A milestone: Ranger scores five out of five

This is what a 50km/h head-on into a stationary object looks like on the first five-star ute.

If you drive a ute and worry about having a major prang, the message seems to be to buy a Ford Ranger. The Ford has become the first ute to achieve a maximum five-star Euro NCAP crash test rating. (A day later, the Australian ANCAP announced it had also awarded a five-star rating.) Ranger scored 89 per cent for overall safety, the best score ever earned by a ute and one of the highest recorded by Euro NCAP for any type of vehicle. It also achieved 81 per cent for pedestrian protection, the highest rating of any vehicle ever tested by Euro NCAP.

Double cabs take big bite of the NZ market pie

There's nothing like some good pie charts to liven up a website so … I knew double cab utes dominate the market, but wasn't sure by how much. I put the question to Toyota NZ who quickly came up with the above, showing the dominant share of double cabs over the last 12 months followed by extended cabs (Extra Cab) and single cabs. These are industry-wide figures, not just Toyota's.