Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2020 i CAR UK

Illustration: Avarvarii Factfile POWERTRAIN 50kWh battery, 168bhp (est) e-motor, front-wheel drive CHASSIS Steel and aluminium monocoque DUE 2021 1 LEX LUTHOR CALLED… …he wants the kryptonite back. Peugeot’s hot electric 208 will use plenty of green detailing in a colour named after Superman’s one weakness. The project hasn’t been signed off yet, but boss Imparato and 208 project manager Guillaume Clerc want it to happen. The plan is for all Peugeot Sport cars to use the colour. 2 POWER STRUGGLE At the e-208’s launch, project manager Rémi Seimpere said the 50kWh battery filled all the available space. That means extra shove will have to come from fitting a more powerful electric motor drawing from the same battery, sacrificing some of the regular e-208’s range. 3 PLUGGED-IN ROLLOUT The Peugeot Sport…

Themes of the year? Apart from the obvious, 2020 will go down as the year of the plug-in hybrid. A compromise in every sense, it’s nevertheless a useful solution as nascent charging networks blossom in slow motion. Having previously offered plug-in hybrid derivatives of the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, Land Rover has now properly electrified its more affordable cars, the Evoque and the family-friendly Discovery Sport. And it’s done so with a new approach. Where the Range Rover mounted its 85kW e-motor inside its transmission, meaning both power sources drove both axles (via the low-range transmission if necessary), the new cars use a different philosophy. Each power unit – the engine and the e-motor – drives an axle each, the propshaft’s departure freeing up space in which to…

The theory has never changed: to make driving at night safe, you need to make night as much like day as you can. And the problem hasn’t changed: the beams that light your way will dazzle oncoming drivers, so you need to dip your headlights. Where there’s been progress recently it’s been in finding ways to minimise the spread and duration of that dipping. And Audi has taken that one step further with its next-generation system. Its current state-of-the-art lighting, HD Matrix LED, is an adaptive system that works by splitting the traditional single headlight beam into dozens of smaller rays that can be turned on and off individually to un-light small areas in front. It uses 32 diodes per side, controlled by a forward-facing camera, and it’s largely effective.…

An electric drivetrain in a limo makes perfect sense after barely a mile The first thing you notice when you drive an electric car such as the Nissan Leaf is the silence, followed by the instant and seamless acceleration. You get levels of serene luxury in a hatchback you’d normally only experience after winning The Apprentice and getting a lift home in Lord Sugar’s Rolls-Royce. But it’s still a hatchback. Combine that peaceful propulsion with a super-refined shell, however – like the Audi A8’s – and you have the ultimate luxury wafter. An electric drivetrain in a limo makes total and perfect sense after barely a mile of driving. This is a vehicle that’ll spend its life conveying elite business people around a congested city (because that’s where elite business…

Why is it here? Because the 911’s the sportscar benchmark, and the Turbo S promises to be something of an ultimate – the fastest and most complete road-focused 911. And the new one’s not like your father’s 911 Turbo. That was a numbers king keener on searing standing starts and swanning about like an apex predator than being hurried. The 992-gen Turbo feels different: more agile, more involving. Any clever stuff? As you’d imagine given the Turbo’s propensity for speed, active aerodynamics play a big part in the engineering. The car can tweak flaps in the front spoiler to achieve the best possible drag/downforce/cooling profile in real time. The control unit and compressor for this pneumatic system sit in the 911’s front boot, while the huge rear wing maintains the car’s aero…

Our tour guide for the Porsche Museum (4.5 stars out of five on TripAdvisor, the second highest rated museum in Stuttgart) is Michael Mauer, Porsche’s chief designer. Towards the end of our tour, Mauer is showing us the many cars he was responsible for designing. They include the 991 and 992 versions of the 911, the 918 Spyder, the Macan, the Panamera and the latest 718-generation Boxer and Cayman. In fact, every new Porsche since he took over as design boss in 2004, replacing Dutchman Harm Lagaay. Michael Mauer showing us around the Porsche Museum is a bit like Salvador Dalí or Andy Warhol giving us a tour of the Tate Modern, or Caravaggio showing us around the Uffizi. A star showing us his work and those of his peers.…

VISIT WWW.GREATMAGAZINES.CO.UK/CAR TO BROWSE OUR PRINT-ONLY, PRINT AND DIGITAL, OR DIGITAL-ONLY OFFERS SUBSCRIBE ONLINE OR BY PHONE QUOTING EGAA CALL 01858 438884 OVERSEAS READERS CALL +44 1858 438828 Print only Pay £29.99 for 12 issues by recurring payment Digital only Pay £29.99 for 12 issues by recurring payment ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CONCERNED ABOUT DELIVERY? PLEASE VISIT GREATMAGAZINES.CO.UK/COVID-19 THE SITE HAS THE LATEST INFORMATION ON DELIVERY TIMES Terms & Conditions: Subscriptions will start with the next available issue. The minimum term is 12 issues. Direct Debit payments will continue to be taken at the offer price (right) unless you tell us otherwise and you will not receive a renewal reminder. This offer closes 9th June 2020. This offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer. Cost from landlines for…

Getty Images Some call front-wheel drive wrong-wheel drive. It ousted rear-drive in the mainstream because it’s cheaper, lighter and provides more spacious interiors, and its fondness for gentle understeer is safer than oversteer if you’re greedy with the power. Boring? Hardly. Look no further than ’60s rally and touring-car Minis, or today’s 300bhp monsters with limited-slip differentials and foolproof electronics. To drive, the key difference to RWD is that the power goes to wheels that also steer – so power can tug the tyres about (torque steer), leading to flightiness over cambered roads when driven aggressively, especially with steering lock applied. Some cars manage this really well (previous Renault Megane RS), others less so (the still-brilliant Mk1 Ford Focus RS). And when the nose lifts under acceleration, a frontdriver’s front…

Lexus RC 300h F Sport Month 6 The story so far Esoteric two-door first launched 2014, facelifted 2018. Our test car is the hybrid 300h version + Looks just as good as an RC F -Doesn’t drive like an RC F, which is a shame Logbook Price £42,305 (£43,725 as tested) Performance 2494cc hybrid four-cylinder, 220bhp, 8.6sec 0-62mph, 118mph Efficiency 40.8-47.6mpg (official), 36.8mpg (tested), 114g/km CO2 Energy cost 17.9p per mile Miles this month 672 Total miles 6658 I knew it was in there somewhere. Our long-term-test Lexus RC 300h feels like there’s a great driver’s car trapped inside it – you can feel the inherent handling balance and the underlying stiff structure it’s allied to – but it’s smothered by the unresponsive hybrid powertrain. You waft in a state…

Matty Graham The Volvo’s not cut out for getting anywhere in a hurry What shape SUV do you fancy this morning? I’ve been asking myself this question every day for the last couple of months because I’ve got three 4x4s on the go, though only two of them actually do go (my old CR-V dog/DIY-carrier has a sticky offside front caliper, but the weather’s been too grim to tempt me to get the tools out). But even a van down, between the Volvo V60 and Touareg I’ve got most eventualities covered. Normally, the departure of one long-term test car dovetails with the arrival of a new one. But Volkswagen kindly let us hang on to the Touareg a little longer so we could compare it with the Volvo taking its…

A lot of Niro miles covered this month and its logbook is filling up with pros and cons. Bad first. Regen paddles: after persevering with them for the first month I find them counter-intuitive and difficult to modulate smoothly. Pedals: need recalibrating. The top centimetre of travel on both throttle and brake pedals is too sensitive. Headlamps: even on full beam the yellowy projection is feeble. Bings: it trills, bongs and pings on start-up, when reversing, and during manoeuvring. Ride quality: the too-firm lumpy ride is at odds with the Niro’s easygoing nature. Matty Graham But now the good. Sport mode: brings together both petrol and electric powerplants to make short work of overtakes. Packaging intelligence: the cabin mixes generous passenger accommodation with plenty of storage areas. Ergonomics: excellent touchscreen…

It’s a phrase that’s used an awful lot, but what does artificial intelligence (or AI) actually mean for cars? We seek enlightenment from two experts: Paul Newman, CTO of Oxbotica, an Oxford-based autonomous-vehicle software company; and emerging-tech expert Dr Jack Stilgoe, associate professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s centre for data science and AI. Paul Newman (Oxbotica): ‘I don’t think anyone imagines they will be able to get a steering wheel- and pedal-free car any day now. But a normal-looking car with super-advanced controls offered to you in certain places? I reckon that starts to happen soon, within three to five years.’ Dr Jack Stilgoe (UCL): ‘It’s not a question of when, but…

The starting point is last year’s Huracan Evo, from which Lamborghini deletes all the stuff you’re supposed to covet Last year we published our dystopian The Last Gallon story, imagining what we’d fuel with our last dregs of super-unleaded in a post-apocalyptic Grimsby. Right now, it’s as though I’m trapped Tron-like in those pages. I’m ripping over the Pennines, a huge hunk of engine out back helping adjust attitude and smear number 11s over the road. There are great peels of V10 thunder on every downshift. It’s pre-lockdown, the day before they’ll close the pubs. For a few more hours driving for the sake of driving is still okay, and I’ve got my hands on a supercar I think I might actually fuel with my last ever gallon: the new…

There are only a handful of cars able to tell between heads and tails as they run over a coin. The Mini GP does not only happily oblige, it can tell you the year it was minted, too. Firm springs and dampers are, of course, no guarantee of fun. But they make perfect sense on the Mini GP, a car that treads a fine line between pleasure and pain. Just leaf through the bible of automotive no-nos and the classic vices are all here in abundance: torque steer, waywardness at any speed, marginal ride comfort… But you know what? It’s impossible not get a kick out of this doped super-Mini. A rather rough daily driver, the £33,895 limited-edition two-seater nails the bullseye if what you want is a hot hatch…

The earliest surviving Countach is looking better – and more original – than it has in years. Rescued from a barn in Switzerland in 2000, and brought back to Sant’Agata, chassis #001 has spent the last two decades in Lamborghini’s on-site museum, which links the factory’s modern entrance with the ’60s original. The museum’s much better for a recent refresh, and so is the car. Originally painted red for its appearance at the 1973 Geneva motor show, it was resprayed green for that autumn’s Paris salon, and has just received another coat of the same. But the big change is beyond those scissor doors. The original alcantara-covered dash and bizarre blocky seats that look like giant, slightly melted Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bars, which were replaced with regular production items when…

Bentley Continental GT V8 Month 1 The story so far A pinch-yourself-is-this-really-happening moment: living as a Bentley Boy in 2020 +Extraordinary quality; ample power on tap; sense of occasion -Actually a sports car at all? Relevant in 2020 at all? Logbook Price £151,800 (£194,345 as tested) Performance 3996cc twin-turbo V8, 542bhp, 3.9sec 0-62mph, 198mph Efficiency 23.9mpg (official), 21.0mpg (tested), 268g/km CO2 Energy cost 26.4p per mile Miles this month 280 Total miles 5055 Bentley has quietly sewn up the £100k-£200k pocket of the grand tourer market ever since the first-generation Continental GT launched in 2003. It thrust Crewe into a hitherto unidentified white space in the automotive firmament: the playground of the successful, just-into-six-figures, grown-out-of-Mercedes-Benzes brigade. Now, with the latest Mk3, we’re going to spend a few months finding out…

When I was informed by those in power that I would be driving a very expensive, fast Vauxhall for the next few months, I wondered if perhaps I had been transferred, reject footballer-style, to CAR’s sister title Classic Cars and was going to spend the summer hooning about in a Lotus Carlton – the only expensive, fast Vauxhall I could think of. Alas, this proved not to be the case and the almost-as-expensive, almost-as-fast Vauxhall turned out to be a very different beast: the petrol-electric Grandland X Hybrid4, a modern crossover in so many senses it is hard to know where to start. So we’ll start with the basic facts. This is Vauxhall’s first plug-in hybrid (the prescient rangeextending Ampera not counting), with a claimed electric range of 30-plus miles…

Spending most of a year in the latest Ford Focus Estate has reset my petrol-powered priorities somewhat: it’s the kind of car that makes you reassess your motoring needs. Do you really require anything roomier? Better equipped? Sharper to drive or faster? Our considered answer is: probably not. There’s a Christmassy moment late each afternoon at CAR HQ when test car keys are dished out. I never once felt disappointed at the end of the day if I was put down in the Focus, as I knew it does everything so damn well. It’s one of the great modern all-rounders. I might’ve wanted something flashier, with a posher badge or an extra 50bhp, but I knew pretty quickly that this Ford was a polished jack of all trades. In many…

Jaguar i-Pace S Month 3 The story so far Nervy times running Jag’s EV without a home charger +Warp-speed acceleration… -…which I currently daren’t use Logbook Price £64,995 (£80,980 as tested) Performance 90kWh battery, twin e-motors, 395bhp, 4.8sec 0-62mph, 124mph Efficiency 2.5 miles per kWh (official), 2.1 miles per kWh (tested) Energy cost 4.2p per mile Miles this month 1527 Total miles 9824 Hallelujah! My days of arriving at the office chilled to the marrow from a heater-free commute, nerves shredded by range anxiety (closest shave: eight miles and four per cent charge remaining) are over. Today, BP Chargemaster fits my 7kW ‘socketed’ smart home charger! It’s taken about a month to get to Installation Day, because BP has to assess the suitability of your property, veracity of your claim…

Toyota is bringing the bravado in a way we haven’t been used to seeing from the Japanese giant in recent years. Not only is it convinced it started the SUV trend with the original RAV4 25 years ago, it’s practically guaranteeing its new Yaris Cross will be a massive sales success. Making a baby SUV is a pretty easy recipe: use the platform from a supermini (in this case Toyota’s GA-B architecture from the latest Yaris); lift the ride height (it’s 30mm taller than the Yaris); and graft on some chunky styling cues inspired by the other SUVs in your range. The new car’s blocky wheelarches, down-turned face and horizontal rear lights are all seen on the current RAV4. Given Toyota’s wholesale addiction to hybrid powertrains, you won’t be surprised…

Illustration: Chris Rathbone Nobody enjoys having a challenging deadline pulled forward. So imagine being BMW R&D boss Klaus Fröhlich last year, when BMW announced the accelerated roll-out of its electrified vehicle programme. No longer did Fröhlich have to deliver 25 plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and full battery-electric (BEV) BMWs by 2025. Now it was 2023 – with more than half expected to be BEVs. If that sounds daunting, the 59-year-old board member – a BMW lifer since 1987, who once developed V8s and worked on Land Rover programmes – is sanguine at the prospect of delivery. ‘Honestly, it’s very simple – we have this fully flexible architecture. We have not moved product forwards. We have simply decided to have additional products, so that the counting to 25 reaches that number earlier.’…

KEEP THE PRODUCT NICE AND SIMPLE Arrival’s Generation 2 electric van uses an electric ‘skateboard’ platform and puts bespoke bodywork on top, depending on the client, in ‘micro-factories’ – teeny buildings with a low carbon footprint, located near demand hotspots, that can be created in as little as three months. CATCH THE ATTENTION OF A KEY BUYER Worldwide delivery mega-giant UPS has put its name down for 10,000 specifically-designed Generation 2 vans. The first will hit the road this year, and UPS has the option to order another 10,000 if everything goes smoothly. Royal Mail and John Lewis want in on the action, too. GET BACKING FROM SOME B IG HITTERS You know you’re on the right track when Albert Biermann, Hyundai’s R&D wizard and head of the N Division,…

The FR sits 15mm lower than other Leons, and that makes a handy difference to the way it rides and steers There’s a clue on the hatch. Under the stylised S that is the Seat badge, the name Leon is written in a newly flamboyant script. It fits with the joie de vivre that sets the new Leon apart from the latest Mk8 VW Golf, the car the Mk4 Leon is based on. Might it even be a sly joke? Badge engineering? Yes, but this is something Seat is good at, and not one bit ashamed of. Set aside the hot GTI/GTE/GTD Golfs – they’ll have to argue their corner against the Cupra Leon in due course. But today, driving the new Leon in semi-sporty FR spec, with the midrange…

In the April 2020 issue Gavin Green laments the demise of the BMW i8 and wonders how this can happen. The short answer is a current price tag north of £111,000. SPONSORED BY The nuclear option Douglas Ponsford (letters, March) advocates hydrogen as a car fuel. I used to think that hydrogen is the fuel of the future. It doesn’t involve heavy batteries. However, while you can make hydrogen from water using electrolysis, it is much cheaper to make it from petrochemicals. It’s a fossil fuel, guys. Biofuel, anyone? We’d probably need to slaughter 90 per cent of the people on the planet so we could use the land previously used for food to grow biomass. Come in, cold (or hot) fusion. We need you now. Mike Franklin Required: one…

What the coffee couldn’t manage, the M8 Competition’s V8 is doing effortlessly. Just a few moments ago, as I slid aboard the 2+2 BMW coupe, my brain was still on the pillow; still on standby, with only essential systems online. Now, thanks to the BMW’s awesome V8, I’m very much awake. This is one ferociously quick car. We’re snaking though wild hill county, the bone-grey road the only conspicuously man-made scar on a landscape that was here long before us – and will go on long after we’re gone. There is no other traffic; the only other living souls are sullen birds that take flight as our two-car cacophony heads their way. The S63 engine up front (shared with the F90 M5) is an upgraded version of the 4.4-litre V8…

1st PORSCHE 911 TURBO S It’s fast – that’s what happens when you hook a monstrous twin-turbo flat-six up to all-wheel drive and fat tyres. But the sports-car reflexes and interactivity – they're new ★★★★★ 2nd BMW M8 COMPETITION The M5 sweeps all before it, so what gives? Fast saloons are safe ground for BMW – it’ll take a sports car to beat the new Turbo. And the M8 Competition isn’t one ★★★★ It’s an assumption that the car you’re after is the lighter, purer and more focused one. Sportier doesn’t always mean better. And if it’s a gran turismo you’re after, the BMW 8-series (and particularly the 840d and M850i) has to be on your shortlist. (In a four-way test of such cars, including the DB11, Continental GT and Lexus LC,…

Little lion BMW’s 2.0-litre fourcylinder has GPspecific internals, including its own turbocharger, intake system, pistons, rods and a stronger crank. ‘Emissions and noise regulations mean it’s getting tougher to create cars like this. But we are confident that within the BMW Group we have the expertise to make another GP a reality in the future as well,’ Metz says. Fingers crossed. Rocket-sled suspension Suspension is lowered by 10mm, track is wider, bushes stiffer, camber more aggressive. ‘Our main target was that the car performs on track. With that in mind, we accepted ride comfort you might describe as a little raw as a tradeoff,’ says Metz. Auto ’box only ‘Customers prefer autos,’ says Metz. Offering a choice would have added significantly to the development time and costs, not justified in…

Built by a team of 10 in 1973, chassis #001 became the oldest surviving Countach when the original pre-production prototype thumped a wall during crash testing at MIRA in the early ’70s. Despite its historic status, it was stripped of its show-car cabin and sold on to help with cashflow; now it’s been restored. The Countach was radically different to the Miura. The V12 was rotated 90º and the chassis switched from a semi-monocoque layout to a spaceframe design. ‘We had lots of problems with the early cars,’ admits legendary, now-retired, test driver Valentino Balboni. ‘The chassis was complicated, constructed from lots of different-sized bits of metal and welded everywhere. It just wasn’t strong enough,’ admits Balboni, who prefers the later Countach S. The classic market disagrees. Early models like…

Driving position: great. Seats: comfy. Stereo: continues to be awesome. But the glossy touchscreen masks only an okay-ish infotainment system that’s fraught with odd and sometimes annoying foibles. First off is the traffic announcements – you know, the ones that interrupt your music to tell you about a traffic jam 30 miles away in the wrong direction? It’s the 21st century: use Waze or Google Maps – I don’t care that there’s congestion in the Outer Hebrides. It took several attempts to find out how to switch them off permanently, and I have no idea how I did it, as the settings layout is confusing. When driving into the office car park (and other dead-end roads), the nav tells me, without fail, that it’s a ‘road with restricted access’. I…

Matty Graham Time – the great healer. Take the steering wheel. Peugeot started shrinking them back in 2012 with the last-gen 208 and its ‘i-Cockpit’ design. It had a shrunken wheel that you looked over, rather than through, to see the dials. With your hands bunched close together like you would in a Caterham, it exacerbated the nimbleness. Perfect for a city car, then. In the 508, though, with a tiny wheel in your hands you feel like you’ve been forced to buy a vehicle one size too small. And rather than the dials being raised up higher on the dash, it’s more like the wheel has been artificially restricted in rake adjustment. Add in an electric seat that won’t go low enough, and everything meets in the middle. But…