Innholdsfortegnelse for March 22, 2023 i Autocar

How much will it cost? Ford hasn’t said, but expect a healthy premium over the Focus. A starting price in the mid-£40,000 range would line up the Explorer neatly against the similarly sized Volvo XC40 Recharge, and the highest-spec 4WD cars are likely to nudge the price towards £60,000. Ford says it has striven to keep running and insurance costs to a minimum. Ford Team Edison boss Ulrich Koesters said: “From a Focus customer perspective, we believe this will be affordable.” Is it an indirect Fiesta replacement? Ford of Europe boss Martin Sander (pictured) said the Explorer “can’t replace the Fiesta when it comes to customer expectations, because it’s a totally different vehicle – a totally different vehicle in a totally different segment”. Indeed, it is substantially larger and will…

PORSCHE HAS CONFIRMED plans for an electric version of the Cayenne as it shifts towards ramping up the number of EVs it sells. Expected to be launched in 2026, with UK sales beginning in 2027, the EV will arrive two years after the delayed electric Porsche Macan and a year before the marque’s new K1 range-topping crossover. It is the first time that Porsche has officially recognised plans to provide a pure-electric driveline option for its best-selling model, which recorded 95,604 sales in 2022 – 30% of Porsche’s overall total. “The fourth generation of the [Cayenne] SUV will underline Porsche’s goal of delivering more than 80% of its new vehicles as electric models in 2030,” said Porsche. As with the electric Macan, which the German car maker said “has reached…

Ferrari has revealed a convertible variant of the Roma as its first car with a soft top since the F430 Spider was retired in 2010. Arriving as Maranello’s new entry-level convertible, the Roma Spider has been extensively reworked at the rear, taking inspiration from the Portofino M that it replaces. It uses the same underpinnings as the Roma coupé but with added rigidity measures, due to the loss of the roof. The Spider weighs 84kg more than the 1570kg coupé, owing to the addition of the roof-retraction mechanism, wind deflector and integrated headrests for the rear seats. Its headline addition is the soft top itself. Breaking a decade-long trend of folding-hard-top convertibles, the Roma Spider is Ferrari’s first front-engined soft-top since the 365 GTS4 of 1969. The roof is made…

Asignificant surge in the number of cracked tyres being reported – some with potentially dangerous faults – has been blamed on the pandemic. Modern tyres contain waxes and chemicals to protect them from the damaging effects of ultraviolet light and extremes of temperature, and as a vehicle is driven, these substances migrate to the tyre’s surface to keep the rubber supple. However, with the outbreak of Covid in early 2020 and the ban on all but essential travel that followed it, vehicles were parked up en masse, often for several weeks. With these vehicles being left unused, the protective chemicals in their tyres’ sidewalls were no longer replenished, leaving them vulnerable. Jump forward 18 months and today vehicle owners and garages are reporting an increase in cracked and damaged tyres.…

It’s possible – tempting, even – to read too much into the news that the ICE Citroën Berlingo is back on sale just over a year after it was pulled in favour of the electric ë-Berlingo. Another hint of backlash against the EV revolution? A shout joining the chorus of those who want EU law to allow for alternative ways to zero tailpipe emissions? Or just, as the tech bros will say, an example of boomers failing to get with the programme? Probably a hint of the first and second and not so much of the third, for me. Not hugely significant on its own but of interest and worth remembering – a momentary ripple on the glidepath towards electrification. One point worth remembering: for some people, convenience looks like…

One down, one to go. This is the year in which two blue-blooded brands dispense with tradition and launch their own SUVs. Controversial? Just a touch. That said, we’ve now driven Ferrari’s Purosangue and found it to be profoundly good – although the presence of an 8250rpm 6.5-litre V12 always helps. That leaves the BMW XM. This is M division’s first bespoke car since the mid-engined M1 of 1978 and one that M CEO Frank van Meel says offers the best of X and the best of M. Hence the name. This is also M’s very first hybrid, and its plug-in powertrain will resurface in the next M5, possibly with even more power and torque. Even for this initial application, it gives a heady 644bhp and 590lb ft. A low-slung…

You don’t have to be first when launching a new product, but it can help. Pioneering also presents many challenges, though, and those faced by Maxus with its T90EV pick-up have led rival firms to shy away from the sector for now. It’s the usual story of battery weight versus kerb weight, but where any heavy EV is a problem for efficiency, a heavy pick-up truck can also bother HMRC – or rather potential buyers who will have cough up the 20% VAT for any vehicle not capable of reaching the magical 1000kg payload threshold needed for commercial vehicle qualification. Then there’s the important matter of pick-ups being four-wheel-drive machines and therefore requiring two motors, which naturally adds more weight. Then consider packaging the batteries within a narrow ladderframe chassis…

Finding words that convey the sublime sensation of melting into the leather-lined, double-glazed privacy of a six-figure super-saloon after three chaotic flights and 37 sleepless hours in transit isn’t easy, although I’m sure our hosts have a specific expression for it. And just as the Germans have terminology for almost any imaginable sentiment, Porsche seems to have a solution for any propulsionrelated eventuality. Initiated by the Taycan, its battery-electric offensive is off to a truly enviable start, yet you can still enjoy the howling delights of a 9000rpm fossil-fuelled flat six courtesy of the 911 GT3. The line-up also includes numerous hybrids, and Porsche Engineering is at work getting its 4.4-litre V8 to drink hydrogen and has even simulated a Nordschleife lap time. But now there’s another strand, which is…

How can Ford make a multimillion-pound commitment to Formula 1 while axing 3800 European jobs? “We have to do what’s necessary in order to descale our business and to translate the drastic reduction in complexity we see in the business in our move from ICE to electric vehicles. We have to translate this reduction in complexity into our organisation and our cost structure. Otherwise, we will not be competitive with companies who are EV-only, like Tesla and whoever is coming. That’s part of the job. But the other part of the job is to create exciting future business, to create more excitement for our brand. And if the marketing specialists come to the conclusion that it’s more efficient to spend money in this partnership [with Red Bull] than in traditional…

We’re staging this battle in Seoul because few cities on the planet can lay claim to such a comprehensively diverse car parc and because it’s one of the world’s most notoriously congested. But you could just as easily substitute the backdrop for Manhattan or Rome and the cars for, say, a Range Rover and a Ford Fiesta. Because it’s a simple question that we’re asking: is there any point splashing out on a large, luxurious and highly specified motor if it’s going to spend 97% of its working life stationary and the other 3% doing less than 20mph? This is a question that has been brought to the fore in recent years by a startlingly rapid rise in car prices and sizes, alongside the just as sudden demise of the…

COMPARISON Mud fight Ford’s new Ranger Raptor goes off road to challenge the king of the hill, Jeep’s Wrangler Rubicon INSIGHT Lanzante McLaren-aficionado, engineering artisans working to telephonenumber budgets DRIVEN Bentley Continental GTC Has the S treatment worked on Crewe’s touring convertible? EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST BMW X7 M60i BMW’s biggest, brashest… best? We find out how the X7 measures up USED GUIDE Volkswagen Type 2 Underpowered, uneconomical, outdated – and never more popular SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p58…

MILEAGE 3555 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if the vRS badge can make an electric car exciting It’s easy being a critic. Not for us the blood, sweat and tears of engineering a car from the ground up. We just sit back, wait for it to be launched and then either praise or condemn as we honestly judge the situation to be. Of course I’m being slightly flippant, but a recent conversation with automotive engineer David Pook reminded me that there’s no such thing as a truly bad car any more. There are compromises and shortcuts, but fundamentally most characteristics of a car will be like they are because a team of engineers chose for them to be so. Take our Skoda Enyaq iV vRS. I queried in its…

It’s official: the Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony is getting into the EV business in tandem with Honda. Yes indeed, the home of the PlayStation and the games that play on it will also soon supply your car – or at least that’s the idea. Truth be told, many car companies have gone the other way over the years, and these are some of the most notable examples. Volkswagen’s sausages For many years, VW’s most popular product has had no wheels and no engine. You see, the company makes pork sausages and uses them to make currywurst, a popular type of fast food in Germany. It serves this currywurst to workers in some of its factories with utensils that it also makes, in brand-owned restaurants and at events such as…

The new Volkswagen ID 2all concept previews a sub-£22,000 electric car set to go on sale in 2026 and showcases a major brand revamp that draws inspiration from Wolfsburg’s rich heritage and is intended to make it “shine again”. The ID 2all features styling closer to the current Polo and Golf than the ID line-up of EVs – a design language that will now be applied to all future models. This is part of a major refresh led by Volkswagen boss Thomas Schäfer to make it a “love brand” again. Key to that is making a massmarket “affordable” EV that will be “as spacious as a Golf and as inexpensive as a Polo”. When it goes on sale in 2026, the Peugeot e-208 rival will be one of the first…

Tesla will fail to meet its target of delivering 20 million cars per year by 2030 unless it imminently introduces new models to bring more customers to the brand, a leading analytics firm has told Autocar. During its 1 March Investor Day, labelled by some as disappointing for its lack of a new car reveal, CEO Elon Musk instead showcased new, highly efficient working processes that will drive down the cost of future vehicles and allow the US firm to grow its output. But for the four-model car maker to go from 1.31m deliveries last year to almost 19 times that in only seven years, more than just new production processes are needed, according to the analyst arm of banking firm Bernstein. Toyota, the world’s biggest car company, for example,…

AUDI WILL INTRODUCE an entry-level EV similar in size to today’s A3 in the middle of this decade as the firm steps up its electrification push. The new model, confirmed to Autocar by Audi’s chief technical officer, Oliver Hoffmann, is part of a plan to get an EV into each “core” market sector by 2027. Audi will launch 20 new cars by 2025, half of them electric, and from 2026 will roll out new EVs only worldwide. This push will start with the Q6 E-tron, an SUV confirmed to be arriving at the end of this year and the first EV to use the versatile PPE platform created by Audi and Porsche. Speaking at Audi’s annual conference, CEO Markus Duesmann said the firm was “on the verge of the biggest…

THE UK GOVERNMENT has frozen the 5p cut to fuel duty that it introduced last year, which it is claimed could save motorists £100 a year. Announced by chancellor Jeremy Hunt as part of his 2023 spring budget, the move will keep fuel duty at 52.95p per litre for an additional 12 months. Hunt said that he made the decision after hearing what impact the government’s planned 11p duty rise would have had on motorists. Key players in the automotive industry, including the RAC and the AA, said that this freeze would “help millions of drivers”. Hunt also announced an additional £200 million towards repairing potholes on UK roads. This increases the total fund for fixing the nationwide scourge to £700m.…

“How many other facets of our lives are being so mismanaged?” MONDAY My long-awaited week in Genesis’s potent GV60 Sport Plus EV started today and is turning out to be every bit as absorbing as I had expected. I’m deeply impressed by its body design (it’s handily shorter than its Kia and Hyundai siblings, which helps) and most of its driving factors – controls, poke, dynamics and comfort – suit me fine. Within 10 minutes of collecting the car, I had found a convenient lay-by where I spent 30 minutes adjusting variables (lights, voices, maps, bongs, switch responses and much more) to my preferences. How you view compulsory configuration depends on your temperament. Some see it as a chore, whereas I love it, almost like a hobby. So far I’ve…

I’ve just spent a couple of hours in central London, during which my expensive Mercedes spotto count read: G-Classes seven, AMG GT 4-Door Coupés none. Only anecdotal evidence, I know. But there are only ever a few used GT 4-Doors in the classifieds, too, and tell me, reader, have you ever seen one? I can’t shake the feeling that AMG’s bespoke coupé-saloon (technically a five-door hatchback), introduced in 2018, is a very rare groove, a niche option. But if you prefer to roll around in a G-Class, well, I think you’re missing out. So far we’ve had the 63 S variant in the UK, plus the less powerful 63, now dropped but continuing abroad. Brits like high-spec cars, so we settled on the one with a 630bhp 4.0-litre V8 and…

MODEL TESTED 500H F SPORT Price £74,950 Power 366bhp Torque 406lb ft 0-60mph 6.1sec 30-70mph in fourth 7.0sec Fuel economy 31.1mpg CO2 emissions 182g/km 70-0mph 56.8m Car marques like Lexus haven’t typically been around long enough to have been involved in the conception of many current vehicle types – but, with the RX luxury SUV, Toyota’s premium brand does claim to have been something of a pioneer. When the first-generation Lexus RX was launched in 1998, what would become known as the luxury SUV market really only had ladderframe cars within it: the P38A Range Rover, the Mercedes M-Class and, in North America, the Lincoln Navigator. With its monocoque chassis and choice of either front-or four-wheel drive, however, the RX demonstrated how much bulk could be saved by adopting a more…

There’s no shortage of superlatives to describe Pininfarina’s drop-dead gorgeous Battista. It’s the fastest, the most powerful, the most expensive and the heaviest supercar that I’ve ever driven. For Mahindra, which gave the ‘PF0’ road car project the go-ahead after acquiring the famous Italian design house in 2015, the 1900bhp Battista is a matter of immense pride. This electric rocket has shot the home-grown Indian SUV specialist to the pinnacle of power and performance at the pointy end of the hyper-EV market. Mahindra has always had big electric ambitions. It’s the only Indian company to field a Formula E race team and in August last year unveiled a bold plan to launch five all-new, all-electric SUVs in the next four years. Automobili Pininfarina is the Kohinoor of Mahindra’s electric portfolio,…

FORD’S EUROPEAN DESIGN director, Amko Leenarts, speaks excitedly and passionately about the next stage in the company’s evolution as he shows us around his slick, expansive Merkenich Design Studio, just down the road from the Cologne factory. He joined Ford 11 years ago (when its range was several times larger than it will be by 2025) and is now charged with leading the brand into its bold new electric future, starting with the Explorer. Importantly, he says, Ford’s redeploying of historic names does not herald the advent of nostalgic styling cues: “Retro designs aren’t moving us forward. It’s always about totally new interpretation: that’s what makes it interesting.” The Explorer is an entirely different proposition from its much larger US-market namesake but, highlights Leenarts, has been designed with the same…

Wish we were there When Autocar discusses motor shows, it’s almost always from a journalistic perspective. What about us punters? I’ve always loved motor shows, and it doesn’t get any better than Geneva, the compact layout and proximity to the airport making it the perfect day trip. My friend and I, both having been in the industry (him at Aston Martin and me at WAE Technologies), love a natter about this, that and the other while wandering around at Geneva, poking and prodding, admiring or disapproving of all the latest metal. There’s nowhere else you can do this, especially while enjoying the decent coffee and food, albeit at somewhat eye-watering prices. We love it and are desperately hoping that 2024 really is going to bring the return of this cracking…

A look into the Soviet car industry HAVING PULLED DOWN an iron curtain over Europe after the war, the USSR became ultra-secretive, regarding even trivial enquiries about its cars from Westerners as industrial espionage. Hence we knew only the little that the few who visited could find. Yet still we were interested, not least because the Soviets claimed to be making great inventions and advances. The USSR had three factories producing four models in 1953. From Moscow came a compact economy saloon – or rather from Rüsselsheim, the Moskvitch 400-420 being a Kadett copy made by tooling stolen from Opel’s home. GAZ’s M20 ‘Pobeda’ was the first original post-war design, which we defended from accusations of copying. The neatly styled saloon boasted unitised construction, a 49bhp water-cooled 2.1-litre four, independent…

MILEAGE 4357 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see why people are scrambling for this latest hybrid crossover offering What car did your parents have when you were little? I have a photo of baby me in an Austin Montego Estate, although the first car I can recall Dad driving was a Renault Scenic. In contrast, most of today’s kids will one day reminisce about crossovers and SUVs. Probably quite a few of them will remember sitting in a Toyota Yaris Cross. Despite it being based on a supermini, I reckon it would be spacious enough for a young family, and I assume a number of parents agree because I’m seeing loads of these cars on the roads now. Of course, it has Isofix mountings for child seats in the rear;…

THE NEWS THAT Bentley is discontinuing production of the unique W12 engine is inevitable. Bentleys will be fully electrified from the start of the next decade and, like it or not, the days of 6.0-litre 12-cylinder petrol engines have been numbered for some time. The W12 is something of a masterpiece, though. For such a niche machine launched more than two decades ago in the Volkswagen W12 concept car, a final production figure of 105,000 units for the Bentley version in production for exactly two decades isn’t bad going. The W12’s name is a bit of a stretch in that it implies four banks of three cylinders, rather than two banks of six. In fact, its design draws on the Volkswagen VR6 engine launched in 1991, which is equally if…

Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg and Carlos Sainz Sr headline as team owners. American motorsport powerhouses Chip Ganassi and Andretti have pitched in too. In the cockpits, the cream of talent from the rallycross world has risen to the top (as you would expect in an offroad division), while a generation of relatively unknown female racers are making the most of this new platform to establish themselves on a global stage. The venues are exotic and the 4x4s, if still troublingly far from bulletproof, have the power and speed to create a decent spectacle. Yes, there’s plenty to like about Extreme E. And yet… As its third season began this month, among palm trees on the edge of a shimmering desert shoreline near Neom in Saudi Arabia, this electrically…

We should start with a cliché: the range of an electric car. Sorry, but there’s no getting away from the fact that with a 46kWh battery giving it 221 miles per charge, the new Citroën ë-C4 X isn’t going to break any records. Nor is the charging especially quick, maximum 100kW ingestion replenishing 0-80% in 30 minutes. But Citroën is refreshingly honest about this. No smoke and mirrors here, just an honest appraisal of what a bigger battery would have meant: more cost, more weight and less of what buyers allegedly want. Citroën wants to be the brand of ‘enough’ and not embrace excess. That has overtones of the comedic BL Princess strapline ‘Better than average’, but let’s gloss over that and focus on the fact that this elongated ë-C4…

“It’s not a very popular topic to talk about downtime, so we turned it around: we talk about uptime,” explains Ford Pro boss Hans Schep, gesturing at the cinemasize wraparound screen behind him, which shows his team the live status of Ford’s 136,000 connected commercial vehicles in the UK. This is the data display centre of Ford Pro, the newly hived-off commercial vehicle operation, in Dunton, Essex – the nerve centre for a rapidly expanding and highly advanced fleet management service that aims to minimise the amount of time that any Ford van or truck is off the road so as to preserve its owner’s stream of revenue. Using the data on display here, Ford Pro can identify breakdowns and order parts and repairs accordingly, schedule routine maintenance for a…

We live very close to the M25 and are therefore prime contenders to benefit from a reduction in emissions-based pollution. However, while walking to our local town recently, we noticed that noise pollution seemed to have got worse. At the same time, we could see that a lot of the cars passing us were now electric. Pausing to listen more closely, each time an EV passed, it seemed louder than a similar ICE car. We can only put this down to the additional weight being carried through the car’s four contact points with the road surface. When are regulators going to wake up to the facts that heavier cars will result in more damage to roads if the tyre contact footprint is kept the same, which in turn will cause…

What? An unfashionable MPV occupying prime space on these hallowed pages. But bear with us, because this is the second-generation Volkswagen Touran, and if you’re looking for a seven-seat car that’s immensely practical and surprisingly good to drive, and also a fabulous used buy, look no further. Its popularity has made it one of the best-selling MPVs and one of our favourites both new and used, and its longevity points to its obvious success. Glamorous? Maybe not, but desirable? Oh yes, indeed. There are engines to suit all needs, for starters, and whichever one it has, the Touran is always a refined performer. Among the earlier engines, the 1.2-litre and 1.4-litre petrol units are quieter and more suited to low-mileage drivers, while the 108bhp 1.6-litre and 2.0-litre diesels are more…

You might be tempted by any car wearing a Maserati badge that you can buy for just £10,000, but I have to warn you that there is, alas, no such thing as a bargain. To keep said Maserati on the road for even the most minuscule of annual mileages and running even reasonably well will cost you more than a small nation’s annual GDP, but could it possibly be, if we put the vulgar subject of money to one side for a moment, actually worth it? Well, there are few car badges with as much cachet. Chuck your car keys down on the bar at the Dog and Duck and all your friends will swoon. This cut-price 3200 GT may have been launched in 1998, but it still looks pretty…

An owner’s view KEVIN DAKE “I bought a nearly new 2002 Spyder with the larger V8 and kept it for 15 years. Because I lived out in the sticks, it suffered terrible neglect in my hands, but it mostly kept working. I did service it when it needed it, and I kept the mileage low. Parts and servicing were incredibly expensive, though. I loved the engine note and the speed and the handling. I sold it to a friend, and so far he hasn’t fallen out with me over it; in fact, the car is thriving.” Buyer beware… ENGINE If this goes wrong, you’re in serious trouble – so shop carefully. You want a stack of receipts for recent, regular work to show that it has been looked after properly.…

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…