Table of contents for June 1, 2022 in Autocar

“The carbonfibre and composite body has been developed to generate maximum downforce” Mercedes-AMG has at last shown the spectacular, Formula 1-inspired One hypercar in production form, with customer deliveries planned to start later this year. Announced by the Project One concept at the 2017 Frankfurt motor show, the hardcore coupé is the most potent Mercedes road car yet, combining a modified version of the firm’s turbocharged 1.6-litre V6 grand prix engine with four electric motors for a combined output of 1049bhp. With a top speed limited to 219mph, it also becomes the brand’s fastest production car, eclipsing the 214mph-capable CLK GTR from 24 years ago. The two-seat, left-hand drive hypercar is the result of a close collaboration between Mercedes-AMG’s regular road car operation and the UK based Mercedes-AMG F1…

THE RAPID ELECTRIFICATION of the BMW line-up continues with the unveiling of the new third-generation X1 crossover, which follows its 4 Series, X3 and 7 Series stablemates in gaining an electric variant for the first time. BMW’s crucial rival to the Audi Q3 and Volvo XC40 is its first “premium compact model based on a flexible vehicle architecture to feature an all-electric drive system”. The architecture in question is the FAAR, which underpins the new 2 Series Active Tourer MPV and will soon appear in the next-generation Mini Countryman crossover. In the new iX1 xDrive30 EV, it houses a dual-motor powertrain (one on each axle) producing a combined 309bhp and 364lb ft, making it good for 0-62mph in 5.7sec – figures that line it up as a close rival to…

German specialist sports car firm Wiesmann is considering branching out beyond its trademark two-seaters into more luxury-focused models, including SUVs. The prospect of a bold new era for the firm comes under fresh ownership and with access to advanced EV drivetrain technology. CEO Roheen Berry took charge of the car marque in 2015 when it was acquired by his family’s multinational technology firm, Contec Global. In an exclusive interview, he told Autocar that the firm’s new 671bhp Project Thunderball electric roadster will serve as a showpiece for a new-look lineupthat will be expanded and electrified as the firm continues on the comeback trail. “The Thunderball is to show the world what we can do. It is already quite an incredible car compared to others that do what it does, at…

Mercedes-Benz saw its average selling price rise from €51,000 in 2019 to €71,500 in the first quarter of this year, a rise of 40%, chief financial officer Harald Wilhelm proudly told an audience of bankers in Monaco recently – and it plans to push that selling price up even more. “We’re not going to compete with volume makers,” said CEO Ola Källenius. “We’re a modern luxury company.” The message to the bankers was ‘tell your customers to buy our shares, because profits are only going to go north’. The message to customers, meanwhile, was interpreted as ‘don’t expect any more cheap or discounted cars’. Like many manufacturers, Mercedes has been banging the drum of value over volume for a while now, but its executive team used the Monaco event to…

Ninety minutes. That’s all it took Toyota GB to sell build slots for the two years’ worth of GR86 production that’s coming our way. And after that? You may already know this, but there won’t be any UK-bound cars after that. In 2024, the ‘B’ measures of the EU’s General Safety Regulation standard come into force in Europe and, short of re-engineering the thing, Toyota isn’t able to bring the GR86 up to scratch, so that will be it. Yes, there’s a small chance extra slots will become available before then, but given that those would need to be poached from other markets, don’t count on it. Even then, any requested car would need to be assembled at Subaru’s Gunma plant in Japan (the tie-up established for the old GT86/BRZ…

Volkswagen’s seven-seat version of its mid-sized SUV, the Tiguan Allspace, has now been updated in line with the regular five-seater, and this is our first chance to drive it on UK roads. The Allspace gets 110mm of extra length in the wheelbase, and seven seats as standard in the UK. The mid-life refresh is mostly about new assistance and infotainment technology, although there’s a new radiator grille with the obligatory illuminated light bar, too. There are new adaptive matrix LED headlights and active lane keeping and blindspot monitoring systems for upper-trim versions but our entry-level diesel Life car had none fitted. As for secondary controls, the layout has changed slightly. There’s an updated, better-networked 8.0in touchscreen infotainment system – thankfully, not the one the Golf Mk8 uses, but one with…

It’s summer 1931 and, since June, England has been enduring thunderstorms, flash floods and even the occasional tornado. Thankfully, before autumn begins in September and the days begin getting shorter, there’s something truly exciting to look forward to, an event that will galvanise this rain-soaked nation: the Schneider Trophy seaplane race. The first country to win the trophy three times in five years will keep it forever. Britain won it in 1927 and again in 1929, and now it stands to win it a third and final time, at least if the mighty supercharged 37-litre V12 Rolls-Royce ‘R’ engines powering our team’s Supermarine S.6Bs hold up. The trouble is they are being tested to breaking point. They were used in the 1929 contest, when they produced 1800bhp and a winning…

From the moment the British Touring Car Championship began in 1958, it has proudly held a place as one of the UK’s top motorsport series. Every year, countless youngsters take their first steps into car racing, aspiring to follow in the footsteps of BTCC greats like Colin Turkington, Ash Sutton and Gordon Shedden. However, for every youngster embarking on a racing career, there’s also an older amateur who dreams of taking a place on the grid to challenge the famous names. Like his Status Quo guitarist father, Rick Parfitt Jr is well known for his work in the music industry (not to mention that he once held a role selling advertising in Autocar). A latecomer to racing, the 47-year-old won a title in both classes of the British GT Championship…

TWIN TEST Lotus Emira vs Porsche 718 Cayman We hit the road in a finished version of Hethel’s all-new sports car for the first time – where it faces the best in the business FEATURE Used police cars What happensto thefour-wheeled force after its time in service? We find out INTERVIEW Gill Pratt Thefutureaccording to the boss of Toyota’s hugely influential research institute EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Mercedes-AMGEQS53 Mercedes’ electric luxury saloon gets the go-faster treatment FIRST DRIVE Toyota GR Supra manual RWD coupé is given the gearbox we’ve always thought it needed SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p24…

MILEAGE 7103 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT Have a new platform and PHEV power made Jaguar’s cub fully fighting fit? A long-awaited holiday to Devon recently provided me with an ideal chance to test all of our Jaguar E-Pace’s capabilities, from motorway muncher to rural daily driver. First came the challenge of packing everything for the week, as this SUV’s packaging is one of its weaker points, with a boot smaller than the BMW X1 and Volvo XC40. Our friends at What Car? measured its size like this: it will take six carry-on suitcases below the parcel shelf, compared with eight in the XC40 and nine in the X1. On the plus side, the boot is a useful square shape with a wide recess and no lip to make loading and…

“It’s available in a choice of five trims andwiththree mild-hybridised powertrains” The Defender is once again available in three bodystyles, as Land Rover crowns the 4x4’s line-up with the longer, eight-seat 130 variant. Land Rover bosses promised right from the start that – despite its more overtly upmarket focus than the utilitarian original – the second-generation Defender would be given a similar flexibility of purpose, courtesy of the same three-pronged model line-up: 90, 110 and 130. The largest of the three is now official, with 340mm of extra length added behind the rear axle, rather than between the wheels as was the case for its predecessor. As a result, it is identical to the mid-sized 110 ahead of the C-pillar. Measuring 5358mm long overall, it is primed to take on…

“It will have performance to match the Mercedes-AMG GT and maybe the higher-end Porsche Taycans” DeLorean is back, and it’s gearing up to take on the world’s best-established premium brands with a comprehensive line-up of cars in different segments and an array of powertrain solutions. The brand is being revived by a US-based outfit whose CEO, Joost de Vries, was previously a high-ranking official at Tesla and Karma. He has taken the helm from Brit Stephen Wynne, who had run DeLorean as an aftermarket support service since 1995, when he acquired the brand rights following the high-profile demise of the original company. Spearheading the rebirth is a striking battery-electric coupé with rakish, sports car-style proportions, far removed from the wedge-shape silhouette and compact footprint of the 1981 DeLorean DMC. The…

THE RISE AND rise of Kalle Rovanperä continues. Toyota’s 21-year-old sensation is now an impressive 46 points ahead of Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville in the World Rally Championship following his third consecutive victory of the season – and perhaps his most impressive yet – on Rally Portugal. The Finn added a win on gravel to those on snow (Sweden) and asphalt (Croatia) with an astonishing performance in his Toyota Gazoo Racing GR Yaris Rally1. Running first on the road for the first day kept expectations low because, as the first to pass through the stages, he would sweep them clear for his rivals. Yet Rovanperä still took a pair of stage wins and ended the day just 13.6sec down on team-mate Elfyn Evans. On day two, he initially lost further time…

Imagining a customer for the Audi S8 is a slightly complex exercise, but the car apparently now accounts for 20% of UK A8 sales, so there must be plenty of them. This car’s sheer size, its particular comfort and luxury tuning, its reserved performance styling and its unambiguous limousine classification all seem to mark it out as one not to drive but rather be driven in, which is a little at odds with its Audi Sport badging. So is this the A8 for the CEO who travels in the back and just wants the car park status it confers? Or, as a more understated fast saloon, is it bought by someone who doesn’t actually want people to notice it? Might its owner be driven in the week but drive themselves…

MODEL TESTED 220i COUPE M SPORT Price £36,010 • Power 181bhp • Torque 221lb ft • 0-60mph 7.3sec • 30-70mph in fourth 8.5sec • Fuel economy 34.0mpg • CO2 emissions 148g/km • 70-0mph 44.8m Think of any of its recent high-profile new models, such as the iX, 1 Series, 4 Series or recently revealed 7 Series, and today’s BMW might not strike you as a company that is particularly nostalgic, or one that cares much about its heritage. All the typical BMW hallmarks – a long bonnet, rear-wheel drive, subtle kidney grilles, the Hofmeister kink – have been either ditched or substantially reinterpreted. And then there is the new 2 Series Coupé. It doesn’t get much more ‘traditional BMW’ than this. All the aforementioned traits are present and correct. There are…

We’re driving around the bottom of the Eiffel Tower, two grown men enthusiastically describing 28mph circles for the camera in a tiny, two-seat Citroën Ami quadricycle that’s road-legal for unlicensed French 14-year-olds. Traffic swirls chaotically around the mighty monument, not least because part of the time my chauffeur, Citroën CEO Vincent Cobée, is driving into the traffic to give our camera the best images. Nobody seems to care – apart from four gendarmes sitting nearby in a white Renault with blue stripes, clearly charged with keeping order. They allow a few passes, then reluctantly drive to where we’ve stopped while our photographer changes lenses. Trouble seems likely, but Cobée knows exactly what to do. He opens the Ami’s big door, jumps out and strides towards the gendarmes, arms wide and…

Is alcohol the fuel of the future? “IT IS RECOGNISED by all scientific men that, when the liquid fuel supply of the earth is used up, as it must be at no very distant day, though not in the time of any living now, alcohol will take its place,” we stated 110 years ago. (Mind you, our call for Britain to investigate it as a new fuel for cars was prompted mainly by soaring petrol prices. Ah, plus ça change.) Alcohol had already long been extracted from farmers’ crops for use as a fuel, primarily for lamps, and recently for farm machinery. Some early cars could run on it as well. Germany and France were very keen, with the latter holding promising trials (pictured), as were Ford and General Motors…

MILEAGE 2211 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if Mazda has managed to inject any of its flair into a family-friendly SUV ‘Five years’, David Bowie once sang. It’s not a huge amount of time, as the great man so brilliantly told us in his mournful ballad. And it’s all that separates the registration plates on the two Mazda CX-5s pictured here – a facelifted Mk1 and our surgically enhanced Mk2 – but boy can you tell the difference. The original CX-5 was the first car to feature Mazda’s Kodo design language combined with Skyactiv technology, but our car is, to my eyes at least, a much better example of the styling brief. Where the older car is slightly frumpier around the nose, the newer one benefits from sharper headlights…

The noughties gave us some true future classics, although not all were appreciated equally at the time. Take the Vauxhall VX220, which made its debut in 2000. The two-seat roadster may have a following today, but it failed to ignite the wider buying public’s enthusiasm during the early years of the new millennium – despite its eye-catching looks and a genesis that involved the expertise of one of the finest sports car makers in existence. Because under the skin, the VX220 shared much with the contemporary Elise as the product of a partnership between Lotus and Vauxhall. It was built at Hethel and shared many crucial parts with the Elise S2, including the stiff, aluminium chassis tub. It also benefited from Lotus’s know-how with glassfibre bodywork and suspension tuning. “The…

More than a century ago, car manufacturers had already started to clump together, and it’s now rare to find any brand that’s not related to at least one other – mainly because economies of scale are perhaps more vital here than in any other industry. Here, we present today’s biggest car groups – some of which also produce other vehicle types and some of which you might not even have heard of. Stellantis 14 Like General Motors back in 1908, Stellantis was founded as an umbrella organisation for several existing firms. The process began in 2017, when the PSA Group – owner of Citroën, DS and Peugeot – bought GM’s Opel and Vauxhall siblings. Four years later, this group then merged with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which added Abarth, Alfa Romeo,…

Lexus has revealed the all-new fourth iteration of its flagship SUV, the RX, which has been completely redesigned inside and out and offers the option of plug-in hybrid power for the first time. The Volvo XC90 rival was Lexus’s most popular vehicle last year, with 221,000 examples sold worldwide, and now follows its smaller NX sibling in swapping over to parent company Toyota’s GA-K platform. This brings a claimed increase in body rigidity and a low centre of gravity while cutting weight by 90kg from the previous RX, all in the name of improved handling. Its wheelbase has been extended by 6mm, its roofline lowered by 10mm and its track widened by 15mm at the front and 40mm at the rear, while a refreshed exterior design based on Lexus’s Next…

MASERATI HAS REVEALED the long-promised convertible version of its MC20 supercar, with a unique ‘smart glass’ panel in its folding hard top. Called the MC20 Cielo (Italian for ‘sky’), it will face off against a diverse crop of highly strung mid-engined drop-tops that includes the Ferrari 296 GTS, McLaren 720S Spider and Chevrolet Corvette Convertible. Maserati says its first convertible since the V8-engined Grancabrio bowed out in 2019 “is a model devoted to driving pleasure in the great outdoors”, highlighting its state-of-the-art roof window, which can change from clear to opaque at the touch of a button. The roof takes just 12 seconds to open and close, making it among the quickest of any convertible on sale. Apart from the roof, the MC20 Cielo is technically identical to the MC20…

TESTING CARS TO destruction forms a vital part of development and global new car assessment programmes such as Euro NCAP have evolved benchmark crash tests to make sure all cars are up to scratch. The tests are carried out in controlled conditions to ensure consistent like-for-like comparisons, but there are also instances where testing in real-world conditions is valuable. The difference between that and NCAP testing is that rather than being attached to a sled, the car needs to be driven, but like NCAP tests, using a human driver is out of the question. An alternative is what test equipment firm AB Dynamics calls “proving ground automation”, which includes a range of driving robots. Like many industrial robots, these are not what we might imagine: in other words, they’re not…

Fast Ford fan clubs recently cracked out the caterpillar cakes to mark the 40th anniversary of a car that’s arguably the very embodiment of the term ‘cult hero’: the Fiesta XR2. At around the same time, Ford revealed an updated version of that pepper-potted delinquent’s modern-day descendant, the Fiesta ST, which is an automotive rarity in matching its hallowed forebear for both enthusiast appeal and critical acclaim. A more aggressive front-end treatment, an upgraded driver aids package and a new digital dial cluster are the defining differentiators of the facelift, and you will have clocked the new Mean Green paint option. More significant is what’s no longer offered: the three-door model, which has bitten the dust in line with Ford’s ploy to streamline its line-up. Not that any of those…

The Wacky Races cartoon of the late 1960s featured some thrilling competition, with the likes of the Mean Machine piloted by Dick Dastardly and Muttley pitting itself against the mighty Turbo Terrific driven by Peter Perfect. Endlessly fun and ultimately harmless, it was an enticing if unrealistic first taste of motorsport for budding petrolheads. But does any real-world equivalent even come close for whimsical thrills? Welcome to the beguiling world of classic trials, the off-road competition where anything goes… apart from four-wheel drive. That would be much too easy. Conceived in the early 20th century, and having grown in popularity during the 1920s and 1930s, classic trials are effectively off-road hillclimb events that have remained unchanged since their inception. Around 20-25 trials happen in the UK each year, organised by…

Your 11 May issue contained two letters complaining about extended lead times on new cars, both correspondents having no clue when their cars would be delivered. These prompted almost identical responses from BMW and Mercedes-Benzsaying: “Your dealer is best placed to answer these questions.” This seems entirely disingenuous. I believe the truth is that dealers have no clue, because they receive the same information from manufacturers as us: none. I recently visited a Volkswagen dealer to ask about lead times on new cars and received a similar response: “We have no idea.” When pressured, they said: “Maybe a year.” I’m certain that manufacturers could give a rough idea (within a few months) and if circumstances change adjust that prediction, but it seems to suit some political purpose to keep customers…

The Levante was always going to be an important car for Maserati. The firm’s first SUV, it arrived in 2016 with the expectation that it could become the new volume seller, like the Cayenne had for Porsche and the F-Pace for Jaguar. It has certainly lived up to expectations. In 2021, the Levante accounted for 59% of the marque’s total sales. It appeals as a more practical alternative for drivers who want a taste of Maserati’s emblematic dramatic style and compelling performance. To that end, each Levante features 50:50 weight distribution with double-wishbone front and multi-link rear suspension, and four-wheel drive is standard. It has been designed as a grand touring SUV rather than a sports car on stilts, and while it provides decent levels of luxury and performance, it…

BELIEVE IT OR not, the Audi TT is 25 years old next year. In that time, the two-door coupé (and, to a lesser extent, the convertible) has become one of the German car maker’s most recognisable models thanks to its Bauhaus-like design, which seemed revolutionary at the time of its launch. The TT was initially a concept designed by Freeman Thomas in 1995, before world-renowned automotive designer (and Autocar’s 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award winner) Peter Schreyer brought the sketches to life for the production version. Like the Audi A3 and Skoda Octavia of the time, it was based on the underpinnings of the fourth-generation Volkswagen Golf. However, its eye-catching looks ensured it stood out against the Volkswagen Group’s run-of-the-mill hatchbacks. The groundbreaking interior, designed by Romulus Rost, was equipped with…