Table of contents for April 16, 2025 in Autocar

HYUNDAI WILL LAUNCH the first of its next-generation interiors next year – and bosses promise to keep physical buttons. The move, confirmed to Autocar by vice-president of design Simon Loasby at the Seoul motor show, could also result in a smaller infotainment display and simpler-to-use software for the touchscreen in an effort to improve safety. The decision echoes that of other makers, such as Volkswagen, which last month promised a return to a more analogue cabin. Loasby said: “Our vision for our next-generation interiors [is that] the safest way is to keep the driver’s eyes on the road as much as possible. “With this philosophy in mind, we quite quickly realised that the central screen is actually just a distraction. So [in terms of safety] you really don’t want people…

THE VOLVO EX90 has gained a single-motor variant that trims the electric SUV’s starting price by nearly £14,000. Available to order now from £82,660, the new entry-level EX90 model has a rear-mounted motor that produces 276bhp and 361lb ft for a 0-62mph time of 8.4sec. The less powerful drivetrain means the car is capable of returning 3.4mpkWh, compared with the Twin Motor variant’s 2.9mpkWh. As a result – and even with the usable battery capacity reduced from 107kWh to 100kWh – the Single Motor EX90 boosts the range from the Twin Motor’s 364 miles to 380 miles.…

GAC, one of China’s biggest car makers and a joint-venture partner of Honda and Toyota, is gearing up for a UK launch. The Chinese state-owned firm, which sold just over two million cars last year, has confirmed it will arrive in the UK with a pair of European-designed EVs positioned to undercut some of the world’s biggest players. The smaller of the two is the Aion UT hatchback, billed by its maker as “China’s version of the Mini”. Designed to suit city commuters, the Aion UT hatch is slightly longer and wider than the Volkswagen ID 3 – a decision informed by the expectations of interior space of buyers in China. It’s priced from the equivalent of just £7500 in its homeland but is expected to cost significantly more in…

IN-CAR AUDIO IS as much about relaying information to the occupants as it is listening to music. With that in mind, one of the latest ideas to emerge from Continental is an instrument display that doubles as a sound chamber to transmit sound without the need for separate speakers. The display is based on the company’s Ac2ated Sound Technology, which it began developing a number of years ago with audio specialist Sennheiser. An exercise in system integration, the display does away with the need for separate speakers, saving cost, weight and space. Sound is generated by actuators, which effectively turn the entire display surface into a speaker thanks to audible vibrations induced in the glass. It can transmit all kinds of sound, including speech, in “exceptional quality”. According to Continental,…

MAINSTREAM CAR MAKERS typically look upmarket, although occasionally down, in a bid to grow their business and profits. Yet one brand is simply looking to stay the same. Under CEO Thierry Koskas, Citroën is positioning itself as what he calls a “popular brand”, making unashamedly mainstream cars “packed with all of what a customer needs, no more, no less, and in a very affordable package”. At £21,990, the new ë-C3 is already one of the cheapest EVs on sale in Europe, with an even cheaper version to come. To go with its facelift, the ë-C4 has also had a price cut of over £5000. These are part of what UK boss Greg Taylor calls a “fair pricing” strategy: discounts buyers would have got anyway are set into the list price…

WRITE TO autocar@haymarket.com A LIFELONG LOVE AFFAIR I was delighted by your Mercedes-Benz E450d road test (19 March). I had been humming and hawing about ordering one for a while, and this test pushed me over the edge. I guess I’m the archetypical customer: I do quite big mileages and have run Mercedes estates ever since the W123 (a rare five-speed manual 280TE). I’ve had one or more from each series since; the E450d will be my 10th. My current car is a 2018 E400d in which I’ve covered 191,000 miles, and it’s still wonderful. I ordered it in silver with tan leather and on air suspension (standard on the E450d), and it has been an unalloyed joy in which to cover big mileages. Over the past 40-odd years, I’ve…

TESTED 9.4.25, BARCELONA, SPAIN DELIVERIES NOW Let’s face it: Ford desperately needs a small, affordable electric car. With the Renault 5 now in showrooms, plus the Jeep Avenger, Volkswagen ID 3, Volvo EX30, Smart #1 and all of Stellantis’s sub-£30k EVs going well in the UK, never mind the ZEV mandate regulations, Ford has been worryingly lacking in this class. So it’s great news that the brand’s small EV is finally here – and that the Puma Gen-E is precisely the sort of proposition that will get people through showroom doors. Starting from just under £30,000, it has a 53kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery powering a single front-mounted motor, giving it an official range of up to 234 miles. It looks exactly like the standard petrol Puma except for its Mustang Mach-E-esque blanked-off…

Exotic 2+2 sporting coupés hardly come any more different than the Bentley Continental GT and the Porsche 911, and yet Crewe seems to be following Stuttgart’s philosophy as it develops its modern luxury grand tourer into its third decade. Just as ‘all-new’ model generations of the Porsche can be considered in pairs (the 2004 ‘997’ being a technical development of the ‘996’, ditto the 2019 ‘992’ of the ‘991’), Continental GTs have developed similarly. The second-generation GT of 2011 refined and improved the chassis of the 2003 original, and now the fourth generation has refined and improved the Porsche-developed platform and body of the third. When, in 2023, Crewe announced the end of production of the W12 engine that powered the GT for so long, we all knew major change…

On 28 March, Vauxhall made its last vehicle in Luton. Out of respect to the Stellantis-owned UK brand’s 120-year association with the Bedfordshire town, it was a Vauxhall Vivaro rather than one of the other related mid-size diesel vans – Citroën Dispatch, Fiat Scudo and Peugeot Expert – that the factory also produced. With the last vehicle out of the door, the plant’s 1100 workers clocked off for the final time and work began on dismantling the production line and moving what will be required to Stellantis’s Ellesmere Port factory, where it has invested £50 million to make electric versions of the same vans, in addition to the smaller electric vans it already builds under those brands. No diesel vans will be made. Stellantis announced it would be closing its…

MILEAGE 4412 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if the 2024 Car of the Year really is the standout family SUV “It says.” “It says.” “It says.” This phrase was repeated over and over again by the voice of Siri through the Renault Scenic’s Apple CarPlay when I tried to dictate a text in reply to one it had just read out. Renault took the car back to try to fix the glitch and sent me a Rafale to try for a week for an electric versus hybrid comparison of its family crossovers. They share the same otherwise excellent Google-based infotainment system, so I checked if they had another thing in common. Sure enough: “It says.” This points to a wider software bug that will no doubt be included in…

MILEAGE 7342 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT How easy is it to run a convertible as your only car in the depths of a British winter? Electric NA or all-the-bells-and-whistles ND: on which MX-5 would my £35,000 go? Honestly, it’s our new ND. But it’s closer than I thought it would have been. The ‘NA’ you see here is indeed an EV. When I wrote about it before, it garnered fury from the world of car bores. “Not a propa MX-5,” sang the chorus of middle-aged men in the online comments. But it’s the real McCoy, rather than a soyboy. The good folk at Oxfordshire-based Electrogenic have ripped out the old 1.6-litre four-banger and replaced it with a single electric motor powering the rear wheels. It makes 160bhp and 229lb ft…

Parked on a suburban side road, David Power’s Volkswagen XL1 looks as though it has just landed from outer space. One of its two butterfly doors is open, attracting curious passers-by. “Everyone stops to look at it,” he says, clearly enjoying their delight. This miniature two-seat coupé (the occupants sit slightly offset) is a diesel-engined plug-in hybrid with a carbonfibre body, digital side ‘mirrors’ and a drag coefficient of just 0.186 – 2.5 times lower than a contemporary Volkswagen Golf. Its 800cc two-cylinder engine produces only 46bhp and its electric motor 26bhp, but it weighs a mere 795kg. The XL1 started life in the early 2000s as a development project for fuel-saving and emissions-reduction technologies, and the 2013 production version could do a claimed 313mpg in diesel-electric mode or 140mpg…

TOYOTA PRIUS 1.8 VVTi T-SPIRIT 2013, 66,000 miles, £8000 You can stop scoffing about taxis, because this particular hybrid hatch has been looked after meticulously. It has a full service history, costs nothing to tax and is ULEZ-compliant. It has decent kit, too, like cruise control and a rear parking camera. KIA NIRO 1.6 GDi HYBRID 2 2017, 80,500 miles, £10,300 This hybrid will easily achieve 60mpg, which is impressive for such a bluff, tall car. Even after two owners, it looks to be in good nick, and it won’t cost you anything to tax. Roomy, practical and efficient, this is a solid compact SUV. SKODA OCTAVIA 2.0 TDI LAURIN & KLEMENT DSG 2015, 44,000 miles, £11,390 ‘All the car you’d ever need’ is a cliché, but it absolutely applies…

Land Rover is gearing up to launch a long-mooted and highly anticipated smaller entry-level Defender as a crucial new model in its electric SUV portfolio. The rugged, compact 4x4 is rumoured to have been on the cards for several years but has never officially appeared in JLR’s product roadmap presentations. But Autocar spy photographers have spotted the model testing for the first time, confirming development is well under way and indicating it could arrive in dealerships as soon as 2027. These first images reveal it will have a close visual relationship with its full-sized namesake in its chunky, straight-edged proportions, but it will be a smaller, lower-riding proposition and less geared towards off-road performance. Approached by Autocar for comment on the new images, a JLR spokesperson said: “JLR does not…

This is our best look yet at the future of Porsche as testing of the electric Cayenne ramps up. The new EV will arrive as the model line’s fourth generation and its importance to the German car maker cannot be overstated, given the Cayenne currently makes up a third of its sales. Today’s third-generation version will continue to be updated so it can be sold alongside the EV into the next decade. But the new fourth-generation model will be exclusively electric, which enables the nameplate to live beyond 2035, when sales of new non-EVs will be banned in the EU and UK. Both SUV and Coupé variants are planned. These latest images of the electric Coupé being thrashed around the Nürburgring Nordschleife show how it will evolve from the current…

AUDI SAYS IT has taken inspiration from its past for the new A6 saloon. The ICE model has gained a wide-reaching overhaul for its sixth generation and become a curvier proposition with a drag coefficient of just 0.23, which makes it the most slippery combustion-powered Audi to enter production. Most notably, in pursuit of improved aerodynamics, it has gained the same style of curved rear end that marked out the Mk2 ‘C5’ A6. To make this design a reality, Audi used steel instead of aluminium for the bootlid because it can be shaped more easily. Arriving hot on the heels of the substantially identical Avant wagon, the saloon - which was due to be called the A7 until Audi recently changed its naming strategy – has historically had greater global…

The bosses of Citroën and Dacia have warned that increasingly stringent car safety standards are threatening the affordability of their models – but safety test bodies say the rules are an important indicator for buyers as roads get ever busier and cars become more complex. Citroën’s Thierry Koskas and Dacia’s Denis Le Vot have said that while they accept governmental efforts to improve vehicle safety each year (within the European Union’s GSR2 legislative framework), the higher standards set by testing bodies such as Euro NCAP are out of step with consumers’ expectations. Key to this are the safety test ratings. Vehicles can score up to five stars, which, according to Euro NCAP, tell a buyer how safe a car is. From next year, in order to achieve the top rating,…

Chinese giant BYD will bring its Denza premium brand to Europe this year, with the plan to eventually offer a line-up of four to six models, ranging from grand tourers to off-roaders. The arrival of the Porsche- and BMW-chasing brand is the latest move by BYD to ramp up its European market assault, and its most ambitious to date. Denza was founded in 2010 as a joint venture between Mercedes-Benz and BYD, but BYD took full ownership last year and has reinvented the brand to give it premium credentials. All Denza models will sit on the brand’s bespoke e3 platform and offer electric and plug-in hybrid power. BYD executive vice-president Stella Li claimed that Denza would be the first in the segment to offer “a true focus on efficient, sustainable…

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TESTED 9.4.25, VAIRANO CIRCUIT, ITALY DELIVERIES LATE 2025 BYD doesn’t really do modesty – but then the Chinese company’s remarkable growth (founded just 22 years ago, it’s now the world’s sixth-largest vehicle manufacturer) has earned it the right to carry a bit of swagger. Even so, when BYD executive vice-president Stella Li describes the products of its Denza premium brand as “10 times better than the competition”, it feels a touch bolshy, given that those rivals include the likes of Porsche and BMW. Lexus, Genesis and Infiniti (remember them?) have highlighted the huge challenge that cracking the European premium market presents. But again, when you look at BYD’s track record, anything seems possible. Denza’s flagship is the Z9 GT shooting brake, which is set to spearhead its European entry later…

It feels twee to begin with a reference to the Porsche co-developed RS2 Avant of 1994, but this is a car that is yet again worth mentioning, simply to highlight how deep Audi’s roots go when it comes to performance estates. In the 30 years since the original performance estate broke cover, its maker has installed fruity V6, V8 and even V10 engines into its mainline wagons, creating desirable – and sometimes iconic – models with breadth and everyday appeal. Indeed, with its Quattro drivelines, Audi has become synonymous with such cars. However, in recent times the recipe has been threatened, not only because of the unchecked ascent of the SUV but also because car makers are rethinking their product offerings in the electric age, when margins are finer than…

Shortly after setting off from Nissan’s global headquarters in Yokohoma, I pass a children’s museum dedicated to the hugely popular cartoon character Anpanman, of whom there is an enormous statue outside. Yet somehow a superhero with a head made from a red bean paste-filled pastry isn’t as cute as the car I’m driving. That’s because I’m behind the wheel of a Nissan Sakura, a tiny and boxy EV built to Japan’s kei car regulations for affordable entry-level vehicles. And just like Anpanman, while kei cars are big in Japan, the rest of the world can only really look on in a mix of confusion and envy. Which is a shame, because we can probably all agree that electric kei cars would be an ideal solution to offering affordable cars perfectly…

WHY WE RAN IT To celebrate the last of the small petrol hot hatchbacks Where our long-term test cars have been and what they’ve done “We must celebrate Mini’s commitment to the hot supermini” It’s easy to become desensitised to the exorbitant prices of new cars as they creep, slowly but surely, ever upwards. Just four years ago, the cheapest new car in the UK was £8000. Today, it’s approaching double that. So I’ll confess I didn’t immediately gulp, gasp or go berserk when I saw £34,500 at the bottom of the spec sheet for our Cooper S. Given the general state of things, I thought it sufficiently equipped, suitably potent and aspirational enough to warrant price parity with, say, a speccy Audi A3 or a base-level Volkswagen Tiguan. But…

MILEAGE 4999 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To see if this veteran is actually the pick of Volvo’s growing, tech-first EV range No matter how clean and tidy you think you are, moving house always highlights how much tat you own. These occasions can expose a flaw in many small SUVs: practicality. Some, despite their raised ride height and perceived capaciousness compared with a conventional hatchback, actually have no more interior space. My electric XC40 has decent but not class-leading practicality, according to the official figures, which I put to the test when I moved out of my north London flat with two years’ worth of accumulated cargo. My makeshift removal vehicle has a 452-litre boot. That’s some way from being the biggest in the class, beaten easily by the Kia…

When it comes to superminis, you’re spoilt for choice: some are engaging and fun to drive, while others are well built and major on refinement. But there’s one standout supermini that delivers on practicality and space like no other – and it’s a hard one to turn down now that prices have tumbled to a very accessible £4000. Forget the Ford Fiesta, Volkswagen Polo and Seat Ibiza: for zipping around a city, you should consider a Mk3 Honda Jazz. What makes the Jazz so appealing, other than its price, is its clever packaging. The Mk3 – sold in the UK from 2015-2020 – has a longer wheelbase than its predecessor, which allowed Honda to increase the volume of the entire cabin. Slide into the back of a Mk3 Jazz and…

The Mercedes-AMG C63 is set to receive a new six-cylinder plug-in hybrid drivetrain as part of its mid-life facelift in 2026. The move marks a retreat from the four-cylinder plug-in hybrid system introduced in 2022, with an electrically turbocharged 2.0-litre petrol engine and rear-mounted electric motor developing a combined 670bhp and 752lb ft of torque. Despite the C63 being the most powerful C-Class model to date, its sales have lagged well behind expectations in all of AMG’s key global markets, including the UK, which has forced a rethink of its Formula 1-inspired drivetrain. “The new six-cylinder PHEV set-up is also destined for the facelifted GLC 63” In the facelifted C-Class line-up, the four-cylinder drivetrain will be replaced by a new plug-in hybrid arrangement that features a 3.0-litre six-cylinder unit. The…

SALES OF MORGAN’S sports cars will not be hurt in the US by the imposition of a 25% tariff, boss Matt Hole has told Autocar’s My Week In Cars podcast. He claimed that US sales ”won’t decline significantly”, but added that while “we don’t have a hole in the business… we’re not getting potentially as much growth as we would have liked”. Hole conceded that the firm is likely to lose “a few sales per year” but he remained bullish because until recently “you wouldn’t have been able to buy a four-wheeled Morgan new in the US for almost 20 years, so there’s a pent-up demand there”. Hole added that Morgan and its dealers will absorb some of the cost of the tariff so prices will not increase dramatically for…

Hybrid cars will be permitted to remain on the UK market until 2035 as part of a substantially relaxed framework for the zero-emission vehicle mandate. The government described the decision – which it announced along with a number of other reworked rules – as a show of support to the British automotive industry, following the US’s imposition of 25% tariffs on all imported vehicles. Late last year, the government pledged to rework the ZEV mandate in consultation with the industry, in light of demand for EVs falling well below the mandated proportion, threatening car makers’ ability to trade profitably. Under the terms of the ZEV mandate, car makers must achieve a 28% EV sales mix in 2025, but recent industry figures have revealed that demand is running more than eight…

THE MAZDA EZ-60 SUV has been revealed in China and could be sold in the UK as an electric counterpart to the CX-60. As with the Mazda EZ-6 saloon, which is due in UK showrooms early next year as the Mazda 6e, it has been developed in collaboration with Chinese firm Changan. As a result, the EZ-60 uses the same underpinnings as the Changan Deepal S07, a Tesla Model Y rival that is itself due to arrive in the UK later this year. Mazda has yet to reveal technical specifications for the EZ-60, but the S07 packs an 80kWh battery and a 214bhp rear-mounted motor, delivering a range of 295 miles. It can charge at 93kW, giving a 30-80% recharge in 35 minutes. The EZ-60 also draws on the new…

From January next year, the safety barrier set by Euro NCAP will rise again. The new regulations will expand the current evaluation beyond crash scenarios to include driver engagement, assistance systems and emergency response capabilities. To do this, Euro NCAP is set to introduce assessments across four categories: Safe Driving (driver monitoring and vehicle assistance), Crash Avoidance (systems that actively prevent collisions), Crash Protection (occupant safety) and Post-Crash Safety (assessment of eCall emergency response systems). Euro NCAP says these updates form part of its commitment to Vision Zero – a strategy to eliminate traffic-related fatalities – and aim to align safety assessments with the latest advances in vehicle technology.…

ASTON MARTIN IS readying a new performance variant of the DB12, likely to wear the Aston Martin Racing badge. Prototypes in both coupé and convertible forms (the latter a first for an AMR car) have been seen testing at the Nürburgring, with extra aero parts and a thicker front lip previewing their hardcore wares. Expect tweaks to be made to the chassis too. The AMRs will also be set apart from the standard DB12s by their unique vertically stacked tailpipes. Like AMR cars before, they will draw power from the standard 4.0-litre V8 but are likely to be boosted beyond 661bhp. The preceding DB11 AMR produced 38bhp more than the other DB11s. Although unconfirmed, it’s plausible the pair will be revealed in the coming months, given the £185,000 DB12 was…

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TESTED 25.3.25, BARCELONA, SPAIN DELIVERIES MAY This is the Morgan they think could go from being the third car in your garage to the second one. Instead of owners having a daily driver, something more special for semi-regular amusement and a Morgan for high days and holidays, the new Supersport, the British company reckons, could take the place of (and this sounds ambitious) a Porsche 911. Initially Morgan’s engineers only meant to update the Plus Six, their six-cylinder roadster. But this facelift/update/call it what you will took on a life so large that it has yielded a new name, a new appearance and even a new chassis derivation: CXV (that’s 115 – Morgan’s age last year) replacing CX (110). That has even necessitated homologating and crashing it again. Perhaps helpfully,…

Speccing any car is a joyous thing, but the experience enters an altogether higher plane when it’s an Aston Martin hypercar. Or so you’d think. But what’s the reality? How does that process pan out in practice for a buyer in the rarefied world of exclusive Aston Martins? To find out, today I’m speccing a Valhalla – the 1000bhp mid-engined plug-in hybrid hypercar that will be launched later this year. Production is limited to 999 examples and personalisation is an integral part of the package. You can go to your nearest dealer and spec away there, if you want. Or you can travel to Q New York, Japan’s House of Aoyama or, as I have, Aston’s Gaydon HQ to spend time with a dedicated design team to perfect your car.…

WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT In facelifted form, is this SUV still the pinnacle of British luxury motoring? Everyone keeps telling me it’s ‘brave’. This Bentayga has many deeply impressive features, but the dominant characteristic of our newest arrival to the Autocar fleet is the colour. It caught your eye, eh? The full name of this special paint is Orange Flame Satin by Mulliner, and it costs as much as a VW Polo. Bentley is one of the few luxury brands that’s bold enough to offer colours like this, perhaps because its clientele is so broad: it’s not just affluent ageing Brits but also the young and wealthy overseas. In many ways, then, this SUV’s appearance is the embodiment of Bentley’s brand values these days: have a dark blue Savile Row…

MILEAGE 1724 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT Is Ford’s first European-built EV, with its VW underpinnings, really a true Ford? It’s the key fob that threw me, simply because it was so incongruous. The Ford Explorer has a very pleasant, stylish key fob, but it’s a Volkswagen Group key fob. That makes sense on one level: it’s no secret that the Explorer is built on the German giant’s MEB platform, so there will be many shared parts. But I was still surprised that extended as far as the casing for the remote locking system. So I decided to see how many VW parts I could find in my Ford. The first few are pretty obvious: the stubby drive mode selector behind the steering wheel, the digital instrument cluster and the head-up…

AN OWNER’S VIEW HARRY TSANG “I bought my Jazz Sport in October 2021 as I wanted a car that had a good selection of aftermarket parts available, even if it meant importing from Japan. I fitted it with Tein lowering springs, white Slipstream alloys, a JDM imported Modulo spoiler and a Spoon N1 exhaust. The ‘GK5’ [front-drive 1.5 Mk3 Jazz] offers superb handling but doesn’t sacrifice ride comfort. Of course, one of the biggest strengths is the ample space the interior provides and the Magic Seats offer a lot of flexibility. I also get around 360-400 miles from a tank, which is pretty remarkable.” BUYER BEWARE… ■ ENGINE If there’s a rattle from the engine from cold, this could be an issue with the valve timing control actuator, which can…