Table of contents for March 23, 2022 in Autocar

WHILE THE MINI hatchback will remain relatively similar in its next generation, there’s a more extensive shake-up planned at the larger end of the Mini range. Somewhat surprisingly, the five-door hatchback won’t get an electric version and the Clubman estate is unlikely to be directly replaced. For those after a more practical Mini EV, there will be a new electric-only compact crossover to sit beneath the Countryman. This smaller high-riding model is due to be revealed later this year and will also be built in China as part of the Spotlight joint venture between the BMW Group and Great Wall Motor. It is likely to take a much more radical design than the retro-inspired production Mini models seen to date. This smaller crossover will allow the Countryman to grow in…

Aston Martin has revived the hallowed V12 Vantage name for a commemorative and highly exclusive range-topping edition of its two-seat sports coupé, promising substantially enhanced performance over the standard V8 Vantage. Gaydon will build just 333 examples of the new V12 Vantage, all of which were sold prior to its unveiling for a starting price of £265,000 – £123,000 more than the previous range-topping Vantage F1 Edition. The V12 Vantage uses the same Aston Martin-designed 5.2-litre twin-turbo 12-cylinder engine as the DB11 and DBS but in a bespoke state of tune that endows it with 690bhp and 555lb ft – enough to send it from 0-60mph in just 3.4sec and on to a 200mph top speed. “The engine is the heart of every Aston Martin, but never more so than…

Audi has confirmed that the PPE EV platform it is co-creating with Porsche will also be deployed in the segments immediately below and above the A6, meaning the best-selling A4 and flagship A8 will also be succeeded by electric cars. The company has already previewed the A8 E-tron with the outlandish Grandsphere concept of 2021, but details of an electric A4 equivalent have yet to be given. The future A4 E-tron will no doubt tout performance specifications to match the larger A6 and be similarly offered in both saloon and estate forms, but no release date has been shared.…

THE FORD PUMA will gain an all-electric variant as part of Ford’s EV push, but it will not use Volkswagen’s MEB platform. This raises the prospect of it sitting on an adapted version of today’s platform or using potentially different underpinnings altogether. The decision also raises questions about the future of the Ford Fiesta, on which the Puma is based and which could theoretically therefore make use of any electric conversion, although its lower stance would undoubtedly complicate such a move. The Puma was Ford’s best-selling car in the UK last year. It dethroned the Fiesta, which suffered a drop in sales having been heavily affected by semiconductor shortages and factory closures.…

EV REBIRTH FOR R8, TT Audi aims to have a pure-EV in every “core segment” from 2027. So that’s the indomitable Q5, Q3 and A4 going electric, then, but what about the far-fromcore R8 and TT sports cars? We asked technical development boss Oliver Hoffmann if the two-seaters will get a battery-powered reprieve now that they’re entering their final few months on sale. “The future will be fully electric,” he said. “We intend to come up with some surprises again and we are working on sports car concepts that will probably be fully electric. All I can say is we will surprise and thrill you.” Given the new Audi-Porsche PPE platform will get rear- and all-wheeldrive drivetrains and place an emphasis on dynamics, it seems an obvious basis for EV…

REMARKABLY FOR A manufacturer that’s not known for massive sales volumes, it’s the numbers that stand out when you look at Bentley’s factory in Crewe. Some 210,000 cars across 206 model lines have been built there in the 75 years that it has been operational, which is more than 97% of Bentley’s entire production run. More than that, though, is the fact that just 38,933 cars were built before 2003, before the Continental GT was launched, which just goes to show the staggering success of cars like that and the more recent Bentayga SUV. At present, 85 cars roll off the line each day, which is the same as the monthly running rate of two decades ago. Although Bentley has been around since 1919, it wasn’t until 1946 that cars…

THE THIRTEENTH OF March was a big day for Indiana’s all-American racing hero turned team owner, Tony Stewart. Down in Gainesville, Florida, Funny Car racer Matt Hagan delivered the three-time Nascar and 1997 Indycar champion his maiden NHRA drag racing victory as a team owner. Then about half an hour later, Tony Stewart Racing had another victory to celebrate. Over in Phoenix, Arizona, Nascar Cup Series sophomore Chase Briscoe landed his first premier-tier stock car victory, and in style, leading for 101 laps in his Ford and holding on through two restarts in the final 20 to conquer the catchily titled Ruoff Mortgage 500. Stewart videoed in from Gainesville to congratulate the 27-year-old. “My dad [Kevin] raced against Tony Stewart in sprint cars,” said Briscoe. “I was a diehard Tony…

The GLC SUV recently took over as the best-selling Mercedes-Benz globally, beating the longtime incumbent C-Class saloon with more than 270,000 sales in 2021. It’s no surprise to learn, then, that the second-generation model, driven here for the first time as a prototype, employs the same fundamentals. It still sits on the MRA platform, although this has been developed for greater rigidity and reduced weight. It is 60mm longer than before and has a 15mm-longer wheelbase, with these subtle increases being used to make the interior more spacious. This has also been reworked itself, borrowing heavily from the C-Class – most clearly in the huge touchscreen – but with its own uniquely styled air vents and higher-quality materials. The second GLC will arrive with a quartet of four-cylinder petrol and…

Browsing the new Bronco section of Ford’s US website is a remarkably diverting way to spend time. Ford’s reborn all-American off-roader comes in the kind of specification that made it famous in the 1960s and 1970s: with two doors, a removable hard roof and a chunky appearance that rather suits balloon tyres and bold colours. It’s a range tinged with nostalgia and even some humour: there’s a paint called Area 51. However, unlike the original Bronco (see overleaf), the new model is also offered in different styles – ones that give it the kind of practicality that it lacked in the 1990s and ultimately cost it its place in Ford’s model line-up at the time. “You could spend a day in both and have them variously do one thing better…

Mathieu Baumel is an interesting man. A triple Dakar Rally winner (to Al-Attiyah’s Ari Vatanen-matching four), he likes old French hot hatches and air-cooled Porsches 911s, races at a high level in other series and only got into motorsport when a friend’s father gave him an opportunity at club level following an accident that curtailed his skiing career. He and Al-Attiyah clearly have chemistry. The Frenchman’s quiet warmth and meticulous attitude to preparation plays well alongside the Qatari’s infectious enthusiasm and evident driving flair. The dependencies are also different from what you will find in the WRC, where the stages are known to the driver in advance and, according to Baumel, a good result is 80% driver. It’s more even on the Dakar. New regulations mean that instead of getting…

Road tax is a myth Autocar’s editor, no less, stated in his comment of 23 February: “Unlike road tax (£7 billion raised a year), fuel duty goes straight to the central pot of government funds, rather than simply being used on roads.” Sorry, Mr Tisshaw, but the road fund, originally set up in 1909 to fund repairs to the roads, was all but defunct by 1926 but soldiered on until 1937 when it was finally abolished, the disc in the windscreen becoming just a tax disc (now vehicle excise duty) with all funds raised from it going into the general fund of all government taxes. No tax on vehicles since then has been earmarked for spending on roads, all of which has been funded from general taxation. Astonishingly, it’s still…

Vive la différence RENAULT IS TO revive its famous 5 supermini next year, and Alpine has just finished work on a soupedup version (see last week’s news). History is repeating itself, as there was an Alpine version of the original, introduced in 1976. Yep, before the Mk1 Volkswagen Golf GTI (although it didn’t come to Britain until 1979 and did so as the Gordini, due to a trademark issue). We got our first go in 1978, after it had scored a remarkable second and third in the Monte Carlo Rally. Dieppe bored out the 5’s four-pot engine from 1289 to 1397cc, raised the compression ratio and installed twin Weber carburettors, lifting it from 64 to 93bhp, and tied down the long-travel springs with a hefty roll bar and thicker torsion…

MILEAGE 2499 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if a mid-engined supercar really can work as a commuting grand tourer If this truly is McLaren’s everyday supercar, it needs to work in all weathers. And while the standard Pirelli P Zero tyres are perfectly acceptable circles of rubber, in cold weather they can come unstuck. (Not quite literally: we’re not that brutal on the throttle.) It’s the cold morning start when this was most noticeable. Pulling out of my house is a bit of an exercise in blind faith, as we’re on a corner, so sometimes I’ll edge into the road only to be greeted by a set of headlights bearing down on me. At that point, a touch of panic sets in, I tend to jump on the throttle…

An expert’s view ANDREW CHAPPLE, VOLKSWIZARD “I recently bought a Corrado VR6 to keep forever because the sleek body, low-slung driving position and snarling narrow-angle V6 make a very special combination. All that weight over the nose coupled with its lofty ride height doesn’t suggest agility, but the Passat rear bushes that induce passive rear-wheel steer create neutrality while retaining a plush ride, helped by the modest 15in Speedline wheels. The VR6 engine is tough and bodywork is far more rust resistant than the contemporary Mk3 Golf’s, but parts are much harder to source now, both new and used.” Buyer beware… ■ ENGINE With the VR6, it’s worth doing plenty of oil and filter changes. Listen for timing chain rattles as the part can let go at 100,000 miles. The…

“Electric models will be mechanically unrelated to ICE Minis but still look very similar” Mini has confirmed plans for a dramatically revamped range comprising separate petrol and electric versions of its three-door flagship, a small electric crossover and a larger Countryman SUV. Autocar joined Mini for a round of winter testing in a development prototype of the upcoming electric hatchback, where the company confirmed that over the next five years, its model range will undergo rationalisation and a big push towards electric powertrains. The core of the range, as before, will be the classic three-door hatchback, but buyers will have a choice of two electric powertrains. Unlike the current Mini Electric, which is based on a platform that wasn’t originally designed with electrification in mind, the new electric models will…

MANUFACTURERS ARE often quite happy to let journalists look around or even drive late-stage prototypes as they ramp up the marketing machine ahead of a car’s launch. It is not often, however, that we get anywhere close to a prototype a full 18 months before the car is due on sale. Of course, the Mini electric hatchback prototype that we rode in was still wrapped in camouflage and the interior style was very much bin-bag chic, but it still gave us plenty of clues to the final production design and make-up. Design-wise, it’s clear that the images that leaked late last year of an uncamouflaged car are representative of what we will see in Europe. Just ignore the big rings around the headlights and the square tail-lights: they’re decoys. The…

How did you differentiate the Grecale from Levante? “We wanted to create a new chapter for Maserati. The MC20 was such an important new milestone it deserved a step forward in the design. The second step was then to apply the design of the MC20 to the Grecale, and through that process you automatically get that differentiation, because the Levante is a much more horizontal design.” Which elements will we see on future Maseratis? “We didn’t want to design a car that shouts ‘look at me’ and is too aggressive in its appearance. We wanted to design a car that, to a point, adds visual value: if you see a Maserati, it adds beauty to the environment. It’s a rolling sculpture, and sculpture for us, especially in Italy, is about…

Ford will launch seven new electric vehicles in Europe by 2024, including three cars that will be spearheaded by a new crossover using Volkswagen’s MEB platform technology. The three new electric cars will come under the new Ford Model E division, set up to separate the firm’s battery-electric business from its combustion-engined one, which is now called Ford Blue. The first car to be launched is expected to be based on the VW ID 4 and sit below the Mustang Mach-E in Ford’s line-up. It will be built at Ford’s new state-of-the-art EV production centre in Cologne, Germany. The model will be launched in 2023 and is described officially as a “medium-sized crossover”. The second Ford EV to be built at the plant will arrive in 2024 as a “sports…

WAY BACK IN 1999, General Motors hydrogen fuel cell pioneer Byron McCormick coined the phrase ‘energy security’, saying: “There may even be war and peace issues.” How right he was, and if ever there was a time to focus minds on the urgent need for sustainable energy, this is it. Apart from fuel cells, there’s a slow but growing trend towards developing hydrogen combustion engines. JCB is proving that with its work on hydrogen-fuelled combustion engines and Toyota is exploring the same concept with car engines. It has been tried in the past, of course, with port-injection petrol engines, but the poor volumetric efficiency of burning hydrogen gas in an engine designed for atomised liquid fuel meant vastly reduced specific power (bhp per litre) and greater emissions. Direct injection and…

Time for a quick review of Gran Turismo 7, now that the latest PlayStation driving game has been out for a few weeks. In brief, I like it. I like the physics model, which makes cars behave a lot like, in my experience, the real thing. Some serious online sim racers prefer more serious software, but I think Gran Turismo 7 models road cars really well; although its drift and rally modes are still its weakest points. I’ve not yet spent bags of time playing it, but I’m less enthused by the singleplayer mode, which is too prescriptive. Gran Turismo has never had a plot like, say, Grand Theft Auto, but the developers have seemingly tried to invent one. Some weird beard in a cafe sets you challenges before he’s…

Manufacturing economies of scale, where profit margins are slim and disruptive shocks are becoming the norm, particularly for the volume players, has been the mantra of car makers for the past couple of decades. “Autos is a high fixed-cost/scale business,” wrote analyst Adam Jones of investment bank Morgan Stanley in a recent report. “Returns are maximised when you can achieve very high volume per [unit].” His point was that profits can only flow on annual volumes of more than 100,000. However, newer car makers and other industry disruptors are challenging the prevailing wisdom to find new ways to bring vehicles to market. A key aim is finding an alternative to the stamping press – an expensive machine that uses immense force to literally stamp out panels and other car parts…

“The wrong people often get credited for great design” MONDAY Isn’t it weird how rapidly and how far your opinions about a car can change? Such thoughts flooded my mind after spending some time in Matt Prior’s long-term Polestar 2, a £60,000 dual-motor, full-house edition. The point at issue was that when we first drove this car on its optional £5000 Öhlins sports suspension, early reviewers – including me – complained loudly and long about its uncomfortable ride. Lumpiness was again evident when I started to drive Prior’s Polestar, but the further I went, the more I began to enjoy the unimpeachable body control, supreme body rigidity (manifesting itself in quiet, one-impact bump absorption) and complete lack of pitching – a particularly infuriating fault with many current rival EVs. This…

Despite being an early EV adopter with the Leaf hatchback, Nissan has taken a while to come up with its second electric car. With the Ariya SUV, it finally has. Well, almost. The one we’ve driven here is a pre-production car and our time with it was limited, but it was enough to show that the Ariya could be a very compelling entry in the class currently led by the Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5. Nissan’s contender for the Volkswagen ID 4 class looks like a pretty thorough job. It’s based on the brand-new CMF-EV platform, which is shared with the Renault Mégane E-Tech and will underpin a whole range of EVs from the two brands. Unlike those rivals, entry-level Ariyas are front-wheel drive, with higher-powered versions getting an…

It appears that car manufacturers listen to criticism; or more likely time their product launches so that they keep their best for last. The Nissan Qashqai is a very good crossover, being well equipped and smoothly fitting into everyday life. It’s not the class leader, however, due to a dated infotainment system and, more jarringly, an underperforming engine paired to either an obstructive manual gearbox or a wheezy CVT. When we road tested the 1.3-litre petrol, we speculated that a smoother and more potent hybrid powertrain would complete the package. Having now driven the Qashqai e-Power, I can confirm that it mostly does. It’s quite an unusual system in that it’s the only series hybrid on sale right now. If you’ve not been keeping up on your hybrid lingo, that…

The Ford Bronco was on sale across five generations between 1966 and 1996, always as a separate-chassis two-door off-roader with a hard top. Relatively utilitarian, like a pick-up truck but with a second row of seats and a large, accessible boot, one of its defining features was that the hard top could be removed. It was a popular theme of the time: the Chevrolet Blazer did a similar job, as did the Jeep CJ-5 (which later became the Wrangler) and the International Harvester Scout. As the market changed, a few Bronco derivatives were spawned. The Bronco II was an unrelated smaller model, and the Bronco Sport does the same job beneath the new Bronco today. But while the Wrangler adapted to gain more doors and practicality, the Bronco didn’t. It’s…

James Muirhead opened the large envelope he had just been handed by a senior car interior designer stamped ‘DO NOT BEND’ and found inside it a rock, a piece of seatbelt, a length of thread and some other random oddities. The gauntlet cast down by the designer was to match the colour of each item in leather. Muirhead is head of automotive sales at Bridge of Weir, the company founded by his great-great-grandfather, Arthur Muirhead, in 1905. He had been explaining how it could match the colour of any object as a way the manufacturer could offer a bespoke personalisation service to its customers. A couple of weeks later, he returned with every one of the examples matched perfectly, including the envelope itself, made in colour-matched leather and stamped with…

Pay per mile I’ve just read your piece on road pricing (News, 23 February). Surely it must be possible to fit a recorder to electric vehicles that simply measures mileage driven, with no record attached to which roads these miles were actually driven on. This would remove any issues around privacy, because there would be no record of where the car has been. Drivers could elect to pay weekly or monthly via a smart card in the car, and if they don’t pay as agreed, the car could be prevented from driving until payment is made. Leave internal combustion engine car owners paying fuel duty as they do now. Via email WIN Letter of the week wins this ValetPRO exterior protection and maintenance kit worth £48…

The Mercedes-Benz GLC had an unenviable start to life, having to replace the (left-hand-driveonly) GLK, which had amassed a cult following thanks to its cool, chiselled design. Mercedes took a gamble with a sleek new appearance – but happily it paid off. Based on the C-Class saloon, the GLC sits between the GLA and GLE and was the only full-sized Mercedes SUV in Europe at the time of its launch in 2015. Its dynamic abilities meant it had no trouble handling British B-roads and sweeping corners so it was an attractive buy here from day one – and it’s even more tempting now as a used car. The GLC is more than just a jacked-up C-Class, too. It offers more practicality than its executive counterpart, therefore serving up an ideal…

Designing a car is an immensely complicated business full of potential disasters. The fact that manufacturers get it right so much of the time is one of the wonders of our age. But they get it wrong sometimes, perhaps because they had a bad idea, or a good idea didn’t work out, or they were following a fashion that should have been dropped years before. Here are some of the most notable cases. NSU Ro80 Unreliability Launched in 1967, the Ro80 was an attractive and innovative car with two major problems, both caused by its underdeveloped rotary engine. First, it was tremendously uneconomical, which became tiresome during the early 1970s fuel crisis, when prices surged. Second, the tips of its rotors kept disintegrating, which rapidly led to complete engine failure.…

The Grecale is Maserati’s most strategically important and potentially best-selling model in decades. The new SUV will play a fundamental role in the Italian firm’s rapid transition to electrification and provides it with a long-awaited rival to the Porsche Macan. Revealed shortly after Maserati’s parent company, Stellantis, announced that the brand – along with Alfa Romeo, DS and Lancia – will launch only electric cars from 2025, the Grecale has been engineered to accommodate pure-combustion, hybrid and fully electric drivetrains. This will lend it a similar flexibility of purpose to its German rival, itself due a pure-EV in 2023. Expected on sale in June from around £60,000, the Grecale sits below the Levante in Maserati’s line-up and will be joined in dealerships by the secondgeneration Granturismo sports car, which will…

The fully electric Grecale Folgore (Italian for ‘lightning’) will touch down in dealerships a year after the combustion car. Technical details remain largely under wraps but Maserati promises it will pack up to 590lb ft – almost as much as the Audi E-tron S, which cracks 0-62mph in 4.5sec – and a 105kWh battery, which could feasibly supply upwards of 350 miles of range. It will be largely identical to the ICE car, save for an exclusive colourshifting paint option, bespoke wheels and a unique grille.…

AUDI WILL LAUNCH an electric equivalent of the hugely successful A6 executive saloon in 2024, plus an Avant-badged estate option, which is set to be the first electric offering in the executive estate segment. Following the unveiling of the saloon-shaped A6 E-tron concept last year, Audi has revealed a follow-up concept that previews the estate variant. It will not immediately replace the A6 Avant, though. Instead, Audi is planning to launch a “parallel offer” powered by combustion in the future. Like its saloon sibling, the new A6 Avant E-tron concept sits atop the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) architecture that Audi is developing in partnership with Porsche, to be first deployed in the new Porsche Macan EV and Audi Q6 E-tron SUVs in 2023. Audi said it will ensure “that what…

What happens to the Fiesta? Small EVs are hard to make money on – a negative for the Fiesta, given Ford is doing all it can to staunch years of losses in Europe. Ford is gradually moving the Fiesta’s German facility in Cologne to EVs from 2023 but hasn’t indicated when production of the Fiesta will stop. One possibility is that the Fiesta’s role will be taken by the Tourneo passenger version of the small Transit Courier van being made in Romania from 2023. Ford’s statement that it will carry on selling combustion-engined vans until 2035 gives it a loophole to sell this welcome cheaper-end model for a good 10 years yet. And the Focus? Ford pointed out that 58% of sales last year in Europe were SUVs, so the…

The stunning new Alpine A4810 concept is an intriguing vision of the zero-emission sports cars the French brand could be building in 2035. Described as a ‘superberlinette’, the concept is the work of transportation design students at the Turin-based Istituto Europeo di Design, who were briefed in autumn 2021 by Alpine to create a concept that at once “embraces the latest-generation technologies” while nodding to the brand’s trademark characteristics. IED students have previously created concepts in partnership with Suzuki, Hyundai and Pininfarina. Beyond its outlandish, future-looking design, the A4810 is notable for its adoption of a hydrogenfuelled drivetrain – a first for the Renault-owned performance brand. Its creators have not said whether this takes the form of a conventional fuel cell electric set-up or a hydrogen-combustion system (what look like…

In a world where disruptive business models are ever more common, the agency retail model could forever change the way we buy cars. In the latest Autocar Business Live webinar, we spoke to Jonathan Goodman, CEO of Polestar UK; Duncan McPhee, COO of dealer group Lookers; and Tony Whitehorn, consultant and ex-CEO of Hyundai UK, about how it could transform retail in the UK. The full interview, in videoon-demand or podcast form, is available to download at insight.autocarbusiness.com What is an agency model? JG “We don’t really call it an agency model. What we have is a new brand starting out with a direct consumer model. And when we set out how we wanted that to happen, it meant that we needed retail partners who were focused on delivering exceptional…

CAR COMPANIES ARE losing production because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but are beginning to find new sources for the crucial wiring harnesses that the country specialises in. Vehicle production could be down as much as 15% in Europe in the first half of this year because of the war, bank Wells Fargo has estimated, further depressing output during the wider semiconductor shortage. BMW has said that production at its factories, including the Mini plant in Oxford, will return to normal this week after shutdowns caused by parts shortages, but the company also said in a statement that it expects continued supply restrictions linked to the war. Other car makers forced to slow production because of war-related shortages include Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Skoda and Volkswagen. Nissan said its production in…

This ultimate Porsche Cayman has been coming for 17 years – although, as some have held, it was never coming at all. Back in 2005, just as the motoring world realised how much handling potential was locked up in the brilliant mid-engined chassis of this two-seat sports coupé, some wondered whether, if given enough power and dynamic purpose, it might even go on to eclipse Porsche’s GT-department poster boy for outright driver appeal: the all-conquering 911 GT3. Others ventured that Porsche’s product strategy needs must exclude that eventuality by simply preventing such a Cayman derivative from ever being signed off. But thanks to the vision of one of Porsche’s more colourful senior executives of recent years and the subsequent commitment and skill of his cohorts and deputies, the 718 Cayman…

“It knows how to draw you deep into the throwback experience on the right road” Some cars are so esoteric that it’s hard to know where to start, so I’ll just spit it out. The RML Short Wheelbase (SWB) is a V12-engined berlinetta heavily redolent of the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB and built on the bones of a Ferrari 550 Maranello, mostly using composites. So it’s not really a restomod, like the Alfaholics GTA-R, because no 250-series Ferrari is involved. But neither is the carbonfibre bauble before you an entirely clean-sheet affair, like the Porsche 964-flavoured Ruf SCR. RML’s work instead blends 1990s hardware (the driveline and suspension layout) with cuttingedge manufacturing techniques (the Wellingborough-based company’s raison d’être) to capture, in the words of CEO Michael Mallock, the “look,…

MODEL TESTED LONG RANGE AWD Price £54,990 Power 434bhp Torque 424lb ft 0-60mph 4.7sec 30-70mph in fourth na Economy 3.1mpkWh CO2 emissions 0g/km 70-0mph 46.5m Tesla isn’t like other car companies. In the 10 years since it launched the Model S, it has developed a fully fledged model line-up and sold millions of cars, embarrassing established manufacturers’ sluggish EV roll-outs in the process. Whatever it is, it’s definitely not a start-up any more. And yet, it does things you couldn’t imagine from, say, Mercedes-Benz. For instance, taking deposits on the upcoming lorry, pick-up truck and roadster despite these models being nowhere near productionready. Tesla has released its Full Self-Driving system in public beta in America, despite it being quite a long way from being self-driving, as the emerging videos quite clearly…

Last night at dinner, one Nasser Al-Attiyah, the winning driver of this year’s Dakar Rally, jokingly said something along the lines of: “If he’s speaking French, I know something is really wrong.” The he in question is Al-Attiyah’s butter-wouldn’t-melt co-driver, Mathieu Baumel. It’s Baumel’s heavily sculpted race seat that I’m strapped into now, contemplating not only how we’re going to get around a hairpin so ridiculously imminent that it makes the fact that Al-Attiyah’s right foot remains flat to the floor seem darkly comic, but also at what point Baumel would be deploying his mother tongue. Now? Now!? In the end, the urge to scream “MERDE!” never boils over into actual speech. For this I will be forever grateful, and soon we’re heading in the opposite direction to only moments…

COMPARISON New BMW 2 Series Coupé vs rivals The M240i has blown us away. Now it must take on two very different cars: Porsche’s 718 Cayman and Mercedes-AMG’s CLA 45 DRIVEN Alpine A110 Have they managed to make one of our very favourite sports cars even better? FEATURE Lambos on ice No, this isn’t some offbeat West End production: it’s way more fun than that EVERY WEEK DRIVEN Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing America’s BMW M5 is a riot. We stop giggling enough to deliver the verdict BUYING GUIDE Alfa Romeo GTV Stylish 1990s coupé can be yours from £2000. Here’s what to look for SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p20…

MILEAGE 3611 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out whether Audi can retain its premium appeal in the EV age After a couple of recent short teasers, this is our first chance to fully welcome the Sportback version of the Audi Q4 E-tron to our fleet. Which, as mentioned in one of those teasers, is pretty much exactly the same as the Q4 E-tron that it has replaced, just with more of a sloping roof. It’s also in Sport trim and has the same 77kWh battery and 201bhp single-motor ‘40’ drivetrain for rear-wheel drive. There are more differences than that, though. For stats fans, the drag coefficient is lower than the standard Q4 (dropping from 0.28 to 0.27), thanks to that faster roofline. The boot is bigger, at 535 litres…

The late 1980s and early 1990s gave birth to many acclaimed sports cars, plenty of which are soaring up the collectable classic ranks. The Volkswagen Corrado is one of them. With its reasonable prices on the rise, this charismatic coupé is getting more sought after by the minute. Then again, that’s unsurprising, seeing as it’s such a special and rare model – and one headlined by a crown jewel of an engine option. It wasn’t the first unit available in the Corrado, though. In 1989, the model came to the UK featuring only a 136bhp 1.8-litre four-cylinder – the same 16-valve engine found in the Golf GTI Mk2. It didn’t stick around, though, because a 136bhp 2.0-litre became its replacement in 1992. On another, more powerful note, the previous year…

LOOKING FOR A subtle hot hatch? Step forward the Seat Ibiza Cupra, the sportiest version of Seat’s supermini, produced from 2009 to 2017. We’ve chosen the range-topping Bocanegra model, which was on sale for just three years and limited to 1000 annually worldwide. Ever seen one in the wild? If not, we wouldn’t be surprised. There are just 373 on UK roads, according to government figures, and numbers are tumbling further each year. The Bocanegra was a spruced-up version of the Ibiza Cupra that, for a £700 premium over the standard car, featured a bespoke design inspired by the Seat 1200 Sport of the 1970s. The front end was encased in black (‘bocanegra’ means ‘black mouth’ in Spanish) and the foglights were incorporated into the bumper. It had a more…