Long-Term Review

Why we’re running it:  To see if Lexus’s famed attention to detail makes up for the modest range

Month 1 - Specs

Life with a Lexus RZ: Month 1

Welcoming the Lexus RZ to the fleet - 26 July 2023

Spending £70,000-plus on a car is quite a privilege at the best of times, but throw in the current cost of living crisis and impending recession and it becomes an even more extravagant proposition.

So, with opinions like that, seeing the keys to such a vehicle land on my desk at Autocar Towers was a bit of a surprise – but maybe that was the point. The very plush Lexus RZ will be in my keep for the next few months, possibly in the hope that I’ll become an advocate for high-end cruising, or at least understand its place.

What’s more, the brand’s new flagship is an EV, and Lexus’s first bespoke one at that (after the also-a-hybrid UX) – albeit a reskinned Toyota bZ4X. Sorry, being cynical.

But it’s hard not to be in the world of lavish EVs. Just look at the spec sheets that accompany some cheaper models such as the Skoda Enyaq iV, which in £45,000, bigger-battery form delivers more than 300 miles of real-world range.

It makes you wonder why Lexus (and Toyota) didn’t want to offer more than the RX’s on-paper range of 251 miles (we’ll come to that later) and whether a car like this, at this price point has a place in the world – especially when battery technology has yet to catch up with combustion power in terms of how far it can take you between stops.

Anyway, we’re going to start with a clean slate.

First, let’s have a look at what we have here: a 309bhp, four-wheel-drive, two-tonne family SUV that has been created to offer “confidence, control and comfort”, according to Lexus.

Although this is my first report, I’m already more than 700 miles into our relationship, which has included airport trips and motorway runs. B-road blasts have figured too, and they’ve been surprisingly quite fun in this EV, despite its weight.

I’m happy to report Lexus has hit the mark: this is a comfy car. And plush – especially in the Takumi trim of our model. As a result, every journey has been one of comfort – from being lightly manoeuvred into my driving position at the press of the start button to the in-seat fans keeping me sweat-free on scorching days.

This is a key point for a car at this price point: it needs to be as nice as, if not nicer than, your lounge. Odd analogy, but you get my point. The infotainment, with its large, 14.0in screen, has a raft of features that we will dive into later.

I’ve sat in the back of it and it’s very pleasant. Those seats recline, which makes it one of the most comfortable rear benches I’ve sat on, although passengers have reported feeling the bumps, something I’ve not noticed in the front.

The faux suede (an environmental decision) across every seat and touchpoint adds to the plushness. Then there’s the opaque glass sunroof that, as if by magic (it’s actually science), switches to clear at the touch of a button. The interior is just such a good place to be.

The RZ also drives well for a 4.8m-long family SUV, and with the Takumi trim adding performance dampers front and rear (which means no towing can be done), it handles well too. The four-wheel steering also means our car can manoeuvre slickly in town.

Good news, then? Well, ish: there are some caveats. The beeping is one. The RZ has a host of safety features, from speed limit monitoring and lane assist to driver concentration technology.

They’re all good things, but they’re just very sensitive (the driver monitoring system hates sunglasses), and when alerting – which it does with loud beeps and bongs – it is quite aggressive.

You can, as with most safety systems, turn these off but it must be done for each journey. This seems a world away from the if-not-safer Volvo XC40 Recharge, my previous long-term test car, which doesn’t feel the need to constantly bong at you as part of its uncompromising quest to keep you driving legally and safely.

Which brings me on to the range. The RZ has a claimed a top end of 271 miles, but as ours is fitted with 20in alloys, this immediately drops to 251 miles.

Yet this is the dreaded ‘fan off’ range, so the reality is even lower. How low? After our first few weeks with the RZ, even in stints of especially conservative driving (the app has been scoring my driving at 84 out of 100 for efficiency), I’ve achieved no more than 180 miles from the fully charged 71.4kWh battery.

That’s 180 miles for a car that costs £74,000. Not great, but it’s a good benchmark to attempt improvements during our tenure.

This is going to be an interesting test, then. We have here a car that Lexus has entrusted as its new flagship, so is it up for the task? Let’s see what it’s made of.

Second Opinion

The RZ is a beautifully finished, smooth-riding car, so I imagine it will be a very pleasant companion for the next few months if Will can find a way to tame the overzealous safety systems. I’m also curious to see if the RZ’s range prediction in winter will be more accurate than the Toyota bZ4X’s.

Illya Verpraet 

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Lexus RZ 450e Takumi specification

Specs: Price New £74,000 Price as tested £74,000 Options None

Test Data: Engine xxx Power 309bhp Torque 321lb ft Kerb weight 2055kg Top speed 99mph 0-62mph 5.6sec Range 252 miles (WLTP) Economy 3.4mpkW CO2 0g/km Faults None Expenses None

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Why we’re running it:  To see if this hybrid can strike the sweet spot between a car and a van

Month 1 - Specs

Life with a Toyota Corolla Commercial: Month 1

Welcoming the Corolla to the fleet - 28 June 2023

Us photographers are an annoying breed: we insist on journalists driving cars out to the middle of nowhere, will always ask for one more pass and will always have a frankly ridiculous amount of kit to hand, just in case.

You would think a van would be our perfect method of transport, then, right? Well, as much kit as we have, they are if anything probably a little too big for us. Plus, thieves have a habit of viewing vans as oversized lucky-dip boxes.

So what do you do if you need a reasonable but not ridiculously large amount of cargo space in an inconspicuous package? You go for a car-based van, such as my new Toyota Corolla Commercial.

From a distance, it looks like a standard Corolla Touring Sports estate. It’s only when you get close that you notice the rear windows are blocked off with a black film (designed to make its van identity as hard to realise as possible) and you realise all is not as it initially seems.

It has the same ‘self-charging’ hybrid system as its rear-seated cousin, with a 1.8-litre four-pot petrol engine, an electric motor and a small battery. That means there’s a total of 138bhp on tap, delivered to the front wheels through an e-CVT.

There’s a fair amount of goodies included for the £24,533 (excluding VAT) base price too, including a rear-view camera, heated seats and an infotainment touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Although they are mechanically identical and almost visually so too, the differences between the Corolla car and Corolla van are immediately obvious once you open the latter’s rear doors and find that the back seats are missing (something required by law in order for anything to qualify for commercial vehicle tax benefits).

They have been replaced by a cavernous 1326-litre cargo bay and a full-metal bulkhead grille for separation between the driver and the load being transported. I’m so used to seeing seats inside a car like this that it looks simply massive, but it’s not quite as spacious as even the smallest ‘proper’ vans.

For example, the smallest Toyota Proace City variant has a load bay of 3300 litres, despite being 247mm shorter overall. Still, I’m able to transport objects up to 1860mm long and 1430mm wide.

It’s also worth noting that there’s a normal rear screen. That’s great for driving because the blacked-out side windows create blind spots large enough to lose a medium-size container ship in, but it means that whatever I leave in the back is on full display to the world.

The payload is 435kg, which sounds like a lot until you compare it with the aforementioned Proace City’s 650kg load-lugging capability. Heck, even the standard Corolla estate can carry 100kg more than our new long-termer in certain specifications.

This decreased carrying capacity is offset by the driving characteristics, though. As you would expect, this ‘van’ just feels like a car. The control weights are light around town but the steering is firm and stable at high speeds, while I’ve also been impressed by the quietness, comfort and fuel economy – all things that you want in a vehicle prone to being driven for exceedingly long periods.

Although it glides smoothly over the appalling roads around my local town of Poole, the rear feels much more softly sprung than the front, giving the car a tendency to rock back and forth for a bit after hitting large bumps. It’s not unpleasant, but it does take a little bit of getting used to.

The radar-guided adaptive cruise control is a real stress-reducer in traffic, as the car does all the work for me, with the incredibly heavy steering and accurate lane keeping assistance seeming like they would be happiest with no human intervention in the slightest.

If that’s not your cup of tea, these two systems can be turned off via the controls on the steering wheel, while other safety equipment such as automatic collision avoidance can be disabled in the menus. Best of all, it remembers your preferences for next time – which isn’t always the case on other cars.

The powertrain is keen to stay in electric mode around town, only really using the combustion engine under acceleration and above speeds of around 30mph, and the power delivery feels incredibly smooth.

The claimed WLTP figure of 64mpg seems somewhat optimistic, but even with my feet of lead, I’ve managed to average 60mpg overall so far, and a recent hour-long motorway run with fairly heavy traffic yielded an incredibly impressive 72.6mpg figure.

So, it’s big, it’s comfy and it’s economical. On first impressions, I’m going to have to try quite hard to find things to moan about during my time with this Toyota, and I doubt that “my dog doesn’t like it” would be a valid criticism.

Second Opinion

Jack’s Corolla is up there with the best vans, mainly because it doesn’t look like one. It does all those vital tasks so easily that it should be a winner for his job. One area where it may come unstuck is passenger room. He and I aren’t blessed in the leg department, yet even for us the seat is just a few inches off the bulkhead.

Piers Ward

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Toyota Corolla 1.8 VVT- i Commercial specification

Specs: Price New £29,440 Price as tested £29,956 Options Silver metallic paint, £525

Test Data: Engine 138bhp at 5200rpm Torque 104lb ft at 3600rpm Kerb weight 1410kg Top speed 112mph 0-62mph 11.1sec Fuel economy (claimed) 61mpg CO2 105g/km Faults None Expenses None

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Why we’re running it:  To see if a fast estate is still the best car in the world

Month 1 - Specs

Life with an Alpina D3 S: Month 1

Welcoming the Alpina to the fleet - 21 June 2023

Time is running out for independent-era Alpinas like this, the D3 S Touring, which is based on the latest-generation BMW 3 Series and has joined Autocar for the next few months. Goody.

Alpina was bought by BMW last spring but will continue with its own line-up of models (although they are largely finished on BMW production lines) until 2025. After that, BMW will be in control of new Alpina output.

Hopefully, they will continue being things like this. A fast 3 Series wagon is perennially the sort of car that migrates to the top of those ‘all the car you’ll ever need’ lists, and the D3 S is the right sort of fast 3 Series wagon.

The D3 diesel – and its B3 petrol alternative – were revised last year when BMW facelifted the 3 Series range. The result is a 355bhp and, importantly, 539lb ft estate with a 48V mild-hybrid system.

Because Alpina is rated as a tiny manufacturer and so has less pressure on its corporate average fuel consumption than a large car maker, it can sell a car with this 3.0-litre straight-six diesel engine in the UK, while BMW itself sadly no longer does.

It officially returns 40.9mpg and 182g/km, and while doing so is a car with a 4.6sec 0-62mph time and a 170mph top speed. Alpina buyers in Germany love that kind of flexibility – and for not unrelated reasons, it’s one of the first places I took the D3 S (more on which next time).

In the meantime, here’s a rundown of the basics. The D3 S costs £66,000 and is respectably equipped off the bat, but you can add a lot of options. There’s a full list of what this car contains on the opposite page, but the important extras are the 20in black forged wheels, instead of 19s, black paint against which it’s hard to see the subtle decal kit and high-performance brakes. Inside is a Harman Kardon hi-fi and merino leather trim (it’s part blue but you can have white, red, brown or black). I’ll go into the others later.

First impressions are good. This shouldn’t be a surprise: a 3 Series is good and Alpina does good work, so an Alpina 3 Series should be terrific. And it is. I know diesels get flak to the extent that they took barely over 5% of new car sales last year, but the BMW 3.0-litre has always been a peach and with the 48V mild-hybrid system start-stopping it in an instant without shaking, the eight-speed ZF transmission remaining one of the finest in the business and the xDrive four-wheel drive system, it’s proving to be a seamless, effortless, 550-mile-to-a-tank and 50mpg-without-trying-too-hard (I’m still settling to an average) mile eater.

The diesel has lost out to the plug-in hybrid in particular (thanks in great part to the company car tax benefits), but you would have to plug one in a lot to match the D3 S’s economy. In jobs like mine, with lots of long journeys to places where I can’t plug in on location, it’s still incredibly useful.

Apparently, those high-speed, high-mile journeys play a big part in the popularity of Alpina’s diesel models in Germany (people will commute big distances rather than fly internally), while in Japan, traditionally a petrol rather than a diesel market, they think of them as we did in the early 2000s too.

Dynamically, it’s impressive. Firm, certainly, but brilliantly controlled, with relatively low noise levels, consistent if heavy steering – brutally stable at high speeds – and just a reliable, unflinching way of going about things.

It’s usually tempting to compare an Alpina with its equivalent BMW M car, but that this is a diesel and BMW itself doesn’t offer this engine means I won’t make the M3 Touring comparison. I think they are really quite different cars – the D3 S doesn’t have M levels of agility.

If it does have an issue, it’s not really all of its own making. Those 20in wheels wear 30-profile Pirelli P Zero tyres front and rear, closely matched at 255mm (front) and 265mm (rear) wide, which should make this four-wheel-drive car with even weight distribution very nicely balanced.

But twice in the past week I’ve thought I was going to rip a tyre from the rim over some very British potholes that I didn’t see at night. A proper thump of the sort that makes you think you’re going to spend the next two hours waiting for a recovery truck. It’s almost tempting to recommend the 19s instead, but they have a split five-spoke design rather than these slinkier Alpina classic spokes for which, even in black, I’m a bit of a sucker.

Anyway, more next time – including whether continental Europe is kinder to the rubber.

Second Opinion

Prior is right to feel like the cat that got the creamy diesel V6. Alpina’s D4 S Gran Coupé sister car impressed the hell out of me earlier this year with its incredible cruising refinement and long-striding easy performance and efficiency. I remember thinking that you could probably get 40mpg out of one at 100mph-plus autobahn speeds.

Matt Saunders

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Alpina D3 S Touring specification

Specs: Price New £66,000 Price as tested £88,265 Options 20in wheels £3420, Black Sapphire paint £800, decal set £420, performance brakes £1770, carbonfibre interior trim finishers £500, merino leather £3800, comfort access £560, lumbar support £195, electric seat adjust £1120, galvanic finish on controls £95, CNC aluminium gear paddles £290, high-gloss interior £205, panoramic sunroof £1550, laser headlights £1870, shadow line lights £300, driving assistant professional £1870, drive recorder £190, park assistant plus £650, acoustic glazing £190, sun protection glass £380, auto-dim mirrors £310, loudspeaker upgrade £820, electric towbar £960

Test Data: Engine 3.0-litre straight-six diesel Power 355bhp Torque 539lb ft at 4200rpm Kerb weight 1950kg Top speed 168mph 0-62mph 4.6sec Fuel economy 40.9mpg (claimed) CO2 xxxg/km Faults None Expenses None

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Why we’re running it:  To see if the new electric Niro is the Volkswagen Golf of the EV world

Month 1 - Specs

Life with a Kia Niro EV: Month 1

Welcoming the Niro to the fleet - 7 June 2023

When the Kia Niro was named as one of the seven cars shortlisted for the 2023 Car of the Year award late last year, the nice man from Kia asked me if I would like to speak to UK boss Paul Philpott about the model and its success.

In coming up with some topics for that discussion, a thought struck me, and it has stuck with me ever since: the Niro EV is like the Volkswagen Golf of the electric car world.

The Golf has long been the de-facto choice in the ‘old world’ for those who just want a family car to quietly but brilliantly do it all, with no fanfare. Don’t know what car to buy? Get a Golf. It strikes me that among EVs of this size, the Niro does the exact same job. Don’t know what electric car to buy? Get a Niro.

The Niro EV is already unusual in the electric car world for being a second-generation model, and the refinement rather than reinvention shows that Kia was already onto a good thing before the switchover last year.

So much so, in fact, that the drivetrain is identical. There’s the same 201bhp, 291lb ft front-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motor that draws power from a 64.8kWh (usable capacity) lithium ion battery. Even the top speed (104mph) and 0-62mph time (7.8sec) remain the same.

All those figures are still competitive in the market, but the retained maximum charging rate of 72kW now looks a bit pedestrian compared with some EVs’.

The early indicated range that I’m getting is just shy of 240 miles, which is down from the 250-plus that I remember seeing from the old e-Niro and shy again of the official 285-mile range. Still, it’s early days, and with warmer weather I expect this to rise.

The Niro is, of course, not just an electric car but a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid, too. They all look the same: beyond a small badge on the bootlid, the only real way to tell the EV apart from its stablemates at a quick glance is through the flash of green on the numberplate. The HEV and PHEV even use the same 1.6-litre engine, the latter also drawing electricity from a 11.1kWh battery.

I will make sure to get close to the EV’s range-mates for comparison during this test, because Kia tells of genuine cross-shopping between the models and customers choosing differently to what they had expected after sampling them and speaking to dealers. It’s a clever strategy that allows buyers to compare apples with apples.

Kia is able to secure buyers who might intend to buy an EV yet when push comes to shove decide otherwise and end up with one of the Niro’s other powertrain options, “particularly those without off-street parking, for whom home charging is more challenging, perhaps their driving needs are such that they need some greater flexibility, or they don’t yet have the confidence of charging infrastructure”, as Philpott told me.

“The options of HEV and PHEV are there,” he continued. “I think people are comparing them, and by giving people the choice it forces them to ask themselves questions. What do I want for the next three years of car ownership? Am I ready to go fully EV? Perhaps [I will instead go] PHEV, [because] it gives me an option.”

Whatever version they go for, there are the same 2, 3 and 4 trim levels to choose from. Our car is a 4, and beyond colour (including a contrasting tone for the C-pillars) the only other choice is whether to have a £900 heat pump. Our car doesn’t, but it’s something I would add based on past experiences.

That aside, our car is fully loaded and wants for little. Highlights include the leather-effect ‘vegan’ upholstery (made using Tencel fabric from eucalyptus trees), although I can’t work out if it really elevates the car while remaining durable or feels like a more upmarket version of a wipe-clean vinyl tablecloth from a child’s party. For now, I’m leaning towards the former.

The running-in period for our Niro has already been quite extensive, the recent flurry of comings and goings on the Autocar fleet holding back its debut in these pages. Yet this has simply allowed the new-car glow to last longer, as it has slipped seamlessly into everyday life.

Its dimensions make it feel nicely compact on our roads (having a narrower car after squeezing through gaps for 10,000 miles in a BMW iX has been particularly welcome), and its real-world drivability and pace are excellent.

The e-Niro, like its Hyundai Kona Electric sister, had a propensity to feel like it was going to escort you into a ditch, due to the violent amount of torque going through the low-rolling-resistance tyres; this new car feels more restrained and manageable without feeling slow. While the hardware is the same, the tuning has been improved.

It’s spacious inside, too. A boon is being able to get a set of golf clubs in the boot widthways, such is the space and span of the opening.

Easy to drive, a good size, spacious, no fanfare, good equipment levels… Sounds like what we would have said about the Golf a few years ago.

Second Opinion

Forget the EV revolution: the Niro EV is a brilliant advert for evolution. Take a car that was a huge hit, carefully address its relatively minor flaws and produce an absolute mainstream smash. Yup, another reason to compare it to the Golf.

James Attwood

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Kia Niro EV 4 specification

Specs: Price New £42,295 Price as tested £43,040 Options Interstellar Grey with Grey pillar £745

Test Data: Engine front-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motor Power 201bhp Torque 291lb ft Kerb weight 1739kg Top speed 104mph 0-62mph 7.8sec Economy 3.9mpkW CO2 0g/km Faults None Expenses None

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Why we’re running it: What lessons can be learned from running a Toyota Land Cruiser, the most old-school of current offerings?

Month 1 - Specs

Life with a Toyota Land Cruiser: Month 1

Welcoming the Land Cruiser to the fleet - 17 May 2023

You’ve never driven off-road?! Not even once?!” an incredulous Piers Ward exclaimed over the airwaves from his home in rural Lincolnshire. “No, because there are roads where I want to go,” came my cheeky reply from a Sussex suburb.

Our associate editor was calling to deliver the news that my wee Yaris Cross was going to be swapped for a gigantic Land Cruiser – two Toyotas seemingly from different universes.

Land Cruisers being as rare as Ward’s favoured flat caps around here and the possibility of meeting a mamba appealing to me about as much as catching Covid, I had never fully appreciated this 4x4’s popularity or depth of lore.

Since 1951, Toyota has sold more than 10 million Cruisers – enough for every person in London today with plenty to spare. Many of those have ended up in Africa and Australia, but they’re also popular in South America and the Middle East – basically, anywhere you need the off-road ability of a Land Rover without the associated reliability concerns. The one complication is there isn’t just one Land Cruiser.

Most places, but very few of them in Europe, have the J300, released in 2021. Over here, we get what they know as the Land Cruiser Prado, which is smaller and which has been in its J150 generation since 2009, its second facelift coming in 2017. And in really hardcore places, like Chile, Namibia and Canada, there are also Land Cruisers 76, 78 and 79, variants of the J70 that has been in production since 1984. The same year the Mercedes-Benz W124 and Ferrari Testarossa were born…

So why are we running a Land Cruiser now, in 2023? I won’t even pretend it’s to see if it can function as a city car or a good commuter, for obvious reasons. Instead, we’re doing so because it’s perhaps the most anachronistic car sold by a mainstream manufacturer today and seems to be made more so by the day as everything else becomes electrified, connected and autonomous, which makes it a real curio, an item of rare interest. I guess this is what you get when you write articles about the 1920s (see p66) and wear a baseball cap that reads ‘modernity has failed us’…

I began to question that as I stepped into my behemoth of a seven-seater for the first time, having noted the ladder-frame construction through the gaping gap between 23in all-terrain tyre and bulky body as I jumped from the running board into an ivory leather chair; was met by a dash looking like a hi-fi you would find in Oxfam; touched yet more leather and Earth’s smoothest wood trim; and then read a spec sheet alerting me to the presence of a 2.8-litre four-pot that would get just 29mpg. On diesel. At £1.70 per litre…

I have tested many SUVs, but most of those were front-driven crossovers, and even the Land Rovers I’ve driven have had a monocoque at least. The Land Cruiser is something else entirely, I realised as it grumbled into loud life, sat back on its big bum and floated lazily out of Toyota’s fleet garage, my steering inputs are seemingly taken as more approximations than directions.

Get this, though: I was laughing like an idiot. So homogenous and characterless are many cars these days that I loved finding a new way to drive and seeing controls and features that were totally unfamiliar. How’s a button for manual diesel particulate filter cleaning, an off-roading console or a central bin that can function as a fridge, for instance? I would like the touchscreen’s Apple CarPlay to be wireless for my £64,150, but otherwise Invincible spec (sitting above only Active trim) brings everything any countryside dweller could need.

In terms of old-school luxuries, I have said fridge, electric seat adjustment, a parking camera, parking sensors, automatic headlights, tri-zone air conditioning, powered mirrors, a heated and electrically adjustable steering wheel and comfy chairs with ventilation and heating and upholstered in Ortaka Ivory leather (the same colour as the carpet).

As for off-road features, I have Multi-Terrain Select (five off-road driving modes), cameras looking underneath the car, crawl control (a kind of off-road cruise control), a body angle display, a steering angle display, off-road turning assistance, a rear Torsen differential, a locking centre differential and Toyota’s fascinating Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System, which senses whether you are on or off-road and then hydraulically optimises the anti-roll bars accordingly.

And among the modern technology, I have a 9.0in infotainment touchscreen with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and sat-nav, a punchy 14-speaker JBL stereo, adaptive cruise control, lane departure alert, traffic sign recognition, automatic high beam, automatic wipers, rear cross-traffic alert, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection and blindspot monitoring.

I may have been the butt of many jokes since being handed the keys to the Land Cruiser for the juxtaposition of my car and my lifestyle, but I’m already feeling like I’m making a new friend, I’ve booked a course to learn how to off-road (that you can read about here in the coming weeks) and I’ve even made one of my neighbours envious. Surprise, surprise, she’s a travelling equine vet.

Second Opinion

The Land Cruiser might still be my favourite all-round versatile passenger 4x4, aside from the Jeep Wrangler, which does something slightly different. That’s a hobby car, this is a practical, all-conditions wagon that can tow all day, or off-road all day, or sit on a motorway all day, and feels like it will do any of those things basically forever. Easy to take for granted

Matt Prior

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Toyota Land Cruiser 2.8 D4-D Invincible specification

Specs: Price New £64,150 Price as tested £64,880 Options

Test Data: Engine 2.8-litre 4cly diesel Power 204bhp Torque 369lb ft Kerb weight 2135kg Top speed 109mph 0-62mph 12.7sec Fuel economy 30.5mpg CO2 246g/km Faults None Expenses None

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