Table of contents for July 6, 2022 in Autocar

“They’re charging £3-4 million for a hypercar and we’ll be 10-15sec quicker than them at Silverstone” Volkswagen made headlines at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed when its ID R electric racer surged to the top of the hill in 39.9sec – and that record stood for three years until being beaten last weekend by Wiltshire-based start-up McMurtry Automotive, whose ludicrous Spéirling fan car shaved 0.82sec off that time. We spoke to ex-Marussia Formula 1 driver Max Chilton – who was at the wheel for the record run – to find out exactly how it was done, what it means and what’s coming next. What did it feel like? “Everyone has watched the Festival of Speed multiple times, but to see it speed up like that… They can see it…

As Volvo prepares to launch a zero-emissions equivalent to the XC90 late this year and pushes forward with its broader growth plans, Lex Kerssemakers, soonto-be-retired commercial operations boss who has worked at the maker for 38 years, reflects on where Volvo has come from and what the future holds. What is the biggest change you’ve seen during your 38 years at the firm? “The most important moment for me was the move from Ford to Geely. What we learned under Ford was that if we don’t have a very clear brand and product strategy, we could easily have faded away within a big corporation. Then we were taken over by Geely in 2010. We were bankrupt because Ford was in bad shape. If the Chinese hadn’t given us carte blanche…

AFEW YEARS ago, the companies that produce many of the major components for car makers, such as transmissions, recognised that a new, potentially lucrative market was about to emerge. Although not in need of a traditional multi-speed transmission or driveline, manufacturers would still need some sort of transmission to sit between the motor and the wheels. That would be fine for the big brands making premium cars with the budget to co-develop electric motor-generators and control systems with specialist suppliers, but what about the small and medium car makers? The answer, tier-one suppliers reasoned, was an integrated electric axle that smaller manufacturers could buy off the shelf and incorporate into their EV design without any fuss and far less cost. Pretty soon, the first examples began to appear, and following…

Some correspondence this week. A reader writes from Australia to ask: is it safe to drive an EV if you have a pacemaker? I confess that this subject hadn’t even crossed my mind. But fortunately it did cross the minds of some scientists from a university and a cardiovascular research centre in Munich and the Wellington Hospital in New Zealand, who in 2020 published the results of a study on it. In short, it’s not a problem. They took 108 patients with various cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs, meaning pacemakers or defibrillators) and exposed them to the electromagnetic fields in four electric cars (a BMW i3, a Nissan Leaf, a Tesla Model S and a Volkswagen e-Up), both while driving under full power in a laboratory, so the field was…

SATURDAY Are you a good passenger? I am, and I’m not. I can do quick road miles in perfect serenity beside someone I trust, but I’ve never been much good at having my innards rearranged in the second seat of something extremely quick – such as the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport in which I was driven at Goodwood. Of course, you can’t refuse such an offer. The potential of this car (1184bhp, 268mph, 0-60mph in 2.2sec) is such that the only way you’ll ever really discover how it goes is by going with someone who drives it as an expert. Such a bloke was Olivier Thévenin, Le Mans winner and one of Bugatti’s select test driver group who can (a) drive like the wind, (b) make fast cars feel refined…

Golly, what’s this? A new midsized electric crossover from a mainstream brand that has embarked on a rapid-fire and ambitious electrification strategy? It feels like we haven’t seen one of those in, ooooh, at least seven minutes. You know the drill. The Ariya is Nissan’s answer to the Kia EV6, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Tesla Model Y, Volkswagen ID 4 et al. We’ve driven a prototype before, but now the stickers are off, two years after its unveiling. And it should be worth the wait. Nissan sensibly shouts about its longstanding success in the crossover and family EV segments, both of which it claims it invented. But will the Ariya’s delayed arrival count against it? Even once EV-agnostic Toyota has beaten it to the punch, and as a result there’s a…

MODEL TESTED 204 58KWH V3 Price £38,390 • Power 201bhp • Torque 229lb ft • 0-60mph 6.7sec • 30-70mph in fourth na • Economy 3.8mpkWh • CO2 emissions 0g/km • 70-0mph 47.2m The past few years have seen a wealth of new car brands spun off their parent companies. Volvo begets Polestar, Hyundai begets Genesis, Seat begets Cupra and Citroën begets DS. But despite all the marketers and product planners in the world, the launches of these brands have seemed strangely off-kilter. Polestar, pitched as an electric brand, was launched with a plug-in hybrid. Genesis is also supposed to be modern and high-tech, but its first four cars have been extremely traditional in chasing the German manufacturers. And then there is Cupra, which has existed since the 1990s as Seat’s performance…

Drivers you meet at EV chargers are generally a friendly bunch and happy to spend time chatting – usually to bemoan the state of the UK’s charging infrastructure. Once that’s out of their system, such chats often break into an impromptu, good-natured game of Top Trumps. Drivers of Jaguar, Kia, Polestar and Tesla EVs will all happily compare ranges, charging times, dynamics and prices. It’s all good-natured fun, with drivers really keen to learn about other cars. But I would feel left out, because I never found another EV driver who particularly wanted to know more about my Citroën ë-Berlingo M. Sure, it would attract plenty of glances when I pulled up to a charger, but more of the incredulous than admiring kind. People might have wanted to know whether…

At 6ft 7in tall, I can vouch for Toyota Research Institute CEO Gill Pratt’s assertion that one size doesn’t fit all (‘BEVs can’t be the only answer’, 8 June). As he says: “Diverse circumstances call for diverse solutions.” This is becoming more obvious by the day. BEVs’ range will improve over time, but cold weather is likely to remain a negative factor. Imagine running out of juice on the Drumochter Pass in the depth of winter… The charging infrastructure in the UK is woeful. I’ve seen charging cords slung out of apartment windows, posing a safety risk to other residents. The 2030 target is a case of the UK government putting the cart before the horse and hoping that it won’t matter (plus ça change). And just because we don’t…

New Viper fights SL AMG “DIVIDE ONE THOUSAND horsepower between two cars and apply to 30 miles of British road. Discover whether these outputs are an ivory-tower irrelevance or something you can use and enjoy.” Yes, the needless power wars began long ago. In 2003, it seemed mad that Chrysler’s new Viper got 500bhp from an 8.3-litre V10 when a decade earlier the Lotus Carlton had caused uproar over 377bhp. Well, the American had to show up the 493bhp V12 from its German sister Mercedes’ SL 55 AMG, right? “We drag race and the Viper is a little quicker. But it doesn’t feel it, mostly because driving it quickly is such a physical effort and requires so much learning. In the SL, you just hold the throttle open and devote…

MILEAGE 5771 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if a plug-in hybrid S-Class can be as convincing as its diesel ancestors It did feel a little unfair to turn up at the recent launch of the all-new Range Rover in a Mercedes-Benz S-Class. It meant that my experience of Land Rover’s crucial new flagship would be topped and tailed by journeys in what I have no doubt is the best massproduced luxury car in the world. The Range Rover is a car that’s expected to climb slippery slopes, wade through mud baths, cross deserts and clamber over rocks, and were it to display any inadequacies in any of those directions, it would be roundly criticised for them by the likes of me. We don’t make such demands of the S-Class.…

Time and chance happen to all, it seems – even to Lotus. Consider the fact that the Norfolk firm’s all-new, all-electric SUV will weigh upwards of 2.2 tonnes, or three times the weight of the original Lotus Elise, and you may begin to wonder what happened to the marque’s ‘simplify, then add lightness’ philosophy. In fairness, batteries weigh heavy, as do SUVs generally, and a firm has to do what a firm has to do, but it does throw into sharp focus just how marvellously lithe that dainty little Elise was when it first hit the streets. The world was charmed by it, and no wonder: it was a lovely, lightweight, mid-engined roadster that offered immeasurable driving pleasure and fun by the bucketload. It also cost, in 1996, a measly…

The first fully electric Lamborghini will be an all-new, radically styled 2+2 crossover arriving in 2028, adding a fourth model line to the Italian brand’s range, and it will be swiftly followed by an electric-only second-generation Urus SUV, CEO Stephan Winkelmann has revealed to Autocar. Intriguingly, the launch of the electric duo also raises the possibility of Lamborghini’s sports cars – currently called the Huracán and Aventador – keeping petrol power as part of a plug-in hybrid system for at least two more generations, the first launching next year and the second at the turn of the decade. This means they could be on sale until at least 2035, when most regions are expected to legislate full electrification for new cars. The continuation of the sports cars as combustionengine models…

Motorsport entrepreneur and former Formula 1 star Jonathan Palmer has unveiled plans to open the world’s first selfsufficient eco driving and race circuit on a 1300-acre former air force base. The site, near Laon in north-eastern France, will be powered entirely by renewable energy generated from a huge surrounding solar park he also plans to build. Palmer’s MotorSport Vision (MSV) firm, the UK’s leading race circuit operator, bought the former French and US air force airfield in 2015 and planned to build a five-mile, high-speed, supercar-friendly circuit ideal for track days and race meetings. At the time, MSV said it would be the fastest and longest circuit of its type in Europe. However, interruptions from the Covid pandemic, plus fast-rising costs and the rapid shift from fossil fuel to battery…

Future Vauxhalls will be even more distinctive as the British brand looks to establish itself as a leader in design under its new “bold and pure” mantra. The introduction of a new design language started with the Mokka-previewing GT X Experimental concept of 2018, has continued on the new Astra and will be rolled out across all future models over the next few years. These will include replacements for the Crossland, Grandland and Insignia models and a reborn Manta before Vauxhall goes all-electric in 2028. The Vauxhall design team has settled on “bold and pure” as its guiding principles and promised that every future model will be “approachable, progressive and ingenious”, according to chief designer Mark Adams. “We thought the brands [Vauxhall and Opel] were dusty and old and too…

Citroën has revealed a new fastback-inspired reworking of the genrebending C4 – which will be offered in the UK with only an electric powertrain. While the front of the new ë-C4 X is identical to that of the ë-C4 hatchback, it has been extensively reworked from the B-pillar backwards. The hatch rear has been switched for an elongated fastback body, making it 240mm longer than the ë-C4 and 200mm shorter than the C5 X, under which it sits in the Citroën line-up. New design cues include distinctive LED rear lights and a bespoke rear bumper, along with black inserts similar to those on the C5 Aircross SUV. With the wheelbase staying unchanged from the ë-C4, at 2670mm, the designers focused on increasing space in the rear and boot of the…

One of the motorsport sector’s proudest boasts is that it discovers and develops technologies that bring vital and rapid benefits to wider society. The latest to enter this hallowed space is Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), the Oxfordshire company that was spun out of the Williams Formula 1 team back in 2010. Its first job was to create the Jaguar C-X75 hybrid hypercar, and it has recently done much of the engineering work for the 2000bhp electric Lotus Evija. Today, as well as continuing on cars, WAE is working on a suite of hydrogen and EV developments that promise major changes to several huge industrial sectors, mining and heavy transportation prominent among them. The key to this is WAE’s acquisition three months ago by ambitious Australian firm Fortescue Metals Group, best…

“The business has certainly come back faster than we anticipated,” Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann says, with a smile painted across his chiselled jaw. He is explaining the remarkable, trend-bucking sales growth of the Italian firm, which posted its strongest annual sales volumes on record in 2021 when most other car makers were having starkly different fortunes. While no executive seems willing to risk saying it out loud, Lamborghini is on course to nudge the 10,000-unit watershed in 2022. If it does, its business will have grown from roughly a third the size of historic rival Ferrari’s to be almost a match for it, in volume terms at least, in less than a decade. That would be quite the coup – and let’s not forget that there’s that much-teased, all-electric, fourth…

Interesting fact: Skoda is the only car maker that’s allowed to use the words Monte Carlo on its models, on account of the success of the Popular in the 1936 rally to the famous principality. Not one to miss out on a marketing opportunity, Skoda created the first Fabia Monte Carlo in 2011, and now it’s back again. Spoiler alert: this isn’t a vRS-lite edition, despite the location and brand association. Changes include a reprofiled front bumper, a mock rear diffuser, plenty of de rigueur black trim bits and 17in alloys with detachable aero elements. The 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine is the most powerful available in the new Fabia and possible only with this trim (although you can also get a 1.0-litre Monte Carlo). Power and torque run to 148bhp…

Some tyres live a long but not very glorious life, rolling away for tens of thousands of miles. Others, as the cliché goes, live fast and die young, burned up by race cars – even those doing endurance events. Unlike most GT3 races, where the regulations require all cars to run on the same tyres, the rules of the Nürburgring 24 Hours allow multiple tyre suppliers. Falken’s N24 GT3 race tyres are all made in Japan, but they compete only here in Germany, and solely by the Porsche 911 GT3 RS pairing of the company’s own race team. On the sidewall of each tyre is a barcode. This is used by the race organisers to check when a tyre is used and by Falken to manage its stock. Conveniently, this…

Desperate for a date I couldn’t agree more with Terence Larkin’s comments about dealers’ communication on lead times (1 June). After a test drive and negotiations on the cost versus the value of our Toyota Yaris Hybrid, we ordered a new Yaris Hybrid in February and were given an estimated delivery date in August or September. Obviously no one without the aid of a crystal ball could have foreseen the situation that we currently find ourselves in, with the shortage of semiconductors and the impact of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. However, trying to get a build slot or delivery date from our Toyota dealer is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Yet still it continues to email us, trying to entice us to visit the showroom to purchase a new…

There’s no need to overthink a sports car. Above all, they’re about driving thrills and gigglesome fun – and in this regard few are better than or as accessible as the Mazda MX-5. Its small dimensions, modest weight and rear-wheel-drive dynamics are timelessly entertaining. The formula has been adopted by the 1989 original all the way up to this current, fourth-generation car, which arrived in 2015. Let’s get specific, though, and see what makes the Mk4, or ND, tick. A 1.5-litre engine opens the range with a modest 129bhp for a 0-62mph time of 8.3sec. There’s also a 2.0-litre engine with 158bhp, which was upgraded to produce 181bhp in mid-2018. The latter output allows for 0-62mph in 6.5sec, although it varies depending on the particular configuration. Heavier trim levels and…

An expert’s view PHIL BENFIELD, ALLON WHITE SPORTS CARS “An Elise is one of the ultimate driver’s cars, but good ones are becoming harder to track down. Find the right one and you’ll have a superb sports car with handling and performance that’s hard to beat, combined with pretty reasonable running costs. The basic 118bhp S1 is my personal favourite. Like any used car, there are areas to be aware of when trying to find the ‘right’ car. A good service history is key. Paintwork can be expensive to repair so bear this in mind while looking.” Buyer beware… ■ ENGINE Many cars will have been modded and many more will have had remedial work carried out. Head gaskets are a known issue, but most should have been repaired by…

ROUVEN MOHR HAS held the enviable responsibility of engineering Lamborghini’s radical electrified future since January. He moved across from the validation department to fill the sizeable shoes of CTO Maurizio Reggiani, who is now vice-president of the brand’s motorsport division. Like Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann, the German is no stranger to the halls of Sant’Agata. Mohr served as head of development for the Aventador, Huracán and Urus before leaving for a brief second stint at sibling brand Audi, where he specialised in energy and weight management. He told us what to expect from what was, not so long ago, the completely unexpected: a Lamborghini without an engine. What are the challenges of electrification? “The first thing I want to say is that there are opportunities, too. A performance hybrid, rather…

“We aren’t going to do something just with good performance, but to give emotion to the driver” Pagani has no plans to make electric cars after conducting a four-year study into whether they would be suitable for the brand. Company boss Horacio Pagani thinks that EVs are too heavy and lack emotion, and that most of the energy they use is not sustainably produced. He also believes that the climate impact of supercars is so small that their use of an internal combustion engine, however big, is in a broad context largely irrelevant. “In 2018, I created a team working on fully electric cars,” he told Autocar at the recent Milan Monza motor show. This team’s primary responsibility was looking at global homologation for Pagani to create such cars, particularly…

BMW ON F1 RUMOURS Will BMW return to Formula 1 as it looks to fast-track its understanding of electric powertrains? It’s unlikely, according to BMW M boss Frank van Meel. “We’re happy with what we’re doing with the [LMDh] sports car prototype,” he said. “F1 is thinking about electrification in 2026, which is quite late. Also, there is not much spin-off into road cars. On the prototype, there are a lot of lessons, from aerodynamics to cooling, as well as the V8 hybrid drivetrain being linked to the one in the XM.” Cunningly, BMW showed off its new LMDh sports car at the Festival of Speed in such a way that it was both in pride of place and away from prying eyes: 40 metres in the air on the…

THE HILLCLIMB RECORD at Goodwood used to be an almost mythical number, never again to be approached and certainly not beaten. Nick Heidfeld’s barnstorming run in a McLaren MP4/13 in 1999, when he took just 41.6sec to climb the 1.1 miles, looked set to stand for eternity, especially after the accident in 2000 that claimed the lives of Lotus 63 driver John Dawson-Damer and marshal Andrew Carpenter and left another, Steve Tarrant, with life-changing injuries. But over the years, levels of commitment have crept back up. In 2019, Romain Dumas blasted up in the Volkswagen ID R electric prototype with a time of 39.9sec – and now the mark has been lowered again. In fact, ex-Formula 1 and Indycar racer Max Chilton ripped it apart with a banzai time of…

The EQE isn’t the first road-going EV produced by AMG, but its runner-up status shows how quickly this part of the market is developing. The pioneering SLS Electric Drive was launched in 2014, when its 738bhp peak output was deeply impressive and its claimed 120-mile range was pretty respectable for an off-the-shelf EV. It also cost £355,000 and, unsurprisingly, AMG produced only a handful of them. Eight years later, AMG is launching another EV, the EQE 53, which makes 617bhp in standard form and up to 677bhp (briefly) when equipped with the AMG Dynamic Plus Package, has a range of up to 321 miles under WLTP rules and comes with the extra practicality of four seats and luggage space. UK pricing hasn’t been confirmed, but we’re told to expect it…

The proliferation of C-segment SUVs has hurt sales of estates, but there remains a strong case for such cars. That’s where the new Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer comes in, taking the contemporary, sharp design of the hatchback and adding a lot more practicality. The new estate brings with it a choice of powertrains, including a plug-in hybrid one, and simplified trim levels, although it’s perhaps not the bargain that the Astra used to be. Up front, it’s the same as the hatch, with the Pure Panel digital dash, lots of storage and very comfortable seats. A wheelbase extension of 57mm has added room where it was needed most: the back. A longer roof helps. The car’s overall length has been stretched by a considerable 268mm, too, to the benefit of…

The risky thing about making any reboot is getting it wrong – screwing it up so badly that you tarnish what everybody remembers they love about the original. And so to the Lamborghini Countach. A car whose name in Italian roughly translates as ‘crikey, look at that!’, and quite rightly. The original Countach of 1974, Lamborghini’s second mid-engined supercar, was one of the defining cars of the late 20th century. If you had been asked in the ’70s, ’80s or even ’90s to describe what a supercar was, you would have been explaining rakish looks, latent aggression, a low roof, that the engine was probably in the middle and had at least eight but probably 12 cylinders and that the top speed started with a two or thereabouts. You would…

The price of everything has been on the up, so if you want that new car smell, you will need at least £12,595 to bag a Dacia Sandero or a chunky deposit to climb aboard the easy payments train. But it doesn’t have to be like that. In truth, there has been a cost of living crisis for decades, to varying degrees, but all the while Bangernomics has been fighting against it. There has been a noticeable bangerflation just recently, so a couple of hundred quid won’t get you much with an MOT any more, but it’s still possible to buy something interesting and useful for less than a new car deposit – if you know where to look. Here are my three top sub-£3000 choices in each category –…

ROAD TEST New Range Rover’s toughest test It was a five-star car on first appraisal, but will it remain so after being thoroughly tested on and off road by our experts? FEATURE Toyota Aygo X This new city car thinks it’s an SUV, but is it really? We head off road to find out FEATURE Electrified classics with a difference Meet the firm using cutting-edge tech to reimagine old cars EVERY WEEK FIRST DRIVE Jaguar C-Type Yes, it really is new, and it has come from the Jaguar factory FIRST DRIVE Lightyear 0 Battery, hydrogen and now solar. We test the EV powered by the sun SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p62…

MILEAGE 10,900 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if a hybrid-only mini-SUV can be an efficient long-distance commuter car “Are these electric? I haven’t seen one before.” I have to say the friendly question caught me off guard as I alighted from a grey compact crossover in a Sainsbury’s car park. There really is a disconnect between the kinds of cars that would draw a comment from an enthusiast (I think my last one was a Jaguar XK120) and from those to whom driving is little more than a necessity. This chap, he explained, needed to upsize from a Smart car and felt the need to go green. Instinctively, I went to say “ah, no, it’s actually a hybrid”, before stopping myself in order to explain in a bit more…

In the early days of the car, it was easy to build one-offs. But the advent of monocoque construction made it much harder, which is why it’s now such a costly business. But every so often a company will still unveil a road-going car that’s unique, either as a customer commission, a marketing exercise or the basis of a production model that never sees the light of day. Here are our favourites. Maybach Exelero 2005 Although it looks like a refugee from a Batman film, the Exelero was never designed for a starring role on the silver screen. Instead, it was designed as a mobile test bed for high-speed tyres, bankrolled by German tyre maker Fulda and based on the platform of the Maybach 57 limousine. This wasn’t the first…