Innholdsfortegnelse for 12/4/2017 i Autocar

JEEP HAS LAUNCHED the most powerful series-production SUV yet at the New York motor show. Called the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, it’s a 707bhp SUV that can out-accelerate the Range Rover SVR, Bentley Bentayga and Porsche Cayenne Turbo S. Using a Hellcat supercharged 6.2-litre V8 that has 645lb ft, it can sprint to 60mph in 3.5sec — identical to a Jaguar F-Type SVR — and tops out at 180mph. By comparison, the quickest of the aforementioned SUVs, the W12-engined Bentayga, is down on power by 107bhp and needs an extra half a second to hit 60mph — although the Bentley can make it to 187mph. The Trackhawk uses an eight-speed automatic transmission that sends drive to all four wheels. An electronic limited-slip differential and beefed-up rear axle work with launch control…

Prime Minister Theresa May has hinted that a ‘diesel scrappage’ scheme could be on the cards. Her words follow public outcry that owners of diesel-engined cars are now being penalised for running them, having been encouraged to buy diesels by previous governments. May said: “I’m very conscious of the fact that past governments have encouraged people to buy diesel cars and we need to take that into account when we look at what we do in the future.” Calls for a scrappage scheme, which would give owners a financial incentive to trade in their diesel cars, came in the wake of reports that the Government will soon announce a ‘Toxin Tax’. This will be a daily £20 charge for drivers of older diesels who wish to drive into polluted cities…

FERRARI WILL ALWAYS have a naturally aspirated V12 in its line-up, according to company boss, Sergio Marchionne. His comments quell concerns that the V12 will be downsized and turbocharged, as with Ferrari’s V8s, or even axed entirely. ‘‘We will always offer a V12,” said Marchionne. “Our head of engine programmes told me it would be absolutely nuts to [put a] turbocharger on the V12, so the answer is no. It [will be] naturally aspirated, with a hybrid [system].” The electrification is not all about lowering CO2, either, said Marchionne: “The objective of having hybrid and electrics in cars like this is not the traditional objective that most people would have. We’re not trying to make two targets. We’re really trying to improve the performance on the track.” Ferrari technical chief…

Audi has raised the bar on the structure of the new Audi A8, which goes on sale this autumn. The company’s engineers say they have incorporated new materials to create the lightest, stiffest bodyshell possible, while at the same time ensuring the flagship vehicle is capable of accepting technology such as hybrid powertrains. The A8 is switching from an aluminium construction to a hybrid, with carbonfibre and magnesium being added to the previously used steel and aluminium for the first time. Although the new shell is 24% stiffer, which should help to enhance handling and refinement, the overall weight of the body in white is 282kg, an increase of 51kg compared to the outgoing A8’s structure. The increase is largely due to the improved specifications being offered on the new…

The fifth-generation Land Rover Discovery may look like a quite different prospect from any namesake, but driving it is like being with an old friend who has been given a new waxed jacket and a new lease of life to go with it. This is such a comfortable, calming and assured car on the road – a proper Land Rover whose real talent is to put you at ease, despite its considerable size, and to be ready to do almost anything you might ask of it. And by taking road miles so comfortably and effortlessly in its stride, somehow it only underlines its ability to take you farther off the beaten track than any other SUV likely could – and without even getting its tyres mucky. The way we use…

As another lorry overtakes our car approaching a blind corner on a sleet-covered single carriageway, it strikes me that this is the most ridiculous car journey I’ve ever known anyone to undertake. “Sometimes it’s like we’re still in Mumbai,” says the driver with a wry smile. It feels like we’re hurtling along at some lick. The car is shaking a lot, it’s incredibly loud and the single wiper is manically working in vain to clear the windscreen of sleet. But a glance at the digital speedo shows we’re barely touching the road’s speed limit of 55mph. The driver is Rahul Kakar, Autocar India’s chief road tester, and the car in which we’re limply chopping through Arctic-like Estonian roads is one of the cheapest new cars you can buy anywhere. So…

"I approach the Le Mans 24 Hours like it is a charity go-kart race" It was a plot twist worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster: there were just four minutes of the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours remaining and Toyota looked to have the race victory in the bag – until the unthinkable happened. After 23 hours and 56 minutes of reliable running, the failure of a simple intercooler pipe forced the leading TS050 Hybrid to stop on the start/finish straight, in full sight of the grandstands, just as the car had embarked on its final lap. Toyota has entered a total of 44 cars at Le Mans since 1985, but has never won. Agonisingly, 2016 was the third time the Japanese manufacturer has had defeat snatched from the jaws of…

"The Focus RS proves that four-wheel drive can enhance driving fun, not inhibit it" I here was a considerable amount of excitement around the arrival of the Ford Focus RS on our long-term test fleet last autumn. It was understandable that everyone was jostling for a drive in it. This was, after all, a car that was lauded by all comers, received a maximum five-star road test verdict in this magazine, became the star of many online drift videos and offered a generous 345bhp for just £30,000. That’s all well and good, but a car on our long-term fleet has to prove itself to be not only adept at all of the road testing jobs, but equally capable at handling more mundane tasks, such as the daily commute or a…

Okay, so a small hybrid crossover probably wasn’t the ideal car to scrounge for my week off. Let me explain: I’d set myself the rather ambitious task of building a brick wall in my garden for a new greenhouse to sit on. The job involved carting many, many bags of sand and cement from a DIY store back to my gaff. Custodian Darren Moss kindly offered the Niro’s services and, well, it was that, a Morgan 3 Wheeler or a Renault Twizy. Easy decision. Anyway, each bag weighed 25kg, so after some quick back-of-a-fag-packet calculations, I worked out I could legally carry 13 bags at once. To put that in some sort of context, our Audi SQ7 long-term test car could have managed 31 bags, and even our 1.0-litre Volkswagen…

Upmarket SUV seeks second owner Range Rover Evoques are coming slowly down to earth, but if you are going to buy one, it might as well be a one-owner example like this 2.2 TD4 from 2012. The selling dealer is marketing this 112,000-mile car with a warranty because the history is solid. There is a load of spec, from DAB radio to a touchscreen and electric seats, keyless start and all that. It’s up for £17,494. Mid-engined, rear-drive future classic Silly money for classic cars appears to be the norm now, so it is best to bag yourself something that seems rather undervalued. Something like this 2003 Renault Sport Clio V6 for £23,995, in fact. It’s a 44,000-mile car and has had just two previous owners and recent cambelt replacement…

"Most people who took a new one for a test drive were hooked" Every silver lining has a cloud. In the case of the brilliant Skoda Octavia vRS Mk1, it’s mileage – lots of it. Examples with more than 150,000 miles are common, which, when you think about it, should tell you it’s tough, useful and fun to drive. Prices for such cars start at around £600 but you’ll still find them up around £1600, similar to what 2006-year cars with 150,000 miles are being advertised for. The same money will buy 2004-reg car with around 120,000 miles. When considering any car older than 10 years, it’s best not to get too hung up on the year of registration and be guided instead by condition, at least if there are…

Volkswagen Sharan From £25,500 Full-sized seven-seater offers outstanding versatility and space with tidy handling and VW-brand desirability. BMW 2 Series Grand Tourer From £24,200 Brings a proper premium brand badge to the MPV table but appeals for more reasons than that. Volkswagen Touran From £22,200 The medium-sized people-carrier done conservatively. Re›ined and wieldy, with excellent infotainment options. Ford S-Max From £23,300 Better looking and better to drive than most, but not quite the class leader its predecessor was. Cabin a bit plain. Seat Alhambra From £24,900 A cheaper, plainer and less desirable sister to the Sharan. Spacious, versatile and decent to drive.…

“The new A7 dispenses with the look of today’s model in favour of a tauter appearance” Audi has laid the foundations for what one senior insider has described to Autocar as “the most ambitious new model programme to date” for the German car maker. The plan, which will result in Audi introducing no less than 15 new or facelifted models between now and the end of 2018 (see right), will be led by new versions of the A8 and A7. Both cars will feature advanced technology and design cues that will influence other vehicles in Audi’s range. The new model blitz is the core element in a broader strategy Audi’s chairman, Rupert Stadler, is banking on to help re-establish the company’s standing following the negative headlines and exodus of top-ranking…

“The Stinger is a brand shaper. It will change the expectations of Kias a lot” The head of high-performance vehicles at Hyundai-Kia, Albert Biermann, has promised that Kias will be “more sporting and fun to drive” in future. Biermann, who joined Hyundai-Kia in 2015 after heading up BMW’s sporting M division, told Autocar Kias could be “more sporting” than they are at the moment and “we’ll accept a compromise in ride quality” as a result. He also said there’d be “more differentiation” between Kia and Hyundai models in future. Kia’s sporting intent will be signalled when the Stinger arrives in September (see separate story, right) to take on the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupé and Audi A5 Sportback. Hyundai’s own sporting models, which will be badged ‘N’ and start with…

FORD WILL SOON be selling more Ecoboost three-cylinder engines in Europe than any other format, once the new 1.5-litre version, launched in 198bhp form on the new Fiesta ST, spreads through its range. Ford’s Europe product development chief, Joe Bakaj, has hinted that the engine will go as far up the range as the Mondeo, for which the existing 1.0-litre engine is already used. Although it has been expanded once already, the Ecoboost triple is unlikely to get any bigger, said Bakaj. “A capacity of 500cc per cylinder is about right for thermal efficiency,” he said. “Besides, we don’t need cars to get more powerful. We need them to get lighter.” Ford is also about to start selling its new generation of multi-speed automatic transmissions, developed with GM, in Europe.…

Be it winning the Formula 1 world championship, dominating the Monte Carlo Rally or having a hand in producing one of the most iconic cars of the 20th century, Charles and John Cooper have arguably done as much for the perception of the UK’s automotive industry as any other constructor, tuner or mainstream manufacturer. But do you think either of them ever stopped to consider, after all of their success with predominantly lightweight racers, that one day their family name would be affixed to the back of a near-1550kg Mini crossover? No, we don’t think so, either. But that hasn’t stopped BMW from subjecting its big Mini to the full John Cooper Works treatment. As with the Clubman JCW, the standard Cooper S’s 2.0-litre four-pot has been uprated with a…

Soichiro Honda wasn’t a man short on glistening pearls of wisdom. I don’t own an anthology of his greatest musings and I’ve never seen one in print, but don’t doubt for a second that at least one of them exists. It was probably written, printed and distributed by Honda itself. In my head, it’s illustrated entirely by beautiful studio photographs of The Great Man’s many and varied pairs of spectacles, the admiration of which (via a Google Images search) is worth a minute of anyone’s time. One of Soichiro’s utterances – a pretty key one – comes with every example of the new Honda Civic: “Pursuing a unique identity is the thing that justifies Honda’s existence.” It’s written on the back of the driver’s handbook (which itself is entitled ‘How…

“Improbably, this Land Rover taught me about power oversteer” ANDREW FRANKEL AN OLD PORSCHE, an even older Land Rover and a positively ancient Citroën. I’m not going to pretend they have anything in common, that some golden thread links them and explains their presence in my shed. On the contrary, it is their differences I celebrate. Besides, do not mistake me for any kind of car collector, even though these are not the only old cars I own. I appear to be an accidental accumulator as the almost-by-chance presence in my life of two of these three attests. One is the Porsche 968 Sport. I bought it last year because Porsche said I could drive a 918 Spyder in Scotland if I turned up in a Porsche I actually owned.…

So TVR is having Cosworth rework the Coyote V8 engine, including extensive performance and durability testing, presumably at great expense (News, 22 March). The signs don’t appear to be that promising, however, as the stock engine has 430bhp and your article suggests only that the new output will exceed 400bhp. I’m keen for TVR to succeed, but the standard engine is a gem and in standard form would fly in a sub-one-tonne, Gordon Murray-designed chassis. It is time for TVR to knock off all the secrecy, consult with a wider group of potential purchasers and refocus on a stripped-out road racer, with an already proven engine, for a £65k sale price. It could even leverage the prestige of the TVR Griffith win at the recent Goodwood Members’ Meeting. Ben Hiscock…

I he other week I cashed in an editor’s perk and accompanied/chaperoned/stalked Andrew Frankel on his drive to Geneva in a McLaren 650S. All this served to do, however, was to give me the bug for cross-continent thrashes. So I set out to scratch that itch again one sunny weekend in late March with a much shorter road trip in the 320d to the town of Amiens in northern France. Granted, it is only 100 miles each way from Calais, but my itch was indeed scratched. Few things are quite as satisfying as a deserted French Autoroute and I made swift progress (okay, perhaps not quite as swift as we did in that McLaren on a German Autobahn…). Road noise from the tyres aside, the 320d made for a wonderful…

NOT ALL NEWBIES to our Toyota Mirai react the same way. However, when some doubters learn that the Mirai’s electric power is generated from compressed hydrogen fed into a fuel cell stack, they are inclined to look dubious and say “Ah, the Hindenburg”, referring to the infamous New Jersey hydrogen airship disaster of 1937 that produced some of the most graphic images of exploding gas ever captured on film. This reaction from our naysayers is regrettable because research after the Hindenburg incident suggested it was the airship’s inflammable skin that created the disaster. As safety-conscious Toyota has repeatedly proved, when hydrogen is ignited, it dissipates far more quickly than petrol: on the internet there’s fascinating film footage that compares the two ignition ‘events’. In nearly every case we’ve experienced, hydrogen…

It is MOT time for my teenager’s toy car, but we have had to postpone one appointment due to her busy social calendar. We have, though, performed the all-important pre-MOT test check. You might as well catch the easy stuff, which you’ll only get charged for if you don’t fix it yourself. All we found was a blown driving light (now replaced). A wonky suspension arm was spotted and fixed earlier this year, so I’m sure there isn’t anything else to worry about. The Polo is due its annual service, too. You will have to wait until my next update to find out what the garage actually fixes...…

Mercedes-AMG C 63 S From £69,200 Another superb creation by Mercedes-AMG. The coupé is huge fun out on the open road and docile enough to use around town. BMW M4 From £57,000 Has grip, precision, pace and all-round civility, but lacks some of the dynamic charm of its rivals. Mercedes-AMG C 43 From £47,600 Not as bombastic as the full fat C63, but the 3.0-litre V6 is compelling in its own right. It is also luxurious and well-built, like all Mercs. Alpina B4 From £59,000 Twin-turbo engine is more dramatic but less well-mannered than the BMW M4’s, but it is better on road than on the track. Audi S5 From £47,000 A great grand tourer, with a relaxed, cosseting nature, but lacks the handling dynamism that its rivals have in…

SSANGYONG REXTON | SEPTEMBER The Rexton has long been one of the cheapest seven-seaters on sale, but not one of the best in class. However, this new-look version will have a plusher cabin, including a 9.2in infotainment screen. It will be offered with a choice of new petrol and diesel engines, and either two or four-wheel drive. Price£29,995 APRIL Audi Q5 (right), Avatar Roadster, BMW 4 Series update, Dacia Logan MCV Stepway, Lamborghini Huracán Spyder, Lotus Elise Sprint, Mercedes-AMG GT Roadster, GT C Roadster, Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupé, GLA update, V-Class Marco Polo, Mini Countryman JCW, Piecha AMG GT-RSR, Porsche Panamera, Skoda Kodiaq, Toyota Yaris update MAY Alpina B3 S, B4 S, D4, Audi A5 Cabriolet, Kia Picanto, Lamborghini Aventador S, Huracán Performante, Lotus Elise 250 Cup, Exige Race 380, Exige…

A luxury original Mini with tweaked 1275cc engine, Apple CarPlay-enabled infotainment and bespoke interior and paint is being launched by David Brown Automotive (DBA), the company behind the Aston Martin DB5-inspired Speedback GT. Evoking the spirit of customised 1960s Minis, the Mini Remastered is hand-built using a British Motor Heritage shell. Most of the 142 panels have been fettled by DBA to improve fit and finish, and ‘de-seamed’ for a smooth look. Attention to detail on the body includes trimming the hallmark roof gutter and tidying up the seam with bespoke trim. Where seams have been removed, internal bracing returns body stiffness. A new cross-car beam anchors a smart new dashboard and there’s a new aluminium multi-bar grille, based on the design of the Speedback GT’s. DBA prefers to start…

ASTON MARTIN HAS started work on its new St Athan plant, where the DBX crossover will be built from 2019. Like Aston Martin’s Gaydon HQ, the St Athan site in Wales was formerly occupied by the RAF. In total, 750 workers will be employed there, selected from 3000 applicants. “Production versions of the DBX will start coming off the line in late 2019 but we should be producing the first development prototypes towards the end of next year.” said Aston CEO Andy Palmer. He added that there will be some overlap between its two sites: ”If we’re already making components in Gaydon that are needed in St Athan, there seems little point tooling up all over again. Likewise, work done in St Athan, particularly in areas such as electrification, will…

We’ve driven two right-hand-drive Stingers on UK roads. One was the 2.2-litre diesel, the other the 3.3-litre V6 GT range-topper, which we also briefly tried on a track. At 4.83m, the Stinger is quite long compared with the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupé (4.64m) and Audi A5 Sportback (4.73m) and it has an unusually long 2.9m wheelbase. That, Hyundai-Kia performance chief Albert Biermann said, has advantages for packaging, ride comfort and stability but presents some challenges in making the rear-wheel-drive Stinger feel as agile as the best cars in the class. At the moment, the 2.2-litre diesel will arrive in the UK with only passive dampers, which give a relatively controlled ride. It does have drive modes, though, which adjust the engine and gearbox response (an eight-speed auto is standard)…

Motorsport on closed public roads can take place in mainland Britain following a change in the law that will make it easier for races, rallies and speed events to be organised. Although closed-roads events such as the Mull Rally and Rally Isle of Man take place annually in some parts of the British Isles, events on the mainland have traditionally been more difficult to arrange. This is because each Road Traffic Act suspension or amendment – necessary to permit competing vehicles to travel above the speed limits on mainland roads – has required an Act of Parliament. That process has proven prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for most grassroots motor clubs. From Monday, however, local authorities are now permitted to suspend the Road Traffic Act for authorised motorsport events on roads…

The Lotus Elise has been named Britain’s slowest-depreciating performance car because it retains more of its original list price after four years than any other ‘affordable’ sports model. According to data supplied by Autocar sister title What Car?, an Elise 1.8 220, purchased new for £37,150, loses just £1900 of its value after a year and 12,000 miles. That’s about half the depreciation rate of a Bentley Continental GT V8. After two years and 24,000 miles, the Elise’s original value has dropped by £8150. After four years and 48,000 miles, the British roadster holds on to 54.71% of its list price. This ranks the car close to far more expensive and exotic models such as the Ferrari 458, which will retain 55.97% of its new value (£178,491) after four years,…

BMW’S I BRAND is already paying back on the huge investment required to launch it and the i3 and i8, even though sales have not yet met expectations, according to BMW’s head of sales and marketing, Ian Robertson. He said: “Demand is accelerating, as we knew it would, but it does still rely heavily on incentives to change consumer patterns.” Robertson cited the fact that BMW’s i division expects to sell 100,000 cars in 2017, even though it took more than three years to notch up its first 100,000 sales, which it achieved last November. Asked if BMW had launched the i brand too early, with rivals such as Audi, Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz only set to launch their first electric vehicles in 2018 and 2019, Robertson said: “Sometimes it can…

It might feel like you’ve been here before, but you haven’t. Not quite. The first time we drove an Elemental RP1 was almost two years ago. It was a prototype and it drove terrifically well. So, naturally, the team went away and changed the whole darned thing. The headlights and gearbox are the only bits to remain the same. The rest has been refined, fettled, tweaked and adjusted. And it has, let’s be honest, taken a while. But the first RP1 customer already has his car, and the next couple are in build at Elemental’s unit near a farm in Hambledon, Hampshire – not nearly famous enough as the home of cricket, and not yet famous as home to one of Britain’s specialist car makers. The basic emphasis is still…

t’s facelift time for the Mercedes-Benz GLA, and although the engine range remains unchanged, there’s a new grille, different headlights, fresh bumper designs and interior trim upgrades, as well as different alloy wheels and a new paint option. All cars now have keyless entry, a reversing camera and Apple CarPlay and all but the range-topping GLA45 get 30mm-raised off-road ‘comfort’ suspension, which we’re testing here with adjustable dampers (a £595 option). As such, our 200d rode much the same as the old car, which is to say not particularly well. Even without the added ride height, our GLA felt vertically loose over crests and dips in its Comfort setting, and although it was better controlled in Sport, that gave it a more fidgety secondary ride. Comfort mode also makes the…

MODEL TESTED TD6 HSE LUXURY Price £64,195 Power 254bhp Torque 443lb ft 0-60mph 8.7sec 30-70mph in fourth na Fuel economy 26.3mpg CO2 emissions 189g/km 70-0mph 53.9m If one were looking for the rock on which the modern incarnation of Land Rover is built, you could easily make the case for the Discovery – a car originally fashioned from a cubic jumble of old Range Rover architecture and the unwanted constituents of the Austin Rover parts bin. The first generation, launched in 1989, was a packaging rethink intended to compete with a new, affordable generation of Japanese 4x4s that made the Range Rover of the day look old and overpriced. The solution wasn’t flawless (indeed, its flaws multiplied and deepened over time), but its downsized diesel engine, utilitarianism and practicality caught…

"Wimbledon Stadium was the last ‘proper’ motor racing track in London. Once, there were plenty" CAPITAL LOSSES NEW CROSS STADIUM This tiny venue at the eastern end of the Old Kent Road started life as a running track in the early 1900s and hosted the UK’s first stock car race meeting in front of a capacity crowd on 16 April 1954. It closed in 1963, was demolished in the mid-1970s and is now a park. HARRINGAY STADIUM The north London oval opened as a greyhound track in 1927 and was a staple of the stock car calendar from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s. It also featured as a film location in The Long Good Friday. A decline in the popularity of greyhound racing forced it to close in 1987.…

The 100 most beautiful cars of all time We name the industry’s greatest design hits – and reveal why creating a beautiful car is now more difficult than ever New VW Golf R vs Audi RS2 Can a modern performance estate topple a legend? Buy a bargain Bentley Why Bentley ownership could be more affordable than you think EVERY WEEK Honda Civic Every aspect of the new British-built hatchback assessed by our experts VW T-Roc and VW Polo Early drives in two important new VWs set to launch later this year Mazda 3 MPS Why this often overlooked and underpriced hot hatch is a winner…

SO FAR, THE Renault has proven itself to be an enigma: consistently poor in the areas where an MPV should excel, and consistently good in areas where it should struggle. Ergonomically, there are a number of irritations. Most noticeably, the rear underfloor storage bins result in a surprisingly high floor, which puts rear occupants in an awkward position with their knees higher than their hips. This was in evidence when I gave my fellow players a lift to football one Monday evening. There’s also limited legroom in the rear (even with the front seats slid all the way forwards to give those in the rear as much space as possible) and a sloping roofline. It doesn’t take long for taller colleagues to start complaining on longer journeys. And despite Renault…

Andrew Prentice bought his 2000 Audi A4 five years ago for £300 when it was traded in at the Audi garage where he worked. “It’s just a 1.8-litre non-turbo petrol but was a two-owner car with 80,000 miles when I bought it and it has now done more than 130,000 miles,” he says. “Other than run-of-the-mill things like servicing, and replacement of brakes and suspension parts, which are to be expected, I have had no major issues so far. The only alterations I’ve made are to the wheels. The car is still worth what I paid for it, if not more, which means ‘free motoring’ as far as I’m concerned.” SEND YOUR USED CAR TALES TO james@bangernomics.com…

Ferrari F12 Berlinetta From £240,000 Thrilling in a way that only a front-engined V12 Ferrari could be. Crushing performance and unparalleled drama. Rolls-Royce Wraith From £230,000 An intimate and involving Rolls-Royce; less grand, perhaps, but only in the measures that serve to make it great. Aston Martin Vanquish From £190,000 If your money is only intended to buy dazzling exterior beauty, it is best invested in Aston Martin’s flagship. Bentley Continental From £140,000 It may have lost four cylinders, but the new Audi-sourced V8 is so good that it completely reinvigorates the Continental. Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupé From £125,000 So long in the legs that continents ›lash by mid-stride. Has a business-like opulence. The 63 AMG is the best.…