Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i CAR UK

Insider Renault 5 EV The basis of the forthcoming A290. It’s already a reimagining of the past in itself, but now Alpine’s turning Renault’s 2024 supermini into a more potent street racer. Alpine A110 The reinvented icon, reminding the world what Alpine means, before the switch to an all-electric range. The A110 will go pure electric, joining the A290 and a crossover EV. Alpine A523 A tad more tenuous? Design boss Antony Villain has taken inspiration from Alpine’s F1 cars for the A290b’s racing car-spec interior technology Renault Sport Twingo Gordini Alpine’s treatment of the R5 echoes the days a decade or so ago when Gordini branding was sprinkled onto Renault hot hatches. Let’s hope there’s more substance this time.…

Insider Tell us about your first car… ‘A 1992 Alfa Romeo 33. You always have a special attachment to your first. It cost me a lot of money, though – picture a big hole in the ground that I put all of my savings into whenever I had to fix it!’ What achievement makes you most proud? ‘It’s when projects I’ve been a part of sell well. A project that I like, but doesn’t sell, isn’t good. I’m still proud of my first cars: the second-gen X5 and first X6.’ What’s the best thing you’ve done in a car? ‘The ideal experience is crossing the Alps. Whatever car you have, it doesn’t matter – that is the nicest drive I’ve ever had.’ Tell us about a time you’ve screwed up……

Charging an EV without needing a cable? Sounds like a pipe dream, or possibly a nightmare involving turning major roads into something akin to dodgem-car arena. But it’s an idea that is edging closer to reality. Wireless (or inductive) charging uses a process called magnetic induction. If a conductive substance passes through a magnetic field, it induces a current which can then be used to power something. That much has been clear since Nikola Tesla demonstrated using electromagnetism to generate electricity in the 19th century. Wirelessly charging a car requires a transmitter and a receiver in order for the process to work. Just like phones with wireless charging, a pad is used to transmit the electromagnetic field, and the car needs to have a conductive material attached to it in…

Simple pleasures Thank you for the Dacia story (‘The Cheap Shall Inherit The Earth’) – much more interesting and relevant than the Ferrari SUV review also in the April issue. Reminded me of the LJK Setright stories you used to do. Please do more stories like this for us mere mortals, and less Ferrari and (dare I say it) Porsche stories. And to think my grandchildren will ask me what a car with an internal combustion engine was. Though of course their electric cars will be amazing, and I sincerely hope CAR will still be around to review them. Mark Knight Just one of many letters from readers who enjoyed the big feature involving the Duster in Morocco and Mark Walton’s monthly Jogger updates in the Our Cars section. In…

WATCH THE VIDEO! HEAD TO THE CAR MAGAZINE YOUTUBE CHANNEL Lamborghini Huracan Evo Month 4 The story so far The Huracan’s proven adept at daily life. Time for a longer road trip! + Long-legged touring, big tank, ease of use - Mucky aero restricts vision in bad weather Logbook: Price £165,656 (£216,806 as tested) Performance 5204cc V10, 631bhp, 2.9sec 0-62mph, 202mph Efficiency 20.6mpg (official), 19.7mpg (tested) 332g/ km CO2 Energy cost 41.0p per mile Miles this month 858 Total miles 5564 Living with a supercar as your sole means of transport does funny things to your motoring habits. I’ve thought nothing of doing shopping trips and school runs in our Huracan. When train strikes derailed an impor-tant work function in London, I simply drove from Peterbor-ough to The Shard. It’s…

There’s no surprise in the XC40 meeting and exceeded our transport expectations with an ease that borders on the insou-ciant. A pre-warmed cabin, neck-snap acceleration at busy junctions, a superb sound sys-tem for pumping out Korean rap (it’s a long story), excellent visibility and plenty of USB ports all work together to make the 35 miles of daily school runs as stress-free as feasibly possible when ferrying teenagers. A less welcome surprise is how little I’ve warmed to the one-pedal drive mode. I find it too aggressive for smooth pro-gress around town, and it’s a bi-nary on-or-off choice, with no option to modulate the level. Rather more surprising, in a good way, has been discovering that the Volvo app you’re en- couraged to use to enhance your ownership experience is…

I wish I had some sort of mega scandal to break on these pages. Explosions, crashes, getting stranded – that sort of thing. But none of that has happened. Instead, the 308 has simply been a great car. Damn. The much-discussed design certainly helps. The exterior is much more dramatic than oth-er cars sharing parts with the 308. But it’s the inside where form and function really come together. It has just the right amount of premium feeling for the price, the i-Cockpit steering wheel and dials combo works a treat for me and the infotain-ment system is one of the better ones I’ve used, complete with its customisable i-Toggles. Then there’s the way it drives. It’s not lighting quick, or the last word in performance handling, but the steering…

I once owned a 1969 Fiat 500, a car so basic it didn’t have a fuel gauge. A light glowed when the level was really low, and the previous owner left me with a piece of wood to dip in the un-derbonnet tank to work out how much was in there. I’m thinking about getting a similar dipstick for the CX-60 because I don’t believe the fuel gauge. I could live with the er-ratic remaining-range read-out if the gauge itself were reliable, but it’s not. It will not move for miles, then drop quite quickly, and sometimes even climb again. I imagine there’s some too-clever calculating going on. It makes long trips stressful. Hybrids are complicated by de-sign, but they shouldn’t be complicated to use. CHRIS CHILTON Mazda CX-60 2.5…

Cupra’s vibrant EV shares a significant number of parts with a few other EVs, and I used to think that diminished its cool, disruptive image. How can you be engaging, sus-tainable and youthful when you’re borrowing parts from the Wolfsburg mothership? This month, however, I gained a new appreciation of the MEB platform used by those and many other VW Group EVs – and all it took was a drive of the forthcoming VW ID. 7. The ID. 7 will sit atop VW’s EV range – and it sits on the opposite end of the spectrum to my Born, too. But where the Born wants to get the back end out, the ID. 7’s unflapp-able dynamic chassis con-trol keeps things in check. Where the Cupra’s quick rack invites razor sharp…

1 BMW M3/M4 COMPETITION THE GOOD: Mighty straight-six; front axle’s never-give-up attitude; dreamy chassis balance THE BAD: No manual; nearly 911 money now THE UGLY: M3 Touring £85k new but changing hands for six figures THE ONE TO BUY: From £80k (Comp saloon) with rear drive; adding xDrive AWD costs £2800 Now available as an estate: rejoice! GIANT TEST WINNER 2 BMW M5 COMPETITION THE GOOD: An animal when you want it to be; reasonably urbane family transport when you don’t THE BAD: Hard ride on Competition suspension; priced above £100k THE UGLY: CS version has already gone off sale THE ONE TO BUY: Just one – brilliant – model now, the Competition: 3 AUDI RS6 AVANT THE GOOD: Massive presence; cushy interior and ride, any-weather pace – a genuinely…

IN THE SPOTLIGHT Thought Alpine was a one-trick pony? You thought wrong. First the brand itself and its most famous car were revived for the 21st century; now comes Alpine 2.0. There will be a range of cars, all electric, including a replacement for its A110, a crossover SUV to tap into that most lucrative of markets and an electric hot hatch based on the upcoming Renault 5 EV. What you see here is the A290b: our first look at that Alpine hot hatch, and a car that’ll kick off Alpine’s EV revolution. ‘When it was first discussed, the immediate feeling was to do a real hot hatch,’ Antony Villain, Alpine’s head of design, tells CAR. ‘I think that’s something that’s missing right now, and something that French manufacturers are…

PAST AND FUTURE Instead of being a Urus derivative as originally planned, Lambo is preparing a battery-electric, four-seat, two-door EV which philosophically connects to the 1972 third-generation Espada. Except it’ll be quite a bit taller and more like an SUV in many ways. Tenuous link? Maybe, but Lambo knows where the money is. MULTIPLE MODELS Like the Huracan, it's understood that Lamborghini intends to offer different variants, with even pricier Performante and SV derivatives, as well as a possible Sterrato off-roader. As for the standard model, our intel suggests a rough mark-up of around £20,000 compared to a Urus. DELAYED GENIUS While the Revuelto and the Huracan replacement will use Lambo’s new ‘monofuselage’ (above), the new car’s all-electric DNA means it’ll take advantage of VW Group’s set of delayed SSP…

Insider THE EXECUTIVE STALWART The new E-Class combines only a modest exterior design refresh from the outgoing model with a major technological leap on the inside. A new generation of the MBUX interface makes its debut with the E-Class, and the powertrain line-up includes plug-in hybrids capable of more than 60 e-miles. But no EV – that’s the EQE’s job. NEED TO KNOW What is it? Merc’s technophilic 5-series rival I Tech specs MBUX and wide screen, active ambient lighting, optional air springs and rear steer I Aimed at? Stopping execs drifting away to BMW and Audi I When can I get one? Summer THE CONFIDENT UPSTART Now Cupra’s found its feet (seemingly by trampling all over its parent, Seat), it’s getting more self-assured. The wild-looking new Tavascan pushes the…

The 300-mile test NEW CAR MEETS REAL WORLD Maserati wants to be Italy’s Porsche, and judging by rumours of a potential stock market listing, so does parent company Stellantis. Unfortunately, Maserati is more like Italy’s Jaguar, another brand with a history we’d probably call rich and colourful if many of the best bits hadn’t occurred so long ago they only happened in black and white. But the winds could be changing for the brand whose naming department has always loved a good breeze. The firm’s MC20 supercar has been a critical hit, boosting the brand’s credibility, especially among younger buyers, and the new GranTurismo’s choice of Folgore electric and traditional combustion power options gives it a USP among GT cars. But Maserati really needs a volume player, particularly since the…

Things are looking up for Aston Martin. The share price has rallied by more than 100 per cent in the last six months, and the For-mula 1 team are flying thanks to a crafty former champ behind the wheel and some significant work on the car over the winter. The DBS 770, being at heart a GT, isn’t adorned with any F1 team badges. But still – what a GT. The balls-out, last-of-the-line, final hurrah for the DBS is in many ways closing in on supercar territory. Only 499 770 Ultimates will be built, split between 300 coupes and 199 roadsters. Rest assured, you’ve missed your chance. Cosmetic alterations include a little nip and tuck in the form of a ‘horseshoe’ vent in the bonnet and a larger diffuser at…

Try to see it in rational terms. The key – and we appreciate it’s not easy when it comes to matters 911 – is to try to avoid getting too emotional. Accentuate the positives. Count your blessings. Because, yes, the 911 will – according to the current plan – go electric early in the next decade. But between now and then (and let’s face it, 2013 feels like a lifetime ago…) we have a feast of hybrid and naturally-aspirated 911s to look forward to. The extensively facelifted 992, the 992.2, arrives early next year. As ever, this generation will run to an array of body styles and powertrains, including bigger-displacement hybridised boxer engines. But if that idea gets you panicking, don’t: the high-revving, naturally-aspirated GT3 models are safe through 2028.…

1 SPRING BOOST We’re taking a 120-mile trip to the Wiltshire inlaws’, with the C5 X Hybrid’s electric range up five miles with warmer weather to 19 total. I switch from default electric to hybrid to ration that electric assistance. 2 COMFORT ZONE The M25 is sticky, but when we do hit 70mph the X’s refinement is lovely: the acoustically optimised glass limits noise to a whisper of airflow. The switch from electric to petrol is hard to detect at a cruise. 3 SERVICES AND STATS Stop at Fleet services: Welcome Break’s rip-off E10 costs 26p a litre more than a local independent! We’ve covered 45 miles and run on electric 40 per cent of the time: 72mpg and eight miles of electric is left. 4 DISCOMFORT ZONE Dodging queues,…

BMW iX M60 Month 4 The story so far We’ve learned that BMW M’s iX EV SUV is a car, not a Wi-Fi password + Power; comfort; a cool cabin - Excessive price and bulk; BMW’s OS8 Logbook Price £116,000 (£120,000 as tested) Performance 105kWh battery, twin e-motors, 611bhp, 3.8sec 0-62mph, 155mph Efficiency 2.8 miles per kWh (claimed), 2.6 tested, 0g/km CO2 Range 348 (official), 250 (tested) Energy cost 13.1p per mile Miles this month 701 Total miles 7512 A friend who’s a very senior executive at a rival car maker recently grilled me on BMW’s latest OS8 operating system once I’d done a few miles in my iX, in which it first appeared. He’d heard both praise and condemnation, and – given the massively increased impor-tance of user interfaces…

An initial gripe is the Multivan’s electric range. Official figures put it at around 30 miles, but with early-morning temps in single digits it’s usually less than 20. Add in using the bat-tery to defrost the windscreen and heat the cabin, it’s more like 15. The school run is an eight-mile round trip, twice a day, be-fore any deviations, so the pet-rol engine is firing up daily. It’ll get better with better weather, but that won’t change the faff of charging. Sure, I can input the timing of cheap elec-tricity, and when we next want to leave, but then it’ll just start charging regardless. So, to take advantage of off-peak power, I have to restrict the charging times via our charger. Doesn’t feel like the joined-up future. BEN PULMAN Volkswagen…

Driving a quick EV is a little like being an F1 driver on a border-line strategy, in that you must work out when to push and when doing so might jeopardise your overall performance. While the e-Tron GT defaults to Comfort mode, switching to Efficiency (which would make more sense as the baseline mode) soon becomes second nature, for its increased, er, ef-ficiency (and range). The payoff is an 85mph limit, with accelera-tion tailing off as you reach that threshold. The Audi will not waive that limit, regardless of pedal position, which – while very rarely an issue, admittedly – can lead to some interesting moments as your brain tries to work out why it feels like some-one’s pulled the handbrake on. BEN MILLER Audi e-Tron GT Month 5 The…

HOW DOES NEW GBU WORK? Fewer classes, more frequent updates and all the sass you’ve come to expect from GBU GIANT TEST WINNER 1 HONDA CIVIC TYPER THE GOOD: Feel, feedback, focus: a phenomenal full-size hot hatch THE BAD: Nearly £50k for a front-drive hatchback with barely any more power than before THE UGLY: Probably the last of its kind; good job it’s one of the best THE ONE TO BUY: There’s just the one model; expect to pay around £550 on a PCP with an £11k deposit GIANT TEST WINNER 2 TOYOTA GR YARIS THE GOOD: A modern-day rally homologation special THE BAD: Road noise like a death-metal gig; joke rear seats THE UGLY: Limited supply makes finding one tricky THE ONE TO BUY: Opt for the Circuit pack…

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: Choose your body style from saloon, estate or the borderline SUV-ish Cross Turismo. Get the Taycan 4S for £91k if you’re sensible, sharper GTS is tempting and Turbo just bonkers; top models cost £149,300 2 MG 4 THE GOOD: Incredible value and remarkably good fun to drive THE BAD: Poundland Lamborghini Urus vibes, especially in orange THE UGLY: How do you feel about driving an MG-badged hatchback from a Chinese-state-owned parent company? THE ONE TO BUY: It’s so affordable may as well pick the long-range version in…

PIERRE LECLERCQ, CITROËN DESIGN CHIEF Here’s a new way of looking at Cit-roën: it’s the IKEA of car brands. You may scoff, but Citroën’s suave and deep-thinking design chief Pierre Leclercq’s admires the Swedish furniture company’s designers and likes the way IKEA has brought good design to more people. ‘My parents probably had the choice of maybe two or three kitchens and they all looked alike some-how,’ he says. ‘Design isn’t a luxury any more – you don’t have to pay for it. With car design, it’s the same. For example, with the Ami, it didn’t have to look like shit just because it was cheap – it has to look great. We want people to come out in the morning and think, “I like this view.” Affordable? Cost effective?…

Virtual reality and racing games were made for each other. The level of immersion is unlike any other driving experience to be had unless you are, you know, actually driving a racecar for real. Gran Turismo 7’s VR mode comes via a free update and is probably the single best VR experience to date on the PSVR2. GT7 already features some of the most detailed car interiors of any game, and in VR they come to life even more. I was completely blown away by the level of detail you experience when you sit in these incredible cars and look around at the steering wheels, buttons, screens, stitching etc. It’s all meticulously realised. I’ve been lucky enough to sit in some of these cars in real life, and I can…

With pricing that makes it more expensive than some versions of the rival Audi Q8 e-Tron, Polestar 3 and Porsche Taycan 4 Cross Turismo, and which makes the slightly smaller Tesla Model Y look like an absolute steal, the new SUV version of the EQE really ought to be exceptionally good. You can get the entry-level EQE SUV, the 350 in AMG Line trim, for £90,560, or you can go up to £121,760 for the 500 in Business Class spec. Other markets also get more potent – and more expensive – AMG versions. Our test car, the 500 in AMG Line Premium spec – which means it comes with just about everything aside from rear-wheel steering and the cabin-spanning Hyper-screen – sits on the high side of average in terms…

Netflix’s Drive to Survive has made Haas F1’s Guenther Steiner, the most filter-less team principal in the pitlane, a cult hero. Fans still buy Red Bull shirts and Ferrari caps, but some turn up to the track proudly wearing the 58-year-old’s moustachioed face on their chests. Off the back of the show’s success, Steiner has a book out called Surviving to Drive, a diary of his 2022 F1 campaign. It’s published by Bantam in hardback and as an audiobook, which gives an extra di-mension to his inventive swearing. Steiner’s accent is a rare delight; he’s a multilingual Italian with a German name and US citizenship. I’ve come to the London offices of his publisher with a shortlist of subjects CAR would like me to cover in my allotted half-hour, includ-ing…

Sunday morning. Driving through the middle of North-amptonshire to get our young-est to his rugby match. I realise that ahead of me is a BMW iX3, and behind me a Mercedes EQA. So with an Ioniq 5 filling in the German sourdough sandwich, that makes three electric crossovers in a row. And it’s all entirely normal. This is it – it’s happened – electric cars are now completley unremark-able, and I’m in the thick of it. But no. Just moments later, another Ioniq 5 approaches from the op-posite direction. You can spot it a long way off, with that non-grille, angular LED lights and its jaunty stance. And as it nears, the driver flashes and the front passenger waves, like we’re Suzuki Cappucino own-ers or something equally cult-like. Not normal…

Ford Mustang Mach-E GT Month 1 The story so far Performance EV beaten by EV6 and Model Y in group test, but hopes to impress long-term + Big power; sharp handling for an EV; kerb appeal - £76k for an orange Ford? Logbook Price £74,540 (£76,420 as tested) Performance 91kWh battery, twin e-motors, 480bhp, 3.7sec 0-62mph, 124mph Efficiency 3.1 miles per kWh (claimed), 2.4 (tested), 0g/km CO2 Range 310 miles (claimed), 190 (tested) Energy cost 14.2p per mile Miles this month 722 Total miles 5415 At 48, I worry that I might be too old for my new Ford Mustang Mach-E GT already: at least in this specification. And it’s not just the shouty Cyber Orange paint, a £1150 option I’d leave unticked were I ordering this car myself. It’s…

The UK government is subsi-dising the burning of wooden pellets to the tune of almost £2 billion a year. Drax, the electric-ity generator, has switched its North Yokshire power station from coal to wood pellets or ‘bi-omass’, and in 2021 the compa-ny burned 8.3 million tonnes of pellets, earning £893 million in direct government subsidies. Meanwhile I have a wood-burning stove, which ap-parently makes me a climate criminal these days. And I needed to buy some wood. The Skoda has a massive boot – with the third row of seats folded flat it has 765 litres of boot space; with the middle row down, it’s a cavernous 2005 litres, room for a great many logs. Please don’t judge me. MARK WALTON Skoda Kodiaq vRS 2.0 TSI 245ps DSG 4x4 Month…

VW Golf R Estate Month 7 The story so far Estate version of the hottest Mk8 Golf + Longer wheelbase and usefully more space for passengers and luggage than the hatch - You don’t ever get the hang of the infotainment; dynamic engagement not quite there Logbook Price £45,070 (as tested £48,715) Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 316bhp, 4.9sec 0-62mph, 155mph Efficiency 36.0mpg (official), 28.2mpg (tested), 178g/km C02 Energy cost 20.2p per mile Miles this month 1704 Total miles 13,857 Ask the Golf R Estate to de-scribe itself in five words and it’d probably say ‘hot hatch for grown-ups’. An R estate has never slipstreamed me like I’m towing it and I’ve never seen one slaloming through traffic on the M25 – but then if you’re happy to pay £2375 over…

GIANT TEST WINNER 1 PORSCHE 911 THE GOOD: Style, like 911s, never goes out of fashion THE BAD: The base Carrera now costs more than £97k – yet that’s not enough to stop it being a clear class winner; road noise now up to 11 THE UGLY: To some, it’s now more comfy GT than sports car; canny options list pushes you to spend far, far more THE ONE TO BUY: Carrera S with the seven-speed manual for £110k on the nose; the Sport Chrono package is bundled in, but you’ll still pay for the Porsche badges on the wheels to be coloured in GIANT TEST WINNER 2 ARIEL ATOM THE GOOD: A beautiful object as well as a thrilling drive; think of it as a modernised Lotus Seven crossed…

GIANT TEST WINNER 1 LAND ROVER DEFENDER THE GOOD: All-new reboot brings untold dynamic improvements on road and off it THE BAD: Second-row access is a pain in the 90; expensive; 130 in particular is very big, so parking can be tricky THE UGLY: Alternatives to white steel wheels are offered. Why? THE ONE TO BUY: Range spans 90, 110 and 130 bodies, with significantly different dimensions but remarkably similar character and the genuine off-road ability that Land Rover always delivers so convincingly. Heart says petrol V8 90, head/wallet say diesel-six D250 110 GIANT TEST WINNER 2 PORSCHE MACAN THE GOOD: Handles better than any other SUV. And some hot hatches THE BAD: Hardly an original choice – but then there’s good reason for that THE UGLY: People might think…