Innholdsfortegnelse for Agosto 15, 2018 i Autocar

YOU KNOW A car is significant when its whole class has been named after it. And the BMW 3 Series class is soon to welcome its latest entrant: an all-new 3 Series. While cars of its ilk may seem like an endangered species due to the ever-increasing number of SUVs, the 3 Series segment is actually in rude health. In recent years the Jaguar XE and Alfa Romeo Giulia have swelled the ranks and brought welcome driver appeal, while the Audi A4 and Mercedes C-Class come with levels of technical sophistication and everyday luxury that wouldn’t look out of place a class or two higher. The appeal of the 3 Series has always been its all-round ability – as good as the best in most key areas and crucially always…

MG HAS REVEALED a new addition to its SUV range in China. Called the HS, it’s a production version of the X-Motion concept that was shown in Beijing in April. The Nissan Qashqai rival will go on sale in China in September but isn’t yet confirmed for a UK or mainland Europe launch. In China, it will be sold alongside the GS, and with that car due for replacement, the HS has the potential to become its successor in the UK in 2019. It features a new MG Pilot semi-autonomous driving system, with lane keep assist and adaptive cruise control. Initially, it will be offered with a turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine making 225bhp and 266lb ft and powering all four wheels. Other variants are set to be added later. Pricing…

BMW IS RAMPING up testing of its all-new 3 Series range, including this 330e plug-in hybrid model. The 330e is one of several new 3 Series variants planned to follow the standard saloon, which is due to be revealed at the Paris motor show in October. BMW is currently benchmarking the 330e’s all-electric mode with a similarly sized full EV. This prototype was seen testing alongside a Tesla Model 3. The camouflaged BMW test mule, which looks like a regular 3 Series, has ‘Electric Test Vehicle’ written on each side. Further clues to its identify include a small lump in the C-pillar disguise, where BMW has traditionally placed the ‘eDrive’ badge on its plug-in models. A fully electric 3 Series is not anticipated, with that car instead set to be…

Land Rover’s new 2018-model-year Range Rover Sport plug-in hybrid is a car with a shelf life short enough to make unrefrigerated prawns look like a prudent Saturday morning market-stall purchase. A dodgy prawn will make you ill, of course – and an over-ripe Range Rover almost certainly won’t. And yet the analogy seems a fair reflection of the rapidly changing emissions testing landscape in which manufacturers like Land Rover are being challenged to survive at the moment. According to Land Rover, this new P400e model has been available to buy since February. The reasons why the Gaydon firm has waited until August to launch the car to the UK press haven’t been made clear, but they’re probably not as sinister as you might expect of something with such a complicated…

Time for the biggest-selling version of Britain’s biggest-selling compact executive saloon, in recently facelifted form, to show its mettle on British roads. Better pay attention in the office canteen. The Mercedes C-Class’s recent mid-cycle facelift resulted in a number of new engines, all mated to nine-speed automatic transmissions. We’ve already sampled the very newest – a 1.5-litre 48V turbo petrol, which powers the new C200 – but it’s the 192bhp upper-mid-range diesel C220d that Mercedes expects to continue to dominate the sales mix. For this car, Mercedes has retired its long-serving and somewhat coarse 2.1-litre four-pot diesel engine and brought in its new-generation 2.0-litre unit, as seen in the latest E-Class. What a difference it makes. While there’s still the faintest edge of uncouthness to the engine’s combustion under load…

For some cars, ‘outstanding’ isn’t quite good enough on its own to earn five road test stars. It wasn’t quite good enough for the last Fiesta ST, which dominated its rivals but narrowly missed the completeness necessary to seal the deal. And it isn’t quite enough for the new one either. Had we felt slightly differently about the car’s three-cylinder engine (punchy, smooth but not quite at home in a hot hatch), its chassis (supremely eager and engaging, not always composed) or its driving environment (tidy though ordinary), things might have been different. As it is, we have as many minor reservations about this car as we had about the last Fiesta ST – and they can’t be ignored. And yet there isn’t another front-driven performance car in striking distance…

Apparently, there are over 100 billionaires living in the UK, 72 of them in London. Any one of them could afford to buy the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO that will go under the hammer at an RM Sotheby’s auction at Monterey later this month. A GTO sold earlier in the year for £52 million, the most money ever paid for a car. It’s amazing, but here’s food for thought: if that Ferrari were to receive a bump that dented its front wing, there are far fewer than 72 people in the UK with the skills to repair it. One of the few is Grace Roaf. This 22-year-old hot rodder and drag racing enthusiast is an apprentice at G&A Fabrications, a traditional panel beating and fabrication business hidden away behind a…

ON SALE 22 AUGUST COMPARISON Porsche Cayenne vs Range Rover Sport SVR The world’s newest and most desirable super-SUVs face-off. Matt Prior referees the 1109bhp shoot-out INVESTIGATION Honda in Formula 1 Will it ever be a winner again? We go behind the scenes to find out FEATURE Living with a legend Old, noisy, cramped, flawed – but brilliant. Life with a Merc G-Wagen SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p36 EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Dacia Duster It’s back for a second generation. Is the SUV cheerful as well as cheap? USED BUYING GUIDE Vauxhall Corsa VXR The original can now be had for less than £4k. Here’s what to look out for LONG-TERM TEST Hyundai i30 N We conclude whether Hyundai is now among the hot hatch elite…

MILEAGE 5323 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out whether a big, separate-chassis, part-time all-wheel-drive SUV still has a place in the world After the self-created calamity of reversing the Rexton into a driveway skip (a temporary resident, although that’s hardly an excuse), the big grey beast has at last returned, its repair delayed not by the difficulty of getting parts for so new a model but by insurance bureaucracy. Gratifyingly, the Rexton looks none the worse for its driver’s stupidity, its return coinciding with the need to make a couple of long trips: one to Cornwall, another to the Lake District. It has previously achieved such distances with little effort, if with an unsettling appetite for diesel that has easily dropped well below 30mpg. Since then, it has managed…

The 607 was a big car and, at 4.87m long on a 2.8m wheelbase, one of the largest in its sector. However, it was far from overweight, the bodyshell weighing in at just 285kg because Peugeot made the bonnet and inner panels from aluminium. The 607 rode well and had loads of kit – including automatic windscreen wipers and automatic headlights – but at the end of the day, you were still sitting inside a great big Peugeot. A 2004 2.2 HDi with 133k miles is just £1290.…

An expert’s view PETER BRISTOW, HAMPSHIRE SERVICE CENTRE “As a specialist technician, I give the SLK R171 seven out of 10 for reliability, drivability and looks. The engines aren’t as tough as those in the old R170 SLK. Neither is the 171’s seven-speed auto ’box on more expensive versions as trouble-free as the standard five-speed. Incidentally, whatever Mercedes says, those auto ’boxes do like an oil and filter change every 35,000 miles. I can’t fault the 171’s galvanised body, superior suspension and sharper handling. On those measures, it’s a great car.” Buyer beware ■ ENGINE On early 280 and 350 V6s, beware balancer shaft gear failure. Early signs are misfiring, and the ‘check engine’ light – followed by terminal timing chain failure. Early 200s can suffer premature timing chain and…

“The £9bn plan involves mild hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery EVs and hydrogen-fuelled models” Mercedes-Benz bosses have approved a €10 billion (£9bn) programme to launch more than 130 electrified variants within the next seven years, spearheaded by the upcoming EQ S luxury saloon. The plan – which involves an extended range of mild hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery EVs and hydrogen-fuelled models – was tabled at a recent board meeting of Mercedes’ parent company Daimler and received the backing of chairman Dieter Zetsche. The goal of the massive project is to give Mercedes an unparalleled range of premium electrified models, which will help to significantly reduce the company’s average fleet emissions ahead of a series of increasingly strict EU CO2 emission regulations starting from 2021. The model assault will be split across the…

“Performance feels as solid as the claimed 4.2sec 0-62mph time suggests” Aston Martin’s Q division, creators of the wild V8-powered Cygnet that starred at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, is inviting pitches from clients for further one-off creations to be built. The V8 Cygnet was commissioned by an Aston collector after he heard the brand had previously toyed with the idea of combining the body of the Toyota iQ-based city car with the running gear of the previous-generation Vantage S. Aston has agreed as part of the deal to never make another, ensuring the road-legal one-off is truly exclusive. The Gaydon-based car maker has refused to give the exact price of the project but admits the owner has spent more than would be required to buy one of its…

THE NEXT-GENERATION Audi S3 will join a new A3 line-up that will grow to 11 models by 2022. Four-door saloon, five-door liftback and convertible versions are all in the product plan. However, three-door models are not. The new A3 is due to arrive in 2019 and will sit on the same MFA platform as the current A3, albeit with a slight increase in size. Testing of the hot S3 version is now taking place on public roads and this disguised prototype was spotted in Germany. It is marked out by its muscular bodykit, large brakes and quad exhaust system. The new S3 will go up against the BMW M140i and upcoming Mercedes-AMG A35. Power from its 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine is expected to be around 325bhp, keeping it some distance…

The car industry was so focused on hardware over the past decade that it let firms such as Google’s Waymo take a lead in developing autonomous and connected car technology, according to Peter Wouda. He said: “In terms of hardware, all that we’ve managed in the group is at a point of perfection – we are top. We were concentrating on that heavily in the last decade, so we have to catch up with connectivity. It’s no surprise that network and connectivity did not come from the car industry when you consider what companies such as Apple have achieved.” The VW Group is collaborating with technology firm Nvidia and self-driving start-up Aurora Innovations in order to develop its connected car and autonomous technologies. Wouda acknowledged the importance of working with…

As is becoming common among longways-engined plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), the Range Rover Sport P400e squeezes its 114bhp electric drive motor into the space in the drivetrain where the automatic transmission’s torque converter would otherwise be. When packaged with the clutches that it needs to disconnect and reconnect at will, the motor is about an inch longer than the torque converter was – so the P400e’s 2.0-litre petrol engine is packaged about an inch further forward under the bonnet than it would be in a Range Rover Sport 2.0 Si4. Land Rover says its hybrid transmission is sufficiently ‘modular’ to work in tandem with any of its engines, although the costs of engineering each new combination of piston engine to work with it make it unlikely that we’ll see a whole…

MODEL TESTED ST-3 3DR Price £21,495 • Power 197bhp • Torque 214lb ft • 0-60mph 6.6sec • 30-70mph in fourth 7.8sec • Fuel economy 37.7mpg • CO2 emissions 136g/km • 70-0mph 45.3m Ford hasn’t missed, flopped or floundered with its go-faster Fiesta since it introduced the first Fiesta ST at the Geneva motor show in 2004 – although, as those with longer memories will recall, the Blue Oval had something of a chequered history with its hot supermini breed before that point. The original ‘Mk1’ Fiesta XR2 was a triumph. It was a car capable of 60mph from rest in less than ten seconds, and of passing 100mph flat out, on the market in 1981. But the performance versions of the ‘Mk3’ Fiesta (XR2i, RS Turbo) were both notoriously disappointing. After…

“This was the greatest model range of the 20th century” Sporty, stylish and sophisticated: just three reasons why you always promised yourself a BMW 3 Series. Exclusivity used to be another, but after 1993, that ceased to be an issue, reflecting the fact that this was the greatest model range of the 20th century. It still is. Saloons, coupés, cabriolets, Tourings and the mad-as-hell M3s. With the seventh iteration of the 3 Series and the third of the 21st century, it is time to take a deep breath and assess BMW’s greatest hits. In the beginning, 1975, there was the E21. We fan boys can only refer to 3s by their model codes. What BMW did here was shark-nose up a 2002 and turn a compact car into a much…

FIRST REPORT WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To discover if Peugeot has a class leader on its hands by fitting seven-seat MPV convenience into an on-trend SUV body They say you should take your time to fall in love – but, around 30 seconds after settling into the driver’s seat of the Peugeot 5008, I was smitten. And, before you write in, I know that sounds an odd thing to say about any car, let alone a Peugeot, but it is absolutely true. It is because this 5008’s cabin is a joy to be in and look at. Everything that you first see and touch is not only great in terms of perceived quality but interesting too. There’s the dark faux-denim cloth that breaks up the plastic surfaces. The digital dash…

QUESTION I’m really tempted by an early Aston Martin V8 Vantage. What should I look out for? Michael Groves, Surbiton ANSWER Evidence of meticulous maintenance is imperative. Look for bills to prove services have been done on time. A sticky first and second gear when cold are normal, but avoid anything with knocking or rattling suspension. Check for paintwork defects on the A-pillars and water ingress in the boot. Inside, ensure the sat-nav screen opens up properly since the mechanism breaks easily. AR QUESTION Am I right to be nervous about buying diesel for my next car? Anne Pettifer, Rhyl ANSWER There has been a lot of hype around this topic, but our advice remains the same: if you’re doing high miles, diesel still makes sense; otherwise, go for a…

Mercedes-AMG GT S £74,990 Here’s a bit of good news for you: while you weren’t looking, Mercedes-AMG GT prices have been sliding. Granted, that doesn’t yet mean you can walk into a Mercedes dealer and exchange one for a fiver and the packet of sweets you found in your pocket last Tuesday – but if you were thinking about buying yourself a brand-new Porsche 911, perhaps your head might be turned. You see, for less than the cost of the Porsche, this three-year-old GT S can be yours. And this is, let’s not forget, a car in rather a different league. By which we’re talking about 515bhp versus 365bhp, 0-62mph in half a second less and an awful lot more drama. Oh, sure, the GT S lacks the Porsche’s final…

Honda CR-V 1.6 i-DTEC EX Price new £34,515. Price now £25,189 If you’re after a good deal on a Honda CR-V, now’s the time. A £9300 saving is what you’ll get for picking this top-spec 10,000-mile EX over one of the last new examples clogging up dealers’ forecourts before the replacement model arrives later this year. A price of £25k isn’t unreasonable for such a big SUV with so many toys on it; and, of course, because it’s a Honda, that minimal prior use will be water off a duck’s back. This diesel example also gives you the more potent 158bhp 1.6-litre engine, which is worth having.…

“The move signals a return to the bodystyle after a 20-year hiatus, with a potential debut in the 488” Ferrari has filed a patent with the European Patent Office for a new Targa-style convertible roof design. The move signals a return to the bodystyle for the car maker after a 20-year hiatus, with a potential debut in the 488. The patent application refers to “a car with a ‘Targa Top’ body” that features a “coupé body with a rigid roof that is removable and is supported at the front by the upright of the windshield and at the rear by a robust, full-width roll bar”. The Targa-style top Ferrari refers to is similar to that used by Porsche on the 911, but the new patent refers to the specific design…

THE MAKER OF crowdsourced sat-nav app Waze believes that it can become a market leader through a series of deals with car manufacturers. The Google-owned app uses real-time data gathered from users to help refine traffic routes and currently has 100 million monthly users, including 2.1 million in the UK. The app initially only worked on phones, but has been available to use on car infotainment systems through Android Auto, and shortly will be via Apple CarPlay. Making it more easily accessible through infotainment systems, especially in countries where smartphone use while driving is banned, could be key to growth. Waze will also be featured directly on Ford’s Sync 3 in-car infotainment system, and the app’s makers are currently negotiating deals with other car makers. Waze believes such deals can…

Porsche’s Goodwood Festival of Speed star, the 911 Speedster, is highly likely to enter production next year, and a source close to the company has revealed details of the car’s expected specification. After the concept was displayed at Goodwood as part of Porsche’s 70th anniversary celebrations, Autocar learned that a decision to build it was imminent. A source has now confirmed that a production decision has already been made internally and the Speedster is set to be limited to 1948 units worldwide – a reference to the year Porsche first produced its 356 sports car. The hardcore open-top model will be based on the chassis of the current 911 GT3 and will use the same 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat six. Unlike the GT3, it will be offered solely with a…

I’m grinning, the guard in the gatehouse is laughing and workers walking down the access road that Aston Martin’s Gaydon HQ shares with Jaguar Land Rover’s huge engineering base are pointing and scrambling to take pictures on their phones. Well before reaching the national road network, this Cygnet’s status as a crowd pleaser has been confirmed, the attention won by its snarling V8 soundtrack turning to amazed incredulity when people see where it is coming from. What it doesn’t feel like is a lash-up. Indeed, from the hugging embrace of the driver’s seat, it feels like a V8 Cygnet has always been part of the company’s extensive model plan. The driving position is higher than in the Vantage, and the shifted bulkhead has moved the pedals back to an ankle-cricking…

The rise of autonomous, electric and connected vehicles will fundamentally change how cars are designed and constructed, even allowing them to be made out of materials such as paper and bamboo. That’s the view of Peter Wouda, Volkswagen Group’s design director, who leads the car giant’s Future Centre in Europe. That centre is focused on developing forward-looking technology such as last year’s autonomous Sedric concept. While much of the car industry’s efforts are currently focused on semi-autonomous driver assistance technology, Wouda is looking further ahead to fully autonomous cars, which wouldn’t require any driver input. That development will fundamentally change how such cars can be designed. “The second generation of cars [following on from the Sedric] can be designed totally differently,” said Wouda. “If you take away human drivers, you…

The US has been toying with performance pick-ups for the past decade, with the popular Ford F-150 Raptor inspired by desert racers. The formula is simple: fit heavy-duty shock absorbers, a wider track and knobbly all-terrain tyres to a pick-up with extra grunt. Now the Raptor formula is being shared around the world using the Ford Ranger as the donor vehicle. And it’s coming to the UK. The Ranger is the slightly smaller sibling to the F-150 and Ford’s rival to the Toyota Hilux and Volkswagen Amarok. It gets a bold new grille, tucked front and rear bumpers for better off-road clearance, a 150mm-wider track, bulging front and rear wheel arches, magnesium side steps, race-bred Fox shocks and gnarly BF Goodrich KO2 tyres. The Raptor still comes with selectable heavy-duty…

It may be an ST and not an RS fast Ford, but this Fiesta certainly doesn’t want for the sheer grip, traction, power or body control it needs to be taken seriously by the circuit-driving fraternity. Staying incredibly level and gaining so much added impetus from its outside front wheel when cornering fast and hard, the Fiesta refuses to understeer when most rivals would. Having already turned in to hard-charged corners more keenly than those opponents might have anyway, that allows you to pile on the apex speeds you’d expect to need a more expensive and apparently purposeful driver’s car to hit. The ST’s not quite as stable at high speeds as the bigger mega-hatches it emulates, of course, and its brakes won’t put up with the natural consequence of…

In a car market that almost always makes it harder for a successful brand to stay on top than to get there in the first place, the BMW 3 Series is beginning to look like a car of gradually waning fortunes. Will the good times ever roll for it quite like they did in the car’s late ’90s and noughties-era pomp? For all sorts of reasons – not least because it’s hard to think of another car in recent decades that has achieved such critical acclaim and sales popularity in equally phenomenal proportions – we might wonder. For the next-generation Three, due to be unveiled at this autumn’s Paris motor show and to appear on UK roads in early 2019, reasserting the compact executive saloon segment dominance that its various…

Highway to heaven Several years ago, I wrote asking Autocar’s advice on the best vehicle in which to enjoy a dream trip on Route 66. Despite some excellent lent suggestions, the vicissitudes of life have thus far sadly prevented me from living the dream. It was therefore a joy to finally make the trip through Matt Prior’s account of his own Route 66 odyssey, so wonderfully illustrated by Luc Lacey’s stunning photography (4 July). Matt’s t’s trip might only have lasted eight days, yet I was left with the feeling that, but for necessary editorial constraints, he could have written reams more about his adventures on the Mother Road. So, thank you Matt and Luc for an excellent account that has thoroughly renewed my appetite for making the trip. I…

MILEAGE 2430 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if Nissan’s advanced the cause of EVs at the affordable end of the market Our Leaf has racked up a surprising number of miles in its first few weeks with us, immediately proving that it’s capable of much more than just pottering about in town – although it’s brilliant at that too. Not only have I taken it on at least three trips of close to 200 miles each, but some of my more masochistic colleagues (pictured above) also nabbed it to use as unconventional transport for this year’s Three Peaks Challenge (Autocar, 25 July). Although 160-170 miles of indicated range doesn’t sound like enough to give you complete freedom, the rapid charging infrastructure at motorway services and other locations along major…

MILEAGE 97,930 The Flying Pig has been consistently brilliant. Well, great at gulping fuel, but you can’t fault it. That start-up yelp has gone and we did a few journeys that just lapped up the miles with four on board. You might remember that the Pig had a smelly dog issue and Autocar readers were not slow in offering brilliant suggestions. One involved an expensive cleaner that I haven’t bought. White vinegar was another. Instead, we found a date-expired Chinese red condiment, tried it, and then splashed out on some proper white vinegar. It hasn’t absorbed the whiff. We still plan to vacuum the carpets.…

Galvanised Mercedes convertible: surely the recipe for a top used car, isn’t it? Better still, prices for the model that meets this description, the R171-series SLK from 2004 to 2011, start from just £2500 for an early, entry-level version. One such example is a 2004-reg SLK 200 auto with 111,000 miles on the clock and a year’s MOT. “Engine powerful and reliable, hood works,” claims the seller. Doubtless were you to traipse to Leicester to check it out, you’d find much to criticise. Still, it highlights how low prices for the second-generation SLK go. Even at the other end of the spectrum, they aren’t mad, with late ’n’ low cars starting at £11,000 or about where the cheapest SLK 55s (not covered here) begin. In the middle, at around £7500,…

Rumours that prices of 911s are cooling off look like they might be well founded. This lovely SC hammered at £39,667 at Silverstone’s 21 July sale – considerably less than some dealers are asking on the open market. With just 55,000 miles showing, a whopping history and a recent bodywork restoration, it looked like just the ticket and even came with the original dealer key rings. True, the SC isn’t the most desirable 911 out there, but values have nevertheless inflated recently along with other classic models, so this reasonable-sounding sale price means there’s hope for aspiring buyers yet.…