Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i CAR UK

Illustration: Avarvarii Factfile POWERTRAIN 135kWh battery (est), three e-motors, 990bhp (est), all-wheel drive CHASSIS Steel, aluminium and composite monocoque DUE 2024 1 FLYING LIKE A G60 As the facelifted F90 5-series and M5 go on sale now with a cleaner look, it’s the next-gen G60 that’ll ring the changes. The all-new 5-series arrives in the autumn of 2023, with the G60 M5 due a year later in two states of electrification: plug in hybrid and pure electric. Who’d have thought it? 2 TESTING, TESTING… BMW is openly working on a ‘power BEV’, using a 5-series mule. It has three e-motors borrowed from the powertrain we’ll see in the electric i4 and the iNext SUV. One drives the front axle while the rear wheels get a motor each. Numbers? 711bhp and…

Mid-engined, rear-drive, wild looking and blessed with extreme performance–the RM19, a radical concept racer living a double life, is all of these things. Ask anyone at Hyundai and they’ll call it a development car, but it’s also our first look at a top-shelf halo model for N division. It’s currently powered by a TCR-spec 2.0-litre turbo four making 385bhp, for a 0-62mph time under four seconds and a handy 155mph top speed. Tech from the motorsport division is already trickling down to Hyundai’s more pedestrian models. The latest dual-clutch auto in the new i20, for instance, draws on motorsport experience. ‘It shows that motorsport developments are necessary for our high-performance segment but also for normal production cars,’ says Schemera. But however advanced the tech, Schemera is well aware that the production…

The Apple Watch has just celebrated its fifth birthday, and the traditional watch makers are celebrating an extra five years of life they once thought they might not have. Despite their initial fears, the rise of the smartwatch has not rendered them irrelevant, and many well-known names now make semi-smartwatches of their own. If they won’t do as much as a pure smartwatch, that’s a plus point for those of us who don’t want our phones to completely colonise our wrists. Here are a couple of new smartwatches from Swiss makers, and an example of how to do it differently from Breitling. 01 Frederique Constant Smartwatch Vitality £695 A digital display in the lower half of the dial only reveals itself when you touch the crown. It can track your…

Okay, it’s not perfect. For a start, and in a very un-McLaren bout of wanton imprecision, Variable Drift Control, as featured on the 720S Coupe and Spider, isn’t really variable drift control at all: it steps in long before you’re anything like sideways enough to be considered drifting. And so needlessly complicated is McLaren’s Active Dynamics panel (certainly compared with rival interfaces from the likes of Ferrari and Porsche) that you might never actually find it (see handy guide, right). But the good news is that Variable Drift Control is a brilliant example of technology helping you get more from a car. And with bald numbers like 710bhp, 0-62mph in 2.8sec and 212mph, most of us could use a helping hand in the benchmark modern McLaren. Activating Variable Drift Control…

The engine and electric gubbins have been crammed into the nose, so you still get nearly a metre of rear legroom When Honda swapped the Civic’s clever folding Magic Seats for a lower driving position and independent rear suspension it was a sad day for anyone who liked to regularly transport a big plant pot or tall dog in their hatchback. So, when it was announced that the new-generation Jazz would be sold in Europe exclusively with a hybrid powertrain–something that ordinarily eats into space under the rear seats and boot–it felt like the little Honda might be robbed of its Mary Poppins’ handbag USP. Happily, though, the 1.5-litre petrol engine and associated electrified gubbins have mostly been crammed into the Jazz’s stubby nose, so you still get nearly a…

The Ferrari SF90 has more sides than a dodecahedron with dissociative identity disorder. A demon track weapon one minute, a relaxing cross-continent cruiser the next, it’s the heaviest Ferrari sports car ever built, yet can lap Ferrari’s Fiorano track as quickly as the lightest. Depending on which driving mode you select, it can either keep a Bugatti Chiron honest from the lights–or be shown the door by a supermini. And if you pull away sharply on a loose surface in its eDrive EV mode, during which the V8 and the rear axle take a little nap, you’ll discover one more mind-bending fact: the SF90 is, at least some of the time, Ferrari’s first front-wheel-drive production car. Unprecedented times, indeed. Ferrari claims the SF90 launch was put back from March to…

FUTURE FIRST: ID.3 You can see what they’ve tried to do, and you can understand why they’ve tried to do it. If the inside of the ID.3 looks a bit Apple and a bit Tesla that’s no coincidence. For the mass market Apple defines classy consumer electronics, just as Tesla defines electric cars. And the ID.3 is very much intended as a car for the masses, like the Beetle and the Golf before it. The overall proportions and the clean detailing are modern. Thanks to a wheelbase 100mm longer than the Golf’s, the cabin is roomy and the boot a useful 385 litres. But even this well-kitted test car–close to 1st Plus spec, the only model initially available in the UK–could do with a bit of extra colour and some…

Above all else, it’s the noise that strikes you first. The badge is the same, the general layout the same, but the soundtracks could not be more different. The Malaga Red 2002 tii and the Hockenheim Silver M2 CS on these pages are separated by more than 45 years of automotive history and evolution. And where the older car is a sometimes jarring mix of roar, whine and rattle, the new one growls with serious power. But despite the aural disconnect, and a 316bhp power difference, the BMW’s dinky sports DNA has not changed much between the reigns of chancellors Schmidt and Merkel. Rear-wheel drive still prevails, as do manual transmissions, independent suspension, four disc brakes, circular instruments and a four-seat, two-door, notch-back body style. The 1974 128bhp 2002 is…

And so to the Peugeot, perhaps the most understated of this trio. Devoid of retro styling flourishes, the nearest the 208 gets to looking backwards is the C-pillar kink that references the windowline of the much-loved 205, this magazine’s car of the ’80s. Unencumbered by modish influences past or future, it’s a design that works well in the here and now. The Peugeot is the only car here that busts the four-metre mark on a tape measure and is correspondingly the roomiest inside, with genuine space in the back for adults. Its loadbay is the most capacious, and if you value roominess and practicality it’ll be the easiest car here to slot into your life. Peugeot’s insistence on sticking with its Lilliputian i-Cockpit interior design means those not familiar with…

Matty Graham I drove my mother’s elderly dog to the vet’s last week. Not exactly a winning Top Trump card in the Dream Drives deck, but after three weeks of either walking or cycling, the 10-mile return trip with Stinkyboy Alfie left me buzzing. I savoured every moment, and drank in every aspect, no matter how small. Starting, appropriately, with the Niro’s key. Its asymmetrical shape makes it easy to press the right button without needing to glance at it. And it reminds me of Bodie and Doyle’s Pye PF8 walkie-talkies in The Professionals. Unlock and unplug. Drop down into the plumply upholstered seat. Seatbelt and smartphone. Flick out the key–no pushbutton start-up here–and twist. Pretend I don’t hear the cheesy bingbong welcome. Glance down to the right of the…

The Superb is shinier than it’s ever been since it arrived, as I’ve spent much of the recent bonus spare time cleaning things, and then cleaning them again. As I buff those roof rails one more time, I hanker for a decent European road trip. In fact, as I delve into the murk of the wheelarches, starting to restore them to showroom condition, I realise that a trip to the dump would be pretty good. Because driving is so satisfying, isn’t it? And the great advantage of the big Superb is that once I’ve taken all the rubbish I’ve cleared from the garage to the local recycling centre, and the grass clippings from the 600-plus times I’ve mown the lawn, I’ll happily take it the long way home along some…

MY EYES! Citroën C4 New C4 attempts to merge family hatch and crossover. There are bits of CXperience concept in there but the Cactus’s Airbumps have vanished. The overwrought rear end is meant to be assertive and muscular–looks Pontiac Aztek. Vauxhall Mokka Outgoing Mokka was duller than watching paint dry. New car is the first production model with the Vizor face, and Vauxhall’s recent fascination with two-tone colours means brave options like this Manta-inspired combo. REVOLUTIONARY? Citroën C4 Notably less funky than the C3 inside, but Citroën’s squircle steering wheel remains and fresh digital instruments debut. PSA also sacked the person who used to put the air-con controls onto a laggy touchscreen. Progress. Vauxhall Mokka There are bits of Corsa inside, but design boss Mark Adams has spearheaded a minimalistic…

Illustration: Chris Rathbone Jean-Philippe Imparato is an ebullient presence, and the energy of Peugeot’s executive VP mirrors that of the marque itself. Peugeot has been re-energised of late, with the 208 beating the Tesla Model 3 and Porsche’s Taycan to the European Car of the Year title in March. ‘It’s an interesting result,’ says Imparato. ‘You have three EV cars on the podium [the 208 is available with the choice of either conventional engines or a pure electric powertrain]. I get the sense the 208 is on top, aside from its design, because of affordability. Not everyone is able to pay more than £60,000. In terms of EV transition, it is time to provide affordable cars.’ He adds that in January and February, the electric e-208 (priced from around £25k)…

You don’t so much approach corners as find they’re flung at you South of picture-postcard Franschoek, in the Mont Rochelle nature reserve, the snaking tarmac of the R45 down to Cape Town is a sensational bit of engineering. It’s a relentless 30°C outside. The landscape is a ferociously three-dimensional and parched place of sheer rock slopes, broken peaks and blackened, fire-ravaged wilderness. Yet somehow the road through it is perfect; smooth, empty, wide (important when you’re driving a contemporary Bentley) and dry. In a W12 Bentayga you don’t so much approach corners as find they’re flung at you, such is the twin-turbo, 6.0-litre unit’s surfeit of performance. (Peak power and torque are as before, 627bhp and a stonking 664lb ft–not figures that would suggest any need for a turning up…

It was as much a compromise as it was a convertible when Ferrari launched the 208 GTS Turbo in 1983. Now a largely forgotten if seminal footnote, the 208 was Maranello’s first turbocharged convertible and a preview, some four decades early, of this new F8 Spider. The removal of the 208’s roof made it wobblier than a coupe, but the real compromise was the engine–a gruff, laggy 2.0-litre turbo V8 that knocked 35 horses from the near-identical 308’s 252bhp and ducked the 38 per cent VAT that Italy levied on that car’s bigger, 3.0-litre V8. But compromises and the new F8 Spider? I’m struggling to think of any as the Ferrari and I fly across this rolling landscape with sun beating into the cabin, bringing an almost obscene 710bhp to…

Ever wonder how the greatest game-changers make it to showrooms unsullied by committee or compromise? The thrill of a clean-sheet design and an over-achieving mission statement must spur on the cleverest engineers to make groundbreaking cars such as 1959’s Mini, the 1974 VW Golf and the first-generation Ford Focus or Audi TT (both 1998). Can the Honda E hope to join this exclusive club? At first glance, its daring wardrobe, electro smarts and digital talents certainly secure the interview. And so it proves when introductions are made. It’s a shame some of the stance and conceptual slam-dunk of the Urban EV show car that sired the E were lost in the transition to showroom spec, but this is still one of Honda’s boldest designs for years. It’s dripping with cute…

Three months in and I’m wondering if picking the V8 rather than the W12 was a step down in any way. The twin-turbo 6.0-litre range-topping W12 arrived with the Mk1 Conti in 2003 and is still available today now that the coupe has reached its third generation. But the majority of customers pick the smaller engine–hardly surprising as the price compares favourably (£151,800 plays £163,100) and there are advantages in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions too. Even at this rarefied strata of the market, such things matter. It’s a more modest Bentley for these straitened times. You’d be hard-pressed to tell from behind the wheel, though. Not once have I felt short-changed by the absence of one third of the engine’s swept volume or hankered for a further four cylinders.…

VOLVO TPV Volvo builds its first car in 1927, but four-wheel drive isn’t on the options list (hell, neither are four-wheel brakes, until 1928). But 17 years later, Volvo’s engineers mash together the body of its PV800 saloon with the mechanical guts of its small truck to create the Terrängpersonvagn (literally ‘off-road car’) or TPV, for the Swedish military. PV5 4 4 Volvo’s hunchback PV isn’t four-wheel drive, but it certainly proves its off-road mettle, demolishing strong competition from Mercedes, Citroën, Peugeot and Ford to win 1965’s gruelling Safari Rally. The winning team comprises driver Joginder Singh and his brother Jaswant, who wear turbans instead of crash helmets. C3 03 The ‘Cross Country’ tag makes its first appearance in 1974 on promo material for Volvo’s civilian version of its forward-control…

Well that didn’t take long. I was expecting months and thousands of miles to pass before I’d tested all the possible permutations offered by the MySense driving modes. But I seem to have exhausted all the combinations, and found a clear winner, in this month’s 93 miles. I suspected that I’d go all around the houses and end up defaulting to Sport. But no! Sport steering is good, but Sport powertrain is a bit sudden. So I favour Sport steering and Regular powertrain. Job done, unless subsequent research reveals hidden depths to Comfort or Regular steering. There are rather narrow limits to what you can select. In Sport mode you have to have Sport powertrain and Sport steering. But in the individually configurable MySense mode you don’t have the option…

I’ve been working through a long ‘to do’ list. Or more accurately, in the 90 minutes our toddler sleeps at lunch I tidy the playroom, put food in front of a partner who’s tied to Zoom for 10 hours a day, then turn my attention to anything else in the remaining moments. Job No1–the only job I’ve managed so far–was to clear out the garage, shed and garden. I’ve removed enough rubbish to fill the 508 SW 10 times over. Rather than make numerous trips to the recently reopened local household waste site, instead I got to do something I’ve always wanted to do: order a skip. It’s the biggest that would fit through our gate. I filled it in just one lunchtime rather than savouring the experience, so now…

Land Rover’s new Defender is an altogether more road-capable, sophisticated and refined vehicle than its predecessor. But if you love box-section ladder frames and beam axles, it won’t be for you. Step forward the Ineos Grenadier. ‘Number one focus was off-road mobility and capability,’ says the British firm’s commercial director, Mark Tennant. ‘An off-road vehicle that doesn’t keep on going and provide years of faithful service isn’t really doing the job. The Grenadier’s designed first and foremost to be a working tool, but you shouldn’t have to suffer for that utility–there’s connectivity, screens, seat comfort, plenty of room… It’s not a throwback. It’s a modern vehicle built to a certain style.’ It’s boxy, with prominent wheelarches, low bonnet, near-flat glass, external hinges, utility rails, asymmetric rear doors, a ladder to…

Illustration Chris Rathbone While Hyundai quietly churns out dependable cars for the masses, it’s what’s bubbling just beneath the surface that’s of real interest. Not content with shifting big numbers–in 2019 it out-sold Citroën, Peugeot, Skoda and Seat in the UK–it’s now targeting a holy trinity to get enthusiasts interested: bold design, ambitious investment in next-gen tech, and a performance-car wing with its sights set on BMW’s M division… N: THE NEW M DIVISION Prior to 2013, the letter N meant nothing. Now, thanks to success in World Rally–Hyundai holds the manufacturers’ crown–and TCR customer racing programmes, not to mention the lauded i30 N hot hatch, N has become a respected Hyundai satellite. Now, under former BMW M boss Albert Biermann, the N portfolio is looking to expand. Biermann’s efforts…

Astronaut, racing driver, car designer–these are the careers of boyhood dreams. It’s hard to imagine a better way to earn a crust than conceptualising new supercars all day, first on paper, then as a full-size model in clay. But, just as becoming a racing driver is now as much about simulator work, social media and telemetry analysis as it is putting away champagne and nailing 130R at Suzuka, so car design has become digitised, with tablets instead of sketchbooks and virtual reality threatening to replace clay modelling. So, how useful are these tools? We ask Ivo van Hulten, director of interiors at Porsche, Bugatti design director Achim Anscheidt, and Land Rover creative director Massimo Frascella. TABLET OR SKETCHBOOK? Ivo van Hulten, Porsche: ‘The best way is always a combination. To…

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Welcome to Wolfsburg, or Stadt des KdF-Wagens (‘city of the KdF car’) as the Nazis originally called it. It was built to manufacture the ‘people’s car’ commissioned by Hitler, and to house its workers. Slave labour, many from the local concentration camp, manufactured military vehicles there during the war. It was renamed Wolfsburg after the local castle, on the advice of the British occupying power. The giant factory was dismissed by UK, US and French motoring experts as unworkable, and the Beetle as unsaleable. They would become, respectively, the world’s biggest car plant and the world’s best-selling car. Some 70 years later, Volkswagen would become the world’s biggest car maker and, at about the same time, the most scandal-ridden. Jürgen Stackmann agreed to join Volkswagen just 14 days before the…

Imagine the fury of a ghost train distilled into a road-legal vehicle: the mechanical clunks and whines from carriages, screaming riders, groaning skeletons lurking round darkened corners, shocking pneumatic bursts, the adrenaline that tingles your toes and somersaults your stomach as you plunge into compressions. That’s how it feels to drive an Ariel Nomad R over this tumbling North Devon landscape, clinging on just as hard as you’re smiling. Add a disclaimer to the windscreen about dodgy tickers, bad backs and pregnancy, and a tedious queue before being seated, and this is an automotive Alton Towers. The regular Nomad buggy’s been around since 2015 as an all-terrain, all-weather alternative to Ariel’s original track-focused Atom, if still rear-wheel drive and with its engine behind the driver. There’s more ground clearance, a…

Stepping from the Honda E to the Mini Electric is quite a shock. For two decades we’ve been lapping up the baby BMW’s fun and fizzy character, but the Brit suddenly feels old in this company. Large dinner-plate-sized circular infotainment screens and a brace of retro toggle switches look quaint next to the digital wizardry of the Honda. You sit low in the sportiest driving position and you’re reminded that the Mini is the shortest, lowest and narrowest car on test. The package is correspondingly snug: you miss the rear doors of the other two and the cramped back seats are a joke, compared with the adult-friendly second-row accommodation in the e-208 and occasional-pub-run status of the E. None of these cars has a particularly big boot, and space is…

This trio feels zeitgeisty and incredibly on-point for the anxiety-laden, finger-gnawing 2020s: electrically powered to save the polar bears, small enough to thread through our increasingly congested cityscapes, yet boasting enough dynamic fizz to reward keen drivers on occasional extra-urban forays–and with an eye on urban chic to boost kerbside feelgood factor for some catwalk cool. Each one couldn’t be more on trend if it tried. Mini has been ploughing a similar furrow for two decades under BMW ownership and there are few surprises with the Electric. In the spirit of all the best Minis, however they’re powered, the British contender is damn fast–comfortably the quickest car here–but what surprised us more was how it lacked the sophistication of the others. We never thought we’d say it, but the Mini…

The 330i’s arrival made us a two 3-series Touring family, giving me a chance to delve deep into what a decade’s development has brought. I won’t argue my 2009 320i Touring is better, but there is a lot to like. The design has matured well, it’s still a comfortable, spacious car, and it’s currently enjoying an Indian summer of having shed all its value, still being perfectly good to use, but having enough ‘patina’ to make us feel carefree if never careless when using it. Decent enough mpg, cheap maintenance by a garage that’s within walking distance–there’s much to be said for this. The obvious difference between the two cars is size: the new car is 188mm longer, putting it halfway between a 10-year-old 5-series and my 320i. Inside, there’s…

What is it with me, Bentleys and the end of the world? The last time things melted down this spectacularly, in the financial crisis of 2008, my long-term test car was a used Continental GT. Driving that car at that time made me feel like a Depression-era Woolf Barnato cruising blithely past the queues for soup kitchens in his 4.5 litre. It felt even less appropriate when my meagre life savings disappeared (temporarily, thankfully) down an Icelandic geyser. I could barely afford the fuel, and searched Yahoo for countries within driving distance but without extradition treaties to which I could abscond with the car and what remained of its residual value. This time I had the keys to a new, third-generation Bentley Flying Spur when the crisis struck. It was…

One of the very exciting things about life with the Grandland plug-in hybrid is seeing whether I can get to Grantham and back on one battery charge. Yes, you might think I should get a better hobby, but the Sainsbury’s in this storied town–which invented the caterpillar track, Margaret Thatcher and run-down charity shops–is exactly 15 miles from my house. When I fire up the fully charged Grandland at home it generally predicts a range of 31 miles, meaning I could do the round trip with one mile to spare. This has gone up from the 24-mile range the Vauxhall was showing when it first turned up, so I must be doing something right. There are two modes for electric driving: a freewheely one where, when you lift off, the…

A PERFECT SILHOUETTE The theory: The DB11’s fundamentally right proportions mean Reichman was able to resist the temptation to throw creases and features at it. ‘The fashion is to have a lot of visual excitement cut into the surfaces–but that quickly dates. On the DB11, the visual excitement comes from the restrained embellishment of the proportions.’ The big exception is the option to pick out the roof strakes in gloss silver or black on the V8 DB11. On the AMR you’re restricted to black or nearly-black carbonfibre, and for good reason: it looks better. In practice: Legroom in the rear seats is abysmal for a car more than 4.7 metres long, as is a 270-litre boot (same as Alfa’s Mito). But who cares? HIPS DON’T LIE (BUT DO GET STONE…