Innholdsfortegnelse for January 17, 2024 i Autocar

Volkswagen’s upcoming entry-level electric city car, known as the ID 1, will channel the spirit of the Up and could even take its name when it arrives in 2026. The company confirmed plans for a new entry-level EV last year when it revealed the slightly larger ID 2all concept and is now working to bring it to production within the next three years as a replacement for the Up, which recently went out of production after 12 years on sale. Revealing that the first design sketches are complete and that development is under way, Volkswagen technical development boss Kai Grünitz suggested it will be an obvious successor to the brand’s successful city car in its conception and inevitably will share some design elements and attributes. “The ‘ID 1’ will be…

HYUNDAI ALSO HAS its eyes on the skies, with the firm’s aeronautical mobility arm Supernal due to put its new S-A2 into production in 2028. The styling of the five-seat aircraft was led by Hyundai Motor Group design chief Luc Donckerwolke, who described it as “auto meets aero”. It represents the latest expansion beyond cars by the Korean giant, being announced alongside Kia’s new commercial vehicle division (see p14). The project is being led by Hyundai vice-president Jaiwon Shin, who previously had a long career at Nasa. Shin said projections show that there will be a huge rise in eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft in the future as alternatives to taxis. The market is potentially “hundreds of thousands” for vehicles of this type, he said, compared with a…

IN THE BATTLE to reduce global CO2 emissions, the emphasis has so far been on making less of it, but a few automotive companies are looking at ways to remove the gas directly from the atmosphere as well. A process called direct air capture (DAC) uses chemical filters to absorb CO2 from air passed through them. CO2 is needed to make synthetic fuels, being combined with hydrogen to make methanol, which then undergoes further processing to produce the final product: a direct replacement for petrol or, in another formulation, as aviation fuel. It’s this that Porsche and partner firm Highly Innovative Fuels are doing at the latter’s Haru Oni pilot plant in Chile, where industrial-scale DAC technology is also being developed to produce the CO2 needed to make the carbon-neutral…

FEW PARTS CAUSE as much argument within car companies as the humble rear windscreen wiper. Designers hate the clunky looks. Engineers complain that they add weight and ruin the airflow, while bean counters look at the cost of the arm, motor, switch and wiring. But woe betide any manufacturer who launches a hatchback, estate or SUV without one. Excuses about having special coatings, cameras or spoilers to direct airflow across the back window just don’t wash with customers, who will complain relentlessly – especially in the UK. One car firm showed an early prototype of a new hatchback to staff and was surprised by the horrified reaction when it was suggested rear wipers were obsolete. To convince the bosses that it really needed one, UK staff made a presentation that…

MONDAY It always happens: just as I settle into waxing on about the wonders of cheap cars and utility models, Bentley (or someone nearly as good) sends a car to show me what performance, ride quality and refinement are really like. This time it was a Continental GT V8, a truly beautiful car, and over a few days the Steering Committee and I put 500 miles of wonderful journeys under its wheels. I also shamelessly enjoyed using that special presence that encourages the staff of swanky hotels to park it on their forecourt, not their car park. Driving a Conti a mile is impressive enough, but you really need time to savour it and to notice that whatever you do, Crewe’s experts at refining car behaviour have been there before…

Yes, it does appear to be petrol-powered supermini week here at Autocar. We spend quite a lot of our time driving and reviewing EVs and SUVs, because that’s where the industry is going (or being pushed), and wishing new cars were a bit lighter and simpler. It’s therefore quite nice to be reminded that there’s still a decent choice of sensible small cars that don’t cost the earth. Mind you, the roughly £20,000 that all of them seem to cost still feels like quite a lot of money and this refreshed Hyundai i20 certainly isn’t the cheapest. It starts at £20,770 for an entry-level Advance and tops out at £26,720 for an Ultimate with an automatic gearbox and all the options. Visually, the facelifted i20 gets revised bumpers front and…

“Iwonder how much they paid to have their car in that film.” It’s a thought that often arises when a shiny new model is driven by a big-name actor. Surprisingly, the answer is almost always ‘nothing’, and it’s all down to the art of product placement and secrecy befitting a spy thriller. Back in the day, product placement of cars was more luck than data-derived judgement. Which makes you wonder: what if Sean Connery hadn’t used an Aston Martin DB5 in 1964’s Goldfinger or Steve McQueen hadn’t been at the wheel of a Ford Mustang chasing down a Dodge Charger in 1968’s Bullitt? We can only speculate what such appearances might have done for the growth of a brand or model. Today, product placement is seriously sophisticated, and the strategy…

Formula 1 has grown in global popularity at a phenomenal rate in recent years, almost to the point of saturation, with an endless stream of online content showing us every bit of data, every comment, every lap from every camera angle and every aspect of every driver’s personality. Search up on the paddock of 50 years ago and you can get a good sense of how it was back then. That of 100 years ago, though? No chance. Unless, that is, you know of an obscure website named The Golden Era. Many F1 fans have a vague notion that grand prix racing existed before the foundation of the World Championship, but you do still get the impression that it all started in 1950, the year Giuseppe Farina won the inaugural…

MILEAGE 6262 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To enjoy Jaguar’s last-ever highperformance V8 and to remind us what we’ll be missing out on We’re moving rapidly towards the end of our relationship, the F-Type and I. There’s about a fortnight to go, and already the regrets are starting to pile up. Chief among them is the fact that I never used the car for a long, raking trip down through France – to take in the Schlumpf collection we’ve often meant to revisit on the country’s far eastern side, or to spear down the Atlantic coast to La Rochelle, where we’ve had happy times in the past. It’s something both my missus and I would like to have done. Mechanically speaking, the car lends itself to such exploits. But the best…

COMPARISON Kia EV9 vs rivals It’s touted as a genuine premium sevenseater, so we’re pitching it against the Land Rover Defender 110 and Audi Q8 E-tron FEATURE Bicester Scramble How enthusiast-led events have become highlights of Britain’s motoring calendar FIRST DRIVE Ford Tourneo Courier Van-shaped MPV has Puma underpinnings. Can it really fill the void left by the Fiesta? EVERY WEEK USED GUIDE Subaru Impreza Turbo How to channel your inner Colin McRae on a modest budget ROAD TEST Jeep Avenger Small EV has really impressed us so far. Let’s find out how good it really is SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p22…

Mini is preparing to round off its line-up of three all-new core models later this year with the unveiling of the Aceman crossover, which is expected to be the brand’s best-seller. The Aceman will share much of its mechanical make-up with the new Cooper, using a stretched version of the supermini’s Spotlight architecture. Billed as the Mini with the broadest appeal, it is 192mm longer, 23mm wider and 130mm taller than the Cooper. Power will come from a single electric motor at the front axle, with outputs of either 181bhp or 215bhp. The entry-level offering is capable of sending the Cooper from 0-62mph in 7.3sec, while the more powerful motor reduces this to 6.7sec. The Aceman will be able to achieve broadly similar sprint times. As with the Cooper, two…

VIETNAMESE EV MAKER Vinfast will start selling cars in the UK by the end of the year. No model line-up has been announced yet, but in France, Germany and the Netherlands the seven-year-old company is already selling the VF-8, a mid-size SUV that can travel up to 293 miles on one charge of its 87.7kWh battery pack, from €50,990 (£43,900). Vinfast has also shown the VF-9, a seven-seat large SUV that is now available to order in its continental Europe markets from €90,590 (£78,000). It has also announced the smaller VF-5 and VF-6 SUVs and last week unveiled a pickup truck concept at CES. It’s attempting to lure buyers with the promise of good specs and a 10-year/200,000km (124,280-mile) warranty. Vinfast is currently building a UK team and has hired…

Gridserve has opened a new EV charging hub at Gatwick, claiming it is the first dedicated facility of its kind at a European airport. Located just off the M23 about halfway between London and Brighton, it is described by Gridserve as “one of the most advanced EV charging facilities in the world”. It is equipped with 30 chargers, 22 of which use ultra-rapid CCS connectors that can supply batteries at rates of up to 350kW, thereby adding as much as 100 miles of range in just 10 minutes. Four Tesla Superchargers have also been installed but are yet to be activated. The site is Gridserve’s third bespoke charging hub, and company boss Toddington Harper said: “Our goal is to givepeopleconfidence to charge on the motorway network as quickly as they…

Here’s an odd first for Formula 1: exactly the same cohort of drivers that finished 2023 will remain in the same seats (barring anything unforeseen) come the 2024 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix on 2 March. It’s the sort of titbit that only adds grist to the mill that motorsport’s pinnacle is caught in a form of stasis right now. So, more of the same this year? In the wake of Red Bull Racing’s and Max Verstappen’s multiple recordbreaking feats, that’s the obvious fear. Friends who usually have more than a passing interest in F1 tell me they struggle to engage right now. That’s understandable, and you might share that sentiment, even if one-team domination is hardly an F1 novelty. But that anecdotal apathy isn’t yet being reflected in published TV…

This is a strange thing to be writing on these pages: a review of my very own car. It’s a brand-new Renault Clio, paid for with my own money, earned by writing about other cars. Still, a fearless, unbiased review this must and will be. When Renault announced the revised Mk5 Clio last year, it made the supermini hybrid-only, giving the buying public a stepping stone between petrol and electric. But then Rishi moved the UK’s ban on new ICE car sales back to 2035 and Renault correctly sensed that there would still be an appetite for more affordable small petrol cars for a while yet, particularly with the cost of living crisis in full swing. I doubt it would have gone unnoticed in Paris that the Ford Fiesta was…

Gone AWOL I see the electric Range Rover is now open for order. Well, all I can say is good luck to anyone thinking about ordering one, as the manufacturing process seems a total shambles. Having owned several JLR cars over the years, including two Range Rovers, I ordered a new D350 HSE back in October 2021. I was led to believe that I would have the car before the end of 2022, with the well-documented chip shortage causing a delay, which I accepted. When I contacted my dealer at the start of 2023 to enquire if they had at least an idea of a delivery date, they informed me that some cars ordered around the same time were in the process of being built. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case…

The Audi A3 Sportback is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The original, based on the second-generation A3, arrived in 2004. Owners appreciated its two additional doors and extra cabin and luggage space. Very soon, the five-door was outselling the threedoor, and with the 2020 arrival of the fourth-generation A3, Audi got the message and binned it. What took it so long? Even the Mk3 Sportback of 2012, under the microscope here, appeared to have the field to itself – as today’s sevento-one ratio of used five-doors to used three-doors illustrates. Both share the Volkswagen Group’s MQB platform, albeit slightly extended in the Sportback to provide an extra 35mm of space between the front and rear wheels. Unfortunately, our testers were unimpressed by the rear passenger space, declaring knee room…

THE FORD BRAND has always been uniquely and fascinatingly fractured. Most know that it has long had American, Australian, European and Brazilian divisions doing very different things with good deals of independence, and in the past there were, of course, British and German divisions (in fact, at one point, Brits could buy a Ford from three separate firms). But there are also obscurities, both present (Turkish lorry or Chinese Mondeo, anyone?) and past (Italian Anglia or French V8 sports coupé?). Wait, what? Yes, there was once a Ford of France, offering the rich a coachbuilt, rally-winning beauty. To properly tell the story of our 27 June 1952 road test car, though, we first must travel back to 1934. Even with Dagenham recently completed as Europe’s largest car factory and similarly…

Horsepower isn’t the only metric we use to assess a car’s performance, but it often tells a fascinating tale. Multiplying a car’s output by two or three over the course of its production run is a way for manufacturers to demonstrate what their engineering teams are capable of. So join us for a look at some cars that offered massively differing levels of power output. Some were created to move the masses as cheaply as possible, while others started life with performance in mind. Dodge Challenger 2008-2023 The Mk3 Challenger began life with a retro look and, in its most basic configuration, a 3.5-litre V6 that was tuned to send 246bhp to the rear wheels. Early models shipped with a four-speed automatic transmission, but Dodge quickly replaced that with a…

Honda will initiate a radical new range of electric cars in 2026, totally unrelated to its current ones, starting with a striking large saloon that majors on driver engagement, spaciousness and efficiency. The saloon that will spearhead this revolutionary range of EVs – dubbed the 0 Series – was previewed at CES by a concept that is said to be a very close representation of what will reach showrooms. Representing a ground-up overhaul of the Japanese brand’s approach to EV development, 0 Series models will be sold in global markets, including Europe, following a launch in the US. Honda’s European boss, Katsuhisa Okuda, said the 0 Series is about “creating outstanding projects from zero, unconstrained by existing assumptions”. With this line of EVs, Honda is “going back to the starting…

BMW’S FLAGSHIP FACTORY in Munich, Germany, will produce only fully electric cars from 2027 onwards, following a €650 million (£560m) investment to expand and upgrade the 102-year-old site. The German company has confirmed that it will produce the first of its radical Neue Klasse EVs – a saloon that will serve as the next-generation 3 Series – at the plant from 2026 onwards. Initially, that vehicle will be produced at the Bavarian facility alongside combustion-engined models, but by the following year the plant will be fully dedicated to EVs – although BMW has yet to specify which models beyond the Neue Klasse saloon it will make there. The €650m investment has involved the construction of four new buildings, including a new vehicle assembly line and body shop. To create space…

What I suspected was the case with the Toyota GR Yaris has turned out to be about right. “It’s no wonder I’ve had correspondence from people with big car collections who drive a Yaris every day,” I wrote in 2021 after spending a few months living with one and finding that it offered a driving experience so special that it would please people who could afford rather more than the £29,995 the hot hatchback cost. And last month, Toyota presented me with some data backing that up: 48% of GR Yaris owners own one as an ‘additional car’, when the class average is only around 10%. Many have a GR Yaris “next to a supercar”, said a delighted chief engineer Naohiko Saito. “This is something we’ve never seen before.” Given…

Toyota was so concerned that it might not be able to sell all of the required 25,000 GR Yarises that it needed for World Rally Championship homologation that it created a cheaper, ordinary version of the three-door car for Japan, called the RS. It comes with the standard Yaris’s humdrum 1.5-litre hybrid powertrain and none of the fancy running gear or hardware. They designed it to make up the numbers if the GR Yaris wasn’t successful. As it is, the good people at Toyota have been taken aback by the little hot hatch’s popularity. They’ve now made 32,000 of them and counting. Not only has that justified this facelift, which they didn’t imagine they would ever be in a position to produce, but it also means they’re now committed to…

It’s at 160mph on Hangar Straight that my internal monologue pipes up for the first time since leaving the pits. Who the hell do you think you are? Kévin Estre? Fair question. I have, by twisting one of four dials on the steering wheel through a solitary ‘click’, just adjusted the behaviour of the limited-slip differential of our Porsche 911 GT3 RS, in anticipation of entering one of Silverstone’s many committed right-handers. Specifically, I’ve requested a decrease in the locking effect during ‘coast’ (that is, off the throttle). This should provoke the car into rotating more freely during the trail-braking phase. As a result, it should be pointing out of the bend sooner, those magnesium front wheels all the straighter for maximum uncorking of the 518bhp 4.0-litre flat six nestled…

MODEL TESTED DESIGN • Price £45,695 • Power 308bhp • Torque 265lb ft • 0-60mph 5.8sec • 30-70mph 4.7sec • Economy 3.4mpkWh • Max DC charging speed 135kW • 70-0mph 51.4m It’s full steam ahead for BYD’s European expansion. You might expect it to start by dipping a toe in the water with a single model, but less than a year after the launch of the Atto 3 crossover, it is now introducing its third car to the UK market. BYD is not just throwing new models at the European market – it has also committed to local production with a factory in Hungary. It is the first Chinese manufacturer to do so since MG closed the Longbridge plant. The Hungarian factory is still a few years away, but here…

FINAL REPORT MILEAGE 7891 WHY WE RAN IT To see if Lexus’s famed attention to detail made up for the modest range “Homeward-bound after a long flight, the RZ felt like it was worth every penny” In a world where lightness and aerodynamically sleek designs are the key to hitting those all-important range targets, the battle with consumer demand for big, raised, family transporters is an ongoing one. None shows the difficulties of this more than the Lexus RZ, a heavy, bulky thing that goes against everything the new wave of electric car creators stand for. But in typical Lexus fashion, it doesn’t seem to care and has put luxuries ahead of marginal weight savings – and range. When the Toyota bZ4X-derived RZ, in £73,945 Takumi trim, came to me…

Reading your news pages of 20/27 December, I initially scoffed at Euro NCAP boss Michiel van Ratingen’s statement that the safety assessment body held no responsibility for the increased mass of cars. I thought it at best self-delusion and at worst a lie, so I set about some research. The Peugeot 205 GTi 1.9 weighed 875kg and a few years later the Renault Clio RS 182 was 1110kg, a whopping 235kg more. Sure, the Clio had air conditioning, but it also had airbags, ABS and ESP – and yet it achieved only two stars from Euro NCAP. We all know that no major firm could make a car like the 205 GTi again, because it wouldn’t pass any safety tests at all. The phase-three RS 200 came in at 1279kg.…

An owner’s view LEE GARDNER “We bought our Sportback 1.4 TFSI SE new in 2015. It’s now done 65,000 miles and never put a foot wrong. The first three services were by an Audi dealer, but after that we went independent. It rarely wants for anything. For example, I’ve just had four new Pirellis fitted to it. I couldn’t see any point in compromising the ride and handling for the sake of a few quid. Unfortunately, the paint has suffered from a couple of major bird strikes. Perhaps we should have had paint protection, but it’s so expensive. Maybe next time…” Buyer beware… ENGINE The maintenance schedule allows for oil changes at 19,000 miles or two years, but an annual refresh is preferable. The diesel engines have a timing belt…

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…