Innholdsfortegnelse for August 12, 2020 i Autocar

HYUNDAI HAS ANNOUNCED a sub-brand for EVs named Ioniq as it gears up to reveal three new landmark electric cars in the next four years. Sharing a name with the Korean manufacturer’s big-selling family hatchback (which itself is available as an EV), Ioniq will be used for each of Hyundai’s upcoming EVs. They will be told apart using a numerical naming strategy similar to Volkswagen’s forthcoming ID family; Ioniq will use odd numbers for SUVs and even numbers for saloons and other bodystyles. The sub-brand’s first model will be the Ioniq 5, a compact crossover based on the radical 45 concept from last year’s Frankfurt motor show, in 2021. It will be followed in 2022 by the Ioniq 6 sports saloon, which will take cues from the low-slung Prophecy concept.…

Car makers are “struggling” to publish all model-variant CO2 and MPG figures in time to hit the deadline for the new WLTP fuel economy rules on 1 January 2021, according to a report by industry consultant Jato Dynamics. “This isn’t about the test itself or compliance with the test but the massive data flows to inform customers and dealers about new CO2 and MPG figures, and some car makers are struggling with that,” said Olivier Pejis, head of European sales leasing at Jato. “There’s also the issue of offices being closed for three months during Covid shutdowns, cutting the time available to work on this.” With around 15 million new cars sold in Europe every year, each with a unique specification of parts and the bulk of each model subject…

The car market slowdown due to the pandemic will not hamper the push to reduce emissions and electrify vehicle fleets – and it could be beneficial to smaller, more agile companies. That’s the view of Peter Rawlinson, CEO and technology chief of US EV start-up Lucid Motors. Speaking at the Financial Times ‘Future of the Car’ virtual conference, Rawlinson – a British engineer who previously headed the technical development of the Tesla Model S – said it is “heartening” to see the environmental benefits resulting from globally enforced lockdown measures. “We’ve seen bluer skies, we’ve seen clearer waters, we’ve seen a lot less noise pollution, and that’s beneficial,” Rawlinson said. “But still, a lot of people are not buying [EVs] for the environmental credentials of those cars, although they are…

Forty-four years. That’s how long the Volkswagen Golf GTI has been on sale. A rather decent run so far, then. The first-generation model, introduced in 1976, established the formula that each of its successors has carefully followed, with a decisive increase in performance and dynamics over the standard Golf and a styling package that is simple yet subtle. We limit our use of the word ‘iconic’ at Autocar, but the description fits the bill better than any other here. The letters GTI have long become synonymous with enthralling hot hatch performance. So it’s with a good deal of interest and intrigue that we approach the latest version, scheduled for delivery in the UK by the end of the year. The new eighth-generation Golf GTI receives a revised turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder…

Yaris lore won’t be a specialist topic for too many petrolheads, but it’s a relatively interesting story and worth recounting now that the almost entirely new fourth-generation model is upon us. The original Yaris arrived in 1999 with an almost comically curvaceous body and an instrument binnacle playfully skewed towards the centre of the dashboard. It was fun to look at, but it was also roomy and carefree to drive, and because of this, it sold so well that even Toyota was surprised. Young people especially liked it, and it duly reshaped the supermini class. However, better-looking rivals had appeared by the mid-2000s (chiefly the Ford Fiesta), so where the Yaris’s cute boldness had once endeared it to recent L-platees, increasingly it was bought by older drivers, who were lured…

Despite four years passing since its launch, the fifth-generation Mercedes E-Class still occupies a firmly competitive position as one of our executive class favourites. Its blend of unrivalled comfort and refinement have stood the test of time, but four years is an exceedingly long time on the technology front. The focus, then, for the Audi A6 rival’s mid-life revamp is a totally overhauled electrical system, which engineers told Autocar earlier this year makes the new E “more advanced than the S-Class in certain areas”. We’re driving it in the UK, albeit in left-hand-drive German specification. Let’s start with the visual tweaks, which are minor enough for our photographer to enquire what has actually changed over the old model. The front end carries most of the changes, including new LED-only lights…

1 ALPINE A110 PURE Simpler is better when it comes to this vivacious French two-seater. Still nothing to beat it for on-road driver entertainment. 2 PORSCHE 718 BOXSTER GTS 4.0 Could hardly be more different from the Mog; not so different on price. Brilliant to drive. 3 LOTUS ELISE CUP 250 Packs plenty of punch and offers real track-day pace, too, as well as lots of tactile driver reward at any speed. 4 CATERHAM SEVEN 420S Take your pick of factory-built Caterhams for Plus Four money. This upper-mid-range option is huge fun and quick with it. 5 MORGAN PLUS FOUR Classic roadster charm, stirring pace and involving handling. Not refined or dynamically sophisticated, but likeable.…

WHY NOT TRY OUR OTHER GREAT TITLES? View all of our offers on themagazineshop.com TERMS AND CONDITIONS This is a UK-only offer; for overseas offers, please visit themagazineshop.com or call +44 (0) 1604 251 461. All savings are based on the UK cover price and are correct as of January 2020. Please allow 35 days for delivery of your gift and first issue. The gift will be sent under separate cover from the magazine and won’t be dispatched until your first payment has cleared. Should we run out of gifts, you will be offered an alternative gift; there is no cash alternative. Direct Debit rates are valid for one year, after which they are subject to change; should prices change, we will inform you in writing. Should you wish to…

Since he burst into Formula 1 as a precociously talented and preternaturally confident 17-year-old, Max Verstappen has been widely regarded as the future of the sport. He’s the youngest driver to start an F1 grand prix. The youngest to score points. The youngest to take a podium. The youngest to win a race. The youngest to win multiple races. But when does the future become the present? The Dutchman is now in his sixth full season of F1 and has started more than a century of grands prix (he has just passed father Jos’s tally of 106). He has scored eight hard-fought wins during that time, but there’s a sense that his talent deserved more. For one thing, while still only 22, Verstappen will, unless he pulls off a miracle…

I read with interest Steve Cropley’s article ‘Cross country run’ (27 May) covering how Jaguar Land Rover tests its vehicles. When Steve wrote about tuning British cars for British road conditions and how “UK roads are so uniquely difficult and badly repaired that when a car works in the UK, it will work everywhere”, it reminded me of an experience a couple of years ago while driving with a Dutch colleague. I’d collected him from Manchester airport in my diesel Skoda Superb, and within a few miles we were travelling along a selection of north-west England’s A- and B-roads. After around 20 minutes of general conversation, he suddenly, quite loudly and completely out of character said: “My God, these roads are terrible. They wouldn’t let them get into this condition…

FIRST REPORT WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if the all-American icon translates over here, especially as a new all-British icon arrives… You don’t see many Jeep Wranglers in the UK but there’s no denying the success of what I’m going to dare calling the original off-roader. I mean, you could make a case that any really early car or truck was designed for rough track use. But the modern 4x4 as we know it? I think its origins all started here: the Jeep. Today’s Wrangler is the latest in a model line that, as with a Porsche 911 or Toyota Corolla, has been in constant evolution, ever present since 1941. Jeep currently sells nearly a quarter of a million Wranglers annually. Just not to the UK, where we buy…

QUESTION I recently bought a Jaguar E-Pace and it has a DPF fault. I have a copy of a JLR document for dealers where it advises that the fault is in the way customers use the vehicle. Can you offer clarity? Allan Law, via email ANSWER Diesel particulate filter issues can be an issue if you use the car for short journeys. If you clearly told the dealer what your driving style is and it follows the information in the document, you have strong grounds to negotiate a favourable trade-in for a more suitable car or for a refund minus usage. MA QUESTION I have a Mégane RS with less than 6000 miles on the clock and it has flaking paint. Renault says it’s due to stone chips so won’t…

Audi A8 £29,750 Given the choice, many buyers of executive cars would find it hard to resist a fully fledged luxury car for similar money. So here’s one such quandary: buy a new Audi A6 – you can get the entry-level 40 TDI Sport for £36k with a discount – or an Audi A8 that’s barely two years old for less? You’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m talking about the old model, but I’m not. You really can buy the latest A8 for less than half the price it was new. It has the up-to-the-minute twin-touchscreen technology that’s being stuffed into all the refreshed Audis, plus it comes with a smooth 3.0-litre V6 diesel engine rather than a mundane 2.0-litre four. And the A8 will have an interior that’s…

Peugeot RCZ R Price £14,950 The regular RCZ was a sheep in wolf’s clothing, but the Peugeot Sport-fettled R version was something special. For a start, you would never guess that it was a mere Berlingo van underneath if you’d just taken it for a hard drive. That’s how extensive the alterations were. Mind you, so they should have been, considering the R cost £5000 more than the ever-popular Renault Sport Mégane at the time. This made the R a slow seller and ultimately quite rare. A perfect combination for future collectability.…

An owner’s view JOE HOBBS “The Volvo engines are really reliable, but the earlier 1.6-litre diesel was a mistake. I’ve had two, and although some people say they’ve never had an issue, I didn’t catch a break, even with regular servicing and constant long journeys. The R-Design package is a must as it makes the car look 100 times better, and go for a five-pot Volvo engine. It’s a good-looking, reliable car with a brilliant community behind it.” Buyer beware… ■ ENGINE Most of the options are hardy, but the 16-valve 1.6-litre diesel is notorious for DPF failures, so make sure the ‘reduced engine performance error’ message isn’t showing and that it was replaced or serviced at 100,000 miles. Problems here can cause a pressure backlog in the system and…

Volkswagen has given the ninth-generation Passat a definitive go-ahead after more than a year of internal debate over the future of the German saloon and estate. The decision comes after Volkswagen Group chairman Herbert Diess had cast doubt on whether the Passat would be replaced. He cited the increasing popularity of the similarly sized Arteon and plans to produce the well-received electric ID Vizzion concept in saloon and estate bodystyles from 2023 onwards as possible reasons not to continue beyond today’s car, which was introduced in 2015. Set for UK launch in 2023, the new Passat will share its platform, drivetrains and electrical architecture with the Skoda Superb – alongside which right-hand-drive versions will be produced in a new greenfield factory to be established by Skoda as part of a…

THE NEW KIA Sorento has been priced up for the UK. Available to order now from £38,845, the large SUV is initially available with only petrol-electric hybrid and diesel powertrains, before a plug-in hybrid comes later this year. All are four-wheel drive. Entry-level 2 spec offers the hybrid only. This combines a turbocharged 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with an electric motor and a 1.49kWh battery pack for a combined 226bhp and 195lb ft of torque. It promises a 0-60mph time of 8.7sec and 40.9mpg. Standard kit includes LED front and rear lights, seven seats, a digital instrument display, an 8.0in infotainment touchscreen, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay phone mirroring and a substantial suite of active safety systems. In addition to kit upgrades, 3 trim (from £41,245) gets a new…

MERCEDES-BENZ’S NEW generation of app-based digital services will, in future, allow drivers to decide whether they wish to drive their car or let it drive itself. Mercedes is the latest car maker to announce plans aimed at capitalising on the rapid development of digitalisation and automation in the car industry – and, crucially, on an important revenue stream. Recently, the Volkswagen Group officially opened its Car. Software unit, intended to raise the proportion of its cars’ software produced in-house, as it seeks to move away from being a hardware-focused company. Mercedes’ new “digital eco-system” initially comprises three main Mercedes Me apps already available to download, plus its own developer platform. This means Mercedes owners can now add functionality such as pre-conditioning the temperature inside their car or booking a service.…

And so to the most important Aston Martin since the DB11, which was the most important Aston Martin since the DB9, which was the most important since the DB7, which was… well, you understand. The ‘most important’ tag accompanied Aston Martins perennially as the company went through the latter half of its first century, making some outstanding cars but seldom more than skimming the surface of making any money. The ‘Second Century Plan’ was conceived to change all that. It was tentatively being followed under the stewardship of chairman and CEO Andy Palmer, who in 2015 introduced a business plan that would include seven core models (one replaced each year – “not rocket science”), cash-flow-generating special editions and a stock market flotation. That last part, which Palmer called a “key…

It takes a brave soul to ask an obvious question. God bless whoever was brave enough to ask one at the end of that monthly ‘town hall’ meeting at Ferrari a couple of years ago, concerning exactly why it was that they didn’t make a car like the much-loved, big-selling 550 Maranello any more. That, in my head at least, must have been how the new Ferrari Roma came into being – not that the company is letting on. There will have been a prevailing will from the management to make more of the modern front-engined V8 platform architecture shared with the Portofino convertible, of course. An enthusiasm, too, from Ferrari’s design team to seize the opportunity, once it was presented, to bring some classic, coupé-bodied elegance back into the…

Despite the impressive global success of the Bentayga since its 2016 launch, Bentley has always been a bit concerned about the styling of its SUV flagship. Most early criticism has melted away now that global sales have passed 20,000 and this fastest-selling Bentley ever continues to dominate a class whose size has trebled in four years, helped by the arrival of the Rolls-Royce Cullinan, Lamborghini Urus and Aston Martin DBX. Still, it’s small wonder that Bentley has launched such a thorough Bentayga update for 2020, running to more than 1000 individual changes. On the outside, changes reflect the effects of a new design era that arrived with the latest Continental GT and Flying Spur saloon. The grille is bigger and more upright, while the lights are lifted in the front…

MODEL TESTED PLUS FOUR Price £62,995 • Power 255bhp • Torque 258lb ft • 0-60mph 5.1sec • 30-70mph in fourth 9.2sec • Fuel economy 44.5mpg • CO2 emissions 165g/km • 70-0mph 49.5m Last year, one of Britain’s oldest car makers entered a new, outward-looking modern era. After the business had been owned and run by the Morgan family for more than a century, a controlling share of the Morgan Motor Company was bought by Italian-led venture capital firm Investindustrial (which also remains a minority shareholder in Aston Martin Lagonda). In the same year, the company’s first all-new model in decades entered production, based on a box-fresh aluminium platform and powered by an up-to-date turbocharged BMW engine never used by the Worcestershire-based outfit before. That was the range-topping Morgan Plus Six, of…

Driving this car quickly on Millbrook’s Hill Route is an undertaking that demands a bit of warming up to. With speed comes a heightened awareness of the Morgan’s fairly lax attitude to containing body roll through faster bends, as well as the really quite marked rear weight transfer that can accompany mid-corner applications of throttle. It’s arguably in these instances where the Morgan is simultaneously at its most unsettling and exciting. As weight shifts rearwards, you feel the already mute steering go light, which makes sensing the point at which front-end grip becomes slip that much trickier. You often see the nose push wide before you feel it. At the same time, your position out over the rear axle does mean you feel far more keyed in to any shimmies…

MODEL TESTED ROADSTER There’s no clock on the Morgan Roadster’s dashboard, but if there were, it would turn anticlockwise. Buyers want their Morgans to be time machines, and change is so infrequent in Malvern that any new Morgan is a significant event. The long bonnet, waterfall grille and swooping wings date back 50 years and have lost none of their charm. Beneath the aluminium panels, the Plus Eight’s ash body frame and steel ladder chassis also remain, complete with archaic sliding pillar front suspension and leaf-sprung live rear axle. But under the louvred bonnet, a Ford V6 replaces the Plus 8’s Rover V8. Standing starts take practice to balance wheelspin and axle tramp and we restricted our runs for fear of damage, so violent was the rear axle’s protest. But…

It’s a worrying time for the 210 employees of UK Mitsubishi importer the Colt Car Company and its 1700-or-so directly associated dealership staff, not to mention the myriad suppliers that feed into this 15,000-vehicle-sales-per-year operation. Word is that while there was some inkling of tough news on the horizon, people expected something focused on cuts around the edges, not a cut full stop. However, there are also reports that Colt’s senior management are already in talks with potential new partners and that the clarity received from Mitsubishi has helpfully accelerated what were tentative talks with alternative brands, most likely Chinese and looking to bring a cost-effective range of electric vehicles into the UK. While launching a new brand is always a gargantuan task, the timing is perfect in that respect:…

Remember Sally Cockburn? She was featured in Autocar in March after successfully resisting her insurer’s attempts to write off her Nissan Micra. Cockburn appealed its decision, enlisting the support of local mechanic Colin Mullan, who put right the damage to her car by pulling out the Micra’s wing and resetting the car’s front suspension geometry. Job done: the insurance company reclassified the Micra from a Category B write-off, meaning it could never go back on the road, to a Category N, meaning she could drive it once again. They also sent her a settlement cheque for £2528. “I’m happy now,” she said, “but I wonder: do insurers often try to force motorists to accept their car is fit only for the crusher when it isn’t?” According to Tim Kelly, a…

McLaren woes in rear-view mirror McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown says that “the bad news is behind us now” after the firm’s coronavirus-related financial struggles in the first half of the year. The Woking-based McLaren Group laid off hundreds of staff and has been looking for additional funding, but Brown said the Formula 1 team is now “financially healthy” and aided by a “better business model” being adopted by the sport in the future. Ticktum takes his first Formula 2 win Williams F1 junior Dan Ticktum said his first Formula 2 race win at Silverstone proved that Red Bull’s “doubts in me were wrong”. The British racer was dropped from the drinks firm’s driver development scheme at the end of last season. BTCC keeps Infiniti flag flying in the UK…

Red Bull’s second-tier squad, rebranded from Toro Rosso to AlphaTauri this season, has long been used to develop new talent on the firm’s driver development scheme. But this year, it’s giving its two racers second chances. Both Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly were promoted from Toro Rosso to the main Red Bull squad and then dumped mid-season (for Max Verstappen in 2016 and for Alex Albon in 2019 respectively), but both have earned themselves a reprieve from the notorious Red Bull young driver scrapheap. “The period with Red Bull was quite particular and, for reasons that I know, that they know, it didn’t really work out,” says Gasly, who erased the disappointment of his mid-season demotion last year with a brilliant second-place finish for Toro Rosso in Brazil. “That was…

COMPARISON Polestar 2 vs Tesla Model 3 Can this electric fastback from Sweden’s unconventional new brand beat the Tesla saloon that’s taking Europe by storm? FEATURE Life with an Electric Reflections on our month experiencing Mini’s third coming FEATURE VW camper at 70 Celebrating this four-wheeled icon with a holiday… on our driveway EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST BMW M2 CS It’s just lost a triple test to a Cayman GTS. Now for the full eight pages… BUYING GUIDE Renault Mégane RS Its predecessors may have hit higher heights, but it’s still a top hot hatch SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p48…

MILEAGE 1224 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if diesel power really can excite as much as petrol in a sporting four-door By sheer luck (and the kindness of Kia UK), I found myself in possession of a Kia Stinger GT-S the week after picking up the S5. Although the Kia is a relatively nice product unlikely to be cross-shopped by many Audi customers, it was interesting to compare the brands’ very different approaches to sporting saloons. First, the price. Our S5 is just over £50k as a base price but knocking on the door of £70k with all our options added in. The Kia? £41k. And that’s before haggling, which is well worth doing given Stingers haven’t exactly flown out of showrooms. And don’t think the Korean car is…

MILEAGE 70,446 What’s the best modern used car you can buy with a reasonable amount of money? A VW Golf – and we have one of those. I haven’t been in or even seen a Mk8 Golf, but I can’t imagine it’d be any better than ours. Certainly not any prettier and the 1.4 TSI petrol engine delivers a fairly solid late-50 to the gallon on its longish commute. It is currently asking for an oil change, but as the regular pilot observed: “When isn’t it?” The last time we tried to do an oil change, things didn’t go well. Anyway, hard to know what to replace it with except another one.…

It would be a harsh but fair assessment to say that it took Audi two goes to get the Q7 right. The first-gen car, launched in 2006, was solid and premium but the driving experience was pretty poor and its firm ride and shortage of interior space left us feeling short-changed. However, all that was set right in this second-generation model, launched in 2015 and revised for 2019, when a facelift introduced some styling tweaks and mild-hybrid assistance for the engines. Initially, there were two versions of the 3.0-litre TDI diesel, the 218 and the 272, and both offered plenty of oomph. There was also a plug-in hybrid E-tron version, which felt even quicker, but for real pace there was a mighty SQ7 with a 4.0-litre V8 diesel. Models from…

Volkswagen has applied to trademark a number of its classic model names with an ‘e’ prefix, indicating that they could receive electrified revivals. Late in June, Volkswagen applied to register the e-Samba name. In the following few weeks, the firm subsequently registered the names e-Beetle, e-Golf Classic, e-Kübel and e-Karmann. The e-Kübel is expected to refer to the Kübelwagen, a light military vehicle from the Second World War that Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess declared in 2017 he desired to resurrect as a zero-emissions utility model. Although unconfirmed, it is expected that these trademarks don’t relate to reborn classics directly built by Volkswagen. Instead, they could concern projects commissioned for German company eClassics, a specialist in converting older models into modernised EVs. Volkswagen backs eClassics, which already makes an electric version…

BMW will continue to develop petrol and diesel engines and electrify each of its combustion-engined models over the next two years as part of its multi-powertrain future strategy. The German manufacturer said it won’t pivot completely to electric vehicles, instead offering mild hybrids, plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), battery EVs and hydrogen fuel cell EVs until at least 2035. It has developed vehicle platforms that can cater for each powertrain type. Every existing petrol and diesel BMW will be fitted with 48V mild-hybrid technology within the next two years, and these will play a role in BMW’s future alongside alternative propulsion methods. BMW is “not in favour of” so-called self-charging hybrids, claimed corporate affairs boss Wieland Bruch. He explained that if an electrical element can be fitted, the car should “take full…

JAGUAR LAND ROVER (JLR) has officially lost its UK court bid to secure trademark rights for the shape of its original Defender 4x4, allowing Ineos Automotive, an offshoot of a multibillion-pound chemicals firm, to proceed with producing its similarly styled Grenadier. JLR has been pursuing cases to trademark the Defender’s name and exterior look for four years. It first lost in court in 2019 after a long-running battle with Ineos owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe. It then lodged a high court appeal, which has now been dismissed. The judge in the case upheld findings by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office that the shapes JLR sought to protect weren’t distinctive enough to trademark. She claimed that while some enthusiasts might see the similarities in design as significant, they “may be unimportant or…

TOUCHSCREENS HAVE SOMETHING in common with Marmite: we either love them or hate them. Except it’s not all that clear whether anyone actually does love them. They seemed a good idea at the time, for decluttering instrument panels, but lots of drivers find them a dodgy distraction. The latest idea to emerge for reducing the need to glance quite so intently at the icon you’re trying to poke is Predictive Touch, a new technology cooked up by Jaguar Land Rover’s Human Machine Interface Research Group and the University of Cambridge. The system predicts what your finger is aiming for before it even touches the screen and makes the selection without the need for contact. Doing the job without the need to take such accurate aim could go a long way…

Although it has been seen as something of a ‘poseur’s Porsche’ over the years, not all 911 Targa fans would identify as your typical boulevard showboats. They might only admit it in hushed voices, but there are some fairly serious drivers out there – a few of them are colleagues – who actually quite fancy the idea of a Targa-topped 911. As much as the Targa’s dashing appearance might have endeared it to testers and enthusiasts over the years, though, that fact alone has never been enough to see it rise to the top of the ‘base’ 911 tree. Compromised rigidity, greater weight (the Targa has historically been the porkiest 911 variant, and the same is true here) and a higher centre of mass over the rear axle have all…

Heading into Madgwick, there’s a sheen of rain on the Bacalar’s windscreen and conditions are definitely wet rather than merely damp. Goodwood’s first corner is a place of frequent high-speed heroism, although rarely in preproduction one-offs. The sodden conditions have already brought to mind Kenny Bräck’s opposite-lock heroics here in a Ford GT40 at the 2013 Revival in similar conditions, but even Bräck didn’t get to see such an unlikely speedometer number: the Bacalar’s digital instrument pack reports that the car is doing a bracing 170mph well before the first apex. It’s not, of course. The instruments are playing a video loop vastly more exciting than the reality of this respectful rumble through the rain in a roofless seven-figure prototype. This Bacalar was built to be on a motor show…

Technology transfer between racing and road cars is often overstated. It shouldn’t shock you to learn, for example, that Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes-AMG hybrid Formula 1 car has little in common with the GLB 300e. Similarly, the all-electric powertrains used in Formula E by the likes of Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Nissan and Porsche are only tangentially related to those in their electric road cars. Motorsport is, as ever, as much an exercise in marketing as research and development. However, that doesn’t mean technology transfer doesn’t occur. In fact, it often does where you would least expect it, such as in rear-view mirrors and speed cameras. Here’s another: Formula E tech is set to soon make EVs faster – not to accelerate but to charge. Currently, Formula E cars are charged by…

FINAL REPORT MILEAGE 3420 WHY WE RAN IT Entry-level Lamborghini is surprisingly good to drive, but you’d still be mad to use one every day – wouldn’t you? Our time with the Huracán is over. I’ll explain exactly how this makes me feel shortly, but first I want to address the notion of ‘supercar saturation’ creating some degree of ‘supercar apathy’ among enthusiasts. This phenomenon stems not only from the modern-day flood of social media images that glorify supercars as nothing more than status symbols, but also the stream of ultra-exclusive creations everyone is today building. Simply, we can’t escape supercars at present, especially on our screens, and some people feel an appreciable portion of the wow-factor is fading because of this – myself tentatively included. And without wanting to…

MILEAGE 1566 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT Is it good enough to be considered a credible flagship fast Ford hatchback? An interesting, if impromptu test. I had an appointment with the newly revised Honda NSX and it occurred to me that within the broad confines of what may loosely be described as ‘driver’s cars’, you could get further apart than these, but not much. One is a mid-engined supercar costing £170,000 and has four-wheel drive, three electric motors to supplement its V-formation engine and a paddle-shift gearbox. The other is a front-engine, front-drive hatch with manual transmission and under half the power and costs less than a fifth of the money. Just how humiliated would my poor old Focus ST feel by comparison on a really great road? The NSX was…

David Maclean reckons this might be a prime candidate for Bangernomics: “This is my 16-year-old Alfa 147, acquired for £500 from an elderly neighbour who’d given up driving. He’d owned it from new and had kept every receipt (including petrol) during its 60,000-mile life. “He had ‘pensioner-dented’ most of the panels and rounded all four corners off, spoiling its pretty lines somewhat. I’d intended to use it as a temporary stopgap ‘pub-dumper’ car, but beneath that scratched surface lay a great fun drive (it’s the 2.0 TS), so two years and 20k miles on, with not a single penny spent, it’s still here and still going strong. Just goes to show: don’t believe all you hear about Alfas.”…

The W109-series is a glorious-looking forerunner to the S-Class and no doubt the new owner was rather taken with this metallic blue example, sold recently at auction for £21,600. That sum got you a show-quality car a few years ago, but today prices are creeping up towards £40k for the best. This particular motor was said to be a good, usable classic with a few flaws. It has been repainted and has just been fettled after seven years of storage. It has the more widely available M116 3.5-litre V8 with a reputation for being pretty durable.…

Volvo has long been lauded for its propensity to take radical design concepts to production nearly unaltered. You would struggle to tell the XC40 from the 2016 Concept 40.1, and electric performance brand Polestar’s first two models still look like they’re from another age entirely. Then there’s the 2001 Safety Concept Car (SSC), which took elements from the timelessly elegant P1800ES estate and found its way into dealerships five years later in the form of the radical C30. This three-door premium hatchback returned Volvo to a segment it hadn’t touched since production of the divisively styled 480ES ended in 1995. It also strengthened the firm’s reputation for prioritising safety with innovative functions including a ‘Blind Spot Information System’ and software that detects if the driver is distracted. Sitting atop then-parent…