Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i CAR UK

Getty Images RED BULL WILL SPOIL MERCEDES’ PARTY By the end of the 2019 season there was nothing to split Red Bull and Mercedes. The big difference was grunt, but Honda reckons it’s made big progress over the winter. If that’s the case then we’re game on for the closest fight of the hybrid era: Mercedes versus Red Bull; Lewis Hamilton versus Max Verstappen. Verstappen is the perfect foil for Hamilton. He’s quick and super-confident, to the extent that he isn’t intimidated by anyone. ‘Lewis is definitely one of the quickest out there,’ says Verstappen. ‘But he’s not God. God is with him, but he’s not God…’ Yep, this is the battle we’ve been waiting for. SEBASTIAN VETTEL: FIZZ OR FIZZLE? You’re only as good as your last race, or…

GTA DIDN’T ALWAYS MEAN A VIDEO GAME… 1965 GIULIA GTA Autodelta-fettled, the Giulia GTA – in 1600cc and 1300cc Junior guise – is as synonymous with Alfa motorsport glory as the all-conquering grand prix cars: light, rapid and drifty like a prettier M3 1970 1750 GTAm US emissions regs force Alfa to fuel-inject the Giulia. Autodelta spies an opportunity and builds a Group 2 racer: 1985cc (via a 4mm bore increase), 200bhp, fibreglass arches over race rubber a full 13-inches across and glory in the European Touring Car Championship 2002 147 GTA Into the 147 hatch (body widened and lowered) went a 247bhp V6, hooked up to a manual or (fairly disinterested) Selespeed semi-auto transmission. Uprated suspension did what it could 2002 156 GTA A proper Alfa; beautiful, fast, musical.…

Illustration Chris Rathbone This is not a metaphor. Euphemism is not being deployed. Ian Cartabiano literally can’t get his dog to go into its new kennel. He assembled it, snipped the ribbon – and… nothing. The dog isn’t having it. ‘I like designing things, I hate building things. So I found a really nice kit that was pre-designed and semi-manufactured in Ukraine, then I just put it together. It’s really cute, except the dog doesn’t want to go in it. I keep throwing the ball in the back of the doghouse and the dog will go in as far as she can with one leg still out, get the ball somehow and run out.’ For some other designers it’s an analogy that would fit horribly well: make something amazing, invite…

Jump behind the wheel and we find stomach-churning speed and a healthy willingness to powerslide What’s in a name? When it comes to quattro, the performance-biased all-wheel-drive system as synonymous with Audi as five-cylinder engines, ’80s rallying and understeer, things are changing. With the electric age all but upon us, they must. In the year it turns 40, quattro is plugging in, trading propshafts for power converters and cleaning up its act. But at what cost? Will your e-quattro Audi still slew sideways like rally legend Stig Blomqvist on a Swedish stage? We’re in Germany testing a sportier version of Audi’s e-Tron electric SUV, the e-Tron S, in swoopier Sportback guise (it’ll also be available in the normal, boxier e-Tron body). Audi says the e-Tron S will be the first…

Second- or third-gear slides can last until the V8 runs out of grunt or the X5 runs out of road Smell that. Really see what the X5 M Competition can do and an acrid smog lingers long after your ears have stopped ringing from the howling and screaming of the engine and brakes. And it can do a lot, in exchange for a lot of money, and with many compromises if you’re expecting this rival to the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Lamborghini Urus and Audi Q8 RS to be luxurious and sophisticated. It’s not. It’s an X5 with an M5 powertrain – no more, no less. In the UK we don’t get the regular X5 M. What we get is the X5 M Competition, which has different wheels, a louder exhaust…

The steering is so quick your fingertips never need move on the wheel The exhausts’ bluff bark ricochets off the hillsides and the M235i changes direction like a horizontal yoyo. We’re sidewinding along an undulating road in the forests north of Lisbon, unforgiving drop-offs either side. If this were a rally stage, there would be some definite ‘Don’t cut!’ pace notes. In fact, up here, this BMW feels like a leather-trimmed rally car: bluff three-box body, powerful turbocharged four-cylinder engine, effective all-wheel drive. The steering is so quick your fingertips never need move from quarter-to-three for anything but a hairpin, while torque-vectoring inside-wheel braking helps the inside Pirellis bear-hug each apex and the tidy standard-fit mechanical limited-slip diff at the front increases accuracy without tugging away at the steering. Yep,…

AUDI RS6 AVANT Once more with feeling BMW styles its M5 as the original super saloon, but the original super estate? That’s Audi with the 1994 RS2, key to which was quattro all-wheel drive – an innovation that helped humble machinery go much faster before the M5 was a twinkle in Munich’s eye. Fuse all that history, go up a size and you get the RS6, Audi’s rival to the BMW M5. The two have been going head to head for four generations, and now there’s a new RS6 from Audi Sport to give that M5 a run for its money, though the Audi always has been an alternative, not a facsimile; all-wheel drive, auto gearbox, turbo torque, estate car body – these are all things the M5 never used…

Today is Saturday. Today I woke at 5am and abandoned my kids, driving four hours to stand in somebody’s front garden and gawp at a 1988 Nissan Sunny 1.6 LX. I love cars but this is ridiculous. It’s all David Bellamy’s fault. The recently deceased bearded botanist was all over TV in the ’80s and ’90s before some rather un-zeitgeisty views about climate change led to him being excommunicated by the Beeb and his other employers. And for a time in the early ’80s, one of Bellamy’s employers was Ravette, then owners of the I-Spy books series. First published in 1948 by former headmaster Charles Warrell, these books were designed to keep post-war kids entertained on boring journeys when iPads were the kind of witchcraft you read about in the…

Matty Graham BMW 330i Touring Month 1 The story so far 3-series Touring in 330i spec – lighter, cheaper and only 3mpg off 330d, more exciting/less rattly than 318d/320d +Strong blend of dynamism, space, tech, design and quality - Ride quite firm; four lacks the magic of a good BMW six Logbook Price £39,670 (£48,495 as tested) Performance 1998cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 254bhp, 5.8sec 0-62mph, 155mph Efficiency 38.7-39.8mpg (official), 32.9mpg (tested), 163g/km CO2 Energy cost 17.1p per mile Miles this month 503 Total miles 1494 The first long-term report I filed for CAR was in 2006, when I’d taken over the mag’s E91 330i Touring. It was metallic blue with cream leather, equally creamy straight-six and a ride that turned every B-road into Belgian pavé – blame early runflat tyres for…

Alex Tapley Ariel Nomad Month 8 The story so far Wild, Honda-engined on-/off-road weapon was ours to enjoy and try to break for a few months. Sadly it must now leave +Goes anywhere; fast; drifty; does everything… - …except keep you dry, store much, or in any way drive itself Logbook Price £33,996 (£55,677 as tested) Performance 2354cc four-cylinder, 235bhp, 221lb ft, 3.4sec 0-60mph, 124mph Efficiency n/a mpg (official), 26.2mpg (tested) Energy cost 23.1p per mile Miles this month 326 Total miles 1561 The ideal long-term test is a story of discovery. Of going beyond first impressions to discover a car’s true character. Of building a deep and lasting respect where initially there may have been misgivings. Initially baffling hybrid system proves useful; gorgeously pillowy ride ultimately offsets slovenly dynamics…

And relax. If you were worried that electric-obsessed VW was about to do something weird with the Golf GTI, you can breathe again. Here it is, in production form, ready to go on sale this autumn for around £32,000. And it couldn’t be more in keeping with Golf GTI tradition, from its red-lined headlights via its tartan seats to its twin tailpipes. Powered by a 242bhp turbocharged petrol four, the Mk8 GTI will be joined by a hot diesel GTD and a plug-in hybrid, the GTE. A similar spirit, and much of the same hardware, will also be available on a slew of other 2020 hot hatches from around the VW Group: Skoda Octaia vRS, Audi S3 (driven in prototype form in this issue) and, most notably, the new Cupra…

We can’t yet tell you how Ford’s all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUV drives – but we’ve had a good hands-on opportunity with the latest infotainment system, Sync 4, in a static Mach-E. Sync is Ford’s infotainment software, which started out as a tiny screen buried deep in the dashboard of a Fiesta in 2007, and has since morphed into Sync 3 – a decent if slightly clunky offering adorning all Ford’s passenger cars and most of its vans. Sync 4, as previewed in the Mach-E, is a rather different offering, taking the form of a TV-sized touchscreen dominating the cabin and controlling almost all the car’s functions. The Mach-E’s screen is half an inch bigger than the one on the Tesla Model 3, at 15.5 inches – you can almost hear…

You’ll need to turn your x-ray vision up to double strength to see what’s really going on here. The visual changes for this fourth generation of Audi A3 are pretty clear, despite the camouflage on this pre-production version, and entirely predictable. But under the skin there are some more interesting developments, especially in the case of the hot S3, the car we’ve driven. Although final specs aren’t yet confirmed, it’s obvious the newcomer will continue its position at the slicker end of the hot-hatch spectrum, priced from around £39,000. Ingolstadt knows how to balance muted restraint and premium polish with some fiendishly clever engineering. We know the 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine continues with little mechanical change; the engineering focus was on maintaining outputs – reckon on 306bhp and 295lb ft of…

The battery-electric Polestar 2 is the Tesla Model 3’s first direct rival, and is a most convincing one. It’s not a bulky SUV, and it pitches both pace and price right down the middle of the Californian car’s range. Curiously, though, the Swedes claim they’re not targeting Tesla owners at all. They want electric converts who currently drive a BMW M2 or Ford Focus RS. Those are some serious cars. At this point you’re probably thinking this is a tall order for a battery fastback based on a Volvo. But while it’s true this car inherits engineering expertise and tech from Volvo, it certainly doesn’t steer like one. Well-weighted and fast without being overly sensitive, the front end is predictable and turns crisply. This is to be something of a…

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1. BY BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN CONCEPT AND PRODUCTION You know the Bentley Mulliner Bacalar is built upon the same platform as the Continental GT Convertible: your brain unthinkingly reads the unchanged wheelbase and common volumes and senses the same organs and skeleton beneath the new muscle. But at the same time you’re left in no doubt that this Bentley is more than that. That what you’re gazing upon is a concept-car-meets-real-world statement of intent from a marque now so at ease with its place in the world that it’s gleefully playing with the notion that time is linear. Why leave the past behind when it can power you into the future as effortlessly as a twin-turbo W12? ‘The Bacalar is a big step forward in the interpretation of what…

Jaguar i-Pace S Month 1 The story so far The editor-in-chief pops his pure electric cherry +Beautiful ride and handling, punchy performance - Range anxiety. Range anxiety. Did I say range anxiety? Logbook Price £64,995 (£80,980 as tested) Performance 90kWh battery, two e-motors, 395bhp, 4.8sec 0-62mph, 124mph Efficiency 2.5 miles per kWh (official), 2.1 miles per kWh (tested), 0g/km CO2 Energy cost 6.4p per mile Miles this month 1420 Total miles 6775 So this is it: my immersion into full electric motoring starts here, with this Jaguar i-Pace. No armbands, just in at the deep end. Or shall we liken that to my house, 65 miles from the office, and currently devoid of wallbox. The shallow end is CAR HQ, with a row of 10 restorative chargers, and a mere…

Alex Tapley The stopwatch doesn’t lie. It took one minute and 48 seconds for me to convert the Tarraco from five-seat mode, with the boot cover in place, to seven-seat mode, and barely more than 60 seconds to reverse the operation. But introduce real live humans into the equation and you have to allow at least five minutes for all the jostling and arguments to resolve themselves. Getting the kids out takes at least as long, if you include going back to rummage around under row two in search of lost earphones, drinks bottles etc. A significant amount of the conversion time is taken up with manhandling the unwieldy boot cover – a heavy, awkward and largely superfluous hangover from the days when every self-respecting motorist carried a trilby and…

Lexus RC 300h F Sport Month 4 The story so far Esoteric two-door first launched 2014, facelifted 2018. This one’s the hybrid 300h version, in F Sport trim – not the 5.0 V8 RC F +Show-stopping design - Ambivalent driving dynamics Logbook Price £42,305 (£43,725 as tested) Performance 2494cc hybrid four-cyl, 220bhp, 8.6sec 0-62mph, 118mph Efficiency 40.8-47.6mpg (official), 42.6mpg (tested), 114g/km CO2 Energy cost 13.5p per mile Miles this month 390 Total miles 5321 This is a four-up road test. Three readers and one writer are squeezed into the RC’s 2+2 seats, and debate is in full swing as we travel, pit-stopping for driver changes as we go. One reader owns a Lexus already, and is considering a coupe as his next car; one has never considered buying a Lexus…

Mercedes-Benz X350d 4Matic Month 10 The story so far Nissan-based pick-up has won over Steve Moody with its mix of fun and usefulness +Versatile and accessible – for a pick-up truck -You have to make a lot of allowances Logbook Price £47,405 (£59,834 as tested) Performance 2987cc turbodiesel V6, 253bhp, 7.9sec 0-62mph, 127mph Efficiency 31.3mpg (official), 27.7mpg (tested), 237g/km CO2 Energy cost 21.3p per mile Miles this month 563 Total miles 10,381 Mercedes-Benz X-Class By Mark Walton Bah. I’ve been had. What’s worse, I know it within the first three miles. ‘You should swap the G-Wagen with Steve’s X-Class!’ they said. ‘That would be so interesting! Those cars are so similar!’ Right. Fell into that one. Don’t be fooled (like I was) by the superficial spec: they wear the same…

Oliver Brookwell ‘Even if I could have spec’d a GT3 RS new, I don’t think I’d have changed a thing’ GT3 IN THE BLOOD I’ve previously owned a 996.1 GT3, Gemballa 500 and a 997.1 GT3 RS, and now this. It’s the latest 911 GT3 RS, the 991.2. My wife and I had owned the 997 for about nine years and it’d almost doubled in value during that time – it was still in full warranty, with just 18,000 miles, and I’d really taken care of it. I loved that it was the last of the RS models with the Mezger engine and manual gearbox, but I didn’t want it to tick over to 20,000 miles and hurt the value. That’s when I started looking at the 991.2 GT3 RS.…

Illustration: Avarvarii Factfile POWERTRAIN 4.0-litre V8, optional e-motors (SL73), rear- or all-wheel drive CHASSIS Aluminium monocoque DUE 2021 1 GOING SOFT ON TOP The new-generation SL will return to a soft-top convertible roof instead of the folding hardtop – ‘Vario Roof’ will be binned. Why? That’s down to the all-new aluminium structure; so light and strong is the SL’s new structure that a much more torsionally rigid hardtop isn’t required. And, of course, the soft-top will save weight, too.o. 2 SUN’S OUT, PLUG IN Along with plans for Euro-7 compliant V8s, an EQ Power plug-in hybrid SL could be part of the mix, badged SL73. The powertrain is expected to make its official debut in the AMG GT four-door later in 2020, combining the 630bhp M178 twin-turbo V8 with e-motors…

Porsche 911 Turbo S The 992-generation 911 Turbo sticks with the formula that’s worked so well for generations, mixing high performance and long-distance comfort. The new 3.8-litre boxer six, based on the Carrera’s, has bigger twin turbos than before and makes 641bhp, up 68bhp, with torque up by 37lb ft to 590lb ft. Top speed is still 205mph, but 0-62mph is trimmed by 0.2 seconds to 2.7. It’s 20mm wider at the rear arches, and the new active aero improves cooling and downforce. NEED TO KNOW What is it? Wider, more powerful and better equipped ultra-rapid grand tourer Tech specs Twin-turbo 3.8-litre six, all-wheel drive, rear-wheel steering Aimed at? All-day-long fast driving When and how much? Now: £155,970 for the Coupe, £165,27 for the Cabrio, both up by £8.5k Hyundai…

1 It’s the first electric four-seat convertible The new 500 is not only Fiat’s first fully electric car, it’s also the world’s first fourseat electric convertible; it’s available in tin-top guise too. Although following the example of 1957’s original 500, and 2007’s retro rebirth, this is an all-new EV-only car. It’s not expected to arrive in right-hand drive until next year, and UK prices have not been announced, but the Italian price converts to more than £32,000 (before government grants). 2 You can charge it really quickly The 500 comes equipped for a variety of charging options at home and on the road. Use the fastest option and you can get the battery from empty to 80 per cent full in 35 minutes, or you can get 30 miles of…

The ’50s was a good time for watch design. Like the car makers, the non-Swiss watch brands were freed from the need to contribute to the war effort, and their customers had the time, money and freedom to travel, dive, race cars and fly aircraft for fun – and wanted watches to match. The ’50s saw the introduction of classics like the Rolex Submariner and the Omega Speedmaster which remain in production and look timeless. But what if you want something a little more of that moment? 01 Raketa Classic Avtomat From £685 Russia’s Raketa is one of the few watch brands to make every part in-house, its former Soviet masters wanting to avoid reliance on Western suppliers. The Raketa name, which means ‘rocket’, was adopted after Gagarin’s first manned…

STARRING BMW X5 M, AUDI S3 PROTOTYPE, FIAT 500 HYBRID, BMW 2-SERIES GRAN COUPE, POLESTAR 2 Second gear is ideal for opportunist overtakes and exploiting to the full the engine’s eagerness to rev Picking up the keys to the latest 718 GTS, in a flash I’m transported back to my first encounter with a Cayman, 15 years ago. Turns out it’s all still there in my subconscious, triggered by the 42 grammes of coupe-shaped, chip-studded plastic, which feels exactly the same today as it did when the first Cayman was launched. Climbing behind the wheel of the two-seater has the same effect: I’m home. But this time around the Cayman is sporting an intriguing combination of engine and transmission: the 4.0-litre flat-six engine from the Cayman GT4 and its six-speed…

PLUS Upgrade promises improved fuel economy and emissions MINUS Unsophisticated; Toyota Yaris Hybrid more efficient Earlier this year Renault revealed a hybrid Clio of such immense engineering complexity it required someone with a long technical career in F1 to explain it at the launch. This Fiat 500 Hybrid is not like that. At all. It fact it’s so simple even I can explain it to you – lift off the gas or press the brakes and a 12-volt motor charges an 11Ah (0.132kWh) lithium-ion battery. This electricity is then used to boost acceleration via the same motor, or to allow the auxiliaries to keep running while the engine switches off completely to save fuel. Hybridisation in the mildest of forms. Given the original Fiat 500’s emphasis on simplicity, that purity…

1. BY PLUNDERING A VERY EXOTIC PARTS BIN Some things are just a bit too much to compute. The scale of the universe; the depth of the Pacific; the unchecked lunacy of somebody who wishes the McLaren 720S had more power. This is a car for just such lunatics. The McLaren 765LT is the 720S evolved with an unwavering focus on performance; less weight, more power, increased appetite for railing through corners at speed. ‘We’ve touched a lot of things a little bit,’ says chief engineer James Warner with no little understatement. First up is a comprehensive aerodynamic package, partly informed by findings from the 720S GT3 racer. First point of contact is a deep front splitter, like a snowplough made from beautifully wrought carbonfibre. Air beneath it flows across…

1. BY MAKING IT ‘1000 PER CENT FUN TO DRIVE’ This, of course, is not BMW’s first electric car. The adventurous (but misadventurously unprofitable) i3 city car hit the streets in 2013, and the iX3 crossover arrives later this year. But this is the first all-electric BMW that dares to use Munich’s founding template: saloons that drives like sports cars. And, belatedly, a rival not only to the obvious Teslas (Model S and Model 3) but also to the likes of Porsche’s (more expensive) Taycan 4S. It’s like the glory days of M3 versus 911 all over again. There are many questions to answer of the i4, but let’s get the important one out of the way first: will it drive like it must to honour both its badge and…

Israel wants to be the new California. This tiny, embattled nation of just nine million has 7000 active tech start-ups The search for the future of motoring takes you to some unexpected places. I am on a quiet street on the outskirts of Ramla, a mainly Arab town near the city of Tel Aviv, just off the main highway to Jerusalem. It’s an odd area. At one end of the street is Israel’s transport museum, whose small outdoor display consists mainly of trucks once operated by Taavura, a haulage and construction business as old as the State of Israel itself. Taavura grew into one of Israel’s biggest businesses by helping to carve a new nation into an often unforgiving landscape. Taavura’s shiny headquarters is one block over, but this street…

When did you last push a car? Do you have rose-tinted memories of applying shoulder to rump of reluctant Clio or de-fuelled Fiesta? Luckily, cars have got more reliable over the years. But they’ve also got a great deal heavier. Should you have cause to push a Superb Estate you might want to make sure you’re on good terms with a physio first. At 1612kg fuelled but driverless and unluggaged, it asks a lot of its 2.0-litre diesel engine just to get rolling. Blame the all-wheel-drive system. Blame the sheer size of the car. Blame the long list of equipment fitted as standard. It’s hardly alone among big estates in being a porker, but you expect better from Skoda, which has a tradition of finding clever solutions to packaging problems.…