Innholdsfortegnelse for April 22, 2026 i Autocar

OFFICIAL PICTURES Hyundai has lifted the covers off the Ioniq 3, its new electric hatchback that will arrive in the UK this year priced from around £25,000. Positioned as a rival to both small electric cars such as the Renault 5 and larger alternatives including the Volkswagen ID 3, it is described by Hyundai as an ‘aerohatch’ – a sleek new form conceived with the goal of maximising aerodynamic efficiency. This approach has resulted in a raked roofline, similar to that employed by the old Hyundai Veloster, ending with a prominent duck-tail rear spoiler. The front end, meanwhile, was sculpted to have the smallest frontal area possible. Its efforts have yielded a drag coefficient of 0.26, which is better than the smaller but chunkier Renault 5 (0.29). As a result,…

Gilles Vidal is widely regarded as a master of retro design, having penned the striking Peugeot e-Legend concept before defecting to Renault to oversee the new 4, 5 and Twingo (pictured). However, he said not to expect an explosion in retro design at Stellantis, adding: “If you look at how many products are retro-futuristic and how many are new [designs], the ratio is like 5% to 95%. “It seems there’s a lot, but there’s not so many compared to everything else. Where it makes sense and it’s relevant, let’s go for it; when it’s not relevant, or there’s no reason why we should, we will just go for a new car.”…

HAS TESLA JUST kicked off a new price war? Right now, one of the best finance deals out there is for the Model 3 saloon base model, which can be had for £295 a month with just £295 down. Because finance deals can be pulled and stretched any which way to get the monthly figure down, I need to add that this is across two years, with an annual mileage limit of 8000 miles. That’s excellent. Over the course of the two years, you’re paying £7572 for a car that costs £37,990, which is well below the likely cost of the depreciation. To put that into context, Hyundai is offering a base level i20 supermini for £321 a month over four years after an initial deposit of £1500. Tesla’s deal…

GONE JAECOO CUCKOO Britain is such a strange car-buying nation. For years and years we’ve been obsessed with German brands and ‘premium’, then suddenly a new Chinese manufacturer comes along with a budget-ish family car that looks a little bit like a knockoff Range Rover model and we buy more of them than anything else. Brian Via autocar.co.uk WOOHOO FOR WUHU I’ve had my Jaecoo 7 PHEV for eight months and it’s an absolute dream: great to drive, fabulous economy and build quality way better than some mainstream cars. I haven’t had a single issue with it. Looks are divisive but I love it and have had so many comments from other people. Don’t forget that certain Minis, BMWs, Volvos and other cars are all built in China too. Oh,…

I know what you’re thinking: oh goody, yet another Chinese brand arriving in the UK. Surprise, surprise, it’s got a strange name – Aion – and its first fruit here is a family-sized electric crossover. But, so the folks behind the brand’s UK arm claim, this isn’t the kind of venture we have come to expect from China’s entrants to the UK and European markets. Rather than simply being an importer, Aion is a partnership between car-making giant GAC, which builds cars in China for Toyota and Honda, and Jameel Motors, an international distributor. It doesn’t want huge sales right out of the gate – there will only be 25 or so Aion dealers across the UK by the year’s end – and it won’t be flooding the market with a…

Some cars’ characters are defined by a single component, for better or for worse. Think of the Renault Clio 182 Trophy’s remotereservoir dampers; the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N’s simulated gears; and the original Smart Fortwo’s automated manual gearbox. The Polestar 3 was just such a car, with its torquevectoring rear clutch pack that could chuck all of the drive from the rear motor to either wheel. It gave this big and heavy EV remarkable agility and a sense of playfulness. You’ll note I’m using the past tense here, because the 3 has just had a big but rather confusing update, as part of which that clever differential has found itself out of a job. The update isn’t really a facelift, because other than some new wheel designs and paint options,…

Thanks to the likes of the new Ford Capri, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Honda’s revival of the Prelude after more than 20 years was going to result in a crossover. Fortunately that has not happened, and the fifth interpretation of a nameplate that will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2028 is, as every one of its predecessors has been, a front-driven coupé. We have spent a fair bit of time with the new Prelude – enough, certainly, to warm to its charms as a relatively affordable, frugal and usable junior GT. As we will shortly discover, calling this 181bhp, hybrid-powered machine an out-and-out sports car is perhaps a stretch, and there are areas where it can’t live with the similarly priced BMW 220i M Sport, but framed correctly…

A rule of business is that it is cheaper to keep a customer than find a new one. It’s also a rule today’s car manufacturers and their dealers ignore at their peril, especially now there are so many new car brands tempting previously loyal customers to switch. Not long ago, motorists stuck to one brand for almost their entire lives – motorists like David Franklin, who in 2022, and at the age of 84, bought his 55th Fiat. “Fiat never let me down, so I didn’t let them down,” he explained. Brand managers would give their right arm for that kind of customer loyalty today. In the 1960s, when Franklin first started buying Fiats, there were around 60 brands in the UK, but by 2020 there were only 40. By…

MILEAGE 92,946 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see whether a modernised 2005 car can be better than a new one Our time with this modernised E46 BMW 330Ci is almost up, but it has just required a little more remedial work. When it went in for a service prior to its MOT test (from which it got a clean bill of health), the technicians thought that some belts needed replacing, but when it came to doing them they realised that the pulleys would want renewing too. I’ve since taken the car back to my friends at Classic Collective in Bicester to have that done. When I received a text to say it was ready, they said that if I waited 45 minutes it would be cleaned by the time I…

Hunting for a decent used BMW with proper luxury credentials? Chances are you’re only considering a 3 Series or 5 Series, but what if we told you that you could step up to a 7 Series for only a little extra cash? A 3 Series or 5 Series estate won’t cost much less than a comparable 7 Series saloon: a 2018 730d with 52,000 miles is stonking value at £20k, for example, while a 530d of similar vintage and condition could nudge £17k. It feels a good bit more special, too. Open the driver’s door and you will see a badge on the B-pillar proclaiming a ‘carbon core’. It’s not a full, i8-style tub but a steel and CFRP structure that, together with a mostly aluminium body, keeps rigidity up…

When you’re going for it, “ the sound of the engine in the Ferrari 360 is more of a shriek, while the 430 is a grunt,” says Raj Sangha. “The 355 is the sweet spot.” He should know since he has owned all three. Raj’s current car is a 355 GTS manual, but prior to that he owned a 355 F1 Berlinetta. The sound of his GTS is enhanced somewhat by the aftermarket exhaust system fitted to it. “There’s a point at about 3500-4000rpm when the V8 sounds amazing even on a stock exhaust,” he says. “But with the aftermarket system – Tubi manifold, Capristo back box and Larini cats – you can hear it throughout the rev range.” His GTS sounds good and, he says, looks good: “The GTS…

Ford’s archive in Detroit (p50) and the neighbouring Henry Ford Museum hold items that help tell some of the most famous stories in automotive history, but so large has been the American company’s contribution over the past 123 years that there are also many forgotten stories waiting to be rediscovered. One unfolded during World War II – specifically the Blitz in Britain. With German aircraft bombing the public night after night, Ford of Britain chief Baron Percival Perry felt compelled to help in some way – and, as we reported in August 1941, “conceived the idea of a great fleet of vans in small units located at key points throughout the country, ready to rush food to any town or village where it was required”. Of course this would be…

“Icons make the difference in the end, and definitely the Mercedes grille is an icon” OFFICIAL PICTURES Mercedes-Benz has hit back at archrival BMW with the first electric C-Class – which it claims will be the “sportiest-ever” version of the long-running saloon to take on the recently revealed i3. As the saloon sibling to the new electric GLC, the C-Class EV is the second car to both use the new MB.EA platform and be designed according to Mercedes’ new strategy of making its electric models look more like its ICE cars. Due on sale in the UK later this year, the new C-Class will be offered initially in dual-motor 400 4Matic guise, with a range of 472 miles and a sub-£60k list price, before further powertrain options – including long-range…

“It should offer a range in excess of 350 miles and up to 215bhp” Nissan has unveiled the new Juke as its fourth EV, a car that it says will “help us reach new customers” thanks to a radical new exterior design. The quirky SUV is the second-best-selling Nissan in Europe after the Qashqai, with more than 1.5 million of them sold since the original was launched in 2010. The third-generation Juke, which was unveiled at the brand’s future-facing Vision Event in Japan, is based on Nissan’s CMF-EV platform and is therefore powered exclusively by electricity. It shares much of its underpinnings with the smaller Leaf, alongside which it will be built in Sunderland. It will go on sale in spring next year. The Japanese firm’s answer to the Ford…

Stellantis is working to more clearly differentiate its brands under new European design chief Gilles Vidal so they “compete more against the real competition” rather than among themselves. The Frenchman returned to the group last year after a five-year stint with rival Renault, having overseen the production designs of the highly lauded 4 and 5 and the new Twingo. Vidal previously made his name as chief designer of Peugeot during the 2010s, when he ushered in a new design language and was involved in the introduction of the i-Cockpit. Now, as the dust settles on his first months back at Stellantis, Vidal has revealed to Autocar that his aim is to “orchestrate enough differentiation between the different brands so that those brands matter”. He continued: “The client will still compare…

Road rage incidents have increased by more than a third in the UK since the turn of the decade – and new research claims problems in drivers’ personal lives and not just problems on the roads are behind the rise. The number of police reports of crimes caused by road rage or aggressive driving increased by 34% between 2021 and 2025 (the newest data available), and Department for Transport (DfT) data reveals 10% of the 1454 deaths on Britain’s roads in 2023 were linked to aggressive behaviour. Now, a new study has investigated the causes of driver rage. Road safety technology company Ooono found that 33% of UK drivers are stressed by a lack of sleep, 29% by work pressure, 27% by financial pressure, 24% by family or relationship pressure…

The first new Jensen in 25 years will be named Interceptor GTX, it has been confirmed ahead of the model’s unveiling this summer. The GTX is being developed by Banburybased Jensen International Automotive (JIA), which has previously created a series of restomods based on the original Interceptor and FF. The new model has been conceived in the spirit of those originals, eschewing electric power for a modern V8 that Autocar understands to have been sourced from the current Chevrolet Corvette. In its basic configuration it puts out 495bhp and 452lb ft, but JIA said its powertrain will be “bespoke”, hinting at additional grunt. The Corvette ZR1 adds a pair of turbochargers that boost its peak outputs to 1064bhp and 828lb ft. JIA added that the Interceptor GTX will offer a…

THE 50 BEST CARS ON SALE TODAY Britain’s car buyers now have more choice than ever before. Our testers pick the best cars for all occasions – then fight about their favourite five AUDI RS3 COMPETITION This 394bhp hot hatch celebrates Audi’s five-pot – but is it worth £93k? JAECOO 8 UK’s best-selling car gets a bigger sibling. Will it be another smash hit? EVERY WEEK ALPINE A390 Ambitious French performance firm’s new Porsche Macan Electric rival gets the full treatment TESLA MODEL Y Ever-popular but divisive electric SUV is the latest addition to our fleet. How good is it to live with?…

Yes, another week – another page, even – another Chinese crossover. But no, this one can’t be plugged in. This is the Chery Tiggo 4, a B-segment SUV, which is 4.3 metres long and, for sale at less than £20,000, priced to give European car makers the heebie-jeebies. Chery is in the Omoda-Jaecoo bunch of brands, and chat from the company is about whether those two are respectively best pictured at Bicester Village/Daylesford Organic or in some swish part of London like Mayfair. But Chery, they say, is pure suburbia: imagine it as an own-brand sliced-white-loaf kind of car, and perhaps none the worse for it. Chery’s idea is that somebody trades in their £5k supermini as a deposit and pays £235 a month for one of these instead. A…

You may already have read Illya Verpraet’s comprehensive report on the new Volkswagen T-Roc, dispatched from Lisbon late last year (Autocar, 26 November). And in just a couple of months’ time, you’ll be able to read an even more comprehensive review bolstered by economy and performance figures obtained at Horiba MIRA proving ground, when the T-Roc undergoes its full and thorough road test. In the meantime, here’s a brief report from the car’s fresh-off-theboat arrival into the UK – a market in which the first-gen model was spectacularly successful between 2017 and 2025, even as its specific niche became increasingly crowded. Today its chief rivals are the Toyota C-HR, Renault Symbioz and Skoda Karoq, and the new Nissan Qashqai is another serious alternative. These drives on UK Tarmac matter more…

HYUNDAI KONA N 2021-2023 £23,000-£29,000 The inexorable rise of Hyundai N has facilitated its expansion from a maker or rorty, old-school hot hatchbacks to a true pioneer in driver-appeasing EVs. Somewhat lost amid its packed timeline is the curio Kona N – aka the shoehorning of the i30 N’s flagship 276bhp 2.0-litre turbo engine into a shorter, chunkier crossover. It came with a dual-clutch auto ’box only, to match its more flexible vibe, but its stern ride and mischievous handling hardly scream ‘school run’. All the more reason to covet one. ABARTH PUNTO 2008-2014 £4500-£9000 Think ‘modern-day Abarth’ and I’d wager your head quickly fills with brightly hued Fiat 500s in various states of tune, or perhaps the raucous 124 Spider, another unsung hero, comes to mind. The poor Punto…

WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To discover if this private hire stalwart is, in its fifth generation, now fit for family life “Just take a second to look at the car. It’s a really pretty thing” If you asked 100 people across the country to name an Uber vehicle, I bet most would say a Toyota Prius, probably in silver. The tough Japanese hybrid hatch is a staple of taxi ranks and Uber drivers nationwide, worldwide even, especially in its third-generation form. That’s not surprising, given that the world’s most famous hybrid has a long history of rock-solid reliability and cheap-to-run frugality. It has been years, however, since I’ve seen one without a private hire plate. That is until now: meet our new, fifth-generation Prius. Toyota is taking the nameplate along…

MILEAGE 4927 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see how well Dacia can make a big car for a small price Everything is getting bigger nowadays, isn’t it? Whether it’s bills, burgers or cars, it’s bloating at an unbelievable pace. Rarely a day goes by without me being left aghast at seeing something I’d pegged as a mid-size machine fill all four corners of a British parking space. Watching someone try to park something like an Audi Q5 now tends to be a weirdly fascinating experience. The really entertaining part, though, comes immediately after they’ve parked, when the driver exits the vehicle. In a world of long cars with longer doors, it requires gymnastic manoeuvres that would make the contortionists of the Cirque du Soleil proud. How do you solve this…

Mercedes currently has no plans to introduce an estate version of the new C-Class, despite BMW confirming that it will offer a big-booted Touring version of the new i3. Every C-Class so far (and its W201-generation 190E predecessor of the 1980s) has been offered in estate form, but this new EV could be the first to buck the trend, simply because, said designer Robert Lesnik, “nobody is buying them”. Asked about the prospect of turning the new coupé-roofed C-Class into a wagon, Lesnik told Autocar: “It’s interesting: if I sit down with guys like you or other designers, they say ‘well, I like station wagons!”, but in the end, nobody is buying them. “We have three regions. Nobody is buying them in America; we tried the shooting brake [version] of…

The new Nissan X-Trail SUV will be launched next year with a bold new look. Shown for the first time last week, the SUV will feature a new front end, dominated by a distinctive wide-mouth grille and angular LEDs. While no technical details were confirmed, the Skoda Kodiaq and Kia Sorento rival is expected to feature the newest version of Nissan’s e-Power series-hybrid powertrain, which was recently updated with increased power, refinement and efficiency. The new X-Trail will be launched globally next year, but with the current model having only arrived in the UK in 2022, it is unclear when the new generation will come here. It’s possible that the new model could go on sale in the US first, badged as the Rogue, before coming to Europe later –…

BACK IN 2023 Swindon Powertrain announced its four-valve cylinder head kits to fit the Porsche 911 964 and 993 M64 engine. The company reached a milestone recently when it supplied its 100th kit, which is designed for use by specialist engine builders and requires the rest of the engine to be modified to withstand the extra power and revs. The standard M64 engine has two valves per cylinder, but the new heads open up the engine’s breathing to raise a 993’s redline from 6900rpm to as high as 12,000rpm. Gloucester-based modification and restoration specialist Thornley Kelham is using the kit on its limited-edition 911 European RS, of which only 15 will be built with a choice of two engines. The capacity of the first is the standard 3.6-litre, making more…

A HONDA INTEGRA Type R has been totally gutted and restored to factory spec by British restoration specialist Tolman. This 1999 DC2 – the only generation of Integra Type R offered in the UK – underwent 740 hours of work to get it back to its original, rust-free form. That included Tolman creating a new set of wheel arches and rear quarter panels (due to the difficulty in sourcing replacements), retrimming its Recaro seats and rebuilding its 187bhp 1.8-litre petrol four. Tolman also fitted new brakes, tyres, lights and springs, updated soundproofing, a modern immobiliser and even a set of Nitron dampers. The car was restored for a customer and the cost hasn’t been revealed but we estimate it to be close to a £100,000 machine – rather more than…

CHINESE NEWCOMER AION will add a plug-in hybrid SUV to its range next year. The brand is weeks away from the UK launch of its first model, the V electric SUV (driven, p24), and will follow that with the UT hatchback in the coming months. It will then branch out into combustion-engined cars by the end of next year with parent firm GAC’s Trumpchi S7 PHEV. The S7 is currently in the UK for testing to inform any modifications required to suit our roads. The V was fitted with firmer springs and dampers after testing on B-roads, and the update has since been rolled out across all of Europe. The SUV will also ditch its Trumpchi branding and S7 name to ensure it fits in with Aion’s UK line-up. In…

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The Panda is back from the brink of extinction. Well, sort of. Fiat’s sensible city car left the UK market in 2024 but now it has now returned – only it’s bigger than before (Grande, see?), with its sights set on the slightly better-paying supermini class. We came away from the Grande Panda’s international launch so impressed that we handed it the Best Small Car gong at the 2025 Autocar Awards, but this is the first chance we’ve had to test its mettle in right-hand-drive form. You could argue that the Grande Panda deserves the acclaim without having to turn a wheel. Even on a rainswept Worcestershire hillside it radiates charm and lifts your spirits, its Etch A Sketch form packed with details that make you point and grin. From…

When Volvo presented its first electric saloon to the world in March last year, it chose the Artipelag modern art museum in Stockholm. It was a strong statement, if any were still needed, that the 99-year-old company now sees itself as an aspirational brand that can sit wheel to wheel with Mercedes, BMW and Audi, rather than a purveyor of the sort of trusty family plodders you grew up in. Volvo’s ascent has been mostly but not entirely convincing. It boils down to the fact that the company’s approach to exterior and interior design has, for about a decade, been writing cheques the underlying technology hasn’t always been able to cash. Performance and handling have been fine, but efficiency and ride quality have frequently been short of the mark. Any…

Holiday romance or the real deal? It’s a question that we have all surely asked ourselves at some point, whether about a (potential) significant other, a newly discovered cocktail or, given the publication you’re reading, an especially bewitching hire car. What’s fun under the sun of the Canaries or a Balearic Island as you dash between beaches and tourist vistas doesn’t always fit the criteria you demand of your transport back home. And it’s the question that brings us here. Back in January, my better half and I were handed the key to a Citroën C4 at the Las Palmas arrivals hall, and how brilliant it transpired to be in heat-repelling white amid some winter warmth. Its 1.2-litre triple thrummed us through Gran Canarian hills, while its precipitous tyre sidewalls…

When Ted Ryan was first approached to become Ford’s heritage brand manager, he was intrigued but reluctant. The issue wasn’t that he doesn’t consider himself a car nut: his dad, who owns a historic Mustang and Lincoln, and best friend are, and both tried to convince Ryan that “there are great stories in cars”. But Ryan initially pushed back, telling them: “I’ve got Santa Claus and polar bears.” For 21 years before he joined Ford in 2018, Ryan was an archivist for Coca-Cola. “It’s one of the best brands in the world,” he enthuses. “As well as Santa and the polar bears, you’ve got Norman Rockwell, the colour red, the secret formula.” But just as the fizzy drink is woven into cultural heritage, so is Ford. And Ryan was being…

MILEAGE 563 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if this cheap Chinese EV is now a realistic alternative to established brands It has been a while since I’ve had an EV, which has meant the driveway hierarchy has changed and I can no longer always guarantee the space in front of my home charger. That problem has been eased by my new Omoda’s relatively unusual layout, with a front-mounted charge port rather than the petrol flap-style installation in the rear quarter of many EVs. (For those with long and very geeky memories, the E5’s cantilevered charge cover pops up in much the same way that the cassette-deck cover did on the original 1996 Fiat Bravo/Brava.) Even with that and the extra-long cable of my charger, however, I was often struggling…