Table of contents for January 19, 2022 in Autocar

The hot PHEV drivetrain destined for deployment in the new Range Rover Sport will also be used by BMW in the next-generation M5. An electrified version of BMW’s 4.4-litre petrol V8 will boost the reserves of the seventh-generation M5 to “over 700bhp” and offer “limited electric drive compatibility”, a source close to the German car maker has confirmed. Autocar understands the new M5 super-saloon will adopt a rear-mounted electric motor, among a series of major engineering changes, and it will operate in combination with an evolved version of BMW’s S63 engine to increase the M5’s reserves to somewhere in the region of 790bhp and more than 737lb ft of torque.…

Before work gets under way on electrifying the Phantom, Rolls-Royce is working on updating the regular car, which it launched in 2017. A camouflaged prototype caught by our photographers hinted at subtle tweaks for the headlights and grille, but the four-door flagship won’t be substantially modified, said CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvos, because Rolls-Royce is “not in the facelift business”. “We will refresh the car in certain areas and that’s it,” he explained. “Phantom stays Phantom. Our customers would not appreciate if the Series 1 looked very different from the Series 2.” Powertrain and chassis tweaks are therefore highly unlikely, but new personalisation options for the paint, upholstery and wheels are expected, while the infotainment system is likely to be replaced by parent company BMW’s eighth-generation iDrive, which is faster, has greater…

Toyota’s Gazoo Racing division was out in force at the Tokyo Auto Salon last week, showing off a trio of performance-focused concepts aimed at strengthening the link between its road cars and motorsport efforts. Boss Akio Toyoda aims to “deliver cars to customers that evolve quickly and can be tailored to individuals, like in the field of motorsports”, reinforcing his commitment that Toyota will launch “no more boring cars” on his watch. While either limited-run or concept-only for now, the cars – along with two electric sports car concepts shown just last month – demonstrate Toyota’s commitment to catering to driving enthusiasts. GR GT3 This bespoke creation makes clear Toyota’s ambition to compete with GT3 sports car racers from the likes of Audi, Ferrari, Mercedes-AMG and Porsche on the track.…

GLASS MAY BE one of the things most taken for granted in cars, but it plays a much greater role than merely allowing us to see where we’re going. Noise insulation is an example, and acoustic glass is something premium that manufacturers have been taking advantage of for years. Its potential is even more attractive for EVs, because airborne noise is far more noticeable as powertrain noise all but disappears. The technology behind acoustic glass is particularly elegant because, like so many clever ideas, it piggybacks on tech originally developed for an entirely different purpose. Back in the day, windscreen glass was made safe for use in cars by subjecting it to a high-temperature process to produce ‘toughened’ or ‘tempered’ glass. The heat treatment puts an end to shards of…

E-SCOOTER FOR ELITES Bugatti’s first EV packs 0.07% of the W16 Chiron’s power and has an 18mph top speed… Yes, having dabbled in yachts, aeroplanes and even champagne, Bugatti has now put its name to an e-scooter, which is actually manufactured by American firm Bytech. It has a 22-mile range, three speed settings and a maximum load of 110kg, but it’s only on sale in the US – so, just like the Chiron, you can’t have one. TURKISH CONQUEST Turkish outfit Togg plans to go global with five electric cars due by 2030 – but not before it has found success in Turkey. “There’s no brand in the world that hasn’t been successful in its home market but been successful somewhere else,” said CEO Mehmet Gürcan Karakas. Togg plans to…

WINNERS ✓ Despite all the doomladen headlines of Covid-19 and the chip shortage, some car makers actually had a good 2021, with many achieving record sales. One such notable success was BMW, which recorded its best-ever sales results. It delivered 2,213,795 cars for year-on-year growth of 9.1%, led by its recently refreshed model line-up and rampingup of electric car production. Luxury brands were more popular than ever, as Porsche also achieved record sales. It sold 301,915 new cars for an 11% year-on-year increase, while Lamborghini had its best-ever year, delivering 8405 cars for a 13% rise. It was also a successful year for British firms. Lotus recorded its highest global sales in a decade as it wrapped up production of the ageing Elise, Evora and Exige. Bentley posted record results…

While the plug-in Bentayga Hybrid was a small first step on Bentley’s path to full electrification of its line-up, the new Flying Spur Hybrid takes a bigger stride. The saloon’s electriconly range is still limited, and although certification hasn’t been finished yet, Bentley says it expects a relatively modest 25 miles of pure EV operation under the WLTP standard. But a punchy new powertrain means the Flying Spur Hybrid is only fractionally slower than its V8 sibling and Bentley promises that the pricing of both cars will be similarly close. Even though the Bentayga Hybrid and Flying Spur Hybrid each use a twin-turbocharged hybridised V6, their engines are barely related to each other. The SUV’s is an Audibased system that uses a torqueconverter automatic gearbox, whereas the Spur’s is closely…

After years of build-up, Genesis has finally become a reality in the UK. The 127 cars that found homes at the tail end of 2021 will already be turning heads from passers-by, no doubt wondering just what that is wearing a badge which looks a bit like Aston Martin’s and, when hearing the name, wondering when Phil Collins started making cars (has that one worn off yet?). The G70 Shooting Brake, which we first tested in Portugal last month, is now with us in the UK, and it’s the car that shows the most yet of what Genesis will be about here. While the saloon and SUVs we’ve seen are global models, the G70 Shooting Brake was designed and engineered purely for our corner of the world. Which makes it…

MODEL TESTED M50 Price £63,850 • Power 537bhp • Torque 586lb ft • 0-60mph 4.1sec • 30-70mph in fourth na • Fuel economy 2.3mpkWh • CO2 emissions 0g/km • 70-0mph 61.4m Nobody can accuse BMW of rushing the i4. As far back as 2010, the company was already putting experimental versions of an electric Mini into the hands of civilian testers to gather as much everyday data as possible. The findings went on to inform Project i: an ambitious attempt to put BMW ahead of premium rivals in the sustainable mobility game. Launching in 2014, it almost succeeded. After years of tantalising concepts, Project i bore production-ready fruit in the form of the all-electric i3 city hatch and the plug-in hybrid i8 coupé – sophisticated models and cast-iron future classics both,…

It’s 9.10 on an otherwise very normal Thursday morning in November, except that I’m about to order a brand-new Ferrari. Well, I’ve recently turned 40, so you know how these things go. As if. Sadly, the car is not for this undervalued motoring journalist (accessories by Argos and Specsavers; overdraft is model’s own). Even so, just getting a flavour of the showroom process through which customers are led when deciding exactly how their six-figure supercars should look, feel and operate should be a fascinating exercise. This all stemmed from a short conversation with Ferrari’s UK PR man, among whose responsibilities it is to fully dress to impress as many as six press demonstrators per year and who was a little ambivalent at the prospect of doing it all again for…

It’s not an auspicious start. Autocar has been granted a 10-minute one on one with Kimi Räikkönen via Zoom during the weekend of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the 2007 world champion’s 349th and last Formula 1 race. So our first question, naturally, is whether he’s feeling any emotion. “No, not really,” he answers with a shrug. “It’s like any other race, really.” Really, what were we expecting? In its brevity and unflinching honesty, that answer encapsulates why the 42-year-old Finn was such a divisive character for much of his Formula 1 career. While his stone-faced lack of emotion infuriated many, to others his air of indifference in an era of media-trained sheen made him a cult hero – one to whom the ‘Iceman’ nickname was thoroughly suited. His…

What is the UK government up to? It wants to promote EV sales yet with no notice reduced the EV grant from £2500 to £1500 and the eligibility cut-off from £35,000 to £32,000. I learned this when my mother’s superb Kia dealer, Snows of Newbury, told me her Soul EV had received the old grant as they had processed her order quickly. I feel sorry for dealers who took orders they couldn’t fulfil until this year that now will cost them £2500 or even a sale. Then again, I’ve been surprised of late by how poor dealer service has been elsewhere, especially in London from prestige marques such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. Poor product knowledge, a disinterested attitude, terrible follow-up and, in Porsche’s case, an almost hostile approach. Toyota…

Is the first always the greatest? Whether in film, music or cars, it’s a topic often discussed. Take the BMW M3. The original, E30-generation car is quite different from the current, sixth-generation one, and it was hailed as “perhaps the most successful homologation road/race car offered to date” on these pages in its initial 1987 test. Produced to meet Group A motorsport regulations, the first M3 was built primarily in 2+2 coupé form. It gained flared box arches, improved aero and a dog-leg fivespeed manual transmission among many other go-faster additions over its standard sibling, with the cherry on top being a 200bhp 2.3-litre four-cylinder engine. “You’ve missed your chance to pick one up for reasonable money. Prices are only set to rise” In the end, BMW met the regulation…

HONDA’S FIRST SUPERCAR was among the finest of its era. The NSX is still revered today, and its influence extended much farther than Japan. Indeed, it served as the model for the ride and handling of what was arguably the greatest supercar ever made: the McLaren F1. F1 designer Gordon Murray even tried to convince Honda to give the “friendly supercar” more power, but it declined. And to be fair, it didn’t really need any more: from its 1991 launch, the NSX was driven by a mid-mounted 3.0-litre V6 making 252bhp and 209lb ft, capable of taking it to 167mph. Gearshifts were controlled by a five-speed manual or, from 1994, a four-speed automatic (the F-Matic). In 1997, Honda introduced the Targa-topped NSX-T, limited to Japan and the US. Along with…

Land Rover is shifting its internal focus from the soon-to-launch, radically reinvented fifth-generation Range Rover to development of the 2023 Range Rover Sport, the current version of which has become one of the company’s best-selling cars. Due to launch around a year after its full-sized sibling, the new, Mk3 Range Rover Sport will play a fundamental role in supporting Jaguar Land Rover as the firm embarks on a wide-reaching and rapid-fire electrification programme. Every year for the past five years, the current model has outsold the standard Range Rover by more than 40% and more recently has jostled with the smaller Evoque and Discovery Sport for the position of JLR’s best-selling overall model. The roll-out of Land Rover’s new MLA Flex architecture to its largest models means the Mk3 Range…

Will you be able to maintain profit margins with EVs? “One thing is clear: we will never bring a car to market that isn’t as profitable as the combustion-engined cars. That’s my credo. I would like to drive contribution margins per car, because I’m in the business of making profit: that’s my task in the BMW Group, not making volume.” How will you leverage the scale of the BMW Group as you move into the EV era? “We’re leveraging the BMW Group’s scale as we have done in the past: in a very intelligent way. We’re using components from the group which fit us, which make a Rolls-Royce truly a Rolls-Royce. We aren’t into rebadging existing bodies from mass-manufactured cars as Rolls-Royces, so we take components. We would be foolish…

SUBARU’S RADICAL NEW STI E-RA concept previews an electric track car drawing on the firm’s “all-wheel control legacy”, which it established over two decades of competing in global rally championships with the Legacy and Impreza. The racer uses four Yamaha-supplied electric motors for a combined output of 1073bhp and an advanced torque-vectoring system to improve turn-in response and stability. Subaru said it mounted a motor on each wheel to allow for optimal power delivery and improved yaw control. However, this set-up is permitted by the regulations for the new FIA Electric GT Championship, which will get under way in 2023, suggesting that a Subaru entry is on the cards. Following an on-track development programme over the course of 2022, Subaru will take the STI E-RA to the Nürburgring and attempt…

The electric rebirth of one of Volkswagen’s best-known and biggestselling vehicles will show that “people who love cars” work at the company, said CEO Ralf Brandstätter. The ID Buzz van, a retrofuturistic reimagining of the original Type 2, will be revealed on 9 March as the latest entry into the rapidly expanding family of MEB-based EVs. Brandstätter said that it will be “definitely the most emotional of our electric models” and will play a key role in Volkswagen’s push to become “the most desirable brand for sustainable mobility”. The largest ID-badged EV will use the same MEB platform as the ID 3 hatchback and ID 4 and ID 5 SUVs, and it will be the first in the line-up to be available in passenger-carrying and commercial forms. In an attempt…

A couple of people have told me they think the new Noble M500 is too heavy, with its intended 1250kg weight, which will, if that’s right, work out at around 1300kg when we test it, fully fuelled. Its mechanically similar predecessor, the M600, tipped our scales at 1305kg when we road tested it. I don’t agree that this is too heavy. If the M500 does manage to come in at 1300kg ready to roll, that seems light to me. And I think the misconception that it’s hefty comes because so many manufacturers quote a dry weight for their supercars. Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren and more do it. The Lamborghini Huracán coupé supposedly weighs 1421kg, but it won’t work out like that on the scales with a filled tank. And take the…

ALWAYS TAKE THE hard way. That’s the rough translation behind the name of Hero-Era’s first regularity rally of the season, the Per Ardua ad Infinitum. And the event more than lived up to it this year, as crews faced ice and snow on the opening day, followed by incessant rain and rivers of mud on the second, over a tricky route covering tests and regularity sections in Somerset and Devon. Paul Crosby and navigator Andy Pullan slithered their Porsche 911 to a repeat victory from last year, comfortably beating Paul Bloxidge and Ian Canavan (Volkswagen Golf GTI) by 3min 23sec. “This was a tough but brilliant event,” said Crosby, a former race engineer who also ran a respected supplier of composite parts to F1 teams. “Many have said it was…

The Flying Spur Hybrid’s 14.1kWh battery pack can be fully recharged through its charging port only, and not by the engine on the move, but a Hold mode makes it possible to save the charge for later deployment. In Hybrid mode, the system will try to make the most appropriate use of the battery’s energy when a destination is set in the sat-nav, prioritising electric operation for slower and busier roads. The navigation display also gives a visual indication of potential electric range from wherever the car is, drawing a green area that shrinks as the battery level falls. Bentley engineers refer to the resulting shape as ‘the fried egg’. This definitely works better at higher charge levels. By the time available range dropped to under two miles in our…

Do you ever find yourself looking at the hulking, jacked-up Ford Ranger Raptor pick-up truck and thinking “it’s nice, but it’s not quite lairy enough”? Us neither: its outlandish offroad suspension and tyre package already give it more than enough presence on Britain’s cramped streets (not to mention agreeable levels of countryside competence). But this new Special Edition – which arrives as the current-generation Ranger prepares to bow out – ups the ante with “extra badass as standard”. Roughly translated, that means it gains racing stripes, red accents inside and out and matt black trim all round. If it didn’t stick out in the supermarket car park before, you can guarantee that it will now. As with the standard Raptor, its track is extended by 150mm over the less hardcore…

Some pairings just work: fish and white wine, apple and cinnamon, coffee and chocolate, hatchbacks and a stiffer, pointier chassis. Others are challenging from the outset: lobster with gravy, apple crumble with gravy, a sporty chassis with gravy. That doesn’t mean a talented chef can’t potentially make it work, but it’s an uphill battle. Like gravy, SUVs can be very appealing and are loved by many, but combine them with a delicate suspension set-up and their SUV-ness can dominate and make for a heavy-handed recipe. The people at Hyundai’s N performance division have so far proven to be proficient chefs when tackling the classics: the i30 N is impressive and the i20 N is brilliant – our favourite new hot hatch of 2021. Have they been able to make the…

2018 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX By 2018, it appeared that Räikkönen’s race-winning days were long over – but then he took a stunning, skilful win for Ferrari at the Circuit of the Americas, nursing his tyres to make a one-stop strategy work when all his rivals stopped twice. The crowd went wild. 2003 MALAYSIAN GRAND PRIX This was a race of firsts for future champions, as Renault’s Fernando Alonso claimed his maiden pole position before McLaren’s Räikkönen overhauled his rival during the pit stops to secure his first F1 victory at the age of only 23. 2012 ABU DHABI GRAND PRIX Räikkönen inherited the lead after Lewis Hamilton retired, then fended off a charge from Alonso to take the new Lotus team’s first win. The race also spawned an F1…

COMPARISON BMW i4 vs Porsche Taycan The Taycan has yet to encounter a proper rival in the electric driver’s saloon stakes – until now. Can the all-new i4 topple it? FEATURE Ferrari’s V12 greats The 550 reinvented Ferrari GTs for the modern age. We line it up beside today’s 812 INTERVIEW Immaculate collection Think your collection of Autocar magazines is big? Wait till you see this motoring library… EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Fiat 500 Fiat’s popular city car has turned all-electric. How does it stack up? CULT HERO Honda S2000 How to buy a roadster some say is better than the Mazda MX-5 SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p24…

“The main sticking point is the price and range combination” FIRST REPORT WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if Lexus’s first EV can compete with the established premium electric SUVs If you’re looking for an electric SUV, you’re certainly not short of choice. Peugeot has the e-2008, Volkswagen the ID 4 and Jaguar the I-Pace, while Hyundai and Kia have set the trend for allround quality along with excellent range. And so to Lexus, the latest to throw its hat into the EV ring. The UX 300e is an interesting proposition. Built on Toyota’s GA-C platform and evolved from the UX hybrid, it is Lexus’s maiden batteryelectric car and technically the first from its parent company, too. It’s a low-slung, mid-size crossover that looks far more imposing than its dimensions…

An expert’s view DAN NORRIS, MUNICH LEGENDS “I own an E30 M3. You can’t really be in the specialist BMW world without having one, just because they put the manufacturer on the map. Without the E30 M3, would BMW have the reputation it has for sporting prowess? I love the way it handles and you feel so connected to it. You can get all its thrills at relatively sensible speeds. It’s also fairly reliable mechanically. The road car’s engine is pretty much the same as the touring car’s. We’ve seen examples with over 150,000 miles on the clock still going strong.” Buyer beware… ▪ CLUTCH It shouldn’t be heavy, but if it is, it needs replacing. Don’t ignore it, either: a worn clutch puts the release bearing under stress, and…

A road test in any other magazine might well be a short, subjective summary of a new car produced under almost any circumstances, but the Autocar road test is different. Specific, rigorous and detailed, it’s the closest examination we can give of any new model. It appears over at least eight pages and is close to 50 man-hours in the making every week. Most of what the road test process entails is designed to be strictly repeatable and fair. We benchmark standing-start and in-gear acceleration at a purpose-built test facility every week. We carry out both subjective and objective handling tests on both road and track, on the latter up to and beyond the limit of grip, so as to fully assess stability, drivability and limit handling appeal. And while…

“They’re a slightly strange breed, your sporting off-roaders,” mused our correspondent in 2005 as he reported on a first ride of the then radical new Range Rover Sport. Lighter, lower cars, he continued, are far better at cornering quickly, but that hadn’t stopped BMW and Porsche from storming the sales charts with their dynamically minded X5 and Cayenne models in recent years, and it was buyers of these models Land Rover hoped to poach with a canyon-carving take on its venerable luxury flagship. The early signs were there that the massmarket sports cars of the future would indeed be SUV-shaped, with a higher seating position, and the sheer physical improbability of such heavy cars accelerating so quickly highlighted as primary factors in their appeal. On the basis of the Sport’s…

Rolls-Royce will follow up its first EV, the Spectre coupé, with all-electric successors to the current Cullinan SUV, Ghost saloon and Phantom limousine. Speaking to Autocar in the wake of the announcement that Rolls-Royce sold more cars in 2021 than in any previous year in its 117-year history, CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös said it’s important that each model is replaced by an EV alternative as the firm progresses towards a pure-electric line-up by 2030. The British firm will refresh its current range in the coming years but won’t launch any more combustion models, making the Mk2 Ghost the final petrol-powered Rolls-Royce to be introduced. Müller-Ötvös highlighted the UK government’s planned 2030 ban on new ICE car sales as a particular incentive but said: “We aren’t only driven by legal: we’re also…

Rolls-Royce will reveal the second of three examples of the coachbuilt Boat Tail at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in May. The Phantom-based cabriolet is the most expensive Rolls-Royce model yet produced, with a price tag estimated at £20 million. The first customer car was revealed last year, and while the second will be similar in its overall conception, it will be markedly different in terms of its execution, such is the scope of personalisation offered with coachbuilt creations. The third and final car from the series won’t be publicly revealed on its completion, in accordance with the client’s wishes to keep it under wraps.…

NO NEW SMART motorways will be built in Britain until there’s five years’ worth of safety data available from those opened before 2020, the government has confirmed. The announcement comes in response to widespread criticism that all-lane-running motorways are less safe than conventional motorways, because the hard shoulder serves as a live lane and the replacement emergency refuge areas are spaced far apart (up to 1.5 miles), providing drivers with fewer safe places to stop in the event of a breakdown. The House of Commons’ Transport Select Committee in November last year called for the smart motorways scheme to be halted, advising the government to collect five full years of safety and economic data from the 112 miles of them introduced before 2020. During this time, National Highways will continue…

ID 3 CABRIOLET Volkswagen could soon launch an electric successor to the long-departed Golf Cabriolet. Work on an ID 3 convertible concept is under way, and the reduced development costs brought by a shared platform make a business case much more feasible. ID 3 GTX “Fun to drive is a part of mobility”, Brandstätter told Autocar as he confirmed that a hot 4WD version of the ID 3 is inbound. It will be based on the aggressivelooking 329bhp ID X concept but is likely to take the GTX badge and 295bhp powertrain into production. AERO-B GTX The Passat-size Aero-B saloon of 2023, evolved from the outlandish ID Vizzion concept, will get a hot GTX range-topper to rival similarly conceived versions of the Tesla Model 3 and Polestar 2. A 0-62mph…

60% Proportion of adults with a disability who hold a full driver’s licence 6% Share of Motability applications that are now for an electric vehicle A new initiative formed from a collaboration between Coventry University and mobility charity Motability will bring new insight and opportunities for disabled drivers, with an aim to make everyday vehicles more accessible. The university’s National Transport Design Centre – a state-of-the-art facility that conducts research into the future of transport design – will give members of the disabled community the opportunity to help develop the future of transport policy and practice. Previous research that it has conducted showed that unsuitable transport design for disabled people caused “reduced economic opportunities, social exclusion, a reduced quality of life and other negative impacts”. Although there are several organisations,…

While the UK’s EV charging infrastructure has a way to go, some companies are working to improve the accessibility of EVs themselves, which are often harder than ICE vehicles to adapt for disabled drivers. “The main challenges with converting a vehicle for disabled drivers is connecting the vehicle to our equipment,” said Grant Harbour, CEO of Hemel Hempstead-based Steering Developments. “Manufacturers change systems too frequently without warning, so a lot of development work is required to access things like ancillary controls and park-position signals.” It is possible to convert an EV, said Harbour, but each one poses a challenge, because they’re set up differently. “It’s vehicle-dependent. We have to shut down the main batteries of the vehicle to make it safe before we can work on it, which takes extra…

MONDAY I’m worried about Jaguar. It’s a year since we revealed the marque’s last concept (pictured above) and even that was only a pawn in a computer game. It’s also a year since CEO Thierry Bolloré revealed his 2025 plan to refound the marque as an EV range. Since then we’ve had nothing to ‘Reimagine’, not even the emergence of a prominent and determined Jaguar leader that would seem logical. Not even a comment on how it’s going. The only signs of movement are JLR’s sales types battling to shift cars everyone knows will soon be time-expired. Meanwhile, Jaguar has lost its best-known design leaders. Sure, Gerry McGovern is in charge and he’s a wonderful designer, well proven at building winning Land Rovers. But where’s the evidence he knows what…

The Transit Custom is the darling of Ford, having secured its place in the history books as 2021’s best-selling vehicle in the UK. Yet the firm’s most important vehicle this year has to be the new E-Transit, Ford’s first electric commercial vehicle at a time when companies are looking to clean up their public images. Unsurprisingly, Ford hasn’t held back: the E-Transit is now the most powerful large van on sale, thanks to a 265bhp motor, while even the lesser variant is punchy, with 181bhp. Both make a massive 318lb ft of torque. The option of two power ratings is rare for an electric van, and rarer still is to offer multiple bodystyles, but the E-Transit has an impressive 25. Short, medium and long wheelbases, two roof heights and three…

Endless Covid tests; smartphone apps and online accounts needed for everything; cars that try to wrest control from you and are overflowing with superfluous tech. If you feel overwhelmed by the complexity of modern life, Dacia has a few antidotes to offer – one of them the Duster, which it has just updated. The choice of engine is the trickiest decision to make, as there’s an 89bhp 1.0-litre turbo petrol triple, its 99bhp LPG-compatible sibling, a 128bhp 1.3-litre turbo petrol four, a 148bhp variant of that with a dual-clutch ’box and a 113bhp 1.5-litre diesel four. Each has been “renewed” to cut CO2, while there’s no petrol 4x4 any more – which is logical enough when eight in 10 Brits live in an urban area. We’ve already driven the diesel…

The i4 M50 doesn’t entertain as naturally on track as an M340i can. The physical forces at play are simply too great to take much enjoyment in the car’s limit handling, and there’s a sense of jeopardy that comes from taking slip angles with the thick end of 2.3 tonnes underneath you. Although the M50 is accurate and stable, adaptations to the power steering and suspension on account of that weight have also toned down the communication levels you get from CLAR-based ICE cars. Moreover, limit handling seems compromised by the tyres, which relinquish grip quite suddenly when weight transfer is involved. The car’s aptitude in biasing torque can cover its tracks to some extent, but even then, sometimes the system doesn’t know whether to sustain a slide with more…

Given the meteoric rise in popularity of crossovers, it has taken a surprisingly long time for performance crossovers to become a thing. Audi and Mercedes-Benz were slightly earlier with the much more serious and expensive RS Q3 and AMG GLA 45, but the real pioneer was the Nissan Juke Nismo. We gave this car just three stars back in 2013 and the more hardcore GTR version even went down to 2.5. You might argue it was misunderstood genius that was ahead of its time, but really, the way the Juke Nismo dealt with its higher centre of gravity was simply misjudged. The regular version was too soft and too ordinary; the GTR’s ride was way too hard yet its body still rolled too much. Both had traction issues and weren’t…

No Twitter, no Instagram and no Facebook. Minimum screen time. That’s the Goodwin way. Obviously I can’t avoid looking at a laptop screen, because there’s no way I’m going to go back to using a typewriter; and I can’t not look at online classic car auctions on my phone, because I’m addicted. My day starts with a quick peek and ends with a look at what’s going under the hammer in the evening. It started with Collecting Cars, but I’ve moved to The Market, because it doesn’t do personalised numberplates and Collecting Cars has too many Porsches and BMWs on it. The Market, I’ve found, has a more eclectic selection of cars. It also has a premises at which you can view some of the cars, so if my enthusiasm…

Sliding the Victor I’ve just read the Auction Watch piece in the 8/15 December 2021 issue on the Vauxhall VX2300 police car. I had the privilege of attending an advanced driving course with Durham Constabulary in 1981 and as part of it used a Victor on the skidpan, and it might well have been that very car. The tyres had a thick band of smooth rubber around them, and I think the pressure was around 50psi. It was great fun to use and taught me a great deal about car control and driver reaction time. So thank you for bringing back some great memories. Ed Henderson Via email Light amendments I’m writing in reply to Jon Hemmings on the subject of headlights (22/29 December 2021). I wish to correct some…

WOULD A YOUNG car enthusiast guess the 700 Coupé to be a BMW, sans logo? No way. Tiny and cleanly styled, it’s from another age, when Autocar still had to literally spell out Bayerische Motoren Werke. In fact, BMW had in 1959 only just avoided being sold to Daimler-Benz (imagine!) as industrialist Herbert Quandt had decided to instead up his stake and bankroll development of the new car. Its success was vital – and was already 15 months strong as the first right-hookers came in 1962. Its basis could be traced to the Isetta bubble car, and in the back was a 697cc motorcycle flat twin making just 40bhp at 5800rpm. Our testers said: “Performance is astonishingly good. It accelerated from 0-60mph in 23.4sec. A mean maximum speed of over…

The BMW Z4 is one of the stalwarts of its class. The drop-top sports car is now in its third generation, having forged a wheel-to-wheel battle with the Porsche Boxster during each. The Boxster has traditionally been the critic’s choice, but the latest Z4 gets closer to besting its rival than ever before. For this model, introduced in 2018, BMW continued the Z4’s traditional front-engine, rear-drive layout, but it was designed around a cloth roof, which returned for the first time since the initial Z4’s introduction in 2002. A 50:50 weight distribution and its lighter roof improved handling, while boot space was increased by 50% to 281 litres. Three engines are available, starting with a choice of two turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrols. The entrylevel sDrive20i produces 194bhp while the sDrive30i…

As you might have noticed, we like our sports cars here at Autocar. But this story is about the fast machines that almost everyone has forgotten ever existed. Which is a real shame, because some of them were rather good, some were very pretty and some had extraordinary specifications. So let’s jog our memories. Trident Iceni 2008 The Trident Iceni was announced with a 660bhp 6.6-litre diesel engine, which was claimed to be good for 190mph and 0-62mph in less than 3.0sec. It was priced at around £100,000, sported a six-speed automatic gearbox and promised an enormous 2000-mile range from a single tank of biodiesel, thanks to a targeted combined figure of 68.9mpg. In theory, the Iceni is still available, but bearing in mind that it was unveiled in 2008…