Innholdsfortegnelse for October 16, 2019 i Autocar

IT’S NOT EASY making cars, as Dyson has found out (p18). It’s one thing to create a prototype for a game changing electric car, quite another to bring it to production. To get that prototype into production, there are factories to create and supply chains to establish, plus the logistical and IT systems to support them. Then each individual component needs to be mass produced, be bolted together, then work reliably in unison. By this point, you’d have spent billions, and not had a penny back in return. To get that, you have to decide where to sell them, and find the buyers willing to choose your product over another; then subsequently support those buyers after their purchase and give them the experience to make them want to come back…

Toyota’s top-selling European model, the Yaris, is moving to a new generation next year – and the first official images and details have been revealed. The fourth-generation Vauxhall Corsa rival is set to go on sale in the UK in the middle of 2020 with customer deliveries commencing in September. It has been redesigned from the ground up, with a new platform and a three-cylinder hybrid powertrain designed specifically for the new car. As with previous Yaris generations, the new supermini has been designed in Europe with European customers in mind and it will continue to be built in the Valenciennes plant in France. However, for the first time, the Yaris name will now be used globally on small cars tailored for each region, much as Toyota has done with…

Toyota has revealed a dramatic new version of the Mirai hydrogen fuel cell car in concept form ahead of its Tokyo motor show debut. The car is described as a “final-stage development model of the second-generation Mirai” and moves to Toyota’s latest TNGA platform. The design is totally removed from that of the previous model and is nearly five metres long, while the firm claims increased body rigidity and a lower centre of gravity. The interior has been reworked with a 12.3in central touchscreen, digital instrument display and controls moved to the centre of the dashboard. Notably, the Mirai now has five seats instead of four, too. Toyota also promises a major step forward in fuel cell technology, claiming a 30% increase in driving range over the current car’s 300…

Rolls-Royce could soon come under pressure at the top end of the luxury market from a little-known Chinese brand. Domestic-focused car maker Hongqi, which in 2018 poached Rolls-Royce design chief Giles Taylor, is planning an attack on the pinnacle of luxury motoring that will eventually go global. As part of the FAW Group, one of China’s biggest car manufacturers, Hongqi aims to achieve this by leveraging a rich cultural and historical heritage that includes building official government limousines such as the popular L5 (above). Now settled into his role as global vice-president of design and chief creative officer in Munich, Taylor told Autocar of plans to build a flagship luxury car that would target affluent Chinese buyers who would traditionally aspire to own a Rolls-Royce. “We’re picking up young customers…

BMW has crowned its expanded compact car line-up with the new 2 Series Gran Coupé, its first small four-door coupé – and it promises the machine has been developed with a focus on driving dynamics. Due to be launched in March next year priced from around £25,000, the new Mercedes-Benz CLA rival expands the 2 Series line-up alongside the existing Coupé, Convertible and Active Tourer – although it is built on a different platform from those models. While the Coupé will continue as rear-wheel drive, the new Gran Coupé is front-wheel drive and uses the same FAAR architecture as the recently launched – and closely related – 1 Series. The Gran Coupé model designation started with the 4 Series and 6 Series in 2012 and has recently expanded with an…

NAME SOMETHING CAR people find least interesting and hate spending money on. How about lubricating oil, for starters? It’s as critical as the materials a powertrain is made from but spanks your wallet, so it’s tempting to buy the cheapest available. Does it matter what you put in your engine, differential or gearbox? Definitely. It’s crucial. Modern lubricating oil is complex stuff and, in some ways, works at a molecular level much like the machinery it protects. It consists of base fluid (oil) and additive packages, chemical cocktails that, among other things, turn a lubricant from a monograde oil into a multigrade. The first multigrade was launched by Duckhams in Europe in 1951 but, until then, all oils had been monograde. Before then, cars used a lower-viscosity engine oil in…

Porsche and Boeing are jointly developing an electric flying car concept as part of a new partnership exploring the “premium urban air mobility market”, the two brands have announced. Engineers from both companies will work on the project to implement and test a prototype, but no timeframe has been given for the endeavour. The flying car concept, known as a full-electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle, is part of a project by a team created to explore the market potential for urban air travel. A 2018 study by Porsche Consulting forecast that the urban air mobility market will gain traction after 2025.…

FREE SEALEY TOOL KIT WHEN YOU SUBSCRIBE TODAY ▪ COMPREHENSIVE RANGE ▪ KIT HOLDS A SELECTION OF TOOLS ▪ SOFT GRIP HANDLES ▪ SUPPLIED WITH IN THE STORAGE CASE WORTH £45 SUBSCRIBE TO AUTOCAR For 124 years, Autocar has been dedicated to sharing with you our love of cars every week. You can turn your support of Autocar into access to an even more exclusive club by subscribing. Every Wednesday you’ll be first to read the magazine packed with news, reviews, insightful features, star columnists, used car buying advice and our expanded data section. You’ll also receive regular free supplements and gain access to exclusive benefits (see below). There has never been a more interesting or significant time for the car industry and we’d love for you to join us…

Even if you hadn’t been told, I reckon you’d know this is the new Nissan Juke, because it so clearly looks like a replacement for the Juke that has been around for the past nine years – a car that popularised, rather than invented, the trendy compact crossover segment. The Juke is now, as it was then, a small, tall hatch. It’s bigger than before, although not by a huge amount. At 4.2m long, it’s halfway between a supermini (Ford Fiesta etc) and small family car (Ford Focus etc) in length, a size that now means adults can sit behind adults and that lifts the boot volume by 20% over the old Juke’s, to 422 litres. It sits on the Renault-Nissan group’s small CMF-B platform, which you’ll also find underneath…

The MG HS is the successor to a car that its maker would rather we all forgot. Those who remember the short-lived GS will recall a mid-sized crossover SUV that looked odd, handled soggily and had an ill-mannered engine – while the HS, we are assured, represents significant leaps of progress in all of those areas. With an all-new model platform underneath it and a widely re-engineered 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine under the bonnet, the HS doesn’t really stand out from the current SUV crowd, but it’s certainly a much more visually appealing design than the GS was. The interior is comfortable, spacious and surprisingly lush feeling in places. At least, it is in the case of our top-of-the-range, near-£25k test car. The cabin is sufficiently large and well packaged…

To get the best from the car on track, drop the chassis to its lowest setting (20mm or so below standard, at the push of a button) and disable the ESP, which is lenient but hinders progress exiting fast bends, when downforce gives all the security needed. Fitted with Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R tyres, the car showed exceptional resistance to understeer given the 205-section front contact patches. Through the quickest corners, the Stradale carried a level of speed comparable to that of some hypercars, and did so with disarming security and stability at both ends. The torque output does need managing through slower bends, but the neutral handling proved nothing if not predictable, and the steering is well geared for making corrections. A question mark hangs over the lap…

There’s a great deal you might infer about the hot hatchback, it seems to me, if you stop for a moment to contemplate the fish-finger sandwich. Both are the sort of indulgences that lend themselves perfectly to the enrichment of the everyday. Both are extraordinary, some might even say unlikely, triumphs of human ingenuity made from fairly ordinary ingredients. And yet both can be corrupted so easily if you disregard the modesty and simplicity of their make-up and let your tastes for the exotic run riot. Sliced white bread, fishy digits of unspectacular quality (arranged transversely for optimal space efficiency), a scrape of margarine and a (traditional) condiment of your choice – that’s the upper limit on how ambitious one ought to be with a fish-finger sarnie. As I regularly…

Bowler’s take on a club racer Defender has been around since 2014 and once formed the basis of a one-make series designed to get people hooked on rough-and-tumble motorsport. The modifications are relatively light to keep costs low, but on a course like Bovington the combined effect is profound. It’s an amazingly agile thing given its roots, if nervous at times because the 88in wheelbase is so short relative to the high centre of gravity. As co-driver Tomley says, don’t get cocky. Fast? Ish. The 2.2-litre turbodiesel Ford Transit engine is remapped to 170bhp and 332lb ft, which is quite enough to sustain speed, and our car also has a limited-slip diff at the rear. Otherwise it’s a standard driveline with a 50/50 torque split, although the lever for the…

Depressing and refreshing I found the article on JLR’s new turnaround plan (News, 2 October) both depressing and refreshing in roughly equal measure. It was depressing because JLR products have been plagued by poor quality for decades and, despite the odd ray of sunshine, the company continues to rank well below the competition. Knowing this, and they must have massess of data, a strategy whereby problem vehicles were exported to China and distributed through a fledgling dealership network was rolled out. That the brand did not have the heritage value in China to offset the levels of frustration and annoyance we tolerate in the UK appears not to have been considered a major risk in the formulation of strategy. Chinese customers have deserted the brand and taken their money elsewhere,…

MILEAGE 2029 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out if the reborn, revamped Corolla can cut it with the best in the hugely competitive family car class Self-charging hybrid. It is, at face value, an innocuous phrase. Yet in the electrified car world, the concept of a ‘self-charging hybrid’ seemingly has the ability to cause as much social media controversy as whatever random brain fart Elon Musk has dumped onto Twitter today. The self-charging hybrid terminology has been introduced as a subtle rebranding of what have long been known simply as hybrid systems: an internal combustion engine aided by an electric motor powered by a battery charged using purely recaptured energy. The new phrase seems a way to differentiate such ‘classic’ hybrids from more recent variants such as mild and…

MILEAGE 104,320 PORSCHE CAYENNE We have booked the Porsche with a proper dealer for the recall work. It did take a couple of goes, though. I phoned and the service department was busy. The receptionist had my number and promised a call back. It didn’t come. Sorry to go on about that, but that was rule number one in the old main dealer days. Never mind, I phoned back and booked. I almost booked the MOT there, too, but didn’t fancy the chance of being stranded more than an hour away from home. There could have been a Taycan loan car, though. Maybe next time.…

“Despite a 50% reduction in swept capacity, it has been conceived to deliver up to 553lb ft of torque” Mercedes-AMG will send a clear message that it is adapting to modern demands with the upcoming third-generation C63 by forgoing its long standing V8 power in favour of an advanced four-cylinder hybrid drivetrain that develops more than 500bhp. The new C63 will be the first in a number of new AMG models earmarked to receive an electrified version of Mercedes’ new turbocharged 2.0-litre M139 engine when it goes on sale in early 2022. The four-wheel-drive rival to the Audi RS4 and BMW M3 is already undergoing intensive development at AMG’s Affalterbach engineering headquarters. The potent four-cylinder engine kicks out a maximum of 416bhp and 369lb ft of torque in non-electrified form…

The autonomous Toyota LQ concept is a “next-generation” revision of the Toyota Concept-i, first seen at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show. To be shown at the Tokyo motor show, it’s equipped with level four automated driving technology, and now includes an “on-board artificial intelligence agent”. Called Yui, the AI system is said to “build the relationship between vehicle and driver by learning from and responding to individual preferences and needs. An augmented reality head-up display, automated valet parking and an air-conditioned seating system that self-adjusts to drivers’ alertness levels also feature. Public test drives at the Tokyo event will be on offer.…

Dyson has scrapped its plans to build what it called a “ground-breaking” electric vehicle because it doesn’t feel that the project is commercially viable. The firm established a new Dyson Automotive division that was developing a large crossover-style EV saloon ahead of a planned launch in 2021. Billionaire inventor James Dyson had vowed that the new technology and design methods would make it stand apart from every other EV. However, in an email to staff, James Dyson confirmed the automotive project has been closed. His email said the team “has developed a fantastic car; they have been ingenious in their approach while remaining faithful to our philosophies. However, though we have tried very hard throughout the development process, we simply can no longer see a way to make it commercially…

Most people would assume that Bentley’s intention in basing the global launch of its all-new, third-generation Flying Spur saloon in and around Monaco’s famous Hotel de Paris was to provide a suitable backdrop for a model the company suggests (without quite claiming) is the best car in the world. However, having attended the event and driven the car, I can report that this exotic location had a second, very different purpose: it demonstrated how important it is that any modern 5.3-metre long luxury saloon that wants to be taken seriously as a day-to-day driver (as Bentley insists the Flying Spur should be) must come with active, electronically controlled, four-wheel steering as standard. That matter was proven in my first 20 yards of driving… As with everything in Monaco, the area…

MODEL TESTED STRADALE Price £143,500 • Power 395bhp • Torque 369lb ft • 0-60mph 3.7sec • 30-70mph in fourth 4.3sec • Fuel economy 25.5mpg • CO2 emissions 216g/km • 70-0mph 39.4m Rarely do we welcome a true debutant to the road-test pages of Autocar, and rarely do we test cars with genuine motorsport pedigree, but some days are simply better than others. This car represents the first time Italian chassis manufacturer Dallara has fixed its name to a road-legal machine. As a project, it has been a long time coming, and as a prospect, it is nothing short of mouth-watering. At least it is for those aware of what the company has achieved since a young, ex-Lamborghini engineer set up shop in the Emilia-Romagnese town of Varano de’ Melegari in 1973.…

VERDICT You may wonder how, against the backdrop of a mighty asking price, a car powered by nothing more momentous than the turbocharged four-cylinder engine from a hot hatchback can earn four and a half stars. The first thing to note is that each Stradale will make Dallara almost no profit. It exists for no other reason than because Gian Paolo Dallara wanted it to, and it costs so much because the materials and construction techniques are direct from the world of motorsport. You’ll find interior elements that seem underdone and brakes that lack finesse, but mostly the Stradale simultaneously feels bona fide racing car and true luxury product. It’s a trick only the McLaren Senna pulls off with this much confidence. Then there is the magnificent chassis, which on…

1 ALFA ROMEO GIULIA QV MANUAL Right-hand-drive conversion costs mean UK Quadrifoglio buyers are denied the pleasure of a three-pedal hot Giulia. The shift isn’t Alfa’s slickest, but hand-channelling 503bhp should be electrifying, making a great Alfa greater still. 2 CADILLAC CTS-V Mmm, 631bhp should do it. And 630lb ft. Both are more than a BMW M5 can muster and will spear you to 60mph in 4.1sec. The CTS-V runs a Corvette engine to mix American muscle with European handling and ride. It’s a great drifter, apparently. 3 OPEL AMPERA-E The original range-extending Ampera was a fascinating lost cause. The simpler, pure-electric Ampera-E is notable for its range, but all the noting is going on in mainland Europe and the US, where it’s been a bigger hit than its ancestor.…

COMPARISON Audi Q5 vs Volvo XC60: plug-in hybrid performance SUVs rated This pair aim to mix performance, economy and practicality like no other type of car. So how many boxes do they really tick? INTERVIEW I designed the Defender Gerry McGovern tells Steve Cropley about the impossible job FEATURE 365 days of snow Where winter testing takes place all year round… indoors EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Renault Mégane Trophy-R The £50k stripped-out special faces the ultimate test of its credentials FIRST DRIVE Volkswagen T-Roc R VW’s R division has made some fine hot hatches. Now it makes its first SUV USED BUYING GUIDE Skoda Octavia vRS How to buy the people’s performance car in one of its many flavours SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p22…

MILEAGE 2618 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out if Renault can make a daily use hot hatch to rival the very best Ten years ago, I ran a V6 diesel version of the interesting and short-lived Renault Laguna Coupe. The experience proved about as different from running our current Mégane RS 280 as it’s possible for two separate cars to deliver, but for a couple of things. Like the Mégane, the Laguna had four-wheel steering, and I remember being quite taken with it. Second, however, it had a keyless-entry system. Just like the one on the Mégane, it was a bit over-sensitive – so when you get out of the car with the key in your pocket on your way round to retrieve a bag from the passenger side,…

Honda Civic Reader Doug sent me some details about his Honda: “I bought my 2005 Civic 1.6 SE in 2009. It has been extremely reliable and passed its MOT every time since, bar one because of a dodgy bulb. Apart from an annual service I’ve had the front discs and pads replaced. It has 90,000 on the clock now but that VTEC engine still brings a smile to my face. I love the simple knobs and buttons to operate simple functions, and it even has a CD player. My local Honda dealer reckons this model was the best Civic they made.” SEND YOUR USED CAR TALES TO ✉ james@bangernomics.com AND READERS' QUESTIONS TO ✉ autocar@haymarket.com…

If you’re in the market for a used family hatchback offered with a choice of efficient engines, and benefiting from a decent chassis and good equipment, all available at a decent spread of prices to suit your specific depth of pocket, you’ve come to the right place. Lauded as European Car of the Year at its launch in 2014, the Peugeot 308 has continued to be exactly that for thousands of used car buyers who have chosen it over rivals including the Ford Focus and Volkswagen Golf. Indeed, at that same launch, there was talk that Peugeot had finally sprung a family hatch that was the equal of the class leading Golf. It hadn’t, of course. It’s taken VW seven generations of continual improvement to get the Golf to where…

Seat Leon 1.8T 20v Cupra R £4495 Seat’s newly independent Cupra brand rekindles memories of the sporty Leon 1.8T 20v Cupra of 1999. Its turbo engine made 178bhp, good for 0-62mph in 7.7sec. Today, prices start at about £1000 for honest cars. In 2002, it was upstaged by the Cupra R, still with the same engine but this time producing 207bhp for 0-62mph in 7.2sec. Not a huge gain but what mattered more were its four-pot Brembo brake calipers, 18in wheels, quicker steering, stiffer suspension and deep front splitter. Then, 12 months later, along came an even hotter version toting 222bhp and 0-62mph in just 6.5sec. This remains the one to have. Fortunately, there are still a few lingering in the classifieds – such as the 2005/05-reg with 94,000 miles…

Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport S Price £30,000 Launched in 2016 to coincide with the Golf GTI’s 40th anniversary, the Clubsport S was the most powerful production Golf ever created, with 306bhp from its 2.0-litre engine. What’s more, it had less weight to haul around since the car had no rear seats. Four hundred were made and only 150 came to the UK, all of them snapped up ‘off plan’. Fortunately, the faith shown by those first customers was justified: Autocar awarded the car half a star over the regular, four-star GTI. New, the S cost £35,000. Today, used ones start at £30,000.…

Royal Rolls-Royce 7 July 1950 THREE YEARS AFTER their marriage, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, had built to their specification the first Rolls-Royce Phantom IV – of which just 18 would be made. At almost 19ft long and over 6ft high, it dwarfed other cars on the road, we reported. The styling of its spacious interior was “very simple, with grey cloth upholstery, a grey curled mohair rug and figured walnut cappings and panel work on the division with banded edges”, and up front were “two large and very comfortable armchair seats upholstered in green leather”. The chassis had independent front suspension with hydraulic dampers, a 5.7-litre straight eight and a four-speed manual gearbox. This particular Phantom IV, ‘4AF2’, lives on today, and last summer delivered Meghan…

TOYOTA IS HIGHLY likely to produce a performance version of the new Yaris, according to Toyota Europe’s executive vice-president Matt Harrison. The decision is part of a greater desire within Toyota to connect the brand’s Gazoo Racing motorsport activities to its road car range to help customers better understand the link. Harrison said: “This is the strategy of Gazoo Racing – not just the sports cars, like Supra, but to look at performance derivatives as well.” Although he stopped short of officially confirming a hot Yaris GR, Harrison said: “We have some ideas about more aspiration opportunities for the car, but you’ll hear more in a couple of months. “That’s more related to our desire to link Yaris to our success in motorsport.” “On selected vehicles we will look at…

Porsche has been forced to drip-feed the flow of new Macan models because of the combination of the SUV’s popularity in showrooms and the rigours of WLTP emissions sign-off. As a result, it’s only now – nearly 12 months after the facelifted Macan made its debut – that we’re finally seeing the Turbo flagship. So has the fastest and traditionally sportiest of the firm’s SUVs been worth the wait? Well, Porsche has certainly gone a little further with the update of the Turbo than with other versions. There’s a new engine, for instance, the old 3.6-litre V6 replaced by a downsized yet more powerful 2.9-litre. Featuring a pair of ‘hot vee’ turbos (the sort that, for quicker response, nestle on top of the engine between the banks of cylinders), it…

1 BAC MONO For the ultimate feeling of driving a road-going race car, look to BAC. The Mono closely resembles a Formula Ford underneath the dramatic bodywork. 2 CATERHAM 620R The most unhinged Seven demands no little skill to extract its performance potential. Sublime balance, though, and throttle-adjustable all day long. 3 DALLARA STRADALE Tons of pedigree. Also beautifully finished and sublime on track. Captures the vibe of the sports prototype racers of yesteryear. 4 LOTUS 3-ELEVEN 430 No longer on sale but a supreme expression of the Lotus philosophy that long ago inspired Gian Paolo Dallara. Compromised on the road but epic on track. 5 ELEMENTAL RP1 Similar to the Dallara in concept, and faster in a straight line, but lacks the Italian’s aero capability and design flair. Arguably…

“I’m done with leasing. I need a more flexible solution” Car subscription services, where you have the use of a new or used car including all expenses bar fuel for the price of a monthly payment, are gaining ground in the UK. Providers include Wagonex and Drover, which also powers schemes for car makers. Traditional rental companies including Thrifty and Europcar operate similar schemes. But while a subscription, or monthly rental, might be a convenient and inexpensive way to browse recorded music or have a phone, is it a convenient and inexpensive way to run a car? Sam Wright, 33, is a self-employed building surveyor living in Surrey. He has two cars – a Mini Cooper S 3dr auto and a BMW X2 xDrive20d M Sport X auto. Neither is…

This place isn’t for the ‘half a turn more left damper’ types. Bovington Camp is where the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps acquainted itself with Somme-bound Mark I tanks during the First World War – the rhomboid monsters whose crew shared the cabin with a noxious 16-litre Daimler-Knight straight six. On typical race tracks, in typical racing cars, and on more typical days, you might make a mental note of the corrugation on the way into a corner. Muddy, mogul-blighted Bovington is to that corrugation what getting kicked in the face is to an Indian head massage. As an arena for motorsport, its style is much more ‘new dampers please’. We’re competing in round four of the six-event British Cross Country Championship. It’s a weekend of cross-country rallying:…

It doesn’t feel like long since we first sat down with Lewis Campbell in the lobby of McLaren’s Technology Centre to ask him about his first placement after winning the Autocar-Courland Next Generation Award. Now, five months and five companies later, Campbell finds himself in the lobby of Jaguar Land Rover’s newly opened Design and Engineering Centre, preparing for his fifth and final interview. With the bustle of 13,000 engineers going about their daily business all around us at the Gaydon-based facility, Campbell sits calm and composed, safe in the knowledge that he has already worked at more of the big automotive giants than many professionals will in their lifetime. And he’s not yet even 25 years old. Having won the Next Generation competition for his innovative anti-cloning car identification…

QUESTION Should I drain the remaining fluid in my diesel car’s AdBlue tank before refilling it? John Brown, via email ANSWER It’s not necessary to drain the old fluid since there’s no reason for it to have deteriorated. The risk occurs when the fluid is contaminated, for example during the refilling process. Instead, the important thing is to make sure you don’t run out of AdBlue. This is because cars that require AdBlue will not start with an empty AdBlue tank. If the car is running and the system detects the AdBlue tank has emptied, the ECU will limit the engine’s performance until the AdBlue is replenished. All that said, running an engine with no AdBlue in the tank won’t actually damage it. JE QUESTION What is the point of…

JAGUAR XJS V12 It says ‘Lister’ on the side and indeed it’s wearing an official, factory-fitted Lister bodykit. However, the fact that it sold for £7500 is your clue that, underneath, it’s just a standard V12 coupé – in this case, a pre-HE model registered in 1980. Had it been the real thing, its 5.3-litre engine would have been enlarged to 6.0 litres or more and you could add another zero to the price. For example, last year, a 1990 Lister Jaguar XJS V12 Le Mans coupé, with 3000 miles and with its engine bored out to 7.0 litres to produce 600bhp, sold for £88,480.…

The Jaguar XK makes for a great used car, with its lightweight, bonded and riveted aluminium monocoque clothed in aluminium body panels, and a choice of a reliable 4.2 or 5.0-litre V8 under its long bonnet – supercharged in R versions. And with prices starting at just £6000, it’s also a great bargain. Not to be confused with its predecessor, the XK8 of 1996-2006, the XK was launched in 2007 and expired in 2014. The two were different, but from launch to its 2009 facelift, the XK used the same 300bhp 4.2-litre V8 that had seen service in later XK8s. From 2009, the XK gained an all-new 380bhp 5.0-litre V8 with direct injection. The R version’s supercharger raises the 4.2’s power to 420bhp and the 5.0’s to 503bhp. There’s a…

An expert’s view CHRIS WESTON, SERVICE MANAGER, SWALLOWS “The XK is a fantastic car and a big improvement on the XK8. For one thing, it’s roomy. I’m 6ft 5in and even I can fit into it comfortably. The suspension is also much more sophisticated and that’s what turns it into a real driver’s car. On top of that, the 4.2 in particular is extremely reliable. The XK can take very high mileages. We have customers whose cars have done from 180,000 to 200,000 miles and they still use them every day. The cars just lap it up. Fortunately, low mileage doesn’t seem to be an issue for the model, either, so long as it’s been serviced on the dot. Regular oil changes are critical.” Buyer beware ▪ ENGINE The coolant…

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. 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 gear (*kickdown with an automatic) and demonstrates flexibility. » FUEL ECONOMY Figures quoted are the average and touring fuel economy as tested.…