Table of contents for December 04/11, 2024 in Autocar

The UK’s best-selling car, the Ford Puma, has been fully electrified to offer 234 miles of range for under £30,000. Joining Ford’s growing electric car line-up alongside the Mustang Mach-E, Capri and Explorer, the Puma Gen-E will compete against the likes of the Mini Aceman and Peugeot e-2008 in the fast-growing electric crossover segment. The Gen-E looks almost identical to its combustion sibling. Its differences take the form of a tweaked front end, which mirrors the Mustang Mach-E’s, and the absence of tailpipes. Ford hopes the Gen-E will build on the popularity of the ICE version (42,465 UK sales so far in 2024) and to smooth the transition to electric for current Puma owners rather than lose them to rivals. Underneath, the Gen-E uses an adapted version of the combustion…

MG is not expecting major changes to the zero-emission vehicle mandate, because doing so could increase pressure on the UK government to reverse other financial policies, such as the farmers’ inheritance tax. Commercial director Guy Pigounakis said the mandate had “fundamentally changed the way cars are designed, engineered, distributed and priced” and “will continue to do so in its current guise”. The scope of any review will ultimately be limited, he believes, due to the can of worms it would open for the government. He said it is likely to extend only to a “recalibrating” of the targets each year by lowering thresholds and by reducing fines for non-compliance. Even small changes will still make “a huge difference” to some car makers, he added, some of which “are planning to…

Incoming Hyundai CEO Jose Muñoz insists there will be “no significant change” to the company’s strategy following his promotion to the top job. Muñoz, who is currently chief operating officer, will take over the CEO role from Jaehoon Chang on 1 January 2025. Speaking at the Los Angeles motor show during the unveiling of the Ioniq 9, Muñoz said Hyundai intends to keep working on “great design and technology and making good decisions for customers”. He also promised continued improvements and a “simple summary” of how the company will look under his leadership. Muñoz confirmed Hyundai will continue to invest in all powertrain technologies, which he called a “good strategy” for a global car maker. “We are ready for any decisions customers make,” he said. Speaking about electric car investments…

Lotus will launch no new model lines in the next two years but will instead focus on introducing new range-extender hybrids in response to waning demand for electric luxury cars. New Lotus Europe CEO Dan Balmer, previously a high-ranking Aston Martin executive and alumnus of BMW and Rolls-Royce, confirmed the hiatus on new product launches in his first appearance in the role, following the exit of Mike Johnstone earlier this year. Balmer takes the helm at Lotus’s European arm as it grapples with heavy financial losses and shrinking demand for its new line of lifestyle-focused luxury EVs, the Emeya and Eletre. Lotus was expected to add a Porsche Macan-sized electric crossover – known as Type 134 – in 2025 but this car has been put on hold as the firm…

The new Jaecoo 7, the first UK vehicle from China’s new ‘premium off-road’ brand, will arrive in January priced from £29,800 to take on rivals as diverse as the Kia Sportage and Range Rover Evoque. Created by Chinese car giant Chery, Jaecoo – a portmanteau of Jaeger, German for hunter, and cool – is a sibling brand to Omoda, which was launched in the UK earlier this year. While Omoda is focused on urban buyers seeking practicality, Jaecoo has a more upmarket and off-road focus. Affordability will be a key distinguishing feature for both brands. UK boss Victor Zhang said Jaecoo offered “the best of traditional off-road and sport utility brands, mixed with cutting-edge technology and style”. The Jaecoo 7 family SUV will be offered with petrol and plug-in hybrid…

IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN! Christmas is upon us and so is another special issue of Autocar. Crack open the fizz and dig into our annual feast of motoring fun A NOMADIC ADVENTURE Richard Webber uses a new Ariel Nomad to deliver a tiny Hebridean island its festive tree. Hope he remembers to pack a coat or three… JCB DIGATRON Matt Prior has piloted some absurd machinery over the years, but a 1320bhp V8-powered monster digger takes the (cheese and) biscuit LONG-TERM AWARDS Gongs include most practical and most sniggered at. Guess which one the fluorescent Abarth wins JOHNNY HERBERT We retrace his remarkable Formula 1 journey – and get his take on Max Verstappen……

In case you’ve forgotten since it was revealed just two weeks ago, the Ioniq 9 is Hyundai’s latest and largest electric car. Based on the same E-GMP platform as the other Ioniq EVs and closely related to the same-sized Kia EV9, it is due on sale in about six months’ time, offering single- and dual-motor powertrains, six or seven seats and a maximum range of nearly 400 miles. Prices are expected to range from about £65k to nearer £80k for the range-topper. Shortly after seeing the new SUV in the metal for the first time, I was invited to Hyundai’s inconceivably large American proving ground in the Mojave Desert, and although the cars were heavily camouflaged and the conditions tightly controlled, it proved an insightful first taste of what could…

THIS IS A landmark moment for Cupra as a brand: it has given its first stand-alone model a mid-life update. The Formentor was the first Cupra that wasn’t a go-faster Seat. In fact, it always offered a range of powertrains, including some very sensible ones. Landmark or not, the actual changes to the car aren’t earthshattering, particularly if you’ve just read my review of the facelifted Leon (left). It’s pretty much all the same stuff: some visual updates, a better touchscreen inside, more electric-only range for the plug-in hybrid version (pictured) and more power and better chassis hardware for the fast four-wheel-drive petrol. There’s one more change lower down the range. Like with the updated Volkswagen Golf, if you pair the entry-level 1.5-litre petrol four with the dual-clutch automatic gearbox,…

1 LAMBORGHINI REVUELTO McLAREN 750S £246,665 The recently revealed, £2m W1 hypercar is more akin to the Revuelto in technical terms, but as we’ve yet to test that car and the 750S is very nearly as quick as the Lamborghini but at a considerably lower price, it is the ‘lesser’ McLaren that earns inclusion here. The 750S isn’t the statement the 720S was but it remains a singularly absorbing supercar thanks to its lightness and its delicacy, not to mention its surprising usability, despite its increased rawness. It lacks the Revuelto’s V12 and opulence. Engine V8, 3994cc, twin-turbocharged, petrol Motor na Total power 740bhp Total torque 590lb ft Gearbox 8-spd dual-clutch automatic Kerb weight 1389kg 0-62mph 2.8sec Top speed 206mph Economy 23.2mpg Electric range na CO2 276g/km FERRARI SF90 STRADALE £379,225…

We’ve made you wait; we’ve built the suspense – this year for longer than usual. And now, with 2024 drawing to a close, it’s time to deliver our biggest and best group test exercise. This is Autocar’s annual Britain’s Best Driver’s Car shootout: our 10 favourite new driver’s cars of the past 12 months, all brought together, driven for three days straight on both road and track and then scored by a panel of judges purely and simply on how much driver appeal they provide. BBDC – still sometimes referred to as ‘Handling Day’ by our longer-serving reporters – is the highlight of the road tester’s year. On no other occasion can we justify devoting so much of our attention, for so long, to a field of such interesting and…

Acknowledging that one of the cars in question has a German heart, while another is the product of a Bahrain-owned company, we have an all-British top three at this year’s Handling Day. Despite the stream of Caterhams, Lotuses, McLarens, Nobles, Morgans, Ariels and the odd Vauxhall that have graced this contest over the past 36 years, this has never happened before. Makes you proud, eh? It’s a punchy home showing, and this really is a heady trio: a wild-eyed bruiser of a V8 GT sandwiched between a pair of mid-engined machines whose DNA differs markedly. Not wanting to give ammunition to those who like to claim that Autocar has an overtly British bias (how many 911s have won BBDC over the years?), but even the nearly-but-not-quite supersub hails from these…

The new year is always a particularly exciting time for Autocar, Christmas hangovers notwithstanding. No sooner have we recovered from the jollity of our two Christmas double issues than we’re getting stuck into another popular edition of the magazine: the one with the annual New Cars special report, our look ahead to the year in metal. As is tradition, New Cars 2024 appeared in the first issue of the year and listed every new car expected to appear in the 12 months to come. It covered more than 150 models – including the Mini Aceman, Renault 5, Aston Martin Vantage and Bugatti Tourbillon, to name a few. January’s first drives were similarly riveting and kicked off with the Aston Martin DB12, which, with its excellent handling, rapid pace and modernised…

We’re not exaggerating when we call the Autocar Road Test the most exacting in the business: five-star verdicts are hard to achieve. Between 2020 and the start of July this year, just six cars had reached that threshold. And yet, in the space of the next two months, we handed out three maximum five-star scores. Had our testers gone soft? Absolutely not. The industry just produced three brilliant, significant and very, very different cars. Two of those machines – the Porsche 911 S/T and the Skoda Superb Estate 2.0 TDI – showcased the art of refined evolution. By contrast, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N proved to be a true step-change, as the first EV to be a genuine driver’s car. July and August weren’t just notable because the stars were…

It’s Christmas and the road test gear is having a well-deserved break, because it has been extra busy in 2024. There has been some upheaval in the world of the Autocar road test, because to coincide with the redesign of the magazine, we moved to a different venue to do our performance testing. The shift to Horiba MIRA allowed us to (re)introduce some tests, such as wet braking, and generally revise our procedures. We also decided it would be a good idea to do more instrumented tests, which means that we ended up testing 58 cars instead of 49 this year. Put them all together and you end up with 111 tonnes and £6,155,050 worth of test cars. With all of them fully fuelled and/or charged, you could cover 20,768…

Museums, car meets, a great drive, even banger racing: we’ve got your Christmas week covered in this, our round-up of 12 things to do this Yuletide. Depending where you live, it’s well worth visiting the Museum of Land Speed at Pendine Sands, now in a shiny new home, and the new County Classics car museum in Taunton. The Great British Car Journey in Derbyshire has added Japanese cars to its collection, while London’s Ace Cafe is expecting lots of Porsches. Our pick? The Jim Clark Trail, where great roads, fabulous views and memories of a world-beating driver combine to make an unforgettable day. BANGER RACING ADRIAN FLUX ARENA King’s Lynn, Norfolk Sunday 29 December stockcar-racing.co.uk While most racing drivers put their feet up, those who go banger and stock car…

FORMULA 1 How Max Verstappen joined Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel as a four-time Formula 1 world champion only underlined what we already knew about the Dutchman: that at 27 his place is assured among the few, as one of the greatest racing drivers we’ve yet seen – and, much like Michael Schumacher, he will probably always stoke anger over his hard-edged character and approach to wheel-to-wheel racing. For a while we feared 2024 would be more of the same following his near-whitewash last year. Verstappen won seven of this season’s first 10 races to open up a gaping lead – which was just as well given how the season would then turn. The toxicity of Christian Horner’s allegedly inappropriate behaviour to a female employee at Red Bull tarnished the…

It’s often said that death and taxes are the only certainties in life, but I’d like to propose an addition to that list: the Autocar road test. Over the past 104 years, we’ve published a weekly in-depth analysis of the latest and greatest new cars, unearthing the kind of data that you won’t find anywhere else. And yet some key elements of it are shrouded in mystery: what’s it like to be a road tester and how does it all come together? I’ve been tasked with joining deputy road test editor Richard Lane at the Horiba MIRA proving ground, home of the Autocar road test, to find out. But not all is well… Our job is to run the numbers on Maserati’s stunning-looking new flagship, the MC20 Cielo. Except sod’s…

“Few more desirable EVs were as good across the board as the Born” WHY WE RAN IT To see if this entertaining electric hatchback’s reputation stands up to the in-depth scrutiny of real-world use The Cupra Born arrived on our long-term test fleet shortly after being crowned Best Electric Car in the 2024 Autocar Awards, so expectations were appropriately high. After several months and more than 5000 miles behind the wheel, I’m happy to report that this thoroughly impressive electric hatchback has well and truly won me over. In the time it was here I drove down to Cornwall twice, up to Yorkshire, across into Wales and comprehensively covered west London. It was as comfortable crawling through the capital as it was cruising to the coast, but the lasting impression…

SKODA KAMIQ Mileage 6950 Last seen 20.11.24 In the relentless drive to save on production costs, car manufacturers are continually finding new things to hide behind menus on the infotainment screen (door mirror adjustment, anyone?). Luckily for me, Skoda isn’t among them, and it remains, at least for now, one of the few that retains physical switches for its climate controls. And what’s better, in the Kamiq the system is a doddle to use. WR MERCEDES-BENZ CLE Mileage 1809 Last seen 20.11.24 I think I’ve settled on the right drive mode settings to best enjoy the CLE’s bandwidth. Everything left in Comfort is fine for main roads and normal pottering around, but a single turn of the steering wheel dial to ramp things up to Sport is ideal for B-roads…

The typical classic car is a pampered thing driven lightly in summer and tucked up in winter with only a trickle charger for company. But not so Simon Edwards’ Lotus Elan S1 +2S. The 54-year-old sports car is Simon’s only motor, and because he lives in a flat, he parks it outside in a resident’s bay where it stays come rain or shine. Partly as a result, its yellow glassfibre body looks a little tired, but Simon isn’t too bothered. “If I fixed it, I’d get too precious about the car,” he says. “I then wouldn’t drive it as much, and so I’d have to buy a second car to compensate. I like that it’s ageing gracefully and, whatever the weather, I drive it without worrying.” His car is the…

Forget the furore. Remove from your mind, if you can, the past two weeks’ noise about Living Vivid and Breaking Moulds. Concentrate instead on the Jaguar Type 00 (Zero Zero), the long-promised concept coupé that introduces an entirely new design style to the 90-year-old marque and sets the tone for its all-EV range that will hit showrooms from 2026. The concept car is a two-door fixed-head coupé, a body type we’re told will not be built. But it has perhaps been artfully chosen because it loosely echoes the layout of the 1961 Jaguar E-Type, the car nearly everyone cites as the leader of a previous great leap forward in Jaguar design. Company insiders say the concept coupé’s size, proportions and, above all, its design style are all “very close” to…

Jaguar’s next-generation line-up will be spearheaded by a Porsche Taycan-rivalling super-GT, the design of which has been clearly previewed by the Type 00 concept. Arriving in 2026 as the first all-new Jaguar since 2018’s I-Pace, the EV was shown in official testing images released last month to bear a striking resemblance to the concept, especially its long bonnet, low nose and square proportions. Differences with the production car come in the form of an extra set of doors and rear seats. Although the GT’s back end has yet to be seen, the concept’s lack of a rear window indicates this will make it into production. This striking four-door GT is the first of three upcoming electric cars due to arrive by the end of the decade atop a new brand-specific,…

VAUXHALL OWNER STELLANTIS has announced plans to shut its historic commercial vehicle factory in Luton and “consolidate” its UK manufacturing footprint at its Ellesmere Port site, putting 1100 jobs at risk. This represents a major escalation in a long row between the multinational manufacturing giant and the UK government over the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate – a reworking of which is now under consideration by MPs. Luton currently produces only combustion-engined vans, whereas Ellesmere Port last year began making EVs after a £100 million upgrade. Stellantis said this decision will “potentially contribute to greater production efficiency” that would also allow it to meet increasingly stringent ZEV mandate targets. If the proposals come into effect, ICE van production would move to Houdain in France, with the Cheshire site transformed into “an…

Volkswagen will launch heavily updated versions of its ID models from 2026 as part of a significant upgrade to the MEB architecture on which they are based. The company’s R&D boss, Kai Grünitz, confirmed the developments to Autocar at the recent LA motor show, as well as the launch of a new ID 2 SUV concept car at the 2025 Munich motor show, a 2025 revamp for the Polo, a slimming down of the brand’s combustion-engined range when Euro 7 emissions regulations kick in next year, and the role that Rivian will play in the development of future Volkswagens. ID RANGE UPDATES Grünitz said the “huge improvements” to the current ID range from 2026 will include an all-new look that is “going back to where we came from”. There will…

Production restarting for Ineos Automotive in January is the “best possible outcome” for the company, according to CEO Lynn Calder. The firm was forced to halt production in September as it was gearing up to expand into the Chinese and Central American markets. Calder admitted there were a number of hypothetical outcomes “that weren’t very palatable, that had us down for much, much longer” following the shutdown after a trim supplier, understood to be seat maker Recaro, filed for insolvency. Speaking to Autocar at the Los Angeles motor show, Calder said Ineos was working on ways to shore up its supply chains, but she believes production will be “absolutely fine” next year. “This particular issue is now resolved,” she added, crediting “major and strong collaboration” for solving the problem. “We’re…

Rear-wheel drive, you say? An Audi estate with 375bhp and rear-wheel drive? Well, grab your flying goggles and pick your pig, the unthinkable has happened. Welcome to the new A6 E-tron, which arrives in both Avant estate and Sportback hatchback guises. It’s electric-only, offering a couple of battery options nestled within a modified version of the new PPE EV platform that also underpins the Audi Q6 E-tron and Porsche Macan Electric crossovers. The entry-level A6 makes do with an 83kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery and 225kW charging on an 800V electrical system, not to mention ‘just’ 322bhp. All of which is good for a range of 383 or 361 miles, depending on whether you go for the Sportback or the Avant. Meanwhile, there’s a 100kWh battery for the 375bhp Performance and 456bhp…

As the star player of BMW’s electric team, the iX smashed it out of the park with its first swing. Well appointed and packed with technology, showcasing both fantastic refinement and effortless performance, it fulfilled its brief with aplomb. If, that was, you could get past the styling. If you didn’t warm to the iX’s distinctive front ‘grille’, temper your expectations of this facelift: even with this late-prototype test car sporting a camouflage wrap, you don’t need an ultrasound machine to detect its swollen kidneys. Remember, that panel houses the many sensors required by the iX’s array of ADAS features. Instead of restyling the car, BMW has focused on improving its performance, range and comfort, no doubt keeping in mind the recent and impending arrivals in the big luxury EV…

THE TALISMANIC STATUS of the reimagined Land Rover Defender has been obvious since we first saw the car back in 2019. The funny thing is, this car’s commercial significance has rapidly become even greater. JLR sold more Defenders in 2023 than Velars, Evoques and Discovery Sports combined. In the UK, it has sold more and more units every full calendar year since its introduction. So it’s a vital profit generator (given that it can easily be dressed up to cost close to £100,000 in just-so specification) and an asset that the firm simply can’t afford to let go off the boil. Hence this 2025-model-year update. It’s not quite a facelift, because very few if any exterior design changes are entailed. It’s more about lifting the Defender’s luxury cabin ambience to…

LAMBORGHINI REVUELTO On-the-road price £452,040 Price as tested £533,532 Value after 3yrs/36k miles £373,800 Typical PCP £3992 pcm (£50,000 deposit + 36 months/15,000 miles) Insurance group 50E FITTED EQUIPMENT Standard Carbon-ceramic brake discs, ‘Comfort’ seats in leather/Corsa Tex trim, nose-lift system, lightweight windscreen, rear-view camera, cruise control, 12.3in TFT cockpit display, rear-wheel steering, magnetorheological dampers, two USB-C ports Optional Verde Hydra special paint £11,256, brake calipers in Nero Lucido £1548, Altanero diamond-cut alloy wheels £5844, titanium wheel bolts £1056, exterior carbon package (upper and lower) £39,756, exhaust tips in matt black £1056, Ad Personam interior trim £4788, fully electric and heated seats £2556, steering wheel carbon pack £3180, Bronzo Oreadi stitching £1380, leather pack £2124, passenger display £3180, smartphone interface £2928, bicolour mats £840, headlamps pack £1380 Also available Engine…

Wales is looking a lot flatter than last year, and the abundance of bumpy roads suggests this will turn out to be a rather different contest from before. Except, of course, this is not Wales but Lincolnshire, because for the first time in four years, we have decamped from Anglesey and instead chosen Cadwell Park for the track element of our Britain’s Best Driver’s Car contest. That’s not because we’ve grown tired of North Wales (how could you?) but because Anglesey Circuit has decided it doesn’t want to deal with electric cars for now, or more specifically what might happen to them in the event of a violent interface with trackside objects. Two of this year’s most intriguing driver’s cars just happen to be electric, so we needed a new…

“Nobody failed to place 100% trust in the Artura, even at circuit pace” And so, at the end of three fast days, after all the debates had been had, the fuel and electrons thoroughly depleted, the deliberation biscuits devoured and the judges’ scores recorded, our champion was crowned. Britain’s Best Driver’s Car for 2024 is the McLaren Artura. It wasn’t quite a unanimous victory, but it wasn’t far off: five out of six judges gave this remarkable petrol-electric supercar their highest score of the field, and only from one did it record a mark lower than 20 (out of 25) for its performance on either the road or the track. The adjectives used to describe it ranged from ‘sublime’ to ‘incredible’ and ‘a revelation’. On track, few failed to salute…

March opened with the heartening prospect of a new-model pipeline bursting with compact, affordable, funky electric cars. Having just seen the production-ready version of Renault’s retro-cool 5, we also brought you news of the Tesla Model ‘2’, Fiat Panda EV and MG ‘2’, all due in showrooms before the end of 2025. Suddenly, electric car ownership was promising to get a lot more viable for a great many more people. And, before the end of the month, with our attention focused on slightly bigger things, we crowned our favourite sub-£40,000 electric car. A panel of six judges gathered at Bicester Heritage for a back-to-back test of 12 contenders for that accolade – from the Smart #1 to the Volvo EX30, via the Vauxhall Astra Electric, BYD Dolphin, Renault Megane E-Tech…

September ushered in a move to two instrumented road tests most weeks, meaning our new chief testing location of Horiba MIRA proving ground would soon become second home to Autocar’s road testers. Unsurprisingly the spread of metal in the September-October period was vast, with everything from city car (Kia Picanto) to supercar (Maserati MC20) going under the microscope along with icons such as the VW Golf GTI and Mercedes G-Wagen. Oh, and a new Aston Martin, which was the first car to appear in our new 10-page format. Truly, there is no more comprehensive a review out there: all said and done, it runs to 6000 words or so. Despite the scope and quality of the road test cast, there were, alas, no five-star verdicts and nothing you might call…

Take advantage of our Christmas offer and buy a gift subscription from just £37.49, saving £27 on the shop price. Crafted exclusively for those who live and breathe cars, Autocar is the present that will rev up their festive season. TIME-LIMITED CHRISTMAS OFFER ENDS 30 DECEMBER Order today Call 0344 848 8807 quoting X24STPA Visit www.themagazineshop.com/X24STPA/aca See great offers on our other titles at themagazineshop.com TERMS AND CONDITIONS This is a UK-only offer; for overseas offers, please visit themagazineshop.com/X24STPA/aca or call +44 (0) 1604 251 461. All savings are based on the UK cover price of £4.99 and are correct as of November 2024. Please allow up to 35 days for delivery of your first issue. Direct Debit rates are valid for one year, after which they are subject to…

Like Subbuteo, the church, salad cream or Jaguar, the Volvo estate seems like one of those things that just ought to be around even if you’re not actually going to use it. There will always be Volvo estates, won’t there? There have been for more than 70 years. In fact, people have been making Volvo estates since before even Volvo could be bothered. Volvo introduced a car called the PV445 in 1949, when you could buy just a chassis and the bare mechanicals, onto which coachbuilders started to put estate bodies. Shortly after that, Volvo decided it would be a good idea to do the same itself, which it did with the Duett, of 1953. It was more like a van with windows than a car, really, but the idea…

Switch off your computer, turn out the lights, don’t leave any milk in the fridge: it’s the Christmas break, so goodbye work, see you next year. But what if you’re leaving behind something rather bigger than an office – such as a car factory? Industry calls it the Christmas shutdown (well, what else were they going to name it?), and for car manufacturers such as Nissan, with its Sunderland production lines, it lasts two weeks – this year from Saturday 21 December to Sunday 5 January inclusive. How do you switch off a production line? With a big red button that turns off the power, forcing the cars to a shuddery halt and leaving the assembly workers hanging in mid-operation? “Not exactly,” says Lee Watson, production director at the Sunderland…

Conducting the performance tests takes about a day, on top of several days of onroad testing. But what about writing it? The answer is that it depends: some road tests are four pages long, others six and occasionally, as with the Lamborghini Revuelto in this issue, 10 pages. “I’ll always know more or less what I’m going to write before I sit down,” says Lane. I ask if he has ever changed his mind about a car after sitting down and thinking it over, to which he replies a resolute “no”. He says: “Writing is refining your thoughts, and if – after several days, 500 miles and gathering all the figures at MIRA – you still don’t have a well-defined idea of where the car sits relative to its rivals…

MILEAGE 1323 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT Does being the basis for an ICE model compromise the G80 as an EV? The Genesis Electrified G80’s mileage is climbing fast, mainly because I trust this car’s range well enough to take it on the fairly long trips that are a large part of my motoring life without extensive grubbing about looking for charging points. A couple of weeks back, in 10-12deg C weather, I wrote that the G80’s usual offered range was 325 miles. The temperature has now fallen closer to 3-5deg C and I’m now offered 290-300 miles. That’s still fine, but even after years of driving EVs, I’m still not entirely happy about the seasonal range lottery in which all EV owners must take part, weather-depending. There’s been a decline…

The first modern-era Countryman set out to prove that Mini could break away from its supermini roots and make a practical five-door hatch, but in reality it was short on performance, ergonomically flawed and a little lacking in character. Nevertheless, the BMW Group marque’s crossover became its most popular model and that warranted a successor, which landed in 2017 with a roomier cabin and a grippy, well-balanced drive that put it well among the best in its class – and now you can have one for less than £7000. Adding 200mm to the length of the chassis meant the secondgeneration Countryman, or ‘F60’ in Mini speak, had SUV-aping credentials, making it more capacious and practical than its predecessor. Adults won’t feel aggrieved in the back (there’s more head room than…

LOTUS ELISE 1998, 8000 miles, £23,995 The Elise S1 is an enthusiast’s dream, and this immaculate, two-owner example has just over 8000 miles on the clock. It has been meticulously maintained, is in original condition bar a stainless sports exhaust and has a long MOT. LOTUS ESPRIT TURBO 1987, 49,000 miles, £28,995 Calypso red, black leather and a factory fit ‘Targa’ roof: late-’80s sports cars don’t get much cooler than this. This one has been overhauled with new brakes and suspension and work to the gearbox. History file and a long MOT means more happy motoring to be had. LOTUS EXIGE S 2015, 20,000 miles, £44,995 The third-gen Exige was a triumph, and this V6 S is one of the best on sale, with a main dealer history and the…

JLR HAS BRUSHED off the negative public opinion generated by its Jaguar relaunch, but more pressing is the dip in profits after a tricky three months in which production was hit by a shortage of aluminium from flood-stricken supplier Novelis as well as a quality issue that delayed the delivery of 6000 cars. JLR’s all-important profit margin slid to 5.1% in the three months to the end of September, down from 8.9% in the quarter before. However, the Tata-owned company is confident of returning to those heights in the next six months. “We expect to bounce back strongly in the second half [of the financial year],” chief financial officer Richard Molyneux told analysts in early November. The company sold 103,108 cars in the quarter ending September. That is up slightly…

The ‘right size’ is the most important thing for an interior touchscreen, rather than having a screen that is as big as it can possibly be. That’s according to Hyundai design chief SangYup Lee, who nevertheless confirmed that the next-generation touchscreen in development would be bigger than the dual 12in displays currently used by the manufacturer. Speaking at the launch of the new Ioniq 9, which uses the firm’s existing touchscreen display, Lee added: “The right size is most important, making the screen easy to see and read. Having the right content is also important, as is the right UX [user experience].” The size of in-car touchscreens is increasing, most notably with the likes of Mercedes’ Hyperscreen that runs across the full width of a dashboard. Lee plans a different…

HYDROGEN DEVELOPMENT today tends to focus on more prosaic transport, such as delivery vehicles, but Toyota’s projects err to the exciting. Back in the 2021 Fuji 24 Hours race, it fielded a Corolla Sport powered not by a hydrogen fuel cell but by a specially developed H2 version of the three-cylinder GR Yaris combustion engine, and last month the car competed in the final of the Super Taikyu Series. The Corolla runs on ‘boil-off’ hydrogen from liquid hydrogen carried in its fuel tank. Burning hydrogen in a combustion engine generates no emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) or unburned hydrocarbons (HC), which are two of the three emissions cleaned up in a conventional petrol car by a three-way catalytic converter. The third comprises oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and although the racing…

A FOUR-MONTH FACTORY shutdown would have done for many other infant car makers in Ineos’s position. But production will restart next month (p15), much to the relief of CEO Lynn Calder, who is not at all defeatist or downbeat when she says making cars is “really hard”. Ineos will now ramp up towards its annual goal of 30,000 Grenadier 4x4 and Quartermaster pick-up models in its chosen global markets. Recent additions include China and Mexico as well as an expansion to new states in its largest market, the US. While it will always offer more utilitarian Trailmaster versions, Calder believes there is room to grow upmarket with plusher Fieldmaster models. She is also buoyed by the success of its Arcane Works bespoke division and, much like Land Rover, that its…

WRITE TO autocar@haymarket.com I THOUGHT I WAS SPECIAL As a Jaguar fan and owner, I was very surprised to see its new tagline: “We’re here to delete ordinary. To go bold. To copy nothing.” I’d never realised Jaguar thought the cars it had been building for the past 100 years were ordinary. Hatfields Jaguar in Wakefield, now closed, never told me I was buying an ordinary car. I’d been delighted with my two E-Paces and F-Pace. Well, don’t worry, Jaguar: I won’t be buying an ordinary car again. I’d hate to be seen in an ordinary car. I hope when your new showrooms are opened, selling non-ordinary electric cars to wealthier customers, people like me will still be allowed in to get our ordinary cars serviced. What a stupid situation…

So, the new Audi A6 E-tron is the quick, capable executive car that most buyers will want of what Audi calls “electric avant-garde in the upper-middle class”. But what of the S6? Well, it certainly seems to have the naughtiness to back up the S badge. Rear-biased four-wheel drive comes courtesy of a permanent magnet motor at the back with 375bhp and 428lb ft of torque on call and an asynchronous motor at the front with up to 188bhp and 203lb ft. That all delivers up to 543bhp and 620lb ft combined, for a 0-62mph time of 3.9sec. Mind you, that’s only in Launch mode. Leave that button alone and the S6 makes do with 496bhp and a 0-62mph time of 4.1sec. A certifiable laggard at that point, of course……

Cupra’s line-up can be confusing. The brand started life with performance derivatives of Seats, and for a few years each of its models had a spicy powertrain of some description. But as it started to take Seat’s place, milder versions were added. As such, you can now buy a Cupra Leon with a 148bhp 1.5. That’s not what we’re interested in here, though. The performance versions remain at the heart of the brand, and now a facelift has given the Cupra Leon an extra dose of, well, performance. On the hatchback side, the plugin hybrid has been upgraded to the Volkswagen Group’s latest ultra-long-range system with 268bhp, while the 2.0-litre petrol now always comes with 296bhp, since the lower-power version has been dropped. I had a brief drive of that…

This week’s test is surely the most anticipated of the year when it comes to raw performance and excess, but there is far more to the car in question than numbers. The Revuelto is Lamborghini’s opening play in the PHEV arena, in which supercar makers now find themselves, willingly or not. As a replacement for the rough-edged but lovable Aventador, it will also serve as the company’s flagship for the next decade or so, anchoring broader approaches to design and technology. And from a dynamic perspective, out on real-world roads the Revuelto promises (and absolutely needs) to redefine the way big V12 Lamborghinis with four-wheel drive handle themselves, because while the Aventador was exciting, its robust ISR gearbox and at times uncooperative manner caused it to slip off the pace…

DIMENSIONS PARKING ACCELERATION BRAKING ACCELERATION IN GEAR CABIN NOISE RUNNING EFFICIENCY BRAKE FADE RESISTANCE THE SMALL PRINT Power-to-weight and torque-to-weight figures are calculated using manufacturer’s claimed kerb weight. © 2024, Haymarket Media Group Ltd. Test results may not be reproduced without editor’s written permission. For information on the Revuelto, contact Lamborghini London, Melton Court, 27 Old Brompton Road, London, SW7 3TD (020 7589 1472, lamborghini.com).…

It’s not uncommon, early on during days such as this, for testers to make a beeline for what you might consider to be the more ‘stable’ vehicles, especially when it’s still damp under some of the trees and some of us haven’t seen Cadwell Park in the flesh for several years, or even at all. I missed out on the road driving by dint of talking to MSV’s Jonathan Palmer in London for our podcast that same day. As a result, I was up at 5am the next day so I could arrive at a misty circuit by 8am. A mid-engined sports car with no ABS or stability control, you say? Ahem. Just excuse me while I stroll past the Noble M500 to the Volkswagen Golf R first. Over the…

Conditions started out slightly wet on the day that our lap times had to be recorded at Cadwell Park, and time was too short to wait for a completely dry surface to get a full set of perfectly comparable data. Three cars bore the brunt, but none more punitively than the GR Yaris, which lent itself to slightly slippery running better than anything else waiting in the pit lane. In matching conditions as we had later in the day, it might have found another couple of seconds. But whether it would have escaped the dubious position of setting the slowest lap time of the day, among so many more powerful cars, is harder to say. It was easy to be impressed by pace as towering and easy to reproduce as…

May was packed to the rafters with car launches, which meant our road testers had the chance to sample some of 2024’s hotly anticipated new metal. Matt Saunders delivered a four-star first drive verdict on the “polished” new electric Mini Cooper SE and gave the same star rating to the Lotus Eletre, which he described as “a giant leap of a luxury SUV” after it trounced the Audi SQ8 E-tron in an electric SUV showdown. Matt Prior, meanwhile, sampled the latest exotica from Aston Martin, awarding the Vantage a 4.5-star verdict and calling it “an old-school sports coupé with charm, speed and noise”. He also took David Brown Automotive’s £150,000 Mini eMastered for a jaunt around London and concluded that the electric restomod was “great fun”, despite feeling a little…

It feels strange to get to November without having conducted, let alone published, our Britain’s Best Driver’s Car feature, but for me there is a pleasing symmetry in how it’s running (from p44) in this issue – 2024’s cars tested as late as possible in 2024. November begins, then, with a hectic schedule of chatting to Jonathan Palmer at the Royal Automobile Club at the start of London Motor Week for a podcast, before heading immediately up to Cadwell Park, one of Palmer’s circuits, to conduct the feature. Then the road testers head off to get road test numbers on the Ford Mustang, a UK drive story verdict on the Analogue Supersport Lotus Elise restomod, and I go to drive the Albion Dog Cart on the London to Brighton Veteran…

While 2023 was the year electric cars slipped into the mainstream and their popularity boomed to a point where the 2035 EV-only target began to look achievable, 2024 was the year that brought the automotive world back down to earth with a bump and showed there really is still an awful long way to go. The slowdown in EV sales growth, driven by incentives ending in powerhouse markets such as Germany, comes as car makers are forced to contend with increasingly strict emissions mandates in the EU and the UK, thereby creating a paradoxical environment in which electric cars must be sold in volumes that are, in many places, currently greater than the market demand. Throw in a trade war with China, the onset of pivotal new technical regulations and…

1953 PV445 DUETT The Volvo estate that started it all, although coachbuilders had been putting estate/station wagon and even pick-up bodies onto Volvo chassis in the years leading up to the Duett’s appearance. 1975 66 Volvo bought Daf in 1972 and developed the Daf 66 into the Volvo 66. It is, or was, perhaps the oddest Volvo estate to date, with only three doors, rear-wheel drive and a CVT gearbox. 1962 AMAZON An Amazon estate was launched in 1962, and in 1965 it became the first imported car used by the police. “Surely our police force is committing a crime by using an imported car,” wrote AMG Gillan of London SW1 (Autocar, 1 October 1965). 1993 850 “SHOCK! This Volvo is a great drive” ran our quasi-hysterical first drive headline…

ARIEL NOMAD 2 MATT PRIOR As with the Atom 4, Ariel launched a new Nomad this year and immediately it made the previous Nomad look a bit dated. I think it’s the new, bigger-diameter tubing, similar to what happened in the mountain bike world a couple of decades ago. Everything before it looks more spidery, less rugged. As I write, I still haven’t driven it on the road. But I have had two extended goes on an airfield and then at a race track, neither of which you’d describe as this buggy’s natural habitat. But it does the brilliant things on those that the previous one did, only better. Its long-travel suspension breathes and allows big body yaws and roll movements under various accelerations, yet it remains utterly controllable, like…

MILEAGE 9523 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if the definitive executive car is now electric, albeit in £100k guise The i5 pings me quite a lot of messages. Recently it had been telling me the tyres were a little underinflated, because the weather had been getting cooler, but that I didn’t need to worry about it. They’re meant to be at 2.6 or 2.7 bar (38-39psi) both front and rear, and in the summer they were. As autumn came that slipped to 2.4 bar (35psi), but as I drive mostly alone and with the car unladen, running at under fully laden pressures was no big deal. The car agreed. I figured it improved the ride, too, which was no bad thing: this i5 sometimes gets used as a car-to-car…

AN OWNER’S VIEW JASON MORRIS “I bought my second-generation F60 Countryman in early 2017 to replace my Mk1 Countryman, which I had been using for trailer training. I used my F60 for driver training for six years, covering over 200k miles, many of those spent towing a 1200kg trailer. It’s coped with everything I’ve thrown at it. Sure, it’s had a few parts along the way, but nothing that you wouldn’t expect to wear over time. Last year, I retired the car but decided to keep it because I just really enjoy driving it.” BUYER BEWARE… ENGINE Crankshaft sensor failure can put the car into limp mode, limiting performance. Take the car on a decent test drive to ensure it’s running smoothly. An oil leak or vibration from the engine…

Every year, the event that Autocar road testers just can’t wait for is Britain’s Best Driver’s Car (see p44), or Handling Day for short – a road and track gathering of the most exciting driver’s cars for testing to the limit. Has been since 1989. Back in the ’60s, the equivalent was surely the Foreign Car Test Day, held at Silverstone by Total Oils’ PR team – a kaleidoscope of Italian, German, French, American, Japanese and Eastern European metal at a time when the UK market was dominated by British products. Our first report came in 1963, when Alfa Romeo’s new flagship saloon was the star of the show. “So smooth and quiet is the 2600’s [straight six] that one has to keep a watchful eye on the rev counter.…