If quirkiness won car awards, the Hyundai Inster Cross would silently sweep up a red carpet and win. In our week with this highly distinctive city car from the massive Hyundai & Kia group it continuously attracted attention whether moving or parked, including in traffic queues. I can think of nothing since the Nissan Cube which has elicited such … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: Leapmotor T03
The UK new car market is buzzing with electric models at high prices, so it’s worth taking a look at one of the cheapest - the Leapmotor T03. A Stellantis joint venture with the Chinese company, the car is made in Poland on lines previously producing the Fiat 500, another Stellantis brand, and the Leapmotor models are sold through the more familiar … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: Hyundai i10 Advance
The motor industry’s headlong plunge into SUVs, MPVs and Crossovers has left the market short of compact city cars which are perfectly matched to the real-world needs of many drivers. While some manufacturers stopped making traditional small hatchbacks and are now living to regret their decisions as market share slides and rivals fill the gap, Hyundai has … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: Kia Picanto GT-Line
If you can remember when cars were actually fun to drive you’ll enjoy the latest Kia Picanto even more with the high specification now added to this anything but basic runabout. We briefly drove the latest baby car from the Korean family in the summer and that was an entry-level model, but we’ve just managed to get our hands on the higher specified GT-Line, … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: Suzuki Swift 1.2 Ultra
The fourth generation Suzuki Swift is already a landmark model, just months after its introduction. While it builds on the success of previous models over the last 40 years and is one of the most capable city cars on sale it is also the last of its kind since Suzuki announced it will step up its battery electric vehicle range and in that will be a model to … [Read more...]
Suzuki Swift hits 40 years
In the lead up to the introduction of the all-new Swift Hybrid this Spring, Suzuki has reflected over the last 40 years of evolution of its highly popular and important global model and provide an insight into its development since 1983. This evolution and development since it created the first city car to break out of the Japanese-only compact town car has … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: KIA Picanto 1.0 T-GDi GT Line S
With motoring costs soaring a lot of drivers are downsizing and face the dilemma of what to buy, yet do not realize how good a modern small car can be. In fact, a recent study found the typical family car today has over £32,700 of features fitted as standard which were not there a decade ago and after adjusting for inflation. We recently found ourselves … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: Toyota Yaris GR Sport
Toyota dominated this year’s World Rally Championship and hopes some of this success will spread into its sophisticated city car, the Yaris. It launched the Yaris GR Sport about 12 months ago and my test drive really took me back, more than a year, to a time when hot-hatchbacks were all the rage and any car which had a rally or racing pedigree was … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: MINI Electric Shadow Edition
The coming of the electric car age is going to make us all re-evaluate our motoring lives and what we expect from them, much in the same way as the diminutive Mini drove a change in our lives over 60 years ago. So it seems reasonable that the MINI Electric might just do what its petrol forebears did and change our views towards electric cars of … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: Honda e Advanced
Honda is currently taking a different lane down the electric highway opening for us in Britain and Europe and selling the Honda e city car. While most car makers want to get us into their small to medium sized hatchbacks and crossover models, Honda e is unashamedly a model intended for commuters and staged longer journeys. It’s essentially a city car with … [Read more...]
