Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i topCar

THE LONGEST-SERVING and most successful Lamborghini president of modern times bowed out at the Geneva show. His final act was to launch a new car that commemorates his most illustrious predecessor. Stephan Winkelmann, German by name and by birth, Italian by upbringing and by nature, unveiled the new Centenario in Switzerland. The 566kW supercar uses Lamborghini’s most powerful-ever naturally aspirated V12, and celebrates the centenary of company founder Ferruccio’s birth. It’s also a profitable way of liberating lots of money from 40 wealthy loyalists. ‘I have tried to copy some of our founder’s management ideas. He maintained that what you say is what you do. He was very hands-on, very passionate, very bold and yet also showed great humility. Lamborghini then had a family atmosphere and despite the growth I…

ALL THREE LANES of the A5 out of Lisbon are busy, an impatience of escapees keen to flee this most beautiful of Mediterranean cities. The speed limit, typically European, changes every few kilometres, the peloton concertinaing then accelerating amid a firing of brakes and foot-flat diesel fumes. Third car from the left in the outside lane is me, and the passing parade might be forgiven for thinking there’s something up – right now I’m using both hands to accent a point to my passenger. I can do this without fear of consequence because the tenth-generation Mercedes-Benz E-Class I am nominally piloting is, in truth, driving itself. Piloting is about the sum of it – inside the lavishly appointed cabin Drive Pilot is operational, a simple double pull of the cruise…

VIEW FOUR GENERATIONS of Sportage on parade and it’s easy to see how far Kia has come in just 15 years. With record sales year on year, the company’s image has been transformed over the last decade, and the Sportage is fundamental to its future aspirations. But it is, surely, design that drives image, and – studying those four Sportage variants – it strikes me that the third and fourth generation cars are placed the wrong way round in the stylistic pecking order. Kia’s designers have here concentrated so hard on making the corporate, tiger nose grille yell ‘BRAND’ that they’ve forgotten to make the front good looking. Elements once seamlessly integrated into the svelte smile of the effortlessly stylish are now divorced; the upshot a more prosaic, Mr Potato…

YOU KNOW a car’s been around for ages when you realise it’s already on its second facelift. Now in its ninth year on sale in SA, Chevrolet has given the Captiva a new grille and front bumper plus new headlights with LED daylight runners. Sounds comprehensive but doesn’t look it – more a makeup makeover than full plastic surgery. At least the 18-inch alloys and integrated side steps are standard. Changes are more obvious inside where a seven-inch touchscreen infotainment system simplifies the layout and halves the button count. New dashboard elements, instrumentation and leather covered steering wheel also help to re-energise what was a seriously dated cabin. The touchscreen’s very intuitive OS, called MyLink 2.0, includes a ‘smartphone projection feature’ aka Apple CarPlay for compatible handsets that allows control…

SAY CONTESTED but what I really mean is congested. Just look at that collection, eight-strong and almost a sea of monotone save for a splash of brown and red. And those are just the posh ones so no Ford Fusion, Honda Accord or even Mazda6 here I’m afraid, despite being excellent and having the correct D-segment dimensions. Instead, the new A4 plays a familiar rivalry with its Munich nemesis, the BMW 3 Series, and from Stuttgart the perennial Mercedes-Benz C-Class, both resplendent in white, both blessed with their respective performance division’s body addenda making them look suitably imposing. From the land of the rising sun, Lexus and Infiniti have sent in their champions, the IS200T and Q50 2.0T Sport respectively. That leaves us with three Euro fighters; the dated but…

ALMOST IRONICALLY PERHAPS, this year sees Renault compete in Formula One solely as Renault Sport F1 after cancelling its previous partnership with Lotus, which in a way recalls a motor sport-oriented move by the French automaker some 20 years ago. It was then that Renault was recovering from a difficult period in its history and wanted to re-establish itself as a sporting brand, and to this end designed a purist Spider sports car that doubled as both a road and race car, the latter approach backed with a one-make race series. But it had a rival – the near identical in configuration Elise, built by Lotus... Naturally there were comparisons, but while the Elise was yet another chapter in the history of lightweight and dynamic Lotus sports cars, for Renault…

Racing cars without racing drivers? Not content with taking the engine noise out of racing, it seems the all-electric Formula E championship has got it in for drivers, too, proposing an autonomous support series for the 2016/17 contest. ‘Roborace’ will feature 20 identical 300kph electric cars, 10 teams and hour-long races around the same street circuits as Formula E proper. Identical cars? Where’s the fun in that? The tag line ‘Driverless teams competing in a battle of algorithms’ hardly sounds like a thrill ride either. But although the cars will look the same, their software will be totally customisable – organisers hope to induce step-change innovation for autonomous motoring. What will the cars look like? No idea yet, but removing the driver does suggest intriguing flexibility, and Formula E has…

GOODBYE BMW 335i GT IT’S ALLover. My year with Hunchy has finally come to an end. I won’t lie – I’m pretty heart sore and as an experienced motoring journalist I shouldn’t really get affected by such things. But I have and it’s difficult to come to terms with bidding farewell to the best long-term test vehicle I’ve ever had the privilege of driving. Here’s a re-cap of some of the highlights of the 12 months we’ve shared together. As the custodian of a long-termer most of the time you feel obliged to say good things and profess the quality and general awesomeness it might or might not exude. I on the other hand can certainly say this was not the case for my BMW 335i GT. Why – well,…

MONTH 10 CITROËN C4 CACTUS THERE’S PLENTY to talk about in month ten of our Cactus long-term test. Of highest importance is probably the Frenchie’s first 15000km service. A simple email to Citroën elicited a phone call from the service department at Mekor Cape Town before the day was out and we had the little turquoise machine booked in. The day of the booking, a friendly man collected it first thing at the office and whisked it away. I figured I’d take whatever else was lying around the TopCarcarpark home that evening but before I’d even had time to claim a set of keys I received a call saying it was ready for collection. That’s beyond efficient. Clearly they didn’t need to do anything particularly time consuming, the invoice listing…

FEBRUARY 2016 MAY have been a leap year month, but total local industry new vehicle sales stepped backwards, not only from the January total but also when compared with February 2015’s figure. The statistics, issued jointly by the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa) and Lightstone Auto, the independent provider of the South African new vehicle sales information to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the automotive industry, showed that local manufacturers and distributors sold 48 149 vehicles over the six market categories, with a further 29 308 being exported.…

It’s constructed from composites, including carbonfibre. BMW suggests that steel part presses will become obsolete at some point in the future, with rapid manufacturing and ‘4D printing’ taking a wider production role. By 4D printing, BMW means adding a moving function to 3D printed components, integrated with the car’s electronic control systems. BMW is adamant that ‘in the future, BMW drivers will still want to spend most of the time they are in their car at the wheel.’ Replacing conventional instruments and screens, the entire windscreen becomes a giant display. Parts of the interior architecture are designed to change shape, using 800 moving triangles set into the instrument panel. Likewise an intelligent mesh of triangles shift and change the shape of the body as the wheels turn. The BMW Vision…

What prompted Toby Venter to acquire the Bentley distribution rights? Well, Bentley has been bracketed with Bugatti and Porsche under the VW group which certainly helped Toby make his final decision. These three brands have some degree of parts sharing and synergies so it made absolute sense. Will this acquisition have any impact on Porsche SA in terms of cannibalisation of sales? No. Our current Porsche customers also own Bentleys. As a premium brand Bentley starts where Porsche stops. The two brands complement each other. What can we expect from Bentley SA this year in terms of growth and sales? We’re essentially still a start-up business, a Greenfields operation if you will. So there’s no real expectation in terms of growth just yet and our main goal for now is…

McLaren 570GT Having decided that trying to cram an extra pair of chairs in the back was utter madness, McLaren’s newest edition to its ‘budget’ Sports Series has eschewed the typical grand tourer’s four seats for a glass hatchback. But this isn’t just any glass hatchback; this is a side-opening McLaren glass hatchback accessing a leather-lined Touring Deck providing 220 litres of additional bag space. With comfort-tuned suspension, 2% slower steering, specially developed noise-cancelling Pirelli tyres and extra sound insulation, the 570GT rightfully claims to be the most luxurious and refined McLaren yet. NEED TO KNOW > What it is McLaren’s bid to make a real daily driver > Engine & performance 3.8 twin-turbo V8, 419kW, 600Nm, 3.4sec 0-100kph, 328kph top speed > Aimed at Er, the motorway commute? Pagani…

AS THE DEAR old Land Rover Defender ceases production after 68 eventful years of farming, warfare, exploration and – latterly – urban posturing, it’s worth examining why it achieved such success and, even more important, such widespread affection. Apart possibly from the original Mini, there has never been a more beloved British car. Why was it so loved? Its longevity helped. Any car that can stay in production so long is bound to create emotional bonds. (The Mini lasted 41 years.) Mind you, the latest Defender shared only one component with the 1948 original – the hood cleat on the soft-top version. Celebrated owners including the Queen and Churchill added to the allure. It became a national treasure, like an all-terrain David Attenborough or Ranulph Fiennes (who both used Landies…

INITIAL DRIVES IN the new Tucson in Gran Canaria last year on a mix of gravel roads and tight mountain passes left us feeling suitably impressed by the new model’s tangible step up in terms of quality and overall refinement. At the time we could only sample the naturally aspirated 2.0-litre NU petrol engine and 1.7-litre CDRi diesel, the latter of which sadly does not form part of the local line-up. Thankfully a perky 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol headlines the Tucson range in South Africa followed by the naturally aspirated 2.0-litre model. Both engines can be had in either manual or automatic transmissions – a six-speed torque converter-type unit for the 2.0-litre and a seven-speed dual-clutch (DCT) for the range-topping all-wheel-drive 1.6-litre T-GDI Elite. Visually the Tucson builds on the company’s…

Hilux, for the time being at least, is actually cheaper than the outgoing model ON LAUNCH, TOYOTA’S marketing team made much of the fact that in its last month on sale the previous generation Hilux was the country’s best-selling bakkie. Their point was that the brand is as strong as ever, and fair enough. But there is a hidden stress inherent in that; a legion of Hilux fans loved the old one and wanted to get their hands on it before it was too late. Could it be Joe Public was nervous of a new Hilux after ten years? What if it was too hi-tech, too expensive and not as tough? On two of those three we can report that fears are unfounded. Hilux, for the time being at least,…

The Astra works hard - there is some scrabble and fight – but little to suggest a Cretaceous date with death in a valley far below A HEAD, GRAHAM ROSS’ 1954 masterpiece, a driver’s pass to rival the best of Europe. Outeniqua, Bloukrans and Grootrivier passes lie behind, spaghetti strands straightened out by sheer force of character. Astra character. By now we understand each other, Opel’s lithe new Astra and I, and both are up for the challenge. And challenge is right – Huisrivier Pass is that most demanding of routes, initially fast as it snakes autobahn-like down from Calitzdorp to the river itself, then suddenly tight as the switchback count mounts, up steeply through the 500-million-year-old quartzitic sandstone folds. Huisrivier is earmarked as the 1.6T Sport’s handling Damascus Moment,…

BEFORE WE DELVE into the minutiae of VW’s LWB people carrier and load lugger, allow me to pose a question… rhetorically of course. Aside from Uber XL drivers, who goes out and buys a commercial van repurposed for civilian use? Wading through the ocean of passenger cars on Volkswagen’s website reveals any number of perfectly practical conveyances to move many people and objects about. From the ‘jumbo’ Golf SV and trad Touran MPV to family favourites Tiguan and Touareg, plus the T6 microbus in Transporter Crew Bus, Kombi, Caravelle and California varieties, the degree of choice for what is essentially a vast monovolume on wheels is virtually infinite. Yet VW doesn’t stop there. Originally derived from a panel van is the Caddy genus, available in Crew Bus, Alltrack and Trendline,…

THE MORE THINGS change – nascent piloted drive, creeping hybridisation, climatic carnage – the more things stay the same, and in Bugatti’s unspeakably indulgent world of money, speed and luxury that means one thing: that engine. For while the Chiron, the car that will grasp Veyron’s baton and run with it to 500 units costing at least €2.4 million apiece, is a new car by every significant indicator of these things (monocoque, coachwork, systems, performance, driving dynamics) there’s an old friend bolted to its composite rear bulkhead. Chiron’s Judgement Day came long before Ferdinand Piëch’s departure from VW’s supervisory board, before dieselgate. It was May 2012 when key VW Group minds met under a flawless Spanish sky to sign off or kill off a number of projects. In a duotone…

FRANK GEARY’S GUGGENHEIM museum glistens in the sunlight on the opposite bank of the Ria del Nervión like giant curls of swarf fallen from some unseen engine shop in the sky. As worthy of a chin-stroke as any of the works contained within its walls, it has helped bring millions of visitors to a rejuvenated Bilbao every year since it opened in 1999. But for all its plaudits it’s also been the subject of controversy, coming under attack for symbolising gentrification and cultural imperialism from people who know about these things. That seemed to make it an apt enough place to start a journey in the latest Evoque, a vehicle that firmly prioritises the aesthetic over the off-road athletic, that started life as a concept wearing a Land Rover badge,…

1 As the autonomous Toyota follows a truck laden with bricks in lane one of the motorway, so the truck’s unsecured payload begins to topple into the road. If it stays in its lane and brakes hard, the Toyota calculates it will plough into the bricks. But swerving to avoid them holds its own dangers… 2 Up ahead on the hard shoulder, a family have broken down and are just leaving their car to reach safety. The autonomous Toyota is as likely to hit the stranded car as the bricks. Meanwhile, another car is fast-approaching from behind in the middle lane. If the Toyota moves into the middle lane and the other car maintains its speed, the two will collide 3 The Toyota quickly assesses the situation. From machine learning…

PERMANENT FOUR-WHEEL drive has been at the heart of Audi’s core quattro models ever since the original Ur-Quattro yumped onto the scene in 1980. But its latest-generation system is anything but permanent. Instead it switches between front- and four-wheel drive in milliseconds and bins the traditional centre diff for a pair of clutches controlled by a network of sophisticated electronics. The goal is efficiency: the rear wheels are brought into play near-instantaneously when needed, but most of the time the car is front-wheel drive and, thanks to lower frictional losses, more fuel efficient. Audi calls the new-generation system ‘Quattro with Ultra’; Ultra being its conspicuously parsimonious sub-brand. Surely ‘Quattro with Duo’ would be more appropriate? The new system will be rolled out across some versions of Audi’s longitudinally-engined models from…

MONTH 9 MAZDA 6 GOOD MORNING, I’d like to book my Mazda in for its 15000km service please.’ ‘Certainly sir. Can I have your number and the department will phone you back after 9.30am.’ ‘Er, sure, can you give me an idea of when they are likely to call? I’m scheduling meetings.’ ‘I don’t know sir, when they’re not busy.’ Not the greatest start to the servicing experience. Mazda Paarden Island’s busy is obviously far more important than the client’s busy. But hey, Monday morning, perhaps the receptionist and the service centre are just having a pre-coffee moment. Fast forward a few of hours later. Still waiting for the call. Very bad coffee apparently. I phone back at noon. ‘They will phone you when they can, sir.’ ‘That’s not going…

MONTH 3 NISSAN JUKE 1.2T ACENTA Intermittent use has killed it, sorry. Pacman has died. Not once, not twice but three times. Game over. No, I’m not referring to that ball-munching, spectre-dodging ensemble of yellow pixels (beep, beep, boop), but rather our long-term Nissan Juke. The plucky hatch-on-stilts that has cycled duty between Aaron and myself over the last few months has had to endure several school runs, and many more trips to the mountain bearing bicycles, running gear and lifestyle paraphernalia of all description. But we also have long-termers of our own to run, not to mention an eight-car fleet of saloons (page 54) to contend with this month and that meant sparse Juke time. The sad result of all this stagnation is a battery that won’t hold its…

1 DS’s surprise supercar Everywhere you looked in Geneva lurked the biggest names peddling the fastest cars: Bugatti! Lamborghini! McLaren! Pagani! Pininfarina unveiled a fuel-cell-powered supercar capable of exceeding 300kph, Koënigsegg showed the 1500hp (1119kW)hybrid Regera. But the supercar from the most unlikely source was the E-Tense concept from Peugeot’s upstart premium brand DS (above). The company hasn’t let its lack of eight- or 12-cylinder supercar engines hold it back: the E-Tense is pure electric. It’s built on a carbonfibre monocoque, housing lithium-ion batteries low to drop the centre of gravity, suspended via double wishbones. The electric powertrain produces 300kW and 515Nm of instant shove, said to propel the DS from stop to 100kph in 4.5sec. The zero emissions range is up around 322km. Think this concept is all claim…

MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS The most complete team in F1 in 2016 – and possibly of all time. With a brand new power unit and big aero gains on the chassis, their biggest threat might be the drivers crashing into each other – or one of them sustaining an eye injury in a freak hat-hurling incident. LEWIS HAMILTON Favourite to seal a third consecutive title, so long as he spends more time with his engineers than with rappers. WE SAY True test of greatness starts here. NICO ROSBERG Has the speed, but does he have the consistency? With Merc protégé Pascal Wehrlein lurking in the wings, a defining season. WE SAY Only Nico believes he is not a number two driver. This is his last chance to convince the rest of…

REMEMBER FORMULA 1’S desperation to ‘spice the show’ in order to boost live audience and television ratings – in turn driven by the greed of the sport’s commercial rights holder, vulture fund CVC Capital Partners as it maximises profits from its ‘investment’ – resulted in a new low in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, when no cars circulated during the usually nail-biting final three minutes of the one hour session. How it came to this is a lesson in mismanagement compounded by a total lack of strategic vision by F1’s commercial masters – led by one Bernard Charles Ecclestone – whose continuing reliance on a business model created by the now-85-year-old when he first entered F1 as team owner in the seventies lies at the core of F1’s latest…

FORGET COUNTRYMAN, Paceman, Clubman, I’m cruising along the coast with the top down in the new Breezeman. Has a nice ring to it, right? (Note to Mini: my royalty fees are ridiculously low) Okay, so Mini may (or may not) have missed a trick by once again calling its new soft-top a Cooper Convertible but they’ve missed little else with this remake. As with the latest 3-door Cooper, significant gains have been made in the areas of drivetrains, interior quality and ride comfort while retaining all of Mini’s retro boutique style. As before the four-seater convertible features a fabric roof that doesn’t fold completely away – what it robs from the aesthetics it replaces by not taking up tonnes of boot space. That’s important when you only have 215 litres…

IN SHARP CONTRAST to last month’s Lamborghini Huracan Spyder launch in Miami, Mercedes has brought us to California for the launch of the updated SL not just for the lifestyle but for the roads. Miles and miles of deserted, sun-drenched two-lane blacktop that writhes across the scenery, punctuated only by the jarring presence of border patrol checkpoints populated by smiling men with machine guns. It all makes you want to keep on driving forever. And you’re probably already thinking it must have been wasted on an SL. Merc’s big convertible cruiser might have started life as a hardcore homologation special, but over the years it’s become the de facto boulevard barge-about for buyers of a certain age and wealth profile. Comfortable? Absolutely. Luxurious? Of course. Fast? You’d better believe it…

EVERY NEW MINI we’ve tested recently has thoroughly impressed us, particularly the 1.5-litre and 2.0-litre turbo hatchbacks. These superb offerings seamlessly meld comfort and sportiness without compromising refinement, and the new Mini Clubman isn’t any different. As a matter of fact it builds on these principles taking comfort, performance and user-friendliness to the next level. Compared with its predecessor the new Clubman has grown – both in demeanour and size. At more than 4.2m in length it’s essentially a Maxi rather than Mini measuring 270mm longer and 73mm wider than the regular 5-door hatchback. More notable is the progression in terms of quality over its forebear with first-class materials liberally used in the cabin architecture. Then there’s its excellent luggage capacity and refinement levels of the highest order. Copy and…

Veyron’s W16 ushered in a new era of wanton power and speed. During the 450-car run output rose to 882kW in the Super Sport Veyron brief a nightmare for transmission boffins Ricardo. 7-speed DCT slick and impressively resilient in the face of torque abuse Initially inert dynamic character became progressively more alive and taut as Veyron gave way to agile Super Sport Design always more shock and awe than traditional Bugatti elegance. Relatively low-tech cockpit dated fast The road car’s Concorde moment and an engineering miracle. So accomplished Molsheim’s stuck to the same script Four far bigger turbos plus a little associated upgrading have added half the original car’s power output again Driveline reinforced to cope. New drift mode shows Bugatti’s playful side; 1103kW powerslides are go Chiron continues the…

BONDGOT DB10. This year, and not before time, the rest of us finally get a new Aston Martin DB, the DB11. With an aluminium chassis, a V12 engine up front and some classic Aston design cues in place (albeit deftly re-imagined), you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘new’ is a bit strong. But new the DB11 is. Get into the detail, from the rigidity and fiendishly clever packaging of that bonded aluminium monocoque to the twin-turbo V12’s wanton surplus of torque, the innovative aero solutions to the unmistakable dynamic fingerprint of ex-Lotus ride and handling ace Matt Becker, and it becomes clear that this is the Aston Martin we’ve been waiting for, one whose links to the past have been carefully edited: out with the carry-over engineering you don’t want, forwards…

> FOR ME it began with the LF-LC concept. The moment I saw it I knew we had to build it. Many other people said the same: Lexus, please build this car. But it was easier said than done. To create a car that stirs the soul and captures the heart we have to challenge ourselves. For me, LC means Lexus Challenge. > THE CHALLENGE was to incorporate production considerations and constraints into a design study. So we created a cross team with designers, r&d and production engineers. We had one common objective: to achieve the best design and the best dynamics. > WE WANTED to launch a hybrid version of LC. But how to combine our new requirements for superior driving feel with a hybrid powertrain? We clearly felt…

MONTH 4 RENAULT CLIO 1.2 EDC IT DOESN’T REALLY matter what position Renault holds on your personal radar, if you like cars you tend to notice when a current generation Clio passes by. Four years on from launch, it’s somehow better looking now thanks to a particular combination of stance, curves and colour that gels superbly. This didn’t happen by chance. It was all part of a meticulous plan conceived by then-new Renault design chief Laurens van den Acker. Remember the Dezir concept that made its debut back in 2010? That was the first in a series of six concepts that helped shape every new Renault from Clio (2012), Twingo, Espace and Megane to the recently revealed Scenic (see page 10). These six represented aspects of life that Renault identified…