Cupra has opened order books for its Formentor crossover, revealing UK prices ahead of the start of customer deliveries.

While the new coupé-SUV will eventually be offered with both petrol and plug-in hybrid powertrains, UK orders are now being accepted for models fitted with the top-rung 306bhp, four-wheel-drive set-up, which begins at £39,930. The first examples are set to arrive in the UK in the last quarter of 2020. 

A base 148bhp 1.5 TSI petrol, from £27,300, will then arrive early next year, as will a 1.4-litre plug-in hybrid with either 201bhp or 242bhp. A 187bhp 2.0 TSI petrol will also become available next month. The firm eventually plans to offer seven different engine options for the Formentor, although availability will vary by market.

The new coupé-SUV is the first stand-alone model from Seat’s premium spin-off brand, and joins reworked versions of the Ateca and Leon in Cupra’s line-up.

The Formentor will be built on line two of Seat’s Martorell factory, with 160 cars per day initially being produced – although the firm says it will account for around 10% of the plant’s output once production reaches full capacity.

Speaking at the start of Formentor production, Cupra boss Wayne Griffiths – who was recently named head of the overall Seat brand – said that the model marked “the biggest step in our brand’s history.

“It’s the first car 100% developed as a Cupra, and has all the DNA of the brand. This will help Cupra not only in terms of sales, but also to attract new customers.”

Griffiths added that the Formentor will play a key role in the target to double Cupra’s sales from around 50,000 next year, with the crossover anticipated to account for more than half of the brand’s volume in 2021. 

As Cupra’s first stand-alone model, the Formentor was shown as a concept at the Geneva motor show last year and the design is largely unchanged in production form. Griffiths said that “at the moment we don’t foresee” a Seat-badged version of the Formentor being offered.

Griffiths said the Formentor “is destined to make Cupra an even more relevant brand in the market”.

Built on the same version of the Volkswagen Group’s MQB platform as the Ateca, the Formentor is 4450mm long, 1839mm wide and 1511mm tall, with a wheelbase of 2680mm. It sports more aggressive styling than the Ateca, with a long bonnet, sharp side sculpting and a steeply raked, coupé roofline. It sits on 19in wheels as standard, with 18in brakes.

In this week’s round-up of automotive gossip, BMW explains how Brexit could hit European car makers and suppliers, Mercedes shrugs off Covid and more.

Brexit bills 

BMW’s chief financial officer reckons the UK’s decision to leave the EU could cost European car makers and suppliers “€10-11 billion” (£9.1-10bn) – a figure echoed by Europe’s motor industry body, ACEA. “We need tariff-free trade,” BMW’s Nicolas Peter told journalists last Thursday. “And even then, it needs to be seamless. The administrative processing at customs needs to be efficient.” The company has invested tens of millions of euros this year on Brexit preparations, but clarity is still not forthcoming.

Merc’s Covid-proof S-Class

Despite the industry-wide delays to model launches caused by the pandemic, Mercedes boss Ola Källenius said the recent S-Class launch happened exactly when planned. “We had the worst sales quarter since World War II but we were cash-flow positive,” he said. “We have continued to invest in high-tech products. The S-Class launch date was set long before Covid – and we’ve stuck to it. Technologically advanced projects such as the S-Class have not been affected.”

Into the Matrix

Milton Keynes-based Envisics claims its holographic, augmented reality head-up displays will help re-engage people in the process of driving with modern technology. “With these more enhanced semi-autonomous systems, there’s a much greater level of disengagement from the drivers,” said Envisics CEO Jamieson Christmas, claiming its multi-distance perspective head-up displays can mitigate that. The company just secured a £39 million funding round with several automotive tie-ups.

The dramatic new second-generation Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel cell vehicle has been spotted on public roads for the first time, revealing that it will largely retain the concept car’s dramatic styling.

The machine, which is due on sale later this year, was first displayed in concept form at the Tokyo motor show last year, before being shown in near-production form at a brand event in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The Japanese firm promises the new Mirai will offer a major step forward in fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) technology. It claims a 30% increase in range over the current model, which manages just over 300 miles, along with improved driving performance.

The new Mirai is built on Toyota’s latest TNGA platform and features a heavily evolved design, including a bold grille and a sweeping, coupé-esque rear. Toyota claims increased body rigidity and a lower centre of gravity than the original Mirai.

In concept form, the new Mirai measured 4935mm long and 1885mm wide, with a wheelbase of 2920mm. It sits on 20in wheels and retains the four-door saloon layout of the original Mirai, which was launched in 2014. Toyota indicated those dimensions will carry over to the production version.

The interior has also been reworked. It features a 12.3in central touchscreen and a digital instrument display, with many of the controls moved to the centre of the dashboard. Notably, the Mirai now has five seats instead of the original’s four, which, Toyota says, has been enabled by a reworking of the hydrogen fuel cell configuration.

Aside from the claimed increase in range, Toyota has not given specific details of development work done on the fuel cell powertrain. But it says the system, including the fuel cell stack, has been entirely redesigned and offers increased hydrogen storage. It also claims the work on the system ensures a smoother, more linear response, along with improved handling.

READ MORE

Autocar road test: Toyota Mirai fuel cell vehicle

Hydrogen cars explained: the technology targeting a fuel-cell future

Full of gas: 6 weeks with a hydrogen-powered car​

You might think that a BMW M4 and a Fiat 500 on the driveway would cover most of a family’s motoring requirements. However, reader Andy believes that for the majority of his journeys, both are impractical. What he really needs is a proper old-fashioned workhorse for dogs and heavily laden journeys around Britain and abroad. He has £10,000 to spare and wants to go down the estate or SUV route. Horses that work, though, need to be reliable and not too complicated. They also don’t need thoroughbred names.

With that in mind, Skoda Superbs can amass colossal mileages and are perfectly suited to those increasingly unfashionable diesel engines. Andy could spend just £7500 of his budget for a 2014 2.0 TDI CR Elegance Estate. It’s a big five-seater and has more than enough room for dogs.

Elegance trim goes beyond the usual specification boxes, so there’s climate control, electric leather seats with a memory function, powered wing mirrors and Bluetooth.

A look at this Superb’s official efficiency statistics tells us that its engine scores 60mpg overall, but if you’re getting 50mpg fully laden with dogs and gear, that’s great going. This one had done 61,000 miles, and I would say game over at that price.

I haven’t even mentioned the Volkswagen Passat Estate, which does the same job for slightly more.

Still in the estate area, I keep going on about Ford Mondeos, but we will miss them when they’re gone. These are huge old things and just popping along to a car supermarket will unearth a rather marvellous 2017 TDCI 2.0 Econetic Style Estate. You can bag that for just under £9000.

This one had covered a strong 71,000 miles, was ULEZ-compliant and officially topped 67mpg. It may not have been a Titanium, but it still had climate control, cruise control and adjustable lumbar support for its driver. Plus the dogs would love it. Nothing flashy, just purposeful.

When it comes to SUV shapes, there’s a strong market for very specific dog-walking 4x4s that can be bought for buttons. We can shell out a bit more in this case, and I would go for a reliable Kia Sorento. There are seven seats if you need them and a high driving position.

Being a 4×4, it will cost a bit more than an estate. A privately advertised 2011 2.2 CRDi KX-3 at £7500 with 75,000 miles seemed like a solid buy, even though it had four previous owners and cream leather. The reality is that these will struggle to reach 40mpg overall, but that’s a price worth paying for some users.

I will continue to promote the cause of the estate over any SUV, and I think that applies here. The choice, though, is always yours.

Tales from Ruppert’s garage

Volkswagen Golf, mileage – 73,218: The Ruppert family vehicle that racks up the most miles and the fewest problems continues on its merry way with just a brief pit stop. It had been communicating for some time that it wanted an oil change, so it was booked in. That meant my daughter needed another car for work, and she turned down the opportunity of using my classics in favour of her mother’s 4.5-litre V8 Porsche. Anyway, two days of cover for a 23-year-old worked out at just £25. Meanwhile, the oil and filter change for the Golf came in at £90. That will see it through to its next MOT test in early 2021. If only everything in life were so simple…

A near-700bhp plug-in hybrid is one of three new variants announced for Porsche’s updated-for-2020 Panamera range.

The Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid becomes the most powerful combustion engined Porsche model currently on sale, with a peak combined system output of 690bhp from a 563bhp twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 engine and a 134bhp electric motor. That’s a 20bhp boost over the outgoing version and translates to a 0-62mph time of 3.2sec – 0.2sec faster than before. The top speed is 196mph, a 3mph gain.

There is also a 30% boost in electric range from a battery upped from 14.1kWh to 17.9kWh thanks to optimised cells and tweaked drive modes. Porsche claims a WLTP city EV range of 31 miles, WLTP fuel economy of 94.6-104.6mpg and CO2 emissions of 61-69g/km.

Porsche has also released details of a revised version of the more affordable Panamera 4 E-Hybrid. Sitting below the previously announced 552bhp 4S E-Hybrid, it offers a combined 456bhp from a 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 and electric motor combo. It’s capable of 0-62mph in 4.4sec and a top speed of 174mph. The official all-electric range is up to 35 miles, with CO2 emissions of 47-51g/km – almost a 40% improvement on the old model.

A non-electrified Panamera 4S has also been added. It retains the same 434bhp 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 as before, giving a 0-62mph of 4.1sec and a 183mph top speed.

Every Panamera features a lightly redesigned exterior, with the previously optional Sport Design front end now standard, plus a raft of tech upgrades. The suspension and chassis control systems have been updated to improve dynamics as well.

UK pricing has also been revealed. The cheapest model, the 4 E-Hybrid, is priced from £83,720 and the 4S £92,440. The flagship Turbo S E-Hybrid is £140,130. They join the Turbo S and GTS, first detailed in August, and can also be ordered as a Sport Turismo estate.

READ MORE

1977 Porsche 911 Turbo reimagined as sci-fi restomod 

New Porsche 911 Turbo arrives with 572bhp flat six 

Porsche investigates alleged manipulation of petrol engines

If there’s one thing that the BMW 5 Series has become particularly adept at over the course of its nearly 50-year existence, it’s the ability to make the wider car world collectively sit up and pay attention.

Upon its arrival back in early 2017, the seventh-generation, G30 version of Munich’s venerable executive car wasted no time in catapulting itself to the top of the class, with its mixture of driver engagement, luxurious refinement and efficient performance helping it maintain a vice-like grip on that position since.

Now, in a bid to grow its advantage and stave off the heightened threat posed by updated offerings from Audi and Mercedes-Benz, the 5 Series has been facelifted. Cosmetically, it has been sharpened up with new light and grille designs, but the crucial changes here are an expansion of the plug-in hybrid range and the introduction of 48V mild-hybrid technology on all four- and six-cylinder engines.

That said, the bread-and-butter 520d was the one 5 Series variant to benefit from the addition of an integrated starter-generator set-up last year, and here we’re driving it in the UK in newly facelifted, Touring estate guise for the first time.

The 2.0-litre four-cylinder B47 diesel engine is effectively the same as it was when the G30 5 Series was launched some three years ago. It continues to make a modest 187bhp and 295lb ft, all of which is delivered to the rear wheels through an eight-speed automatic gearbox. However, its 48V architecture now provides an additional 11bhp of electrical assistance, which should aid responsiveness when you need to get your foot down.

Like all mild-hybrid systems, this allows the engine to switch off while coasting and can help to spur the diesel engine along when you’re driving at a relatively consistent rate of knots. All of this, unsurprisingly, has been implemented in the name of marginal efficiency gains, but the big pay-off is that the 520d is now RDE2- compliant, so it isn’t hit by the 4% benefit-in-kind tax diesel surcharge.

Still, to any savvy fleet manager or business buyer, a BIK rating of 32% won’t be quite as tempting as the circa-10% scores the latest generation of plug-in hybrids are able to achieve. But for those private buyers after a big, efficient family estate, there’s very little about the way the 520d drives that’s likely to disappoint.

Automotive manufacturing doesn’t often get the headlines, but the sheer scale of it, and the economies it drives globally, explains why affected governments tend to place it near the top of any priority list.

According to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), there are 298 automotive assembly and engine-production plants in Europe. Of those, 142 make passenger cars, 28 light-commercial vehicles, 58 heavy-duty vehicles, 58 buses and 71 assemble engines, with some plants producing a mixed output. Germany has the most, with 42 factories, while France has 31 and Italy 23. Outside the EU, Russia has 31 plants, the UK 30 and Turkey 17.

Across Europe’s wider automotive manufacturing spectrum an estimated 3.5 million people are employed, with data suggesting that within the EU automotive accounts for 11% of all manufacturing jobs. Add in employment from retail and additional operations and that figure rises to 13.8m employed directly and indirectly, with automotive thereby making up 6.1% of all EU jobs. Big stuff.

This importance is both a blessing and a curse. These factories need to keep running at close to capacity to make economic sense, and that means cars need to keep rolling out of them come what may, even if there aren’t enough customers. The horrible truth is that even in non-Covid times there are too many factories for the number of customers. It’s why there’s always room for a haggle, and why many cars end up being self-registered each month to be sold on at a discount at a later date. Big it may be, but automotive has evolved poorly: supply outstrips demand.

Why not shut some factories? This age-old question is hampered chiefly by the challenges of manufacturers working to their own competitive agendas rather than a collective greater good, and – perhaps even more so these days – the industry’s importance as outlined above. Mooted automotive job cuts quickly come under the spotlights of governments and unions, the former willing to offer incentives to keep them open, the latter holding enough sway in some countries to kibosh any closure plans, no matter the economic logic.

For the foreseeable future many factories are running well below capacity. Social distancing protocols and a reluctance to build unordered cars are front of mind, with the bitter pill of potential losses made easier to swallow by government support schemes. But what happens when that support ends and a global recession means fewer people still are buying cars?

The pressure for closures will be applied again – and this time around the economically stressed governments won’t be in a position to respond, nor the unions able to justify holding their line. Painfully, but perhaps necessarily, the cuts may come.

READ MORE

Inside the industry: September’s eye-catching sales statistics 

Inside the industry: Firms can still thrive in these tough times 

Inside the industry: UK automotive deserves more support

For all its clever technology to aid economy and emissions – delivering a claimed 48.7mpg and 131g/km of C02 riding on 18in wheels as this edition does – it’s not the most perky of 2.0-litre petrol engines. Acceleration is linear and up to scratch, but doesn’t have the verve through the range that smaller petrol engines in the Volkswagen Golf or Ford Focus do. The spec sheet says it achieves 0-62mph in 8.2sec and a top speed of 134mph.

Despite the Skyactiv-X’s slight underwhelm, the rest of the 3 package makes it one of the keenest driver’s cars in the hatchback segment, probably outsmarted by only the Ford Focus. Satisfyingly precise steering, a sharp, tactile gearchange and more than respectable cornering technique make this car enjoyable behind the wheel on every kind of route. That dynamic appeal inevitably compromises ride comfort – but, although firm, it has far better body control than some of its rivals.

Mazda’s interiors are a world apart from recent generations and are now pushing towards German premium levels while remaining distinctly Japanese in their feel. Joyfully, the rotary dial remains here for infotainment controls while others are controversially phasing them out in favour of touchscreens. The infotainment system, displayed on an 8.8in screen, is responsive and simple to use. There’s also a well-positioned head-up display.

The 3’s stylish ways suit the colour choices of this 100th Anniversary edition, with the burgundy palette helping you feel ensconced in this comfortable, well-specified interior. If visibility or rear passenger space is more your priority, best go for a more obvious hatchback choice.

The 100th Anniversary edition builds on the £28,940 GT Sport trim, which is already decked out with a 12-speaker Bose system, heating for the steering wheel and front seats, parking sensors, reversing camera and more. This 3 adds the aforementioned anniversary design tweaks, such as the 18in black metallic alloy wheels with 100 Years logo, and also brings a 360deg camera, driver fatigue monitoring and smart braking systems.

As a bonus, numbers will have to thin before prices surge dramatically, so you’ve got time to grab a bargain.

How to get one in your garage

An owner’s view

Liam Murrin: “I bought my ST with its rod bearings on the way out, so I had its bottom end refreshed. Then I installed a factory-replacement K&N filter and a stainless-steel exhaust. I’ve had the odd problem over the years: the seat tilt handles went (a common weak point but easy to change), the plastic radiator cracked and the power steering can boil over. Otherwise, it has only ever needed consumables and touch-ups.”

Buyer beware…

■ Engine: The engine was punchy enough in its own right but held at 148bhp to keep insurance costs down, so many owners have eked out a few extra horses using aftermarket air filters (go for cones over panels), performance exhausts and uprated cams, valve springs and throttle bodies. Avoid cheap brands and walk away if the seller can’t give you comprehensive information on any modifications. Otherwise, check the timing chain is tight and check for a rough idle – usually a sign the throttle body needs cleaning and resetting.

■ Gearbox: Don’t be overly worried by the horror stories about the gearbox ‘exploding’ or ‘falling out of the car’, because it’s a dependable unit if you keep its oil fresh and let the car warm up before shifting through the gears. As in any performance car, though, the synchros and bearings don’t get an easy ride, so some crunchiness is to be expected, particularly from second into third.

Vanwall, the first British Formula 1 team to win its home grand prix and the World Constructors’ championship, is being brought back to life — first through the production of six 1958-spec continuation cars and eventually with “a vehicle for the 2020s”.

The project is the brainchild of marketing entrepreneur and former offshore powerboat world champion Iain Sanderson, whose Vanwall Group has owned the name since buying it from Mahle in 2012. 

The continuation cars will be built in Lincolnshire by the highly respected race engineering firm Hall & Hall, which has a long track record of such projects, as well as a deep working knowledge of original Vanwall cars through connections with the late Tom Wheatcroft’s Donington Collection.

Sanderson says he already has customers for two of the cars, the engineering and building of which will start now – exactly 62 years since Vanwall clinched its Constructors’ Championship title with a Sir Stirling Moss victory in the Moroccan Grand Prix.

The first continuation car is expected to be delivered within 18 months. 

The cars will all follow the 1958 Vanwall specification in every detail using original blueprints, be “fully race-eligible” and cost £1.65 million excluding VAT. The cars will use a faithfully recreated 270bhp 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine, just like the originals.

Sanderson admits he also has the wider ambition of launching a Vanwall road car, but he says the project will take shape only after the company concludes a study to see how the marque’s unique heritage and innovation can “translate to an appropriate vehicle for the 2020s”. Original Vanwall cars had a chassis by Lotus founder Colin Chapman and pioneering race car aerodynamicist Frank Costin.

Sanderson already has a track record of creating advanced road cars, having unveiled the Lightning GT electric supercar at the 2008 London motor show.

“Vanwall has a unique place in our racing history,” says Sanderson. “It was built specifically to beat what founder Tony Vandervell always referred to as ‘the red cars’, and its success showed the British how to win.

“Before Vanwall, we were always first of the losers. After Vanwall, we became perennial winners.”

READ MORE:

Sir Stirling Moss: his five greatest drives

How to fix Formula One, according to Autocar

Allard JR continuation is brand’s first model for 60 years