MotorWorld 17 cars test Drive under $60k watch New

On first impressions, there mightn’t seem much in common between some of the 17 cars pictured above. Turns out that there’s quite a lot. For one thing, they all list for under $60k. For another, each promises some degree of fun factor: be it measured in muscle, sportiness or genuine high performance.

But, crucially, these 17 cars were recently amassed at Sydney Motorsport Park and put through their paces by both you the reader and we here at CarAdvice. In conjunction with our recent 11-way small SUV mega test, we’re keen as hot mustard to find out how similarly – or differently – your experience with this latest and greatest pack compares with ours.

Fifteen of our motley pack were supplied by the manufacturer (in the case of the Commodore SS) or importer (all the others) for the recent MotorWorld Sydney event which centred around providing Joe and Joanne Public hands-on experience with their newest metal which, for our 17 ‘warm car’ field, involved lapping around the extended Brabham Circuit for the first three days of the event and circulating the shorter-if-faster Druitt Circuit (aka North circuit) on its fourth and final day.

Two of the cars on test – the Mazda MX-5 and Volkswagen Golf GTI – are CarAdvice’s own vehicles, each considered the touchstone in their respective affordable sports car and hot hatch segment, and serving as benchmarks of buck-banging driver’s car appraisal.

We we’re there for the four-day Motorworld Sydney circus, picking the brains of readers and the public who got to drive these cars on track

Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce

Price: $42,990 plus on-roads
Powertrain: 1.75L turbocharged four cylinder, six-speed dual clutch, FWD
Outputs: 177kW/340Nm
Laptime on test: 1:11.72

BMW 125i

Price: $45,900 plus on-roads
Powertrain: 2.0L turbocharged four cylinder, eight-speed automatic, RWD
Outputs: 165kW/310Nm
Laptime on test: 1:10.28

Ford Fiesta ST manual

Price: $22,990 plus on-roads
Powertrain: 1.6L turbocharged four, six-speed manual, FWD
Outputs: 134kW/240Nm (147kW/290Nm overboost)
Laptime on test: 1:10.82