LEXUS have finally done it – consigned some of the staid designs of their earlier foray over here to the museum of motoring and let the posh Toyota really come of age.
The LC 500 is, quite simple, one of the smartest machines you’re likely to come across in your daily meanderings.
The view through the door mirrors from the driver’s seat highlights its muscular stance and picks out rear arches that are bigger than the shoulder pads on an 80s glam rock group.
CUT-THROAT just isn’t an adequate word when it comes to the compact SUV market these days.
Crammed might be better, because you’d be hard pressed to find a manufacturer who doesn’t have one vying for your attention in the pages of their glossy brochures or on-line.
It’s been too good a gig to miss out on, and the British public just can’t seem to get enough of them. They’re all built on sound underpinnings – SEAT’s Arona is a pumped up Ibiza, Kia’s Stonic has morphed from the Rio and Hyundai’s Kona has its origins in the decent i20.
IT’S at the opposite end of the spectrum from the mainstream compact SUVs but Dacia’s revised Duster has a couple of things going in its favour.
The first is it’s a stylish SUV for the price of a supermini. And the second is it’s new price is around half that of a well specced similar machine from the likes of SEAT or Nissan.
Which is good news for those on a tighter budget who still crave the reassurance that a new car’s warranty brings with it (three years/60,000 miles in this case).
IT had to happen. It was inevitable that someone would taken a small city runabout and turn it into something that people would actually want to spend their hard earned cash on just for the hell of it.
A car that would bring the smile back to faces, many of whom would remember those halcyon days when the Golf GTI ruled the ‘smiles per mile’ stakes.
THERE used to be an unwritten rule that to qualify for Volvo ownership you had to be closer to your pension than your youth – but not any more.
Cars that decades ago has the aerodynamic qualities of a breezeblock are allofasudden ‘de riguer’ in the desirability stakes, because while they still major on their commendable safety attributes, they’re also now building a big chunk of style into them.
Take this XC40. This is not a car for someone in their motoring dotage, who will only venture out onto the roads twice a week – once for the pension on a Thursday and the other to be at the head of a slow moving snake of traffic on a Sunday afternoon.
IT looks like Jeep have got the point with their all new Compass…..
Its predecessor didn’t really set the world alight when it launched into the soft roader sector of the UK market, but the latest version seems a bit more intent on putting the tribulations of the past firmly in the past.
Those of us with long memories and dates from a past century on our passports will possibly think of American GIs smoking huge cee-gars and hanging onto the top of the windscreen for dear life at the mention of the word Jeep.
TALK about diving in at the deep end – Mitsubishi’s all new Eclipse Cross has a whole load of family SUVs waiting at the side of the road to nudge it off course.
And of course, if they do, it’ll revel in it as Mitsubishi has long standing four wheel drive credentials. Every Eclipse Cross, irrespective of engine size, will have four driven wheels, so when the going gets tough, it’s capable of keeping on going.
The company itself is now under the wing of Nissan which took a controlling interest in 2016, but this is still a car of Mitsubishi’s sole making.
THIRTY six thousand pounds will buy you a pretty decent car these days. It’ll also give you a staggering amount of optional extras to add to your limo to make it even more user friendly.
That amount brings this weeks car under scrutiny, Audi‘s A8 L, up to an on the road price of £108,600 – and it’s probably a small price for a top line exec to pay for a car that oozes quality and style.
IN a motoring world dominated by the letter E – Efficiency, Environment, Economy – Kia have added another one to the pile: E for Excellence.
And very possibly Envy. Few cars that have arrived for appraisal in recent months have attracted anything like the open-mouthed admiration that has been the lot of Kia’s first rear wheel drive grand tourer to hit the UK roads, and indeed the rest of Europe.
SOMEONE at SEAT must have bought a blooming big bag of ‘A’ letters at a Spanish car boot sale a while ago.
We’ve had a succession of models with names beginning and ending in that letter: Arosa, Alhambra, Altea, Ateca and now comes the Arona – the latest in a line of cars that have progressively built up the profile of the VW Group owned brand to a level where their popularity is considerably higher than in the past.
SEAT are going places – just like the customers who are finding the sporty aspirations of the latest models to their liking.