CAR UK December 2021

‘The crisis would be Obama’s first order of business’ If life’s about timing, Barack Obama’s was a touch unfortunate. Lehman Brothers Holdings announced it would file for bankruptcy in September 2008. Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States in January 2009. Whether he liked it or not, dealing with the biggest economic meltdown since the Depression would be his first order of business – ready and waiting for him just as soon as he’d unpacked his box files and set his computer desktop image (a Hawaiian beach scene, I imagine, given the stress of the job and the fact that he spent his formative years on the island, surfing and studying). The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was the moment the ominous distant rumblings of economic catastrophe cracked into a…

‘The crisis would be Obama’s first order of business’ If life’s about timing, Barack Obama’s was a touch unfortunate. Lehman Brothers Holdings announced it would file for bankruptcy in September 2008. Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States in January 2009. Whether he liked it or not, dealing with the biggest economic meltdown since the Depression would be his first order of business – ready and waiting for him just as soon as he’d unpacked his box files and set his computer desktop image (a Hawaiian beach scene, I imagine, given the stress of the job and the fact that he spent his formative years on the island, surfing and studying). The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was the moment the ominous distant rumblings of economic catastrophe…

THE MONTH ACCORDING TO CAR ‘We talk about GFC as an objective,’ chuckles Renault Group’s vice-president of design, Laurens van den Acker. GFC? ‘Great f**ing cars,’ he elucidates. The experienced Dutchman, one of car design’s great strategic thinkers, has been fired up by regime change at Renault – or the ‘Renaulution’, the coinage favoured by new CEO Luca de Meo. The industry leader – who broke through as one of the masterminds of Fiat’s reborn 500, before running Audi marketing and VW’s Seat division – is ripping up the company after his July 2020 arrival coincided with a €7.3 billion half-year loss. De Meo’s turnaround plan? Cutting costs, naturally – €2.5 billion slashed by 2023. Key to this is boosting collaboration with Renault’s Alliance partners, Nissan and Mitsubishi: by 2025, 80 per cent…

THE MONTH ACCORDING TO CAR ‘We talk about GFC as an objective,’ chuckles Renault Group’s vice-president of design, Laurens van den Acker. GFC? ‘Great f**ing cars,’ he elucidates. The experienced Dutchman, one of car design’s great strategic thinkers, has been fired up by regime change at Renault – or the ‘Renaulution’, the coinage favoured by new CEO Luca de Meo. The industry leader – who broke through as one of the masterminds of Fiat’s reborn 500, before running Audi marketing and VW’s Seat division – is ripping up the company after his July 2020 arrival coincided with a €7.3 billion half-year loss. De Meo’s turnaround plan? Cutting costs, naturally – €2.5 billion slashed by 2023. Key to this is boosting collaboration with Renault’s Alliance partners, Nissan and Mitsubishi: by 2025,…

Bernd Körber, the down-to-earth boss of Mini, has outlined how it’ll go electric by 2030. ‘We’ll use two architectures – a bespoke EV matrix developed in Munich but assembled in China, and a comprehensive evolution of the existing platform,’ he says. A new three-door hatch will be electric from the start when it arrives in 2023. ‘A Mini is a Mini, no matter whether it is battery-or petrol-powered.’ In 2024, a five-door electric compact crossover is expected to play in the same league as the Peugeot 2008 and Vauxhall Mokka-e, and may reprise the Paceman name. Those who prefer engines to e-motors can choose from three models using a revised UKL1 platform from 2025: a three-and five-door hatch and a cabriolet. The next Countryman, built in Dresden, will merge much closer…

Factfile POWERTRAIN 78kWh battery, all-wheel drive, 373-mile range CHASSIS Steel monocoque DUE 2023 1 GROWING FAMILY Polestar’s badging makes it easy to guess what the next model will be called. And now we know what shape it’ll be: the boss has confirmed to CAR that next year’s 3, a large SUV, will be joined in 2023 by a smaller e-crossover called the 4, likely to take design cues from the Precept concept (pictured). 2 A SLEEKER KIND OF SUV The Polestar 4’s lower roofline is clearly visible in a set of teaser images revealed by Polestar. Think BMW X4 (pictured) in its overall shape – though we hope it’s prettier than Munich’s offering. It’ll give Polestar a second foothold in the lucrative premium electric SUV space. 3 SHARPENED GEELY TECH Geely Auto Group’s pure-electric PMA architecture is the base,…