My IX35 is now 5 years old & out of warranty, it has been a good car when I haven’t been using it to cull the roo population of QLD.

We traded it on a new ute, wanted a D-Max but the dealership in Cairns is just pus so we went to Toyota.

Got this for $59,790. (before trade)

Hilux 4x4 SR52.8L T Diesel, Auto, Dual Cab, LED Fog lights, Canopy, Tub Liner, Tint, Bonnet & Headlight protectors, Floor mats, 150Kkm extended warranty & a full tank of fuel.

It had 58Kms on the clock when I took the pic yesterday arvo.

Bloody nice to drive but I get the hand-me-down Hyundai Santa Fe now.

I don’t mind having the Santa Fe, it is easier on fuel & has a few other little niceties & feels more like a luxury car than the Hilux.

The Hilux is proper 4x4 with low-range , diff-lock, & will tow 3.5KKg.
The Fanta Fe is AWD & will tow 2KKg.

Good one, always liked Toyotas, good for off or on road.

We were thinking about a Ranger which has a few more refinements than the BT50 but decided to keep the Navara and bought a Tucson.
It claims to be able to tow 1600Kg but I have only put about 600kg on the back.
I would never buy another Nissan with their dodgy warranty claims, the bastards try to wriggle out of anything.
Have had a Hilux and two Landcruisers and found them reliable but getting a bit pricey for a new Cruiser and I hate parting with money.
We are thinking about replacing the i20 with a new i30 though, looked at the KOna but it doesn’t get good reviews, too expensive for essentially an i30 in SUV form for another $10K+

Nice Cliff … curious about the fuel though. What does “uses more fuel” mean?

The old Sook used to be a sipper at 11l/100 when we bought it, but now eleven years later range rovers get 100mpg!

Good one.

Noice, very noice

@bitingmidge said in New Ute:

curious about the fuel though. What does “uses more fuel” mean

2.8L motor, the Santa Fe is a 2.2L the iX35 was a 2L.

iX35 averaged about 7.5L/100Km, Santa Fe averages about 7.9L/100Km, haven’t had a chance to test the SR5 yet but it is claimed to be 8.7L/100Km

The Tucson manages about the same as the ix35 in economy and standard mode but I can achieve 13L in sport mode.
Slightly bigger footprint and a bit heavier, probably the same engine.
Mine is the Active X 2WD, I know yours was the AWD Highlander.
The Elite was OK but the sunroof made it undriveable with the amount of room the sunroof takes up, being 195cm I have that problem with a lot of cars.

iX35 went back to being called the Touson.

Elite & Highlander are the other way around.

I had the Elite AWD 2L Diesel 6 speed auto, the Highlander has Sunroof/Moonroof, electric heated seats & I think the passenger seat was electric as well.
Sunroof is useless in FNQ, Moonnroof is just somewhere else to leak, electric heated seats are a total waste of time 99.7% of the year in FNQ, who cares about the passenger’s seat?

@Cliff-Rogers said in New Ute:

iX35 went back to being called the Touson.

Elite & Highlander are the other way around.

I had the Elite AWD 2L Diesel 6 speed auto, the Highlander has Sunroof/Moonroof, electric heated seats & I think the passenger seat was electric as well.
Sunroof is useless in FNQ, Moonnroof is just somewhere else to leak, electric heated seats are a total waste of time 99.7% of the year in FNQ, who cares about the passenger’s seat?

@Cliff-Rogers said in New Ute:

iX35 went back to being called the Touson.

Not quite, Tucson (the new one) is a bit longer, bit wider and has a slightly larger cargo area, one of the women at work has one and you can see the difference when you put them side by side.
Heated seats would be nice in winter as the leather is bloody cold, and one thing I dislike with all Hyundai’s is the bloody skinny steering wheel, I put a cover on both of them to build them up a bit so I don’t dig my fingernails into my palms.
That is really my only grizzle.

I bet you can’t go out & buy a new iX35, the Touson replaced it.

You should also put a new RAV4 beside an old one & a new Hilux beside an old one, try a new Xtrail beside an old one, they are all bigger/longer.

I remember when the Corolla and the Camry were small cars, they just grew and were replaced with a new era of small cars like the Echo and Yaris.
The new Fiat 500 is not 500cc like the old ones, the Mini is quite big.
I worry about Hummers getting bigger, I don’t want one but they take up a lot of road, bit like the owners ego.
I had a Suzuki LJ80, 800cc of brute power, took us 4 days to get to Lightning Ridge, you arrived with a sore back, did it two days in my 1982 2.2L diesel Hilux, bit more comfortable too although it did not have power steering and aircon was an option.
I read a lot of reviews on the Tucson before I bought it and the general consensus was 2WD is fine for most conditions and AWD if you spend a lot of time on dirt roads which I know you do

AWD suites us as we have about 4Kms of very narrow bitumen on the road into our place from the highway, when you pass an oncoming car you have to put 2 wheels off the bitumen, in the wet season the side of the road becomes dangerous, particularly if it has been raining so long that the cow lanes turn to slush & the farmers use the road to bring the cows in for milking. Sometimes it gets so you can’t see where the bitumen is in one great big long red mess.

Looks good.

No bull bar?

I am surprised given the amount of macropods you run into.

Welcome back Jack… does time fly when you’re having fun?

@enter-username said in New Ute:

Looks good.
No bull bar?
I am surprised given the amount of macropods you run into.

You’ll see it Sunday.

I hit a roo in 1983 (?) buggered up Easter, missed out on getting to a wedding, (not mine) a right fuck up.
Then had a bull bar on every car for more than 15 years & the only one I hit after that was on the side of the car.
Gave up on the bull bar, (12 years ago) since then I have hit 3 in the front & 2 in the side, only one put the car off the road.

Never hit a roo but managed to get a rather large wombat in a landcruiser which tipped it on its side and fold the front wheel underneath the body, bloody wombat walked away.
Got a large stag in a work landcruiser in the high country, got him on the tray and had it butchered, most of the meat was good and the buggered bits the dogs got.

Donged a couple of roos gently in the side of the car, was passenger in a Morris 1100 when a horse did the same, worst ever was a pig full on (near Yalleroi) in the 80’s. Took out the radiator in the brand new Kingswood I was delivering to Avis in Longreach. It was that incident and having lots of mates with bent roo bars that convinced me that they were a waste of time - often the cost of straightening them and repairing the panel they’d leaned back on, and the subframe too was more than if there’d been no bar.

So Zillions of miles between T’ville and Longreach and in the Downs country later, I just take it stupidly easy at dusk and dawn, preferably in a cafe somewhere. Nearly hit an emu once - that was a challenge 'cause the rotten thing just charged at the space between the lights.

Never had a roo bar on any of my cars. I don’t like them as they obstruct view and are dangerous to pedestrians. I’ve only hit 1 roo that it would have made any difference and that was not a big ding. We have about 100 roos living on my property so are exposed to plenty of them. I’ve been hit on the bonnet and the side of the car when my car was essentially stationary and the roos had slammed into the car. Very frustrating and expensive to fix the little dings that result.

Gina wanted a bar to go scrub bashing on rural properties for sale, the genuine one was about $3.5K & didn’t have any side protection so if you pushed your way into scrub, you get scratches down the side.
The ARB one does have it but the Toyota sales people made enough noise about using non-genuine stuff & voiding warranty & voiding Australian Standards that we just didn’t bother.
Fuck it, if somebody wants to sell their property, they should make it accessible & somebody who wants to buy it & look at the inaccessible parts, let them bring the scrub basher or the drone.