Review Spending a couple of hours at the wheel of a new car at a press event is all well and good, but to really get under a vehicle’s skin you need to live with the thing on a day-to-day basis. This is especially true of one with an alternative drive train.
So it was with some interest that I watched a shiny new white Nissan Leaf roll off a trailer outside my house for a week-long trial. Tony covered the Leaf’s technical aspects more than thoroughly when he briefly drove it back in April, so if you want the basic details, take a shufti there.
Looks and feels a bit too American
The self-imposed brief was simple: dock the Mercedes and live with the Leaf as my only car. This would involve a fair amount of motorway driving, a quick trip to Leeds plus my usual urban and suburban local running about. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Many years ago, a family friend who at the time flew for the United States Air Force gave me a personal tour around a Fairchild A10 Thunderbolt and said: “Y’know, Al, she ain’t a plane she’s more a gun with wings.”
Something similar could be said about the Scenic Bose Edition which isn’t so much a car as a Stereo system with a tyre at each corner.
Bose-black suits the design
In every way, the new Bose Edition is the pinnacle of Scenic evolution. Not only does it come with the sort of Stereo you simply don’t find in cars of this class but it also has an integrated TomTom navigation pack, the latest turbo-diesel stop/start drive train and a styling pack that comes close to making it look like a car you would actually want to buy rather than have to because of untamed fecundity. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Style, practicality, economy and sporting performance – not necessarily aspects of the car makers’ art you would expect to find all combined in a single model. But that’s what you’ll get with the arrival of a new generation of rather desirable but also extremely frugal diesel coupés from the likes of Renault and Volkswagen.
Its haunches give it a purposful stance
VW’s new planet-cuddling Scirocco is a “BlueMotion Technology” vechine rather than a true BlueMotion car. The latter is a distinction reserved for cars that have been environmentally fettled to within an inch of their lives with revised gear ratios and modified bodywork in a quest to improve fuel consumption and minimise noxious gas emissions. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Give Toyota its due, it’s wringing the maximum amount of value from the Hybrid Synergy Drive power train. The 1.8 VVT-i Atkinson Cycle petrol engine and associated electric motor have already turned up in the Prius and Auris Hybrid, and now you can have them in a posh frock with a Lexus badge on the nose.
Lexus’ CT200h: the nose looks better than the rest
Called rather inelegantly the CT200h, Lexus’ new baby is being billed as the first full hybrid in the premium compact sector. Or, to put it another way, a semi-sporty but still eco-tuned posh hatchback to compete with the likes of the Audi A3 and BMW 1 series. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Putting small capacity turbo-diesel engines in large cars seems to be becoming all the rage, so hard on the heels of Peugeot’s 508 e-HDI comes Volvo’s take on the concept, the S60 DRIVe.
S60: the best looking Volvo to date?
On paper, the similarities are clear: four doors, a 1.6 litre turbo-diesel engine; six-speed gearbox; low emissions – 114g/km here compared to the Pug’s 109; and very solid economy: over the EU combined cycle, the S60 should return 65.7mpg, slightly ahead of the 508’s 64.2. Read the rest of this entry »
