REVISTA LAYOUT

CAR 

Can a luxury 

sedan be a 

bargain? 

The last scale of the 

pony-car arms race 

www.carmagazine.co.uk

03 Bugatti Chiron 

05 Maserati Levante 

07 Rolls-RoycePhantom 

09 Why yot next Uber will 

probably be a driveless Volvo. 

11 Tesla launches world`s 

biggest battery. 

13 Merceedes Eco Assit: the 

car that helps you drive better. 

15 New 2020 BMW M3 

codenamed G80 revealed. 

17 Ancient and modern: new 

and old Mercedes G-wagens 

spied on test. 

1 www.carmagazine.co.uk/

www.carmagazine.co.uk/ 2

NEW CARS 

BUGATTI CHIRON 

If there’s any doubt about the 

Bugatti Chiron’s raison d’être, it’s 

written right on the steering wheel, 

on a large blue button emblazoned 

with one word: ENGINE. Sure, 

we could wax poetic about the 

marriage of modern technology 

to the ancient human craving 

to express vanity and wealth. Or 

about how the 1500-hp Chiron 

is metaphorically the 700-room 

Château de Versailles with 

tailpipes, how the $3 million price 

means it is no crazier than hiring an 

artist to spend four years painting 

God and Adam and angels and 

saints on your chapel ceiling. 

In other words, we could go on and 

on about how it is an exuberant, 

untethered overstatement in the 

service of generating delirious 

stupefaction, both in the nobles 

who luxuriate in it and the peasants 

who revel in its reflected glory. 


Highs: 

Unsurpassed hyperbole, quieter 

cabin, more communicative 

chassis. 

Lows: 

$3 million buys multiple non- 

Bugatti supercars, giant wing 

blocks rear visibility. 


Maserati Levante 

Maserati has been here before. 

Preserving soul-stirring brand 

values while managing the 

balance-sheet realities of being a 

tiny carmaker has never been easy. 

The last time this Mo dena-based 

brand pulled it off, however, was 

long before Lamborghinis went 

5 www.carmagazine.co.uk/ 

from sharing farm fields with bulls 

to being named after bulls. In 

1957, Maserati was a builder of 

low-volume sports cars and even 

lower-volume race cars. Back 

then, it was also an independent 

concern, unencumbered by the 

burdens or blessings of its current

Highs: 

Bristling with Italian sights, 

sounds, and smells. 

Lows: 

An engine that makes you wait, 

only good enough from behind 

the wheel, a whole lotta euros. 

parent company, Fiat Chrysler 

Automobiles. When its “White 

Dame” prototype rolled out that 

year, the Grand Tourer led the 

way for the series production 

3500 GT—a volume seller 

(relatively speaking, with about 

2200 made) introduced into a 

market ripe for its combination 

of Italian speed, sound, and flair. 


Rolls-Royce 

Phantom 

The Holy Grail of handcrafted 

luxury automobiles. 

Its decadent design is derived 

from an aluminum structure that 

rides atop an air suspension for 

euphoric comfort. Prodigious 

power is provided by a 563-hp 

twin-turbo V-12 paired with an 

eight-speed automatic and rearwheel 

drive. An interior tailored for 

kings can even be adorned with a 

custom-artwork dash. Its dizzying 

array of tech includes night vision 

and a distinct laser-light system. 



CAR TECH 

Why your next Uber will pr 

driverless Volvo 


obably be a 

Volvo and Uber are extending their 

collaboration and have revealed 

a plan to have ‘tens of thousands’ 

of driverless cars on the 

road between 2019 and 2021. 

The two companies struck a deal in 

August 2016 to work closely together 

to develop the next generation 

of autonomous ride-sharing taxis. 

The XC90 pictured is only the 

start of it: the vehicles will in fact 

more likely be based on the next-generation 

of the Scalable Product 

Architecture (SPA) underpinnings. 

By early next decade, the 

next XC90 will be on sale and 

Volvo intends to have its own autonomous 

car on sale in 2021. 


Tesla launches world’s 

biggest battery 

If in doubt of Tesla’s ambition, 

check this out: the US electric 

car start-up has finished building 

the world’s biggest lithium-ion 

battery near Adelaide in Australia. 

The so-called ‘mega battery’ will be 

used to smooth out power supply in 

South Australia, a rural area beset 

with electricity shortages and blackouts 

at times of peak demand. 

In September 2016, 1.7 million 

homes were left without power. 

Its output of 100 megawatts is 

powerful enough to supply 30,000 

homes for one hour, according 

to company chief Elon Musk 


Why Tesla 

collaborates with 

other manufacturers 

And what’s the 

relevance of the 

mega battery to 

road cars? 

There is more. In an extraordinary 

move, Tesla ‘open-sourced’ 

all its patents in spring 2014, 

and Musk now reveals that ‘at 

least one major car company’ is 

using Tesla’s own data to catch 

up with it. It’s also working with 

Mercedes on the electric B-class. 

‘And there’s a good chance 

we’ll do something with Toyota 

again,’ he says. ‘They just need 

to get over this fuel-cell thing.’ 

Nothing. And everything... the 

move shows just how holistic Tesla 

is thinking with its battery tech. It is 

driving forwards with its mission to 

wean the world off fossil fuels - and 

domestic electricity use is another 

focus for the disruptive business. 


Mercedes Eco Assist: the 

car that helps you drive 

better 

Amid all the excitement over 

Mercedes’ latest evolution of its 

autonomous driving systems in the 

revised S-Class, it’s easy to overlook 

the other big innovation: you. 

More precisely, the S is set up to 

offer encouragement, information 

and incentives to help you 

drive more smoothly and more 

economically. Crucially, it can be 

ignored and over-ridden, leaving 

you to decide whether your priority 

is economy at any given moment. 

The latest, upgraded version of Eco 

Assist is available on the S450 (not 

a UK model) and S500 – the only 

cars using new beltless inline-six 

petrol engine with 48-volt electrics 

and an integrated starter-generator 

(ISG) instead of an alternator. 

13 www.carmagazine.co.uk/ 

Eco Assist works by combining 

several features. Connectivity 

and sensors: The car knows 

where you are, where you’re 

going, and what’s happening in 

between. So it won’t encourage 

you to accelerate towards slowing 

traffic or a hairpin, for instance.

When Eco Assist 

helps most 

Downhill: 

You’re prompted to lift your foot off 

the gas, and the car will brake itself. 

Uphill: 

The mapping knows you’re 

near the brow of a hill and 

will prompt you to lift off. 

Moving queues: 

If the radar spots you’re cruising 

into a queue, it slows 

but aims to keep rolling. 


Spyshots: 

future cars 

uncovered 

New 2020 BMW M3 

codenamed G80 revealed 

So many questions. Will the next 

M3 be little more or less than a 

cut-price, downsized M5? Can the 

next M4 in its standard form hope 

to eclipse the bells-and-whistles 

GTS version of the current car? 

And can the most important M car 

BMW makes get back to being the 

best compact sports saloon/coupe 

money can buy, without caveat? 

Next year, BMW will introduce the 

all-new 3-series saloon, code G20, 

followed in 2019 by the Touring 

(G21) and in 2020 by the 4-series 

coupe and convertible (G22/23). 


Of these four bodystyles, three will 

receive the full M treatment. Why 

no M4 Gran Coupe? Because the 

next Gran Coupe will be electric. 

While previous M3s have been 

powered by a mixed bag of 

engines, from lightweight and 

punchy 2.0-litre four (E30) 

to a 4.0-litre V8 (E90/E92), 

the next version, due 2021, 

remains faithful to the twin-turbo 

3.0-litre found in the current car. 

The power output of the next-gen 

base car is said to equal that of 

the limited-edition M4 GTS, which 

musters 493bhp at 6250rpm 

and 442lb ft at 4000rpm. 

It thus eclipses the 444bhp twinturbo 

V6 in the new Audi RS5, 

matches the Mercedes C63 S 

AMG and will give the 592bhp 

Jaguar XE Project 8 – of which only 

300 units will be built, remember 

– a good run for its money. 


Ancient and modern: new and 

on t 

That Mercedes is about to 

relaunch the classic off-roader 

to keep it going for another 

decade. Our spies have captured 

the new 2018 G-class on test in 

Germany - we’ve got photos of 

it alongside the current car (last 

updated with a host of cosmetic 

and powertrain upgrades in late 

2015), splattered in mud after offroading 

trials and fresh pictures 

of the red-hot new AMG version. 

The G-class – in its current W463 

generation – has been around 

since 1990, at which point the 

G-wagen name was dropped. 

Time, then, for a major refresh... 


old Mercedes G-wagens spied 

est 


We don`t care for the 

wheels, but we love 

the paint! 

LITERALLY, OBSESSED AND 

DREAMING...

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