Tabla de contenidos para August 2023 en CAR UK

Porsche 911 (964) The star ting point of any Singer Vehicle Design project. Owners of such cars can hand them over to Singer’s specialists for them to be transformed into clean, modernised and high-performance works of art, including the ones you see below. Dynamics & Lightweighting Study Almost like the Carrera RS of the restoration projects available to clients. The DLS programme was developed in par tnership with Williams Advanced Engineering and represents the distilled essence of Singer’s intentions. Interior is stripped to its barest bones. Turbo Study  If the DLS is all about a strict diet, the Turbo project is the opposite end of that spectrum – it’s all about MORE. That cer tainly explains the yuppie-era body work, luxur y interior, boosty forced-induction power train and the potential…

Tell us about your first car… ‘A Fiesta XR2. Growing up in the Wirral, every two years the RAC Rally would star t in Chester. After seeing all those homologation specials, getting an XR2 felt achievable!’ What achievement makes you most proud? ‘Qashqai. That it became the first British-built number one seller for something like 24 years last year has got to be my proudest moment.’ What’s the best thing you’ve ever done in a car? ‘We have internal driver training where you learn all aspects of car craf t – it’s not about driving fast! That said, I basically learned to drif t using a 370Z at MIRA . I remember thinking “I’m getting paid for this…”’ Tell us about a time you’ve screwed up… ‘We don’t like to…

It wasn’t the first Citroën to get Hydropneu-matic suspension, but the classic DS of 1955 brought the innovative system to the world’s attention. So it’s appropriate a suspension system that’s arguably its spiritual heir is being used across most of the line-up of Cit-roën spin-off brand DS. Whereas the Hydropneumatic system combined hydraulics and pneumatics, often with ride-height adjustment and self-level-ling capability, today’s DS is going big on Active Scan Suspension. The idea of Active Scan Suspension is simple, even if the execution is not, involv-ing considerable processing power. It reads the road ahead to pre-emptively prepare for the worst ruts and biggest undulations. Key to the technology is a camera built into the top of the windscreen, plus four height sensors and three accelerometers, to gauge steering angle, speed…

It’s Porsche’s 75th birthday, on the eve of the 100th-anniversary Le Mans, and I’m standing next to Mark Webber when the bomb-shell drops: the Mission X, an all-electric hy-percar concept. Did the former Porsche Le Mans driver get a sneak peak earlier? ‘No mate,’ he says, ‘they kept this well and truly to themselves.’ Hollywood A-lister and race team owner Patrick Dempsey is here too. He loves the balance of futurism with Le Mans heritage. Wolfgang Porsche is also here, 80 years old and the spit of dad Ferry. I spy multiple Le Mans winner Hans Stuck, engineering leg-en dPete rFalk ,today’ sto pbrass .Yo uwouldn’t put ’em all on the same plane. That Porsche was plotting a follow-up to the 918 Spyder hypercar of 2013 was a given. But…

If Silverstone has never seen anything like it, neither has it heard any-thing like it. Three hundred and eighty two Lamborghinis stretch out of sight on the start-finish straight, as though someone’s scattered a box of Quality Street all over it. As they wait to make history with a slow parade lap, so owners peacock and preen – some giving short sharp blips on the throttle like a jump-scare in a horror movie, others agonisingly clipping the rev limiters for seconds at a time. Selfie sticks the length of periscopes poke from side windows or dropped convertible tops. The UK’s 11 official dealers are mostly responsible for rounding up Lamborghini’s modern range in Northamptonshire – predominantly Aventadors and Huracans with a surplus of SVJ and STO specials respectively, though a…

Hyundai Ioniq 5 Namsan Edition 77.4kWh RWD Month 3 The story so far New edition of stylish Hyundai EV; time to see how high-spec version handles a longer journey + Roomy, techy and user-friendly - Still getting a feel for how to extract more range Logbook Price £54,150 (£54,150 as tested) Performance 77.4kWh battery, e-motor, 225bhp, 7.3sec 0-62mph, 114mph Efficiency 3.45 miles per kWh (official), 3.2 miles per kWh (tested), 0g/km CO2 Range 295 miles (official), 224 miles (tested) Energy cost 11.9p per mile Miles this month 2334 Total miles 3687 One of the many expectation-mangling innovations of Extreme E is not having spectators. So an opportunity to attend a round with a press card tucked in the band around my trilby is too good to miss. It’s in Scotland,…

Sometimes you have to accept there are things in life that you just don’t get on with. I never liked guacamole, for example. Or Turkish Delight. Marzipan? I like almonds, honey and sugar, but not together. And then the Skoda Kodiaq vRS. Over the last few months it’s been fast and self-assured, it’s comforta-ble and well equipped – what’s not to like? Yet for some reason, it’s proved to be something of a marzipan car for me. You may remember I adopted the Kodiaq halfway through its time at CAR. Its first keeper, Tim Pollard, noted: ‘There’s a surprising turn of speed, but this is not a car to enjoy driving fast.’ And that’s been my prob-lem with the Kodiaq – too many contradictions. Starting with the whole idea of…

1 BMW M3/M4 COMPETITION THE GOOD: Mighty straight-six; front axle’s never-give-up attitude; dreamy chassis balance THE BAD: No manual; nearly 911 money now THE UGLY: M3 Touring £85k new but changing hands for six figures THE ONE TO BUY: From £80k (Comp saloon) with rear drive; adding xDrive AWD costs £2800. Now available as an estate: rejoice! 2 BMW M5 COMPETITION GIANT TEST WINNER THE GOOD: An animal when you want it to be; reasonably urbane family transport when you don’t THE BAD: Hard ride on Competition suspension; priced above £100k THE UGLY: CS version has already gone off sale THE ONE TO BUY: Just one – brilliant – model now, the Competition: £1300pcm 3 AUDI RS6 AVANT THE GOOD: Massive presence; cushy interior and ride, any-weather pace – a…

IN THE SPOTLIGHT Clearly Singer Vehicle Design has its own Large Hadron Collider stretch-ing between its Californian home and UK outpost. Its latest project smashes together two of its tastiest restoration programmes – 2018’s Dy-namics and Lightweighting Study and the 930-inspired Turbo Study (explainer panel on page 11) – with explosive, world-bending result. The new Dynamics and Light-weighting Turbo Study (snappy) is Singer’s most extreme project yet, in-troducing racing-car know-how and aero, and creating a car that treads the fine line between road and track. It’s also proof of Singer’s growing confidence when it comes to distill-ing that pure adrenaline hit. ‘Our Dynamics and Lightweighting Study heralded a new era,’ says Singer Group CEO Mazen Fawaz. ‘It facilitated enormous matura-tion of our operations in California and the UK. We’ve collaborated…

A STRONG START Genesis has unveiled two concepts in recent years under the Speedium name, experimenting with the brand’s design cues as it goes fully electric. The two-line design motif is expected to be used much more boldly, potentially going all the way across the front of the car, says design head SangYup Lee. FEEDBACK LOOP Head of product Mark Choi (above) and chief brand officer Graeme Russell were both impressed by the positive reaction to the Speedium concepts. Choi told CAR earlier in 2023 that Genesis ‘is not neglecting’ that feedback, adding: ‘We are potentially bringing it into the market, but nothing is official.’ nothing is official.’ FACTFILE POWERTRAIN 99.8kWh battery (est), twin e-motors, all-wheel drive CHASSIS Aluminium and steel monocoque DUE 2028 (est) A SPORTIER OUTLOOK The Speedium…

THE EXPERIMENTAL EGOIST Is Merc looking entirely to its future with the Vision One-Eleven concept? Dramatic cues from the C111 experimental car of the ’70s – including its gullwing doors – tell us ‘no’. But the slim, high-densit y batter y pack and use of innovative axial-flux motors under its cur vaceous body work scream ‘yes’. NEED TO KNOW What is it? A C111 for tomorrow I Tech specs Augmented-reality infotainment displays, lightweight and powerful axial-flux e-motors I Aimed at? Looking back as well as forward I When can I get one? The tech will reach real Mercs soon THE CROSSOVER COPYCAT Not everyone’s idea of a flagship model, but Renault has high hopes for the Rafale, named after a fighter aircraf t. It’s related to the Austral, but has…

What if electric cars could supply electricity back to the national grid, instead of only ever plugging in to draw power for driving? That’s the simple concept of vehi-cle-to-grid (V2G, or bi-directional) charging and it’s a capability that’s being rolled out on next-gen models such as the Kia EV9 and 2024 Renault 5. ‘Three things are essential for V2G,’ says Alain Thoral, of Renault’s sustainable mobility subsidiary Mobilize. ‘A bi-directional charger in the vehicle, a bi-directional wall-box and an electricity contract to monetise V2G.’ Vehicle-to-grid is already well-established in Japan, where electrified cars are considered storage batteries on wheels and have been used to power homes and critical infrastructure when natural disasters cause outages. But next-gen V2G will turn this into an ‘always on’ con-cept – and an earner for…

RAGS vs RICHES The Elise was launched against a typically Lotus financial backdrop – near-oblivion. Lurching from one owner to another, it was a miracle Lotus survived for as long as it did – the Elise was crucial, as was Lotus freelancing its engineering expertise to other manufacturers. The Eletre is on a different plane as current owner Geely is valued at $12 billion. That should cover a couple of fallow months… THE INSIDE STORY Even by the standards of the mid ’90s, the Elise was basic. No air-con, while electricity was limited to the spark plugs. It didn’t even have carpets. Nor was there an easy way to get in, with its wide and low sill. The Eletre does everything required of the modern SUV, including the de rigeur…

Of all the classes of car, the executive saloon is better suited to going electric than anything. They’re big enough to cope with the extra weight, and unlike more sporting cars they can sell their near-silence as a virtue. And, price-wise, they were already heading for five-figure territory, even before EV development costs came into the picture. But let’s face it, not a single one of those sensible points is in the thoughts of the crowds that gather around the Lucid everywhere we go. It’s an absolute people magnet. Even among such an imposing, eye-catching bunch, it’s the new American saloon that people want to look at. That’s partly down to the novelty of a new badge – one that’s only just arrived in Europe, and not yet made it…

Giant test THE DEFINITIVE VERDICT Stadium-filling stargazer Professor Brian Cox loves nothing more than to latch on to some apparently straightforward idea and, drag-ging it with him, dive headfirst down a wormhole to the abstract. Throw in surrealist comedians James Acaster and Ed Gamble, of the Off Menu podcast, and you’re set for a supermassive saunter into the brain-stretchingly weird. As the BMW M2 powers south, heading cross-country on a back-roads last hurrah (and overtaking everything in its path with impres-sive impunity) before hooking up with the A1 (where it will prove far quieter than the Porsche 718 Cayman GTS I drove up in, if a touch less fuel efficient), Gamble and Acaster are imploring Cox to use his influence to end the search for dark matter. The clue, they…

Like a dog angling for his 5pm dinner at 3.30pm, the CX-60’s ‘service soon’ notification start-ed nagging optimistically early. But 7500 miles? I didn’t know Mazda made Formula 1 cars. The yellow light would come and go over the next few thou-sand miles, but by 10,000 it seemed like a permanent fi-xture so I rang my local dealer, Vospers, only to be told by the man in the service department that he’d get in trouble if he ser-viced it before I’d reached 12,500 miles. ‘Call back later’ was the advice. Fine by me, but I did wonder what the point of the light was, and why even that 12.5k interval is so low when Porsches can go for two years or 20,000 miles between checks. The dash showed over 13,000…

Cupra Leon Estate 2.0TSI 4Drive VZ3 Month 1 The story so far Does Cupra’s close relation to the Golf R Estate offer a better blend of performance and practicality? + Swift, sharp-looking estate with all-wheel drive and 300bhp - It’s noisy – and not in a good way Logbook Price £44,845 (£46,825 as tested) Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 306bhp, 4.9sec 0-62mph, 155mph Efficiency 34.4mpg (official), 31.3mpg (tested), 186g/km CO2 Energy cost 20.8p per mile Miles this month 1088 Total miles 1487 Every time someone asks ‘What is that?’ I reply, ‘It’s a Cupra. Which is really a Seat. Which is really a Volkswagen.’ Just as all matter in the uni-verse can be broken into atoms and those atoms can be reduced to quarks and gluons, so it feels like everything…

HOW DOES NEW GBU WORK? Fewer classes, more frequent updates and all the sass you’ve come to expect from GBU GIANT TEST WINNER 1 HONDA CIVIC TYPE R THE GOOD: Feel, feedback, focus: a phenomenal full-sized hot hatch THE BAD: Nearly £50k for a front-drive hatchback with barely any more power than before THE UGLY: Probably the last of its kind; good job it’s one of the best THE ONE TO BUY: There’s just the one model; expect to pay around £550 on a PCP with an £11k deposit 2 TOYOTA GR YARIS THE GOOD: A modern-day rally homologation special THE BAD: Road noise like a death-metal gig; joke rear seats THE UGLY: Limited supply makes finding one tricky; high chairs THE ONE TO BUY: Opt for the Circuit pack…

GIANT TEST WINNER 1 PORSCHE TAYCAN THE GOOD: Interstellar acceleration; stellar handling; agreeably tactile; roomier than a 911 THE BAD: Empty interior; ferociously expensive; not a 911 THE UGLY: Begs to be thrashed, but thrashing it clobbers the range THE ONE TO BUY: Choose your body style from saloon, estate or the borderline SUV-ish Cross Turismo. Get the Taycan 4S for £91k if you’re sensible, sharper GTS is tempting and Turbo just bonkers; top models cost £148,300 2 TESLA MODEL 3 GIANT TEST WINNER THE GOOD: Sceptic-confoundingly good to drive, easy to live with; massive price cuts have made it even more appealing THE BAD: Giant touchscreen may be genius when you’re stationary but it can be hugely distracting when you’re moving THE UGLY: Panel gaps to swallow a SpaceX…

Whether it’s the latest Juke’s chassis improvements, or describing how the Qashqai e-Power system works, few engineers can help even the least mechanically minded among us un-derstand technology quite so well as David Moss. He’s a Nissan lifer, starting there as a graduate engineer in 1990. Over the last 33 years he’s been involved in everything engineering-related, in-cluding being chief vehicle engineer for the third-generation Qashqai. Most recently, he’s risen to senior vice president for R&D in Europe – aposition previously always held by someone from Japan – and is also now responsible for research and de-velopment for Africa, India, the Mid-dle East and Oceania. Moss vividly recalls how it all started for him: ‘In those days, R&D was in portacabins – we hadn’t even built the Cranfield site [Nissan’s…

ASTON MARTIN DB12 The 300-mile test NEW CAR MEETS REAL WORLD T heflashbacks to some great drives I’ve enjoyed here in the past are becoming more and more frequent, like contractions getting closer together, telling me I must be near to where the Route Napoleon gets interesting. So it must be time to dial the DB12 into Sport mode. It’s a car built for roads like this; let’s see if it delivers. There’s a little more noise from the exhaust, tighter damping and a different program for the ESC and diffe-rential. The gearbox also loses a very slight hesitation to kick down it shows in GT mode, and is holding gears for longer. The new ESC system is certainly earning its keep, utilising six-axis inertia measurement to predict and manage…

These days the M3 (together with its two-door sibling, the M4) is less a car and more a model range, its myriad body styles, option packs, potential powertrains and seats (yep, seats – these are key) offering if not a world of different possibilities then at least a de-cently sized nation state. Just as some bemoan the 911’s gentrific-ation, so the M3/M4 is now a hugely refined, capable and well-appointed distance machine, should you need it to be. Snug in the standard seats, 500-mile days take about half an hour and leave you fresh as a yoga-retreat returnee. But if that doesn’t sound M3 enough for you, tick the M carbon bucket seat option (an admittedly punchy £3740). Now it feels less like a GT, more like a lap time-obsessed…

BIG AMBITIONS The size of the plant gives a good perspective on the company’s future. It occupies a 250-acre site – five times the size of the production and engineering facilities at Hethel – and is intended to produce up to 150,000 Lotus EVs a year across three model lines. The total production of Lotus sports cars since the company’s foundation 70 years ago is under 125,000. SELF SUFFICIENT Although it’s one of many Geely Group plants in China, Lotus’s Wuhan factory has been designed to be self contained, with all three Lotus EVs set to be built there. The stamping plant contains high-pressure presses that can apply up to 2500 tonnes of pressure and operate up to 18 times a minute. These automatically change tools depending on which parts…

Hello BMW i7 xDrive 60 M Sport Month 1 The story so far The BMW i package, stretched upwards into the 7-series jellymould + Tech galore; a huge battery; promise of long range - That face Logbook Price £111,900 (£125,705 as tested) Performance 101.7kWh battery, twin e-motors, 537bhp, 4.7sec 0-62mph, 149mph Efficiency 3.2-3.4 miles per kWh (official), 2.4 miles (tested), 0g/km CO2 Range 387 miles (official), 330 miles (tested) Energy cost 14.2p per mile.46 Miles this month 215 Total miles 1670 Let’s not beat around the bush: the BMW i7 has a face of which even its own mother may not be especially proud. I’m not quite sure how we ended up moving from the chunky modernism of the BMW i3 I ran seven years ago to the blunt trauma…

Citroën C5X Hybrid 225 Shine Plus Month 5 The story so far Five months have helped us get under the skin of Citroën’s big crossover + Splendid hybrid system and economy - Digital niggles; oddball app Logbook Price £40,210 (tested £43,310) Performance 12.4kWh battery, 1598cc four-cylinder plus e-motor, PHEV, 222bhp, 7.9sec 0-62mph, 145mph Efficiency 186.2mpg (official), 85.5mpg (tested), 30g/km CO2 Energy cost 3.0p a mile Miles this month 84 Total miles 11,102 The C5 X hasn’t moved much this month, which has given me time to reflect on some strengths and weaknesses. Early on, I wondered if the X’s 12.4kWh battery was too small; what use is a 14-mile winter range? Thankfully I have a wallbox, so although I found it irritating to plug in every night, a lot of…

My oldest brother regu-larly takes the opportuni-ty to tell me how dramati-cally my automotive tastes have changed over the last 25 years. From my early obses-sion with Japanese grey imports and Mercedes- Benz models from the 1980s, via my passion for small lightweight flyers through to fully embrac-ing electrification, he’s been there clinging on to the grab handle and stab-bing at an imaginary brake pedal in the passen-ger footwell. His latest observation that I had comfortably settled into midlife mo-toring mellowness has nothing to do with age or apathy and much more to do with the electric Volvo XC40’s unfailing ability to make all journeys relaxed and stress-free. A car both full of intelli-gence and free of irritants is truly valuable in our idi-otic and fraught world. No incessant binging…

GIANT TEST WINNER 1 PORSCHE 911 THE GOOD: Style, like 911s, never goes out of fashion THE BAD: The base Carrera now costs more than £97k – yet that’s not enough to stop it being a clear class winner; road noise now up to 11 THE UGLY: To some, it’s now more comfy GT than sports car; canny options list pushes you to spend like a lottery winner THE ONE TO BUY: Carrera S with the PDK gearbox for £110k on the nose; the Sport Chrono package is bundled in, but you’ll still pay for the Porsche badges on the wheels to be coloured in 2 ARIEL ATOM GIA NT TEST WINNER THE GOOD: A beautiful object as well as a thrilling drive; think of it as a modernised Lotus…

GIANT TEST WINNER 1 LAND ROVER DEFENDER THE GOOD: All-new reboot brings untold dynamic improvements on road and off it THE BAD: Second-row access is a pain in the 90; expensive; 130 in particular is very big, so parking can be tricky THE UGLY: Alternatives to white steel wheels are offered. Why? THE ONE TO BUY: Range spans 90, 110 and 130 bodies, with significantly different dimensions but remarkably similar character and the genuine off-road ability that Land Rover always delivers so convincingly. Heart says petrol V8 90, head/wallet say diesel-six D250 110 GIANT TEST WINNER 2 PORSCHE MACAN THE GOOD: Handles better than any other SUV. And some hot hatches THE BAD: Hardly an original choice – but then there’s good reason for that THE UGLY: People might think…