Innholdsfortegnelse for November 22, 2023 i Autocar

Renault will revive the Twingo as a new sub-£17,000 EV with claimed “best-in-class” efficiency as a key part of an expanded European line-up of seven electric models. Renault Group boss Luca de Meo described the new Twingo as a “silver bullet for sustainability mobility” and key in the firm’s quest for an affordable EV. The Twingo is due to arrive in 2026 and will be designed and engineered in Europe, with de Meo promising that it will match Chinese rivals in terms of price. He added that the brand could use an outside partner to develop it. De Meo claimed the hatchback will cost 50% less to produce than a new C-segment SUV, due to a reduction in materials and an increased focus on a soft-waredriven platform that will require…

HYUNDAI’S IONIQ 5 Robotaxi is being primed for mass production as the first prototypes roll off the line in Singapore. These are the first examples to be created from the ground up, rather than being standard Ioniq 5s retrofitted with the autonomous tech. More than 30 sensors (a combination of lidar, radar and cameras) are fitted to the car, as well as exterior customer-support buttons and passenger guidance displays. Shipped exclusively to partner Motional in the US, the level-four-capable cars are being tested by ridehailing firm Lyft in Las Vegas. Once testing is complete, the models will be marketed to firms in regions where selfdriving vehicles can be legally used. It is unlikely they will be sold to individual buyers.…

Ford is poised to resurrect the hallowed Capri name for its second electric crossover on Volkswagen’s MEB platform – and it has appeared in public for the first time ahead of a launch next year. A sibling to the Ford Explorer and a direct rival to the new Peugeot e-3008, the reborn Capri will look more like a raised saloon than an SUV-coupé, similar to the Polestar 2, with a raft of bespoke design cues to differentiate it from the Explorer and possibly nods back to its iconic namesake. The LED headlights, for example, look to be modelled on the distinctive headlights of later Capri models. It is expected to be technically identical to the more straight-edged Explorer. That means a choice of three electric powertrains, ranging in output from…

Manufacturers are scaling back their subscription services – ‘Netflix for cars’ offerings of shortterm flexible contracts with the option to switch or hand back the car with little notice. Autocar contacted seven firms that advertise subscription products in the UK but are believed to be taking this course: four didn’t respond, one couldn’t give an answer and a source at another confirmed that it had stopped offering subscriptions already. Volvo, once a vocal advocate of the format (only in February, CEO Jim Rowan said it was “here to stay” after a 49% rise in subscriptions in 2022), confirmed that “subscription doesn’t have the same focus it once did for us”, due to the firm’s backing of the agency model (whereby it sells cars itself, rather than to dealers). WHY SUBSCRIPTION…

Autonomous motorsport is an oxymoron to most enthusiasts. Remove the racing driver from the equation and you have to wonder: what would be the point? Wouldn’t such activities merely be technical exercises rather than real sport? When news broke of the most ambitious autonomous motorsport project yet, my initial response was the default: ‘So what?’ However, amid so much discussion about artificial intelligence (AI) and its increasing influence over our lives, taking a Luddite stance seemed churlish. In the spirit of keeping an open mind and embracing change, it was time to find out more. MIDDLE EASTERN PROMISE The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League, aka A2RL, plans to take its public bow at the UAE’s Yas Marina Formula 1 circuit on 28 April 2024. Details remain work in progress, but…

When the world’s premium car makers started getting serious about electrification, they said there would be a major reduction in model variants. However, when that trio of deadly German rivals – Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz – made such comments, it always looked like lip service: we knew they would go right on producing some models just because the others were doing it too. So it appears with the new Mercedes EQE SUV: one big reason for its existence is surely that BMW is having evident success with its iX, and Audi with the Q8 E-tron. Which is not to say that the EQE SUV is anything other than another fine luxury car from a distinguished stable of big cars. Spend a morning with the ultra-smooth, cosseting and surprisingly agile 500…

A£40,000-plus electric family car with around 200 miles of range is a pretty hard sell in this climate. Which is a shame for Peugeot, because it’s the first mainstream manufacturer, just ahead of Vauxhall, to move onto electric estates. Sure, MG pipped Peugeot to the post with the new darling of the Uber drivers, the 5 SW EV, and Porsche weirdly has two different Taycan estates. But now Peugeot is here with a good-looking wagon that has all the hallmarks of a strong family hauler. The boot is flat, long and wide and at 548 litres is the same size as the plug-in hybrid 308’s, if smaller than the pure-ICE versions’. The rear seats fold down with a pull of a lever from the boot, opening up yet more space.…

MODEL TESTED GT3 RS • Price £192,600 • Power 518bhp • Torque 343lb ft • 0-60mph 3.2sec • 30-70mph in fourth 6.8sec • Fuel economy 18.5mpg • CO2 emissions 305g/km • 70-0mph 38.8m Midway through 2020, photos emerged of a prototype 911 bearing an inconceivably large rear aerofoil. At the time, we were unsure whether this machine was an incoming version of Porsche’s GT3 RS or a test bed for one of the race cars. In a way, the latter seemed likelier. The wing was colossal. As it happens, this prototype was, in fact, a road car and the finished article is before you now. The GT3 RS of the 992 generation is the most ambitious 911 yet intended for the public. As is tradition at Weissach, it is an evolution…

MILEAGE 6312 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if Lexus’s famed attention to detail makes up for the modest range Did you notice that the car pictured below isn’t my regular long-term Lexus RZ? If you did, congratulations, you’re in fine fettle. As for the rest of you, that is clearly Sonic Grey, not Sonic Silver. Get that eye test booked in. Here’s a more pertinent question: why am I driving it? Well, a kind soul hit the front of our £74,000 EV while it was plugged into a public charger and, of course, didn’t leave a note. The damage? Warped front end, broken headline casing, scuff marks and very slightly bent bonnet. Not great. The lovely Lexus press team have been round, as you can see (or, as established,…

Make mine a 3310 I just want to thank Matt Prior for his honest review of the EX30 and its ergonomic shortcomings. It helped me a lot in my search for a not-too-expensive EV. I’m not young, and all this screen-operated everything isn’t to my liking. I much prefer cars with physical buttons, knobs or stalks that I can operate without having to look. Remember the good ‘old’ days when you could write a text message on a Nokia phone without having to look at the keys and using just one hand? A Nokia couldn’t be tracked or hacked either. Anton Thortzen Denmark It’s good, but it’s not right Thank you, Matt Prior, for your detailed review of the EX30. Having scrutinised the same pre-production car at two separate Volvo…

For some years, the original Audi A5 Coupé of 2007 to 2016 has been sliding down the social scale, such that it is now appreciated only by those who wrap the paint, remove the chrome and fit black alloys. An exaggeration, but it’s a shame just how many of these large, handsome cars have fallen into bad company. Fortunately, sufficient numbers of unmolested examples remain to make shopping for one a far from fruitless endeavour. It will be well worth the effort. In our original review, we praised the A5 – Audi’s first proper 2+2 since the Coupé (B4) bowed out in 1996 – for its desirability inside and out and Audi for overcoming the dynamic frustrations that had always kept the BMW 3 Series out of reach. We also…

PEUGEOT 1007 1.6 SPORT 2007, 56,000 miles, £2250 There are few ways to stand out for less. While its mix of Pininfarina styling and sliding doors is polarising, the 1007 can now be yours from just £995. Most of those currently on sale seem to be in good nick, like this one. AUDI TT 3.2 V6 QUATTRO DSG 2004, 110,000 miles, £4995 This design has lasted the test of time better than most rivals, especially inside, and it’s well screwed together. The 150bhp 1.8 Turbo four makes a great cheap package, but the 247bhp VW Golf R32-derived 3.2 V6 makes it operatic. HONDA JAZZ 1.4 i - DSI SE 2008, 86,000 miles, £2350 If you need ULEZ compliance on a budget or just a cheap runaround you can rag without much fuss,…

The mighty V8 is an endangered species. Even the Mercedes-AMG C63 has become a four-cylinder hybrid and our Jaguar F-Type R 75 might well be our last-ever V8 long-termer. It’s time, then, for us to look at our favourite V8-engined cars from over the years. Our list is chronological, not ranked, but we’re sure there will be some controversy over omissions… Audi R8 2007 The Audi R8 caused a sensation when it arrived, largely because it gave its Porsche cousin a bloody nose when few had ever managed to land a blow on any 911. So much of the original R8’s appeal stemmed from the naturally aspirated 4.2-litre V8 borrowed from the RS4. With 414bhp and a manual gearbox as standard, it sounded great and revved and went brilliantly, with…

Polestar is about to embark on an aggressive model expansion that is set to ultimately be crowned with a supercar, in addition to a sports car already confirmed for production. Two new SUVs – the BMW iXrivalling 3 and the 4 crossover – will be launched in the UK next year and join the recently updated 2 in showrooms. They will be followed in 2025 by the 5 sports saloon and in 2026 by the 6 open-top sports car, both of which will be engineered in the UK. Beyond that, Polestar has a desire to make a supercar inspired by the Synergy concept revealed earlier this year. Such a car is “something we should take further”, design boss Maximilian Missoni told Autocar at the recent Polestar Day event, where the…

AMERICAN EV FIRM Lucid has revealed its second car, the Gravity – a high-powered, long-range BMW iX rival said to offer radical new motors and ultra-fast charging speeds. A close technical relation to the Air saloon, Lucid’s new seven-seater is claimed to deliver “sports car performance” with a 3.5sec 0-62mph time courtesy of “the most power-dense EV motors in production globally”. The Gravity is also able to carry more than 700kg on board and tow loads of nearly three tonnes, says Lucid. Like the Air, it comes with 900V charging hardware, which means 200 miles can be theoretically added in as little as 15 minutes at a rapid charger – making it one of the fastest-charging production cars in the world. Lucid claims a maximum range of more than 440…

After the King’s speech on 7 November included a proposal to outlaw electronic devices that are used to steal cars, Autocar has discovered that they are still being openly advertised for sale on the internet. The proposed law will make it illegal to produce, modify, supply, import or possess such devices, with a penalty of up to five years in jail. Police believe these are behind the majority of vehicle thefts in the UK, which rose by 25% from 104,435 in 2022 to 130,389 last year. According to the latest data from Tracker Network UK, 93% of all the vehicles the firm has recovered had been stolen without their owners’ keys being used. Relay theft is a popular method that requires one thief to capture the signal from the key…

THE NEW EM90 MPV is described by Volvo as a “comfortable living room” on wheels, touting more than 450 miles of range and offering private jet levels of refinement. The third new Volvo to be revealed in the past 12 months, following the EX90 SUV and EX30 crossover, the EM90 is a technically advanced and high-specification rival to the likes of the Lexus LM. Designed primarily for the Chinese market (yet destined to be sold elsewhere if there is sufficient demand), the EM90 is based on sibling brand Zeekr’s 009 MPV but it has its own interior and exterior design to bring it into line with other Volvos. It is equipped with a 116kWh battery for a range of 458 miles on China’s CLTC testing cycle and is capable of…

The people behind Bloodhound, the jet-and-rocket-combining, land-speed-record-attempting car, have been looking for more money for quite some time. Now they’ve combined that search with one for a new driver, in what strikes me as the most sensible change of trajectory in the project’s difficult history. I had a ‘why didn’t I/they think of that before?’ moment when the story landed. It has been trying to appeal to corporations – it should have appealed to egos long ago. The land speed record has stood at 763mph for the past 26 years, since Andy Green took Thrust SSC supersonic. Now 61, Green has been in the hot seat for the Bloodhound project too since its 2008 inception and has already tested it at 628mph. Initially the talk was of 1000mph, but these…

Six years have passed since McLaren launched the 720S – a supercar whose engineers were, at the time, refreshingly open regarding their anxiety over its eventual replacement. In fairness, they had reason to be. In the 720S, they had made an exceedingly light, monumentally potent supercar with class-defying road manners. Talk about a hard act to follow. Today, we know that replacement will involve a hybridised V8 powertrain, due to come on-stream in a few years’ time. The car to house it is currently being masterminded by McLaren’s new CEO, Michael Leiters (formerly of Ferrari), with fresh styling overseen by Tobias Sühlmann, who is tucking his feet back under his desk in Woking after a short spell at Bentley. As the successor to the 720S, it will exist as a…

Anyone who has visited mainland Europe over the past few years will have seen a Peugeot 208 – they’re everywhere. Indeed, it was the best-selling car there in 2022. Sensible size and reasonable price give it the edge over most things. Our drive of the updated version comes firmly on home soil, then. In fact, we’re just 185 miles from Zaragoza, where the 208 is made. Up front, there’s a larger grille and the ‘three-claw’ light signature has been altered to match the 9X8 hypercar that races at Le Mans. Inside, there’s a new 10in infotainment touchscreen. It’s zippy and communicative and the in-built TomTom sat-nav is intuitive. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay do, of course, come with it. The cabin temperature controls are on the screen, while the little…

Barely a mile along one of Scotland’s great driving roads and already there’s the creeping sense that an unfair fight is unfolding. The scrap itself is an all-time classic: Aston Martin versus Ferrari, only as we’ve never known it – in all honesty, could never have imagined it, not long ago. As for any unfairness, neither of these brutes is what anyone would call affordable, but one will set you back nearly twice what the other one does, and that surely confers an in-built advantage. Why? Because when you really get to know the £313k Purosangue (£411k as tested!), you realise its eye-watering price is as much the result of engineering bloody-mindedness and ambition as it is about keeping Ferrari’s shareholders purring. It’s a juicily profitable product (as they all…

MILEAGE 4535 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To enjoy Jaguar’s last-ever high-performance V8 and to remind us of what we’ll be missing out on The Jaguar F-Type R seems to have one of the fastest-spinning sets of odometer wheels that I’ve ever encountered. Either that or it’s so effortless that I hardly notice the miles slipping by. On second thoughts, I think it’s the latter. In less than two months, this car’s recorded mileage has sped from 500 to 4500, which is almost 500 miles a week or 100 miles every weekday (I tend to drive my own cars on the weekend). Clearly I’ve been busy travelling around the UK, but I have absolutely no memory of any journey seeming to drag. There are lots of reasons for this. Although the…

Crikey! Matt Prior was on one in his review of the new Volvo EX30 (First drives, 8 November). We are running our third current-shape XC90 (brilliant cars for all aspects of life), and I had been eagerly awaiting the first review of the EX30 as a clue to what the EX90 might look and feel like as a replacement family wagon. We also have an XC40 Twin Engine in the family, which is also great, if a little silly and irrelevant in terms of performance. I totally get Matt’s comments and frustration. The Sensus system in the older XC90s is absolutely fine, with real buttons where you need them. Yes, some climate controls are on the touchscreen, but it’s just a quick prod. Likewise, the Google platform in the XC40…

An owner’s view JOHN RATCLIFFE “I’m the seventh owner of my A5, a 2011-reg 2.0 TFSI S Line. I’ve updated it with an RS5 grille and rear window tints and, for a cleaner look, removed the badges. Being an S Line, it has very firm suspension, but the upside is that it corners really well. It has no rattles and is reliable. The engine has a small leak from the rocker cover and the rear parking sensors have failed, but both should be easy to replace. With a light foot, it will do up to 43mpg; if I go for it, around 37mpg. Insurance is expensive, but you have to expect that with a car like this.” Buyer beware… ENGINE Early versions of the 1.8 TFSI and 2.0 TFSI suffered…

WHEN LOTUS FOUNDER Colin Chapman needed a replacement for his race cars’ Coventry Climax four, he hired its creator, Autocar journalist Harry Mundy, to spice up Ford’s mundane Kent engine. The resulting Twin-Cam proved itself immediately in the 23 sports racer. Ford therefore asked Lotus to fit it in its new saloon for Group 2 racing – and a legend was born. Homologation required 1000 Ford Cortina Lotuses to be made for the road, which caused great excitement among enthusiasts. In addition to the new DOHC unit, Cheshunt gave the Cortina a high-ratio rear axle, modern rear suspension, a heavier-duty set-up at the front (lowering the ride by an inch), wider tyres, a close-ratio manual gearbox and aluminium parts to compensate for the extra bits. As such, the car’s power-toweight…

NO FURTHER POLESTAR models are confirmed for production beyond the 6 sports car, but the firm has made an ambitious pledge to launch a “truly climateneutral car” in 2030, known as the Polestar 0. The company is now two years into a lengthy research and development programme aimed at determining how the environmental impact of its supply and construction processes could be rebuilt from the ground up to have zero carbon emissions. Design boss Maximilian Missoni (pictured) confirmed the goal was to create a car from the project and it might be “a different type of car from what you’d expect” due to how radical the approach was in building a car from scratch not using fossil fuels in its creation rather than trying to remove fossil fuels from an…

Hyundai can now build and deliver cars just six hours after an order is placed using factories that are minimally staffed, run by artificial intelligence (AI) and use robots to do the key manufacturing work. Showcased for the first time at the Korean brand’s new Innovation Centre in Singapore, this ‘Smart’ facility – currently producing the Ioniq 5 and, from 2024, the Ioniq 6 – will be used as a test bed for scores of similar sites that will pop up in cities around the world, with the UK not ruled out. These new-era EV factories will serve local urban markets, with a major focus on personalisation and customer experience, as part of a major push towards taking the brand upmarket. “This isn’t just a factory: it’s a customer experience…

ONE OF THE exciting things about technology is that the extent to which it will evolve can be unimaginable. An iPhone is thousands of times more powerful than a 1980s supercomputer, for example. The Clean Earth Magnet in development by US firm Niron Magnetics is another example, because powerful magnets are needed in just about every facet of human life, and this could be a game-changer in any device that uses an electric motor. Electric motors, not just for cars but for everything from drills to submarines, come in various types, one of which is the permanent magnet motor. Therein the rotor has embedded magnets that are attracted to a rotating magnet field created by the stator – a set of electromagnetic coils surrounding the rotors. The permanent magnets’ power…

OFFICIAL FIGURES prove we Brits are a conservative lot when it comes to car colours. While certain shades come in and out of fashion every couple of decades, black, silver and the hues in between have for years propped up the top of the chart. This presents a quandary for car firms, which must try to make the new product look interesting when it is first seen. The ‘launch colour’ is carefully chosen by the styling department to show the car’s curves at their best and it features on all the press and marketing photography. But consumers won’t usually buy these brighter shades and are scared into believing they make the car tricky to resell used, especially as buyers filter out colours they don’t like on buying websites. The way…

MONDAY Long haul (586 miles return) from the Cotswolds to Cockermouth, where hyperactive Chinese EV firm BYD was launching its third car in the UK this year, the deeply impressive Seal (see p32). The venue was Malcolm Wilson’s magnificent M-Sport complex at Dovenby Hall, home to hundreds of fine rally cars over two decades, plus several seasons’ worth of booming Bentley GT3 sports racers. Its beautifully planned layout (offices, workshops, stores, design studios, a car museum, a showroom events centre and, of course, a challenging handling track) rivals that of any Formula 1 team for its opulence and organisation – and it’s rather more welcoming. I’ve visited M-Sport plenty of times over two decades but have never felt that I know the place, because every time I arrive, they’ve changed…

Of all electric cars, it strikes me that the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is the first to have been developed from the outset as a pure driver’s car. There are sports saloons, 2000bhp hypercars and, in the form of the Abarth 500e, even a superficial hot hatch. All are impressive in their ways. But the Ioniq 5 N is different. It’s the best electric driver’s car yet made. Hyundai’s N performance division is on good form, of course. The i30 N and i20 N hot hatches are the best in their classes, even though those classes are slimmer than they once were. It has recruited well from the outset, too, including in 2019 Tyrone Johnson, one of the men behind the final Ford Focus RS, which is what, if…

We already know the BYD Seal is a very decent car. Twice in these pages we have given the electric saloon a four-star rating: on track in Spain and then on the road in Germany. However, experience tells us that judgements about any car’s dynamics mean surprisingly little unless you subject them to that special examination set by the lumps, bumps, ruts and cambers of our own roads. As many a suspension engineer has told our testers: if you can make a car’s suspension work in Britain, it will work anywhere. BYD is pretty much an unknown to the British public, despite the fact that it’s one of the world’s biggest battery makers and has more than 1000 electric buses taking us around our cities. But that shouldn’t remain the…

Not sure about you, but any vehicle with 5000lb ft of torque making weekly tours of my local streets would pique my interest. After all, that kind of ship-pulling capability is around double what even the largest heavy-haulage juggernaut churns out. And if I told you that said vehicle could also accelerate from 0-50mph in six seconds, despite an unladen weight of 17 tonnes, you’d probably think I was talking rubbish. And actually, you’d be right. You see, Lunaz – the Silverstone-based company that has made a name for itself electrifying premium classic cars while drawing in the likes of David Beckham among a raft of high-profile investors – is about to deliver its first ‘upcycled’ electric bin lorry to Buckinghamshire Council. And while I can’t really see Mr Beckham…

MILEAGE 4612 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if Peugeot can refresh the family car market with an innovate mash-up Nothing is real any more. An exaggeration, fine, but as our world turns from physical to digital, it seems to me that its workings are becoming abstracted. It’s the difference between hardware and software: even a non-techy person can look at a computer and see it’s composed of physical components, but the programs running on it aren’t tangible or understandable. Thus when something soft-warerelated goes wrong, we have no idea of why, we can’t look into the problem and we sure can’t fix it. I find this abstraction very troubling, especially in situations where there are no workarounds. Heated seats, say: when they’re on a rocker, they usually work, and…

FEATURE Rolls-Royce’s heritage and future We tell the story of Sir Henry Royce and the company he co-founded more than a century ago from behind the wheel of its bold new EV DRIVEN Peugeot e-3008 New generation of electric crossover gets a new look and a new platform INSIGHT Future of fuel stations How forecourts are adapting as demand grows for plugs instead of pumps EVERY WEEK FIRST DRIVE Renault Scenic MPV has been reborn as an electric SUV. Is it still ideal for families? USED GUIDE Mercedes-Benz E-Class Fourth generation of the executive saloon is now a brilliant bargain SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p46…

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…