Cars in Action, one of Mzansi’s most prominent motoring magazines, has begun doing performance testing both at Gauteng altitudes and at the coast. CIA as it’s affectionately known, was for a long time the only magazine to do tests here at 1600m above sea level. Of course there are newspaper supplements that do this such as Citizen Motoring and Star Motoring. IN4RIDE is the country’s only independent motoring website that does performance testing and since we are Jozi-based our figures will be different from coastal ones.
"Our dual testing programe has been in the pipeline for a while and took quite some planning," Cars in Action publisher Michele Lupini pointed out. "It's something we have long dreamed of doing and is now a reality - the data we have so far is quickly proving most interesting and we're looking forward to growing to understand the real differences between all cars' costal and high altitude performance differences."
Why is all this important? Well cars generally lose a good deal of their power when they come to Gauteng or when they are in other high altitude areas around the country. That means the 0 – 100km/h times you see in some magazines like CAR and TopCar (both of which are based on the coast and test only there) cannot be replicated in Gauteng or Polokwane or Free State for example. This partly explains why some people complain about their cars’ lack of performance compared to manufacturer’s claimed times.
CIA says its new October 2009 issue will be indicative of this new dual testing system.
