WITH SUVs being the car of choice for many, there was an inevitability about the arrival of a very quick one.
And it comes from an all-new brand, although you may recognise the car in question.
Cupra has been a trim level used by SEAT for some time, but from now on will stand alone as a pukka range, in the same way Citroen have done it with DS.
STYLISH? Tick. Range anxiety alleviated? Tick. User friendly? Double tick.
Meet the Kia e-Niro, a car that successfully combines two of the fastest growing motoring trends – smart crossover styling with full electric power.
THE last week has been spent in near silent driving mode, in a vehicle that is the transport of choice for a multitude of mini cab drivers here in Milton Keynes. And probably elsewhere.
Starting up Toyota’s latest Prius is a bit like coming across some motorway roadworks – you begin to wonder if anything is actually going on.
FORD’S KA has been a popular small city car among those whose budgets were a little on the tight side – a bit like the space inside.
Around town it was in its element, small and manoeuverable, but not the sort of car you’d drive to the middle of France and back, though I know someone who did undertake that very trip some years back.
But the car you’ll find in the Ford sales brochures now bears very little similarity to the original 1996 version.
WHEN it comes to car design, no one has ever accused the French of re-inventing the wheel.
And while some might think they have done just that with the squared-off offering used to point the wheels on the all new Peugeot 508, they’d be wrong.
FOCUS is a family favourite that mirrors a fine wine – it just gets better with age.
And the current incumbent wearing that blue oval Ford badge proves the point, offering the family motorist a package that ticks most of the boxes if their choice is a traditional hatchback.
FORD’S Fiesta ST is the sort of car dentists love. Not necessarily to drive, but because it provides them with an endless stream of hapless victims.
The sort of car you find yourself groping around in the footwell to find your fillings. Because suspension travel is, shall we be generous here, minimal.
Not really the car for the family man, then, who would find his offspring vomiting into the door pockets after a few miles of any spirited motoring.
FOR cee’d, read Ceed – the name has changed slightly, and there are changes afoot in the latest incarnation of the car that changed the way we think about Kia.
So much so that the Euro designed, Euro built hatch is a very much oft-seen addition to UK roads.
Sketched at the company’s European design centre in Frankfurt and built in Slovakia, it’s very much a European car, which may or may not tempt you into ownership in the current political climate.
THERE’S not much you can do to a Mazda MX-5 to make it a bit better, apart from maybe a little more power. So that’s what they’ve done.
Now propelled by a 2.0 litre 184ps engine (that’s 24ps more than before), the little two seater has the ability to sprint to 62mph in under seven seconds and carry on – with your knuckles turning whiter by the second – to a top speed of 137mph. The throttle response is impressive.
IT was ironic that Volvo’s big V90 Cross Country Ocean Race came to play just when the weather conditions turned to the sort of weather conditions you might encounter in the Southern Atlantic.
Squally didn’t do the day justice, but charting the Volvo’s progress via the large nine inch centre touch screen ensured the trip was completed without any undue hassle.