Innholdsfortegnelse for August 9, 2023 i Autocar

The new 600 will be the next Fiat model to receive the Abarth treatment as the Italian performance brand expands its line-up. The go-faster crossover will follow the 500e hatchback as Abarth’s second electric car and initiate its first new model line since the 124 Spider roadster bowed out in 2019. Fiat and Abarth CEO Olivier François revealed no details of the sporting crossover, but on the subject of the viability of an Abarth 600e, he said: “It’s logical.” Expected to land in early 2025 (mirroring the gap between the arrivals of the Fiat 500 and its Abarth sibling), the 600e will no doubt bring a significant power boost over the standard Fiat model. In the 500e (road tested on p46), a more responsive motor ramps up power and torque…

Renault is turning to retro design for its upcoming EVs as a means to differentiate its cars from “anonymous” and “cold” rivals. Renault Group design chief Laurens van den Acker told Autocar that reinventing classic designs is “irresistible” for CEO Luca de Meo, who revived the Fiat 500 while boss of the Italian firm in the 2000s and, on arrival at Renault, green-lit the retro-styled 4 and 5 EVs for showrooms. Van den Acker said: “I think there’s this unsaid expectation that EVs should look a little bit anonymous, very fluid, very cold. I hope there’s more richness in the future for EVs, and we’re trying to do our best. The Renault 5 and Renault 4 will be full EVs, but they will be legendary icons. At the same time,…

VOLVO HASN’T GIVEN any firm indication that it will directly replace its comparatively slow-selling S and V model lines with EVs, but boss Jim Rowan has hinted that lower-slung models will return. “Suffice to say we play across all the spectrums and range and we have customers who require different vehicles and different uses for vehicles,” he said. “We will try and make sure that we can capture as much of that as we possibly can.” “We’ve teased what’s coming next and we had already signalled we would do a smaller SUV,” he said before the unveiling of the EX30. “Then different formats, saloons and estates or whatever. We will get to that when we get to that.” Previous CEO Håkan Samuelsson suggested that Volvo’s future lay predominantly in SUVs…

FOR BIG CAR makers, maintaining a supply of parts for models that are no longer in production is a real headache. While consumables and body panels will be in constant demand and profitable to sell, there are warehouses full of other parts just taking up space and tying up capital. Therefore firms will have regular clearouts of old bits. Some will just get dumped in a skip, but others will be auctioned off to the highest bidder – usually a dealer with more storage space or an interest in a specialist model. This is how one dealer came to buy the world’s entire remaining stock of head gaskets for one particular performance saloon. The canny trader then ramped up the price, knowing that owners would have little choice but to…

Formula 1 at Spa, the British Touring Car Championship at Croft and Formula E capping its first season of Gen3 cars by crowning a new British world champion in Britain. Yes, there was plenty happening in the motorsport world over the final weekend of July – yet still I found myself drawn to a gem of a circuit for one of the best low-key highlights of the UK season. Oulton Park in Cheshire is surely among the most beautiful circuits in the world, never mind Britain, and its traditional Gold Cup meeting is cherished among historic racers. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the Gold Cup ranked high among the best non-points F1 races, when the world’s best drivers and teams regularly turned out for events that didn’t count towards…

If you look at it in a certain way, choosing the new mild-hybrid version of Ford’s popular Puma ST sport crossover instead of the original pure-petrol model will cost you precisely a tenner. Deciding between that purepetrol car (with a six-speed manual gearbox) and the new MHEV one (with a seven-speed automatic) may therefore seem a straightforward decision: use less fuel and emit less CO2 for a tiny extra outlay. But it’s nowhere near that simple. The Puma ST’s petrol-manual powertrain is the familiar 198bhp 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbo setup that we all know and admire from the now-departed Fiesta ST. It returns a combined 42.8mpg on the WLTP test cycle, emits 149g/km of CO2 and gives the car a decent 0-62mph sprint time of 6.7sec. However, the Puma ST Hybrid…

One of our own was racing in the British Touring Car Championship this season. Fifteen years ago, Will Powell was a young road tester on Autocar. By hook or by crook, he made it onto the grid of one of the toughest and most competitive motor racing series in the world. Earlier this summer, we joined him on race day at Oulton Park to witness the cut and thrust close up. In short, BTCC life is brutal – and it turned out to be his final outing. Powell, 38, was racing a Honda Civic Type R for One Motorsport with Starline Racing, teamed with 18-time race winner Josh Cook and Aiden Moffat, who way back in 2013 became the youngest driver to start a BTCC round. In contrast, Powell is…

MILEAGE 8008 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if a fast estate – even a diesel one – is among the best cars in the world Another week, another adventure for the beast from Buchloe. My poor colleague Matt Prior, the car’s official keeper, can’t have actually spent much time with it so far. Pretty much every member of the Autocar office has stolen it away at one point or another, returning a week later with a grin on their face and another 1000 or so miles on the odometer. Sorry, Matt. As you may recall, Richard Lane treated the D3 S to a lovely summer holiday a few weeks ago. The sun-kissed mountains of Italy awaited him, accessed by mile after mile of French autoroute so smooth that it…

GROUP TEST GR Corolla vs Subaru WRX vs Nissan Z Three of Japan’s finest performance cars aren’t available to us Brits. So we headed to Canada to find out which is best ROAD TEST Chevrolet Corvette Z06 America’s favourite sports car gets a new V8 in hardcore form FEATURE 20 years of the Conti The GT has transformed Bentley. We revisit milestone models in reverence EVERY WEEK FIRST DRIVE BMW X5 SUV has been refreshed with new hybrid powertrains and cockpit tech USED GUIDE Toyota Avensis Forgotten this family hauler existed? Allow us to refresh your memory SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p22…

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…

“What production car is this going to be? It’s going to be all of them” The radical new Vauxhall Experimental concept provides the first look at what its design chief calls “Vauxhall 2.0”, previewing how the brand’s design signatures will evolve as it gears up for all-out electrification in 2028. This Astra-sized coupé-SUV is the envisioned climax of a transformation taking place over the coming years as Vauxhall looks to launch a totally new line-up of electric cars based on parent company Stellantis’s modular STLA platform. It follows similarly futuristic concepts from sibling Stellantis brands Peugeot, Lancia and Chrysler, which have previewed the functionality of this upcoming wave of STLA-based EVs. The concept builds on the foundation laid by the 2018 GT X Experimental, the sharp-edged crossover that introduced design…

CUPRA IS REINFORCING its positioning as a performance brand through a commitment to motorsport – and in the case of EVs, will transfer technology and learnings both ways. Having won both eTouring World Cup seasons with its Leon-based eRacer (in 2021 and 2022), Cupra took the step up into Formula E – an electric racing series with eight seasons already behind it and a much higher profile, thanks to the presence of major global car makers DS, Jaguar, Maserati, McLaren, Nissan and Porsche. The Volkswagen Groupowned Spanish company endured a difficult debut, coming last of the 11 teams with just six points-scoring finishes all season, but senior figures are nevertheless happy. “We knew the difficulties of this year, and I think we’ve proved that steadily we’ve been improving during the…

Because they store battery packs that can then be charged slowly, Power Swap stations don’t require as large a grid connection as a standard fast charger, but Galvin noted many of the sites will also offer traditional EV charging. CHINESE EV BRAND Nio will launch in the UK only once it has the infrastructure in place to offer a “fantastic” user experience – and that includes providing a number of its innovative battery swap stations. Nio UK chief Matt Galvin told Autocar that discussions are ongoing with potential service partners and for sites for the Power Swap battery change stations. Nio expanded into Europe in late 2021 and is currently active in Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Autocar understands that 2024 is the target for a launch in…

TYRE MAKERS HAVE been steadily making progress over the years in convincing drivers that their products are more than occasional distress purchases. Many drivers have discovered the benefits of winter tyres, for example, and any self-respecting enthusiast is choosy about what rubber they fit to their performance car. Now tyres makers are gearing up to push the boat out on more conspicuous technologies in the form of intelligent tyres. Pirelli recently talked to us about its plans for smart tyres containing embedded chips. Continental has some ideas along similar lines, one of which it calls the Care tyre, which stands for connected, autonomous, reliable and electrified. Like Pirelli, Continental is developing tyre pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) based on sensors embedded in the tyre tread. Since 2012, it has been mandatory…

Today, I have become the envy of my colleagues while some of us The fun EV that I had hoped to bring was sufficiently new that it couldn’t make it even in early left-hand-drive form, so I’ve had to arrive in something else. Hence the envy. Now, this isn’t an EV versus ICE car look-at-me smugathon (although it did take quite a long time for one of us to arrive from the south coast in a Honda E). No, instead I’m the envy of my colleagues because I’ve arrived in a Series 1 Lotus Elise. And I’m not alone in thinking it’s fabulous. This is a fairly early example, from 1998. Although at one point badly damaged, it’s in very good mechanical order, if a bit scruffy around the edges…

Lotus was founded by a man so preoccupied by lightness that even rivet spacing represented a battleground between him and his design engineers. AMG, on the other hand, is celebrated for contract-killer saloons with cuddly nicknames like Hammer. These firms aren’t kindred spirits, then, but thanks to Chinese carmaking giant Geely, their paths have crossed, and an interesting, potentially excellent little sports car has sprung from the collision. Anybody coming around from a decade-long coma may wonder just how we got here. It warrants explanation. Having relieved Ford of Volvo in 2010, Geely seven years later took a major stake in Malaysia’s Proton and, as part of that deal, control of Lotus. It’s now turning Lotus into an EV-only brand, and the Wuhanbuilt Eletre SUV is its first tilt at…

Volkswagen has been in a sticky situation for a little while now, but the German giant is hoping the light at the end of the tunnel will appear now it has an updated ID 3 on sale. You would be forgiven for thinking that nothing about the design has been changed. Indeed, most people won’t notice anything. But take a close look and you will see that the bonnet is now cleaner, without the black plastic brow; new air intakes have been added at the front and rear for improved cooling; the rear decals have been removed; and the ‘ID’ badges have been prised off the front wheel arches – all of which contributes to a very subtly more mature look. Far more important are the changes inside. Volkswagen has…

I turn to Loris. From across an intimate cockpit, immaculately trimmed, the man who started his career as an errand boy for Bob Wallace in Lamborghini’s R&D department yet went on to help develop many of the world’s groundbreaking supercars, starting with the quadturbo Bugatti EB110, looks back. Thing is, Loris Bicocchi wasn’t involved in the development of this groundbreaking supercar. How groundbreaking are we talking? Pure-electric, Bugatti Chironeviscerating pace, Apple CarPlay, at least 222mph, homologated worldwide… Serious, then. But only recently has Bicocchi become involved, mainly to help owners get to grips with their new toy. It means that when I ask him what he thinks will happen if I bury the throttle in Furiosa mode, with the traction control tentatively set to Sport (to cut the powertrain some…

Fobbed off I recently purchased a new NX, only to be told by my dealer and Lexus that they supply only one key. Lexus told me that it took this decision last autumn, due to the semiconductor supply situation, and couldn’t give me a date for when it would return to the industry standard of supplying two keys. As I’ve spent £45,000 on a car and chip supply is vastly improving, I think this is at best poor. William Boyd Via email Save yourself £110k So, the new top-of-the-range Mercedes-AMG SL doesn’t quite cut the mustard in your road test (26 July), despite its £172,000 price. I was struck by the similarities between the SL 63 and my pastgeneration C63 S Cabriolet, which I bought for half the cost. Almost…

How does a V12 Aston Martin DB9 for the price of an average-mileage, four-year-old, Mk7.5 Volkswagen Golf GTI Performance sound? That’s the opportunity awaiting someone with £22,000. Obviously they couldn’t be more different and, as a sage once said, buy a DB9 cheap, pay twice. Still, almost twice as powerful, three times as many cylinders, over a second quicker to 60mph and looks that will give you neck ache from turning back to admire it. As 2030 looms and new V12s drink in the last-chance saloon, a cheap DB9 is stupidly tempting – running costs aside, of course. The 2+2 GT was launched in 2004 and bowed out in 2016, so even the youngest ones are now seven years old. It was the first Aston to be built at the…

WE FELL IN love with the Fiat 500 right away, but when a four-seat version of the ‘clockwork mouse’ was introduced three years later, we had doubts: after all, it was just 3.3 metres long and used the smallest engine – a 13bhp 570cc four – of any car on the market. Apparently, the only change needed to take two more people was a squarer rear, a higher final drive ratio and half-elliptic rather than quarter-elliptic rear springs. We needn’t have worried. After a day three-up, we said: “This additional weight is naturally felt, but the car remains a practical proposition and is able to hold the speeds favoured by most family motorists.” Indeed, up to 50mph. Overall, “it maintains driving interest in a remarkable degree”. “Admiration cannot be denied…

Last year was a wake-up call for many car makers as global sales of popular models plummeted by significant percentages year on year. Much of this was due to rivals muscling in and taking market share. The march to electrification is clear in most Western countries and China, and while the US remains keen on its large pick-ups, the market’s buying patterns are shifting towards more efficient models. Here we rank the world’s best-selling cars in 2022. Toyota RAV4 1,015,700 cars sold For the second year in a row, the Toyota RAV4 was the best-selling car in the world. It was also alone last year in topping the one million mark. That was an impressive feat, helped by the ongoing demand for mid-sized SUVs in many of the largest markets…

IN THE NEARER future, Vauxhall is readying a wide-reaching revamp of the Crossland crossover, which will enter its second generation in 2024 with a chunky new look and the option of electric power. Spotted for the first time in heavy camouflage, it is a radically different proposition from the current Crossland, with a blockier, sharper silhouette and a more overt billing as a small SUV, rather than a raised supermini. Even at this early stage, it is clear that the Crossland’s more robust-looking silhouette comes with an increase in size – no doubt with an eye on better appealing to family buyers who prioritise practicality. The current Crossland measures around 4.2m long and closely rivals the Ford Puma and Seat Arona. A subtle boost in size could take it into…

LOTUS HAS OPENED a new flagship showroom in central London as part of its bold ambition to raise annual sales from around 1500 per year to 150,000 by 2028. The so-called hyperspace, opposite the Ritz hotel in Mayfair, will host prominent displays of important Lotus models past and present, a museum-style exhibition detailing the brand’s history, a merchandise shop and a dedicated area for customers to configure their new cars. There is also an invite-only clubhouse in the basement for loyal clients and brand ambassadors and a lounge supposedly offering “the best coffee in Mayfair”.…

Volvo now exclusively sells SUVs in the UK, having discontinued all of its estate and saloon cars here. The S60 saloon and V60 and V90 estates are now available only from dealer stock. The larger S90 saloon was axed earlier this summer as part of a wider “consolidation” of the brand’s range, along with the V60 and V90 Cross Country off-road estates. The S60 was removed from sale last year as part of an internal evaluation process, then recently reinstated to the order books “for the mediumterm future”. Approached by Autocar for comment, Volvo said: “We continue to rapidly transform our product offer, which means not only moving towards full electrification but also shifting to new platforms and technologies across all our cars. “We will naturally need to evolve and…

Look behind you!’ is a cry increasingly being heard by leasing companies, car dealers and car buyers as that spectre which haunts the used car market threatens to disrupt an emerging part of it. We are talking about ex-fleet cars, specifically the growing number of used electric ones that lease companies and businesses could soon be disposing of in a market already struggling with weak consumer confidence, heavy depreciation, over-supply of certain models and the fear that technological progress risks making even some fairly youthful EVs look old-hat. On the surface, recent new car registration figures paint a positive picture. EVs were up 39.4% year on year in June and up 32.7% year to date. However, dig deeper and the figures reveal that business and fleet registrations accounted for almost…

SATURDAY AM What an amazing world we UK-based car lovers inhabit! We hardly have time to recover from the Goodwood Festival of Speed when the equally wondrous but very different Festival of the Unexceptional is upon us. I was privileged to join this year’s FotU judges so departed the Cotswolds for Lincolnshire at 4.30am with the Bentley Flying Spur as my calm and cosseting companion. The plan was to beat the traffic, but there wasn’t any, so when I reached Grimsthorpe Castle at 7am, I parked behind shrubs (this competition for £1000 25-year-olds isn’t the place to come over all showy in a £250,000 limo) and dozed until others arrived. The event was better than ever. Entrants know this isn’t a classic car show in the Austin-Healey sense. They arrive…

“Of the current crop of Porsche’s RS creations, this is arguably the one to have” Who could forget the Carrera GT? Porsche’s V10 shrieker deserves all the hype, yet it has one under-reported quirk. While the car’s race-derived motor gives bystanders the sonic hiding of a lifetime, the individual administering it has to settle for a more subdued rendition. Perversely, you’re better off outside than in. The same can’t be said for the 718 Spyder RS. This wonderful machine is many things: the last petrol model on Porsche’s mid-engined platform, the only RS car to date not expressly intended for bullying on track, the first time Weissach has discarded the gloves with an open-air, purist’s car since the Carrera GT. But more than any of this, the Spyder RS is…

The Audi RS6 is the performance estate godfather, but now the BMW M3 has muscled in on its turf. Matt Saunders prepares for an epic shootout This feels like a turning of the tables, a rebalancing of the cosmic order, or turning Goliath into David for Back in December 2021, not long after the first four-wheel-drive BMW M3 appeared, we convened a twin test between it and the shockingly expensive Audi RS3 Saloon. You often learn more about a new car by taking it out of its segment pigeonhole and applying a bit of wider-focus perspective than you do by finding the closest rival possible. People don’t shop for the performance cars of their waking dreams with painstaking reference to vehicle segments and mechanical type, after all. We just tend…

MODEL TESTED TURISMO Price £38,195 Power 152bhp Torque 173lb ft 0-60mph 6.9sec 30-70mph 6.4sec Economy 3.8mpkWh Max DC charging speed 86kW 70-0mph 44.6m It often looks like modernity is killing the hot hatchback. Car makers are looking for bigger profit margins and thus to larger and taller cars. No more Fiesta means no more Fiesta ST; developing fancy bespoke suspension for something that needs to be affordable – well, there’s no point, really. Meanwhile, rules for fleet CO2 averages mean that manual, non-hybridised cars with high-performance engines sold in relatively large numbers could get car makers in hot water. So we’ve ended up with no hot Renaults or Peugeots, a Golf GTI that’s going auto-only next year and a £49,090 Civic Type R – which you can’t buy because it’s…

MILEAGE 2433 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if Lexus’s famed attention to detail makes up for the modest range Just over 1500 miles in and I’m beginning to form a bit of a bond with our Lexus RZ. This is a good car. It’s plush, it drives well, it’s very comfortable and it’s well equipped. The many journeys that we have already shared have all been a breeze. It really is a car made for relaxed travelling, and I’ve started to pick up on the many things that Lexus has done to make that so. This includes the quietest windscreen washer motor you’ve ever heard (honestly, it’s creepily muted) and windows that drop without a hint of noise. They really are luxury levels of detail, even beyond what you…

I’ve worked in EV charging for seven years, and the slowdown in the growth of electric car sales (News, 26 July) is of little surprise. To date, our customers have been those who are attracted to new tech, people who are wealthy enough to try out an expensive new technology and company car users who benefit from minimal tax penalties. This is a small section of the population. Private buyers are now being asked to pay £30,000-plus for a car that overall isn’t as good as an ICE vehicle. An EV requires a home charger at a cost of around £1100 or requires lengthy charging times at a remote location, struggles on long journeys and loses range in cold weather. Expensive new technology that is better than the old is…

An owner’s view PAUL JENNER “I’ve had my 2006-reg DB9 coupé for 10 years, during which time it’s covered 25,000 miles. It’s now done 62,000. It has a full Aston Martin history and would make a great first DB9 for someone. They would need to budget around £2000 a year to run it, not including fuel – I get 14-26mpg. Road tax is £590 and I pay around £400 to insure it on a low-mileage policy. Servicing is around £800 every 10,000 miles. Discs and pads, which you might need every 20,000 miles, cost around £2000. Tyres last well so at least you don’t need to worry about those too often.” Buyer beware… ENGINE It’s strong but can suffer from corrosion around the cylinder liner seal area. This is easily…