Innholdsfortegnelse for May 15, 2024 i Autocar

STELLANTIS WILL BRING Chinese electric car maker Leapmotor’s T03 supermini and C11 SUV to European markets – including the UK – in early 2025. The multinational giant paid £1.3 billion for a 20% stake in the eight-year-old firm and exclusive export rights late last year. The C11, a seven-seat rival to the Tesla Model Y with a claimed 342-mile range and up to 536bhp, will be imported from Leapmotor’s factory in Hangzhou, eastern China, but Stellantis will build the European-market T03 itself in Tychy, Poland. The city-focused supermini will be built alongside the Jeep Avenger and combustion-powered Fiat 500, although it isn’t yet confirmed whether production of the Italian model will be affected. Recent reports suggested that Fiat plans to replace the 17-year-old 500 with an ICE version of the…

IF AUTONOMOUS CARS capable of doing most driving duties become a reality, we will be free to relax or focus on other things while on the road. But will we be able to make the mental switch back to driving and regain control fast enough in a critical situation? Researchers at the University of Glasgow have been investigating whether augmented reality could help in this regard. The problem is that letting the car take control while concentrating on something else means the driver’s role shifts to somewhere between that of a driver and a passenger, not actively involved in steering but still in charge of the car. One thing we aren’t good at, says the research team, is “sustained supervisory tasks”. We become bored, lose awareness of road conditions and…

Values of used electric cars are reaching parity with equivalent petrol and diesel models, new data has revealed. First-quarter data from Manheim Auctions showed an average trade price of £16,654 for a two-to four-year-old EV, compared with £18,063 for an equivalent diesel car – a 7.8% difference. Comparable petrol cars sold for £12,980 – 28.3% less than EVs and 39.2% less than diesels. EVs were still much more expensive when compared with ICE cars across all age groups, averaging £16,829 in the first quarter next to diesel’s £6051 (-64.0%) and petrol’s £6108 (-63.7%). However, this was disproportionately weighted by newer, more expensive EVs, while two-to four-year-old cars represent prime used stock for franchised dealers. Used EVs have traditionally been more expensive than their ICE equivalents, deterring many buyers, but prices…

“About time, huh?” said Lando Norris to Jenson Button in his post-race interview in Miami – before dropping a cheeky F-bomb live on TV. Don’t judge the 24-year-old too harshly for his lapse in manners: it had taken him 110 grands prix to finally win one and banish that unwanted record of most Formula 1 podiums without a victory. The first one is always the sweetest, especially when you have to wait so long. Yes, a generous slice of luck was served his way. Kevin Magnussen’s clumsy bungle into Logan Sargeant was perfectly timed for Norris to pit his McLaren under the safety car and resume ahead of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull. But the Brit had already proven the quickest driver on track once he had been uncorked when Sergio…

There’s now an electric G-Class, while the combustion versions, including this bombastic AMG G63, have been hybridised. Has Graz gone woke? Are pigs soaring over fields while Beelzebub ice-skates beneath them? The short answer is no. The latest G63 is only a mild hybrid (thanks to a 48V integrated starter-generator) and reassuringly is still an in-your-face, ostentatious display of wealth – making it clear you can afford to ignore tedious objectives such as price, interior space and fuel economy. This is ostensibly a facelift, and a light one at that. New stuff includes a slightly different radiator grille and a new lip to the windscreen to improve the drag coefficient. Inside, the G63 has gained the latest MBUX infotainment system, which means a few firsts: this is, for example, the…

Back in 2018, your correspondent spent an eye-opening two days at the Guangdong International Circuit near Guangzhou testing and judging 23 different Chinese cars as part of a Car of the Year test organised by local media. It was memorable for all kinds of weird and wonderful reasons, the quality of the cars on show being one in particular. I had attended a similar test the year before that, and in 2018 the leap forward in the quality of cars was far more noticeable than it would have been had similar tests been run in Europe over the same years. At the very least, China was on the right track and learning fast about cars with the potential for global export appeal; back then, the designs were clearly ahead…

For years – for decades, even – there’s nothing. You can trawl for as long as you like through Autocar’s rather wonderful digital archive (see p39 for details): incidences of the Lotus and Audi brands – so distant from each other for so long, operating within market niches entirely discrete from one another – finding their way into competition in the same group test simply don’t exist. Then, in 2006, shots were fired: the Audi R8 appeared, and the following year it won our annual Britain’s Best Driver’s Car contest – beating a Lotus 2-Eleven in the process. The Lotus Evora returned fire in 2009, winning the title outright and beating the V10-engined incarnation of the R8 back into joint fifth place. From there on out, suddenly there are semiregular…

I’ll have the V8 In a rare departure from Autocar’s usual high standards, you have erred in titling an article ‘Electric Range Rover to be no-compromise luxury SUV’ (News, 1 May). The title contradicts itself. An electric car is by definition compromised. Gary Williams Poole, Dorset Not fit to wear the badge Has Volvo chucked away its reputation for safety? Looking at the EX30 (road test, 1 May), I’d say it has. It’s a nice car inside and out, but crash-worthiness isn’t the be-all and end-all: a car primarily needs to be safe to drive, and the EX30 obviously isn’t. Autocar has a fivestar marking system but very rarely uses the lower part of the range. I mention this because I believe the EX30 should get an overall one-star marking.…

The first 5 Series was launched more than 50 years ago, so by the time this sixth-generation F10 saloon version of 2010-17 landed, BMW had the recipe just about right. Autocar’s testers awarded the model four stars, praising its performance and economy, quality cabin and refinement; they deducted points for its bland styling, below-par suspension and expensive options. Even so, it sold well to ambitious executives, with the result that today the classifieds are stuffed with F10s at prices starting from £3000 for an early 520d with a starship mileage, rising to £19,000 for a late 535d with around 45,000 miles – not that diesel is the only choice. The petrols didn’t sell anything like as well as the tax-efficient diesels, but there’s a wide selection of options ranging from…

AUTOCAR RECENTLY HONOURED the female high-fliers of the British automotive industry at our annual Great Women awards ceremony. Even in the very earliest days of motoring, there were a number of pioneering women. But very few are widely known today, so let me introduce you to one who achieved several significant firsts: Vera Hedges Butler. She was born in London in 1881 to a wine merchant father, Frank, who in 1897 became one of the first people in Britain to buy a car (a Benz). Through the embryonic Royal Automobile Club, Frank met aristocratic young engineer Charles Rolls (who had bought his own first car, a Peugeot, two years prior, aged 18). Both men would take part in the 1000 Miles Trial of April 1900, a massed journey from London…

“It is likely that the Aston 4x4 would be closely related to the DBX SUV” Aston Martin is considering a rugged, high-powered super-4x4 to rival the Mercedes G-Class, Autocar can reveal. Design proposals for the shock new model are being evaluated internally, Autocar understands, but no decision has been made yet on whether to go ahead with what would be Aston’s second SUV. Tellingly, the Gaydon firm’s 4x4 concept is said to be dubbed ‘Project Rambo’ internally, a moniker that echoes the nickname of Lamborghini’s seminal LM002 – a radical, go-anywhere 4x4 pick-up truck with a V12 lifted from the Countach supercar. Like the Lamborghini, Aston’s 4x4 is expected to match supreme off-road ability with supercar levels of performance and luxury credentials that befit a lofty price, should the car…

THE VOLKSWAGEN POLO could be on sale for another five years, having been given a stay of execution by the relaxation of upcoming EU emissions legislation. Initial proposals for the Euro 7 emissions regulations were set to kill off Volkswagen’s supermini, because the cost of making it compliant would have obliterated its profitability. In 2022, Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer told Autocar that it made “no sense to go with very small cars beyond Euro 7” because – according to his estimations – the rules would have added “£3000, £4000 or £5000 or more” to the cost of a Polo-sized car. However, those rules were heavily watered down by European law makers last year in response to widespread criticism from the car industry about the added development and homologation costs they…

Alpine has unveiled the Alpenglow Hy4, a hydrogen-combustion supercar that will be used to develop the technology for future road and track cars. An evolution of the Alpenglow concept shown two years ago, it made its dynamic debut at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium last weekend as a showcase of the performance potential of the emerging technology. It is powered by a new turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine said to be unrelated to the A110’s. Hydrogen is drawn from three tanks, each carrying 2.1kg of the gas at 700 bar of pressure. This is then injected into the cylinders at 40 bar alongside a spray of water that is said to reduce toxic NOx emissions. The powerplant can rev to 7000rpm – 200rpm higher than its limit in the top-rung A110 R –…

Male workers taking a comfort break at premium electric car brand Zeekr’s impressive new factory in Ningbo, 130 miles south of Shanghai, are faced with a motivational poster that reads more like a threat. “To live, to win it all, what does it mean? It means that even a small mistake is not allowed in 2024!” In China’s cut-throat new car market, only the fittest survive, and Zeekr needs to be fit, because it’s arguably vital to the long-term health of parent company Geely. Zeekr is also targeting European buyers, starting late last year in Sweden and the Netherlands, with the 001 shooting brake and X compact SUV. More countries will be added this year, including Germany, and the UK is expected to follow. So far, Zeekr has been a…

I think it has finally happened: I can’t keep up with the car world. Sorry. I I just suddenly feel overwhelmed. Where to start? Well, Land Rover announced that it was dropping its straight-six petrol engine from the Defender, which from memory it introduced only about 30 minutes ago, in favour of a V8. Now, don’t misunderstand me: I don’t mind this idea at all. But the V8 in question is JLR’s own supercharged 5.0-litre one, which I thought it had replaced with BMW’s twin-turbocharged 4.4-litre one. Then Mate Rimac, of electric hypercar fame and sometimes dubbed ‘Europe’s Elon Musk’ by the press (I think I would sue if anyone called me that…), told the Financial Times’ Future of the Car conference that the next Rimac is unlikely to be…

With 656bhp rather than the 503bhp of its predecessor, Aston Martin’s latest Vantage has moved on to a new performance plane. It was a serious sports car before but the comprehensive overhaul has, as with the DB12 we were so impressed by recently, significantly shifted its capabilities. Its price too: this is a £165,000 car before options. In appearance, it is mildly tweaked, enhanced, more muscly and 30mm wider now, at 1981mm across the body. The chassis, a blend of aluminium extrusions and castings, is a similar architecture to the DB12’s, though this car is shorter of wheelbase (2692mm) and overall length (4496mm) because it’s a sports car, not a grand tourer. It’s Aston’s most focused series model, for now, but one might expect a more hardcore variant later. This,…

The UK now gets the G500. Alas, it doesn’t have a V8. The only way to get your hands on an eight-cylinder G-Class is to go down the AMG route. The ‘regular’ model, then, is now available with two 3.0-litre straight-six engines: a 443bhp petrol in the G500 and a 362bhp diesel in the G450d. It makes sense, really: keep the V8 for the people who really, really don’t care about MPG and offer a six for those who just don’t really pay attention to it. The diesel is a peach. Like the V8 and the petrol six, it’s now a mild hybrid by way of a 48V integrated starter-generator, which lifts power by 20bhp to 382bhp (and explains rebadging it from G400d to G450d). On rational grounds, this is…

There are many remarkable stats about Geely, yet the one that might stand out the most is that it’s actually the biggest company in Sweden. Some 30,000 people are employed by Geely companies there, the biggest, of course, being Volvo Cars, which Geely Holding Group notably acquired back in 2010. But there are also design and engineering centres for brands including Zeekr and Lynk&Co. One of the best comparisons for Geely is Virgin or Tata: huge multinationals with a diverse range of brands operating across multiple industries. Geely was formed in 1986 by entrepreneur Li Shufu and originally made refrigerators; Geely Auto didn’t follow until 1997. Today, there isn’t a company called just Geely. Geely Auto sells Geely-badged cars mainly in China, where it shifted 1.7 million units in 2023.…

MODEL TESTED PREMIUM • Price £39,895 • Power 268bhp • Torque 253lb ft • 0-60mph 5.7sec • 30-70mph 4.9sec • Economy 3.3mpkWh • Max DC charging speed 157kW • 70-0mph 45.7m Having catered to more practical tastes when it first reappeared in 2023 with the #1 compact SUV, the rejuvenated Smart brand is now bringing us something a little more stylish. The promotional literature for the all-electric new #3 actually goes so far as to describe it as “all-exciting”. Exciting or not, it is clearly a lower, more curvaceously appealing prospect than its range-mate, playing to a quite different crowd. This is a second showroom Smart model we can use to continue to piece together how the brand is going to define itself under shared Geely/Mercedes ownership, then. Smart calls…

MILEAGE 21,040 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To make a case for Volvo estates’ revival and try the firm’s used buying scheme We all know Volvo axed its estates in the UK because there just wasn’t the demand, with that instead going to SUVs. No surprise there. And Volvo’s biggest seller worldwide is the XC60, to which I’m quite partial too, despite being an estate fangirl. One of my good friends, Sophie, lives in a corner of leafy Hertfordshire – a Volvo enclave if ever there were one – and is now on her second XC60. It’s a safe bet that Sophie, her husband and their two children are the exact demographic that Volvo (and most car brands) hope to appeal to – relatively young, affluent and with that active lifestyle…

In his informative piece about fuel cell development for cars (Under the Skin, 24 April), Jesse Crosse rightly described the elephant in the room as being the lack of a hydrogen refuelling network. However, consistently ignored in the FCEV debate is the elephant’s bigger brother, which is the fact that an FCEV will consume around three times as much electrical energy per mile as a BEV. Why? Because the process of making hydrogen via the electrolysis of water is around 70% efficient, while compressing the hydrogen to 700 bar for on-board storage is 85% efficient (ie it requires pumping energy equal to 15% of that contained in the gas itself) and the efficiency of the fuel cell itself is around 50%. Multiplying those factors together gives an overall efficiency value…

An owner’s view ALAN WELLS “I’ve owned my 528i for eight years. It was registered in 2013 and has done 109,000 miles. Despite the awful roads where I live in the West Country it’s as tight as a drum. I did have to replace three of the coil springs, though. They had developed cracks; it’s a common problem. It’s an effortless, long-distance cruiser that’s also supremely comfortable. On the motorway it returns up to 37mpg. Road tax is a reasonable £200 and the last major service – the intervals are every two years – was £300. I can live with that.” Buyer beware… DIESEL ENGINES Those up to 2014 can suffer a sticky turbo wastegate and premature chain tensioner wear – listen for telltale rattling or tapping noises. Check that…

The Seat brand will live on in the future with a lower-cost electric car positioned below the Cupra range. Seat and Cupra boss Wayne Griffiths sought to put an end to speculation about the future of the Seat brand once and for all by confirming the likelihood of such a model in the future. That speculation was in part fuelled by the chairman of Seat SA (parent company of Seat and Cupra), Thomas Schäfer, who said last year that “Seat’s future was Cupra”. That future beyond today’s range of Seat models, said Griffiths, will take shape when lower-cost electric cars can be made profitably. “The €20,000 question is when Seat needs to be on the table and as part of the answer,” Griffiths told Autocar. He said that while the…

Rolls-Royce will soon break ground on a significant extension of its factory at Goodwood, West Sussex, that will enable it to offer substantially more personalisation on each car that it builds. Planning permission was recently granted by Chichester District Council, enabling the firm to progress with what will be the most substantial investment in the factory since it was opened in 2003. Extending it is high on the priorities list for Chris Brownridge, the former BMW UK boss who took the helm at Rolls-Royce at the end of last year, following the departure of long-standing CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös. Speaking to Autocar for the first time since taking the job, Brownridge – who has held several high-ranking positions in the BMW Group since joining in 2005 – said that expanding the…

The Volvo EX90 will go into production shortly, more than 18 months after it was first revealed, with the Swedish brand promising that its electric flagship SUV will set new standards for safety. The large SUV, which will sit alongside the combustionengined XC90, was first shown back in November 2022. Manufacturing will start shortly at Volvo’s US factory in Charleston, South Carolina. Priced from £96,255, it is available to pre-order now, with first UK deliveries due before the end of the year. Although product manager Hande Ergiturk admitted that the EX90 had been delayed by a number of software issues, she said the car’s reveal “was deliberately early, because it wasn’t just a car reveal, it was a reveal of our new technology”. The EX90 is the first car to…

MONDAY Suddenly there’s a new date in the diary. Until this week, I expected that from 4-6 June I would either be bashing a keyboard or hanging about some far-flung photo location, just doing the job. Now I know I’ll be at the Honourable Artillery Company, attending the London Concours, where an extraordinary, historic, amphibious off-roader called the TVR Scamander will spearhead a crazy class called Wildcards. The Scamander is an eye-popping one-off built in 2008 by Peter Wheeler, the chemical engineer made good who owned TVR in its glory days of 1981-2004. It’s a large, three-seat amphibian, shaped like a giant cockroach, that uses a mid-mounted Ford V6 to power its rear wheels on land and a water jet when it’s afloat. It had been hibernating since Wheeler died…

Hands unyielding on the steering wheel. Foot welded to the accelerator. Round and round I go for two rotations, inner ear out of sync, the world a blur. I’m experiencing this new Mercedes EV’s party trick: the ‘G-Turn’. All four of its electric motors rotate it nearly on the spot. It’s good fun and it’s quick, unlike when BYD’s Yangwang U8 does it. A bit of a gimmick? Sure, but the G-Class has always been a bit gimmicky, and this is a G-Class through and through. The first electric G-Class – or, to use its clumsy proper name, the G580 with EQ Technology – sits alongside the regular G450d, G500 and AMG G63 (see p30-31), and Mercedes really wants you to just see this as a G-Class first and a…

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N has finally landed in the UK, so we had to have another go to make sure that it’s still a game-changer when driven on a patchy B-road. I’m keeping this short, because my colleagues Matt Prior and Richard Lane have already expertly introduced and reviewed Hyundai’s XXL electric hot hatch, and it’s bound to appear in future group tests. Here’s what matters: within a few minutes of setting off, I was on a halfway-decent road, stuck behind a Vauxhall Corsa doing 40mph in a 50mph zone. I held back a bit, then went through a corner and squeezed the accelerator. The car rotated gently, feeling agile; the steering was talkative and the suspension felt connected to the road, yet still compliant. The car felt alive…

MILEAGE 11,556 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see whether a recent update has kept Audi’s flagship EV at the leading edge As it breaks through the 11,000-mile barrier, a mileage amassed in a matter of months, the SQ8 E-tron has spent recent weeks specialising in what it does best: longer-distance motorway journeys. Twice recently it has taken a rapid, one-stop day return journey from my home in Gloucestershire to Rye in East Sussex, 340 miles in all. I say longer trips rather than just plain long, because despite promises of a 290-mile range, the big Audi is only reliable to 220-230, and that’s when you’re fairly careful to save power in elementary ways, by avoiding acceleration up long hills and never cruising (as everyone else seems to do) 10-20mph beyond…

COMPARISON BMW 530e vs Mercedes-Benz E300e The 5 Series and E-Class are age-old rivals, and both now offer updated PHEVs. So which makes the best efficient executive hauler? DRIVEN Cupra Tavascan The Born is one of our favourite EVs. Is its new SUV sibling cut from the same cloth? DIARY DATES A summer of motoring fun Events that guarantee a good time (if not warm weather) EVERY WEEK FIRST DRIVE Ineos Grenadier No-nonsense 4x4 turns Quartermaster pick-up truck ROAD TEST Volkswagen Tiguan All-new version of Wolfsburg’s best-seller meets our road testers SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p20…

A road test in any other magazine might well be a short, subjective summary of a new car produced under almost any circumstances, but the Autocar road test is different. Specific, rigorous and detailed, it’s the closest examination we can give of any new model. It appears over at least eight pages and is close to 50 man-hours in the making every week. Most of what the road test process entails is designed to be strictly repeatable and fair. We benchmark standing-start and in-gear acceleration at a purpose-built test facility every week. We carry out both subjective and objective handling tests on both road and track, on the latter up to and beyond the limit of grip, so as to fully assess stability, drivability and limit handling appeal. And while…

When car makers are creating a new model, there are many hoops to jump through and a high chance that things will go wrong. For this reason, you wouldn’t blame them for playing it safe. But thankfully they occasionally like to shock. Let’s look at some cars that caused a lot of controversy when they were released but have only improved in our eyes over time. BMW 5 Series 2003 For decades, BMW stuck to subtle evolutions between generations and Russian doll-like relationships between models. Perhaps the greatest triumph of the E60 5 Series was that it comprehensively dumped all these rules for one of BMW’s most important models and produced a design that still looks sharp today. When it emerged, critics said it looked too heavy and too rounded…