Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2025 i CAR UK

What other magazine would dare to take a (briefly) shiny new Ferrari Purosangue to the windblown expanses of the Sahara desert? Or drive a very secondhand Fiat Panda all the way back from Andorra to the UK? It’s these stories – along with our uncompromising road tests, insightful analysis and candid interviews – that make CAR an unmissable package, not only every month but every day, via our various online channels. CAR is home to the world’s greatest motoring journalists and photographers, creating beautifully crafted stories aimed at entertaining, informing and occasionally outraging our loyal and equally opinionated readers around the world. In CAR’s 60-plus years the world has rarely known so much change and uncertainty. Technological developments, challenging legislation, new trends, emerging powers – nothing moves in the automotive…

‘I wish I was cool’ Seoul meets Malibu with the latest concept from Genesis. This is the X Gran Convertible – a grandiose, two-door, four-seat boulevard cruiser based on the G90 luxury saloon that usually ferries board members around the South Korean capital. Like the colour scheme? Designers say it’s inspired by the deep red hues of a tasty Cabernet Sauvignon, and there’s also a two-door coupe version. Genesis definitely needs to generate a bit of excitement, and this may help, although whether there’s enough cool associated with the Hyundai group’s luxury brand to make a hit of any production version is debatable. ‘I wish I was faster’ Skoda doesn’t stick its vRS performance badge on many cars, so its appearance on the Elroq, the smaller of its electric SUVs,…

When it feels like the world is spinning ever faster, it’s a relief to jump in the Morgan Supersport and arrive at your first junction. Because it’s at this point that you’ll flick the indicator stalk and realise that the click-clack tempo is just that little bit slower; like a calming metronome, it winds everything back a fraction and you begin to forget the 349 unread emails that had been boring into your subconscious. And breathe. Morgan has spent most of its 116 years trading on the past, but with the new Supersport all that changes. For a start, there is no option for wire wheels. Nor any louvres on the bonnet. Instead, this is a Morgan that acknowledges what has gone before but is confident about the future; a…

Letter of the month Peaky blinder CAR magazine, my regular monthly look at cars and the car industry since 1971, sometimes as a subscriber, sometimes as a news stand buyer; it has always kept me fascinated with internal combustion engine technology and vehicles. Retiring, finally, I became the owner of a 2017 Porsche 718 Boxster S in mid 2022 and I love everything about it. It replaced a Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor, an excellent vehicle and a flawless, cheap-to-run and comfortable business tool, but unlike the Porsche I wouldn’t call it fun to drive. Reading the 60-year retrospective of the Porsche 911 in CAR in the December 2023 issue, I began thinking that I need to know more about what is likely to be in the market in 2026…

As I take off, I realise this could be the longest jump I’ve ever done. I know I’m airborne because of the silence – the harsh, gravelly hiss of stones has stopped battering the floor. But I feel calm, like I’m in a slow-motion Dukes of Hazzard jump. I reach into the centre console and take out a mint humbug. The wrapper proves a little fiddly. Best check how the flight is going – as any Hazzard fan will tell you, it’s always the landing that splits the General Lee in half. But I’m not worried. With my parabolic trajectory almost complete, the windscreen is now filled with my landing spot, a patch of gravel several metres down the road. I pop the sweet in my mouth, straighten the steering…

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So, £1500. By saving just £28 a week for a year, you too can own the equivalent of one of these high-water marks of automotive history. Even the Mini’s half-dozen air fresheners were thrown in for free… If only it were so simple. Often, the purchase price is just the start. Improvements are needed, sometimes because a part is just old, or other times because the previous owner hasn’t lavished enough TLC on a car they use for a three-mile daily trek to the train station. Part of the plan with our group was to see how easy it is to buy and fit the parts needed. There are myriad places to get these but seeing as we bought all the cars on eBay, the MyGarage bit of the site…

The trip computer has some fascinating details to share. Of my miles in the GLC, 54 per cent have been done on electricity alone. That translates to 96.7mpg on diesel, a harder-to-fathom 917kWh of electricity consumption and a combined 15.2p per mile based on the not-brilliant 25p per kWh I pay for electricity at home. The GLC has done just three big trips from my East Mid-lands base – home to Cumbria with a few days’ local running while I was there, plus one to Oxford and another to Wales. Those longer trips have added up to about 1200 miles, and those were miles during which there was no plugging in. It’s part of the appeal of a plug-in that you have the choice. If you’d rather skip the hanging…

Isn’t it frustratingly rare to find something that just gets on and does a good job? Which is why living with the Scenic is so satisfying. Early days yet, but its appeal is obvious and straightforward – it’s a family car that goes about its business with a competency that is as deep-seated as it is fanfare-free. Like the 1996 genre-defining original that did so much to take the MPV mainstream, this fifth-gen Scenic also scooped European Car of the Year honours, and joins the 4 and 5 in Renault’s recent run of top-drawer models. The UK line-up is simple. There’s the choice of either a 60kWh battery with 158bhp or a long-range version with an 87kWh battery and 215bhp. Both are nickel-manganese-cobalt units from LG. Trim levels start with…

A bit of Jaguar? Maybe. Lotus overtones? Definitely. Neither have been the kind of inspiration you’d typically find in a Corvette; that whole-hearted, four-wheeled embrace of muscular Americana. But then this concept isn’t a typical Corvette – or even very American. It has been crafted by a 30-strong team of designers based in the UK, led by Julian Thomson – a key figure in modern British car design. As well as the S1 Elise that shaped Lotus for a generation, Thomson had a hand in a string of handsome Jaguars including the XF, F-Type, F-Pace, i-Pace and even the radical CX-75. Thomson now works at General Motors, at its new European Advanced Design Centre in Leamington Spa. After a break following his departure from Jaguar, Thomson says he’s ‘having a…

Ahead of its hotly anticipated next step in Formula 1 as supplier of an all-new engine to Aston Martin, the Honda Racing Corporation is taking the opportunity to remind the world of some of its mind-blowingly inventive successes of the past (while glossing over its many misfires). HRC is selling off camshafts, cam covers, pistons, conrods and other genuine bits of old F1 cars, including the mighty RA100E V10 (pictured right) used by Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger in 1990, starting with an auction in August at Monterey Car Week. There will also be some more affordable items, such as signed merchandise. The auctions and sales will doubtless be a good earner for HRC, but I’m prepared to take Honda’s words at face value: it’s a philanthropic act so that…

It’s exactly 25 years this month since Volkswagen completed its gradual takeover of Skoda, turning the budget Czech brand into a global player. Skoda has since become one of the strongest brands in the group, with its unrelenting focus on practicality, space and keen pricing, qualities that never fall out of fashion. Skoda recently announcing record turnover of €27.8 billion (£23.8bn) in 2024, as operating profit jumped by a third to €2.3bn (£2bn) on a margin of 8.3 per cent to overtake Audi’s. In the same period profit dropped at Audi, Porsche and the VW brand. Although Skoda chairman Klaus Zellmer is proud of those successes, it’s not all plain sailing in Mladá Boleslav. Skoda, like all car makers, is being battered by changing sentiment towards electric cars and an…

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Newcastle United recently pulled off a shock win in UK football’s Carabao Cup, demolishing Premier League leaders Liverpool to break a 57-year run in which the only silverware they took home was spoon-shaped and made of wood. Most of the NUFC supporters weren’t even born when the Magpies last lifted a cup, but somehow the mythology of the club’s ’50s heyday and occasional flashes of brilliance since then have kept the brand alive and loved. Fans willing to overlook the disappointments have kept on hoping each year that this season might be the one. Fans at the other big clubs probably wondered why they bothered. Alfa Romeo’s dry spells have never been quite that arid, but it’s not hard to see the parallels. Here’s a brand with a rich history…

If you want to get off-road, these are the destinations to put in your nav Pyrenees There are hundreds of miles of rocky trails that criss-cross the Pyrenees between France and Spain, and if you string them together you can do 750 miles off road from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Passing through pine forests and rocky passes, there are panoramic views at every turn – just make sure you keep an eye on the road, though, because you’ll be sharing the tracks with gangs of middle-aged (mostly) men riding BMW GS motorcycles. Morocco Morocco may be developing fast and investing billions in its motorway infrastructure, but you’ll still find plenty of unpaved tracks in the south. Unlike the twists and turns of the Pyrenees, these gravel tracks along the…

In a faraway land where pigs soar above the clouds, the impending arrival of the all-electric Range Rover is no big deal. It’s certainly tempting to retreat into the comforting notion that the whole electric thing is just a passing fad, something for the distant future, and that the LR bit of JLR can avoid the seismic shift Jaguar is currently grappling with. But no. Pinch yourself and wake up to the brave new world where nothing is sacred. Range Rover may have offered its first plug-in hybrid as far back as 2017, but its debut in full electric – alongside combustion engines, not instead of them – hasn’t come a moment too soon, judging from the level of demand claimed by JLR. Even though there has so far been…

It’s easy to forget that Volkswagen sold a mid-engined, carbonfibre-bodied two-seater with gullwing doors and a £99k price tag only a decade ago. And no, it wasn’t a slice of supercar exotica, but rather a fuel-saving eco special. The exquisite little XL1 you see here was an extraordinary car that entered low-volume production back in 2013 – paving the way for today’s crop of hybrid and electric VWs. Cast your mind back, pre-Covid, pre-Dieselgate, before Trump and the current financial challenges that have engulfed Volkswagen and Europe’s other legacy car makers. Engineering scion Ferdinand Piëch still stalked Wolfsburg’s corridors of power in the early Noughties and it was his single-minded product focus that begat cars as extreme as the Bugatti Veyron hypercar at one end of the VW Group empire…

HOW DOES GBU WORK? Our road testers rank the best cars currently available in 12 categories, and highlight the ones to buy TOP 5 HOT HATCHES GIANT TEST WINNER HONDA CIVIC TYPE R THE GOOD: Feel, feedback, focus: a phenomenal full-sized hot hatch THE BAD: Now £51,905 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: Just one Type R; £459 a month on a three-year PCP with an £11.7k deposit GIANT TEST WINNER TOYOTA GR YARIS THE GOOD: A modern-day rally homologation special that’s thrilling to drive THE BAD: Road noise like a death-metal gig; joke rear seats THE UGLY: Long waiting list, even with some versions now over…

‘The Chinese can now build very, very good cars,’ said the Mercedes-Benz executive, noting that a prototype of the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra sedan had recently (unofficially) obliterated the four-door production-car lap record set by Porsche’s Taycan Turbo GT. ‘But,’ he said, waving his arm at the mouthwatering selection of classic cars on the Mercedes-Benz stand at Retromobile in Paris earlier this year, ‘they don’t have this.’ What he meant by ‘this’ was heritage; the history of the Mercedes-Benz brand made real in steel and chrome, rubber and glass. Old Henry Ford may have once claimed history was bunk, but a growing number of legacy car makers are today hoping history means bucks. In an era when a company that barely a decade ago was making smartphones can produce a Porsche-beating…

On the face of it, we’ve been here before. A two-seat, mid-engined supercar (red, at that), dripping in motorsport heritage and pretty as a pressed rose, flitting through a quick left-right chicane before sending 600bhpplus to the rear wheels and launching forth under bright, clear Italian skies. A small crowd has formed at the side of the road, desperate to steal a glimpse of the Italian institution blatting back and forth before their eyes. Aware of the audience, my grip on the steering wheel tightens. Lavished in the finest leather, its delicate form telegraphs crucial data into my palms as the front end bites hungrily into the braking zone. Click-click. A perfect double flare of rev-matching from the dual-clutch ’box and we’re down to second, eyeballs darting left to the…

‘I think that we have an unbelievable story and glory if you look at our past. So what I’m imagining for the future, and also for the present, is that we need to find the right position in the market, starting from our legacy.’ Santo Ficili is the man tasked with taking Alfa Romeo into the future and is stepping into some big shoes: the presence of Sergio Marchionne still reverberates through the Alfa narrative, while Ficili’s direct predecessor, Jean-Philippe Imparato, had the double bonus of a clear plan and being best mates with Stellantis’ then-CEO Carlos Tavares. To complicate matters, JPI is still at Stellantis so has the potential to mark Ficili’s homework. But his personal history stands him in good stead. He began his automotive career as a…

We all have our hobbies. Some play golf, others like to garden, some grown men make 16th century galleons out of matchsticks. My hobby is window shopping for crappy cars on eBay. I don’t know why, I just like to idle away the hours looking for all manner of garbage I’ll never actually buy. I suppose the entertainment comes from seeing what’s out there, feeding my car-nerd imagination. What would it be like to buy a 1995 Mercedes C-Class for £1250? (I don’t need one.) Wouldn’t it be fun to own an old Fiat Panda? (I’d never drive it.) And would a 170,000-mile Alfa 159 be reliable? (I’d never risk it.) Ah yes, the crunch issue: reliability. Would that tatty P38 Range Rover with stratospheric mileage and cracked leather…

Off-roading in someone else’s very valuable car requires a considered blend of aggression and restraint. Go too hard in the wrong places and at best you’ll spill your iced latte; at worst you’ll need a bin bag for the car’s corners and a good story for the insurance paper-work. But fail to go hard enough and you might get stuck, which would be embarrassing in any 4x4, let alone one wearing Land Cruiser or Defender badges. Water surges over the Defender’s bonnet, although we’re barely troubling a third of the Defender’s maximum 900mm wading depth; the Land Cruiser maxes out at 700mm. As the wade-sensing display assures me there’s nothing to worry about, the supercharged V8’s thick-milkshake purr turns to a hungover-bear roar and we accelerate so effortlessly that the…

Jealous colleagues keep telling me I’ve probably got the best car of the entire CAR long-term test fleet. Best by what metric, though? It’s not the fastest, nor the most efficient. And, well… just look at it. My new Skoda Superb estate, arriving in sensible SE L trim and finished in grey, looks like something that turns up at 4am to take you to Stansted for your week in Benidorm. It really isn’t anything special to look at, is it? The Superb has always been quietly handsome, but this time around, in its fourth generation, it manages to look a little dowdy. And yet everyone I’ve talked to who’s remotely interested in cars has responded with some approving noise or other – a ‘phwoaaaar’ here and a ‘niiiiice’ there –…

Not all rotary engines are born equal. Over the years, there’s been the Mazda Cosmo, the OG rotary sports coupe, unveiled in 1964; there was the Le Mans-winning Mazda 787B, with its screaming, four-rotor R26B engine; the 228bhp Renesis engine of the RX-8 coupe from 2003; and there’s the tiny tiddler found in our Mazda MX-30, an 830cc, single-rotor range-extender working in conjunction with a modest battery and electric motor. Given this rich, 60-year history, we thought it would be nice to drive the MX-30 alongside one of our Mazda’s rotary ancestors, the RX-3. This sweet little coupe was part of a whole family of cars dating back to 1971 and it proved to be a huge export success for Mazda. Available as a coupe, saloon and estate, with both…