ANOTHER week, another new SUV – but one that aims to be a step or two above the rest in terms of desirability and quality.
It would be a fool who would bet against Audi’s new Q2 being anything other than a hit for the German manufacturer as it launches what it dubs a ‘compact premium SUV’ – the first of probably a few such offerings in the coming months and years.
THERE’S still something about the noise the engine in the back of a Porsche makes that gets right through to your soul – despite the meddling of the EU.
Even when it’s a slightly more modest than usual two litre turbocharged unit in the back of the latest 718 Boxster as opposed to the traditional six cylinder unit of old.
It’s a car which makes you want to switch off the radio because nothing that comes out of the mouth of those broadcasting can compete with the subliminal sounds that herald spent gases shooting out of the tail pipes.
RENAULT’S Scenic was the car that, back in the 1990s, invented a class of car that has captured the hearts and wallets of the motoring public.
And now it’s got a lot more scenic – its new for 2017 distinctive profile has given it a much needed boost in a sector where there are a lot of similar machines vying for attention.
With the C segment mopping up one million sales across Europe each year, it’s a race you’ve got to be in.
THERE’S one thing I really, really like about the new SEAT Ateca – and that is it’s just like the SEAT Leon.
Not quite externally, obviously, but slip behind the wheel and you’ll be hard pushed to tell the difference. In fact you can’t. The seats locate you a bit higher, but the quality feel and look that made the Leon such a success is very much in evidence here. You could almost be in the same car.
And that, to me, is a masterstroke by the Spanish manufacturer, because it’s an instant tap in for current owners looking to join the current compact SUV revolution and size up from their hatchbacks.
THINK long and hard if you’re in the market for VW’s latest Passat – you’re going to need a long garage or plenty space on your drive. Or both.
And a spare socket won’t go amiss, as the new GTE is a plug-in hybrid that can be driven for up to 31 miles on electric power alone in E-mode. But probably only if you have a right foot that is as light of touch as a butterfly.
IT’S only when you put the latest Mazda3 alongside the model it’s replacing that you notice the oh so subtle changes in its look.
But changes there are – vital in a sector of the market that includes the Focus, Golf, Leon and Astra – and vital to ensure that sales of the neat 3 continue to rise as they have in recent years.
But the biggest change trumpeted at the UK launch is one that you definitely won’t see but one you should, on a trip, benefit from.
THE New Zealander who gave McLaren its name will always be remembered as the ‘whoosh, bonk’ man.
That was the way he went about things in his early years. “We can get a body knocked up and whoosh, bonk, there’s our racer’ was the Bruce McLaren way of doing things in the 1960s.
These days, at McLaren’s pristine factory in Woking, you get the distinct impression that things are a touch more ordered, more clinical, ever so slghtly better organised.
THREE cylinder engine technology is not a new automotive phenomenon – Saab were doing it fairly successfully back in the 1950s and 60s.
But cars have grown since then, in both size and kerbweight, as the drive to make them safer for us to use has gathered pace.
So this week we pose the question ‘how realistic is it to stick a three pot under the bonnet of an average sized family car’? In this case Volkswagen’s much bought Golf.
And will it still perform with an air of respectability?
THE Golf was credited with being the first hot hatchback but you motoring historians out there will know that is not strictly the case.
That mantle falls to the Renault 5 Gordini, the company’s first ever front wheel drive sports hatchback and one that terrorised grannies a full year before the Golf was launched in 1977.
And that mainstay of ‘fast and furious for everyone’ has served the French manufacturer well over the ensuing three decades and more.
EARLIER in the summer we were being warned to hold fire on the chequebook if we were in the market for a compact SUV – there was an upstart on the way.
That upstart was SEAT‘s first foray into the market, the Ateca (A-tee-ka). Now it’s here and the warnings were on the ball. It is, to my mind, better than expected.
It does everything the rest of the pack does, but where it proves to be the new leader is in its pricing. It’ll cost you less than the best of the rest and is it’s based on the hugely popular Leon it can’t really fail to be a good all rounder.