Innholdsfortegnelse for 27/01/2016 i Autocar

Jaguar Land Rover beat long-time leader Nissan to become the UK’s biggest car manufacturer in 2015, a position it has never previously held in the combined 70-year history of its constituent companies. Figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) also revealed that more new cars were built in Britain last year than in any of the past 10 years, while exports hit an all-time high. The SMMT figures show that JLR’s production rose by 50,400 units (or 9%) to 489,923, beating Nissan, whose production dropped by 4.7% to 476,589 units. However, Nissan’s Sunderland plant, which is 30 years old this year, still remains the largest car factory in UK manufacturing history. Its small decline in output has been blamed on disruption caused while the additional Infiniti…

PORSCHE HAS GRANTED the 600bhp-plus Mission E an official codename, indicating that the advanced electrically powered saloon has formally entered development. The move follows an announcement in December last year confirming that the Tesla Model S rival had been given a production green light and was tentatively set to go on sale in 2020. The production version of the Mission E, codename J1, has been conceived to sit on a bespoke platform designed to accommodate a lithium ion battery pack capable of providing the car with a range of more than 330 miles. In combination with two electric motors, the sleek four-door promises a 0-62mph time of just 3.5sec. The new platform is said to be separate to the structure being developed by parent company Volkswagen for its new range…

One of the 10 Aston Martin DB10 models produced for the Bond film Spectre is to be sold at auction. The model is one of the two ‘show cars’, and has been used solely for publicity. It’s expected to fetch around £1 million at the Christie’s auction on 18 February, with proceeds going to the Doctors Without Frontiers charity. Despite its 4.7-litre V8 engine and top speed of around 190mph, the model is not homologated, certified or approved for use on any public roads. CLUBMAN ALL4 UNVEILED The new Mini Clubman All4 has been revealed ahead of its New York motor show debut at the end of March. The four-wheel-drive Clubman will come with a choice of 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines at launch. MORGAN’S ELECTRIC FUTURE Morgan will…

BMW has kicked off its winter testing season inside the Arctic Circle with cold-weather development of six new models due over the next three years. Chief among the models undergoing testing in Sweden were a successor to the Z4, due next year, and a replacement for the crucial 3 Series, which isn’t due before 2018. It’s the first time the Z4 replacement has been seen in the metal, although its arrival was announced by BMW last year as part of a tie-up with Toyota. The two have worked together on a next-generation front-engined, rear-wheel drive sports car platform. This will not only spawn a soft-top replacement for the Z4 but also a new coupé for Toyota, likely to be inspired by the 2014 FT-1 Detroit show concept that was billed…

AUDI IS PREPARING to extend its RS performance car line-up with a new 450bhpplus range-topping version of the upcoming second-generation Q5 SUV, sources close to the German car maker have revealed. Planned to be introduced during the second half of next year, the RS Q5 will use the same twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine as the new RS4 and RS5 that are due out later this year. Audi has also confirmed that it will build a battery-electric SUV from 2018. The Q6 will be heavily influenced by last year’s e-tron quattro concept.…

It’s the 6.8sec 0 100mph time that best highlights the explosiveness of the acceleration The new Porsche 911 Turbo S does so many things so well that you can’t help but be overwhelmed when you first drive it. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that, given that it’s only a facelift, it’s such a big improvement on the outgoing model. The 991-series 911 Turbo S was launched during the second half of 2013, and it blew us away with its huge speed and utter competency. This new one is something else again, with an official 0-62mph time of just 2.9sec and a claimed top speed of 205mph. More than outright pace, though, it represents a significant step forward in terms of dynamic prowess and is more memorable to drive than…

To coincide with the RAV4’s facelift, Toyota has added the option of hybrid power to the line-up. It’s a similar set-up to the Lexus NX300h’s, the RAV4’s plusher cousin, with a 2.5-litre Atkinson-cycle petrol four-pot engine allied to a front-mounted electric motor in the front-drive version (available from £26,195) and supplemented by a further electric motor at the back in the four-wheel-drive version (from £29,795). Toyota says the combined power output is 194bhp in either configuration, dished out by a CVT. In both arrangements, the RAV4 Hybrid takes 8.4sec to reach 62mph, making it quicker than versions powered by the new 2.0 diesel and revised 2.0 petrol engine, despite the hybrid’s 105kg penalty in front-drive form and 170kg in four-wheel-drive. Exterior updates are focused on the front end and the…

For a car like no other in production, the hydrogen fuel cell-powered Toyota Mirai – theoretically on sale for £60,000 but in reality impossibly limited by supply – feels reassuringly easy to drive. Once you’ve settled behind the wheel, you find the Mirai’s responses are strongly reminiscent of those of a Nissan Leaf, a Renault Zoe or any other electric car in two ways that contrast with the fuel-burning ones you’ve been in all your life. On the one hand, the Mirai’s smoothness and quietness are the equal of any high-end luxury saloon; on the other, there’s an immediacy and accuracy about the power delivery that few conventional cars can match. But the Mirai does things differently from its battery brethren, too. It derives its power from air and hydrogen…

Reading that the car is now a consumer electronic (Autocar CES report, 13 January), I have detected a pattern in the naming of Chevrolet’s electric devices. Goodbye elegant deer names, such as Impala, and look forward to the 2017 announcements of the ‘Jolt’ and the US-only pickup version, the ‘Dolt’. This could start a run, with Ford following suit with a hybrid Mustang, the ‘Colt’, and Morgan with an all-wood ‘Holt’, Hyundai with a Ford-rivalling ‘Kolt’, China with the Roewe ‘Lolt’, Porsche with a drop-top ‘Molt’, Smart with the unisex appealing ‘Nolt’, the Maserati ‘Oolt’, the Rimac ‘Solt’, the Land Rover ‘Tolt’ and the Finnish-built ‘Wolt’. Finally Russia will announce the re-engineered Austin Allegroas the Zavod Oh Likhachova Tak, or ‘Zolt’ for short, and Volkswagen will rebrand to fool Californians…

It didn’t take the Fabia long to worm its way into the lives of various staffers Manufacturer slogans often have the feel of something dreamt up by a marketing department late on a Friday afternoon. We couldn’t see a lot of ‘Auto Emocion’ in much of the Seat line-up, before that slogan was traded in for ‘Enjoyneering’ and the current offering, ‘Technology to Enjoy’. And Renault’s ‘Passion for Life’ seems difficult to apply to a Clio Expression where 15in steel wheels are listed as one of the key standard features. However, Skoda seems hell-bent on delivering ‘Simply Clever’ cars throughout its range — and after more than six months with the latest Fabia, we have to conclude that this is one catchphrase that is being acted upon. The Fabia started…

If you’d like a quick example of the insane way in which fuel and CO2 figures are calculated these days, my A4 does the job very nicely. With a 187bhp 2.0-litre four-cylinder diesel engine and front-wheel drive, it is claimed to do 64.2mpg on the combined cycle and emit 113g/km of CO2 while it is doing it. That places it in band B from a vehicle tax point of view, and it is therefore assessed at 20% of its value as a so-called benefit in kind. What results, then, would you expect a 3.0-litre V6 diesel running through a four-wheel drive system to achieve? Well, to give you a steer, such an A4 weighs a substantial 170kg more and will clearly suffer far greater frictional losses thanks to having 50%…

TVR’s new sports car will be offered with the option of a chassis created using Gordon Murray’s iStream Carbon manufacturing process, the reborn car maker has revealed. The iStream Carbon process was showcased on the Yamaha Sports Ride Concept at the Tokyo motor show last October. An evolution of Murray’s existing iStream system, iStream Carbon involves carbonfibre panels being bonded to a tubular steel frame. TVR has revealed that it will produce a special ‘launch edition’ of its new sports car, which will be among the first models to be delivered to customers when the car enters production next year. The launch edition will feature iStream Carbon as standard, before the feature becomes a cost option on the standard car. While Murray’s stock iStream chassis is already very strong, the…

Smart’s novel two-seat city car has an open-top version for 2016. The Coupé’s ultra-compact length, width and height are retained, but the Cabrio is £2140 dearer across the range. The Cabrio is offered with the same engine choices: 70bhp and turbocharged 89bhp versions of the 0.9-litre three-cylinder petrol unit. At launch, a six-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox will be the only option, but there’ll be a five-speed manual for £995 less in March. Let’s start with the talking point: the roof. Pressing a switch next to the gearlever or on the keyfob begins a 12-second opening sequence that can be initiated at any road speed. One push of the switch gives a partial roof opening like an extended sunroof, and a second push wraps the roof right over the B-pillars and…

You sit so low in the GLC that it seems a more likely rival for an A4 Allroad than a Land Rover It doesn’t seem that long ago that Mercedes SUVs came in two sizes: modest, as anyone might reasonably rate three generations of the M-Class, and massive, as anyone outside of the US would call the blimpish GL. You could have a G-Wagen, too, of course, although no one did, because it was like buying a Land Rover Defender in Wehrmacht fancy dress. Mercedes also built something called the GLK, but you couldn’t have that in the UK, because converting it to right-hand drive was apparently too much of a bother. Consequently, despite being in the business of turning out the kind of cars people suddenly want since the…

Many flood-damaged cars could be sold on in a dangerous state You can easily spot one of the 250 flooded write-offs at Michael Douglas Auto Salvage in Carlisle. Not only because it has the word ‘floody’ scrawled on the windscreen but also because it’s covered with a film of brown silt. Move closer and you can see the heavy condensation on the windows, dirty water in the headlights and a tide mark in the engine bay. Open the driver’s door – being careful to stand back to allow the stench of sewage and flood water to escape – and water sloshes in the door pockets, while silt covers the floor, the seats and much of the fascia. The steering wheel is a circle of green mould. It and the other…

Our three-year-old pre-owned Conti GT V8 has been accumulating miles at an alarming rate. We’ve had it just four weeks and the mileage has already climbed from just over 21,000 when it left Bentley Birmingham (from whom the former owner bought another car) to 22,700. It’s one of those cars that simply eats distance. We picked it up in Crewe, drove back to London for meetings, then used it the next day for a London to Midlands return dash. That was 450 miles in the first 24 hours, right there. Even so, I’m surprised by the GT on dynamic grounds. My first impressions of Continentals were gathered during an early comparison of a GT W12 and an Aston DB9, a car we judged to be aiming at broadly the same…

READER’S CAR: MG 3 A J Barnard has a best buy that isn’t strictly Bangernomics, but he is very happy with his MG 3. “It has plenty of room inside for at least four adults, looks good, drives positively and is comfortable, with clear all-round vision,” he says. “The 1.5-litre engine performs nicely, with a bit of raucous fun. “A year and 7000 miles later, I am still enjoying this great little car. She runs happily around the crowded streets, loves a longer run without costing a fortune and draws admiring comments from almost everyone who sees her.” SEND YOUR BANGERNOMICS TALES TO JAMES Twitter: @Bangernomics Email: james@bangernomics.com WHAT CAUGHT MY EYE THIS WEEK: MOT CHECK Some people have noticed that gov.uk/check-mot-history  exists, and so it…

MG GS Summer The first ever MG SUV is longer, wider and lower than the Volkswagen Tiguan and will be offered in both front and four-wheel-drive forms in the UK. Engine options include a 2.0-litre turbo petrol unit with 217bhp. A 1.9-litre diesel will also be available. Price £18,000 (est) SPRING 2016 Abarth 595 facelift, Alpina B7, Ariel Nomad Supercharged, Audi S8 Plus, S4, RS6/RS7 Performance, R8 Spyder, SQ7, SQ5, BMW M2, M4 GTS, 225xe Active Tourer, 330e, 3 Series GT facelift, X4 M40i, Bugatti Chiron, Cadillac CT6, Chevrolet Camaro, Detroit Electric SP:01, Elemental RP1, Ferrari 488 Spider, Fiat Tipo, Ford Focus RS, Ranger, Mustang, Infiniti Q30, Hyundai i20 Active, i20 1.0, Jaguar F-Pace, XE AWD, XF AWD, Kia Sportage, Optima, Kahn Speed 7, Koenigsegg Agera RS, Lamborghini Aventador SV…

An all-new two-seat coupé concept, described as “a template for future sports cars”, will be unveiled by Vauxhall-Opel at the Geneva motor show in March. Seen here in these official pictures for the first time, the GT Concept is broadly similar in size and mechanical layout to a Mazda MX-5 but has ultramodern, flowing lines and a fixed roof. It is so pared down and “unashamedly avant-garde” that it doesn’t even need door handles or exterior mirrors. It does, however, employ the classical long-bonnet, short-boot proportions used by ‘emotional’ rear-wheel-drive sports cars through the ages, although its mechanical components are distinctly modern. A 144bhp turbocharged version of Vauxhall’s 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol engine drives the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential gearbox, which is also controllable by column-mounted shift paddles. Vauxhall-Opel…

The 718 Boxster S beats the Cayman GT4’s 062mph time by 0.2sec The most powerful version of Porsche’s all-new, turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine will have a capacity of 2.5 litres and produce up to 345bhp in the facelifted Boxster S. The model, which has been renamed 718 Boxster S following Porsche’s decision to resurrect its hallowed 718 nomenclature, is set to get its first public airing at the Geneva show in March. The revised two-seater will be joined by the more keenly priced 718 Boxster, which runs a 2.0-litre variant of the horizontally opposed four-cylinder turbo engine making 296bhp. The new models will be available from April, with an even more powerful 718 Boxster GTS due next year. At £41,739, the 718 Boxster is priced £1641 above the outgoing Boxster,…

BENTLEY IS CONSIDERING a pure electric version of its EXP 10 Speed 6. Although the coupé has yet to be signed off, sales director Kevin Rose says an electric version “is an option. The torque delivery of an EV is very Bentley-like”. Bentley would use VW Group electric tech that enables a large and powerful EV to do more than 300 miles on a single charge and achieve an 80% recharge in just 20 minutes. A plug-in hybrid version of the Bentayga SUV is also in the pipeline and will probably appear within three years. It will share its core tech with the hybrid Porsche Cayenne and therefore will most likely use a V6 engine. Plug-in versions of the Continental and Flying Spur will follow. Bentley is also considering an…

DS WILL DEVELOP its own technology in addition to sharing systems with sister brands Citroën and Peugeot, according to DS boss Yves Bonnefont. Speaking at the launch of the new DS 3 last week, Bonnefont said: “The group has defined a technology road map with three paths. First, there is technology that will be shared between the three brands because they are the core elements. “Second, there is technology where one brand will take the lead to establish the technology, which can then spread to the other brands. Finally, there is technology that’s dedicated to one brand.” It is known that DS will spearhead PSA’s electrification and plug-in hybrid technology, but Bonnefont hinted that chassis technology ideas are also being developed. DS design boss Thierry Metroz said DS models will…

Infiniti is still a minnow alongside the big German fish in the premium pond, but that’s something Nissan’s luxury brand hopes to change with this, the new Q30. Taking on the likes of the BMW 1 Series and Audi A3, the Q30 uses sizeable chunks of Mercedes-Benz A-Class under its skin. Despite this, Infiniti proudly claims to have made the Q30 its own through some careful suspension tuning and a thorough restyle of both the inside and the outside. So for all of its Mercedes lineage, this looks and feels unmistakably like an Infiniti. A range of petrol and diesel engines is available, with the most frugal 1.5-litre Renault-derived oil-burner being capable of claimed combined fuel economy of 68.9mpg while emitting 108g/km of CO2. The version we’re looking at here…

‘It’s dirty, uncomfortable, floods when it rains… but it’s beautifully functional’ Deep in the bowels of Ford’s Product and Development Center in Dearborn, Michigan, there’s a room that no security pass will grant you access to. Not that you’d ever know to try. The room is at the end of a corridor about four flights of stairs underground. It’s the kind of room that only caretakers and security guards would ever walk past: unused and almost forgotten for years. For the past two years, though, that room has been home to one of the most top-secret projects in Ford’s history: the new GT. Created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the GT40’s first Le Mans victory, the new supercar’s launch at the 2015 Detroit motor show was so secret that…

Check the windows open and close Sniff the seats and headlining Check the carpets are dry and the windows free of condensation Look for premature rust Check under the bonnet for discoloration and a tide mark Check that all the dashboard lights work Check if the windows steam up after you turn on the heater Check the light clusters for trapped water and condensation Take it for a drive, checking for smooth running and no wheel bearing noises If in doubt, have it professionally inspected…

All of the things that feel luxurious about the XC90 are fitted as standard anyway For the past six months I’ve been driving a Land Rover Defender. Obviously, in many ways it’s terrible, as you may well be aware, but I have enjoyed every single one of the 15,000 miles I’ve driven in it, even though most of those were on my own, on a motorway, which is hardly natural Defender habitat. Motorways are rather more the preferred ground of the car that has come to replace it: a Volvo XC90, in what counts for entry-level XC90 specification these days. It has a 2.0-litre diesel engine producing 222bhp and has arrived in entry-level Momentum trim, in which form it costs some £45,750 before options. “What’s an XC90 for, then?” asked…

Mileage 3959 The Type R badge attracts a cult following, and I’m having so much fun in the Civic that it’s difficult not to be converted. I’ve been dipping into the civictype-r.co.uk forum to vicariously revel in the excitement with which other owners discuss their cars. The forum is full of useful snippets, including one on suitable oil for the Type R. Given that I cover 500 miles a week, I like to have a bottle close at hand, and it turns out that there’s a recommended oil type for the turbocharged 2.0 i-VTEC engine above and beyond the 0W-20-grade lubricant specified. Honda has got into bed with Castrol to produce Edge Professional H, which is “co-engineered” between the car company and lubricant maker. Is this just a marketing gimmick…

Nissan Qashqai prices start at around £5000 for a 2007 1.5 dCi with a light six-figure mileage in low Acenta trim You may well have already come across stories about the motor industry patting itself on the back for selling more cars than ever in 2015. The trouble is that a significant number of them will have been preregistered. I have been writing about that for as long as I’ve been scribbling about motors, which is a very long time. That practice won’t ever go away but, as I never tire of pointing out, at least three times the number of used motors are sold in the same period and no one makes a fuss about that. So let’s take a look at the brand-new 2015 best sellers and see…

1 Subaru Impreza 2.5 WRX STi (2007 2011) The Mk3 Impreza broke the model’s mould, being available for the first time as a practical five-door hatch in the hope of competing with the Volkswagen Golfs of this world. But while the WRX can’t quite be held in such high esteem as its predecessors, it retains a unique and alluring character. The steering has near-perfect weighting, while the handling is spot on and able to keep everything neat and tidy until the tyres run out of traction. Under the bonnet is a 2.5-litre boxer engine, which develops 296bhp and is full of character and delightfully smooth. The WRX gets to 60mph from rest in 5.2sec. An 80,000-miler from 2008 is available from £10,000. 2 Subaru Legacy 3.0 R Spec B (20032009)…