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Everything you need to know about cars this week: 20 April 2018
Driving the Swift Sport, 488 Pista and Lambo SUV, plus a new M Car and Aston
Driven: the newly turbocharged Suzuki Swift Sport
How much: £17,999
What we say: “It doesn’t understeer (unless you enter corners at totally loutish speeds), turning in keenly and gripping tenaciously. The old Swift Sport had lower, easier to reach limits; this a car you have to work a bit harder if you want to unearth its aggressive side.
"While it may be a touch more sensible on first acquaintance, I imagine it’ll take longer to ‘complete’ than the old car, which to many drivers may always have been a stepping stone to a Clio RS or Fiesta ST anyway."
Advertisement - Page continues belowRevealed: the new BMW M2 Competition
How much: £49,285
What we say: “It’d be very easy to argue the BMW M2 needed no such reworking; it’s a mega little sports coupe and a bruising alternative to an Audi TT RS or Porsche 718 Cayman. But the list of tweaks leave us feeling assured BMW hasn’t ruined the recipe, it’s just lobbed in a load of scotch bonnets to make it punchier than ever."
Driven: the rather important new Mercedes A-Class
How much: £20,000-plus
What we say: “It doesn’t pander to the traditional road-test criteria. We like it for that. It goes its own way. It puts comfort before sportiness and has some real wow factor with the connectivity. If you look at the way most people drive, that’s probably just what will make them happy."
Advertisement - Page continues belowRevealed: Aston's next supercar is the DBS Superleggera
How much: TBC, but lots...
What we say: "The replacement for the Aston Martin Vanquish, set to appear later this year, will be called the Aston Martin DBS Superleggera.
"The DBS bit you know. That premiered on an Aston Martin as far back as 1967, and topped the Aston range in 2007. Superleggera? That’s a nod to Aston’s history with Touring Superleggera."
Driven: Ferrari 488 Pista prototype
How much: £230,000 (est)
What we say: "Ohmygoodness the handling is just as special as the engine. The engine compresses time, but the chassis slows time down.
"Despite the harum-scarum velocities, it lets you know long before the limit arrives. It’s balanced and friendly. It communicates, cajoles, coaches you into exploiting its abilities."
Revealed: a 250mph Pininfarina electric hypercar is coming
How much: £1.7million
What we say: "The cockpit is truly audacious, with a ‘vanishing point’ aspect to the main display, and an evident driver-centric layout. It looks genuinely fabulous, as it must with the weight of history bearing down on it.
"The performance claims? Zero to 62mph in less than two seconds, 186mph in less than 12, onto a top speed of 250mph, with a projected range of 310 miles from the batteries (though not if you’re travelling at 250mph)."
Driven: the Alpina D5 S, a rarer, cooler 530d
How much: £62,000
What we say: "The eight-speed auto is a masterstroke. We can think of several manufacturers whose engineers ought to drive one of these – just to see how the gearbox behaves. Not too keen to change up into an unnecessarily high gear, nor too keen to kick-down when you want to pile on a bit of speed. Responsive in manual mode, too."
Advertisement - Page continues belowRevealed: the new 911 GT3 RS is chuffing fast
How much: £141,000
What we say: "The Porsche 911 GT3 RS has lapped the Nürburgring in 6m 56.4s. That makes it – and this is scarcely believable – 24 seconds faster than the previous GT3 RS around the ‘Ring. TWENTY FOUR SECONDS. It's faster than such fast things as Porsche’s own 918 Spyder and the Lamborghini Aventador SV."
Driven: the Lamborghini Urus (at last)
How much: £165,000
What we say: "The Urus is what happens when the maker of the planet’s most outlandish supercars turns its hand to a large five-door family car, one with proper ground clearance and off-road ability."
Advertisement - Page continues belowRevealed: this Sport 300 has killed off the V6 Jag XE
How much: £45,160
What we say: "The Sport 300 is the engine from the cheapest F-Type popped in the front of the XE and teamed up with all-wheel drive, though the image above suggests skids are still on the menu. That engine is a 296bhp 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol turbo.
"Before you ponder whether the Sport 300 is priced rather too closely to the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing XE S, we have bad news: the over-engined, supercharged V6 XE is no more. Low sales and increasingly tight emissions regs have killed off the 375bhp petrol engine in both XE and XF models. Boo."
