Innholdsfortegnelse for April 7, 2021 i Autocar

The all-new EQS is hugely significant as Mercedes- Benz’s new flagship luxury saloon and the first model based on its Electric Vehicle Architecture (EVA) platform. The German manufacturer’s first three EQ electric models (the EQC SUV, EQV MPV and EQA crossover) use adapted versions of conventional platforms, making the EQS the first ground-up Mercedes EV. Holger Enzmann, who heads the EQS test programme, calls it “a new beginning” – and now we’ve had our first taste in a near-production prototype. The aluminium-intensive EVA platform is key to the distinctive shape of the EQS, with its smoothly surfaced body also made exclusively from the metal. The differences from combustion-engined Mercedes are clear, with an optional panel ‘grille’ featuring small three-pointed star motifs and a new bonnet giving it a distinctly new-world…

It doesn’t matter which way you cut it: the past year makes grim reading for the car industry. Whether you look at sales or manufacturing, the numbers are all down, with the ongoing effect of the coronavirus pandemic and the rolling programme of lockdowns and restrictions creating uncertainty for consumers and businesses alike. So it isn’t an understatement to say the full reopening of dealerships on 12 April can’t come soon enough. How bad has it been? You don’t have to look far for an answer. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders estimates the industry as a whole suffered a staggering £23 billion loss in the year since prime minister Boris Johnson announced the first national lockdown at the end of March 2020. As for sales, over the course…

Imagine how different a company Audi must feel today than it did 10 years ago. Once the envy of the industry, the firm’s formerly phenomenal growth curve now looks to have permanently levelled off. Its closest competitors have overtaken it. The ex-boss and a couple of his lieutenants have ended up in court. Perhaps even more worrying still if you’re an Audi employee, though, must be the prospect of the product strategy that has fuelled the company’s rise now suddenly seeming to have run out of road. It was with those odd-numbered, designer Sportback saloons that the firm really started putting on the sales volume back in the noughties. Back then, too, came the Q-prefixed SUVs, whose appearance on the roads none of us can have failed to notice, and…

The new Octavia e-Tec is Skoda’s first 48V mild hybrid. It runs the smallest engine available in the Mk4 car, a 1.0-litre three-pot turbo petrol, with the MHEV element a belt-driven starter-alternator that uses energy recovered under braking to charge a battery. This then powers things like the power steering and coasting with the engine off. It should prove more economical, yet the regular 1.0 TSI is only 1mpg and 1g/km of CO2 worse for a saving of about £2000. To be fair to Skoda, direct comparison is hard: the e-Tec is exclusively automatic, whereas the regular engine is manual only, and dual-clutch gearboxes weigh more. Operating on the Miller injection cycle (which is meant to produce peak torque 35% earlier than the Atkinson cycle), the e-Tec makes 148lb ft…

The car world is full of characters: talented, knowledgeable, professional people often at the top of their game. Catch them at a new product launch and their appearance and dialogue will be highly polished, often PR-managed and a credit to the company that employs them. So when, in 1999, a rather dishevelled-looking chap called Lee Noble arrived at Autocar’s offices, driving what appeared to be a rather cheap and cheerful open-top kit car called the M10, we were sceptical. With some reluctance, the road test team tried the car – and the following week, this magazine proclaimed it to be “one of the most complete and exciting British midengined two-seaters we’ve driven”. That marked the start of the Noble phenomenon. Four years later, I drove an M12 – the M10’s…

NOBLE FOUNDER How do regard the Noble M12 now, 20 years later? “As a classic British sports car that seems to have been slightly overlooked. A car that, at its inception, was ahead of most other British low-volume car companies, if not in technology or material terms, most certainly cost-effectively and dynamically.” When was the last time you drove one? “Probably five years ago on a trip to Buckingham Palace to meet Prince Michael of Kent. I believe it was a celebration of British cars over the years; Autocar’s Steve Cropley was also there in a Jaguar XJ220.” If you were to design an M12 for 2021, what would you change? “Actually, not that much. I’ve done a couple of redesigns, but they always end up costing much more in…

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With a few old-school events returning to the World Rally Championship, there’s a hint of nostalgia in the air. The latest event to rejoin the schedule is another vintage classic: Greece’s Acropolis Rally, taking the place of Rally Chile (which has been canned due to potential pandemic disruption) in September. Like Kenya’s Safari Rally, the Acropolis was always a proper car-breaker, its stages littered with rocks the size of footballs and moon-like craters. However, unlike the Safari, which has been neutered (rally cars and roaming giraffes no longer mix in today’s polite society), the Acropolis will be just as long and tough as ever. Even Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has called his home WRC round “the Rally of the Gods: an epic annual contest that tested drivers like no…

Everything must change We read car magazines regularly because we’re petrolheads, and many of us have a fossil-fuelled toy or two tucked away. However, deep down, we all know that we will have to make some major sacrifices to prevent further trashing of the only planet we can live on and, in the longer term, putting right the damage we’ve already done. It won’t just be the cars we drive that will have to change but also our entire lifestyle and the economic model we’ve been used to for the past 70 years. The time will come, fairly soon, when most of us would happily trade a few seconds off the 0-60mph time or a few BHP for an extra mile or two per kWh and less range anxiety. The…

MILEAGE 2345 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if a coupé still has a place on today’s SUV-obsessed roads You do have to pinch yourself in this job sometimes. First I was lucky enough to be able to run a BMW 420d Coupé, and then the other day a chap with a lorry turned up to swap it for the top ‘non-M’ 4 Series, the M440i xDrive. BMW coupés have historically always felt special, but this one is arguably even more so. Straight-six engines are a dying breed (just look at what Mercedes-Benz is up to with its new C-Class for proof), so it feels like we’re keeping a bit of the heritage going with this particular car. Day-to-day and pottering around, you don’t notice the difference in pace too…

QUESTION I drive fewer miles now and resent paying the same for my car insurance as before. Are any insurers responding to this change in drivers’ habits with tailored deals? Don Brown, Chichester ANSWER The RAC has launched an insurance product for drivers doing fewer than 6000 miles per year. With Pay by Mile cover, you pay as little as 4p for each mile you drive, plus a monthly fee to cover the vehicle when it’s parked. How much drivers will save depends on their circumstances but someone paying the lowest per-mile rate of 4p and doing 5999 miles will pay £240 plus the monthly parking fee. Elsewhere, some rivals such as Direct Line will refund low-mileage drivers a portion of their premium. JE QUESTION I’ve only just noticed that…

BMW M6 Convertible £22,995 Our round-up of BMW M soft-tops begins with the M6 Convertible of 2005-2010. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, granted. More pertinently, it’s not only expensive to buy but also expensive to own and, if anything goes wrong, too expensive to fix. That’s why dealers aren’t interested in stocking examples that are very leggy (up to 90,000 miles is their limit, and most prefer no more than 60,000) or cheap (from around £16,000 is where they start). For less expensive examples, you’re looking at private sellers. That’s not necessarily a problem, since you can tell a lot about a car from its owner. Have your chosen M6 expertly inspected and you could stumble across a bargain. The M6 is powered by a 5.0-litre V10 producing 500bhp.…

Aston Martin will hit the ground running with its transition to electrification later this year when it unveils the production-ready Valhalla supercar, which will serve as a halo model for a new range of hybrid versions of the firm’s current models, as well as all-new fully electric cars. The Valhalla is due to enter production in 2023. Revealed in concept form at the 2019 Geneva motor show, it was set to be the first model to use Aston’s bespoke ‘TM01’ hybridised 3.0-litre V6, before the set-up was to be rolled out across the line-up. However, development of that powertrain has now been put on ice in light of Aston’s strengthened ties to 20% stakeholder Mercedes-Benz, which will supply components at a “reasonable cost” to the British brand. The mid-engined two-seater…

The Mercedes-Benz CLS has been given a mid-life makeover, gaining a raft of styling upgrades, a new mild-hybrid diesel powertrain and a limited-edition version of AMG’s range-topping 429bhp CLS 53 4Matic+. The four-door coupé received a number of updates to its driver assistance and infotainment systems last year, so this facelift focuses on design changes, including a revised grille and bumpers. Meanwhile, the interior now features a number of new trim options, with additional use of leather and a new steering wheel design. The new powertrain, badged the 300d, features a 248bhp 2.0-litre fourcylinder diesel engine assisted by a 20bhp 48V integrated starter-generator. It achieves official CO2 emissions of 144-153g/km with fuel economy of 48.7-51.3mpg. The hot CLS 53 has also been given a spruce-up, including a redesigned AMG grille…

PEUGEOT WILL LAUNCH mild-hybrid and electric versions of its new 308 family car but is unlikely to introduce a hot PSE rangetopper, according to product boss Jérôme Micheron. “We want to give the customer the power of choice, because the market is evolving so fast but we want to have the right answers,” he told Autocar. “We’re launching the new 308 with petrol and diesel, we’ve already decided a roadmap in which we will launch MHEV and we have a plan for an EV. “We would rely on the existing EMP2 [platform for the e-308], but in the Stellantis group we have several options to create electrification.” The e-308 is likely to use the 134bhp set-up employed by the smaller e-208, with a 50kWh battery offering a range of 150…

The big, elegant luxury saloon may be one of the oldest automotive concepts there is, but it’s alive and well in the enduringly handsome shape of the Volvo S90. Contrary to what you might have heard, it has also been doing reasonable business. Five years after the S90 was launched, it remained more popular in the UK than its V90 estate sibling was in 2020. Will it continue to be so popular, though, now that Volvo UK has taken the decision to remove the cheaper mild-hybrid versions and offer it exclusively in plug-in hybrid form? From the outside looking in, to keep on the cheaper engines in the equivalent V90 (which can’t be had as a PHEV, incidentally) while removing all powertrains except for the T8 Recharge from the S90…

You could argue that the new Mercedes-Benz EQV gets very close to being the perfect BEV. It’s generous in size and tall, so a very big battery slips under it a treat. It’s one of those vehicles that’s likely to do constant city to airport runs, so its journeys will be regular and fairly short. It’s built for a wide range of loading conditions (from six people plus luggage to just its driver), so its air suspension can be expected to cope with the battery’s additional weight. And its operators are bound to have regular charging to hand. In essence, it’s an electric version of the recently updated van-derived V-Class, smartly furnished for five in the back (with three, if necessary, across the rear bench), with powered side doors and…

The Across, like the RAV4, is very much intended for occasional – and fairly light – off-road forays only. In PHEV form, the car has the same wading capability as any other RAV4 and almost identical clearance angles and measurements – enough for a muddy or slightly rutted track, but not perhaps for a great deal more. The Across PHEV’s particular specification both helps and hinders it off road: the car’s electric motor torque does make for good low-speed control and drivability, but its ‘eco’ tyre specification certainly doesn’t allow it to create the last word in mechanical grip on any surface. That would, of course, make for an easy fix for owners who wanted to add a little extra capability on dirt and grass: just fit a set of…

“Jaguar designs will be compelling and jaw-dropping. One word I like is exuberant. Even shocking, but in a good way” What will Gerry McGovern do at Jaguar? This has been the hottest question in British car design circles since January, when creative, combative, single-minded McGovern was elevated to the new position of chief creative officer at Jaguar Land Rover by CEO Thierry Bolloré, himself just four months into the job. Whereas the Englishman was previously responsible only for Land Rover design (a job that he accomplished with both design brilliance and commercial acumen), he would now also be a key figure in the future of Jaguar – a brand far more troubled and far less successful. A couple of weeks after McGovern’s promotion, Bolloré shocked the car world with a…

ROAD TEST Volkswagen Golf R This old dog has learned many new tricks in its latest generation – but at a price. Now it faces the toughest test in the business COMPARISON Bentley Bentayga vs Range Rover Who makes the world’s best luxury 4x4? Clue: it’s British FEATURE Blower reborn Andrew Frankel turns Bentley Boy as he helps to sign off the reborn Blower EVERY WEEK MOTORSPORT Allan McNish Le Mans winner is now a team boss. We hear how he’s finding the switch FIRST DRIVE Peugeot 508 PSE GTi is no more; now it’s PSE. We rate the first new-era fast Peugeot SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p52…

MILEAGE 5425 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out if this plug-in hybrid SUV can eclipse its higher-profile donor model BORROWING OLGUN KORDAL’S Suzuki Across for this week’s road test was an interesting experience. For the first time (£139,000 Polestar 1 grand tourer aside), here was a plugin hybrid that actually did what it said on the tin with regards to how far you can drive it on a full charge. Suzuki claims that the Across can travel as far as 47 miles on nothing but electrons before you will need to plug it back into the mains, so I was impressed when I found that I was able to cover 48 miles before its petrol engine sparked into life. That figure wasn’t achieved entirely in the sorts of stop-start,…

MILEAGE UNKNOWN This is a proper everyday tale involving next door’s EV. It broke down at the top of their gravel drive. They use it for taking out the bins and random duties around their estate. Well, after it conked out, I did the decent thing and helped the lady of the house to push it out of harm’s way. You’d think these would be easy enough to push along, but as well as the batteries, they put up a fight and beep at you. Like the real car-sized things, they shouldn’t be dragged along. Anyway, pure Bangernomics electricity did the job, and after a few hours it could be driven away. At least there was a happy ending.…

Dacia’s cheap-as-chips Sandero hatchback has been with us since 2013. For its first few years, it came in Access, Ambiance and Laureate trims and was powered by a choice of three engines: a 73bhp 1.2 petrol, a more modern 89bhp turbocharged 0.9 TCe petrol and an 89bhp 1.5-litre dCi diesel. From August 2015, all three were uprated to the Euro 6 emissions standard. Today, prices start at around £2000 for a decent example such as the one-owner 2013-reg 1.2 Ambiance with 60,000 miles and a full service history we found. That’s not bad for a spacious hatchback with electric windows, remote locking and a stereo, albeit one powered by a low-tech petrol motor that costs £150 to tax and takes 14.5sec to haul the car from standstill to 62mph. At…

With Mitsubishi leaving us, the Colt Car Company is auctioning off its 14-strong heritage fleet this month. You can see the cars at autoauction.co.uk. Those bound to attract interest include a Starion and a 3000GT, plus a bevy of Lancer Evolutions, including an Evo VI Tommi Mäkinen Edition signed by the man himself. It’s exciting stuff, but our attention was caught by the pretty Colt Lancer 1.4. It was the first Mitsubishi registered in the UK, in 1974, and the brand’s stand car at the Earl’s Court motor show that year. The little two-door saloon has done just 74,000 miles and looks mint.…

Reader warning: this is not your ‘Rolls for the price of a Ford Focus’ story. The cheapest Ghost we found was a 2010/59-reg with 118,000 miles for £63,000 – around the price of a new, premium EV. This kind of money doesn’t even buy you best in class, since it was finished in wedding white and had endured five previous keepers. True, the service history was described as ‘full’, but there was no word of it being by Rolls-Royce. Being registered in 2010, the car was what we’ll call, for the purposes of this guide, a Series I Ghost. The model was launched in 2009, when it was described as the ‘baby Rolls’, since it sat beneath the Phantom in the manufacturer’s lineup. An extended-wheelbase version came along in 2011.…

Genesis, Hyundai’s luxury brand that is gearing up for an imminent UK launch, has previewed a future electric “high-performance grand tourer” with the new X concept. The two-door GT is the fifth concept from the brand, which already operates in Korea and the US, since it was founded in 2015. No powertrain or performance details have been revealed. Instead, the focus is on how a future Genesis performance car will look. The front features a large grille, which, Genesis says, is to improve airflow and reduce resistance rather than for cooling. The concept also has cameras in place of door mirrors to further increase efficiency. The alloy wheels use a “turbine-type” five-spoke design, with lime green brake calipers hinting at the car’s performance intent. The rear bodywork is designed around…

THE WEIGHT OF lithium ion battery packs is one of the major drawbacks of electric vehicle technology, not just dynamically but also because lugging more weight around uses more energy. Since EVs are all about sustainability, that’s counterproductive. But what if the conventional battery could be ditched and replaced with an electrical storage battery technology that could be integrated into the car’s structural components and therefore add no additional weight to the car at all? Scientists at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm might have the answer in what they call massless energy storage. The Swedes’ idea harks back to 1960s grand prix racing, when BRM and Lotus first used engine and transmissions as a structural part of the chassis,…

TESTER’S NOTE Hyundai’s paddlebased regen remains the best implementation I’ve tried, swapping between three strength levels (or turned off completely) without taking your hands off the steering wheel. TM The recent shake-up of which models do and don’t qualify for the UK government’s electric car grant has affected plenty of manufacturers, but Hyundai has been stung particularly badly. While the entry-level Kona Electric continues to qualify for a discount under the new rules, the longer-range model is now ineligible, carving a significant gulf through the line-up. It means the 64kWh Ultimate version tested here now retails for more than £40,000, pushing it into a hotly contested price bracket along with newcomers like the Ford Mustang Mach-E and Volkswagen ID 4. If you’re more of a glass-half-full person, though, you might…

MODELTESTED 2.5PHEVE-FOURCVT The new Suzuki Across looks an awful lot like another mid-sized, electrified SUV you might have seen on the road already: the current Toyota RAV4 PHEV. However, what we’re dealing with here is not a worrying case of design plagiarism. The reason the new Across looks like the RAV4 is because it is a RAV4, only badge-engineered. You might have noticed that smaller Japanese marques such as Suzuki are currently having a torrid time in Europe, mostly because emissions legislation demands that their smaller models are equipped with expensive emissions-cutting technologies, which eat into already-slim profit margins. Daihatsu left Europe in 2013, Subaru is teetering on the brink, and the exciting news that Mitsubishi UK is to auction off its wonderful heritage fleet comes only because, at least…

The Across may be no more or less than a rebadged, lightly restyled RAV4 PHEV, but its foundation is impressively strong. Not only does Suzuki’s first plug-in hybrid arrive with a class-leading claimed range, but it’s also capable of making good on its claims for electric autonomy, which makes it something of a collector’s item. It has rounded, predictable, reassuring handling; quietly potent real-world performance, in whichever mode you happen to be driving it; and a plug-in petrol powertrain that continues to offer commendable efficiency even when the drive battery has been depleted. In the measurable, objective terms in which this test chiefly deals, it would be flat wrong to label the Across as anything other than a standout car. For some private buyers, this Suzuki’s £45,599 list price will…

Can we pretend that neither the finest hot hatchback of the modern era, nor one of its more accomplished adversaries, ever existed? Just for the next 10 minutes? It’s the only way we’re going to get through this test while giving these crossovers a fair hearing, because the truth is that the new Volkswagen Tiguan R and Mercedes-AMG GLB 35 are deliberately and irreversibly compromised from the outset. The hot hatches in question are the Golf R and the AMG A35. Both are great performance cars, but especially so the Golf, which has during the past decade gained a reputation for excellence based on its sublime mix of everyday usability and prolific speed. If you want unassuming yet exciting, the Volkswagen is where you start. Excellence is a fragile thing,…

From Monday 12 April in England and Wales, and 5 April in Scotland (Northern Ireland has yet to reveal its hand), car dealerships will be allowed to reopen. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), certainly thinks so: “Over the past few months, click and collect has been a lifeline for the sector, but nothing replaces the face-to-face customer experience. Since March 2020, the industry has recorded a £23 billion loss, so the importance of retailers being open for business should not be underestimated.” Our advice? Get in early. According to a poll of 3000 people by our friends at What Car?, car buyers are emerging from Covid-19 hibernation in their droves. Visits to What Car?’s new car deals pages…

Red Bull ‘right’ to relinquish lead Red Bull Formula 1 team boss Christian Horner has said ordering Max Verstappen to relinquish the lead of the Bahrain Grand Prix to Mercedes-AMG’s Sir Lewis Hamilton, after the Dutchman left the track while overtaking him, was “the right thing to do”. Verstappen, who was unable to pass Hamilton again, had said he would have preferred to keep the lead and try to build a time gap to cover any penalty. Rookies shine on Formula 2 debuts Formula 3 graduates Liam Lawson and Oscar Piastri both took a race win on their Formula 2 debuts in Bahrain. Alpine junior driver Guanyu Zhou – who already has two seasons behind him – won the third race of the weekend. He now holds an 11-point lead…

FINAL REPORT MILEAGE 3522 WHY WE RAN IT To see if the E has the usability to match its desirability, despite its short range The world is quite divisive, you may have noticed. Debates are fierce, and the grey middle ground seems lost in a desire to make everything black or white. Whatever happened to a bit of good old-fashioned fence-sitting? With that in mind, comments about the Honda E tend to go something like this: “Yeah, I love the way it looks inside and out, even more so the way it drives, but its range is tiny, so it’s basically rubbish.” Sure, the range figure is smaller than similarly priced rivals such as the Peugeot e-208, but by enough to discount the E entirely? Not a chance. We’ll come…

MILEAGE 3941 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if there’s more to this funky plug-in SUV than a tax-friendly CO2 MY NEIGHBOURS MIGHT be getting a bit more relaxed about lockdown-related travel restrictions, because many of the cars that have sat stationary on my street for the past few months suddenly seem to have disappeared. For purely selfish reasons, this is good: it means the two Ubitricity lamp-post chargers are no longer being blocked. So, for the first time I was able to plug our Citroën C5 Aircross PHEV into one of them, rather than the nearby Source London chargers. The price difference was pretty drastic: whereas I normally pay anywhere between £8 to £13 to top up the PHEV’s battery at the latter (which hardly seemed worth it), it…

Huge thanks to Andy, who turned to this beautiful car when he need to replace his former work-related wheels: “After 20 or more years of company cars, I needed a suitable means of commuting 26 miles a day across beautiful Cornish countryside. The dormant toy on the drive at the time was a 2000 Boxster S with 90,000 miles that I had bought for £4250. Having sorted the suspension, tyres and brakes, I have now added 20,000 trouble-free, glorious miles with performance, handling and a wonderful noise to boot!”…

Even if it is powered by a 168bhp 2.4-litre 20-valve five-cylinder engine, the Stilo Abarth is surely stretching the case for classic credibility. Maybe, but it does have scarcity on its side. This one-owner, 27,000-mile 2003 car has a full service history, too. Still not persuaded? Then how about the Stilo Michael Schumacher Limited Edition with 18in OZ Superturismo multi-spoke alloys, Bilstein dampers, Eibach springs and a stainless-steel rear silencer? A 2006 example with 140,000 miles was heading to auction online as this was written……

An expert’s view CURTIS JOHNSON, BENTLEY SOLUTIONS “I’m a Bentley master tech and started my business nine years ago servicing Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. I love the Rolls-Royce brand, especially its associations with royalty. BMW has done a lot for it, making it even more exclusive and the cars more reliable, but while manufacturing processes have improved and the cars feel great to drive, I’m not sure material quality has quite kept pace. I often find trim is clipped in place rather than screwed, as it used to be. Also, some of the bits you can’t see, such as door cards and the parts around them, aren’t quite the quality you’d expect. It looks like they’ve been trying to save money, but it’s a risky strategy.” Buyer beware… • ENGINE Full…