Innholdsfortegnelse for March 1, 2023 i Autocar

“The baby G-Class would be crucial in making ‘G’ a sub-brand in the same vein as Maybach and AMG” Mercedes-Benz is plotting a rugged ‘baby’ SUV inspired by the G-Class as a flagship for its new family of ‘Entry Luxury’ models – and it will have electric and combustion-engine options. Unlike the full-sized EQG, which will use a reworked version of the existing combustion car’s ladderframe chassis, the compact SUV would sit on the same versatile Mercedes Modular Architecture (MMA) platform as the upcoming CLA (see left), which will arrive with a choice of ICE and EV power. The proposed new SUV is currently being considered by Mercedes and would be its fifth Entry Luxury model if it gets the go-ahead, joining four others being launched over the next…

THE SECOND-GENERATION Kodiaq will introduce the next evolution of Skoda’s design language for combustionengined cars, bringing with it a range of more efficient petrol and diesel powertrains. The all-new large SUV, confirmed for a 2023 launch, has been spotted testing on public roads for the first time. Photos reveal the new Kodiaq as being a similar size to the current one but with a less rakish body, most likely to improve head room in the third row of seating. This should strengthen its position in light of newer seven-seaters including the latest Hyundai Santa Fe and Kia Sorento, plus the much cheaper Dacia Jogger. Also visible are a front grille with more defined spokes and flanks. The new Kodiaq won’t follow the ‘Modern Solid’ design language set out by the…

THE DACIA SANDERO hatchback and Sandero Stepway crossover will be differentiated more acutely in future, potentially opening the way for the Stepway to be a more overt SUV. The current generation of the Sandero was launched in 2020, with the Stepway derivative once again being slightly raised, receiving a new suspension set-up and having a more rugged, off-road look. The next-generation Sandero and Sandero Stepway are expected to be launched in around 2028. “There’s definitely room for more differentiation between the two, and if we can deliver on the promise of Dacia by including all the essentials at a great value, then there is also room for the price separation between the models to grow,” said Dacia’s vice-president of sales, marketing and operations, Xavier Martinet. This hints at the Stepway…

CITROEN CEO VINCENT Cobée has unexpectedly left the firm to “pursue personal projects” just over three years since his appointment. Thierry Koskas, sales and marketing chief for Citroën parent company Stellantis, has been appointed head of the French brand as it prepares to launch a range of accessible EVs taking their lead from the recently revealed Oli concept. Cobée became CEO of Citroën in January 2020 and oversaw its repositioning as an accessibility-focused brand, with launches including the C3 You – a variant of the supermini priced from £13,995 – aimed at the emptying city car market. His prevailing mission was to boost the accessibility and sustainability of EVs, beginning with the launch of the £7695 Ami quadricycle.…

“If there was ever a time for kei cars to do well in the UK, it would be now.” That’s according to Torque GT, one of the UK’s leading importers of Japanese cars. Demand for these microcars is growing, says the firm, driven by the arrival of “brilliant” new models coinciding with growing concerns about low-emissions zones such as London’s ULEZ. Kei (short for keijidosha) cars are Japanese-market models with government-regulated size and engine displacement limits, first introduced after the Second World War to help get the country moving again. Tax and insurance benefits, as well as exemption from shako shomeisho rules – requiring motorists to prove they have off-street, overnight parking – eventually spurred on strong demand for these vehicles. Despite swingeing cuts to monetary incentives, kei cars today…

CAR FACTORIES FACE FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL As car makers ready their factory networks for mass adoption of EVs, concerns over redundant capacity grow. With converted ICE assembly lines proving less efficient than lines bespoke to EVs, many face the threat of closure and displacement of tens of thousands of staff. Only the best (and the luckiest) sites will survive. BATTERY PRODUCTION VITAL TO UK’S FUTURE The UK needs EV battery factories to insure it against any future trade disputes with the EU, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has warned: “Currently, the UK is protected, because we can source batteries from the continent. If at any point in time this isn’t working any more, the UK could be caught in a position where you can only sell EVs but have no batteries…

I love this time of year, the eve of a new Formula 1 season. You have an inkling of what to expect, but all the hot air from the teams’ launches and even what we learned from (the single) pre-season test only offer a glimpse of the truth. Ultimately, we won’t know the true shape of things in Bahrain this weekend until we get into the heat of the night-time grand prix itself on Sunday. The only teams that can feel confident in their predictions are probably the ones who feel they might be in trouble, and even they will be hoping for a surprise, happy to be proved wrong. Optimism is the natural state in sport. You can read our full preview of the new F1 season on p48.…

Quite a few marques are going all-in on ever more far-fetched tech features to make their cars more appealing. After all, who doesn’t want integrated TikTok, a selfie camera and AI-operated windows in their car? A fair few people, actually, reckons Lexus. So while its new RX has all the standard stuff, including a 14in touchscreen, voice control and a phone app, the real draw should be the beautifully crafted and minimally distracting interior. It’s an appealing idea, but first let’s look at the new RX as a whole. It’s a rival for the BMW X5, Mercedes-Benz GLE and Range Rover Sport, although European buyers have never taken to Lexus’s alternative way of doing things like Americans have. It didn’t help that the RX has never been available with diesel…

MODEL TESTED 2.8 D-4D GR SPORT • Price £49,000 • Power 201bhp • Torque 369lb ft • 0-60mph 10.0sec • 30-70mph 9.5sec • Fuel economy 28.9mpg • CO2 emissions 249g/km • 70-0mph 53.4m Plenty of car makers have abandoned Europe’s light pick-up truck market, having made their doomed experiments. But for two pick-up-market institutions in particular – namely Ford and Toyota – the battle to be top dog in Europe’s flatbed showrooms rumbles on, and as it does so, it’s letting off some interesting fireworks. The second-generation Ford Ranger is now in production, and it will present some stiff competition to this week’s road test subject. But the Blue Oval’s offering needs to get some years in yet to make it to its eighth model generation or its sixth decade on…

Is space the final frontier? Kieron Salter of engineering firm KWSP certainly seems to think so. Because despite being in charge of an automotive manufacturing consultancy down here on planet Earth, it’s clear that he has designs on reaching beyond the atmosphere. If nothing else shows the transformative winds coursing through the automotive industry at the moment, it’s KWSP’s attitude to the future. Salter has mentioned space at least half a dozen times in our opening conversation with him. Weight and size are the key considerations up there, because everything has to be sent up in costly rockets, and this is the core focus of KWSP’s exosphere work: an ongoing feasibility study into additive manufacturing in space. “If I send the raw materials up into space and I have a…

The best kind of ending Your A-Z of used cars (25 January) reminded me that I’d owed you this letter for a long time. There are two very distinct types of Mazda RX-8: the R3 and all the others. All those oft-quoted ‘issues’ relate to non-R3 cars, and even then most are due to the owner. The R3 was the ‘last hurrah’ for the rotary engine, so the engineers were basically given free rein. Naturally, they went to town and made one of the best-handling, most entertaining Japanese cars, which is perfect for British roads. They revised the oiling system to solve all the potential pitfalls of daily running, added Bilstein shocks and Eibach springs, beefed up the anti-roll bars, enhanced the engine bay bracing, got Recaro to supply excellent…

MILEAGE 3501 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if Volvo’s smallest battery-powered SUV can be a motorway commuter and weekend companion This week we have a real-life game of spot the difference. Sitting on the drive above is, to my neighbours at least, the car that is usually there albeit sporting a new paint job. But keen Autocar readers may have spotted a bigger discrepancy than the change in colour: this is the XC40 Recharge’s C40 coupé sibling. You’ll be wondering where the green SUV has gone. If you read the last report (15 February), you’ll know that a nasty crack appeared in the driver’s side of the windscreen, and it was growing by the mile. So while the car was back with Volvo to get a replacement screen, we…

A road test in any other magazine might well be a short, subjective summary of a new car produced under almost any circumstances, but the Autocar road test is different. Specific, rigorous and detailed, it’s the closest examination we can give of any new model. It appears over at least eight pages and is close to 50 man-hours in the making every week. Most of what the road test process entails is designed to be strictly repeatable and fair. We benchmark standing-start and in-gear acceleration at a purpose-built test facility every week. We carry out both subjective and objective handling tests on both road and track, on the latter up to and beyond the limit of grip, so as to fully assess stability, drivability and limit handling appeal. And while…

“The CLA saloon will be joined by successors to the CLA Shooting Brake, GLA/EQA and GLB/EQB” Mercedes-Benz is preparing to take on the Tesla Model 3 with an all-new thirdgeneration CLA that offers the choice of in-house-developed electric and mild-hybrid petrol drivetrains. The new four-door coupé-style saloon is set to be previewed in concept car guise at the Munich motor show in September prior to a planned start to UK sales in early 2025. As part of recent moves to simplify the naming of Mercedes-Benz’s models, the new CLA is expected to retain its traditional name in both pure-electric and combustionengined forms, rather than adopt the EQ sub-branding given to electric models today. It is among four new ‘Entry Luxury’ models pencilled in for launch by Mercedes-Benz over the next…

MERCEDES HAS UNVEILED the new MBUX Superscreen – its next-generation dashboard-integrated touchscreen technology. Set to be available in the new CLA when it arrives in 2025, this more contemporary and digital-based cabin tech will first feature as a high-cost option in the new E-Class, set to go on sale in July. Here, we pick out the best new features.…

BMW’s first publicly available hydrogen fuel cell car is “probably going to [arrive] in the second half of the decade”, according to the project’s chief engineer, Jürgen Guldner. Speaking in Antwerp, where the company presented a small pilot fleet of fully functional, fuel cell iX5 SUVs to journalists and politicians, Guldner said BMW is “waiting for the tipping point of the [refuelling] infrastructure”, putting emphasis on the European Union’s Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Directive, which could soon attain full Regulation status. Such a change in status would be significant because it would mandate the installation of truck-specific refuelling stations every 150km (93 miles) along arterial routes. In time, these could provide the skeleton of a widespread high-pressure passenger car refuelling network. It’s one reason why Guldner views the emergence of fuel…

Fiat will launch two new electric cars this year – and one of them is expected to be a small SUV badged as the Panda. The pair will be part of a major electrification push by Fiat parent company Stellantis. The group plans to expand its European EV portfolio from 22 models currently to 30 this year and 42 by the end of 2024, spread across 11 brands. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares announced the two new Fiats in an earnings call that detailed the company’s bumper 2022 profits. Tavares didn’t reveal the identity of either Fiat. However, one is slated to be built alongside Jeep’s new Avenger small SUV at Stellantis’s factory in Tychy, Poland, and sit on the same eCMP platform. The Avenger will also be sold with combustion…

March arrives with the easiest resubscription decision I face all year: £40 to watch online the Supercars Championship, Australia’s touring car racing series. Central to its appeal to me is that it features rear-wheel-drive V8 coupés with locked differentials. That and the fact that the organisers put parity between competing brands top of the agenda, so it offers very close racing. But apparently not close enough: when following other cars, racers have complained about sitting in ‘dirty’ air, which disrupts aerodynamic performance, making passing harder and overheating mechanicals. Not that you would know it as a spectator. A big change for the 2023 season is the arrival of new cars, the Gen3 Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang. They generate 60-70% less downforce than their Holden Commodore and Mustang predecessors, with…

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No, you can’t just have a diesel. Every car maker has to get its fleet average CO2 down, but sales of oil-burners in the UK have imploded. So as much as Dacia is a brand that epitomises simplicity and no nonsense, a petrol-electric hybrid seems to be the way to go. The ‘new’ technology consists of proven Renault mechanicals, as is the Dacia way – the Jogger using the E-Tech-badged powertrain already seen in the Clio, Captur and Arkana. As a refresher, this consists of a naturally aspirated 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine, a clutchless and unsynchronised four-speed gearbox, and two electric motors. The larger of those drives through the ’box, while the smaller one acts as a starter-generator and adjusts the engine’s RPM for rev-matching. Since the standard 1.0-litre turbo petrol…

A THREE-WAY TITLE BATTLE DS So, Edd, will it be Red Bull versus Ferrari versus Mercedes-AMG for the title this year? ES Hopefully. Possibly. Probably not! DS What makes you say that? ES They all have the resources and potential to be up there, but when small differences have such a big impact, there is likely to be enough of a difference for one of them not to be in the mix. But Ferrari seem very upbeat. As for Mercedes, there are some mutterings that they might not have made the progress they hoped for. It could come down to Ferrari challenging Red Bull, but certainly I wouldn’t rule out a three-way fight. VASSEUR’S FERRARI CHALLENGE DS Former Alfa Romeo team principal Frédéric Vasseur is the new boss at Ferrari, the…

DRIVEN Ferrari Purosangue Can an SUV really faithfully continue the legacy of the world’s most singular car maker, even with an atmospheric V12? FIRST DRIVE Aston Martin Valkyrie Time to find out if the wait for the most extreme Aston ever has been worth it FEATURE V6 debate Has there ever been a truly great V6? We attempt to settle the argument for good EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Volkswagen Multivan Wolfsburg’s newly car-based MPV is put under our microscope OUR CARS Renault Mégane E-Tech EV New Mégane aims to prove that French flair can be electrified SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p22…

MILEAGE 2564 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if an electric SUV is worthy of the Mustang name and, more importantly, if it augurs well for Ford’s future What price warmth? A heavy one, it seems, as the energy cost of running heating systems in the cold continues to shock me. The Mustang Mach-E’s stat-o-meter suggests that close to half of its energy has at times been expended not on driving from A to B but on keeping me warm while it did so. In part, that’s misleading. My kids are very keen swimmers, which makes me a (less keen) taxi driver, which in turn means I spend more hours than is healthy working, reading, watching videos or nodding off while sitting in car parks – which at this time…

MILEAGE 10,043 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out if a big Citroën can make you feel relaxed about a charging network with so few places for a PHEV to plug in I’m now 10,000 miles into my test of the Citroën C5 Aircross plug-in hybrid, and although it’s not a car without its foibles and minor annoyances, I’m enjoying driving and living with it, quirks and all. As I pointed out in our first report, this SUV’s combination of useful size, competitive price, long electric-only range and low benefit-in-kind tax banding stands to make it quite an important ‘conquest car’, meaning it could introduce people to Citroën who’ve never considered the brand before. And on the evidence I’ve uncovered so far, the particular vision of Citroën-ness that it presents…

The Mercedes-Benz SLK 55 AMG is like a squirrel wielding a handgun: so small yet so powerful. What we have here is the German brand’s baby roadster (in R172 guise) that, as if by magic, has had a 5.5-litre V8 engine squeezed under its bonnet. It’s a unique and captivating proposition, yet one that’s actually rather affordable. And we don’t just mean to buy, either, because its engine made this SLK the most fuel-efficient V8-powered production car in the world on its debut in 2011. This is thanks to the unit’s stop-start system, high-pressure direct injection, intelligent ancillary power management and clever cylinder deactivation tech. It emits 195g/km of CO2 and averages 33.6mpg officially. As a result, you won’t pay extortionate amounts in fuel or tax, the latter of which…

The new off-road-friendly Porsche 911 Dakar is a reminder that the German sports car company has long had an unlikely involvement in the world of rallying. We all have our own ideas of what constitutes a rally car, usually along the lines of ‘relatively small but with a very powerful engine and four-wheel drive’. Not all of them conform to this recipe, however… Triumph TR7 1976 The TR wedge’s rally career was another example of British Leyland settling for defeat when victory should have been the result. Already delayed into production, the TR7 was underpowered, so Triumph fitted the 16-valve Dolomite Sprint engine to its rally car and tuned it to 220bhp. It handled well but lagged behind the 265bhp Ford Escorts. In 1978, rule changes made the TR7 rally…

Volkswagen has unveiled the keenly anticipated facelifted ID 3, brought to market earlier than planned in reaction to wellpublicised issues with the electric family hatchback’s software and interior quality. Chunky revisions mean the ID 3 “is taking a significant and noticeable leap forward in terms of quality, materials and system stability”, Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer told Autocar in October last year, adding: “We’ve listened very carefully to the ID 3 community. [The facelifted ID 3 is] a car that delivers what the Volkswagen brand promises.” Most notably, the ID 3 now features the latest generation of Volkswagen’s ID software package, with revised menus that are intended to reduce complexity and engender a smoother user experience. It will continue to be displayed on a 10.0in central touchscreen, until a new 12.0in…

BRITISH SPORTS CAR maker BAC has “backed off” from development of its hydrogen fuel cell E-Mono, company co-founder Neill Briggs has told Autocar. In 2021, BAC announced it had partnered MIRA-based Viritech to create a zeroemissions version of the Mono sports car. Their efforts yielded the E-Mono, a virtual study using a hydrogen fuel cell stack, a 20kWh battery and four electric motors, giving the car a 704kg kerb weight and 371bhp power output. Despite being 149kg heavier than the Mono R (powered by a 2.5-litre Ford-sourced combustion engine), the E-Mono was more than 2.0sec quicker around a simulated lap of Silverstone. Little has been said about the hydrogen project since mid-2022. Now Briggs has hinted the UK government’s push towards battery-electric vehicles – plus recent filling station closures…

FORD HAS CONFIRMED plans to build one of the European industry’s largest EV battery cell plants in Ankara, Turkey. The company has signed a non-binding agreement with Korean battery giant LG Energy Solutions and Turkish industrial conglomerate Koç to build the plant. Ford hopes to break ground at the site this year and begin production there in 2026. The batteries are likely to be used in vehicles including the E-Transit electric van, which is built at the nearby Gölcük plant using batteries made by LG Energy Solutions in Poland. Once opened, the Ankara factory will push Ford towards its goal of producing more than two million EVs globally. All three involved parties have committed to an initial annual capacity of at least 25GWh, which, said Ford, could later rise to…

THE LATEST AND what promises to be the most effective method for preventing a bandit from making off with your car is a sophisticated biometric identification system from automotive tech giant Continental. The same company that produces the tyre brand, Continental is one of the world’s largest automotive tier one suppliers, which means it’s supplying key components directly to the car makers. The key thing about tier ones like Continental, Bosch, ZF and others is that many of the innovations appearing on cars come from them and not the manufacturer. This latest system is much the same tech as the facial recognition we use on our mobile phones. Biometrics is the computer science of recognition using biological characteristics. That may be something as familiar as a fingerprint, or recognising the…

Owners of Range Rovers living in London are finding their vehicles are becoming uninsurable owing to a combination of sky-high premiums and a reduction in the number of firms willing to insure them. According to the DVLA, Range Rovers were the second-most-stolen cars in the UK in 2022, with more than 5200 taken. A lot of them were stolen in London, with the result that many insurers have either stopped insuring the cars or sharply increased premiums. Land Rover itself no longer offers insurance for its models. Its website informs customers that it ceased to do so on 1 November 2022. A spokesperson for the company said it and insurance provider Verex had mutually agreed to end their partnership but it is preparing to launch “an exciting new insurance proposition”.…

SUNDAY It was a great morning, and suddenly the neighbourhood was full of great cars. Not expensive mostly but small, agile, businesslike and determinedly driven. I followed several to a local airfield – Polos, Fiestas, Micras, 206s – where I discovered they were among 90 entrants in a day-long, five-venue road rally being staged by the Bath Motor Club, based 30 miles away. As far as I could establish, the rally consisted of a dozen driving tests (mostly on disused airfields) and well over 100 stage miles. The entrants’ banter, the cars’ noise and the drivers’ obvious joy of taking their energetic little cars to the limit reinforced my determination to do more road car motorsport this year. It looked too good to miss. TUESDAY Until lockdown arrived and the…

In this business, it’s not rare to come across new series-production cars that have been left conspicuously underdeveloped. But to find an experimental, proof-of-concept, never-for-selling machine that already feels very convincingly honed for public consumption? Now that’s quite unusual. Of course, no matter how plausible the BMW iX5 Hydrogen seems in isolation, there’s the big obstacle of refuelling the thing. With its carbonfibre-encased cylindrical tanks speedily filled with 6kg of hydrogen, compressed to 700 bar and cooled to -40deg C, it will in theory do 313 miles before needing to stop. But with few hydrogen fuelling stations on the ground in Europe, stopping in the right place is rather tricky. BMW suspects that as heavy industry turns towards hydrogen and ICE options are legislated into the margins, a robust hydrogen…

The days of the estate car appear to be numbered. Over the past four years, Volvo – perhaps its most fervent proponent – sold 22,800 of them, compared with 149,200 SUVs. What an injustice this is when the Volvo V60 Cross Country still exists. Combining go-anywhere capability and practicality with a lower and therefore more engaging chassis, surely it still has a role to play. Apart from the body cladding and 60mm increase in ride height, this is fundamentally the same car as the regular V60, so it’s fitted with double-wishbone suspension and with four-wheel drive as standard. Retuned for the Cross Country, this set-up gives an absorbent, conspicuously comfortable ride. This encourages trips to faraway destinations, and with a 519-litre boot (36 litres more than in the XC60 SUV,…

When is a niche no longer a niche? Don’t worry, I’m not about to go all Descartes on you. It’s just that we’ve been calling the crossover/fastback/jacked-up hatchback/dropped SUV in-betweener brigade ‘niche’ for a long time, yet there’s such demand for it and its members are so numerous that, frankly, it’s not really niche any more, is it? Which brings me to our test. You want something fun and a bit executive-posh, but you want it to be different; you want it to be a bit attention-grabbing. Let’s face it, you want anything – anything – but a grey Audi A4, BMW 3 Series or Mercedes-Benz C-Class. With that in mind, we’ve gathered together a trio of mid-sized ‘alternative’ executives, with the Peugeot 408 being the newest offering. It’s based…

This won’t wash I’ve just returned from my local BMW dealership with a bill for just over £130 to clear the windscreen washer filter on my 3 Series. When I questioned this, I was told BMW was aware of the issue but didn’t consider this to be a warranty issue. From discussion with the service department, it appears I wasn’t the first person to raise this issue. Surely a filter that blocks in less than two years, preventing the washers being usable and making the car unroadworthy, is an issue that BMW should address. Does this mean that I can expect another bill every 18 months or so to clear this filter? I wonder how many other owners will be aware of what’s ahead when the water output suddenly reduces.…

MILEAGE 6898 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To judge how Vauxhall is doing in the big-volume but tough hatchback market It was entirely my own fault. I was driving the Astra well inside the speed limit along a semi-rural road with a low kerb close to the edge of the Tarmac. Instead of watching the road, I reached across to the central screen to select a map or change the radio station (can’t remember which). The inattention caused me to miss a gentle but vital kink and sideswipe the kerb, enough to scuff both nearside alloy wheels and scar the tyre sidewalls. Instantly I felt the flood of guilt that goes with doing needless damage to a car, together with the feeling that in today’s alloy-wheel age you can do lots…

If Goldilocks judged cars, she would probably find the BMW X3 to be just right. After all, it’s not as compact as the X1 and X2 but not colossal like the X5 and X7. As such, you have an SUV with a spacious interior, as well as a car that doesn’t feel out of place around town. In a word, it’s versatile. Now, versatility means less when you can’t fully enjoy it, but that’s not something you need to worry about with the third-generation X3, launched in 2017. It gets all the luxuries you would associate with its premium badge. Even entry-level SE trim has LED headlights, 18in alloys, leather seats that are heated in the front, dual-zone climate control, automatic lights and an electric tailgate. This sense of richness…

An expert’s view ADAM FRANKS, PROJECT AMG “Having such a small car with a large engine is pretty cool. The engine’s cylinder shut-off function was quite advanced for its era and the technical highlight. These cars are pretty bulletproof from the engine and transmission perspectives; we don’t hear too many nasty stories. One thing that has recently come into play is corrosion on the rear axle and brake lines. When you drive it, note any engine vibrations or things like that, because they’re telltale signs that the car has been driven hard and the engine mounts are a bit tired. The heart of the engine will be absolutely fine, though. It can take quite a lot of abuse, really.” Buyer beware ▪ BODY The divider between the home of the…