Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i CAR UK

To mark the demise of its supercar, Audi is building 333 last-of-line R8 GTs. It’s a tasty recipe: a free-breathing 612bhp 5.2-litre V10, the rear-drive layout we learned to love in the even more radical Lamborghini Huracan STO and a 20kg diet thanks to forged wheels and carbon-ceramic brakes. It’s old-school even to sit in, with a ’70s-style supercar driving position involving stretched arms and legs akimbo. The footwell is too narrow to accommodate the three-pedal layout that helped make the Mk1 R8 4.2 V8 so memorable. And the instrument panel is still loaded with knobs, buttons and switches – and that’s for the better. The exterior includes a massive tail spoiler, various splitters and sideblades as well as new 10-spoke black wheels. Beneath the graceful skin, we find serious…

Gorden Wagener loves Mercedes. Ever since joining its design depart-ment in 1997 he’s been a one-compa-ny man, rising quickly through the ranks from sketching supercars like the SLR McLaren to leading the team behind the sales-breakthrough 2012 A-Class Mk3. Since landing the top design job at 38 years old in 2008 he’s help trans-form the brand from slightly stuffy and conservative – and with some below-par interiors – to one of the strongest premium-luxury brands, with simple and elegant exteriors and class-leading cabins. Chief de-sign officer since late 2016, he now oversees the aesthetics of everything Mercedes creates, from cars to show-rooms, including everything digital. CAR caught up with the 54-year-old at his Nice design studio in southern France to ask how he plans to keep up the momentum. ‘Mercedes…

Beetle IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME You can bet that when the feelgood vibe around the ID. Buzz starts to wane, a Beetle-referencing EV will poke its head above the walls of Wolfsburg, like this e-Bugster concept from a decade ago. Karmann EVERYONE’S DOING IT The VW Karmann Ghia, which ran in various coupe and convertible forms for 20 years from 1955, remains a universally admired shape. Electric conversions have been offered by various specialists. Golf GTI WARNING! CONFUSION AHEAD! Will an electric Golf run alongside combustion versions, or wait until they’ve left the mix? Will it be called ID. Golf, or lose the prefix? And isn’t GTX meant to be the e-performance suffix, not GTI? Buggy LIKE A BUZZ BUT SMALLER The ID. Buggy concept inspired by the…

Volkswagen, in its haste to pivot to electrification, dropped the ball with its infotainment. Its reliance on under-devel-oped touchscreens has been a rare faux pas from the world’s biggest car-making group. New CEO Thomas Schäfer has admitted to CAR that it needs to improve pronto, saying candidly that the digital switchgear simply isn’t good enough. Here’s how VW will get back on track, with the first updates coming on a revised ID. 3 in 2023. FUNCTION OVER FORM: WHAT’LL BE UPDATED?…

Would you pay £1.1m for a new hypercar powered not by 2000bhp electric motors or a V12 but by the V6 engine from a Nissan GT-R, and built by a company you’ve never heard of in a country with no history of making high-performance cars? Praga, from the Czech Republic, thinks you might: not least because its new Bohe-ma represents one of your last chances to order a hypercar with pure internal-com-bustion power from new. One Praga execu-tive admitted they’re ‘cutting it fine’ to be launching a car like this. In the 1930s Praga made aircraft and more cars than Skoda and Tatra combined. After the war it made trucks and transmis-sions before diversifying under private ownership into karts and racecars like its Britcar-winning R1, among other things. The brief…

Letter of the month Writing worthy of the cars The quality of writing in the December issue of CAR deserves the highest praise. Stephen Bay-ley’s piece on Volvo was sublime; please can we have more of him in CAR? Mark Walton’s piece on Porsche and Gavin Green’s piece on Citroën were both outstanding, too. And happily it reminded me of my favourite personal car story. My sister-in-law pulling-up outside her boyfriend’s house in a slightly rag-ged Citroën XM, handed down to her by her older sister, and the driver’s door literally fell off when she opened it. Happy days! I still want a DS, though. That is an effortlessly cool car. Thanks again for a tremendous last issue. Steve Newell You’re very welcome. And thank you to all the readers…

1 TESLA MODEL Y Model Y delivers the most range and takes home our efficiency prize with a performance impressively close to the WLTP rating. Ruthless ergonomic efficiency means spartan interior. Range 331 miles (official), 241 (tested) Efficiency: A-road indicated 3.51 miles per kWh Urban indicated 3.0 miles per kWh Rural indicated 3.12 miles per kWh Efficiency (official) 4.42 miles per kWh Efficiency (tested) 3.26 miles per kWh 2 MG 4 TROPHY One of only two cars to top a true 3 miles per kWh on test. Base car has smaller (50.8kWh vs 61.7kWh) battery but only gets 117kW, not our Trophy’s 135kW charging capability. Range 270 (official), 199 (tested) Efficiency: A-road indicated 3.1 miles per kWh Urban indicated 3.3 miles per kWh Rural indicated 3.0 miles per kWh Efficiency…

⊲ Couldn’t you just do an electric Atom? ‘There was a [one-off] electric Atom in 2004, around the time we did some work for Tesla, and we did look at it quite seriously. The problem then was it was going to be four times the price of a supercharged car and a bit slower. A hard sell. And we obviously don’t have the pockets of Elon Musk. ‘When we started looking at Hipercar there was the possibility that an EV could be “better” – which in our world means “faster” – than a combustion-engine car, and the writing was on the wall [for combustion cars] then. So part of the reason we did Hipercar was to gain knowledge about EVs. We’ve taken the decision to be zero-emission by 2030, even…

VW Golf R Estate Month 3 The story so far R all-wheel-drive high-performance hardware in the lengthened Golf Estate body + Longer wheelbase and more space than the hatch, with most of the dynamism - Let’s see how we get on with that notorious infotainment Logbook Price £45,070 (£48,715 as tested) Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 316bhp, 4.9sec 0-62mph, 155mph Efficiency 36.0mpg (official), 29.9mpg (tested), 178g/km C02 Energy cost 25.2p per mile Miles this month 1017 Total miles 9048 If last month’s mpg seemed a little low at 26.9mpg, the R’s fuel economy has settled down now I’ve averaged out a few tanks, rising to 29.9mpg – that’s a match for the Mk7 Golf R hatch I ran in 2015 (both use a 2.0-litre turbo four; the estate has a fraction…

So after five overwhelm-ingly positive reports, it’s time to find a few nega-tives. They’re only offered here by way of balance: there’s certainly nothing that should deter you from joining the back of the long queue for one. The most grievous is probably the car’s fre-quent refusal to open CarPlay when connected to my iPhone, despite readily talking to my partner’s Android. The friend who bought a Hyundai Ioniq 5 when he couldn’t wait for an EV6 like ours has noticed the same thing. Irritating, but not grave enough to take it in to the local Kia dealership for a fix. There’s no light in the charging port, meaning I need to stick my fingers into the holes to guide the charger home in the dark – that’s safe, right?…

THIS MONTH BEST LUXURY CAR BENTLEY FLYING SPUR Epic interior; a joy whether you’re up front or in the back BEST GT FERRARI ROMA Beautifully balanced design, and a drive to match BEST SPORTS SALOON BMW M3/M4 Bewitching front-end grip and balance. Utterly stellar BEST COUPE/CABRIO BMW 2-SERIES Pick the M240i version for a miniaturised M4 BEST SUB-£500pcm FAMILY CAR BMW 3-SERIES Looks great, drives great, makes you feel great BEST £500pcm+ FAMILY CAR BMW 5-SERIES Still the de facto big saloon/estate choice BEST £500pcm+ EV PORSCHE TAYCAN Now a bigger seller than the 911 – and deservedly so BEST SUB-£500pcm EV MG 4 Confounds expectations: as fun a car as it is credible NEXT MONTH BEST SUB-£500pcm PHEV PEUGEOT 308 Design makes you look twice; actually worth a second…

CARS I PEOPLE I SCOOPS I MOTORSPORT I ANALYSIS – THE MONTH ACCORDING TO CAR For a company that’s perhaps best known for being expert at the careful evolution of a few timelessly simple ideas, Audi has also had more than its share of big bangs. Quattro may be the one that still resonates the most, but the TT and R8 have also shone a light on Audi’s strengths. The problem is, both those cars have been around a long time now – 25 years in production, in the case of the TT – and both are about to exit the range. Leaving the question: what next? Both the TT and R8 show what design teams and engineers can do when given a huge toolkit to work with and shielded…

ITS OWN HEART Unlike the V10 that had to be shared with the Audi R8 (above), Lamborghini’s new V8 is entirely its own product and not derived from anything else. While the plug-in hybrid replacement for the Huracan will lose the signature 10-cylinder shriek, power will still be outrageous – and it’ll pass EU7 emissions regs. FUTURE, PROOFED The Huracan replacement, like the upcoming V12-powered Revuelto that replaces the larger Aventador, will have e-motors designed to supplement power and reduce lag. Lambo’s electrification plans are in full effect, and while the Sián (above) and its supercapacitors kicked it all off, now it’s time for the big guns. FACTFILE POWERTRAIN 4.0-litre V8 plus e-motors, all-wheel drive CHASSIS Aluminium and carbon monofuselage DUE 2024 TRIMMING THE TUB Lambo is going down the…

Car makers are embracing the idea of a split personality. Ford is partition-ing of its car-making business into Ford Blue and Ford Model E. Blue’s responsibility will be to maintain and further develop combustion-en-gined cars, and must also be the main revenue driver, while Model E is positioned as the EV and software dynamo. ‘Model E is all about electric vehi-cles and their development,’ says Ford’s UK MD Lisa Brankin, ‘while Ford Blue is about industrial infra-structure and plants, logistics and so on – all the stuff you need to have a successful business, and that we do really well, that a start-up business doesn’t have.’ The move is designed to help Ford reach its goal of half its global sales volume being EVs by 2030. Ford pres-ident and CEO…

Tell us about your first car… ‘A late-’80s Ford Fiesta from my mum. I covered it in surfer stickers, but unfortunately I wasn’t a good driver so I wrecked it in various little accidents. Then I bought a rusty Renault 4 that was even more crap.’ What achievement makes you most proud? ‘Professionally, what I’ve done with Mercedes over the last 25 years, putting the company in the right direction and creating a lot of cool cars. And in terms of family, my four kids.’ What’s the best thing you’ve ever done in a car? ‘No comment! [Laughs.]’ Tell us about a time when you screwed up… ‘I’ve never screwed up! [Laughs again.]’ Supercar or classic? ‘Both. I would have a 300 SL Mille Miglia version and the new SL.’…

How do you really get the most out of an AMG? With Track Pace, an app that aims to make you a better driver through instant analysis of telemetry. It gives you a clear, de-tailed look at your inputs to help you im-prove your speed and technique through a variety of displays – some of which look like they’ve come straight out of a video game. Track Pace itself isn’t new, but this latest version is a significant step forwards. To get the full benefit, you need an AMG running the MBUX interface, and you need the AMG Track Pace app on your smartphone. The app works differently depending on which AMG you have. We tried it in a range of current models, from a fizzy A45 S to the…

Well there’s a handy metaphor. Our test drive in the new Series II (ie facelifted) ver-sion of the Phantom Mk8 takes us on the A303 past Stonehenge. Leave aside the ques-tion of the car’s styling perhaps owing something to the prehistoric standing stones on Salisbury Plain, the point here is about perspective. Stonehenge always looks small seen from the road, but from the Phantom the stones look tiny, as if some Spinal Tap-style scaling error has occured. Conversely, the Phantom looks huge, because it is. Until, that is, you get inside and start driving, when its size very quickly becomes entirely untroubling. That must be partly because the size all seems justified: there are no dead spaces, no voids. Rather, all four occupants (five if you sacrifice the vast rear…

‘Above all,’ says Kamm Manufaktur founder Miki Kázmér, ‘I didn’t want to lose the ’60s mojo.’ We’re looking around the fabulously dainty Kamm 912c. Originally a careworn 1968 Porsche 912, it’s now beginning its sec-ond, c-suffixed life after a thorough engi-neering overhaul. This is the first project by Kamm – asmall outfit based in Budapest – and this car is its prototype and demonstra-tor. Built-to-order customer versions begin production shortly. CAR might have once rather uncharitably described the 912 (the more affordable, four-cylinder version of the 911 sold from 1965 to ’69) as ‘the car the “debadge” option was made for’ but today it’s a sought-after classic. Famously, there’s no shortage of 911 restomod specialists out there but Kamm has chosen to focus on the 912, a car about which…

It takes a lot to startle a Snowdonian sheep. Lumbering lorries, ly-cra-clad pelotons, even groups of supercars being tested by maga-zines: nothing can shift a hardy Welsh mountain sheep from its im-portant business of chewing and staring into the middle distance, even if it’s laying on the apex of a corner. But a purple-bodied, gold-wheeled SUV bearing down with its quad exhausts growling like an enclosure at Longleat achieves the impossible: the sheep scarper. I don’t blame them. The Jaguar F-Pace SVR Edition 1988 is a big, bombastic machine. But it’s probably not the colour scheme that’s got wool on the run. Purple body, gold wheels: written down, it sounds horrible, doesn’t it? And yet the Edition 1988 is actually rather subtle. Elegant, even. Meeting it yesterday for the first…

THE HURACAN LOCKS ON LIKE THERE'S A GUNSIGHT IN ITS FLAT-RAKED SCREEN These cars are not direct rivals. The small matter of four cylinders, an entire market segment and some £76k separates Lamborghini Hura-can Tecnica from Porsche’s 911 GT3 (or £122k with our ‘as tested’ op-tions). What they share is philosophy and timing – driver engagement like it’s been concentrated through a magnifying glass, visceral thrills accented towards the track but accessible on the road, and the knowl-edge we have only a limited window in which to enjoy analogue cars like these, at least as new. Naturally aspirated engines shared largely unchanged from GT3 racers are key to this urgency. Four litres in the Porsche, 5.2 in the Lambo, they rev like circular saws and do their best work when…

Mazda likes to think of itself as Japan’s affordable answer to BMW, but with the CX-60 it’s pitching itself directly against its German hero’s X3 SUV, and not undercutting it on price. And there’s a twist: the four-cylinder engine in the plug-in hybrid isn’t the usual turbo 2.0-litre, but a naturally aspirated 2.5-litre. Mazda also offers the CX-60 with a pair of mild-hybrid, 3.3-litre straight-six turbodiesels (one rear-, one all-wheel drive) despite the fuel being as fashionable as a coal-fired power station. A mild-hy-brid petrol six will follow. Our PHEV’s unlikely atmo powertrain pumps out a useful 323bhp and 369lb ft, and is only available with an eight-speed auto and a rear-biased all-wheel-drive system. Zero to 62mph takes 5.8 seconds, which makes the PHEV the fastest CX-60. That extra perfor-mance,…

Land Rover Defender 110 SE Month 5 The story so far Living with Land Rover’s ‘reborn’ icon + We’re completely won over by it… - … but not everyone is convinced it’s true to tradition Logbook Price £64,035 (£78,360 as tested) Performance 2997cc twin-turbodiesel six-cylinder, 245bhp, 8.3sec 0-62mph, 117mph Efficiency 30.8mpg (official), 27.9mpg (tested), 241g/km CO2 Energy cost 28.8p per mile Miles this month 961 Total miles 17,486 In our corner of Hampshire, old Land Rover Defenders and Se-ries models are everywhere. The woman at one end of our lane has a 90 (plus a tidy Por-sche Boxster) and at the other end there’s a 110 that pulls their horsebox. Go anywhere in this rural area and you’re guaranteed to see one before long. I’ve invited some of those lo-cal…

HOW DOES NEW GBU WORK? Constantly updated, new GBU covers eight of 16 classes in each issue, and we list all our class kings TOP 5 £500pcm+ EVs GIANT TEST WINNER 1 PORSCHE TAYCAN THE GOOD: Interstellar acceleration; stellar handling; agreeably tactile; roomier than a 911 THE BAD: Empty interior; ferociously expensive; not a 911 THE UGLY: Begs to be thrashed, but thrashing it clobbers the range THE ONE TO BUY: Choice of three bodies (Cross Turismo pictured). Get the Taycan 4S (£87k or £940pcm) 2 BMW i7 NEW ENTRY THE GOOD: One of the best luxury cars south of a Rolls-Royce, electric or otherwise THE BAD: List price starts at £107k; weighs more than 2.7 tonnes; ‘brave’ styling THE UGLY: Theatre Screen option is pointless gimmickry THE ONE TO…

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 14 No. It’s the car people love to hate, or love with an evangelical fervour, or take for granted as transport during half-remembered Uber journeys. And now it’s going – from these shores at least. The Toyota Prius imminently goes off sale in the UK (and Australia) and won’t be replaced in those markets. What kind of legacy does the Prius leave? It arrived at the turn of the millennium as one of the world’s first mass-produced hybrids, together with the Honda Insight (a car quickly strangled by the extra doors, seats and practicality of the Prius). It changed the world, kind of.…

JG: I was five when the original TT launched, and as a burgeoning car enthusiast I was hooked. It just looked so cool. Then when the R8 arrived in the mid-2000s, I didn’t care about the rivals Ferrari and Porsche were fielding at the time – Iwas so drawn in by it. I sometimes wonder if I’m wearing rose-tinted spectacles because those cars wowed me when I was young and impressionable. ATJ: I’ll miss what these cars stand for – but I won’t miss the TT at all. It looked cool but, given I’m a bit older than you, I remember when you could go into a Nissan dealer and get a 200bhp hooligan machine in the 200SX, for example. JG: Fine, there were sharper things to drive than a…

Isn’t it Ioniq? Hyundai’s noticed we love the Ioniq cars, so the styling is spreading. The Kona was always a wacky looking thing but now it has that same retro future vibe as Hyundai’s EVs. Hybrid, N-Line and EV versions have different looks. 8/10 Controversial to cool Freshly brewed How to go from derivative to daring in one generation. While the Astra could have also sat in this slot, Vauxhall’s brilliant new design direction kicked off with the current Mokka. 8/10 Boring not on the menu The one that got away Toyota’s Prius was always clever but got sneered at for its gawky looks. Just as the sleek new fifth generation arrives, Toyota says it’s not coming to the UK. We get the C-HR instead. 6/10 Roofline isn’t Uber friendly…

You can see why senior figures in the car industry are up-set. On top of the European Union’s 2035 ban on combus-tion engines that’s forcing them to develop whole ranges of electric-only cars in double-quick time, they must now pivot their attention back to the shorter term and make significant changes to their current model line-ups. After much delay, the EU’s proposed Euro 7 regulations have finally been revealed. They set out the targets new cars built from 1 January 2025 must meet, with the UK likely to follow the same rules despite no longer being a member state of the European Union. Thierry Breton, EU commissioner for the internal mar-ket, says the new rules ‘will ensure that combustion-en-gine cars put on our market until 2035, as well as heavy…

ALPINA B3 NEW CAR MEETS REAL WORLD A RAF,SLOW’ warn Welsh road markings come rain, shine or sheep but right now the bilingual advice seems particularly worth heeding – the reading on the Alpina B3’s digital dash has plunged to -5.5ºC, gritting lorries whizz past scattering rock salt like it’s pigeon feed and the B3’s adaptive LED headlights glisten over a surface smeared with grease, grit and slush. I’m definitely arafing down for this hairpin. Not that the tricky conditions seem to be troubling the new Alpina B3 Touring overmuch, as we head deeper into Wales and Buchloe’s winter wagon works its way ever-deeper into my affections. You’ll know Alpina, right? Established as a BMW tuner when Burkard Bovensiepen produced a twin-carb conver-sion for the BMW 1500 back in 1962, accredited…

Just how good is the Wiesmann Thunder-ball prototype? Put it this way. I warmed up for my drive in the electric two-seat roadster by driving one of the tiny German special-ist’s previous models, an MF5, which uses one of the best engines ever made, BMW’s 547bhp twin-turbo V8. And even with the bar being set so high, the electric Thunder-ball proved to be engaging and exhilarating. Billed as the world’s first luxury electric roadster, it’s a modern take on the classic formula: you sit low and well back, with the wind in your hair and a smile on your face as you revel in the directness of the steering and the immediacy of the throttle response, with 671bhp and 811lb ft going through the rear wheels, aided by a mechanical…

The power delivery is pleasingly refined, not neck-snapping like a Tesla Motor Valley has finally produced an elec-tric car – or has it defibrillated one back to life? The Maserati GranTurismo has been reborn in Folgore form with more than 750bhp, but surprisingly the power output is far from the most remarkable thing about it. Not only has Maserati beaten Ferrari, Lamborghini and Pagani out of the EV blocks, but this two-door, four-seat electric coupe has no direct rivals. The Porsche Tay-can and Audi e-Tron have four doors, and everything else on the market is either a sa-loon or SUV. Or costs seven figures. The surprises don’t stop there. A sub-three-second 0-62mph time and near- 200mph top speed are accompanied by a far more luxurious and spacious interior than the…

GENESIS GV60 An inventive repurposing of EV6/Ioniq 5 components, the GV60 is eye-catching inside and out. Base cars get 226bhp and rear-drive for £47,005, and mid-spec Sports (£53,605) are all-wheel drive with 314bhp. Ours is a Sport Plus. PRICE £65,405 (£75,315 as tested) POWERTRAIN 74kWh battery (net), twin electric motors, all-wheel drive PERFORMANCE 476bhp, 516lb ft, 4.0sec 0-62mph, 146mph WEIGHT 2095kg EFFICIENCY 3.25 miles per kWh (official), 289-mile range (official), 0g/km CO2 KIA EV6 GT The most powerful car in the Kia/Hyundai/Genesis electric family. Halo model is 40 per cent pricier than the base £45k RWD EV6, but only around £7k more than a 321bhp AWD GT-Line S. PRICE £62,645 (£62,645 as tested) POWERTRAIN 74Wh battery (net), twin electric motors, all-wheel drive PERFORMANCE 577bhp, 546lb ft, 3.5sec 0-62mph, 162mph WEIGHT…

It’s the child of multiple projects, partners and government funding initiatives People often look at the car like this,’ says Ariel general manager Henry Sie-bert-Saunders, cupping his hands either side of his glasses as if peering through a letterbox, ‘when really this project repre-sents much more than the car alone.’ We’re standing in front of the proto-type Ariel Hipercar (not its final name: the production car will have a new moni-ker when it joins the Atom, Nomad and Ace motorcycle on sale in approximately two years’ time). As Henry spreads his hands, I cast my eyes around its surroundings: a vast, clean space bordered by banks of high-tech equipment and overlooked by gargantuan vents and pipes, like a Star Wars hangar. For our deep dive into the Hipercar prototype, we’ve…

Audi e-Tron GT quattro Month 1 The story so far The more affordable of Audi’s two-car e-Tron GT range, with us for the next six months + Looks; performance; colour; badge; range - Not cheap; a bit thirsty Logbook Price £83,285 (£93,575) Performance 83.7kWh battery, 523bhp, 5.4sec 0-62mph, 152.2mph Efficiency 2.89 miles per kWh (official), 2.6 miles per kWh (tested) Range 282-286 miles (official), 218 miles (tested) Energy cost 27p per mile Miles this month 5 Total miles 95 Remember Audi’s e-Tron GT? While the Porsche Taycan, originally available only as a four-door coupe in just two fl-avours, Fast and Freaky Fast, has blossomed into a model range, with a number of body styles and a bewildering array of pow-ertrain options, Audi’s take on the same superb J1 platform (800-volt…

Modern life involves a lot of staring at screens so I often feel oddly resentful getting into cars with digital dials – another screen to stare at, on the way home from a day of staring at a screen. But the Mustang’s digi dials are lovely: they’ve got a trio of configurable displays includ-ing the option to spread the revcounter into a left-to-right bar across the screen, and a choice of miniature dials to dis-play data as esoteric as the air temperature and pressure in the intake manifold, the air-to-fuel ratio and the temperature in the differential. Only downside is I find con-trolling the various displays in-credibly fiddly. I access some of its functions by trial and error (for a while I could find the cyl-inder-head temperature more easily than…

Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Month 6 The story so far A third of UK Cayman buyers go for the GT4 – and quite right, too. Now that it’s leaving, time to take stock + The best sports car on sale - Not cheap; 18-month wait Logbook Price £80,500 (£97,132 as tested) Performance 3995cc flat-six, 414bhp, 3.9sec 0-62mph, 188mph Efficiency 25.4mpg (official), 25.5mpg (tested; 10mpg on track), 251g/km CO2 Energy cost 32p per mile Miles this month 348 Total miles 12,547 After six months and 3000 miles, ‘my’ 718 Cayman GT4 is gone. And let’s be honest here, barring a freak windfall, it’s never coming back. All too often you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. But my time with the GT4 wasn’t like that. I was acutely aware…

1 VW GOLF GTI (USED) THE GOOD: Most EU4 petrol cars registered after Jan 2006 are ULEZ-exempt. A petrol car to do it all? Hard to beat the Golf GTI THE BAD: Some Mk5s are EU4 but there are ratty ones to avoid THE UGLY: Mk2 and most Mk1s don’t qualify for classic exemption 2 BMW 335D (USED) THE GOOD: Most EU6 diesels registered after September 2015 qualify, including straight-six 335 THE BAD: Less powerful 330d is cheaper but not all are ULEZ-exempt: double-check THE UGLY: xDrive is overkill if you’re going into London 3 PORSCHE 981 BOXSTER (USED) THE GOOD: Plenty of EU4 sports cars, including the dreamy 2012-’16 six-cylinder 981 soft-top THE BAD: From before Porsche sussed electric steering feel THE UGLY: Steering wheel in your chest to…