I couldn’t help but whistle aloud when I looked at the spec sheet for the new Ford Kuga ST-Line X Edition and saw the all-in price for the first time. Answer: emphatically yes. This Kuga is so loaded with good stuff and outstanding qualities that it stands in a class apart – as is made manifest straight away by the …
It’s that awards time of year again. When autumn comes… Even so, I apply myself seriously to the task because I know that the results make a difference to customers’ choices and, therefore, to sales. The European Car of the Year – perhaps the motoring award with the most dubious record for impartiality and probity – can add hundreds of …
“How shall I recognise the car?” my daughter asked when I told her that I would be picking her up from the school bus in the All-New Dacia Sandero Stepway “Yes, but yuk,” she answered. “Well, that’s the colour of the car you’re looking for,” I said. Actually, the colour of the car that came to us on loan recently …
“Is this the complete nanny state car?” asked my older daughter when I was driving her in the new Škoda Enyaq. “Have you seen all these messages mothering us?” The Škoda Enyaq didn’t annoy me that much, but its know-all self-righteousness did certainly get on my nerves, especially when its autosteer system so forcefully corrected my lines on corners that it …
A stylish Suzuki? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Looking at it outside our house, however, I was filled with admiration for the looks of the new Suzuki Swace. Ever since I first set eyes on a Pontiac Bonneville estate car in the pages of Automobile Year 1958, I have always been a sucker for the classic form of the …
Can it really be 20 years? It doesn’t feel possible that a fifth of a century has fled away since that unforgettable moment when a Škoda Octavia vRS first came my way. In the case of the Škoda vRS, we had been given a degree of advance warning in the excellence of the standard Octavia, which Škoda started producing on …
To be lent one terrific Mazda may be regarded as good fortune; to borrow two in succession might look like tearing the arse out of it (as my dear old Mum used to say when she thought anyone was overdoing it a bit). In the case of the CX-5, the changes are all invisible from the outside. Ever since it …
Last month, I couldn’t decide whether I would choose a Fiesta ST or a Focus ST for my personal transport. This month, Ford have generously provided the answer in the form of the Puma ST. The high and firm bolsters on the Recaro front seats made it slightly awkward for my mother-in-law to slide her bottom in and out of …
Watershed moment”; “mould breaker”; “Tesla-buster”. Not so: I am happy to report that the I-Pace is standing up well and appear to these eyes to be, perhaps, the first classic of the electric age. It may not be going too far to say that it’s as great a car as Jaguar has ever made (well, setting aside the D-Type, maybe). …
Strike my eyes. Ford have produced a version of the EcoSport that I can actually approve. Who would ever have imagined that this could occur? After several reworkings, however, Ford have now devised an EcoSport which answers most of those objections. I am not going so far as to say that I would choose to own one, but I enjoyed …