Sitting on a plane this week, heading to Tasmania to drive a Falcon with two missing cylinders, I was reflecting on just how much the motoring landscape is changing.
A Ford Falcon with a four-cylinder turbo? A few years ago you would have been laughed out of the bar for even suggesting that. It's now a reality, and a surprisingly effective one.
The fact is we're all caught up in a whirlwind of tech-driven change, with battery-powered cars hitting the market, the occasional hybrid proving to be a decent drive and a growing number of bright-coloured lycra-clad robots are invading glorious roads once almost exclusively reserved for the greatest of all inventions - the internal combustion engine.
But the fact remains that external factors always necessitate change - sometimes for the better, sometimes not so much.
So when Alastair Sloane, after doing an incredible job as NZ Herald motoring editor for the past 15 years, decided to move to new things, our reaction was much like mine when mulling the Falcon's new mill.
