Innholdsfortegnelse for June 05, 2019 i Autocar

THE VOLKSWAGEN GROUP’S actions in cheating diesel emission tests shouldn’t be forgotten – or forgiven. The firm, and many of its former management team, rightly paid a heavy price for their actions. Yet despite that, and at a time when many car makers are facing major struggles or looking at mergers (see FCA-Renault, p20), the VW Group remains a giant. Much of the responsibility for that is down to Herbert Diess and his decisive, clear actions. In the aftermath of Dieselgate, when many firms would be focused purely on crisis management, Diess boldly abandoned much of VW’s long-term product plan and diverted vast resources to develop the electric MEB platform. When the first car on that architecture, the ID 3, launches later this year, it will spearhead a hugely ambitious…

The Ferrari SF90 Stradale – the brand’s fastest-accelerating and most technically advanced road car to date – has been revealed as the first in a series of electrified Ferraris. Described as a “milestone in Ferrari’s history” by company CEO Louis Camilleri, the new flagship model is the first series -production plug-in hybrid Ferrari, with more expected. It is the second of five new models to be presented this year in an “unprecedented” product rollout. The SF90 name is taken from the firm’s latest Formula 1 car, and in turn references the 90 years since Scuderia Ferrari was founded. Unlike the earlier LaFerrari hypercar, which also used a hybrid powertrain, the SF90’s production is only limited to the amount Ferrari can sell. No price has been revealed at the time of…

OUTSIDE OF MOTORSPORT, regular users of advanced carbonfibre-reinforced plastic (CRFP) structures include McLaren, BMW and Lamborghini. The Italian firm built a new factory in 2010 to make the Aventador monocoque in-house, developing its own process called ‘RTM-Lambo’. RTM – for resin transfer moulding – usually involves pressing the dry, resin-free lay-up together in a two-part mould and injecting the resin. RTM-Lambo is a lower-cost method of making high-quality body components. The top half of the Aventador tub is made and part cured using the ‘prepreg’ method. Prepreg is carbonfibre mat pre-impregnated with resin. It comes in rolls and is stored in a refrigerator, like ready-made puff-pastry, to stop it going off. Prepreg is the best way to make components with a shiny Class A finish, but it is expensive, so…

It’s not often that Porsche does favours for its German car-making rivals, but in the case of the Alpina XD3 compact SUV, the famous sports car maker seems to have done just that. By withdrawing its Macan diesel from sale, Porsche has left the field open for Alpina, builder of ‘optimised’ performance versions of BMWs since 1962, to claim that it builds the fastest diesel SUV currently available. For a base price of £57,900 – or £70,135 with options (wheels, paint, glass sunroof, big brakes), in the case of our test car – you get a version of BMW’s compact yet spacious X3 that can perform a 0-62mph sprint in just 4.9sec, and run onwards to the usual governed top speed of 155mph in very short order. The XD3 recipe…

2019 Rolls-Royce Cullinan WHAT WE SAID THEN “Rolls has, like Porsche did with the first Cayenne, tried to put clear Rolls-Royce cues into the design. Maybe they just don’t translate to an SUV, or maybe we’re just not used to it yet.” The market demanded an SUV of Rolls-Royce and the market got it. An off-roading Rolls-Royce is not such an alien idea. The robustness of the early cars meant they were frequently used off road in Arabia, courtesy of Lawrence, and as armoured cars during WW1. But as with the first Cayenne, the Cullinan’s look is troubling. A Ferrari soft-roader? It’ll be a very fast soft-roader, and one that may even introduce the Maranello wail to Dubai’s Big Red, a huge, shifting sand dune that needs traction and torque…

When governments work Further to your scrappage scheme feature (Autocar, 22 May), I also ‘cashed’ in by part-exchanging our family runaround of five years, a 1996 Nissan Micra with an MOT until September ember 2009. The next stop would have been the scrapyard but instead I received £2000 for it against a 59-plate brand-new Hyundai i10 1.2 Style. And, yes, 10 years later, we still have the brilliant i10. It has just passed 65,000 miles, and apart from routine servicing, two sets of tyres and one set of brakes, it has been super-reliable. My normal daily drive is a Merc, but the Hyundai i10 is an economical, reliable little car. Thank you to the government of the time for making me £2000 better off. See? Politics has its plus points,…

MILEAGE 13,490 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if this newest twist on the Range Rover formula is worthy of the badge – and its price Cornwall: first stop for our new Range Rover Velar. Barely five minutes after it had arrived, photographer Jed Leicester took away his family in it to the south-west for a bank holiday break and instantly put the Velar under the strain of a fully loaded family road trip. So speedy was Jed to grab the keys that he even beat me to any kind of meaningful drive. Jed’s big journey south plus a few cross-country drives on business that I’ve done since to get my own first impressions mean that the mileage figure is already 3000 up from when we took delivery (with 10,000…

MILEAGE 102,954 MINI COOPER My 1964 Mini, which has been piling on the miles recently, made a guest appearance at the Autocar Awards and was in a little film that was shown on the night. I made the epic journey. Well, it was only a 250-ish-mile round trip, and blimey was it noisy. I usually do half-hour blasts, but six hours at 250dB was rather tiring for someone of my age, but huge fun. I will give it a quick once-over because it is due an MOT. Legally, it doesn’t need one, but one would be stupid not to.…

There was a Ford Cougar once; a family-size coupé based on the Mondeo Mk2. It was a handy thing that, in range-topping 2.5 V6 guise, could do 0-62mph in 8.2sec. Although it’s spelt differently, the Kuga, launched in 2013, at least sounds the same and, with the right engine, promises to be almost as much fun. It’s a family SUV rather than a coupé, so where the Cougar was sleek and low, the Kuga is tall and chunky. It’s based on the Focus Mk3 and is the model we think of when searching for an example of a fine-handling mainstream SUV. Like most cars, the Kuga can be split into pre-and post-facelift generations. The latter arrived in 2016 and is characterised by restyled front and rear ends, the availability of…

MERCEDES-BENZ CLS 500 Wrapped (as in vinyl and not around a tree) CLSs like this one really look the business. It’s a 2007/57-reg car with 117,000 miles and dressed to look like a 55 AMG right down to its boot badges, quad pipes and interior. You wonder why anyone would go to the trouble, except that, being a 2007-reg 500, it has the later 382bhp 5.5 V8 under its bonnet for 0-62mph in a near-AMG-rivalling 5.4sec. (The 470bhp 55 AMG cracks it in 4.7sec.) It went into the ring with a bundle of workshop receipts, although there’s no mention of them adding up to full service history. The hammer fell at £7504.…

An expert’s view PHIL HARDING, VW SERVICE CENTRE (GOSPORT) “There are a few issues with the Eos, mostly concerning the roof and making sure the drain holes are clear. Neglect them and in a rain storm the car can quickly resemble a goldfish bowl. Otherwise, the roof is really special. It’s made of steel and glass and even incorporates a sunroof so that it still feels light and airy when the main roof is closed. One thing: check if the engine is belt or chain driven. VW had issues with tensioners failing, causing the chain to jump and destroy the engine. At least a belt has specified replacement intervals.” Buyer beware… ▪ ENGINES Listen for rough running, which could be air leaks in the breather hoses and/or carbon deposits fouling…

“The 652bhp 3.9-litre is extremely light and small for a V12. It’s also high-revving, redlining at 12,100rpm” Legendary designer Gordon Murray, who created the trailblazing McLaren F1, has unveiled an all-new £2.5 million three-seat ultra-lightweight hypercar that, he believes, will beat all rivals – including the Aston Martin Valkyrie and Mercedes-AMG One – for “purity, sense of purpose and ground-breaking technology” when it appears in 2022. The car will be made in a batch of 100 units over one year by Murray’s own manufacturing company, Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA). It will feature revolutionary ‘fan car’ technology to generate aerodynamic downforce and improve cornering grip. The system is similar to one pioneered by Murray in the controversial 1978 Brabham BT46B Formula 1 car, which won its only grand prix before being…

Mercedes-Benz’s AMG performance car division has extended its range of four-cylinder models with the new CLA35 4Matic Shooting Brake. A sibling model to the CLA35 4Matic saloon revealed at the New York motor show in April, the Volkswagen Golf R Estate rival receives an AMG-fettled version of the turbocharged 2.0-litre petrol engine used by the CLA250 Shooting Brake. Changes have been made to the induction and exhaust system as well as adopting an AMG-specific ECU and stiffened mounting points. The transversely mounted unit provides the CLA35 Shooting Brake with 302bhp at 5800rpm and 295lb ft at 3000-4000rpm. Drive is sent through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox and a four-wheel drive system that can vary the drive split from front-drive only to 50% front and 50% rear, depending on prevailing traction levels.…

The new four-wheel-drive BMW M8 Coupé will become the most powerful and fastest two-door model yet sold by the German car maker when it arrives in the UK later this year. Revealed for the first time in Competition form ahead of a public debut at the Frankfurt motor show in September, the latest in a growing line-up of performance models from BMW’s M division builds on the strengths of the M850i with a powertrain shared with the M5 and a chassis honed during a 24-month development programme at the Nürburgring. The now familiar twin-turbocharged 4.4-litre V8 offers up to 616bhp and a top speed of 190mph in top-of-the-line Competition guise, thanks to tweaks to the induction system and more rigid engine mountings than the standard M8. Peak power is produced…

The mega-merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Renault, poised to create the world’s biggest car group, has been welcomed by analysts. But the threat of factory closures, cost savings that struggle to emerge and the complications of making an unwieldy conglomerate workable are just three of the major risks. Last week, Renault agreed to “examine the proposal” received from FCA to merge the two into a new company jointly owned 50/50, based in The Netherlands and with annual sales of 7.95 million units. Add in Renault’s alliance partners, Nissan and Mitsubishi, and the combined group output will be 15m units per year, which is 5m more than either the Volkswagen Group or Toyota. The merger, known internally as Project Newton, promises to fix any number of problems for both…

The XD3 isn’t the only SUV Alpina now offers, and nor is the effortless twin-turbo diesel tested adjacent the only engine fitted to that car. In certain markets, Germany included, the XD3 and a new take on the slope-roofed XD4 come with a special quad-turbo straight-six diesel, and though neither this engine nor the XD4 will be offered in the UK, we tried the combination on the country roads around Salzburg. With 568lb ft served up well below 2000rpm, this is an engine that rightly steals the headlines, and it moves the XD4’s two-tonne bulk down the road like a leaf in the wind, ultimately powering the car to a top speed just shy of 170mph. The combination of large, low-pressure turbos with another pair of smaller, high-pressure, variable-geometry turbos…

GTS, sitting halfway between regular Porsche and health-warning-attached Turbo, tends to be shorthand for ‘our favourite version’ of big Porsches, so let’s see now that we’ve got the Panamera GTS on the road in the UK. Our first drive in this latest version, late last year, was overseas and mostly on track, with a bit of time on a smooth road. Circuits don’t tend to suit a 1995kg five-door hatchback, but as ever Porsche engineers manage to make the car do extraordinary things. A big, smooth road, though, is the precise kind of environment the Panamera was designed for. Oxfordshire tends not to have them. Nice to report, then, that the Panamera GTS suits what it does have well enough. GTS no longer means a high-tune naturally-aspirated engine and coil…

MODEL TESTED 2.0 HYBRID DESIGN TOURING SPORTS Price £28,820 • Power 178bhp • Torque Unspecified • 0-60mph 8.5sec • 30-70mph in fourth na • Fuel economy 44.3mpg • CO2 emissions 89g/km • 70-0mph 47.9m The world’s best-selling passenger car, the Toyota Corolla, is officially back in Britain. Having been away since 2006, when its maker rebranded its mid-sized family hatchback the Auris for European buyers, the Corolla is now a global power again. And what a power it has been: around for five decades and counting, and very likely to reach its 50 millionth global registration with this 12th model generation. If the Corolla has taught us anything, it’s that excitement and driver appeal are of secondary importance when it comes to selling mid-sized hatchbacks and saloons in world-beating volumes. The…

1 FORD FOCUS 2.0 ECOBLUE 150 ST LINE AUTO ESTATE The class’s dynamic standard bearer is back to its best on handling. Outstanding to drive. 2 VOLKSWAGEN GOLF 2.0 TDI 150 GT DSG ESTATE Not as recommendable as the withdrawn GTD wagon, but very classy and complete all the same. 3 SKODA OCTAVIA 2.0 TDI VRS DSG ESTATE Space, pace, efficiency and plenty of driver appeal here. Bigger than some will need. 4 TOYOTA COROLLA 2.0 HYBRID DESIGN TOURING SPORTS An impressive drive from a really complete family car. Practical, pacy, frugal and fine-looking. 5 PEUGEOT 308 2.0 BLUEHDI 180 GT AUTO SW Not as spacious as some or as refined or fine-handling as others, but worth considering.…

Herbert Diess breaks the rules. We’re about to spend 60 minutes of his valuable time talking in his office – the hour has been strictly agreed with his minders – and given the exactness of the interval, plus the implied challenges and strictures of his massive job as head of the Volkswagen Group, I’m expecting him to be a serious, driven, time-poor and somewhat humourless individual. His predecessor, Matthias Mueller, nice guy though he was, was rather like that. So it’s quite a surprise to find that within a couple of minutes, Diess and I are chatting cheerily about the plus points of the classic Triumph TR6, a car he says he owned, loved and sold for too little money. He also had several Minis and Beetles and still has…

PERFECT DRIVE Goodwood daydreams in an Aston Martin To mark the 60th anniversary of Aston’s greatest racing season, we indulge our fantasies in a DBS Superleggera TRACK TEST Brabham BT62 Andrew Frankel is let loose in a track car with road car ambitions ROAD TEST Hyundai Nexo Definitive verdict on the gamechanging hydrogen-powered SUV EVERY WEEK FIRST DRIVE Range Rover Velar SVR Hold tight: it’s the fastest yet, thanks to a 5.0-litre V8… AS GOOD AS NEW Maserati Ghibli Why a modern Italian thoroughbred can be within your grasp LONG-TERM TEST Dacia Duster Will there be tears or cheers as we wave goodbye to our bargain SUV? SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p24…

MILEAGE 1873 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see whether this trail-blazing small EV has evolved enough to still be considered the best in its class Barely a month in and the i3S is cultivating something of a split personality in me, at least when it comes to my driving style. For my commute, the drive mode is firmly in Sport and the air conditioning on. I’ll even precondition the cabin if the weather looks a bit iffy. With only 17 miles to cover and a charging point waiting for me at the office, there’s no need to conserve power or take it easy off the line at traffic lights. And my word, it feels nippy when you do open the taps, in a way a similarly powerful petrol hot hatch…

Skoda Fabia Estate Steve Lee is giving us an update on his Fabia 1.9 TDI estate: “It is not far short of 177,000 miles. It was originally for my son, who needed something cheap and economical. Once he had finished with it, I took it over and used it for work and now my wife uses it. “During its time with us, it took four of us and a boot load to near Frankfurt and back at 60mpg. That was when it had done 144,000 miles. Since then, I’ve used it to move the contents of my daughter’s flat, twice. “While we’ve had it, it has had only routine maintenance and servicing, a couple of front dampers, rear door locking solenoids, two brake light switches and a few minor things.…

How do you relate the T.50 to the McLaren F1 you designed? “It’s fair to call T.50 today’s equivalent of the F1. That was certainly our intention. Of course, it’s very different because the materials and technologies available today are so much better than they were. I look at the toolbox we’ve got at our disposal now and it excites me more than ever.” Does your different approach with the T.50 mean you don’t think much of current hypercars? “Not true. I’ve driven them all and many are brilliant. Most are amazingly capable. But they’re nearly all heavy, which is something you can disguise at times but which really tells when you’re talking driver involvement. You simply feel the weight. Heavy cars don’t get the hairs on the back of…

The new Vauxhall Corsa is the first of a raft of Vauxhalls and Opels aimed at rejuvenating the brand with new levels of design integrity and engineering. Opel-Vauxhall vice president of design Mark Adams told Autocar at the Corsa’s unveiling last week that the new model – built on a PSA Group platform that will give it petrol, diesel and electric variants – was engineered to the most robust standards in the company’s history, despite a massively shortened development programme after PSA bought GM’s European arm in 2017 and started afresh. A GM-based Corsa was all but finished by that point and it could have been launched, but the ‘toolbox’ of newly available PSA technology, including access to BEV hardware, plus licensing costs that would have been payable to GM,…

SKODA’S BIGGEST-SELLING model, the Octavia, will be renewed for 2020 and spy photographers have caught the most revealing prototype of it yet. Skoda has used body-colour plastic panelling to cover up parts of the bodywork, but it’s clear the design has evolved and is heavily inspired by the Superb and new Scala. The shape is all new and Skoda has ditched the controversial split-headlight design. The fourth-generation Octavia isn’t expected to grow in size and is underpinned by an updated version of the MQB platform used by today’s model. It is expected to be slightly lighter, though. The new Scala provides the best indication of how the Octavia’s design will evolve. It will have a new generation of infotainment, greater connectivity and a wider variety of new materials. Engines will…

BENTLEY IS RAMPING up its Mulliner Coachbuilding arm with the unveiling of an ultra-exclusive new model, of which only 10 will be made. Bentley design director Stefan Sielaff confirmed that the brand “will show a first idea of what we can do for 10 customers” at the end of this year. The car is set to cost in excess of £1 million as Mulliner, which revealed the limited-run Continental GT Number 9 Edition at Geneva, seeks to differentiate itself from Bentley’s mainstream range. The proposed design or powertrain are yet to be revealed, but it’s expected to hark back to Bentley’s early heritage and use a traditional petrol engine. Sielaff said: “More and more customers are asking for a very individual Bentley. From our observations, rich customers are getting richer.”…

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At the beginning of last year those interested in a superbly engineered but excruciatingly entitled Bentayga could choose either the W12 standard car or a V8 diesel version. Neither now exists, the diesel swept into the gutter by the broom employed to clean up the Volkswagen Group’s post-Dieselgate act, the W12 now replaced by this, the Bentayga Speed. There’s a Bentayga Hybrid too, featuring Bentley’s first V6 and its first six-cylinder motor in 60 years. More on that in a few weeks. Nowhere in the press blurb that accompanied the Speed’s Geneva launch does it say it’s an ‘instead of’ rather than an ‘as well as’ but, it turns out, the old W12 Bentayga slipped out of production a year ago. To me, a Bentley Speed model is an addition…

The Corolla’s chassis showed how much effort has been invested in it by making short, easy work of the hill route. The car’s handling combines plenty of grip and precision with consistently good body control and there’s an unwavering sense of linearity and predictability about its every response, making it easy to drive even when you’re hurrying it along. There’s well-matched weight and pace about the steering, while equally finely judged suspension rates and well-balanced grip levels give you a clear sense of how hard you can lean on the outside contact patches and how much you can ask that front axle to do. In both cases, the answer’s ‘plenty’ – but it’s the natural-feeling handling and ride compromise and the clear sense of dynamic coherence about so much of…

This is a test for and of the unconventional. It’s for those who want something out of the ordinary. Something not an Audi, BMW or Mercedes-Benz. It is for those who think like a fleet manager does not. There’s a new Volvo S60, see. Pretty, isn’t it? We could have put it against its prime German saloon rivals, and if we did, my guess is that it would finish second to the new 3 Series, because the BMW has a kind of poise that the Volvo does not. But to avoid that foregone conclusion, and because we wanted to do something more esoteric, we have assembled three rivals that all go about being large family saloons/hatchbacks in a slightly different way. Which of our four is the most unusual is…

Toyota MR2 auto £2790 The Mk3 MR2 of 2000-06 is a pretty thing and an interesting, if impractical, alternative to the Mazda MX-5 Mk2 of the same period. Both are rear-wheel drive but the Toyota has its 138bhp 1.8-litre engine behind the driver, which is neat. Facelifted cars from 2002 got a six-speed manual gearbox over the earlier five-speeder. The optional auto, or sequential manual transmission to give it its proper name, also gained a sixth gear to go with the shift buttons on the steering wheel. This version is rare and the electronics can be temperamental but, say enthusiasts, it’s the one to have for its quick-fire changes. We found a 2003-reg auto with 83,000 miles for £2790. It has the optional hard-top and full service history, although one…

BMW 530e M Sport Price new £50,000. Price now £32,850 Last month, Autocar reported the recent fall in registrations of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs); a result of the government’s decision to withdraw its PHEV grant, as well as supply difficulties caused by WLTP testing. It’s an issue that could be coming home to roost in the form of lower prices for certain nearly new and pre-reg PHEVs. For example, we came across a 2019/19-reg BMW 530e M Sport auto with 3000 miles for £32,850, or £17,000 less than the new, on-the-road price. That’s some reduction on a model as efficient as this.…

The Volkswagen Eos is a member of that select group of hatchback-derived coupé-cabriolets that graced the noughties and included the Ford Focus, Vauxhall Astra, Peugeot 308 and Renault Mégane. Of them all, though, the Eos was the poshest, a status reflected in its higher price. Fortunately, since production ceased in 2014, its prices have fallen to the extent that you can pick one up for around £700, although at that level you want to be sure the model’s temperamental roof works. Prices peak at around £14,000 for a 2014-reg 2.0 TDI with 20,000 miles. That seems a lot for a car that is based on the old Golf Mk5 and went out of production 10 years ago, so we’d settle for something in between, such as a facelifted, 2011-reg 1.4…