Autocar - First for car news and reviews

I drove our Jaguar XF a few hundred miles across the country at the weekend and truly found it one of the most relaxing cars that I've ever driven. The diesel engine's refinement is tried and tested, but what doesn't get as much attention...

This rather unusual-looking machine is the new Vauxhall Insignia estate, which made its public debut at the recent Paris show.
I had to take a step back when its huge clamshell tailgate automatically opened to reveal a pair of secondary rear light clusters hidden in the boot lining.

But this unusual layout prompted a piece of well buried piece of trivia to come to mind. There’s an obscure EU regulation that requires all of a car’s lights to be visible, even when all the doors and lids are open.

It may not be immediately obvious in photographs, but the Laguna Coupe has more than a hint of modern Aston Martin in its styling. This was much commented upon at the Paris motor show. It’s said that ex-Aston design boss Ian Callum visited the Renault...

For students of the way car demand is changing — and how design will adapt — the next few years will provide some fascinating spectator sport.

Seems to me that many of the rules about how cars look and are laid out will be rewritten, even before the expected blizzard of hybrid and electric powertrains arrives.

There are signs this week that Volvo is about to redesign its traditional V70 estate - because customers think its roof is too low - just as Renault is preparing to drop its Espace MPV because customers feel, in this new age of insecurity, that the pioneering people-carrier’s glassy, high-riding way of doing things makes them too vulnerable.

Discovering who’s right (each company doubtless has iron-cast research to justify its point of view) will be fascinating.

It’s difficult question to broach: how do you ask the designer of the BMW X1 Concept whether he knows what everyone else is thinking? “Adrian van Hooydonk, chief designer at BMW: do you realise that you’ve created another car apparently trapped underneath a fallen ugly tree?”

I wasn’t quite that abrupt, as you’ll see in our Paris show video on the car. But still, the question had to be asked.

Are you disappointed by the look of the new Chevrolet Volt? Compare the leaked pictures of the real thing with the much-publicised concept car, and you see a car of tame, even lame, looks that appear to do nothing to proclaim it as revolutionary.

The sharp edges have gone; so has the subtly aggressive proportioning and with it much of the aura of excitement that has surrounded the Volt since it was first previewed.