Everything you need to know about cars this week: 28 Oct '18

"If you’ve never been enamored with the hatchback-breadvan styling of the Ferrari FF and GTC4 four-seaters, and yearned for a more classical saloon silhouette for your practical Ferrari, Ares Design wants to see you. And your chequebook.

"The latest musing from Ares Design, the coachbuilder headed by ex-Lotus boss Dany Bahar, is this Ferrari 412-inspired saloon, currently titled Ares Design Project Pony..."

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"Peugeot is calm. It says so itself. Calm about the car industry’s long, complicated march towards the intersection of electricity and mobility. In fact, it is so calm, it intends to build a new range of electrified sports cars from 2020 onwards.

"So in news of the ‘good’ variety, we might actually see something resembling the fantastic 450bhp e-Legend concept we saw at this year’s Paris Motor Show. Yep, good news indeed..."

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"Testing in Spain, ahead of December’s season-opener in Saudi Arabia, has given us our first chance to see and hear them in action. The results are…mixed. On the one hand, they look just as tremendous on the move as we hoped they might. All futuristic and Batmobile-y..."

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"Often, it is best not to ponder too much on the ‘why’, but instead to marvel at the result. Today’s example: an all-electric Audi A3 saloon going really, really quite fast in reverse.

"Though it’s not an ordinary electric Audi A3 saloon. It is Schaeffler’s A3 saloon. It features four electric motors from the team’s season two Formula E car – the championship winning FE01 – producing a total of 880kW. Or 1,184bhp in old money..."

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"Hennessey isn’t the only company pumping pick-up trucks full of more righteous, American horsepower than they can or were indeed designed to handle. Roush is at it too, and this is its latest creation – the appropriately-named, grammatically irritating ‘ROUSH F-150 NITEMARE’..."

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"Following Matt LeBlanc’s announcement that he will leave TG after the next series, we’re proud to announce that comedian and entertainment host McGuinness, along with former Ashes-winning England cricketer Flintoff, will join Chris Harris for Series 27 of Top Gear TV.

"Rory Reid will step down from the main presenting line-up, but will remain part of the Top Gear family, along with Sabine Schmitz. He’ll continue to be the face of TG’s companion show Extra Gear, and will form the heart of a larger digital presence for the show...

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"This is its take on a GT-R Track Edition – at £98,895 a mere four grand more than Nissan’s, but now with 631bhp (freer flowing air filter, larger fuel injectors because “any GT-R with over 600bhp tends to run out of fuel” says Iain Litchfield), and although the standard Damptronic Bilstein adaptive dampers are retained, they’re retuned and mated to stiffer Eibach springs. Which come from NASCAR..."

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"In June 2018, a “third party car manufacturer” entered into a contract with Aston’s consulting business to buy the tooling and design drawings for the “previous generation Vanquish”. That’s the Vanquish Aston no longer makes, replaced entirely by the lovely new DBS Superleggera..."

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"The Audi R8 is the subtle supercar no longer. To tempt you away from the likes of the McLaren 570S and Mercedes-AMG GT R, this new, facelifted gen-2 Audi R8 has so much front and rear grille going on, it’s a wonder there was any space left to put the headlights. Angry, innit?

"It’s not just the extra intakes and fins up front, either. The R8’s rear diffuser has invaded higher into the rear bumper, wrapping itself around much bigger oval tailpipes than the old oblong tunnels. The engine bay vent now stretches across the entire rear of the car. And it rides on spindlier 20-inch alloys, if you’d like them. Perhaps some Lamborghini DNA is seeping back across the German-Italian border…"

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"As you can see, this is far from stock Seventies pick-up. It’s powered by a custom-tuned Ford Performance V6 EcoBoost engine lifted directly out of Ford Racing’s GT Le Mans development program. Power? Yep, it’s got it. Nearly four digits of the stuff (914bhp at 7,400rpm) and 702 ft lb of torque at 6,450rpm. We’re told it sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard in a Gymkhana video before. So, ear defenders at the ready..."

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"Welcome to this week’s (alleged) Nürburgring lap record – courtesy of the brilliantly rapid and rather excellent (but appallingly named) Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S 4MATIC+.

"With Development Engineer Demian Schaffert behind the wheel, it’s just set a 7m 25.41s lap around the 13-mile circuit, making it, in Mercedes’ words, the “fastest fully-fledged four-seater production car to ever conquer the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife”. Former record-holders include the Afla Romeo Giulia QV and Porsche Panamera Turbo, which in 2016 recorded 7m 32s and 7m 40s laps respectively..."

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"In full cry the suspension and steering will chomp their way down a difficult road at a crazed rate without batting an eyelid. Clearly a lot is going on down there to shepherd and marshal the 1.9 tonnes, but from your seat the effort is well disguised. Adaptive damping, four-wheel steering, active-anti-roll… yet it doesn’t feel like a computer synthesis. It’s just like a well-sorted car a couple of hundred kilos lighter..."

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"Sleek, isn’t it? Long and low and lean and, well, sleek. A streamliner. This is it, the McLaren Speedtail, the car formerly known as BP23 and likely forever known as the spiritual successor to the F1. Three seats, stratospheric top speed and a price tag that’s similarly out of this world..."

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"Ah! Just what the market ordered, another crossover. Everybody, say hello to the new VW T-Cross – the lastest Volkswagen to join the SUV party. 

"It’s a niche-tastic tiddler too, a crossover supermini baby SUV-thing. See, if we’re being honest, we’re getting a bit lost in the increasingly rising tide of slightly-bigger-than-this but only-a-bit-smaller-than-that crossovers. But you – the public – seems to lap them up like free chocolate on a hotel pillow. So here’s another one for ya. Go on, lap it up. Lap. It. Up..."

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