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  • Swartkops Raceway, Driver Training Failures, and South Africa's Road Safety Crisis

    Swartkops Raceway, Driver Training Failures, and South Africa's Road Safety Crisis
    2026/10/02
    Pieter du Toit (Swartkops Raceway | Owner)
    Grant McLeery (Driving Dynamics | Founder and Advanced Driver Trainer)

    Pieter du Toit and Grant McLeery on circuits, licensing, and road safety

    This episode is for South African motoring enthusiasts, parents of new drivers, and anyone frustrated by the country's road safety statistics. Host Roger McLeery and co-presenter Melanie Walker sit down with Swartkops Raceway owner Pieter du Toit and veteran driver trainer Grant McLeery to cover the real history of South African motorsport and the very real failures in how the country licences and trains its drivers.

    Pieter du Toit traces Swartkops from its origins in 1961 - built on the access roads of a drive-in cinema by the Peters brothers - through its years as a kart circuit that attracted Michael Schumacher, to the composite motorsport facility it is today, home to Toyota Gazoo Racing's South African base. He talks about the economics of keeping an independent circuit alive through rental income and corporate manufacturer days, the garages that make club racing affordable, and three generations of the du Toit family now competing in Money Max karting at international level.

    Grant McLeery, who has trained over 100,000 drivers across Africa in 43 years, delivers a sharp critique of the K53 licensing system: the average South African driver receives just three hours of training before their test; licences are routinely bought in licensing department parking lots; and the law allows someone to pass their test in an automatic vehicle and immediately drive any car, including a five-million-rand Porsche. He compares this to the US and European systems where your licence is tied to the category of vehicle you trained in, and some states restrict night driving and freeway access for new drivers in their first year. He also presents specific research from a Stellenbosch professor showing that receiving a call creates seven seconds of full cognitive blindness, while initiating a call creates twelve seconds - a number that reframes the cell phone distraction debate entirely.

    The conversation covers skid-pan training for 4x4 drivers, the overlooked fact that 99 percent of SUV owners spend 99 percent of their time on tar, stopping distances on gravel roads, the case for mandatory road safety education in schools through Life Orientation, township motorcycle licensing initiatives, and why women are measurably easier to train than men. South African motorsport history runs throughout, with references to Roy Hesketh, Killarney, East London Grand Prix, the Scheckter family, David Piper, Jeff Mortimer, Paddy Driver, and Alfie Cox. Driving Dynamics
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    36 分
  • Why Toyota Has Led South Africa's Car Market for 47 Years

    Why Toyota Has Led South Africa's Car Market for 47 Years
    2026/09/10
    Motoring Today is the show for South African petrolheads who want real insight into the cars, trucks, motorbikes, motorsport and industry stories that matter. Host Roger McLeery sits down with Toyota South Africa's Product Communications Manager Mzo Witbooi to dig into how Toyota has held the top spot in the South African market for 47 consecutive years - and why no rival has come close.

    Roger and Mzo cover Toyota's staggering global output of 11.8 million vehicles a year, Toyota South Africa's current market share of around 23 percent, and the threat posed by a flood of Chinese brands entering the local market. Mzo explains Toyota's deliberate multi-pathway powertrain strategy - continuing to invest in internal combustion engines (ICE), hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), battery electric vehicles (BEV) and hydrogen fuel cell technology simultaneously - rather than betting everything on a single technology as rivals in Europe have done at the cost of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

    The conversation covers the full product offensive Toyota South Africa has executed in 2025: the updated Corolla Cross GRS (locally produced at the Prospecton plant), the Land Cruiser FJ, the new RAV4, the bZ4X electric, the new Hilux, and the forthcoming Lexus ES. Mzo also lets slip - on air - that a new Fortuner is roughly a year away, following a 10.8 billion rand investment into the IMV production line at Prospecton.

    The episode explores Toyota Gazoo Racing in South Africa, the GR Yaris, GR Corolla and GR Supra, and how motorsport technology trickles down to production vehicles. Roger and Mzo reflect on the Prospecton factory flood disaster and how Akio Toyoda's personal response - sending engineers from around the world within days - defined Toyota's corporate character. They also discuss Toyota's near-total dominance of the minibus taxi segment, the Hilux as South Africa's best-selling vehicle, the 220-strong dealer network, and CEO Andrew Kirby's decade leading Toyota South Africa. www.linkedin.com · www.toyota.co.za · gazooracing.co.za · www.hino.co.za
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    20 分
  • From Delivery Fleets to Electric Scooters: The State of Motorcycling in South Africa

    From Delivery Fleets to Electric Scooters: The State of Motorcycling in South Africa
    2026/09/24
    Arnold Raphael (AMET - Association of Motorcycle Industry Distributors | Director)
    Johnny Shand (Bikeman West Rand | Owner)

    A wide-ranging conversation about the South African motorcycle industry in 2024 - who is buying, who is riding, what is selling, and where the market is heading. This episode is for motorcycle enthusiasts, industry insiders, delivery fleet managers, and anyone curious about two-wheelers in South Africa, from commuter scooters to adventure bikes to electric delivery fleets.

    AMET Director Arnold Raphael and West Rand dealer Johnny Shand join hosts Roger McCleery and Melanie Walker to break down the current state of the local motorcycle market. Topics include the explosion of delivery motorcycle fleets operated by companies like Checkers 60/60, the South Africanisation of a workforce that was historically over 85 percent foreign riders, and the safety and training initiatives being led by Hein Jonker of the Motorcycle Safety Institute.

    The panel covers the dramatic rise and fall of South African motorcycle sales - from a record 84,000 units in 1980-81 driven by the oil crisis, to a collapse caused by import duties under the apartheid government, to today's market of around 3,300 units per annum in the 500cc-plus segment. BMW's dominance in the leisure segment, driven by the GS adventure bike range, is examined alongside the growing competitiveness of Chinese brands like CFMoto.

    Electric motorcycles and scooters get serious attention: battery-swap infrastructure, weekly lease pricing for electric delivery bikes (around R1,200 per week versus R650-R750 for petrol equivalents), range limitations for riders covering up to 300 km per day, and why the leisure e-bike market remains almost flat. The conversation also covers the collapse of motorcycle publications and TV programmes like Bike SA and Twist Grip, the shift to social media marketing, the rise and fall of the Abbott Motor Show, and the Red Star Racing expo that now draws over 5,000 visitors. Brad Binder, KTM, MotoGP, the Suzuki Hayabusa, CFMoto's Moto2 and Moto3 involvement, and the shortage of skilled motorcycle mechanics are all discussed.
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    40 分
  • Turbos, Records and a Drug-Running Honda | Chris Kambouris of TurboDirect SA

    Turbos, Records and a Drug-Running Honda | Chris Kambouris of TurboDirect SA
    2026/09/17
    Chris Kambouris (TurboDirect South Africa | Founder and MD)
    Melanie Walker (Motorsport broadcaster and former Group N racing driver)
    Turbo tech, motorsport history and a wild drag car story

    This episode is for petrolheads who love real mechanical detail, motorsport history, and the kind of enthusiast rabbit holes that end with a drug-busted drag car. Roger McCleery and Melanie Walker sit down with Chris Kambouris, founder of TurboDirect South Africa, to talk all things turbocharging - from DIY turbo builds in the mid-nineties to a Honda NSX drag car that ran a 6.5-second quarter mile at 211 mph, got seized by the Las Vegas PD, and is now heading to PRI Indianapolis.

    Chris explains how the core turbocharger design has been unchanged since a Swiss engineer invented it in the 1940s - and exactly what has changed: the control systems, VNT technology, bearing materials, and ECU strategies like anti-lag that can destroy a turbo in seconds. He breaks down the difference between twin-turbo, bi-turbo sequential and compound turbo setups, and explains why the tiny GT06 Garrett turbo in a Tata two-cylinder diesel spins at 360,000 RPM - faster than a nine-millimetre bullet at the rim.

    You will also hear why buying a genuine BorgWarner turbo through a VW dealer can cost four times more than buying the identical part through TurboDirect, why a P0299 fault code almost never means a failed turbo on a 1.6 TSI, and why root-cause diagnosis matters more than the replacement part itself. Plus: Group N Golf racing, Kyalami pit-straight sounds, Dakar truck dreams, a 389 km/h turbocharged street-legal motorcycle, and the South African TurboDirect USA expansion. www.linkedin.com · www.linkedin.com · www.instagram.com · www.bringatrailer.com
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    37 分