Table of contents for June 29, 2022 in Autocar

PRODUCTION OF THE Ford Focus will end in 2025 as the firm switches its attention to electric vehicles. The end of this family car is also likely to mean the end of Ford production in Saarlouis, Germany, although Ford stopped short of saying that the plant would be closed. “We’re seeking other alternative opportunities for vehicle production at Saarlouis, including [selling to] other manufacturers. We don’t have in our planning cycle an additional model that goes into Saarlouis,” Ford of Europe boss Stuart Rowley told journalists. Saarlouis lost out to Ford’s Spanish production facility in Valencia to build vehicles on the manufacturer’s planned new global EV platform, starting later this decade. That the platform is global suggests they will be larger models and not include a Ford Fiesta replacement. Ford…

The latest and most striking entrant into Hyundai’s expanding bespoke EV family is the new Ioniq 6: a rakish, aero-optimised saloon aimed squarely at the hugely popular Tesla Model 3. It is the second addition to Hyundai’s new Ioniq EV family and will join the retro-styled Ioniq 5 crossover – which is fast becoming one of the most popular cars in its segment – in dealerships in 2023. Previewed in 2020 by the sleek and ultra-low Prophecy concept, the Ioniq 6 is Hyundai’s first foray into the electric saloon market, having established a foothold in the EV segment with the Kona Electric, Ioniq hatch and Ioniq 5. At 4855mm long, 1880mm wide and 1495mm tall, with a wheelbase of 2950mm, it is a close match in size for the Model…

Chinese firm Aiways aims to start selling cars in the UK and other right-hand-drive markets in 2023. Founded in 2017 by Fu Qiang (a former sales chief at Volvo) and Gary Gu, it now has a factory in Shanghai with an annual capacity of 300,000 units, plus its own research and development centre and battery factory. Its European headquarters are in Munich, Germany. “We’re seeing significant interest from the UK, as well as right-hand-drive markets in south-east Asia, including Japan,” said Alex Klose, Aiways’ overseas CEO and strategy vice-president. “That has surprised us – in a good way, of course – so we’re trying to react as quickly as we can. “The plan now is to be in the UK sooner rather than later. I made a pledge to do…

THE PURE ETCR electric-powered touring car series, now renamed the FIA eTouring Car World Cup, continues to build a head of, um, sparks in its second season. As in its maiden year, factory entries for the Cupra Leon and Hyundai Veloster have been joined by the Alfa Romeo Giulia from privateer Romeo Ferraris, and the short-form racing spectacle remains engaging. At Jarama, just outside Madrid, Cupra’s executives must have been delighted to see their investment paying off handsomely as two-time DTM champion Mattias Ekström was crowned King of the Weekend. Adrien Tambay, son of 1980s Ferrari Formula 1 star Patrick, also shone, despite losing his points lead, and Spanish veteran Jordi Gené (the older brother of ex-Williams F1 racer Marc) won his quarter-final. The electric powertrains and a reliance on…

The Honda Civic isn’t as ubiquitous as it once was, having largely fallen prey to the same SUV contenders as other once big-name hatchbacks. And for British buyers, it perhaps isn’t as appealing as when it had the cachet of being built in Swindon. Nonetheless, the Civic remains important to Honda, sitting in the top three for UK sales after the Jazz supermini and the HR-V small SUV. What’s more, Europe (and the UK) couldn’t be closer to the Civic’s development. Rather than receive a global car to then tweak for its market, Honda Europe has led the research and development this time round, knowing that its customer expectations are greater than those of the Americans and the Japanese. There’s plenty of change in this 11th-generation hatchback. It has a…

MODEL TESTED E-TENSE 225 PERFORMANCE LINE+ Price £39,600 Power224bhp Torque266lb ft 0-60mph7.4sec 30-70mph in fourthna Fuel economy72.3mpg CO2 emissions30g/km 70-0mph48.6m Sportiness sells. That has long been a given in marketing. It’s why adverts and brochures depict beautiful people engaging in tennis or hiking, not theoretical mathematics. It’s why most BMWs and Mercedes are sold in M Sport or AMG Line trim, why everything has a Sport mode and why the four-spoke steering wheel is a dying breed. The paradox is that most car buyers have no need for a car that handles in a sporty, dynamic fashion. They have no desire to tackle a challenging B-road with gusto and would be much better served by a car that’s easy to use and quiet and cushions them from the UK’s harsh roads.…

Until quite recently, you would have struggled to buy an electric car that could tow a caravan, so rare were they. Forward to today and you’re spoiled for choice of EVs with braked towing capacities ranging from 500kg to 2500kg. Given that the typical single-axle family tourer weighs around 1500kg, you can assume there’s one that can tow it. But what’s it like to tow with an EV? What effect does towing have on range, and when you run out of power, how do you recharge it with a large caravan attached? To find out, I borrowed a Skoda Enyaq iV 80 and a Bailey Discovery D4-2 tourer and went caravanning. I chose these for their good towing match. What does that mean? Well, the Enyaq has a kerb weight…

FEATURE Cannonballrerun Getyourkickson…theA66.WeputaBritish spin on a Hollywood classic to celebrate the Lamborghini Countach’s V12 hybrid return SECOND-HAND STARS Inflationbusters Save money and avoidlongleadtimes with these cut-price used heroes ROAD TEST CupraBorn The first proper electric hot hatch, or justaVolkswagenID3 with an angry face? EVERY WEEK FIRST DRIVE Mercedes-AMGEQE53 Affalterbach’s Porsche Taycan rival brings 677bhp and 738lb ft OUR CARS Polestar2 It’s giving the Tesla Model 3 a hard time, but did it please us every day? SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p60…

MILEAGE 6855 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out whether Audi can retain its premium appeal in the EV age The Q4 E-tron Sportback has taken my regular one-night trips back to Norfolk in its stride. Its maximum range – anything between 200 and 300 or so miles, depending on the temperature and the driving/road conditions – has always been more than enough for the 170-mile journey to Nelson’s Country from my Berkshire home. At the other end, I stay at a Nissan Leaf-owning friend’s house, where I charge the Q4 overnight and head back home the next day, typically in a sombre mood after wasting a load more emotional energy on watching the football team I follow lose – again. Anyway… For my final visit of the season on…

Whether it was sky-high expectations, peer pressure or even booze, we are grateful for whatever was responsible for BMW dreaming up the E92-generation M3. It’s a masterfully mad creation, one with more muscle than its predecessor, thanks largely to a V8 from the internal combustion gods. The V8 in question is a naturally aspirated 4.0-litre unit with a party piece: on planting the right foot, it will rev eagerly to 8300rpm and develop its maximum 414bhp at that point. Considering the previous, E46 M3 received 338bhp, that’s a small hatchback’s worth of extra grunt you have to play with. Overkill, you say? Well, being rear-wheel drive, the M3 can slide around if you so wish, but it’s no blunt instrument. Put the power down and you will rocket from 0-60mph…

“The new models will be based on a single platform, will utilise closely related mechanical packages and could be made in Solihull” Jaguar is planning a trio of “jaw-dropping” electric sports crossovers to burst through the £100,000 barrier and take the brand into Bentley territory from 2025. The new two-tier, three-model line-up promises to dramatically recast Jaguar as a 50,000-60,000-per-year manufacturer of exclusive, aluminium-rich electric cars. These will be based on a single platform, named Panthera, will utilise closely related mechanical packages and could be made in Solihull. When he became Jaguar Land Rover CEO two years ago, Thierry Bolloré made no secret of his plan to mirror the Range Rover ethos – and success – in a newly configured Jaguar line-up. Within months, the Jaguar design team had been…

Car makers in the UK and Europe have never really fully embraced the idea of loyalty programmes, bar Ford’s now defunct membership of the Nectar points scheme. But that’s all set to change as companies try to build a more direct, app-based relationship with their customers. “Almost all major automotive players are looking to develop solutions which can increase direct engagement,” Manuel Wiener, head of innovation and strategy at consultancy Capgemini Invent, told Autocar. To get a sneak preview of a possible future for car makers’ customer loyalty programmes in Europe, you need to explore the eye-popping world of Chinese firms and the extraordinary growth of the “fan economy” in their home country. Brands such as Lynk&Co, Nio and Xpeng – all of which are now pushing into Europe –…

We’ve had four-cylinder AMG models since the launch of the A45 in 2013 and, heading further back, rear-driven four-pot performance Mercedes saloons in the stylish forms of the 190E 2.3-16 and 2.5-16 in the 1980s. But the new C43’s longitudinally mounted turbocharged 2.0-litre engine means it’s effectively crossing the streams, even if it does come with standard four-wheel drive. The new C43 marks the dawn of a new downsized era for AMG, one that will soon lead to a brawnier C63 plug-in hybrid using a more powerful version of the same base engine. While the C43 lacks both a charging port and a high-voltage hybrid system, it does bring its own electric innovation with the arrival of a new Garrett 48V turbocharger. This uses a compact motor that acts directly…

The Land Rover rival that time forgot NO, YOU AREN’T looking at a Series Land Rover. That’s actually the Austin Gipsy, launched in 1958 by the British Motor Corporation to rival Rover’s popular off-roader. In 1965, Longbridge improved the capability of the little 4x4. It squeezed 72bhp (up from 62bhp) at just 1500rpm out of its 2.2-litre four-pot – “an excellent power source for this sort of hardworking vehicle, where the need is for low-speed slogging rather than performance at high revs”. Also added was the option of leaf-spring live suspension (with telescopic dampers front and lever ones back) over the usual Flexitor all-independent rubber suspension. “Not only is the improvement in ride comfort very marked, but also it’s outstandingly good in crosscountry pounding. It still feels immensely strong, but…

MILEAGE 8101 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT Have a new platform and PHEV power made Jaguar’s cub fully fighting fit? When the Mk2 Range Rover Evoque arrived in 2019, it introduced a bit of kit so nifty that we gave it that year’s innovation gong at our annual awards ceremony. Both elements of it – ClearSight Ground View and ClearSight rear-view mirror – are now available across much of the Jaguar Land Rover stable. Indeed, they are fitted to our Jaguar E-Pace as part of the Technology Pack (£1220), which also brings wireless phone charging, a head-up display and an interactive driver’s display. ClearSight Ground View is the realisation of the transparent bonnet idea first seen on the Land Rover Discovery Vision concept in 2014, while ClearSight rear-view mirror uses a…

INSPIRED BY OUR BMW M 50th anniversary coverage last week, we’ve been on the hunt for a used M3 – and you can read about the E92-generation V8 M3 in Cult Hero (p68). Here, a different generation of M3 has caught our eye in the classifieds. Not the original, E30-gen M3, which has become so revered that prices can range anywhere from £30,000 up to the heights of £100,000. Nor is it the latest generation, the G80, which first went on sale in 2020 and will cost you from £65,000 on the used market. Instead, we’re looking at spending a fraction of that. Our choice is the E46-gen M3, produced from 2000 to 2006, which to this day remains the most successful M car ever, with more than 85,000 sales…

Many car companies have come perilously close to the edge of financial ruin or reputational death only for a single model to save the day. Some of these cars have attained legendary status, while others have become staples of our automotive landscape. The roles that they played in saving their manufacturers from bankruptcy, obscurity, mundanity or all three can’t be understated. Here we list them in date order. 1949 Ford 1948 Nearly all of Ford’s US factories were turned over to cranking out military equipment during World War II, so when the firm returned to making cars, all were dated designs. It therefore assembled a crack team of engineers, who took the 1949 model from concept to production in just 19 months, making Ford the first of Detroit’s Big Three…

“CEOChristian Horner described the car as ‘Adrian Newey unleashed’” Red Bull Advanced Technologies (RBAT) is in the advanced stages of developing a mild-hybrid 1250bhp V8 hypercar due for delivery in 2025, as detailed to Autocar by Christian Horner, CEO of Red Bull Racing and its Advanced Technologies offshoot. The car has been designed with a minimum of compromises and is aimed primarily at track-day applications, but Horner said the closed-roof vehicle – rendered here by Autocar using a silhouette sketch supplied by the firm – could be made road legal should owners wish to convert them to meet local traffic regulations. A limited production run of 50 units, built at the rate of 15 per year, is planned. Most of them are already spoken for. Horner described the vehicle as…

Volkswagen has previewed its long-awaited Tesla Model 3 rival with a sleek, low-slung concept called the ID Aero. The brand describes it as “the first fully electric limousine for the Chinese automobile market”. However, it also confirms the production version – to be revealed next year – is bound for North America and Europe, with production for those markets taking place at its factory in Emden, Germany. The latest addition to Volkswagen’s ID family of EVs will take the brand into “the high-volume upper-midd-leclass-segment”, challenging an expanding field of popular rivals that include the Model 3, Polestar 2, BMW i4 and – soon – Hyundai Ioniq 6 (see p18). The rakish car will essentially serve as the electric equivalent of the combustion-engined Passat. It will appear first in saloon form,…

The legendary Subaru Impreza 22B has returned as an ultra-exclusive and highly charged restomod. Called the P25, the new arrival is the work of British motorsport company Prodrive, which successfully ran Subaru’s World Rally Championship team from 1990 to 2008. It arrives 25 years after the Prodrive-engineered Impreza 22B, of which just 424 examples were made. Prodrive will produce 25 P25s, each using an original Mk1 two-door Impreza WRX as its basis and, while dramatically enhanced, staying true to the fan-favourite original’s ethos. Each will be supplied with a UK numberplate and priced at £460,000 before taxes, so £552,000 including VAT. The burbling 2.5-litre flat-four boxer engine, highly modified but related to that of the Subaru BRZ, is fitted with a monstrous Garrett motorsport turbocharger, a performance intercooler and a…

CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE IS perhaps the one thing with the biggest question mark over fitness for purpose in what is fast becoming an EV revolution. Companies are working hard to build a high-speed charging network that’s anywhere near as plentiful, accessible and reliable as the refuelling station network, which has taken 100 years to evolve, but they have a huge task ahead of them. Providing enough public sites with enough chargers to support the growing number of BEVs on UK roads is one thing, but the local supply must also keep up – and installing brand-new chargers at a site doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a brand-new local area distribution network to go with it. Second-life batteries, which have reached the end of their useful lives for powering BEVs, could make a…

The first notable change from BMW’s new ownership of formerly independent Alpina comes from the title: this isn’t the Alpina B4 Gran Coupé; it’s the BMW Alpina B4 Gran Coupé. That aside, it is business as usual for this new model, if not the company (more on which another time), which has been remaking BMWs with its own name attached for nearly six decades. This, then, is Alpina’s take on the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupé, and its take on a fast M variant that BMW doesn’t make. Not yet, at least. It’s “a discreet car for connoisseurs”, according to Alpina product manager Thomas Hackspiel-Cornu, which is very much the Alpina way: it’s a maker of understated, subtle, fast road cars that can be used on a circuit but are…

Tesla, schmesla. Whereas the world’s favourite EV pioneer took the best part of a decade to break into the mainstream, Aiways has managed it in just five, albeit flying under our radar by taking most of its sales in China. Founded as a start-up in 2017, Aiways has in short order built a plant with an annual capacity of 300,000, a full R&D centre and a battery factory, all to support ambitions of becoming a global brand by exploiting the once-in-a-century reset of electrification. Ahead of plans to break into the UK in around 12 months’ time, we took an exclusive drive in its U5 family crossover around London. The U5 is feted by Aiways for being a clean-sheet, no-compromises EV design, better to extract every inch of space and…

“Hangon.” Two innocent words, but not the ones you want to hear just as you’re about to be lowered down a 65deg slope, strapped tight into a metal stretcher. Seven more words slip into my brain: “I really must stop volunteering for things.” I’ve no idea what the volunteers of the Central Beacons Mountain Rescue team did to resolve the issue, but 30 seconds later I’m back on the move, staring at the sky and putting all my faith in seven Welsh rescuers and several metres of rope. We’re in the Brecon Beacons National Park, spending a day with the volunteers who dedicate their lives to rescuing walkers/cyclists/motorcyclists/sheep in this part of South Wales. Crucially, we’re here to learn what life is like after the Land Rover Defender. Mighty impressive…

Terence Larkin asked for other readers’ experiences on lead times for new cars (1 June). I wanted to replace my BMW i3, only to find that BMW UK had no build slots available before the model ceased production. My choice then rapidly narrowed down to the Volkswagen ID 3 and DS 3 Crossback E-Tense, as these were small enough to fit in my garage and had their charging points in the right place for my wallbox. Visiting the VW dealer in Canterbury, I felt for the sales executive. “Maybe 50-plus weeks” was the best he could do regarding delivery time, and he no idea what the part-exchange would be. At the same time, I contacted Canterbury’s DS dealer, which is part of a family-owned group that also contains the BMW…

Are the days of the multipurpose vehicle coming to an end? A few makers think not, despite MPVs being pushed to the sidelines by the ever-growing cohort of crossovers. Mercedes-Benz is one of the best examples. Its latest, third-generation B-Class is based on the high-selling A-Class hatch and features similar mechanicals, a handful of competent engines and a premium feel inside. But the draws of the B-Class aren’t speed and power. Instead, this compact MPV is geared towards comfort and excellent accessibility. We described its drivability as “effortless” in our 2019 road test and found its appeal was bolstered by a host of technology, including driver assistance features previously seen only on the S-Class. A supple ride, light handling, excellent low-gear urban performance and competitive fuel economy combine to make…