Table of contents for 1905 in Auto Express

AS you’ll see, from page 50, we’ve created a special report about the Chinese brands that have appeared in the past 18 months or so. Around one-in-10 new cars in the UK are now made by a Chinese brand, which is quite a rise. Even more significantly, we’ve never seen so many unfamiliar names arriving here at once. It’s fascinating and, if you’re an established manufacturer, terrifying. I’ll be amazed if all the new brands survive, but the bigger players coming to the UK are hell bent on making an impression – and have the cash to do it. What’s more, the success is not based on incremental new-car sales. It has come – and will continue to come – at the expense of household names. The big brands we’ve…

LEXUS LEXUS has clearly lost its mind. At least, that would be one explanation for the brand – known for its reliable and luxurious cars – unveiling a six-seat, six-wheeled minibus in Tokyo. This bold creation is only a concept, but it could be telling that it’s called the LS Concept – because the first LS put Lexus on the map back in the nineties. SUBARU RALLY fans, rejoice. Subaru hasn’t given up on its STI brand, and it’ll show two new concepts at the Japan Mobility Show. The Performance-E STI and Performance-B STI are visions of the future of its hot sub-brand. The more ambitious of the two is the former, which will “spearhead Subaru’s new generation” of high-performance cars. MAZDA MAZDA’S new concept car will give us an…

TWO months after the Volkswagen ID.3 qualified for the Government’s Electric Car Grant, its bigger siblings, the ID.4 and ID.5, have followed suit. Both cars receive the base £1,500 grant, but this is still enough to bring their base price down to £35,495. For this, the ID.4 (pictured) is available with the smaller 52kWh powertrain in Essential and Match trims, while the ID.5 with the same battery is in Match alone. Despite there being two different specs of ID.4, and the ID.5 previously costing more than its boxier sibling, all of these models were shifted down to the same £36,995, a sliver below the sub-£37,000 qualifying threshold.…

VOLKSWAGEN will likely be disappointed after the T-Cross received the same three-star rating as a cut-price Chinese electric hatch after undergoing Euro NCAP’s tough safety tests for a second time. The T-Cross was originally tested in 2019 and awarded the full five stars by the safety experts. But under the stricter 2025 tests, the SUV could only muster a three-star score, mostly due to its 57 per cent rating in the test’s Safety Assist portion. According to the test sheet, the VW’s autonomous emergency braking system showed “marginal” performance. But the T-Cross earned decent ratings for adult and child passenger protection. Also scoring three stars was the Dongfeng Box (below) – a budget Chinese hatchback. It scored better than the VW in the test’s Safety Assist section, but didn’t offer…

KGM has bolstered its Torres range with a new hybrid engine option. The powertrain, which is branded as a ‘Dual-Tech Hybrid’ system, has been developed in partnership with BYD and should broaden the appeal of the Torres in the competitive mid-size SUV class. The Korean brand, formerly SsangYong, usually trades on the simple premise of offering a lot of car for the money, and this looks to be the case with the Torres Hybrid. Prices start at £35,995 in upmarket K40 trim, undercutting the base petrol Torres in lesser K30 specification by £800. The Hybrid pairs a 1.5-litre turbo engine with two electric motors and a six-speed e-DHT automatic transmission. Total power for the system is rated at 175bhp, and torque is 300Nm. It’s enough to get the 4.7-metre, 1,670kg…

“A lot of time and effort has gone into ensuring the new Compass is capable of getting down and dirty” THREE years ago, the Jeep Avenger burst on to the scene like Kevin Hart – small, fun, energetic and versatile. The baby SUV may be the antithesis of the unstoppable four-wheel-drive Wrangler that the brand is famous for, but clearly that’s what people wanted. More than 200,000 have been sold so far, mostly in Europe. With Jeep’s UK sales now triple what they were before the Avenger’s arrival, the decision to super-size the winning formula to create the new third-generation Jeep Compass was a no-brainer. It uses the same STLA Medium platform as the latest Peugeot 3008 and Vauxhall Grandland, and eventually it’ll be available with the same selection of…

CITROEN has taken a very different stance with this second-generation C3 Aircross. It’s quite a brave choice, because, frankly, we thought the old model was rather good. The new car is bigger, more practical and more varied under the bonnet, and it’s an approach that seems to be working, because Citroen has already taken 3,000 pre-orders for the car. It’s only a couple of centimetres shorter than a Nissan Qashqai, but unlike the Qashqai, the C3 Aircross is available with seven seats. Yet there’s a caveat – to get the third row, you’ll need to choose from one of the petrol or hybrid engines available; the fully electric e-C3 Aircross is five-seat only. Space has always been an Aircross signature, and here it’s no different. Up front, that’s aided by…

“WE want to be one of the largest mainstream brands in the UK,” says Bono Ge, BYD’s UK country manager. No messing: this Bono wants to be bigger than U2. Build Your Dreams is the standard bearer for the Chinese car industry’s international expansion; it entered the UK market just over two years ago with the Atto 3 electric SUV. Now it has a range of six EVs, and the imminent arrival of the Seal 6 DM-i estate will make it two plug-in hybrids. BYD isn’t quite China’s biggest car maker – SAIC, owner of MG, gets that accolade – but last year sales hit 4.27 million vehicles. It certainly gets the most attention, however, often pitched in a death-or-glory battle with Tesla to be the world’s omnipotent EV maker.…

THE Sailun demonstrated that, in broad terms, you get what you pay for. It was no bargain, however, and for your money you get last place in all the snow tests, last in wet and dry braking, and the poorest economy. First in dry handling and cabin noise was little compensation. The fifth-placed Dunlop was most economical but pipped to fourth spot by the Vredestein, which was at its best on snow but good in the wet and reasonable in the dry tests. The top three tyres were in a class of their own. Almost tied for second place were the Bridgestone and Continental. The former proved outstanding in the wet, while the latter delivered in all conditions. But topping the table once again was the Pirelli, a tyre that…

THAT’S right, Volvo doesn’t just make SUVs and estates! The new Volvo ES90 is strutting into town to take on highly impressive, all-electric executive saloons such as the Audi A6 e-tron and BMW i5, along with the Polestar 4. However, the ES90 is obviously not a traditional three-box saloon. Volvo says it’s been designed to offer the “refined elegance of a sedan, the adaptability of a fastback” (whatever that means) and “the spacious interior and higher ground clearance associated with an SUV”. It shares a lot with Volvo’s seven-seat EX90 SUV, starting with the sleek front end that incorporates the same headlights and pixelated ‘Thor’s Hammer’ daytime running lights. That lump on the roof is not a taxi beacon, it’s a LiDAR stack – one of the numerous sensors and…

JUST over a decade on from the start of the Dieselgate emissions scandal, car companies are once again taking the stand over claims regarding the use of so-called emissions test ‘defeat devices’. On October 13 at the High Court in London, representatives from Citroen/Peugeot, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Renault began their defence for a lawsuit in which prosecutors accuse them of manipulating official emissions tests by installing specialised devices in their cars. All five manufacturers deny wrongdoing, while 220,000 car owners have accused them of being misleading and it’s thought that the scandal could potentially involve as many as 1.6 million vehicles. The brands involved in this case are in addition to a further nine manufacturers who are under fire for similar claims. A verdict is not expected until autumn…

CATALYTIC converter theft may soon be a thing of the past. Exclusive new Auto Express data has lifted the lid on its decline – raising the question as to why this might be the case, and what thieves are now opting to steal instead. Following a Freedom of Information request to all 48 police constabularies across the UK, Auto Express can reveal that in 2024, the number of catalytic converter thefts fell by 98 per cent compared with 2021. A prime example of how thefts have decreased is in South Yorkshire, which in 2021 recorded 850 incidents of theft registered under the term ‘catalytic converter’. In 2024, only five crimes of this kind were recorded, representing a huge 99.4 per cent fall. Other forces also saw significant drops in the…

IT’S the end of the line for the fourth-generation Jeep Wrangler, Auto Express can confirm. The brand will stop taking orders for its famous 4x4 by the end of this year, and the final cars will be delivered to customers within the first half of 2026. Jeep’s head of product planning in Europe, Marco Montepeloso, said: “There are several regulations that are affecting the compatibility of Wrangler with the European region, like the safety regulation that’s coming in mid-2026 that needs some additional features that will be hard to implement in it.” Unsurprisingly, emissions also played a role in the Wrangler’s demise. The turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that every UK model uses pumps out up to 269g/km of CO2. That’s almost as much as the Range Rover Sport SV.…

IT’S been 12 months since we first drove Leapmotor’s T03 city car and C10 SUV, but now it’s time for possibly the most important model the brand will launch in the UK: the B10. Clearly aligned with the C10 more than the dinky T03, the B10 sits somewhere in between the hugely competitive B and C-segment SUV markets – rivalling the likes of the Ford Puma Gen-E, Kia EV3 and MGS5 EV. It also has to compete with fellow Stellantis group products including the Peugeot E-2008 and Vauxhall Mokka Electric. Leapmotor is keeping things very simple with the B10 in the UK; there’s just one 67.1kWh battery and a high-spec trim level. That gives the car a range of 270 miles, much more than you get in the Ford Puma…

THIS is an extraordinary time for the UK car market. Nine new Chinese brands have entered this year and are rapidly racking up market share. It’s bewildering for many consumers: what does XPeng, Changan or Chery stand for? Our power list aims to answer your questions, including key ones about model ranges, warranties and dealer networks and whether they’re investing in UK and European R&D. One obvious benefit is that these hi-tech, lower-cost cars are, for now, acting as a brake on price inflation. It’s anyone’s prerogative not to buy a Chinese car for geopolitical reasons, but their competition will improve western cars. And for that we can all be thankful.…

CHINA reportedly produced more than 31 million cars last year alone – almost double the amount cranked out across the whole of Europe. Indeed, many big European brands have capacity in China, either building cars in joint ventures for the domestic market, or assembling them for export. So you could have been driving a ‘Made in China’ car without realising it – like these 10 dual-nationals, for example… 1. Dacia Spring Made in: Wuhan YOU seriously never wondered how the Dacia Spring could have a price tag of just £15k? Being built in Wuhan isn’t the only reason, of course, but it will certainly have helped this urban runaround earn the title of Europe’s cheapest EV. It’s produced there as part of a joint venture between the Renault Group and…

THE UK’s number one Chinese car company is a brand born 101 years ago in the verdant English countryside: MG Motor. No, we haven’t lost our minds: Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation snapped up the badge after MG Rover plunged into administration in 2005, and it now sells more cars in a single year than the firm delivered in its pre-Chinese history. That’s progress. Any new entrants looking for the playbook on how to crack Europe should kick off by reading up on MG: an incessant supply of increasingly competitive cars, in simple ranges with lots of powertrains; affordable prices undercutting the mainstream; a big, nationwide dealer network. One aspect isn’t so easy to replicate, though: a well known badge, loved by many. Head of product planning David Allison has spoken…

MY advice to anyone thinking of purchasing a brand-new car in an uncertain, inflation-ravaged Britain in the final months of 2025? Don’t. No need. Currently, buyers typically have to make an upfront payment of between £40,000 and £50,000 for the right to buy and own an average factory-fresh model. That’s my idea of a big, instant, financially painful hit for a private motorist paying his or her own bills. And think closer to £60,000, if high-interest loans are taken out via banks and other financial institutions. If you don’t have or can’t borrow this sort of money to spend in one hit, you’re not alone. You are the many, not the few. Fact is, for too many years, wages haven’t kept pace with new-car inflation. And that’s why so many…

IT’S hard to believe, but this futuristic-looking concept offers our first peek at the next generation of the Toyota Corolla. So far, the firm has only released these teaser images and confirmed this new Corolla Concept will be one of several creations it’s bringing to the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens its doors on 30 October. The concept has what appears to be a charging port on the front wing, suggesting this new Corolla is either going to feature plug-in hybrid power – like the latest Toyota Prius – or it’ll be purely electric. Our money is on the latter because Toyota has started to expand its range of EVs, and an electric Corolla would give the Japanese brand a rival to the likes of the Kia EV4, Volkswagen ID.3…

THE new MGS6 EV has been inadvertently revealed by Euro NCAP, even before its maker has had a chance to confirm the car itself. It means our first look at the new MG comes while it’s being evaluated by the safety organisation, rather than via the glossy press pictures we’d usually publish when a new car is unveiled. The positive for MG is that its latest model has received a full five-star Euro NCAP rating, as well as strong scores for adult and child-occupant protection. The S6 EV scored 92 per cent and 85 per cent respectively in the two categories, as well as 84 per cent for vulnerable road users, and 78 per cent in the safety assist test. Taking overall design inspiration from the smaller MGS5 EV, the…

IF you ever travel to Korea, as I did earlier month, you’ll notice that along with all the Hyundai and Kia models, there are lots of Genesis cars lining the city streets. The locals are a patriotic bunch, but the premium brand’s appeal in the western world has so far struggled to gain traction. On face value, it’s not hard to see why. The Brits, in particular, are fierce badge snobs; swapping an Audi, BMW or Mercedes for a little-known upmarket brand, no matter how polished, is a tough sell. But now that the company has been around for a few years, it’s time for a host of product refreshes. Genesis began with a lightly tweaked GV70, followed quickly by the much-improved and elongated G80 Electrified. But now’s the time…

SKODA boss Klaus Zellmer has a map on his office wall, where he plots the confirmed R&D or manufacturing operations of Chinese car manufacturers in Europe. There are four pins in Germany, a couple each in the UK, Hungary and Italy, plus markers on Spain and Sweden too. “How do the Chinese handle tariffs?” he explains. “If tariffs impose a risk and there’s enough sales potential, they just invest into that area. We know China’s ambitions and aspirations don't stop at its borders. Their invested capacities and volumes mean they need to export. They are very keen and aggressively looking into the export potential.” The Chinese influx of the UK and European car markets is in full flow. In the first half of this year, Chinese market share in Europe…

17SKYWELL UK importer Innovation Automotive is trying to grow fledgling brand SKYWELL sounds like a James Bond blockbuster, but is the minnow of the Chinese EV pack. Skyworth Auto emerged from a Nanjing bus company eight years ago, and the BMW X3-sized BE11 crossover is the first car. The long-range version covers up to 304 miles and costs £39,995, while the 248-mile standard range version is £3,000 cheaper. It’s yet to make much UK impact; Skywell needs to convince leasing firms to offer a standalone car with unproven used values. Reinforcements arrive in 2026 with the ‘233’ electric panel van and the Q hatchback, an MG4 rival. A big saloon may follow. “SKYWELL SOUNDS LIKE A JAMES BOND FILM, BUT IS THE CHINESE EV PACKMIN NOW” UK MODELS: Just the…

AUTOMATIC headlights and wipers, humongous touchscreens, countless sensors, autonomous emergency braking – the list of technology in modern cars is longer than ever before. All of these features often come in seriously handy, too, taking a sizeable chunk of effort out of everyday driving. However, if you’re shopping for a new car that’s adorned with all of this lovely gadgetry, I urge you to do one thing: remember that it’s there to assist you as a driver, not replace you. All too often I’ll be driving along the motorway with numerous cars creeping far too closely towards the centre white line, or there are countless people driving without their lights on at night, or in rain and fog. Sure, people have been making driving mistakes since the dawn of the…