One day we were talking about teaching analogies and models, and the difficulty in simplification of knowledge without introducing straight-out erroneous ideas.

His example of the latter was: Clouds bumping into each other make thunder.

Much better, he pointed out, to say even to the youngest child: Thunder happens because of lightning.

In fact, clouds are a good example of these ideas. My little boy, who is 4 years old, asks what clouds are made of.

Tiny, tiny water droplets, I say.

So, how does rain happen, he asks?

I say: The tiny droplets run into each other and join together. When they are big enough, they fall to the ground.

While I am saying this, sometimes I think of a much more sophisticated model: water vapour, latent heat of evaporation and condensation, relative humidity, dew-point, hygroscopic nuclei – and other concepts.

A meteorologist would probably think of vapour pressure, a chemist might think at a molecular level, a physicist might consider terminal velocities, a climatologist might consider climate change, a minister of religion might think of God, an agnostic might think of the magnificence of nature.

In the description of clouds and rainfall that I say to my son, I am conscious of the gross simplifications I am making.

But that’s OK: every single thing I know about the world is a gross simplification of reality.

The intellectual models I use to make sense of what occurs around me are just reducible approximations of what really happens.

When I write technical articles in AutoSpeed, I am conscious that all the time I am presenting fundamentally simplistic models. I hope that they’re not of the ‘clouds bumping into each other make thunder’ type: but they may be.

Recently, I wrote an article on suspension roll centres, virtual pivot points and other ways of analysing suspension designs. In doing so, I consulted five different suspension design textbooks, and also considered very carefully the experience I have in developing human-powered vehicle suspensions, and modifying car suspensions.

As always, I was quite conscious during the writing of the article that the model I was presenting of reality was likely to be flawed: as I have already implied, every model we have of reality is, to a greater or lesser degree, flawed. However, I hoped that the information would benefit people’s understandings, especially in practical outcomes.

The day after finishing the article, I looked through a complex SAE paper on suspension roll centres. This paper immediately debunked several suspension ‘myths’, most of which I had implicitly or explicitly promulgated in the article I had written.

However, the paper was working at a level analogous to the ‘vapour pressure and hygroscopic nuclei’ theory of why rain falls: if I based my article on the SAE paper in question, perhaps less than half of one percent of AutoSpeed readers would understand anything I wrote. (If in fact I could understand it myself!)

So I could easily decide not to write anything at all: if it’s not ‘right’ and ‘correct’, surely it shouldn’t be written?

But that would be like saying to my son: I cannot tell you why rain falls; it’s too hard to understand.

I cannot tell you what a roll centre is; it’s too hard to understand.

Or I cannot tell you what a voltage is; it’s too hard to understand.

I cannot tell you what engine detonation is; it’s too hard to understand.

I cannot tell you how a tyre behaves when cornering, it’s too hard to understand.

And so on.

And these things – and all things – really are too hard to understand… if you want as ‘correct’ an understanding as it is currently possible to have.

Are my articles full of errors? So by definition, very likely.

Anyone who suggests that the technical articles they present for general readers are perfectly correct – or do not mislead in the slightest – just do not understand the nature of knowledge – and how all our descriptions of what goes on around us are just relatively simplistic models.

Me? I try to use the simplest model that’s consistent with not being grossly misleading…

I feel like one of the first pilots of jet-powered aircraft. They immediately knew that they were flying the future: there could be no going back to pistons and propellers.

Today I drove the car that, for me, spells the end of the piston engine for performance cars.

The car was the all-electric Tesla, and its performance – and the way it achieved that performance – was just so extraordinary that I am almost lost for words. That a start-up car company has created such a vehicle is simply unprecedented in the last century of automotive development.

For the Tesla is not just a sports car with incredible performance (0-100 km/h in the fours) but also a car that redefines driveability. Simply, it has the best throttle control of any car I have ever driven.

Trickle around a carpark at 1000 (electric) revs and the car drives like it has a maximum of just a few kilowatts available. It’s the pussy cat to end all pussy cats: Grandma could drive it with nary a concern in the world. Put your foot down a little and the car seamlessly accelerates: heavy urban traffic, just perfect.

But select an empty stretch of bitumen and mash your foot to the floor and expletives just stream from your mouth as the car launches forward with an unbelievable, seamless and simply immensely strong thrust.

There are no slipping clutches, no flaring torque converters, no revving engines, no gear-changes – just a swishing vacuum-cleaner-on-steroids noise that sweeps you towards the horizon. The acceleration off the line and up to 100 km/h or so is just mind-boggling – especially as it’s accompanied by such undemonstrative effort. The car will do it again and again and again, all with the same phenomenal ease that makes this the winner of any traffic lights grand prix you’re ever likely to meet.

And it’s not just off the line. Want to quickly swap lanes? Just think about it and it’s accomplished. 

In fact drive the car hard and you start assuming that this is the only mode – outright performance. But then enter that carpark, or keep station with other traffic, and you’re back to driving an utterly tractable car – in fact, one for whom the word ‘tractable’ is irrelevant. Combustion engines are tractable or intractable; this car’s electric motor controller just apportions its electron flow as required, in an endlessly seamless and subtle variation from zero to full power.

It’s not just the acceleration that is revolutionary. The braking – achieved primarily through regen – has the same brilliant throttle mapping, an approach that immediately allows even a newcomer to progressively brake to a near-standstill at exactly the chosen point.

A seamless, elastic and fluid power delivery that no conventional car can come remotely close to matching; a symphony on wheels to be played solely with the right foot; an utterly smooth and progressive performance than can be explosive or docile, urgent or somnambulant – literally, a driveline that completely redefines sports cars.

There’s no going back – my driving life is now changed forever.

Footnote: the Tesla drive was courtesy of Simon Hackett of the ISP, Internode.

By importing the data into a spreadsheet, I can rank all our articles in terms of numbers of ratings, averaged ratings for individual articles, and so on. I can also see changes over time in the average reader ratings for specific articles.

The other day a reader proposed that, if an article suggests to people ideas they don’t want to hear, they are more likely to give it a low score. So in other words, instead of rating articles on the basis of the quality of journalism, expression, innovative ideas (etc) that are presented, they just rate it on the basis of whether or not they agree with it.

Of course, that’s fair enough – no specific criteria are given to readers as to how they should evaluate articles.

But it also gives rise to an interesting idea. In terms of new car tests, I think that, over the long-term, most readers of new car tests are those who have bought the car in question – and then are looking for confirmation that their purchase decision was a good one!

I base this on two ideas. Firstly, new car tests typically decline in averaged reader ratings over time. So a test might start off with an average of 3.7, but over time that rating invariably drops.

Secondly, the more negative the test, the more marked is the decrease in rating.

So I think that the initial batch of ratings come from people who don’t care one way or another whether the car is praised or denigrated. Then, subsequently, people doing web searches on the car (ie they are interested in the specific car and that’s why they are looking for reviews) find the stories. 

And because they either own the car (and want that reassurance their purchase was a good one) or are thinking of buying that car (and again want the reassurance that their choice is correct), the more faults found with the car in the review, the less they enjoy the story.

Our test of the Honda HRV was scathing. Reader rating score? 1.81 out of 5.

The Audi A8 3.7 we thought way overpriced and underdone. Reader score? 2.04 out of 5.

The Mitsubishi Outlander was a pretty unimpressive car. Score? 2.15.

The Saab 9.5 was terribly outdated. Score? 2.16.

Our test of the Pug 407 HDi Touring  is probably the most negative ever published. 2.25 out of 5.

That simply awful car, the Alfa 166? 2.74 out of 5. (Probably a score that goes against the trend by actually rising over time as people – including owners – finally realise what a disaster the car was.)

And the most recent – the FG Falcon – with a score of 2.87.

(All scores at the time of writing.)

In contrast, positive car tests rate typically about 3.5 – 3.6.

I won’t pretend that there aren’t exceptions to the above argument – some positive new car tests have rated poorly. But typically, what I’ve written above is the case.

I can also see another fascinating element in the article scores.

It sounds arrogant – it probably is – but I have always thought that we’ve been well ahead of the game in much of our editorial content. For example, perhaps five years ahead of everyone else in our interest in hybrid cars – eg in modifying them.

And confirmation of this is coming when we re-run certain articles. Years after they were first published, these articles are now scoring much higher reader ratings than they did when they were first released!

Why? I think that people now perceive them as more relevant.

Yes, for an editor, reader ratings make for fascinating reading…

A 2003 model AMG Mercedes Benz E55, it comes standard with a supercharged 5.4 litre, 3-valves-per-cylinder V8 boosted by a Lysholm compressor spinning at up to 23,000 rpm and pushing air through a water/air intercooler.

Peak power is 350kW at 6100 rpm, but the real whammy is in the torque – no less than 700Nm is developed from 2650 – 4500 rpm.

Initial impressions were of complexity – there are an awful lot of obscure knobs and buttons, especially on the car I drove that was fitted with options including dynamic driver and passenger seats (adds lots of controls – some automatic – for seat shape), tyre pressure control, rear sun-blinds, keyless go – and Gawd knows what else.

But having said that, the instruments and controls most often used by the driver were clear and easy – it was the next layer down… and the next, and the next… where things got complex.

Without a doubt the best aspect of the car was the engine. It hauled like the fastest freight locomotive on earth, a massive amount of torque available at whatever engine speeds you liked.

Performance? Yes, very strong – the factory 0-100 km/h is quoted as 4.6 seconds.

But the steering had that horrible Mercedes Benz slow ratio around straight-ahead (but with some lock on, good, meaty weight and feel), and the initial movement of the throttle was quite non-linear in terms of response – not much happened at first.

Ride (set at the most comfortable of three settings) was very good; handling equally so. The stability control and traction control systems were refined and effective: it was the sort of car you could throw around after only a short familiarisation.

Impressive? Yes, I think so – especially at the AUD$100,000 they now command. Impressive at the original AUD$250,000+? Perhaps proportionally less so!

If you’d like to own one, contact Paul at www.qsm.com.au – the car is currently not for sale but I am sure a deal could be done…

Although sometimes attributed to Mark Twain – because it appears in his posthumously-published Autobiography (1924) – this should more properly be ascribed to Disraeli, as indeed Twain took trouble to do: his exact words being, ‘The remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”.’

And there are no greater ‘damned lies’ than readership or circulation figures for magazines and other publications. To give you an idea, often when a print magazine quotes ‘readership’, they triple or even quadruple their actual sales figures. Why? Because they assume each copy is read by three or four people!

In the same way – or even, come to think of, much worse ways – web sites quote all sorts of figures for their readership.

AutoSpeed’s figures are logged by Google. I can look at our daily figures, weekly figures, annual figures – or even figures for the content, section by section. Further, through internal Web Publications data, I can view readership numbers, article by article. Finally, I can also see the number of reader ratings for each article, and what those ratings are.

So I can, hand on heart and backed-up by unarguable data, say that AutoSpeed’s readership over the last year has been over 2.8 million separate visits and nearly 9 million pages.

So does that mean we have 2.8 million readers? By definition, of course!

However, to me a ‘reader’ is someone who returns frequently, reading our weekly-updated content. So, for example, someone who comes to AutoSpeed at least 50 times a year (we always have a two week break in new content over Christmas / New Year.)

And in the last year, we had over 52,000 people who returned to AutoSpeed one to two times per week (to be precise, 52 – 100 times per year).

But we also had another 38,000 who read AutoSpeed 101 – 200 times per year – an average return period of 2 – 4 days.

And we had another 32,000 who read AutoSpeed more than 201 times in that year – say every 1-2 days.

Therefore, people who read AutoSpeed more than weekly total 122,000 people, with the sampling period being the last year.

Stretch the definition to those who read AutoSpeed a little more frequently than monthly and that figure jumps to an even 250,000 people.

Include ‘about monthly’ (in actuality, 9-14 times a year) and you can add another 74,000 – the total is then 324,000 people.

These figures struck me the other day when I was viewing the latest circulation figures for the monthly Australian car magazines. Only one performance title even makes the list of the top 100 best-selling magazines in Australia (and that’s Street Machine), and it has audited monthly sales of 55,526.

Of course, those Street Machine buyers are viewing the magazine for the content published in just that issue, whereas AutoSpeed readers might be viewing anything from the last ten years of content.  But that’s the nature of our web beast – and the editorial policy that has specified from day #1 that we should make the content as timeless as possible.

I can remember when I edited a print magazine that had something like 5 per cent of the number of bi-monthly readers of AutoSpeed. It was a magazine where I could have only dreamt of covering the breadth and depth of topics we frequently write about in AutoSpeed. Simply, I could never have done the current AutoSpeed content in a national Australian print magazine: the fixed costs were too high and the potential readership far too small. 

Web Publications deserves the utmost congratulations in making available a publication that, AFAIK, is quite unique in the world. Sure, that publication has also given me a job for a decade, but look at the content and look at the readership numbers and it’s simply a genuinely impressive outcome.

I read the referrers’ list (and then follow many links) at least a couple of times a day. It tells me, indirectly, which are our most popular articles for that day, and even more importantly, it also shows me how well each article is understood.

Huh – ‘how well it is understood’?

Well, the sad truth is that many AutoSpeed articles are completely misunderstood by readers. But again, that’s useful to me – if my writing hasn’t been clear enough, or the photos of sufficient quality, then I get to see the outcome expressed loud and clear.

But there’s nothing I can do about wilful ignorance.

Recently we ran an article (highlighted also in this blog) on modelling space-frame structures. By building a scaled-down space-frame out of copper wire that is soldered together, you can very quickly model the stresses that occur when the space-frame is subjected to various forces.

The article has been popular and has high reader ratings – that’s rewarding to me when I know that the technique works extremely well, and that further, it is a better technique than other ways I’ve seen in the past for modelling space-frames.

For example, using balsa wood and glue is one approach, but the copper wire technique is better because:

1) it is easily joined quickly and with strength by soldering (far easier than glue, especially when you want to make quick changes and then immediately model the results);

2) the failure mode is typically compression failure by buckling (as occurs in full size, tubular space frames);

3) the shape of failure (ie the sharpness of the bend in the wire) clearly shows the degree of stress concentration, and location of that stress, in the member.

They are all major advantages.

A further advantage is that if a wire fails by bending, it can be quickly straightened and other changes to the model then made. Of course that wire will now be weaker than it was, but in many cases that doesn’t matter because broad-brush changes are being modelled. As I stated in the article, the final iteration should always be tested with a newly built model.

So what was that about wilful ignorance?

A person, who owns and edits a motorsport / homebuilder magazine published in Australia, wrote on a forum about the space-frame modelling article:

This article is perhaps the perfect example of why Autospeed gives me the irits. Virtually the same information WRT models has been in many books for close to 30 years (with one significant change). However wire is not a good medium for such testing, balsa wood and glue is better. However Julian Edgar has obviously not understood the fundamentals of a basic beam let alone a spaceframe. The elements in any spaceframe should be in tension and not compression. He should read Costin and Phipps book on the subject…after all it has been around for close to 50 years now and the engineering pre-dates this to the 1930’s!

This is all simply rubbish.

The statement “The elements in any space-frame should be in tension and not compression” is simply farcical, as even a moment’s thought will reveal. Unless the car is hanging statically from a crane, the loads will always be made up in a space-frame by both compression and extension.

I have the book that the poster mentioned. Let me quote from it (page 22):

“Stiffness must not in any circumstances be imparted by putting bending loads into members at joints. In fact, joints should be loaded only in tension or compression.”

No-where in the chapter (or for that matter the whole book) is a statement that supports the idea that a space-frame should have members only in tension – it is of course impossible.

I suggest that the reason that articles like this give this poster the ‘irits’ is that it’s exactly the sort of breakthrough, down to earth, easily accomplished technique that readers of his magazine would love…

eBay, the Lifeline BookFest (no less than a million second-hand books for sale, and all proceeds benefitting charity!), bookshops (both new and used), garage sales – the sources are endless.

The other day one of the books that lobbed into my post office box was an orphan – a single volume of one of the Newnes Motor Repair sets of the 1950s – and perhaps the early 1960s. The book – Volume 3 of probably a 6 volume set – covers commercial vehicles, tractors and general car repairs (but the latter only the subject titles from ‘B’ to ‘E’).

I was browsing it, looking at the different designs of the (mostly) British vehicles when something suddenly hit me.

The names!

These commercial vehicles – trucks, vans, tractors – had the most wonderful, evocative names.

Like?

Well, how about the Karrier Bantam? No, well get your head around the Karrier Gamecock.

All right, perhaps the Leyland Comet - or the Super Comet?

Not happy? Well step into my Leyland Hippo! No, I am not kidding.

Also from Leyland there’s the Beaver, Hippo, Octopus, Titan – or Tiger Cub. I think I’d much rather drive a Titan than a Tiger Cub.

Or, God forbid, a Hippo….

But it doesn’t stop there.

From Scammell there’s the Highwayman, Mountaineer and Constructor. I guess at least these names make sense (unlike the bloody Tiger Cub!).

But wait.

Did you hear about the Scarab Mechanical Horse?  (In fact, it’s a very interesting vehicle with a front suspension design of its single wheel like nothing I have seen before.)

Finally, I’ll leave you with the Thornycraft Sturdy Star.

Um, how can a star be sturdy? A bit like the ‘Strong Planet’, isn’t it? Or maybe the ‘Mega Universe’?

Clearly I was born too late – in the ’50s I could have got a job making up names with Leyland or Karrier or…..

About once every two weeks I get an email.

Hi, I’ve invented a new type of turbo. I am sure you’d like to cover it.

Or,

I’ve developed a breakthrough fuel – you make it yourself. You should do a story on it.

Or, even,

You haven’t done a new car test on my car – it’s a XYZ. Would you like to drive it?

On the off-chance that something will actually eventuate, I always email back a semi-polite reply.

But then the turbo man doesn’t want to send me any real-world test results, or the person who makes their own fuel suddenly goes very quiet, or the person with the new car lives in remote, outback Western Australia.

However, sometimes – just sometimes – stories actually eventuate.

And in the last few months I’ve done a number of stories with people who have popped up out of nowhere.

David of Adelaide emailed me – he had a Hyundai i30 diesel and would I like to drive it? Since I was going to be in Adelaide in a few months’ time (and since I’d already briefly sampled the i30, but not nearly a long enough experience to write a story) I was interested. I’d want the car for 24 hours minimum, but that was basically the only caveat.  

And the story happened.

I’d expected to do about 600-700 kilometres in the day I had the car, but the fact that the machine hadn’t even had it first 1000 kilometre service stopped that. But I still did a reasonable number of both city and country kilometres. (And, incidentally, about four times as far as occurred at the Hyundai i30 launch – see here).

Another story that came out of nowhere was the one I did recently on the 1960s Mitsubishi Colt.

Craig is a Colt collector, and after I saw his cars on a discussion group, I jotted his name down to contact when I was in his area (as it happens, again Adelaide). By email he was helpful – very helpful (and also mortified when his email went mad and repeatedly sent me the same [large!] files).

His Colts were just as he had said, he’d prepared a folder of print-outs for me just as I’d asked, and I could drive a car – another request granted.

He seemed surprised how smoothly it all went – perhaps I was a nicer person to deal with than my reputation apparently suggested!

But I love cars – all cars – and I relished driving his Colt in just the same way as (don’t laugh when I put them in the same sentence) I so well remember driving a friend’s original Porsche 356.

And when doing the story on the Colts, I could also cover how Craig has restored an old petrol bowser.

In the flesh the restoration wasn’t as good as the pics had suggested, but after a moment I decided that the quality of the restoration simply didn’t matter – it looked good, and that was the whole point of the exercise. As I wrote in the story, if you want a great conversation piece in your home workshop, here’s how to achieve it.

And then I did yet another story that proved to be a great success – although I’d initially wondered how it would go.

The story was on a man who blows acrylic bubble canopies suitable for gliders, historic aircraft – and human-powered vehicles and custom cars. Ian works out of a backyard shed, and is modest, smart, experienced and helpful – and was there at the agreed time, with the agreed resources, and furnishing the agreed information. (I state the latter points because so often this is not the case!)

Each story – driving the Hyundai i30 CRDi, driving the 1960’s Colt and writing about its history, doing the bowser story and seeing how acrylic canopies can be blown – I found inspiring and interesting.

And, if I found them exciting, I know by long experience that lots of readers will also enjoy the resulting articles.

So despite my opening lines, these stories do sometimes happen!

In short, it looks to be a great year.

First-up, we’ll be continuing our ‘How to Electronically Modify Your Car’ series. At this stage the series has about 15 parts – it may grow a little. By reading those stories, you can be taken from knowing literally nothing about electronically modifying a car to the stage where you can confidently make changes to analog and digital signals, and understand how car systems can be altered.

In the second half of the year we expect to cover an innovative development in DIY electronics that will put the power of making major, custom electronic modification of cars into the hands of everyone. It’s a development that has been more than 12 months of work in the making, and one that I think is enormously exciting. More on this as we get closer to launch.

In the first few months of this year we’ve also get new car tests coming on the Mitsubishi Ralliart Lancer, Holden Calais Sportwagon, Lexus RX400h and Lexus GS450h hybrids, and Hyundai i30 diesel.

In DIY tech stories, we’ll be covering how you can engineer space-frames without mathematics or engineering knowledge, how to build an ultra lightweight portable drill from scrap parts, and how to reshape factory seats to get much better comfort and support.

We’ve also got upcoming stories on the MRT modification packages for the Evo X Lancer and late-model Subaru turbos, a story on the brilliant Whiteline Black Box modification for electronic stability control systems, and a two-part series on the development of an ultra light-weight electric car. And for something a little from left-field, we also look at how custom acrylic canopies can be formed – perfect for alternative design cars.

Finally, this year we will also be covering the design and development of Chalky, a new recumbent pedal trike that will combine extreme ride comfort, foldability and cutting-edge design that includes both ‘bicycle’ and ‘leaning trike’ modes of cornering. It will be probably the world’s most advanced human-powered machine suitable for general use.

And those are just the start – as usual, we’ll publish more than 100 new stories this year.

It’s been an interesting year, not least because in response to reader requests, we’ve been again testing more new cars.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I think that when testing cars, nearly all journalists are way too soft in their criticisms. I mean, to make just a simple point – by definition, half of all new cars should be rated below average and half should be above average.

But read most car tests and you’ll find that nearly all cars are said to be way above average!

I also think that journalists – and especially enthusiasts’ magazines and TV shows – need to in part be blamed for the absurd direction that some manufacturers have taken with their cars.

The car that this year amazed me the most was the Ford FG Falcon.

The model that I would think sells the best – the XR6 – was incredibly off the pace in the things that matter to most purchasers. All I can say is: what on earth was Ford thinking when they set the priorities?

I wrote about this when the car was first released – see The New Falcon – Mostly Irrelevant and the ironic The Ideal Car for the Times - but the car’s reality was even worse than I’d guessed.

The Falcon review appears in AutoSpeed in the first issue of next year.

Incidentally, lest you think I’d already made up my mind before driving the Falcon (and so a negative test was inevitable), that’s not the case. In fact, our test of the Aurion demonstrates that. I had no great hopes the Aurion would be anything wonderful (and the Camry certainly wasn’t), but as I wrote in the Aurion test: the Aurion is a highly impressive car, well matched to those who want a large car with comfort, performance, a superb ride-and-handling match for real-world Australian conditions, and fuel economy that in its class is excellent.

I don’t think the Aurion is the best car for Australian manufacture, but I still think it’s a very good car.

But to be honest, I could not – and still cannot – believe how bad the FG Falcon is…. and ‘bad’ in the context of what the car is supposed to achieve.

Why on earth did the company spend lots of money on a new front suspension design and steering when out on the road, pushing the car to anywhere near its very high limits is illegal? To put this another way, in virtually all road use, what was wrong with the previous model’s suspension?

That (rumoured) $100 million spent on the new front suspension could have been used to make the air conditioning actually work and improve interior packaging – both would have had far more positive impact on potential purchasers than getting better turn-in at 150 km/h…

And the fuel consumption!

Forget the official government test figures: at a measured 12.5 – 13.5 litres/100km in the city, there appears to be no real-world improvement in a decade. That is simply unforgiveable.

The Falcon angers and frustrates me. The decisions that Ford’s myopic product planners took, in the face of overwhelming worldwide evidence, has cost this country – and Ford – a lot of jobs and money.

With the new (or now just revised old?) upcoming Falcon engines – including perhaps diesel and liquid LPG injection – Ford may be able to regain some of the initiative. But even with improvement in this area, the interior functionality of the Falcon will still remain pedestrian.

I have been asked what car I think Ford should have used as the benchmark when developing the FG. The answer to that is clear: the benchmark could not be any single car, because the Falcon has to be a car unique in the world. It has to sell into a small, geographically defined market where its major buyers are government and fleets, followed only then by family buyers.

The Falcon does not need to have the best fuel economy, or the best interior packaging, or the best high speed stability, or the best NVH, or the best handling, or the best safety, or the best performance. What it needs to be is ‘good’ in as many areas as possible.

Therefore, some examples of benchmark cars that should have been used in the Falcon’s development include cars like the Honda Jazz (for packaging), Mazda 6 (for steering and handling), and any of the similar sized Euro diesels (for fuel economy and performance). And of course, other cars with specific strengths as well.

But, to be more explicit, fuel economy, safety, practicality and packaging – they’re key areas that nearly all buyers will be looking for. Outstanding grip and handling are way down the list for all but a tiny minority of enthusiasts.

Mitsubishi paid for their 380 product planning decision with the loss of manufacturing in Australia.

With the one important exception of crash safety, the FG Falcon is at least as bad a decision.