Table of contents for July 24, 2024 in Autocar

JLR WILL AXE all Jaguar models apart from the F-Pace ahead of the marque’s reinvention as an EV-only luxury brand. That means the E-Pace and electric I-Pace, which are both assembled by Magna Steyr in Austria, will now be withdrawn, following on from the Castle Bromwich-made XE, XF and F-Type, which were pulled from production last month. “They’re all close to zeroprofitability products,” said JLR boss Adrian Mardell. The brand has yet to confirm an official end date. Another key reason for the decision was that JLR sales are now dominated by the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Defender, said the brand. Between them, these three high-profit SUVs accounted for 59% of JLR’s 111,180 half-year global sales. “We are eliminating five products, all lower value,” Mardell told investors. “None…

BYD WILL LAUNCH three plug-in hybrids in Europe next year in a push to boost its volumes in the face of a shrinking appetite for EVs. The Chinese company, which launched in Europe in 2022, is the world’s second-best-selling electric car manufacturer behind Tesla, but it believes PHEVs are the answer to ailing EV demand. “BYD is different,” the firm’s president, Stella Li, told Autocar. “Tesla only has EVs but we have PHEVs. Referring to PHEVs as a “game-changer” offering, Li said models such as the Seal U DM-i are gaining renewed importance as a bridge to full electrification for wary would-be EV buyers. “A lot of people want to try electric cars but currently they have range anxiety and hesitate,” she said. “This car gives them the solution.” She…

FLYWHEEL ENERGY storage is one of those intriguing and exciting technologies that hovers around on the sidelines of sustainable propulsion while batteries steal the limelight. That said, products are out there for use in stationary energy storage and vehicles. Flywheels store the energy used to spin them at very high speed. An example is the F-Boost kinetic energy recovery system developed by Silverstone-based Dumarey Green Power, which mainly produces stationary flywheel KERS systems for use in various industries like construction sites, where they recover energy from heavy equipment. The F-Boost integrates a flywheel, electric motorgenerator and inverter in a compact unit (560mm by 41mm by 156mm). Weighing only 50kg, it is designed to hybridise both BEVs and ICE vehicles. Like all flywheel kinetic energy storage systems, the F-Boost’s strength lies…

Red Bull Technology boss Christian Horner has hailed his company’s new RB17 hypercar as an embodiment of “all the good stuff they got rid of from Formula 1” and says it would be possible to adapt for road use. Horner said lead engineer Adrian Newey – who will leave Red Bull at the end of this F1 season – was “unleashed” in creating the RB17, because he did not need to adhere to the usual restrictions. “There are no FIA constraints and no cost cap, so you can see influences from all these cars over the years,” added Horner. “It has an insane amount of performance that even Max Verstappen would struggle to extract.” While similarly conceived hypercar projects from rival F1 teams – the Mercedes-AMG One and Aston Martin…

FRIDAY The Goodwood Festival is in full swing. It’s as important as Christmas for the way it changes routines and creates unique stories. Funnily enough, last year’s forced closure (remember the storms?) created a joyous new event for 2024. When Mercedes was forced to halt the hoopla a year ago, it instantly moved its cars and people to its own brand centre-cum-test track, Mercedes-Benz World at Brooklands near Byfleet, and did its own thing. It worked so well the company decided to repeat it this year, chucking in the launch of a slightly more house-trained AMG Coupé, the 63 Pro, for good measure. Cue lots of bellowing cars on track, plus an amazing formation of following drones, spewing red smoke. My afternoon there was topped by a super-smooth, super-quick passenger…

There’s no denying how much of a success story the Kuga has been for Ford. It’s the SUV that started out as the Blue Oval’s first dip into the then murky waters of jacked-up, pseudo-offroad hatchbacks, and it went on to become one of the UK’s best-selling cars. In 2022, it even topped the list of biggest-selling plug-in hybrids. Now the Kuga has received some targeted updates to both its design and its technology. The headlights have become more angular and are now connected across the grille by a light bar, while the lower bumper has a less fussy look. The rear end is less drastically altered but does get some redesigned tail-light clusters. These changes, together with a new infotainment system, are designed to keep the Kuga high up…

Good news! There’s a new car with a naturally aspirated engine and a manual gearbox that weighs under a tonne. It isn’t the latest carbonfibre Porsche special edition but one of the cheapest new cars you can buy: the Kia Picanto. Okay, ‘new’ is a stretch because this is the facelifted version of the third-generation Picanto, which was launched in 2018, and it’s a mostly cosmetic refresh at that. It gains EV9-inspired headlights and there’s a new light bar at the rear, because of course there is. The car you see in the photos is the entry-level 2 model, which gets good old halogen lights and diddy 14in alloy wheels, but you can also choose GT Line, which gets 16in whoppers, LED lights and a slightly over-the-top bodykit complete with…

Electric cars are the new frontier, the opportunity to try something new. Or not. If we’re realistic, the pool of adventurous early adopters who are open to buying a radical-looking starship has been mostly exhausted by now. Many other buyers, even if they can hold their nose at the high prices of electric cars (we’ll get to that), want something more familiar. And that’s where we are today. Not only are this electric Mini and 500 two very comforting shapes that hark back to the 1950s, but they also generally seem to have been developed so that people trading up from their petrolpowered predecessors are spared from too much culture shock. Before this test, I spent some time in the three-cylinder petrol-powered Mini Cooper C, and swapping to this brand-new…

The trend towards bigger, heavier cars with more safety kit and features has put the future of the affordable city car in serious doubt. Small cars used to be a popular sight in our cities, but they’re now an endangered species – which is bad news for anyone seeking an affordable new car. A few months ago, Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo proposed a solution: taking inspiration from Japan’s small urban vehicles, known as kei cars, believing that a European version could help make for affordable mobility and help get older, smoggier cars off European roads. De Meo has a bullish view on cross-manufacturer co-operation (inspired “by Airbus”) for electric European kei cars. “Compact cars could create a growth surplus for Europe” of £500 million in annual GDP and…

“Range? The most I’ve been promised so far by the fascia predictor is 360 miles” FEATURED THIS WEEK FIRST REPORT WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see how 20% more claimed battery range works with a pokier 241bhp motor In the two years it has been on the market, the MG 4 has made a lot of people happy. It’s ideally sized and priced, it’s more than decent to drive, the cabin accommodation is good (if you can forgive a slightly tight boot) and it generally does what it says on the tin. As a result of these things – and, very importantly, because its name doesn’t scare people – it has been selling out of its skin. Some of those sales are to private buyers too, as opposed to business…

MILEAGE 5424 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if this capable new crossover can be more than just a niche product The dire warnings from reader ‘John’ from Durham (Your Views, 12 June) about the battery of his Forester e-Boxer not holding charge, and subsequently leaving him stranded, did make me think twice about leaving the Crosstrek unused for a week on two occasions recently, once in an airport car park. Fortunately, however, while I do agree with John about the disappointing fuel consumption from this powertrain, I’m happy to report that I suffered no such trouble with the battery upon my return. A week or so later, I did suspect that there was a fairly fundamental fault with the car when it made a ‘clonk’ on start-up, followed by…

The picture of a Jowett Javelin, a De Luxe indeed, in the 26 June issue (Road Tests On This Day) brought back memories of when buses and bicycles ruled and of the rare cars in our road when I was a kid. The owner of the Javelin was thought to be quite avant-garde. Then there was the erstwhile ‘rally’ driver with his Sunbeam Rapier, the Teds with their bulbous Buicks, our pre-war Vauxhall and its dodgy big end, the German lady with a Volkswagen Beetle, my friend whose dad replaced his magisterial beige Humber with a Fiat 600, the aspiring manager with his vinyl-laden Ford Consul Classic and finally my grandfather’s miserable ’58 Ford Prefect, which my father wanted to beat, much in the later style of John Cleese. Enduring…

An owner’s view MATTHEW MELNITSCHUK “I have owned a white 8v Audi A3 for five years. I service and maintain it myself after ‘downgrading’ from a ‘W204’ C-Class I had owned for eight years. It’s great to drive, with a nice interior. I initially thought the Drive Select was a gimmick but I always have it in the Comfort setting. I have had no reliability issues and only had to complete regular maintenance on it, but I would recommend changing the spark plugs every 30,000 miles and the oil every 9000 miles or sooner. Oh, and I’ve had no oil consumption between changes.” Buyer beware… ENGINE When starting any of the petrol engines from cold, listen for squeaks or especially prominent rattles. Even if the noise disappears after a short…

The initials GT – for gran turismo, Italian for ‘grand touring’ – originally designated a high-performance car with enough space and comfort to embark on a long trip. And though the badge has been used on some of the best cars ever made (including Volkswagen Golf GTIs), it’s been royally abused by marketing departments too – as these glaring examples show. Dodge Lancer GT 2-Door Hardtop 1962 Dodge claimed the GT emblem in 1962 when it renamed the hard-top variant of the Lancer the GT 2-Door Hardtop and upgraded it with thicker carpet, bucket seats, wood trim on the dashboard and full wheel covers. The firm marketed the Lancer GT as a performance model and equipped it with a 101bhp version of the Chrysler group’s Slant Six engine. Buyers who…

“If you look at our line-up globally, at this point we don’t really have much in the affordable segment” Anew range of smaller and more affordable electric Fords will be spawned from an upcoming ‘skunkworks’ architecture on which the firm aims to produce the world’s most efficient EVs. This new platform, the development of which is being led by a former Tesla engineer, could underpin spiritual successors to the Fiesta and Focus and a replacement for the Puma, as well as opening up the potential for other small cars from Ford. The architecture programme is still in the engineering stages, yet it is the first concrete sign that Ford sees a way back to offering a whole suite of more affordable models underneath the new Explorer, Capri and Mustang Mach-E…

Mercedes-AMG expects to make internal combustion-engined cars for as long as legislation allows and is putting no fixed date on their demise. A softening of demand for electric cars across Europe, coupled with apparent hesitancy from legislators in some markets on an outright ICE car ban, has resulted in many car makers rowing back on plans to commit fully to making only electric cars by a certain date. Mercedes itself has pledged to invest more money into continuing to develop ICE technology, which opens the door for the AMG’s famed V8s to continue. Speaking at the reveal of the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 Pro 4Matic+ at Mercedes-Benz World, Brooklands, AMG boss Michael Schiebe would not put an end date on internal combustion engines being phased out from AMG models. However, for…

Car makers including Renault, Volkswagen, Land Rover, Ford and Toyota are falling far behind targets for the UK’s ZEV mandate, which requires 22% of this year’s sales to be of zero-emission models. Those manufacturers ahead of target include Cupra, MG, Subaru, BMW, Volvo and Jeep, while all-electric brands such as Tesla, BYD and Polestar will sell credit to help out laggards. Brands can pool together as a group to hit their targets. So far this year, 16.6% of all car sales have been electric, according to new figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, indicating that the industry has its work cut out in the second half of 2024. The penalty for non-compliance is £15,000 per car, although there are ways for those who are falling behind to…

“I WANTED A Valour and asked if it could be a little bit different, if they could make a special version for me,” said legendary F1 driver Fernando Alonso when asked how Aston Martin’s new limited-edition Valiant racer was born. Fitted with a 734bhp 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12 and six-speed manual gearbox, the bespoke commission is limited to just 38 examples and has a price tag of close to £2 million. We sat down with the Spaniard at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed to find out more. What’s the car like to drive? “It’s quite extreme. It’s a track car that is made for the normal road. The things that surprised me most were the suspension and the handling, but also the sound of it. The sound of the V12 is a…

Heard of Toby Sowery? To be fair, not many have – or rather had. Earlier this month the Cambridgeshire racer put himself firmly on the Indycar map with a poised and accomplished series debut at Mid-Ohio. Parachuted into Dale Coyne’s minnow team at short notice, the 28-year-old climbed from 24th on the grid to finish 13th at the demanding road course and equal the team’s best result of the season. In the context of this being the premier single-seater championship outside of Formula 1, the performance left its mark and didn’t go unnoticed. Sowery has enjoyed rave reviews. So why has he always been off the radar? Sowery’s career so far is best described as patchwork. A karting contemporary of Lando Norris and George Russell, he never had access to…

The Volkswagen Golf model range, despite a bit of trimming around the edges for this facelift, is an expansive beast. Excluding the sporty R and GTI, there are no fewer than five trim levels and eight engine and gearbox combinations, although not every permutation is possible. And then you still have to choose between a hatchback or an estate. Our European correspondent brought you a look at the volume seller, the 1.5-litre petrol manual, a few weeks ago, but now the updated Golf has landed here in the UK, there’s more ground to cover. First, a quick recap. Visually, the lights and bumpers have been mildly redesigned, and the interior has evolved to address the usability criticisms voiced by both customers and critics. All versions of the Golf now have…

The Captur compact SUV has been a mainstay of Renault’s success in the hybrid market – along with the Austral crossover and Clio supermini – and now it has been facelifted to keep fresh in the face of rivals such as the Nissan Juke. The substantial visual overhaul brings a new front end with updated lights, the latest Renault logo and an adapted rear diffuser. There’s no denying the new Captur is one of the better-looking crossovers in an often stylistically bland class. The range opens with the TCe 90, as before, which has a 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol engine and a six-speed manual gearbox. The alternative is the version tested here: the full-hybrid E-Tech, which will account for up to 60% of Captur sales, says Renault. It comes with a…

If your interest has been piqued by the Abarth 500e and Mini Cooper SE (see p30) but you don’t really fancy their £30,000-plus asking prices or electric powertrains, then the cars here could be just what you’re looking for. We’ve put together a guide to grabbing bargain versions of the duo and some of their closest rivals on the used market, from the original Mini GP to Renault’s Clio V6. These cars deliver plenty of driver involvement, car park cachet and handsome looks for a fraction of the price of their new electric Mini and Abarth counterparts. And if our more mainstream junior hot hatch choices don’t quite float your boat, we’ve got you covered with some wild card alternatives, complete with wacky styling, rorty engines and outright exclusivity. Abarth…

MODEL TESTED R Price £121,250 Power 906bhp Torque 727lb ft 0-60mph 3.1sec 30-70mph 2.2sec Economy 2.0mpkWh Max DC charging speed 348kW 70-0mph 49.4m The American state of Kansas has a reasonable amount in common with the English county of Norfolk. Both are, after all, predominantly agricultural provinces renowned for their flat horizons, and just as Dorothy famously departed one, so the Lotus Eletre would seem to belong an awfully long way from the other. This is Lotus’s mouldshattering new ‘hyper-SUV’. The car maker used it as the fanfare and exclamation mark for the announcement of its bold new Sino-British, Geely-owned corporate era back in 2022. It manifested the company’s will to grow into new markets, to target new customers and to reinvent itself as a sustainable, global luxury brand. As…

MILEAGE 3079 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To get under the skin of a promising hatch and assess its tech in daily use You know what really grinds me? When manufacturers claim their new ‘small car’ is actually small. There are several examples of this, but one of the worst is the Ora 03, said to be a hatch when it’s actually similar in size to the Nissan Juke crossover. Cars have become bloated partly in response to customers demanding more height and interior space, while electrification brings a big underfloor battery, which consequently makes the vehicle taller. So how privileged I feel to be driving a genuinely small car, one that also happens to be an EV. Since taking custody of the Peugeot e-208 more than 3000 miles ago, it…

MILEAGE 13,190 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To discover whether this disarmingly straightforward SUV is an anachronism or something to quietly covet “I decided to stick to local roads, which flow much better” I have just returned from a slightly strange trip, stringing together several European car launches and in the process driving 2250 miles in a week and a half. I did it in our long-term Volkswagen Touareg V6 TDI, and there is no question that of our current fleet, it was easily the best tool for this job. I can’t say I instantly bonded with the Touareg. It’s noisier on the motorway than I expected. The air suspension is just a bit too floaty in its softest mode yet slightly too wooden over corrugations. The cruise control is adaptive-only…

TWIN TEST Range Rover Sport vs Porsche Cayenne Two big beasts of the performance SUV world go head to head. Can Britain’s finest get the better of German engineering? FIRST DRIVE Volkswagen Golf GTI Hot hatch icon now has more power but no manual. We put it through its paces FEATURE Autojumble joy We go bargain hunting at a car boot sale where you can buy… a car boot EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Mercedes-AMG C63 Does this four-cylinder plug-in hybrid miss its V8? We find out USED GUIDE Nissan Qashqai All your friends probably already own one, so is now the time to join them? SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p18…

The Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid has been revealed as the most powerful combustion-engined series-production model yet to be produced by the German manufacturer. Producing a whopping 771bhp and 738lb ft of torque from its twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 with a gearbox-mounted electric motor, the four-door saloon can hit 62mph from rest in a blistering 2.9sec. That’s 0.3sec quicker than the existing Turbo E-Hybrid and just 0.4sec off a Ferrari 296 GTB. That speed helped the new Turbo S recently clinch the combustion-engined luxury car record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife with a time of 7min 24.17sec – almost six seconds quicker than the previous-generation Panamera. The Turbo S E-Hybrid is only surpassed in outright power terms by the 1093bhp electric Taycan Turbo GT and limited-run 875bhp 918 Spyder hypercar. The Turbo…

Ineos is planning a significant shift upmarket, with a focus on boutique off-roaders to rival the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, instead of trying to grow both its line-up and sales. By pivoting to focus on its new Arcane Works programme – Ineos’s take on Land Rover SV and Bentley Mulliner – the brand will be able to target similar margins while making fewer vehicles as it looks to battle against increasingly stringent emissions regulations in the UK and across Europe. “The main feedback from dealers is that the Grenadier is too cheap – it needs to be more expensive for the amount of car you get,” George Ratcliffe, commercial director of Ineos Automotive (and son of founder Sir Jim) told Autocar. “They want to sell it for more.” This pivot is a…

THERE ARE SOME good reasons for choosing a certain colour for your new car. Perhaps it matches your lipstick, or maybe a favourite tie. It’s more likely to be something dull, like you think it will have the best resale value. But one car company employee chose a certain shade on his new hypercar just to irritate his former boss. In order to tempt him away from rival companies, the original employment contract had a clause which gave the new boy a bonus that included the limited-edition car worth a six-figure sum. After less than a year it became clear that the employee and his boss were not getting along, so they agreed to part ways. Much to the irritation of the boss and despite legal challenges, the settlement included…

have a lot of time for Michael van der Sande, who as Alpine managing I director brought the A110 to market and was later in charge of JLR’s Special Vehicle Operations. Plus, anyone who owns an Alfa Romeo SZ is all right in my book. But I have even more time for him since yesterday, when he took a well-aimed pop in an online post at level-one autonomous driving functions, which he described as “a nightmare”. Citing speed warning systems getting limits wrong, multiple emergency braking alerts and unwarranted steering assistance interventions, he said these systems are “confusing, annoying and (in my humble opinion) not very safe”. Problems like this are compounded, he said, by “the most ‘basic’ functions, such as air vent speed, hidden on the second page of…

Some of us might see the letters ‘RR’ and think it stands for Rolls-Royce or Range Rover, but now there’s another option: Rookie Racing. Lexus will start to use RR to designate its high-performance models (think of it as the equivalent of a GR-badged Toyota) and the first one to arrive will be the LBX Morizo RR. Morizo refers to the racing alter ego of Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda, while RR stands for Rookie Racing, the firm’s motorsport team that competes in Japan’s version of Formula 2 and touring car championships. The regular LBX does a pretty convincing job of being a small, upmarket SUV, but the Morizo RR livens things up by replacing the usual fuel-saving hybrid set-up with the engine and four-wheel drive system from the most exciting…

Peugeot has just launched a new generation of its large, seven-seat SUV, the 5008, and Skoda has done much the same with the new Kodiaq. Good timing, then, for a mild refresh of the four-year-old Kia Sorento. The Sorento plays quite an interesting role in Kia’s model line-up, because it is now the only car it offers with a diesel engine – in this case a 2.2-litre four-cylinder unit that makes 190bhp. And rather than being on the brink of being elbowed out, it still pulls its weight, outselling the plug-in hybrid by quite a margin. That’s because if you need a tow vehicle, a four-wheeldrive SUV is just the ticket, and the diesel Sorento’s 2500kg pulling capacity actually exceeds that of the Kodiaq (2400kg for the 4x4, less for…

Skoda has given the Octavia a range of targeted updates to boost its everyday usability and interior technology. We drove high-spec versions a few months ago and they proved to be well mannered and comfortable, but now it’s the turn of an entry-level edition. While the SE L and Sportline models bring luxuries such as adaptive cruise control, faux leather upholstery, and sports suspension and steering, the SE Technology trim tested here is as close as you will get to minicab spec, but even then you get plenty of kit. The £26,775 SE Technology 1.5 TSI model is decent value for money because as standard it has a 13in touchscreen with sat-nav, a rear parking camera, heated front seats, wireless charging and smartphone mirroring, as well as 16in alloys. Add…

FIRST REPORT WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see how similar Britain’s cheapest supermini is to its class-leading sibling “I’ve already had someone stop to ask how it drove because they loved the look” Reader, I’m disappointed. Not wanting to be left behind by the industry, I had a man come to quote for installing an EV charger at my home. “Nope, can’t do it” was his instant verdict. Because my flat is 35 metres from the block’s car park, they would need to dig up the drive and lay an armoured steel cable, which would cost many thousands of pounds and then wouldn’t work properly anyway, due to voltage drop. Therefore I’m relieved and very grateful – as should be the other 100-plus residents here, and indeed those in the…

Blue language Further to the 3 July letter from John Chillcott regarding AdBlue pricing, my local supermarket sells it for at least £11 per gallon. I bought 1.5 gallons in a small town in Germany called Elten (just off the E35) and paid the equivalent of £6.58. This was from a forecourt pump, not in a container. On a related note, I enquired at a Skoda dealer in England for a set of sill kick plates and was quoted £110. Being a Yorkshire person, this really stung! I called into a Skoda dealer in Germany and paid the equivalent of £42 for the same thing. This is rip-off Britain at its best. Michael Kahn Sheffield Telling porkies In reference to sports car maker Lotus’s decision to build a 2.5-tonne SUV,…

Looking strictly at price, you might not think the Audi A3 is a bargain buy. After all, you can have the same technology, engine options and drivetrain layout in a Skoda Octavia or Volkswagen Golf and both of those are cheaper, like for like. Examples of the third-generation A3 (2012-2020) are knocking around from £3000, about twice the price of the equivalent Skoda or VW. So why are we suggesting you should plump for the more expensive version of essentially the same car? Because it’s a better all-rounder. On the second-hand market, where prices are lower and mileages higher, what you really want is a comfortable, dependable car built using the sort of attention to detail that Isambard Kingdom Brunel gave his viaducts. And the A3 should deliver that. Outside,…

“THE OTTO VU, as it is called in Italy, is comparatively expensive, and it is the type of car for which there is a fairly limited demand, yet for the enthusiast requiring a fast 2-litre car, it would be difficult to find one which would provide better performance and roadholding and be more of a delight to drive,” we concluded in our road test of 9 July 1954. So who was behind the 8V? Ferrari? Maserati? Lancia? Alfa Romeo? In fact, it was Fiat, a largescale, mainstream company that was still making the 500 miniature of 1936 and had just launched the 1100, 1400 and 1900 as worthy but stodgy four-cylinder family cars. Why act so out of character? The answer to that ultimately begins with World War II. With…

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…