Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2022 i CAR UK

SUV TO BOOST MCLAREN FACTFILE POWERTRAIN Three electric motors, all-wheel drive CHASSIS Hybrid carbonfibre aluminium monocoque DUE 2026 McLaren Automotive’s ban on SUVs is no more as new CEO Michael Leiters launches his turnaround plan. ‘I think McLaren can become more profitable if we think about new segments and car concepts,’ he says. ‘Why shouldn’t [we] offer something for a totally different purpose without negating the brand DNA?’ FIRST SUV, FIRST EV The SUV is set to be the first fully electric McLaren. Leiters doesn’t believe today’s lithium-ion batteries have the energy density to deliver a supercar, but they could be stacked into a family McLaren. With the car four years away, tech spec is far from clear, but McLaren could slaughter another sacred cow: adopting all-wheel drive. LIGHTWEIGHT FOR…

‘I love the car industry but it’s sad that people are scared to enter it.’ Julie David, Peugeot UK’s manag-ing director, is talking about the dread some customers feel when vis-iting a car retailer. But it could equal-ly apply to whether the industry’s macho history could dissuade some women from applying for jobs. With almost three decades of ex-perience, David is currently on a mission to change how it sells cars. She joined Peugeot as MD in January 2021; four months later Stellantis fired its entire European network. ‘Stellantis terminated the network for the right reasons, to be more fle-xible and embrace change,’ says David. ‘I spoke to every one of my investors to explain it, 180 people in the net-work, [saying] “If you’re going to be on board with…

▲ PLUS Roomy interior; quality up to scratch; decent to drive MINUS ▼ Bitesize boot Yes, Smart’s new compact electric SUV real-ly is called the Hashtag One. And yes, it really is an SUV, if a small one. Too much of a stretch for this long-time purveyor of city cars (and roadsters)? Apparently not. When pushed, a compa-ny representative assures us it’s space ef-ficiency and a thirst for urban roads that make a Smart, although the runaway suc-cess of the SUV class and profitability such cars bring are big, dangly carrots too. Besides, the #1 isn’t that big. At 4270mm it’s slightly shorter than a Mini Country-man, a car Smart has benchmarked. Unlike the Mini, the #1 continues Smart’s electrif-ication drive. Regular versions have a single 268bhp electric motor driving…

Letter of the month The passion Interesting and slightly surprising that you chose ‘EVs are superior' as letter of the month in the October edition. I have been reading CAR since the ’70s and always considered it to be a publication for enthusiasts. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a member of the anti-EV brigade. Drives in the Jaguar i-Pace and Porsche Taycan left me mighty impressed. They were both fast and fun to drive and I would have no qualms about owning such ve-hicles for family trips. But as an enthusiast they left me cold. The issue isn’t whether they are better or worse than cars with internal-combustion engines. Without an engine – the heart and soul that largely bestows the ‘character’ that you have so often referred…

It’s amazing what three letters can mean to a community of like-minded people. Everyone knows BMW, and everyone knows what those three letters metaphorically stand for: ultimate driving machine. BMW’s been around for more than a century but it didn’t acquire its current ethos until the early ’60s, when cars like the 1500 and 2002 injected some spice into the everyday car – something Bayerische Motoren Werke has been doing ever since, and one of the main reasons it’s wound up with the silver medal in the CAR 60 countdown. And BMW Motorsport, the performance division, has amplified BMW’s success story as a car maker for the enthusiast tenfold. In an age when M is looking down new avenues to keep its numbers up, it’s cars like the new M2…

GAVIN GREEN I voted Ferrari top. Great cars for me are about so much more than just transport. They’re about design genius, driving appeal, wonderful engineering and crafts-manship. I was looking forward to interviewing Enzo in 1988 but he had to cancel, and died a few months later. JAMES TAYLOR Lotus is a minnow but I voted it second as its achievements in road-car dynamics are giant, and it’s still the fifth most successful team in F1 his-tory. Much of its success is of course bound up in Colin Chapman’s Leonardo-like ingenuity and restless energy. PHIL MCNAMARA My family’s love for Peugeots made it my top French brand, ranked sixth. The original DS was a sensational car and I rated the stan-dalone modern incarna-tion much higher than 60th. I love…

Audi racer Frank Stippler set a new ‘compact class’ Nürbur-gring lap record in August 2021 – his 7min 40.748sec in an RS3 saloon beat the previous record by over four seconds. But there is a caveat: he used P Zero Tro-feo Rs, Pirelli’s dry-optimised answer to the Michelin Cup 2 R. The Rs are optional in other markets, but not in the UK, hence our test car was supplied on P Zero tyres. The stock P Ze-roes worked very well until one developed a bleb in the sidewall, probably after clouting a pot-hole, but the silver lining was an excuse to test the Trofeo R. I had four fitted at Pirelli’s Performance Centre in Burton-on-Trent – aworkshop so ad-vanced that your tread depth is measured by simply driving in. I’d…

Kia EV6 GT-Line S AWD Month 4 The story so far Wins group test, impresses in long-term test, takes on massive road trip + Design; dynamics; charging speed; long-haul chops - Long lead time; shallow boot the only official cargo option Logbook Price £55,195 Performance 77.4kWh battery, 321bhp twin e-motors, 5.2sec 0-62mph, 114mph Efficiency 3.5 miles per kWh (official), 3.2 miles per kWh (tested), 0g/km CO2 Range 300 miles (official), 260 miles (tested) Energy cost 11.8p per mile Miles this month 1615 Total miles 8110 If you’re still concerned about the practicality of an electric vehicle, the following may prove instructive: a 1200-mile trip diagonally across the Brit-ish Isles, from Brighton in the south-east of England to Done-gal on the north-west coast of Ireland, in a Kia EV6 very fully…

In the words of Jack White, we’ve said it once before but it bears repeating. For a mid-en-gined two-seater, the Cayman can accommodate an incredi-ble amount of stuff. There’s a rear boot big enough for a race weekend kit bag and helmet, the deck above the engine (par-tially claimed by the bolted-in cage in our car) for jackets and backpacks, and the frunk that can swallow a suitcase packed for a week away. That’s made possible by the MacPherson strut front suspension, a set-up about which some rivals – Al-pine particularly – are sniffy. But when it works this well and buys you a front boot big enough to stash a body (the Al-pine’s frunk is full of wish-bones), who’s laughing now? BEN MILLER Porsche Cayman GT4 Month 4 The…

IN THE SPOTLIGHT BOSS THOMAS INGENLATH WAXES LYRICAL ABOUT HOW THE 3 APPEALS TO ALL FIVE SENSES Confidence is brimming at Polestar, with boss Thomas Ingenlath setting the tone. The reveal event for the new, pure-electric Polestar 3 SUV feels almost like an Apple product update, or something you’d expect Elon Musk to host with whooping, enthusiastic owners and dolled-up investors rubbing shoulders with bloggers and influencers. Big music set pieces, bold and simple imagery and a Steve Jobs-style ‘oh, one more thing’ vibe to the presentation are all present and correct. The new 3 is a big moment for the Scandi EV outfit, bringing it into the premium electric SUV market that seems impossible to resist right now. Ingenlath takes the stage smiling and waxing lyrical about how the…

Tell us about your first car… ‘The first car I owned was a Peugeot 106 GT. I wanted a 205 GTI but I couldn’t afford one.’ Which achievement makes you most proud? ‘Creating high-performing teams that deliver a result. It could be bringing a car to market, or in a past team delivering a statement site in a European city: you go from the darkest days to euphoria.’ What’s the best thing you’ve done in a car? ‘Rock crawling in Utah was astonishing, but I love speed and performance cars so it has to be ice driving – it’s the most thrilling.’ Tell us about a time you screwed up… ‘Transitioning between automotive businesses you can learn things the hard way: don’t assume it’s the same, ask questions, understand strategically…

Nothing gets old quicker than the future. When Peugeot unveiled the 2016 version of its i-Cockpit, it was a radical new look. Now, however, it seems laggy and fiddly compared to newer systems. Because of the way the PSA group – now absorbed into Stellantis – liked to share tech, various Citroëns and Vauxhalls also get versions of the system. The replacement is already available on the latest Peugeot 308, with the Citroën ver-sion debuting in the C5X (dubbed My Cit-roën Drive Plus), complete with physical cli-mate-control dials. Vauxhall has launched the new system in the Astra with physical controls too. Peugeot, meanwhile, has kept its heating and cooling screen-based. Even if there are slight differences in in-put method between manufacturers, and they feature different colour schemes and fonts, the…

60 YEARS, ONE LIST CAR turns 60 this year, and to celebrate we’ve ranked our 60 favourite car makers, and examined the reasons behind the ranking in some fantastic new stories. From bold EV start-ups to legacy giants adjusting to the new world order, the brands that excite, intrigue and inspire us most are all here. Running for three issues, our list concludes this month with the top 15, and a glimpse behind the scenes of the voting process. DEFINING ‘GREATEST’ We’re looking for an elusive mix of qualities. Consistent brilliance – because we’re judging brands, not single models. Innovation – the game changers. Cultural significance – a brand’s reach beyond units shifted. Motorsport success – not on the agenda for some. Current health and future prospects – because car…

1 The flying start Born in 1938, and in production for 65 years including a long afterlife in Mexico, the original Beetle was a simple rear-engined car designed to get the German people mobile, like the later Fiat 500 in Italy and the Mini in the UK. It ended up becoming a global cult, selling more than 20 million and getting rebooted as an uninspiring Golf-based pastiche. 2 The birth of ‘lifestyle’ Launched in 1950 and with us ever since, the Transporter is the world’s best-selling van, but has achieved that partly by transcending the whole idea of ‘van’. It’s been favoured by surfers and brickies alike, and VW was very early to cotton on to the advantages of cooperating with outside experts who wanted to customise them. 3 The…

CAR can’t claim to have got there first on Tesla and Elon Musk. But we did get there early. I first wrote about them in any depth in 2006 in a piece speculating that ‘the next great leap forward for the car won’t start in Stuttgart, Detroit or Toyota City, but in Silicon Valley’. It was two years after Elon had taken his first stake in Tesla, but two years before he took full control of the company and launched the Roadster. Back then, Tesla was a tiny start-up with just 80 employees, and the major car makers were so dismissive of electric cars that BMW’s product development chief Burkhard Goeschel, interviewed for the piece, dismissed EVs in three words: ‘Forget about them.’ Dr Goeschel is now president of the…

WATCH THE VIDEO! DOWNLOAD CAR’S iOS OR ANDROID APP FOR EXTRA CONTENT Visit the Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby and you’ll see signs in nearly every fish and chip shop there: ‘Voted Best Fish and Chips in the World 2019!’ one will say. ‘Best in The World 2018!’ the next will boast. ‘Best Fish and Chips in the UK!’; ‘Winner, Best in Europe 2020!’; ‘Best in Whitby!’; ‘Best in Yorkshire!!!’. Basically everyone in town has won something. Accolades are as cheap as chips. Supercars are like that: there’s always the fastest, the most expensive, the winner of this group test, the winner of that award. It’s easy to become jaded by the barrage of plaudits and praise. But every once in a while a car comes along that really stands…

You drive our cars BMW iX xDrive 40 M Sport Month 6 The story so far Fun, refined EV entering final straight with us + Driving dynamics making friends galore - No one impressed by the range, though Logbook Price £72,795 (£86,020 as tested) Performance 71kWh battery, twin e-motors, 322bhp, 6.1sec 0-62mph, 124mph Efficiency 3.22 miles per kWh (official), 2.8 miles per kWh (tested), 0g/km CO2 Range 231-264 miles (official), 200 miles (tested) Energy cost 9.0p per mile Miles this month 1232 Total miles 8670 Round my Hertfordshire way I see a lot of BMW iXs. And most motoring journalists exposed to Munich’s big e-SUV have fallen under its spell. So it’s time for an even tougher test at the hands of hardcore BMW fans and repeat owners Paul Lesnik…

You simply will not believe how good the Dacia Jogger is to drive. No one does, until they have a go, then they all get out of the car smiling and saying, ‘Wow! I wasn’t expecting that!’ It has no business being this good. It has a 1.0-litre three-cyl-inder turbo petrol engine that belongs in a tiny city car, but in this instance is powering a big seven-seat estate. The 0-62mph time is over 11 seconds and the steering needs three turns, lock to lock. On paper this car isn’t exactly a sizzler… until you look at the weight. With a kerbweight of 1205kg the Jogger is as light as a Fiesta, despite its size. So believe me when I say there’s real pleasure in merci-lessly wringing the Jogger’s neck…

What makes a Defender a De-fender? In part it’s the side-hinged boot, which is different from its siblings’ split tailgates and top-hinged hatches. But it means if you park with traffic on a road with a crown then the right-side-hinged boot won’t ever stay open. Blame the weight of that spare tyre. A spare tyre that, as an aside, carries big ‘Wrangler’ lettering, whereas Ford got Goodyear to remove the word from the out-facing sidewall of its Bron-co rubber, so the rival Jeep’s name isn’t given such promi-nence. Still, it’s what’s inside that counts, right? Which is where you’ll find a big square boot, that despite family trips away (with travel cot etc) we’ve never yet come close to filling. BEN PULMAN Land Rover Defender 110 SE Month 3 The…

FIRST CAR RENAULT MEGANE MK4 ‘I’ve done a mix of show cars and production cars but this was my first one, and that included all of the variants like the GT Line spec and even the RS models.’ LATEST CAR SKODA VISION S ‘It’s a huge step for Skoda. It’s part of this new “Modern Solid” strategy we’re carrying out, and it was such a fun adventure to be a part of.’ BEST DETAIL TECH DECK FACE ‘Competitors all have unique shapes for their DRLs, so it was difficult to find a new one – something you could recognise if you saw the car in the rear-view mirror.’…

HYUNDAI IONIQ 6 The 300-mile test NEW CAR MEETS REAL WORLD I nsteadof driving Hyundai’s new electric Ioniq 6 on the road, my first stint is spent navigating the metaverse – appropriate giv-en we’re in Seoul, home to South Korean tech titans Samsung and LG. It’s not an en-tirely successful virtual outing. I’ve got the VR headset on, a joystick in each hand, and I jab around Hyundai’s Goyang ‘Motorstudio’ like a kind of virtual Scott wielding a couple of snow poles. But Hyundai is serious about this stuff for ‘gen-MZ’, deploying it as part of a marketing toolkit that includes free NFTs. It’s all very forward looking – as is, to be fair, the Ioniq 6. Following the stand-out Ioniq 5, this is the second Hyundai on the E-GMP…

▲ PLUS Incredible tech, space, drive and opulence MINUS ▼ Some unnecessary gimmicks If you’re expecting a witty critique of the BMW i7’s rather large grille, you’re going to be disappointed. Getting distracted by that would be doing a disservice to what is possi-bly the finest engineered EV on sale today and one of the best luxury cars outright. It all starts with the cabin. Whether in 7-series or electric i7 spec, every model will now be long-wheelbase. The 7 has grown by 130mm in length, 48mm in width and 51mm in height – and it wasn’t exactly a Fiat Panda to begin with. The upshot of this is space – beautifully appointed space. Highlights include the sumptuous Com-fort seats with optional Merino leather and cashmere upholstery, the mesmerising Sky…

THERE ARE SOME WITHIN MERCEDES WHO PRIVATELY WISH THAT THE COMPANY WOULD STOP TALKING ABOUT THE GULLWING TheMercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing cast a bright halo and a long shadow over its maker. By comparison with the staid, frumpy saloons and cabriolets Mercedes was also making in 1955, the Gullwing looked and drove like it had been timewarped back from the future. The fastest car of its day, its straight-six motor had the world’s first production fuel-injection system, derived from that used on the V12 engine of a Messerschmitt fighter, and it was cradled in a spaceframe chassis directly inspired by Mercedes’ racing cars. Happily, that chassis and its wide sills required the use of those exuberant gullwing doors. But while they’re obviously the defining feature, the rest of the design is…

Oliver Blume’s first Porsche memory was playing Top Trumps with his school friends – there were faster and more powerful cars in the deck but they all coveted the 911 card. And when he hit driving age he bought the closest thing to a 911 his meagre finances at the time could stretch to, a 50bhp VW Beetle. The lessons that rear-engined VW taught him, driving in the rain, are there in the muscle memory his current car requires when hustled, a 911 R. A trained mechanical engineer with a PhD in vehicle technology, Blume joined Audi as a trainee. A meteoric rise through the VW Group ranks followed. He was appointed to the Porsche executive board in 2013, becoming CEO in 2015. ‘I see a lot of Porsche and…

Skoda Kodiaq vRS 2.0 TSI 245ps DSG 4x4 Month 2 The story so far We’re one month in and finding the Skodiaq super-practical, if thirsty + Well equipped, roomy and super-logical – Identikit VW Group features Logbook Price £47,690 (£52,585 as tested) Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 242bhp, 6.6sec 0-62mph, 144mph Efficiency 31.7mpg (official), 29.4mpg (tested), 202g/ km CO2 Energy cost 35p per mile Miles this month 1042 Total miles 1492 Ever since the Octavia invented the Golf-and-a-half market in 1996 and the first Superb let the world stretch out and say ooooh five years later, the frontier of space has been a Skoda staple. No surprise, therefore, that the Skodiaq is a roomy family car envied by middle-aged friends with growing broods, drawn by the marriage of spa-ciousness and decent…

Just before Kate Middleton be-came Mrs Wales I saw her in a filling station on the M40. I was refuelling a stunning BMW M635 CSi from BMW’s heritage collection. She was obviously going to see it and give an ap-preciative nod as she walked in front of me on her way to pay. But incredibly she totally blanked it and, tempting as it was to call her over, I can’t im-agine the secret service detail in the Range Rover would have been too impressed. What’s that got to do with the DS 9? I can’t be sure that HRH would make a detour to check the French flagship out, but plenty of people do. Most are curious, having never seen one, and many really like the shapes and even the…

Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Month 7 The story so far CAR’s long-term test fleet loses the Wrangler; Jake loses a carefree companion + Rugged, tough and with oodles of character - Generally impractical; thirsty Logbook Price £53,800 (£55,800 as tested) Performance 1995cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 268bhp, 7.3sec 0-62mph, 99mph Efficiency 24.4mpg (official), 20.1mpg (tested), 260g/ km CO2 Energy cost 56.4p per mile Miles this month 380 Total miles 8600 Some long-term test cars leave my life as if I’ve just replaced my washing machine, or had a phone upgrade. They served a purpose and did what they were meant to do, but departed with little fanfare. I’ve also been for-tunate enough to run some ab-solute worldies on CAR’s long-term fleet, including an Audi R8 Spyder back in 2019. But noth-ing to date…

I visit usually once a week, preferably at night when there’s no one around. Thanks to some poor planning at home, it’s in this dark corner of South London that I come to get my weekly fix of electrici-ty. Fastned Greenwich is the usual place, but if not there’s a good BP charger around the corner – and if both of those fail, there’s a Lidl which is pretty aban-doned most nights. You’re probably won-dering what’s going on. Let me explain. The opti-mal EV experience re-quires a home charger, so just before the Born ar-rives I get one fitted from Hive. Neat and unobtru-sive, it sits by the front door ahead of a Cupra EV-sized space on the drive. All I need to do is reverse the Born in and…