Table of contents for February 28, 2024 in Autocar

SWISS FIRM MICRO Mobility will begin selling its Isettainspired Microlino EV in the UK in the coming months. The reborn bubble car has the same heavy quadricycle (L7e) classification as the old Renault Twizy. This means that although it is only marginally larger than a Citroën Ami, it offers a more useful 17bhp electric motor and has a 56mph top speed. The design mimics the 1953 Isetta’s front-mounted door but there is a reverse gear, so drivers are not trapped when parking forward against a wall. Like the Ami, it will be offered in left-hand drive only. The Microlino can be had with battery packs of 5.5kWh, 10.5kWh and 15.0kWh, corresponding to claimed ranges of 58 miles, 110 miles and 142 miles. It is priced between £15,400 and £18,800 in…

CUPRA HAS REVEALED a new range-topping version of its Born electric hatchback, which will become its most potent model this autumn. The new Born VZ (short for ‘veloz’, meaning ‘fast’ in Spanish) raises power from 228bhp in the warmed-up Born e-Boost to a Volkswagen Golf R-baiting 322bhp. The torque increase is even more dramatic, with the rearmounted motor now chucking out a huge 402lb ft (up from 229lb ft) to give a 0-62mph time of 5.7sec, making the VZ the quickest car based on the Volkswagen Group’s EV-specific MEB platform. Top speed has increased too, from 99mph to 124mph. Cupra claimed this boost in performance “isn’t achieved by sacrificing efficiency”. Official range is 335 miles for the new hot hatch, partly courtesy of a small increase in battery capacity, up…

CAR JOURNALISTS are simple creatures. When attending a new product launch, all they really want is a decent amount of time driving the car in appropriate conditions. Lunch and access to an executive are added bonuses. A big manufacturer aimed to tick all these boxes when it launched a ‘soft-roader’ to the media. There was plenty of driving in picturesque places and the company’s MD was set to join the journalists for breakfast so he could answer any tricky questions before the driving started. However, the poor exec was held up by a minor crisis back at HQ and rang to tell the PR team he would be delayed. They suggested he could join them for lunch instead and gave him the location where they would be stopping, along with…

MONDAY Whenever I turn up at McLaren’s magnificent Woking Technology Centre, officially opened 20 years ago, I wonder whether those who work there ever get over the sense of wonder that we visitors feel. To me, the MTC is as magnificent as ever, and I especially love the way your excitement rises as you drive around the lake, enter the glass doors, walk past some of the world’s greatest racing cars and pitch up beside the red Austin 7 that Bruce McLaren and his dad used to race on the beach in New Zealand. I first read about that as a kid in Australia. My latest visit was with my colleague Jonathan Bryce to see the new Artura Spider, which brings with it a suite of tweaks for the fixed-head…

‘Centralisation’ might yet turn out to be the Marmite vehicle design concept of 2024. This is the reason that the Volvo EX30 – rolling out to UK customers as of next week – has so few items of physical switchgear, no instrument binnacle at all and a large, portraitoriented multimedia touchscreen that therefore has to convey and control so many more functions and so much more information than seems altogether good for it. So ask yourself, reader: are you a believer of the rationale that by designing the car’s layout of controls so determinedly around that touchscreen, Volvo’s interior designers genuinely thought they could meaningfully reduce the number of switches, knobs, displays, chips and other electrical components needed elsewhere and in doing so make a simpler, lighter and more sustainable…

Morgan isn’t bound by the same pressures as most car makers to add bigger touchscreens and AI voice assistants in a mid-life facelift. No Morgan has either of those, thankfully. But in the four years since the current Plus Four and Plus Six were launched, there has been cause for subtle improvements based on press and customer feedback. There was a round in 2021 and another last year. We’ll go into more depth when we road test the biggerengined Plus Six in a few weeks, so let’s focus on the Four here (though most of the changes apply to both). The CX generation, as it’s known, was launched in 2020 with an allnew bonded aluminium chassis and a pair of BMW engines. Since then, nothing much has changed on the…

Five years after the launch of the third-generation Touareg, Volkswagen has refreshed its flagship as it looks to keep pace with rivals such as the BMW X5 and Mercedes-Benz GLE. We have previously reviewed the diesels and the top-rung plug-in hybrid Touareg R, but have now spent some more time in the standard eHybrid. It’s available in Elegance trim only and uses the same set-up as the £80,370 R – a 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine paired with a gearboxmounted electric motor – but with a lower system output of 375bhp (compared with the R’s 455bhp). Both hybrids retain the same 14.3kWh battery as before, bucking a trend from rivals that have gained increased capacity as part of recent facelifts – the X5 and GLE now offer 25.7kWh and 31.2kWh respectively.…

Hard to Beet I read Felix Page’s article on his 1972 Volkswagen Beetle (‘The loved bug’, 7 February) with interest, as in 1972 I bought my first car, a 1957 Beetle, paying £325 in cash. It had a four-speed gearbox with no synchromesh on first gear. It had no flashing indicators, relying on semaphore arms that came out of the door pillars. An interesting feature of these was that at the maximum speed of 60mph both were sucked out at the same time. As an extra hazard, there was no fuel gauge. The tank had two levels of fuel, and in the event of the main tank being empty, you placed your left foot on a lever beside the clutch pedal, which in theory granted you access to the 1.1-gallon…

If a high mileage – anything above 100,000 in 10 years – is a good indicator of a car’s quality, then the fourth-generation Toyota RAV4 (2013-18) is an SUV you can buy with confidence. At least 55 listed on one popular website can claim this distinction at the time of writing. In fact, more than 120,000 miles is not unusual and, over far fewer years, some have chalked up the kinds of mileages commonly associated with former Prius cabs. Naturally, most of these highmilers are diesels, split evenly between the 122bhp 2.0 D-4D, which was replaced in 2015 by a BMW unit producing 143bhp, and the 148bhp 2.2 D-4D, which was dropped during the same year. But there’s also a handful of 149bhp 2.0 V-Matic petrols and, perhaps less surprisingly,…

AS THE WORLD rebuilt from the ruins of war, economic miracles occurred in nations both victorious and defeated. Among them was one that few know about today: the Central African Federation (CAF), founded in 1953. Large reserves of gold, asbestos, chrome and copper, farmland that allowed for both self-sustaining food and tobacco for export, and the mass arrival of skilled workers from Europe resulted in a massive influx of investment and constant production rises. Within just one lifetime, this area of empty bush land had become an industrialised society on par with New Zealand. Car makers were keen to get in on it, for obvious reasons. “To the Rhodesian, a vehicle is not a luxury but more of a necessity of life than an overcoat,” Autocar reported on visiting in…

“The launch price is expected to be less than £25,000 when it arrives in the UK early next year” HOW RETRO RIVALS COMPARE The production version of the Renault 5 has been unveiled at the Geneva motor show, as the first in a wave of retro EVs coming from the French brand over the next few years. As promised, the road car is a faithful translation of the acclaimed concept from 2021, taking heavy inspiration from the original 1970s Renault 5, and it will eventually be joined in dealerships by evolved versions of the similarly nostalgic Renault 4Ever and Twingo concepts. Renault is aiming to defend its position in the increasingly competitive small car market, and the 5 E-Tech is testament to the company’s commitment to providing affordable cars in…

“The total system output is now 689bhp and 531lb ft and its power-to-weight ratio is 473bhp per tonne” McLaren has launched the Artura Spider as its first drop-top hybrid, ushering in more power and a raft of chassis and aerodynamic upgrades that will also be used on an updated version of the coupé. Available to order now from £221,000, the Spider is claimed to be the lightest convertible supercar in its class “by as much as 83kg”, with its 1457kg kerb weight giving it the edge over the Maserati MC20 Cielo and Ferrari 296 GTS. Extensive use of lightweight materials – such as carbonfibre for the folding hard-top – means it is just 62kg heavier than the current coupé version. The Ricardo-developed 120deg 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine has been carried…

Astumble in the demand for electric cars in the UK could be benefiting diesel cars, at least in the short term. In December 2023, EV sales fell 34% year on year as makers struggled to convince the wider public to make the switch. Meanwhile, diesel car sales actually rose 12%, interrupting a decline that began in 2016. “When BEV does badly, combustion engines do better, but diesel does a little better than petrol,” said Al Bedwell, head of powertrain analysis at market researcher GlobalData. The situation is even more pronounced in Germany. Last year, diesel car sales there rose 11% across the full year, giving this fuel type a 24% share, according to GlobalData. Customers of larger and more expensive cars are still attracted to the properties of diesel, which…

Abit of Spanish sun in February? Don’t mind if I do. A recent trip to Valencia to catch a GT and single-seater winter series was just the tonic, even if it was a leftfield turn from the mainstream. The series is run by German promoter and track-day specialist Gedlich Racing, and I must admit that I expected a throng of wealthy amateurs making a meal of GT3 and GT4 exotica. There were one or two of those – but mostly what really struck was the glut of young, hopeful talent who pitched up, using the winter series to get their eye in ahead of the season proper. A huge field of 38 Formula 4 cars, drawn mostly from the Italian and Spanish series, had congregated as a fresh cohort of…

The second-generation BMW X2 has arrived, and with it a headlining M35i performance model as part of an initial fourstrong line-up that also includes an all-new electric iX2 (driven, p30). Positioned at the top of the new X2 line-up at £47,395, the M-badged model receives a reworked version of BMW’s B48 engine: a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo petrol unit with variable valve and camshaft timing, developing 296bhp and 295lb ft of torque. That’s actually 6bhp and 37lb ft less than the original X2 M35i was given by a previous iteration of the B48, owing primarily to the adoption of a petrol particulate filter and other emissionsreducing measures. By comparison, its keenest rival, the Mercedes-AMG GLA 35, offers 302bhp and the same 295lb ft, although it has a mildhybrid system, which in…

Can there be many milestones left for the 17-year-old Fiat 500? Most modern cars are long dead and buried by this age. The Mini hatch has been through three full model generations in the space of 25 years. But historically speaking, really special small cars have tended to live for longer, getting only incremental updates. The original Mini and Citroën 2CV managed more than four decades, for instance, and the Volkswagen Beetle more than six. This baby Fiat won’t match that feat, but if it can survive for another year, it will have lasted longer than Dante Giacosa’s iconic Nuova 500 of 1957. We haven’t had the opportunity to test this car in a while – not since the 2020 introduction of the 1.0-litre mild-hybrid petrol engine. At that point,…

DAY ONE: 07.00 London. Disable phone alarm, flick through news app. Twitter. Shower, change, get in car. Sit in traffic on the A406. Ponder grey clouds. So far, so normal. But Waze is not set westerly for the office, in Twickenham, like it normally is. It is pointing north. I am en route to Kielder Forest in Northumberland to drive the new Porsche Cayenne S. The Cayenne has long been described as the saviour of Porsche. Car enthusiasts have been fed the narrative that the Cayenne is a means to an end. Porsche makes this so that other, more interesting, purer Porsches can continue to live. If this new model feels familiar, that’s quite likely because we road tested the new Cayenne S in last week’s issue, calling it an…

Matt Prior stated that the new Morgan “is engaging and better in every way than one from 30 years ago” (Tester’s Notes, 7 February). I see where he’s coming from, and it is true that we often have rose-tinted glasses about cars, but in the specific case of the Morgan, I disagree. I have an older Plus 4 with what I somewhat disdainfully call the ‘bedstead’ chassis, which can be quite hateful on the wrong surface. So I took a test drive of the new CX-chassied Plus Four, with its modern BMW engine, hoping that it would be a perfect upgrade, giving a full open-top experience with more civilised behaviour. However, I had a eureka moment during the drive and realised the new upgraded models are just plain wrong. If…

An owner’s view DEAN ASHTON “I’ve got a 2013-reg RAV4 2.2 D-4D Icon. It’s done 144,000 miles and I’m the third owner. It sounds like a high mileage but, of course, it only equates to around 14,000 miles a year. You become familiar with a car over time, so while I’d say it still feels smooth and pulls strongly (economy is around 40mpg), someone coming to it new might say it feels all of its 10 years! All I can say is that there are few rattles, the engine doesn’t smoke, the clutch shows no signs of giving up, there’s no corrosion and everything works. It’s probably still worth around £4000, so I’m happy.” Buyer beware… ENGINE AND GEARBOX Water pump failures have been reported on some cars, so check…

A road test in any other magazine might well be a short, subjective summary of a new car produced under almost any circumstances, but the Autocar road test is different. Specific, rigorous and detailed, it’s the closest examination we can give of any new model. It appears over at least eight pages and is close to 50 man-hours in the making every week. Most of what the road test process entails is designed to be strictly repeatable and fair. We benchmark standing-start and in-gear acceleration at a purpose-built test facility every week. We carry out both subjective and objective handling tests on both road and track, on the latter up to and beyond the limit of grip, so as to fully assess stability, drivability and limit handling appeal. And while…

RENAULT PERFORMANCE brand Alpine is working on its own version of the 5, dubbed the A290, which it will launch towards the middle of 2025. Now in final winter testing ahead of an unveiling in June, the hot hatch is the spiritual successor to the Alpine/Gordini versions of the original 5. It will use the 215bhp motor from the Renault Mégane E-Tech crossover, modified to provide a temporary “boost” that is likely to take it nearer the 237bhp offered by the rival Abarth 600e. It is expected to have largely the same interior as the standard 5 but will be marked out by a sporting multi-function steering wheel with a flat bottom and no doubt a smattering of Alcantara and race-style trim elements.…

Prefer your race-bred restomods with a touch of je ne sais quoi? The Alpine A110 has been reworked by Italian coachbuilder Zagato to create the AGTZ Twin Tail, a sleek, limited-edition tribute to the lesserknown A220 prototype that raced at Le Mans in the 1960s. Priced from around £550k before tax, the AGTZ features a 1960s-style ‘longtail’ rear section that can be removed to give “the muscular punch” of a short-tail racer. Just 19 will be built and the order book is “filling fast”, says Zagato.…

The MG 3 has been reinvented for a second generation, adopting a bold new look and switching to full hybrid power in a bid for supermini sales supremacy. Set to be priced higher than today’s £14k model, at around £20k, the new 3 is due in the UK in the coming months as a rival to the Honda Jazz, Renault Clio and Toyota Yaris, majoring on practicality, efficiency and compelling performance. The new-look 3 was designed at MG’s Shanghai studio, taking stylistic influence from the Chinese brand’s current crop of crossovers and hatchbacks, and is slightly longer and wider than its pure-ICE forebear. MG’s new Hybrid Plus powertrain (its first non-plugin hybrid offering) combines a 101bhp 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with a 107bhp electric motor for a combined 192bhp and…

As the car industry recovers from the lingering effects of the pandemic, the supply chain crisis and various other geopolitical obstacles, manufacturers are being forced to confront another commercial headwind that threatens to throw their production plans and investment strategies into disarray: a global drop in demand for electric cars. Variously attributed to continued consumer uncertainty about the usability of electric cars, their high price relative to ICE alternatives and the notion that the first wave of early EV adopters have long since adopted, the global EV ‘slowdown’ – as it has been widely dubbed – has prompted many mainstream car firms to row back on electrification plans and called into question the electrification timelines that have been outlined by governments worldwide. FORD Blue Oval boss Jim Farley said recently…

On the whole, I don’t like telling people what to do. Where governments have a clear choice about whether to interfere in people’s lives or not, I usually think they shouldn’t. Overreach is tiresome and we will probably get along just fine without it, so unless it’s really obvious that something needs intervention, governments should just facilitate what we reasonably want to do and otherwise leave us alone. I suppose I don’t trust ‘them’ not to mess things up. I’ve always felt this way about driving. Yes, perhaps it’s daft that you can pass a driving test at 17 and barely think about your licence again until your grandchildren notice that you keep nerfing the garage door and in the meantime you can pick a car off the shelf that…

If we were in a corporate bonding exercise and playing a mandatory game of word association and I were to say ‘Volkswagen’, you might say ‘Golf’. But actually the Tiguan SUV is the German firm’s best-seller. It has been since 2018. This third-generation car has a lot riding on it, then – and they’ve nailed it. It’s easily as good as the Mk2, with some clever additions and some low-key, hidden-gem style polish that you might not be expecting. Tons of choice too. There are five trim levels: Tiguan, Life, Match, Elegance and R-Line. As for engine range, it’s like the ark: there’s a pair of 2.0-litre turbo diesels (which produce 148bhp and 190bhp), a pair of 2.0-litre mild-hybrid turbo petrols (128bhp and 148bhp) and two petrol-electric plug-in hybrids (201bhp…

The next-generation BMW Neue Klasse that will start to arrive next year will use a bespoke electric platform. Until then, the firm is pushing on with its multi-powertrain strategy, hence the arrival of the iX2 – a car that is technically all-new yet feels quite familiar, in part because it shares much with the existing iX1. The exterior styling elements that mark out the electric version from the ‘regular’ X2 SUV-coupé (see p28) are minimal, although we definitely prefer its slightly more relaxed look to the appearance of the M235i we also sampled. While it is distinct from the iX1 on the outside, the interior will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in that model. Generally, that’s not a bad thing: it feels like a quality cabin, with…

Vauxhall has added a Sports Tourer estate version of the mildly sporting GSe to the Astra range. We have driven the Astra GSe before and it remains a curious case. It is allegedly the performance range-topper but makes do with the same 221bhp plug-in hybrid drivetrain as many other Stellantis models. On-paper performance is sprightly enough: 7.5sec to 62mph is hardly slow, but it is trumped by the 6.7sec of the Cupra Leon eHybrid estate, and certainly won’t raise any hot hatch eyebrows. The fitment of frequency-selective dampers gives it a touch more wheel control than the standard Astra, and it feels surefooted and confidence-inspiring, but hardly exciting. That the 18in wheels are shod in perfectly ordinary Michelin Primacy 4 tyres tells you all you need to know about the…

REFINING PERFECTION DS The champion team comes into 2024 on the back of an unprecedented season. Max Verstappen says he’s not bothered about chasing records, whether it be championships or Lewis Hamilton’s mark of 103 wins. He appears to live in the moment. So where do you think he goes from here? ES In the short term, he will just want to keep doing what’s he doing. Although he doesn’t care about records, he does care about winning. Certainly it could be more of the same for the next few years, before the new power unit rules for 2026 create a reset. Verstappen is the criticin-chief for certain elements of F1’s drive for entertainment. For example, he doesn’t like the sprint races. But for now, while so many wins are…

MODEL TESTED 2.0i E-BOXER TOURING • Price £36,290 • Power 134bhp • Torque 134lb ft • 0-60mph 10.4sec • 30-70mph in fourth 19.0sec • Fuel economy 35.2mpg • CO2 emissions 174g/km • 70-0mph 53.5m Twenty-five years ago, few Subaru devotees would have expected a car like this week’s road test subject – the third-generation Subaru Crosstrek (née XV) – to become this enduringly interesting and determinedly alternative brand’s biggest-selling model. And yet it is. Last year, around 40% of Subaru’s (admittedly modest) share of the European market was accounted for by the car we have known as the XV for two full model generations, since its first appearance on our roads in 2012. Now, however, the model’s North American market identity becomes its global one and so, to us at least,…

FIRST REPORT WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if a Baja-ready pick-up truck can handle the Wild West that is British roads As I write this, I’ve just stepped out of a Range Rover Sport SV. You may have read about it in last week’s mag. It’s a tremendously able car, with the broadest abilities of any production vehicle on sale. And yet, and yet: if I had to wake up every morning forever to find just one 4x4 outside my house, I’d still rather it were a Ford Ranger Raptor. I’m hopelessly smitten by it, which is silly, because I really like small, light cars and this is a 5.4m-long, 2454kg off-roader that typically carries one person (me) and returns only 21mpg, even when I’m not using all of…

TWIN TEST Porsche 356 vs Porsche 911 Ultra-rare and ultra-expensive example of the German giant’s first car meets its most famous descendant DRIVEN Volkswagen Passat Now available only as an estate and bigger than before, but is it better too? FEATURE GR Yaris on ice We chart the Finnish links of Toyota’s epic hot hatch EVERY WEEK FIRST DRIVE Mini Countryman SE We’ve sampled the big new Mini in JCW form. Now for an electric one ROAD TEST Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV Undeniably large and luxurious, but how talented is this flagship EV? SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe or see p18…

The future of car design has always looked a bit outlandish. For many decades, car makers have experimented with unexpected ways to leverage technology to make cars safer and more comfortable. Some innovations have remained at the concept stage, but others have beaten the odds and trickled down into production cars. Let’s refresh your memory. BMW Z13 1993 At the 1993 Geneva motor show, BMW previewed the city car of the 21st century. Designer Robert Powell explained how he envisioned a safe, quick and upmarket city car while commuting between his home in Stuttgart and his office in Munich in a 5 Series. Powell’s team placed the Z13’s steering wheel in the middle of the cockpit. Engineers argued that this packaging solution protected the driver from side impacts while making…