JustBritish

Just published are the clearest spy images yet of the MG 3, a new supermini that will go on sale in China next year and could make it to the UK in 2012. The small five-door hatch has neat, inoffensive styling – although it falls some way short of the racy Zero concept that was shown at the Beijing show.

The MG 3 will offer a choice of four-cylinder petrol engines: a 1.3 producing 67bhp, and a 107bhp 1.5. The standard gearbox is a five-speed manual, although the 1.5 will be offered — in China, at least — with an automatic option.

There will also be a diesel; MG owner SAIC is in discussions with a number of potential suppliers. The firm also has a turbocharged version of the 1.5 petrol; with 156bhp on tap, it could form the basis of a performance variant.

The interior looks rugged but spacious. The test car’s fascia keeps branding to a minimum, although an MG 3 logo is visible at the bottom of the steering wheel.

This car is a top-spec model; the giveaway is the CD player slot, because more lowly trim levels will get a solid-state memory-based MP3 player only. The car is aimed at buyers between 18 and 28 years of age; the iPod-like controls on the steering wheel reflect this.

Later next year SAIC will launch an MG 3 ‘cross’ – a version with extra body cladding. It will be a successor to the MG 3SW (Streetwise), a Rover 25-based model that is a big seller in China.

For more pictures, check out Autocar.co.uk.

Lotus hadn’t planned on making many Elises. About 2,500 cars should do it, Lotus thought, taking the Elise from its 1996 launch to, maybe, the millennial cusp. After all, not many people would want a basic, pure, minimalist sports car costing a far from minimalist £19,000. Surely.

Well, the Elise has just entered its third generation (from £27,450). About 35,000 have left Lotus’s Hethel factory to date. The idea has proved more widely seductive than the original creators dared to hope and, as I turn and go back up the twisting road by Goodwood racecourse to savour the bends yet again, I am once more completely under its spell.

There is nothing quite like an Elise. Other cars have had the individual elements – light weight, simplicity, a mid-mounted engine, a British badge – but currently the Lotus is a unique mix of good things. Here’s another bend: as ever, the Elise turns instantly, precisely, seemingly without any sensation of shifting a mass, only the front wheels’ castor action forming a resistance against which my hands must work. Driving a new car without power steering is a rare occurrence nowadays, but it’s not needed here. Instead you just enjoy total two-way telegraphy with the road surface. The sensation is all the better because you sit low, looking over a low dashboard with the near part of the road framed by the bulges that cover the front wheels. It’s a very special vantage point. Above me is only sky, provided the fabric roof is stowed in the surprisingly roomy boot, and I’m at one with this car.

Great. But what’s the news? It’s that third-generation thing I mentioned. The second-generation Elise, born in 2000 at the point when the original plan would call an end to the whole idea, had busier styling full of strakes and slashes and a body pressed in a mould from pre-impregnated composite sheet, like a Renault Espace used to have. It replaced the cottage-industry method of hand-laying glassfibre matting and resin, and made the Elise into a more consistent, better-quality product, but the original’s visual purity had been lost. Now, with this latest Elise, it mostly returns.

The nose is smoother and incorporates Audi-like daytime running lights in LED strips; the side vents are protected by mesh instead of vanes; the tail is calmer, apart from an ugly but effective aerodynamic diffuser. Inside it’s much as before. The stalks on the steering column
betray its Vauxhall Cavalier origins, but why re-engineer something that works? There’s a racing-car functionality about it, aided by a bonded and extruded aluminium chassis of remarkable rigidity.

And now the most important bit. The entry-level Elise has a new engine, still made by Toyota, still using Lotus’s own management system, but down from 1.8 litres to 1.6. Power stays the same at 136bhp, peak torque drops slightly to 118bhp, and – the key reason for the change – official CO2 output drops from 196g/km to 149.

It’s a so-called Valvematic engine, in which a conventional throttle system is used only at idle and all other speed control is effected by altering the amount by which the inlet valves open. This less-obstructive pathway for the engine’s suction of air is the key to the improved efficiency.

Result? A more frugal Lotus but a no less entertaining one. Despite the drop in maximum torque the Elise still feels punchy enough not to demand frantic revving, although it will do that, too, if you like.

Best of all is the way all the major controls work in such perfect harmony. You flow with instinctive co-ordination within 100 yards of entering an Elise for the first time. Only two minor snags mar the bonding process: the engine sometimes has a little gasp for breath as it accelerates; and the magical way the Elise breathes over bumps and undulations is occasionally shattered by a thump from the rear suspension over a nasty ridge.

Otherwise the Elise is, as ever, a balletic, sensuous, life-affirming delight. Objectively it seems expensive for what it is. But objectivity never bought a Lotus.

by John Simister

Close on the heels of Tata Motors-owned Land Rover announcing its plans to develop hybrid cars, the Indian automaker’s another British subsidiary has now decided to toe the line.

Jaguar Cars, is now reportedly looking to introduce hybrid versions of its XJ and XF models in 2013-’14, using hardware developed with sister brand Land Rover, as reported by Britain’s Car magazine. The magazine has also stated that the first Jaguar hybrids could be launched soon after the planned 2013 introduction of the first Land Rover hybrid.

It was reported very recently that by the end of 2010 Land Rover will be testing the first diesel hybrid prototype called the ‘range_e’ which is being developed using a Range Rover Sport platform. Tests of this vehicle will use the existing 3.0 litre TDV6 diesel engine featuring a ZF 8-speed automatic transmission. The goal is to achieve a range of 20 miles using electric power only emitting less than 100 g/km of CO2 emissions and to achieve a top speed of around 120 mph.

According to ‘Car’, Jaguar’s hybrid system, which also will employ the ZF hybrid transmission, will be applied eventually to every model in the range. The Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) engineering centre in the British Midlands is developing both diesel- and gasoline-electric hybrid powertrains for use across both model ranges,” the magazine said. The system will “quickly spread across the XJ, XF, XK Jaguars and the Discovery, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport,” according to Car, and will be upgraded with plug-in capability by 2015.

It is to be mentioned that Jaguar Land Rover is already active in four ongoing projects that are part of the Technology Strategy Board/ Department of Transport Low Carbon Vehicles Innovation Platform. These projects, which demonstrate technological innovations that could be applied to future vehicle models, are the ‘Limo-Green’ Series Hybrid; a Flywheel Hybrid System for Premium Vehicles; the REcycled ALuminium (Real) project; and a Range Extended Hybrid Electric Vehicle (REHEV).

Read more: Jaguar XJ and XF models could also turn hybrid by 2013-14 – WheelsUnplugged
Automobile Industry News – Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

The new Aston Martin Rapide is a lovely car, to be sure, and driving one around town creates precisely the same effect on the populace as would a young Paul McCartney striding through Waterloo Station in 1964. Never mind the panties. Investment bankers throw their tighty-whiteys at this car.

But what does it prove? It proves that if you care absolutely nothing about outward visibility—the Rapide has the sightlines of a Normandy pillbox—and that you don’t care that the front roof pillars (the A pillars) are thicker than a Clydesdale’s fetlock; and that in order to get in the car rear passengers will be obliged to remove their heads and feet; and that once there they will have their noses grinding against the entertainment system’s headrest-mounted screens; and that the car’s sun visors are three fingers wide and virtually useless; and that the rear quarters have blind spots the size of libertarianism; and that the “trunk” offers the capacity of a refrigerator’s vegetable crisper…if you don’t care about any of that, then you too can design a beautiful four-door super sports car. It’s easy.

Read the rest of the review at the Wall Street Journal.

British car output rose an annual 44 per cent in April with a total of 98,290 new cars produced in Britain last month on higher demand for new vehicles, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

In the year to date, car production was 64.9 percent higher than the same period a year ago.

“Output in April is up across the car, commercial vehicle and engine sectors compared to the same time last year, reflecting a good start to the second quarter of 2010,” said SMMT chief executive, Paul Everitt.

“The home market saw a significant increase in the month, a positive indication of a strengthening economy and an improvement in consumer confidence,” he added. – Reuters

The last genuine MG works rally car is up for auction, 35 years after it was retired from action competitive farewell, and is expected to fetch £90,000-£130,000 (R1-1.5-million) – more than 100 times the price of the road-going MGB in 1964.

BRX 854B was one of two MGB rally cars built by BMC’s competition department in 1964, when the road car was priced at £850 (the equivalent of R1700 at the time).

It made its racing debut in the Spa-Sofia-Liege rally in August 1964 and went on to compete a further five times as a works entry, in the Tulip, Acropolis, Geneva, Danube and RAC rallies, all in 1965.

It was retired in 1975 and has since then had a meticulous restoration, overseen by MG historian John Baggott and legendary MG racer Barry Sidery-Smith with meticulous attention to detail. Existing parts have been painstakingly restored or replaced and some non-standard period competition parts have been sourced with no expense spared.

Its first public appearance after restoration was at the Le Mans Classic in 2008 and it has the historical technical passport, meaning it’s eligible for other such prestigious events, including the Goodwood Revival, Monaco Classic GP and other pre-65 invitation races.

The MGB will be offered up on June 2, complete with documentation – including letters from the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust and the BMC competition department – original handbooks, racing instructions, receipts, restoration archive photographs, magazine articles and newspaper clippings from 1964 and 1965.