22 — Centralian Advocate, Tuesday, October 29, 2013 Alice Springs to Adelaide | Adelaide to Alice Springs WEEKLY SERVICE RedStar Car Carriers 8256 1299 for a quote MOTORING Indian Tata may give Chinese rivals curry Offroad, the ruggedness and excellent wheel articulation of Tata Xenon makes it a standout ute Joshua Dowling THE Indian Tata brand has thrown a Myna bird among the cheap Chinese pick-ups. It has been recently relaunched in Australia with a six-model ute range. The starting price bravely pitches the Tata at a premium. Its warranty is three years/ 100,000km and the service inter- vals are 12 months or 15,000km, whichever comes first. Roadside assistance is also free for the first three years. The Tata Xenon range is avail- able with one engine — a 2.2-litre turbo diesel — and one trans- mission, a five-speed manual — with a choice of 4x2 or a 4x4 drivetrains. The first 400 vehicles to arrive this year do not have stability control but they do come with anti-lock brakes. The stability control equipped cars begin to arrive in January. Payload capacity ranges from 880kg for the dual cab to 1080kg for the cab-chassis models. Towing capacity is 2500kg for all models. There are only two airbags available as standard (as with the Chinese ute rivals) and it is unclear when or if side impact airbags will be added. The back seats do not have adjustable head rests (and there are only two fixed head cushions) and the centre seat has a lap-only belt. A rear camera, built-in sat- nav with touchscreen and Bluetooth audio streaming are available on all models in an accessory package, while Bluetooth and USB audio input are standard across the range. The highlight of the new Xenon is the Euro V compliant 2.2-litre turbo diesel engine designed and engineered in-house by Tata with expert help from key suppliers. On a preview drive in Mel- bourne this week ahead of the Xenons showroom debut the en- gine proved to be a smooth and efficient operator. Compared to other diesel utes — from mainstream as well as emerging brands — the Tata Xenon has almost no power delay from low revs and was relatively refined and quiet, with good pull- ing power all the way through the rev range. It is a genuine highlight of the car and bodes well for the future, when it gets installed into an all-new architecture. The five-speed manual had a sturdy, direct shift action. The brakes were sound. Economy is an impressive 7.4L/100km and accel- eration was better than expected partly because the Xenon is smaller (and therefore lighter) than its newer rivals. The interior is a little squeezy by modern standards but not dissimi- lar to the previous generation utes from the mainstream brands. Rear end grip is dicey in the wet and stability control can’t come soon enough. But, off-road, the Xenons ruggedness and excellent wheel articulation means it can clamber over obstacles that would leave some utes stranded. The Tata Xenon will probably find most favour on the farm at first, which is why the dealer network is initially focused on regional and rural areas. Tata vehicles have been sold on and off in Australia since 1996 after a Queensland distributor began importing them mainly for farm use. There are an estimated 2500 Tata heavy-duty pick-ups on Australian roads already. But there are many more Indian-made cars on Australian roads, albeit with foreign badges. More than 34,000 Indian-made Hyundai i20 hatchbacks and more than 10,000 Indian-made Suzuki Alto small cars have been sold in Australia over the past four years, since 2009. There is as yet no star-rating for crash safety on the new Tata ute range. However, the new distrib- utor for Tata vehicles in Australia believes the origin of the vehicles will be a competitive advantage. ‘‘There is no tougher place on earth to test vehicles than on the tough and demanding roads of India,’’ said the newly-appointed distributor of Tata vehicles in Australia, Darren Bowler, of Fusion Automotive. Tata Motors — India’s largest automobile company — acquired Jaguar and Land Rover from the Ford Motor Company in June 2008, in the grip of the Global Financial Crisis. The acquisition gave Tata ac- cess to Jaguar and Land Rover designers and engineers but Tata is yet to release an all-new model with their input. The Tata Xenon ute was re- leased in 2009 and is also sold in South Africa, Brazil, Thailand, the Middle East, Italy and Turkey. The Australian versions of the Xenon ute released are the first right-hand drive models fitted with dual airbags and a Euro V-compliant engine. Solution to poor visibility Karla Pincott The STS system projects an image of the road ahead of the truck being overtaken onto your windscreen YOU can’t see around corners, but you could be able to see through traffic in front of you in the future. We’ve all experienced being stuck behind a truck on the highway, not able to see around them to check if it’s safe to overtake — wishing vehicles could be made as invisible as James Bond’s Aston Martin Vanquish in Die Another Day. Researchers at a Portuguese university have the answer — a system that projects an image of the road ahead of that truck onto your own windscreen. Called the STS (for See- Through System), it uses a set of cameras and vehicle-to-vehicle communication to display the im- age as a virtual windscreen. The team from the University of Porto says STS uses low-latency video streaming and dedicated short-range communication to transmit the imagery swiftly, allowing the driver to see through the vehicle blocking their line of vision. It depends on the vehicle in front of you having the system’s cameras installed, which then wirelessly sends the footage in near real-time to a trans- parent monitor fitted on your own windscreen. However, an increasing push is being made into vehicle-to-vehicle communication and the extra safety it offers — with car- makers testing systems that warn following traffic of accidents and other problems. So invisible cars may not remain the stuff of 007 daydreams. White new king of car colour rainbow AFTER more than a decade as the world’s favourite car colour, silver is falling in popularity to white. PPG Industries, the leading supplier of automotive paints, says 25 per cent of the vehicles it supplied in the 2013 model year were white, up 3 per cent from the prior year. Silver and black tied for second, with 18 per cent each. White dominates in Europe, North Amer- ica and Asia. Only in South America is silver still king. Apple Inc, with its all-white stores and gadgets, made white a hi-tech colour. The variety of whites — from flat shades to creamy pearls — is also contributing, says Jane Harrington, PPG’s manager of auto- motive colour styling. But if you don’t relish a whiteout on the highway, never fear. Carmakers are currently scouting colours for the 2016 and 2017 model years, and Harrington is showing them some eye- popping options, from a pink-tinged bright red developed in Asia to a rich dark gray with faint green highlights. Eleven different browns — from light copper to dark chocolate — and an equal number of grays are part of PPG’s annual colour show for automakers at its automot- ive centre in the Detroit suburb of Troy. There are six yellows and seven greens, from seafoam to dark olive. One notable absence: Powder blue, which is increasingly confined to electric cars or hybrids. Harrington and her international team determine colour trends by watching fashion, architectural paint colours and other predictors. She thinks we’ll see more deep jewel tones like teal and more earthy metallics, like reddish orange, in the coming years. With the end of the recession, drivers don’t mind being showy again, she says. Car buyers could also see taxi-like yellows and other flat, bright colours, which are growing in popularity thanks to small, funky entries like the Kia Soul. Pastel tones, like mint green and very light pink, are also in the mix. PPG will take its colour tour on the road to Los Angeles, Europe and Asia and will then start working with individual automakers on their choices. Companies typically choose eight to 10 colours for every model. PPG won’t say how many cars it supplies paint for each year, but it works with every major car company. ■ From carsguide.com.au