Innholdsfortegnelse for March 27, 2024 i Autocar

THE HOT MERCEDES-AMG G63 has also been revamped, with even more power and an advanced new active suspension system that is designed to improve both its on-and off-road performance. Affalterbach’s take on the off-roader keeps its 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged petrol V8, although the addition of a 48V ISG raises its power by 20bhp to 577bhp and its torque by a considerable 147lb ft to 627lb ft. The G63 also gains many of the design and infotainment upgrades as the regular G-Class models, but the headline addition is the option of AMG Active Ride Control. This system replaces the mechanical torsion bar cross-stabilisers that are normally used with active hydraulic elements, while the shock absorbers gain two hydraulic connections. It is designed to allow for a wider roll spring rate while also…

Renault is considering reviving the Escape MPV, as the flexibility of the company’s EV platforms enables it to explore and revisit a range of different bodystyles. The Espace is currently a stretched seven-seat version of the Austral hybrid SUV, but Autocar understands the name could be redeployed for an electric people carrier that’s truer to the concept – and design – of the original, launched in 1984. Renault’s global leader for the Ampr Medium platform, Olivier Brosse, told Autocar that a resurrection of the seminal people carrier is “something we are contemplating” as Renault expands its electric car line-up into new segments. He said: “Technically I think it is possible, but after that we would have to consider if an MPV would be accepted by European customers.” An electric, seven-seat…

In a modest-looking workshop on an industrial estate in Oxfordshire, the foundation of Nio’s UK market aspirations is being laid. Here in ‘Motorsport Valley’, a small team of engineers are working to provide the Chinese car maker’s future models with what its principal chief engineer, Danilo Teobaldi, describes as a “European flavour”. Already active in Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, Nio has yet to officially launch in the UK. Its latest statement points to starting UK sales some time in 2025 as part of a further global expansion that includes right-hand-drive markets for the first time. Still, Teobaldi is confident that when they do reach the UK, Nio models sold here will reflect the sort of dynamic qualities expected and demanded by buyers in a segment traditionally dominated…

THE ELECTRIC FIAT 500 could be retrofitted with a petrol engine to replace the ageing combustion-powered 500, which faces being pulled from sale in Europe this year due to new cybersecurity laws. Reports suggest that Fiat has asked suppliers to its Mirafiori plant in Italy, where the electric-only 500e is built, if they could fulfil a 100,000-car increase in annual production levels. Automotive News Europe said this almost entirely comprises combustion-engined cars, suggesting Fiat will – bizarrely – convert the EV to use petrol power. Keeping a genuinely affordable, petrol-powered 500 on sale is critical for Fiat. Of the 173,187 examples of the 500 sold across Europe last year, 108,943 were petrols.…

Sam Bird must have wondered whether he would ever win again in Formula E. Yet the series veteran heads to the electric singleseater series’ first visit to Tokyo this weekend riding a crest, following a fab victory snatched on the last lap in São Paulo from a former team-mate who left him deep in the shadows last term. Bird’s victory in Brazil ended a personal drought dating back nearly three years (to the New York round in 2021) and also marked a first in Formula E for McLaren. It was great to see him back where he belongs. BIRD’S NEW WINGS Bird cut a sad figure at times last year, when a combination of errors and a slump in form led to the end of his spell as a works…

It takes confidence to pepper the literature of your most expensive product with the ridiculous phrase ‘corner rascal’. We’re talking here about a £65,000 halo model, with 641bhp, built by the world’s third-largest car maker, not some gap-toothed Victorian street urchin. If anything, the moniker is more obviously suited to Hyundai’s recently discontinued i20 N, whose diddy footprint and agility meant it went everywhere in tripod mode. One has to imagine that, for the new Ioniq 5 N, ‘game-changing performance EV’ wasn’t quite snappy enough, yet that is exactly what this dynamo of a hot hatchcum-SUV happens to be. We’ve driven the 5 N previously, though in developmental form. We liked it, and now that we’ve driven the delivery-spec car seen here, we like it even more. The Ioniq 5…

It’s exceedingly rare to get a dozen cars in the same place on the same day, all using a revolutionary form of power, all reasonably new in the market and all shooting at the same price point and the same buyers. Recognising that visual appeal and visual success will guide many buyers who choose from this group, we invited design consultant Sam Livingstone, founder of Cambridge-based Car Design Research and a visiting professor of vehicle design at the Royal College of Art, to stroll through the cars with us and air his views on the differences and successes of their designs. We started with the Kona Electric and Niro EV, which share major dimensions and underpinnings. Livingstone felt both are effective modern products whose designers focused on making visual links…

MILEAGE 19,445 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To make a case for Volvo estates’ revival and try the firm’s used buying scheme My dad recently bought a Lexus and the salesman offered him a 30-minute handover or a one-hour handover. He opted for the former, because he didn’t think he had the patience for an hour. I suspect most people feel the same way or are time-poor. Still, I’m continuing to reap rewards months later for investing that longer period of time. When James Cox, sales manager at Waylands Volvo Reading, handed over my used V90 (Autocar, 10 January), I learned about a number of features that I may not have, shamefully, ever discovered. One such feature is an ‘Adjust passenger seat’ toggle in the systems menu on the touchscreen. If…

FIRST DRIVE Porsche Taycan One of our favourite EVs has received major upgrades to its chassis, powertrain, battery and interior. So just how much better is it? INTERVIEW Gernot Döllner New top man at Audi talks about growth plans and Formula 1 entry DRIVEN Toyota Land Cruiser Off-road titan gets retro looks and just a bit of modern tech EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST BMW 550e Is this potent six-pot plug-in hybrid the cream of the new 5 Series crop? USED GUIDE Renault Twizy Why this unorthodox miniature EV could be worth taking a punt on SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p18…

Easter eggs: the best secrets hidden in cars It’s Easter this coming Sunday, so no better time to celebrate the long-running art of special features being hidden within cars – popularly known as Easter eggs. These are often the result of designers and engineers injecting a sneaky bit of fun into their products, and some examples have become legendary in their own right. Vauxhall’s sharks Stay attentive if you drive a Vauxhall: there might be sharks travelling with you. The company began hiding shark images in its cars when it introduced the 2006 Corsa (they’re on the glovebox hinges) after a designer’s son suggested it would be a cool feature and then there was a bet in the team about whether they could make it through company filters and layers…

“The new-look kidney grille takes direct inspiration from the 1960s Neue Klasse cars” The new Vision Neue Klasse X concept showcases the future design of BMW’s bespoke electric SUVs – and closely previews the next-generation successor to the iX3, due to launch next year. It’s a companion piece to the Vision Neue Klasse saloon concept that was revealed last year and exhibits the differing design language that will be applied to BMW’s bespoke electric saloons and SUVs in the near future. BMW CEO Oliver Zipse said that the two concepts showcase “the breadth of our future model line-up”. Appearing broadly similar in size to the current iX3, the new concept will be readied for production next year as the first of the next-generation Neue Klasse EVs. Like the i3 saloon…

BENTLEY BOSS ADRIAN Hallmark will take over as Aston Martin CEO in the coming months. He will be Aston’s third CEO in four years, following Tobias Moers and current boss Amedeo Felisa, who will step down as he approaches his 78th birthday. Hallmark has left Bentley with immediate effect and will start his new role by October. He will take the reins at the start of a transformative era for Aston Martin in which it will electrify its line-up with the addition of new plug-in hybrids and its maiden EV in the next two years. The role he played in scaling up Bentley’s personalisation service, Mulliner, will be especially relevant. Mulliner has driven huge profit increases at Bentley in recent years – much as Aston’s own Q bespoke division has…

FISKER HAS PAUSED production of its Ocean SUV for six weeks as the EV brand looks to secure vital financial backing amid doubts over its ability to continue operating. The move came as the American firm announced an injection of $150 million (£119m) from an unnamed existing investor. The money will be provided in the form of convertible notes, which are subject to interest on repayment, and is “subject to certain conditions”, including Fisker filing a full financial report for the 2023 financial year. Fisker said it remains in talks with a “large auto maker” about a financial deal, which could take the form of pure investment, strategic development or a production partnership. It hasn’t named the firm, but Nissan is widely reported to be in talks regarding a potential…

BEFORE A CAR is given a zingy name by expensive marketing creatives, it is allocated an internal code so everyone within the company knows what they’re all referring to in meetings. Sometimes these are amusing, such as ‘Project Beryl’, but mostly they’re a dull mix of numbers and letters to denote departments and platforms. These codenames often leak out and are seized on by enthusiasts. They will chat to each other about how the P38 was unreliable, the E30 is the best driver’s car, or why the W210 wasn’t built as well as the W124. One team of engineers didn’t think about the possible public outing of a codename when they started a project to re-engineer a popular hatchback. It was known as ‘BCC’, which executives later claimed in media…

Last week, Lotus announced a new programme called Chapman Bespoke. It promises to offer greater personalisation and unique options, right up to the production of one-off cars, for your Lotus. What would Colin Chapman, Lotus’s founder, after whom the scheme is named and whose signature adorns its badge, have thought? No idea. Never met the bloke. One of my least favourite phrases in motoring hackery is “so and so [company founder] would have approved”. It’s usually proclaimed definitively at the end of an article to show that a car is a true thoroughbred, that it’s fit to wear the name. But honestly, how are we to know what WO Bentley or Charles Rolls would seriously have thought about the cars that come out of their companies’ respective factories today? Big…

So many small cars have been cut from manufacturers’ ranges lately that Suzuki estimates there are 250,000 people in the UK who bought a supermini in the past three years but won’t be able to replace it likefor-like when the time comes. There’s no longer a Ford Fiesta, a Kia Rio or a Nissan Micra and more besides – 28% of the small car sector has been binned off. There is, though, a new Suzuki Swift, and this is it. And it’s good. It’s a conventional small car offering and very Suzuki – light and frugal, with a strong list of equipment and keenly priced. Although small cars’ share of the overall UK market has shrunk from 20% to 15%, “the B-segment is important and our customers want a small…

When the Jeep Avenger was revealed in late 2022, it was slated to arrive in the UK only with an electric powertrain. But things have changed since then – market conditions, customer desires, you name it – and now the Stellantis brand will offer not just the manual petrol variant here but also this one: the mildly electrified petrol Avenger e-Hybrid. It’s a similar story over at Fiat, which is also now bringing the petrol version of its closely related 600e (road test, p48) to the UK. While things are different under the bonnet, the e-Hybrid looks virtually identical to the electric Jeep Avenger. The only noticeable change is the addition of a green ‘e’ badge to indicate its electrification. As in the Alfa Romeo Tonale and other Jeep e-Hybrids,…

Here we are at the sharp end. The four best affordable electric cars in 2024, as voted by a panel of six road testers, are two reasonably compact hatchbacks, the Cupra Born and MG 4 EV, and two slightly larger and more practical front-wheel-drive crossover hatchbacks, the Kia Niro EV and Hyundai Kona Electric (a £38,595 car, although tested here in slightly more expensive Ultimate form). The smart way to spend £40,000 or thereabouts on an electric car this year remains either to think small and sporty or spacious and sensible. But before we get to the merits of each of those routes, a quick word for the lower order. Is it an upset not to be reading about the brand-new Volvo EX30 among these leading lights? It probably shouldn’t…

Slov-enly writing Greg Kable writes that the new Volkswagen Passat is made in Bratislava, Slovenia (First drives, 6 March). My wife is from Slovakia and I’ve been to Bratislava many times, and I can confirm that it is indeed the capital of Slovakia, not Slovenia. I’d think that as holder of the European Editor post, Mr Kable would know the difference between the two countries. Adam Holmquist Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire Left to rust Thanks for printing my letter about my recent experience with Arnold Clark and Alfa Romeo (21 February), which I’m keen to update you on. After 11 weeks of waiting on parts, the much-anticipated day of collection finally arrived. I turned up fully expecting my muchcherished Stelvio Quadrifoglio to be washed and ready to go. See the picture…

The award-winning Grand C4 Picasso and its successor, the equally celebrated but barely changed Grand C4 Spacetourer, may seem like dinosaurs in a market moving to electric, but families still need to travel, and with household budgets squeezed, these practical people-movers make a great buy. The earliest are now 10 years old but the newest only two, so there’s a seven-seat C4 to suit most pockets. Impressively, from launch in 2014, the 2.0 BlueHDi 150 diesel engine was Euro 6-compliant; lower-powered engines became so within a year. It means there’s a wide choice of cleaner oil burners at a range of prices. That’s good because most Grand C4 Picassos are diesel, while Spacetourers are split equally between diesel and petrol. The root of the big C4’s appeal is its platform,…

MODEL NAMES COME from many places, but one of the easiest ways to establish an image is to borrow the name of an evocative location: think Ferrari with the yachts of the Italian Riviera’s Portofino harbour, Seat with the party island of Ibiza, Bentley with the iconic Le Mans racing straight of Mulsanne or Chrysler with the tower blocks and street crime of Croydon. Okay, sorry, that was mean – and more to the point, Chrysler did so in the 1930s, when Croydon wasn’t just some London borough but an important industrial town in Surrey and home to England’s first international airport, where the rich would fly to all corners of the British Empire in glamorous Handley Page HP42 biplanes. Another major aerodrome lay a way west in the Middlesex…

Mercedes-Benz has electrified the G-Class line-up as part of a major update that also includes a range of measures to improve efficiency and usability. The second-generation W463 iteration of the hugely capable off-roader was launched in 2018 and will shortly gain a fully electric variant for the first time. As part of the update, performance division AMG has made substantial revisions to the G63 too (see below). The entry-level model continues to use a 3.0-litre straight-six diesel, although it now features a 48V integrated starter-generator (ISG). That lifts power by 20bhp to 362bhp and substantially boosts torque to 553lb ft – which is why it has been rebadged from G400d to G450d. The G500 will continue to be offered in some markets, with its 3.0-litre petrol straight six lifted to…

In the past 12 months, local councils have spent only a fraction of the millions of pounds given to them to repair potholes, as the amount of money required to repair roads reaches a record high. In 2020, the government created the Potholes Fund, which each year until 2025 would award £500 million to councils across England to enable them to fix an estimated 50 million potholes. But according to the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (Alarm) survey of local authorities by the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA), English and Welsh councils spent just £143.5m filling potholes in the past 12 months – at a time when the numbers of potholes and vehicles being damaged by them have rarely been higher. 631,852Number of pothole-related incidents dealt with by the AA…

IN JULY LAST year, Chinese manufacturer GAC announced it had been working with Toyota on using ammonia as a substitute for fossil fuel and had successfully run a combustion engine on the carbon-free chemical. We have got used to hearing about methanol, hydrogen and synthetic fuels as potential replacements for petrol and diesel, but ammonia? A household cleaning product or fertiliser, yes, but the idea of ammonia being flammable seems almost bizarre. However, it is being investigated for all kinds of transport use, including ships, trucks and cars. More recently, Sophia University in Tokyo has been working on making ammonia burn efficiently inside an engine’s combustion chamber. An ammonia molecule contains three atoms of hydrogen and one of nitrogen so it is flammable, but not that easy to ignite. Its…

“The Lambo was impounded and I had to get a train home” MONDAY I shamelessly ducked our Monday office meeting to head 240 miles north in the Audi SQ8 E-tron for a promised visit to the Mathewsons classic car auction business in Pickering, North Yorkshire, made famous since 2019 by the Bangers and Cash TV series. Late last year, I met kingpin Derek Mathewson at a dinner in (of all places) the House of Commons and he turned out to be exactly the relaxed and knowledgeable character he seems on the haunted fishtank. His invitation, plus the prospect of viewing stock for a two-day sale that would put 700 lots under the hammer, was too good to miss. It was also a decent test for the none-too-efficient Audi because we…

spent much of my flight home from Gothenburg trying to cobble together some sort of Oasis-themed introduction to the Polestar 4, which in spite of its objectively compelling technical specification, striking form and futuristic cabin has come to be popularly known as simply “the car with no rear window”. Polestar’s decision to omit the rear windscreen in favour of a digital ‘mirror’ – thereby negating the need to look back, in anger or otherwise – has provoked plenty of headlines and much intrigue. However, the justification for the totally opaque stern section is twofold, explains head of design Maximilian Missoni: it allows the rear header rail to be shunted backwards, freeing up more head room for back-seat passengers while allowing a slipperier, coupé-style roofline, and the camera actually offers a…

As zero-emission vehicle mandate pressures build and sales growth stutters, getting buyers into affordable electric cars might be considered the European car industry’s central mission for the next couple of years. That’s good news for the consumer, because the inevitable competition should cut prices, accelerate technical development and, in the longer term, bring to market a generation of zero-emission vehicles that are better than their predecessors. So goes the thinking. But what about now? What is the best way to spend sensible money on a new, affordable electric car in 2024? And is it any different from how it was a year ago, or two – or longer still? Well, with between £35,000 and £40,000 to spend, or a notional PCP finance budget of about £100 a week after a…

MODEL TESTED 600E LA PRIMA Price £36,995 Power 154bhp Torque 192lb ft 0-60mph 8.8sec 30-70mph 7.7sec Economy 3.4mpkWh Max DC charging speed 103kW 70-0mph 44.5m This week’s road test subject is not all that it appears. At first glance, you could certainly mistake the new Fiat 600 for a direct replacement for the firm’s 500X crossover hatchback. Well, supposedly it isn’t. While the 500X is set to continue in production for at least another couple of years, this new, slightly smaller and lower hatchback slots in just beneath it in Fiat’s range, where it will play bigger, four-door sibling to the 500 – just as the original 600 of the 1950s did. As such, Fiat is trumpeting this car as its return to the traditional European supermini market, in which…

MILEAGE 4983 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out if this plug-in hybrid luxury SUV can offer the best of both worlds You can’t buy a car costing near-as-dammit £100,000 and expect it to be cheap to run, and that point was brought home to me rather vividly recently. After editor Tisshaw’s epic European trip (as reported on last time), on a chilly evening I was looking forward to returning to the comforting embrace of the X5’s remarkable armchair and the warmth of it, the armrests and the wheel. But when I hopped in the car late that evening and turned on the ignition, a tyre pressure warning light came on, accompanied by the inevitable bong. BMW continues to persist with run-flat tyres, so you really can’t tell how low…

As a new driver of an MG 4 EV, I feel that the point of relevant useful safety systems versus the requirement of a high Euro NCAP safety rating is being missed. My new car has several pointless safety systems, and it seems that most new cars are the same. Almost every owner of a 4 on the online forums turns off the lane keeping assistance as soon as they get in their car. In certain situations, it can be frightening or even dangerous, as it tugs the steering wheel in your hands. Then there’s the automatic emergency braking. This has the tendency to apply the brakes as hard as possible, sometimes for no apparent reason – when you’re turning or if it decides you’re too close to a parked…

An owner’s view ANNE MERRICK “We run a 2015-reg Grand C4 Picasso 1.6 BlueHDi Selection, which we bought in 2018. Then, our four children were small and it was one of the few MPVs we could find that would take three child seats on the middle row, each with Isofix mountings. The children are much bigger now, but it’s still roomy enough for all of us. The car has picked up a few scrapes, including one caused by a badger that ran into us. It has been very reliable and had no issues, apart from a recall to have the AdBlue tank changed. It routinely does more than 50mpg and road tax is just £20, so it’s very cheap to run.” Buyer beware… ENGINE On diesels, check the AdBlue level…

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…