Five Things: cars we really wanted to find under the Christmas tree this year…

Sunday, 27 December 2020

Christmas has been and gone and we still only got socks and undies... here are five cars we would have preferred!

Christmas has been and gone for another year and yet again socks and undies were a sad substitute for a shiny new car waiting for us on Christmas morning.

Still, we live in hope for next year, so here are the five cars we were hoping to find under our Christmas tree this year in the hope that Santa can take a hint for 2021…

Toyota GR Yaris

A mini-size monster in the wet or the dry, a GR Yaris would have looked great under our Christmas tree. Even better in our driveway...

Although it arrived too late for our annual Top Car awards, the undoubted motoring highlight of 2020 was Toyota’s emphatic re-entry into the hot hatch segment with the superb GR Yaris.

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Never mind Santa giving us a Model Y, we would just like Elon to tell us when he is making RHD ones!

* The little big winner: the Stuff Top Car for 2020 is the Toyota Yaris

Basically derived by Toyota’s Gazoo Racing motorsport arm from its WRC car, the GR Yaris actually shares little with the ‘normal’ Yaris save its headlights, doorhandles and interior trim, but that certainly doesn't diminish the fact that it is a fantastically feral little corner devourer that is thoroughly and joyously addictive to drive.

This year was our last chance to get a new Shelby GT350 for Christmas. Sigh... we guess second hand will have to do...

The highlight, however, is the brilliantly belligerent little 1.6-litre three-cylinder engine that pumps out a frankly silly 200kW of power and sounds amazing.

C’mon Santa – it’s tiny too, so it would have fitted under the Christmas tree…

Tesla Model Y

It’s stupidly expensive, but we love it. And we reckon Santa could afford one.

Santa Musk is notoriously vague around production schedules for RHD versions of his cars and even more vague around supply to a tiny market at the bottom of the world (that’s us, by the way), but we just really want to get our hands on what certainly sounds like the best Tesla yet.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like we will be seeing one under our Christmas tree next year either, as predictions based on previous RHD Tesla launches currently put the Model Y down for sometime in 2022.

Although Elon Claus did spring a surprise with the LHD launch of the Model Y, which was slated to begin production around now, but actually started in March this year instead.

Ford Mustang Shelby GT350

Okay, so it will probably never happen. But we can keep hoping!

Fancy some bellowing flat-plane crank V8 goodness for Christmas this year? We know we did. We always do…

Sadly, however, there wasn’t a Shelby GT350 parked under the tree this year and there won’t be next year either, as Ford has since stopped production of what has to be one of the best sounding V8 Mustangs ever to have turned a wheel in anger.

Okay, so the competition from Dodge and Chevrolet were faster and more powerful, but the fact that the GT350's 5.2-litre flat-plane crank Voodoo V8 sounds more Modena than Detroit and that Ford has now dropped it to concentrate on production of the more powerful (but Voodoo V8-less) GT500 just makes us want it more…

Honda e

Tiny, adorable and packing that lovely low down torque all EVs do, the Honda e is everything a slightly tragic Japanese Kei car obsessive (that’s me, by the way) wants in an EV.

Although not technically a Kei car, the e does share the same reason for not coming to New Zealand as a new vehicle – it is prohibitively expensive for this part of the world.

Honda always warned that its tiny city EV was going to be high-spec and luxury-priced and it is, with even (slightly) second-hand imports landing here now at $70k plus prices…

But we really don’t care and want one anyway. Damn the cost! After all, Santa will be picking up the bill for that…

A Batmobile

Every damn year we hope for this…

Anyone whose obsessively nerdy interests include “cars” and “movies” has an intersection point at “Batmobiles”, I mean, it’s just science.

Any Batmobile would do thanks, although I personally have a preference for the majestic rocket packing one from the late 80s/early 90s Tim Burton movies, Batman and Batman Returns.

That said, the Lincoln Futura-based one from the 1967 TV series would do nicely as well, although the weird phallic neon one from Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever might be a stretch…

In reality, of course, I would be rather chuffed with a sweet E9 BMW 3.0 CSL...