Innholdsfortegnelse for 14/6/2017 i Autocar

SOME INDUSTRY-CHANGING powertrain innovation has come out of Japan over the past couple of decades, often with little-to-no fanfare from its makers. The Nissan Leaf brought electric cars to the masses, the Toyota Prius did the same with hybrids before that and since then we’ve had the Toyota Mirai and Honda Clarity as the first bespoke hydrogen cars. Japanese car makers are known for not being overly forthcoming in revealing their future plans and technology, even when it’s a true world first and worth shouting about. They are quiet innovators, with no boastfulness for the technology when works straight out of the box and an attitude that such innovation is just part of being a car maker. However, Honda has opened up this week about the 1000bhp, four-motor electric powertrain…

XF Sportbrake On sale now and aimed at three German rivals (see previous page), this car shows Jaguar’s desire to maximise market coverage with each model while streamlining development costs. F-Type 2.0 four-cylinder The F-Type has gained a new entry-level model that reduces its starting price to £49,900. The addition of the 2.0-litre engine means the F-Type is Jaguar’s most wide-ranging model. E-Pace The E-Pace could mark Jaguar’s biggest assault on the global car market. The BMW X1 and Audi Q3 rival will have front-wheel drive as standard and be priced from under £30,000. XE SV Project 8 Jaguar’s Special Vehicle Operations division has created the XE SV Project 8. Just 300 of the 592bhp saloons will be made and the price is expected to be more than £100,000.…

McLaren 540C Entry model takes 3.5sec to reach 62mph and hits 199mph. As road biased as McLarens come; still sharp enough to give the Porsche 911 GTS a run for its money. McLaren 570S Arrived in 2015. A strong seller, this Audi R8 and Porsche 911 Turbo S rival is also one of the most sweetly balanced supercars in production. McLaren 570S Spider Newest arrival. It does a remarkable job of matching the coupé’s straight-line pace while adding the option of a folding roof. A potential class leader. McLaren 570GT In theory, the softest of the lot, trading outright performance for practicality (370 litres of luggage space), not that you’d know it from behind the wheel.…

MITSUBISHI UK BOSS Lance Bradley believes the UK’s new car tax system, which has raised the tax rate of certain low-emissions vehicles, could discourage consumers from buying less-polluting cars. “We’re talking to the Office for Low Emission Vehicles to try to encourage a better system,” said Bradley. THE TOYOTA SUPRA will have an automatic gearbox and BMW electronics when it arrives next year, a new sighting of a development car’s interior has shown. The two-seater is expected to make use of the same gearbox and hybrid four-wheel drive set-up as the next BMW Z4, with which it is twinned. ITALIAN RACING CAR chassis maker Dallara looks poised to name its upcoming high-performance road car the Stradale, a new trademark has suggested. A source told Autocar that the car, which is…

A passenger lap in one of the world’s hottest new supercars was just one of the highlights of Josh de Wit’s incredible month with McLaren Automotive. The 22-year old says he has to pinch himself sometimes. As part of his prize for winning the 2016 Autocar Courland Next Generation Award, he’s had three separate one-month work placements at Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot and McLaren, and he’s thrilled with the variety each manufacturer has offered him. “Each placement has been amazing,” says Josh. “I have a big interest in battery technology, and McLaren wanted me to develop in that area, so it’s been great to really throw myself into it.” During his time with the manufacturer at its Woking headquarters, Josh worked with the team behind the McLaren P1 hypercar and…

Renault Twingo GT Rear-engined, rear-driven supermini developed by Renault Sport might have been brilliant. It ought to have been a giggle, at the very least, but it isn’t even close. Fiat 500L MPW Quite breathtaking brass neck from Turin to attempt to use design cachet originating from one of the world’s most iconic microcars to sell a seven-seat MPV. Equally breathtakingly bad to drive. BMW X6 The original loathsome BMW ‘CUV’ that started the current fad is now renewed and in second-generation form. Nothing says “I’m so rich you can think what you like” quite as succinctly. Kia Venga A relic of a time when mini-MPVs were all the rage – and also when Kia’s standards on design allure and cabin quality were much lower. It’s probably only still in…

“Bangernomics, then, would seem to be dead. But you constantly prove that it isn’t” Well, here’s a big lie if ever I read one. Apparently, the great British banger is dead. Apparently, “ambitious new drivers” – the words of the people behind a survey – are now “aspiring to opt” for a brand-new vehicle as their first car. This piece of research reveals that more than a third (38%) of drivers have chosen to purchase new cars on finance once they have passed their driving tests. I suppose I’d better be careful who I accuse of being a fibber, because the company which surveyed 1371 drivers is a firm of solicitors called Motoring Offence Lawyers. I am not too sure about the point that the company is trying to prove,…

Aston Martin has turned to its motorsport arm to send its outgoing Vantage model off in style. The Vantage AMR swansong model, named after Aston Martin Racing, is the motorsport arm’s first road car product. Just 300 examples of the race-inspired model will be built — 100 with a V12 engine and 200 with a V8. The 4.7-litre V8 AMR produces the same 430bhp as the regular V8 Vantage. However, Aston Martin has applied a power upgrade to its naturally aspirated 6.0-litre V12, increasing its peak output by 30bhp to 595bhp. Both cars come with a seven-speed automated sequential manual transmission with paddle shifters but either can be specified with manual transmission instead — six-speed for the V8 car and seven-speed for V12 model. The car comes in coupé and…

The people carrier is dying a not-particularly-slow death. Once the industry’s trend segment, with MPV versions of everything (remember when Toyota slapped a Verso badge on its entire range?), that mantle is now well and truly in the hands of the SUV. MPV sales were down 13% in Europe in the first quarter of this year and declined 7% in the quarter before that. Meanwhile, small SUV sales went up 16% in Q1 of 2017. So the change in focus is not a difficult decision for Citroën to make, and nor will it be the last firm to make it.…

When it comes to initialisms, Ferrari has now reduced all other players to the role of amateurs. In just eight lines of its press release it refers to 4RM, 4RM Evo, 4RM-S, E-Diff, F1-Trac, SCM, ESC, SSC4 and SCM-E. The good news is that, like your laptop, you don’t need to know how all this tech works, merely its cumulative effect. Which, says Ferrari, is to make the Lusso’s all-wheel drive far more effective, particularly when it comes to the distribution of torque to the front axle and the way it’s vectored across the front wheels. The driveline also now includes rear-wheel steering developed from the system first produced for the limited-series F12tdf, offering up to a degree of steer either way, thanks to a hydraulically operated toe-link. The upshot…

Price £39,500 (tbc) On sale October What’s new? Range-topping petrol engine in VW’s new top-of-the-line executive five-door THOUGH IT MAY be fleshed out at a later date, VW’s Arteon range will launch with just two engines: the 2.0-litre twin-turbocharged diesel reviewed last week and this 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol. Compared with its rivals from Audi, BMW and Alfa Romeo, the VW gets off to a competitive start, with a peak 276bhp and 0-62mph in under 6sec. The car gets lower sport suspension in R-Line trim, too, but the hot hatch engine and stiffened springs still don’t make it a driver’s car. Steering is light and elastic-feeling, and agility and body control serviceable, but they’re far from inspiring. It’s a refined, spacious, alternative executive option – but it’s not as appealing as…

If you browse through the ‘What’s coming when’ section at the back of this mag, there are quite a few cars that, their manufacturers’ form would suggest, are likely to appear in the top 50 list for 2018. Some of them — the McLaren 720S, Suzuki Swift and Volvo XC60 among them — we ve already driven, and some others are not so far away, either. If the Range Rover Velar (left) and Honda Civic Type R don’t make it somewhere into the 2018 order, their makers will have fallen well short of their usual mark. They’re among cars that you simply expect to deliver: same, then, for an updated Mercedes S-Class, the VW Touareg, the Seat Ibiza and the Skoda Karoq; likewise the Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo (right). Then…

Lee Noble’s credentials as someone who instinctively knows how to build a great road car were established — as far as Autocar is concerned — in a single day. Back at the start of 1999, he cold-called our road test desk, offering us an exclusive drive of a car he’d built himself, a sports car with a mid-mounted 2.5-litre V6, possibly bound for eventual sale as a kit. The morning he delivered the car, most of our testers were on the road, and the staffer he’d arranged to meet was busy. Invited by our receptionist to hand over the keys, Noble decided to wait so he could explain this past several years’ work to the staffer. Our man finally appeared, Noble did his technical explanation and then he departed, frustrated…

Derek Buckler is regarded as the father of the UK’s kit car industry and first began selling ‘replicas’ of his successful little hillclimb car back in 1949. He sold his company in 1962, but examples of his cars still race. Pioneers such as Colin Chapman (Lotus), Trevor Wilkinson (TVR), Jem Marsh (Marcos) and the Walklett brothers (Ginetta) followed, building cars and offering them in kit form from the mid to late 1950s. A great Lotus advert from the period shows Chapman in front of a drawing board with details of his then-new Lotus VI and the marvellous strapline: “He designed it – you build it.” Peter Pellandine was another early pioneer. He introduced what we today regard as a kit car when he began selling his Ashley packages in comprehensive…

It’s turning ugly I have come to the conclusion, looking at the front cover of the 31 May issue of Autocar, that BMW and Mercedes-Benz are having a competition as to which of them can produce the ugliest car. Richard Langdon Salisbury Jean genius I read Matt Prior’s remark about blue jeans marking the cream leather in Autocar’s Skoda Superb long-term test car (Our Cars, 31 May). My late, lamented BMW 3 Series (E91 generation) had lemony-cream leather. My wife and I never worried about wearing blue jeans or anything else in it, although wax jackets (now mercifully outdated) have been banned from my cars for more than 40 years. There are two secrets to preventing stains on the leather. 1) Regularly clean the seats with Autoglym leather care products.…

No one produces as thorough a judgement on a new car as Autocar. As well as acceleration, braking, fuel economy and noise tests, we carry out benchmark limit-handling tests, setting lap times if appropriate. But we don’t just drive at the track, essential as it is for finding the limits of performance; we also drive on a wide range of roads. We aim to produce the most complete, objective verdict in the business, so you can be sure how good a car is. Where we have tested more than one model in a range, the rating is for the range overall; where a model within the range meets our coveted five-star standard, it is highlighted in yellow. » 30-70MPH Indicates overtaking ability through the gears » 50-70MPH Recorded in top…

1 Seat Ateca From £17,990 Fine-handling Seat looks great, has strong engines and stands out for its impressive dynamic execution. Typically great value, too. 2 Nissan Qashqai From £18,795 The de›ining modern crossover. Second-gen version better in all areas, most notably fuel ef›iciency, space and re›inement. 3 Skoda Yeti From £17,610 Almost a blueprint for crossover appeal: chunky looks, hatchback handling and compact MPV practicality. 4 Renault  Kadjar From £19,145 Renault’s Qashqai-based crossover is a good one. As practical as the Nissan but falls a little short on re›inement. 5 Toyota C-HR From £20,995 An interesting, refreshing and genuinely good addition to the crossover class. Shame the engine isn’t better.…

 "Iwanted a GT86,” said somebody I know in fewer than 140 characters the other day, “but they’re just too expensive”. The GT86 weighs about as much as my thumb and isn’t a great deal wider I almost know what he meant. Toyota’s little rear-wheel-drive coupé – see also: the Subaru BRZ – was given a mild makeover last year. The tweaks raised its price by £2795, and another rise since then makes a GT86 cost at least £26,855 today. A base BRZ is a bit cheaper, but not by a lot. You can get one from £26,495. Or, as we otherwise know it, about six grand more than a Ford Fiesta ST. Mechanically, the two coupés are the same and have hardly changed from before: some minor damping revisions, apparently,…

If you assumed that the rapid rise in popularity of crossovers over the past decade might have cannibalised estate sales in the UK, you wouldn’t be completely correct. It turns out that an increasing number of Brits are opting for bigger-booted models in recent times. Sales grew from 413,947 in 2014 to 573,266 in 2016, marking an increase in demand of nearly 40%. The XF Sportbrake, therefore, has real potential to become a significant money-maker for Jaguar, not least because its adoption into the XF model plan early on has made producing it much more cheaply than the previous XF Sportbrake. It will also enter the US market for the first time. Sales of estates there aren’t particularly high (188,959 were sold in 2015), but demand for them remains consistent.…

What do we want, then, from the McLaren 570S Spider? We want exactly what we get from the 570S coupé, only with a bit more fresh air. And, one supposes, given the apparent inherent strength in the 570S’s carbonfibre tub, that’s precisely what we’ll get. The result would probably be the best drop-top to drive on sale today, then, albeit perhaps not the most intoxicating. McLaren’s engine note, better today than it has ever been, still lacks a certain something compared with some rivals. The other question for McLaren, too, is what suspension settings do you give it? The same keenness as the 570S’s? Or knock it back a touch so it cruises a bit more like the 570GT, which has a softer set-up and slower steering? Dream ticket: I’d…

There have been three buzzwords in the industry for some years now : autonomy, electrification and connectivity. If you weren’t at least talking about them, or more likely at least demonstrating that you were doing something about them, you were trailing the pack. Until now, that’s exactly where Honda was – or rather the perception of where it was, because it’s clear from the technology demonstrations and speeches in Japan that work on autonomy and electrification has been well underway for some time, albeit out of sight. Honda lags behind many rivals in these areas: the roll-out of road sign recognition systems and frontal impact avoidance technology isn’t exactly ground-breaking and have been almost commonplace in Fords for many a year. However, Honda is committed to not only to playing…

Vantage will be replaced next year with an all-new model that will benefit from Aston’s tie-up with Mercedes-AMG. The V8 car will be built on new aluminium architecture and use Mercedes-AMG’s 4.0-litre twin-turbo engine. This should give even the entry-level car 500bhp. The V12 model will use Aston’s 5.2-litre twin-turbo, already in service in the DB11. Expect power to be close to 600bhp. Prototypes spotted testing have worn a modified DB11 body. Inside, the definitive Vantage will feature Mercedes-AMG switchgear and electronics. The next Vantage will arrive as part of an Aston Martin model blitz in which all of its key cars, including the Vanquish and Rapide, will be refreshed with new models and joined by the new DBX SUV, Lagonda and drop-top DB11 Volante.…

In Europe at least, the 5 Series GT represented a rare misstep for BMW. Conceived as a fallback in case legislation, economic downturn or snowballing buyer-consciousness killed off the large SUV, the 5 GT has spent a lifecycle looking like the answer to a question that no one had asked. Beyond its frumpy appearance, part of the problem was its placement: who needed a car that was practically the length of a 7 Series with vast rear headroom but not a vast boot? The decision, then, to move the concept upmarket is understandable. In the headier atmosphere of the 6 Series’s reputation, the product might find customers more inclined to embrace the idea of an expensive liftback that’s neither a pure-blood tourer nor a full-blown X-car. The positioning makes even…

SATURDAY Great driving day – exactly the sort I’ve come to expect – at Shelsley Walsh Speed Hill Climb while competing in a Renault Zoe, part of a motley field of electric cars. Our electric vehicle wasn’t quick on this short, steep track, especially when tasked with lugging a driver of fuller figure, but it steered and gripped beautifully on the same tyres worn by a Clio RS. I managed to post a best up the hill of 49.2sec, equalling the time I set in my 1955 Lotus 6 a decade ago. Thankfully our senior staff writer, Sam Sheehan, came along the following day and recorded a respectable 48.6sec, which was more in touch with an electric Ford Focus driven by a lightweight Shelsley specialist who’s used to recording 23sec…

Price £31,395 On sale Now What’s new? A respectable if not entirely compelling update of this likeable crossover STYLING, REFINEMENT and stiffness are the notable points of this CX-5 refresh, which closes the gap to Volkswagen’s persuasive and only slightly pricer Tiguan without really threatening to overhaul it. The effort devoted to making the CX-5 quieter is moderately successful; the new look even more so. A more rigid construction has certainly rendered a purposeful chassis dynamic – one arguably better suited to Scotland’s fast A-roads than an urban crawl through the home counties. It’s a more rounded vehicle in high-spec, all-wheel drive format – but, at £31,395, a comparatively big- one, . READ MORE ONLINE autocar.co.uk…

MATT PRIOR Editor-at-large Points Porsche 911 GTS 1 Volkswagen Golf R 2 Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio 3 McLaren 570S 4 Aston Martin DB11 5 MATT SAUNDERS Chief tester Porsche 911 GTS 1 Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio 2 McLaren 570S 3 Volkswagen Golf R 4 Aston Martin DB11 5 NIC CACKETT Deputy reviews editor McLaren 570S 1 Porsche 911 GTS 2 Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio 3 Volkswagen Golf R 4 Aston Martin DB11 5 ANDREW FRANKEL Senior contributing writer Porsche 911 GTS 1 McLaren 570S 2 Aston Martin DB11 3 Volkswagen Golf R 4 Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio 5 FINAL ORDER 1 Porsche 911 GTS 5 2 McLaren 570S 10 3 Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio 13 4 Volkswagen Golf R 14 5 Aston Martin DB11 18…

Lee Noble may now have decided that the market for the brand of accessible supercar he invented in the early 2000s has shrunk to uneconomic proportions, but that hasn’t stopped him creating a successor for the much admired M10, M12 and M15, just to show what it could be like. Meet the Exile, a 500bhp-plus 3.0-litre V6 twin-turbo projectile with a 200mph top speed and a sub-3 .0sec 0-60mph time. Noble built it three years ago, partly to prove to himself he could still do it. His partner has again been Justin Fielder, a longtime backer and serial Noble owner. It’s more hardcore than the M12 for which Noble is best known, with an obvious relationship to the World Endurance Championship-style racing cars he has always loved. “It’s quite high-tech…

AK SPORTSCARS AK Sportscars produces Cobra replicas that you can buy complete or in component form. CATERHAM You can still buy a Caterham Seven in component form and build it yourself. CHESIL A maker of fine Porsche 356 Speedster replicas in factory-built and home-build forms. GD CARS Stunning takes on the AC Cobra and Lola T70 Spyder theme. GBS Born out of the old Robin Hood brand and a maker of the Seven-inspired Zero. HAWK CARS Produces fine Cobra 289, AC Ace and Lancia Stratos replicas. LISTER BELL Popular takes on the Lancia Stratos theme, with Stradale and Group 4 versions. MILLS EXTREME VEHICLES Purveyors of the exo-skeletal concept with the Mazda MX-5-based Exocet. ULTIMA Kit cars with up to 1080bhp. Latest Evolution model is right up at the top…

AFTER MY MOST recent report about the disabled Forward Collision Warning (FCW) system needing repairs following an impact with a pheasant, our Renegade has been back to Jeep HQ to be fixed. The autonomous emergency braking sensor was replaced at a cost of £526.23, not including a day’s labour. I must correct something that I was told by a Jeep dealer representative: there isn’t just one ‘master’ technician in the UK with the training to repair FCW systems. It is, though, a more niche repair, but only because the technical kit needed to calibrate the system is very specialised. There’s no doubt that safety is paramount and any technology that can prevent collisions or injuries should certainly be fitted to as many cars as possible – and not just as…

STAR RATINGS EXPLAINED 0-20% Inherently dangerous/ unsafe. Tragically, irredeemably flawed. 20-35% Appalling. Massively significant failings. 35-50% Very poor. Fails to meet any accepted class boundaries. 50-60% Poor. Within acceptable class boundaries in a few areas. Still not recommendable. 60-65% Off the pace. Below average in nearly all areas. 65-70% Acceptable. About average in key areas, but disappoints. 70-75% Competent. Above average in some areas, average in others. Outstanding in none. 75-80% Good. Competitive in key areas. 80-85% Very good. Very competitive in key areas, competitive in secondary respects. 85-92% Excellent. Near class leading in key areas, and in some ways outstanding. >93% Brilliant, unsurpassed. All but flawless.…

New Toyota GT86 driven It’s called the Orange Edition, but does a garish paint scheme make it feel faster? City Concours in pictures Classic cars, armed guards, London landmarks... they’re all in our gallery. The UK’s best-selling cars Guess which car model tops the UK sales charts? Clue: it isn’t Dacia. ALSO FIND US AT youtube.com/autocar autocar.co.uk/facebook twitter.com/autocar autocar_official SUBSCRIBE  autocar.co.uk/subscribe For all our latest print and digital subscription offers…