Auto Express 1482

IS it important where a car is built? It’s a particularly pertinent question to ask this week, when our cover star is the E-Pace (above) – the first ever Jaguar not to be produced in the UK. It’s set to be manufactured in Graz in Austria. Also featuring in our issue is the Lynk & Co 01, an SUV that will be sold globally by Volvo’s owner Geely but made in China. That would have set the alarm bells ringing for many a decade ago, but editor in chief Steve Fowler tells me he was massively impressed with the car’s quality when he went for an exclusive ride around the streets of Gothenburg. At the same time I was in Morocco at a Dacia plant that has produced a million…

steve_fowler@dennis.co.uk @stevefowler YOU wait years for a Jaguar SUV, then three come along in quick succession. It was little over a year ago that the F-Pace arrived, winning the 2016 Auto Express Car of the Year Award in the process. Then we saw the stunning I-Pace electric SUV concept unveiled at last year’s Los Angeles Show; it’s due to go on sale next year. But beating it into showrooms will be this, the new E-Pace, which sits unsurprisingly below the F-Pace in the line-up and arrives in the first few months of 2018 with prices starting at £28,500. It also heralds a couple of firsts: it’ll be the first Jaguar to be built outside of the UK (at Magna Steyr’s plant in Graz, Austria), and it’s also the first Jaguar…

▪ Exclusive ride in 01 SUV ▪ Swede design, made in China “We wanted to give the 01 a sporty feel, so we’ve prioritised handling and a fun drive” OLA HERMANSSON Lynk & Co vice-president steve_fowler@dennis.co.uk @stevefowler IT’S two years away from launch, but Auto Express was invited to Lynk & Co’s home town of Gothenburg in Sweden to take an exclusive ride in the brand’s first model – the 01 SUV. This isn’t only our first on-road experience of a Lynk & Co model, it’s also our first experience of a car using the new Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) platform, which has been jointly developed with Volvo and both firms’ Chinese parent company, Geely. At 4,530mm long, the 01 sits somewhere between the Audi Q3 and Q5 in terms…

▪ Smaller crossover on the way ▪ Part of unique car share plan steve_fowler@dennis.co.uk @stevefowler AS well as the 01, Lynk & Co has revealed to Auto Express its plans to expand its future model line-up to include a compact crossover, called the 02. Speaking exclusively to us, Lynk & Co’s senior vice-president Alain Visser, said: “In between the 01 SUV and 03 saloon will be a type of crossover vehicle that we’ll reveal soon. It’s got SUV cues, but it’s probably a bit lower. You’ll see that most of our cars are relatively small in size.” Visser also revealed that Lynk & Co will launch in the UK before the end of the decade. “We’re launching in China this year and Europe and the USA in mid-2019. And we…

▪ Limited-run Yaris has 210bhp ▪ Only 400 built; £26,295 price TOYOTA hasn’t made a hot hatchback for more than a generation, but now it’s back with a pretty specialised offering, and Auto Express has had an early taster of the high-performance Yaris GRMN at the Nürburgring in Germany. The new model’s suffix stands for ‘Gazoo Racing tuned by Meisters of the Nürburgring’. Only 400 examples will ever be built, and between 90 and 100 are projected to come to the UK. The Yaris GRMN features a supercharged 1.8-litre engine, and although the car is still going through the homologation process, the final outputs should be around 210bhp and 250Nm of torque. These easily overcome a kerbweight of just 1,135kg to deliver an impressive 0-60mph time that’s expected to be…

▪ 247bhp in standard model ▪ 155mph top speed claimed James_Brodie@dennis.co.uk @jimmybrods FOLLOWING our brief stint behind the wheel of a prototype version earlier this year and countless teaser images, Hyundai has finally revealed the new i30 N. It’s the Korean manufacturer’s first attempt at a fully fledged hot hatch and fires the starting gun on a range of new N-badged high-performance models from Hyundai. Hyundai touted the idea of a hot hatch at last year’s Paris Motor Show with the RN30 Concept, while the company’s involvement in the World Rally Championship since 2014 has delivered the impetus to develop new performance models. Albert Biermann, executive vice-president of Hyundai’s high-performance vehicle division, told us that the manufacturer is aiming to deliver “an accessible highperformance package”, hinting that it could undercut…