Innholdsfortegnelse for October 25, 2023 i Autocar

THE CITROEN C3 Aircross will become a seven-seat electric SUV when it enters its second generation in 2025, going after the Dacia Jogger with a focus on practicality and affordability. Brand CEO Thierry Koskas showed preview images of the new model at the reveal of the smaller new ë-C3, to which the new C3 Aircross will be closely related. Koskas confirmed the new C3 Aircross will remain a B-segment SUV and will adopt a conventional twothree-two seating layout. Autocar understands it will use the new Smart Car platform that underpins the ë-C3, but it will be stretched significantly to offer room for seven occupants. For reference, the ë-C3 will be launched with a 44kWh battery, which officially yields a range of 199 miles. A cheaper variant with a 124-mile range…

THE NEW 2024 Tesla Model 3 is now on sale in the UK, offering a significant price saving over the outgoing car. Deliveries will start in January 2024, with the new-look Model 3 priced from £39,990 – £3000 less than the cheapest version of the outgoing car, which was itself subject to a drastic £8000 price reduction earlier this year. That entry-level price is for the single-motor, rear-wheeldrive car, which has up to 344 miles of claimed range and can be charged at speeds of up to 170kW. The twin-motor Long Range model increases the price to £49,990, the maximum range to 421 miles and the peak charging speed to 250kW. Beneath the subtly restyled exterior, more than 50% of the saloon’s components have been changed, says Tesla, in a…

STELLANTIS AIMS TO surpass Ford to become the global leader in light commercial vehicles (LCVs) by 2027. The multinational giant wants to boost its global sales of vans and pick-up trucks from 1.6 million last year to around two million in 2027, which it believes would be enough to overtake its rival. “If you want to be number one, you have beat Ford,” said Stellantis LCV boss Jean-Philippe Imparato. As part of its LCV push, Stellantis has rebranded its commercial business unit Pro One. Unlike Ford with its Pro commercials unit, though, the firm won’t break out financial results; the new name is just to “highlight the importance of the unit” within the company. LCVs accounted for around a third of Stellantis’s €180 billion (£156bn) revenue last year, the company…

The increasingly popular agency sales model – whereby the car maker sells directly to the customer with the dealer acting as its agent – is facing its first big test as supply of new cars returns and demand dips. Manufacturers that sell directly to customers – including Mercedes-Benz, Cupra, Tesla, Polestar and Volvo – are now offering some of the biggest visible incentives to buyers as they try to boost sales, data from What Car? shows. Car makers are moving away from the wholesale model – whereby they sell cars to dealers, who then sell them to customers – because they want to keep a tighter control on costs, establish direct contact with customers and retain more of the money generated from selling the car. That worked well when cars…

Motorists wanting to scrap cars that don’t comply with London’s new Ultra Low Emission Zone and claim mayor Sadiq Khan’s new-car grant are saying that Transport for London’s processing system is struggling to cope and vehicle breakers are overwhelmed. The ULEZ was expanded to cover all London boroughs on 29 August. To enter the zone free of charge, petrol cars must be at least Euro 4-compliant and diesel cars at least Euro 6. According to the RAC, there were around 700,000 noncompliant cars registered in Greater London when the zone was expanded. On 30 January, Khan launched a £160 million scrappage scheme offering their owners a £2000 grant towards the cost of a compliant car, and already more than £100m has been claimed. TfL says that it aims to process…

So Bernie Ecclestone now has a criminal record for tawdry tax fraud. The long-time tsar of Formula 1 changed his plea to guilty this month in London’s crown court for failing to declare on a trust of £400 million and, at the age of 92, has avoided jail after agreeing a £652 million settlement with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Given that Ecclestone is estimated to be worth £2.5 billion, that shouldn’t pinch too much. The case follows a string of headlines that haven’t exactly painted the former used car dealer in the best of light in the past few years. Professing his admiration for Russian president Vladimir Putin and making daft (and deeply offensive) remarks about women have left the man they used to call The Bolt strikingly out…

Despite appearances, this isn’t an all-new Renault Clio. No, this is a more visually aggressive take on the fifth-generation supermini, which adopts a “more fun, less fuel” approach. The facelifted car was meant to be sold here only with the E-Tech Full Hybrid powertrain, but Renault recently announced it would also keep the 1.0 TCe engine (an 89bhp turbo three-pot) “in order to meet the needs of some customers in a difficult economic climate”. Kudos. Here, though, we’re driving the E-Tech, which features a 1.6-litre petrol engine, a 48bhp electric motor, a 24bhp starter-generator and a small (1.2kWh) drive battery. Priced from £21,295, it’s the cheapest hybrid on sale in the UK today, below the rival Toyota Yaris (£22,125) and Honda Jazz (£26,395). While its powertrain sounds complicated, the Clio…

What can you do in 32 minutes? Mow the lawn, perhaps, or make a carbonara? Maybe even squeeze in a couple of episodes of Friends if you skip the credits and fast-forward through the adverts. If you’re one of the 600 people employed on Rolls-Royce’s Goodwood production line, you know exactly what you can achieve in 32 minutes. That’s the ‘takt time’ afforded to each of the 42 production stations between the shutter door of the paint shop and the pre-delivery inspection pen, and meeting that rigid deadline – whatever your team’s specific task may be – 14 times per shift is utterly crucial to avoiding costly hold-ups and delays to the delivery of cars that have cost their VIP customers (who probably ordered around two years ago) an average…

Ash Sutton is a motorsport phenomenon, pure and simple. At just 29, the Hertfordshire racing driver has already equalled joint record holders Colin Turkington and Andy Rouse as a four-time British Touring Car Champion, and in the eyes of many he is well on his way to earning the mantle of series GOAT – the Greatest Of All Time. This year, in his second season driving a Napa Racing Ford Focus, Sutton became the first driver to win a BTCC crown in both frontand rear-drive cars, his previous titles having come in a rear-driven Subaru and an Infiniti. That’s a big deal in the specialist world of tin-top racing, and he did it in a dominant manner rarely seen in Britain’s ultra-competitive premier racing series, with a recordequalling six pole…

The theory of everything I feel very sorry for those young people who fail their driving theory test, because it’s much harder now than it was in my day. When I obtained my driving licence in 1972, I didn’t have to do a written test; the examiner simply fired questions about the Highway Code at me in the car. However, I’ve been driving long enough that I consider that I know enough about the subject to stay safe and free from points on my licence. I was therefore somewhat alarmed when I took a mock theory test that I certainly didn’t know all the answers and failed (42 correct out of 50 multiple-choice questions). I don’t really have a defence for my failure, other than that several of the questions…

The next time you leave a second-generation Nissan Note of 2013 to 2017 in your dust, remember that it scored a solid four stars in Autocar’s road test. Our reviewers were impressed with its “extremely practical interior, smooth ride and decent fuel economy”. Think about it: as a supermini-size MPV that must transport up to five people comfortably and affordably, the humble Note hit its KPIs bang on the nose. If only more cars, many of them significantly more expensive, could claim the same… The Note was based on the then current, fourth-generation Micra and built in Sunderland. It was popular with the sort of folk one likes to imagine wouldn’t know one end of a car from another (although in fact they’re often among the most demanding buyers with…

IF THERE’S ONE area in which car makers have made the most progress over the past halfcentury, it’s surely reliability. Today, we take it for granted that a new car will start with ease and drive all day without any concerns, won’t soon succumb to rot or rust, and shouldn’t need any major work before its first MOT test. None of this was true in the 1960s or 1970s. Across our long-term test fleet today, the only problems are a few software glitches. A mechanical or bodywork failure would be notable for its rarity. Now compare with some examples from our fleet assessment of October 1979. Chrysler Alpine after 27,800 miles: ignition resistor needed replacing, door handle fell off twice, heavy glass tailgate kept dropping and fouling boot sill. Fiat…

There is a multitude of reasons why a car will be sold in one market but not in another. Most are entirely logical: some countries like some types of vehicle far more than others, often due to car culture, climate or consumer taste – or often a combination of the three. But not always. Here are some of the more notable no-shows. Renault Talisman Estate 2016 This handsome devil was on sale in Europe between 2016 and 2022 as a replacement for the Laguna. It came with a variety of engines, ranging from a 108bhp diesel to a 198bhp petrol. Even at its launch back in 2016, it was clear that a large estate car with a mainstream badge was far from the market sweet spot, so Renault never engineered…

Mercedes-AMG is poised to begin advanced development of its first bespoke electric sports car, which will arrive in 2025 with innovative, UK-developed drivetrain technology that is likely to make it the firm’s most powerful road car yet. Serving as an electric alternative to the snarling, V8-engined GT 63 4-Door Coupé, AMG’s first bespoke electric car will be tasked with taking on highly acclaimed and bigselling EV sports saloons such as the Porsche Taycan, Audi E-tron GT and Lucid Air. AMG has already turned its hand to the Mercedes EQE and EQS duo to create warmed-up, 53-badged sports saloons with huge power outputs, but this new model will be designed from the ground up as a performance car. As such, it is expected to place as much emphasis on dynamic performance…

The Toyota GR Supra is set to gain an extreme new high-performance variant, potentially called the GRMN, with a significant increase in power and a tighter, more composed chassis. A new variant of Toyota’s sports coupé was recently spotted testing at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Clad in camouflage, it wore a new fixed rear wing, as well as a tweaked front bumper fitted with canards and an aggressive-looking lower lip. Under the bonnet, the hot new Supra could go as far as trading the BMW Z4-sourced ‘B58’ straight six – which puts out 335bhp and 369lb ft – for M division’s tuned ‘S58’ powerplant. That engine, used by the BMW M3 and M4, swaps the B58’s twin-scroll turbochargers for a pair of single-scroll units and features a revised piston design with…

Kia bosses believe a focus on reducing the barriers to entry for EV adoption – particularly concerns about price and charging – and the adoption of a regionalised approach will be key to meeting its ambitious goal of becoming a ‘global leader’ in electric cars. The Korean firm has grown rapidly in recent years thanks to the success of its rebrand and new electric models. Now, it is aiming to grow its global EV sales from a target of around 258,000 this year to one million (about 25% of its total sales) by 2026 and 1.6 million (37% of its total) by 2030. Kia boss Ho-sung Song said: “The transition to electrification is a must, not an option.” But he noted there are still significant challenges in achieving that. He…

THE OUTLANDISH NEW Nissan Hyper Punk is an electric crossover concept designed to showcase the future design direction for the Japanese firm’s EVs. Starring at this week’s Tokyo motor show, the Jukesized crossover is described as “functional and stylish”, blending virtual and physical features in a bid to appeal to a style-focused audience. The fourth and final entrant into Nissan’s Hyper concept family, it follows the Hyper Adventure SUV, Hyper Urban crossover and Hyper Tourer MPV (right) in gaining vehicleto-grid charging technology, striking origami-inspired styling cues and AI-powered mood-sensing technology that automatically adjusts the interior lighting and music. Its styling “goes against the minimalist design”, as a statement of intent for the EVs that Nissan will launch in the coming years. Its sharp-edged silhouette and squat proportions are emphasised…

FORD HAS SLASHED the price of the Mustang Mach-E by £7000 across the range. The Mach-E now starts at £43,830 for the entry-level Select version, which has a range of up to 273 miles. That price undercuts the cheapest Tesla Model Y (£44,900). The Mach-E Premium, with the bigger battery and a range of up to 372 miles, now costs £52,380 while the performance-focused GT has been reduced to £67,540. Billed as a ‘promotion price’, the cut effectively reverses the increases of up to £7700 that Ford levied across 2022 on the Mach-E on the back of the rising costs of raw materials.…

I’m almost kind of half-thinking about maybe being convinced In next week’s issue, you will find our annual Britain’s Best Driver’s Car contest, two of whose competitors (not a spoiler alert, I don’t think), the Alpine A110 R and Ariel Atom 4R, arrived on composite wheels. Both were expensive cars, but previously I’ve generally tried rims like this on high-end supercars. Just a few weeks ago, I drove a Porsche 911 S/T, which doesn’t have composite wheels but does have magnesium ones. Porsche’s engineers were keen to point out the similar reason why they had used this material: a reduction in wheel weight. In particular, it’s a reduction of unsprung mass: the bit on the road side of the springs, so the tyres, wheels, hubs, brakes, wishbones and so on.…

Having kept the basic principles of the Corvette essentially unchanged through seven generations and 65 years, Chevrolet has thrown innovation at the C8 version. As launched in 2019, this was the first mid-engined Corvette, and now the E-Ray version is making it both the first with a hybrid powertrain and the first to feature four-wheel drive. Unlike posher electrified supersports cars like the Ferrari SF90 Stradale, McLaren Artura and Lamborghini Revuelto, the E-Ray isn’t a plug-in hybrid, nor does it use multiple electric motors. Instead, it splits its powertrain by axle. At the rear is the same pushrod small-block 6.2-litre V8 engine that powers the regular Stingray (the LT2), turning the rear wheels through an eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox. At the front is a compact AC motor that can add 160bhp…

Peugeot has just given its supermini-based crossover, the 2008, a mid-life facelift. We reviewed the new electric e-2008 a few weeks ago from the international launch, but for those who baulk at the thought of paying £40,000 for a car like this, there’s still the regular petrol version. It can be had with a 99bhp 1.2-litre turbo triple and a good old six-speed manual gearbox for a slightly more palatable £24,170, although our test car, with the more powerful 129bhp version of the same engine and in the middle-ranking Allure trim with a few options, came in at £29,070. When the larger and more generously equipped Hyundai Kona demands only £25,725, what added value is the Peugeot offering? The 2008’s design has been subtly tweaked, gaining more LED lights. Most…

“I’ve seen a lot of Porsches in my time, but never that one” Think of a Porsche. Don’t make it an easy one. How about a 959? At the seventh Rennsport Reunion, held at the Laguna Seca Raceway, there were at least 12. A dozen 959s. In a country where the 959 was never sold. Okay, let’s make it harder. A 901. Remember that? The car the 911 was before Peugeot spat the dummy and asserted its rights to all three-digit car names with a ‘0’ in the middle. They made just 82, few of which survive. Yet two of them, cars six and seven, were right there, heading an entire grid of 911-based cars. We need to make this more difficult. Much more difficult. So let’s go racing. Surely,…

MODEL TESTED 1.5 ECO TSI DSG FR BLACK EDITION • Price £37,000 • Power 148bhp • Torque 184lb ft • 0-60mph 8.9sec • 30-70mph in fourth 10.8sec • Fuel economy 40.9mpg • CO2 emissions 153g/km • 70-0mph 45.8m We are now reaching the end of the road for the car brand once touted, in fairly ambitious yet serious terms, as the Volkswagen Group’s answer to Alfa Romeo. In a recent interview with Autocar, VW Group board member Thomas Schäfer revealed that if Spanish car maker Seat has a future, it’s probably not in making cars. Over the short to medium term, he explained, Wolfsburg’s Spanish outpost is set to transform into something that may sound more interesting at first – an e-mobility provider, or some other kind of pioneer of alternatives…

MILEAGE 7420 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if BMW’s entry EV is as impressive as its iX range-topper Every year, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders holds a regional drive day so that hacks like us can test the latest metal on sale in the UK. I took the opportunity this year to clue myself up on some of my BMW iX1’s biggest rivals, and I was surprised at some of my findings. First up was the Toyota bZ4X, which was priced slightly below the iX1 but similar in size. While it was eye-catching and a decent EV in its own right, with a longer range per charge (317 miles plays 272 miles), it couldn’t match the BMW for comfort, performance or premium interior materials. The Nissan Ariya…

Your Secret Source column about a customer wanting her car’s paint colour matched to her favourite nail varnish (11 October) brought back hilarious memories. Some time in the last century, I was helping to install an end-of-line road simulator at a prestigious car manufacturer’s plant here in the UK. The special-orders section was right alongside our simulator chamber, and one of the cars being finished off there was a convertible in a very striking pinky red shade with cream upholstery. Subtle it wasn’t. Our team joked that the customer had had it painted that shade to exactly match his partner’s nail varnish. A week or so later, the customer and his partner showed up, presumably for a final inspection of the car – both wearing fur coats, in August! The…

An owner’s view GAVIN LEE “I own a Nissan Note 1.2 N-Tec – a 2015 car with 31,000 miles. The limited-edition trim is based on Acenta and has extras including a touchscreen and a reversing camera. We’ve owned the car since new and it has been trouble-free. It does about 50mpg with four of us on board. It’s our second Note; we had a firstgeneration car and a Qashqai before that, so we’re Nissan loyalists! With the back seats folded the Note is like a van, with bags of room from floor to ceiling and across the vehicle. I should change it, but what would I replace it with that doesn’t cost a fortune?” Buyer beware… ENGINE Petrol engines have timing chains, but the diesel has a timing belt that…

Vauxhall is considering the development of an entry-level city car that will be priced from around £22,000, according to the boss of parent brand Opel. The new entry point is envisioned as a diminutive, urban-oriented proposition to sit below the Vauxhall Corsa Electric – which opens at £32,445 – in a space similar to that previously occupied by the likes of the Vauxhall Adam and Viva. That would make it a rival to the forthcoming Renault 5 and the Kia EV2. Florian Huettl, CEO of Vauxhall parent brand Opel, said a city car “was possible” as “there is space in the [new] range for a smaller model [than the Corsa]”, although he wouldn’t confirm if such a car had been designed. Huettl hinted that the key to a Vauxhall city…

THE UK GOVERNMENT should prioritise road upgrades in the Midlands and the north to improve connectivity and trade across England, independent government advisors have said. According to the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), only 22% of National Highways’ current five-year, £27.4 billion Second Road Investment Strategy covers these regions. The NIC said this “was not consistent with helping underperforming regions” and nor did the current approach target national and regional productivity goals. In its Second National Infrastructure Assessment report, the NIC said policy makers should carry out “systematic” analysis of how and where connectivity could be most improved, focusing on routes that were most important for trading between places and key freight hubs. Policy makers should “then identify which sections of these important routes underperform in terms of journey times or…

BATTERY-SWAPPING FOR EVs has been talked about for years but always seemed too far-fetched to work. Yet Chinese EV manufacturer Nio recently clocked up 30 million battery swaps across its Power Swap Stations network, which is mainly in China but also in Europe (and is expected to reach the UK at some stage). The advantage is simply time. It takes just 2min 30sec to swap a Nio car’s battery for a fully charged one, so the total process from arrival to departure takes roughly the same time as using a petrol pump – much quicker than the fastest battery charge. The process is fully automated from start to finish. The driver parks in the station’s recharge area and taps the ‘auto parking’ option that appears on the car’s touchscreen. The…

ALTHOUGH A downturn in the economy is never welcome in the car industry, there are occasionally glints of a silver lining in the dark clouds of recession for motor industry employees. One of these is that there are great deals to be had on cars that have been in stock for too long – and the biggest bargains are offered to staff first. Hence the directors of one car company were quietly excited to hear that the firm’s high-performance coupés were going to be offered on the company lease scheme at a rate that was only a little higher than one of the normal SUVs or hatchbacks. They rushed to place orders and the administrator found it hard to keep a straight face when almost all directors asked for an…

SUNDAY You left me last week with my Alpine A110 unexpectedly conked on the Fosse Way in northern Gloucestershire: a fast, narrow stretch with sightlines restricted by a steep cutting. Few events render you as powerless as an open-roads breakdown – although nowadays they’re so rare that I can’t remember a previous one. Via its app, I contacted the AA, which instantly sent a link that established my position. Within 45 minutes, a van had arrived to tow the car to a lay-by. Within an hour, a flatbed truck had loaded the car to carry it the 15 miles home. Both drivers insisted this five-star treatment was nothing special. It’s interesting to clock how you’re treated by other drivers when you break down. Many are impatient. A few take serious…

Before we get started, let’s get one thing straight: the car you’re looking at here isn’t a restomod. Sure, at a glance, the Prodrive P25 is a doppelganger of the 1998 Subaru Impreza 22B, a Japanese icon of near-mythical status of which just 424 examples were built, only 16 of them coming to the UK. Yet despite the same bulging wheel arches, high-rise rear spoiler and metallic blue paint, the similarities between this dynamic duo are almost coincidental. You see, the P25 is neither restored nor modified – it’s virtually an all-new offering. Yes, it’s built on the bare bones of an Impreza, but almost everything else is bespoke, from the top of its carbonfibre body to the sump of its turbocharged 2.5-litre flat-four engine. It has been designed not…

Nostalgia: according to one dictionary, it’s ‘a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition’. However you define it, there’s no denying there’s a lot of it about these days, from politicians selling us bucolic visions of the past to music and fashion industries that, at the moment at least, appear to be knee-deep in the 1990s. Yet nowhere is the feeling more pervasive than the automotive sector, where the urgency of the climate crisis and the looming all-in adoption of EV power is making many buyers keen to recapture motoring memories that were filled with a greater sense of freedom and environmental innocence, when hydrocarbons were happily hurled about, the road ahead was always open and the future always seemed…

“With a ubiquitous charging network, people won’t worry so much about range” Ask anyone teetering on the brink of EV ownership, or just discounting the idea altogether, what’s stopping them from pulling the trigger and the most likely answer is the high retail price. It’s common knowledge that, almost without exception, EVs have a significantly higher price than their combustion counterparts (especially for EVs with a range of around 250 miles or more) and, for many, it’s too much to ask. So what will it take to make an EV affordable for more people? Is it even possible? To understand how much something costs to buy, the first step is to know how much it costs to make. Andy Palmer was chief operating officer at Nissan and led the Nissan…

MILEAGE 4854 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out if this quirky newcomer is a serious prospect or a flash in the pan A lot of my driving life seems to revolve around my cars’ load-carrying ability, to the extent that boot space has become a bit of an obsession: I’ve got two highly strung dogs who don’t like being too close together, I regularly carry huge loads when restocking the local food bank, I’m the school run taxi most days for four kids and, in the case of an EV, I’m often having to get the charging cable out. With all that in mind, I was a little concerned about how the Atto 3 was going to work out in daily life, given its published capacities of 440 litres…

FEATURE Britain’s Best Driver’s Car 2023 What is this year’s most fun performance car? We put 11 epic contenders through their paces USED CARS Best bargain buys Which BBDC contestants from the past 35 years you should snap up now INSIGHT The future of performance cars What will BBDC look like in 35 years? We investigate EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Honda e:Ny1 Can the latest electric SUV match its rivals in a hugely competitive class? DRIVEN BMW i5 Electric version of new 5 Series executive saloon tested in the UK SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p28…

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…