Motoring News
Yesterday, 16 October 20162017 Mini Countryman hybrid confirmed
Mini's first foray into the hybrid market, the second-generation Countryman, is expected to go on sale next year
Mini has officially acknowledged its second-generation Countryman will offer a petrol-electric hybrid drivetrain alongside other more conventional three- and four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines when it goes on sale in the UK next year.
The new petrol-electric SUV represents Mini’s first foray into the hybrid ranks, offering a glimpse at plans by the British car maker to further diversify its line-up to include other alternative drive models, including a full electric version of the Cooper hatchback due out in 2019.
Set to form part of the launch models, the Countryman hybrid is twinned with the BMW 225xe Plug-in Hybrid, alongside which it has been conceived and developed. As well as sharing the same basic platform structure, the two cars also receive a common driveline based around BMW’s turbocharged 1.5-litre three-cylinder petrol engine and electric motor.
The fundamentals of the system were first unveiled on the BMW i8, although they’ve been turned 180-degrees, with the combustion engine mounted transversely up front and the electric motor mounted within the axle assembly at the rear.
In the 225xe, the combustion engine delivers 134bhp and 162lb ft, with the electric motor providing an additional 87bhp and 122lb ft. Together, they provide the
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read moreBMW M5 (1998-2003): used buying guide
BMW’s V8-engined E39 M5 is widely regarded as the best of its breed — and you can pick one up for as little as £9000
Even if the E39 BMW M5 (1998-2003) had never turned any of its four, bespoke 18in Chrome Shadow alloy wheels (they’re easy to kerb and about £150 each to repair), we’d still be talking about it for its exhaust note alone. Idling, the 394bhp 4.9-litre V8 with double Vanos variable valve timing, eight throttle bodies and a free-flow exhaust is full of menace. Provoked, it explodes into vein-popping rage.
Parking the Lotus Carlton of 1990 conveniently to one side, the M5 is often credited with firing the starting gun on the modern-day saloon horsepower race, whose present pace-setters include the 552bhp M5 and 577bhp Mercedes-AMG E63 S.
But as any fule kno, it isn’t how fast you go, it’s how you get there – and getting there in the E39 M5 is still, 18 long years after the first cars took to the road, a thrilling and involving experience. BMW’s M division already had a great chassis to work with, to which it added beefed-up suspension, a limited-slip differential and sharper steering (no small achievement considering it was a recirculating ball set-up), while lowering the ride height. Ventilated discs allround and, by today’s standards, a rather interventionist ESP system (some owners switch it off) completed the changes. Add a Sport button and a six-speed manual gearbox (the throw is a little long but
read moreWorld Rallycross: why Mattias Ekstrom is hooked
World Rallycross has quickly established itself as one of the most spectacular forms of motor racing; we speak to its fastest driver to find out why
Few other sports can match World Rallycross for its sheer spectacle.
The speed of the cars, the frenetic pace of the racing and the amphitheatre-like circuits make for epic entertainment. A Formula 1 grand prix looks like an endurance race in comparison.
Perhaps because of this excitement, many top drivers have joined the FIA World Rallycross Championship despite its relative infancy; it has been running for only three years in its current format. This season’s favourite for the World RX title, Mattias Ekström, is one of the most experienced drivers on the grid and also one of the sport’s greatest ambassadors.
“You always have to go for full attack in a rallycross race,” says the Swede, who also races in the DTM touring car series alongside his rallycross duties. “If you don’t, you’ll look pretty stupid. These cars are fun, fast and wild. For sure, they’re the ones that make me smile most.”
Ekström, who has two DTM titles and six World RX wins under his belt, is joined by other massive motorsport names on the World Rallycross Supercar grid, including nine-time world rally champion Sébastien Loeb, 2003 WRC champ Petter Solberg and Mr Gymkhana himself, Ken Block. That’s one heck of a driver line-up.
“The racing with these guys is all heat of the moment, so you have to always be sharp and see if there’s a chance,” explains Ekström. “It’s so different [from circuit racing], because there you have a strategy, but here it’s more instant.”
THE CARS <
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Woking's racer faces three other top models in our GT4 racing car special
You’re doing a track day in your Porsche Cayman. It’s the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. Ahead, you catch a glimpse of a shard of automotive exotica.
As you power through Becketts, you pick out the shape of a LaFerrari. It disappears on the straight because you have 370bhp to its 950bhp, but by the time you’ve reached the exit of Stowe your windscreen is full of Ferrari once more. You nip by under braking for Vale and as you leave Club and look in the mirror again, it’s gone.
This is not a fantasy. It may be that the Ferrari driver wasn’t trying hard, but in a day spent driving the latest GT4 racers at a Silverstone track day populated not only by LaFerraris but also Radicals, BAC Monos, Ariel Atoms, Porsche 911 GT3 RSs and other apocalyptically fast road cars, nothing got a sniff of the exhausts of any of the GT4 race cars we had gathered to investigate and enjoy.
It seems odd that you can take a car like a Cayman, throw some race suspension, slick ty
read moreAston Martin DB11 vs Bentley Continental GT Sport - grand tourers compared
Aston Martin’s vital new DB11 delivers GT comfort and supercar performance in a very different way from the Bentley Continental GT Speed
Running fast towards my rendezvous with the Aston Martin DB11, the challenge it is about to take on is clear.
The Bentley Continental GT Speed under my right foot doesn’t feel like a car in need of replacement at all. Indeed, I’d argue the greatest trick it ever pulled is not to have lived a life this long – it’s already in its 13th year – but to have become so improved within that span as to be a better car today relative to its peers than when it was new back in 2003. Usually, cars just don’t do that.
And if it seems odd to be banging on about a rather old Bentley in a test whose primary focus is a brand-new Aston Martin (upon whose shapely shoulders rests to one extent or another the future of the company that makes it), I’d ask you to bear with me for the duration of this paragraph, because this stuff matters. If you and I are to understand the nature of the challenge, we must peer beyond the immediately evident – the respective power-to-weight ratios, looks, mass and age gap. We must appreciate that in its sense of solidity and sheer structural integrity, the Bentley has a quality as ea
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