Latest news with #ute
Daily Telegraph
28-05-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Telegraph
‘Locked and loaded': new ute coming to Australia
Don't miss out on the headlines from On the Road. Followed categories will be added to My News. It took Hyundai Australia's new boss minutes to say what his predecessors spent years avoiding – the South Korean brand is getting a ute. It's a long overdue announcement from the company that currently has no answer to the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux, two of Australia's best-selling new vehicles. Don Romano, formerly head of Hyundai in Canada, has been tasked with turning around the South Korean brand's fading fortunes in Australia. He's only been in the job seven weeks but he's already well aware that Hyundai's lack of a rival to the Ranger, HiLux and more is its biggest problem. RELATED: Rocky road ahead for Australia's newest ute Hyundai needs its own Ranger. Picture: Supplied But thanks to his strong reputation with Hyundai's upper management for his successes in Canada, Romano is confident he's the man to make it happen. 'LOCKED AND LOADED' While he admits it could take until at least the end of the decade to have a ute in Hyundai showrooms, he will make sure the plan is in place before he returns to Canada in three years. 'I want it locked and loaded by the time I leave,' Romano said. The most obvious, and fastest, way for Hyundai to add a ute to its range would be creating its own version of the upcoming Kia Tasman ute. Kia is Hyundai's sister brand and they share vehicle underpinnings and powertrains across several models already. However, Romano is not sure that the unorthodox looks of the Tasman and its relatively small 2.2-litre turbo diesel engine would be the right fit for Hyundai's range. ' You know, it depends on what we want, it really does,' he said. RELATED: Does the Ford Ranger Raptor live up to the hype? Hyundai's offering is unlikely to be like the 2025 Kia Tasman ute. Picture: Supplied 'If I were to go with a standard diesel I could probably get it in a few years, but is that really what we want for the market? And number two, how's that gonna fit into the government's plans for NVES [New Vehicle Efficiency Standard]? So we need to really kind of consider, do we just want another ute that everybody else has or what's distinctly Hyundai?' The other obvious option for a Hyundai ute is the South Korean brand's new partnership with America's General Motors. Could Hyundai have its own Chevrolet Silverado? The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding last year to work on a range of shared vehicles and that could include a ute. The General Motors portfolio includes several options for Hyundai, including the Chevrolet Colorado and Silverado, which are both bigger than the Ranger and HiLux. While a promising option, the deal is so new Romano admitted he's not sure if it could deliver a ute option for Australia yet. ' I cannot tell you whether or not that's feasible at this stage,' he said. MORE: iPhone car coming to Australia Hyundai Australia CEO Don Romano. Picture: Hyundai 'I just know that we have the relationship now with GM and I know that we need pick-up trucks in a number of markets, and not just Australia. I would say this is probably one of the more important, but the US is no less important, it's much bigger. 'And so now what we're doing is we're assembling all the requests from around the world, and it's being done by a new group that [Hyundai global CEO] Jose Munoz has put together. Just to determine, what are the common grounds? What are the commonalities, what makes the most sense for the company globally? 'And I think that fits with the vision that we have here. Again, it's easy to say, 'Hey, we'll just take this vehicle and put a Hyundai badge on it', but I don't think that's what the market's looking for – something new.' The BYD Shark 6 is showing how popular new thinking on utes can be. Picture: Supplied Ensuring Australia gets the right ute is Romano's clear priority, even if that takes longer, but he insists a plan will be in place within the next three years. ' Honestly, I just can't give a timeline because I want something unique that's distinctly Hyundai,' he said. 'That's something we can differentiate ourselves with, not just another pick-up truck. 'And I'm willing to wait a little longer, but I do want it in the product plan before I leave and go back home to Canada.' After selling more than 100,000 cars per year in 2014, 2015 and 2016, Hyundai's love affair with Australia has faded. Last year Hyundai managed to sell 71,664 cars, a third of No. 1 Toyota's sales and none of Hyundai's models made the top 10 best selling cars of 2025. Originally published as 'Locked and loaded': new ute coming to Australia
The Drive
15-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Drive
BMW Guys Will Literally Build a Twin-Turbo Hybrid V12 6x6 Pickup Before Buying an F-150
The latest car news, reviews, and features. What do you do if you need a truck but absolutely love '90s BMWs? You make one out of an E38-generation BMW 7 Series, of course. That's exactly what Brian Lutton of Florida did when he turned an old 750i into a ute—except, it wasn't enough. He needed lots of towing capacity, so he's building another one, this time with a fully functioning 6×6 setup running a Frankenstein hybrid twin-turbo V12 powertrain. Lutton, who chatted with The Drive about the build, lives in Florida but went to college in Michigan, so he wanted something to tow project cars back and forth. He chopped an E38 7 Series from the B-pillar back, gave it a pickup bed, and his BMW ute was born. It had a stock BMW engine, a stock five-speed automatic transmission, and was originally rear-wheel drive. The 'only' modifications were chassis bracing to handle towing, air suspension, and a transmission cooler. The engine had 270,000 miles on it and was still capable of towing another 7 Series on a trailer. According to Lutton, it handled towing comparably to a half-ton pickup. Brian Lutton However, it couldn't handle towing two cars at once, so he needed to make a more extreme tow vehicle while retaining a similar formula to his original 7 Series ute. He bought another clean 7 Series as the basis of the project, chopped off its trunk, and then cut the bed off the first ute, which came with its rear axle. He welded those together and created a four-door luxury sedan with dual rear axles. That was a process in itself, but it was really just the beginning of this mad scientist's creation. The fun started once everything was welded together. Under the hood is a BMW M73 5.4-liter V12, which he slapped two turbochargers onto. He threw out the stock five-speed ZF automatic and replaced it with the eight-speed ZF auto and xDrive system from a 2018 BMW X5 diesel, making it four-wheel drive. The front subframe and differential are from a 2003 BMW X5, but modified to fit. The rear differential is a limited-slip unit from an E60-generation BMW M5, which is mounted to a stock E38 subframe. Brian Lutton The build is currently a 4×6 7 Series pickup, as the rearmost axle isn't powered. However, it will be soon. Lutton has already fitted the final axle with a rear electric motor taken from a Tesla Model 3, and is working on getting a BMW i3 battery pack to power it. A CANTCU controller handles the transmission and rear differential, and Lutton has a rotary dial that can control the all-wheel drive system's lockup from zero to 100%. Under normal circumstances, the Tesla motor will just work with whichever gear the transmission is in: so if it's in drive or reverse, the electric motor will be, too. Lutton also says the EV motor can be put in either park, reverse, neutral, or drive independently of the transmission, meaning the car can work as a pure EV, too. Supposedly, he can set it to a regen mode, letting it drag while the car is in 4×6 mode and put energy back into the battery. Regenerative braking should reduce the braking load on the discs while towing a trailer, too. The project isn't done, according to Lutton, as there's much battery and motor calibration yet to be completed, as well as body work. It looks pretty gnarly at the moment, but that's to be expected given the extreme nature of the build. Still, it's mostly functional, and Lutton already has one of the wildest, most fascinating project cars I've seen in ages. When it's finally complete, it will probably be safe to say that he has the only V12, hybrid, four-door, 6×6, BMW-ish ute in the world. Got tips? Send 'em to tips@ Nico DeMattia is a staff writer at The Drive. He started writing about cars on his own blog to express his opinions when no one else would publish them back in 2015, and eventually turned it into a full-time career.
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Boy, 6, killed and three injured after nightmare crash in NSW Far South Coast
A six-year-old boy has been killed in a two-vehicle crash on a rural road, which injured three others. A dual-cab ute and a truck collided on Towamba Rd, Nullica, on New South Wales ' Far South Coast, about 4.10pm on Tuesday. The young boy, who had been travelling in the ute, died at the scene. The 30-year-old male driver of the ute and his three-year-old female passenger also suffered multiple injuries. The pair were airlifted to hospital. A third passenger in the ute, an eight-year-old girl, was taken to South-East Regional Hospital at Bega. The truck driver, believed to be in his 50s, was taken to hospital for mandatory testing. He was also treated for the effects of shock. Crash investigators examined the scene on Tuesday night, and Towamba Road remained closed for several hours. Police urged anyone who witnessed the collision to make a report via Crime Stoppers.
