What Car? December 2021

Back in 2011, I attended the launch of a striking new saloon from a recently created brand, which promised luxury with a green twist. The car had quite a few flaws, but my biggest worry was whether the company itself would be around for long enough to look after the vehicles of its customers. The car in question was actually the Fisker Karma (below) rather than the Tesla Model S, which one of my colleagues wrote the first drive on a few months later. However, while my doubts about Fisker Automotive proved justified, I would probably have expressed similar concerns for the longevity of Tesla had I been the one to review that early Model S. How wrong I would have been. ‘The Tesla Model 3 is regularly among the best-selling cars…

The What Car? Target Price is the maximum you should pay for your new car and is set by our team of mystery shoppers. Every day they haggle to see what discounts are available across the UK, and those savings form the basis of the deals offered by our free New Car Buying service. In a lot of cases, however, you can save even more. Just head to whatcar.com/new-car-deals and select the car that you’re interested in, and participating dealers will compete for your business. It’s all done through our website, so they won’t see your details until you’re ready.…

YOU’VE GOT TO hand it to Tesla. A decade ago it was nowhere, and even five years ago, those of us supposedly in the know gave the American brand next to no hope of challenging the traditional big car makers. Today, though, it’s bigger than BMW, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. And even if you scoff at the sometimes fickle nature of the stock markets, Tesla is finally delivering profits and competing at the pointy end of the sales charts. Indeed, for much of the past two years the Model 3 saloon has been Britain’s top-selling electric car, and for several of those months it was the bestselling car of all. What’s behind the incredible growth? Well, like most success stories, equal slices of flair and fortune. Tesla had…

Model S On sale Early 2022 First introduced to the UK in 2014, the Model S luxury car will get a big interior update early next year, with the portrait-orientated touchscreen infotainment system of today’s car ditched in favour of a 17.0in landscape unit. This runs new software with the processing power of 10 teraflops (yes, that’s really a thing), meaning the games you can play on it are comparable with those on modern consoles. Also due soon is the Model S Plaid, which uses three electric motors to produce a whopping 1006bhp. That’s said to be enough for 0-60mph in just 1.99sec. Model X On sale Early 2022 Tesla’s large Model X SUV will get the same interior changes as the Model S. But while official pictures show both cars with a new steering wheel (which…

THE GRANDSPHERE CONCEPT car is a first glimpse of the model that will replace the Audi A8 in 2025 – a car that has long been the default luxury saloon for those who want the back seat ambience of a limousine without the ostentatiousness of a Bentley or Rolls-Royce. The Grandsphere will have Level 4 autonomous driving capability, so it will do the driving for large stretches of each journey. The driver will only have to be in control in complex urban environments or on twisty country lanes. On the outside, the Grandsphere looks like a classic grand tourer, with a long bonnet, flowing lines along the bodywork and a gently curved roofline. Inside, the Grandsphere has seating for four, and the rear doors are hinged at the back with no central pillars.…

LOOKS GET YOU noticed, and although judging a car’s styling is a subjective business (after all, what one buyer would describe as beautiful would have others running for the showroom door), we think most people will agree that this latest Peugeot 308 is, well, a bit of a looker And it needs to be, because standing out in the family car game is like trying to get through the public auditions for Britain’s Got Talent. To help it, then, this new 308 is available with two plug-in hybrid engine options, as well as a 1.2-litre petrol and a 1.5-litre diesel, the latter of which – on UK roads – is likely to be as rare as a golden buzzer from Simon Cowell. Let’s start with the 1.2-litre petrol. This 129bhp engine is the…