Innholdsfortegnelse for March 30, 2022 i Autocar

“The new models in 2023 set the course for the next generation of Honda cars” Honda will launch an electric small SUV next year based on the newly revealed e:Ny1 Prototype. The firm has also announced two more electrified models for 2023: a compact hybrid SUV and a new-generation CR-V, which will be offered with hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains. The Japanese car maker said the upcoming e:Ny1 will be “at the centre of Honda’s future product line-up” and offer “the unique blend of dynamics, technology and design for which Honda is known”. It added that the model will be “a great option for families looking for their first EV”. The latest hybrid-only Civic for Europe has also been revealed, which completes Honda’s plans to electrify its entire mainstream line-up…

Kia has confirmed that it will offer the EV9 electric SUV in Europe and the UK from 2023 as its new largest model. Previewed by the Concept EV9 that was unveiled at the Los Angeles motor show late last year, it is similar in size to the US-only Telluride and was devised specifically to cater for the demand in that market for large SUVs. But with growing calls for such vehicles in Europe, it will now be offered for sale here as well. While the EV9 is unlikely to sell in great numbers in the UK due to its size, Kia believes that it can serve as a brand-building halo model by winning over buyers of Range Rovers and other large premium SUVs. The Concept EV9 uses the same Hyundai…

Why set up in Coventry? “Look at the other brands here: there’s Tata, there’s Mahindra. To achieve our goals, we need to leverage all the experience that’s here, and [CEO] Bhavish Aggarwal was very receptive to that. “If you look at Formula 1 and Formula E teams, almost all of them are within a 50-mile radius. It’s good to have a presence.” What are you designing? “It’s about first principles. What’s the best way to get out of a vehicle? It isn’t having a B-pillar. We’re forgetting about engineering challenges. What’s the best way for a customer to wipe a windscreen? Do you need to touch anything any more? Does the car need to know it’s you? Those kinds of things will give us a point of difference, and we…

The mismatch between the quoted and actual fuel economy of plugin hybrids is coming under greater scrutiny as EU authorities look to tighten the testing process in reaction to data harvested from the vehicles themselves. The EU and the UK (which copied over the legislation) have since January 2020 required all new cars to monitor and store fuel consumption data for inspection by authorities, including electricity use for PHEVs, so that they can calculate more precise official CO2 figures. PHEVs combine an electric motor and battery with a petrol or diesel engine to theoretically cut CO2 emissions to less than 50g/km in most cases – well below that of even the most frugal hybrid without a socket. That in turn unlocks a range of tax incentives, the most generous of…

One good way of gauging the success of the Volkswagen Group’s financial year is via CEO Herbert Diess’s performancerelated bonus. In 2021, he took home an extra €5.29 million (£4.4m), bringing his total remuneration to €8.6m (£7.1m). Why was Diess, along with his fellow board members, so well rewarded in a troubling year for the automotive industry? Because the German company made profits of €20 billion (£16.6bn) on sales of 8.6 million new vehicles. That’s compared with €19.3bn (£16.1bn) profit on 11 million cars in 2019. Or to put it another way, the group’s €2325 (£1945) profit per car last year was up €571 (£478) on a year in which there was no Covid disruption or semiconductor shortage. Across the industry, the so-called chip crisis actually contributed to bumper profits.…

THE DAY BEFORE the Sebring 12 Hours round of the IMSA Sportscar Championship, the 2022 World Endurance Championship began at the Florida circuit with the 1000 Miles of Sebring. And shock horror: a Toyota didn’t win. The Toyota GR010 Hybrid’s whitewash in 2021 resulted in a heavy Balance of Performance (BoP) penalty for the start of the new season, and neither Gazoo Racing entry had an answer to the ‘grandfathered’ LMP1 Alpine A480 as Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxivière and André Negrão took a first WEC win for the French firm. The race was stopped three times: once for a big accident for José María López in the #7 Toyota, then for the threat of thunderstorms and finally for a deluge that stopped the race for good with 14 minutes to…

f you think the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing sounds impressive, imagine one that has shrunken in a hot wash, conveniently lost 120kg of weight and somehow gained motorsport-derived aerodynamics and you will almost be there. Created to battle it out with the BMW M3 Competition and Mercedes-AMG C63 S, the new CT4-V Blackwing sits on the same General Motors Alpha platform as its bigger brother but, crucially, misses out on its sublime supercharged V8. In its place is a less heroic-sounding twin-turbocharged 3.6-litre V6 that makes 472bhp and 445lb ft. Both of those output figures are overshadowed by the car’s closest German rivals, with the M3 Competition good for an extra 31bhp and 34lb ft. The rear-driven baby Blackwing is also 30kg heavier, but there was no certainly evidence of any…

Chinese EV firm Nio entered the Norwegian market last year and will expand into another four European countries this year, most notably Germany. Whereas Norway got the original ES8, all following markets will get only second-generation models. The first of three new cars to arrive this year based on Nio’s 2.0 platform, the ET7 gives us a glimpse at what we Europeans can look forward to. Compared with previous Nio cars, which were all SUVs, the ET7 is quite a departure. Sleek, almost coupé-like lines announce a Tesla Model S rival. It is bristling with sensors. Among the most noticeable identifiers are the units above the windscreen: this is one of the first cars to employ lidar. While the interior looks familiar, Nio has really upped its game in terms…

MODEL TESTED SPORTLINE KOMBI SWB BLACK EDITION Price £59,460 • Power 201bhp • Torque 332lb ft • 0-60mph 9.1sec • 30-70mph in fourth 10.4sec • Fuel economy 32.0mpg • CO2 emissions 199-213g/km • 70-0mph 47.1 m The increasing prevalence of bolder sport styling on new commercial vehicles might simply be evidence that vans, lorries and pick-up trucks inevitably follow where market trends for passenger cars lead. This week’s road test subject, however, suggests that something more interesting could be afoot. Some buyers of these super-functional, hard-working utility vehicles might be ready for more serious pseudoperformance van derivatives, right out of the showroom, than they have hitherto been offered. They might even be ready to pay surprisingly high prices for them. The Transporter Sportline is the new range-topping version of Volkswagen’s mid-sized…

“It spends much of the session rotating in uncatchable low-speed spins. It feels entirely ludicrous” It’s hard to think about anything while sitting in a hard-working Lamborghini other than the car itself, but I spent at least some of my time during a trip in various of the company’s cars remembering Dave Stewart. Not, it must be said, for the music that he and Annie Lennox created; rather because after Eurythmics’ chart success had peaked, he claimed to suffer from Paradise Syndrome – depression caused by a lifestyle that was too perfect and too predictable. Multimillionaires with the ability to scratch every itch obviously need to find some more prickles to soothe. Which is where Lamborghini’s Ad Personam division can help. Although best known for the ability to order bespoke…

The Ford Sierra is regarded by most as being rather unexceptional, but then there’s the Sierra RS500, a car that still has a cult following today and examples of which fetch big money. But wait: there’s more, because beyond that is the RS500 race car, which dominated the British Touring Car Championship in the 1980s, scoring 40 race wins. Nine of those victories were with Andy Rouse at the wheel. Not only is he a four-time BTCC champion but his race car preparation business, Andy Rouse Engineering (ARE), also built the cars. Former ARE employee Alan Strachan now owns CNC Motorsport AWS and recently announced plans to build three continuation RS500 models to the exact Group A specification of the era, with Rouse’s blessing. Many of the original RS500 race…

The trouble with taxes The article concerning the two Kias driven from Brighton to Glasgow (‘The proclaimer’, 9 March) didn’t make an overwhelming case for electric from a running cost perspective, at £82 for the EV6 against £99 for the petrol Proceed. The EV6 driver pays 20% VAT on fuel, of course, so £68 net value, meaning a total tax burden for the trip of £14. The Proceed driver also pays 20% VAT but in addition pays fuel duty (57.95p per litre), so in this case the taxation is almost £55. Using off-motorway chargers in everyday driving would lower the cost of electricity further so that the loss of revenue to the Exchequer is even greater. National expenditure can’t cope with this heavy discounting, and the answer seems to be…

MILEAGE 4815 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if this family EV has the versatility to be Volkswagen’s new people’s car Taking part in a winter range test of 10 electric cars – from a Fiat 500 to a Porsche Taycan – really helped to put my Volkswagen ID 3 into perspective. Although the ID 3 wasn’t among those being put through their paces, I’d driven up to the Millbrook Proving Ground in my car and felt surprisingly happy to get back into it for the drive home. I’m not suggesting that I’d take it over a Taycan, but I preferred it to threequarters of the cars we’d been testing. The reason why this came as a surprise is that I hadn’t been feeling all that upbeat about the ID…

An expert’s view ADRIAN JARDINE, ALFA AID “The most important thing to note is that the Twin Spark engine uses oil and will blow up if not looked after. The V6 is great. It does have an oil cooler whose pipes will corrode through and empty the sump in about 10 seconds, though. Watch out for the airflow meters on both versions and the throttle potentiometers. The exhausts rot over time, as can the radiators. The sunroof rusts and its motors can seize, which is an expensive fix. The Cup racing version is very rare and definitely worth more, even though the mechanicals are the same. If you’re interested, definitely buy now, because prices are on the up.” Buyer beware… ■ ENGINE Both engines require a new cambelt every 36,000…

“Lotus said the target is a top speed of 162mph and sub-3.0sec time for the 0-62mph sprint” The Eletre begins Lotus’s reinvention as an electric performance vehicle firm offering a breadth of cars, rather than just the sports cars for which it is traditionally known. The SUV is the first of four EVs set to arrive by 2025 from the Geely-owned British brand. Until now, the Eletre was codenamed Type 132 and the subsequent electric models are currently known as Type 133, Type 134 and Type 135, the last of which is the Evija hypercar. The Eletre has almost exactly the same footprint as the Lamborghini Urus, at 5105m long, 2131mm wide and 1630mm tall, but is roomier thanks to its long wheelbase. It is therefore a large car that…

What was the biggest challenge with the Eletre? “Balancing everyone’s expectations. It’s critical for the success of the brand. It must appeal to the 22-year-old hyper-rich Chinese buyer versus someone who has owned 10 Lotus sports cars. It’s a hell of a responsibility taking a heritage brand like Lotus and balancing the product so it appeals to a huge customer base.” How quickly did you turn the car around? “Six months ago, this car was unrecognisable and now it’s tooled. Traditionally, product development takes eight years. When you have a tech-laden product such as the Eletre, the tech moves fast. Our processes are now solidified. We’ve delivered one car, so it should be easier with the second and third car.” What’s the spirit of the Eletre in your mind? “It…

THE NEW CIVIC, first revealed for the US market at the LA motor show last year, pairs a newly developed Atkinson-cycle 2.0-litre petrol engine with two electric motors to produce 181bhp and 232lb ft. The hybrid will emit less than 110g/km of CO2, says Honda. The model’s design is evolutionary, although it adopts a fastback-style sloping roofline, ditching the current model’s prominent rear wing. Inside, it features a minimalistic design similar to the HR-V. The upcoming Civic Type R will retain a pure-combustion set-up, likely to be based on a tweaked version of the current car’s 316bhp turbo 2.0-litre four.…

THE USE OF simulators to develop cars in a virtual environment is as old as the hills, but like everything involved in the design and use of EVs, simulation is potentially an old dog that can learn new tricks. Range is one of the biggest considerations for anyone going electric. When buyers are handing over considerably more of their own cash than they would for an ICE car, expecting them to accept less capability from the new technology is asking rather a lot. But range isn’t just about the vehicle hardware and software, it’s also about adapting to a different driving style and making the most of the unique features an EV has, such as driver-controllable regenerative braking effort and coasting. The problem with that for EV makers is the…

CLEANING THE STREETS As well as pioneering EV development, Audi is trying to prevent harmful materials entering our ecosystems and “filter out microplastics where they’re created”. In collaboration with the University of Berlin, the car maker is developing filters for streets, drains and sewers to stop tyre and road particles from entering soil, rivers and the ocean. It says around 110,000 metric tonnes of the stuff ends up on the streets of Germany alone each year. “Our goal is to take preventative actions wherever possible,” said environmental foundation director Rüdiger Recknagel. The filters also capture cleaning waste, cigarette filters, wrappers and other plastic granules measuring up to 3mm in size. BLUE-SKY THINKING The old dream of flying cars might still come true, after Suzuki announced a tie-up with Skydrive, described…

At the recent launch of the Vauxhall Astra Hybrid-e, we questioned the gap between the 37-mile quoted electric range and the 43-mile range measurement for working out its benefit-in-kind tax band. The difference is a money saver, dropping the PHEV from the 12% band into the 8% band. Why the two figures? Amazingly, this is down to a decision by HMRC to allow from 6 April 2020 companies to quote what is called the equivalent allelectric range (EAER), rather than all-electric range (AER). AER is what you would expect: the range covered in ‘charge depleting’ mode before the engine fires up. But EAER also includes an element of engine running, so it is not emissions-free. Why? Many PHEVs don’t completely decouple the engine in electric-only mode, so EAER is…

ACCORDING TO THE SMMT, around 8%, or roughly 300, of the 3800 main dealers that it represents are what can be termed single-site franchise businesses. Many are those just described, with longterm brand relationships and deep connections with their local communities. It sounds like automotive business utopia, but the much-trumpeted sales agency sales model, whereby the manufacturer sells cars directly to customers at fixed prices, could spell trouble. It leaves dealers as kind of ‘experience centres’, fielding enquiries, handing over new cars, servicing customers’ cars and retailing used ones. But Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry, believes the agency model could be the saviour of independent dealers. He said: “It’s a bit of a win for them. It takes new car stock off their balance sheets,…

SUNDAY I’ve had a thunderous weekend in an Audi R8 V10 Performance RWD, the epitome of a last-hurrah supercar, aimed unerringly at those people whose future option will be some kind of lower, shorter, Audi-fied Porsche Taycan. This particular R8’s major purpose in life is to provide an envelope for one of the most stirring petrol engines ever built, and at this it does a handsome job (driven, p30). There’s something super-special about a V10: it has the sophistication and precise response of other big-capacity, multi-cylindered engines, but there’s much more inherent animalistic purpose than you find in a smooth V8 or a refined V12. The R8’s ever-present exhaust and induction duet makes this extremely obvious. I found that just giving this car the beans a few times – I’m…

Have you noticed recently, when walking or driving around after dark, how many windows are lit not the colour of halogen but any lurid combination of red/blue/green? The reason I ask is because of the dash in the new C-Class Estate. The entire thing is backlit, even the air vents, and you can pick from myriad colour schemes via the new 11.9in touchscreen, which has supplanted most switchgear. It’s right on-trend. The MBUX system facilitated by that offers everything you could wish for, and possibly even more, and it sits beside a customisable 12.3in dial display. Are we complaining? Not really. It works fine and looks slick. Our test car is a C220d. Yes, a new dirty diesel in 2022 – except it’s not dirty. It uses a new 2.0-litre…

And relax. Enjoy the respite. You’ve certainly earned it. BMW-land has of late been an exhausting kaleidoscope of odd contours, oversized grilles, transverse engines, endless crossovers, mass, girth and, although it’s quite understandable, widespread electrification and the compromises that brings. Buy an iX and you get the full house. It’s a BMW, but it’s not a BMW. Do they even make those any more, for those of us who can’t stretch to an M5 CS? Turns out they do. One look at the new G42-gen 2 Series Coupé’s monolithic bonnet tells you that not only does this car possess an engine but also it’s set lengthways rather than sideways. And the car is therefore natively rear driven. Elsewhere, the silhouette is clean, the kidneys are right-sized, and there is of…

Red with green? Blue with yellow? Brown with anything? And do you want the seatbelts to match? Who knew that specifying your own anything-goes supercar would involve so many choices? This abundance of decisions when almost anything is possible is why Lamborghini, like other luxury car manufacturers, has devised a way to make the process easier. Favoured buyers have long been able to visit the Sant’Agata factory, but now they can combine a tour with a stop at the Ad Personam studio, where an expert guides them in a specifying session. This is a more involved process than any online configurator and a very hands-on one. The studio has paint and fabric swatches for every factory option and ‘extended’ colour so you can see what goes with what. The consultants…

Andy Rouse is regarded by many as the best BTCC driver of all time. He has four BTCC titles to his name, 60 race victories in the championship and two Willhire 24-hour race wins. He also raced at Le Mans three times. His career started in the 1960s in Formula Ford and he switched to saloon car racing in the 1970s. He won the Ford Escort Mexico series and then joined Broadspeed in the British Saloon Car Championship, winning the overall title in 1975. He set up his own race car engineering company in 1981 and won the BTCC in 1983 and in 1984, famously driving a Rover SD1 that finished ahead of the Rover factory team. In that same year, Ford gave him the contract to build the Sierra…

DRIVEN BMW 7 Series It hasn’t even been revealed yet, but we’ve already had an early drive in BMW’s all-new flagship saloon. Here’s how it’s shaping up FEATURE Dacia world tour One tank of fuel, lots of exotic (and familiar) place names… Matt Prior is your guide INVESTIGATION Cost of motoring Buying and owning cars has never been pricier. Where will it end? We investigate EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Mercedes-Benz S580 Anything the new 7 Series can do, the new S-Class might do already CULT HERO Maserati Quattroporte V8-engined, Pininfarina-bodied Mk5 is now £10k up. But exercise caution SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p24…

MILEAGE 5732 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if this hybrid-only mini-SUV can be an efficient long-distance commuter Benevolent soul that I am, I’ve agreed to exchange my new Skoda Kodiaq (which you will meet soon) for Luc Lacey’s Honda HR-V. A high-mileage photographer with a penchant for extreme sports and camping with his friends clearly has more need of a capacious 4x4 than I do. Compact crossover for me it is, then. I must be honest: the HR-V hasn’t made a great go of ingratiating itself. That’s not because it’s bad to drive, ugly or nasty inside. In fact, it’s the opposite of those things. Instead, it has irked me through its technology. My struggle to get the infotainment system to accept my iPhone for Apple CarPlay set the…

The Jeep Compass had a tough task when it launched into its second generation in 2018. It was the firm’s major entry into the fiercely competitive C-segment and a rival to the popular Skoda Karoq, Vauxhall Grandland X and Renault Kadjar. Could it hold its own as a capable, spacious SUV? Buyers clearly thought so. It has become Jeep’s most popular model in Europe, accounting for 40% of the brand’s sales. Which is good news for used buyers because it means there is a good selection of cars available on the second-hand market. The Mk2 Compass is based on a stretched version of a platform shared with the smaller Renegade and was launched in diesel and petrol guises. The diesels kicked off with a 118bhp 1.6-litre turbo model that had…

1979 Talbot Sunbeam Lotus Here was a Hethel-fettled hot hatch with a 2.2-litre twin-cam slant four sending 140bhp to the rear and a sub-tonne kerb weight – an unimaginably attractive proposition. We found it “went extraordinarily well” but felt let down by its sub-par economy, poor refinement and propensity for understeer. 1989 Lotus Elan (M100) A dalliance with front-wheel drive for Lotus’s would-be Mazda MX-5 killer. It never matched the sales of its rival, but we still reckoned “you should sell your grandmother” to own one and labelled it a worthy bearer of the hallowed Elan name. 1990 Vauxhall Lotus Carlton Never before and perhaps never again will a car attract quite so much attention from outside the car world as did the Lotus Carlton. It was the ultimate Q car: a Vauxhall…

ndian start-up Ola Electric will introduce a range of vehicles in the UK by 2025, following the rapid roll-out of its first product, the S1 scooter, in its home market. Alongside the ‘premium’ S1, Ola will offer a cheaper scooter and a car in the next three years, both in the UK and other markets globally. Its longer-term plans include a number of fourwheel vehicles, stretching from those that “address urban use scenarios” to others that “have greater [driving] ranges and greater capabilities”, explained design chief Wayne Burgess. The Brit, who in a previous role at Jaguar worked on cars including the F-Type and XF, is leading Ola’s designers both at its headquarters in Bangalore and at the technical centre in Coventry that was opened in January. The firm said…

Now look here, car companies. I know that using lots of buttons is expensive and they can look cluttered on the dashboard, and that touchscreens are so much tidier and cheaper. And I know that touchscreens are much more accommodating to over-the-air updates than buttons, and that they’re oh so versatile for giving access to lots of different features, and that they’re very easy to personalise. But maybe we haven’t told you this enough, although it feels like we all have: can you honestly please just stop it? Theses screens are being asked to do too much. It’s distracting. It’s – and I don’t use this word lightly – dangerous. Recently I drove the Citroën C5 X, and I like the car. It’s comfy, spacious and good value. One of…

STELLANTIS AND LG Energy Solution have announced a C$5 billion (£3.01bn) investment in a joint venture to build a battery factory in Canada with an annual capacity of 45GWh. The companies claim the new site in Windsor, Ontario (handily just across the US border from Detroit), will be the first large-scale battery production plant in Canada. It is intended to produce cells for the North American market, where the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram brands are crucial to Stellantis’s success. Last year, Jeep’s share of the US market, which totalled just over 15 million, was 5.16%. Stellantis claimed that the gigafactory will open in 2024 as it pushes for five million annual global EV sales by 2030. The ambition is for 50% of Stellantis’s North American sales and 100% of…

As great farewells go, the new Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing is right up there, being a love letter from General Motors engineers to both the Chevrolet small-block V8 engine and the super-saloon that it inhabits. Both are on borrowed time as Cadillac prepares for its journey towards becoming an all-electric brand, which will begin with the weird-looking Lyriq crossover next year and continue, we’re willing to wager, with a long line of luxurious zero-emissions high-riders. That might explain why absolutely nothing has been left on the table with the latest CT5-V Blackwing. A natural rival to the BMW M5 CS, the CT5-V Blackwing gets the ‘LT4 Gen 5’ supercharged 6.2-litre small-block V8 engine that was last used in the previous-generation Chevrolet Corvette Z06. It already employed lightweight titanium valves, forged connecting…

Cars like the Audi R8 are starting to look time-limited. Sure, there are still nearly eight years before UK law bans their sale, but Audi is already working on an electric version of its supercar and Lamborghini has a hybrid solution on the way for its Huracán, which shares most of the R8’s underparts. Depending where you stand, this means that if you are in the market for a £130,000 supercar, you have two starkly different ways to jump. You can proceed with a purchase now, knowing you will be owning one of the most practical and bestdeveloped full-performance piston sports cars there’s ever likely to be, or you can keep your eyes ruthlessly on the future and wait for the first crop of super-performance EVs to land. Wait and…

If the Volkswagen Golf R were a fictional character, it would have to be some kind of Marvel Avenger. It does everything: it’s fast, it’s fun, it handles, it has four-wheel-drive usability and it’s adult-four-seater practical yet also doddle-to-park compact. An estate derivative therefore makes a lot of sense, since it introduces even more usability and practicality into the equation without detracting from any other quality. The estate uses the same 315bhp 2.0-litre four-pot turbo petrol engine, hydraulically controlled 4WD system and torque-vectoring rear differential as the hatchback and almost identical uprated suspension and brake parts. Because it’s longer, it has slightly more even weight distribution and thus its own suspension settings, but they’re only marginally different. Volkswagen has made a slightly better fist of the estate’s design this time…

MERCEDES C63 AMG AMG’s 6.2-litre M156 V8 is one of the great road car engines and the W204 C-Class chassis an excellent match for it. Not cheap to run, but now priced from around £18,000. It’s hard to imagine a more versatile, entertaining coupé at that price. PORSCHE CAYMAN S Around £25,000 buys the best of the late 987-gen Caymans with the post-facelift 3.4-litre flat six, so the same power as our base 718 but a far more musical delivery. A touch more gets a higher-mileage example of its 981-gen successor, mind. BMW M3 (E92) The only M3 road car ever to tout eight cylinders, the E90 is a lazier proposition than the E46 that preceded it (the two generations are now similarly priced), but this makes it an appealing GT-cum-sports car.…

In my youth, I was always running out of petrol – a combination of being too tight to brim the tank and an addiction to gauge gambling. I’ve grown out of it now. I can’t be bothered with the hassle or the reaction from my wife when the engine starts to splutter. But there’s another reason for this more mature attitude to fuel quantity, and that’s because 16 years ago I learned to fly. Early on in my flying career, I very nearly ran out of petrol while flying over mountains in Wales. I’ve never been so frightened or so relieved to be back on the ground. Ever since, I’ve been anal about always having plenty of reserve. My aeroplane has a fuel capacity of 160 litres, which, assuming there…

Thanks but no thanks Your article about petrol Kia versus electric Kia was great. As one of the ‘on-the-edge adopters’, I was really interested to see the electric car used only £17 less ‘fuel’ and took just 40 minutes longer, but you missed the bit about the biggest differences. The Proceed starts at £25,480, while EV6 starts at £40,995, which is a staggering £15,515 difference, and now the government won’t even help with a decent grant or VAT reduction. Add that to your article regarding the growing shortage of chargers (News, 9 March) and I’m going to agree with fellow reader Richard Bradshaw (Your Views, 9 March) and stick with my Porsche Cayenne GTS for the foreseeable. Roger Wilson Via email It doesn’t add up Your comparison of Kia’s EV6…

MILEAGE 5015 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if the market’s best-value SUV, now refreshed, still embodies the Dacia ethos of functionality with affordability The Duster has already started doing that familiar Dacia thing: gobbling miles just because it’s so damned convenient and economical. As I write, the car has been here exactly two months and the mileage has climbed from 385 to just over 5000. I happen to have one of those lives in which you accumulate miles, but normally I spread them more across other cars. The Duster is like its brethren: one of those cars that’s easiest to fall into than most – convenient enough, small enough, quick enough, quiet enough, comfortable enough, frugal enough. Chuck in the facts that when you take it places it doesn’t…

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven. I think Wordsworth had it right. Those with memories that extend back to the 1990s will remember it as a golden age for coupés. Keen drivers now can only look back in envy at the bounteous choice we had back then. If you felt so inclined, you could have chosen from a whole plethora of two-door sportiness that included such desirables as the Fiat Coupé, Honda Prelude, Peugeot 406 Coupé, Nissan 200SX and Volkswagen Corrado. Even Rover was in on the act with its 200 Coupé and Vauxhall with its Calibra. But for those with an eye for style and a yearning for a romantic badge, there was one coupé that stood head and…

WHY DIDN’T THINGS work out for the Vauxhall VX220? On paper, it seemed to have all the ingredients needed to shake up a niche vehicle segment. It was light, mid-engined, striking to look at and properly rapid, outperforming the likes of the Mazda MX-5 and Toyota MR2 with ease. Alas, the VX220, launched in 2000, was the unfortunate victim of badge snobbery and was often disregarded by drivers who considered it to be nothing more than a rebadged version of the Lotus Elise S2. Although it was true that some of the VX220’s brilliance came from its Lotus-derived underpinnings, including the Elise’s bonded, lightweight aluminium chassis tub, the two cars actually shared only 141 components (around 10% of its total parts). Vauxhall gave the VX220 a wider rear track and…

It’s now half a century since the wedge era of car design arrived, and it certainly created some of the best and most interesting shapes. Wedge cars are often the source of enormous and enduring arguments between aficionados, and so many of them seem to comprise firmly Marmite-like opinions, for or against. Here’s our pick of the best wedge wonders. Let the disputes begin. Lamborghini Countach 1974-1990 If the Lamborghini Miura gave rise to the ‘supercar’ name, the Countach set the bar by which all others would be judged. Styled by Marcello Gandini, it made the most of its wedge-nosed shape to appear to be moving at 100mph even when static. The appearance wasn’t just to tease the eye, either; it was far more stable at high velocities than its…