The Clarkson Review: 2017 Porsche Panamera Turbo

Jeremy Clarkson wrote this article before being admitted to hospital in Mallorca and treated for pneumonia

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JEREMY Clarkson is away. That’s what it should say at the bottom of the page this week. Because I am away. I’m in Mallorca, sitting in the darkened confines of the villa’s dining room, looking at the sunshine streaming through the windows and listening to the children playing in the pool, wondering how on earth I came to be writing a column, and hitting the keys on my laptop slightly more viciously than usual.

I love my summer holidays. Sitting at the breakfast table with my children, who’ve been reduced to green-faced wrecks by whatever it was they did the night before. And trying to amuse them by dreaming up new and interesting ways of killing the wasps.

Everyone has their own technique, all of them learnt from some pool boy in Corfu or Crete. “They don’t like cigarette smoke.” “Burn coffee grounds; that keeps them away.” My idea is better. Attract them with a plate of bacon and then squirt them with a jet of fire from a catering-sized tin of wasp killer.

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“Look, children,” I shriek excitedly. But it’s no good. They’re too green and too right-on to be impressed by animal cruelty, even in Spain. And anyway they’re not paying attention because they’re adhering to standard operating procedure for all teenagers around a dining table: looking at Michael McIntyre clips on YouTube.

Later, when I’ve seen Michael’s take on wasps, which is very funny, and after I’ve smeared myself in cream, except the bit under my stomach which will burn later, I lower myself onto a bed by the pool and immediately the people in the next villa start to play, loudly, whatever’s doing the rounds on the Europop scene this summer. It seems to be something called Despacito. Which is better than Who Let the Dogs Out?, but not much.

Then you have the strimmers. And then the gardener turns up with his leaf blower. Even though it’s August and there are no leaves to blow, just huge clouds of dust.

Later you go for lunch with people you’d never dream of seeing at home, but who are suddenly your besties because they happen to be renting a villa a few miles away. And you smile as they tell you in great detail exactly where it is, as though that makes any difference. In Mallorca, it’s all based on how far you are from the restaurant where they filmed The Night Manager.

“Transport is always a tricky holiday issue . . . you are given the keys to something that you can never drive because you’re always too drunk”

This is all standard holiday stuff. The chats with friends about who’s had the worst budget airline experience, and who’s got the best cure for mosquito bites, and endless calls to taxi companies who say their driver is as near to the house as he can get, which turns out to be two miles away in the car park of a tapas restaurant where he’s sitting in the sun, hoping to God we don’t find him.

Transport is always a tricky holiday issue. You rent a car, which means you have to spend the first six days of your holiday at the airport, waiting as the girl at the counter writes War and Peace on her computer. And then you are given the keys to something that you can never drive because you’re always too drunk.

This year I was given a seven-seat, two-wheel-drive Nissan X-Trail, which, fully loaded and then loaded a bit more, simply would not climb the road to the villa. I had a choice from the driver’s seat. I could either spin the front wheels, which made a terrible noise, or spin the clutch, which made a terrible smell.

This explains why I’m stabbing at this laptop and not having a holiday, even though I’m away. The editor of the Sunday Times Driving section had called and he doesn’t take no for an answer. “I’m on holiday,” I said, firmly. “Yes,” he replied, as though I hadn’t spoken, “but would you write a column if I got you a car?”

“The Panamera remains a car I would happily use on a day-to-day basis in the UK. However, it’s not what I’d call a first-choice machine here”

I peered over the hedge at the ruined X-Trail and thought: “Oh, what the hell.” So, two days later, a man turned up with a Porsche Panamera Turbo that he’d driven from Stuttgart. It was exactly the same car I drove at home a couple of months ago. Back then, I thought it was tremendous, powerful and smooth and fitted with an interior that’s sublime. It remains a car I would happily use on a day-to-day basis in the UK.

However, it’s not what I’d call a first-choice machine here on the sun-kissed island of Mallorca.

First of all, it’s quite wide. It’s so wide in fact that it goes up the road to our villa with, in places, just half an inch of clearance on either side. That requires immense concentration, and that’s hard because its parking sensors and collision warning system are in meltdown and the interior sounds like that nuclear plant in The China Syndrome.

All of this stuff can be turned off, of course, but not when one wheel is dangling over a cliff, one door mirror is half an inch from a stone post and you have two teenagers in the back saying they feel sick. I’ve had the car for four days now and the fastest I’ve been is 6mph.

Yesterday, we went to the beach where they filmed The Night Manager, which, and I know this is showing off, is at the bottom of our drive. And it took nearly two hours. I arrived a nervous wreck and couldn’t have a refreshing drink because later in the day I’d have to drive back.

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That was even harder because we got stuck behind some Spanish Doobie Brothers in a Ford who, when they met something coming the other way, were consumed with the need for some peace and love and reversed. Which meant I and about 200 other cars had to do the same thing.

After a while, I resorted to the horn and some rude gestures, and they responded in kind, emerging from the smoky interior to let me know that it was hard enough to drive a car on that road at the best of times, but it was especially difficult when all of them thought they were being attacked by a Klingon Bird-of-Prey.

It was at this point that I realised the Porsche was fitted with the single most important thing that could be fitted to any hire car, anywhere in the world: German plates. It meant as we finally got past the erratic Ford, using a dribble of smooth turbo power, we could hear the passenger muttering to his mates: “Malditos Alemanes!”
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Head to head: Porsche Panamera Turbo vs BMW M6 Gran Coupé

	Panamera Turbo	BMW M6 Gran Coupé
Price	£115,100	£97,980
Power	542bhp	552bhp
Fuel	30.1mpg	28.5mpg
0-62mph	3.8sec	4.2sec

 

First Drive review: 2016 Porsche Panamera 4S

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source https://www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/clarkson/clarkson-review-2017-porsche-panamera-turbo/

The Clarkson Review: 2017 Mercedes-AMG GT C Roadster

BECAUSE I’M extremely middle class, my children’s prep school organised exchange trips with pupils at a school in Tokyo. This meant that my kids got to spend a couple of weeks eating fish that were still alive and later they got to host little Japanese people who had no clue what to do with a spoon.

I picked up one of these kids from Heathrow and it quickly became obvious the poor little thing spoke no English at all. So she wandered into the arrivals hall after an 11-hour flight, jet-lagged all to hell, and she was met by a man who was bigger and fatter than anyone she’d seen in her whole life. And he communicated in what to her must have sounded like the grunts of a farmyard animal. Bewildering didn’t begin to cover it.

I loaded her luggage into the boot of the family Volvo — I said I was middle class — and she climbed into the back clutching what at the time was a completely amazing translation machine. The idea was that she spoke into it and it then spoke to me in English.

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Shortly after we joined the M25 I could see in the rear-view mirror that my microscopic guest was trying to turn the machine on. And by the time we joined the M40 she was starting to get desperate because plainly she was having some difficulty.

Much later, on the twisting and lovely A44, I heard the telltale beep to say she’d been successful and quickly she garbled something in Japanese into the electronic wonder box. She then held it next to my ear while it said with an electronic Stephen Hawking lilt: “Car sick.”

During her two-week stay she was sick after eating tinned tuna, mashed potato, ice cream and pretty much everything that was dead.

But I bet that if you ask her now to define the low point of her stay she’d say it was that moment on the A44, being hugged by a 6ft 5in monster as she vomited the contents of her stomach into the roadside undergrowth.

Motion sickness is hideous. You really do want to die. I saw a man once lying on the floor in a cross-Channel ferry’s lavatory. The voyage had been as rough as any I can remember and everyone had been sick so violently it was a lake of vomit in there. And it was swilling over the poor man who, as I entered, opened one eye and said simply: “Kill me.”

I felt his pain. I’d been on a boat in the south of France once when the gentle rocking brought about a malaise so intense that I invited my friends to murder me. I meant it. I even told them where the knives were kept and where on my rib cage they should stab.

All of which brings me conveniently to the Mercedes-AMG GT. I thought when I first saw this car that it was a toned-down, more realistic version of the mad old SLS AMG with its bonkers soundtrack and its gullwing doors. I assumed therefore that it too would be a headline-grabbing one-off.

But no. Mercedes has turned it into an entire range that’s now so complex you are able to choose how many brake horsepower you’d like and what shade you’d prefer for the seats. Naturally you can also decide whether you’d like a roof or not. And what colour you’d like that to be.

Well, as I’ve already driven the super-hard and bellowy GT R coupé, which I’m not sure about, I thought — it being summer and all — I should try out the slightly less powerful but still pretty nuts GT C roadster.

Like the “I’m a racing car, I am” GT R, it’s fitted with four-wheel steering. And that, if you are going for a record round the Nürburgring — something the GT R holds for rear-wheel-drive production cars, incidentally — is tremendous. When you drive a car that steers with all four wheels you are always amazed by just how readily it changes direction.

“It’s lighter than you might think, thanks to a chassis that’s made from helium and a boot lid made from witchcraft”

However, I was not on the Nürburgring. I was in Oxfordshire and I was not driving particularly quickly when my passenger invited me to stop. Because she felt car sick. And the last time this happened was when I was driving her in a Porsche 911. Which also had four-wheel steering.

The problem is that when you move the steering wheel even a tiny bit, the car darts. It’s very sudden and if you’re a passenger you have no time to brace or send a signal to your stomach to hold on. You, the driver, may like this sensation a lot. But I think it may be a deal breaker for whoever’s in the passenger seat.

Pity, because there’s a lot to like in this car. It looks like a traditional AMG product. Big, lairy and heavy. But, actually, it’s lighter than you might think, thanks to a chassis that’s made from helium and a boot lid made from witchcraft. There’s even some magnesium in there as well.

All of which means that the big turbocharged V8, which responds as quickly as the steering, has much less to lug around than you might think. Which means this car is properly fast. Knocking-on-the-door-of-200mph fast. It also does a fabulous bonnet-up, squatted-back-end lunge when you stamp on the throttle.

I’d like to say this speed is surprising but you know from the moment you fire up the engine and the exhausts wake everyone in a 12-mile radius that it’s going to be mental. What is surprising, however, is that you can enjoy quite a lot of the speed with the roof down. It really is calm and unruffled in there.

And it’s a nice place to sit. Sure, the gearlever is mounted nearer to the boot than your hand and, yes, there are a lot of buttons to confuse you. I once turned off what I thought was the stop-start feature and then spent the whole day in third because I’d actually changed the seven-speed automatic box into a manual.

My only real gripe is the bumpiness of the ride. It really is firm — too firm — and that’s unnecessary because this isn’t a track-day car. It’s a handsome, look-at-me boulevard cruiser. Or a devourer of motorways and interstates. It should be softer. And it really could do without that four-wheel steering.

Mercedes shouldn’t try to make sports cars. That’s Porsche’s job. What it should do instead is take this vehicle back to the drawing board and turn what’s very nearly there back into an AMG Mercedes. Then it would be absolutely brilliant.

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Head to head: Mercedes-AMG GT C roadster vs Porsche 911 Turbo cabriolet

	Mercedes-AMG GT C roadster	Porsche 911 Turbo cabriolet
Price	£139,460	£137,533
0-62mph	3.7sec	3.1sec
Top speed	196mph	198mph
Kerb weight	1,735kg	1,740kg

 

Write to us at driving@sunday-times.co.uk, or Driving, The Sunday Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

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source https://www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/clarkson/clarkson-review-2017-mercedes-amg-gt-c-roadster/

E-type reborn: Tiff Needell reviews the Eagle Spyder GT

THESE DAYS cars are managed by electronics, which fills me with sadness because the simple sound of a vehicle coming alive, tickled by my right foot, without any sudden burst of computer-generated revs, is a delight.

Arguably the greatest engine note was produced by the Jaguar E-types of the 1960s, sadly long gone. But wait; there is a firm that brings E-types back to life. It takes old cars and makes them as good as new. No, better than new.

Eagle E-Types was set up in 1984 by Henry Pearman to care for and restore E-types for classic-car buffs who wanted to keep their pride and joy running as smoothly as a Swiss watch. But every now and then some owners pondered what it would be like if you could take the E-type and give it modern road manners. Such as brakes that actually stopped the car and suspension that could cope with being driven like a bat out of hell.

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By the mid-1990s Pearman decided to find out. Eagle took an E-type, left the beautiful body untouched and rebuilt everything underneath. The result was an instant hit. Over time, word spread about the East Sussex-based car maker that was working wonders with one of the world’s favourite classic cars. So much so that in 2011 when Jeremy Clarkson got his hands on the Eagle Speedster he declared it “the most beautiful car” he had seen.

“The Spyder GT costs £834,000. I’d need a deal with Amazon to hope to afford such a plaything”

Now Eagle has come up with a new creation. The Eagle Spyder GT is in effect a Speedster with a folding roof and a proper windscreen, which is important. Because the vehicle Clarkson tested didn’t have those things, so when it rained the owner’s eye-wateringly expensive car quickly became a paddling pool if there was no shelter nearby.

And when I say an Eagle is expensive, I mean it. The Spyder GT costs £834,000. I’d need a deal with Amazon to hope to afford such a plaything.

Like all Eagle products, the Spyder GT is handmade. It is based on a donor car — even if about the only original thing left is the chassis plate — and each takes 6,000 hours of work to create.

The attention to detail is astonishing, with each model built to the buyer’s specification. You can have a 3.8, 4.2 or 4.7-litre version of the straight-six engine. The car I tested came with a 330bhp 4.7-litre powerplant with its big valve head, itself a work of art when the bonnet is hinged forwards to reveal the gleaming, polished aluminium cam covers. And what’s this? Not a piece of plastic to be seen. How refreshing.

Drop into the leather-clad seat and there’s a perfect driving position behind a classic wood-rimmed steering wheel with a simple round gearknob and, surprisingly, plenty of headroom.

A big rev counter and speedometer dominate the view ahead while a mass of dials and switches fill the centre console. The key goes in the middle of all this, and has a small starter button to its side. Turn the key, push the button. Depress the clutch, feel the gear being engaged via the lever in my hand, lift the revs, ease in the clutch and rumble forwards. It’s often the simple things that bring the most joy.

You quickly become aware of how far back you sit in an E-type — almost on top of the rear wheels — as you have to ease the long bonnet a fair way out into the road before you get a clear view of what’s coming. It feels like you’re playing a game of million-pound junction roulette where you hope to pull out without an HGV removing the front of the car.

There’s no power assistance for the steering, so it’s heavyish at low speeds, but on a winding road it provides all the right feedback. Bumps that would have an original E-type doing a hop, skip and jump are taken calmly in the car’s stride and although there’s no antilock braking, the brake pedal pressure and its response inspire confidence despite a wet road.

The engine feels like it wants to rev higher but with so much torque there is little need to max it out in every gear — third will do pretty much everywhere, but the bespoke five-speed transmission is such a joy to use I want to keep on changing gear for the sake of it.

Finally the rain lets up and there’s a chance to put the hood down. Anyone expecting a mix of electronics and hydraulics to lower the roof will be in for a shock. It’s much the same basic manual affair as the standard E-type roadster, with a few subtle improvements, of course.

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With it lowered, the cabin is filled with the roar of the exhausts. The car will hit comfortably 62mph in less than five seconds and it’s just going into its stride. Its top speed is said to be 170mph-plus. But I bet it would do more.

When you back off the throttle from high revs, the engine plays the petrolhead’s equivalent of an orchestra in full flow. It pops and spits its way down the rev range and the temptation to keep doing it over and over again is too much to resist.

It doesn’t matter so much to me that this is one of the most beautiful cars in the world. Or it’s that bit more practical than the Speedster that captured Clarkson’s heart. It’s the fact it is one of the most beautiful to drive that makes me want to have one.

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Blasts from the past: Jenson Interceptor and Eagle Speedster

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source https://www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/e-type-reborn-tiff-needell-reviews-eagle-spyder-gt/

Ford Fiesta Mk 7 review (2017 on)

THE Ford Fiesta is like a two-up, two-down: the backbone of Britain, suiting people from all walks of life. This is a car chosen by first-time teenage drivers, young mums and dads, those who’ve made it through to the other side of their mid-life crisis and pensioners who hope they’ve found a car that will see them right until they hang up their driving gloves.

Since its launch, in 1976, it has had high points and low points. The last version but one, the Mk 6, was a cracker, but the third-generation Fiesta, sold from 1989 to 1997, was about as popular as a verruca to a marathon runner.

The seventh-generation version went on sale in July this year. It has a big job to do: to keep ahead of the chasing pack. Ford says it has taken a big leap forward: this may be one of the most affordable small cars on the road, but it can park itself, slam on the brakes if a child walks out in front of it, steer you back into your lane if your attention wanders, respond to spoken commands such as “I need a coffee” and stream your tunes through a B&O sound system.

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The variants are as numerous as ever. There are humble petrol and diesel versions, the sporty ST hot hatch and even a plush version from Ford’s posh sub-brand Vignale, which comes with all the trimmings. Prices start at £12,715, for a three-door Fiesta Style with a 1.1-litre petrol engine, and reach £21,225, for a five-door Vignale with a 1.5-litre diesel.

The Fiesta is the bestselling car in Britain, but the competition has been catching up with Ford’s bread-and-butter hatchback. The Mini and Volkswagen Polo are established rivals that are seriously good. Also snapping at the Fiesta’s heels are the Citroën C3, Kia Rio, Hyundai i20, Seat Ibiza and Toyota Yaris.

So it’s curious that the Fiesta has lost some of its good looks. The previous version stood out of the crowd like a giant Toblerone in the duty-free. This one is as bland as a supermarket’s own-brand cooking chocolate.

Ford has form here. Remember when it changed the brilliant Focus Mk 1 to the Mk 2, which had all the charm of a cardboard box? It’s just committed a similar sin against the S-Max.

Inside, the pizzazz is nowhere to be seen either. The cabin is smart enough, but if you prised off the badge from the steering wheel, it’s unlikely passengers could guess what car they were sitting in. A Mini driver would think it all rather dreary.

Cheap-feeling plastic is scattered about the place, a rash decision by Ford when Korean car makers are lining up to pinch its customers. The seats feel small to the point of miserly, and the touchscreen appears to be facing in the wrong direction – as though it has come straight from the left-hand-drive car. And if you’re considering opening the panoramic sunroof, a word of warning: the mesh blind fails to reflect heat on a sunny day, so pack some kind of hat.

That said, this is a comfortable car. It has a good driving position, the touchscreen has user-friendly graphics, the Ford Sync 3 communication system is a huge improvement on its predecessor and the front of the cabin feels spacious. It’s only when you climb into the back that it feels a small car: most adults’ heads will brush against the roof lining, and the 292-litre boot is only average for the class.

	Mini 5-dr	VW Polo	Kia Rio	Ford Fiesta	Citroën C3	Skoda Fabia	Honda Jazz
Boot space (ltr)	278	280	288	292	300	330	350

The Fiesta’s greatest asset of late has been the way it drives, and this new version is no exception. It is by some margin the best small hatchback for anyone with even a passing interest in getting from A to B with a smile on their face. And even if you don’t count yourself as a motoring enthusiast, you’ll enjoy this car for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on.

Driving the Fiesta is like meeting up with your most fun friend for a night on the tiles: you’re guaranteed a great time

The Fiesta we tested had a 1-litre three-cylinder turbo petrol engine that puts out just 98bhp. That didn’t bode well. But it was a hoot, with enough oomph to make brisk progress, a rorty rasp and good manners on the motorway. There are more powerful versions of the EcoBoost engine, but this one — the cheapest — will be enough for most drivers’ needs. And it returned 51mpg in our hands.

Driving the Fiesta is like meeting up with your most fun friend for a night on the tiles: you’re guaranteed a great time. Ferrari and Porsche could learn a thing or two from the way its steering and suspension are set up. It has a precision and delicacy rarely found in cars at any price.

Yet when challenged with a six-hour motorway trip, the Fiesta feels assured, comfortable and relaxing. In some of its competitors you’d collapse in a heap at the end of such a drive.

If the Fiesta were judged on the driving experience alone, Ford would be assured of another smash hit. But the competition is growing stronger all the time. Some of the fizz that made the Mk 6 so bubbly is missing. Will its successor be a Party Seven, or will it miss the mark?

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source https://www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/ford-fiesta-mk-7-review-2017/

The Clarkson Review: 2017 Audi RS 5 Coupé

BACK IN the Eighties, BMW came up with the idea of making an innocuous-looking saloon that was very fast and utterly beautiful to drive. It was called the M5 and it earned a reputation for being one of the world’s great cars.

All the other manufacturers could see straight away that BMW had created something of a masterpiece, so they decided to not respond in any way at all. And that’s weird. It’s like all the country’s football teams looking at what Chelsea did last year and thinking: “We can’t possibly match that, so let’s not bother trying.”

Eventually, after BMW had had the market all to itself for years and years, Mercedes joined forces with the tuning company AMG to create a high-performace range of cars, but these weren’t really direct rivals for the fast Beemers. They were big and smoky and loud and quite soft. They were muscle cars, really, in Hugo Boss suits.

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And Audi? Well, it started to fit quite powerful engines to its four-wheel-drive models to create the RS line-up, but, again, they didn’t have the magic of BMW’s M cars — the delicacy.

If you really knew your motoring onions — if you really knew how to trail-brake and feel the limit of adhesion — you were never going to be satisfied with a nose-heavy Audi or a wayward Mercedes. If you were a proper driver, you’d always go for the BMW.

However, in recent months the BMW bandwagon has sort of fallen over. There is no M5 on sale at the moment, and while the M2 is a joy, its bigger and better-known brother the M3 is a bit of a dog. The steering is actually fairly terrible. And an M car with terrible steering? That’s like an omelette made with rancid eggs.

BMW M3 Competition Pack review (2017 on)

And to make life even more difficult for BMW, other rivals have finally woken up. Alfa Romeo can sell you the Giulia Quadrifoglio, which has three-quarters of a Ferrari engine and an exhaust note to stir the soul. It would be my choice.

Then you have Mercedes, which has just produced something called the E 63 S. Its styling is a bit in-your-face for my taste — and for yours, too, unless you live in Dubai — but it’s not like any AMG we’ve seen before. It has the power, but it’s harnessed into a proper package. That’s a serious car for serious people, make no mistake.

And then there’s Audi, which has just launched the car you see in the photographs. It’s called the RS 5 coupé, it costs £62,900 and it’s borderline sensational.

I was hoping Audi would have fitted it with the 394bhp five-cylinder engine from the TT RS, because when historians look back at what they’ll call the “petrol age”, they will describe that as one of the all-time greats.

But Audi has gone for a twin-turbocharged 2.9-litre V6. Which gives 444 brake horsepowers. And 600 Eurotorques, or 442 lb ft. That’s a lot in a car of this type.

But the bald figures of 0-62mph in 3.9 seconds and a top speed of 155mph — or 174mph with the optional Dynamic package — tell only half the story. To get the other half, you have to go behind the wheel and open it up. And, ooh, you’ll be grinning. Actually, to start with, you won’t be grinning. You’ll be looking as though a lion has just come into your kitchen, because, God, it’s alarmingly quick off the line. I once saw someone put a mustard-covered hot dog up a police horse’s bottom. Well, the Audi sets off like that.

Of course, there have previously been Audis that were fast in a straight line. But that’s all they could do: go in a straight line. You would be sitting there, sawing away at the wheel and shouting, “Turn, you bastard, turn”, but they rarely did. A nose-heavy layout and four-wheel drive saw to that.

The RS 5 is different. It has a bitey front and a waggly tail that is just what the enthusiastic driver wants. Oh, and while the ride is definitely firm, it doesn’t pitter-patter like Audis of old. This, rest assured, is a properly sorted, well-engineered and really quite well-priced car.

It’s also good-looking. The wheels are worthy of a spot in Tate Modern, the rear side windows are a nod to the Nissan GT-R — a comparable car, in fact — and the space isn’t bad either for a two-door coupé.

“God, it’s alarmingly quick off the line. I once saw someone put a mustard-covered hot dog up a police horse’s bottom. Well, the Audi sets off like that”

So there we are. Another kick in the teeth for BMW’s M division. A car you can drive, safe in the knowledge that the cognoscenti will give you a discreet nod at the lights — a recognition that you’ve made a wise choice.

And there’s more. I was in Knightsbridge the other night, having dinner on the pavement (not like a homeless person — I was at the Enterprise, which is a pub, not a spaceship. Well, it was a pub. It’s a bar and restaurant now.) Anyway, every third word I tried to say was drowned out by the bangs from wealthy young gentlemen’s anti-lag systems echoing off the walls like a firefight for the centre of Homs.

They went round and round the area in their hotted-up supercars until even I was pissed off. So you can imagine how my fellow diners felt. Which is why they will vote for anyone who makes petrol illegal.

I sense this everywhere these days. People are fed up with owning cars. They use Ubers and trains. And those who maintain their interest in all things automotive are treated with the sort of scorn and disdain that I reserve for golfers and freemasons.

So if you’re going to buy a really quick car that you can enjoy when no one is looking, it needs to be discreet. And the Audi is.

There is, however, a problem. If you’re the sort of keen driver who might be interested in this car, the chances are that the vehicle you currently drive doesn’t have four rings on the grille.

Which means you will have no idea how the Audi’s sat-nav-multimedia-connectivity system works. You will stab away at various buttons and then mutter something under your breath and push a few more, and eventually you’ll get out of your test vehicle, slam the door and buy the new version of the car you drive now.

This is becoming a serious problem. I write on a PC and cannot change to a Mac because I can’t be bothered to waste my life learning my way around its systems. I use an iPhone because it’s familiar, so when someone says Google’s latest effort is better, I don’t care, because I don’t know how it works.

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It’s increasingly the same story with cars. I understand how to silence the sat nav woman in my Volkswagen Golf and how to make Apple CarPlay work. I know how to reset the trip computer and to engage the self-parking system. But when I get into a BMW, or a Mercedes, I do not know straight away how to do any of that.

The days when a car was three pedals and a steering wheel are over. They’re electronic now, and much of their appeal is their ability to steer round jams and stop before an accident happens and play the music from our phone.

And in the Audi all this stuff is bloody difficult. So you won’t buy one. And that’s a shame.

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Head to head: Audi RS 5 vs Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio

	Audi RS 5	Alfa Giulia QV
Price	£62,900	£61,595
Power	444bhp	503bhp
0-62mph	3.9sec	3.9sec
Top speed	155mph	191mph

 

Write to us at driving@sunday-times.co.uk, or Driving, The Sunday Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

The post The Clarkson Review: 2017 Audi RS 5 Coupé appeared first on Sunday Times Driving.

source https://www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/clarkson/clarkson-review-2017-audi-rs-5/

First Drive review: 2018 Tesla Model 3

THE TESLA Model 3 is billed as the Ford Model T of the digital age — a car that will bring affordable electric motoring to all.

If Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire who co-created PayPal and who also has space ambitions is right, the Model 3 is the iPhone of transport, turning electric cars from playthings for millionaires, or tinny runabouts for hippies, into must-have gadgets for the masses.

But that revolution, and the planet-saving benefits it brings, hinges on one thing: what is the car like to drive?

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The one I’m allocated on the night of the launch, at which the first cars were handed over to select customers, is 007, the seventh off the line. It is the personal vehicle of Jerome Guillen, a senior Tesla engineer. Even with its lush metallic blue paint, stylish wheels and panoramic windows, the 007 does not look like a car that will change the world.

What sets it apart from the worthy electric vehicles produced by other manufacturers, though, is that it can be upgraded, like an iPhone. Musk’s genius, like that of Apple’s Steve Jobs before him, is that he has reimagined the car as a platform — a gadget that can grow and change over the years, with self-driving technology or a future ride-sharing network that lets owners make money from their vehicles.

It’s expected to cost about £30,000 after government grants when it goes on sale in the UK, although it could be a year before it arrives here. A £40,000 version of the Model 3 will have 310 miles of range and even zippier acceleration, Tesla says. With only a handful of moving parts, it is said to be almost maintenance-free.

The keys to the first 30 examples — the keys were actually paired smartphones — were handed over at a glitzy event at Tesla’s factory in California, where Musk was welcomed to rapturous applause. The customers were handpicked Tesla employees, but soon he expects to build 500,000 cars a year.

Musk’s self-proclaimed mission to disrupt the near-monopoly of the internal combustion engine has paid off. The Model 3 was launched two days after Michael Gove, the environment secretary, announced that new petrol and diesel cars would be banned from sale in Britain after 2040 (although it was later determined that hybrids — including plug-in hybrids — meeting emissions regulations will still be allowed).

“Early electric vehicles had the appeal of a glorified milk float and were bought by drivers called hair-shirtists by Jeremy Clarkson”

The expectation that more countries will ban conventional petrol and diesel vehicles has helped to send Tesla’s shares and Musk’s personal fortune soaring. Earlier this year Tesla’s market value overtook that of Ford, even though it has never reported a profit.

In California, Tesla owners are part of a club who exchange tips online. Using an app called PlugShare, they can drop into each other’s homes for a recharge, reducing the range anxiety that has been one of the drawbacks of electric cars.

Early electric vehicles had the appeal of a glorified milk float and were bought by drivers called hair-shirtists by Jeremy Clarkson. But Tesla models outperform most conventionally-powered rivals.

The car unlocks automatically when its paired smartphone approaches. Inside, all dials, controls and knobs have been replaced by a single 15in touchscreen. It’s liberating, if unnerving, to be faced with just a steering wheel and pedals.

But when I fire up the car, all becomes clear. The accelerator is immediately responsive and the car sets off with a kick. With electric cars, there’s no need to work the gears: all the power is available immediately.

The Model 3 will accelerate from 0 to 60mph in less than six seconds and has a range of at least 200 miles, according to the company. It can be charged overnight from a domestic mains supply or from one of Tesla’s network of roadside superchargers that will add a range of 130 miles in about 30 minutes.

When I let up on the accelerator, strong regenerative braking — which feeds kinetic energy back into the batteries — slows the car automatically. I scarcely need to use the brake at all.

So far, so Starship Enterprise. The real warp-speed leap came when I double-tapped the gear-shift lever, turning on the autopilot. Immediately, the steering wheel twitched as the car used its built-in cameras, radar and ultrasonic detectors to follow lanes and avoid other road users.

On my short drive, the autopilot worked well, although it did drive closer than I would have done to workmen digging up the road. It also had trouble with lanes that were poorly marked, meaning I had to take back control by tapping the brake.

Musk says that all Model 3s come with all the necessary hardware for full self-driving — although that is still several years, a lot of regulatory approval and an $8,000 (£6,000) upgrade away.

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Musk, who in the past has failed to meet production targets, insisted his Californian factory would soon be delivering 5,000 cars a week to more than 500,000 customers worldwide who have put down a $1,000 (£760) deposit on the Model 3. He is building another plant, the Gigafactory, in the Nevada desert where the battery packs will be made.

Even if he falls behind with deliveries, it may not matter. He learnt from Steve Jobs, the late chairman of Apple, to keep supplies scarce to boost desirability.

Tweet to @meharris Follow @meharris

Behind the scenes of the new Tesla Model 3 launch: the £30,000 electric BMW 3-series rival

The post First Drive review: 2018 Tesla Model 3 appeared first on Sunday Times Driving.

source https://www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/first-drive-review-2018-tesla-model-3/