Autocar January 19, 2022

THE ROLL-OUT OF smart motorways has been a sorry mess. While the theory may have been sound, and an initial trial successful 16 years ago, in practice they have simply not been safe enough. Our roads, above all other criteria, must first be safe. Emergency refuge areas a mile and a half apart do not allow for that. Breakdowns don’t happen at preordained intervals when you’re already in the inside lane, after all. The technology to detect and then warn other road users of a breakdown has been shown to be patchy at best, defective or non-existent at worst. Now, they’re likely to be gone forever after a five-year pause was put on any new ones being built, pending a longerterm safety review (p13). Common sense has won through in the end. However,…

Land Rover is shifting its internal focus from the soon-to-launch, radically reinvented fifth-generation Range Rover to development of the 2023 Range Rover Sport, the current version of which has become one of the company’s best-selling cars. Due to launch around a year after its full-sized sibling, the new, Mk3 Range Rover Sport will play a fundamental role in supporting Jaguar Land Rover as the firm embarks on a wide-reaching and rapid-fire electrification programme. Every year for the past five years, the current model has outsold the standard Range Rover by more than 40% and more recently has jostled with the smaller Evoque and Discovery Sport for the position of JLR’s best-selling overall model. The roll-out of Land Rover’s new MLA Flex architecture to its largest models means the Mk3 Range Rover Sport…

“They’re a slightly strange breed, your sporting off-roaders,” mused our correspondent in 2005 as he reported on a first ride of the then radical new Range Rover Sport. Lighter, lower cars, he continued, are far better at cornering quickly, but that hadn’t stopped BMW and Porsche from storming the sales charts with their dynamically minded X5 and Cayenne models in recent years, and it was buyers of these models Land Rover hoped to poach with a canyon-carving take on its venerable luxury flagship. The early signs were there that the massmarket sports cars of the future would indeed be SUV-shaped, with a higher seating position, and the sheer physical improbability of such heavy cars accelerating so quickly highlighted as primary factors in their appeal. On the basis of the Sport’s well-rounded chassis set-up,…

The hot PHEV drivetrain destined for deployment in the new Range Rover Sport will also be used by BMW in the next-generation M5. An electrified version of BMW’s 4.4-litre petrol V8 will boost the reserves of the seventh-generation M5 to “over 700bhp” and offer “limited electric drive compatibility”, a source close to the German car maker has confirmed. Autocar understands the new M5 super-saloon will adopt a rear-mounted electric motor, among a series of major engineering changes, and it will operate in combination with an evolved version of BMW’s S63 engine to increase the M5’s reserves to somewhere in the region of 790bhp and more than 737lb ft of torque.…

When the 2008-2010 recession hit, Bentley boss Adrian Hallmark eloquently described how the various top-end car sectors recovered: “Most of the luxury market came back fairly quickly, and our cars were among the quickest because though they’re expensive, they’re also practical and tend to be used every day. The pure sports car market, on the other hand, forgot to recover.” A decade later, this comment still serves to explain why hot, top-end SUVs like the Range Rover Sport are so important in today’s market. They’ve become sports car substitutes – just as prestigious, nearly as quick, and markedly easier to drive and own. Lamborghini’s 2021 results flesh it out: sales of the Urus SUV doubled those of the Huracán, with the Aventador trailing even further behind. There’s also a notion that cars like…

Before work gets under way on electrifying the Phantom, Rolls-Royce is working on updating the regular car, which it launched in 2017. A camouflaged prototype caught by our photographers hinted at subtle tweaks for the headlights and grille, but the four-door flagship won’t be substantially modified, said CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvos, because Rolls-Royce is “not in the facelift business”. “We will refresh the car in certain areas and that’s it,” he explained. “Phantom stays Phantom. Our customers would not appreciate if the Series 1 looked very different from the Series 2.” Powertrain and chassis tweaks are therefore highly unlikely, but new personalisation options for the paint, upholstery and wheels are expected, while the infotainment system is likely to be replaced by parent company BMW’s eighth-generation iDrive, which is faster, has greater functionality and features…