I’m ready to ditch my Suzuki Escudo for an upgrade, which do you recommend?

Regards, Victor

Hello Victor,

The best car here is the Subaru Forester, mostly because it has won many awards while the other two haven't. But accolades mean nothing without justification, so let's start talking about why the Subie queen is such a darling.

For starters, it has one of the best safety ratings ever, which is something that should be at the top of your mind when talking about family use. How good is "best"? In 2018, the IIHS (Insurance Institute of Highway Safety) in the US declared it a Top Safety Pick, and if there is an institution that knows about motor vehicle safety, it is the IIHS. They're so strict, they are less forgiving that most NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) assessors.

The Subaru beats the others in the ratings by getting a "good score" for the structure and safety cage, while the Nissan and Mitsubishi have to make do with an "average" score.

The Forester also beats out the X-Trail and Outlander on headlamps which vary by trim. The Subaru gets two scores: average and marginal, while the Nissan and the Mitsubishi get three scores: average, marginal and poor.

That means you have to scour the spec sheets of your used car thoroughly before committing if you opt for something other than the Subaru. There is also something called Subaru EyeSight© which is an electronic suite of driving aids and safety features, a suite so sublime and competent it is used as the poster child for the advancement of motor vehicle safety systems, both active and passive.

Don't forget that the Forester was borne out of Impreza underpinnings and as of the SJ model you are inquiring about, still was. That means a compact footprint and good handling on surfaces of varying grip, setups further boosted by the symmetrical all-wheel drive system.

Speaking of boost, the XT also comes with a turbo engine, again borrowed from the Impreza, good for 250hp, which is a number that the other two can only dream about.

While we can go on and on about standard and optional equipment, ground clearance, styling and whatnot, the most outstanding feature of the Forester with which it leaves the others in the dust really has to be that drivetrain combination.

The boxer motor provides a low center of gravity, the symmetrical all-wheel drive system provides impeccable balance, and the CVT, hateful as it is, does make the most of the power coming off that boxer motor.

Which country would you advise me to import a car from?

Hello Baraza,

I and a million other motoring enthusiasts can't be grateful enough. We have received some good advice on which is a good car, however, where to get a good car is a challenge, whether based on price, availability, honesty and after sales service. Would you prefer buying locally or importing? Who are the renowned car dealers locally and globally for new and used cars? Which country is the best source for 'driven abroad cars'? 

Sammy

Hello Sammy,

Buying a used car is always a gamble. Always. Unless you have been privy to its operational treatment since zero mileage, you can never really tell what you are getting. That said, I'd prefer to import a used car while it is still allowed over getting a locally used car.

Based on the kind of correspondence I get in Car Clinic and the kind of content I witness on social forums, Kenyans are not very well versed about the motor vehicle, and a heady combination of misleading mythology, tightfistedness and egocentric myopia fiercely resistant to edification means many Kenyans abuse their vehicles, actively or passively.

I cannot list good dealers locally or globally, mostly because I have only imported one car in my life and bought from a dealer twice. All my other purchases, and they are quite a number, have been private transactions between owners incumbent and prospective. I also won't do that list because it is highly subjective and unlikely to be thorough, however, I can tell you where to import a car from.

There is Singapore, where you can get flashy cars on the cheap, but as I have always written over the years, yer gets what yer pays fer. That low price comes with a caveat emptor: the likelihood that you are divesting Singapore of its metallic junk just so you can have a money-pit sculpture in the name of personal transportation is very high. This is a gamble, and the odds are really not in your favour.

There is the UK, from where you can import a vehicle in varying states of disrepair, but more worrying is the problem of rust. The British isles use salt to thaw out their roads in winter time, and it's winter 364 days of the year over there, so they are almost always driving on salt.

On wet roads, that salt dissolves in the spray that gets kicked up by the cars wheels, and it finds its way into nooks and crannies that the eye cannot immediately see. With water and salt meeting bare metal, elementary primary school science tells us that rust will develop faster than your car can accelerate to 100km/h from rest (this is an exaggeration, but yes, there will be rust).

One other thing: be prepared to do mental calculations as you operate your motor vehicle since the units in the cluster are expressed in miles and miles per hour, not kilometers. 100mph is 160km/h. Keep that in mind the next time you are pulled over by a policeman wielding a speed gun.

Then there is the land of the rising sun, Japan. They don't use salt on their roads - at least not as much as the UK, as far as I know, their speedometers read in good ol' Roman Catholic units and not that imperial claptrap that the UK and its biggest colony the US insist and persist but should really desist from using, the used vehicles they export undergo thorough inspection and a grading system so that you know exactly what you are getting, and they have a wide array of cheap hardware that will not be painful to own in the foreseeable future.

It seems like the perfect source of used cars, and it almost is, but for the full experience, you will learn how to read kanji scripts because that is what they write in over there in their part of the world.

The BMW or the Golf? Though I’d really like the BMW...

Hi Baraza,

I am a great fan of your motoring column, and I like how you analyse specs, performances and reliability of different cars. I would like to get your thoughts on the BMW 116i (or any model within 1series) and the Volkswagen Golf (TSI). I plan to own (by importing) my first car in about two months’ time and my eyes are on one of these two, with preference for the BMW.

I have heard a few people say that the Golf has been prone to developing problems with its gearbox (not sure about it). Planned car usage will be majorly around Nairobi, and a number of trips upcountry. My budget is somewhere around Sh1.4M. I am open to other recommendations but I prefer you stick to German options that fit my budget - I am a big fan of European machines.
Douglas.

Hi Douglas,

Do not buy the BMW 116i, because it is the slowest accelerating BMW ever made in the 21st Century, which is at odds with BMW's claims about ultimate driving machines. If you really want a 1 Series, start with a 120i and work your way up, but that is if you really want a 1 Series.

Why am I so against the 1? Besides its shameful off-the-line lethargy, it's also not much to look at. The second generation F20 is an improvement over the bulging, amorphous E81, but it's still not the last word in automotive design. It is a combination of a standard BMW corporate face, generic (neo-Korean) profile and bland rear.

When viewed from the side, you'd be hard pressed to tell what it is if it wasn't for the Hofmeister kink and/or one or two badges. The rear looks like they got tired of designing the car.

The Golf is quintessential Teutonic design language, subdued handsomeness reeking of functionality and lack of offense, the way Germans have been drawing cars since they quit their imperialist march across most of Europe.

The BMW has another fatal flaw: the use of rear-wheel drive. It is a compact car, a hatchback, meaning that space is at a premium, like land in Japan. The reason why everyone makes front wheel drive hatchbacks is because the drivetrain is stashed away under the bonnet where nobody stores anything ever since Subaru stopped placing the spare wheel there. This leaves a lot of space in the passenger compartment for the engineers and designers to play with.

Not so a rear-drive car, worse so, a hatchback. By taking power to the back wheels, a transmission tunnel has to run along the roll axis of the car, right inside the car where the passengers are sitting. That means the 1 is a 4-seater, you will never fit 5 people in it, unlike the Golf.

Once the driveshaft reaches the rear axle via the space-robbing transmission tunnel, it culminates in a differential, another massive component sitting low in the boot, which means more precious space has been taken unnecessarily. You can see how this is not looking good for the Bavarian.

And now, the handling. Again, most cars are front-drive because this is a setup that favours understeer, the safest of all forms of loss of control of a motor vehicle in that it is easily rectifiable.

Rear-drive platforms tend to favour oversteer, which requires the reactions of a housefly and a mastery of vehicle dynamics otherwise you will crash. There is a third setup, the worst of them all: rear-drive platform with a short wheelbase. This essentially turns the 1 Series into a Group B rally car.

These were impossible to control at the limit, and the 1 is not very far from that. Push it hard and it will make your life difficult in corners if you are not a driving maestro intentionally unsettling the car. Play it pretty, play it practical and play it safe. Buy the Golf.