Innholdsfortegnelse for January 23, 2019 i Autocar

THE VOLKSWAGEN GROUP is the master of platform sharing, its MQB architecture underpinning scores of cars from four brands to save millions in development costs. Now it’s doing the same for electric cars with its new MEB architecture, the basis for VW’s first wave of ID EVs, as well as models from Audi, Seat and Skoda. And potentially now Ford, too. The VW Group and Ford have shared more details of their tie-up (p15). More partnerships like theirs are inevitable, and on a greater scale to those in existence today, due to the costly development of electric and autonomous vehicle technologies. But with so many shared parts, just how different will rival electric cars be from one another? To this point, most electric cars have offered a broadly similar driving…

Land Rover will reveal a heavily updated Discovery Sport this summer, intended to regain ground lost to the latest generation of rivals including the Volvo XC60, which outsells it by two to one. The Discovery Sport is the car maker’s biggest-selling model and crucial to its success, as Jaguar Land Rover tries to reverse the company’s fortunes. Land Rover sales fell 6.9% year on year in 2018 and, earlier this month, 4500 job losses were confirmed at JLR. The Discovery Sport is one of three models that Land Rover hopes will spark a major turnaround this year. The new Evoque, revealed late last year, goes on sale in April, while deliveries of the facelifted Discovery Sport will start in October. The other key vehicle is the new Defender, to be…

Car companies will try multiple ways to save money in the least damaging way possible in the coming decade, and we got a taste of that last week when Volkswagen and Ford announced details of their future alliance. The first concrete steps will be model swaps in the profitable world of vans but the two companies are also investigating ways to collaborate on electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and the whole complex world of mobility services. They’ve also said they’re open to working together on car models. “You can’t do this alone,” Ford CEO Jim Hackett said of the race to develop these new and costly technologies. First, though, they’ve got to free up the cash to do that, and that’s where the commercial vehicle sharing comes in. Ford will build…

SUBARU HAS REVEALED its most powerful model yet, the WRX STI S209, as a limited run model exclusively for the US market. The hot saloon, the first of STI’s range-topping S models to be sold in America, uses a heavily reworked version of Subaru’s 2.5-litre boxer engine, with a larger turbo boosting power to 336bhp. Its reserves are sent to all four wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox and the car features new front and rear limited-slip differentials, a driver-controlled centre differential and a new torque vectoring system. The aerodynamics of the Audi RS3 rival have also been reworked, with Subaru claiming it offers an additional 1g of lateral grip. Subaru’s STI performance arm will produce 200 examples of the new S209, which will go on sale later this year.…

VOLKSWAGEN WILL BUILD electric vehicles on its new MEB platform in the US starting in 2022 – and it will develop EVs specifically for that market. VW will spend £620 million installing an MEB production facility at its plant in Tennessee, where the US-market Atlas large SUV and Passat are currently built. The first of VW’s electric ID cars to go on sale in the US will be the ID Crozz in 2020. It will be imported from Germany. When the Tennessee MEB facility comes on stream, it will make a version of that model for the US, along with a production version of the ID Buzz concept. However, the US models are likely to differ substantially from Europe’s. Scott Keogh, VW’s US boss, said producing models developed specifically for…

By now, I dare say you’ll have read plenty on the back story and, from last week, Andrew Frankel’s early track test of the new 992-generation Porsche 911. To recap, the eighth-generation 911 is definitively, unsurprisingly, unabashedly a 911, with the same wheelbase as the outgoing 991 generation and a 3.0-litre twin-turbo flat six again. But otherwise it’s quite different. With so little steel in its body, it’s now officially an aluminium monocoque. There is steel sheet around the B-pillars but the vast majority of the rest is aluminium, including castings around suspension mounts and, for the first time, an aluminium body side, apparently one of the most complex pressings in the car business, necessary as Porsche tries to offset the weight of new technology and crash protection that the…

Audi sells more TTs in Britain than anywhere else, so it makes sense that styling tweaks for this year lean towards subtle. A honeycomb-effect makeover for the front grille, some new wheels and two new colour options largely keep the base TT looking fresh, while S-Line models now go more aggressive with a full-length front splitter and rear diffuser. Underneath, there are more sweeping changes, with the 1.8-litre base engine of the outgoing version replaced by a more potent 2.0-litre four-cylinder. The mid-range 45 TFSI tested here sees 242bhp and gains a petrol particulate filter. Suspension remains by MacPherson struts at the front, four-link at the rear. Only front-wheel-drive models can be outfitted with a manual gearbox; our car had quattro all-wheel drive and the new seven-speed, dual-clutch S tronic…

If Seat’s decision to launch Cupra as an independent entity seems perplexing, time behind the wheel of its first offering is unlikely to offer much clarification. This hot Ateca’s performance is muscular enough even if your yardstick is VW’s Golf R, and there is usability to trump what any hot hatch can offer. As an affordable family-oriented driver’s car, it evades most attempts at serious objective criticism – but not all. What’s lacking is charisma and true driver engagement. We have reservations as to whether Cupra’s interior feels special enough, whether the exterior is suitably bold and whether the powertrain is vociferous when you’re in the mood. Beyond stability, the chassis also captures little of the suppleness or handling reward that have made some of this car’s mechanical relations so…

There’s a default setting among some motorsport fans who ‘was better back then’. In rallying, the halcyon 1980s are rightly lauded for the Group B monsters that kicked up the dust in a frenzy that created legends in metal – and made heroes of those who had the mettle to drive them. But such rich heritage can become something of an Albatross: if we only ever look back, there’s a chance we’ll miss what’s happening right in front of us. And in terms of the World Rally Championship, what’s happening right now is too good to overlook. The modern breed might be based on humble hatchbacks – Toyota’s Yaris, Ford’s Fiesta, Hyundai’s i20 Coupe and Citroën’s C3 – but the production link is as loose as the gravel on which…

SPEC SWAP WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if the new, Europe-designed Ceed is a true Volkswagen Golf rival or still a bit of a family hatchback also-ran Do you know anyone who has bought an entry-level car in recent years? I don’t. Such is the culture of easy sell-ups and tempting lease deals, it’s usually a no-brainer to pay an often heavily discounted sum to upgrade. In fact, some manufacturers have actively removed the lowest rung on their trim level ladder due to lack of interest. But should you always spend more to get extra equipment you may never use? That’s what I’ll establish as I take custody of the cheapest Kia Ceed you can buy new. Last September, I started running the premium-brand-baiting 1.4-litre First Edition Ceed. For…

Our old mate, car dealer Bradley Mitchell, is always picking up interesting stuff: “Had to send you this CR-V. Bought it a few days ago, a dreadful noise coming from underneath, for peanuts. Turned out to be the tyre. Chucked a part-worn on for £25 and it drives brilliantly. I smoked it around for two days just to be sure it was okay and, I have to say, I’m a fan! It’s deceptively rapid, lovely and smooth, and you’d never guess it’s done 157k. It’s incredibly roomy and the packaging inside is genius. What a great winter smoker for £1800!”…

An owner’s view RICHARD ELLSON, 850 R OWNER “My dad was in the traffic police and brought home a T5 estate one night. I fell in love with it and then all over again when I saw them in the BTCC. I bought my T-5R seven years ago, since when I’ve been restoring it. It had good provenance and a load of workshop invoices but it soon became apparent it had been maintained by a chimp. He’d even used wood screws! It’s now concours. I converted it from an auto to a manual and upgraded the Garrett turbo from the G15 to the G16 to suit. I love the T-5R for the fact that it represents Volvo’s first break with its staid image, while being a bit of a sleeper.…

“The car will have a more extrovert, aggressive look around the front grille” Volkswagen is putting the finishing touches to its next-generation Golf GTI, which promises incremental performance changes rather than a more radical switch to hybrid power as had originally been planned by Wolfsburg. To that end, the eighth-generation Golf GTI, due in early 2020, is set to stick with much of the hardware that has made the seventh-generation model such a success, both critically and commercially. That means an updated version of the Audi-developed EA888 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine used in the existing Mk7 Golf GTI. Again, like the current car, it will be offered with two power outputs: a standard output of around 252bhp and a more powerful 286bhp model badged TCR, which will replace the current…

THE VOLVO V40 could be indirectly replaced with an SUV-coupé in the next three years, in reaction to falling sales of the model and the need to accommodate electrification. Lex Kerssemakers, Volvo’s European boss, confirmed to Autocar that the V40 will not be replaced directly but said it would be superseded by a higher-riding model. He is confident that Volvo can achieve its annual sales goal of 800,000 units with its existing triple approach of the 40, 60 and 90 Series cars, but added: “We probably need another bodystyle in the next two to three years in the 40 Series. We need to do something more creative, which is why we decided not to replace the V40 directly.” While he did not describe the incoming car as an SUV-coupé, Kerssemakers…

FIRST PROTOTYPES OF a new Lynk&Co hatchback, expected to be dubbed 04, have been spotted testing ahead of an expected European market debut in 2020. Original expectations for the brand, part of Volvo’s Chinese parent Geely, were for it to focus on building SUVs and saloons – market priorities for China and the US. However, a hatchback would form a crucial part of Lynk&Co’s target for a full range launch in Europe next year. Like its siblings, the hatchback will use Geely’s CMA platform, also adopted by Volvo for the XC40. The scalable platform allows different wheelbases, ride heights and rear tracks – the hatchback is expected to be the smallest model in the line-up, sitting below the 4.5m-long 02. Lynk&Co will focus on offering electrified-only variants in Europe. Expect…

Major motor shows present windows on the future of motoring – but in recent years, the very future of those shows has come into question. Increasingly, car firms are shying away from spending huge sums on massive stands to display parked cars in soulless convention centres. Instead, they’re holding their own events or using the internet to showcase their products directly to more people at a fraction of the cost. First run in 1907, the Detroit motor show was for decades the cornerstone event of the US car industry calendar. But reflecting the decline of the car industry it serves and the city it’s based in, the event, officially known as the North American International Auto Show, has struggled in recent years. There were around 30 new cars launched this…

MODEL TESTED 2.0 TSI 4DRIVE DSG Price £35,900 Power 296bhp Torque 295lb ft 0-60mph 4.9sec 30-70mph in fourth 8.3sec Fuel economy 28.9mpg CO2 emissions 168g/km 70-0mph 52.4m (damp) This week, we turn to a question that fans of a certain popular line of affordable European performance cars might well have been waiting for an answer to since March 2018. Exactly what might we get from a Cupra ‘Seat’ that we haven’t so far been given by one of the many Seat Cupra hot hatchbacks that the Spanish firm has brought to market since the very first, the 148bhp Seat Ibiza GTI Cupra Sport of 1996? The newly independent Cupra performance brand, announced at the Geneva motor show last March, has finally borne fruit in order to begin addressing that question. And,…

Seven-thousand-nine-hundred. In the same way today’s teenagers don’t recognise the electro-garble of an internet dial-up tone, that number is one I struggle to get my 30-year-old head around. These days we’re supposed to be impressed by mammoth torque outputs conjured barely above idle; 7900rpm is the sort of engine speed at which only six-figure flights of fancy, usually Italian, finally give up everything they’ve got. Written on the spec sheet of a relatively attainable sports coupé, it feels wrong. Sinful, even. And damn exciting. BMW’s straight six for the millennium – the 3.2-litre S54 – is one reason why prices for even enthusiastically owned examples of the E46 M3 are inexorably on the up. Other reasons include its sweet chassis and near-perfect proportions. For many, when production ended in 2006,…

It’s midday, 8 March 1982 and a code orange status has just been triggered in the offices of RoSPA (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents). Colin Goodwin has just been issued with a driving licence. Two o’clock the same day: RoSPA raises the alert status to red. Goodwin has purchased his first car. That damned piece of paper had taken nearly two years to obtain. The people at the DVLA, or whoever was responsible back then for organising driving tests, had been on strike and there was a massive backlog for dates. I’d applied for a cancellation and got a date a week later, having had no lessons. I took it in a mate’s Fiat 127 Sport that fouled its plugs. I failed. More disasters followed. Anyway, I…

QUESTION After a lifetime of new cars, I’m considering buying used. Is manufacturer approved the gold standard? Ken Chalk, London ANSWER It should be but we have enough experience of them to know that all that glitters is not gold. For example, a few months after buying it, an acquaintance realised his approved used 65-reg VW Scirocco had been painted, a fact the dealer should have declared (the car was its former demonstrator, so the salesman would have known). It was missing its parcel shelf, too, which reminds us to check that removable parts such as the shelf, cupholders and storage covers are present, since scavenging parts for used stock can tempt some. JE QUESTION Does the old mantra about paying less for a soft-top in winter still hold true?…

Yes, that price does look a little strong but this is the limited-edition S version of Alfa’s gorgeous coupé, so we’ll make allowances. Our example is the 3.2 V6 petrol model but there was another based around the 2.2 four-pot. The S was created in 2008 in response to criticisms of the Brera’s woolly handling. Prodrive’s engineers were put on the case and wasted no time applying chassis tweaks. They lowered the car 10mm, tickled the steering, gave it 50% stiffer Eibach springs and a set of Bilstein dampers and swapped the standard brakes for more powerful Brembos. Then they raided the parts bin for sexier, arch-filling 19in alloy wheels laced up with Pirelli P Zeros. Our tester was impressed, finding the S’s steering sharper and better weighted and body…

Porsche 911 Carrera T coupé Price new £85,576. Price now £82,990 The new 911 turns a deal-conscious mind to its forebear. How about something interesting and late-plate such as the 700-mile 2018/18-reg T coupé we saw? It’s in Racing Yellow and has the optional manual gearbox, likely to be sought after later down the line. The 365bhp T cost almost £8000 more than the basic coupé but has a few goodies as standard, including a limited-slip differential, the S’s lower final drive ratio, a sports exhaust and a lowered chassis. It’s a bit lighter, too.…

Lexus has refreshed its RC F Coupe and added a lightweight version to the line-up. The new Track Edition is 80kg lighter than the standard RC F thanks mainly to an extensive use of carbonfibre. Both RC Fs get a new suspension tune, visual tweaks from the previous model and a detuned normally aspirated 5.0-litre V8 engine. Power has fallen by 12bhp to 451bhp due to emissions laws.…

“No longer having to avoid treading on Ferrari’s toes should be good news for the long-awaited Alfieri” Faltering sales and profits at Maserati are prompting a change of strategy for the luxury sports car marque. New Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Michael Manley has admitted that the organisational pairing of Maserati with Alfa Romeo was a mistake, and resulted in the former being treated “almost like a mass-market brand”. Manley has returned Harald Wester to the position of head of Maserati, which the German held previously between 2008 and 2016, and given him the task of installing a new management team and developing a revised plan. Wester has already recruited Jean-Philippe Leloup from Ferrari to lead a new department called Maserati Commercial. A new boss has been appointed to Maserati North…

FORD HAS REVEALED its facelifted Mondeo range, priced from £21,995 and set for deliveries in March. The Vauxhall Insignia rival receives new grille designs, revised bumpers and reshaped lights front and rear, plus a full-width chrome strip across the tailgate. A new, less-polluting 2.0-litre EcoBlue diesel engine has been brought in, with claimed improvements to refinement and low-end performance. The estate is also available with the 184bhp petrol-electric hybrid powertrain for the first time. Inside, new trim and upholstery choices feature, while Ford claims fit and finish has been improved. A rotary dial gear selector has been added to the automatic gearbox, and new tech includes an intelligent speed limiter.…

The new Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 is the most powerful road-legal model the firm has yet produced, but its chief engineer says the pursuit of that performance hasn’t come at the expense of handling. The new model, the first of the current-generation Mustang to be given the GT500 nameplate, is powered by a hand-built 5.2-litre V8 engine mated to a 2.65-litre supercharger that, Ford says, produces in excess of 690bhp. That compares with 493bhp for the previous range-topping Mustang GT350 and it exceeds the 647bhp of the Ford GT. The GT500’s power is delivered through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, which, the firm says, will allow a 0-60mph time in the mid-three seconds and the ability to run a quarter mile in less than 11 seconds. Carl Widmann, the car’s…

The extra-hardcore run-out special edition is a feature that has become more common than red piping and chrome pedals within the model lineage of the average modern hot hatchback. Even the most celebrated and well established of them all, the Volkswagen Golf GTI, can’t last for a whole model lifecycle without one. We’re lucky it can’t, by the way – or we’d have missed out on some utterly brilliant fast hatchbacks over this car’s long and illustrious history: the G60-engined supercharged Mk2s, the Mk5 Edition 30 and the stellar Mk7 Clubsport S. These fast Golfs are, at their best, irresistible enigmas: cars whose brilliance seems simultaneously to make both absolutely perfect sense and no sense whatsoever. The superbly adaptable Golf GTI has sat, for the past three model generations at…

Hyundai isn’t hanging around when it comes to rolling out its N-branded performance models. It’s only 18 months since it launched the i30 N hatchback and, having already introduced the Veloster N in markets other than ours, the Korean-based firm is now introducing this: the i30 Fastback N. From an engineering perspective, working so quickly is a smart move. Hyundai uses a great many proprietary components for these cars, after all, and it stands to reason that the more development opportunities it can lever into a short space of time for the various driveline, suspension, steering and electronic governance systems in the N-brand armoury, the quicker those systems – and the cars they’re attached to – should improve. Welcome, then, to ‘Hyundai N-car v3.0’. Based on the elongated ‘coupé-like’ i30…

During the marketing build-up before launch, Cupra hinted at the track-day mentality of its very first model. A few laps of Millbrook’s Hill Route put paid to the slogans, however. Although the Ateca remains within itself more often than not on the road, this tortuous circuit quickly reveals a stubborn chassis prone to understeer, as the tall body is tugged in the preceding direction of travel. The car’s relatively short wheelbase and spry steering ratio make short work of the course’s tight hairpins – although, even at maximum attack, there’s precious little in the way of communication or a palpable sense of involvement. Four-wheel-drive traction and a muscular engine make the Cupra Ateca deceptively quick, but any attempt to enliven the car’s handling will end in frustration. ACCELERATION…

Some cars instantly ooze success from every paint molecule. From the moment the proud designer slides off the cloth cover, the car looks to be a nailed-on smash hit. Very often it is. But sometimes, a car that looks like a sure-fire winner fails to make the cut. Sometimes the car doesn’t drive in the ways its looks say it will. Sometimes the price is wrong. Sometimes there isn’t enough promotion behind it. Very often, it’s a mix of all these things and more. Read on, then, to discover our selection of cars that should have been stars, and five unlikely machines that broke records. LOTUS EVORA 2009-NOW The costliest model Lotus had ever developed, the Evora aimed to combine Elise dynamism with refinement, 2+2 practicality and the electronic tech…

While I knew that a Tesla could accelerate ‘ludicrously’ quickly, it strangely took the Kona’s 7.0sec 0-60mph time (and the latest Leaf’s 8.1sec) to bring home to me that as the country moves progressively over to more electrified cars, cars are going to get faster – or at least accelerate faster. Of course, we as pedestrians are not getting faster, which is a bit of a problem when crossing sing roads. It’s good to know, then, that new cars travelling by electric power will be required to emit a sound at speeds of up to about 12mph from July this year. I think a hard-accelerating Kona would only emit this sound for about 1.5 seconds – and then it would confusingly just stop. I’d suggest the car monitors its own…

MILEAGE 5615 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if this quirkiest of compact crossovers has more to offer than its head-turning styling Since arriving on the fleet, the Aircross has rarely been called on to shift loads larger than the weekly supermarket shop, or a couple of suitcases for a long weekend. A week-long Christmas break spent visiting relatives across various parts of the country was a great opportunity for it to demonstrate just how practical it could be, with a full contingent of bags, presents, passengers and other miscellaneous holiday knick-knacks to carry. The first leg, with only driver and one passenger to accommodate, went as smoothly as you might expect. There was no need to lift the false floor or adjust the sliding rear bench seat to make…

We were powering aboard the Flying Pig recently when, inevitably, we had to stop for more fuel. On the way back from the kiosk in the dark, I could see that something was missing. It turned out to be the offside fog-light glass. The bulb was still intact and it worked. Half the glass had gone, presumably on the M25, M11 or, most likely, somewhere stony. To avoid the bulb getting busted, I used some leftover Yuletide clear packaging as protection. Initial replacements seem to be fairly pricey from the official channels – around £100 at the moment. There are alternatives……

Among the wannabe classics out there, the 2.3-litre five-cylinder turbocharged Volvo 850 T5 of the mid-1990s and its T-5R and R offshoots are the real deal. They were the most powerful cars Volvo had produced at that point in its history, a claim given extra emphasis by the company fielding a pair of 850 estates and saloons in the British Touring Car Championship from 1994 to 1996. Admittedly, they differed from their road car brethren in being powered by a 2.0-litre, non-turbocharged engine producing 286bhp and driving the front wheels through a six-speed sequential gearbox, in place of the production cars’ choice of five-speed manual or four-speed automatic ’boxes. No matter. They showed that more than just building safe and secure cars, Volvo could build exciting ones as well. To…

Seems only last week that MG ZRs were taking the first bus to the scrapper and now here’s one making £6380 at auction. Naturally, it’s no ordinary ZR but a hot 1.8 VVC 160 (0-62mph in 7.4 sec) in tip-top condition with just 8600 miles and one previous female owner. However, cooler heads may have reflected on the fact that tidy ZR 160s with good service histories and 50,000 miles can be bought for around £3000 and, crucially where the VVC system is concerned, test driven beforehand. If the engine feels lifeless, the VVC actuator module is probably to blame.…