Table of contents for November 13, 2024 in Autocar

OFFICIAL PICTURE THE KIA EV2 is set to arrive in 2026, priced from around £25,000 as a rival to the new Renault 5 E-Tech. The small, high-riding hatchback will sit on the same E-GMP platform as Kia’s flagship electric cars, the EV6 and EV9 SUVs. This platform supports both single- and dualmotor powertrains, but given the packaging challenges of a smaller car and the more urban focus of prospective buyers, a dual-motor version of the EV2 is far from certain. The EV2 has now been spotted testing on public roads for the first time, and although the prototype is heavily camouflaged, the car clearly has a boxy silhouette similar to that of today’s Kia Soul EV, with column-like front lights copying those of the EV9. It will doubtless get a…

“Dealer income will fall as consumers push back against paying the commission” Dealers will be looking for new ways to compensate for lost earnings, consumers are being warned, after the shock ruling that they must either disclose or drop ‘secret’ commissions charged on finance deals for new and used cars. Commissions paid unknowingly by customers have accounted for large chunks of profits for dealers, which have teams dedicated to growing revenue from finance and insurance deals, or ‘F&I’ (including GAP insurance, see box, right). For example, Penske, owner of UK dealer group Sytner, disclosed that F&I income totalled £1352 per car on average in the nine months to the end of September. The figures, which included its US operations, show that finance and insurance generated 3.1% of its revenue but…

HOW MCLAREN TAKES THE STRESS OUT OF POWER PLAY McLaren’s new 3988cc, twin-turbo, MHP-8 V8 powering the W1 supercar is the most power-dense combustion engine the company has yet produced, at 230bhp per litre, and also the highest revving at 9200rpm. The V8 is once more manufactured in Worthing by Ricardo, which has built 38,000 engines for McLaren Automotive since 2011, starting with the M838T for the MP4-12C. The design reveals some traditional details. An example is the valvetrain, one of the most highly stressed areas of any engine and where engine designers can find themselves in a catch-22. Introducing a feature to cope with one extreme can cause other problems. One such demon is valve bounce, where the inlet and exhaust valves are moving so fast they literally bounce…

A PENNY FOR the thoughts of Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares when the bombshell news broke of the Volkswagen Group’s decision to close factories in Germany for the first time. The seismic VW restructure is the result of slowing demand for electric vehicles, coupled with a spiralling cost base. In its development of electric vehicles, VW has chosen to create dedicated architectures and models, selling them alongside existing combustion-engine model lines, something that requires development and investment in two parallel technologies. Stellantis has taken the opposite approach of ‘multi-energy’ architectures that can house multiple powertrain options, with the advantage of being able to scale according to demand. Just weeks earlier at the Paris motor show, Tavares had said the VW approach “is going to put you on your knees”. While not…

Several decades ago, I was introduced to the equine world. A very experienced rider offered some advice: “Riding a horse is like this: imagine when purchasing your next car, you are told: ‘Now, sir, our latest model has its own brain. Sometimes it will accelerate by itself, and when you want it to, it will refuse. On occasion without any notice, it will brake. However, sometimes when you brake, nothing will happen. Plus, every now and again, you will turn right and it will turn left, and the opposite may also be true. It’s very safe, if you bear this in mind.’” I’ve since spent many happy hours on a horse. However, throughout I have had to contend with an independently thinking prey animal. It will react to protect itself…

TESTED 1.11.24, MONACO DELIVERIES FEBRUARY 2025 We have previously tried Renault’s Rafale flagship as a full hybrid and found it to be efficient and suitably appointed, but its underpowered, thrashy E-Tech powertrain and ill-resolved ride can’t quite cash the cheques written by its rakish silhouette and plush cabin. Now, though, there’s a plug-in hybrid that has a chassis fettled by Alpine, 50% more power, an 8% benefit-in-kind rating and dramatically reduced running costs if driven right. On paper, it’s the set-up this car needed from the off. Whereas in a ‘normal’ PHEV you might find a sole auxiliary motor integrated into the gearbox or powering one of the axles, the Rafale has three of the things dotted around its driveline: one with 67bhp on the front axle and a 34bhp…

I breed, nobody has told Volkswagen. Of course the brand was a pioneer of the go-faster family car genre, but its continuing commitment to the cause is admirable, with GTE, GTI, GTI Clubsport and R versions of its recently revised Golf all still in the mix. In the face of the new breed of all-electric alternatives (such as the Alpine A290 reviewed on p24) and despite a legislative environment that makes this type of car increasingly difficult to justify, VW claims to have made its latest generation of fleet-footed Golfs more energetic, exciting and engaging than ever – and none more so than the racy R. We have sampled the fourwheel-drive flagship R in mainland Europe, but this is our first chance to drive it in the UK. Plenty of…

Before there were coupés and SUVs, one of the early car bodystyles was the ‘dog cart’. It was so called because when horses pulled carriages, you might keep the dogs in the middle. In the new horseless era, when this 1902 Albion A1 was made, it was where some makers put the engine instead, without seemingly much changing the design otherwise. Of the 369 cars that started the annual London to Brighton Veteran Car Run on 3 November, the Albion is among those that most looks like a hangover from the pre-engine combustion era. It wouldn’t look that out of place with a nag tied to the front of it. Steve Cropley and I will be driving what is one of seven surviving dog carts, I’m told by a man…

Plush, mature and packed full of usable technology, the secondgeneration Volvo XC90 arrived as a serious statement of intent back in 2015, delivering performance, practicality, style and efficiency in a way that made it the definitive all-rounder in a segment brimming with talent. But it also landed at a tricky time for Volvo: the firm was still trying to find its feet after a takeover by Chinese car giant Geely, and any successor to the original XC90 needed to hit the ground running as the seven-seater had grown into one of the brand’s best-selling models. Volvo didn’t hold back. The XC90 got an all-new platform, complete redesign, electronic overhaul and revamped line of engines, accompanied by an upmarket interior in a bid to outdo the likes of the BMW X5,…

Every time a properly ‘vintage’ car appears in these pages, a colleague remarks: “The problem with old cars is they all look exactly the same.” Even as Autocar’s biggest history nerd, I find this difficult to totally refute, genre of car aside. All had that same in-sweeping bonnet, terminating in a vertically oblong grille between two high-mounted, circular headlights, flanked always at the front and often at the rear by separate wings over the wheels. So when did this stop being the case? You might propose the point when aerodynamics crossed over from the aeronautical industry and the resultant ‘streamliners’. But the main thing that makes those cars look (relatively) modern is their wheels being situated within their bodies – and those developments weren’t mutually exclusive. The first streamliner to…

Bentley’s first electric vehicle will arrive in 2026 as “the world’s first true luxury urban SUV”, according to the British firm – and it will be one of 10 new EV and plug-in hybrid models to be launched in the space of a decade. The debut EV from the Crewe-based firm had been due next year but, in a manner similar to other car firms, Bentley has pushed its timescales back, including its ambition to become electric-only, which is now set for 2035. Instead, it will continue to develop PHEV technology and now extend the life cycle of its PHEV cars beyond 2030 until 2035. New Bentley boss Frank-Steffen Walliser said the firm was adapting to “today’s economic, market and legislative environment” and called the new strategy “a major transformative…

Suzuki has put its future electric cars on hold while it “monitors the market” amid a slowdown in EV uptake, president Toshihiro Suzuki has said. Five electric models were due before the end of the decade as part of a $35 billion (£27bn) EV investment, starting with the eVitara that was launched last week. These cars have already been previewed in silhouette form, and although Suzuki has yet to confirm which segments they will occupy, they are clear matches for the likes of the S-Cross and Ignis, suggesting the brand will look to electrify some of its most popular models. However, at the launch of the eVitara – its first EV – Toshihiro Suzuki would not set a date for when the next EV would arrive, nor confirm if the…

The next-gen Renault Clio is set to ditch purepetrol power and switch to hybrid-only drivetrains when it arrives next year. The new model will also introduce several fresh design cues, as revealed in pictures of the car spotted testing on public roads. These include a diamond-shaped grille pattern on a prominent nose and twindeck rear lip spoilers. The 2025 Clio is likely to adopt an updated version of the CMF-B platform that the current model sits on and use an evolution of the existing 143bhp E-Tech hybrid powertrain. It is understood, however, that Renault has yet to decide if it will offer the car in the UK. Any uncertainty could be a result of the ZEV mandate, which has led some firms to limit the supply of non-EVs in order…

Car makers exporting to the US are waiting to see if Donald Trump will convert his rhetoric on tariffs into reality as they digest news that the Republican has won a second term as president. The US is a key market for premium and luxury UK car makers, with cars from Aston Martin, Bentley, JLR, McLaren and Rolls-Royce comprising the bulk of the 73,571 UK car exports to the US last year. JLR in particular is vulnerable to any potential tariff hike on European cars. The US was the company’s biggest global market in the first nine months of the year, taking three out of every 10 cars it sold. JLR said it would not comment on the issue. Trump railed against Europe and its car exports during his election…

UK motorists are shunning showrooms in favour of holding onto their ageing cars, to both the detriment of new car dealers and the benefit of warranty companies and independent garages. Despite total new car sales increasing 6% for the year to date, those to private buyers are down 11.8%, figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders show. Meanwhile, of the 34 million cars on the roads, 16 million – almost one in two – are more than a decade old. Among these cars, 10.5 million are aged over 12 years. According to Philip Nothard, insight director at Cox Automotive, a key factor is the rising price of new cars, up 129% over the past 15 years from an average of £22,868 to £52,342. “This is almost 50% above…

FEATURE HIGH-MILEAGE CARS: BUY OR BYE? One of these Golfs is £8k and the other is £12k. The only difference: their mileage. So is a high-mileage car a bargain or a liability? We reveal all DRIVEN NEW SKODA OCTAVIA vRS Is this the ideal performance car for people who live in the real world? MOTORSPORT TOP FUEL DRAG RACING Strap in and brace for an 8.0-litre V8, 11,000bhp and 319mph in 3.88sec EVERY WEEK LONG-TERM TEST MERCEDES-BENZ CLE High-tech, handsome coupé hits our fleet. But it will need more than looks and tech to impress us USED GUIDE SEAT IBIZA A VW Polo for those with more sense than money? No, it’s an even smarter used buy than that…

“It has quite a different appeal, being a lot more about fun at high revs, speeds and effort levels” You can understand why it happens. You’ve been developing an extra-special sports car restomod, resplendent with engine and suspension componentry exotic enough to salivate over. Countless workshop man-hours will be poured into the painstaking renovation of every example. And then, one day, you realise what you’re going to have to charge for it. The value is plain to see but, oily and rubbery bits notwithstanding, how do you make a 25-year-old sports car that can be acquired cheaply enough to be worth restomodding in the first place suddenly seem like it’s worth spending a six-figure sum on? The convention is to attach a big industry name to it, bringing instant interest…

If the past decade of automotive history has proved anything, it’s probably that no modern car, however commercially successful it may once have been, can be considered totally timeless. The Mercedes berlinetta coupé, however, has certainly always looked like a timeless design classic. The celebrated line of two-door icons from the firm encompasses the original 1950s ‘gullwing’ sports cars; various larger ‘Ponton’ and ‘Fintail’ models following shortly thereafter; the imposing, square SEC models of the 1980s; the revered W124-generation coupés of the 1990s; and even the popular CLK Kompressors of the noughties. And it’s the popularity of the CLK that Mercedes is hoping to rekindle with its latest two-door gambit. The firm has, for sizeable chunks of recent time, sold as many as three coupé model lines in parallel, not…

The timing of my first few yards in AC’s ‘new’ Cobra MkII 347is spectacularly bad. Gingerly making my way from its temporary base above Brooklands Museum’s historic Finishing Straight, the heavens open with truly biblical fervour. Any thoughts of a road trip in this factory continuation car that even hints at the Cobra 427’s transamerica thrash in the 1976 film The Gumball Rally are washed away as quickly as some of the loose rubble on Brooklands’ track. If nothing else, our slightly shorter schlep will now include some of Gumball’s filmic grit as we take on the rain-swept roads of southern England, picking up destinations that have particular relevance to this 2024 Cobra’s heritage. AC Cars, as you will have seen from Matt Prior’s prototype drive of the new Cobra…

“As a new entry-level model for Lexus, this is a welcome addition” WHY WE RAN IT Lexus has pinned its hopes of UK sales growth on this compact crossover. Is it likely to deliver that? A few days before our long-term LBX was returned to Lexus HQ, I spotted another one on the motorway. As far as I can recall, that was the only other example I’d seen during the entire time we’d had the Lexus Breakthrough Crossover. It was the same colour as mine (and confusingly had a private numberplate that read ‘PUG’). It was great to see an LBX in motion, one in which I wasn’t travelling, so I could ponder its design, its place on the road, its place in the melee of cars on sale today.…

AN EXPERT’S VIEW RICHARD BROOKS, DMW CARS “Petrol engines are the most reliable. Plug-ins are a law unto themselves, with issues relating to the hybrid components. “With the hybrids, if a car is around four years old and it’s just gone outside of its warranty, Volvo may contribute to the cost of the repair as a gesture of goodwill. The electric rear drive axle is the weak part of the hybrid system, and if it packs up Volvo can sometimes pay 50% of the bill as it’s a £4000 repair. “With diesels, we tend to see problems with the EGR or the AdBlue systems. I would stick with a basic petrol engine as they are typically the most reliable. The diesels are also hit with high road tax, but they…

“Regular charging brings a decisive advantage” Mercedes-Benz has set a new 24-hour distance record for electric cars during testing of its third-generation CLA, with an estimated efficiency of over 5.0 miles per kWh. Using learnings from the sleek Mercedes Vision EQXX engineering concept of 2022, a prototype of the new electric saloon covered a distance of 2309.6 miles within a single day at the Nardò test track in Italy. The record was previously held by the Porsche Taycan, which ran for 2128.2 miles around the same banked oval back in 2019. Based on the Mercedes-Benz Modular Architecture (MMA), the Mk3 CLA is the first of four new compact EVs that the German manufacturer plans to launch by the end of 2026, including successors to the CLA Shooting Brake and EQA…

Abarth won’t produce any more pure-combustion cars, focusing instead on EVs, its European boss has told Autocar. Citing increasingly strict emissions rules, European head of Fiat and Abarth Gaetano Thorel said the costs were simply too much for both car maker and consumer. “If you make a combustion sports hatch that emits 180g/km and you are in Italy, you have to pay between €1000 and €2000 road tax every year,” he said. “Is it fair when I can give customers an electric sport hatch that behaves in the same way, has the same level of enjoyment and equivalent performance? All at the same price? I think it’s better to offer electric cars.” When asked if Abarth would instead explore hybrid technology - particularly given that the Fiat 500 Ibrida has…

Renault will radically rethink its approachto interior design with its next-generation electric cars, due from 2028, as part of a bid to improve usability while moving upmarket and embracing ultra-advanced new technologies. “We are going to bring breakthrough solutions on pretty much everything, including the cockpit and user interaction,” explained head designer Gilles Vidal, as he detailed the futuristic cockpit of the firm’s radical Emblème concept, which is set to evolve into a production car in just over three years’ time. The show car’s freshly revealed cabin marks a dramatic departure from the firm’s current production car interiors, with an overt focus on digitisation and touch controllability, along with a new approach to ergonomics and prioritisation of driver safety. The highlight of this new approach to cabin design will be…

AUDI HAS REPORTED a tough first nine months of 2024, with profits, revenue and deliveries all down. The German brand blames the falls on a “challenging” market – notably among electric cars, the increased competition from the likes of cheaper Chinese offerings and production output being slowed by limited parts availability. A sales dip in China – down 8.5% to 477,247 sales – has also heavily impacted the brand, given that the country is its biggest market outside of Europe. Compounding the situation, sales in Europe were down 9.8% to 503,746 cars. Overall, Audi sold 1,235,590 vehicles in the first nine months of 2024, a fall of 10.9%. These included 115,788 EVs, which was 5.8% down. However, Audi CEO Gernot Döllner remained buoyant, with the brand having launched or updated…

STARSTRUCK As an 80-year-old petrolhead, I’ve owned four Aston Martins, four Jaguars and a Bentley over the past 60 years. A year ago, with some trepidation, I bought a second-hand Polestar 2 Dual Motor Performance with only 5000 miles on the clock for about half of the new price. Driving the 20 miles into London on the A3, I hardly ever have to apply the brakes, as lifting off the accelerator or engaging the ‘intelligent’ cruise control slows me and charges the battery whenever I approach a vehicle ahead. Driving in this way, I achieve an incredibly high kWh/100 miles rating. The car’s computer gives a constant readout of this and it goes through the roof if I accelerate hard. With more than 400bhp, my 2 can accelerate from 30-70mph…

I think I might have said that the hot hatchback had returned when the Abarth 500e landed. May I amend my view? This is the Alpine A290, and now I feel like the hot hatch is back. The A290, the sporty variant of the Renault 5, will go on sale in the UK next March. It’s compact, at 3.99m long and 1.52m high, albeit 1.82m wide across the body. Overhangs are relatively compact too, with a 2.53m wheelbase. There will be two power options, 178bhp and 217bhp, but mechanically they’re identical and less than 1500kg. There’s a 52kWh battery. Prices will come in January but the meat of the range will be mid-£30ks. The A290 has borderline retro styling including a bonnet reminiscent of the original 5, beneath which lies…

I gnoring the Dacia Spring is impossible if you’re hunting for a small EV. Its headlinegrabbing starting price of £14,995 makes it comfortably the cheapest electric car on sale in the UK today, undercutting the Citroën ë-C3 by £6995 and the Fiat 500e by £10,000. Unlike several other boxy EVs on sale today that market themselves as ‘small’, the Dacia Spring is genuinely dinky. Measuring 3701mm long, 1583mm wide and 1480mm high, it’s very similar in size to the Hyundai i10. Entry-level Springs come with a measly 44bhp electric motor, which will eventually propel the car from 0-62mph in 19.1sec. It’s comfortably the slowest car on the market today and makes our rangetopping, £16,995 Extreme model a more enticing proposition. That’s equipped with a more powerful 64bhp motor with 83lb…

Traditional estate cars can feel like something of an endangered species, but look closer and you will see that there are still plenty of new ones entering the market. We have recently seen an allnew BMW 5 Series and Mercedes E-Class, we drove the new Audi A5 Avant just a few weeks ago, and Volvo even reintroduced the V60 and V90 to the UK after a brief absence. Other markets don’t care for them, but here in Europe the estate car remains very popular. The enduring usefulness and popularity of the estate car, combined with the fact that the Passat is Volkswagen’s oldest nameplate (pre-dating the Golf by one year), made it inconceivable that there wasn’t going to be a new generation. VW really is going all in on the…

WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT This is Genesis’s biggest electric car, as well as the basis for the brand’s ICE models. Does this compromise its EV performance? “You’ll love it,” said Matt Saunders. “Genesis do brilliant interiors.” Our road test chief was reacting to my asking what he reckoned about the Genesis Electrified G80, the five-metre-long luxury saloon I’d just learned was to be my transport for the next few months. I’d not driven one, but his backside has been in practically every car on sale. Saunders also well knows my abiding preference for car comfort, hence the comment. I liked what I heard. I also liked what I’d just read on the website, that Genesis (Hyundai’s slowly expanding premium marque) sees itself as “striving for balance between elegance and performance”.…

One evening, two years ago, George Pappas was being driven down his local high street by a mate and mulling over whether to replace his Mk4 Golf diesel, a recent purchase that was boring him to death, when his girlfriend, also in the car, spotted an old BMW 3 Series at the side of the road with a ‘for sale’ sign in the window. “I got out and looked around it,” says George. “It was a 1988 320i four-door saloon, a model I’d had a poster of on my bedroom wall as a kid – the M3 version, at any rate. I thought it looked brilliant. I called the seller and the next day bought it for £7500.” The car had done only 75,000 miles and been owned by three…

MERCEDES-BENZ 190E 2.6 1991, 81,000 miles, £14,990 This super-rare 2.6 190E is said to be in “stunning condition” throughout, garaged/dry stored from new and with a full service history. The 2.6-litre six added punch to the 190E, and while it wasn’t sporty, it made for a comfy long-distance cruiser. SAAB 900i 1991, 83,000 miles, £3250 Refined and stylish, this tidy 900i is in good order and looks a bit of a bargain. It has sailed through its past three MOT tests with no advisories and has a full service history and original book pack. Just don’t expect much performance from the 16v lump and three-speed auto. AUDI 80 CD 1983, 21,000 miles, £9995 Previously owned by the Audi UK Heritage fleet, this ultra-low-miles 80 CD is one of just nine…