Car review

Affalterbach looks to a new high-performance PHEV powertrain for the replacement for the much-loved E63 super saloon The Mercedes-AMG E63 was a brash, loud, powerful super-saloon of a kind that isn’t easily forgotten and that only Affalterbach could make. To the dismay of a generation of dyed-in-the-wool performance car enthusiasts, it's no longer in production.Sacrificed as part of Mercedes' wide-ranging electrification plans, one of the most multi-faceted of AMG’s modern-day performance cars has been laid to rest with a celebrated reputation built up over a period of 16 years and three model generations. And it has been indirectly replaced by this: the petrol-electric Mercedes-AMG E53 Hybrid 4Matic+.This new headlining E-Class model, to be sold in the UK in both saloon and estate forms, may lack the character-defining V8 engine used by other key AMG models, but it doesn’t want for performance. With 603bhp in combination with a so-called AMG Dynamic Plus package, it offers exactly the same power as the previous-generation E63 4Matic+.

The Audi A1 is a stylish and competent supermini - but does it have the edge over the Mini? The design premise of the Audi A1 was clearly minimalism over maximalism.In your correspondent's opinion, this is how you make a car age well, given that inside and out the Audi is as pared back as small hatchbacks get, and is certainly on the prettier side of the spectrum. It would be harsh to call it featureless, but it’s not exactly the automotive equivalent of Tobermory.This Germanic attention to efficient, neat design has served the A1 well, because even now with the earliest examples more than 14 years old, they still look modern – a good thing, because they’re in a tussle in the classifieds with the evergreen Mini hatchback.If you were to buy a Mini, would you be missing out? Well, unlike that car, the A1 didn’t draw on its maker’s heritage. Instead, it was one of the few small cars to have a team of engineers smelling each of its interior surfaces to make sure the scents didn’t clash.Upmarket appeal was the clear priority here. That interior also offers enough space for average-sized passengers and their average-sized luggage but not much else beyond that. The rear seats will accommodate anyone below average height and the boot any load smaller than 270 litres. By contrast, the contemporary Mini makes do with just 160 litres, while the Mk6 Ford Fiesta offers 295 litres.What about trim levels? If you can live with halogen headlights, entry-level SE models come with 15in alloy wheels, cruise control, electrically adjustable and heated door mirrors, rear parking sensors and a 6.5in pop-up display that, like many of the other trim pieces and buttons around the cabin, has the tactility of a Bang & Olufsen hi-fi.Stepping up to Sport trim grants you 16in alloys, sportier suspension, front foglights and USB and Bluetooth connectivity, while S Line (our recommendation) includes 17in alloys, xenon headlights, LED tail-lights, front sports seats, an aggressively styled bodykit and LED ambient interior lighting.You could upgrade further to the Black Edition variant, getting 18in alloys black exterior trim, but we don't think it adds that much styling flair or kit over S Line.For over a year, an S Line A1 was owned by yours truly, and never did I want for more. It was comfortable enough around town despite its firmer suspension, the gear change of its six-speed manual (a five-speed manual and a seven-speed S Tronic automatic were also available) had a reassuringly ramped and high-quality feel, it had a 1.4-litre four cylinder petrol engine that was more than potent enough and it regularly bested 40mpg. It certainly felt worthy of its Audi badges.There were a multitude of powertrains available, ranging from a slightly underpowered 94bhp 1.0-litre three-pot petrol (replacing an 85bhp 1.2-litre four in the pre-2015 facelift model) to the 1.4-litre four with 123bhp, 148bhp or 183bhp, although that last version was axed in 2014.You could also get a 1.6-litre or 2.0-litre diesel four, both of which offer up to 60mpg. The 2.0-litre is our choice of the oil burners, as it's not only abstemious but pacy too.So, it depends on what you're looking for in your small car. If you're after some nostalgic charm, buy a Mini. But if you want refinement, quality appeal and a tidy (if slightly anonymous) design, it's A1 all the way.

McLaren's plug-in hybrid supercar gets a host of powertrain and chassis revisions to increase its performance and excitement factor McLaren Automotive CEO Michael Leiters says he wants to take the company’s road-going products back towards their motorsport roots. To draw clearer and more evocative parallels between them and the racing machines for which the company is even more widely known, and carve out a bolder character and identity for them in the process.Sounds sensible - but the two years that Leiters is just approaching in the job is a pretty short window of time in product development terms. So isn’t now too early to seek to judge any 'Leiters effect'? Well, perhaps it isn’t. The McLaren 750S certainly shows signs of a shift in priorities towards the wild, expressive and dramatic; and now we know that its little sibling, the revised Artura plug-in hybrid supercar, does also.‘Revised’ may be the wrong descriptor for this car, actually. It feels more as if the Artura’s launch has been reset. Leiters came to the chair at McLaren around the same time as the Artura’s troubled and delayed market launch in summer 2022. Significant technical revisions to the car followed; but sales have been slow to do likewise, Woking executives now admit.So it feels like McLaren’s main motivation in making these revisions, for the 2025-model-year and coming only two years into the Artura's life, is simply to give it a fresh start: with the press, dealers and customers alike. And the wider the revisions, perhaps, the fresher the start.Rebooted or otherwise, however, the Artura remains one of McLaren's boldest cars yet. Between its British-built carbonfibre monocoque, its ethernet electrical architecture, its superformed aluminium bodywork and its V6 plug-in hybrid powerplant, this is probably the most technically daring project that McLaren has undertaken since the McLaren P1 hypercar – and quite possibly ever.Range at a glanceThe Artura options list is quite extensive. There are six no-cost paint colours, but nearly 30 others you can pick (before you get into commissioning your own colour); there are three wheel designs; and numerous further exterior trim and equipment spec choices.McLaren corrals the car’s most important optional features into seven packages: the Gloss Black Interior Finish Pack, the Technology, TechLux and Vision Interior packs, and the Performance and MSO Carbonfibre Interior packs. The Technology Pack is the priciest (£6800) but includes 360deg cameras, Bowers & Wilkins audio, LED headlights, intelligent cruise, road sign recognition and lane departure warning.

The concept of a mainstream Ford is about to change forever. So is the crucial new Explorer EV any good? The Ford Explorer is a new Ford like no other. The fact that it’s based on a Volkswagen architecture is remarkable enough, that it takes the place of the Fiesta on its production lines in Cologne perhaps more so. Oh, and it resets the notion of a mainstream, mass-market family-sized Ford as a car that is now electric and starts at £40,000. The new Explorer isn't just a new Ford, then - a significant enough event itself - but the boldest embodiment of entirely new approach for the Blue Oval in Europe. The strategy has been to replace high-volume, low-margin models like the Fiesta and Focus with more profitable crossovers like the Puma and now the Explorer, ‘legacy’ model names being rebooted in the process. This isn’t a fringe manufacturer tinkering around with the margins of its range. It’s Ford, the UK’s number-one car maker and maker of its number-one car in the Fiesta for as long as anyone can remember – but with the demise of the Fiesta, it's no more on either count, and the brand is clinging onto a place in the top five in the UK’s sales charts.The Explorer’s development hasn't been easy. It was delayed by more than a year and re-engineered late on to take advantage of more advanced battery technology, and Martin Sander, who led the company throughout its development and was the spokesperson for this new Ford of Europe, including being the face of the Fiesta news, left Ford to join Volkswagen just a week before the first test drives.That’s quite a lot to unpick, yet whatever the narrative to date, only one thing really matters now: is it any good to drive? The pretty yet sodden roads around Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital, will reveal all.

Magical V8 sports SUV’s interior and tech get updated to keep it spinning money The security guards at Aston Martin’s Gaydon headquarters have it all right.They patrol the campus from the confines of an understated but quite fetching white Aston Martin DBX of 2020 vintage (silver wheels, too). Aside from the fact that their counterparts in Maranello are unlikely ever to find themselves luxuriating behind the wheel of a £313k Ferrari Purosangue, there’s nothing unusual about this.It's worth mentioning only because, for a moment, I almost didn’t recognise this old DBX, so demure did it look parked next to the extroverted mass of the new-for-2024, facelifted DBX 707 that we're in Gaydon to drive.It’s fair to say that since it was launched in 2019, the DBX has been on a journey. As a driver’s car, it has always represented an unusually sweet blend of comfort and handling in the super-SUV sphere, but its ultimate raison d’être has always been to sell, sell, sell – to support the firm’s bottom line by successfully competing in what is a profitable but brutally fierce class.That’s why, just a few years into the DBX’s existence, we got the flashy 707 version. More power, less weight, more grip, louder colours, a louder exhaust and more visual aggression, including a diffuser that wouldn’t have looked amiss on one of Aston’s GT3 racers. All of this in order to better appeal to anybody cross-shopping the DBX with the Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus or Purosangue.It proved so popular that Aston elected to drop the subtler original from its range. And now there’s another evolution.