ABDC 2018: The FAQs

There you are, flipping the burgers and prodding the snags, when the brother-in-law approaches with a beer in hand and asks: "So, tell me about Australia's Best Driver's Car?"

You're 'the car influencer' within your circle of family, friends and colleagues – but you're just not up to speed with ABDC. How embarrassment...

Don't be caught out; we've prepared this handy guide to all the salient points underpinning Australia's premium annual event testing performance cars on the road and the track to decide which one wins out for driving enjoyment.

It doesn't matter whether it's on the open road or circulating the tight, technical Winton Motor Raceway in north-eastern Victoria, if a car doesn't feel as balanced, doesn't perform as strongly as expected, or fails to communicate effectively with the driver, it's out of the running. And it works the other way too. A car can blitz the others in track testing and still feel unpleasant and demanding.

So to contend at ABDC, a car needn’t be hard-riding and noisy, but definitely should be very competent getting from Point A to Point B by the longest route…all the while making a great noise and leaving its driver grinning.

A good driver’s car is one we can’t get enough of – regardless of when and where we’re driving it.

And as appealing as Tasmania is when you're driving demanding roads in a car that's really up for it, more than a few of our judges were glad of the milder weather in Victoria. Believe it or not, Victoria's High Country boasts roads that are the equal of Tasmania's – and we enjoyed (almost) five full days of blue skies and sunshine for the first time in ABDC's four-year history. No need to pack the thermals this year.

Some of the cars in the final field were variants or upgrades of pre-existing models already tested in ABDC. So the Audi RS 5 quattro, as one example, is one variant of A5, as was last year's S5. The Mazda MX-5 was back for another tilt at the title, in RF Limited Edition form.

So was Ford's Mustang Track Pack and the Renault Clio RS 200 Cup, and the Subaru BRZ tS taking part in the 2018 event is a badge-engineered version of the Toyota 86 GTS that has previously been a contestant.

Models putting in a first-time appearance at ABDC included Honda Civic Type R, Lexus LC 500, the Suzuki Swift Sport Turbo, Kia Stinger 330Si, BMW M5, Mercedes-AMG E63 S 4MATIC+ and Hyundai i30 N. The Alfa Romeo Giulia QV was back for a return bout, after falling foul of suspension geometry issues last year.

If you’re in the market for a ‘driver’s car’, you’re not looking for a cheap car as much as one you’ll enjoy driving. Our guess is you’re willing to spend a bit more for the pleasure, but most buyers are limited by a budget – and that's usually well short of $250,000.

Some run longer, but only fans will watch right through a 10-minute video, which is why we only produce a few of those.

We believe there is no other way to fairly compare cars as disparate as a Suzuki Swift Sport Turbo and a Mercedes-AMG E63 S 4MATIC+. Despite the gulf in price between these two cars, both are fun to drive for different reasons.

ABDC is not a straight-forward comparo. Yes, there is a winner, but every car taking part is already a finalist and won’t disappoint any potential owner.

They may have fitted brand-new tyres, stickier/softer tyres or lowered the tyre pressures. Perhaps they applied drag racing sticky VHT to the road in launch area. Did they use a drag strip’s timing equipment, which doesn’t measure rollout (the distance a car travels between a standing-start take-off and the timing beam)?

We don’t do any of the above things but we do use a professional racing driver.

We also test each car back-to-back in the same conditions on the same surface on the same day. We apply manufacturer-recommended tyre pressures on standard tyres (as per the tyre placard) and ensure the same (relative) fuel load is in each car.

Finally, we also make sure each car has enough runs to extract its best time.

In short, we like to think of the figures achieved at ABDC as comparable to those a good driver might manage at a hard start from the lights any day of the week. A real-world result, if you will.