Innholdsfortegnelse for May 21, 2025 i Autocar

The DS 4 has been given a heavy mid-life revamp that ushers in a fresh look, a new name and the option of an electric powertrain for the first time. The second-generation family hatchback has been the French brand’s bestseller in the UK since its 2021 launch, albeit with just 2300 sales in total. Even though the 4 has done much better for DS in mainland Europe, amassing 10,405 sales in 2024, the manufacturer is struggling after overall deliveries tumbled 22.4% last year. The downward trend is most prominent in the UK, where a stagnating DS has amassed fewer sales since 2023 (4000 units) than it achieved in 2019 alone. Such is its plight that reports suggested parent Stellantis was ready to offload the firm last year. Instead, though, Stellantis…

The forthcoming Polestar 7, the brand’s first mass-market model, is set to be a far bigger seller than any of its current line-up but will retain the premium billing and dynamic credentials of those cars. The Europe-made, Europe-focused crossover will arrive in 2027 and is being primed as the catalyst behind a significant growth in sales for the Swedish car maker. Polestar has not yet said whether it will use its own architecture for the 7 or adapt a platform from the wider Geely group, as it has done with each of its current models. Either way, CEO Michael Lohscheller was keen to emphasise the firm’s commitment to ensuring the new 7 looks, drives and feels like an authentic Polestar. Asked if he had any concerns about a more mainstream…

In-wheel motors have become a focal point of EV development over the past two years, as new materials, designs and production techniques have mitigated concerns around the effects of adding unsprung weight. Among the most prominent manufacturers of in-wheel motors is Surrey-based Protean. But Yasa tech chief Tim Woolmer revealed to Autocar that Yasa is also angling for a slice of the market. He said: “Probably in 12-14 months, we will be showing off our technology for the first time and it will blow your socks off.” He added that EVs are currently “in the 1930s”, comparing the benefits brought by in-wheel motors to the development of disc brakes by Dunlop and Jaguar in the early 1950s. He said: “I would guess in a significant period of time from now…

Aston Martin has become the first manufacturer to offer the second generation of Apple’s in-car smartphone mirroring system. Apple CarPlay Ultra expands dramatically the amount of screen space that the Apple interface can occupy, entering the car’s instrument display as well as its main infotainment screen. “Building on our in-house, state-of-the-art infotainment system, CarPlay Ultra will provide additional functionality and personalisation opportunities which place Aston Martin at the forefront of infotainment in the sector,” said Aston CEO Adrian Hallmark. The new system will first be rolled out in the US and Canada, with the UK and Europe following within the next 12 months. CarPlay Ultra will be included as standard in the DB12, Vantage, Vanquish and DBX 707 for the 2025 model year, along with the new DBX S. Owners…

Following the DG Cities survey, Autocar was keen to test dealer attitudes to ADAS. Posing as a buyer, a reporter visited four new car dealers and one used car supermarket. Overall, his experience was positive. For example, the VW dealer told him correctly that ADAS provide only assistance and are not intended to replace the driver. At Ford, he was told the only vehicle in the brand’s range with anything resembling autonomous capability was the Mustang Mach-E and only when specified with optional BlueCruise. At a Mini dealer, the salesperson’s explanation of ADAS was impressively detailed, but at Vauxhall the salesperson couldn’t explain how lane centring differs from lane keeping assistance. At the used car supermarket, the salesperson was ignorant of the term ADAS but, by referring to its features…

ROAD TEST LOTUS EMEYA British brand’s electric GT faces the toughest challenge in the business. Can it really go toe to toe with the Porsche Taycan? INVESTIGATION HOW SHOT IS AN EV BATTERY AFTER 175,000 MILES? We set up an independent test of the battery in a leggy Tesla Model 3 FIRST DRIVE BYD DOLPHIN SURF Is this miniature hatchback the affordable EV you’ve been waiting for? EVERY WEEK LIVING WITH A… DACIA DUSTER We collect a no-nonsense, affordable new family SUV with a fuel-sipping hybrid powertrain USED GUIDE AUDI E-TRON GT Ingolstadt’s electric grand tourer is now a bargain buy on the used market. Here’s what to look out for…

“With a well-judged balance of ride and handling and a fast turn of pace, it’s like a supersized VW Golf GTI” Our road test of the Audi Q5 last week highlighted a slip in standards among mid-sized SUVs. That the best in class scores no more than three and a half stars says plenty about the progress being made (or rather not being made), the bread-and-butter Q5 itself notable only really for being new, rather than any kind of leap forward. In that context, it’s hard to get too excited by the SQ5 performance version – the type of go-faster car that can typically push a middling breed in a direction that simply compromises it further. Which admittedly is unlikely to make you eagerly anticipate the words to come over…

Car designer Peter Stevens, famed for the McLaren F1, is revealing the inspiration behind one of his latest projects: “I was working away from home in Coventry and staying in a very basic hotel. There wasn’t even a chair in my room. So, one evening, I’m sitting on my bed eating a takeaway and feeling quite depressed when I thought: I know, I’ll buy a camper van with all mod cons, park it in the car park of the firm I’m working at and sleep in that instead!” We’ve all got to kip somewhere, of course, but Stevens – the designer of all-time classics including the F1, Jaguar XJR-15, Lotus Elan ‘M100’, Lotus ‘X180’ Esprit and the 1999 Le Mans-winning BMW V12 LMR – putting his head down in a…

WHY WE RAN IT To see if this veteran might actually be the pick of Volvo’s growing, tech-first EV range Such is the reassuring familiarity of a Volvo SUV that when this EX40 arrived on our fleet several months ago, I knew exactly what to expect: a dependable, refined, spacious tourer with a premium feel and a dash of Scandicool. It wouldn’t be tremendously exciting, but it would fit a brief that has kept plenty of buyers happy. And, as the EX40 departs, I’m pleased to say it delivered on those expectations – mostly. To start with, the EX40 is one of the most accessible electric cars I’ve driven. A newcomer to EVs wouldn’t be intimidated to drive it, and it was expertly undemanding on the road. What it lacked…

Jacked-up hatchback or compact SUV? Whichever way you view the Skoda Yeti, there’s no denying that the Czech marque’s segment-blending family car is unique, even if it did borrow its engines and parts from the vast stores of the Volkswagen Group. Its funky silhouette and quirky dimensions captured Europeans’ imaginations when it first arrived in 2009: more than 700,000 were sold before production came to an end in 2018. And long after its demise, this cheerful chariot still holds up as a reliable and appealing family wagon – especially as it can now be bought for as little as £1500. That’s a bargain price for a crossover that’s more refined than a contemporary Dacia Duster and more pleasing to drive than a Nissan Qashqai. The Yeti’s Volkswagen Golf underpinnings ensured…

For today’s battered asphalt, Jack Anderson reckons he has the perfect car: a Fiat Panda Cross. “Driving on the roads here in Hampshire, you need something that can take the rough with the smooth and the Cross does easily,” he says. “The suspension is soft and forgiving, so unless they’re really deep, potholes aren’t a problem, while on smooth roads it rolls along nicely.” While some may dream of lowering and stiffening their car’s suspension, Jack is keen to go the other way: “I like to sit high up, rather than close to the road. My ultimate car would be a Toyota Land Cruiser. I’ll have one, one day.” However, for the moment, a Panda will have to do. This small 4x4 is powered by an even smaller, 875cc two-cylinder…

“This is the finest luxury car and the best executed solution yet to the demands of the US luxury car market,” declared Norman Braman – and he should have known, as the magnate leading a successful dealership group that sold Cadillacs, Maseratis, Porsches, BMWs and even Rolls-Royces. The car in question? British Leyland’s prototypical XX of 1985 – later to emerge as the Rover 800 Series. As recently as 1982, Rover had left the US after two years of dreadful SD1 fastback sales – a repeat of the P6 saloon’s performance, fewer than 1500 having sold annually until Rover had given up in 1971. But the XX indeed seemed ideally formulated, combining the famed appeal of British style with the best aspects of Japanese cars, which were gobbling up ever…

The radically different new sixth-generation Nissan Micra has been created to appeal to younger, European buyers, in a bid to move the supermini away from being known as a “grandma car”. The newest generation of the popular hatchback – which has amassed more than six million sales since first being launched 42 years ago – has been fully revealed by the Japanese firm as a twin to Alliance partner Renault’s electric 5. This means it won’t be sold with a combustion engine for the first time in its history. The Micra is aimed squarely at buyers in Europe, a market in which Nissan is looking to grow after suffering heavy losses in recent years, necessitating a major costcutting plan (see box, right). It arrives as one of four new Nissan…

FIAT HAS RELEASED the first images of the new 500 Hybrid, which reveal that it will get an overhauled interior and a six-speed manual gearbox. Photographs of a group of pre-production prototypes show that it will be visually identical to the electric 500e except for a reworked front grille to feed air to a petrol engine. Inside, the dashboard features a larger and squarer new storage cubby and the gearlever is elevated alongside the steering wheel. Fiat has yet to confirm which powertrain the 500 Hybrid will use, but it’s expected to employ the same 1.0-litre threecylinder mild-hybrid Firefly unit that featured in the previous 500. The presence of a manual gearbox rules out the 1.2-litre three-cylinder mild-hybrid Puretech engine used in a wide range of models under the Stellantis…

THE NEW RENAULT Twingo electric city car will come to the UK in right-hand-drive form soon after its launch next year, the firm’s boss Fabrice Cambolive has confirmed. The fourth-generation Twingo is due on sale in Europe next year with a sub-€20,000 (£16,700) entry price, but there had been doubts over whether it would come to the UK due to the cost of converting the model for right-hand-drive markets. The uncertainty had echoes of the original 1990s Twingo, which was tipped to reach the UK but never officially did. But Cambolive has said the model will come to the UK, citing the strong positive reception of the Renault 5 and 4 as a key factor. “The UK is important in terms of product recognition, because your legacy in terms of…

Volkswagen will start moving all of its electric cars onto an updated platform from next year as it ushers in a new type of battery chemistry that promises to reduce costs. The Volkswagen ID 2 supermini will be the first model to use a new lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery that will be cheaper to produce than the nickel-manganesecobalt (NMC) packs used by the firm’s current EVs. After that, the rest of VW’s ID cars will move to an updated platform, dubbed MEB Plus, which will allow them to adopt the same type of battery. LFP batteries have become more popular as recent technological developments have increased their range while preserving their cost advantage over conventional NMC packs. Tesla was first to bring the technology to massproduction models, followed by Ford. Speaking…

RANGE-EXTENDERS have been in the mix of possible alternatives to pure-petrol and purediesel powertrains for nearly three decades, and with new eRE and eRE+ powertrain products from ZF Friedrichshafen arriving in 2026, we could start seeing more of them. It’s a technology that appears to be enduring. Citroën produced versions of the Saxo, Xsara and Berlingo back in the 1990s and there have been plenty of working concepts from various manufacturers since. For instance, GM launched the Chevrolet Volt in 2016 and the Mazda MX-30 R-EV is on sale today. ZF is one of the world’s largest automotive tier one suppliers and it’s investing big in range-extender technology. Its aim is to make it easier for manufacturers to slot the technology into production cars in a modular way rather than…

THE TOP DESIGNERS, engineers and company bosses will usually get the headlines and plaudits for the successful launch of a new car. But behind them is a team of hundreds, maybe thousands, working towards that success. New models must be planned and costed then delivered on time and on budget. That involves planning and project management, and Renee Knott, whose role at Aston Martin sees her head up both of those areas, is one of those backstage heroes. She left a staff role at JLR for a contract job at Aston in 2003 as a programme timing analyst, such was the pull of the marque and the extent to which “she loved the cars”. She became a member of staff in 2006 and has been there since. In her early…

What a great week I’ve had in your fair country. Due to a choral concert commitment in Hebden Bridge in early May, we decided to take our Cupra Born on a nine-day road trip, which had us visit Galloway, York, the Calder Valley and the Lake District. The conclusions I can draw from our visit are: the people of Scotland and northern England are universally friendly and helpful; our electric motoring experience was almost entirely stress-free, as we found CCS2 ultra-fast chargers to be plentiful and never had to wait for one; and the proliferation of roadworks is as bad in England and Scotland as it is in Ireland… One of my personal highlights was a visit to the excellent Lakeland Motor Museum at the south side of Lake Windermere.…

Those waiting for the now widely practised clichés about very fast EVs might be disappointed by what follows. Is the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT actually unpleasant when given its near-1100bhp head? Painful, even? Nope. It responds to the angle of your right foot superbly well – and in a way, from low speeds especially, that makes just about every other performance car seem like it must have been running in some secret limp mode. Is it violent? Can be. But not brutish, or even boorish – not unless you are. The point is, it does precisely what you ask of it. The odd part is being able to ask for so much, so very precisely indeed. While you get used to its potential, the raw performance feels otherworldly. More like…

L and Cruisers have that aura. It’s one earned from habitually being the wheels of choice for tough people in tough parts of the world, where dependability is all and salubrious alternatives aren’t considered. Because what’s worse when you’re in the back of beyond: a bit of scratchy plastic trim or electrical gremlins? The challenge for Toyota now, and especially in Europe, is that people want it all. Since Land Rover reinvented the Defender and demonstrated that truly car-like road manners could be delivered with little to no compromise to offroad ability, and that an off-roader’s cabin can be both hard-wearing and a little luxurious, everyone else has had to rapidly up their game. Jeep’s Wrangler now steers more accurately than ever and has a cabin of surprisingly high quality…

Tesla’s in a spot of bother. So far this year, its sales across Europe have dropped by around 45% and profits have taken an even more vertiginous slump of 71%. Adding to its woes was the news last month that it was forced to issue its eighth (yes, you read that right) recall of its cubist Cybertruck, this time to remedy its propensity for shedding stainless steel bodywork. So what’s going on? If you look at many of the headlines, the finger points directly at the company’s controversialist CEO, Elon Musk. His appetite for attracting attention of the wrong kind certainly hasn’t helped lure customers into showrooms – although it has created a cottage industry in ‘not in my name’ bumper stickers – but as ever the answer is, well,…

“Having done the McLaren F1, I was momentarily unemployable because everybody assumed I’d charge McLaren prices! “My proudest achievement was the Jaguar XJR-15. We did it in a very short time and on a very small budget. Tom Walkinshaw [boss of TWR, the firm behind the XJR-15] stuck the registration plates from his Range Rover on it and drove it for a week before declaring he loved it. “The Jaguar avoided what I call the ‘folded cardboard style’ of Italian design, which Lotus was then obsessed with. I did the aero changes to the Esprit because the first, squareedged version was disastrous in terms of aerodynamics. Marketing advertised that it had a drag coefficient of 0.33 but in truth it was 0.45. My version actually was 0.33 Cd, which they…

AN OWNER’S VIEW UNA MULLIGAN-QUENBY “I’ve had a Skoda Yeti for three years. My old car was involved in an accident, so I upgraded to one with a leather interior and air conditioning. I love the Yeti: it reminds me of my old Land Rover Freelander, and because it’s tall and has a great driving position, I can see over hedgerows on country lanes. It’s good in town and fits into tight parking spaces. I would highly recommend one, and it’s a shame that Skoda doesn’t still make them.” BUYER BEWARE… ■ ENGINE High oil consumption is common across the engine range, so be sure to use the dipstick: timing chains are known to fail due to oil starvation, particularly on the 1.2 and 1.4 engines. Infrequent oil changes or…

Nissan is to cut 20,000 jobs, close seven factories and freeze all post-2026 product work as part of an expanded global restructure aimed at reducing annual costs by £1.3 billion by 2027. This builds on the Japanese company’s February announcement that it would reduce its workforce by 9000, close three plants and slash production by 20% (to five million vehicles per year). The new announcement includes those previously disclosed plans, said Nissan, and came as the company confirmed a £3.8bn net loss in the 2024-25 financial year. New Nissan president and CEO Ivan Espinosa attributed the heavy losses to “rising variable costs, compounded by an uncertain environment”, adding that this new “prudent approach” has the aim of “returning to profitability by fiscal year 2026”. To that end, Nissan will reduce…

MERCEDES IS RAMPING up testing of its new CLA Shooting Brake. Expected to make its debut at the Munich motor show in September, the CLA wagon will, like the saloon, arrive first in electric form, with a petrol version following later this year. At launch, it will have the same 85kWh battery as the standard CLA but, given its bulkier body, isn’t expected to match its 484 miles of range.…

JLR posted pre-tax profits of £2.5 billion in the 12 months to the end of March, its highest recorded in 10 years. For the 2024-25 financial year, the British company generated £29bn in revenues and its best profit in a decade, despite “global economic challenges”. Record sales for the best-selling Defender (left) played a significant part (115,404 sold, up 9.7%), as did the Range Rover Sport (79,862 sold, up 18.7%) and the larger Range Rover (77,000 sold, up 8.9%). Sales of the smaller Discovery Sport and Evoque were up 9.3% and 26.7% respectively, but the older Discovery – in its eighth year in showrooms – declined 5.8%. Jaguar sales nearly halved (to 26,862) as JLR wound down production in preparation for its bold new electric era. That will begin next…

British electric motor maker Yasa expects to almost double its annual production volumes by 2026 as several major brands launch new performance cars exploiting its technology. More than 25,000 motors are expected to come off the Mercedes-Benz-owned firm’s Oxford production lines from next year, up from just under 15,000 today, as its unique motor design underpins an increasing number of new cars from the likes of Lamborghini and Mercedes-AMG. Yasa’s motors employ a proprietary axial-flux design, called the Yokeless and Segmented Armature, which is claimed to be four times more powerdense than the radial-flux motors common in today’s mainstream electric and hybrid cars. In simple terms, it provides a boost of around 150bhp or more in a package not much larger than a stack of three or four dinner plates.…

Porsche is gearing up to launch what insiders at its Zuffenhausen headquarters in Germany describe as the most extreme and technically advanced 911 yet: the fifth-generation GT2 RS. Set to go on sale in the UK next year, the new range-topping 911 is being developed to stretch the limits of what is possible in a road-legal Porsche. It will be powered by a heavily re-engineered, twin-turbocharged version of the company’s signature horizontally opposed six-cylinder petrol engine, paired with an electric hybrid system derived from the new 911 GTS T-Hybrid. One important goal of the hottest 911 is to restore Porsche’s supremacy at the Nürburgring, where development prototypes have been lapping as a full unveiling approaches. New spy shots confirm the forthcoming 911 GT2 RS will be as visually aggressive as…

Widespread confusion regarding the capabilities and limitations of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) is developing a ‘trust gap’ with modern cars. That’s the conclusion of a new survey from technology specialist DG Cities, which warns that in order to buck this trend, dealers and car makers need to explain the tech better to buyers. From its findings, 40% of respondents report receiving insufficient information at the point of purchase. Assistance systems such as blindspot monitoring and lane centring were made standard on new cars through the European Union’s recent General Safety Regulations 2 (GSR2) with the aim of halving road deaths. Highlighting some of the findings from the survey, DG Cities behavioural scientist Lara Suraci said: “A quarter of motorists were not happy with their cars’ ADAS features while one…

CHANGE IS GOOD AND BAD I read with interest Matt Prior’s appreciation for a more ‘endearing’ version of the gentleman’s G-Wagen (Prior Conviction, 23 April). Matt is clearly ‘of a certain age’ – and as I sit comfortably in the same cynical, nostalgic, old-gittish space, I too find myself wanting the good things that I remember of older cars, while conveniently forgetting that there was plenty of rubbish going on with them also. Each to their own, but personally I’m cool with new paint colours and bigger wheels. I’m far more irritated by countless electronic interventions and additions that I neither want nor need, whether they be supposed EU requirements like speed and seatbelt ‘pinging’ or simply nonsense expressions of greater aspirational luxury, such as the electric parcel shelf in…

Of all the bad habits that we accumulate across our motoring lives, one of the worst might just be to presume that we have to pay well above a car’s basic price for a respectable motoring experience. The ‘Post Office spec’ is long gone from makers’ ranges, yet Brits are still well known for buying ‘richer’ specifications than anyone else in Europe. Richer for whom, you may reasonably ask. The most basic Volvo EX30 shows the wisdom of refraining from ticking boxes on the order form. Sure, you can pay extra for a bigger battery, more gadgets and four-wheel drive (courtesy of a second motor), but without going for any of that, you get a handsome, compact EV that certainly doesn’t look like a poverty model, enough power to shame…

Zuffenhausen old boy and recently installed CEO at Bentley Motors, the estimable Frank-Steffen Walliser, recently spoke to us about making “something more extreme”. Settling into his new role after 29 years with Porsche, the German was hinting at future models that could bring added excitement to the traditional Bentley way of doing things (911 GT3 RS treatment for the Conti GT, anyone?), but he could just as well have been talking about the super-saloon he’s just launched. You’re looking at the latest Flying Spur, which now comes exclusively in V8 hybrid flavour and with no shortage of horsepower in any form, but especially in top-billing Speed guise, as we have here. This car puts out as near as dammit 800bhp and thus comfortably outguns its 6.0-litre W12 predecessor. The old…

Word association time: what comes to mind when you think of Subaru? Easy: a blue and yellow Impreza flying sideways down a rally stage, somewhere around – or possibly just beyond – the limit. Here’s something that doesn’t come to mind, though: electric vehicles. With the heavy cost of electrification and an influx of cut-price Chinese manufacturers, these are difficult times for even the largest car makers operating in Europe. And for the smaller ones struggling for every sale they can get, it’s enough to make you wonder: why go to the trouble? Subaru Europe boss David Dello Stritto understands why you might ask that. “You could think: ‘Okay, we’re selling around 30,000 cars a year in Europe and we’re doing around 700,000 in the US, so why bother?’” says…

“My favourite aspect of the driving experience was actually the braking” WHY WE RAN IT To find out if the Cupra Tavascan really is a sporty SUV – and if the segment needs it When I was handed the keys to Cupra’s funky-looking new electric SUV at the start of the year, I was excited, especially given how much I had loved the smaller Born electric hatchback. While that car was essentially a reworked and sportier version of a Volkswagen ID 3, the Tavascan was billed as Cupra’s take on the ID 5. I was intrigued to learn more. So, in my first report, I asked whether this 2.3-tonne EV, with 335bhp and a 0-62mph time of 5.5sec, really could be considered a sporty proposition or was just another dynamically…

CUPRA LEON ESTATE Mileage 6010 Last seen 14.5.25 A weekend away with a few caraverse friends gave me valuable insights into how well Cupra is resonating with its young and trendy target market. “I thought Seat made the Leon,” said one when I arrived. “Is it a Tesla?” wondered another innocently on clocking the unfamiliar emblem. I had high hopes for a parttime petrolhead, until he asked: “Cupra’s the all-electric brand, isn’t it? What’s the range like?” I’ve got some teaching to do. FP SUZUKI SWIFT Mileage 9876 Last seen 7.5.25 The Swift’s touchscreen is pretty small (not that I would want it to be any bigger) but still quite annoying at night. So imagine my delight when I found out that you can turn it off while keeping your…

DACIA SANDERO STEPWAY 1.0 TCE PRESTIGE 2022, 10,000 miles, £12,995 With its chunky, rugged styling and economical little 1.0-litre engine, this Stepway is just as fun and capable as the Panda (left). Plus it’s spacious, it has plenty of standard kit and it should average 50mpg. KIA PICANTO 1.0 T-GDI 2022, 4500 miles, £14,395 Phone mirroring, heated seats and a heated steering wheel: this low-mileage Picanto has all the right features to make city work that bit comfier – and GT-Line S trim makes it look great too. Like the Stepway above, it will regularly achieve 50mpg and it has a full service history. SEAT MII ELECTRIC 36.8KWH 2021, 29,000 miles, £8995 Want a climate-conscious city car? This tidy Mii should serve you well. A real-world range of 140 miles…