futuremaxz

  Mercedes-Benz’s AMG performance car division has unveiled two new in-house developed petrol-electric plug-in hybrid (PHEV) drivetrains – the most powerful of which is set to provide future four-wheel drive   AMG   models with over 804bhp together with pure electric capability for zero-emission running over short distances. The new PHEV drivetrains, part of what AMG calls its e-Performance strategy, are based on the German car maker’s existing twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 and a newly developed longitudinally-mounted version of its turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine – the M177 and M139 as they are respectively codenamed, both mated to a nine-speed AMG torque converter equipped MCT-Speedshift gearbox. In an electrification process aimed at increasing their reserves while providing added efficiency for lower average CO2 emissions, the AMG combustion engines are combined with an electric motor integrated into the rear axle assembly. The new driveline archit...

  Two powertrains are available: a supercharged V8 petrol producing 557bhp and the plug-in hybrid P400e. The latter is capable of up to 25 miles of electric-only running, with official CO2 emissions of 75g/km. The Dynamic model is pitched as the most driver-focused, with suspension and steering tuned for extra agility on the road. Land Rover’s Dynamic Response system helps control body roll, and the ride height is lowered by 8mm for better performance and a more purposeful stance on the move. Dynamic editions are only available in standard-wheelbase form. Riding on forged, 22in alloy wheels with a five-split-spoke design, the SVAutobiography Ultimate’s exterior is finished with Orchard Green paint. There’s a Narvick Black contrast roof with matching door mirrors, and copper detailing around the Range Rover and SV badges. The side vent, bonnet finisher, grille and front bumper accents are all finished in Graphite Atlas. Inside, the interior features Vintage Tan leather and copper we...

  Instead the X is an exercise in design, with Genesis using the coupé to hone its trademark Two Lines philosophy. This can be seen in the headlights, tail-lights and in several other elements both outside and inside. The front features a large grille – an unusual feature for an electric car, as demands for cooling are typically much lower than those of combustion-engined vehicles. However, Genesis insists that this and the air intake underneath helps improve airflow, reduce resistance and extend the car's range. The alloy wheels are a ‘turbine-type’ design with five spokes, with lime-green brake calipers intended to hint at the car’s performance characteristics. At the back, Genesis claims the rear incorporates the shape of a horseshoe that helps to tie the sleek profile of the concept together. Exterior video cameras in place of customary wing mirrors can be seen in the images released so far. Genesis has gone to great lengths to ensure that the X's interior feels "driv...

  It’s the most powerful-ever version of   the fearsome and famed AC Cobra , the Anglo-American icon that’s been in and out of production for the best part of 60 years. Packing a 580bhp supercharged V8, this muscle-bound slice of 1960s sports car is the latest arrival from  a revitalised AC brand  that celebrates its 120th anniversary this year. Following a naturally aspirated 378 Cobra that made its debut three years ago, this Superblower is the new flagship of a range that also includes a recently revealed, and bang-on trend, all-electric version. Like these versions, the Superblower’s chassis and body are built at the firm’s factory in South Africa, before being shipped to the UK, where the drivetrain is installed, the finishing touches are added and the car is submitted for its individual type approval. While it looks largely like the  ’ 60s original, there have been some significant changes for this latest iteration. For instance, like all Cobra m...

  Looking back now, it’s almost laughable how Ford’s decision to bring the lauded Puma name back for a compact crossover seemed so controversial. “A sporty small SUV indeed. As if such a thing was remotely possible,” wrote one of the Autocar website’s commenters. How could a jacked-up supermini possibly compare to the fun little 1990s coupé? Well, after almost 9000 miles behind the wheel of one, I think the nomenclature makes perfect sense. The old Puma was Fiesta-based, funky to look at and agile to drive. The new one is all of those things, too. It proved it could live up to its predecessor’s reputation as a dynamic and fun little machine to first custodian James Attwood on a trip to Aston Martin’s new St Athan factory, attacking Welsh country roads with gusto and in a manner more becoming of a hatchback than an SUV. After I had the chance to find out for myself on a job in the Wye Valley, I had to agree: the Puma is comfortably among the best-handling cars in its class. Yet it a...

  A limited-run Venture edition of the   Mazda MX-5   roadster will arrive in dealerships later this month, with 160 examples earmarked for the UK. Priced at £27,615, the Venture is based on Mazda’s Sport trim, over which it carries a £1260 premium. It adds Deep Crystal Blue Mica paint, a grey fabric roof and silver paint for the door mirrors and roll hoops. Inside, the seats are finished in a unique Light Stone Nappa leather. Other than these cosmetic changes, the Venture is identical to the MX-5 Sport. Riding on 16in alloy wheels, the car is powered by a 1.5-litre petrol engine producing 130bhp and features a six-speed manual gearbox. On the standard car, this results in 0-62mph in 8.3sec and a top speed of 127mph, while combined fuel economy is given as 44.8mpg. Apple CarPlay is standard across the line-up, while Sport models come with heated seats, a DAB digital radio, rain-sensing front wipers, an automatically dimming rear-view mirror and keyless entry, am...

  Exclusivity, it seems, is a tricky balancing act. The world’s billionaires want their cars to be unique to them, but they haven’t got to their position of wealth by squandering their cash unnecessarily. The world’s luxury car manufacturers, on the other hand, have to think about bottom lines and boring (but essential) things like durability.  Price the car too high, or build too many of them, and a manufacturer can soon end up with a series of white elephants that damage the brand as a whole. It’s a wallet-melting trap that many have fallen into, but Bentley hopes it can avoid.  Hence the reason that the car you see here - the Bentley Mulliner Bacalar - is strictly limited to a ‘production’ run of just 12. Each one found a home within days of being unveiled and every single person who signed up when the car was launched in March 2020 is still committed, despite the ravages of you-know-what over those intervening 12 months. Impressively, despite the v...

  I know what you’re thinking: we’ve lost the plot. It’s just not a fair fight, is it? I mean, how could it be? It’s like asking the well-meaning Old Boys squad from your local rugby club to play 80 minutes against a first-string All Blacks side. The result is only going to go one way, and in an uncomfortably brutal fashion. Yet there’s method to our madness here, because the   Ford Puma ST   and the   Lamborghini Urus   have more in common than a 444bhp difference in power and £140,000 gap in price (you could buy nearly six Pumas for the cost of one Urus) would have you believe. You see, these two are essentially the bookends of an increasingly popular genre: the super-heated SUV. It’s obviously not a new concept (Porsche has been at it for the best part of two decades now), but in recent years we’ve seen an explosion in their numbers, to the point that the majority of new ‘driver’s cars’ launched these days take their design cues from rutted tracks as much as ...

  Reader warning: this is not your ‘ Roll Royce  for the price of a   Ford Focus ’ story. The cheapest New Rolls Royce   Rolls-Royce Ghost   we found was a 2010/59-reg with 118,000 miles for £63,000 – around the price of a new, premium EV. This kind of money doesn’t even buy you best in class, since it was finished in wedding white and had endured five previous keepers. True, the service history was described as ‘full’, but there was no word of it being by Rolls-Royce. Being registered in 2010, the car was what we’ll call, for the purposes of this guide, a Series I Rolls-Royce Ghost. The model was launched in 2009, when it was described as the ‘baby Rolls’, since it sat beneath the Rolls Royce Rolls-Royce Phantom in the manufacturer’s line-up. An extended-wheelbase version came along in 2011. The following year, the options list expanded to include more bespoke items, including wood veneers and natural grain leather trim. Two years later...

 

 

 

 

 

  Volkswagen has opened order books for the new   Volkswagen Arteon   R fastback and Arteon R Shooting Brake, with prices starting from £51,615 and £52,435 respectively. The two performance versions of  VW 's executive cruiser sit at the top of the range, for which prices currently start from  £ 35,435 and  £37,640 respectively.  Cheaper variants of each body type will be introduced later, but for now t he price for the fastback marks a slight premium over the outgoing model. The new R-Line variant is priced from £38,255 in four-door form and £39,055 as the Shooting Brake. The Arteon was launched in 2017 but has previously been offered in only a fastback bodystyle. The new Arteon Shooting Brake variant features a separate design from the B-pillars back, with an extended roofline, a tapered glasshouse, prominent haunches over the rear wheels and an angled tailgate. Official figures show the Shooting Brake offers 565 litres of boot sp...

  First, there’s that aggressive BMW M design, which ensures that every journey starts with a frisson of excitement, even as you walk to your car. At the front, the large iconic BMW M frameless kidney grille and wide low-slung bumper vents sit ready to feed huge gulps of air to the hungry straight-six under the bonnet, while a lean-forward rake – with 19-inch alloys at the front and 20-inch alloys at the rear for enhanced agility, just like on the iconic BMW M4 GTS and M4 CS – lend the BMW M3 Competition Saloon and BMW M4 Competition Coupé an animalistic ready-to-pounce stance. Those iconic BMW double-spoke alloys frame huge, powerful BMW M Compound six-piston fixed-caliper brakes (380mm at the front; 370mm at the rear), marking out the BMW M3 and M4’s potent stopping power. Finally, the muscular rear haunches and the huge swept-up rear diffuser – framing gaping 100mm diameter quad-pipe exhaust – offer the perfect lasting impression. In addition to the bold new colours available on...

  Almost a year after we first drove the latest   Volkswagen Golf   R hatchback, the new Golf R Estate has arrived, bringing with it a number of new developments that promise to make it an even faster and yet more rounded car than its predecessor. The hot Volkswagen estate has always been a favourite. Its combination of performance and practicality has traditionally given it big appeal for those attempting to juggle a wish for real driver enjoyment and a requirement for more than adequate load-carrying ability. The new model builds on the standard Golf estate in much the same way as the car it replaces, with typically subtle exterior styling changes that mark it out as the flagship of the line-up without going overboard on unnecessary design flourishes Included is a uniquely styled front bumper with larger air ducts and gloss black elements, an illuminated strip through the grille that acts as a daytime-running light, standard LED headli...

  Ford has now dropped diesel from four model lines, having   axed the Ecoblue-powered Fiesta  in 2020 due to “very, very low” sales.   The Ford Focus retains its 1.5-litre (2.0-litre in the Ford Focus ST) diesel option, but it's due an extensive mid-life facelift imminently, and it remains to be seen whether that will continue.  Diesel is also available for the Tourneo Connect and Tourneo Custom MPVs, which are derived from the Transit commercial van. When it launched the Ford S-Max Hybrid and Ford Galaxy Hybrid earlier this yea r , Ford was keen to highlight that a WLTP-certified consumption rating of 43.5-44.1mpg was in line with the diesel variants, with the added benefit of significantly reduced emissions. It made a similar claim about the hybrid version of the Ford Kuga SUV, though that retains its diesel option for now. Ford isn't the only manufacturer to have slashed its diesel offering recently. A d...

  The class of supermini-based small crossovers can be a frustrating one. Early efforts in particular were very similar to the hatchbacks they were derived from, thus emphasising that they offered a driving experience that was just slightly less rounded. When it launched in 2017, the   Seat Arona   was the first to show that B-segment SUVs could have some decent driving dynamics, as well as tick the important practicality, economy and budget boxes. Since then, the class hasn’t stood still. The Ford Puma has redefined what a sporty crossover can be, and cars like the current Vauxhall Mokka and Peugeot 2008 feel far less like a tall Vauxhall Corsa or Peugeot 208 than their predecessors. Can a facelift keep the Arona competitive? It’s inside where you’ll find the biggest changes. Like the Ibiza, the Arona suffered from quite an austere interior with a lot of scratchy plastics. That’s gone now, with a much swoopier dashboard f...