Autocar RSS Feed

Amalfi Spider: Epic Greek blast in Ferrari's £227k 'entry' drop-top

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0100

Replacement for the Roma Spider promises not only more speed, but extra refinement and, ahem, stability

We dubbed it Honey Mountain. Ferrari’s events team, whose carefully prescribed route we plain ignored, would probably have dubbed it the arse end of nowhere.

But in this game, sometimes you have to take a punt on an unsolicited location-pin fired over by snapper Jack Harrison at midnight. It’s how you end up on a spellbinding Greek pass the next morning, gleefully climbing ever higher in what is, in all objective ways, the least serious car in Ferrari’s expansive modern day line-up.

The pass in question is an abandoned-feeling stretch of the EO66 that takes you over the Oligyrtos mountains in the Peloponnese region. Think dense reaches of fir and pine, limestone massifs and impossibly verdant valleys, threaded with a scribble of asphalt smooth enough for you to unleash laugh-outloud speed but rugged enough to keep things interesting.

And slatted boxes. Hundreds of them, pastel-hued and weather-worn, dotting the roadside. They’re crammed with bees busy making liquid gold for the towns below. It all feels faintly mythical, but perhaps that is to be expected. Among his labours, Heracles dealt with the man-eating Stymphalian birds only a few miles from the highest point of the pass.

We’re in Greece for the media launch of the new Amalfi Spider. It costs £227,000 and is the rag-top version of Ferrari’s entry-level Amalfi coupe. If you didn’t know better, you might have thought it damned with faint praise in last night’s uncharacteristically concise technical presentation at the hotel. It was described by engineers as being “as easy to drive as possible” and existing as the best option for new Ferraristi who – get this – might find the company’s cars an “intimidating step up from what they’re used to”.

Is the Amalfi Spider a car that Ferrari actually enjoyed creating or one it merely feels compelled to offer, to get people hooked on Maranello magic before their heads are turned by wares from Gaydon and Stuttgart?

The truth will soon become obvious, but this car is without doubt more approachable than the drop-top Ferraris it subordinates, the midengined 296 GTS and flagship, 1036hp 849 Testarossa Spider. I do wonder if positioning it as the dilettante’s choice sells it short, though. Let’s face facts: here we have a short wheelbase, steering response with which you could draw blood and a 3855cc twin-turbo V8 laying down 561lb from 3000rpm and 631bhp (spins faster than ever, too).

There’s also the small matter of a new Race mode, in which the fervour of the electronic stability systems has been diminished versus what you got in the old Roma Spider. ‘Easy to drive’ could be rebranded as ‘invites you to get unhinged, pronto’.

Before then, there are prosaic but nonetheless important elements. The freshly laid, glass-smooth motorway that takes us over from Attica, across the vertiginous slash in the landmass that is the manmade Corinth canal and into the vineyard-dotted Peloponnese bush is a chance to settle into the car’s unpretentious, cupped seats and take stock of what Ferrari says are myriad improvements to “quality of life on-board”.

The new electrohydraulically folding roof – five layers of fabric, three of rubber – is said to offer the same noise-insulation as a folding hard top, and in fairness this is difficult to dispute. The AmalfiSpider is a closer match for Bentley’s Continental GTC, as goes rolling refinement, than for any equivalent Porsche 911 convertible. I don’t think an Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, on its comically wide and roaring tyres, comes close either.

More impressive is what happens when you put the Amalfi’s roof down, which takes 13.5sec and can be done at 40mph. Keep the side windows up, deploy the rear seat-back panel as a turbulence-mitigation measure (it flips out to sit horizontal) and you need barely raise your voice to chat, even on rapid motorways runs. Uncanny.

The nose lift – not that you constantly need it, with the Amalfi’s unthreatening ride height – is also new and integrated into the Magneride dampers. Along with their springs, the dampers offer a broader spread of characteristics than Roma owners will know. Comfort mode is softer than before, Sport and Race firmer. And as ever, whichever mode you opt for via the anodised nub of the manettino, you can depress the dial itself to enter the ever-excellent Bumpy Road mode. This sets the suspension to its softest, no matter what the engine, gearbox and ESC are doing.

The Amalfi’s languid waft and confounding suppression of wild and tyre noise – that is, its phenomenal capability as a serious-distance GT car – can lull you into a false sense of security. In this case the brutal awakening comes when we leave the motorway via a wickedly tight corkscrew slip-road. After only deploying a couple of degrees of lock for the last 50 miles, in my mind the steering has become simpatico with the languid body movements you get in Comfort.

This is, of course, quite untrue. When I carry good speed and carve the Amalfi into this corkscrew using meaningful lock, the nose darts inwards so keenly that, just for a moment, a meeting with the Armco doesn’t feel out of the question. Clearly the Amalfi Spider’s EPS tuning is unchanged from that of the Roma Spider: this is the Max Verstappen school of sensitivity.

Your ability to live with and enjoy the vivid effects that your steering inputs have on the swinging, power-domed nose will define your suitability for Amalfi ownership. The helm of the 911 GTS Cabriolet is slower, more natural and gives the gift of letting you revel in the kinematics of camber and castor as the car straightens post-apex. Anybody can enjoy it without having to adjust. Like in all modern Ferraris, the steering here is more confected and provocative, being keen to take advantage of having an engine nestled so far back you could almost stub your toe on it. There are serious rewards on offer, but you have to be game.

We should also discuss the new body. Both cars were overseen by Flavio Manzoni, but the Roma’s tapered snout and pseudo-grille are firmly out, replaced by a more monolithic aesthetic. The Amalfi is a smart grand tourer and the hint of boat-tail is rather a lovely one, but it lacks its predecessor’s eccentric, darting elegance. It’s just a bit more ordinary.

Underneath the body the two cars are essentially unchanged. This becomes obvious when you notice the identical claimed dry weight of 1556kg for Roma and Amalfi Spiders. However, there are tweaks. The turbos now spin faster in order to help pump peak power up from 29bhp in the Roma to the Amalfi’s headline 631bhp. There are also lighter camshafts that raise the flat-plane crankshaft’s head room by 100rpm to 7600rpm. And finally there are the carbon-ceramic brakes, which are now gripped courtesy of a by-wire mechanism. It means that, behind the scenes, you benefit from the ABS Evo system originall masterminded for the 296 GTB supercar.

To reach the foot of the Oligyrtos range, you need to join the EO66 at the comatose township of Nemea. As the buildings peter out, there’s a snaking run that slowly rises through olive groves and corridors of dense reeds, inhabited only by the occasional Mk2 Mitsubishi L200 that all the farmers here seem to drive.

With the manettino in Sport and Bumpy Road mode engaged, the Amalfi Spider is stunningly supple and cohesive – unrecognisably so compared with the California that started this lineage back in 2008. It has verve and togetherness. Where the nose goes, the tail obediently falls in with a purposeful squat, dropping the four tips of the reworked exhaust plumbing an inch or so closer to the road under power. It’s effortlessly quick.

Speeds inevitably rise and very soon, all thoughts of the soft-close doors, the new physical steering-wheel controls (a vast improvement on the derided haptics) and rolling refinement have faded. But the engineers were right: this is an incredibly low-cortisol Ferrari when you’re just mooching. Which only heightens the surprise and the delight when you’re not.

And now we reach the pass. The only real way to go is to select that freer Race mode, at least until you have a good understanding of the car’s transition from grip to slip. This can happen rapidly but in the dry it never happens unexpectedly.

The V8 is also precise enough for anybody to enjoy gently over-rotating the notably narrow (285-section) rear Goodyears on exit, for a tiny opening of lock. Given half a chance, the car will slither everywhere in such fashion. Or you can smash the torque in and ride out a filthy great broad slide, although you need to select ESC Off mode for this. Does any other Ferrari invite you to steer using the long, indulgently sprung throttle pedal as enthusiastically as the Amalfi?

At the same time, this new chassis is more forgiving than before. In Sport or even Comfort modes, if a corner ended up being sharper than expected, it wasn’t uncommon for the Roma’s tail to go wandering on a trailing brake. Some of us loved this impetuous, in-built agility, but the Amalfi , with its new 6D chassis controller, is less impishly mobile in normal driving. That’s handy in a car just 6mm narrower than the 12Cilindri.

We hit the top of the pass with the morning shadows receding and Harrison steps out to get a shot of the Amalfi’s nose next to one of the beehives. Unfortunately for him, I neglect to kill the booming V8 via the now-physical stop-start button. For the poor bees this is the equivalent of a T-Rex inserting its head through your bedroom window, so Harrison beats an undignified retreat and now it’s time for some conclusions.

We both feel the lack of sonic fireworks is disappointing. In fairness, Ferrari is now at the stage of having to use thinner engine oil simply to get this unit emissions-compliant. Along with the turbos and catalytic converters, creating real acoustic emotion is tough.

Neither do I much like the now-mandatory passenger-side display. And while Ferrari has reduced the stack height of the roof to 22cm when stowed, it does chomp into the boot space that is already limited by the hulking, Magna-engineered eight-speed transaxle lurking below. The Spider’s 172 litres with the roof down is reason to go for the coupé if you enjoy touring.

But this is otherwise a pretty stunning little Ferrari with some roguish charm. Consider the bowstring compliance that will be the envy of certain mid-engined machines; the balance and sled-like aptitude for oversteer; the uncanny refinement; the miniscule handling concessions from having more weight and a higher centre of gravity than the coupé; the V8 complemented by an exquisite, versatile dual-clutch gearbox.

The open-air Amalfi is pricier than rivals and, gulp, costs £49,000 more that its forebear did in 2023. But Ferrari has taken this car to a place that will be tough to match, let alone beat. Never tiring but never dull, it’s an underrated honey.

Specification	Details
Price	£227,260
Engine	V8, 3855cc, twin-turbocharged. petrol
Power	631bhp at 7500rpm
Torque	561lb ft at 3000-5750rpm
Gearbox	8-spd twin-clutch automatic, RWD
Dry weight	1556kg (with options)
0-62mph	3.3sec
Top speed	200mph
Economy	tbc
CO2, tax band	257g/km
Rivals	Porsche 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet, Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, Mercedes-AMG SL63

Who is China really stealing sales from?

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 12:23:39 +0100

It's not the easy prey at the bottom but some mid-market stalwarts that are losing out

On the face of it, the UK new car market is a land of milk and honey again for car makers selling here, with sales up nearly 10% year on year.

Given that increase, you'd expect to see general growth across the board – or at least no worse than standing still – but the volume of new entrants from China means there are a significant amount of losers.

Patterns are now emerging and the mid-market is where the action is happening for Chinese brands and where the impact is being felt by established car makers.

There are five brands who are really making an impact on the UK and have sold more than 20,000 cars here so far this year: BYD, Chery, Jaecoo, MG and Omoda. They've captured around 180,000 of the UK's nearly 1.3 million new car sales this year, which is around 14% of the market.

Add in Leapmotor and Geely and you're pushing the 200,000 mark. Everyone else from China – Changan, GWM, Aion, Xpeng – is for now making up the numbers.

The sales success of those five brands has demonstrated that China can sell cars at significant volumes, and not all of those sales are additive.

It's the mid-market stalwarts – those operating a level below the very biggest sellers in the UK – that have seen their sales dip the most, with an obvious pattern.

Nissan's sales are down almost 16% this year, Hyundai's almost 9% and Peugeot's 15%. These are brands that have so far sold just under or over 50,000 cars in the UK this year, a similar volume to BYD and MG.

At a couple of rungs below at around the 20,000 volume, Chery and Omoda have pushed ahead of Honda and Mazda, which have recorded 16% and 21% drops respectively this year.

Above the middle market, and into the upper echelons of the UK car sales, the drops are smaller: Volkswagen, Ford and BMW have had small single-digit drops while Audi and Kia have managed to increase sales, albeit not at the same pace of growth of the market overall. China is having an impact there but currently it is not a crisis. Standing still here is progress of sorts. For now…

It's hard to get too much of a read on what impact China is having on the smaller players in the market – the likes of Alfa Romeo, DS and Jeep, for example – because their sales are so relatively small and other factors can cause them to spike them up or down, making China more likely an excuse than a reason.

China is having success in the mid-market by offering a lot of car for not a lot of money. Heavily leaning toward electric models, Chinese brands aren't bogged down by the ZEV mandate targets that legacy car makers are wrestling with.

Crucially, they also enjoy far lower production costs. That makes aggressive fleet discounting or non-retail giveaway deals viable for them, where it would be financial suicide for legacy players.

The mid-market has long felt the squeeze from those both above and below it, but China is a different kind of threat because its marques enter with brand and badge neutrality; you don't know what you're going to get from a BYD but you recognise its best cars as being cheap without feeling cheap.

What is Nissan beyond the Qashqai? Name three cars from the Honda range. What's the best-selling Peugeot? Try and spot a Hyundai when you take the badge off the bonnet. What was the last new Mazda?

The mid-market isn't a total struggle in the UK for established players: Vauxhall, Renault and Skoda are doing well. They also feel like brands that have a plan and an identity, with a centre of gravity in their ranges, be it the small EVs from Renault, the SUV consistency from Skoda, or the value push from Vauxhall.

But the question has long been asked about who the losers will be when the Chinese car industry starts to sell at volume overseas. Now, we're starting to see those who are feeling the pain.

New Denza D9 is a £75k luxury MPV with plug-in hybrid power

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 11:54:54 +0100

Four-wheel-drive rival to Lexus LM is fourth model in Chinese luxury brand's expanding UK range

BYD-owned luxury brand Denza is now taking orders for its fourth model, a luxury MPV to rival the Lexus LM and Mercedes-Benz V-Class.

The D9 joins the Z9 GT shooting brake, Bao 5 SUV and Z supercar in an expanding line-up of models designed to compete with the European premium stalwarts.

Priced from £75,000, it undercuts the LM by almost £23,000 and is roughly in line with what the new Mercedes VLE is expected to cost when it lands next year.

The D9 is a plug-in hybrid, featuring an electric motor on each axle – making 228bhp at the front and 60bhp at the rear – and a 119bhp 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine.

Denza hasn't quoted a combined power output but said the big seven-seater will crack 0-62mph in 8.6sec.

Meanwhile, a 58.5kWh battery under the floor allows for an electric-only range of up to 130 miles and is compatible with BYD's new ultra-rapid Flash chargers, which can fill it from 10-70% in just five minutes.

Like the Z9 and Bao 5, the D9 is equipped with BYD's DiSus active suspension system, which adjusts compression and rebound rates on the move to "deliver both assured body control through the corners with a supple ride on rougher road surfaces".

As standard, the D9 comes equipped with electric sliding doors, leather seats, a panoramic roof, cooled and heated storage compartments and LCD control panels for each second-row passenger.

Step up to £85,000 Ultimate trim and it gains 'zero-gravity' seats in the middle row, with 14-way adjustment, 16-point massaging and the ability to recline almost horizontal - plus 12.8in screens within the front headrests.

Deliveries will begin in the coming months.

5 ways to prepare your car for the summer holidays

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 11:50:00 +0100

With temperatures topping 30°C again, now's the perfect time for your car's essential summer health check

If it feels like this summer has barely let up, you're not imagining it. The UK has now recorded temperatures of 35°C or higher in May, June and July alike – something that's never happened in the same year’s weather records before.

When spells of hot, dry weather push the mercury into the thirties, your car needs to work harder than it has all year. Combine this with summer holidays where soaring temperatures are paired with days out and even longer trips away from home, and you’ll want to be reassured your car is well maintained and fit for the job.

Long motorway miles, a fully loaded boot and cabin temperatures that would make anyone wilt all add up to more stress on your car than the average commute. A few minutes of preparation now can be the difference between a smooth departure and a trip-spoiling roadside emergency.

So, from air con to abroad-driving rules, we’ve partnered with Kwik Fit to list the five things worth checking before you set off, with the biggest one – you guessed it, tyres – saved until last.

Get your free summer tyre check today

#1 Get your air con checked (and regassed if needed)

There's nothing that saps holiday enthusiasm faster than a car that can't keep its cool. Air conditioning systems naturally lose a small amount of refrigerant every year – usually around 10% – even without a fault, so a system that felt fine last summer might blow lukewarm air by the time this one arrives. If your car is taking longer to cool down, or the air coming through the vents isn't as cold as it used to be, it's worth having it looked at before you're relying on it for a five-hour drive to your favourite coastal spot.

A basic air con check is quick and inexpensive, and it can flag a slow refrigerant leak before it becomes a bigger, more expensive problem. If a regas is needed, most garages – Kwik Fit included – can do it in under an hour, and it's the sort of job that's easy to book alongside anything else you're having done, or while you enjoy an iced latte at the nearest cafe.

It isn't just about comfort, either. A cabin that's stiflingly hot is a genuine distraction behind the wheel, and tired, overheated drivers react more slowly and can make rash decisions. On a long journey with restless kids in the back, keeping the car cool is as much about concentration and safety as it is about anyone's temper. It's also worth checking your pollen filter at the same time – a clogged one restricts airflow and makes the whole system work harder, which is especially noticeable during a hot, dry summer when pollen and dust are everywhere. Hayfever sufferers will feel much better too, and avoid the sore eyes that are the last thing you need on a long drive. A five minute check now could save hours of serious discomfort later in summer traffic.

Book your air-con ragas

#2 Top up and check your fluids

Engine oil, coolant and screenwash rarely get a second thought until something goes wrong, but hot weather and long-distance driving put more strain on all three than a typical school run ever will. Coolant is the big one: it's what stops your engine overheating, and it works considerably harder on a warm day with the air con running and a full car than it does on a cool, unladen commute. Low coolant on a busy motorway in July is a recipe for a breakdown at the worst possible moment.

Checking oil and coolant levels takes a couple of minutes with the bonnet up and costs nothing, and most garages like your local Kwik Fit will happily do it for you as part of a wider free vehicle health check. It's also a good moment to pop out the dipstick and check if the oil looks the right golden colour and thin consistency, rather than dark and sludgy, since a long, hot trip is exactly the sort of driving that shows up a car that's overdue for a service.

Screenwash is easy to overlook but just as important in summer – dust, pollen, insect smears and road grime build up fast on a hot dry road, and an empty washer bottle is a genuine hazard when you're driving into low evening sun with the visor down and glare already doing you no favours.

It's worth giving brake fluid a mention too, particularly if you're planning on towing a caravan or driving down some unfamiliar, mountainous foreign roads – heavier loads and sustained braking both ask more of the system. None of this needs to be complicated. A free check at a Kwik Fit centre will run through oil, coolant, brake fluid and screenwash in one visit, so there's no reason to be guessing what surprises lurk under the bonnet before a long trip.

Book your free fluids check today

#3 Know the rules if you're driving abroad

If your summer holiday involves a ferry crossing or the Channel Tunnel rather than the airport, there's a bit of homework to do before you leave, because the rules for driving in Europe have shifted since Brexit and it's easy to be caught out by outdated advice.

Since September 2021, GB stickers have been retired in favour of 'UK' – though if your number plate already carries the UK identifier with the Union Jack flag, you won't need a separate sticker for most countries. Spain, Cyprus and Malta are the exceptions, where a UK sticker is required regardless of what's on your plate.

You'll also want your V5C logbook and proof of insurance in the car, and it's worth checking whether your policy needs extending for time spent overseas, since many providers only offer a set number of days of European cover as standard. If you're heading further afield, it's also worth knowing that British citizens will soon need an ETIAS travel authorisation to enter many European countries – a quick online form, but one more thing to sort ahead of time rather than at the border. This was planned for introduction in late 2026, but now looks to have been delayed until 2027. When it is introduced, it is expected to cost around £17 and last for three years.

Beyond documents, most European countries expect you to carry a warning triangle, a high-vis vest for each occupant and a first aid kit. If you're driving a right-hand-drive on the opposite side of the road to normal, you'll need headlamp beam deflectors to stop your dipped beam dazzling oncoming traffic – some cars with advanced adaptive headlights allow you to switch this within the headlight settings.

Some countries have their own quirks on top – France, for instance, has specific rules around breathalyser kits and low-emission zones in certain cities – so a quick check of the destination-specific advice is worth the ten minutes it takes. None of it is complicated, but it's far easier to sort at home than to discover a gap in your paperwork or kit at a toll booth.

#4 Pack smart and don't overload the car

It's tempting to treat the boot as a bottomless pit once the beach bags, bikes and camping gear start piling up, but every car has a maximum load weight for good reason. An overloaded car sits differently on the road, takes longer to stop, and puts more strain on suspension, brakes and, crucially, tyres than they're designed for.

Your vehicle's handbook or the plate inside the driver's door will tell you the maximum permitted weight, and it's worth a rough mental tally before you start strapping things to the roof. You’ll also need to adjust tyre pressures to the manufacturer’s recommended settings for a fully laden vehicle. You can find this information through Kwik Fit’s handy online tool here.

Roof boxes and bike racks are brilliant for freeing up interior space, but they also change how your car handles, particularly in crosswinds, and they increase fuel or energy consumption more than most people expect. If you're using one, distribute weight evenly and keep heavier items low and central where possible, both inside the car and up top.

It's also worth having a plan for the unexpected: a charged phone, a basic breakdown kit and a note of your cover provider's number will make any hold-up far less stressful, especially with children counting down the miles to the caravan site.

A fully loaded car behaves differently to the one you're used to driving on the commute or school run, so it's worth a few minutes to think about what's going in, where, and how much it all weighs. It's a simple habit, but one that pays off the moment the road gets twisty or the weather turns – which brings us to the part of the car that has to cope with all that extra weight, in all conditions, using nothing but four small contact patches with the road.

#5 Check your tyres – the single most important job on this list

Everything else on this list matters, but nothing affects how safely your car handles a long summer drive quite like its tyres. They're the only part of the car actually touching the road, and with a fully loaded boot, higher speeds and hotter tarmac all working against them, summer is exactly when tyres are put under the most strain. In fact, Kwik Fit’s research has found that one in eight drivers have suffered tyre problems on summer holiday journeys.

Heat is a genuine factor here, not just a talking point. Hot road surfaces increase the operating temperature of a tyre that's already working harder because of extra weight and longer journeys, and that combination accelerates wear on tyres that are already close to the legal limit. The legal minimum tread depth in the UK is 1.6mm, but braking performance – especially in the wet, which UK summers still have no shortage of – drops off noticeably well before you reach that limit.

It's worth checking tread depth (a 20p coin pushed into the main grooves is the classic test: if you can see the outer band of the coin, it's time for new tyres), tyre pressures, which change with temperature and load, and the sidewalls for any cracking, bulges or damage that could turn into a blowout at motorway speed. Recent research for Kwik Fit found that almost one in ten drivers had set off on a summer holiday knowing there was a problem with their car, but they just hoped it would be OK until they got home again. If you’ve been living with a tyre with a slow puncture, never head out on a long motorway trip before having it inspected to find out what the cause is, and if it can be safely repaired or needs to be replaced.

This is where it's worth having a professional take a proper look rather than guessing. Kwik Fit offers a free tyre check at every one of its UK centres, with no obligation to buy anything, so there's no reason not to get a second opinion before a long trip. If you do need new tyres, same-day fitting is available both in-store and via Kwik Fit's mobile fitting service, which sends a technician to your home or workplace – useful if you've left it late or a problem crops up in the days before you're due to leave.

With a wide range of tyres to suit every budget, there's no need to overspend, but it is worth choosing quality: a tyre like the Continental PremiumContact 7, for example, is built around strong wet grip and braking performance, exactly what you want underneath a fully loaded car on an unfamiliar road, possibly in a rainstorm, hundreds of miles from home.

Ultimately, tyres are a safety item first and a performance one second. Fresh air con and full fluids will make the journey more comfortable, and knowing the rules abroad will save you a headache at the border, but it's four small patches of rubber that decide how well your car stops, steers and grips when it matters. Give them the once-over before you go, and the rest of the items on this list can easily fall into place around them.

Book your free tyre check today

EVs and hybrids drive UK car market to best July since Covid

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 10:22:05 +0100

Renault 5 (middle) was the UK's favourite EV in July

Registrations of electric cars rose by 44.5% compared with July 2025 – although petrol cars are still on top

Last month was the strongest July for new car sales in the UK since the Covid pandemic, as a significant rise in sales of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric cars drove growth.

A total of 156,571 new cars were registered during July, an increase of 11.7% compared with July 2025 and close to the 157,580 recorded during the same month in 2019.

EV registrations rose by 44.5% compared with July 2025, to 43,106. That means that for the year so far, EVs have accounted for just over one in four of all new cars sold – a significant improvement on a year ago but still short of the 33% target set by the government’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) attributed the rise in EV sales to the continued roll-out of the government’s Electric Car Grant and discounting.

It also suggested the rise in petrol and diesel fuel prices triggered by the Iran war may have swayed buyers towards EVs and hybrids.

PHEV sales rose 33.6% year on year, to 23,359, while sales of conventional (or ‘self-charging’) hybrids rose 11.6%, to 20,711.

Registrations of pure-petrol cars, meanwhile, declined significantly. They fell from 66,271 to 62,799, a reduction of 5.2%.

Although they remain the predominant choice of UK buyers, petrol cars’ market share fell from 47.3% in July 2025 to 40.1% in July 2026.

This means that electrified cars – ie those capable of driving solely on electric power – now account for more than half of all new car sales in the UK.

SMMT chief Mike Hawes warned, however, that this growth “cannot be sustained”. He claimed that car makers are “haemorrhaging billions” by discounting their EVs in order to stimulate demand sufficient to meet their ZEV mandate targets.

Hawes has previously called on the government to accelerate its review of the ZEV mandate and smooth the annual inclines in EV sales targets, as the UK approaches its 2035 deadline for sales of new ICE cars.

EV-focused transport research organisation New Automotive said that, taking into account the credit-banking and credit-trading flexibilities built into the ZEV mandate scheme, sales are tracking ahead of targets.

Although the official target for EV sales for 2026 is 33%, New Automotive estimates a real target of 24.6%, and the EV market share for the full year currently stands at 25.3%.

The best-selling car in July was the Ford Puma, a regular chart-topper, with 3531 registrations. It was followed by the Nissan Qashqai (3224) and Kia Sportage (3205). The best-selling EV, meanwhile, was the Renault 5 (1805).

Notably, Chinese newcomer Jaecoo had two models in July’s top 10 best-sellers. Its 5 and 7 SUVs scored 2481 and 2709 registrations respectively.

Used EV repair scheme looks to tackle cliff-edge residual drops

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 09:58:45 +0100

New BCA scheme aims to raise confidence in ex-fleet used EVs and make them more attractive to buyers

BCA has opened an industry-first facility offering cost-effective battery repairs for de-fleeted electric and hybrid vehicles, aimed at helping them find homes with second-hand buyers.

The site in Doncaster is managed by BCA Fleet Solutions and offers diagnostics, repairs and replacements for high-voltage components including the battery, inverter, drive motor and on-board charging system, with work carried out to OEM standards.

The facility is equipped to work on all makes and models, focused on vehicles with an expired or invalidated warranty. BCA says it will use “green” (used) parts where available.

The used electric car market is breaking records for volume each quarter as it receives the influx of three- to five-year-old ex-fleet cars, many of which were leased to company car and salary sacrifice schemes following the introduction of ultra-low tax rates in April 2020.

At 86,943 units, EVs accounted for 4.3% of all used car sales in the first quarter of this year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), and that supply is increasing.

The latest data from HM Revenue & Customs shows 51% of company car drivers (467,000 of them) were in electric cars in 2024/25. That’s a sizeable jump from the 7% share (52,000 drivers) in 2020/21.

However, with supply surging, comparatively few incentives available for second-hand buyers and sizeable discounts on new cars, the leasing sector is claiming large losses as companies face “cliff-edge” residual values when those vehicles are auctioned at the end of what’s typically a three-year contract.

Used vehicle leasing is rising in popularity, which helps spread depreciation over a longer period, but companies have warned they could need to inflate monthly rentals on new cars to cover the risk of further losses – and that would make them more expensive for both fleets and private customers.

Industry body the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA), whose members operate 750,000 EVs (more than a third of the two million on UK roads), has called for standardised battery health certificates to give buyers more confidence and make vehicles easier to sell.

With more than 1000 EVs going through its auctions each week, BCA has launched several services to support demand, claiming vehicles are selling quickly and at higher prices than the residual value guides have forecast.

In 2024, the company introduced a battery service report working with specialist firm Aviloo, which produces a health score out of 100 and issues condition grades from A to E, then supplies a full report to winning bidders that they can pass on to customers.

Within a year, BCA claimed the 22,000 vehicles auctioned with battery health reports averaged a 1.4% improvement over the guide price and a 2.7-day reduction in time-to-sale, showing higher confidence among dealers that they could sell them on.

This builds on the EV/Hybrid Assured Report, introduced in 2019, which includes diagnostics and drive tests, and assesses the condition of vehicles’ charging ports, cables and inverter coolant levels.

Paul Bromley, managing director of BCA Fleet Solutions, said: “Rather than simply replacing expensive batteries, we investigate the cause and repair or replace components, delivering a cost-effective and timely solution that means EVs and hybrid vehicles can be repaired and offered for sale without undue delay.

“This helps to foster a circular economy, driving environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals and ensuring these vehicles reach the market in the best possible condition to attract buyers.”

Chery Tiggo 4: is this the most car you can get for £20,000?

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 07:54:00 +0100

Chery bids to make up on lost time against other Chinese budget brands with a particularly low-budget hybrid SUV You may have read a great deal, over the last year or so, about the rising fortunes of Chinese budget brands within the UK market. They are certainly enjoying a period of rapid expansion. But some are growing faster than others, and some have yet to really hit what you might call ‘the big time’ as far as car sales on our shores are concerned. That’s why cars with the potential to fuel rapid transformation suddenly appearing. Right now, the race is on to grab as big a slice of the UK pie as possible before somebody else beats you to it – and the Chery Tiggo 4 has the look of a car with some serious buffet-blocking elbows.As figures recently released for car registrations for the first half of 2026 confirm, the only Chinese brand with a place among the UK’s top 10 best-selling car makers remains MG. BYD and Chery’s own Jaecoo brand both have berths within the top 20, however, and both currently have much faster rates of growth than MG’s. Blink, then, and all this could be different.The interesting quirk about Chery’s particular case is that both of its offshoot brands - Jaecoo and Omoda - were introduced to the UK earlier than the Chery brand itself so are slightly both better-established in terms of UK volume and market share. That situation is what the Tiggo 4 might be out to justify, because it’s quite a lot of pretty conventional car for really not a lot of money - a recipe that has proven popular time and again, and not only in the UK.The Tiggo 4 is a hybrid-powered compact SUV. It has an upright and chunky look. It’s a useful-looking size, straddling the SUV-B (Dacia Duster, Kia Stonic) and SUV-C (Nissan Qashqai, Citroën C5 Aircross) segments. It’s got good, appealing on-paper performance and economy statistics. Yet it’s conspicuously cheap, starting from just £19,995, when even the average Ford Puma rival is typically several thousand pounds more.So is there a catch? And will owners really care even if there are a few of them, given how much car they’re getting and how little they’re paying here?

Vauxhall Corsa GSE: New hot hatch outpaces Golf GTI for £9k less

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Electric sports Corsa brings stiffer suspension, limited-slip differential and a series of retro nods

The Vauxhall Corsa GSE will be quicker yet cheaper than the Volkswagen Golf GTI when it lands in the UK later this year.

Despite being pitched in the traditional ‘junior’ hot hatch class, once occupied by cars such as the Ford Fiesta ST, the new EV has the performance to outmatch many full-sized performance cars.

With 277bhp, it takes 5.5sec to hit 62mph from rest, beating the 5.9sec of the benchmark Golf GTI - and the 5.7sec taken by its electric equivalent, the Volkswagen ID 3 GTX.

That also makes the Corsa GSE quicker than the rival Alpine A290 (6.4sec).

The Corsa GSE will be priced from £34,495, or £32,995 if – as expected – it gets the £1500 Electric Car Grant from which the standard Corsa benefits. That's roughly on a par with the A290, and £9000 less than the GTI.

The Corsa GSE is Vauxhall’s first hot hatch since it discontinued the Corsa VXR eight years ago and is claimed to bring "the sporty GSi genes of the Vauxhall Nova into the future".

As with the new GTi version of its Peugeot 208 twin, the Corsa GSE swaps the regular Corsa Electric’s 154bhp motor for the 277bhp unit that's also deployed in the Abarth 600e, Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica Veloce and Vauxhall Mokka GSE.

Power is delivered to the front wheels through a Torsen limited-slip differential and Vauxhall said it has tuned the throttle and brake pedal responses to emphasise the GSE's sportiness. The car also gets reworked axles front and rear, as well as stiffer anti-roll bars and new dampers with hydraulic bump stops.

The suspension sits lower than the regular Corsa's and the cambered 18in alloy wheels are fitted with Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres. Both the weight and feedback of the steering have been increased and the rack is quicker. Stopping power is provided by four-pot Alcon brakes front and rear. Three-spoke alloys hark back to those on the original hot Nova, with a flat-faced design to improve aero performance.

As with the regular Corsa, the GSE features several drive modes that alter the car's character. In its normal setting, it is capped at 228bhp to preserve range. The Eco mode cuts this further – although Vauxhall has yet to confirm to what extent – and limits the top speed to 93mph. Sport mode, said to be designed for track use, uncorks the full 277bhp.

The exterior tweaks that distinguish the Corsa GSE from regular variants are more subtle than with the previous VXR. Indeed, its treatment with black contrasts around its vents and wheel arches echoes the relationship between the early 1990s Nova GSi and its stablemates.

Inside, it is clear that the GSE is a more focused proposition than the standard Corsa, with chunky tartan bucket seats, green seatbelts and an Alcantara-trimmed steering wheel. The pedals, meanwhile, are finished in aluminium.

Alongside the pricing, Vauxhall confirmed the Corsa GSE has an official range of 232 miles – 31 miles greater than the closely related Mokka GSE.

As previously reported by Autocar, the hot Corsa will be followed by a high-performance variant of the larger Astra to rival the Golf GTI.

This will look to capitalise on the gap in the market left by the discontinued Ford Focus ST and Honda Civic Type R while also trading blows with the Cupra Born VZ and Kia EV3 GT.

The GSE sub-brand is instrumental in Vauxhall's plan to shed its dowdy image and cultivate a new, more desirable one. This, it is understood, is because new Chinese competitors majoring on value threaten to steal what has long been one of Vauxhall's main selling points.

"Vauxhall scores highly for rational appeal but not so much the emotional," the brand's commercial director, Michael Auliar, told Autocar.

Vauxhall-Opel CEO Florian Huetti previously said "sportiness" represents the "next step" for the British and German brands as they look to better differentiate themselves from in-house Stellantis siblings, such as Peugeot and Citroën.

	VAUXHALL CORSA GSE	ALPINE A290 GTS+	MINI JCW ELECTRIC
Price	£32,995	£34,245	£34,905
Power	277bhp	215bhp	255bhp
Weight	1550kg (est)	1479kg	1725kg
0-62mph	5.5sec	6.4sec	5.9sec

Cheap cars hit Tesla profits as tech pivot stalls

Wed, 5 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0100

Cybercab roll-out in Austin, Texas, has faced delays

Tesla's second-quarter profits slumped – despite it selling 10% more cars than a year ago

Tesla's long-promised transition from car-making giant to AI-driven tech titan has suffered a setback, as returns on the firm’s core vehicle line-up continue to erode.

The company reported a sharp drop in profits for the second quarter this year, after the average selling price of its cars slumped. The operating margin dropped to just 1.4% for the quarter ending June, compared with 4.1% in the same period last year despite delivering more cars, at 451,758 – up 10%.

The average selling price, based on automotive revenue divided by deliveries, sank 27% to $42,730, down from $58,564 this time last year, as Tesla rolled out cheaper models and offered more attractive finance to fend off increasingly strong competition.

Tesla in the UK has been offering the Model 3 saloon for lease at £295 a month with £295 down, meaning customers were paying £7572 over two years for a car that costs £37,990.

Tesla’s push to offset falling US sales amid the end of EV incentives there has switched its focused to global markets, including Europe and China. The Model Y SUV looked to top European sales in the first six months of this year as the firm sought to reclaim its EV crown from BYD.

The Model Y and Model 3 were the two best-selling electric models in the UK in the first six months, according to figures from the SMMT. The Model 3, which is produced in Tesla’s plant in Shanghai, was the UK’s third best-selling Chinese-built car over the period, after the Jaecoo 7 and MG HS.

Tesla continues to rely heavily on the Model 3 and Model Y for the bulk of its revenue, building 442,936 in the three-month period. Its other models, including the Cybertruck, account for just 8822 vehicles produced.

The company is pivoting to robotaxis and robotics as it looks for new, more profitable revenue streams, but so far the Model Y robotaxis and purpose-built Cybercab haven’t progressed as expected.

CFO Vaibhav Taneja blamed “kinks” for the slow rollout, which began in Austin in June last year but has only expanded to a handful of cities, despite CEO Elon Musk promising that “millions of Teslas would operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year”.

Tesla’s stock price has fallen by 29% from the start of this year.

How BMW cut the X5's emissions by 40% – before turning a wheel

Tue, 4 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0100

Around one third of the new iX5 is made from waste products or recycled materials

Making cars greener involves a lot more than reducing tailpipe emissions or fashioning seat covers from recycled plastic bottles.

It spans the whole gamut of environmental implications in manufacturing, use and end-of-life disposal.

Putting a figure on a car's CO2 footprint is a huge task, and for the past couple of decades considerable brain power has been expended on figuring out the cradle-to-grave CO2 impact of vehicles and powertrains.

The results now lie in Life Cycle Analysis databases that make it easier to put figures on a new car's environmental impact.

BMW has done it with the new X5, explaining how decarbonising the whole production process, including suppliers of parts that make a car up, is reducing CO2 emissions.

The X5's carbon footprint, validated by the German Technical Inspection Association, won't be published until the car is officially launched, but BMW puts the impact of its efforts to reduce CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions during the product development process at around 40%.

Around half of the steel used in the X5's body is electric arc furnace steel, which includes a high proportion of recycled material and is produced using renewable energy. Secondary materials are also widely used throughout the rest of the X5's structure and interior.

Heavy-duty items such as aluminium components including wheel rims, wheel supports, rear axle supports and brake calipers are all manufactured using renewable energy for both electrolysis and production.

Thirty-five per cent of the aluminium used in the doors is either from external recycling sources or waste from the press shop being fed back into the process (known as 'closed loop').

The yarn used to make the cabin's headliner material is 100% recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET), typically from plastic bottles. Overall, around one-third of an iX5 60 xDrive is made from secondary raw materials - equivalent to 940kg of its mass.

Battery recycling has been around for some time, and in the early days it was limited to reuse of the materials in basic components such as steel casings. Today things have moved on, and the active materials are recovered and reused as well. BMW's Gen6 battery includes a high proportion of secondary materials in the cobalt, lithium and nickel content.

Renewable energy is used in the production of anode and cathode materials and in the cell manufacturing.

BMW says that compared with the Gen5 battery used in the iX, CO2e emissions have been reduced by around 28% per watt-hour of battery capacity.

The carbon footprint reduction of the new model will continue during the 'use phase' of its life.

Depending on a few obvious variables, such as drivetrain variant, annual mileage and source of electricity used for charging, BMW estimates that a new iX5 60 xDrive should achieve a CO2e advantage over a comparable combustion engine after around one to two years of use.

The Triumph TR7 is an overlooked sports car hero (yes, really)

Tue, 4 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0100

Unreliability and bad quality scuppered the TR7, but there's so much to love about it

What most people know about the Triumph TR7 of 1974-1981 is that it's a metaphor for the whole British car industry at the time: an adventurous design scuppered by ropey early manufacturing quality that fatally damaged its reputation.

It wasn't a complicated car, just a front-engined, rear-driven roadster with a moderately warm 2.0-litre four-pot engine, driving a live rear axle. Brakes were disc and drum. But its design, the work of a team led by oft-misrepresented Harris Mann, was very progressive: a wedge with an upwardly sweeping swage line, labelled "the shape of things to come".

It sold strongly in the US in the beginning, initially as a coupé and later as a convertible too (after it was established that encroaching American crash safety standards could still allow drop-tops), but the unreliability and bad quality were the big hurdles.

Yet there were great things about TR7s, and I know because I had two of them. Their short wheelbase and relative lightness made them agile, their seats and driving position were brilliantly comfortable, the convertible's top-down protection was exceptional when cruising and they were easy to mend.

My first TR7 was an early convertible with a four-speed gearbox and a busted engine, bought for a song with four flat tyres because it had stood in a north London street for several years. Its virtues were a loud green paint job and the tartan seats my family all liked.

I sent it off to S&S, a now-closed TR7 specialist in Ramsbottom, Lancashire, which fitted an ex-Rover 3.5-litre V8, a five-speed gearbox and a taller-ratio back axle, beefed up the suspension and brakes and gave it back as quite a weapon.

That was circa 1990. I always wonder where that car is now and hope it's still living a happy life, because happy is what it made me, for a year or two.

My second TR7 was a later model in white, also a convertible and a healthy low-miler with the standard five-speed gearbox. I kept it that way, because to change it would have been a shame. It had all the virtues I listed before, plus decent body rigidity and quite taut suspension. Again, I bought it cheaply, because you couldn't pay much in the mid-1990s.

I was persuaded out of it because someone who saw it in the street offered me a £500 profit. I summarily sold it and didn't think much about it for years - until I finally met Mann at a gathering of MG XPower SV owners a few years back and he explained the car's conception and what a birth struggle it had endured, because it was progressive and thus ripe to be misunderstood by 'management'.

Nowadays I wish I had either car, or both, back again, because have pleasant memories of their simplicity and agility, the pleasant nose-heaviness of the V8 and the light steering of the four-pot. I can still feel that gearlever in my hand. Furthermore, TR7s are still good value and the styling, barring a few details, still looks brilliant today.

But most of all I'd like to remember a brave but low-key British designer who believed in progress, rather than in maintaining the status quo, and was content to live with criticism from those who couldn't see as far ahead as he could.

I see TR7s getting scarce now, and I see their prices deservedly strengthening. The trick now is to find unmolested versions. I keep my eyes open, and if I ever see the right car I will be sorely tempted.

Smart #2: Fortwo successor's design outed ahead of October debut

Tue, 4 Aug 2026 10:49:34 +0100

Smart returns to its city car roots with tiny new #2, due next year as UK's smallest electric car

Smart has all but revealed the #2, the electric successor to the famed Fortwo, with a series of murals dotted around the globe.

Although it will be revealed in full at the Paris motor show, the new art pieces give a clear indication of the finished car's design.

It bears a strong resemblance to its predecessor, retaining its stubby proportions, although key changes include scowling headlights and rounded units at the rear.

The #2 marks the Smart brand's return to its roots after launching a range of electric crossovers including the #5, its largest model yet.

Due in UK dealerships next year, it has been designed to offer what Smart calls "uncompromised urban capability".

The two-seater is based on a bespoke Electric Compact Arcitechture developed by Geely.

The Chinese company co-owns Smart with its original founder Mercedes-Benz, which took the lead on the #2's design.

Full details remain under wraps until the Paris motor show in October, but Smart has confirmed the #2 will offer a range of 186 miles and be capable of charging its battery from 10-80% in less than 20 minutes.

It will also have vehicle-to-load capability, meaning its battery can be used to power external devices.

At just 2792mm long, the concept was only around 100mm longer than the old Fortwo, so it will reclaim its position as the shortest electric car on sale, undercutting the Fiat 500e by almost a metre. Anything smaller, like the Citroën Ami or Micro Microlino, typically fits into the quadricycle category.

That will also enable a turning circle of just 6.95m.

Smart said the new #2 will move its entry-level model upmarket while "brilliantly maximising interior space" within its compact dimensions - a product of moving onto a bespoke EV architecture, as the old electric Fortwo was based on an ICE car platform.

The #2 "elevates the city car beyond mere utility" according to Smart - and while it hasn't yet revealed the cabin in full, it promises to be much plusher and more luxuriously appointed than the sparsely furnished original.

It will still be minimalist, in keeping with an exterior design that's been "reduced to its essence", but liberal use of leather, translucent surfacing and two-tone gold paintwork will help to cultivate more of a premium aesthetic.

Notably, will it swap traditional front seats for a bench – which, Smart claims, frees up additional interior space.

Kai Sieber, head of Smart design at Mercedes, said the Concept #2, which previewed the finished article, demonstrates the company's vision that "a city car should do more than solve challenges: it should spark joy".

He continued: "Carrying the heritage of the Fortwo's iconic design, the Concept #2 translates our bold personality into a new era where function becomes fashion. It is not only about clever practicality but serves as a true extension of personal identity."

Smart has given no indication of pricing ahead of next year's scheduled launch, but the more luxurious cockpit and vastly superior technical attributes mean the #2 could command a premium over its short-legged predecessor, which cost around £22,000 when it was discontinued in 2024.

There's no word yet on whether Smart plans to stretch the #2 and add a back seat to create a successor to the Forfour, but such a model would give the brand a footprint in the increasingly competitive electric supermini market, where it could take on the likes of the Renault 5, Citroën C3 and next DS 3.

Reborn Audi A2 driven: Electric comeback for the efficiency king

Mon, 3 Aug 2026 23:01:27 +0100

Effort to maximise efficiency on Volkswagen ID 3 platform results in unlikely electric revival of cult-classic supermini

In one of the 2020s’ less likely retro revivals, the Audi A2 is back.

The A2 has become a bit of cult classic, because it was such an uncompromising piece of engineering, using an aluminium spaceframe and radical aerodynamics to create an incredibly spacious and fuel-efficient small hatchback. But unlike the Mini and the Renault 5, it wasn’t all that popular when it was new and didn’t make its manufacturer any money.

Audi has come to the retro wave from a different angle, because it didn’t actually set out to create something that deliberately riffed on the past. The idea was to make an EV smaller than the Q4 E-tron and make it as aerodynamic as possible, so it would go farther with a relatively small battery – and it turned out that if you optimise a hatchback shape for aerodynamics, something A2-shaped is the logical conclusion.

A fairly short, bluff front end that flows into an monolithic body makes sense because it doesn’t force the air to change direction any more than necessary, as does a teardrop shape that’s cut off at the end for practicality. Try to maximise rear visibility and you end up with a split rear window.

No, the new A2 E-tron isn’t as radically innovative as the all-aluminium original. It can’t be, because making interesting but unprofitable cars isn’t a great business strategy. It also needs to be relatively affordable and indirectly replace the recently departed A1 and Q2. As a result, it’s based on more mass-market underpinnings, namely the familiar Volkswagen Group MEB platform, albeit the latest version thereof.

This comes with a raft of upgrades over previous cars, chief among which is that the middle battery option now uses lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) instead of nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry, so it’s happy to be charged to 100% all the time.

The other big thing is the new ‘APP350’ electric motor, which is even more efficient, thanks to thinner materials, thinner oil and a separate oil pan, so the gears don’t constantly splash through a bath of oil, causing drag.

The A2 E-tron, then, is effectively Ingolstadt’s take on the Volkswagen ID 3. Audi isn’t releasing dimensions yet, but it’s clear the A2 is a similar size to that car. Since BMW and Mercedes-Benz have yet to come up with an electric 1 Series or A-Class, that puts the A2 up against premium-ish rivals such as the Renault Megane, Volvo EX30 and Mini Countryman E, as well as its other sibling, the Cupra Born.

Under the camouflage

So it will need to feel a little bit posh inside. You can’t see much of the interior yet, but I had a decent peek under the camouflage sheets, revealing that the A2 shares a lot more with other recent Audis than with the ID 3. Think Q3 for the digital screens, steering wheel and 1980s-Citroën-style column stalk array.

Mostly that’s good news, because it all works intuitively and feels pretty solid and robust, but it’s still a far cry from the wonderfully tactile Audi interiors of old. There are very few physical controls, and the thick bezels on the screens remind me of a first-generation iPad.

On the door tops and the dash, Audi has gone big on the sort of knitted-looking fabric that we’ve also seen in recent Minis, which feels pleasant enough. It’s all very black and rather austere, which suits an Audi, I suppose, but I’m not sure it feels any more upmarket than a Megane.

The manually adjustable cloth seats are superb, though, and the driving position is spot on – not super-low, because the A2 was never like that, but hatchbacky enough.

In the rear there’s generous head room and okay knee room, albeit with quite a high floor, so the seating position isn’t very comfy.

We don’t have a boot space figure yet, but there’s no reason to believe that it would be any smaller than the Born’s 385 litres.

So how efficient is it, really?

Our first taster of the A2 came in the form of an ‘efficiency drive’ on a loop around Denmark and southern Sweden in the most efficient version of the car, with the new motor and 58kWh LFP battery (there will most likely be 52kWh and 79kWh NMC versions as well) and on sport suspension, because that lowers the car for less wind resistance.

It wasn’t the most exciting drive of my life, truth be told. There’s a reason Porsche GT3s flock to Nürburg and not Trelleborg, but it did suit the A2, because it duly returned 5.4mpkWh.

That’s not to say this was an unrealistic route: it included some motorways and A-roads. So that’s a hugely impressive result. It means you could squeeze 300 miles out of this 58kWh battery, which would be beyond any of its rivals. Even with a bit more spirited driving, I suspect an efficiency figure in the high fours should be doable.

You get all the tools you need for efficient driving. The brake and accelerator pedals are smooth and progressive, and between the steering wheel paddles and the drive selector you can have full freewheeling, one-pedal driving and everything in between. There’s something for everyone here.

On the chassis side, you do clearly notice some compromises in order to get that efficiency – at least in the spec of this test car.

When the A2 comes to the UK later this year, I’d avoid the sport suspension at all costs, because whatever efficiency benefits it brings isn’t worth suffering a bone-shaking ride.

Even on the near-perfectly kept roads of southern Sweden, the A2 was incredibly stiff. It felt well controlled and not brittle, but it got tiresome very quickly.

There was also a fair bit of road noise from the Bridgestone Turanza 6 tyres.

I’d be curious to see how those would hold up in the wet, as we’ve road tested a couple of EVs (Mercedes-Benz CLA Electric, Toyota C-HR+) with Turanza 6s that really underperformed in wet braking during the road test. The tyres on the A2 are Audi-specific, though, so might do better.

On the day, the roads were dry, and the A2 had reasonable grip and steering that was nicely measured and free from corruption, thanks to the motor being at the back.

Verdict

The purists will bemoan that the new A2 isn’t the rolling science experiment that the original was, but such a thing was never going to get the green light. The question is whether Audi has done enough to make this its own car.

It’s a bit of a shame that Audi can’t make something more bespoke, like Mercedes did with the CLA, but the A2 is more than just an ID 3 clone.

We will need to spend more time in it on more varied roads and try different versions for a full verdict but, based on this slightly limited drive, the new A2 is recognisably Audi in its style, feel and focus on aero, and its efficiency is very impressive. It stands to reason that this EV will probably be more successful than the ICE original, although I doubt it will have as loyal of a following in 20 years.

Audi A2 E-tron 58kWh

Interesting design and aerodynamics and a plusher interior combine for a promising premium take on the VW ID 3

Price	£33,000 (est)
Engine	Permanent magnet synchronous motor
Power	188bhp
Torque	258lb ft
Gearbox	1-spd reduction gear, RWD
Kerb weight	1900kg (est)
0-62mph	8.0sec (est)
Top speed	99mph
Battery	61/58kWh (total/usable)
Range, economy	350 miles, 5.5mpkWh (est)
CO2, tax band	0g/km, 4%
Rivals	Renault Megane E-Tech, Volvo EX30

Hennessey Blackbird brings 850bhp, manual 'box and no screens

Mon, 3 Aug 2026 14:02:51 +0100

New atmo V8 supercar promises focused driving experience and long range, inspired by famed spy plane

American supercar maker Hennessey has revealed the wild Blackbird as its third all-new model, replacing the Venom F5 with a clear and rather different mandate: “maximum man-machine connection”.

Although it places a greater emphasis on driver engagement, its targeted statistics pitch it at the top of the supercar set: 800-850bhp, 0-60mph in less than 3.0sec and a 220mph top speed.

Hennessey has touted a dry weight below 1360kg (3000lb) with the help of a bespoke carbonfibre tub and carbonfibre bodywork.

At its heart is a high-revving, naturally aspirated V8 engine developed alongside Ilmor Engineering of Nascar fame and with a targeted red line of 9000rpm.

It sends its reserves to the rear axle via an open-gate, exposed-linkage, six-speed manual gearbox.

While there are electronic aids including active suspension, anti-lock braking and traction control, Hennessey pledges that the driver will be placed in the thick of the action.

As well as offering a more analogue alternative to the similarly priced McLaren W1, the supercar has been conceived as a tribute to the 1960s Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, not only in its design cues and name – Hennessey has acquired the rights to use the latter – but via its long range.

It's first and foremost as a road car, with its development programme prioritising refinement, visibility and luggage space to “comfortably cover more than 800 miles in a single day”.

There’s more cabin space than its Venom F5 forebear and enough luggage capacity for “two full-size carry-on bags”, Hennessey said.

Aerodynamics still play a significant role: the active rear stabilisers, modelled on the SR-71's tail fins, tilt up to 71deg at speeds above 71mph to maintain downforce and the creases alongside the sidepods are an obvious link to its airborne inspiration.

The quad exhaust layout is a nod to the rocket-engined Bell X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier back in 1947.

The aviation theme carries over to the functional, driver-focused cabin, which features an abundance of exposed carbonfibre, visible pedal linkages and a suite of clearly presented dials and clocks in place of a digital driver display.

The focus on simplicity extends to the use of a smartphone mount for infotainment, rather than a central touchscreen, and the eradication of any buttons or switches from the steering wheel.

The minimalist arrangement also places greater emphasis on the gearlever, which sits pride of place on the 'floating' centre console.

Equally atypically for a modern supercar, the Blackbird also features a traditional ignition key.

“A big concern with our customers is driving something that is dated the minute that it lands,” Hennessey design director Nathan Malinick told Autocar. “Not only are these objects of desire to drive and enjoy, but for a large body of our customer base they are also driveable assets. You could still drive this in 75 years and not have a blank and unusable screen that is now broken and no one can find parts to.”

Malinick cited the cockpit of the 1960s Ferrari 250 GTO as among his all-time favourites.

Production of the 71 customer Blackbirds is touted to begin in Texas in 2029, priced from $2.5 million (£1.9m) before taxes.

The Blackbird is expected to live a similarly long life to its forebears, with further spin-offs and specials almost guaranteed. “We are not even thinking about what's going to be next,” said Malinick.

Smile and wave: My Renault 4 got me into the happiest owner's club

Mon, 3 Aug 2026 11:56:45 +0100

It's a value crossover you can actually love - and owners are a cheery bunch

Good news: Renault 4 drivers are wavers. How could they not be? It’s such a cheery car – and still being fairly new remains sufficiently uncommon – that you simply have to celebrate when you see one coming the other way with a friendly wave or thumbs-up to its pilot.

There aren’t many current cars that would cultivate such a sense of community – the Jeep Wrangler and Mini Cooper are among the few that have made me feel like part of some benevolent fraternity – and I’m thrilled to be a member of the gang for a few months.

Last week I was coming up to overtake a lovely Carmine Red 4 on the M40 and preparing to give a jolly salute when my partner warned me to not embarrass her by larking around with strangers in adjoining lanes. Imagine my delight, then, when we pulled alongside and were greeted by a whole family of 4 fanatics – mum, dad and two kids – waving gleefully at us. Joining in ultimately proved irresistible for both occupants of my car.

All of which is to say that the 4 is proving itself to be a car for the happy motorist. It’s attractively priced and competitively specified but unlike some rivals doesn’t trade exclusively on those cold, hard, rational attributes; its charisma, dynamism and slight quirkiness are helping it curry favour with a large and enthusiastic group of buyers who want a car they can actually enjoy owning, not one that simply gets them joylessly from A to B.

You need only look at the online owners’ groups for evidence of the conviviality it encourages. There are all the usual questions about how to turn down the ADAS bongs, remove the parcel shelf and find the VIN, but mostly people just want to tell everyone how excited they are about their new motor.

“I’m genuinely blown away with how good this car is as the daily runaround,” gushed one whose 4 was estimating 325 miles of range during a hot, low-speed commute. “I’m a day late posting because I’ve been having too much fun with the car,” apologises another who had promised live updates on their collection process the day before.

“It makes a nice cup of tea,” boasted an owner who’d discovered the vehicle-to-load functionality and lugged his kettle out to his driveway. Some are even organising meet-ups: there’s no better testament to the 4’s potential to achieve true classic status on a par with its 1970s namesake. Your average electric crossover just doesn’t attract this quasi-cult following from the off.

The constant discussion and debate also gives me plenty of opportunities to consider the merits of different specs and options and alerts me to quirks and features that might otherwise have passed me by.

I now know for sure, for example, that entry-level Evolution trim isn’t worth the slight saving, because owners lament that it lacks crucial niceties like heated seats, charge pre-conditioning, wireless phone charging and Google mapping.

I also know how to tell my 4 to prioritise one phone over another when booting up Apple CarPlay, how to deactivate the alarm if I have a dog in the car and even how to completely remove the rear seats if I ever need to (I hope not)

Will Ferrari's synthesised gearbox really delight drivers?

Mon, 3 Aug 2026 11:56:24 +0100

Is a synthetic gearshift still satisfying if the mechanical link is missing? Ferrari thinks so

Recently I went to Maranello to get educated about tech that goes deep into the petrolhead psyche. Nothing too dystopian: Ferrari’s white-coats haven’t been holding up test tubes to a backbeat of sardonic laughter and thunder as they devise subliminals to make us love the Luce. But they do appear to have concocted a gearbox that can convince you it’s something it manifestly is not.

The 12Cilindri Manuale is the first V12 Ferrari with the famous open-gate gearlever and a full complement of pedals since the 599 GTB. Note the careful omission of the word ‘manual’. It costs an abject fortune – an entire 911 GT3 on top of the regular car – and naturally is sold out.

In a Euro 7 world, a new V12 Ferrari with an H-pattern shift feels like a black swan event. And rather a wonderful one at that. You guide that engraved orb on its slender lever, through the snick-snack gates, so that it manipulates an articulated rod that runs for a short while alongside the propshaft before docking portside at the transaxle, where – still under your control – it elicits an artful spasm of forks, synchro rings and dog teeth. It’s a decadent and romantic thing to contemplate, let alone orchestrate, if you love cars and driving.

Which we all do. But of course the kicker here is that none of the above is actually happening in the hysterically hyped 12Cilindri Manuale. Instead, and as you’ve possibly read, position sensors on the gearlever act in concert with a sensor on the clutch pedal.

It’s all inordinately clever, and the dual clutches in the ’box at the back will engage in a manner dictated by your left foot. Timid drivers will be able to smudge the car off the line in town, just as those with unresolved emotional issues will be able to bang the clutch back in to break traction. But this is all ultimately shift-by-wire, just with a UI of mind-blowing tactility. It’s like listening to the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden on Spotify.

Actually, that’s not quite right. In the Manuale you’re there, doing the act, and that act has been painstakingly recreated. It’s more like being in Madison Square Garden, listening to Gimme Shelter on the world’s greatest PA system, only with Jagger and Richards pouring pints at the bar rather than up on stage with their instruments.

It was clear that journalists at the Manuale’s unveiling didn’t instinctively know how they should feel about it all. No, this isn’t usually a problem. Heavy batteries bad. Mezger good. Lane keeping bad. Skoda Yeti good (very good). But the Manuale defies easy classification. The physical act is real but it lacks emotional stuffing, because it ends at a sensor just out of sight in the transmission tunnel or the roof of the pedal box.

Does enjoying the process of changing gears like this subvert your credibility as a petrolhead? Is a perfectly faithful reproduction of the shift quality enough for you, or is the root of the appeal in knowing that something oily and mechanical is relaying the command?

I can’t quite work it out. What I will say is that, after a series of faintly cynical questions in the press conference, technical chief Gianmaria Fulgenzi threw up his hands and said something to the effect of: ‘For God’s sake, remember this is an 830bhp V12 that you can drive as a manual!’

And the man has a point. Assuming they really have got the weights and elasticities of the controls right, the Manuale is going to be sensational to drive. Riotous, even. The resolve of the most po-faced detractor will melt before even a half-decent rev-matched downshift. It will be pure joy regardless of the absent mechanicals.

And it might just be the start of something. Perverse as it sounds, for now the €590,000 Manuale represents the affordable end of this technology. Koenigsegg has offered a similar by-wire system since 2022 with the £3 million CC850 and its extraordinary ESS gearbox (nine speeds, seven clutches, one open-gate plate).

And there is the upcoming Lola T70S GT, which will give the driver by-wire ‘manual’ control over a six-speed sequential ’box, for an optimal blend of rawness and usability. Prices for that will be somewhere between the Koenigsegg and the Ferrari.

So Ferrari has done something a bit rogue here, but not necessarily bad or, as some have suggested, degrading for the company. Rather it has kick-started a wider conversation that may just end up allowing you to enjoy the sensations of a manual gearbox in your Golf GTI, long after emissions regulations or whatever have made it prohibitively expensive to fit a real one. And you won’t have to buy a Luce to get your hands on it.

Seven ways to save money on EV charging

Mon, 3 Aug 2026 09:35:56 +0100

Volatile energy prices have made charging much pricier in recent years – so how can company car drivers keep a lid on their costs?

Electric vehicles have come a long way in the last ten years. With longer ranges, lower prices and faster charging, even long-haul company car drivers can switch to battery power – but it’s not as cheap as it once was.

Inflated by higher energy prices, the cost of charging an electric car has surged since the end of 2021, and HMRC’s approved mileage rates for company car drivers don’t always cover those costs. However, a few small changes in behaviour can make a big difference. Here are our top tips.

1. Smooth and steady driving

There’s a lot to love about EVs’ straight-line pace, but they’re much more sensitive to driving style than petrol or diesel cars.

Shifting into Eco mode can help soften throttle responses and support more energy-efficient driving. And a gentler right foot while braking is also helpful.

Although EVs have a traditional friction braking system, they tend to only use them when they need to stop quickly. The rest of the time, they’re using magnetic resistance within the motor to slow down, and this regenerative braking (or regen) produces electricity that’s fed back into the battery.

By looking further ahead and backing off a bit earlier for junctions, you’ll be doing more braking using regen and wring a few extra miles out of every charge.

2. Plug in at home

If you’re lucky enough to have somewhere to plug in at home, it’s almost always the most convenient and cheapest place to charge.

For example, the Tesla Model Y – one of the UK’s best-selling EV – officially travels 4.6 miles per kWh of electricity in Premium Long Range trim. That’s less than 6p per mile if you’re on an Ofgem-capped home energy tariff, or around half the cost of the slowest public chargers, according to Zap-Map’s latest price data.

Ordering one is easy. Most leasing companies have options to add a home charger while speccing a company car, and your employer can pay for it without any tax implications. If you’re doing a lot of business mileage, they will quickly recover that cost by avoiding paying for expensive public chargers.

3. Charge overnight

Wholesale electricity costs change constantly, as they’re set by the most expensive source of that energy.

Utility companies pay more during the day, when demand is greater and there’s a larger share coming from fossil-fuelled power plants, and less at night, when cheaper renewables are doing most of the work. Some of them also offer tariffs that pass those cheaper costs onto customers.

An EV-focused tariff (as offered by E.ON and Octopus) slashes energy costs by around two thirds during off-peak hours, which are typically between midnight and 6am.

That’s less than 2p per mile for the Tesla Model Y Long Range, or equivalent to 455mpg in a petrol car. Most EVs and all new home chargers will let you preset charging times to match cheaper energy rates.

4. Be smarter with public charging

It has never been easier to access a public charger. Most new AC and all DC rapid chargers are required by law to offer contactless payments without having to sign up as a member. That’s a positive step, but it’s often the most expensive way to use them.

Several charging networks have paid-for membership schemes with reduced rates. Ionity, for example, offers a 43% discount for £10.50 per month. Tesla also offers discounted Supercharging for drivers in other EVs, for a £9.99 monthly fee. That’s worth considering if you’re a high-mileage user.

5. Join a roaming service

Don’t want to confine your discounts to a single charging network? Roaming services, such as Bonnet and Octopus Electroverse offer cut-price electrons (and other perks) across multiple brands, all from a single membership.

Each one works a little differently. Bonnet offers up to 15% off the advertised rate for its top-tier membership, while Octopus is free and offers up to 8% off all partner networks for its home energy customers with ‘plunge’ pricing when there’s an abundance of green energy on the grid.

As an added bonus, you get all of your public charging invoices in one place, which is useful if you're sorting out your expenses claims at the end of the month.

6. Top up at work

Workplace charging is more common for van fleets, but it can also help company car drivers to go electric.

Work is a convenient place to plug in if you can’t do it at home, while also avoiding relying on expensive public chargers. That’s a win-win for most employers, some of whom offer discounted rates to help drivers, and there’s plenty of support available to help them put that equipment in the ground.

Fleets can claim up to £350 per socket for up to 40 workplace chargers and provide free charging without drivers being taxed for it, even if it isn’t used for business trips. That includes plugging in at your passenger’s workplace if you’re carpooling, but it’s worth check with their boss before you do so.

7. Hot tips

All cars lose a bit of range when temperatures drop off, but it’s more obvious with an EV. Cold conditions slow the chemical reactions in the battery, which hurts efficiency, and there’s no petrol or diesel engine for the car to scavenge heat from to warm the cabin. The result is reduced efficiency and higher costs.

There are ways to minimise that loss, though. Most EVs can be programmed to pre-warm the cabin and bring the battery up to its most efficient operating temperature before a set departure time, and it can do this using mains electricity if it’s still plugged in.

However, once you’re on the move, the best way to stay comfortable is using heated seats, steering wheels and heated windscreens. It's quicker and uses less energy than heating all the air inside the car.

Alpine aims to be "more niche than Porsche" with six-car line-up

Mon, 3 Aug 2026 07:37:12 +0100

Alpine "will need" as many as six models, despite plans to keep its range slim

Alpine is devising a full six-car line-up – but won't launch any new models after the forthcoming electric A110 until at least 2030.

Alpine has recently launched the A390 crossover alongside the A290 hot hatch as part of its expansion. Asked how big Alpine could become CEO Philippe Krief said “we are more on the Ferrari side in terms of volume than Porsche”, suggesting sales of around 15,000 cars per year.

He added: “We are not Ferrari, of course, and we are not aiming to be Porsche. We aim to be more niche than Porsche. We want to preserve the exclusivity and the profitability for our models.”

With the petrol A110 retired, Alpine currently has two cars in its line-up, both based on Renault platforms: the A290 and A390. But when asked about adding more cars, Krief said: “Not in the next four or five years.”

Krief didn’t rule out expansion completely, noting that after the new A110 coupé and 2+2 are out, “we will need [models] five and six”. The more immediate focus, he explained, is expanding into new European markets and then North America.

Alpine will launch in Canada near the end of the decade and the US after that. “The sports car market has been 350,000 cars a year for the past 30 years, and half are in the US,” said Krief.

Alpine has scrapped plans to launch a large SUV as the centrepiece of a US market entry. While Krief wouldn’t totally rule one out in the future, he noted that “we currently don’t have the platform” in the Renault Group.

Dacia Bigster 17,000-mile test: The only car you need – for £30k

Mon, 3 Aug 2026 07:36:25 +0100

How good really is Dacia's new flagship SUV, and is it better than the Duster?

You will have noticed this, but I'll say it anyway: aren't cars expensive these days? Rarely a press loan goes by without a friend spitting out their coffee when I tell them how much that week's test car costs to buy.

As I write, I'm waiting for a Volkswagen Golf GTE to be delivered, and if I tell my housemate this mid-sized warm hatch costs £45,000, I think she might explode. Luckily, Dacia hasn't caught the high-price fever that seems to be spreading among car makers. Since relaunching here in 2013, the firm has kept one eye on the depths of the average car buyer's pocket.

The Bigster, then, is Dacia's latest attempt to be the Martin Lewis of the motoring world. Amusing name aside – it's the sort of word that could fast-track you into an HR meeting if you used it at work – it's a serious proposition. It's essentially a Duster that's been stretched both lengthways and upwards, still using that wonderfully versatile CMF-B platform that underpins all Dacias.

In fact, that's one of the main reasons why Dacias are so cheap: they're all extremely similar from the beltline down, using a lot of tried and tested (or, if you're feeling unkind, 'old') parts from across the Renault Group. And cheap it is.

No version of the Bigster will set you back more than £30,000 in standard guise, which is amazing when you look at its rivals. Nissan Qashqai? It starts at £30k for a base-spec model. Kia Sportage? Same price again for the lowliest of low trims. Skoda Kodiaq? That starts at £5k more. In fact, you can get a Bigster from just £25,000, which is Vauxhall Astra money.

Ours is a mid-range Journey model, priced at a smidge over £30,000 with its optional extras and the latest 1.8-litre hybrid powertrain. The four-cylinder engine makes 106bhp and 129lb ft, with the electric motor – powered by a 1.4kWh battery - adding another 50bhp and 151lb ft, all of which gives a 0-62mph time of 9.4sec.

It's all connected to a clutchless gearbox (four speeds for the four-pot and another two for the electric motor), which works in conjunction with a second motor, itself acting like an integrated starter motor to both start the engine and match its revs to shift without a clutch. It's interesting rather than world-changing underneath, then, but isn't it a good-looking thing on the outside?

There's something reassuringly old-school about it. Most manufacturers seem to have gone for sleek lines and huge light bars (a universally mediocre look to my eyes) but Dacia has taken the opposite approach, with chunky panels and a very square design. It has an air of Giorgetto Giugiaro's 1980s Panda 4x4, and in a world in which nothing else looks quite the same, I'm all for it.

Dacia's angular light motif works really well here, and I'm a particular fan of the wraparound brake lights that split elegantly to house the indicators. Another stylish but sensible feature is the chunky cladding, something that looks naff on many cars but is well integrated on the Bigster.

It covers the parts of the car that would be the most scratch-prone on narrow lanes, surrounding the wheel arches and the lower parts of the bumpers and doors – again, very Panda 4x4. Much like that car, it's a really well-proportioned thing in the metal, being long and tall but surprisingly narrow compared with its rivals.

You might be worried that the Bigster has something of a 1980s land yacht about it – massive outside, but poorly packaged inside. Thankfully, this isn't the case. The boot in particular is enormous: forget a cat, you could swing a tiger in there. There's a 612-litre space with the seats up - nearly 100 litres more than the most capacious version of the small but mighty Duster - and a frankly cavernous 1977 litres with them down.

There's even space for a space saver under the boot floor – something that's frustratingly missing from a lot of modern cars. It's a pleasant enough interior too. Sure, there are a few bits that maybe aren't as upmarket as you would like, such as seat fabric and a lot of basic plastic trim that look a little on the cheap side. But the Bigster claws back some credibility with flashes of silver that provide an important aspect of visual contrast.

I'm a big fan of the chunky centre console that provides some nice separation between driver and passenger, as well as being both a handy place to rest your elbow at the wheel and a neat spot for an integrated cool box to sit. You get a lot for your money, it must be said. In our car's Journey spec, there's a plethora of comfort features beyond that cool box: the front seats and steering wheel are heated, there's a six-speaker 3D audio set-up and the tailgate is powered.

Externally you get a black roof, which makes it look slightly less tall, tinted windows and some sharp-looking 19in wheels. I'd prefer it on some 16in white steelies but, hey, you can't have it all.

On first impressions I'm impressed: the Bigster is aiming to strike the balance between cheap and cheerful that so many cars simply fail to achieve. A few thousand miles should reveal if this is a rare exception to the rule.

Update 2: The heated steering wheel with a mind of its own

I was delighted when I first discovered that the Bigster has a heated steering wheel, but it doesn’t seem to like the idea of me using it too much, because it often simply won’t turn on after just one press like it ought to. My high score for the number of presses needed is six, but three is fairly normal and five isn’t uncommon. Another cost-saving innovation from Dacia? No, just an irritating glitch.

Mileage: 1674

Update 3: Big miles in the Bigster shows how far Dacia has come

I've chucked my Bigster into the deep end, racking up big miles from the off. Barely three weeks into my custodianship, I had a week that involved just about as much driving as this job ever throws at me.

On the Monday I headed down from my home in Swansea to the Dorset coast via the fabulous Atwell-Wilson Motor Museum in Calne, then the next day travelled to Goodwood before schlepping to Ely in Cambridgeshire. I spent Wednesday morning bumbling around rural Norfolk visiting a couple of garages east of Norwich, before driving all the way up to the North Yorkshire Moors later that day and returning to Swansea on Thursday evening.

Let's call it 960 miles all in – not exactly a quick trip to the shops, even by my mammoth mileage standards. Having done a few weeks like this before, I knew it would really make or break the car for me. The key to not going mad on these mega-mile expeditions is being behind the wheel of something that allows you to be truly at ease: maximum miles require minimum annoyance.

Thankfully, the Bigster proved to be well up to the task. The isolation is so much better than you would expect it to be, especially compared with Dacias of the past. I was worried it would be a repeat of a 900-mile round trip from Dorset to Scotland in a Jogger some time ago, when the deafening road noise drove me absolutely insane.

Maybe it's because there's slightly less room for noise to echo around in the Bigster, or perhaps it's a result of the extra sound deadening and acoustic glass, but it's certainly a much more pleasant place to be on long drives. Not whisper-quiet, of course, but more than adequate for most people.

And you can always turn up the volume on the surprisingly decent sound system...The fabric seats are comfy enough and the armrests especially so, the steering is solid at motorway speeds and a 50-litre fuel tank means you can easily eke 500 miles out of a fill. I'm really struggling to criticise the Bigster's motorway manners; I hope it turns out to be this solid all round.

Mileage 1975

Update 4: Large boot is a snapper's dream

The boot of the Bigster really is remarkably large, considering the car’s relatively reasonable dimensions. In fact, it’s spacious enough that if there were a point to hook on to, I wouldn’t even need to fold the rear seats down when strapping myself in for car-to-car photography. The high roof means I can sit up straight, too – something less common than you might think.

Mileage: 3186

Update 5: Narrow, blocky – and all the better for it

Everything is getting bigger nowadays, isn't it? Whether it's bills, burgers or cars, it's bloating at an unbelievable pace. Rarely a day goes by without me being left aghast at seeing something I'd pegged as a mid-size machine fill all four corners of a British parking space.

Watching someone try to park something like an Audi Q5 now tends to be a weirdly fascinating experience. The really entertaining part, though, comes immediately after they've parked, when the driver exits the vehicle. In a world of long cars with longer doors, it requires gymnastic manoeuvres that would make the contortionists of the Cirque du Soleil proud.

How do you solve this problem? Not by making the spaces larger, in my view. That would merely result in the big cars getting even bigger and the few usable spaces becoming even fewer. You instead need to maximise less space more efficiently – something the Bigster is proving to excel at.

The key reason for this is the same reason that it's so attractively priced: because it's built on the CMF-B platform, a one-size-fits-all approach that underpins everything from the Renault Clio to the Nissan Juke. This means it's not that big a car, really, despite the name. At 4571mm long, it's 100mm shorter than the Skoda Octavia Estate. Yet it doesn't lag too far behind in the boot capacity department. The length isn't the important bit for maximising space, though: it's the width. At a smidge over two metres wide (including the door mirrors), it's a skinny thing.

Yet you wouldn't guess that from the inside. Because the beauty of the Bigster's design is that there's so little extra metal extending outwards from the limits of the A-pillars, so the cabin width is essentially the width of the whole car. This combines with the blocky bonnet to make it feel narrow on the road too.

As with an old Land Rover Series 3 or a 1980s dad-spec Volvo 240, the squareness of the thing means you know exactly where each corner is at all times. As a result, travelling down the narrow, one-and-a-half-car-wide country lanes that I spend so much time on is an absolute breeze.

I'm struggling to think of many cars short of a Suzuki Jimny - another slab-sided hero – that are this easy to thread through a tiny gap. In fact, the Honda HR-V that I ran previously was very slightly narrower than the Bigster overall yet it felt much trickier to place in tight spots, due to its more curvaceous bodywork.

It took me an exceptionally long time to work out the size of that car from behind the wheel. The Honda had quite a low driving position too, cocooning you inside the cabin, which didn't help with judging its extremities. By contrast, you sometimes feel like you're sat on top of the Bigster rather than in it.

To me, this bold blockiness makes the Bigster a great-looking thing, characterful and slightly toy-like in stature – the sort of car that you would be able to accurately represent with Lego bricks.

Interestingly enough, a few dyed-in-the-wool classic car enthusiasts – you know, the ones who believe that literally nothing of any value was designed or built after 1981 and view the seatbelt as modern nonsense – seem taken by the Bigster's design. Perhaps that's because Huey Lewis and The News told them 40 years ago that it was hip to be square.

Mileage: 4927

Update 6: Familiarity breeds contempt – not in this case

My plucky not-so-little Dacia continues to munch miles in the hands of yours truly unlike anything else on the current Autocar fleet, and I'm struggling to think of another car in recent memory that has had even close to as much use.

Its total mileage since it was delivered midway through January is equivalent to driving along every motorway in the UK more than three times over – or going from the Autocar office in Twickenham to sun-kissed Honolulu. That would be tricky to do, mind, on account of the Bigster being unable to act as an aircraft or a boat. One clear design flaw right there, frankly.

The car itself reminds me of the Toyota Corolla Commercial that I ran back in 2023, which is to say it's proving to be pretty much everything I'd like from a modern car in some fairly harsh conditions. By all rights, I ought to be thoroughly sick of the Bigster by now, after the ridiculous number of hours I've spent sitting on its fabric seats, but I'm growing far more attached to it than I'd care to admit.

I have yet to find anything about it that really winds me up in the way many modern cars do – which is odd, considering that I'm Mr Glass Half Empty and it does have a few objective flaws.

First, the petrol engine isn't the smoothest thing around. There are times, particularly on cold starts, when it sounds more like a ride-on lawnmower than a car. Even on the move, it definitely seems more three-cylinder rumble than the smoother hum of a four, and the unorthodox multimodal gearbox sometimes has a habit of keeping itself a gear lower than it feels it ought to be at motorway speeds.

That said, the engine is still not earth-shatteringly noisy, and I don't really notice any gruffness at lower speeds, thanks to it being part of a full-hybrid system, which is diligent enough in its electric usage for instances of the 1.8-litre unit roaring to life without a significant jab of the throttle to be fairly rare.

Oh, that's another slight annoyance, actually: the jerk that makes me lurch forward in my seat should I dare to inadvertently lift off as it shifts up a gear. The brake pedal isn't the smoothest either, having a short initial range of travel in which absolutely nothing seems to happen, followed uncomfortably soon by a stop as if someone has dropped a supertanker's anchor on the pedal itself.

Again, not great, and I dare say it's a little telltale of how Dacia keeps the cost of its cars so low, but the regenerative braking is strong enough to slow me most of the way down in good time before a tickle of friction braking brings me to a stop. Having said that, stopping is something the car is quite keen to do all by itself when the active cruise control is enabled – something I've moaned about here before.

Those annoyances aside, plus a fairly occasional tendency to disconnect my phone on start-up, there really isn't much to dislike about the Bigster. It feels like a truly trustworthy workhorse, and I still marvel at its ability to transport both me and my abundance of photography equipment so easily while keeping me in such a good mood.

I like when a car feels purposeful, and that's the word I'd most keenly apply to the Bigster. It knows what its job is and simply gets on with it.

Mileage: 7245

Update 7: The ultimate tracking car

The Bigster proved its worth as an essential hired (or rather borrowed) hand for filming last week. The lads from our sister magazine What Car? were impressed by not only the space inside – easily enough to accommodate all of their video kit, plus my not-small photography bag – but also the smooth ride, which made the car-to-car tracking shots as easy as they can be.

Mileage: 9825

Update 8: Not just a bigger Duster

I see quite a few other Dacias on the road – especially where I live in Wales, where they seem as much of a staple of the nation as crumbly cakes or mountain sheep frolicking along a hillside – but it's rare that I see any other Bigsters.

Admittedly, they can be somewhat hard to spot. Even to my eyes, as well trained as they are on all things Dacia, I struggle to identify a Bigster from a Duster at first glance. Line the two up side by side and you can spot the difference, mind. Naturally, the overall bodyshell is the same – the similarity across the range is one of the key reasons why Dacia can keep the prices of its models so low – but if you know what you're looking for, there are a few little telltale signs to identify the pair.

Weirdly, the Bigster's extra 227mm of length isn't that easy to spot, so natural is the look of its styling. The only obvious signs that distinguish it from a Duster are the contrast roof, a stripe on the C-pillar, a slightly different tailgate and a flatter, less rugged-looking front bumper. They're two from the same pod, as you'd expect.

The pair are almost identical inside too, save for one key difference: all but the highest-trim Duster lacks the Bigster's chunky centre console. That's a shame, because it makes the cabin feel much more upmarket as well as providing a fair amount of genuinely useful storage.

The Duster isn't quite as nice to drive, either. Its wheelbase is 50mm or so shorter and that means it doesn't ride quite as well as its bigger sibling, even on smaller wheels. It's also a noisier place to be when you're on the move. There's more wind noise and a bit of extra road roar that the bigger car manages to tune out.

So why buy a Duster when the Bigster exists? Well, the Duster starts at £3370 less than the Bigster in base trim and always seems to be about £3k cheaper than the bigger car regardless of spec. I suspect most people simply don't feel that they need the extra 20% of boot space because the Duster has a decent enough boot anyway – and in fairness, even I sometimes find myself wondering if I really need it.

Mileage: 10,341

Update 9: Chunky SUV passes key family test

The Bigster has passed an important and challenging test in the family household: my dad's attempt to fit an entire drum kit in the back, something that has (somewhat hilariously) dictated his car buying for years. Dacia's largest model passed with flying colours, swallowing the not-insignificant load with relative ease and without even needing the false floor or space saver wheel underneath to be removed. And it rode far more comfortably afterwards too.

Mileage: 11,328

Update 10: Irritable snapper can't find much to get irritated by

A few very mildly irritating things about the Bigster have revealed themselves.

In fairness, as someone who is annoyed quite easily by things being needlessly difficult to use (read: I'm just irritable and perhaps a bit thick), I can't remember the last time I drove something that was so wonderfully logical. As Autocar's photographer, I really do rack up the miles as I pound the UK's motorway network, and funnily enough having a car that doesn't irritate me incessantly puts me far more at ease on these long journeys.

I suppose a big part of that is the much-lauded My Safety Perso button found in the majority of Renault Group products, which puts the exceptionally annoying, EU-mandated combination of lane keeping assistance and overspeed warning noise in a soundproof prison cell at the press of a button.

Every time I end up in another car, I subconsciously find myself reaching for the right-hand side of the dashboard where the button is and being disappointed to find it missing. Why have so few car makers taken Renault's lead?

That said, it's probably a good thing that the speed warning is so easy to disable, as it has a nemesis in the form of the humble national speed limit sign. It seems to confuse the car as much as quantum mechanics confuses me, resulting in it picking up the correct speed limit on these fastest roads only once in a blue moon. It thinks 60mph single carriageways are strangled with 50mph restrictions and assumes motorways have a 60mph limit. Very odd, all in all.

Other annoyances? The Bigster comes with adaptive cruise control, which sounds all well and good. But unlike some other cars on sale with this, it lacks the option of 'standard' cruise control. The system is better than most at not reacting too soon when approaching slower vehicles, but it's incredibly sensitive to rain blocking the sensor, at which point it stops working and leaves you on your own. What's wrong with classic cruise?

These are fairly trivial things, mind, and my day is still brightened whenever I get behind the wheel, even after 12,000 miles together.

Mileage: 12,125

Final report: Bigster is a winner – and joins an exclusive club of classless cars

There's a certain type of car that I hold close to my heart. Not hairy-chested muscle cars or bulletproof off-roaders but rather what I term the classless car: something that fits in no matter where you take it, from Mayfair to Mansfield. The original Mini is probably the classic example.

There aren't many modern cars that really seem to fit into this category, other than perhaps the Skoda Superb and Volkswagen Golf. But I think the Dacia Bigster has firmly earned its place in this pantheon of social chameleons.

No one could ever accuse me of not spending enough time with my long-termers in my job as Autocar's photographer: over the past few months, I drove this cut-price SUV to every English county bar five (Cumbria, Cornwall, the Isle of Wight, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear, if you're wondering), to four countries and on almost every motorway in the land – and it fitted right in everywhere it went.

I think those chunky looks are the main factor in that. It somehow looks grounded in reality but with enough fancy flourishes to make it stand out from the crowd.

Those chunky edges perhaps give the Bigster off-road credentials that this front-wheel-drive Hybrid 155 version can't quite live up to in reality, but who cares when I'm spending most of my life charging up and down motorways anyway?

I had multiple people say they thought it was a Range Rover, and I can think of many far worse cars for this Dacia to be mistaken for.

It isn't just a pretty face, either. The exceptionally long motorway slogs I spend my life tackling were made much more bearable behind the wheel of this car by its comfort and refinement. The high-speed ride was so much more composed than many of its rivals', while I really was amazed at how little outside noise there was: to look at it, you would think that clipping along at 70mph would sound like you had stepped inside a wind tunnel, but no.

A real bugbear of mine in cars are short ranges, so the fact that I was regularly getting well over 500 miles out of one 50-litre tank of petrol was another little thing I quickly started to love about this Bigster.

Things were pretty good off the beaten track, too. The deceptively narrow footprint, boxy shape and surprisingly fun chassis made threading the Bigster down narrow roads a real joy, knowing that I would always find space to squeeze it into should I find something coming the other way.

Inside, things were less rosy, but only slightly. By and large I was far more impressed with the fit, finish and general ergonomics of the cabin than I expected to be for something at this lower end of the cost spectrum. The physical HVAC controls felt just right, making a nice click as they were operated, and everything else seemed pretty well put together – and appeared to stay like that as the miles piled up.

At one point I thought that an irritating rattle was the result of something coming loose, when in reality it was simply a case of me not having clipped the removable drinks holder in properly.

The narrowness of the footprint doesn't translate to the interior, which in combination with the long wheelbase meant I could fit three adults across the back in genuine comfort – something that's surprisingly uncommon.

And that boot! In terms of useful space, it was just fantastic. Carrying everything from full-size drum kits to race-spec bucket seats, I never once found myself fighting the car trying to squeeze stuff in: it would simply swallow anything I fed it and then ask for more.

Now, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. The somewhat fidgety low-speed ride got on my nerves around town – I suspect a result of the admittedly great-looking 19in wheels – but not as much as the engine, which sounded like someone throwing a bag of hammers into a rock grinder when it fired into life. It was certainly a stark contrast to the creamy smoothness of the car when it was gliding along in all-electric mode.

The front seats were slightly suboptimal too, with Dacia's weird wetsuit-like material getting sweatier than it should have done on long drives in the summer. I wish they were a little bit softer, too, as I didn't really sink into them.

But all in all, I'm struggling to think of anything else on sale that's as good of an all-rounder as the Bigster is. Whether you're driving home from the shops or over to Belgium, you can be sure that it will get you and enough cargo to furnish a small flat there in comfort, ease and a surprising amount of style. I'm going to really miss it.

TEST DATA: DACIA BIGSTER 155 HYBRID JOURNEY
Mileage	At start	6,401
Mileage	At end	23,201
Prices	List price new	£29,740
	List price now	£28,265
	Price as tested	£30,590
Options	Options fitted	Indigo Blue paint £650, spare wheel £200
Economy and Range	Claimed economy	60.1mpg
	Fuel tank	50 litres
	Test average	50.4mpg
	Test best	52.6mpg
	Test worst	41.9mpg
	Real-world range	554 miles
Tech Highlights	0-62mph	9.7sec
	Top speed	112mph
	Engine	4 cyls in line, 1789cc, petrol, plus electric motor
	Max power	153bhp
	Max torque	127lb ft
	Gearbox	4-spd automatic, FWD
	Boot	677 litres
	Wheels	19in, alloy
	Tyres	205/55 R19, Michelin ePrimacy
	Kerb weight	1419kg
Service and Running Costs	Contract hire rate	£358 pcm
	CO2 emissions	106g/km
	Service costs	None
	Other costs	None
	Fuel costs	£2297
	Running costs including fuel	£2297
	Cost per mile	14 pence
	Faults	None

Chinese car makers all share parts - will the world follow?

Mon, 3 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0100

"Everyone has the same door handle": how Chinese firms build cars so cheaply

There's a simple but crucial secret behind how the Chinese brands have managed to develop cars so quickly at costs much lower than those faced by manufacturers in Europe, but it also runs counter to the way traditional car makers work: they share parts.

The ability to use standard parts across multiple models isn't new, and it is one the big reasons why global car giants such as the Volkswagen Group and Stellantis have grown to the size they are. The more you build (or source) of a single part, the cheaper it becomes.

But China has gone one step further by breaking two unwritten rules: the first is that parts should be built to the car makers’ exact specifications; the second is that to stand out among competitors, parts should be differentiated.

China has proven it’s possible to break those rules and still produce cars that appeal to customers, partly by using the costs saved to increase standard tech. Now other countries, including Japan, are looking at whether they can replicate that across competing brands as they scramble to match China on cost.

“China has this industrial scale,” Ned Curic, head of development at Stellantis, told Autocar. “Look at door handles. In China, there are three different handles. Everybody has the same.”

New models from China look fairly similar, and while copying successful designs has been a feature in the country’s recent past, there’s a more practical reason. “Proportion wise, they're very similar, and why they're similar is because they use the same suppliers for the tooling,” Curic said.

Tooling is the industrial kit needed to make parts, including stamping dies and moulding presses. These are typically unique to each manufacturer because traditionally they want full control of all aspects of the car’s design.

This, however, is costly and takes a lot time, which in turn adds more cost. “That's a long lead for us, six months or so, because we do a lot of customisation on those,” Curic said. "In China, they do it close on four weeks because they use the same tools."

Stellantis learnt from the Chinese and is now standardising a lot more inside in the company, Curic said, citing its own narrow range of three types of door handle.

Ford is another to spot the industrial scale. ”They’ve got this hyper level of commoditisation of parts that customers don't always see, touch or feel,” Jim Baumbick, head of Ford in Europe, told the Automotive News Europe Congress in June. He cited headlights as an example: “If you develop a new headlamp, completely new, it's three months longer than just taking a combination of parts that are modular, designed and ubiquitous in the industry. We need to do the same in a different way, here in Europe.”

The strategy allowed the growth of new brands. “That's what people didn't understand,” Philippe Houchois, head of automotive analysis at the bank Jefferies, told Autocar. "They thought all those small car brands that could not survive, but in fact the back office of a small car maker in China can be more scaled up than you realise. Because they used, say springs, that were standard across the industry, used by BYD, Geely as well as everybody else.”

The omnipresent 1.5-litre engine, originally licenced from Mitsubishi, is another good example.

China’s standardisation is in part state-led. Government mandated standards are nothing new and are vital to ensure everyone is working to the same safety, emissions and security legislation. Car makers often welcome them, particularly when they cross borders, because it reduces their engineering bill.

But China went one step further via industrial regulators Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and its research body the China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATARC).

The MIIT’s 14th five-year plan, running to the end of 2025, was focused on setting out standards to allow ‘new energy’ car makers (ie those focusing on EVs and plug-in hybrids) to scale up.

The plan laid 647 automotive standards for the industry, of which 54 were mandatory and 335 were recommended national standards with the rest sector standards.

However the state was able to steer the industry down a particular path by tying some of the recommended ones to subsidies.

The price of not following them was too costly. “That made them kind of mandatory,” Xuming Zhang, head of the World New Energy Vehicle Development Organisation (WNEVDO), told Autocar. WNEVDO is non-profit co-founded by the China Society of Automotive Engineers and global engineer standards promotion body Fisita, with the shared goal to increase global cooperation on automotive regulation.

China’s move was sensible, Zhang states, giving the example of charge sockets. “Suppliers don't want to have to make one for company A, another for company B,” Zhang said. "That’s not good for the product, the development or for their manufacturing. They cannot reach their scale of economy."

Battery cells is another area where recommended government standards turned defacto mandatory via the subsidies, Zhang said.

“China has a strong government, as you know,” he added. "Sometime it regulates, sometimes it support the industry. It may not benefit a single company, but it will benefit the industry."

Houchois at Jefferies believed Tesla was used to provide a role model here. “My theory is that the Chinese brought in Tesla, rolled out a red carpet so it could built a plant [in Shanghai] very, very quickly so it could be used to instil a sense of pressure on the Chinese carmakers,” he said. “Some of the standardisation came because they kind of duplicated Tesla for a while, which is why so many Chinese cars look like Teslas.”

The traditional method of car making, where parts are only shared within groups, is changing. Former Toyota boss and the new head of Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association Koji Sato has openly called for parts standardisation among Japanese car makers. He cited wire harnesses as an example that could boost productivity tenfold, he told Automotive News in an interview. Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa has called for a similar approach.

Even premium car makers are starting to take notice, including BMW. CEO Milan Nedeljkovic told investors late July that cost reduction will partly come from “increasing the speed of development through further standardization and commonality in engineering solutions and components.” Nedeljkovic was quick to assure that BMW would keen an iron grip on specifications, while also acknowledging suppliers could be leaned on for standard parts. “We have to realize that the supplier offer has increased over time,” he said. “There are industrial standards on the market, which are convincing, and it would be wrong not to use them.”

There are issues with this approach. It worked in China because it “turns out that the customers didn’t care much about the style”, Stellantis’ Curic said. Instead customers focused more on digital experiences, which could be differentiated.

That’s different in Europe. “In Europe and in North America, people still care a lot about style. The fit and finish, the materials, the look and feel. I think they make purchase decisions on that,” Curic said. Sharing parts tooling for visible features could be risky.

That is become more the case in China, where car makers are being forced by the pace of competition to find more differentiating features. “The next generation of cars will be less lookalike, I think,” Houchois said.

Enforced parts standardisation is not universally loved in China, WNEVDO’s Zhang said: “Suppliers want common parts because it makes their business easy. The car makers, when they think about their creation, their competency, are sometimes not so keen.”. He cited the desire for car makers to move from standard cell design to be able incorporate cells directly into the car body, rather than a separate pack.

The next MIIT five-year plan, the 15th, announced earlier this year, has gone a different route, marking a “decisive shift from scaling standards volume to targeting strategic technology gaps, tightening safety baselines, and deepening China’s international standardization role”, according to analysis from SESEC, a body that promotes European automotive standardization interests in China.

Essentially, as is often the case with Chinese five-year plans, the last one worked too well, leading to overcapacity, ferocious competition and declining car maker profits. Now MIIT is looking to regulate the digital side further as that becomes the new battleground.

It remains to be seen whether European car makers could actually bring themselves to share common parts, something that in the past was more associated with very small car brands who didn’t have the wherewithal to build its own switches, light units and the rest. Morris Marina doorhandles popping up on Lotuses, TVRs etc is probably the most famous example.

A move to widespread parts-sharing could even trigger claims of collusion in Europe, Houchois suggested.

However, in a period when Chinese car makers are gaining share all the time in Europe, rising close to 10% in the first half of the year, any means to reduce costs to their level will be on the table.

“Massive global corporations need to evolve to sustain efficiency in a market that's shifting fast and forever,” Chris Mason, head of Fisita, told Autocar. “An efficiency in parts supply could help. Whether that's a golden bullet or not needs further consideration.”

Used Mercedes A-Class: Posh hatch is a catch from just £5k

Sun, 2 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0100

Merc's third-gen hatch hit the ground running as a premium Golf rival - now it's available from £2000

The A-Class was a case of third time lucky for Mercedes - at least in terms of making a profit.

The groundbreaking first-gen A-Class was safe and extremely space-efficient. We called it "easily the most innovative front-wheel-drive car since the Mini", yet frumpy styling played a role in it becoming a €2.5 billion failure. Merc's second effort addressed notorious handling quirks but was no less ungainly.

The Mk3, however, was bang on the mark: Mercedes straightened its tie, pushed its glasses up, reopened the rulebook and built the most Volkswagen Golf-like hatchback it could, rather than a segment-bending innovation showcase. It was a roaring success.

It's still a good-looking car today, with neat creases, balanced proportions and a subtly sporting aura. Residuals remain strong, but you can now grab a well-looked-after example with reasonable mileage for less than £5000.

At 4.3 metres long and with a range of four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines driving the front wheels, the A-Class was engineered and specified to rival VW's benchmark and its trendsetting premium relation, the Audi A3.

You slide down into a W176 A-Class's heavily bucketed seats: the low roof and small door openings make it feel more like getting into a sports car than a posh family hatch. That was the point: Merc was trying to entice a younger and more dynamically inclined buyer.

It all feels luxurious and nicely finished without being exuberant. Good-quality plastics and premium switches are plentiful, and the 7in (8in with the 2015 facelift) infotainment system is right-sized, as is the smaller display between the sporty analogue dials.

The driving position is great, but the rear space is more compromised: the bulky seats and low roof make it quite claustrophobic, and the middle seat is for occasional use only.

The boot is also a touch small, at 341 litres, but the flip side of the reduced practicality is the compact feel on the road. The dynamics are excellent, and few would have expected Mercedes to release one of the best-handling hatchbacks of its day. The A-Class is immediate and direct, darting into corners and holding its line with tenacity. A BMW 1 Series seems stodgy by comparison and an A3 almost insipid. It's genuinely good fun to hustle down a B-road.

For those few readers who aren't keen drivers, you might lament the uncompromising stiff ride and poor sound insulation (improved with the 2015 facelift), which lets too much road and engine noise inside. SE and Sport models are firm, but AMG-lite trims can be uncomfortable on all but smooth roads. Adaptive dampers (available post-facelift) go only so far at taking the edge off the ride.

Another A-Class miss was the engine selection: none of the petrols or diesels stand out. That said, the 1.6-litre 156bhp A200 petrol gives a nice balance between economy and performance, and the 2.1-litre diesel became better refined post the 2015 facelift. The 134bhp A200d is efficient and punchy. Both engines are at their best when paired with the standard six- speed manual, although the seven- speed dual-clutch auto isn't bad. Worth hunting down is the rare A250. With 208bhp (215bhp in the facelift), it has Golf GTI pace with an unforgiving chassis that gives great agility when pushing on. It's a forgotten but worthy hot hatch.

What to look out for

Interior: Check for rattles, possibly emanating from the centre console or, on early models, from the front seatbelt height adjusters, which were modified on later versions. Build quality was generally much better on facelifts, and additional sound deadening was welcomed.

Engines: Mostly reliable apart from typical particulate filter issues on the diesels. The 1.6 and 2.0-litre petrols and 1.8-litre (pre-facelift only) and 2.1 diesels are Merc units, while the 1.5-litre diesel is from Renault. It's a little underpowered (108bhp) but economical, reliable and no less refined than the bigger units.

Servicing: A noisy clatter on any engine indicates it's time for a new timing chain - it's normally due at 124,000 miles but often needs doing sooner. The A-Class requires servicing every year or 15,000 miles, whichever is first. The big service should be every four years. It's worth factoring this into the price if a change is due.

Gearbox: Jerky or delayed gearshifts could mean an issue with the automatic 'box - a seven-speed dual-clutch auto across the range. A service or replacement control unit should fix things.

Low-emission zones: All petrols are LEZ compliant, as are 2.1-litre diesels, from as early as 2013. The 1.8-litre diesel is not compliant, and neither is the 1.5-litre in the pre-facelift car (tell it apart by a '180 CDI badge', rather than '180d').

Also worth knowing

Trims range from SE to AMG Sport (AMG Line in the facelift) with Sport in the middle. Sport adds cruise control, auto wipers and 17in alloys to the standard electric mirrors, air-con and auto lights. AMG versions have a sportier bodykit and carbonfibre bits inside. Lots of features (LED lights, leather heated seats, a panoramic sunroof) are wrapped up in the two option packs, Premium and Premium Plus.

The 2015 facelift brought Dynamic Select, with a range of driving and suspension modes: Eco, Comfort, Sport and Individual. It also has the improved 'NTG 5.1' infotainment system that includes both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto hardware support - but not all models have it enabled.

Earlier models with NTG 4.5 can have it (expensively) upgraded, while later ones may just need a software update and cable.

Insurance groups range from 13 to 33. Vehicle excise duty is as little as £20 for the diesels, while the petrols are around £200.

How much to spend

£2000-£4999 Neglected and high-mileage cars, probably not worth the risk.

£5000-£8999 Good-condition, reasonable-mileage pre-facelifts, plus a few later cars in less desirable SE trim.

£9000-£14,999 Massive selection of facelift cars, the majority being automatic diesels. AMG Line commands a significant premium over Sport.

£15,000-£25,000 Late, low-mileage cars and a selection of bonkers A45s - a future classic in the making?

An owner's view

Sioban Hall: "I love my 2017 A-Class. It's an A220d with the AMG Line bodykit. The only downsides are that it can feel quite stiff and noisy, but otherwise I like that it feels low and powerful like a sports car. So far it has been reliable and economical - I get almost 50mpg - and is the perfect car for my motorway commute."

Ultimate sleepers: Can new Citroen campervan beat VW California?

Sun, 2 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0100

The new Citroen Holidays is here to challenge an Autocar favourite for campsite supremacy

Few cars unite the writers of this magazine—or loom so large in many of our money-no-object garages—as a 2.4-tonne, diesel-powered cuboid. One that takes more than 12 seconds to hit 62mph and most likely laps Anglesey in the time it takes to brew a strong cup of tea via its on-board kitchenette. The Volkswagen California is an essential pillar in any rounded car collection, fantasy or otherwise, and it's one that justifies its tortoise-like straight-line performance with the hare-like speed with which it transforms from civilised minibus to rolling four-person villa.

It has occupied a class of its own for more than 75 years now, tracing its roots back to the iconic Type 2 camper van of 1950. The now familiar California badge had its debut in 2004, and Volkswagen has sold in excess of 200,000 examples in the two decades since. All right, there is plenty of capable competition from the third-party camper conversion market, while the Mercedes-Benz Marco Polo lifts things up a notch with its plusher trim and optional air suspension. But the California has always been the factory-made camper for common folks, even if this T7-generation Cali now starts at almost £65,000 and accrues a further £10,000 with the trim and options that truly make it feel like a home from home.

But at last! Coming over the hill, its arrival trumpeted by distinctly commercial turbo diesel tones, is some welcome competition and a car that competes with the aftermarket on price while wearing a glossy showroom sheen. The Citroën Holidays notably undercuts the Cali with its £56,000 entry point and some inevitably rougher edges. The VW now places its seating and sleeping for four firmly on the MQB car platform of the Multivan rather than the underbelly of a Transporter, helping it ride and handle with a fresh finesse. The Holidays, though, is unmistakably a double chevron-badged van with its shorts and flip-flops on—or cagoule and hiking boots, assuming you're deploying it on a Great British break...

The Holidays' name, and the font displaying it, certainly borders on the twee, but it channels a whimsy similar to the Mazda Bongo Friendee, a true cult icon of the used camper van scene. It's the knowing acknowledgement of a vehicle that is both fun and functional without much compromise in either camp. And camp we shall, because how else might we appraise the newcomer's nous against the class MVP?

The Holidays starts life as a Citroën Spacetourer bus, built as normal in Hordain, north-east France, before being sent to Slovenia for its conversion. The payload is bolstered over stock and, unlike the VW, there's one, simple spec to choose from. A 2.2-litre diesel is now standard, although the older 2.0-litre on test delivers an almost identical set of numbers. There's heating, a twin-hob cooker, fridge and (cold) shower, plus the capacity to sleep two downstairs and two inside its gas-strutted, manually extendable roof. Those beds are snug, however, measuring the 1.9 metres by 1.2 metres of a UK queen-size or 'small double' bed rather than a full double. The front seats swivel to face the rears, and a temporary table can be installed between for a proper dining experience.

The California mirrors much of that set-up, but its roof is electrically operated from this mid-range Coast upwards and incorporates a hatch to slide shut to separate the two floors. It trades one cooker hob and the Citroën's unlikely commode toilet for larger water tanks, an integrated side awning and its own foldable chairs, which slot with beautiful tactility into the bootlid. Both vans, it's worth adding, have enormous tailgates that demand care when opening.

The VW's build process takes place in Hanover across two different facilities, and it hits the configurator with three spec levels and powertrains, supplementing its core diesel with a 201bhp 2.0-litre petrol and 242bhp 1.5-litre eHybrid 4Motion. The latter offers around 50 miles of silent running—useful for keeping the peace at the campsite—and represents your only shot at four-wheel drive in this pairing, although we have opted for the diesel here to ensure a civilised squabble. While dynamics may appear less crucial here than in almost any other test in the Autocar archive, no one wants their trip to start on a sour note. And yet, despite its distinctly commercial vehicle beginnings, the Holidays won't subject that upon you.

Its additional 29bhp over the California provides livelier acceleration, and its standard auto 'box makes progress simple. You can manually shift gears with its steering wheel paddles, but there's rarely any need beyond hushing its engine on a consistent incline. Its steering is slower and more laborious than the Cali's, commanding a swish of your forearms rather than a flick of your wrists in corners, and the Volkswagen can't help flexing its more sophisticated platform in this company.

The Cali is quieter on a cruise and nimbler in corners, and it exhibits more quality damping on rougher roads to help justify its larger asking price with more polished manners. An unlikely highlight among it all is Travel Assist, a smart piece of semi-autonomous tech that can predictively brake and steer the car on narrow lanes for safer navigation of unknown roads. While we're not ready to cede full control of our cars just yet, it feels like an adept background safety feature for drivers lost or flustered on a family trip. It's a modest option at £480.

The VW is unequivocally techier, then. It's more immediately habitable too, however much the climate control sliders of its protruding infotainment screen frustrate beside the Citroën's humbler row of buttons and toggles. Front quarterlights aid the Cali's forward visibility, and you can see more through its rear screen, which helps offset its pert side mirrors. While picture editor Ben Summerell-Youde and I agree that its beige interior tones look a bit naff, in truth they lighten the cabin nicely as you drive, and one would assume the trim is hard-wearing and easily cleaned. It would otherwise be a clanging own goal beside the darker-trimmed Holidays.

The Citroën's rough edges show themselves most viscerally inside, with its tacked-on smoke detector, visible bolts and cabling and—perhaps a clincher for some buyers—the modest level of physical fitness and ingenuity required for its transformation from four-seat shuttle to two-tier hotel room. Sliding and folding the rear seats into a double bed is a right old kerfuffle, while unlatching (and more pertinently re-latching) the roof might cause some bruised knuckles on your first several attempts. You would get used to it all, I'm sure, but alongside the near-effortless Volkswagen, it is the most sizeable sacrifice made in the name of value. You should badger your dealer for a proper demonstration before you lay down a deposit.

Each of the levers and pulleys needed to activate bedtime in the California exudes the decades of experience VW has in the game, although whether operating its heating via a touchscreen (or bespoke phone app) is preferable to the simpler knobs and dials of the Holidays falls into the realms of personal taste. Or, indeed, age. A more objective demerit for the VW is its more frequent fuel stops. We averaged 37mpg in both vans across similar usage, but the Holidays' larger tank (70 litres versus 58 litres) easily yields more than 500 miles between fills; the Cali is likely to illuminate its fuel light 100 miles earlier.

The Volkswagen is otherwise the better car here against any parameter bar list price. Even then, its frankly preposterous ability to retain value ensures you can lease one from a mite over £300 per month, while the Citroën (currently) asks considerably more. And yet each of these devices transcends the usual formalities of four-wheeled transport to stand a very good chance of becoming a beloved member of the family.

The purer, simpler Holidays is more honest, right down to its brazen name. It feels far more economy class in its ambience, but the upshot is you'll harbour less fear of getting it dirty or scuffed. It's much less precious about the life that's going to be thrown at it—which in turn might encourage a more enthusiastic attitude from its owners in what they do with it. As the newcomer to the scene it ought to sit proudly on camp amid a row of Vee-Dubs, too. Yet however much it charms, it can't elbow the California from our dream garage.

Snorkel, winches... missile launcher? Here's my mad homebuilt 4x4

Sat, 1 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0100

This Frankenstein's monster of a vehicle is based on a Suzuki, but you wouldn't know it

Andy Racher's dinky-size 4x4 is an example of what happens when you give two blokes a welding torch and a load of thin-gauge tubular steel - and absolutely no idea what to make with them.

"My late dad, who was a welder, and I fabricated a tubular frame, making it up as we went along," explains Andy, who has an engineering background. "Whatever we decided at the time, we did. What you see is simply the result of the many challenges we faced building it. Basically, it was led by 'Where are we going to put this and where are we going to put that?'." This is the result.

At least they had a rolling chassis as a basis on which to work. Andy says: "Underneath all those tubes is a Suzuki SJ410 1.0 soft-top. I bought it 12 years ago as just a rolling chassis with an engine and a steering wheel. The tubular frame and all the extras added just under 200kg to its original kerb weight."

Those 'extras' include every conceivable off-road essential, as Andy explains: "It has a snorkel and all-terrain tyres, of course, but also a pair of Rhino winches with a snatch block so I can gear them up to pull more. On the bonnet is a compact shovel and a pair of load straps, and at the back is a spare wheel, a fuel can, an auxiliary battery, more load straps and two waffle boards that I use as a bridge to cross narrow ditches.

"Inside are two bucket seats fitted with racing harnesses from a Caterham, a steering wheel from a race kart, a fire extinguisher, cameras and a pair of ear defenders because the engine makes a hell of a noise! It's cooled by the radiator from a Toyota Avensis with twin high-speed fans, again sourced from a Caterham."

A neatly crafted instrument panel features a gratifying assortment of dials and switches, but my eyes are drawn to more switches set into a panel mounted along the length of the header rail.

"These control a series of electrically operated valves that allow me to wash separate areas of the vehicle remotely, using water stored in a tank with a high-pressure Whale pump," says Andy. "When it's at full pressure, the water comes out like a jet wash. From the driver's seat I can clean the headlights, the spots, the rear screen and the cameras. It's useful when you're speeding through mud."

Speeding? Not quite. "Actually, it's terrifying off road," admits Andy. "There's very little suspension travel. The first time I took it off road, I broke it. I couldn't help myself: I took a jump and it landed rear first, breaking the rear suspension, part of the gearbox and the handbrake. I spent the next three days repairing it."

In truth, I don't think Andy is bothered by his Suzuki's poor off-road manners; he has just had fun modifying it - and he's not finished.

"My plan is to fabricate a couple of platforms on which to mount weapons, which I will also make," he says. "I'm thinking rear-mounted surface-to-air missiles that will articulate, and at the front two Gatling guns or two single-barrel machine guns - I can't decide. With those, it will be my A-Team tribute vehicle."

I'm not sure Andy's dad had that in mind when he set to with his welding torch.

Is Alfa Romeo the only brand that can sell cars for £30k and £1.4m?

Sat, 1 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100

Line-up ranges from Junior to 33 Stradale hypercar - but not everyone could achieve that spread

Which brands, a colleague wondered, could retail a car at under thirty grand but also, like Alfa Romeo, launch a limited-edition, several-million-pound supercar?

Alfa Romeo won't quote a price for the new 33 Stradale, so it's impossible to know for sure how much it costs. Tragically, it's not on the regular model configurator.

I saw a build slot for one of the 33 examples advertised at £3.5m, but even if that is genuine (I'm unconvinced), asking isn't getting, several people would want to profit from it and who knows if that allows for possible option costs.

Those can change things drastically. McLaren says the average array of options on its £2m W1 add £600,000 to each car and that one customer is spending £900,000.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you can spend as little as £29,015 or something approaching 100 times that on an Alfa Romeo. Is that unique?

In the market, right now, I think one could fairly confidently say that it is - and that it's the broadest model price spread in the business. But who else could, if they chose to, do similar?

My colleague thought hardly anyone, but I'm not so convinced. Almost every manufacturer wanting millions for limited-edition cars will be reaching upwards from its normal sphere, of course-even McLaren or Rolls-Royce. But I think what would mark most out as able to do it is not how far upwards they're stretching but how far down they've already stretched.

Take Mercedes-Benz, BMW or Audi, for example. They could make squillion-pound cars and indeed have. Most recently, the AMG One was around £2.4m, while an A-Class can be had for budget-Alfa money.

What enables them to do it at the top end of the market is ultimately the same reason people want their cars at the bottom end. They've decades of experience of making expensive, thoroughly engineered cars-a lot of them for racing. If it feels okay to hand over £2m to a manufacturer because it has won eight Formula 1 constructors' championships, it fairly well stands to reason that it also feels fine to hand over £30,000 to one.

What's perhaps surprising about this is that premium or luxury (or who would like to think of themselves as luxury) manufacturers moved down into mainstream segments seemingly without affecting their appeal at the top end.

It has been an awfully long time since the introduction of the A-Class, BMW 1 Series and Audi A1. There was a fear, for a time, that selling better-value cars would 'cheapen' those brands - lessen their appeal as premium names. It doesn't seem, though, to have come to pass.

Even discounting the unobtanium, Audi, BMW and Mercedes routinely sell cars costing into the hundreds of thousands, which is very lucrative business - certainly more so than selling cars cheaply.

Pity, then, those manufacturers, many with long and storied pasts, that couldn't pull off this feat, and for which value cars are effectively the whole deal. For them, a shift of just a few per cent in sales when margins are incredibly tight can mean the difference between a modest profit or an extraordinary loss.

I don't think there's a Chinese manufacturer that could do it today (at least in Europe) - but, given that Toyota and Honda probably could, who's to say that won't change in the future?

Could, say, Vauxhall or Citroën or Skoda realistically pitch customers a 'few-off' car at £3m? It feels unrealistic.

Unusually for a car maker with value roots, Ford could and has made very expensive cars. It made 1350 examples of its most recent GT and charged £1.4m for a 67-off track-only version.

Racing, then, must count for something. I don't suppose anyone has raced as much as Ford, and it feels to me like it would be at the root of the appeal of most of these kinds of cars. I know they used to say 'win on Sunday, sell on Monday', but it feels like there's more to it than that. More 'win in 1966, sell in 2026'. It has always been difficult to quantify the amount of cars an extensive racing programme helps to sell, but I think it changes the kinds of car one is able to sell too.

243mph on public roads: meet the world's maddest motorsport event

Sat, 1 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0100

The Silver State Challenge is a motorsport event like no other. We head to Nevada to join in

There aren't many places left where you can legally drive at more than 200mph on a public road. I've come to one of the remaining few.

Twice each year, the Silver State Classic Challenge closes a vast section of Nevada's Route 318 and transforms it into the world's fastest public road motorsport course. No barriers. No run-off. No catch fencing. Just endless desert, distant mountains and a strip of Tarmac stretching to the horizon.

The May event, the Nevada Open Road Challenge, uses a two-leg format totalling 151 miles, making it the world's longest sanctioned public road race. The Silver State Classic Challenge in September runs as a single-leg shootout at 90 miles. Having run since 1988, it might be the least-known yet most wonderfully unhinged form of motorsport in the world.

A drag strip in the desert

The host town of Ely is deep in eastern Nevada, more than 200 miles north of Las Vegas. It feels like an old mining town that moves at its own pace. Casinos and motels wear faded signs from another era, diners serve towering pancake stacks and coffee in thick white mugs and there is a sense the modern world passed this place by.

Then race week arrives, and suddenly Ely fills with Porsches, Corvettes, Mercedes-AMGs, Dodges, Vipers, Shelby Cobra replicas and homebuilt monsters producing absurd amounts of horsepower. Parked among them this year was my car: a Volkswagen Golf GTI.

Much of the field is obsessed with horsepower figures and elaborate aero packages, but VW's front-wheel-drive performance hatch represents a different philosophy: accessible performance. Some 50 years after the original redefined the affordable fast hatchback, our 2.0-litre turbo four-pot Golf GTI, with a comparatively modest 241bhp and 273lb ft, was about to take on a whole new challenge.

But the deficit of power shouldn't be an issue, because the Nevada Open Road Challenge is not simply about going flat out. The event is divided into different classes based on target average speeds. Touring classes run from 95mph to 110mph; above them sit various divisions running at up to 180mph, before arriving at the Unlimited class, where competitors simply drive as fast as they can.

In 2017, during the Silver State Classic Challenge, Robert Allyn and navigator David Bauer set a Guinness World Record for the highest average speed ever recorded on a public highway during sanctioned competition. Driving a 2001 Chevrolet Monte Carlo Nascar, Allyn averaged 219.643mph across the 90-mile course. At one point, organisers recorded the car travelling at 243.3mph.

What strikes you first, however, is not the speed but the atmosphere: it lacks the corporate feel of most modern motorsport environments and resembles a community built around enthusiasts. Some arrive with professional motorsport trailers and support crews; others look as though they drove in directly from somebody's backyard workshop.

Because it is a closed-road event, cars do not need to be road-legal, but the overwhelming majority remain road-registered machines driven to the event. All first-time competitors must complete a mandatory Rookie Instructional Session held at SpeedVegas, a private circuit south of Las Vegas. There, we went through classroom sessions and track instruction. There are explanations of timing procedures, safety protocols, overtaking etiquette and emergency procedures and then, once we reach Ely, course orientation drives pointing out landmarks and reference points hidden in the desert landscape.

Only after completing this programme are drivers allowed to compete. Even then, rookies are restricted to Touring classes: progression into the faster categories must be earned.

The Touring division is aimed at standard to lightly modified production cars. Grand Touring raises speeds to between 115mph and 125mph; Grand Sport from 130mph to 155mph; and Super Sport from 160mph to 180mph averages. Then there's the Unlimited class.

Each step upward requires increasingly serious safety equipment. The regulations also contain a series of wonderfully old-school details. For example, tyres must use metal valve caps: rubber or plastic caps can fail in the heat generated by sustained triple-digit desert speeds.

While the event may look outwardly relaxed and wonderfully eccentric, the organisers take safety extraordinarily seriously. Since its inception, there have been four major accidents resulting in five fatalities. Those incidents hang quietly over the event, even if competitors rarely dwell on them publicly.

Electric vehicles are permitted in the Touring divisions but are not currently permitted to run in the Unlimited category. Race director Blue Offutt explains why: "We simply don't have the capability out there for the sort of fires those cars can create." Route 318 cuts through vast empty sections of Nevada where the nearest infrastructure can feel impossibly distant. Fire crews, emergency services and rescue teams are stationed strategically along the course, but this is still remote desert.

Race week

Friday and Saturday gradually transform Ely into a giant motorsport festival, complete with parades, shows and specialised speed events. Then there is perhaps the most wonderfully surreal tradition of all: the Hookers' Choice Award, presented by workers from Ely's brothels to their favourite car entered in the event.

Race day begins on the outskirts of town before competitors depart in convoy towards a truck stop farther south along Route 318. Drivers sip coffee beside their cars; final tyre pressures are checked; navigators stare intently at their timing sheets.

The Unlimited cars are sent off first. From the truck stop, competitors make the short drive to the start line just outside the sleepy town of Lund, before heading into the desert at 30-second intervals with the local sheriff looking on.

The priority is to get beyond your target average speed as quickly as possible. The standing start means that for the first few miles you remain technically below the 110mph average, but gradually the numbers begin climbing back towards target. The goal is to reach it and build a buffer.

The early long straights are surreal as the Nevada desert opens out in every direction and the GTI settles into its stride. With the road closed and, for long stretches, no other car in sight, you can choose your line freely. Most drift towards the middle of the road, straddling the yellow centre lines and rumble strip to maximise visibility and smooth out the sweepers. At sustained triple-digit speeds, Route 318 develops an almost hypnotic rhythm. The Nevada desert begins coming towards you in enormous uninterrupted waves of asphalt and heat haze.

Suddenly reality snaps back into focus. Just as we are trimming our speed to get as close as possible to our average target of 110mph, we are confronted by debris scattered across the highway: long strips of rubber spread across both lanes. Further down the course, sitting damaged in a neighbouring paddock beyond the roadside fencing, is a Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo. The car has come to rest battered and coated in dust, dirt and dry Nevada grass after leaving the road at close to 180mph.

The sight is a sharp reminder that the dangers remain very real. Fortunately, driver Michael Davis and navigator Ken Reese walked away. Later, during the evening presentations back in Ely, the organisers award the pair the event's Balls of Steel Award for 2026.

At this stage, the mathematics of the Nevada Open Road Challenge become very real. In our 110mph Touring class, every mile should take 32.73sec. Arrive at Mile 20 0.4 seconds early and you are Plus 0.4; 0.6 seconds behind? Minus 0.6.

In the lead-up to the event, this timing variance was on everyone's lips. But every conversation circles back to one place: The Narrows. It sits roughly 70 miles into the southern leg, a tight canyon section carved through the mountains and universally regarded as the most intimidating part of the course.

The route notes alone are enough to raise your pulse rate: "Off-camber 64deg into a short straight into The Narrows." Followed by: "Most treacherous blind curve on the course!!!"

After that, the notes descend into a blur of tightening corners and increasingly urgent instructions for multiple bends, before the understated final note: "Exit The Narrows (resume breathing)."

All while trying to hold a 110mph average. Veterans constantly warn newcomers about it. "You need to build a buffer before The Narrows," one experienced competitor told us, "because you're going to lose time in there." Another laughed and said: "The road decides what speed you do through The Narrows. Not you."

We take the advice seriously. Long before reaching the canyon section on the outward leg, we deliberately build a healthy margin over our target average speed, knowing we would bleed seconds once the road tightened around us.

Another aspect of the challenge in the Touring classes is that competitors are not simply given a target average speed: they are also assigned both a maximum and minimum speed. Our maximum permitted speed was 124mph, with the minimum set at 80mph. Drop below it and you risk disqualification for going too slow. Organisers do not want competitors bunching together or creating dangerous speed differentials across the course.

To enforce it, hidden speed traps are scattered throughout the route. Exceed your maximum or fall below your minimum speed and you are disqualified immediately and not permitted to run the return leg competitively.

That pressure becomes particularly intense approaching The Narrows. By then the road has lulled us into a strange rhythm. Route 318 is so open that 110mph gradually begins feeling oddly normal as the Nevada desert blurs around you.

Then the canyon walls suddenly close in, the road tightens and the corners begin stacking one upon another. And, for the first time, you genuinely have to work for the average speed. The focus changes completely. The challenge is no longer simply maintaining momentum it becomes damage limitation.

Once we emerge from The Narrows canyon section, the priority for the remaining 17.5 miles of the southern leg becomes brutally simple: recover the lost time without overdriving the car. The desert begins flattening out again as we gradually claw our way back towards the magic 110mph.

After 90 miles across the Nevada desert, we cross the line just fractions away from our prescribed target time of 49min 05.455sec. The world suddenly slows down.

After almost an hour of concentration and speed calculations, the abrupt reduction in pace feels surreal: your eyes take time to readjust; your breathing changes; the silence inside the car suddenly becomes noticeable again. Competitors funnel into the tiny town of Ash Springs for the turnaround before the run back to Ely, and the place briefly transforms into an improvised Le Mans pit lane.

Then, less than an hour later, everybody heads back out in the opposite direction for the 61-mile return leg - and this year there is extra uncertainty. Weather forecasts throughout race week had repeatedly threatened rain. Organisers made their position very clear: if rain fell during the event, all competitors would immediately be reduced to a mandatory 70mph average speed regardless of class.

Out on Route 318 the weather has shifted constantly. Some sections remained dry beneath brilliant blue desert skies; other sections grew colder as dark clouds drifted across the distant mountain ranges. And then, after the finish line on the return leg, Nevada desert snow begins falling on the mountains surrounding the town.

That contrast perfectly captures the absurdity of the event itself. One moment you are calculating timing variance at triple-digit speeds while crossing Nevada at full commitment. The next you are crawling carefully back into a tiny mining town through falling snow.

Somewhere amid all of that madness, our Golf GTI quietly delivered a result we could scarcely have imagined. We finished seventh in the 110mph Touring class with an average speed of 109.9808mph or just 0.0192mph shy of the prescribed 110mph target.

By the end of the event, however, the mathematics, psychology and sheer craziness of Nevada's open-road racing culture had started to make sense - enough to understand why so many competitors return year after year. A completely legal flat-out race across the desert run largely on trust and camaraderie.

There is simply nothing else quite like it.

Ignore Jay Leno: Your dream garage only needs three cars

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 15:00:00 +0100

Jay Leno's Garage is a dream, but does he actually have too many cars? | Getty Images

I've got an old Mini Cooper S and BMW 3 Series Touring, but my next car might be something wildly different

A popular pastime among car enthusiasts, both in conversation and mentally during idle moments, is to ponder the dream garage. More specifically, which cars will occupy it, should money not be a concern. Less commonly pondered is the garage itself and how big or small it should be.

Like many, I enjoy the Jay Leno’s Garage videos on YouTube. Freed of having to feign interest in Keanu Reeves’ latest action flick or some washed-up politician’s ‘tell-all’ book but not of the money that that sort of thing used to pay, Leno can spend plenty of time with his collection. To many, it probably looks like the dream: an enormous hangar in California with a couple hundred cars from all eras.

But I’m not sure it is. Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t turn down a similar arrangement if it came my way. But even with full-time staff to look after the fleet, having more cars than days in the year seems impractical to me. Just trying to drive every car at least once a year would be a near-impossible mission.

Maybe 10 is the magic number? I’ve not tried it, but that still seems like a lot. The hangar required to house all that metal still needs to be pretty sizeable, and you have to keep up with 10 insurance policies, 10 MOTs, 10 road tax reminders and 10 services, never mind the more specialist attention that old bangers tend to demand. The thought alone makes me want to lease a Suzuki Swift.

I suspect the sweet spot is three. I’m currently on two: a Mini Cooper S from 2005 and a BMW 325i from 1990. One is a year-round do-it-all car, the other a slightly more interesting do-it-all car, but which is limited to three seasons, because it’s liable to turning to brown dust. They cover a lot of bases and the admin is somewhat manageable.

I’ve had the BMW a year, and I've already done nearly as many miles as the previous owner managed in six. Thanks to him and the owner before, who didn’t drive it at all for 10 years, I had the opportunity to buy a nice, low-mileage car. But I do wonder how cars end up sitting like that. Perhaps the ‘mistake’ is keeping special cars for special occasions.

You may simply be of the restoring or collecting persuasion, which is absolutely fine, but assuming you buy cars to drive, I think the best way of getting enjoyment out of cars on the side is to just use them to brighten up mundane journeys. I’ve been driving the BMW to the supermarket and to the odd UK-based job and then taking the long way back. It has been most enjoyable.

Even so, I think there’s space (functionally, if not physically in the single-car garage I’m renting) for a third car – something a bit silly that’s wildly different from normal traffic and an event every time.

No, not a supercar: that’s way out of my league financially. I’m thinking pre-war. For the past few months, we’ve had a Morgan Super 3 on the long-term fleet. I was lucky to prize the keys from Matt Prior’s hands for a weekend, and I loved how it made low-speed driving interesting, whereas most modern cars aim to do exactly the opposite.

I suspect that with a pre-war car, the need for double-declutching, the uncouthness, the confused looks from passers-by, might inject similar cheer into ordinary driving. The oldest thing I’ve driven so far is a Series II Land Rover, so I may be delusional...

There are signs that this is a great time to buy a veteran car, because prices are dropping as large parts of the established fanbase move on to a more ground-based existence. I came across a 1928 Franklin with an air-cooled straight-six engine, a three-speed transmission and wooden wheels. I’m sold on the concept of an air-cooled straight six alone, but it’s still £13,000, which is a bit much for a bakery-run car, so maybe I need to give it a few more years.

Am I mad for wanting a machine that’s approaching 100 years old? After all, there is a notable absence of Franklin main dealers near where I live. Maybe the three-car garage is better left as a mental exercise. But I’d love to be told otherwise.

Mercedes: Big screens stay but we went "too far" removing buttons

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:00:00 +0100

Mercedes' screens can span the entire width of a dashboard

The industry isn't yet at 'peak screen' but has hit 'low button', says Ola Källenius

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius says touchscreens in cars could continue to grow in the future - but he believes the industry might have reached peak "low button".

As with many of its rivals, the Stuttgart firm's cars have focused on introducing large touchscreens in recent years at the expense of physical buttons.

The tri-screen MBUX Hyperscreen can measure up to 1410mm wide in some cars, making it the largest such display in any production car.

There have been complaints about the increasing number of controls moved from physical switches to the screen.

However, while Källenius acknowledged such concerns, he said: "We spend countless hours on UI [user interface]. I spend hours every year discussing this with our engineers and we joke it needs to be so easy that either a five-year-old kid or a Mercedes board member can use it. That is the hurdle, and once you familiarise yourself with it, it becomes second nature."

Källenius also cited efforts to improve voice control systems but conceded "the industry as a whole might have gone a little bit too far" towards digital controls.

He noted Mercedes has now introduced physical controls on the steering wheels in its cars and said: "Sometimes you get a bit ahead of yourself and do technology for the sake of technology and maybe forget a little bit about the customer. So from now on, you will see us reintroduce the most sensible buttons."

Asked if that meant the car industry had reached 'peak screen', Källenius said: "I don't know if we're at peak screen, but we're at low button."

BYD goes after Defender with boxy £48k, 402bhp hybrid SUV

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:02:56 +0100

Rugged-looking Ti7 goes on sale in the UK as Chinese brand's new flagship

The BYD Ti7 has gone on sale in the UK as the Chinese brand's biggest model, priced from £47,995.

Sized between the 110 and 130 variants of the rival Land Rover Defender, it undercuts the British 4x4 and the petrol-engined Mercedes-Benz GLC and BMW X3.

The Ti7 will be the first UK-bound car to use the Chinese brand’s new, performance-focused ‘DM-p’ plug-in-hybrid powertrain.

This comprises a turbocharged 1.5-litre petrol engine, two electric motors (one per axle) and a 35.6kWh lithium-iron-phosphate battery pack.

The set-up produces a combined 402bhp, giving a 0-62mph time of 4.8sec and an electric-only range of 74 miles.

The Ti7's chunky styling evokes classical 4x4s such as the Defender and Toyota Land Cruiser, with bluff edges to the design and a spare wheel carrier mounted on the boot.

It will be sold in the UK under the BYD brand, but it is in effect a larger sibling of the Denza Bao 5 that's also due to arrive here later this year.

In their native China, both the Bao 5 and Ti7 are sold by BYD’s upmarket, youth-focused Fangchengbao brand.

Asked why the Ti7 isn't being sold as a Denza, a spokesperson for BYD UK previously told Autocar that the differentiation is because the body-on-frame Bao 5 was concevied as an off-roader, while the monocoque Ti7 is meant for buyers who would like rugged styling but may not need off-road capabilities.

In China, the Ti7 is also offered with a battery-electric powertrain compatible with BYD’s ‘Flash’ chargers, which are capable of delivering up to 1500kW.

A network of 300 such chargers is due to be built in the UK this year to support the launch of the Denza Z9 GT, but it remains to be seen whether the fully electric Ti7 will also come here.

Customer deliveries of the Ti7 will begin in January.

Lexus ES verdict: Spirit of the LS lives on in £68k EV

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0100

Lexus's eighth-generation ES becomes its one and only big executive saloon – and goes all-electric to boot. Lexus is one of those car brands that slowly seems to be morphing into an SUV specialist almost by force majeure rather than by force of will. At no point has this firm vowed to stop making other sorts of cars or expressed any particular commitment to becoming a tougher-looking, more outdoorsy version of its former self (unlike some other brands we could mention). It’s simply that customers clearly like SUVs - and Lexus can hardly be criticised for catering to that.Luckily for those who don’t like those SUVs so much, the brand’s management recognises the obligation of a broadly based premium car brand, which sees itself as a rival to the big European ones, to offer a proper range of models. And, just as clearly, said model range should include a big executive saloon like the subject of this review: the Lexus ES. Of course it should. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine Lexus without a generously sized ‘luxury flagship’ four-door. For decades, the full-size Lexus LS was the car indelibly associated with the firm, since it was famously Lexus’s introductory model - in the UK market, at least. In North America, however, the smaller ES appeared at the same time, in 1989. It wasn’t until the seventh-generation ES came along, in 2018, that Europeans and Brits became acquainted with it.Now, the eighth-generation incarnation seems to be part of something of a reset for Lexus’s executive saloon-car strategy. Why a reset? Because by the time it left UK showrooms at the beginning of 2025, the larger, fifth-generation LS had become a very slow-selling car indeed (only three examples were registered in 2024 and fewer than 40 since 2020).It has been replaced, in part, by the firm’s chauffeuring-spec luxury MPV, the Lexus LM. But the old LS also has a kind of successor in this new ES, which is significantly larger than the seventh-generation version; now has a more clearly focussed luxury brief than it ever used to; and has one, but only one, powertrain, albeit one that business and fleet users might naturally gravitate towards in 2026.

New models vital to DS' survival as UK sales hit record low

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0100

DS sold just 112 cars in the UK during the first half of 2026, down from 948 a year ago

DS is poised to introduce two crucial new models in the UK – the N°3 supermini and N°7 crossover – as it begins a fightback after sales slumped to a record low.

The French premium brand sold just 112 cars in the UK during the first half of this year. That's an 88.19% decline from the 948 cars it registered here during the first six months of 2025.

The sharp fall was primarily due to the changeover in generations of the DS 7 SUV, which has long been its best-seller. Production of the left-field BMW X3 and Mercedes-Benz GLC rival wound down throughout the course of the year before finally concluding earlier this month. The 7 accounted for almost half of DS's sales in the UK last year, which totalled just over 1000 cars. This year, just two have been registered.

Although the changeover was long planned and the sales slump expected, the 7's replacement, the N°7, has an especially important role to play in sustaining DS's operations as the brand's other models sink down the sales charts.

The new N°8 flagship has been available in the UK since March but DS has registered just 70 examples – including demonstrators.

In addition, sales of the 3 crossover fell from just over 100 during the first half of 2025 to fewer than 20 in the same period this year.

The 4 accrued just under 500 registrations over the first six months of 2025 but it was replaced last September by the facelifted N°4, of which 43 examples have been registered since its launch.

DS parent company Stellantis doesn't disclose financial performance figures for each of its brands individually, so it's unclear what impact DS's low sales volumes have on its bottom line. DS has long contested that, despite being a niche player, it is a profitable contributor to the group.

Should DS fail to recover the momentum it had built with the 4 and 7 in terms of sales, it will face a significant challenge in ensuring its long-term viability.

DS declined to comment.

New arrivals will be vital

Speaking to Autocar last year, DS CEO Xavier Peugeot referred to 2024 and 2025 – which both brought sales declines for the brand in the UK – as "transition years".

He said the brand would be in a position to "recapitalise" following the launches of the N°8, N°4 and N°7 and that he felt "trust in the future for DS in the UK".

He added that DS should not be judged solely on its sales volumes, it being a profitable contributor to Stellantis on a global level.

However, the UK "needs to provide some volumes" to ensure the profitability of its dealer network, he said. "The coming launches will be key to ensuring the success of DS in the UK."

Stronger sales for the N°7 and N°4 will prove vital if the brand is to guarantee its future in the British market.

Notably, DS is undergoing a significant strategic pivot. Stellantis announced in May that DS will be moved back under the stewardship of Citroën, from which it was originally spun off to become a stand-alone marque.

It will now be considered a "specialty" brand (alongside Lancia, which is being rolled back into Fiat), but it remains to be seen what that means for its global sales network.

N°3: Small car, big hopes

Citroën's influence will manifest in the replacement for the DS 3, named the N°3. This is tipped to return to a more traditional supermini body. It will draw on the Mk1 Citroën DS3, the chic spin-off of the Citroën C3 that was successful enough to justify launching DS as a brand in its own right.

The Mk1 car was retired in 2018 and replaced by the current-generation crossover a year later. The brand's sales immediately plummeted and they have yet to recover.

Some 3000 examples of the DS 3 supermini were sold in the UK in 2018, compared with just over 2000 examples of the higher-riding 3 Crossback in 2019. That year was the crossover's best result for sales, which have fallen every year since, with just 133 registered in 2025.

DS's decision to return to the traditional supermini market could be the first step towards claiming some meaningful volume in the UK and mainland Europe.

Speaking to Autocar last year, DS design director Thierry Métroz said it would take inspiration from the Mk1 car "because it was so successful on the market".

He added: "We sold 500,000 DS 3 gen-ones. It was a success story. It had many, many customers in France, but also in the UK."

CEO Peugeot said he believed DS is "now in a position to recapitalise on this success story, based on the launch of these new products", referring to the N°4, N°7 and N°8. But he added that the brand's previous best annual result of around 55,000 sales has to become the baseline.

The success of the Renault 5 and Peugeot 208 gives reassurance of the N°3's potential, but it could still be a year from showrooms, so DS's larger models must work hard to sustain its UK operations in the meantime.

How DS sales have fallen in the UK

Source: SMMT

Year	Number of sales
2017	9082
2018	5074
2019	4299
2020	2379
2021	2362
2022	3674
2023	2403
2024	1152
2025	1015

Porsche 911 Turbo S tested: A 200mph hypercar for the real world

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Celebrated giant-killing ‘super-Porsche’ enters the electrified era Versatility is a strange concept to find as a core quality at the heart of a 200mph super-sports car. Yet that is how the Porsche 911 Turbo has been defined for most of its 50-year life.The first version, built from 1975, endured for a long time, but the early ‘930’ Turbos made an impression the car would spend decades trying to erase: the ‘Widowmaker’ cast a long shadow.The memory of that car, combined with technology proven by the 959 supercar, was what motivated Porsche to make the four-wheel-drive ‘993’ Turbo of 1995 such a pioneer. But since even before then, the 911 Turbo was set on a path to prove itself the ultimate sports car. Not only the quickest-accelerating and most powerful series-production 911 but also ready to excel on road and track, as a long-distance-runner, a grand tourer, a circuit thriller and a usable everyday driver ready for almost any conditions; to represent absolutely everything any other 911 can do – only better; and more.The idea has now spawned 12 generations of 911 Turbo; and today - with the '992.2' Turbo S - embraces hybrid-electric powertrain technology.

Why women were blocked from Le Mans for decades

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:00:00 +0100

Jackie Bond-Smith, Joey Cook and Jacqui Smith had to fight to race their Mini Marcos | Image: Getty

Jamie Chadwick is the first woman to drive a hypercar at Le Mans, but would have been barred just decades ago

Jamie Chadwick recently became the first woman to drive a hypercar at Le Mans, a year after making her debut in the secondary class of the fabled 24-hour race.

Many women have competed in this iconic event across the decades, yet the best female finish has stayed unsurpassed for almost a century.

"For the first time two women drivers will take part," we said in our 1930 Le Mans preview, "which will be interesting." Whether that comment was loaded is open to interpretation, but if so we were humbled by Marguerite Mareuse and Odette Siko bringing their Bugatti T40 home in seventh.

Their 1931 reprise was ended early by disqualification for a refuelling infringement, but in 1932 Siko achieved that record result: fourth overall and first in the 2-litre class in a supercharged Alfa Romeo 6C shared with grand prix star Louis 'Sabipa' Charavel.

Again, though, she was unlucky a year later: Siko was putting in "quite a good performance" in the initial hours but the next morning suffered a "sensational accident".

"Coming through the pinewoods towards Arnage at 75mph, the car suddenly got broadside on, crashed successively into two substantial trees, and then hit a third which was cut down six feet from the ground. They fell across the road in the track of Driscoll's Aston Martin.

"Madame Siko was thrown clear as the first tree was hit, being shot through the air and falling at the feet of a gendarme with nothing more than bruises and a complete inability to understand what had happened to her. The car, on the other hand, literally burst, the pinions coming out of the gearbox, certain parts even being found 50 yards from the main wreckage.

To add to the completeness of the crash, the chassis took fire on hitting the third tree and set fire to the brushwood and dry fir branches."

It's understandable that Siko never returned to Le Mans, but she continued to compete in speed trials and road rallies until the war.

"Femmes pilotes' were a common sight in the '30s, but there was just one when the race returned in 1949 - and not one in the late '50s or '60s.

Listed in our published 1954 race result is a Thirion, but it's unclear if this was indeed the rally driver Gilberte or her father Max, as some sources say that race officials forced a swap on account of her gender.

If this was the case, it's a mystery to us why the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) might have had such a change of attitude: just three years prior, Betty Haig and Yvonne Simon finished third in the 2-litre class, beating a male crew.

Some sources – including no less than Porsche – say the ACO banned female drivers in response to the 1956 death of Annie Bousquet at Reims.

Supposedly she was known for a hell-for-leather driving style, but Autocar absolved her of blame: "On fast sweeping bends, the worst possible arrangement to have is a ditch at the side of the road, yet this is what one finds on this stretch."

Incidentally, the sport's biggest tragedy, when at least 81 fans were killed by a flying car at Le Mans in 1955, involved only male drivers.

Whatever, the prevailing attitude is encapsulated in this unpleasant comment by The Motor magazine: "The ACO has planned a three-hour race at Le Mans for women drivers – if they can find enough women drivers competent enough to stay on the road for that long."

In 1967, at the height of a golden period for sports and GT racing, a trio of young Brits - Jackie Bond-Smith, Joey Cook and Jacqui Smith – set out to "crack the ban on women imposed by the organisers" with their Mini Marcos.

The ACO rejected their entry, and the RAC defended it thus: "Le Mans presents special safety problems, and a major hazard in recent years has been the speed differential between larger and smaller cars."

Smith saw it differently: "The French have a funny idea about women, haven't they?"

The supposed ban was eventually lifted in 1971, as rally driver Marie-Claude Beaumont earned the ACO's trust in an early-season three-hour race, enabling her to share a 7-litre Chevrolet Corvette in 'the big one'.

Its engine went after 14 hours, but Beaumont competed in the next five Le Mans, scoring a career-best 12th in 1973, then switching to an Alpine-Renault alongside Lella Lombardi - still the last woman to have raced (and indeed scored) in Formula 1.

BMW puts G-Class rival on hold as China headwinds hit home

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:33:45 +0100

Off-roader, code-named G74, evolved rapidly before development efforts stalled; China presents big challenge

BMW has begun reassessing its future product strategy, including putting its rival for the Mercedes-Benz G-Class on ice, as changing market conditions have forced the German car maker to review which models will go into production later this decade.

The move follows what new CEO Milan Nedeljković described as a dramatic shift in the automotive landscape over the past year, with weakening demand in China, growing pressure from new Chinese rivals, stricter US trade barriers and diverging demand across global markets.

Speaking after BMW reported its second-quarter results, Nedeljković said the company was taking a fresh look at its future product plans rather than assuming existing programmes remain appropriate for every market.

"In all these areas, we are taking significant steps and increasing the pace," he said. "For example, we are once again reviewing which technologies, model variants and drivetrains we will need in the future. In addition, we are looking at where new partnerships could make economic and technological sense."

Nedeljković stopped short of suggesting individual models could be cancelled or delayed, but the comments represent one of BMW's clearest acknowledgements yet that future new-model planning is becoming increasingly fluid as global demand evolves at different speeds.

The review is understood to have already claimed at least one eagerly awaited model. Insiders at BMW’s Munich-based headquarters suggested the proposed G74 off-roader has failed to receive final approval and is currently on hold.

The now stalled new model is believed to have evolved from an early Neue Klasse-based electric concept to a proposal based on the cluster architecture (CLAR) and which would have offered a broad range of drivetrains.

While BMW has not officially commented on the status of the G74, its apparent demise reflects the new approach to future new model investment outlined by Nedeljković.

In outlining the revised new model reassessment process, Nedeljković pointed to China as one of BMW’s biggest challenges.

"The rapid deterioration of market conditions in China was the main reason we adjusted our guidance in June," he said, adding that new competitors are now expanding beyond China into other Asia-Pacific markets, Latin America and Europe.

He also pointed to a combination of tariffs, trade barriers, currency fluctuations, tighter regulation in Europe and the continuing conflict in the Middle East as factors that have fundamentally altered BMW's business.

Rather than committing exclusively to electric models, BMW continues to develop petrol, diesel, plug-in hybrid, electric and hydrogen-powered models, arguing that customer demand is now diverging more sharply between major markets.

"The needs and expectations of customers vary greatly from market to market – and even within individual markets," Nedeljković said. "Our sales figures in the second quarter reflect this reality and the strength of our technology-open approach."

He noted that electric model sales in Europe grew by more than a third during the second quarter, while internal combustion-engined vehicles generated double-digit growth in the United States as demand for electric models dropped across the wider American market.

The review comes despite strong momentum behind BMW's Neue Klasse programme.

Nedeljković said the new iX3 is continuing to attract strong demand, with BMW now approaching 100,000 orders. It has already introduced a second production shift at its new Debrecen plant in Hungary to meet demand.

BMW describes the Debrecen ramp-up as the fastest yet achieved at one of its new production facilities, with the second shift introduced ahead of schedule in response to customer demand.

Early demand for the new i3 has also exceeded expectations, according to Nedeljković, with pre-orders opening ahead of schedule in June before the full order books open at the end of September.

The reality of car testing: Five minutes to judge a 1600bhp hypercar

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0100

An "exclusive opportunity" to try a long-awaited new car turns into a media circus - what did I really learn?

The alarm goes at 4.30am. Ahead of you is a 150-mile drive that thousands will be doing this week: the well-trodden way to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Except you're going a day early, to the neighbouring racing circuit, for a date with 1600bhp. Yes, sixteen hundred.

You're carrying out the magazine's first test of one new all-electric, tri-motor sports car. The FoS is an increasingly popular venue for the public debut of new performance cars. Manufacturers therefore tend to build preliminary media test drives around it.

The invite to this one definitely said it would be "an exclusive opportunity" suitable for "experienced testers". When you arrive, however, it seems those definitions have been stretched a little. There are six cars in the pit lane but perhaps 10 or 12 road testers you recognise - and as many vloggers and social media influencers again, all milling excitedly around the cars, smartphones in hand.

When Jenson Button turns up, he does us older hands an unexpected service by distracting the Instagram crew as they swarm on him demanding their selfies. Even so, if there are this many people in the UK with "plenty of track experience" of 1000bhp-plus electric sports cars, then my name is Michael Faraday. Still, we're all here. Better get on with it.

Next, after disclaiming any legal rights you might have had, against either the circuit operators or the car manufacturer in the event of accident or injury, you are ushered into a half-hour press conference.

This follows time-honoured convention. First, some superfluous product introduction, which, if you've read the press material sent to you in advance, you will already know. Second, some design waffle about "flowing lines" and "sculptural artistry", which will be about as useful for your story as the first part. And, finally, some technical information - which won't be quite as extensive or detailed as you might have liked, because they had to make time for all of the earlier rubbish. Your PR contact will promise to send you the slides via email, but will they arrive on time? You have questions, but you won't ask them here because why share the answers with the whole room? In any case, time is short. Remind me, why did we bother with this bit again?

Now, you wait for the one-and-only, three-lap, perhaps five-minute track stint you have been promised, in the car you have come all this way to drive. Colleagues take their turn, returning looking little the wiser than when they had departed; somebody you're chatting to wonders if this might be the farthest he's driven, for the least useful amount of test time, in some four decades in the job.

Finally your turn comes. There is 1584bhp under your right foot, apparently. You do a gentle installation lap; a quicker flying lap; and then, just as it feels like the beginnings of your impressions are forming in your mind, it's all over - before you have even had a chance to acclimatise yourself to that funny, grabby brake pedal, never mind anything else.

You haven't been able to drive exactly as you would like, which might ordinarily involve experimenting with drive programs, stability control settings and launch control. The instructor in the passenger seat was under strict orders to not let you exceed a given speed; to not let you slow down or stop on track; or generally to not let you do your job quite as you might have chosen to. The fact is, even if he had stayed absolutely mute, you wouldn't have driven as you would if he had not been there at all.

No matter how many times you ask, that's your lot. Have a demonstration of our automated parking system, sir. Take a short road test loop in a car that you haven't actually come here to drive (although, of course, you will). The main event is over. Three laps. Five minutes. Not too fast, now. But tell me, what did you think?

By mid-afternoon you're back at your office desk, writing up what impressions you could glean against an imminent deadline - first on the car you didn't expect to drive, and then on the one you did. Then, at the end of an 18-hour day, you're finally off the clock.

People tell me regularly that I must have "the best job in the world". True, it can certainly have its moments. But only rarely do they go on to ask: "What's it really like?"

That, for the record, was a not-unusual, alarmingly real Wednesday.

Trophy hunting: A used MG 4 is a £10k EV bargain

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 06:00:00 +0100

Fine specimens of this rounded electric hatchback are there for the taking, with ranges from 218 to 338 miles

Finally, an affordable, practical, pleasingly styled and good-to-drive electric car. That was our verdict on the MG 4 EV when it arrived in 2022.

That it hailed from China seemingly didn't dent its appeal to British buyers - perhaps in part because it wore the famous octagon on its beak. Since coming here, it has always been among the top 10 best-selling EVs, peaking at number two, and between the different battery and performance options there's a 4 for almost every need.

Our own Steve Cropley, after running a top-line Extended Range variant for 13,000 miles, was utterly convinced, concluding: "Of all the EVs I've had, this has seemed the most honest and practical." How's that for an accolade?

And now, with prices starting at just £7000, used 4s represent incredible value for money. Unlike many EVs of its kind, the 4 is a hatchback in the conventional mould and thus sits its driver low down, legs outstretched and with a generous amount of steering column adjustment. As such, you feel comfortable immediately.

The upholstery (faux leather or cloth) is a little dour, owners have reported premature wear and the plastics are mostly hard and scratchy, but those are excusable shortcomings at this price point, and hardly unique to the 4. Broadly it's solid and well screwed together.

Most functions are controlled via the reasonably intuitive 10.3in infotainment touchscreen (12.8in from 2026). However, it's possible to configure the steering wheel buttons to adjust the temperature and fan speed. It's unconventional but works surprisingly well. There are some proper buttons too, and the recent facelift brought improved material quality - although it will be a while before these cars hit the used market en masse.

The 4 is roomy, if not quite to the extent of the Volkswagen ID 3 or Cupra Born. Tall adults will be comfy in the back, but the boot is averagely sized at 363 litres. Trophy trim adds a false floor, giving you a useful home for charging cables.

The rear-driven 4 is willing to engage a keener driver. It stops some way short of allowing controllable, exuberant oversteer, but its pleasingly accurate and uncorrupted steering makes for enjoyable progress on the open road and boosts the sense of nippiness in the city. It's far more fun than rivals like the Kia e-Niro and Peugeot e-308.

It's not quite as dynamically balanced as the Born, though: while it's pleasant to hustle, its soft suspension permits notable roll and the ride is quite fidgety.

The standard 4 is served in three flavours: the entry-level car gets a 49kWh battery and a 168bhp motor, the Long Range bumps capacity and power to 61.7kWh and 201bhp, and the Extended Range concludes with 74.4kWh and 241bhp.

Range figures run from 218 to 338 miles. There are two trim levels, SE and Trophy, the latter being our pick, because it adds a fair amount of equipment, including blindspot monitoring, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, heated seats, a heated steering wheel, a better stereo and a 360deg camera.

Finally, there's the XPower hot hatch, which adds a front motor for a combined 429bhp, enough for a 0-62mph time of 3.8sec - quicker than the VW Golf R's. The problem is the softly sprung chassis struggles with so much power, so we would stick to a rear-wheel-drive version for the best everyday balance.

What we said then

5 April 2023: The MG 4 EV may not move any technological boundaries, but other manufacturers should undoubtedly see this car as a serious threat, because it does so many things so well, and for such a keen price that it is hard to argue you should buy any other electric hatchback.

An owner's view

Chris Boek: "I bought my MG 4 in October 2024. Since then, I've only had the first service in my plan, which went fine. I use Android Auto, so the in-built entertainment system's various glitches are irrelevant. The screen is at a good height-sometimes a little too bright at night but not a show-stopper. I love the look of the car, it handles really well and it has all the mod cons. I'm very happy, and I will probably keep driving it until it stops working."

Buyer beware

Interior: It's prone to wear generally. The top of the doors, where you might rest your elbow, is covered with textured plastic that's unpleasantly hard yet can be permanently scratched with just a fingernail. The driver's seat on our long-termer was already showing significant wear after six months and 13,000 miles.

Adaptive cruise control: It's not the smoothest system out there and there's no option to use normal cruise control.

Body: Rattling bootlids are annoying but not major reliability issues. However, more serious problems include failing charge ports and differentials leaking oil.

Reliability: The 4 came bottom of its class in the 2024 What Car? Reliability Survey, with 30% of surveyed owners reporting problems, which covered almost all fault categories. MG paid for repairs in only 55% of cases, leaving 39% of faults costing £1000 or more to put right, according to owners. Repairs weren't always swift either: 68% of affected cars took more than a week to fix.

Warranty: MG's seven-year/80,000-mile warranty should help you sleep better, but owners have reported particularly unhelpful customer service from some MG dealers. Also note that the interior is covered by only a 12-month warranty, so a rattly panel or vibration may not be covered.

Also worth knowing

The first cars that arrived in the UK are known as 'Phase 1s'. They are mostly 22-platers (some are 72-platers) and can't receive over-the-air software updates. This might not sound like a big issue, but it means they've missed out on upgrades like the one-pedal mode that came later.

They've also had more reported build quality issues, so it's best to spend a little extra on a later car. As of this year, all 4s cost £195 annually to tax, while insurance groups range between 27 and 40 - quite high compared with rivals like the Hyundai Kona Electric.

How much to spend

£7000-£9999: It's quite promising that some 4s have already racked up six-figure mileages. However, many in this bracket are also Category S write-offs - which reflects the difficulties in obtaining parts for even lightly damaged cars.

£10,000-£14,999: You don't have to spend much more to get a 4 with fewer than 50,000 miles and a clean history.

£15,000-£19,999: For as little as £15,500, we found a one-year-old 49kWh SE with just 700 miles on the clock. Or for the same money, how about a 40,000-mile 429bhp XPower?

£20,000-£30,000: Nearly new, facelifted cars for as much as £10,000 below their list prices.

One we found

MG 4 EV Extended Range Trophy, 2024, 30,000 miles, £17,260: As with many EVs, you can pick up a two-year-old 4 for half of what it cost new. In this case it's an Extended Range - that's 329 miles per charge - in the upper trim. It will still be within warranty for another five years or 50,000 miles.