Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, wide swaths of Canadians still purchase or lease compact sedans. Their numbers are shrinking, to be sure, but there are more than a few automakers willing to re-up their offerings in this important segment.

Not the least of which is Hyundai. For the 2021 model year, its compact Elantra has been extensively refurbished, donning a new set of clothes and snazzy interior. A Korean designer once told us that people in his country like it when a newly introduced model looks completely different from the old one it is replacing. This helps to explain Elantra’s wild design changes heading into this year.

Under the hood is a 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine making a totally appropriate 147 horsepower. Only this entry-level Elantra is offered with a six-speed manual transmission as standard equipment, and the car is better off because of it. An automatic ‘box in the form of a continuously variable transmission is available at a $1,900 premium to the $17,899 base price.

Hyundai built its rep in this country on offering scads of standard features for reasonable prices. This does not change with the 2021 Elantra. Despite being at the bottom of the totem pole, the Essential trim included heated cloth front seats, remote keyless entry, and power windows with auto down for the driver. An 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system stands tall on the dashboard, ready to play ball with Bluetooth connectivity and Android Auto/Apple CarPlay.

Air conditioning is part of the deal, along with a tilt/telescope steering wheel and the heated side view mirrors are power adjustable. Spotting a base Elantra isn’t easy, since they incorporate alloy wheel (no steelies with hubcaps here) and colour-keyed trim. Sadly, anything other than the Polar White shown here will cost an extra $200.

What We’d Choose

It is tempting to bump oneself up to the Elantra Preferred, a machine which features several extra safety features like collision-avoidance assists for blind-spot and rear cross-traffic locations. There’s nothing wrong with a heated leather-wrapped steering wheel, either. However, the $4,000 price walk does give us pause, though that delta shrinks to $2100 when one considers the automatic transmission.

Actually, it’s the latter that seals the Essential for us. Rowing your own gears isn’t for everyone (here’s a salute to all of you with a stop-and-go commute) but we’ll take our automotive fun where we can. Finding a well-equipped and uniquely styled car as part of the deal is simply icing on a particularly sweet cake.

Find rest of the Base Camp series here

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Diesel power was dealt a blow by various companies playing fast and loose with emissions regulations.

But given that the biggest blow to the environment for any vehicle is the manufacture of it, the most environmentally friendly vehicle is the one that lasts the longest. Diesel engines win easily here, because they typically last twice as long as gasoline engines. So the smarter car companies are sticking with Rudolf Diesel’s invention. No arguments from me.

Case in point: the GMC Sierra AT4 full-size pick-up.

My tester was actually a 2020 model year truck, but the 2021’s that are just arriving are essentially identical. My truck started at $63,098 and loaded with options, listed at $75,918. That’s big bucks.

Now, being a Diesel, it gets great fuel economy. Why would anybody who can afford a seventy-five grand truck care about saving fuel? Well, nobody ever got rich throwing money away. The AT4 designation is GMC’s second “sub-brand”. The first, Denali, has been phenomenally successful, aiming at pure “luxury”.

AT4 is pitched at off-roaders, with a darker, more sinister appearance, bright red tow hooks front and rear, uprated suspension and more rugged tires, all aimed at superior go-anywhere capability.

As noted, my tester had GM’s 3.0-litre turbo-Diesel engine. It’s an inline six, so is inherently balanced for smooth operation. It produces 277 horsepower at 3,750 r.p.m., and a healthy 460 lb-ft of torque at a low 1,500 r.p.m. By compression ignition standards, this engine starts quickly – a 0°C. cold start took less than three seconds, quicker than I could buckle my seat belt.

By those same standards, it’s impressively quiet, at least from inside. Outside, there is some of the characteristic Diesel rattle. People will know you’re coming, but compared to my old Diesel Suburban, it’s a library in there. That good low-end torque gets you off the line quickly, and the smooth-shifting ten-speed automatic transmission means you can generally keep the revs under three grand.

Once you’re up to speed, the blocky-treaded Goodyear DuraTrac off-road tires make more noise than the engine. The stiffer suspension also costs in ride quality, making the AT4 a bit harsh on our pock-marked roads. The electric power steering provides good feel with enough heft to know you’re actually in command.

A “Drive Mode” knob sits on the dash to the left of the steering wheel. Crank it to the right to successively select Normal, Sport, or Off-Road settings, which changes various system responses to suit.

Frankly, I didn’t detect much difference between the first two, although the transmission holds onto gears longer before upshifting in Sport. I didn’t run the AT4 off-road, but I know from previous experience that it will go places you would not believe. There is also a pair of gauges to show you how steep and how “leaned over” you are.

If you crank that Drive Mode knob to the left, you get “Tow/Haul”, which calibrates things for towing a heavy trailer. This also enables trailer brake control and hitch alignment assistance when hooking up. The interior of the AT4 looks pretty much like all big GM trucks, with good looking quality, readable gauges, easy to reach controls, and a head-display that I was able to shut off. In front of the driver is the tachometer to the left, the speedo to the right, and four smaller gauges between them, for oil pressure, coolant temperature, fuel level, and battery voltage.

Many functions can be operated via the bright clear central screen, but many are also replicated with proper knobs or buttons. My guess is that a lot of off-roaders wear gloves that might not work with touch screens.

AT4 has all the tech you could want, and probably more, including Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and Amazon Alexa, Sirius XM radio with a three-month free trial, USB A and C plugs, 12- and 120-volt outlets in the dash, plus built-in WiFi. Oddment storage is handled by a couple of open bins in the centre console, a massive covered central bin, and two glove boxes. Two cup holders too, of course.

The seats were upholstered in perforated leather, dark grey with orange accents. Those colours were picked up on the dash and door trim panels. The rear seat has loads of legroom. The seat cushions can be folded up to create a massive indoor storage space; the jack and tools are also stored under there. Panels in the backs of the two outboard rear seats can be opened to create out-of-sight bins for valuables like wallets or house keys.

The front seats are heated and ventilated; the two rear outboard seats are heated. There is also a steering wheel heater (yay) but there are gaps in the coverage, notably at the “quarter to three” positions that is where your hands are supposed to be. Big grab bars are provided at all four corners to ease ingress and egress, and for passengers to hold onto if the driver is doing some particularly athletic off-roading.

Key among the options on my tester was the “Carbonpro” composite bed, which should stand up well to serious bashing. This may be the biggest single use of carbon fibre bits offered in any volume vehicle. Looks cool too. It better, since it costs nearly five grand extra. The tailgate is a multi-function affair. Its downward motion is damped, so it opens smoothly. Push another tab, and part of it can be folded down to make a step for access to the bed. Footholds moulded into the lower rear corners of the truck and a foldable handle on the side of the bed further assist getting up into the box. Tow hooks all over the place help secure your load.

Like all GM vehicles, this one fails the ignition off / headlights off test. But it passes the side-view mirror test; you can adjust them far enough out to eliminate the so-called blind spots. There’s a host of driver assistance features – like lane-keeping assist – which as usual I shut off. Emergency automatic braking I tend to leave on. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

And the back-up camera has a wide variety of views, including a wide angle for when you have a trailer hooked on. There are also forward views available under certain conditions that can be helpful especially in tricky off-road situations.

And I like GM’s reverse warning system that vibrates your seat cushion instead of beeping, so nobody else in the truck knows.

The truck industry could build an entire year’s worth of vehicles and never build exactly the same truck twice. So it’s impossible for a reviewer to drive just one example and tell you everything you need to know. What I can tell you about the Sierra AT4 is that it’s a pricey but handsome and capable full-size truck which will go any place you could imagine, and more that you probably couldn’t.

The Diesel engine offers excellent performance. And, fuel economy – the best recorded in my truck was 7.4 litres per 100 km, which is stunning.

There are always compromises and in this case, ride quality and interior noise.

If those are deal-breakers, there are lots of options at your GMC store.

The vehicle was provided to the writer by the automaker. Content and vehicle evaluations were not subject to approval.

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There are two people in the world, and only two, who can talk more than me.

The first is my good friend Peter MacLaurin, who owns a tree farm near Morin Heights in the Quebec Laurentians. Peter never stops. One time, years ago, when my mother, the late Grace Dorothy McDonald, fell and broke her wrist at Expo 67, Peter decided to help her feel better by telling her his life’s story. She listened for a while, but then she got a headache and told him to leave her alone. The exact 10 words she used were: “Peter, if you don’t mind, will you please SHUT UP.”

The other is the racing driver, Alexandre Tagliani, better known as Alex, or Tag, who races in the Pinty’s NASCAR Canada stock car series following a lengthy career primarily in IndyCar racing. I can ask him a question and he can start answering and I can put down the phone and go outside, smoke a cigarette, and come back in 10 minutes and pick up the phone and he’ll still be talking.

Our most recent conversation, er, monologue, took place a few weeks ago when he called me to talk about his latest project, a unique family entertainment centre just off Highway 15 north of Montreal in the revamped Plaza Saint-Therese featuring the first multi-level electric karting track in Canada.

Tagliani and partners are spending $18-million on the TAG E-karting & Amusement Centre that will open in the spring and feature nine activities including a combination of three karting tracks, a laser tag game area, six axe-throwing lanes, six bowling lanes, a Triotech 7D interactive cinema, interactive trampolines, a multi-sensory virtual reality experience, numerous state-of-the-art arcades and a climbing wall — all under one roof.

“We have created a monster,” Tagliani said, laughing, when I asked him how the project was going. “But we’re pretty excited.

Everything is on schedule and we should be able to start testing everything, have some soft launches in early April and be up and running by late April.”

Tagliani started his career in karting, which led to Formula Atlantic, the Champ Car World Series and finally Indy cars, and he’s hoping the 65.000-square-foot facility will eventually develop talents who will go on to be provincial karting champions and maybe even world champs.

There will be three tracks on three levels – one for adults, one for children and a super track combining the two with a length of 0.5 km—and they will feature a total of six course choices, each of which can be completed clockwise or counter-clockwise. Imported from Italy, the go-karts are 100 per cent electric, silent, non-polluting, and odourless (zero emissions), available in a wide range of sizes.

They are the world’s most sophisticated electric models and are available for the first time in North America. They will feature a digital steering wheel, bumper-integrated sensors for safety, and a Boost button for accelerated passing.

“The karts we’ll be using are among the most sophisticated in the world,” Tagliani said. “Using artificial intelligence, the system knows where each kart is on the circuit at all times. So if a kart driver spins in, say, Turn 9 and you are on it going through Turn 1, your kart will stay running at speed and when you get near the Turn 9 sector, if the kart that spun is still there, your kart will slow down and maybe even stop automatically. So it’s very safe.”

Tagliani said it should get your adrenaline running, however.

“We have an eight-and-a-half-foot drop at one corner and another eight-and-a-half-drop at another and that takes you down two stories to the ground level. That’s the first circuit in the world that has this concept.”

Tagliani told me that he’s had this dream for 20 years. “Nothing is worse for a kid who’s really into it and then here comes the winter and he has to stop. The kart goes in the garage and all you can do is sit in it and look at it. Karting was so big in my career and I had this dream and now it’s a reality.”

Tag, who was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 2015, has not sold his name to this project. He’s an investor along with five Quebec businesspeople including Richard Scofield, who’s president of the St-Hubert Group, one of Tag’s Pinty’s series sponsors.

When up and running the amusement centre will employ 75 to 100 people. Dedicated to becoming a destination of choice for family outings as well as for special and corporate events that foster team spirit, the TAG-E karting centre will have two dining areas, including a bar-restaurant.

And if this proves to be successful in Quebec, are there plans to build and operate similar facilities elsewhere in Canada?

“Of course,” said the non-stop talker. “Toronto would look pretty good, wouldn’t it?”

Norris McDonald / Special to Wheels.

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It’s a little change, but a big deal. For the first time since the 1960s, General Motors has completely redesigned its logo. Gone are the uppercase and underlined GM letters in a harsh square in favour of lowercase letters where only the m is underlined. The square gets rounded corners, and the blue is brighter than before. Why the change? It’s part of the automaker’s push toward electrification (and you’ll note the m looks a bit like a plug) and a new marketing campaign the automaker says will help make it more inclusive than before.

GM isn’t the only one with a new logo this week, as Kia announced a new logo and a new slogan. While the previous Kia logo may have been boring, it was clear and simple. This new one, adding more italic to the A, especially, is a bit tougher to read, but maybe shows that the automaker has evolved from its simple roots. The same goes for the slogan, updated from “The Power to Suprise” to “Movement that Inspires.” It’s hard to say that Kia is much of a surprise anymore, as the brand is now well established as an automaker that competes on not just value, but on quality and features.

Mercedes-Benz is adding the biggest screen in the business with a new display it calls Hyperscreen. Using an all-new version of the MBUX (Mercedes-Benz User Experience) software, the EQS electric sedan coming later this year will have a 141 cm panel that is curved and goes from pillar to pillar inside the car. Though it’s several screens behind the one large panel, it should still revolutionise the auto interior. The passenger gets their own display to help control audio and navigation, while a new interface uses AI and contextual learning to, Merc says, not leave you searching through submenus for the feature you want, nor forcing you to use voice controls. Mercedes-Benz calls it zero layer, because you don’t need to peel through it to do the things you need to do.

The first country to see electric vehicles top half of total sales is Norway. It’s an impressive feat for the country, where EV sales hit 42.4 per cent of the total in 2019 and then 54.3 per cent last year. December by itself saw two-thirds of all new vehicles sales electric cars. Heavy subsidies for EVs and high taxes on ICE vehicles have helped the country make the switch. With most of the country’s electricity coming from hydroelectric sources, Norway is aiming to have every car sold there a ZEV by 2025.

On the EV front, Tesla has launched a new version of the Model Y crossover that offers a lower range but a significant cost saving. The Standard Range Model Y offers just a single electric motor, so is rear-drive not AWD, but comes with 393 km of range and cal still hit 100 km/h in 5.6 seconds. This one will start from $54,900, well under the $68,600 of the Model Y Dual Motor Long Range. The lower price should help it qualify for the $8,000 EV incentive in Quebec as well as the $3,000 BC incentive, though the price is still too high to meet the Federal EV incentive. The model has the Premium Interior and can be ordered with the seven-seat interior option for $4,000. This new model is priced on par with the Ford Mustang Mach-E crossover, which is just beginning to arrive at dealers.

The merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group is one step closer to completion after shareholders at both companies voted overwhelmingly in favour of the partnership. Combined, the automaker which will be called Stellantis, hopes to achieve similar production scale to Volkswagen or Toyota, allowing them to spread development costs, save on component costs through larger volumes, and find other ways to boost products while saving cash. The completion date for the merger is expected to be later this month, though it will likely take years before consumers see a difference.

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The last time we drove the Acura TLX it left us a little cold. Marketed as a sports sedan it felt like nothing more than a gussied up Accord. No bad thing on its own but when compared to offerings from BMW, Lexus, and Mercedes it fell well short of that claim.

We even argued that a Dodge Charger SRT with its rumbly V8, a car that might not normally be cross-shopped with a TLX, offered way more thrills for less money.

The outgoing TLX played it too safe but there’s a new one now, and Acura says that they’ve listened to the feedback and brought back some of what made the brand so special only a few decades ago.

The 2021 Acura TLX is a clean-sheet redesign built on its own bespoke chassis and is the most rigid platform Acura has ever created, except for the six-figure NSX.

At first glance there are a lot of similarities to the last one, mainly when looking at it head-on thanks to the large diamond pentagon grille that carries over and offers a menacing stare with its slim multi-element LED headlights.

The big changes reveal themselves in the side profile where the stretched wheelbase and much longer dash-to-axle ratio make this appear more like a rear-wheel drive car—no mistake by any means. It gives the car a sporty and planted stance, closer in stature to the popular German sedans. The TLX looks muscular and athletic without having to resort to gimmicks, but for me, fails to capture all the magic of the Type-S concept.

Acura has brought back the double-wishbone suspension on the front axle, a sophisticated and more complex setup than the MacPherson struts used by nearly everyone else. It might be a costlier way to do things but the benefits are increased grip, better handling, and a more compliant ride.

Gone is the naturally aspirated 2.4-L 4-cylinder motor in the base model, replaced by a smaller 2.0-L turbocharged four-popper based on the one found in the racy Civic Type R. In this application it produces 270 hp and 280 lb-ft of torque, increases of 66 hp and a 98 lb-ft, respectively, over the outgoing unit. It feels suitably quick with excellent low-midrange punch. And this is just the base model. Arriving in spring the TLX Type-S will make its return with an all-new 3.0-L turbo V6 that will make over 350 hp.

Acura has gone back and forth trying to find the right balance between screens and physical buttons, leading to some odd choices over the years but I think they’ve hit the nail on the head this time with the perfect amount of physical controls to do just about everything you need without having to resort to the infotainment.

When you do need to use the 10.2-inch screen, you’ll do it mainly through a touchpad equipped with what Acura calls “Absolute Position” mapping. My first go with it ended with frustration and quite a bit of profanity. Turns out I was doing it wrong, and once I figured out the correct way to use it, thanks to Youtube, it became much easier. The main problem here is that I’ve never had to reference a user manual or the Internet to figure out how to use a car’s infotainment system, as most are pretty intuitive. This one isn’t at first.

The biggest problem with the last TLX was that it was rather boring. A nicer way to describe it would be pleasant but that’s not really a compliment for a sports sedan. The new one does not have this problem.

From the second you plop down in the firm but very comfortable sport seat and grip the nicely textured flat-bottom steering wheel you can feel the improvements Acura has made without even starting the car.

As with any four-cylinder turbo motor, the sound is gruff and industrial and the fake exhaust noise isn’t much help. The torque peak comes at a lower rpm than it does in the Type R and it feels less peaky, but also a bit less exciting. No complaints about the power, though, as it feels faster than the outgoing V6 in nearly every metric. The 10-speed automatic also delivers fast, crisp shifts and does a great job of keeping you in the right gear at the right time.

Steering is quick, light, and reactive, exactly what you want in a sporty saloon. A large silver knob on the dashboard manipulates the drive modes that alter throttle response, steering feel, and other parameters including the adaptive dampers that weren’t equipped on this A-Spec trimmed car. Regardless, the ride with the standard suspension has that firm but still comfortable feel that delivers confidence behind the wheel without beating you up.

Push the TLX hard and the safety nannies don’t intrude as much anymore. The 4^th-gen Super-Handling AWD system can send up to 70 percent of the power to the rear axle and 100 per cent of that can be sent to either rear wheel. The system does an excellent job of masking the TLX’s front-drive roots and makes it a fun car to drive. In many ways, this TLX reminds me of a BMW 3-series, and that’s certainly high praise.

Starting at $44,605, the base TLX is rather well equipped with the SH-AWD system, drive mode selector, Acura Watch driver assist tech, a 10.2-inch infotainment system, remote engine starter, and power heated front seats. As you walk up the trim ladder to the A-Spec seen here, it adds a phenomenal ELS 3D audio system, ventilated seats, a heated steering wheel, some sporty styling accents, and Shark Grey wheels. The top-spec Platinum Elite adds the adaptive dampers and heated rear seats along with a whole bunch of stuff that I don’t have the place here to list.

Acura has shown that it hasn’t forgotten how to make a good driver’s car, and they’re doing it at a price that undercuts major competitors like the BMW 3-Series and the Mercedes C-Class. It no longer feels like your compromising either and that might be Acura’s biggest win here. Bring on the Type-S!

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