota Land Cruiser 70 series dual cab with a 4.5 L V8 turbo diesel

Oh I don't know about that...

What would be the purpose of a boutique truck? You might get a boutique sports car so you can take it to a track day or simply show off your poor taste in motor vehicles. But a boutique truck just loudly and incessantly screams 'I'm a self-centred dickhead' unless it is for third world expeditioning or off road track…

That strikes me as 'doing it wrong'. I know that those of you from North America are just a little bit special but it always makes me giggle when I see these stonkingly ridiculous trucks towing stuff - everywhere else in the world we use far smaller, more fuel efficient and far more practical vehicles to do much the…

Oh, Chevrolet SS! You carry the shared hope of two nations, Australia and America, that the masses can still appreciate raw V8 muscle and sweet, sweet rear-wheel drive. And you get even better when Hennessey Performance gets their hands on you.

Land Rover has been using alloy panels for many decades and I don't think they subsidised anybody to repair them...they just charged panel shops what they were actually worth rather than gouging like most makers do with crash parts...

I'd happily pop for a Panda with the TwinAir engine...except than in Australia it costs three grand more than a 500 with the same engine...the Panda pricing down here is daft. If they had the 4x4 down here it'd probably cost north of twenty grand!!!

They don't need to...Renault has a 2.0 turbo 4 in the Megane R.S. that knocks out 195 kW and 360 Nm - is 260 hp enough?.

Toyota Corolla...in pretty much all it's many and varied forms. Millions and billions of them everywhere in the World. 'Ubiquity' is a perfect alternative to 'greatest' in the automotive thesaurus.