CN Confidential: time wasting tactics

Contemptuous cops and dastardly diesel whodunnits spike our interest in this week's CN Conf...

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Booze bus outrage
Stuck in gridlocked traffic on a Friday afternoon isn't anyone's idea of fun, especially with the mercury nudging 30-degrees. But as a member of the Carsales Network's editorial staff sat on Eastlink with no "state-of-the-art" overhead signs to warn of the cause of the delay ahead frustration began to build.

Sure, if there's been an accident you can forgive an extensive delay, you might even tolerate road works to some degree, but after taking more than 75 minutes to travel a five kilometre section of my trip home, said Carsales staff member was ropeable.

The cause of the delay, as it turns out, was a booze bus operation carried out by the Victoria Police. Nothing unusual there really, except that in their infinite wisdom some nufty at the top had decided a main arterial road in peak hour was a terrific target.

The operation blocked all lanes and both sides of the Eastlink tollway at Bangholme. So extensive was the delay that cars couldn't even get on the tollway at the Frankston end. After a half-hour, delays had extended back to the Dandenong bypass in the north and into the suburb of Frankston at the road's end in the south.

To make matters worse, there were only half-a-dozen cops asking what seemed like thousands of drivers to "blow into this".

Surely if you're going to stage such an op you'd roster on a few more staff.

After 90 minutes one bright spark in blue decided to open an additional lane to ease some of the congestion, but queues continued well into the evening, until stumps were finally pulled just before 8pm.

It's the opinion of the staff member concerned that the Victoria Police's conduct in this instance demonstrated a complete lack of commonsense and, despite the undeniable need to remove impaired drivers from the roads, was absolutely unjustified in this instance.

Detaining so many motorists for such a lengthy amount of time to yield such a small result shows complete contempt for the public they're meant to serve.

Further, and after eight days, Carsales Network's attempts to contact Victorian Police media for comment have gone unanswered.

Chrysler's diesel whodunit
They can be a tight-lipped mob at Chrysler. There's a V6 diesel of unknown origin just months away from launch here in Australia, set to power the new Grand Cherokee, but the local management team either doesn't know who is building it for Chrysler Jeep -- or they're just not saying.

During the local launch of the new Grand Cherokee, the Carsales Network asked Chrysler Australia's spokesman, Dean Bonthorne, who was building the compression ignition engine for the Jeep.

"Don't have confirmation on what it is, but it won't be a Benz [engine],"said Bonthorne.

"The outgoing model was Mercedes-Benz-based -- a 3.0-litre V6 turbodiesel. I believe that logic will dictate [the new engine] will be competitive with that engine.

"There's some similarities in the gearbox, but certainly not the diesel [engine]. For us, while diesel's always been an important element of the Australian SUV environment, the [Grand Cherokee] with the Pentastar V6, which is all-new for us, means we're able to offer this model with a powertrain that does deliver economy over the traditional V8. At the same time we've still got a towing capacity of nearly 2.3-tonne, combined fuel economy of 11.4L/100km, 210kW -- so it's a viable alternative to diesel.

"It's actually won awards over a fleet of diesels, which surprised a lot of people, so whilst we're looking forward to seeing the CRD come mid-year, offering what we've got at the moment -- the V6 and the HEMI V8 -- more than covers us adequately."

The Grand Cherokee CRD will arrive about the same time as Ford's diesel-engined Territory, so despite Bonthorne promoting the fuel efficiency of the new Pentastar petrol V6, people will be watching and waiting with interest for the diesel-engined Jeep. We asked Bonthorne what he expected the sales split to be: diesel versus petrol.

"Again... this is new territory for us, in terms of having a V6 of this calibre. The split in the past has been perhaps around the 50/50 mark, between a diesel and the V8, but because of the performance of this V6... people who were looking at the diesel purely from an economy perspective now have this V6 alternative. Those that want a towing capability, the HEMI V8 still has 3.5-tonne [capacity]..."

The reason we're curious about the engine supplier for the Grand Cherokee can be found in this article. An industry insider told us just two months ago that there was a chance Fiat and Chrysler might not be able to secure V6 diesels from VM Motori, the only engine supplier placed in a position to supply the powerplants for the Grand Cherokee CRD -- other than Mercedes-Benz. We're now of the opinion that the Italian engine builder (VM) will supply the diesel V6s for the Grand Cherokee CRD after all.

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