Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2015 i topCar

01 ‘Stay as close to the wall as you can’ This is the start of the Blancpain 24 Hours of Spa. I qualified in second, 0.017sec off pole position. Despite the rain I made a good start and passed the leading Audi R8 for the top position. On the run down towards Eau Rouge you run as close as you dare to the old pitwall, to set yourself up for the corner. 02 ‘Your line and timing are critical’ You turn left, then right, then run up the hill. You have to be aggressive with the first turn, the left, and use a lot of kerb. Now the most important part; the transition. Turn too early and at the crest the car will understeer, you’ll run out of racetrack and…

THE LATEST ONE New Clubman Unveiling this latest Mini, boss Peter Schwarzenbauer announced: ‘We will concentrate on five core models with strong characters.’ The Clubman is chapter two after the hatches, and it’s a handsome beast, with a hot-rod vibe from its chopped glass and long roof – supposedly the longest in BMW. The unique cargo doors resemble a double fridge’s. ‘It’s expensive to do two doors, but no other [car] brand in the world does it,’ says BMW design director Adrian van Hooydonk. ‘And turning the lamps horizontal widens the stance.’ The 100kW three-cylinder Cooper is the base Clubman; four-pot Cooper D diesel and 141kW Cooper S petrol flesh out the range. The car has grown a massive 295mm over the Mk1, sprouted an extra side door and packs…

SEBASTIAN VETTEL WAS livid after his tyre exploded on the penultimate lap of the 43-lap Belgian Grand Prix. Having lined up eighth following an error-prone qualifying session, his Ferrari team opted for an aggressive strategy, with the Scuderia’s team boss Maurizio Arrivabene admitting afterwards that a one-stop race was ‘Plan A, we decided that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning during our race strategy meeting.’ Ferrari split the German’s race into stints of 14 and 29 laps respectively – and he was well on his way to pulling off a strategic masterpiece. Then, as he sped out of Eau Rouge and towards Kemmel, his right rear Pirelli popped spectacularly. Third place was lost on the spot, with any hope of points evaporating as car after car sped past on the…

BMW’S DAMASCAN revelation that not all its cars absolutely have to drive their rear wheels might have caused a few die-hard fans to spit out their M Sport-branded dummies, but there’s only so much arguing you can do against common sense. And the reincarnated, and now really rather well-rounded, X1 only goes to vindicate its change of faith. First time around, BMW’s littlest SUV was a bit of a mongrel. It forced an ill-fitting offroader bodystyle onto a platform borrowed from the previous-generation 3 Series Touring, with compromised packaging and misshapen proportions the result. This time it’s based not on a rehashed rear-drive estate but the transverse-engined, front-drive platform that underpins the Active Tourer MPV, and various members of the Mini family. That gets X1: The Sequel off on a…

LONG BEFORE BIEBER, Instagram and trending, families bought station wagons. Then came the turn of the MPV, quickly usurped by the SUV in every size from small to ‘Oh my!’ Already a strong player in both B- and C-segment SUVs, Ford South Africa is diversifying its range even more by adding a new acronym, MAV (Multi Activity Vehicle), and is hoping its first fruits, the B-Max, will find favour with those trendies always on the lookout for the next BIG thing. Alas, intriguing as it is, the B-Max is just too niche to ever go mainstream. Think of it as the anaphylactic Fiesta that ate all the shellfish. However, swollen, van-like proportions and a resultant boost in cargo room aren’t its only USP. It has also gained a party trick…

IT’S A HOSTILE environment for motoring enthusiasts these days. Fuel is perilously close to R14 a litre, there’s e-tolling, a CO2 emissions surcharge on any car with a pulse and more traffic on our roads than ever. Now even the car companies are turning against us, turning the turbocharger from a performance enhancer into a tool of evangelical eco-ism. The turbo now acts as temperance for fuel consumption and a firewall to emissions as opposed to the one-way ticket to laggy G-forces and battered kidneys that it once was. Manufacturers match these downsized turbo engines to long-ratio transmissions and ever-bloating bodies and the result isn’t just killing the kilowatt, it’s also sounding the death knell for driver immersion. Well, that’s until you examine an encouraging trend in the newest hot…

IF YOU’RE NOT looking at spending north of half a mil, and you’re quite alright to forgo the all-wheel drive route made popular by the RS3, A45 AMG and soon-to-be Ford Focus RS then these three will most likely have risen to the top of your prospective hot-hatch list. Rightly so, each represents a somewhat different take on the genre. Here intensity ranges from the mature VW GTI, the ever-an-all-rounder ST, to the bonkers RS Trophy. Two are special editions and the other a facelift. Let’s dance. Ford Focus ST3 What’s new here? The facelifted Ford Focus doesn’t receive any power upgrades as such, rather a fettled suspension and steering rack plus a squintier expression thanks to narrower headlamps and a more chiselled aesthetic. The end result is a subtle…

I’VE HAD A few genuinely alarming moments in cars, but never before in something with 37 kilowatts, made in 1951 and only capable of 80-something kilometres per hour. I am sitting in a Series I Land Rover: or rather I’m sitting on it, because with the canvas roof off and the windscreen folded forward, the tiny car’s bare-minimum bodywork barely reaches my hips. Its highest point is the thin Bakelite steering wheel I’m grasping, and the only roll-over protection I have is my flat cap. Ahead of me Land Rover’s Roger Crathorne, the Stirling Moss of off-road driving, is easing a modern Defender over the brow of a 50-metre, 40 per cent descent whose gravel surface has been further loosened by the biblical downpour so typical of a Scottish summer.…

SO YOU THINK you know about ride comfort? You’ve relaxed in the back of an S-Class hotel shuttle and stormed down a Western Cape mountain trail on your fancy full-suspension 29er mountain bike. But you’ve never driven an original XJ? Consider a key part of your automotive schooling absent. Here’s the Jag the current crop of cats desperately wants to emulate. Those tapering flanks, impossibly low roofline and gorgeously slim pillars look great today; half a century ago this was supercar style for the fortunate family man. And it was even better to drive. Most of the oily bits we’d seen before: the ohc XK engine, the independent rear suspension and front subframe. But get past steering that’s lighter than a helium filled penny floater, and it all worked magnificently,…

DURING THE 1960S, Jaguar allocated chassis numbers to 18 Lightweight E-Types; these cars featured aluminium construction rather than steel, a tweaked engine and extensive chassis mods for racing. The final six were never built, but now, incredibly, Jaguar is dusting off those numbers and finishing the job as close as dammit to original specification. These new cars weigh a suspiciously even 1000kg, and mate a 250kW straight-six to a four-speed synchro ’box and slippy diff. There are discs all round, an FIA-approved cage that’ll add more stiffness than the originals ever had, and cross-ply tyres with just as little grip. Can’t believe it, but I’m driving car number 13 on Circuit de Navarra, Spain. This car is worth over ten million rand and already has a name on the logbook,…

THE PRESENTATION begins with a question from MX-5 designer Nakayama-san: ‘Do you like Lamborghinis?’ Somewhat rhetorical for a bunch of motoring journos. Anyway, sketching just the essentials – wheels, drivetrain and glasshouse – he very accurately reproduces both Countach and Miura. Though minus eight cylinders and legendary Italian supercar status, it’s much the same for the new MX-5 which has its mechanicals vacuum-wrapped by svelte bodywork. While to my eyes prettier than ever, the new car is definitively more expressive and a tad more masculine than previous generations. At just more than 1040kg, it’s up to 100kg lighter, too. Vastly increased use of aluminium plus strict enforcement of Mazda’s ‘gram strategy’ which aims to ruthlessly remove all unnecessary material. It’s noticeable in areas such as the bare-bones seat slide lever,…

1 The Evoque’s continuously variable MagneRide dampers impact on a pothole, manhole cover or damaged drain 2 Existing sensors in the magnetorheological dampers, roll-control and traction-control systems combine to measure the severity of the impact, while GPS from the satnav is used to determine its location 3 This information is digitally uploaded to the cloud via the Evoque’s internet connection, then automatically shared with other road users and the local authority 4 Road users are alerted to particularly severe potholes, while the local authority can more accurately target essential repairs PUNCTURES, BROKEN suspension, buckled wheels… potholes are bad news for motorists, but now Jaguar Land Rover is working on a solution: a new connected-car technology dubbed Pothole Alert (PA). TopCar drove an Evoque equipped with prototype Pothole Alert. Like many…

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A NEW WAVE OF Ferrari sports cars are coming, with new chairman Sergio Marchionne having sanctioned a compact, mid-engined ‘Dino’ powered by an all-new V6 engine. The Dino will be the newcomer to the re-energised prancing horse stable, which will be built on an all-new components set and share a revamped engine line-up. Having bent Fiat and Chrysler to his will, Marchionne will lose no time streamlining the complex and in places inefficient Maranello operation. Critical to this will be the new modular vehicle architecture, which will cater for all future models bar LaFerrari-style carbonfibre hypercars. This flexible architecture will continue Ferrari’s aluminium spaceframe approach, and will likely be introduced with the second-gen California in 2017. Thanks to advanced bonding techniques and a cleverly re-engineered body in white, weight will…

Mercedes-AMG C63 Coupe As we all knew, the AMG C-Class coupe will get the 4.0-litre V8 bi-turbo unit featured in the saloon. Power is up to 355kW and 650Nm of torque, while the C63 S gets a whopping 375kW and 700Nm. According to Mercedes, this will propel the two-door from 0-100kph in 4.0sec and 3.9sec respectively. Both top out at the electronically limited 250kph, but with the optional extra AMG Driver’s Package, an 290kph governor is fitted. All that power is pushed through a 7-speed twin-clutch auto. It’s refreshing to know that Mercedes has fitted a mechanical limited-slip differential (LSD) to the C63 (the S model comes with an electronic LSD to control inner wheel motion during fast cornering). An electronically controlled ‘flap’ system comes as standard within the exhaust,…

YOU’LL SWEAR THE new Jaguar XF is longer than its predecessor: that tiny front overhang, the feature line that visually elongates the body, the boot that dangles beyond the rear axle like a cliff-hanging Italian Job bus. All of it makes the new XF appear a long car. It is quite long at 4954mm, but it’s actually 7mm shorter than the outgoing model, 3mm lower too. If you’ve ever sat in the back of the old XF, fashioning a new one to be shorter and lower wouldn’t be top of your wish-list: the rakish roof made it more cramped for rear-seat passengers than 5 Series, E-Class and A6 rivals. Yet sit in the back of the new model and you’ll find plenty of legroom – a class-leading 15mm more than…

VOLKSWAGEN WAS OUT in force to announce the completion of the Polo hatch family and kudos to them; a process that began in June 2014 now sees 11 derivatives in the range, including two new 1.4-litre diesels, GTIs with or without a stick shift and this – reason enough to ignore all the others, if not the entire B-segment hatchback market. It’s that good. Polo’s sole three-cylinder replaces the diesel BlueMotion of yore, taking over the mantle of uber efficient motor in South Africa. You’ll remember the previous TDI BlueMotion was, for many years, the most frugal car on the market, regularly making ridiculously expensive hybrids blush when put back to back and told to go find a complicated road. The fact that it couldn’t pull the skin off a…

YOU’LL THINK I’M juvenile for mentioning it but this is South Africa where our accent twists words such as life into laaf, nice into naas and so on. This really tortures the name of Honda’s new Juke rival. ‘Hey boet, I heard you’ve got that HR-V? Life goes on, hey.’ It does indeed, and in the Thailand-built Honda ‘H emphasis-on-R V’ it does so reasonably well. See, you might think that it’s a direct rival to the Juke but it actually offers 98 per cent of its larger Qashqai sibling’s cabin space. Here’s the problem however, at R350590 for the naturally aspirated 1.8 Elegance model I drove on launch you could in fact purchase a much larger Nissan X-Trail. And I’m not talking entry level either, that’s the turbodiesel. Get…

THIS MONTH’S ‘NEW’ Mercedes SUV is called the GLC and it plunges straight into the intense on-going fisticuffs between the Audi Q5, BMW X3, Land Rover Discovery Sport and Porsche Macan. Although to be honest, that last is essentially standing at one side of the room looking like a badass, and no-one is really giving it any grief. Anyway, the GLC is the replacement for the GLK, a mid-size pseudo-mudplugger that never troubled us due to the Germans’ lack of interest in making the four-wheel-drive platform compatible with steering on the right. The GLK was Mercedes’ best-selling SUV all the same, and we can confidently predict that the GLC isn’t going to have any trouble carrying on this tradition. It is easily the best 4x4 the firm currently makes, even…

I WAS IN PARIS in 2009 when the DS3 was first launched. Today they’d call it a ‘takeover’. Shop fronts down the fanciest rues were emblazoned with marketing imagery and the defining slogan, ‘anti-retro’. Parisians and the rest of the world took it to heart and the DS3 has long been a kind of street hero among well-to-do Euro-sympathisers whose questionable wardrobe contains an assortment of flat-peaked caps, hoodies and track pants. You know those MTV, wrong-side-of-the-track, French-Geordie-Shore types. The nub, crucially, was the DS3 didn’t lack the snap, crackle and pop to mix it with the hatch of the time, the Mini Cooper S (with which the top THP model shared an engine, of course). Since then Mini has grown up in size and attitude, backed by Beemer’s bountiful…

THE COMPACT SUV segment has come a long way since the Tucson first arrived on the scene in 2004. Back then there were only a few competitors vying for segment dominance. Now, an army of competitors fights monthly to be top dog. The all-new Tucson has a lot to live up to – especially in South Africa where its predecessor (badged ix35) sold over 32000 units and spent most of its lifecycle at the top of the sales charts. In fact it was only recently usurped by the Ford Kuga. If it is to regain its crown, it will have to be very good indeed, and well priced, too. Hyundai SA has made a canny move by bringing back the much-loved Tucson name. According to James Kim, Vice President and…

Effortless power BMW’s V12 was given the Rolls-Royce signature ‘six-and-three-quarter’ displacement, and an appropriate torque curve that delivers three-quarters of its peak 720Nm of torque at just 1000rpm. Power was once only described as ‘sufficient’, but BMW owned up to 338kW at launch, which accelerated the 2.5-tonne car as quickly as a contemporary Boxster. Floats on air The aluminium spaceframe wasn’t ground-breaking but BMW just do it very well, hand-welding over 200 sections to an error margin of less than 1mm over the car’s 6-metre length, adjusting tolerances daily to account for atmospheric conditions, and producing greater stiffness than an F1 car: vital for the accurate location of the air-sprung suspension that makes possible the finest ride of any car. Quality and craftsmanship BMW managed to create from scratch at…

THE CAR THAT saved Lotus did so not just through ingenious chassis design or beguiling styling but by delivering a driving experience worthy of that little yellow badge on the nose. The Elise – any Elise – is a great drive, pure and simple. And pure really is the word; few cars put you more firmly in touch with the road, or chatter away so incessantly about its surface. There’s the unassisted steering, which you guide with your wrists rather than your elbows; the brake feel through those beautiful extruded aluminium pedals; and the blend of fluid ride quality and pointy handling that only Lotus seems able to pull off properly. Infamously, things can get a bit tricky on the limit, as is the wont of most short, mid-engined cars,…

THE F1 DIDN’T so much raise the supercar bar – in performance, driving appeal, packaging, you name it – as blast it into the stratosphere. It was a decade ahead of contemporary Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches. It was the fastest car of its time, and stayed there for 12 years until the (comparatively cumbrous) Bugatti Veyron usurped it in top speed, if not by any other criteria. More important than any measurement was its feel. There has never been a car with such sharp yet predictable responses, and such delightfully rich man-machine communion. It accelerates, stops, steers and corners with delicious linearity and eagerness. It is supremely agile yet – if the mood takes – brutally and breathtakingly fast. It is light, technical director Gordon Murray’s guiding mantra; and small…

IT’S ONE OF those often repeated clichés that 4x4 owners end up mounting pavements rather than exploring extraordinary, the vagaries of everyday life getting in the way of the best-laid plans. Fair enough, but we figured turning your commuter into a holiday hero needn’t mean kennels, annual leave and Boet watching the pool turn green. So it was we formed the idea on Friday night, packed the Toyota Fortuner on Saturday morning, added a class-act of a bike, set the cruise control to chilled and dialled ‘off-road’ into the Sat-Nav. The idea was to chase biking trails through the Overberg, be as far away from everything in the shortest time possible. Granted Cape Town was our starting point, that Sir Lowry’s Pass into the Overberg was but a hop, skip…

WITH SALES of compact crossovers exploding the world over, adding a CX-3 to the product lineup was a no-brainer. Early design proposals included a jacked-up Mazda2 and a smaller CX-5, but Mazda rejected both in favour of something more distinctive. So while the CX-3 shares a platform and wheelbase with the Mazda2 it has its own identity, and a strong one at that. Relatively short overhangs, big wheels, narrow daylight openings, a wavy shoulder line, blacked-out D-pillars and bluff front end all mean it’s not likely to be mistaken for anything else. Despite assertions to the otherwise the proportions aren’t quite ‘as perfectly balanced as a supermodel’ – the bonnet appears too long from the rear-three quarter, no doubt to accommodate the 2.0-litre motor and give US consumers their required…

HELLO MONTH 1 RENAULT CLIO GT-LINE CALL ME OLD-fashioned but I reckon we’ve lost one of motoring’s little delights. Fumbling around for the ignition lock, slotting the key and twisting that motor to life helped to personally connect you with the machine in a way today’s push button starters do not. It’s not the same, but as a matter of principle I still insert the keycards on every Renault test unit we receive knowing full well they’ll fire up from my pocket. And now that one has joined our long-term fleet, it’s something I’ll be doing every day because, unlike many road users who’d rather be catching up on social media feeds than actually driving, for me, the emotional connection affects the journey. And I want to give this TopCar…

PERHAPS THE most surprising thing about the new 488 Spider is Ferrari’s choice of a nuovo Blu Corsa reveal livery, rather than a traditional red. That it is faster, stronger and more efficient – both aerodynamically and petrochemically – than the 458 Spider it replaces goes without saying. Though the degree to which it achieves these things certainly earns some appropriate gasping. The new 493kW twin-turbo 3.9-litre V8 is 74kW more powerful than the 4.5-litre naturally aspirated V8 it replaces – resulting in 0-100kph in 3.0sec, 0-200kph in 8.7sec and a 327kph top speed. The structure is 23% stronger, which means it now exactly matches the torsional rigidity and beam stiffness of the 488 GTB coupe. Yet the Spider is 25kg lighter than before, produces 15g/km less CO2, and is…

DETROIT IS STILL healing. Six years after the catastrophic subprime meltdown that claimed much of the manufacturing heartland of the USA, Motor City bears the visible scars. Whole suburbs still stand empty, stray cats the only inhabitants because there are more empty homes than squatters. Skyscrapers still empty (how do you restart a skyscraper?), parts of downtown a wasteland devoid of people or businesses. When they tell you we South Africans missed the real meltdown, believe them – 30 per cent of Detroit’s population packed a car and left town, most of them within a single month. It’s a sobering experience, walking the ghost streets of failed capitalism. Yet in the Midwest a silver lining; out of those ashes rose a new industry, or at least an industry with a…

ONE OF THE great tragedies for the car customer, and the car industry, has been the recent success of BMW. It has probably been the most influential car maker of the past decade and, along with Hyundai, the most successful. It prospers because it offers desirable ‘premium’ vehicles to the global middle class, previously used to mass-maker mediocrity. Plus, it offers a sportier and more performance-oriented driving experience than the volume producers, whose popularity it quickly usurps. When sales began to explode, a decade or more ago, rivals took notice. Then they tried to copy. And that’s when things went wrong. The mass makers, coveting BMW’s position and profits, are now all trying to become more ‘premium’. Indeed, it’s rare to go to a press launch these days and not…

LET’S NOT PRETEND the struggle between door count and power output isn’t real. It’s why something like a Golf GTI continues to thrive and why a Focus ST makes more sense than a Renaultsport Megane, but that’s a discussion for page 50. So often you are forced to forsake one for the other, for example, here in the Corsa range, where the performance gap between the imminent 3-door OPC (152kW) and its more practical, 5-doored, three-cylindered sibling (85kW) is big enough to park an Opel Adam in. And that’s where the turbocharged Sport comes in. Naturally it has a five-door bodyshell, tweaked with OPC Line body addenda and chassis hop-ups, 17-inch alloy hoops and a forced-induction four pot with 110kW and 220Nm ‘for your driving pleasure’. This is hooked up…

THE LEXUS RC F-Sport coupe has been billed as a stand-alone model rather than a two-door version of the IS saloon. It does look very exclusive and although it borrows numerous styling cues from its stablemates, most of the inspiration stems from the LF-LC concept car – the final result of which is an aggressively styled and alluring example of metal origami. While many scoffed at the Japanese firm’s eccentric departure from conventional – read copy and paste – car design, few realised the ingenious path Lexus was charting for itself when its L-finesse language went extreme around 2012. The new-found aesthetical fireworks have separated the Japanese firm from the visual monotony of modern cars and it works. From the spindle grille and serrated LED headlamps to the boldly pressed…

NO OTHER vehicle in the AMG portfolio embodies the niche’s ethos as completely as the Mercedes-Benz C63. The first one was purpose-built from the ground up by Affalterbach and enthralled enthusiasts the world over with its unruly naturally aspirated 6.2-litre V8 lump. It was an intimidating machine – relentlessly fast and as loud as they come and that’s what gave it the reputation it still has to this day. So the new C63 has a lot to live up to and the team at AMG had their work cut out for them retaining the predecessor’s soul despite global demands for smaller engines and lower carbon emissions. Controlled aggression The C63 S lacks the sinewy definition and outright muscular stance of its forebear. Instead, it relies on a deeper front bumper…

THE MGB HAS become such a quintessential hobby classic it feels like you need to peel back layers of tweed – or should that be polyester? – in order to understand why. Bad treatment by British Leyland saw it become a joke even before it eventually staggered out of production. Still, with over half a million sold in roadster and GT form, the B brought the ‘British sports car’ to the masses on both sides of the Atlantic, and essentially defines a pre-hot-hatch era of affordable performance motoring. Performance? 0-100kph in 12.1sec sounds like city car territory now, and though it will top 160kph you have to work the B-series under the bonnet pretty hard. But the feeling of being alive as you push your little drop-top as fast as…

Film star good looks There has never been a more beautiful or elegant Aston Martin, and at the wheel of a DB5 you’re always conscious of that. Styled by Touring of Milan – which also designed some of the best-looking early Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis – this was the work of Italy’s carrozzerie during their golden age, the ’60s. Based on the DB4, the DB5 was a longer and more graceful beast – Italian grace matched to a purposeful British stance. Power to spare It’s hard to beat a tuneful twin-cam straight-six for smooth and gutsy performance, and at the time the UK made some of the best examples of the breed (including the contemporary E-Type’s equally seductive XK motor). The DB5’s 4.0-litre unit produced 242kW in its top Vantage…

IT’S 38 DEGREES outside, but more like 45 in here. Humidity in the 90s draws sweat from my forehead in torrents. All around, worker bees in stone-coloured overalls, seemingly unfazed by the heat, assemble high-compression internal combustion engines in a co-ordinated blur of hands, parts and tools. The pace is crazy, like you’ve hit FFWD on a Discovery Channel Megafactories episode. The heat cranks up in the stamping facility where flying sheets of shiny metal are repurposed with alarming ease before being flung again into stacked piles of body panels. In typically Japanese fashion, warning signs abound complete with tragi-comedy graphics: do not headbutt the machine; breakdancing not permitted here; insanely happy people must wear hardhats and earphones. Probably. A few hundred metres away yet more beige-cladders feverishly glue and…

PICKING A STARTING point for this story is really the tricky part. Maybe a good spot would be to start by examining speed records, and man’s need to go continually faster. From the first time a caveman rode a T-Rex, all the way to present day, we’ve felt the need to set records. Take Andy Green and Richard Noble, for instance – two of the greats of land-speed record setting. Noble became the first man to clock 1 000kph in a car, when he reached 1 019kph behind the wheel of Thrust2 in 1983, winning the Segrave Trophy in the process. It took 14 years and millions of pounds for the record to be broken, this time by a former RAF pilot named Andy Green. With the help of Noble,…

MONTH 2 MAZDA6 ELECTIVE DRUDGERY being what it is – tedious as well as an inevitable oxymoron – there needs to be a way of breaking the office routine. Touring is a good antidote, and for this few cars are as good as the Mazda6. Outwardly urban – the three-box sedan is all about the daily commute – it nevertheless hides the tools for a truly satisfying trek up hill and down dale. Witness its 420Nm diesel locomotive, with more lugging power than a husky after breakfast. Its 19-inch wheels, made for long distance loping. The cavernous boot, great for relocating store room toys too long gathering dust. And that interior, if you’re the driver, is a pleasant, premium space that models somewhere between cossetting and toddler proof, where everything…

MONTH 3 CITROËN C4 CACTUS MASS PRODUCTION: I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what it must take to summon a workforce to build tens of thousands of comfortable, affordable, good-looking, safe and well-equipped cars. I’m guessing you’d need a firm grasp of manufacturing simulation and process flow software, not to mention talent, experience and more money than Bill Gates. The Ford Motor Company for example, inventors of mass production with the Model T, continues to excel with an array of impressive products such as the Focus. And what of Citroën? Its cars are once again oozing that all-important national character motoring hacks love to mention… But you don’t seriously mean to say the left-field Cactus hopes to outsell a C-segment stalwart like the Focus? On the evidence of Joe Public’s…