Melbourne - What Car? (off road, Isofix)

[DE3A]

Hope all is well with everyone despite the recent fires and floods. Long time forum lurker with no real reason to post…until now!

Relocating to Melbourne in March and was hoping to get a better idea on any car or driving restrictions in Victoria and some “What Car?” suggestions.

I’d like to get out and do a bit of light off-road driving and camping, so I’ve been looking mainly at Hilux’s and Landcruiser Prado’s. I quite like the look of the 4.0 V6 petrol SR5 but in my browsing of Carsales.com and Gumtree a lot of these have diesel engines. In nearly 20 years of driving I’ve never had a diesel and 2020 seems a strange year to start but are there any limitations with driving a diesel into the city? (I will be commuting by train so can’t imagine we’ll be driving into the city often). If not now, are they looking to bring any restrictions in in the near future?

I also understand that Isofix is relatively new thing in Australia? From what I’ve read only 2015 Hilux’s onwards have Isofix and maybe some Prado’s a bit older than this (from what I can tell looking at photo's of the rear seats in adverts). Does anyone have any better knowledge?

Any other recommendations for a suitable weekend warrior camping rig? I guess the other usual suspects are the Navara, Ranger or L200? I’d love a ute although in practice it may be easier to have an enclosed boot space as with the Prado. An FJ Cruiser could be an option as a wildcard…

Thanks for any suggestions!

[motomk]

Most of the proper (ie Off Road capable) 4WD vehicles are diesel down here.
The big sellers are the Dual Cab Utes, Hilux, Ranger, Triton. Other ones out there are Amarok, Navara, Colorado, BT50, D-Max.
A few of these are half clones of each other. Some have Isofix, some don't. There is or used to be tax benefits with Dual cab Utes but I don't know much about it.
I guess it is how much you want to spend, How far off-road you want to go, Will it be your only car, does it have to do other stuff?
They are quite big compared to cars but not out of place over here.
There are what I would call wagon versions of the above. Everest, Pajero Sport, Fortuner, Trailblazer, M-UX, but you don't see as many of these around as people buy SUV's.
SUV's are the big sellers here, a lot of them are petrol.

[forzaminardi]

You see a lot of the cars you mention out and about being used day-to-day in suburban Melbourne and surrounds. Less so in the CBD area, but I'm not aware of any formal restrictions on them being driven there.

We were surprised on moving to Oz (from the UK) that Isofix wasn't as widespread here as in Europe. the problem wasn't the cars having them, rather the design of the seats themselves. We had a Isofix base unit in the UK that was brilliant - it just slotted into the car lock points and then you could just clip in or out the seat itself, and get a new one as baby gets older - but they don't sell compatible seats in Oz. So we have an Isofix seat, but it fits directly into the car locking points and has a silly series of straps securing it. I'd imagine, surely, that most cars from the last decade will have Isofix as they are sold globally?

[DE3A]

Many thanks for the replies and all the vehicle suggestions – I’ll make sure to consider these in my future searches. I guess the threads in General Gassing about the ban on ICE vehicles and all the talk of emissions zones, etc, (appreciate these are UK based) got me wondering if diesel was the right way to go out there – but sounds like it may be a non-issue out there going from the suburbs heading out into the country and considering the type of vehicles I’m looking at.

I guess I won’t really know how far to venture until I get there! But the plan was more touring and driving on unmade roads/tracks to campsites I guess, rather than full on rock crawling.

Price wise I was originally looking at around $30k, but as always happen, this has crept up a bit, haha, so around $30k to $40k. It will be my only vehicle, although I suspect we’ll get a second smaller car as a runaround – again dependant on where we end up settling, the commute, etc.

Thanks for the info on Isofix seats. We have the same here, a base that clips in and the child seats themselves clip into the base. I was assuming we’d bring them along, but might be easier to pick up a new seat there when needed if it’s difficult to get one that works with the base. I agree, I thought it would be strange that only 2015 Australian Hilux onwards had Isofix points, if UK Hilux has them since 2008 for example.

Thanks again guys, help much appreciated. Looking forward to getting out there.