Car review

Early examples of Smart’s new dawn didn’t instantly impress. We try the EV hatchback on UK roads Before we dive into the details of the Smart #1, some context. At the long histories of Porsche or Opel and you’ll find that they still produce much the same kind of cars as they did around their foundation – sporty luxury cars for the former and dependable middleclass transport for the latter.Others have experienced serious mission creep, even in a relatively short time. You won’t find it in the literature for the Smart #1, but the name Smart was originally conceived as a slightly contrived acronym for Swatch, Mercedes, Art. The project originated not with a major car manufacturer but with Swatch, a Swiss maker of affordable watches, who wanted to make a city car that embodied the spirit of its timepieces.As Google and Apple have found out, making cars is a tough side gig, so Swatch settled on Mercedes-Benz as an experienced partner. But the realities of car making soon bit and Swatch gradually realised it was morphing into the kind of project it didn’t want to be involved in. Even when Smart was exclusively under Mercedes-Benz, it started to shift from making just the clever tiny cars it’s still known for to making simply A Car, in the form of the Mitsubishi-based Forfour.Twenty-five years after the launch of the original Smart, even Mercedes has come to the conclusion that the original idea wasn’t a very good one. ‘Good’ in this case means lucrative, because there is plenty of demand for well-designed small cars. So it decided to sell off 50% of the business to noted home for mismanaged European car brands Geely.The first product of this joint venture is the #1, an electric hatchback that takes the fight to the Volkswagen ID 3, Kia Niro EV, MG 4 and Peugeot e-308. That’s a tough field of competitors, so the #1 needs to do better than the original Forfour did all those yearsRange at a glanceModelsPowerFromPro 51kWh268kWh£32,500 (est)Pro+ 66kWh268kWh£35,950Premium 66kWh268bhp£38,950Brabus 66kWh422bhp£43,450The Smart #1’s powertrain is tied to the trim level. All currently available #1s have the same 66kWh battery. Pro+, Premium and Launch Editionuse a single rear motor, whereasthe Brabus adds a second, smallermotor at the front. A Pro modelwith a smaller LFP battery and the same 268bhp rear motor is likelyto join the range soon. It is priced at €37,490 in Germany

The 720S was peerless when it arrived, but six years on, does it still excite like little else? Six years have passed since the McLaren 720S arrived – a supercar whose engineers were, at the time, quite open regarding their anxiety over its eventual replacement.In fairness, they had reason to be. In the 720S, those engineers created an exceedingly light, monumentally potent supercar with class-defying road manners. Talk about a hard act to follow.Today, we know that the full-bore replacement for the 720S will involve a hybridised V8 powertrain, due to come onstream in a few years’ time. The car to house it is currently being masterminded by new McLaren CEO Michael Leiters (formerly of Ferrari), with fresh styling overseen by Tobias Sühlmann, who is tucking his feet back under his desk in Woking after a short spell at Bentley.As the successor to the 720S, it will exist as a big brother to the hybridised-V6 Artura and will ring the retirement bell for a model that brought hypercar performance to the supercar realm, putting in quite a shift as goes McLaren’s desire to be a rival to Ferrari.In fact, in terms of performance at this price point, the Italians have only just outdone the 720S, requiring an 819bhp plug-in hybrid powertrain in the far heavier Ferrari 296 GTB to do so. But the extraordinary 720S isn’t finished just yet, and before its true successor arrives, it has evolved into this, the £244,815 McLaren 750S.

Ferrari piles on the downforce for its first road-legal, special-series XX model It’s almost a decade since Ferrari’s last extra-special-series ‘XX’ car, the La Ferrari-based FXX-K, was introduced. Between that, the original FXX, FXX Evolutione, and the 599XX and -Evo, it’s reckoned that Maranello has so far either made (or, in some cases, remade) fewer than a hundred XX-branded cars in total, only for its wealthiest and most favoured customers.Lately, however, those favoured few have been distracted by other things. The firm’s ‘Icona’ models have been cars of more jewel-like, showcar-level design appeal than the more brutally purposeful XXs, as well as extra-special engineering. So why rekindle the old track-special lineage now? Isn’t it a backwards step?Well, it might be - if that was really what Maranello was up to. But, in some respects at least, the Ferrari SF90 XX Stradale looks a little like an XX model in name only. It’s got an XX badge, sure; and it’s got some very special design features and specification upgrades, to which we’ll come. But buying one won’t get you into the ultra-exclusive ‘XX’ trackdays that Ferrari lays on for its VVIP multi-millionaire collectors. The 1400 customers who will buy one of these cars would outnumber the existing ‘XX’ club members by about fifteen to one (and that’d be an awful lot more expensive catering).The very existence of this car, in fact, suggests that Maranello’s XX experiment may be drawing to a close (although I dare say Maranello will insist otherwise). This, Ferrari says, is more of a tribute to the idea of a Ferrari XX car than a fully paid up member of the track-only model set in itself. And yet it's still a car with some incredible track potential.

Volkswagen gears up to finally go Tesla-hunting with its first all-electric saloon, the ID 7 Electrification has turned a few things on its head. You know how you can describe any hatchback to a less car-savvy acquaintance as ‘basically like a VW Golf’; ‘like a VW Golf, but a bit bigger’, or ‘like a VW Golf, but posher’? Well, here’s the new Volkswagen ID 7, and how might one describe it?It’s like a Tesla Model 3, but from Volkswagen, in the same way that a Hyundai Ioniq 6 and a Polestar 2 are like a Model 3, but from Hyundai or that brand that’s Volvo, but not Volvo. Gosh, these new brands are getting complicated.At least the VW ID 7 recipe is fairly simple. It’s a big five-door electric car based on the Volkswagen Group’s MEB platform. Think VW ID 4 but more saloony.

Angry supercar has been turned into something more befitting its name for its second generation Ask the company's new boss, Michael Schiebe, for his take on this, the second-generation Mercedes-AMG GT, and he will tell you it’s a transformative car that improves on the nine-year-old one that it replaces in every single way.He’s biased, of course, but his comments show the pressure on the new coupé to do more and to do it better than before. AMG is taking a whole new direction with its flagship model, targeting a wider and more diverse group of customers by pushing the front-engined supercar that we came to know and appreciate over the years deeper into traditional luxury grand tourer territory.Well, it’s in the name, after all. The move comes in response to feedback from owners of the 2014-2022 model. Schiebe says they sought greater long-distance and all-season qualities but at the same time didn’t want to forgo the car’s inherent speed and track-bred heritage.