Innholdsfortegnelse for June 14, 2023 i Autocar

MEANWHILE, VOLVO HAS removed four models from UK dealerships as it “consolidates” its range in the run-up towards going all-electric in 2030. The V60 Cross Country, V90 Cross Country, S90 saloon and XC40 Recharge PHEV can no longer be ordered from the factory. A spokesperson said the decision was based on “existing orders and available production for the UK market”. They added: “We’re rapidly transforming our product offer, which means not only moving towards full electrification but also shifting to new platforms and technologies across all our cars.”…

Toyota will race a hydrogenengined prototype at the 2026 Le Mans 24 Hours – and it has pledged to continue development of hydrogen-combustion powertrains for road cars as it doubles down on its view that this is a potential route to zero-emissions mobility. To highlight its decision, the company unveiled the GR H2 Racing Concept on the sidelines of La Sarthe at the 100th anniversary of the race. Le Mans organisers have created a hydrogen class for 2026 – open to hydrogencombustion and hydrogen fuel cell racers – and have pledged to use the category’s ‘balance of performance’ rules to put the cars on a par with the fastest on the grid, opening up the potential for a hydrogenpowered car to win outright. Initially, it was expected that the long-mooted…

Stellantis is aiming to extend the life of its vehicles beyond the current 12-year average, with 15 years “not crazy” as the new target. The parent company of Peugeot, Fiat, Citroën and Vauxhall is looking to harvest reusable parts from scrapped cars, among other initiatives, to extend the life of its cars and cut its overall CO2 footprint. If successful, the move could “potentially” impact Stellantis’s sales of new cars in Europe, the company’s head of circular economy, Alison Jones, said, although it is eyeing increases in car sales in other parts of the world to mitigate that. Reusing components and designing cars to last longer are part of the firm’s pledge to reach ‘net zero’ emissions by 2038. The average lifespan of cars across all Stellantis brands is currently…

Amid the shifting sands of the car industry, new players are emerging all the time – and now Saudi Arabia wants a bit of the action. Six months ago, the Middle Eastern kingdom signalled its intent with the launch of a new electric car brand, Ceer – and while it has been relatively quiet since, there are plenty of reasons to take it seriously. First, there’s the role it will play in finally establishing a car manufacturing industry in Saudi Arabia, something the country has been keen to pursue for some time – as was evidenced, for example, by talks with Jaguar Land Rover about a prospective facility just over a decade ago. Ceer also has significant backing from the formidable crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who sees it as…

Max Verstappen could equal Ayrton Senna’s tally of 41 Formula 1 wins this weekend at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. The late, great Brazilian would have relished the position in which the double champion finds himself, in a Red Bull team that has handed him an out-of-sight performance advantage over the rest of the grid. Even his own team-mate can’t live with him right now. As recently as the Azerbaijan GP, Sergio Pérez was triggering talk of an intrateam title fight, but it was always wishful thinking. Following a trio of victories and five from seven races this season, Verstappen is 53 points ahead of the only other driver armed with the power to beat him. Only a catastrophe can stop the 25-year-old from claiming a third consecutive world…

The Austral is Renault’s new C-segment SUV, replacing the Kadjar and arriving in British showrooms imminently. Renault learned from the Mégane that its customers like simplicity, and this is a market overflowing with rivals, including the big-selling (and related) Nissan Qashqai, so there are only three variants, all with the same powertrain, priced from £34,695 to £39,495. Our test car is the top-end Iconic Esprit Alpine. The powertrain is pretty complex and, unlike the platform, is bespoke to Renault in general and, at the moment, this Renault in particular. It’s a hybrid comprising a 1.2-litre three-cylinder turbo petrol engine and two electric motors, with a combined maximum of 197bhp. The way it operates isn’t unlike the latest Hondas, in that most of the time the main motor is doing the…

“The #1 is very different from previous Smarts but it feels like the right product for this moment” Forget everything you know about Smart. Tiny city cars? Well, the #1 (pronounced Hashtag One, I kid you not) is a chunky hatchback – roughly Volkswagen Golf-sized but a bit taller – and bigger Smarts still are on the way. Made in France? Wrong again, because the Hambach factory that was specially built to make Smarts now produces that ultra-British off-roader, the Ineos Grenadier. Owned by Mercedes? Well, sort of. The Germans realised that making tiny but expensive cars in Europe wasn’t very profitable, so Mercedes set up a joint venture with Geely (which also owns Volvo and Lotus) to build Smarts on Geely’s SEA platform and assemble them in Xi’an, China.…

We are standing in the R&D headquarters of Titan, the UK manufacturer of some of the world’s most advanced automotive steering systems, looking at a large screen showing a map of the Suzuka Formula 1 racing circuit. A dot moves rapidly around it, representing a car. In the average teenage bedroom this would be part of an elaborate computer game, but here it’s much more serious. Map and screen belong to a bespoke test rig being used to develop the light, super-secret, by-wire EPAS (electric power-assisted steering) system of a leading F1 car that must remain nameless for now. The F1 connection is just one indicator of how quickly 60-year-old Titan has progressed in the hands of a new team that started running it in 2015 and took ownership in…

Given the rate of attrition in the pick-up truck segment, Ford could have been tempted to coast with this new generation of Ranger. It hasn’t, however. Instead, Ford has improved it in meaningful ways to further reduce the number of compromises that come with a light commercial vehicle. The new Ranger looks great, whether in work truck or lifestyle trim, it rides better than quite a few cars that don’t have half its off-road ability and it handles remarkably like a big SUV. In Wildtrak trim, its interior isn’t too dissimilar from one either. Importantly, it does all the truck stuff well, too. It can’t completely cover up the effects of its heavy-duty make-up, but then neither can its rivals, and the gruff diesel engine is ultimately quite a minor…

MILEAGE 8999 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To assess DS’s progress as a premium brand and unpick this car’s dual identity If DS has one goal, it’s to be a worthy rival to the German premium brands. And if there’s one area in which DS has achieved this with the 4, it’s the perceived quality and finish of the interior. It’s as good as in the rival Audi A3 Sportback, BMW 1 Series or Mercedes-Benz A-Class. As a French brand, DS naturally wants to stand out in terms of its styling from the Germans, and to some extent it does. The 4 has an interesting diamond theme throughout. The touchscreen’s home button and engine start button are diamond-shaped, there’s silver diamond bezel detailing (not so dissimilar to Bentley’s) and there are…

ROAD TRIP Bentley Mulliner Batur Era of the famous W12 engine comes to an end with a 739bhp limited-edition coupé – the most powerful Bentley yet DRIVEN Honda ZR-V Has some of the Civic’s magic dust been sprinkled on this new Qashqai rival? FEATURE Le Mans How much can you pack into 24 hours – without any sleep? We go and find out EVERY WEEK USED GUIDE Honda Integra Type R (DC5) How you can enjoy the car that cemented the Type R legend ROAD TEST Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance 4-Door Coupé PHEV super-saloon packs 831bhp SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p18…

The 911 is 60 this autumn, and Porsche marks 75 years in business this year as well, because on 8 June 1948 its ‘Gmünd’ Roadster was certified for road use. From this small acorn grew one of the world’s most successful manufacturers of desirable cars. As we’ll be celebrating the 911 later this year, we’re going to mark Porsche’s 75th birthday with a look at some other of its most notable cars. 356 1948 The ‘Gmünd’ Roadster was originally hand-built in aluminium and was remarkably light as a result: just 585kg. Although it packed only a 35bhp 1.1-litre Beetle engine, it could crack 84mph. Just 50 were built in the company’s first two years in Austria until, in 1950, the firm moved to Stuttgart, and serial production begun, this time…

“Porsche’s targets are said to suggest a power output of around 1500bhp” The stunning new Porsche Mission X previews an electric hypercar successor to the Carrera GT and 918 Spyder – with a production version set to follow in 2027. The rear-wheel-drive twoseater has been developed with the goal of becoming the fastest road-legal car on the Nürburgring Nordschleife and will fill the gap atop Porsche’s line-up that has been open since the 918 Spyder went out of production in 2015. Porsche boss Oliver Blume said the model would be “a technology beacon for the sports cars of the future”. The Mission X name is a clear reference to the 2015 Mission E concept, which previewed the Taycan that went into production in 2019. In 2021, Porsche showed a Mission…

The designer of the original Lotus Elise has reimagined his seminal sports car as a rapidcharging EV for the modern era, hosting highly advanced battery hardware from a British-based technology firm. Acclaimed designer Julian Thomson, now at General Motors but best known for the Elise S1 (as well as various Volkswagen Group concepts and the Evoque-previewing Range Rover LRX concept), has revisited the lightweight two-seater to create a flagship concept car for the Warwickbased Callum design agency founded by his one-time boss, former Jaguar director of design Ian Callum. First conceived in 2021 by Thomson and brought to fruition by Callum’s eponymous design house after Thomson joined GM, the concept is also a fully functioning technology demonstrator for Cambridgebased Nyobolt, a battery start-up that says its innovative tungsten anode tech…

RENAULT’S HIGHLY anticipated 5 EV will be equipped with vehicleto-grid (V2G) charging as standard – which, the firm says, could slash customers’ charging costs by up to 50%. The brand’s smallest EV will be its first to be equipped with bi-directional charging, which will allow customers to plug their car into the grid and either charge it overnight to take advantage of cheaper rates or return power to the grid when demand is high. Renault will eventually introduce this on all of its EVs, including the current Mégane and upcoming Scenic. Customers can charge their car using an app downloaded to their phone and will be able to specify what time of day they want to leave the house and how much charge they want in the battery by that…

The company launched its Mocean subscription service in London in 2021 (following a pilot in Spain), offering cars for as little as three months, from £339 per month, with insurance, maintenance and breakdown cover included. The firm’s Europe CEO, Michael Cole, told Autocar it now plans to expand the model into new markets because “we see that subscription will be part of the solution”. He added: “For consumers that don’t want to commit to three-or four-year contracts, who want to keep the flexibility, I think subscriptions are an important part of the business.”…

New cars often remind me of 2013’s 313mpg Volkswagen XL1. This week Look, I know, on the face of it, a C-segment SUV doesn’t have much in common with that complicated, expensive, limited-run VW, which was basically a supercar made for fuel economy. But look a little deeper and… Okay, it still doesn’t. But bear with me. Today, the Austral E-Tech hybrid is sold as a 60mpg car. No, that’s not a patch on the XL1’s 313mpg, but in my experience the Austral will return 60mpg or more easily. The XL1 was ratified on a different and less realistic economy testing cycle (NEDC, rather than WLTP) and needed to have its battery fully charged at the start of it in order to return to its remarkable economy figure. In 2013,…

Which way is the new BMW M3 CS going to go? Its bigger brother, the M5 CS, is perhaps the greatest M car of the current era, a supersaloon that set new performance standards while retaining everyday usability. On that basis, much the same recipe in a smaller package opens up a path for another modern great to emerge. Yet the M3 CS also shares much of its hardware with last year’s M4 CSL, a fine car but not an icon like the CSLs before it, its extremeness neither here nor there. Rest assured that the M3 CS “is the little brother to the M5 CS”, insists BMW M development boss Dirk Hacker, whose team looked to simply “repeat the philosophy” that served them so well with the bigger car.…

In just about every respect, the Land Rover Defender 75th Limited Edition couldn’t be further removed in concept from the vehicle whose birthday it has been produced to celebrate. Arriving to mark the anniversary of the first Land Rover (which would evolve into the Series 1 and decades later the Defender) being unveiled, it builds on top HSE trim, leaving very few option boxes unticked and donning a commemorative shade of Grasmere Green, modelled on that worn by the first wave of 4x4s to chug out of Solihull. For that paint, which noticeably also coats the 20in alloy wheels for extra hits of both kerb appeal and kerb aversion, you will pay a premium of nearly £18k over the equivalent HSE. Oh, that does include a small 75th Edition decal…

The emergence of Aston Martin as a Formula 1 front-runner with old-stager Fernando Alonso rolling back the years as its spearhead has been the big story of 2023. It’s no exaggeration to say that with Red Bull steamrollering all comers, Aston Martin’s sudden rise has saved the season by providing a compellingly fresh storyline. While headline-grabbing on track and bankrolled by the powerful presence of Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, the British team is led by a softly spoken, silver-haired engineer from Luxembourg named Mike Krack. With a wealth of experience in motorsport, stretching from race engineering in Formula 3 to heading BMW’s motorsport operations and now his first F1 team principalship, he’s overseeing Aston Martin’s ongoing expansion, relocation to a new purpose-built factory adjacent to its ageing, overpopulated facility across…

Black mark I’ve been fortunate to own every mark of the Volkswagen Golf GTI except the Mk1 and Mk4. However, after just a year of Mk8 ownership, I’ve decided the car isn’t fit for purpose and that I will sell it. The reason? The infotainment system! The numerous warning messages appearing when I’m turning on the ignition, driving and stopping are random, intrusive and often unfathomable. Volkswagen has diagnosed the problem as requiring a new steering wheel, but because so many nearly new cars require this item, it’s on back order and I’m on a waiting list. I know Autocar and others have voiced concerns regarding the poor user experience of the latest VW Group infotainment tech, but for me it’s unacceptable in a £40k car. I honestly don’t think…

Way, way back in the annals of time – otherwise known as 1968, when our man Cropley was still in short trousers – Aston Martin launched the DBS, the successor to the DB6. Overridingly butch on one hand and eminently graceful on the other, the William Towns-designed bodywork won admirers and hearts in equal measure. Its sleek shape covered a competent chassis, a lavish ‘four-seat’ (2+2 in reality) interior and, originally, just the straight-six engine from the DB6 Vantage. In 1969, the DBS V8 appeared and the headline act was engineer Tadek Marek’s all-aluminium quad-cam 5.3-litre V8. The DBS V8 was big, heavy, fast and impressive, and overwhelmingly British. Performance was of the order of 0-60mph in 6.0sec and a top speed of 161mph or thereabouts, and you could choose…

AS THE 1990s dawned, MG was in a pickle. New owner British Aerospace had finally provided the budget to create the new roadster it had long known the public wanted, but the F wouldn’t be ready until 1995, while Mazda was having huge success with the new MX-5 and a burgeoning TVR was set to rejuvenate its roadster. Its solution? Restart production of the iconic B – already dead for a decade and dating from the early 1960s – after mild modernisation on a shoestring budget. British Motor Heritage made a B shell for classic restorations, so MG took this and fitted it with new bumpers and wings, wider tracks, new dampers, Rover’s 190bhp 3.9-litre V8 and a much classier wood and leather cabin. MG readily admitted the new RV8…

The new Volvo EX30 small SUV will be a “cornerstone” of the Swedish firm’s reinvention as an electriconly manufacturer by helping to attract new, younger customers. The Jeep Avenger rival is available to order in the UK now priced from £33,795, with subscription packages starting at £579 per month. Production will begin in Zhangjiakou, China, later this year, before customer deliveries start in early 2024. The EX30 has been developed with a focus on lowering the total cost of ownership to appeal to younger buyers. Company boss Jim Rowan said the firm is “going after young professionals” such as software engineers. Volvo expects around threequarters of EX30 buyers to be new to the brand, and once full production capacity is reached, the model is tipped to become the marque’s best-seller.…

BMW M WILL not commit to one particular powertrain technology but will instead continue to develop everything from pure-combustion engines to electric and hydrogen drivetrains. “We are open. We are interested in everything and well prepared for the future,” BMW M development boss Dirk Hacker (pictured) told Autocar. “We are not in the days to say one thing is closed,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of things open. There are a lot of brains all over the world working on all solutions and what will be the right mixture for the future. You must be active in these areas and not follow one direction too early.” Hacker said M’s straight-six and V8 engines will both be updated to meet Euro 7 emissions regulations, and 48V mild-hybrid technology is…

ONE OF THE latest buzz phrases in the car industry is ‘the software-defined car’. Purists may hate the sound of it and social media is already awash with complaints about buggy car software. But cars have been relying on specialised computers since the late 1970s, although they’re more commonly referred to as ‘ECUs’ (electronic control units). Essentially, though, that’s what they are: boxes of computer hardware running computer code to make things happen. Probably the first major use of ECUs in cars was to control engines. It was a big step because they meant the ignition systems and fuelling of an engine could all be brought under the control of an engine management system, making engines more efficient and more powerful. Soon, ECUs appeared elsewhere, controlling things like ABS, lighting…

MARKETERS AT car firms spend most of their time looking at what rivals are doing. When one introduces a feature or 0% finance deal, they adjust their spreadsheets and make a slideshow for the boss. Occasionally, though, a summer special deal won’t cut it and updates have to be expensively engineered into a car. Once, a car maker needed to upgrade the infotainment in its best-selling saloon. The simplest way was to buy in a standard double-DIN head unit from a supplier. However, such luxuries weren’t fitted to engineering-validation mules, and when preproduction began, it was soon found there wasn’t enough space between the back of the dash and the bulkhead for the new infotainment. Senior management discussed two options: revising the bulkhead or bringing the centre console forward 15mm.…

MONDAY For once, our 2019 Mini Cooper S has been in the limelight. Although it’s by far the most used member of our family fleet (30,000 miles in two years), it’s so easy to drive that we take it too much for granted. Even the big fun factors contributed by its pokey engine, quick steering and taut chassis are banked, as it were. This realisation set me reflecting on the pros and cons of ubiquity in cars. It’s great to own a good and popular one, but maybe it’s time for Mini to have a more radical rethink than the careful one that we already know is coming… Our car attracted the family limelight because one of us recently kerbed a front alloy wheel, an occurrence that deeply upset the…

High inflation seems to be a handy smokescreen for car makers looking to make extra profits, doesn’t it? Translating the 2016 launch price of the original BMW M2 (£46k) into today’s money, it might be reasonable to expect the second-generation sports coupé to start at £60k, rather than £65k. But it’s not that simple: as we’ve already discovered, this is a more powerful, more mature and more technical M car than any of its predecessors. It’s even more expensive if you want that mechanical highlight denied on any other current M car, though: a manual gearbox to go with your rear-wheel drive. Can an M2 really be worth that? When a six-cylinder Porsche 718 Cayman with three pedals costs north of £70k, perhaps it can. A group test will begin…

The option list giveth, the option list taketh away. You can’t buy a Ford Focus ST Estate with the recently launched Track Pack (that’s reserved for the manual hatch), but you can option one with a hands-free boot. Well, with a 575-litre space to fill, buyers might well have their hands full. While that speaks to the slightly different target audiences for the two versions of the Focus ST, there really isn’t much difference between them beyond that. The 2.3-litre 276bhp four-cylinder turbo petrol engine is unchanged (and mandatory, the diesel having been ditched last year), and you get a choice of a six-speed manual or, as driven here, seven-speed automatic gearbox, sports suspension and a limited-slip differential at the front. The top speed is identical and 0-62mph takes just…

MODEL TESTED 2.0L TD ECOBLUE 205PS WILDTRAK Price £48,265 • Power 202bhp • Torque 369lb ft • 0-60mph 9.8sec • 30-70mph 9.9sec • Fuel economy 28.9mpg • CO2 • emissions 234g/km • 70-0mph 55.1m You might think of a pick-up truck as a purely utilitarian vehicle, a tool simply to haul hay bales, sheep and building materials. But it appears that for many UK buyers, their Ford Rangers are much more than that. Take this for a stat: in the UK, 80% of Rangers of the last generation were ordered in Wildtrak spec. To those less familiar with Ranger trim levels, that’s the bells-and-whistles version with nice alloy wheels, leather upholstery, soft-touch interior materials and all sorts of other car-like features. It’s a trend that seems to have come from…

MILEAGE 4680 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out whether Citroën’s return to ‘plush’ makes the C5 X a desirable, comfortable daily driver Report two for the Citroën C5 X, which is settling into daily Autocar life with the ease of pulling on a favourite pair of trainers. I’ve developed a real soft spot for this car already. A big part of its appeal is its comfort and isolation, which was evident within the first few minutes and, as the miles go on, doesn’t diminish. On tyres with generous sidewalls and some body cladding (and an X in its name), the C5 X has a junior crossovery SUV sort of vibe, but because it doesn’t actually ride tall, it can be set up to lope along agreeably without excessive roll…

Your very enjoyable road test of the electric Ford F-150 (17 May) mentions that 40 million F-Series pick-ups have been sold since 1940, mostly to Americans and Canadians. Readers may like to know that the F-100/F-150 has also always been a big seller in Argentina, where Ford still has a plant in General Pacheco, outside Buenos Aires. I’m carbon-dating myself here, but when I was at a British boarding school in the hills of Córdoba in the mid-1960s, the English headmaster’s vehicle of preference was always an F-Series: first a two-door F-100 and later a four-seater F-150, known there as a ‘doble cabina’, with Ford’s famous Y-block 292-cubic-inch V8 engine. It was an amazing workhorse. At weekends, boys were press-ganged into finding the largest rocks we could pick up on…

An owner’s view JOHN FOREMAN “I bought my red 1974 V8 when it was a couple of years old from an Aston dealer. I noticed the initials RM had been forged onto the car’s ashtray and centre console and found out subsequently that the first owner had been Robert Maxwell, the newspaper tycoon. My car ran perfectly, although I was careful not to put a huge mileage on it. It was always serviced by my local Aston dealer, which cost rather a lot. I loved driving the car, though. The rumble from the V8 was addictive. I used it occasionally for commuting from Kent up to my office in central London. In time, once I’d retired, its fuel economy and servicing costs meant it had to go. I’ve regretted selling…

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…