Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2022 i CAR UK

Illustration: Avarvarii Factfile POWERTRAIN 105kWh battery (est), rear-wheel drive, 500-mile range (est) CHASSIS Aluminium monocoque DUE 2024 1 A NEW DIRECTION Alfa Romeo’s five-year plan under new boss Jean-Philippe Imparato is to take advantage of current trends by increasing its SUV offering while also whipping the retailer network into shape. Imparato says Alfa – now part of the giant Stellantis group – is currently profitable, but adds: ‘If you don’t make money, you’re dead.’ 2 HELP FROM STELLANTIS While the STLA Medium platform is exclusive to Alfa and DS, the next Giulia could use STLA Large instead, allowing for battery sizes between 101kWh and 118kWh and e-motor outputs as wild as 443bhp per axle, or range in the region of 500 miles per charge. 3 A FOUR-LEAF E-CLOVER? Imparato says…

Buoyed by the hugely positive response to the Ioniq 5 and EV6, Korean partner brands Hyundai and Kia are going off in a wild new direction for their next electric cars. While the Hyundai Seven (in green) and Kia EV9 (in blue) concepts are in very on-trend SUV shapes, they introduce some off-the-wall ideas and drop some heavy hints about what an Ioniq 7 and EV9 SUV will look like. How off-the-wall are we talking? Well, Kia’s imagining some kind of surfer’s paradise with the Concept EV9; there are pop-out roof racks and a solar panel in the bonnet to top up the battery. Hyundai, meanwhile, seems to have become a little germaphobic in the pandemic, installing the Seven Concept with UV lighting to sterilise the interior while you’re not…

THE WORLD’S BEST WRITERS IN THE NEW CARS THAT MATTER NEW CAR MEETS REAL WORLD It’s the acceleration that stays with you – enough to make a Bugatti Chiron blanch This story isn’t only about nearly crashing a hypercar worth two million pounds. I won’t dwell on turning hard left when I was planning to turn hard right, or the grass and the wall and begging for it to stop. Because this is a story about much more than that. It’s about the Pininfarina Battista. Limited to 150 units, priced €1.98m plus taxes, handbuilt in Cambiano, Italy, it’s the first car from legendary Italian design house Pininfarina, despite the company designing for the likes of Ferrari and Lancia over a 90-year timespan. And it’s about the challenges of engineering an…

Lap three is the first of two hot laps. The Carmen corners without rolling excessively or yawing, and it brakes phenomenally late My turn. Tension mounts, in the car and in the pitlane. Next to me is the racer and test driver Paolo Souza. ‘Bear in mind ESP is not operational,’ is his disconcerting opening gambit. ‘The throttle mapping and brake regeneration algorithm are also still works in progress.’ Never mind. We’re ready to go, in the only running version of the Hispano Suiza Carmen. It’s the first new car to bear the Hispano Suiza name since 1946. The plan is to build 19 of the regular Carmen, an electric two-seat grand tourer making 1005bhp and priced at €1.5m plus taxes, and four of the more track-friendly Carmen Boulogne, which…

Or save yourself £60k Georg Kacher’s November review of the 911 Carrera GTS damns the car with faint praise, or (looked at another way) spells out how little benefit you get by going for the GTS rather than one of the many less expensive variants. He concludes that the Carrera S is probably the pick of the current line-up. Fair enough – I’ve not driven a fraction of the number of 911s that Georg has, but I’ve driven enough to believe that’s entirely true and fair. He speaks of ‘911-ness’, but isn’t it true that the dynamic excellence we all crave is present in every Porsche, not just 911s? In which case, Porsche-ness starts at £45k: £40k less than the base 911, and more than £60k less than the 911…

If you were to wish for a perfect setting, this would do the job. Golden sunlight bathes a velvet-smooth road that alternately coils into stacked, uphill hairpins and unfurls into fast, perfectly sighted downhill sweepers. The engine is breathing chilly air, the better for power, but otherwise the weather is as gorgeous as the scenery: serrated mountain tops needle the horizon like the painted studio backdrop from a spaghetti western made real. And there’s not a soul in sight. We apparently have the hills above Barcelona entirely to ourselves. That’s one wish granted, then. Now for a few more. We’re driving the successor to the Toyota GT86. For every fun mile in that 2+2 sports car there was frustration and a wish list of ‘if only’ caveats: if only it…

Illustrations: Avarvarii When is an SUV not an SUV? When Ferrari says it’s not. Even if it is. Maranello’s entry into the highly lucrative crossover market will be a familyfriendly four-door that’s about as low-slung as an SUV can be. Codenamed F175, the Purosangue will arrive first with an 800bhp V12, with electric versions to follow as the brand pushes its broad electrification plans from 2022 onwards. That much is a given, but you can expect Ferrari engineers to bend the laws of physics when it comes to the Purosangue’s handling – just as they do with the supercars. NEED TO KNOW | What is it? Ferrari’s seat on the SUV bandwagon | Tech? Shrieking V12 to start, hybrid then electric versions to follow | Aimed at? Racing drivers with…

Okay, so it doesn’t look all that new. But get up close to the fifth-gen Range Rover and, with its breathtaking sculptural metalwork and dazzling minimalism, there’s no mistaking it for its predecessor. We’re yet to drive it but the promise is a car night-and-day better to drive, too. A new structure, longer wheelbase and rear-wheel steering mean actual agility may feature this time around, together with the Range Rover’s trademark opulence. NEED TO KNOW | What is it? An all-new generation of the definitive luxury SUV | Tech? Rear-wheel steering, all-new monocoque, PHEV power | Aimed at? Affluent urbanites and landowners alike | When can I have one? 2022…

Torsten Müller-Ötvös In charge at Goodwood since 2010; launched the Cullinan Torsten Müller-Ötvös owns the electric transition. Look the Rolls-Royce chief executive in the eye to catch even a hint of doubt and you’ll fail. He means it. He wants it. Rolls-Royce is going electric by the end of the decade not because there’s a BMW group directive or because Boris Johnson has set a timetable, but because it’s the right thing to do. And because he thinks Henry Royce and Charles Rolls would have wanted it. Now, 120 years on, he can make it happen. By 2030, Rolls-Royce will no longer be making combustion-engined cars. The first of the new all-electric breed will be the Spectre, a two-door fastback previewed by a camouflaged car revealed in September. A small…

Lotus is alive. You can feel it. On a perfect autumn morning Hethel is buzzing: camouflaged Emira prototypes come and go at the gatehouse; a TV crew like an army in black woolly hats crawls all over the perfect little form of Radford’s visiting Type 62; Radford’s Jenson Button chats with attributes director Gavan Kershaw; and MD Matt Windle flits around the site’s slick buildings, bright-eyed both at what Lotus has achieved in 2021 and all that 2022 will bring. For Lotus, 2022 starts with Emira, its love letter to the kind of machines to which it owes its existence. Firstly the second engine option will go live for ordering, a 355bhp AMG turbo four-cylinder driving via a twin-clutch gearbox. Then, in early spring, manufacturing will begin (in a redeveloped…

IN THE BEGINNING It’s rare enough to get the job of creating an all-new car. Rarer still to be building the first product of a new automotive brand. And the Grenadier is completely nonelectrified. Much of the work has also been done during the Covid-19 pandemic… This is a unique combination of challenges – challenges that have been hugely motivating for the engineering team led by Oliver Schlipf. FROM NOTHING… ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be involved with such a project, starting from scratch,’ says Schlipf, ‘developing something completely new, that is a very cool product.’ The Grenadier was conceived by billionaire industrialist Jim Ratcliffe with some mates in a pub and announced to the world in 2017. In line with his vision, the first car from Ineos Automotive has…

THE DEFINITIVE VERDICT This is a stretch of road I’ve driven countless times before, in hundreds of different cars. Just down the road from CAR HQ, an off-camber, right-angled right-hander transitions into a curling-back-on-itself descending left-hand spiral. (My imaginary pace notes read ‘90 right over crest, don’t cut, into three left.’ Depending on the time of day, I might add ‘Two left into Starbucks’ further up the road.) Earlier this morning in CAR’s Hyundai i20N long-term test car I couldn’t help letting out an involuntary chuckle of glee, flicking the gearlever through the gate almost as fast as my hand could move as the burly little 1.6-litre engine’s revs blipped upwards with every downshift (I hadn’t had enough caffeine yet and decided to leave the automatic rev-matching mode on). Now…

HELLO JAGUAR F-PACE AND DACIA SANDERO + GOODBYE CITROËN C4 + YOU DRIVE OUR BMW M4 Jordan Butters My idea of how much a car ought to cost seems to be stuck back in the early noughties. In my head, a midspec Ford Focus 1.6 is still about 14 grand, and I issue an involuntary inward ‘HOW MUCH!?’ every time I read the list price of a newly launched model. But the Jaguar F-Pace always seemed like acceptable value, even to me. You can have this big, unquestionably premium SUV for a touch over 40 grand, though few will order one in bum-basic spec, or part with cash for one. Helped by decent residuals and despite a generous spec, the car we’re testing here can be yours on a PCP…

Jordan Butters You’ll have read about our 2021 Sports Car Giant Test a couple of months before seeing these words, during which time the Kuga has been busy dining out on the time it rubbed shoulders with another red plug-in hybrid. The SF90 is Ferrari’s first production plug-in hybrid, and combines a 769bhp turbocharged V8 with a pair of electric motors on the front axle, and a third acting on the rear. Cumulatively, the electric motors produce 217bhp, which is fairly close to the 222bhp output of the entire electric-plus-combustion combo in the Kuga, and the Ferrari’s 9.3sec zero-emissions 0-62mph time is only a couple of tenths worse than Ford says the crossover will do, both powertrain guns blazing. Unsurprisingly, there’s no Assetto Fiorano-style track pack available for the Kuga,…

Alex Tapley I wanted something that was comfortable and practical, but less intense than my Focus ST – and one more suited to motorway driving than the aggressive, firm Ford. In that sense, the Citroën C4 was the perfect car, and at the perfect time, too. Lately I’ve been driving more than I used to before the first Covid lockdown. Domestic events have replaced international ones, and it’s meant zig-zagging across the UK – rather than to the airport – has become my norm. Whether it’s the Peak District, the Cotswolds or Goodwood, UK events have meant serious miles – and usually catching rush-hour traffic on the way back. The C4, then, with its auto ’box, adaptive cruise control and soft, cosseting ride, has taken the sting and fatigue out…

Well that was exciting, and not in a particularly good way. My photographic work regularly takes me across from Lincolnshire to Oxfordshire and back, and it’s rarely an eventful trip. One of those recent return journeys started off as a beautiful late-summer evening, but all of a sudden the heavens opened and the road turned into something much more akin to a river. This is England, so of course we get a lot of rain, but the intensity of the downpour was something else. As the Qashqai crossed what must have been a particularly deep stretch of standing water, for what felt like an eternity but must have been less than a second the tyres and the road surface were unconnected. However long it was, it was just long enough…

No. 1 The CAR Hall of Fame immortalises the people, the ideas and the cars that changed – or are changing – the game. Submit your nominees to ben.miller@bauermedia.co.uk If there’s beauty in balance then Flavio Manzoni’s is a beautiful mind. It’s there that potential conflict is artfully re-purposed into the raw material and inspiration for spectacular automotive sculpture. Form and function, the old and the new, performance and beauty – all happily co-exist within the formidable creative intellect of Ferrari’s chief design officer. Like Giorgetto Giugiaro before him, Manzoni is a technically-literate artist, not a stylist. Both studied architecture, and the young Flavio dreamed of meeting his hero on Sardinia, where Manzoni lived and Giugiaro had a holiday home. Thanks to his schooling in architecture and industrial design, Manzoni doesn’t…

Car makers that didn’t sign up say that what works in Europe might not apply globally Punchy words, direct from BMW boss Oliver Zipse as he gave his keynote speech at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, where one of the biggest aims was to find a way to push forward the transition to zero-emissions vehicles. Although the broad aim is shared, most car makers have in recent years had their own plans for electrification, with different ideas about how much of the range should be hybrid or full electric by what date. VW, for example is aiming for ‘more than’ 70 per cent of all its cars sold in Europe to be EVs by 2030. Some hoped for a unified response, bringing governments, automotive manufacturers and even business fleets…

It might be best known for a series of coachbuilt cars in Britain in the ’50s and ’60s, but the reborn Radford is looking to the future in its new Anglo-American incarnation. Revived by a like-minded group of founders including former Formula 1 champion Jenson Button and TV presenter Ant Anstead, the first car from today’s Radford is the awesome 600bhp Type 62-2. Don’t be fooled by the classic looks, elegant as they are. The new operation is not just another niche fan project clutching onto the final straws of internal combustion. It’s teamed up with some serious collaborators, and CEO Dan Burge tells us there are at least four very different cars in the pipeline, some of them electric. NOT SO BABY STEPS Radford’s newest chapter begins with the…

AGAINST THE CLOCK The project started in 2020 and on 2 January will result in three RS Q e-Trons quietly charging off the start line of the 2022 Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia. The deal with the organisers is for Audi Sport to compete in the event for three years, which will help the event’s aim of going greener as the decade progresses, and with Audi’s aim of testing its electrified tech in extreme conditions, to benefit the e-Tron road cars. ELECTRIFIED, NOT ELECTRIC The RS Q e-Tron is not a pure EV but a range-extender, built in part from bits previously employed by Audi Sport in Formula E (the motor-generator units), DTM (the TFSI petrol engine that charges the batteries) and Le Mans (the carbonfibre-reinforced plastic cells for the…

Jordan Butters If the merit in any bit of performance engineering is increased driver confidence then M division’s four-wheel-drive system has nothing left to prove. It debuted in the M5, and all the hand-wringing about an M car with a driven front axle lasted only until we drove it. Now, for the first time, that system graces the M3/M4, and the first cars thus equipped have arrived in the UK with suspiciously good timing. Weekday morning, early, and autumn’s doing its thing, with a Teflon coating of fallen leaves like a red and orange Pollock on cold, grey and grip-free tarmac. Up ahead, a colleague in a rear-drive M4 is going well. It’s impressive just how well behaved this generation M4 is on its Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S rubber.…

I applaud your recent coverage of Genesis, the latest attempt by an established mainstream car maker (in this case Hyundia-Kia) to go upmarket. You seem to have approached these (to my eyes) unremarkable-looking saloons and crossovers with an admirably open mind. And then, in every case, decided that they’re nothing special. Have Hyundai-Kia not been paying close attention to what’s going on with DS and Cupra? It would seem not. The same deluded belief that some tricksy bits of cabin decoration and fancy fabrics somehow makes a car upmarket. To be followed, I suspect, by low used prices. You can’t just declare yourself to be premium and expect the world to go along with it. If what these companies want is a piece of the Mercedes/ BMW/Audi action, they’re going…

22 PERFECTION 2 Honda’s Civic Type R only just lost its hot-hatch crown, to Toyota’s GR Yaris. The new Civic really wants it back Illustration: Avarvarii LESS UGLY The current Civic Type R is one of the finest driving machines on sale, but many walk straight past it because of its challenging looks. Tragic. The 11th-gen Civic remains a five-door but moves closer to a four-door coupe in style, with smoother, less offensive bodywork. The Type R gets wheelarch extensions to cover its increased track widths. NOT A HYBRID The new Civic will only be offered as a hybrid – part of Honda’s push to electrify all its European models by the end of 2022. It packs Honda’s e:HEV hybrid set-up – but it’s understood the Type R will dodge…

Illustrations: Avarvarii Yes, the Taycan is a stellar first effort, but this could well be the car that will do more than any other to convert the Porsche masses to electric power. Stuttgart’s battery-electric Macan is poised to take on the likes of the Tesla Model Y by bringing all of that know-how from Porsche’s pioneering electric GT, as well as a clever and flexible platform developed with Audi, into one neat, trendy and sharp-looking package. Like the Taycan, expect different power outputs to use Porsche’s established naming conventions (yes, that includes a ‘Turbo’) and it’ll sit alongside ones with engines. NEED TO KNOW | What is it? Pure electric version of Porsche’s desirable SUV | Tech? 800V platform, Taycan engineering knowledge | Aimed at? Eco-conscious, affluent suburbanites | When…

Anyone naively thinking the recent 812 Competizione might represent some kind of V12 swansong didn’t have to wait long to be proved wrong. Hot on its heels comes the limited-run Daytona SP3, a tribute to Maranello’s sports car racing glories of the ’60s and its first mid-engined V12 since the hybrid LaFerrari. Offered only to Ferrari’s most loyal clients, the SP3 follows the SP1 and SP2 Monzas as the third Icona model. Confused by the name? Don’t be. That Daytona, the 365 GTB/4, never officially carried the name, and here the word’s evocative of an era rather than any one car. And in a sense this Daytona, the SP3, is a car born of two fathers: engineer Mauro Forghieri, who started at Ferrari in the spring of i960 as an…

Finally, the Microbus returns! VW’s confirmed it’s coming in early 2022, with an MPV version and ID.Cargo van, too. A flat floor means oodles of space inside, with up to eight seats. It uses the same MEB componentry as the ID.3 and ID.4, meaning at least a 204bhp e-motor and opportunities for e-AWD versions. VW’s also hinted at bigger 111kWh batteries than the other IDs, pushing range up to around 300 miles. NEED TO KNOW | What is it? VW’s MPV and van icons reincarnated for the electric age | Tech? Clever MEB platform with flat floor and up to eight seats | Aimed at? Neo-hippie parents | When can I have one? Spring…

Frank van Meel has rejoined BMW’s M division in time to finish what he started. After a brief stint at Rolls-Royce, the engineer has reshuffled his way back to M as it gears up to add a flurry of new variants of the M3 saloon and M4 coupe – cars he signed off in his previous stint. The year ahead will bring starkly contrasting newcomers: the M3 estate – relatively practical, relatively heavy – and the CSL version of the M4, which promises to be neither of the above. The second-generation CSL is designed to be the brawniest and most aggressive iteration of the breed, and will be limited to 1000 units. It’s likely to be much more expensive – perhaps £120,000. It has been stripped of its rear seats…

1. It will look sensational In the spring Lotus will unveil its Cayenne-sized battery-electric SUV, codenamed Type 132. If the all-new but reassuringly traditional Emira is the culmination of everything that has gone before, Type 132 is the embodiment of the firm’s future: electric, global, ambitious. And if, after the likes of the Cullinan and Urus, you’re worried the big Lotus will be a hulking affront to everything light, elegant and Chapman, don’t be. Type 132 will be, we’re promised, the Lotus of SUVs, and that extends to the proportions. Reckon on a cab-forward body with the dramatic forms and surface language of a supercar, sitting low on big wheels. Evija meets SUV via the talented trio of Russell Carr, Peter Horbury and Ben Payne? We’re in. 2. Aero will…

MicHael Leiters The John Lennon to Ferrari design boss Flavio Manzoni’s Paul McCartney Long wedded to V8 and V12 engines, Maranello has a new V6 (with hybrid assistance). We saw it coming, but we weren’t expecting a power output north of 800bhp and a pretty cool mission statement – to be the most fun-to-drive Ferrari yet. Here’s what makes the 296 GTB tick, in the words of the man who created it. SHORT-WHEELBASE SCALPEL Our key aim was to make the 296 fun to drive – longitudinal performance is easy, you have the weight-to-power ratio, but lateral is very difficult. This is why we have shortened the wheelbase and lowered the centre of gravity. We could only achieve this because of the new platform and V6 engine. It feels like…

My father was a 6ft 4in beanpole. My mother isn’t. And guess whose short, fat, hairy legs I inherited? The missus, on the other hand, has legs so long that – after an appropriate period of bunching and lunching – I recall a diary entry in which I wrote: ‘Day 3, and still no sight of the inner thigh...’ So how come she sits closer to the helm than me? This is significant not because it constitutes much of a chore to tackle the Q5’s all-manual seat adjustment (particularly since the back is moved via a turny knob rather than an irritatingly imprecise lever), but because I don’t find the driver’s seat base a comfortable place to be for any length of time. I’ve spent three months cursing it for…

Vauxhall made a big fuss about the addition of digital instruments to its new Mokka. Every version would be fitted with them, along with the central infotainment screen, as part of Vauxhall’s ‘Pure Panel’ cockpit design. For SRi Premium (like mine) and above, the central screen is measured at 10 inches, and the digital instruments clock in at 12 inches. But Vauxhall has to win an award for least inspiring use of digital space. To the Mokka’s credit, the instruments are clear to read and configurable, but they look so utterly bland; when Ford’s Puma has bright blue instruments and colourful graphics, the Mokka’s layout and graphics feel like they were designed in a rush on a Friday afternoon. Use of space in the central screen is poor, too. Vauxhall…

My kids have enjoyed luxuriating in the back of the Flying Spur, but for a brief moment of escapism I removed the child seats and sat in the Bentley on my own for an hour or so of ‘work’. Away from the need to re-enact scenes from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, I let the ‘soft-close’ door purr electronically shut and settled into the quiet serenity. I’m over 6ft tall but had no complaints about legroom here, and I raised the rear blinds, set the seats to lightly scald (aided by a heated fold-down central armrest), buried my head in the fluffy pillow of a headrest, and had a soothing massage. Bliss. Utterly relaxed and in no mood to work up a sweat, I then put our three-year-old…

Illustration: Chris Rathbone Past performance is no guarantee of future results, as the financial-services small-print has it. You don’t need to tell Mike Conway. Just look at his Le Mans 24 Hours results. In his first attempt at the French endurance race, in 2013, he finished third in the LMP2 class, but was excluded because the fuel tank was over-sized. In 2015, his first Le Mans with Toyota, a brilliant sixth in LMP1. Then 2016, second. So surely next year he’d be on the top step. But no: 2017, DNF, clutch problems. Then for the next two years, second. And then for 2020, could it be… drum roll… could it be… ah, third. However, finally, in 2021 Conway won, with co-drivers Kamui Kobayashi and José María López, giving Toyota only…

We love a theme here on the CAR watch page, and for obvious reasons tend to feature new motoring watches, especially when a bunch of new ones arrive at once. This new crop has an even more specific link, all being named after great motoring locations: a beach, an autobahn, and the 1000 miles of public road that makes up the Mille Miglia route. There’s a broad range of price and style here, and they’re all ideal if you want a motoring watch that isn’t tied to one car brand. 01 | Farer Pendine II £535 British brand Farer has named a range of affordable quartz-powered chronographs after the locations of British land-speed record attempts. This Pendine celebrates the stretch of Welsh sand where Malcolm Campbell, among others, set new…

Mercedes’ new MBUX Hyperscreen seems like the physical manifestation of something a scoffing technophobe would say about the growing size of in-car screens: ‘What’s next? A whole dashboard made out of touchscreens?!’ Yes. That. Of course, there is more to it than that. In a world of bigger is better, Mercedes can happily brag about the Hyperscreen’s size: it’s 141cm wide, even if it’s technically three screens under one massive curved glass panel. But it’s not just size – Mercedes highlights some wild technical specifications for this latest interface: eight CPU cores and 24GB of RAM at its disposal is comparable to some high-end home computers, and there are super-fine haptic actuators for tactile responses to your input. Hyperscreen’s chief innovation is a greatly expanded digital ecosystem. In plain English,…

No manual, no convertible. But focusing on what you don’t get is an extreme case of looking a gift horse in the mouth This is the sort of thing you’d be forgiven for thinking BMW didn’t do any more. A great deal of effort has been expended – to good effect – on the iX, i4 and myriad other battery-electric BMWs heading this way. But the new 2-series Coupe is a two-door four-seater with a northsouth engine and – on the base models, at least – rear-wheel drive. This is not the base model but the hot M240i, with a 3.0-litre petrol straight-six. (The range starts with the £35k four-cylinder petrol 220i and diesel 220d; this £45k M-lite model is the hottest 2-series of all for now, until the new…

Goodwood Members’ Meeting: a nuclear-orange McLaren 720S pace car rushes past, a wooffled whir of turbo V8. But all eyes are on the silver bullet coming into view behind it. And all ears on the otherworldly sound it’s making. It’s a high-pitched wail, more like a ’90s F1 car than something designed for the public road. Through its low-lying, bowl-shaped windscreen you get a clear view of the driver – former IndyCar champ Dario Franchitti, sitting in the centre of the car – and his shoulder reaching for another gear (it’s a manual). It looks more than a little like a McLaren F1, only rendered in higher definition, with its graphics pinched, pulled and sharpened a touch. It’s in view for just a moment and then it’s gone, revs shrieking…

Illustrations: Avarvarii It’s not as simple as bunging a fat V8 into a saloon any more. Affalterbach is redefining itself for the electrified age, and starting in a big way with its next hot C-Class. With an AMG E-Performance powertrain under the muscular bodywork, the new C63 is the most complex yet, but will also be the most powerful; output is expected to peak at around 600bhp. With a fair whack of that coming from electric torque, this will be damn quick – even if it won’t sing a thunderous V8 tune. All-wheel drive with a lairy drift mode will keep the smile on your face. NEED TO KNOW | What is it? A hot AMG C-Class sans V8 | Tech? A45 engine paired to e-motors, extreme power, a drift…

Long in the plan but only now set to be unleashed on the world, a new version of Aston Martin’s misunderstood ‘911 rival’ gets the twin-turbo V12 for 2022. Like the fabulous F1 Edition Vantage (pictured), the bigger engine will come bundled with a raft of chassis and bodywork upgrades, including a vast rear wing and uprated cooling package. Likely to be offered only in limited numbers, this promises to be a very special car. NEED TO KNOW | What is it? Aston’s V12 (DBS, DB11 AMR) squeezed into the smaller Vantage’s nose | Tech? Increased cooling, serious chassis | Aimed at? Aston aficionados | When can I have one? This summer…

Remember 2019’s intoxicating Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato concept? It’s about to become a reality. The raised-up, rally-style Huracan, engineered to cope with light off-roading and dusty powerslides, goes into limited production by year’s end. Meanwhile, Lamborghini’s hard at work on the Huracan’s successor, on sale in 2024. Its V10 won’t stick around: a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 takes its place, with plug-in hybrid capability. NEED TO KNOW | What is it? Stratos-style, gravel-ready Huracan | Tech? Recalibrated Haldex AWD system, taller suspension, glorious V10 | Aimed at? Lambo owners fed up with speed bumps | When can I have one? Late 2022…

Illustration: Avavarii BMW’s second-generation M2 ticks so many boxes for BMW fans: a hint of the classic 2002’s simplicity, a straight-six engine, rear-wheel drive... You can see it as a pumped-up version of the new M240i, or a junior M4. Both are very good things. It shares its chassis with the M240i xDrive, which is in essence a downscaled 4-series coupe. The extended wheelbase improves stability compared to the previous 2-series, while 20-inch wheels and M Sport suspension will make a tangible difference to grip and handling. Expect a vocal quad-tipped exhaust, bulging arches, a more ground-hugging stance than the M240i and a generous rear diffuser. The M2 will leave the factory in Mexico with a six-speed manual gearbox as standard but a Steptronic eight-speed auto will once again be…

1985 Porsche 962C Remarkably comfortable; the Mazda 787 I tried several years after was a torture chamber by comparison. Fast and allday easy at nine-tenths. Above that, you had better be on your game. As Le Mans prototypes go, I’m told this is an easy one. Mission R cockpit feels about as roomy, with similar proportions. 1984 Porsche-Fabcar 935 Something like 900bhp at max boost in a 900kg package. I tried it at 0.7 bar; a still-mental 7OObhp. A tube-framed, rear-engined car with wonderfully judged suspension but also at least three seconds of throttle lag. 1967 911 S (Daytona winner) Back when you could win your class at Daytona with a warmed-over road car. Few things are as delightful as an early, short-wheelbase 911 S with a high-revving 2.0-litre up…

Alex Tapley Electric cars either work for you or they don’t, depending on reliable access to recharging facilities ‘Lovely car, that MX-30, but doesn’t it have a ridiculously short range?’ So many kerbside conversations have begun that way since I started driving the Mazda. Yes, its official range is a modest 124 miles, but this solitary statistic doesn’t have to define it as a vehicle. However, for many people it’s range, and range alone, that instantly categorises electric cars: below 175 miles equals bad, above 175 miles equals good. If electricity was as readily available as petrol and diesel, then smaller urban cars like the MX-30, Fiat 500e and Honda E would sell in far greater numbers. Buyers wouldn’t be focusing on their range but rather on the qualities that…

The G80/G82 M3/M4 Competition is, for our ‘money’, the best super-saloon/coupe on sale. From early prototype drives through dogfights with a 911 on sun-dappled Alpine roads to a group test win (ahead of the AMG C63 S, Alfa Giulia QV and Audi RS4 Avant), M’s latest weapon has proved unstoppable. Now it’s time to see what three keen readers think of it. Michael Edwards just sold his previous-gen (F82) M4 and has a Porsche Taycan 4S on order. Simon Grace has owned a string of BMWs and currently drives the definitive all-purpose performance car, Porsche’s 911 Turbo S. And Kyle Ecob’s just pulled into the car park in his E46 M3, making us all go a bit gooey with nostalgia... ‘I span my M4 on Cup tyres just trying to…

Alex Tapley After last month’s burst of euphoria, time to give some doubts and qualifications an airing. The i20N is relatively light, at 1190kg, but it doesn’t feel it because there’s so much heft in the steering. I’d rather have overly heavy steering than overly light but here it feels like unnecessary weight for the sake of a ‘sporty’ feeling, without bringing any extra feel or feedback. It actually makes the i20N feel less eager than it really is. A BMW M engineer once told me they’re obliged to make the M5’s steering heavy because some drivers brace their body with their arms on the wheel when driving quickly, rather than with their left leg against the footrest, and need some force to push against to feel secure. Perhaps those…

Alex Tapley The Dacia Sandero could well be the perfect car for these troubled times. In this winter of discontent, as supermarket supplies dry up, fuel runs out and pandemics rage, where better to retreat than the back-to-basics simplicity of Britain’s cheapest new car? Colleague Anthony ffrench-Constant was surprisingly smitten when he first drove it last spring and now we’ve the chance to put it to the ultimate test: real life during this country’s dreariest months. First things first, we need to explain that this particular Sandero is not the cheapest model. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s the range-topper. Dacia’s just restructured the range, by which we mean it’s raised prices, pared back choice and adjusted specs. And currently there aren’t any available in boggo Essentials spec in the…

AUTOGLYM CAR CARE From £8 to £59.99 Flying Spares are now official stockists of Autoglym car-care products. Established for over 40 years, Autoglym has long been recognised as one of the finest product ranges for cleaning and protecting your car. From Bodywork Shampoo Conditioner, to High Definition Wax, from Leather Cleaner to Perfect Polishing Cloths, Flying Spares now offer a comprehensive selection. www.flyingspares.com SCRATCH SHIELD WASH KIT £32.49 Prevent scratches during car cleaning with a scratch-free wash kit. The Scratch Shield – available on its own for just £7.29, or as part of the kit – sits at the bottom of the bucket and creates a protective barrier from the dirt and debris that drops to the bottom, and stops it recirculating above the shield and being picked up on…