Table of contents for December 2017 in CAR UK

Big fun in cars If, like editor Ben (and Gordon Murray), you wander around telling anyone who’ll listen that cars have there become ’s nothing needlessly like a , unhelpfully and unsustainably huge kei car , to prove the point. Go cheeky online drive and in search a tiny Japanese for ‘CAR magazine 5 things Tokyo’ Big A coffee stop at Spiez Switzerland, during the launch of the new Rolls-Royce Phantom. Straight after the croissants and cappuccino, our man Gavin Green dashed out to his car and tried unsuccessfully to start it. Momentarily … ‘That baffled ’s the , he realised the car’s peerless V12 was already idling second time I made that mistake,’ admits Gavin. ‘In my defence it is the quietest car I’ve ever driven.’ Rolls-Royce Phantom first…

So macho Concept shows Subaru means business again. Let’s hope some of that flair makes it through to the new production Impreza and XV. Pride of place on Subaru’s Tokyo motor show stand was taken by the Viziv Performance concept, a super-macho four-door saloon with a boxer engine and wheel arches so chunky they could have been stolen from a beach buggy. It’s all-wheel drive, and apparently inspired by the Legacy, Impreza and WRX, but is, according to one well-placed inside source, ‘just to show and gain public feedback for now’. Tokyo also saw the unveiling of high-performance Subaru special editions. The 207bhp BRZ STI Sport features a host of suspension, exterior and interior upgrades, while the S208 edition of the WRX STI has been tuned to 329bhp and limited…

APART FROM new livery the electric single-seaters will look and sound very much the same as in previous years when they line up for the new season. But appearances are deceptive, as there have been some subtle but telling changes to the cars’ tech spec. It might not seem much, but upping the power available during the race from 170kWh to 180 while reducing the car’s weight by 35lb has proved a challenge for the teams’ engineers and designers, as DS Virgin Racing’s tech chief Sylvain Filippi explains: ‘You can only find that sort of weight reduction in the powertrain and that’s tricky because it’s about shaving mass off the motor, inverter, transmission, the bell housing etc whilst increasing power for the race. That’s what Formula E is all about,…

THE OILY BITS are made and designed in Germany, the engineers and designers mostly work in Munich, the chairman is called Schwarzenbauer and the CEO has three umlauts in this name. Even the leather – 12 hides per car – comes from Bavarian bulls. Yet there is still a wonderfully grand Englishness about the new Rolls-Royce Phantom, just as there was with its BMWengineered predecessor. It’s made on Lord March’s green and pleasant Goodwood estate, the carpentry and leathersmithery owe much to the time-honoured boat building and saddlery skills of the Sussex coast and, when you climb on board, you’re inside a stately home’s sitting room on wheels. (You can almost smell the log fire). There’s now even a gallery for specially commissioned art on this, the latest and greatest…

SEAT PRESIDENT Luca de Meo is late for dinner at the Arona launch: he’s hunkered down in front of a TV watching the latest pronouncement from Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. Just days earlier, the launch hotel was switched from Barcelona to the beach resort of Sitges to avoid independence demonstrations. Seat employs 14,500 people in the divided region. It has three production centres in Catalonia and will be affected if the region breaks away from Spain. All the uncertainty surrounding the British car industry post-Brexit – the origin of car parts, import/export duties –could engulf the Catalan car maker too. Or should that be ‘Spanish car maker’? Seat is currently examining whether its registered office should be relocated to protect its EU status. All this disruption masks the turnaround at…

ALTHOUGH THE GT2 RS AND MISSION E ARE ABSOLUTE OPPOSITES IN CHARACTER AND CONTENT, THEIR DNA IS SHARED WITH PORSCHE’S electric future, what you see is what you’ll get, and that’s a promise. When the Mission E – aka project J1 – goes into production in 2019, it will look like a pragmatic metamorphosis of the stunning concept here, first unveiled at the 2015 Frankfurt show. So it will have conventional B-posts instead of those eye-catching suicide doors, enough headroom front and rear for you to wear a helmet, and a more manageable width that won’t lead to quite so many precious wheels being kerbed in tight car parks. The basic shape, however, is pretty much cast in stone. Among the items due to reappear on the real thing are…

BOB ATKINS AMG: WHEN I think of those three little letters, I think of 50 years of noise and power, and a plenty of very un-Germanic daftness. To me, AMG cars should be shamelessly extreme, the pinnacle of how a Mercedes-Benz can be brutalised, and I shudder at the dilution of the brand with some wobbly and garish SUVs, while recently there has been more bastardising of the badge with AMG-Line diesel mile-munchers pretending to sport 400bhp but delivering a steady 60mpg instead. So when the opportunity came up to drive an AMG car for an extended period of time, we could have gone for some sort of 63, and the end result of the test would be that we went sideways a lot, got scared a lot, made a…

SUMMER SUN, FAMILY, classic racing and a 2017 Alfa Romeo Guilia Quadrifoglio: it was one of those days that leaves you blissfully satisfied, like simultaneously devouring a box set and a box of Lindor Milk Truffles. Castle Combe wasn’t just hosting the West Country Cracker Race Meeting, but also a gathering of my motorsport-bred inlaws, including the introduction of two-month-old nephew Ioan and my daughters to motorsport. The Oakhams welcomed the Giulia into the fold. ‘This is the first car of yours I’ve liked,’ said father-in-law Chris, creakily lowering himself into the subterranean driver’s seat and fiddling with paddles that combine a tactile springiness and a percussive click. Then, laden with camping chairs and children, we left the Alfa in the Castle Combe car park/field and headed for the action,…

ROCKINGHAM’S International Sportscar Long layout uses the first of the circuit’s four banked turns, adding a unique complexion to a circuit that often struggles for appeal with the likes of Silverstone, Donington and Snetterton all less than two hours away. In an Academy-spec Caterham the banked corner is taken flat-out in fourth gear when it’s not raining, the ideal line being just inside the white line that denotes the track limit. But throughout the qualifying session for our recent race at Rockingham, round six of the championship, it was raining; hard. Wipers-going-full-bore-but-making-no-difference raining. Turn one became a lift and a gentle re-application of a steadying throttle once into the corner, with the ideal line a little higher on the banking to steer clear of the friction-free rubber on the normal…

MY 530D M SPORT isn’t a true sports saloon (the M5 will be along shortly to scratch that itch) but as it’s a BMW wearing M Sport badging you’d expect a degree of enthusiasm. And to an extent that’s what you get. Configure the 5-series to Sport everything and the powertrain switches from smooth to jumpy while the body control tautens noticeably, ready for some more ambitious corner-entry speeds. But you still drive the 5-series like a traffic cop; fast, smooth, undramatic. Something about its size and heft makes you adopt this unsmiling style and it is satisfying, if not tingly-palmed thrilling. For that you need a true sports saloon, like Phil’s Alfa Giulia QV (page 136). I borrowed it for a week, failed to wash it and went through…

Make it stand out from the rest of the range ‘From now on we would like to focus on differentiation,’ says exterior design chief Andreas Mindt, acknowledging that successful efforts to establish the Audi brand worldwide may have come at the expense of a Xerox model line-up. ‘Cars from the various model series need to be differentiated. The Prologue concept radiator grille appears on the A8, A7 and [next year’s new] A6, but in different forms. All elements on the A8 need to be proud and upright, but the A7 is lower. ‘Technology and design need to go hand in hand together.’ Keep the classic coupe proportions ‘The A8 sounded the starting gun. It’s all about status and prestige,’ says Audi design chief Marc Lichte. ‘The A7 is all about…

THE NEXT MCLAREN off the rank – at high speed, obviously – will be its ‘ultimate track car’, a brutal, bewinged monster to make the 675 LT feel like an S-Class. Codenamed P15, the new supercar won’t make its show debut until March, but it’s already sold out. As is the second ‘Ultimate Series’ McLaren, codenamed BP23, which is also in development. Ultimate Series cars are the daddies of the McLaren range, sitting above the 720S Super Series and 570 Sports Series, and available only in limited runs. And with BP23 due in late 2019, two of them will be released in the space of just 18 months. That illustrates the pace of change at McLaren Automotive, which aims to grow 44 per cent to 5000 cars by 2020. McLaren…

1 Something’s up: new hairdo for the C4 Cactus? Indeed, Citroën has revamped its small crossover, in a bid to differentiate it from its small crossover, the C3 Aircross. The first casualty of Citroën’s attempt to redefine the Cactus as a regular hatch is the bodywork-protecting Airbump, gone from nose and tail and demoted to the side sills. 2 Errrrm, okay, I think I understand... C4 Cactus prices start around £2500 higher than the Aircross’s, which requires an injection of extra posh. New LED lamps front and rear, and the elimination of roof bars and tailgate cladding complete the effect. New paint colours can be paired with gloss black or white, red or chrome detailing. 3 Any bigger changes under the skin? Yup, Citroën’s new comfort suspension with Progressive Hydraulic…

‘Audi is stepping forward, beyond our hybrid understanding from Le Mans’ ALLAN MCNISH is in limbo. We spoke to the endurance race legend in the gap between the final pre-season tests at Valencia and the start of the 2017-18 campaign in Hong Kong. So, Allan, are you ready? ‘You’re never ready. If you’re a driver or an engineer, we always want more time. But racing is the best deadline date. Either you’re good enough or you’re not. ‘As a manufacturer you get 15 test days, and customer teams get an extra six days. So testing on your own is very, very limited. The Valencia test was three days for everybody together. Sitting down after the test, going through it all, however you look at the results there are two big…

IT’S PROBABLY pretty easy to think of the Jaguar XJ as old hat – if indeed you think of it at all. Jag’s flagship has been around since 2009, after all. The sleek Heart of Gold exterior gives any sighting a certain sense of occasion, of course, but the interior, with its double-bubble central ventilation binnacle and chintzy analogue clock, comes across as quaint, regardless of the update to the infotainment system. Still, in a sea of constantly churning German metal – note the recent S-Class facelift and all-new A8 – it at least offers something positively different, so it behoves Jaguar to make some noise about it occasionally. And if it’s noise you want, a Velocity Blue XJR575 is a promising option, flattening any ageing metaphorical hat with the…

DRIVING THE LOTUS Evora GT430 on a track is a bit, I imagine, like going for a jog with Mo Farah. No matter how fast you are, he’s faster. His limits are much higher than yours. And so it is with the GT430. That’s because its DNA is more race than road: the GT430 takes its inspiration, and many components, from the Evora S campaigned in the British GT championship by Lotus chassis engineer Gavan Kershaw. As a result, it has the distinction of being the fastest Lotus road car ever, and the more dubious honour of being the most expensive. It’s significantly faster than both the Evora 400 base model and the more hardcore Evora Sport 410, a car which had seemingly squeezed every last gram of weight and…

Having owned both an M4 (two trips to Poland, one to Germany and one to Slovenia) and currently a 440i (one trip to Poland, one to Biarritz and one to Applecross on the west coast of Scotland) the 440i is a truly great long-distance car – 120mph at 3000rpm in eighth gear in Germany and 34mpg. It’s everything the M4 should be but isn’t. It has a great eight-speed ZF auto ’box with paddles rather than the clunkomatic DCT box; much less tyre noise; just as comfortable and nearly as quick; excellent roadholding too and £20,000 cheaper. Choice between the two to buy and own? The 440i without a doubt!…

There has never been an SUV, a Bentley, a car with such a wide remit as this FROM RICH PIG farmer to boss of Big Pharma, the audience for luxury SUVs has shifted radically since the first Range Rover crested a muddy brow and loomed imperiously into view in 1970. These days everyone wants an SUV, and why should the hyper-rich be any different? Having been slow to latch on to the concept, the world’s most exclusive car brands are about to flood the market with 4x4s that are every bit as expensive and eye-catching as any supercar. And a world away from the clunky manual-shift and plastic hose-out interiors of the original Rangie. Lamborghini is poised to launch the Urus. Aston has a crossover in…

KIA HAS TRANSFORMED itself from a company selling other people’s cast-offs to one that’s looking to go toe-to-toe with the very best. The current Sorento has already pushed Kia into £40k territory, but the Stinger faces an even tougher battle. Will notoriously badge-conscious BMW and Audi buyers really be prepared to drive a car whose logo still carries more ‘budget’ baggage than Lidl’s travel section? Kia knows the Stinger has an uphill struggle so is winching it to the top with the help of a bigger body, smaller price and, at least with the GT-S version tested here, top speed and power figures that eclipse all of its rivals. The majority of Stingers bought will be four-cylinder cars powered by a 197bhp 2.2 turbodiesel, with most of the remaining customers…

The road tyres hang on well, with decent feedback, and they warm up quicker than slicks When every driver in the Junior field pulls away smoothly from the assembly area I’m hugely impressed. As I find out when I drive the car myself, the clutch action is so abrupt it might as well be a switch, and the plated diff winds up as soon as you put any lock on. ‘Most drivers stall first time,’ says my guide, former Clio Cup driver and now established BTCC racer Josh Cook. You sit behind an adjustable steering column, and the same digital instruments as a Carrera Cup car – ‘Clio Cup cars are often described as a mini-Porsche,’ he says – and your fingertips meet the shift paddles. It’s a paddleshift gearbox,…

Audi’s huge engineering teams are just twiddling their thumbs, aren’t they? VW will provide the e-matrix for the group’s smaller cars; work on PPE, the premium electric architecture, is being split between Audi and Porsche; all future sports cars are to be hatched in Weissach. What’s left for your guys to do? ‘You could not be more wrong. Starting with the A8, we are about to renew all core products from A1 to A7. Then there is PPE, which brings a lot of hard work to realise the targeted 30 per cent saving for all brands involved. And Audi is the group s centre of excellence for autonomous driving, fuel cells and electronic architectures.’ What’s your view on plug-in hybrids? ‘An Audi PHEV should be performance-orientated, not merely CO2-focused. Of…

BARRY HAYDEN ‘HI BEN, ARE you coming to Rockingham for the Ferrari shoot? I thought we could swap cars, see what we think.’ So went Mark Walton’s email pitch. To be honest, I wasn’t massively keen. I’d driven the MX-5 before, thought I preferred driving the GT86, and wondered how I’d manage with two kids but without the Toyota’s rear seats. But Mark exudes a kind of calm persuasion with a glinty madness in his eyes, and the next thing he’s pulling a huge slide past me in the GT86. The swap is on. I have a look round the Mazda and first impressions are good. The design is tauter and crisper than the Toyota’s, giving it a more premium feel, though I still rate the GT86’s looks. The MX-5’s…

A WHITWORTH SUMMER holiday isn’t complete without a jaunt to France for a fortnight of wandering around deserted villages waiting for the blasted bakeries and coffee shops to open. This month I’ll cover what made the big Scenic the ideal travelling companion. Next month we’ll roll up our sleeves and look at what irked us. Enhanced with a sleek Thule roof box and towbar-mounted bike rack, the Renault easily swallowed everything we threw at it. This was impressive, considering the must-have list included rollerblades, cricket bat and barbecue. After a wonderfully smooth crossing on Brittany Ferries’ Normadie, we headed south for Vienne. A midway overnight stay meant we were in no rush, and with the adaptive cruise control set to 70mph, the Renault returned an excellent 47.1mpg. The sat-nav guided…

YOU WOULDN’T HAVE seen our Audi Q5 in last month’s 2017 Sports Car Giant Test, but we couldn’t have pulled the feature together without it. Like the consummate roadie, the Audi worked tirelessly behind the scenes, ferrying photographers and their kit around and providing shelter from the occasionally inclement Welsh weather, while also operating as a mobile canteen and rubbish dump. The ability to slide and recline the rear seats proved handy (that’s the £350 Rear Seat Plus option), and the way the seats lock down securely when folded is a nice touch. We also made use of the panoramic sunroof (£1400) for some of the tracking shots you saw in the feature, while the pricey £2000 air suspension option proved it was worth every penny at literally every turn…

If they hid the badge you’d think this was the work of a luxury manufacturer Superior interior Nothing wrong with Mazda’s current cabins, but this is several leagues higher: simple, clean, classy, with the important stuff prominently analogue, and infotainment kept in the background. Shape of things to come Clear, confident lines uncluttered by any fussy details: the Vision Coupe doesn’t preview a specific future model, but vividly demonstrates Mazda’s brimming design confidence. THE TYPHOON that threatened to take out Tokyo city only delayed Mazda’s recent concept unveiling by 24 hours and soon passed. By comparison the winds of change blowing through the company’s planning, design and engineering departments show no signs of abating. Japan’s fifth-biggest individual marque by annual sales – Mazda sold a relatively modest 1.6 million cars…

1 Looks familiar… Aston’s new convertible version of the DB11 doesn’t make any radical departures visually, but the execution is very neat. The roof itself is a powered soft-top and is claimed to be super-quiet, thanks to the use of eight fabric layers. Choose from three roof colours. 2 Does it have that V8 you were raving about in the coupe last month? Yes, that AMG-sourced 503bhp twin-turbo 4.0 V8 is in fact the only engine offered in the Volante. The V12 would be too heavy for the roofless Aston to use without compromising its handling. 3 So weight’s a bit of an issue? Yes and no. It clocks in at a hefty 1870kg, but that doesn’t stop it hitting 62mph in a perky 4.1 seconds. The DB11 Volante is,…

Honda Sports EV Concept Honda pretty much stole the 2017 Frankfurt motor show with the Urban EV, and just weeks later it stole the Tokyo show with the electric city car’s new sibling. The Sports EV was designed in a flash to be a little electric bundle of joy; it’s compact, has just the two seats and rides low to the ground – so it’s something for enthusiasts to get their teeth into. There aren’t any tech specs yet, but we do know that the Sports EV uses the same dedicated electric car platform as the Urban EV, currently in development. NEED TO KNOW • What is it? Honda’s sweet follow-up to the allegedly impossible-to-follow Urban EV • Tech specs Sits on a dedicated EV platform, but even Honda doesn’t…

The Jag’s now far lighter and the centre of gravity is lower Fixed front All cars run the same Dallara chassis with a shared aerodynamic package and identical front suspension. Minimum weight is 880kg, including driver – a challenge for engineers, given the 250kg weight of the batteries. Cooling is a challenge Air to cool the batteries comes via the right-side radiator while the gap on the left sends air on to the electric motor and inverter. They get very hot during a race; successful cooling can put you on the podium. Leading from the back Teams can tailor the rear of the car, where they can choose how they position the battery, inverter, electric motor and gearbox for optimal weight distribution and cooling, as well as tweaking the software.…

MOTORSPORT IS supposed to be the last frontier or pinnacle of technology of the car industry and now we are going through a big change from combustion to electric. Demand in the commercial market was not created because of Formula E, but more that it’s a by-product of the world changing towards electric technology. The automotive industry needs to promote and create that technology, which is why the FIA created Formula E. It would be almost impossible to turn hardcore motorsport fans into Formula E fans. The key point is to bring new fans. To catch the younger generation, to catch the millennials, to engage with fans that, when they buy their first car, it will be electric. The average age of a traditional motorsport fan is increasing a lot…

ALEX TAPLEY It’s like riding a rollercoaster that goes from zero to full speed in seconds Big wheels, grooved rubber 18in wheels wear grooved, road car-style Michelins as part of Formula E’s drive for road-relevance. The same tyres must work in wet and dry. As the sidewalls are far slimmer than those on most single-seaters’ tyres, the suspension has to do more work than a car with a smaller wheel and deeper sidewall. Driver-led regeneration Brakes play no role in recharging the battery, but the driver pulls a paddle on the steering wheel to add negative torque through the electric motor of up to 150kW. People power Drivers don’t normally get a push-to-pass function, but there is Fanboost – fans vote on social media up to six minutes into the…

HAVE WE REACHED peak crossover yet? Volkswagen certainly doesn’t think so. Wolfsburg says that one in three cars sold globally are now SUVs and the segment will grow in the coming years – a point emphasised by the T-Roc you see here effectively taking over the ageing Scirocco coupe’s production line at the Portuguese production facility. The funky T-Roc is of course just one small part of VW’s massive SUV product offensive that’s been on the boil since 2016 when the new Tiguan came out. Since then, we’ve seen a seven-seat Tiguan Allspace, the massive Atlas in the US and Teramont in China, plus there are plans for an even smaller T-Cross (VW’s answer to the Seat Arona driven in this issue) next year and a fresh Touareg too. The…

THE BMW X3 has come a long way, and not just from the Spartanburg, South Carolina manufacturing plant where it’s built. In 14 years, it’s reinvented itself from runt of the litter to a mid-size SUV that genuinely makes you question if you need an X5. Or if a 3-series Touring would be that much more involving to drive. This new model is the third generation, and key stats include a 51mm stretch to the wheelbase, 55kg less mass to lug, and a choice of SE, xLine or M Sport trim levels – the latter predicted to garner 60 per cent of sales. BMW UK hopes to shift around 11,000 X3s each year as it does battle with the Audi Q5, Mercedes GLC, Volvo XC60 and Land Rover Discovery Sport.…

1 VOLVO MOJO Immaculate cool-looking Volvo PV444 in Tolo, Greece. From a time when Volvos had real character! ERIC NICOL 2 LA DOLCE VITA A couple of McLarens in front of the Sanremo Casino made for a perfect start of the day before going to the beach. Thanks to my girlfriend Letizia for waiting for me while I was snapping pictures! ALBERTO VALTORTA 3 THERE’S THE RUB Some Trabants actually had a happy ending... JOHN CLUCAS 4 RARING TO GO My copies of CAR never go to waste – as soon as I finish reading one, my five-year-old nephew eagerly snatches it from me for his collection. Car mad even at this age, he has an amazing ability to recognise almost any car from just a glimpse. ANGUS GRANT 5…

“I was really born at Ferrari. I had half of my life with them, knowing one way of working: Ferrari’s” FOR A MOMENT I wonder whether Stefano Domenicali is the right guy to be leading Lamborghini, one of the world’s most extrovert car makers. If you’ve ever daydreamed of returning to your old school in triumph and finally exorcising the long-buried hurt of being passed over for sports teams, ignored by the opposite sex and told you’ll never amount to much with a display of your subsequent success (please say it’s not just me) – well, this arrival would do nicely. Stefano arrives at his old school in Imola in a yellow Lamborghini Huracan Performante with a police escort. The school is having a road-safety day and Stefano is the…

Unlike old Audi petrol V6s, it will spin close to 7000rpm and remain hush-quiet YOU’RE CRUISING along a motorway when the traffic starts to slow. Soon you’re doing the familiar stop-crawl-stop-accelerate-stop routine that will continue until you pass the roadworks or lose your mind. In the new A8 there is an alternative: engage Traffic Jam Pilot and the Audi will accelerate, brake and steer all by itself while you sit back and write a strongly worded letter to the Minister of Transport. There are some restrictions on the technology, however. Firstly, the practical limits: the A8 can only self-drive on multi-lane freeways with a centre divider, will only go up to 38mph, and can only operate in the lane it’s already travelling in. And secondly, there’s the law. Audi classes…

There are great estates, coupes and saloons at lower prices than M equivalents BMW’S MOTORSPORT DIVISION was a slow burner. There was no lack of engineering brilliance or race success – just think of the CSL Batmobile racers rampaging through the ’70s European Touring Car Championship. But with the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that BMW was oddly slow in milking the commercial benefits of having so much in-house excellence. Like its CSL big brother, the 2002 Turbo didn’t feature any mention of the letter M, and even the original roadgoing M car, the M1, had just a single discreet badge on its rump. Since then, the Munich sub-division has more than made up for lost time by churning out generation after generation of iconic high-performance machine –…

ALEX TAPLEY ‘I MUST GO, my people need me,’ I imagined our space-age fuel-sipper thinking as it silently floated out of CAR’s office car park for the last time, returning to its home planet of… Epsom, Surrey. After a year and more than 17,000 miles, we’re happy the Hypersonic Red Toyota Prius was part of our fleet. Walk towards it in a car park and it never looked particularly inviting. Even after a year, that aerodynamic ‘melted Joker’ face could still make small children wince. But once you’d parked your backside on the soft leather armchair, that big swooping dashboard always raised a smile, while the Elysium-esque white surfaces put you in a calm place, and the large glass area let in a lot of light and gave a good…