Bloemfontein • Free State • Measurements
This site publishes test notes written on one fixed loop out of Westdene, with the tape measure, the dial gauge and the fuel slip all in the same bag. Nothing here is a press release with the adjectives rearranged.
The N1 running south out of Bloemfontein under a high summer sky, two lanes of open tar and a storm building on the horizon.
The emphasis here is reviews, test drives and comfort, because that is what the loop was built for. The other subjects still get written up, from the same bench, with the same instruments.
Show halls are useful for one thing: sitting in eleven cars in two hours without a salesperson timing you. We go with a tape measure and a notebook and come back with seat heights and boot apertures, not impressions. The hall floor is dead flat, which flatters ride height, so we never judge entry comfort at a show.
Restored cars on a lawn in the Free State are a free lesson in how materials age in dry air at altitude. Paint survives, rubber does not, and the owners standing next to them will tell you exactly which parts took nine months to find. That is more honest information about long ownership than any launch event.
Most long runs from here go north on the N1 to Gauteng or south to Colesberg and the Karoo, with the N6 to Aliwal North and the N8 to Kimberley as the other two regulars. Touring notes cover cruising revs at 120 km/h, the real range on one tank and where the cross-wind between Trompsburg and Springfontein starts to matter.
The expensive cars get the same loop and the same gauge. What changes is the question: at this money, does the air suspension actually earn itself on patched tar, and does the long wheelbase make the gravel section worse. Often it does, and we say so.
Comfort here means a 60 mm seat base you can still feel at the third hour, 150 mm of usable suspension travel, a boot lip low enough to lift a suitcase onto, and aircon that pulls a cabin from 48 °C down to 24 °C in under eight minutes after the car has stood in the sun on Zastron Street.
A three-day hire is the cheapest long test drive available and nobody in a dealership will tell you that. We publish what to check at the handover counter, how the excess and the tracker conditions are worded, and which hire categories are worth the extra three hundred rand a day.
We do not sell cars and we take nothing from anyone who does. What we do is reduce a list of nine candidates to three by measuring them against the way you actually drive, then tell you which of the three to go and sit in for twenty minutes with the engine off.
Bloemfontein sits at about 1 395 m above sea level, which is the first thing most reviews written on the coast forget. A naturally aspirated engine here gives up roughly a tenth of the power it makes at the harbour in Durban, and a small turbo petrol gives up almost nothing. That single fact changes which cars are worth your money on the plains, and it is measurable rather than arguable.
So we measure. Tyre pressures set cold against the door placard with a dial gauge, not the forecourt hose. Fuel taken brim to brim at the same pump on the same side of Zastron Street. Cabin noise read at 60, 100 and 120 km/h on the same 4 km of concrete-strip N1, windows up, blower on the second setting, radio off.
The notes are written for drivers over forty-five who intend to keep a car for seven or eight years and drive it to Gauteng and back several times a year. That reader cares about seat support at the third hour, about boot litres that take a wheelchair or a folded walker, and about what the service plan actually covers when the gearbox oil is due. Those are the things we write down.
Notes are grouped by what the car is for rather than by price. If you want the method before the conclusions, read how we test first; it explains the pressures, the fuel procedure and the three noise readings.
Two hundred and twenty-five kilometres of almost straight tar, a crosswind that arrives without warning past Trompsburg, and a fuel slip at each end. This is the run that separates a car that cruises from a car that merely goes fast.
Read the test notes→
A seat that feels good in a showroom has told you almost nothing. The failure happens somewhere around Winburg on the way north, and it is usually a seat base 40 mm too short.
Eleven kilometres of district gravel toward Soutpan, seven seats occupied by sandbags, and a tape measure under each wheel arch before and after. A loaded family car is a different vehicle from the one on the showroom floor.
A show hall is the only place you can sit in eleven cars in two hours without anybody asking for your identity number. Go with a tape measure and a short list of numbers, and leave the brochures on the stand.
A lawn full of restored cars looks like a hobby and is actually a long-term durability report. Dry air at 1 400 m preserves some things and destroys others, and the owners standing there will tell you which.
Three days and 900 km will tell you more about a car than every dealer loop you will ever drive. The hire desk at the airport is, for about R1 400 a day, the most useful test facility in the province.
No studio shots and nothing borrowed from a press pack. These are the places the notes come from, in the light they happened in.
The long level stretch past the Jagersfontein turn-off where cruising revs and cabin noise are read.
The whole method fits on one page, which is deliberate. If you cannot repeat a measurement you should not publish it, and if a reader cannot repeat it in a dealership it is not much use to them either.
A 46 km town circuit through Westdene, Brandwag and Universitas, then the N1 south as far as Trompsburg and back, then 11 km of district gravel toward Soutpan. Same order, same traffic window, same fuel station. A car that only looks good on a new car's route is a car nobody has tested.
Seat base length, cushion angle, H-point height off the tar, door aperture height and the reach from the backrest to the top of the steering wheel. All in millimetres, all with the same tape. A showroom seat that feels excellent for ten minutes has told you nothing about Winburg at the second hour.
We work out what the car costs over 20 000 km a year at current pump prices, with the published service intervals and a realistic tyre life for Free State chip-and-spray. The figures are indicative, and we say so, but they are arithmetic rather than mood.
All figures are indicative and in rand. They cover our time, the fuel for the loop and the written sheet that follows. We do not take money from dealerships, importers or hire companies, so the fee is the only thing paying for the work.
| Package | Who it is for | Indicative fee |
|---|---|---|
| Shortlist of three | For the buyer who has nine candidates, a budget and no way of choosing between them. | from R2 850 indicative |
| Full comfort file | For a driver with a back, hip or knee that sets the terms, who intends to keep the car eight years. | from R4 400 indicative |
| Touring readiness | For the owner of a car who wants it ready for long Free State and Karoo runs rather than a new one. | from R5 900 indicative |
Prices are indicative and move with the fuel price. A session booked for a car we must travel to collect carries the running cost of that trip at an indicative R6.80 a kilometre. We will tell you the figure before you agree to anything, and we will tell you when a session is not worth your money.
A single noise figure at 100 km/h hides the thing you will live with. Tyre roar rises steadily with speed; wind noise rises much faster, roughly with the cube of it. Read a car at 60, 100 and 120 km/h and the shape of the curve tells you which of the two is the problem, and therefore whether a different tyre would fix it or nothing would.
We take the readings on the same 4 km of N1 south, windows up, blower on the second setting, radio off, meter on the centre armrest at ear height. Two cars that both read 70 dB at 120 km/h can be completely different to own: one was at 62 dB at 60 km/h and is a wind problem, the other at 68 dB and is a tyre problem. The first is a sealing fault you cannot fix. The second costs about R9 000 and goes away.
Measured notes from Bloemfontein
Because the measurements travel and the names do not. A seat base of 455 mm is too short in any badge, and a payload of 580 kg is a problem whatever is written on the tailgate. Describing cars by type also stops this site becoming a place where people argue about brands instead of reading numbers. If you need to know which specific car a note refers to, telephone the ask desk and we will tell you.
Three working days for a single session, five for a long-run measurement, and about eight for a full comfort file because the figures have to be compared across four cars. If a session throws up something we cannot explain, we go back and measure again rather than publish a guess, and then it takes longer.
Yes, and roughly half of what we do is exactly that. The touring readiness package is built around it. We run your car through the same loop and the same instruments as a new one, which usually finds two or three cheap improvements: the right tyre pressure for your real load, a cabin filter that has not been changed, a seat position nobody ever adjusted properly.
No. Not a fee, not a loan car, not a tank of fuel, not an invitation. It is the reason the fees on this site look higher than free advice, and it is the reason a note occasionally says that a car is not worth its asking price. We would rather be paid by the reader than by the seller.
Often more useful. A comfort fitting done early tells you which body styles are already eliminated, which narrows a year of looking down to a handful of candidates. It also means that when a good second-hand example appears you can act in two days instead of starting from nothing.
Fuel, mostly, and distance. The loop uses about 38 litres, so the pump price moves the fee. If we have to travel to a car outside the city we add the running cost of that trip at an indicative R6.80 a kilometre. Nothing is added after the fact: the figure you are quoted before the session is the figure on the sheet.
We do not arrange any of them and we are not licensed to advise on them. What we will do is read a service plan or a maintenance plan with you and explain what it covers, and tell you what we have seen comparable cars sell for locally so that the number you are offered has some context.
Telephone the ask desk on +27 51 430 92 68 during the hours on the contact page, or send the form with the car, the kilometres you drive a year and what is currently uncomfortable. Sessions in the frost window at first light fill up quickly because there are only so many mornings cold enough to be worth using.
A session takes ninety minutes and ends with a page of figures you can hold next to any other car. If you are not sure whether it is worth the fee, telephone and describe the car and the problem; we will say so if it is not.
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