ROAD TESTS

WAS the Scirocco ever really cool? It may have been when first launched, back in the 70s, but the Golf GTI followed a few years later – and in creating an entirely new, must-have hot-hatch sector, effectively stole [...]

I almost crashed an M6 the first time I drove one. In the car park. In reverse. Mildly embarrassing, you could say. That bloody SMG semi-auto gearbox…
See, you can’t juggle the clutch in an M6, nor edge along [...]

 
MiTo fever is well under way in Alfa Romeo dealers. And how they deserve to have a ‘pizza’ the action (sorry)!
Boss Christopher Nicholl has slashed the network, encouraged those who remain to pull their socks up, and [...]

WHEN was the last time you just got in a car and drove somewhere? I’m going to bet it was some time ago. Remember when you were young and had just passed your test – if you were [...]

I’ve had an interesting couple of months on the road test side of things. As you saw last month, we stretched the legs of an Aston Martin DBS, Caterham R500, Mitsubishi Evo X in Wales – all capable [...]

DON’T be confused by the hype. The California is not the new entry-level Ferrari. Indeed, it’s actually more expensive than the existing F430.
Bang goes the modern-day Dino replacement we speculated on when rumours of the new model [...]

AT 186mph, the Ferrari Enzo generates downforce equivalent to having a Lotus Elise sat on its chuff. Which is one way of illustrating just how ‘planted’ it feels at speed.
Painted on to the road is a more [...]

Ground-breaking technology, handsome looks and great engines gave the Cavalier the ammunition it needed to crack the booming family car sector. Little wonder buyers loved it…
DESPITE being absent from new car price lists for nearly 14 years, the [...]

 
‘An Aston Martin DBS, Caterham R500, Mitsubishi Evo X.. and a Twingo.’
‘And a Twingo?’
‘Yes, and a Twingo.’
That’s pretty much how the conversation went whenever I told friends, family and colleagues what we had planned for the inaugural [...]

WE’RE 50 miles into a trip that will take us 10 hours from our Gosport HQ to Tenby in Wales via Caterham in Surrey. Problem is I’m already starting to feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t meant to be like [...]

SATURDAY morning starts stupidly early. It’s cold, dark and damp (still) and we’ve got a 95-mile drive from our Lydstep Beach to rendezvous with snapper Dave Smith and deputy ed Rich in the Twingo in Crickhowell.
Having spent 10 [...]

MID-AFTERNOON on Saturday and we’re getting slowly stewed like Welsh lamb in a hotpot by the unseasonably warm sunshine.
The team are sat in a quiet layby on the edge of a stunning hairpin watching as the quiet [...]

HIS face says it all – like a smacked toddler, Dunc’s mouth is down-turned like the economy. To make up for his ‘loss’, we point the grieving salesman towards the Aston and Dan and I climb into the [...]

Unless you’re a fully paid-up member of the biking fraternity, there’s a very good chance that you’ve never heard of KTM. If, however, you are aware of Austria’s only – and therefore biggest – motorbike manufacturer, you’ll know [...]

Private buyers. If you’re a franchise, you love ’em. Particularly if you’re one selling Fords – the Fiesta is the car more people spend their own money on than any other. Your excitement will be off the scale [...]

High-profit luxury cars are great business. Amazingly, sales can even increase in bad times as many are bought as chauffeur cars. That’s why BMW expects to sell 2,500 new 7-Series in a year. And we can’t see why [...]

Back in 2003 I was working for a well-known national motoring magazine. It was my first job writing about cars full-time and I loved it.
Well, when I say writing about cars, what I really mean was writing [...]

 
We all know of Mitsubishi’s off-roaders and mental Evo performance cars, but regular largish family cars? The Japanese company has not really been a big player in this sector before, despite the obvious mainstream appeal of the high [...]

 
SUVs are taking a hammering in the trade, as you no doubt know – when was the last time you had an ounce of interest in some of your more affluent stock? The situation has changed so quickly, [...]

Lotus Formula 1 made Ayrton Senna a hero by giving him a great chassis powered by a blinding Japanese engine. The company is now using its 26 UK dealers to offer similar sensations to car buyers, by applying [...]

We’ve driven the future… and it’s three-pin plug-shaped! In years to come, supercar owners won’t be zooming to the filling station, hob-knobbing with the hoi polloi as they sink yet another £150 of super unleaded into a [...]

Motorsport is a Porsche obsession. We’re not talking Formula 1 here, either. No, what keeps the Stuttgart engineers busy is racing their beloved 911 road cars by turning them into race-track world-beaters. And the very pinnacle of their [...]

Remember the Maverick? Didn’t think so. Not many people do. The Ford 4×4 was introduced in 1997 and binned not many years after that. Problem was most buyers looking for a mid-sized SUV went for a Freelander instead [...]

The new football season is upon us, which means one thing – boom time for Bentley dealers, says Richard Aucock
 
THERE’S a new rumble starting to bellow through Hull, West Brom and Stoke. That of, ooh, 16 W12 engines being [...]

If any car didn’t need a performance upgrade it was the Corsa VXR. But it’s got one anyway. Richard Aucock finds out what’s new…
 

ONCE the lubricants had warmed through, I did as instructed – not change gear until [...]

AFTER years of BMW’s X3 soaking up all the sales in a sector it invented, finally Audi’s here with a premium compact SUV rival, but is it really the right time to be launching another SUV? Well, Audi [...]

It’s a motor show with a difference. The annual SMMT test day, which we mentioned in last month’s issue, is a chance for hundreds of journalists to sample a host of car manufacturers’ wares in one place. Held [...]

THE Focus ST has been treated to a facelift for 2008, gaining the nearly-all-new body restyle of other Focus models, plus an interior makeover that improves perceived quality. They haven’t messed with the fantastic high-backed Recaros, though. 
 
They are still [...]

So, this is the ‘new’ 911 then, eh? Doesn’t look very new does it? Well, squint a bit harder. You may spot the fog lamps have disappeared at the front, replaced by LED driving lamps. Oh, and aren’t [...]

REMEMBER when BMW launched the X5? Most people thought they were mad, then tried not to watch as the 4×4 sailed up the sales charts. So, when rumours started surfacing that the men from Munich were working on [...]

Eighth gear clicks into place and the acceleration is unrelenting. The noise from the 5.0-litre V8 is penetrating the cabin through the floor, shaking my kidneys as the speedo climbs past the 100mph mark. And I can’t quite [...]

The battle for the hot hatch crown just got interesting with the arrival of the Astra VXR Nurburgring. Duncan Chappell samples the newcomer

If you’re anything like me, these pictures will be giving you flashbacks of car tuning mags, [...]

It was in Knightsbridge (as if it could be anywhere else), where I saw my first Phantom. Sat parked up outside a Costa coffee shop in a bus lane, I couldn’t help but stop and stare. The good [...]

Luxury saloons are more common than you’d think. Take a short drive and make a mental note of how many S-Class and 7-Series models you come across. It sometimes feels like we’re up to our necks in them [...]

IMAGINE opening a garage door and finding inside a line-up including the Bentley GT Speed, Ferrari 599, Pagani Zonda F, Lamborghini Mucielago, and that F1-inspired quart-million pound device the Mercedes SLR. You would know this was supercar land [...]

IN our latest Cult Cars feature we take a look at why the Lamborghini Gallardo has earned its place in the motoring hall of fame. James Baggott reports.
 
Lamborghini’s Gallardo may look like a wedge of cheddar, but that [...]

WHEN I was 10 my best mate Joe Jacobs collected model cars. And I was jealous. Not because he collected them – I had loads myself – it was because he had a niche: he’d only have Lamborghinis. [...]

QUITE why the sheer brilliance of the Audi R8 took the world by such surprise is a mystery. We should have saw it coming. For years the four-ringed marque had been steadily clawing its way up the corporate [...]