Table of contents for August 21, 2024 in Autocar

ROLLS-ROYCE HAS shown off its Bespoke division’s latest creation: a highly exclusive reworking of the Phantom, inspired by the marque’s Spirit of Ecstasy mascot. Named the Phantom Scintilla, it is the British firm’s first ‘production’ car to feature a ceramic emblem – a reference to The Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Greek marble statue that almost inspired the Spirit of Ecstasy but was considered “too domineering”. It is painted Andalusian White and Thracian Blue, bespoke shades inspired by the seas around the island of Samothrace, while its shoulder line and wheels have hand-painted stripes in darker Spirit Blue. Inside, the starlight headliner gains a flowing pattern inspired by the Spirit of Ecstasy’s gown, the dash panel is decorated with seven interwoven aluminium ribbons and the glovebox is engraved with the…

Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera has unveiled a Ferrari 550 Maranello restomod, complete with its original 5.5-litre V12 and six-speed manual ’box. Rebuilt to an ‘as-new’ condition, the V12 is uprated to 503bhp and can push the Veloce 12 from 0-62mph in 4.4sec. New kit comes in the form of adaptive suspension and larger brakes, while the chassis’ rigidity has been improved. Inside, aluminium replaces plastic and the panels are reupholstered in leather. It costs €690k (£590k), not including the donor car or tax. Thirty will be built.…

Following the Battista Targamerica, Automobili Pininfarina will work to complete its line-up with a new four-seat grand tourer. It will be inspired by the Pura Vision shown by the brand at Monterey Car Week last year but will sit significantly lower, turning the luxury SUV into an Aston Martin Rapide-style GT. CEO Paolo Dellachà told Autocar that it will become “sportier” but retain “some utility factor” and arrive “in very few years from now”. He highlighted the Pura Vision’s large glasshouse and the divide between its upper and lower volumes as elements that the new car will retain. This will “be coupled with a state-of-the-art powertrain, which will be less extreme than Battista”, said Dellachà. The nature of this powertrain has yet to be determined other than that it will…

AUDI’S SIGNATURE five-cylinder engine will bow out with the updated RS3 after 48 years in production. Making the same 394bhp as in the previous RS3, the 2.5 TFSI is the only five-pot still in mainstream use. It also powers the higher-riding RS Q3. The upgraded RS3 will arrive next month and follows the A3, which received a wide-reaching refresh earlier this year. Available in Sportback and Saloon bodystyles, the updated RS3 gains a new splitter at the front. This is joined by fresh front and rear LED signatures (with a chequered design) and redesigned side air intakes. Inside, new RS bucket seats, and a flat-top, flat-bottom steering wheel – now with haptic buttons replacing the physical controls – have been fitted. Other changes are subtle and mirror the A3, such…

British start-up Helixx is aiming to revolutionise the delivery driver gig economy in developing countries with a new low-cost and customisable quadricycle – and a business model that takes inspiration from Uber, Amazon Prime and McDonald’s. The company has developed a modular L7e quadricycle that will be offered in cargo, truck, minibus and doorless tuk-tuk forms. The different bodies are all based on one core platform, which reduces manufacturing complexity, and the panels are effectively glued together. The vehicle features batteries that can be removed and swapped to minimise downtime. Helixx is already testing a working prototype and has begun a funding round to raise £20 million for a pilot facility in the UK to produce the first 100 models. The company intends to run a franchise system, with local…

Formula 1 will return this weekend after its summer break, as the Dutch Grand Prix starts a run of 10 races towards the Abu Dhabi finale in December. There’s plenty still to shake out, despite Max Verstappen’s healthy lead over Lando Norris in the drivers’ standings – not least McLaren’s more realistic chase of Red Bull for the teams’ title. Will the latter’s decision to stick by Sergio Pérez (for now) make it vulnerable to attack or will the Mexican rally and start scoring proper points again? Further down the pit lane, there’s a new face on the pit wall. Oliver Oakes, once a promising racing driver and founder of junior single-seater team Hitech, is the latest to be pitched into the principal role at Alpine, the troubled Renault-owned factory…

Think about camper vans and the Volkswagen California is probably what appears in your mind’s eye. Considering that its ancestry can be traced back to 1950s conversions of the original Type 2 van, that’s understandable. A lot has changed since then, obviously, and the new California actually is the first to not be based on a Transporter van, instead sharing its mechanical make-up with the long-wheelbase Multivan MPV, which sits on a car platform. Advantageously, that makes it 269mm longer than its predecessor and means it can offer a 1.5-litre plug-in hybrid powertrain. With a total of 242bhp being fed to all four wheels, the eHybrid is pretty potent and, better still, could keep your fuel bills down with an electriconly range of around 56 miles. There’s also a 201bhp…

When the GTX badge was launched by Volkswagen in 2021, it was tipped as an electric equivalent of – and eventual successor to – the GTI line. But it has suffered by comparison: adding power and straight-line speed is easy on EVs and doesn’t make for an everyday performance hero. Three years later, with new management in Wolfsburg committed to GTI, it’s GTX that’s set to eventually be phased out. Some irony, then, that this new ID 7 GTX showcases exactly what the badge could stand for: a compelling take on what a warmed-up VW EV can be, with a distinct nod towards grand tourers and a different feel to GTI cars. It helps that the ID 7 is the best resolved of all of VW’s EVs. It’s a refined,…

It’s a warm summer’s day and the field I’m standing in is full of hubcaps, big black plastic bumpers, funky carpets and colourful fabrics. Badges like Austin, Daihatsu, Rover and Daewoo feature heavily and there’s a slight whiff of chips in the air. I could be in a McDonald’s car park in the late 1990s – back when everything was a bit brighter and Ronald McDonald’s colourful tones hadn’t been phased out in favour of grey minimalism. And it’s not just fast food chains that seem a bit more grey these days. Take a look at an online car configurator and you’ll be overwhelmed by a sea of grey, or other equally dull hues. The Festival of the Unexceptional (FotU) is an automotive antidote to this. It’s all about bringing…

It’s unmistakably Polestar. The ultra-cool Scandinavian design – all minimalist aesthetic, stripped-back functions, sustainable fabrics, gold highlights and sans-serif fonts – is absolutely what you would expect from the style-focused brand. Except… you don’t have to look hard to spot that the Candela C-8 Polestar Edition isn’t really a Polestar. It’s not even a car. It’s a boat. A super-stylish, ultra-modern electric hydrofoil, sure, but it’s absolutely a boat. But, well, there’s more Polestar in Candela’s fast-growing range of hydrofoils than you might expect, because the partnership between the two Swedish firms extends beyond a styled-up special edition. Deep down in the hull of Candela’s craft you will find Polestar’s 69kWh battery pack as seen in the 2, along with the same 135kW DC fast-charging system. It’s not quite an…

We hear it a lot. Motorsport is primarily a team game. Except, racing drivers are out for themselves – aren’t they? Alliance drivers Ash Sutton, Dan Cammish and Dan Rowbottom have known each other since their childhood karting days. They genuinely get on well. They also recognise and embrace motorsport’s most common conundrum. “We’re competitive and are out for ourselves, to some extent,” says Sutton, “but we share data and everything is an open book. We are trying to drive the brand and team forward as one. There are a lot of partners involved and a lot of money on the line.” “We certainly are a team and that gives us an edge at times over the competition,” says Cammish. “As much as we do race for ourselves, we know…

MILEAGE 7750 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT A switch from FWD to RWD brings better range, efficiency and drivability – but what about everyday appeal? As we and car makers are increasingly finding out with electric cars, less often means more. Some of the first wave of single-motor EVs were packed with ludicrous amounts of instant torque, as manufacturers had shiny new toys to play with in electric motors, the result being otherwise humdrum hatchbacks tugging you towards the nearest ditch. Then there were the early dual-motor EVs, with power and torque figures to shame Ferraris. This turned them only into pseudo-performance cars that could go quickly in a straight line but not much else. The overriding feeling after some time behind the wheel was nausea. We’re now largely past the…

TRIPLE TEST VW Golf vs Peugeot 308 vs Toyota Corolla Following its ‘Mk8.5’ update, is the German stalwart still ahead of its key rivals from France and Japan? We find out FIRST DRIVE Ariel Nomad Wild off-roader enters second generation with a harder edge and more power FIRST DRIVE Hyundai Santa Fe Will radically restyled large SUV impress us as much at home as it did abroad? EVERY WEEK ROAD TEST Range Rover Sport Facelift has robbed it of buttons. Will that lower its class standing? USED GUIDE Dacia Duster Popular 4x4 now costs just £1500. Here’s what else you need to know SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p16…

Some cars are just born right. From the moment they’re launched, they have that elusive X-factor that means they don’t need to be added to or developed. Whether supermini or supercar, all of these designs have the utmost fitness for purpose that sets them apart from the common herd. Here’s our pick of those that were perfect straight out of the box. Austin Seven 1922 Like its American counterpart, the Ford Model T, the little Austin Seven quickly captured imaginations. It was affordable, seated four and was deliberately designed to be a ‘proper’ car rather than the lightweight cyclecars that proliferated at the time. It was also successful because it established the now-familiar arrangement of throttle, brake and clutch pedals. Its simple four-speed gearbox was easy to use, too, and…

JLR will reinvent the ailing Discovery brand for its sixth generation by repositioning it in its own “unique territory” and moving it away from its Defender sibling, which has been “cannibalising” sales. The current Discovery has been on sale since 2017, making it the oldest model in the Land Rover stable. It is also the slowest-selling, notching up only 16,750 global sales last year, almost half that of the Discovery Sport. Despite the Discovery making up just 4% of JLR’s total sales, the British firm remains committed to bringing it back for another generation and will focus efforts on more clearly defining the Discovery’s positioning around its “family adventures” values. Discovery and Defender brands boss Mark Cameron told Autocar the repositioning will need to move the Discovery away from its…

Goodwood’s limited-run Private Collection aims to “blur the boundaries of car and art piece”, Katrin Lehmann, Rolls-Royce Bespoke colour and materials designer, told Autocar. Celina Mettang, in charge of colour and trim design, said: “Everyone sees something else when they look at an art piece and everyone can interpret it in a different way. Bringing abstract and tangible aspects together was one of the greatest challenges in this project.” She added: “Having close to a million stitches is something that really expresses how complex the execution is. The 19 layers on the [Phantom Scintilla’s] picnic table just shows how intriguing, complex and unique these art pieces are.”…

Mercedes ultra-luxury division Maybach has turned its hand to the AMG SL roadster. The Mercedes-Maybach SL 680 Monogram Series is marked out from the standard SL by unique two-tone liveries, the classic Maybach grille and a chrome fin on the bonnet. The interior is finished in white nappa leather. Power comes from the same 577bhp twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 as the standard car, but extra refinement measures have been added. Pricing has yet to be disclosed, but the SL 680 is expected to cost in excess of £200,000.…

MAZDA WILL BRING a striking new electric saloon to Europe as a rival to the BMW i4 and Tesla Model 3. The EZ-6 was revealed at the Beijing motor show in April as an electric successor to the mid-sized Mazda 6, produced by a joint venture with Changan in China. Mazda had previously given no indication of plans to sell the EZ-6 outside of China, but it has now signed an “agreement on electric vehicle export co-operation” with Changan Mazda. The announcement means “the EZ-6 will be Mazda’s first global new-energy vehicle”, said the company, adding that it will be sold in Chinese and European markets from autumn this year. Autocar understands a UK launch is possible, but a decision has yet to be made. Mazda currently offers just one…

THE NEW AUDI A5, which replaces the A4, is now on sale in the UK, priced from £41,950. As a result, there is no A4 on sale for the first time since it was launched in 1994 – and the electric A4 E-tron is not due for at least another year. The previous-generation A5, a large coupé available with two or four doors, has also been retired. The new A5 can be ordered in saloon and estate bodystyles with a choice of petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid power. A warmed-up S5 is also available. Customer deliveries will begin in November.…

Elements of the German car industry pushed hard last year for ICE cars to be allowed to remain on sale in the EU after 2035 – and they got their way, provided such cars use only carbon-neutral fuels. But that might not be enough, said BMW Group CEO Oliver Zipse. Unless the EU accelerates the availability of such fuels, it will amount to “a deliberate ban on [ICEs] through the back door”. The problem here (if you want to perceive it as such) is that the car industry is, despite what some will tell you, actually moving quickly. Too quickly for synthetic e-fuels to arrive in large quantities and at sensible cost. The EU requires that “all new cars and vans registered in the [EU] market are zero-emission by 2035”…

Renault boss Luca de Meo has a knack for populism when it comes to new models. He is clearly very happy for this once-alternative, innovative volume brand to simply keep on bringing the kind of cars that people are actually buying right now. I say this because Renault will have eight models on sale in the UK by the end of this year across the wellworn B (supermini), C (compact) and D (mid-size) segments, six of which could be described as SUVs. The latest is the Symbioz, a hybrid-powered, smaller sibling of the Austral – and between the two, Renault hopes to overwhelm the likes of the Nissan Qashqai, Kia Sportage and Volkswagen Tiguan. This is a 4.4-metre-long crossover, then, based on the CMF-B platform (like the Renault Captur and…

The Mk4 Hyundai Tucson’s mid-life update is a subtle but important one, given that this family SUV was the UK’s sixth-most-popular car last year. Hyundai has stuck with its tried and tested powertrain line-up. Centred on a 1.6-litre turbo four, it comprises a pure petrol, a 48V mild hybrid, a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid, which we are testing here. It adds an 89bhp electric motor for a combined 252bhp and 271lb ft, while a 13.8kWh battery affords it an electric-only range of 39 miles. It’s curious that Hyundai hasn’t improved on that, because rivals have really moved the game on since 2020. The new MG HS and Skoda Kodiaq PHEVs can do 75 miles – almost twice as much – for instance. There can be no complaints about performance,…

“In isolation the Lambo is a hugely fast car, but right here, right now, the driver is eyeballing the 911’s tailpipe”AUTOCAR, 25 SEPTEMBER 2002 Bruntingthorpe, rather a long time ago. It’s the day of Autocar’s 0-100-0 showdown, and a nasal-sounding 911 with crescent-shaped cutouts in its flanks has just split the difference between two cars that, by comparison, are so ‘super’ they may as well have turned up wearing capes. One of them is a flyweight Pagani costing three times as much as the Porsche. It has, by the lacquer of its carbon clamshell, escaped with dignity intact, wailing to 100mph and back with 1.18sec to spare over the Porsche. Not so spared are the blushes of the Murciélago. The Lamborghini has twice the piston-count of the Porsche and a…

1998 LANCIA ZETA Dutch-based Brit John Hart bought his Zeta because he “had a thing” about the Eurovan. It took three years to find the right car, in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and a journey with 13 train changes meant Hart had to examine the car by the light of his phone torch. He bought it on the spot and was so excited he couldn’t sleep during breaks on the 600-mile drive home. SC 1986 CITROEN VISA II Lewis Dickson’s ultra-rare Champagne edition looks great from 20 yards, but closer examination shows it needs work to its body. The interior and mechanicals are perfect – because it shows just 4100 miles. The first owner bought it for his wife in 1986, but to 1990 it did just four miles. It was then…

MODEL TESTED M40i WITH HANDSCHALTER PACK Price £63,230 Power 335bhp Torque 369lb ft 0-60mph 5.7sec 30-70mph in fourth 5.9sec Fuel economy 29.6mpg CO2 emissions 197g/km 70-0mph 51.4m It is well known in the industry that car names sound better in Italian. If Maserati’s GT saloon had been called ‘Four-door’, would it have seemed so exotic? If Ferrari’s manettino had instead been called the ‘little switch’, would you have been so keen to twiddle it? And what about the Fiat Type? Someone at BMW must have thought the same could apply to German, because the subject of this week’s road test is the BMW Z4 with Handschalter Pack. Handschalter means manual gearbox (literally ‘hand-shifter’). And so, six years into the third-generation Z4’s life cycle, BMW has given the six-cylinder version of…

MILEAGE 4789 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT Lexus has pinned its hopes of UK sales growth on this new compact crossover Deep in the depths of a Suffolk forest, aka Center Parcs, I looked at all the vehicles parked around me, all too full of copious amounts of detritus being dropped off to cabins, and considered which I’d like most for this type of trip. My three-hour journey from London in the LBX had been mostly without drama, although what irked me increasingly as it went on was the wind noise. I hadn’t noticed it particularly before, but on a long stint it really took its toll and didn’t seem befitting of the luxury car brief. My colleagues who road tested this car back in May commented “noise refinement is fair”,…

EV action plan David Driscoll puts much of the blame for the slow take-up of EVs on the manufacturers who have spent billions developing ever-better products (7 August). Manufacturers are a business, in it to make money. Thus they will produce what people want to buy. However, he also mentions the role of government, and here much more action is needed and is hinted at in your own news article about the slow roll-out of public chargers. The zero-emission vehicles mandate, while headline-grabbing, is a false way of encouraging take-up, and force-feeding the market is not the best way to encourage conversion to EVs (or the other zero-tailpipe-emission solutions that the government seems to ignore). The government urgently needs to encourage take-up by way of: better and consistent non-political public…

Pick-up truck drivers are a particularly tough crowd to please, so the fact that Ford’s Ranger has for years now been the bestselling such vehicle in the UK is no small reassurance that it’s the pick of the bunch. Pick-ups have always been popular with farmers and builders in the UK, but it wasn’t until the early 2010s that they became a more widely popular choice thanks to the attractive benefit-in-kind rules regarding light commercial vehicles (LCVs). Many company car drivers were taken by the idea of riding about in a well-equipped, leather-trimmed truck while paying much less tax. And the P375-generation Ranger’s promised combination of a robust, utilitarian appearance, sophisticated on-road manners and a truly habitable, car-like interior sent it to the top of their shortlists. This Ranger had…

PRODUCTION OF THE Mk6 Quattroporte has finally ended after 11 years. Maserati must be feeling quite disappointed, having believed that a suave sporting limousine would inspire a tenfold rise in annual sales to 50,000 but then seeing that number exceeded only once, as the Quattroporte was continually outsold by the BMW 7 Series. Its “fitness for purpose being a touch eccentric”, its high prices and a failure to keep it up to date are mostly to blame. Things could have been much, much worse, though – as Maserati well knows from its experience with the second-generation Quattroporte, of which only 13 examples were ever built. Not 13 thousand, not 13 hundred – 13. The original Quattroporte of 1961 was fantastic for Modena, setting the template for cars of its kind…

Lamborghini has taken the covers off the long-awaited replacement for its Huracán junior supercar: the Temerario. The revered 5.2-litre V10 that has powered Lamborghini’s mainstream supercars since 2003 has been ditched in favour of an all-new twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8, assisted by three electric motors. It has a hot-vee layout, meaning the turbos are mounted between the two cylinder banks. One motor is mounted between the engine’s flat-plane crankshaft and the gearbox. The other two are mounted on the front axle, affording the Temerario near-silent, front-wheel-drive operation for short distances. Alone, the engine puts out a whopping 789bhp between 9000rpm and 9750rpm, before redlining at 10,000rpm. Add in the motors and output rockets to 907bhp, yielding a 0-62mph sprint time of 2.7sec and a 213mph top speed. The motors contribute a…

The BMW M5 Touring is back for the first time since the V10-engined E61 bowed out in 2010, getting 717bhp and 738lb ft of torque from a V8-engined plug-in hybrid powertrain. That gives the estate a supercar-baiting 0-62mph sprint time of 3.6sec, all while having 1630 litres of boot space. Like in the new M5 saloon, a 22.1kWh battery affords up to 42 miles of electric-only range. Prices start at £112,500, and UK customer deliveries will begin in early 2025. »M5 TOURING PROTOTYPE DRIVEN P24…

AUTOMOBILI PININFARINA has unveiled its first coach-built car, the Battista Targamerica. It uses the same 1876bhp quad-motor powertrain as the existing Battista coupé – which is twinned with the Rimac Nevera – but loses its roof panel, creating a classic ‘Targa’ silhouette. The car is designed for open-air use but has a roll-up fabric panel for ‘emergencies’. Built as a one-off for an unnamed US client, it was inspired by the unique Ferrari Testarossa Spider made for former Fiat chairman Gianni Agnelli. Automobili Pininfarina CEO Paolo Dellachà said: “He had many one-off cars. There was one which was to me very beautiful: a silver Testarossa with a white soft top and blue stripes at the bottom. That car gave me the inspiration that I proposed to our designer – knowing…

Citroën is gearing up to launch a new version of the C5 Aircross next year that will effectively become its flagship model and gain electric power for the first time. The French firm has committed to focusing on main-segment models in the future (Autocar, 29 May). As a result, it will not replace the slow-selling C5 X, but that saloon’s more popular SUV sibling will survive into a new generation. The C5 Aircross was launched in the UK in 2018 and is currently offered with petrol and hybrid powertrains. For its second generation, it will switch to the multi-powertrain STLA Medium platform shared with the Peugeot e-3008 and the Vauxhall Grandland. Citroën boss Thierry Koskas confirmed the new platform will allow the C5 Aircross to be offered with an electric…

SIMULATORS HAVE COME a long way from a simple screen, fake steering wheel and set of pedals. Today’s state of the art is the motion simulator that feeds back the same kind of sensations a driver feels in a real car on the road or track. For manufacturers of full-sized driver-in-loop motion simulators such as Dynisma and Ansible Motion, the complexity of today’s road cars and the difficulty manufacturers face in designing them can only be good news. Dynisma, which makes the Formula 1-grade Dynisma Motion Generator (DMG) and is McLaren Automotive’s motion simulator partner, sees a new role for its product in developing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for road cars. Motion simulators are a combination of complex software and mechanics. The first creates the illusion of the world…

THE CEOs OF global car companies are paid millions, travel on private jets and expect the red carpet to be rolled out when visiting outposts like the UK. This presents the local organisers with a dilemma: what car do they use for chauffeuring duties? If the company sells luxury models, it’s not an issue. But if the brand has more mundane models, it’s tricky. Do you suggest the VIP steps off their plane into a mid-size hatchback? One poor chap was ‘moved on’ after getting it wrong and renting an S-Class for the boss of an Asian car maker, so their successor had a brainwave: they would import a luxury model from the brand’s home market. After the VIP’s arrival at an event, another curious employee looked up the car’s…

MONDAY For people who love driving, the Steering Committee and I don’t take nearly enough motoring holidays – which is why we’re spending this week messing about on the roads of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, based at a quiet cottage we know about 70 miles south of home. It was difficult deciding which of our cars to take, because each would have made sense. The Mini Cooper would have been quick, the Alpine A110 perfect and the Dacia Duster the soul of practical frugality. But we took the Ford Ranger Raptor, for three reasons: it has by far the best air-con and stereo and its elevated cabin provides an unparalleled view of the surroundings, which was a big reason for us going in the first place. We’ve settled well into…

Dirk Hacker, vice-president and head of R&D of BMW’s M division, says he loves the winding mountain roads of North Wales, but the customs regulations that his team had to negotiate to get their prototypes here… not so much. Autocar road testers have spent decades convincing industry people like Hacker to bring their prototypes to the UK to better tune them for the kinds of dynamic challenges their cars will face here. Now, post-Brexit, it seems that we might just as well have been inviting them to Antarctica, such are the hurdles to overcome. However, when there’s a car like the Touring version of the new BMW M5 in the final stages of development and an event like the Goodwood Festival of Speed at which to make a cameo appearance,…

With its characterful doe-eyed headlights, the Fiat 600 looks like it has driven straight out of Pixar’s Cars and into the real world. Then again, I can’t remember the animated trilogy featuring a plot strand about a global manufacturing giant finding room within the UK’s zero-emission vehicle mandate framework to add hybrid powertrains to previously electric-only cars in response to slowing demand for EVs. Saving that spellbinder for Cars 4, perhaps? Anyway, it’s that new powertrain, and not Lightning McQueen’s latest high jinks, that’s the big story with this new 600 Hybrid, making it the latest Stellantis car to have an ICE option added to its repertoire. The powertrain is familiar from the 600’s Jeep Avenger sibling, as well as various Citroëns, Peugeots and Vauxhalls: a 1.2-litre three-cylinder turbo petrol…

Where the Porsche 911 Turbo story begins depends on who you’re talking to. The Type 930 was certainly the first series-production 911 to use forced induction, but the first blown 911 to exist officially was in fact the 2.1-litre RSR Turbo (pictured) built for Group 5 in 1974, with its famously open-worked tail end, laying bare the centrally mounted KKK turbocharger. With nearly 500bhp to play with, the drivers had mechanical control over the wastegate from the cockpit, which allowed them to vary the level of boost. The only thing bigger than the turbo was the wing. Legend also has it that Porsche could never find a rev counter quick enough to match the explosive rise in the engine speed that resulted from turbocharging. And yet the 911 Turbo story…

A nondescript unit on an industrial estate outside Northampton. Not for the first time, we are glad we live in the era of the sat-nav. This is the new and far from ostentatious HQ of Alliance Racing: the four-car, Napa-backed team of pristine blue and yellow Ford Focuses that everyone in the British Touring Car Championship wants to beat. ‘Superteam’ is the perception. “That’s what we are,” says driver Dan Cammish, “and a lot of people would be envious of the position we are in.” They are but, as we discover, this is a long way from Formula 1 – even though in a literal sense the opposite is true. Just down the road is Brixworth, home of Mercedes AMG HPP, where the manufacturer’s F1 powertrains are built. Just the…

MILEAGE 5024 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see how similar Britain’s cheapest supermini is to its class-leading sibling It really is amazing how different the Sandero feels to my old Renault Clio, considering both are based on the CMF platform. Most platform siblings feel very similar. So I did some digging, and it turns out that there are not just different versions of the CMF but two sub-versions of the supermini-sized B version, namely Low Specification and High Specification. There’s our answer. I mention this because the Sandero didn’t make a very good impression on our first long trip together. I’d hoped its notably more languid chassis, taller tyres and lighter steering would create a more relaxing experience than the taut Clio ever had done as my girlfriend and I…

I realise I live within sight of the frozen north (where I was born) here in the West Midlands, but can anyone explain – or rather justify – the explosion of electric charging points in the London area compared with elsewhere in the UK (News, 7 August)? Our national hub has the only effective public transport system anywhere in the UK, underpinned by huge inputs of cash from central government. Why does anyone in the glorious metropolis have a need for an electric horseless carriage (I hope I’m keeping up with the right terminology; our wireless telegraphy news service here can be sporadic) with such an integrated underground, rail and bus network to transport everyone about? The rest of the population (presumably regarded as undeserving peasants) in the far reaches…

An owner’s view BARRY HEMANS “Having wanted a used pick-up for many years, I finally took the plunge and purchased a 2021 Ranger Wildtrak 2.0 EcoBlue in October last year. I decided a 4x4 would be useful for skip runs and helping my kids move house. So far it has been very useful for running errands and moving heavy furniture about. It’s good to drive on short trips around town and I’ve got used to its commanding size – although parking can be a little tricky. I’ve not had any major maintenance issues to date, apart from a leaking load cover, which is a bit disappointing.” Buyer beware… ◼ ENGINE One of the most common issues with the 3.2-litre diesel Ranger is oil pump failure. Check for ticking noises from…

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…