Innholdsfortegnelse for 14/02/2018 i Autocar

RIGHT NOW, THERE’S a car on its way to space. You’ve probably heard: Elon Musk’s test of his SpaceX Falcon Heavy reusable rocket certainly garnered plenty of publicity. By contrast, Polestar’s plan to send its 1 hybrid coupé on a brand-building world tour (p20) seems decidedly… unambitious. Yet Volvo’s performance brand is being decidedly ambitious with its plans for the Polestar 2 EV, a direct rival to the much-ballyhooed Tesla Model 3. And Polestar isn’t alone in working on EVs that, spec-wise, match up to Tesla’s groundbreaking cars. But matching Tesla’s products – no mean feat in itself – isn’t enough: car firms need to match Musk’s ability to excite and to sprinkle a little magic space dust on Tesla. Tesla’s balance sheet shows it has yet to prove it…

OFFICIAL PICTURES MERCEDES-BENZ IS set to introduce two plug-in hybrids to its facelifted C-Class line-up as part of plans for an extended range of EQ-Power-badged models. The electrified drivetrains are based around a new hybrid system. It operates in combination with a four-cylinder petrol engine in the new C300e and a four-cylinder diesel engine in the C300de. The new EQ-Power system increases the output of the electric motor by 40bhp over that used by the existing four-year-old 300h to 120bhp. The two new hybrids’ electric range will extend to more than 19 miles, thanks to the lithium ion battery’s capacity rising from 6.4kWh to 13.8kWh. Mercedes is remaining tight-lipped about the combined system outputs for the new C300e and C300de. However, the C330e’s turbo 2.0-litre engine is claimed to deliver…

THE RANGE-TOPPING version of the new Toyota Supra will run a tuned version of its BMW partner’s turbocharged 3.0-litre six-cylinder engine delivering up to 400bhp, sources close to the firm’s Gazoo Racing performance arm have revealed. The new Supra is set to make its debut at the Detroit motor show in January 2019, five years after the unveiling of the FT-1 concept that heralded the return of the model. The new two-seat Toyota coupé has been developed in a joint engineering programme with the fourth-generation BMW Z4 roadster. The latter is tentatively planned to be revealed at the Pebble Beach concours d’elegance in the USA in August. However, before the production version of the new Supra arrives, Toyota plans to preview its new coupé in concept car form at the…

Polestar, Volvo’s new electric performance car brand, is sending its first production vehicle, the £120,000 Polestar 1 hybrid coupé, on a brand-building world tour. The tour will begin at next month’s Geneva motor show and reach a climax at the Polestar 1’s own public launch in the middle of 2019. Sales of the model, which will be made only in left-hand drive, will begin soon afterwards. According to newly appointed Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, who also continues as Volvo’s design director, Polestar will become Volvo’s “technological spearhead”. After the hybrid Polestar 1 hits the market, Polestar will only make pure electric performance cars. The marque is also preparing for a 2020 launch of the Polestar 2 crossover saloon that bears a very close relationship to Ingenlath’s Concept 40.2. After that…

The rise of cars with self-driving capabilities has created numerous opportunities for technology firms to break into the automotive industry. Now the world’s biggest smartphone producer has bet more than half a billion US dollars that it can become a market leader in autonomous vehicles – and we’re not talking about Apple. The firm in question is Samsung Electronics, which had a 19% share of the smartphone market last year, compared with Apple’s 14%. To put that into context, the Korean firm makes 44,000 smartphones an hour, and sells more than 660 million connected devices a year. Samsung Electronics has been quietly building up its involvement in autonomous and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) technology through its Silicon Valley-based Strategy and Innovation Centre. According to Dave Anderson, the centre’s director…

You can spell ‘Audi A7’ without the letters C, L and S, but you can’t get far into a consideration about the five-door premium coupé without mentioning the Mercedes-Benz CLS. The CLS effectively created the grand touring luxury coupé market sector in 2004, and the first-generation A7, launched in 2010, was a direct response – one that, for all its merits, never quite emerged from the shadow of its rival. The second-generation A7 Sportback you see here arrives just ahead of the third-generation CLS. At first glance, both machines have taken a similar approach to nailing a difficult market niche, in which buyers demand a car that looks and feels sporting and dynamic, yet prize space and comfort above all else. Both share a platform with midsize saloons (the forthcoming…

TESTED 6.2.18, BERKSHIRE ON SALE NOW PRICE £25,350 What you’re looking at is almost certainly the final car to be designed, engineered and assembled in-house by Mitsubishi. But before you panic, know that the company behind a dozen Dakar Rally wins isn’t folding. Rather, in 2016 it joined the Renault- Nissan alliance, so we can expect an extravaganza of platform and powertrain sharing from now on. The Eclipse Cross, equipped here with Mitsubishi’s S-AWC fourwheel- drive system, is significant for another reason. Slotting into the void between the ASX crossover and the full-sized Outlander, whose architecture it shares, it finally plugs a potentially very lucrative midsized- crossover hole in its maker’s line-up. Prices start aggressively low, at a shade over £21,000 (rising to just under £28,000), and that’s important because…

“The Karoq is pretty good at the rapid but sensible pace needed” There is no better demonstration of the British love for an eccentric challenge than the welltrodden route between Land’s End and John O’Groats. The journey between what are almost the two farthest-flung points of the British mainland serves to illustrate both the nation’s long, skinny shape – 837 miles in a country where it’s impossible to be more than 70 miles from the sea – and also our collective love of a bizarre quest. The first recorded walking of the whole distance took place in 1871 and, since then, it has been done on everything from bikes to skateboards to lawnmowers to at least one traverse by JCB. In an outright win for toughness, the route has even…

The venue for the second leg of the six-round, radio-controlled 1:12 scale LMP12 British Championship season is the gym hall at Lord Lawson of Beamish Academy, near Newcastle. Hospitality is a broken vending machine and Bernie Ecclestone is a slightly younger chap called Peter Winton with less hair but all of it his own. I can’t laugh, though, because many of the road cars I’ve just parked my old nail among on arrival are serious pieces of kit, including a 65-reg BMW X5 M50d, a 17-reg Golf R and a 67-reg Mercedes-AMG C63. Unlike me, these guys aren’t here on a tight budget. What they are here for is to race. That much is clear in the ‘garage’ (the Academy’s games hall), where around 70 blokes (there are only one…

1890 The first patent 1890 The first patents for a compression-ignition engine were filed by Herbert Akroyd Stuart in 1890; by 1891, Richard Hornsby and Sons had bought the patent and was producing hot bulb (or heavy oil) stationary engines. These engines were the first to use a pressurised injection system, with combustion taking place in a separate chamber rather than the cylinder. Diesel files his patent 1892 The man behind the diesel engine as we know it was Rudolf Diesel. Born in 1854, he filed his first patents in 1892 and within five years he had a working engine. With his engines, air and fuel were injected into the combustion chamber; with Akroyd Stuart’s design, only fuel was injected. Diesel’s design featured a higher compression ratio to maximise thermal…

Ferrari Portofino First impressions of Maranello’s new entry-level folding hard-top convertible Tesla Shooting Brake Meet the Brits behind the world’s fastest-accelerating estate Subaru WRX STI Final Edition As this iconic driver’s car bows out in the UK, we reflect on its impact EVERY WEEK Porsche Panamera How to bag a Mk1 version of this luxury saloon from as little as £24k BMW i3s Does the premium electric hatch’s revamp convince our testers? Aston Martin DB11 Volante Sleek new 503bhp convertible sports-GT car assessed SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p26…

MILEAGE 2189 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To determine whether the most ferocious front-wheel-drive hot hatch on sale today is usable on a daily basis Performance car it may be, but the Civic Type R has to provide an element of practicality if it is to live up to the ‘daily driver’ brief demanded of it by a photographer. If I’m heading to a shoot I need space, and plenty of it, for my kit. I have to say that so far I’m impressed by what I’ve found in the Civic. There’s a surprising amount of room under that bespoilered rear hatch and it’s certainly generous by the standards of this class. Officially, the Civic has 420 litres of boot space, increasing to 786 litres if you fold down all of…

An expert’s view SIMON CROSBY, PUMA ENTHUSIAST “Even though I own two Racing Pumas, my favourite is still the 1.7 Thunder. I bought my first Puma in 2000 and instantly fell in love with its free-revving engine and nimble handling. It’s a great car to go racing on a budget with. You can spend what you like but a lot of people do it on the cheap, ripping out the seats and carpet and installing a rollcage for around £250. Rust is an obvious problem. A very few 1.7s had bore problems but you can pick up a secondhand engine for around £150, so it doesn’t have to be terminal. If you fancy splashing out on a Racing Puma, visit racing-puma.co.uk for guidance.” Buyer beware… ▪ENGINE It will be rare…

BMW is taking renewed aim at the Range Rover Evoque and a growing number of style-led premium-brand SUVs with its new second-generation X4 – which arrives just four years after the old model. The original X4 SUV was introduced in 2014 but struggled to match the success of rivals such as the Evoque and Porsche Macan. BMW is launching a new version now because of the arrival of a third generation of the X4’s sister car, the X3. The two models are produced on the same production line at BMW’s US factory in Spartanburg. BMW plans to give the X4 its public debut at the Geneva motor show next month. UK sales books open tomorrow (Thursday) and the first UK deliveries are scheduled for 15 July. Prices start at £42,900,…

The reborn Stratos will be placed into limited production by bespoke sports car specialist Manifattura Automobili Torino (MAT), which has confirmed plans for three versions of the new two-seater: a road car, GT race car and safari rally car. The modern-day Stratos – a homage to Lancia’s legendary sports and rally car, of which 492 examples were built between 1973 and 1978 – was first unveiled in concept form in 2010. It was commissioned by billionaire German entrepreneur Michael Stoschek, who is chairman of car parts supplier Brose and a rallying enthusiast. The design of the new car is credited to Pininfarina, whereas the original Stratos was the work of Bertone. The mid-engined design features the wedge profile, semicircular windscreen, side tanks, removable front and rear servicing hoods and engine-access…

Nissan has given a 370Z successor the green light. The new sports car is expected to be shown in coupé guise before the end of next year ahead of UK sales starting in 2020, some 50 years after the original Z car went on sale here.. Future generations of the Nissan model are understood to have been in doubt because of struggling profitability in the sports car segment, an issue felt more widely across the industry. Honda has admitted a similar quandary about an S2000 replacement and Toyota and BMW have teamed up in order to cut costs in the creation of their respective Supra (see right) and Z4 sports cars. Nissan design boss Alfonso Albaisa told Autocar last year that he was in favour of a new Z car…

The smart motorway upgrade for the M4 is unlikely to include additional emergency rest areas (ERA), despite a recent agreement with parliament, because the project can’t be changed at the last minute. Preparatory work has started to switch the M4 to a four-lane motorway by making the hard shoulder a ‘running lane’, with construction due to start imminently. The upgrade will cover 32 miles between Junction 3 (Hayes) and 12 (Theale) in a five-year project costing up to £862 million and due to finish in 2022. The spacing of ERAs has become controversial following several serious accidents when a vehicle has broken down on what was previously the hard shoulder, having not been able to reach an ERA, and has been hit by following traffic. Pressure to build smart motorways…

THE BOSS OF Toyota’s Research Institute believes the classification system for autonomous driving levels is causing confusion over the progress being made in the development of self-driving vehicle systems. The current framework was introduced by automotive body SAE International in 2014 and features six levels of autonomy. These range from zero (in which a system can only issue warnings to drivers) to Level 5 (for ‘steering wheel optional’ driving in which cars drive themselves). Most manufacturers are currently working on Level 2 (defined as ‘hands off’), Level 3 (‘eyes off’) or Level 4 (‘mind off’). However, Toyota Research Institute boss Gill Pratt said the nuanced differences between the three levels is clouding the development race. “It’s extremely important not to confuse the driving of levels with a gauge of where…

Hyundai has revealed the new Santa Fe ahead of its official debut at the Geneva motor show next month. The Nissan X-Trail-rivalling large SUV grows in length and width, while gaining Kona-like styling and the ‘HTRAC’ four-wheel-drive system inherited from Hyundai’s Genesis luxury brand. There will be 2.0-litre diesel and turbo petrol engines joining the line-up, in addition to the existing 194bhp 2.2-litre diesel. A host of driver aids are standard, as is a system that locks the rear doors and alerts the driver if a door is being opened when traffic is approaching from behind. Prices are expected to increase from the current car’s £32,845 start point.…

I think part of the appeal of a Toyota Land Cruiser is that you can take it anywhere. I don’t mean ‘anywhere’ as in ‘it can go anywhere’, although obviously it can. No, I mean ‘anywhere’ as in: to the shops, to a client meeting, to a shoot or building site or the theatre or a Pony Club rally, where at any of the above a Land Cruiser would say precisely the same thing about you: next to nothing. Toyota’s biggest, baddest and most luxurious and expensive off-roader – for the UK, at least – is, then, the most curious of things, the classless car, capable of doing everything but shouting nowt while it does it, except that you bought it because you need it. Anyway, now, this car, which…

MODEL TESTED RS4 AVANT Price £62,175 • Power 444bhp • Torque 443lb ft • 0-60mph 4.0sec • 30-70mph in fourth 4.6sec • Fuel economy 24.5mpg • CO2 emissions 200g/km • 70-0mph 52.1m Rabidly quick estate cars seem to stoke the imagination of us enthusiasts in a manner few other vehicle types can. There’s something wonderfully improbable about genuine usability combined with performance that, out in the real world, would often do for more purpose-built machinery. Not many of us actually buy quick estate cars, of course, and in that sense, they’re a bit like supercars. This is truer of the RS4 Avant than most. In fact, in the realm of online publishing, it’s not unusual for Audi’s mid-sized hammer-wagon to garner a similar level of attention to that you’d expect…

“The G is still a G,” states Mr G himself, the aptly named head of Mercedes G-Class, Gunnar Güthenke, talking about the second-generation, near-identical-to-the-old-one SUV revealed last month. The G-Class has been around since 1979 and is now synonymous with affluent, nouveau-riche buyers who choose to pimp their SUVs in the most ludicrous of ways – which is the reason why there was sufficient demand to justify models such as the six-wheel-drive G 63 AMG 6x6. It’s also why Mercedes managed to turn the G-Class from a workhorse into a luxury SUV, in the process making it profitable enough to remain in its line-up – something that long-time rival Land Rover failed to achieve with the Defender. Güthenke has been in charge of the G-Class since 2014, when the SUV’s…

FEATURED THIS WEEK FINAL REPORT MILEAGE 15,943 WHY WE RAN IT Oddball Japanese micro-off-roader has that rarest of things: charm. Is there the substance to match? Suzuki describes the Ignis as ‘a mix of 4x4 spirit and technology with little proportions,’ we’ve described it as ‘a supermini-cum- SUV’, my family call it ‘the Lego car’ and my football teammates call it something unprintable. I can’t make up my mind how to categorise the ‘Iggy’, but I can tell you I’ve enjoyed my short time with it. It has been 100% dependable, hugely frugal and not half bad to drive, even when racking up the motorway miles. The first time I drove it, I was taken aback by its size. It breezed down our tight multi-storey (it won the car park…

David Hunter loved the 1980s ads for the Renault 25, so when he saw a three-year-old one for £3000, he bought it and has been driving 25s ever since. “They’re getting very scarce these days and parts are an issue, but I still love them and they’re so comfy,” he says. “My current one cost me £450 more than six years ago. It’s my daily driver and has been super-reliable – as have all the ones I’ve owned. It doesn’t cost any more to run than any other car, so I can live with the not-very-impressive fuel economy.” SEND YOUR USED CAR TALES AND READERS' QUESTIONS TO james@bangernomics.com…

Surprisingly, lightly used examples of the new Honda Civic Type R are already turning up on the forecourts, enabling hot hatch enthusiasts to save £5000 over the list price of £32,995 for the higher-spec GT variant. On Pistonheads, we found a Sonic Grey Civic Type R GT with 3000 miles on the clock on sale for £28,995, but when we checked back a few days later the price had been further reduced to £27,995 – ‘for a quick sale’, in the words of the vendor. If you ignore the wings and spoilers (although that is, admittedly, rather difficult, because it’s plastered in them), you will note that the Civic Type R is a five-door hatch with a sizable boot, seating for five and an 2.0-litre engine, albeit a 2.0-litre engine…

BRIEF This week’s mission is to unearth the fastest second-hand repmobile for less than £5000. Max Adams chooses the winner. Skoda Octavia vRS £3495 Performance and value rarely go hand in hand, but there are a few exceptions to the rule and one of them is the Skoda Octavia vRS. It has all the prowess of its Mk5 Volkswagen Golf GTI sibling but for significantly less outlay, and also has a huge boot for carrying all those carpet samples. For well below our £5000 budget, you can find yourself behind the wheel of a cracking example replete with a mountain of history, below-average miles and a whole year’s MOT. Perfect. ALEX ROBBINS Subaru Legacy 3.0r SPEC-B £3995 Pity the poor sales rep desperately wanting to make Salesman of the Month…

Back when the new Lancia Stratos was just a concept, a mere [cough] eight years ago, Autocar’s Richard Bremner got behind the wheel of it at the Paul Ricard circuit in France. Even then, it had been 10 years in the making and was finally realised by a group of enthusiasts and design house Pininfarina. Bremner described his first few moments behind the wheel: the steering “swivels slightly more lightly than expected, but with an oil-smooth action that’s totally free of slack”. The rest of the car matched that intent, “the carbon nose turning with the obedience of a fear-drilled army corps”. It wasn’t long before Bremner hit a long-curved corner, which revealed “a hint of how agile this stealth-black weapon might be”. He concluded that it’s hard to imagine…

A major shake-up in the way England funds and organises its road system was unveiled in 2015. The Highways Agency was renamed Highways England and a five-year funding plan for motorways and the Strategic Road Network (SRN) was agreed. Regulation was introduced so that HE also answers to the Office of Road and Rail. The idea was a good one: treat roads as strategic infrastructure like water, power, rail and air, and apply long-term planning to building and maintenance. HE, led by Jim O’Sullivan, manages £15 billion allocated to RIS 1 (Road Investment Strategy 1) for 100 main projects between 2015 and 2020. A new five-year plan will run from 2020 to 2025. Now in development is a major revamp of the SRN (the major A-roads in England) to create…

WEDNESDAY It’s starting to look as if we’ll never be free of the original Land Rover Defender, which is officially dead yet very much alive now JLR’s Classic team has started bringing out £150k ‘revival’ V8s. This week I visited former Lotus boss Dany Bahar’s mighty Modena-based coachbuilding company, Ares Design (see story on p56) and discovered that building a 50-off batch of its own magnificent, much-modded Defender V8s was a major project. What on earth can Land Rover’s design chief Gerry McGovern and his gang do to match this phenomenal vehicle with their Defender replacement? It’s only a few months away and already under pressure not just to replace an icon but to start a family. It could be, however, that our impressions of the height of this hurdle…

TESTED 1.2.18, BARCELONA ON SALE SEPTEMBER PRICE £20,000 (EST) It’s not just a new platform: they’ve got rid of the apostrophe too. The new Ceed replaces the cee’d, and even gets an upper-case first letter in the process. How conventional. Seriously: how conventional? Pretty conventional. This is the replacement for the Europeandesigned, engineered and built Kia cee’d in service since 2012, and it picks up similar themes. This steel monocoque, front-wheel-drive contender sits in what Kia calls the ‘C1’ segment, alongside the Ford Focus, Vauxhall Astra and other nonpremium hatchbacks. It’s on the money in terms of size, then, at 4.31m long – the same as before – and with the same 2650mm wheelbase, although everything in the new car’s cabin has been, they say, shifted backwards by 68mm. If…

By any objective measure, this is an exceptional machine. A downsized engine combines effortless reach with an elemental punch that will be alien to owners of the old V8, and the quattro chassis conjures such stability that you suspect the RS4 Avant would simply drive away from its rivals on any road that was less than immaculately surfaced. Fuel economy is also vastly improved, and the interior hits new heights in ergonomics and quality. There are limits to what this car can do operationally, but they are so high as to be redundant – and so Audi, somewhat understandably, will congratulate itself on a job very well done. So why only four stars? The reality is that there has never been an RS4 with a less identifiable character than the…

Following Steve Cropley’s reflection on the Peugeot 309 GTi (‘Hot hatch special’, 31 January), it put me in mind of the brand-new Volkswagen Jetta GTI 16v that I took delivery of in 1990. After years of enjoying Golf GTIs and an employer who favoured staff to drive saloon cars for carrying secure documentation, a Jetta seemed to be a good solution. There were howls of derision from colleagues and comments of ‘pipes and slippers’, but the laugh was on them when it seemed to outhandle and outsprint the hatchback relatives with ease. After 112,000 faultless and fun miles and three years, I bade it a sad farewell. Another unsung hero? Long Itchington, Warks…

MILEAGE 19,866 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out how well this hi-tech executive car blends luxury and sporting traits in a practical body Even though the 20,000-mile mark is fast approaching, I feel like I’m still learning useful things about our big Merc. On a recent drive home on the M3, the remaining fuel indicator stopped giving me a mileage countdown to empty and instead displayed a threatening red fuel pump on the TFT instrument panel. I was keen to tease out the remaining fuel in order get back to my local filling station. In fact, I was mainly determined to avoid stopping at Fleet services, which the E220d’s useful on-screen fuel price indicator told me was charging 141 pence per litre for diesel, so I engaged Eco driving…

Old cars can do the same jobs as much newer ones. That’s the point I’m making and it’s one you understand innately. The smart thing to do at this time of year is to stick your classic in a dehumidified area until the salt spreaders go away. Instead, I had the option of using the Land Rover or the BMW 320. Well, there was some three-lane A-road along my planned route, so the Baby Shark was chosen. I thought I’d stay in the inside lane and take it easy. I didn’t. At my journey’s end, it fitted so perfectly into a multi-storey space that it was possible to open both doors comfortably.…

‒Puma – a driver’s dream’ was the tag line for Ford’s pocket-sized coupé of 1997 to 2001. It signed off a TV ad starring Steve McQueen, cleverly intercut from the film Bullitt at the wheel of his Ford Mustang. What would Hollywood’s 24-carat petrolhead have made of Europe’s tiddly front-driver? Towards the end of the ad, he apparently gets out of the Puma and casts a wry glance in the direction of his Triumph motorcycle, before the action cuts to a double who fondly pats the Puma’s wing. Fast forward 20 years and he’d be unwise to tap a Puma’s rear wing today for fear that it might crumble to dust. Corrosion: it’s the Puma’s number-one enemy, munching away at not only the rear wings but also the sills. Get…

Diesel BXs used to be ubiquitous, but today they’ve all but vanished from our roads. Weird, given how unburstable the naturally aspirated 1.9-litre oilburner is. We know of a car enthusiast who bought a 200,000- mile BX which always started first time, come rain or shine. It was driven for a further 30,000 miles before rust did it in. It is a common BX killer these days. This much more solid example with just 94,000 miles on the clock went for £750 at Anglia Car Auctions recently. With some light regular maintenance, it could give dependable service for years to come.…

Price new £14,860. Price now £11,650 It may have been superseded by an all-new model, but the previous-generation Volkswagen Polo is still a very good supermini. This delivery-mileage Match edition comes with plenty of equipment including air-con, cruise control, automatic lights and wipers, electric windows all round and a 6.5in touchscreen infotainment system with MirrorLink, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. But the best thing is that the asking price of £11,650 represents a saving of £3210 without you even having to haggle. Get in there quickly.…

Does it spark joy? That is, apparently, the question, according to one of these self-help schemes/books/videos/courses, and is the fundamental proposition behind a way of decluttering your life, and making yourself happier, so somebody told me the other day. And as daffodils are coming out, and it’s very nearly spring, it feels to me like time to start thinking about a declutter. So you get the idea of this fad: pick up an old cushion, give it a squeeze and a cuddle, decide if it brings you joy and, if not, chuck it out. I tried it. Got things out of cupboards and rooms, went right through the house, asked myself if they truly brought me joy and binned them if they didn’t. Anyway, the cat and my motorcycle and…