Table of contents for September 2017 in CAR UK

If Carlsberg did trackdays… …they’d feel like an RMA trackday. Fine weather isn’t always part of their service but everything they can control is superb: a relaxed but well-organised vibe, scrupulous on-track etiquette and a range of stunning circuits, from Brands to Spa. Recommended: rmatrackdays.com, 01628 779000. Ariel, Elemental and Caterham do Brands, p104 Hours in Our Cars Those are the nervous smiles of two men facing a drive home fractionally longer than average. Phil Mc joked to the Seat ’ guys that he’d drive his long-term-loan Ateca said to : Barcelona ‘Go for it! . ’ We But d after have a loved to have seen his face when they brilliant tour of the design studio and six restorative minutes on El Poblenou beach, the editor-in-chief…

ILLUSTRATION: SENOR SALME BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR designing a vehicle as commercially important as the F-150 pick-up, or with the heritage of the Mustang must, surely, weigh heavy. But Joel Piaskowski doesn’t recall being overly fazed during his time as director of exterior design at Ford from 2010 to 2014. ‘In the back of my mind I knew it was a very significant responsibility, but at the same time I was confident in my own abilities that I could lead a team, and work with my partners. ‘There was one sketch for the F-150 from a young Korean-American designer, John Kim, that really resonated with me. It had a freshness and boldness to it, and with Ford design chief Moray Callum’s backing it was this more progressive interpretation that won the…

IT’S BOTH IMPRESSIVE that the Yaris GRMN has come so far just over a year from conception, and reason to be nervous that Toyota Europe has integrated so many new components so quickly. We’re driving a late but representative prototype on the Nordschleife and nearby roads, and there’s certainly no hiding the rough edges: the GRMN is loud, stiff, the front seats don’t match the rears, and yet this missing link between OAP- and WRC-spec Yaris brims with raw appeal. Whether such a lack of polish is acceptable at £26,295 is a point of contention – it’s a chunk more than rivals like the Peugeot 208 GTi and Fiesta ST. But there’s no doubting the excitement on offer. Other GRMN models exist in Japan, but the Yaris marks the sub-brand’s…

THERE’S A LOT to like about Renault’s ordinary electric Zoe. It’s cute, drives well and costs about the same to run as a Scalextric. But for all its low-speed sprightliness you could never call it fast. But this is no ordinary Zoe. Like a washing machine that’s been fitted with a fusion reactor, the Zoe e-sport has swallowed not one but two motors from Renault’s Formula E racer, sending drive to both ends to give 456bhp. A regular Zoe makes do with 90. Outside it’s still possible to recognise the delicate flower that is Zoe. But this is a Zoe that’s undergone the same transformation as Sarah Connor did between Terminator and T2 – you wouldn’t mess. The wider track makes it look almost as broad as it is long,…

THE PANAMERA SPORT Turismo may look familiar but unplaceable, like someone you met in a bar on holiday ages ago. To save you going crazy trying to remember, the answer is simple: the Sport Turismo first appeared in concept form at the Paris Motor Show in 2012, which now seems like a lifetime ago. Now, as a part of the second-generation Panamera, Porsche has added a second model dubbed Sport Turismo. Although it’s not called an estate, that’s what it is, just about. You’ll spot nothing different from the front, but halfway round the lap the changes hove into view. It’s taller and chunkier, although the Sport Turismo doesn’t break the tape compared to the standard car, with only the height differing by a scant 5mm. Instead it’s the length…

TEST 1 IS IT A MATCH FOR NORWAY’S BEAUTY? TOWARDS THE END of his life Henrik Ibsen, the great Norwegian playwright, was ill in bed when he had a visitor. ‘How’s he getting on?’ the visitor asked the nurse. ‘Oh, he’s a little better today,’ she replied, cheerfully. To which Ibsen roused himself to cry ‘Tvertimod!’ meaning ‘On the contrary!’… and then died. As last words go, that’s magnificent, but I’m not sure it represents the national character of the Norwegian people. Generally speaking, Norwegians are anything but contrary – in fact, they even have a national code of conduct, the Janteloven or Jante Law, to guide their behaviour. These social rules run along the lines of: ‘Don’t think you’re special, don’t think you’re better than anyone else, don’t think…

COCKPIT A place of work and play Interior quality is more Renault than Porsche but the fundamentals – fabulous Sabelt seats, meaty drilled alloy foot-brace, the driving position and the steering wheel – are right. Shift paddles are column-mounted. Normal or Sport modes can be manual or auto, with quicker shifts in Sport. Track is manual only and won’t force-upshift if you hit the limiter. HARDWARE All the good stuff Premier Edition cars wear these beautiful Fuchs wheels. Alpine-badged Brembo calipers bring power while saving weight. Shocks use hydraulic bump-stops and go without adaptive damping – ‘I don’t like adaptive; there is an ideal damping rate for a given spring rate, and we can calculate this,’ explains Philippe Mérimée, Alpine’s chassis guru. REAR VERSUS MID Similar but different ‘The new…

Full-throttle flat shifts through the sequential ’box are pure bliss • Price£98,700 • Engine1995cc 16v turbocharged 4-cylinder, 320bhp @ 5500rpm, 325lb ft @ 3000rpm • Performance2.7sec 0-60mph, 170mph • Weight595kg (dry) • SuspensionDouble-wishbone front and rear £98,700 – I’LL JUST LEAVE that number there for a moment. After all, with big news the best approach is just to come straight out with it, right? But before your head rolls from your shoulders with laughter and sets off across the room, doubled-up at the notion that a barely-there, road-legal track car might dare to ask nearly six figures, it’s worth considering a couple of factors. First off, the c-word: carbonfibre. You, me and every race car engineer on the planet knows that the material is the stuff of dreams when it…

The AMG’s V8 is so good you almost forget the old 6.2. On paper, the new RS5’s V6 kills the old V8 WE’RE IN PRIME Audi territory: blissfully clear early evening motorway, inside lane at a solid 75mph, miles digitally recorded and discarded just as quickly. The climate is spinning silently at 19 degrees, the auto box is locked in eight and there arebarely 2000 revs showing; I feel like I could drive until the road runs out while using just a fraction of the Audi’s ability. Like undercover special forced it is quiet and calm but perpetually prepared with punches of acceleration and kicks to the kidneys. Is this the ultimate do-anything sub-supercar? The answer lies somewhere in the rear-view mirror. The Audi’s window tints shift the colour of…

THE ROADS are so full of slick road-biased SUVs and crossovers that sometimes it’s hard to imagine that they haven’t always been around. But shooting this month’s Alfa Stelvio Giant Test reminded us how different things were only 25 years ago. Cliff, the man with keys to – and giant mental map of – Walters Arena, the off-road playground at the foot of the Brecon Beacons, served up the reminder with his original pre-facelift circa-1993 Land Rover Discovery. Judging by the paint scheme and stickers, it was once a competitor in the gruelling Camel Trophy off-road adventure race. Judging by the way it waded through a massive pit of muddy water while we minced around at the side in our three premium SUVs on pristine road-spec rubber, it thinks it’s…

I HAD TO go to B&Q the other day. Nobody smiled at me, nobody made a polite comment. I bought some lightbulbs, and went home. The trip was shocking for just how uneventful and unmemorable it was. It was the day after the Bentley went back to Crewe, and it was hard not to feel bereft. B-Day +1. Because the thing that really struck me about driving the Continental was not the epic drives, barrelling through big scenery, it was the little trips, the daily grind made remarkable. Not in the way it might be if you’re in a supercar, all fanfare and stress, but instead relaxing and sumptuous, a feeling that you are floating through a world of chaos and clutter on a pillowy ermine cloud, schussed along on…

1 Crikey, that looks racey… This is Hyundai’s new hot hatch, the i30N. We’re averse to saying ‘first’, as Hyundai previously gave us the odd-yet-lovable Veloster Turbo, which if it had to be categorised would be a hot hatch. The i30N is the first in a line of N Performance cars, as Hyundai looks to muscle in to Golf GTI territory. 2 Why call it N? The hot i30 was ‘born in Namyang’ – the former name of the town of Hwaseong in South Korea – which is where Hyundai’s R&D centre is. The initial also stands for Nürburgring, where the majority of the testing was done. Hyundai also says the letter N looks a bit like a chicane… or maybe a hairpin… or something. 3 Gimme some details. Twin…

MEASURING 5789MM (that’s 19ft) from bumper to shiny bumper, Ford’s new F-150 Platinum is big enough to require planning permission if I wanted to park it in my village. To put it into perspective, the latest Fiesta is nearly 1800mm (6ft) shorter. If the F-150’s length isn’t daunting enough then its 3583mm (12ft) wheelbase and 13.7m (45ft) turning circle multiplies every three-point turn by a factor of 11. That could be deeply inconvenient unless you live somewhere as spacious as Texas. Increasingly, though, pick-ups like the F-150 are finding favour with urbanites eager to discover their inner plaid shirt and Cat boots, despite the difficulties of manoeuvring such a large vehicle. Which is where ZF’s rear-wheel steering technology comes into play. We’re already familiar with it on Porsche’s 911 Turbo…

The new Mercedes S-Class is available with a feature called Energizing Comfort Control. It co-ordinates several pre-existing systems to not just improve the comfort of the driver and passengers but to enhance or indeed alter their mood. All you have to do is take your pick of six programmes: Freshness, Warmth, Vitality, Joy, Comfort and Training. Press go to trigger 10 minutes of sensory pampering, with the climate control, seat heating/cooling, cabin lighting, fragrancing and audio all joining in. Training mode, which uses the massage function available on S-Class seats, gives a choice of three workouts. Boffin-picked music will be played automatically, but if your own music has been loaded onto the system then that could be selected, according to its beats per minute. So if you click Vitality, expect…

RECLINING INTO THE cooling, massaging back seat, voice-activating the entertainment and fiddling with the 64 colours of interior LED, it’s a little hard to believe that a war is raging outside. As your driver scratches his chin and tweaks the cruise control settings, safe in the knowledge that the car can momentarily pilot itself, you probably don’t feel like somebody caught in high-powered crossfire. But that’s what’s going on in the usually calm, rarefied world of premium luxury cars: three of the big guns have fired at once. Here we’re driving the heavily updated Mercedes S-Class; a facelift, strictly speaking, but one involving a new engine line-up and some serious tech advances. In this issue we examine the freshly unveiled Audi A8 (see page 14). And we’re expecting the new…

REMEMBER WHEN PEUGEOT wasn’t so bothered about the GTi? We’d like to forget that lapse as well, but it happened. Go back a decade and the 207 GTi and 307 GTi hatches were tepid rather than hot. Then some suit made the declaration that the GTi was dead. In its place we got the RCZ, and while that gorgeous coupe did donate its 197bhp engine to a 308, that only got the letters G and T and not the all-important i. At least Peugeot was good enough to let the i sit on the sidelines rather than sullying its good initial. Then came a change. First, the 208 GTi: a tad soft, but supple and fun, arriving just as Renaultsport gave the Clio RS both barrels by fitting it with…

> VIA EMAIL I have boxes of old CAR magazines in my shed which in their time brought me great enjoyment, when I would sit down and escape into the world of such great writers such as the late LJK Setright. I normally now just browse online and catch up with CAR through its website. I bought the July edition, sucked in by the promise of the hot hatch reviews (Quick Group Test). I really enjoyed the issue. I have read it from front to back and was surprised by the unusual and unexpected articles in the issue. Online CAR is okay, in the flesh it is simply a great read, so well done to all your contributors. Letter of the month wins £25 worth of tickets for the Dream…

The Stelvio gets off to such a good start that the other two are squealing ‘jumped the gun!’ SOME PHRASES WE write so often it’d be handy to have them accessed via a keyboard shortcut. Things like ‘magnetorheological dampers’ to save me looking up the spelling and ‘according to a 6ft colleague’ when writing about interior space. But our hypothetical shortcut key number one has to be this old chestnut: ‘Is this the car that will finally make Alfa Romeo great again?’ In the case of the Stelvio, it really might be. Forget about the Ferrari-inspired Quadrifoglio monsters, and even the regular Giulia, because they’re window dressing besides the Stelvio. If the Stelvio takes off, it’ll be rags to riches for Alfa, because it’s the car it desperately needs to…

There’s no rear wing – I was planning to strap my tent to that > Price From £40,000 > Engine 1998cc 16v supercharged four-cylinder, 310bhp @ 7200, 225lb ft @ 4500rpm > Performance 2.7sec 0-60mph, 155mph > Weight 520kg (dry) > Suspension Double-wishbone front and rear NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, the future of the British Grand Prix is looking a bit wobbly. Unable to balance its books against the gargantuan fees demanded by F1, Silverstone has exercised a break-clause in its contract and, as things stand, there won’t be a British GP at the Northamptonshire circuit beyond 2019. All the more reason to celebrate the race while we can, which is why we’re at Brands Hatch (which hosted its first British GP in 1966, won by Jim Clark, and…

A bouncy, happy atmosphere throbs beneath shifting seas of flags WE’D HEARD thousands of F1 fans camp at Silverstone every year, but the scale of the Woodlands site on GP weekend is still an eye-opener. Rows of neat tent ‘streets’ border giant marquees and pockets of live music. A bouncy, happy atmosphere throbs beneath shifting seas of home-made flags. Hours afterwards, the adrenaline high of piloting these three wild machines around Brands Hatch is only just beginning to wane, and even the chore of extracting our camping gear from our oddball transport and pitching it in front of a small, friendly crowd doesn’t prove too onerous. That done, we realise we’re a little lacking in luxuries. We don’t have a chair, let alone any way to make tea, or a…

High-flying country folk had to tool about in 1950s agricultural machinery F YOU LIVED IN in the country in 1970 and occasionally needed to cross a field without recourse to a Massey Ferguson, a cart-sprung Land Rover was the only option. You just had to put up with the jarring suspension, pedestrian performance and farmyard ethos. High-flying country folk were, in essence, tooling about in a piece of 1950s agricultural machinery. That all changed in 1970 with the Range Rover. Not only did all of the seats face forwards – you know, like a car – it featured long-travel coil-sprung suspension and a V8 engine, yet could still be hosed out at the end of the day. Land Rover marketed it as ‘The car for all seasons’ and it was…

We enlisted the help of Ann Bellamy, product manager for A3 and TT at Audi, to spec us up an RS3, available in either Sportback or – for the first time – Saloon format. Ann chose the four-door as it offers a bit more luggage space. For this price you get a 395bhp 2.5-litre five-cylinder engine coupled to all-wheel drive with a 0-62mph launch time of 4.1sec. Starting price: £43,765 Inside, all RS3s come with a flat-bottomed steering wheel, climate control, Audi’s MMI infotainment system and a Virtual Cockpit instrument cluster. ‘Also, to complement the performance advantage, my preference would be carbon inlays (£850) and the RS Design Pack (£895), which gives you details that are exclusive to our halo cars. When fitted with the front Super Sport seats (£795),…

IT’S COME A LONG WAY Teslas offer a better range than many other electric cars, but if this is a 3-series rival then potential converts might take some persuading: 220 miles for the basic, 310 for the bigger-batteried Model 3. WEIGH TO GO Part of the cost-reduction strategy for the Model 3 involves greater use of steel rather than the aluminium that dominates the S and X. At 1610kg it’s no lightweight, but still much less than the bigger models. REAR-DRIVE ONLY Initial Model 3s have one electric motor, which drives the rear wheels. Twin-motor versions will follow, with drive to all four wheels and the promise of improved performance. The driving experience remains enjoyably analogue, with rock-solid cornering LESS IS LESS Tesla learns quickly. Air vent design is much…

CURVED HEIR Project boss August Achleitner says: ‘A 911 must always be instantly recognisable as a 911… We must also make sure the base 911 is beautiful rather than aggressive.’ Job done, based on these spy shots. TAKE YOUR PICK Convertible will land in the spring of 2019. Don’t be surprised if it’s followed by more variations than ever before. Simple Targa, low-screened Speedster, extreme Spyder and more could be built in small quantities. PORSCHE’S PERENNIAL PERFORMANCE car is nearing the end of its 991 life. Much like Doctor Who’s frequent regenerations over the decades, the next 911 will have roughly the same formula as it’s always had but with its own quirks and personality – and it’s now close to completion. The 992 generation of Stuttgart’s rear-engined sports car…

1 WILL HAMILTON REGRET PLAYING FAIR? Lewis Hamilton said after the Hungarian Grand Prix that he wants to win this world title ‘the right way’. He was answering questions about whether he did the right thing in letting team-mate Valtteri Bottas through into third place within sight of the chequered flag. Hamilton was just returning the favour. Bottas had let him through earlier in the race to have a crack at the race-leading Ferraris. When Hamilton failed to make an impression, he swapped back with Bottas. All very gentlemanly But Ferrari is not playing by the same rules in this title fight. Sebastian Vettel has already been gifted two races this year by team-mate Kimi Räikkönen, in Monaco and Hungary, where the Finn was faster on both occasions, and Merc…

SUPER CLEAN DIESEL – really? Lately we’ve been encouraged to think of diesels as the scourge of our roads, slowly killing us as we breathe their noxious fumes. Well, yes, if you take old diesels that belch clouds of black smoke it would be nonsense to think of them as green. But engineers at components supplier Continental believe they have cracked the conundrum, developing a 2.0-litre VW Golf Mk7 GTD that emits 60% less NOx along with a 4% improvement in fuel consumption and a subsequent reduction in CO2 compared to a standard car. ‘In other words we have resolved a classic conflict of objectives in diesel engine development,’ says José Avila, president of the power-train division, ‘showing that a clean diesel engine with emissions well within the legal limits…

MCLAREN CALLS ITS 570S Spider a convertible without compromise, and from the driving seat of its least expensive convertible, it’s clear why. The steering purity, body composure, thumping performance… if I’d been teleported into the cockpit with the roof up, feeling every nuance of the epic roads that flick through mountains west of Barcelona with the twin-turbo V8 punching to 7500rpm, I’d never have guessed this was a convertible. This, of course, is unusual: along with a price hike (£164,750 for the Spider, £145,305 for the Coupe), sunshine at speed is typically accompanied by an increase in weight and a decrease in performance, handling and refinement. Blame that on a wobblier structure, extra bracing to compensate, and a tent over the cabin. McLaren sidesteps these pitfalls in two ways. First,…

ONE DECADE AFTER its unveiling, Modena has facelifted the GranTurismo for 2018. Why? Well, there’s still a couple of years until the launch of the all-new flagship GT, the platform of which is going to underpin a fleet of electrically assisted Maseratis. So here’s a new car that’s growing old, but isn’t it doing so gracefully? Those luscious Pininfarinapenned curves look sumptuous as we approach the car in Brescia at the foot of the Italian Alps. The version we’re driving is the sportiest on offer – the MC – but it isn’t as hardcore as the now-defunct MC Stradale despite looking roughly the same. Gone is the neat automated manual transaxle gearbox option. Instead you get a ZF six-speed torque-converter auto, which might have been fine 10 years ago, but…

IF THE 308 GTi is subtle, its harder, faster, lighter and louder Racing Cup sibling is scary. Once you’ve fought your way in past the roll cage, squeezed your hips into a seat designed for racing drivers who’ve been fasting since the age of 14, and crushed your balls with a six-point harness, then there’s a rigmarole of buttons to press before the engine booms into life in front of you, all around you, seemingly inside your helmet. Except then it turns out to be remarkably easy to drive. The low-set seating position means downhill left-hand corners (in this left-hand-drive car) are a bit of an issue around the Ascari race circuit where we tried it, but banging through the sequential ’box is bliss, the grip (from both slicks and…

1 KEEP OFF THE GRASS The other day I went for a walk in the park here in Geneva and came across a 20-supercar gathering. I spotted several Lambos, 458s, 599, i8, R8, 911s, 718, an Aston and a couple of Bentleys. The sound produced by those beauties when leaving for a ride in the Alps was something to remember. Except for the i8 of course! Simply amazing. FABIEN GENTIT 2 TOY STORY Aged 14 I built this Tamiya RC car. Thirty five years on, my 14-year-old nephew got to sit in the running full-size replica at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. IAN HOLMES 3 IT'S BMW'S WORLD. WE JUST LIVE IN IT Just back from a road trip to Munich to visit BMW Museum and Welt. Great time over…

It’s the A110 Berlinette you picture when you hear the word ‘Alpine’ SUNDAY EVENING, summer 1968, Normandy. The sultry heat of the day is finally fading, the cooler evening air perfumed with the scent of fields all around. The road is still warm to the touch, heat radiating into the cloudless sky. There is no noise but for the breeze through the long grass. Then, from the south, a rising engine note. High revs and swift gear-changes betray someone in a hurry, the driver’s foot-to-the-floor commitment punctuated only by blink-of-an-eye upshifts, clean and quick. Long after it first made itself heard, the little mustard-yellow sports car crests the rise in the road, hurtles past and arcs into the fast right-hander that’ll take it out of sight and on to Dieppe,…

To improve on the current Phantom was hard. Though 14 years old, it is still ahead of any Bentley in overall comfort ROLLS-ROYCE MAKES ‘the best car in the world’. Or at least it did 100 years ago. The 40/50, more romantically known as the Silver Ghost, was a car of exquisite engineering execution, if not technical innovation. Rolls-Royces that followed – including the Phantom I that succeeded it in 1925 – became progressively less distinguished. But just as German dynasties shaped our Royal Family, so the Germans saved the nearest thing we have to motoring royalty. The first BMW-era Phantom, the series VII of 2003, was very probably ‘the best car in the world’ – certainly a few notches above any Bentley saloon and more refined than any Mercedes…

The 310 feels spicy on the road but under-seasoned here • Price£28,990 (factory built in S spec) • Engine1596cc 16v four-cylinder, 152bhp @ 7000rpm, 124lb ft @ 5600rpm • Performance4.9sec 0-60mph, 127mph • SuspensionDouble-wishbone front, de Dion rear • Weight540kg SHARING THE BRITISH GRAND PRIX with Silverstone on alternating years from the 1960s through to the 1980s, the full Brands Hatch Grand Prix layout veers off the little Indy circuit just before the smaller end of the kidney and strikes out into the woods like a proper European classic, cut from the same hallowed cloth as old (or new) Spa or the old Hockenheim. Out the back it’s narrow, mostly blind and very, very fast – goodness knows what it felt like for the likes of Mansell and Piquet, going…

A COUPLE OF months in and I’m getting used to the RF’s strengths and its quirks. Overall I love its compact footprint, the way you can dart into gaps and nip into parking spaces. And I’m still thrashing the guts out of it at every opportunity, because it seems a crime not to. But those are things you learn the first time you drive it – what about the stuff that only emerges with time? TEENY BOOT The MX-5’s size-zero packaging comes at a price – it takes three shopping bags and a bunch of bananas to fill the boot, and if you’re going away for a long weekend, two onboard-size wheelie bags is about your limit. The passenger footwell is too narrow for anything bigger than a briefcase (if…