Table of contents for January 2026 in CAR UK

A bona-fide Rolls-Royce fighter?! The Century has long been Toyota’s luxury car for Japan, but in recent years the badge has adorned an SUV as well as a limo-like saloon. Now Century is to become a brand in its own right, and will develop a series of coachbuilt luxury cars for discerning clientele. This high-riding two-door coupe is a concept car giving a taste of things to come. It’s finished in an orange paint that’s 60 layers deep, with swivelling seats and a hand-made interior. ‘Each car is going to be more customised to the personal taste of the person who buys it,’ says Lance Scott, Toyota’s head of European design development. A baby Defender before JLR?! Land Rover’s been testing a smaller Defender model to capitalise on the huge…

Omoda and Jaecoo have been selling new cars in the UK at a dizzying rate. They’re everywhere, all of a sudden. Jaecoo only launched in the UK at the end of January 2025, but is on track to exceed 25,000 sales by the end of the year, already ahead of Citroën and Seat. And that’s largely from one model, the Jaecoo 7. That’s an incredible success. Yet if you go to China you won’t see a single Omoda or Jaecoo. Parent company Chery set up Omoda and Jaecoo purely for overseas markets – they don’t exist in China. That’s not to say versions of the cars can’t be bought in the home country, but they’ll appear with different badges, and sometimes they’ll be restyled. The Jaecoo 7, for example, is…

We have a new Subaru performance champion, folks, and those who have a soft spot for the brand’s rally history might wince a bit. The new Uncharted SUV is not only Subaru’s latest electric car, but also now its quickest. It’s the next battery-electric model after the Solterra and is intended as an electric alternative to the Crosstrek (formerly named XV). It’s generally a little smaller in all directions than the Solterra and is designed to be a little sportier, while aiming for a high degree of capability in different environments. There will be three versions at first: a front-wheel-drive model with a 57.7kWh battery, 163bhp peak power and a 282-mile range; a long-range front-wheel-drive variant, which Subaru expects to be the biggest seller, combining 218bhp and a larger 77kWh…

The steering’s light but not hyperactive, with lots of feel This has been a morning of frustrations. As much as I’ve enjoyed relaxing into the new MCPura (essentially a facelifted version of the car formerly known as the MC20) heading towards the Tuscan hills, there’s a lot of traffic about. The sight of a sinewy stretch of road comes just as we get behind a local in no hurry to go anywhere fast. Blind corners are separated by a few hundred yards at most, so even utilising all 621bhp will make an overtake unwise. And then it happens. Finally, a decent view ahead and the road is clear. A couple of squeezes of the left paddleshifter and a sizeable extension of my right leg, and we’re away. Warm, dry conditions…

Want to know a great way to start a heated discussion among car enthusiasts? Simply park a new G90 BMW M5 in front of them, preferably in a lurid colour to really stir things up, and then stand back. Expect views to vary from love to hate, and a bit of everything in between, but everyone will care enough to have an opinion. BMWs matter to car enthusiasts. We’re expecting a similar array of reactions to the used BMWs we’ve assembled here. Some may well have you jabbing at your phone scanning the online ads or searching for a bank loan; others might make you wonder what we’re playing at by including them. What other mainstream manufacturer can provoke such passion? Having an opinion is one thing. Choosing to buy…

Someone asked Joseph Heller: ‘You’ve never written anything better than Catch-22, have you?’ The novelist replied: ‘No. But nor has anyone else.’ I wonder if that thought occurred to Renault when the new Twingo E-Tech was launched in Paris. It is a reboot of the 1992 original, a design masterpiece. That is to say a masterpiece from the era before the term ‘tech’ was hijacked by manic despots in California. The rebooted and sub-£20k Twingo has its own onboard robot, an avatar called Reno who will interrupt you at every stage of your journey. It may be like driving a call centre: your journey is important to us, but we cannot change gear right now (or ever), Reno may say. And this dystopian Ballardian nightmare begins when you open the…

This should be a home run for Mercedes. After all, the brand new CLA doubles the voltage and wins on range. Spend big, and it will reward you with an S-Class-style full-width infotainment screen along with a bundle of ego-boosting mod cons. It is also quieter and pampers passengers with an eiderdown ride. It’s certainly a big step on from previous electric Mercedes, and shows that Benz has been humble enough to listen to the car-buying public and to learn some of the lessons from the failures of the past. The EV plan B is a smart, grown-up car, if not an exciting one, and we’re inclined to think the less powerful, less expensive 250 version might make more sense if it’s your own money you’re spending. But the Tesla…

My dad passed away recently, and as a family we decided to let his little collection of vintage tractors go. He’d bought and restored a few over the years, all from the ’40s and ’50s, with rich, exotic names like Nuffield, Allis-Chalmers and Vierzon. None of them were worth much, but whenever we all ended up in Yorkshire for a family occasion we’d parade round the field like some kind of eccentric country show. The neighbours must have thought we were mad. Anyway, I decided to keep one of them, partly as a memento, partly because I was half-owner anyway, and partly because I just love this tractor. It’s a 1949 Ferguson TEA20, the classic Grey Fergie, and while it’s not rare or valuable it is hugely significant. Launched in…

Two Mazda concepts were among the standout cars of 2025’s Tokyo show, one an elegantly muscular four-door coupe, the other a pert little city car designed for life in the urban jungle. The sleek coupe, rather prosaically named the Vision X-Coupe (the X is pronounced ‘cross’, as in crossover), is said to have a plug-in hybrid powertrain anchored by a 503bhp turbocharged twin-rotor rotary engine, coupled with a battery big enough to take it 100 miles on pure electric power. The city car, dubbed the Vision X-Compact, showcases Mazda’s work on AI-enabled vehicles that it says will be able to respond to the driver’s emotions. Both concepts are good looking and intellectually interesting. But what do they say about Mazda? Mazda has always been a little different. Other Japanese car…

ChatGPT can now drive you. Of course, there are quite a few asterisks to that statement – mainly that it’s only true of a VW ID. Buzz meddled with by Bosch’s AI engineers. We can vouch for that much based on our experience at a Bosch event. And that has given us reasons to take seriously Bosch’s ambitious claims about where its mashing together of artificial intelligence and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) will end up. The engineering and manufacturing giant is pouring €2.5bn into AI over the next two years, aiming to develop the tech so it can work with – and eventually supersede – conventional ADAS. Bosch software engineers are developing a ‘vision language action’ (VLA) model that builds on the large language models used by the likes…

Like a lot of EVs, you can start your day in this Hyundai accompanied by the calming sounds of a forest, all babbling brook and tweeting bird song. But unlike other EVs, the Ioniq 6 N also offers you the option of a synthesised rumble that sounds a lot like a V8. It’s just the flick of a switch away. And like a real V8, this simulation goes from low rumble to harder-edged howl as you head up to the rev limiter, working through the gears, with an amusing pop on downchanges. Except of course there is no V8 and there are no gears. You know this, and yet while driving the Ioniq 6 N you willingly suspend your disbelief and find yourself acting as if it’s all real. It’s…

Letter of the month Top tip It’s heartening to see about the M3 CS Touring (October issue) and not letting its halo status and track-biased competence colour your judgement too much. The ‘ultimate track estate’ feels like an answer to a question virtually nobody ever asks. Bragging rights aside, on the road it sounds like a stock M3 Touring would deliver considerably more than you need. Or indeed an M340i Touring: B58 straight-six, M Sport adaptive suspension, diff and brakes. In a country festooned with 20mph zones, half-witted pigeons and traffic cameras, that should get us all to the tip just fine. Alistair Drysdale Hot topic Fair play to Mark Walton for spelling out the deficiencies of his long-termtest Ineos Grenadier when it comes to coping with summer heat (Our…

Is that the right colour? The correct badge? The appropriate tint on the indicator lens? If you’re just after a car that drives well, this sort of question won’t detain you for long. But if you’re concerned about authenticity, and if you want to use genuine parts, and if you’ve got one eye on future resale value, you’ll want to hear about BMW Group Classic. It’s a division that as well as BMW-brand cars also covers the rest of the group: modern Minis and Rolls-Royces, and BMW motorcycles too. It supervises the BMW museum and company archive, but more relevantly here it’s the authorised source of detail about every model ever produced; every body style, every engine variant, every transmission. As well as offering tremendous opportunities for wasting an awful…

It’s a Wednesday in October 1995. Colin McRae has outpaced team-mate Carlos Sainz on tarmac in Rallye Catalunya, only to be told by his team to let Sainz take the win. McRae refuses, nearly runs over some Prodrive Subaru crew members who are trying to slow him down, and instantly becomes a folk hero. Part Britpop, part rumbling flat-four. In the end McRae incurs a time penalty to concede victory, before angrily kicking a bin in the service park, his rebelliousness adding to the burgeoning myth. The Subaru drivers are tied on points; the championship will go down to the wire in Britain at the season’s final round in two weeks. With the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, we know how it plays out for McRae: 25 WRC wins,…

Setting off in a hypercar shouldn’t be this simple – but I just drive away. This is the odd thing about the €4.2m Bugatti Bolide. On the one hand it involves loads of fanfare. You need a team of four or five mechanics to help run it, and cooling fans are placed in strategic places whenever it’s not moving. But then on the other it’s remarkably Golf-like. Pull a paddle to select first, engage pitlane speed limiter, drive off as if you were going to Sainsbury’s. The thermobaric shock and awe come five seconds later, when you cross the pitlane exit. Bugatti test driver and Le Mans winner Andy Wallace takes me for a couple of demo laps first, but even so, doing it for yourself – actually controlling the…

There’s always been a tribal sense of community to motoring, and it appears to be alive and well – even in the age of the electric powertrain. As the owner of a Yamaha R7, I’m used to the occasional nod from fellow motorcyclists, but getting a knowing flash from another Polestar owner throws me off a bit. Antiquated, traditional and human, the gesture feels like an odd juxtaposition with a car that so often feels like a clean, cold piece of technology. Of course, the journey I’m on could have something to do with it: driving my 4 to the Polestar Festival – a celebration of all things to do with the fledgling brand. Taking place exactly five years after Polestar’s products first touched down in the UK, it promises…

No, we’ve not printed the wrong pictures by accident. This really is the ‘new’ Seat Ibiza. This generation of the Spanish supermini launched in 2017, and here is the second facelift. It represents the first step towards Seat showing the world what it’s all about these days, having had much of its thunder stolen over the last few years by the sales success of flashier spin-off brand Cupra. As Seat repositions itself as the entry point into the VW Group, the new Ibiza will be cheaper than the mechanically similar Skoda Fabia and VW Polo, although Seat’s UK prices have not yet been confirmed. The engine range is the same as before: one litre, three cylinders with or without turbo, and with manual or dual-clutch automatic transmission. All very familiar.…

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Perplexed by the patchy performance of its first wave of electric cars, the EQ models, Mercedes’ engineers went back to the drawing board. And then much of the world decided it really wasn’t in a huge hurry to buy any EV, however good, so Mercedes’ strategists went back to their drawing boards, or at least their spreadsheets, to come up with a less EV-focused plan. And, for good measure, the designers decided it was time for a bit of a visual rethink, so their digital drawing boards got a workout too. The engineers and strategists have come up with a significantly different car to any of the EQ generation of Mercedes EVs, in that it’s no longer a purely electric product. Instead, the CLA will be available as a hybrid…

Do we believe Renault’s 5 genesis story? It’s lovely, so let’s go with it. Created in a moment of freewheeling genius by Renault’s design team at the time, the 5 concept apparently languished under a cover in a corner of the studio, like one of those wild hunks of military hardware in the Nolan-era Batcave. In bowls the dynamic Luca de Meo, looking for something with the X factor on which to hang his ‘Renaulution’ grand plan. He clocks the 5. Sparks fly. ‘That,’ he proclaims with a confidence that galvanises the entire company, ‘is our car.’ (Fast forward five years and it’ll be the UK’s best-selling EV, but he can’t know that at the time. Can he?) Unveiled as a concept in January 2021, the 5 was the embodiment…

What a score. Fresh from its victory in CAR’s 2025 Hot Hatch of the Year test, I’m getting to spend a few months living with the GR Yaris as my daily car. Keen readers will recognise the plate, too, as this was the very car that saw off some pretty fierce competition. Safe to say that I’ve been very excited about this car’s arrival. Specifically, this is a Gen2 GR Yaris – a facelift that first launched in 2024 that was mainly designed to put right some of the grumbles we and others had about the original. There weren’t many negatives, but there was definitely room for improvement. Toyota has listened and has made significant efforts to improve the car’s weakest areas – chief among which was the interior. I’ll…

HOW DOES NEW GBU WORK? Our road testers rank the best cars currently available in 12 categories, and highlight the ones to buy TOP 5 HOT HATCHES 1 TOYOTA GR YARIS THE GOOD: A modern-day rally homologation special that’s thrilling to drive THE BAD: Road noise like a death-metal gig; joke rear seats THE UGLY: Long waiting list, even with some versions now over £60k, although it starts at £46,045 THE ONE TO BUY: Now has optional auto but go for the manual 3 HONDA CIVIC TYPE R THE GOOD: Feel, feedback, focus: a phenomenal car THE BAD: £51,905 for a front-drive hatch with barely any more power than before THE UGLY: Honda says it’s the last of its kind; good job it’s one of the best THE ONE TO…