Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i CAR UK

‘I am very, very, very excited,’ says Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto. And so he should be, because F1 is racing at Mugello, Ferrari’s own track, at what will be the Scuderia’s 1000th GP on 13 September. More than a just sentimental choice, Mugello is a sensational track. Its 3.259-mile lap is all medium- and highspeed sweepers. All 14 corners are neck-pullers, but Arrabbiatas 1 and 2 are outrageously fast. ‘The drivers are going to be falling over,’ says ex-F1 driver Mark Webber. ‘I tested there once and was bowled over by the speeds - which will be a lot higher now.’ Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel tested at the track in a two-year old Ferrari just before the 2020 season kicked off in Austria. Both used hard, demonstration Pirelli tyres…

Illustration: Chris Rathbone Fittingly, given the marque’s Flying B mascot, Bentley engineering boss Werner Tietz’s first love was aviation. His father flew, and as a teenager Tietz joined a gliding club so that he might do the same. More usefully, given the direction his life would take, the gliding club also taught Tietz to drive. ‘The gliders were launched by cable, which we pulled using a truck. This is how I learned to drive, aged 14. You had to be very smooth with the clutch as you took up the tension or you’d screw up the cables. This was the first time I was in touch with driving and it was fantastic, something different.’ His passion for engineering also came from his father and, at 19, Tietz was heading back…

Magnificent motor cars like Bentley’s recently retired Mulsanne are redolent of a bygone age. And just as time eventually caught up with the Mulsanne – Bentley’s flagship bows out this year, with 30 Mulsanne 6.75 Edition by Mulliner cars – so it has caught up with the Mulsanne’s remarkable engine, the pushrod V8 that remained in continuous production for more than 60 years. In that time some 36,000 were built. Originally designed in the early ’50s, the L-series V8 was no heavier (thanks to its all-alloy construction) and barely any bigger than the six it replaced (it had to fit in the same engine bay, that of the ’59 S2) and, at 180bhp, some 50 per cent more powerful. Half a century later, in the Mulsanne Speed, it would be…

While the M3 targets ultimate driver involvement, the B3’s mission is to maintain the flow If Bilster Berg didn’t exist, Alpina would have to invent it, so well does it show off the qualities of the new B3. The German circuit, 70 miles south-west of Hanover, packs 26 turns into its 2.6 miles. It has it all: long straights, fast corners, slow bends, ultra-fast esses, tall crests and treacherous dips with shiny armcos looming tall behind rather small grass run-off areas. If you’re familiar with the quite awesome twisty Kasseler Berge section of the A7 autobahn, it’s like a compressed version of that. If not, think of Bilster Berg as a neatly paved up-and-down motocross circuit for sports cars. And here, the B3 proves what an incredible job Alpina is…

To look at it’s now a proper SUV, not a hatchback that’s done an orienteering course The old Mercedes-AMG GLA 45 was a hard car to place. Take an A-Class hatch, add ride height and some plastic cladding to make a regular GLA, then replace them with side skirts and lowered suspension to get an AMG version. The confusing result had a less commanding driving position than the normal GLA, and a higher centre of gravity than the A45. It was fast and grippy like the A45 hatch but more practical and better riding. That wasn’t enough to overcome its polarising looks and £50k price, though. The latest GLA suffers from less of a styling identity crisis – to look at it’s now a proper SUV, not a hatchback that’s…

PORSCHE 718 CAYMAN GTS 4.0 Your roots are showing It’s good to be back. Twist the vaguely car-shaped key in the Cayman’s ignition and not four but six cylinders at the small of your back bark and settle into a reassuringly rattly idle. At low revs some of the all-time great Porsches sound like a cutlery drawer being emptied into a distant washing machine, and the GTS continues that theme. It’s not noisy or unpleasant but it is mechanical, gritty. It bodes well for what’s to come. A quick recap: until this car came along, the only current-generation Porsche Cayman you could buy with a flat-six rather than a turbo’d flat-four was the £75k 718 GT4. To both justify the investment in creating the GT4’s 4.0-litre engine and un-wring the…

Matty Graham How gaudy, I thought. Then I drove it around for a while and decided it was perfect I hate falling in love with expensive cars. Because everyone says, ‘Well, of course you love the Ferrari F8 Tributo, it’s £200,000!’ It’s much more interesting when you say, ‘Keep your Tributo! I choose the Honda Jazz!’ It suggests you’re really knowledgable and discerning, like you really know what you’re talking about. I’ve fallen in love with my £106,000 G-Wagen. Okay, I’m shallow. I didn’t mean to love it so much - the first week it arrived, I thought, ‘Eugh, how gaudy and pumped-up and over the top. This is a car for bullies and extroverts and Premier League football players who just want to flaunt their obscene wealth.’ Then I…

Matty Graham I’m afraid I’ve failed you already. Back in Month 1 I promised I’d use the Mini as my main car as much as possible. But this month I needed to do a 120-mile journey to arrive somewhere early to pick up a car I can’t tell you about yet for a photo shoot appearing in a future issue. I knew the Mini would need charging en route, which would have meant leaving even earlier and being beholden to the reliability of public motorway chargers. So I caved, and swapped with a colleague for another new car I can’t tell you about yet, with pistons and a petrol tank. When I have done long journeys in the Mini, it’s been a tolerable motorway companion but not an ideal one.…

Alex Tapley The Grandland is continuing to excel in a motoring life that consists almost entirely of dull commuting and local runabouting. So much of my modest current mileage can be done using battery power, rather than petrol, that I’m regularly seeing upwards of 150mpg on the trip computer. So the plug-in bit of this test is going well, and for anybody thinking they might dwell in the halfway house between internal combustion and full electric, then slippers on and settle in for a very rewarding life with a Grandland. But if you’re thinking of choosing a Grandland for its other headline-grabber, the 296bhp and rapid 0-62mph time - well, I’d not get quite so excited if I were you. Undeniably, in Sport mode with what hairy-chested types - when…

Like the cast of Grange Hill with their blanket negativity about narcotics, I just say no to accidents. Like Hall and Oates, I can’t go for that. But I’m not at all convinced that the way to stay safe is to have your car try to keep you in the middle of your lane. So I was intrigued to find, while prodding around the Clio’s touchscreen menus, that you can adjust the lane departure assistance system in nine steps. Nine sounds like overkill, but it’s something you’d set up just once, and leave forever. There are three time/distance settings - Early, Standard and Late - that let you decide how close to the edge of the lane you are before you’re warned. And there are three settings for the vibration…

BEST OF THE BEST From 85p Since 1999, Best of the Best has been providing petrolheads with the opportunity to win the car of their dreams. There are more than 180 cars to choose from - including some of the latest supercars and SUVs - with tickets starting from just 85p. There is a guaranteed weekly winner - and more than 500 lucky people have already won. Play now for the chance to be the next winner! www.botb.com THRUXTON DRIVING EXPERIENCES Prices vary Driving Experiences are back underway at Thruxton Motorsport Centre after the easing of lockdown. You can get on track in a range of supercars, sports cars and racing cars on the UK’s fastest race circuit. Also available at the Hampshire venue are Skid Pan Driving Experiences, 4x4…

From the darkness, a ray of light. The Ariya - an electric crossover majoring on intelligent technology and all-wheel-drive dynamic prowess - is the figurehead of Nissan’s plan to emerge from the gloom of financial losses, shrinking sales, and plant closures in Spain and Indonesia. ‘The Ariya opens a new chapter in our history, starting a journey of transformation in our business, product and culture,’ vowed company chairman Makoto Uchida as he succeed. Global sales slumped by 10 per cent in the last financial year, as the firm slipped to a Y40bn (£300m) operating loss. The years of ferocious expansion under CEO Carlos Ghosn came to a dramatic halt following his 2018 arrest for alleged financial misconduct. The Ariya breaks new ground for Nissan in EV performance, connectivity, cabin ambience…

Illustration: Avarvarii 1 GOING OFF-PISTE VW’s ID range - all mapped out from 1 to 7 and on sale by 2025 - are pragmatic alternatives to fossil-fuel models. After that, VW hopes to offer up to four emotional niche e-products including this ID Ruggedzz. This is a proper SUV, kind of an electric Defender for the not quite so wealthy. 2 FROM THE FLAMES… VW’s cutesy ID Buggy is dead. Wolfsburg intended to contract low- volume production to e.Go Mobile in Aachen, until the small EV mobility specialist recently filed for insolvency. But expect the Ruggedzz to take design inspiration from the Buggy, including its chunky bumper arrangement, high ground clearance and off-road tyres. 3 THE BOSS’S BRAINCHILD All-electric and allwheel drive, it started life four years ago as RUV,…

If you’re picking a partner company, choose a huge, successful one. It sounds obvious, but the digital landscape is littered with the carcasses of start-ups trying to beat the likes of Facebook, Amazon and Google at their own game. So you can see why fledgling automotive brand Polestar looked to a Silicon Valley behemoth when it was designing its new infotainment system. Where better to start than knocking on Google’s door? The new Polestar 2, the Tesla Model 3 rival that’s shipping in right-hand drive right now, is the first production car to premiere the new Android-powered operating system, which controls all the car’s infotainment. Free for three years, it’s a neat way of making a break with parent Volvo’s legacy OS, which has become a familiar sight ever since…

Morgan Plus 4, Land Rover Defender - septuagenarian British icons the pair of them, both previously based on ladder chassis that turned speedos into Richter scales, and both thoroughly reinvented with aluminium chassis, independent suspension and an inflation-busting price increase (up from £48k to £62,995 for the Mog). The difference is you can barely tell the Morgan’s 97 per cent new. Look closely and there’s more curvature in the Morgan’s vented bonnet and there’s another 20mm in the wheelbase, among other visible changes. But even parked side-by-side it’s like looking for tiny quirks to differentiate identical twins. To help, the new one’s a Plus Four, not 4. Hidden from view is the stronger, more space-efficient CX-generation bonded aluminium chassis, first seen on the larger Plus Six last year, replacing the…

If you could click your fingers and have Mazda release any of the cars on its drawing boards, what would it be? If you could get any car with Mazda’s keen dynamics, effortless elegance and often unconventional powertrains - what’s your pick? Maybe a six-cylinder MX-5 with proper suspension, or a production version of the knockout RX-Vision concept. But a humble battery-electric crossover with limited range? That might not be anywhere near the top. But hey, if 2020’s taught us anything it’s that you can’t always get what you want, even when all you want is a week on a beach or a hug from your mum. And so the new Mazda isn’t a phallic-bonneted road racer with a screaming motor using Toblerone segments for pistons, but a curious, and…

Oh yes. On the road, the 2020 Defender does everything the previous vintage refused to even try to do. Like run straight and true and smooth, irrespective of surface. Like steer without random surprises. Like accept a stab at the brake pedal as an order, rather than a polite request to be dealt with in good time. Like relishing towns, motorways and country lanes just as much as it enjoys crossing a mountain range. And all without deafening the occupants above 50mph. The latest Land Rover is a dynamic revelation. It rides at least as smoothly over most surfaces as today’s key rivals, the Mercedes G-Class and Jeep Wrangler. The brakes are reassuringly strong. Directional stability is no longer a theoretical target but an accomplished mission. Without mastering those absolute…

Why is it here? A storied Merc that doesn’t have any awkward Nazi-related skeletons in its closet? Hurrah! Except the G-Class has something else in its origin story that Mercedes would rather not go on about. It originally came into being, at least in part, because the Shah of Iran - a shareholder - wanted a tough army truck. That eventually emerged as 1979’s original G, just in time for the Shah to be deposed and the order cancelled. Over the last 40 years it’s proven itself on safari and in desert races, sprouted an official Mercedes three-axle version, the G63 6x6, been a Popemobile, had the Maybach treatment and gone wild in 2004 with the 470bhp G55 V8. Any clever stuff? Always a bigger deal in Germany than elsewhere,…

Supercar tests are always memorable, but a few seconds of this Ferrari F8 Spider and McLaren 720S Spider showdown stick so vividly in my memory it’s like rewinding a video. Editor Ben Miller’s ahead in the McLaren, roofs are lowered to let warm evening air swirl in and, after a long run uphill, Ben brakes for a left-hand hairpin. The 720’s twin eyebrow-like rear lights glow red and its active rear spoiler rises gracefully like a Samurai war fan. There’s a rifle-crack of a downshift and the McLaren’s V8 briefly growls over the Ferrari’s, the Italian car still running in a higher gear. I brake and pop in a downshift, momentarily raising the Ferrari V8’s volume above that of the McLaren. We rush around the corner. Climbing back on the…

Spot who’s missing from this list of the founding fathers of the supercar: Lamborghini, Porsche, Ferrari, De Tomaso, even Ford. And spot the manufacturer conspicuously absent from this list of breathtakingly good-looking cars of the same period: most of the above, plus Jaguar, Citroën, Maserati, Aston Martin… But, in both cases, no Mercedes. Yet it could all have been so different if Stuttgart had gone ahead with the astonishing car you see here, the C111. Officially it was always a experimental car; a rolling test bed for new materials, new shapes and new components. But you don’t need to peer too closely between the lines to see the possibilities the C111 presented, namely the possibility to recapture the spirit of the gullwing-doored SL of the ’50s with a powerful, clever…

Alex Tapley Ford Focus ST Month 1 The story so far The ST arrives like a bolt of orange energy, just as summer begins+ Sleeper looks, sharper handling- Orange Fury is a bit much; still not an RS Logbook Price £32,510 (£34,460 as tested) Performance 2261cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 276bhp, 5.7sec 0-62mph, 155mph Efficiency 35.8mpg (official), 30.5mpg (tested), 179g/km CO2 Energy cost 15.6p per mile Miles this month 268 Total miles 346 News of the Focus RS’s demise hit hot-hatch enthusiasts like myself pretty hard. For the last few years, I’ve enjoyed jumping in and out of anti-social weapons like the Honda Civic Type R, Renault Megane RS and Hyundai i30 N - and the Focus RS might’ve been the most brutal of the lot. Like the Type R and now…

Body, ‘performance,. handling, ride and boot capacity aside, there’s little to choose between the two Trapped temporarily into a daily choice of two T-Rocs, the missus and I are entirely in accord - especially since I unearthed a glasses repair kit disgorged years ago by a pointlessly posh Christmas cracker, and, therein, a screw minuscule enough to secure the errant lens in her shades. I take the one powered by a T-Rex with a wasp under its tail, and she takes the one with a demountable trampoline roof and 114bhp. Because, lid off, shades on, Wrigley’s in, Radio 1 on, it matters not a jot to her either that it has a tendency towards the shudderbysmal, or that - in torque delivery terms - it couldn’t pull a new age…

I’ve been interviewing Gordon Murray for 15 years now, and never once managed to arrive at his gaff in something he’d approve of. The worst was my lardy, secondhand, W12-engined first-generation Bentley Continental GT, which had to be parked around the corner lest he cancel our appointment. The Audi SQ8 is definitely not a Gordon Murray kind of car. I didn’t actually park it out of sight, but neither did I feel comfortable taking the space next to the Light Lord’s svelte blue Alpine A110. I was at his new factory at Dunsfold for a preview of the T.50: not a bad way to emerge from four months of trying to be a motoring journalist without seeing or driving anything new. It was the first trip in a long time…

GRIPS AS HARD AS IT GOES Adjustable aero, complete with guillotine rear wing and nearly flat underfloor, increases downforce versus a GT R Pro by a claimed 300 per cent at 156mph. ‘You feel it in the precision of the car in high-speed corners,’ says departing AMG boss Tobias Moers. New valves for the continuously variable dampers independently control compression and rebound, while Sport Plus mode adapts to track surfaces. Michelin Cup 2 R tyres have hard or soft compounds. NO LIGHTWEIGHT Carbonfibre bonnet, wings, tailgate and roof, reduced sound deadening, thinner glass front and rear- AMG has put in the hard yards when it comes to reducing weight. But wider tyres, a wild rear wing and carbon shear plates to increase body stiffness by 15 per cent overall (up…

Getty Images ‘The only thing that matters is the stopwatch. Age means nothing as long you’re fast enough’Fernando Alonso Wait, what? Why is this happening? Because, above all else, Fernando Alonso misses racing in Formula 1. In the two years since he retired from F1, he’s raced pretty much anything - LMP1, karts, Dakar, simulators - and he’s loved it. Rarely have I seen a bigger smile on his face than at the FIA prize-giving ceremony last December, when he was preparing for his first Dakar. But F1 is where Alonso’s heart is at. He’s a two-time world champion and he fancies his chances when F1’s new rules are introduced in 2022. Few drivers are more adaptable than Alonso, which means he’ll learn the new ’22 car faster than most.…

Mitsubishi is pulling out of Europe, having frozen the introduction of new models here. In so doing, it’s pulled the rug out from under the Colt Car Company, the brand’s UK importer which must now seek new, emerging brands to work with. Japan’s 1m-sell- ing global minnow now plans to focus on Asia, with a rationalised range of utility vehicles and a tiny electric kei car co-developed with Nissan. Young readers will shrug their shoulders, but before the brand went bland, Mitsubishi gave us these stellar moments in its 46 years here. EVO: RALLYING ON THE RING ROAD The Lancer Evolution series took the brand to new levels of searing performance and motorsport kudos. Mitsubishi made 10 generations in just 15 years. All employed the same turbocharged 2.0-litre/ all-wheel drive…

AMG’s eight is a brawny, raucous cad of a motor Moment of clarity number one: if you were asked to create a luxury SUV that drove with the alacrity the Aston Martin name demands, you might seek to pull together a team and a parts toolkit not dissimilar to those behind this car, the most important Aston in the marque’s history. The pandemic torpedoed Aston’s original DBX launch plans (set for the perfect light and wide open spaces of California), leaving ever so slightly less exotic Silverstone to host our first meeting with the car in finished, production-ready guise. Aston has an engineering centre on the Stowe circuit, nestled within the flat-out curves of the Grand Prix track, and I get a guided tour with chief vehicle attribute engineer Matt…

The Cayenne Turbo is a lot faster. But the GTS offers a greater sense of connection The GTS was arguably the best-balanced 991-generation 911. The first-gen Cayenne GTS was an even sharper piece of kit than the Mki Turbo. Following in their footsteps now is the third-generation Cayenne GTS. With its 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 and 454bhp, it sits between the V6-powered S and the majestic (but £101k) 542bhp Turbo while costing a whopping £16k more than the S. Fast and musical, the new V8 – the previous GTS used a V6 – is not without its vices, namely that lofty windscreen sticker and fuel consumption that’s 15 per cent thirstier than before. During our drive, we’ll average 11.4mpg, which says as much about how rewarding it is to drive as…

Originally designed as a safer alternative to the Cabriolet, the first 911 Targa featured a manually removable roof and a roll-hoop to protect occupants in the event of a whoopsie. It was cutting-edge for 1965 and provided real benefits over a traditional open-top. Now Cabriolets are much safer but the Targa lives on, its iconic roll-hoop is now a skeuomorphic flourish, there in part for stiffness – but mainly for looks. Still, who’s complaining when the car looks fabulous open or closed, the roof can disappear in 19 seconds, and the engineering required to make it happen is impressive every single time you press it into service? Like the standard 911 4S (four-wheel drive; more power than non-S derivatives), the Targa 4S’s twin-turbo flat-six produces 444bhp, transferred to the rubber…

 Why is it here? The car that created the company in 1948 ended up as the odd man out by the time its run ended in 2016. If the old Defender (the name used from 1990) was still true to the frontier spirit of the Series I, II and III that preceded it, it had been left behind by the rivals it inspired - and by the rest of the Land Rover line-up. With the 2020 Defender, Land Rover puts that right, taking the 1948 car as inspiration but creating a thoroughly modern car in its image. Any clever stuff? Out goes the body-on-frame chassis with its crude suspension, in comes a version of the D7 aluminium monocoque also found in the Range Rover. There’s fully independent suspension, with air…

Within the next 36 months, Land Rover plans to reveal replacements for the Range Rover (2021) and the Range Rover Sport (2022), as well as a brand-new pure electric crossover, an on/off project dubbed Road Rover (2022), which has been simmering inside the marque’s R&D department for over a decade. At the centre of Land Rover’s design facility, in a small but bright cuckoo’s nest, you’ll find chief creative officer Gerry McGovern, whose signature features on the recently unveiled 50th anniversary special edition Range Rovers. Like only a handful of top guns in the car-design business - Audi’s Marc Lichte, Aston’s Marek Reichman and Gorden Wagener of Mercedes- Benz - Land Rover’s chief designer enjoys the trust and support of his board. Until September that board will be led by…

And we’re back. My first significant photo shoot after months of - at most - low-key local work was quite a way to get back into the swing of things. Long, sweaty, intense, it was one of those days we used to do all the time - and however much we used to complain about them, they’re an utterly fundamental part of the business of putting CAR together every month. And it was a chance for the Superb to show what it could do, and then some. The mission was to head down to Somerset to meet up with Ben Barry and photograph him testing the Ariel Nomad R in scorching heat on some great roads in and around Exmoor. Doesn’t sound too terrible, does it? But bear in mind…

Much has changed since the innocent days of February; almost everything has changed, in fact. And one tiny change has been the way in which the test cars we book find their way into our expert, if slightly clammy, hands. Previously, we sat back and awaited a call from reception to say the car had arrived, either on a truck or through the kind assistance of a delivery driver. How spoiled we were. For myriad reasons, not all of them interesting, we now tend to go and collect test cars from press offices. And this creates some interesting comparisons, in that we’re now inadvertently testing two cars back-to-back, on the same day and probably on the same route; the one you drove down to swap, and the unfathomably clean test…

Ever since I spec’d our 508 SW in posh GT trim, complete with massage seats and not one but two interior fragrances, I’ve wondered whether any of it was worth the extra outlay. Seven months in - and about six months since I last dabbled with Peugeot perfumes and a pummel in the back - that’s an easy answer. But given the choice again, what else would I have done differently? The engine would still be the sole petrol available (plug-in hybrid aside), a punchy but quiet turbocharged 1.6 four that gets closer to its WLTP figure with each passing mile. But if we’re to forgo the top-of-the-line GT (losing the fancy seats and fragrances, adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist, a Focal hi-fi, and adaptive dampers I never…

Matty Graham ‘I don’t know how you’d crash it, because you can tell exactly what it’s doing all the time’ AN UNPREDICTABLE CV I choose cars for how they look and how they drive rather than if they’re reliable. I had a Renault Avantime for a couple of years, I’ve had TVRs, a Peugeot 205 GTi and a Fiat Coupe, which I loved - and then it started to fall apart. I had a Citroën Cactus for a year and was desperate to get out of that. I wanted to get a sports car but I wanted it to be my only car, which was optimistic. It was a BMW M2 or a Lotus Evora. The M2’s ride was rock solid. It’s a much better car in many ways, but…