The Aion V is another new Chinese all-electric, mid-size crossover SUV just launched into the crowded UK market. So far, so the same, but Aion is part of the wider GAC Group, which has manufacturing experience stretching back to 1948 in Guangzhou (that’s what the ‘G’ stands for).

And crucially, the business has taken time to launch its Aion electrified brand into Europe after seeing missteps made by other Chinese exporters in terms of over-optimistic sales targets and service shortfalls that ultimately resulted in hasty market exits leaving customers high and dry.

Aion knows it is late to the EV party with its V, but its UK team is offsetting that with a very sturdy eight-year warranty and decent £36,450 starting price. It’s fair to say there is a definite hint of Citroën C5 Aircross about the 4,605mm-long vehicle and it shares similarly upright dimensions (but the French crossover is actually a bit longer, wider and lower).

However, the V’s almost horizontal bonnet, utilitarian roof rails and chunky surfacing with soft edges clearly avoids accusations of being a Range Rover clone, or indeed in aping an amorphous assemblage of design cues from various smooth curvaceous crossovers by other Asian brands.

Despite the mainstream exterior Citroën associations, the interior of the V is more luxurious. The padded and perforated leather upholstery and quilted seat stitching in cream and dark grey looks – and feels – classy.

That finish only comes as part of a £1,495 Premium Pack but that option also includes an extremely well-engineered and finished second-row tray table – closer in execution to Bentley than Citroën – plus eight-point massage seats and a ‘cool/hot box’ situated under the central armrest which can heat, cool or even freeze itself.

Curious to try the box during one of the UK’s recent heatwaves, we tried to crank up the freeze function – via a couple of button presses within the centre touchscreen’s settings at the outset of a significant journey – but while it did get frosty eventually, we wouldn’t trust ice cream in there until after a few hours.

Perhaps surprisingly, diverting energy to freeze rather than just cool, didn’t seem to dent the car’s 317-mile electric range from the 75.3kWh battery either. There’s also a button on the back of the centre armrest so rear-seat passengers can adjust the box’s temperature, down to minus 15°C if required.

Space upfront is good and there are some neat interior touches, including large chrome grab handles that hide their door-opening function until logically pulled. The floating centre console with two mobile phone trays – one for wireless charging – and two cup holders behind, is all very current spec, Chinese import, with a 14.6-inch rectangular central infotainment screen above.

Pairing an Apple phone for CarPlay is relatively easy, but switching between the two can be fiddle-some. A little button at the top of the car’s touchscreen to get back to Apple CarPlay is not the easiest to press on the move, although the reverse manoeuvre – back to the car’s software from Apple – is easier via a branded button within Apple’s main menu.

Passenger space in the back is genuinely excellent. There is loads of room between knees and front seat backs and headroom is very generous too (even if wearing hats). The boot is a good size too – 500-1638 litres min/max – and has two layers so charging cables can be stored under the load floor. But the tonneau cover and its fixing point is thin and flimsy.

Don’t expect the Aion V to be a racing driver’s friend on the move either, that’s not its reason for being. But despite its relative height it doesn’t feel unstable or wallow through corners and it can also absorb a lot of the bumpy nonsense of Britain’s often uneven roads.

For now, the Aion V stands apart as a very well-appointed car for the money – especially inside. For the future, while other more humdrum Chinese entrants rely on more conservative local design outposts to tailor their products for European tastes – usually in Munich – Aion will surely benefit from its well-established and more fashion- and design-focused Milan-based design studio.

Maybe this savvier Euro influence, backed by Chinese innovation, smaller sales aspirations and better customer service will help Aion plot a different course.

Aion V, from £36,450, AionAuto.co.uk, @AionAutoUK

A well-timed riposte to the arrival of the Zeekr 9X, this is the newly announced Audi Q9, a flagship SUV and the top tier of the entire Audi portfolio.

This particular Q is anything but anonymous. Described as the company’s first ‘full-size’ SUV, an appellation which might surprise Europeans, the new Q9 sits above the Q7 and Q8, rounding out a range of SUVs that starts with the Q2 and takes in a few SQ performance models and even the RS variants of the Q8.

‘Full-size’ refers to the US market, where cars considered gauche, overweight and altogether too big for dainty European towns and cities are relative minnows. In Europe, Toyota tops out with the Land Cruiser; the Americans get the Toyota Sequoia. Similar motoring math applies to US-centric models like the Nissan Armada and Lexus LX, as well as domestic competitors such as the Ford Expedition MAX, Cadillac Escalade, and Lincoln Navigator.

What all these behemoths have in common is three rows of full-sized seating – no cramped third rows suitable only for small children. Such ‘full-size’ models run the gamut from family-friendly to luxury conveyances. The Q9 is firmly in the latter camp, going up against established models like the Escalade.

This is a segment dedicated to cars that are much better experienced from within than from without – it’s business class brutalism. Although there’s a groundswell of fresh appreciation for smaller, less imposing cars, Audi’s status within the VW Group means it can soak up the premium prices associated with luxury SUVs, leaving compact car development to better equipped and experienced brands like VW, Seat and Cupra.

Inside the Q9, scale has been deployed in the service of experience and comfort. You sit beneath the company’s broadest panoramic sunroof, 1.5 sq m. All four doors are power operated (and can be popped open simultaneously at the touch of a button on the remote). Bang & Olufsen supply the 22-speaker sound system. Armrests and front centre console are heated. Adaptive air suspension is paired with quattro four-wheel-drive for sure-footed ride and handling.

As if to complement the array of internal screens, the Q9 has a very specific world first up its sleeve. The exterior lighting is supplemented by on-board projectors that beam a directional arrow on the ground when indicating, helping keep pedestrians and cyclists fully informed of your intentions. The OLED lights (curved at the rear) can also run through a full dance card of merry patterns on start-up and shut down.

We have to come out and say it – we’re not fans of Audi’s current grille treatment. Consider the cliff-like visage of the Q9, so large that it has squeezed out the headlights to the upper reaches of the frontage, a design choice that only serves to exaggerate the car’s scale.

At 5.31m long and 2.21m, with wheel sizes of up to 23 inches, Audi proudly claims this is the largest car they have ever made – it dwarfs even a long-wheelbase Range Rover. Launching an automotive leviathan into the teeth of a climate crisis is a ballsy move – there’s even ChatGPT integration to ensure that every facet of high consumption is covered.

There’s also no pure EV. Instead, a mild-hybrid system is harnessed to a 3.0-litre V6 diesel will be the primary powertrain – capable of electric-only driving as well as a handy combination of torque and efficiency. Still, the Bratislava-built Q9 will no doubt find a willing audience when it hits the road this summer.

Audi Q9, UK sales begin in August 2026, price tbc, Audi.co.uk, @AudiUK

Up until now, the idea of China as a source of genuine alternatives to the luxury status quo has remained rather abstract, the subject matter of breathless influencer videos and elaborate motor show launches – all of which have been largely confined to the PRC. Now with the official arrival of the new Zeekr 9X, the Geely sub-brand has its sights firmly set on the European luxury market.

The brand, headquartered in Gothenburg, is already well established in markets like Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, with German operations recently starting and other key European nations spooling up. There’s no word on a UK launch just yet, but it is said to be on the cards.

The 9X will be Zeekr’s largest car to date and its first to have a straightforward luxury positioning. As the company’s VP of Design Stefan Sielaff told Wallpaper* back in May, ‘[the 9X] is a Range Rover-sized SUV. It has three rows of seats and you can turn the second row around 180-degrees for a conference-style layout. This is pretty rare in Europe – I think customers here will appreciate this.’

Designed in the company’s Gothenburg studio, the 9X doubles down on equipment levels and material quality. No surprises for guessing which particular premium SUV brand is being targeted – JLR take note – but such is the level of elevated detail that even Bentley might have to start looking over its shoulder (coincidentally, or not, Sielaff spent six years as Bentley’s Design Director).

Whatever the target, the combination of quality and price will surely bring some kind of shake-up to the big SUV market. Buyers here are especially attuned to the nuances of branding and history, and Zeekr – founded in 2021 – is a minnow in the heritage stakes. However, only a fool would bet against the lure of the new Chinese manufacturers, as sales charts across Europe attest.

Fit and finish are the first things to get right. Zeekr is promising an interior with Nappa leather, hand-polished Nordic wood trim, hand-cut crystal on the control surfaces, no less than 32 Naim speakers, a 17” rear screen, automatic blinds all round and heated, cooling and massaging seats across the first two rows. The 9X is available initially as a six-seater, with a Super Hybrid powertrain that puts out nearly 900hp and has an onboard 2.0-litre turbo engine to serve as a generator for the electrical architecture.

According to Zeekr Europe’s CEO, Lothar Schupet, the 9X ‘is our response to the next generation of luxury consumers. More than ever, luxury customers want more from their car, and the Zeekr 9X is a direct answer to this demand, designed in Europe for European roads… The Zeekr 9X is not luxury borrowed from another era. Instead, this is a new era of luxury, beyond convention.’

So will private jet-style interior trimmings, high technology and exceptional space be enough to tempt traditionalists out of their heritage brands and get behind a brand-new badge? The Zeekr 9X certainly has the presence that scale inevitably brings, as well as a specification and level of tech that’s the equal of any premium European manufacturer. Regardless of its positive attributes, the 9X will still have to conquer a customer mindset that’s been set in stone for decades.

The new 9X will be launched in selected European markets from the end of July 2026, Zeekr.eu, @ZeekrEurope, @ZeekrDesign

GM’s expansive archives contain all manner of riches, from countless design sketches, colour swatches and models of all scales, to plans for show stands and presentation renders. In all, the GM Archive houses over eight million photos and a quarter of a million films, along with all manner of physical and digital media.

There’s also an unusual subset of material, as explained by GM archivist and curator Natalie Morath. ‘Someone recently rang us up and said, “I think I have something,”’ says Morath. The items came from the estate of the late John ‘Winn’ Winniford Morton (1928-2022), a Texas-born theatrical designer whose career spanned an impressive eight decades, creating costumes for the likes of Oklahoma! as well as Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey circuses.

Not only did Winn Morton work in television and the theatre, both on and off-Broadway, he also created the costumes for the ‘Ice-Travaganza’, a monumental performance held at the 1964 New York World's Fair and overseen by champion figure skater Dick Button.

Morton’s love of the big spectacle and grand gesture made him the perfect costume designer for a very particular type of live show, the ‘Industrial Musical’. The newly discovered drawings, some 400 of them, relate to Morton’s work in this sphere for GM. Created to dress the participants in these unique – and largely lost to time – live shows, Morton turned his pen to idealised characters that represented the perfect buyers for the GM brands of the era, including Cadillac and Chevrolet.

‘Morton was connected to GM via his work on Broadway,’ Morath explains. ‘He was a member of the Costume Designers Guild and we used him for several years for multiple brands.’ GM had a longstanding connection with writers, technicians and performers, both for live events, auto shows and TV segments, with actresses like Florence Henderson (1934-2016), best known as Carol Brady in The Brady Bunch, appearing regularly as the ‘Oldsmobile Girl’ early in her career.

‘As far as we can tell, these sketches were all done for these shows, which were high-production, Broadway-scale narrative musicals, maybe half an hour in length, that were put on for dealers, not the public,’ says Morath. Rarely, if ever filmed, these live shows introduced dealers and company employees to the next year’s products, with actors, singers and dancers appearing alongside full-size cars, often dressed to match the paintwork and trim. Sometimes the songs were issued on vinyl, creating sought-after future collectables (click to listen to 'Diesel Dazzle', from the 1966 show Detroit Diesel).

Often, established composers and lyricists would work on these shows, such as Kander and Ebb (Cabaret and Chicago), Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof) and Michael Reno, musical director of the original production of The Rocky Horror Show, among others. ‘We don’t have any surviving scripts,’ says Morath, ‘so it’s fun to imagine in your head what the story was and who these characters were. These are the only fashion items in our collection,’ she adds, ‘they’re unique.’

GM’s Archive is housed in the original GM Design Center building in Warren, Michigan, part of the company’s treasured and recently restored Global Technical Center and expanded design studio complex. ‘Part of the job here is to find ways to share these materials to our audience, who are primarily the GM design community,’ says Morath. ‘We stage exhibitions in our gallery space, helping them find connections between past and present. It’s a good time to take a pause and look back at the company history.’

GM.com/heritage

Thornley Kelham’s new restomod takes a very specific moment in motor racing history and recreates it as an ultra-light, bespoke sports car. To the uninitiated, the British niche manufacturer’s Porsche 356 European SL looks like a stripped-down, hot-rodded version of Porsche’s very first sports car, as popularised by custom builders around the world.

But the European SL has a more authentic claim to fame. The car was inspired by the Porsche Type 514, the specially lightened, all-aluminium racing version of the 356 (also known as the 356 SL for Super Leicht) developed for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was Porsche’s debut race at the Circuit de la Sarthe – its first race anywhere, to be accurate – and the little ultra-light 356 went on to win its class.

Four 356 SLs were built for the race, with fared-in wheels, and specially streamlined bodywork. Thornley Kelham’s homage isn’t quite as extreme, but it is certainly a hymn to the art of aluminium bodywork. The company will also ensure its modern iteration of the coupé is constructed to cope with modern standards of performance and dynamics and everyday usability.

‘We are extremely proud to present our new Porsche 356 European SL, 75 years after the original Type 514 was waved away from Zuffenhausen by Ferry Porsche to compete in the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans race,’ says company founder Simon Thornley. From the handcrafted panels – made with a skill honed over years of exacting restorations – to the stripped-down, minimalist interior, this is a modern iteration of a classic Porsche form.

There are subtle upgrades to the styling, inside and out, while the panel fit and finish far exceed what was possible back in the 1950s. Under the teardrop shaped bodywork is a bespoke 2,332 cc air-cooled flat-four engine, available with either 180 bhp or 200 bhp. A five-speed gearbox (over the original’s four) with the option of passive dampers.

This all weighs in at 930kg, unless you ladle on the options. These include fitted luggage and upgrades to interior electronics and systems. ‘I wanted to deliver a car that Porsche themselves might have done were they not hindered by 1950s engineering capabilities,’ says Pim van de Riet, 356 programme director and an original 356 owner. ‘Our 356 European SL captures everything I love about the original, reimagined without compromise for the 21st century.’

The Cotswolds-based company was founded in 2008. Thornley Kelham’s other products include the Lancia Aurelia Outlaw B20GT, updated versions of the Jaguar XK and more traditional classic car restorations, across marques like Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, and Bizzarrini. The company plans to make fifty examples of the Porsche 356 European SL and is taking expressions of interest now.

ThornleyKelham.com, @ThornleyKelham

By the end of next year, the waters around the Maldives will be humming with some 30 hydrofoils, in what looks set to be a test case for the world’s first standardised inter-island transportation service. Indeed, that number will be just for starters: by the end of the decade this network is expected to be 100-vessels strong, thanks to a $100m deal between JIH Global Investment, a Dubai-based development group with interests in luxury hospitality across the island chain, and Navier, a Bay Area-based US company building what it calls next-generation hydrofoil vessels.

Navier’s 30ft N30 hydrofoils are all-electric, with a 75-nautical-mile range, and built around a super lightweight carbon-fibre hull – the company sees this as a scalable platform on which it will soon offer a 40ft version of its hydrofoil, now being built, and, later, both a 120ft one and a hybrid version. According to Navier, small high-speed boats are 15 times more expensive to operate than similarly sized hydrofoils. The first five N30s will go into service over the next few months.

‘The fact is that hydrofoils can fundamentally change the way we think of moving through water,’ argues Navier’s founder Sampriti Bhattacharyya, ex of Nasa and MIT, where she worked on the development of underwater drones. ‘Hydrofoils don’t fight the water, but ride above it, with low drag and a lower wake [relative to conventional boats]. That makes them more energy efficient and smoother to ride – because, again, you’re above the water.

‘A network of smaller vessels is also more convenient because they don’t require the building of a big terminal [as a more conventional ferry service might], operating larger ships that may be transporting just a few people at a time,’ she adds. ‘Hydrofoils are not new, but cheaper, more compact computing and sensors of the kind used in drones and self-driving cars have also allowed us to build more economic systems [through which the fleet can be managed]’.

Initially, Navier’s Maldives fleet will service the islands’ upscale hotels – Bhattacharyya says the N30’s quiet, zero-emission electric motors are a better fit with the Maldives’ public image as a sustainability champion, with the nation aiming for ‘net zero’ by the end of the decade. Today, the Maldives currently sees around 3,000 gas-powered vessels operating in its waters.

Navier, which was founded in 2019, is also in the planning stages for a second such hydrofoil network for Cambodia, with a smaller service for the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin, Texas, situated on the banks of Lady Bird Lake. Indeed, Bhattacharyya sees potential for Navier’s hydrofoils to operate in any premium coastal market, citing the likes of Miami, Nantucket and New York. The US Navy is also a customer.

Yet the plan is to extend access to the company’s hydrofoil networks to the general public, on demand via an app, now being developed, making them a kind of maritime Uber Black. Eventually, the intention is to compete with public transportation networks, moving both people and goods. That, it’s hoped, could be a game changer for the economies of island nations dependent on boats and seaplanes and especially those driven by tourism. Last year, the Maldives had 2.2 million tourists.

‘This is an ambitious project and will, I think, take a lot of educating the market,’ Bhattacharyya suggests. ‘Hydrofoils are not widely understood [by the public] and inevitably there’s a lot of scepticism, at least before there’s an experience of their “magic carpet” ride. The maritime market is [in contrast] rather antiquated.’ The upsides – in terms of reduced sound and pollution – are definitely worth the trouble.

NavierBoat.com, @NavierBoat

The automotive and the aeronautical are natural bedfellows, and there have been many manufacturers with a hand in both. Mention Rolls-Royce to an airline captain and he’ll assume you’re referring to a jet-engine, not John Lennon’s limousine. BMW powered the Luftwaffe. Mitsubishi, long before it built Shoguns and Lancer Evos, had few repeat customers on the basis that they were mostly kamikaze pilots.

In pre-war France, cars and planes were treated as art forms or haute couture. Both were viewed as a showcase for national ingenuity, and in 1934 Renault took to the skies by supplying the engine for the Caudron Rafale C.460 racing plane you see here.

Drink in that simple, rakish 1930s design. The fuselage is astonishingly slender, fashioned primarily from spruce and birch plywood over a lightweight structure. Magnesium components reduce weight further, while a snug inverted engine and retractable landing gear eliminate unnecessary resistance.

The canopy barely disturbs the aircraft’s silhouette; it’s almost submerged within its spine. Even stationary, this thing looks like it’s doing 300mph out of the pages of the Boy’s Own Paper. It’s all about speed; about cutting through the air like a sabre.

It was built to compete in the Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe race, a 300km speed trial that took place high above the patchwork of fields and rustic villages that separate Etampes and Chartres, to the south of Paris. The colour Bleu de France transformed engineering into national iconography.

In 1933, fascinated by aviation and the world of amateur air racing, Louis Renault bought the Caudron aircraft company. The Rafale takes its name from a gust of wind. Its designer was Marcel Riffard who, in 1910 at the age of 23, had invented the first aircraft to be made of metal.

His other innovations include the medical aircraft. Following Renault’s takeover of Caudron, he began designing aerodynamic motor cars, such as the 1934 record-breaking Renault Nervasport land speed car and the Renault Etoile Filante (Shooting Star) gas turbine-powered machine, which set a powertrain record of 191mph in 1956 (and went on to inspire a 2025 Renault concept car).

The Rafale, though, is arguably his most handsome legacy, and legendary aviators such as Maurice Arnoux, Raymond Delmotte and Hélène Boucher queued up to fly it. Boucher, who was among the most pioneering female pilots and a major celebrity of the day, set a class record speed of 284mph in a Rafaele C.450 (as well as a women’s speed record), which Delmotte beat a few months later in the upgraded C.460 (the difference was its undercarriage, allowing for retractable wheels), by going 314.32mph on Christmas Day 1934. He won the Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe the following May at an average speed of 277.5mph.

The C.460 was originally powered by an air-cooled, supercharged, 8-litre Renault 6Q inverted six-cylinder engine producing 325bhp. Prior to Delmotte’s record attempt, its displacement was enlarged to 9.5-litres, producing 365bhp, which drives a Ratier two-position variable-pitch propeller.

While this racing engine survives, the single C.450 and three C.460s built do not. Everything, including the design plans, was lost during the Second World War and the C.460 you see here is a painstaking replica that’s been totally restored during the last two years under Renault’s watchful eye by Aéro Restauration Service in Dijon.

Bruno Ducreux is the plane’s pilot and chief restorer. Preparing this aircraft after it had sat unused for more than a decade in California was an operation that required extensive work to the entire airframe.

‘The plane is flying well, although it’s not an easy plane to fly,’ Ducreux tells Wallpaper*. ‘You need a lot of power to keep it flying. There is no visibility because you sit really at the back of the plane. The cockpit is very tight and you can’t really move your head. And it lands very fast, at 160km/h. However, it’s very controllable and fun to fly.’

Ninety-two years after first captivating spectators on the ground, there’s a Rafale skimming the clouds once again at French airshows, connecting modern audiences with one of the most elegant aircraft of the interwar period. It’s also inspired the name of a contemporary Renault; the midsize hybrid crossover Rafale.

Shame it doesn’t ape one of Marcel Riffard’s streamliners, as it’s rather boxier than that of his oeuvre. After the airborne Rafale has done the rounds, it will see out its days at Renault’s future heritage museum at Flins, Les Collections, which will open in 2027.

A design masterpiece, the winged Rafale remains graceful even when viewed in a hangar. There are no decorative flourishes, because none are needed. Its aesthetic emerges from airflow, balance and proportion. It shares as much with the minimalist furniture of Jean Prouvé or the architecture of Robert Mallet-Stevens as it does with conventional aviation.

Marcel Riffard’s goal was to win air races, yet the Rafale endures because it captures something more elusive than speed records. It represents the romance of 1930s modernism itself, rendered in wood, aluminium and magnesium, with a classy coat of French blue paint.

Renault.co.uk, @RenaultUK

Might more calm rather than more horsepower be a selling point for the luxury cars of tomorrow? Range Rover has introduced an industry-first electrostatic sound system, for its SV Ultra model, with 21 speakers, plus four bass speakers and subwoofers, complete with transducers in both seats and floor. It’s the perfect set-up for a thumping in-car rave, perhaps.

But the Gaydon, UK-based carmaker has also worked with the music department of Coventry University to develop a series of ‘wellness tracks’, complete with corresponding massage programme and each with a different vibe. Need to dial down your heart rate ahead of a tough meeting? Let your car take the strain. Need to get the blood pumping ahead of, well, a tough meeting? Your SV Ultra is at hand.

A gimmick? Perhaps. But Range Rover is thinking hard about how to make the time we spend in a car pleasing beyond the increasingly ubiquitous comfortable seating and a near-silent engine. For example, it’s also offering an upscale Airwick in the form of a collection of six fragrances baked into ceramic capsules that plug into a slot in the glove compartment and which then waft the likes of Peace, Restore and Rejuvenate – as a few of the fragrances are named – around the compartment.

That system debuts in Range Rover’s forthcoming model – currently undergoing final testing - a grand tourer that retains the brand’s famed off-road capabilities. The Range Rover GT’s lower, sportier exterior is a distinct evolution of Range Rover’s traditional aesthetic, if not on the par of stable-mate Jaguar’s divisive Type 00 Concept of late 2024.

An all-electric power plant has allowed Range Rover to extend the GT’s wheelbase to create an especially capacious cabin even though the GT is also Range Rover’s lowest model to date. The muscular design still projects a certain solidity, helping the GT maintain Range Rover's signature stance.

Although the GT is Range Rover's ‘most car-like’ product to date, as managing director Martin Limpert calls it, arguably it’s the GT’s contemporary interior that is more arresting – and calming. According to Alex Watkin, Range Rover’s chief designer for interiors, the GT represented the first example of ‘a more reductive design approach’ for the brand, with the standard in-car content – cup-holders, fridge, storage space, switchgear and so on – still available but hidden away to leave broad swathes of clutter-free surfaces.

The traditional instrument cluster is replaced with a single screen - the HMI or Human Machine Interface, from which the fragrance capsules can also be controlled. The result is a car interior as seen through the lens of Bang & Olufsen or Dieter Rams.

Range Rover has also decided to forego the usual ‘luxury’ choice of leather in favour of using a stretch PV that allows for a seamless upholstery comprising much large panels not possible with animal skins. The company says this choice is also more sustainable, odourless, half the weight of leather and wear-tested over the equivalent of 10 years.

In another industry first, speakers and airbags are hidden behind low-gloss knitted fabric surfaces, also deployed as a single piece across the dash top. Together with the outsized panoramic glass roof the interior feeling aims at being akin to ‘an open-plan living room space,’ says Watkin.

The Range Rover GT will be the first all-electric Range Rover from Jaguar Land Rover’s new Electrified Modular Architecture platform, engineered for its battery and hybrid vehicles, with a hybrid version of the GT planned for an unspecified point in the future. It’ll follow on from the forthcoming Range Rover EV and Range Rover Sport EV.

Range Rover has announced its third all-electric model and this time it’s a pure EV from the outset, a car that also marks Range Rover’s debut in a brand new sector. Welcome to the Range Rover GT, a crossover luxury electric GT that shares the new EMA platform with the forthcoming Jaguar Type 01.

Whilst the Jaguar’s form factor – for all its controversies – represents a continuation of the lithe, low-slung sporting ethos that has defined the brand for decades, the RR GT is a definite departure. Debuting as EV-only, with potential for a hybrid-electric version further down the line, the GT will be built at Range Rover’s Halewood factory. A full reveal won’t happen until later this year, implying that production could start in late 2027 or early 2028.

What else do we know? The low, curved roofline is very much atypical for a Range Rover. Up until now, the company has eschewed any sector other than the standard SUV, reasoning that it offers up multiple use cases, from executive luxury to off-road tool, in the same form factor.

From a superficial reading of the stance and ground clearance, the GT can’t possibly offer the breadth of ability of a ‘regular’ Range Rover; perhaps this is a tacit acknowledgement that only a small fraction of the company’s customer base ever tackles anything more challenging than a high curb.

Instead, the focus is on long-distance travel and luxury – both things that Range Rover (not to mention Jaguar) already do rather well. To that end, the company has laid bare the cabin design to give aspiring customers a good idea of what to expect. This is very much a minimal space, sharing, dare we say it, some of the architectural elements of the Type 00 Concept.

That includes a large centre console between the front seats, a stripped-down dash with a very horizontal emphasis and technology that is largely hidden away, rather than placed in plain sight (discounting the large landscape touch screen).

The rear cabin continues this architectural focus, with vertical blade-like trim elements marking the junctions between doors and dash. Woven textiles are prioritised, as are simple graphics and minimal physical controls.

The latter might seem controversial at a time when almost all premium car makers are reintroducing a more analogue approach back into their interiors following customer feedback.

However, as Range Rover says, ‘every [interior] element has been considered to create a sanctuary of calm, with a focus on reduced visual and acoustic noise and natural conversational access to more vehicle functions than ever before’, implying that the company believes minimalism is still a strong driver in the luxury sector.

There’s no word on tech specs or range just yet, beyond the fact that this will be the most ‘car-like’ Range Rover ever built, bringing together ‘effortless EV performance, first-class long-haul refinement and all-terrain capability’.

The flowing camouflage wrap seen here cloaks any new design detail that might also debut with the car and could influence the rest of the range. Likely rivals include the Mercedes-Maybach GLS and Bentley's upcoming Torcal EV, with a corresponding uplift in the price point.

Almost a decade ago, JLR applied for the trademark ‘Road Rover’, a hint that development of a low, more dynamically focused model has been in the works for many years. The name dates back to the 1950s, when Land Rover was considering a less agricultural machine for a wider customer base, a project that eventually led to the launch of the first Range Rover in 1970. Subsequent industry upheaval – pandemics, EV regulatory shifts, Jaguar’s brand overhaul, the massive JLR cyber-attack – have all conspired to push back the debut of what is now known as the Range Rover GT.

For now, all we know for certain is that proportion, function and form are getting a grand shake-up for the first time in Range Rover’s history.

RangeRover.com, @RangeRover

As already noted, 2026 marks a quarter century since Aston Martin debuted its Vanquish model. Over three generations, Vanquish has been the flag-bearer for the brand’s front-engined, V12-powered silhouette ethos, a role it continues with the current model, in both coupe and Volante convertible form.

Now there’s to be a limited run edition to mark those 25 years, with 25 examples of each variant produced to an exacting specification put together by the company’s bespoke department, Q by Aston Martin.

Vanquish 25 is the kind of limited edition that only a select group of car collectors would look to acquire, usually with the aspiration that scarcity will equal added value at some point down the line. If they can resist the urge to stash the car in the automotive equivalent of bubble wrap, then they’ll also be acquiring one of the great modern sports cars.

Vanquish 25 shares the mechanical attributes of the ‘regular’ car – a 5.2-litre Twin-Turbo V12 putting out 835PS and capable of hitting 62mph from rest in 3.3 seconds. The Vanquish also has a top speed of a scarcely credible 214mph yet cloaks this power and performance in an incredibly elegant body shape that’s one of the marque’s most effective designs for years.

The stats might not have changed, but the details are certainly different. One of the inspirations behind the new bespoke livery, details and finish is the original Aston Martin Vanquish, produced from 2001 to 2007. Silver is the dominant colour on the exterior, along with three different interior trims - Oxford Tan (shown here), Onyx Black, and Phantom Grey. Customers can also opt for the 2+2 or 2+0 seating configuration, the latter providing more space for luggage.

The paintwork is finished in Q Skye Silver with special Q Commission metal foil detailing on the car’s side sills and shield vanes. Unique badging and slightly fettled wheel shapes and bespoke Aston Martin script foil detailing are the unique elements to look out for, while inside there’s a new set of trim patterns and laser-etched inlays. The start button has been rendered with a bright red top and in the coupe model the headlining is trimmed in black Alcantara.

These might seem like subtle uplifts but to the collector – and those who feel a close connection with Vanquishes old and new – they’re enough to give this grandest of grand tourers an attention-attracting makeover.

‘Anyone familiar with this iconic British brand knows the provenance of the name ‘Vanquish’ in our modern history,’ says Vittorio Gabba, Head of Q at Aston Martin, ‘Vanquish 25 builds on the extraordinary achievements of the modern, third-generation Vanquish with a carefully curated package of exterior and interior features that subtly celebrate this important milestone in our history.’

The model will be shown first at California’s Monterey Car Week, a prime spot for collectors and enthusiasts, old money and new.

Aston Martin Vanquish 25, for more information visit AstonMartin.com, @AstonMartin

Range Rover continues to edge itself upmarket, emphasising the company’s ability to customise in order to meet the most exacting client requirements. In addition to its Bespoke division, the company also has a Classic division, establish to cater to the growing number of customers who want to keep venerable machines on the road or simply source a beautiful restoration. Based in Coventry, it has its own dedicated team of engineers able to enhance and update earlier models.

Range Rover is obviously not alone in this endeavour. Third party companies have been eyeing up the original Series 1 Range Rover, with its iconic proportions and modernist edges. From the Lunaz EV conversion to the Twisted TRCC and Vinile’s Range Rover Classic, there’s plenty of competition.

Perhaps that’s why Range Rover has upped the ante with this delectable ‘Matched Pair’, a twin pack of bespoke craftsmanship that brings together a fully restored 1993 Range Rover Classic with a contemporary Range Rover SV Ultra. The former underwent a 2,000-hour restoration and has been trimmed and painted to be a complementary pair.

Both cars are finished in Titan Silver, with an interior trimmed in Ultrafabrics, an animal-free supplier used by Range Rover. This is the first time this material has been used in the Classic programme; both cars feature the SV Ultra duo-tone Orchid White and Cinder Grey colourway.

Other matching trim elements include the laser crafted seat patterns and mosaic perforations across each interior, and duo-tone steering wheel finishes. The door trims are also bespoke items, with brushed aluminium handles and colour-matched speaker covers.

The Classic model has been treated to Satin Platinum Atlas 16” wheels complete with diamond turned contrast rims, somewhat smaller than the 23” wheels found on the contemporary SV Ultra.

The 1993 car was originally an American market County Edition. In addition to the re-trimming and interior finishes, the Range Rover Classic has been fully mechanically uprated and rebuilt – from the 3.9-litre V8 through to the transmission, suspension, steering and braking systems.

The ensemble, which will be on display at the 2026 Monterey Car Week ahead of being offered through RM Sotheby's The Monterey Auction in August 2026, showcases the company’s ability to custom match specific colour and trim elements, regardless of the age of the vehicle in question.’

According to Dominic Elms, Director of Land Rover Classic, the project ‘shows how it is possible to create a truly individualised Range Rover with our bespoke service, whether it’s a custom colour palette, interior trim or personalised details.’

Things have been quiet on the Range Rover front in recent years but behind the scenes there’s frantic activity as new generation models and technologies cue up. Right now, the family consists of the flagship Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, Range Rover Velar and Range Rover Evoque. The company is also on the cusp of launching all-electric versions of the Range Rover and, in a surprise move, the Range Rover Sport.

Range Rover Bespoke, Range Rover Classic, Jaguar Land Rover Classic, @RangeRover

Aficionados, innovators and the comfortably moneyed but innately curious will get an early chance to get their hands on the new Ferrari Luce, courtesy of this summer’s RM Sotheby’s Auction at Monterey Car Week. Ferrari is presenting the first production Luce off the line, Chassis 0, for auction at the auctioneer's August sale, conjuring up a unique specification for this special car.

This unique first edition of the Luce was overseen by Ferrari’s Tailor Made programme, a service that is open to every customer across all Ferrari models. Luce will be no different, and the specification of this one-off car is but a small dip in the ocean in terms of what can be achieved.

We haven’t been living under a rock for the past few months so feel duty bound to point out that the Luce wasn’t exactly heralded by fanfares from the Ferraristi. Despite a cohesive, creative and hugely involved design process, courtesy of Jony Ive, Marc Newson and the rest of the team at LoveFrom, a vocal coterie of enraged keyboard warriors found plenty to object to, from concept, form and detail all the way down to the idea of an electrified Ferrari.

Perhaps Chassis 0 won’t change any minds, but it’s worth noting that this configuration is pretty stunning, bringing a fresh angle to the Luce’s controversial forms. A white Ferrari is inevitably rather Crockett and Tubbs, but on the Luce it looks nothing short of sensational. The paintwork is a unique Madreperla Semi-Gloss finish with the interior finished in Perla Le Mans metallic leather in Perla with Grigio Corvara secondary elements.

That white-on-white finish really accentuates the simplicity of car’s silhouette, with the monochrome details taken to the extreme with special wheels, bespoke brake calipers with even the Ferrari logo using an optical white background.

The paintwork contains a unique pigment that accentuates iridescent reflections – Ferrari describe them as ‘evolving from green to violet depending on the intensity and angle of the light.’ It also emphasises the distinction between the aerodynamic bodywork and the glazed passenger shell.

Inside, the exceptional interior is finished in white Le Mans metallic leather, another unique Ferrari development that high quality Swiss hides and a finish that brings more light into the already spacious car. On the ‘regular’ Luce, the secondary interior elements are usually finished in black, but on Chassis 0, the team at Tailor Made have used Grigio Corvara.

The whole package is finished off with a dedicated plaque to honour its unique status as the first production chassis of the Luce production programme.

The car is being sold without reserve, although RM Sotheby’s is suggesting that the value of this unique machine is somewhere in excess of $1.1m, a healthy mark-up over the c$645,000 US list price. Ferrari will be donating all proceeds of the sale to ‘benefit future educational initiatives’ through The Ferrari Foundation.

Ferrari Luce Chassis 0, offered without reserve, RMSothebys.com, Tailormade.Ferrari.com, Ferrari.com, @Ferrari.com

Thank heavens for the digital realm. Long-running driving-focused console and PC games have offered manufacturers a spectacular virtual showroom, a place to assemble their heritage fleet, current models and desirable rarities with precision digital modelling, sparkling paintwork, and cinematic lighting. Everyone is happy.

From Gran Turismo, now in its seventh version with over 500 officially licensed models, to Fortnite (which has had official in-game appearances from Lamborghini, Jeep, Porsche and many more) and all points in between, there’s considerably more chance that young and future consumers will get their first introduction to an auto brand via their games controllers, rather than a traditional ad or movie tie-in, let alone a showroom.

Not content with its considerable presence in Gran Turismo, Forza, Fortnite, and even PUBG: Battlegrounds, Aston Martin is now making a play for a different kind of virtual landscape. This is the all-digital Aston Martin Dreadnought, a futuristic SUV created as a playable item in the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

First up, the design. In both name and appearance, the Dreadnought is an aggressive beast. The car has been modelled as if were packing a V12, making it as noisy as it is visually loud. Activision's incredibly popular combat game (over half a billion units shifted across its various franchises, formats and iterations) is mostly about blowing stuff up, so a lot of the carefully considered touches on this virtual super-SUV might go unnoticed as you’re trying hard not to die.

Nevertheless, Aston Martin’s design team has gone all out in its attempt to create a driving environment that’s materially rich, highly textured and – in this case – both rugged but also luxuriously functional. Freed from the tiresome restrictions of legislation, customer clinics and even the laws of physics, the Dreadnought is a pure design exercise.

The Dreadnought’s imperious front end features the ultimate abstraction of the classic Aston grill. Along the flanks, the deep sculpted wheel arches and window graphics carry trace memories of Aston’s road cars while the rear end has a hint of the brutish Valour Supercar, with signature rear light designs that first emerged on the track-only Vulcan from 2015.

Still, as a thought experiment, it shows how far Aston Martin can push its brand, way beyond the upscale super-SUV territory it joined with the DBX and into the realm of Range Rover, Rivian, Hummer et al. There's certainly a dose of the Warthog vehicle designed for Microsoft's Halo series in there and do we also detect a hint of Virgil Abloh’s monumental Project Maybach? There’s also a visual and technological link to endurance rallying, one of the most brutal and unforgiving of all motorsports, and a space hitherto unexplored by luxury brands like Aston.

Finally, the aesthetic approach ties into a fresh wave of angularity emerging from Aston Martin design, for so long the preserve of swooping, flowing curves and muscled bulges. With all that said, there’s no evidence to suggest that this is anything more than the design team playfully pushing pixels around to spread the Aston Martin wings and expand its aesthetic associations.

Aston has clearly lobbied hard to ensure the in-game Dreadnought experience is a superior one, with covetable levels of speed and armour. You also get Chiltern Green paintwork, herringbone weave carbon fibre bodywork, metallic gold gear lever and switchgear and Oxford Tan leather dashboard and door panel – not that players will have much time to scrutinise the details.

Describing the model as a 'deliberately extreme creation [that] combines Aston Martin’s high-performance, luxury DNA with the virtual landscape of Call of Duty,’ Aston Martin is making a bold play for a different level of cultural relevance.

‘The team have hugely enjoyed the not inconsiderable challenge of redefining what an Aston Martin can be when the only limit is imagination,’ says Marek Reichman, Aston Martin Chief Creative Officer, adding that Dreadnought was designed and conceived with real-world applications in mind – ‘navigating the streets of New York, powering through the monsoon-soaked roads of Mumbai, and performing with complete authenticity in every environment.’

According to Stefano Saporetti, Aston Martin’s Director of Brand Diversification, the collaboration is about ‘exploring new dimensions of luxury.’ ‘Expanding Aston Martin’s footprint into the gaming world allows us to engage with a new generation on their own terms,’ Saporetti explains, ‘The Dreadnought isn't just a digital vehicle; it’s a strategic gateway for a younger, global audience to experience our ultra-luxury DNA. By pushing the boundaries of virtual engineering, we are ensuring that the spirit of Aston Martin resonates powerfully with the luxury consumers of tomorrow.’

Whether the all-out militaristic imagery plays well in a world where all-out militarism is an uncomfortable fact of daily geo-politics is another matter.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will be published by Activision on Friday, October 23, 2026, CallofDuty.com, AstonMartin.com

Although both open- and hard-topped versions of the new 849 Testarossa were announced together last September, Ferrari has staggered the launches, with the Spider following a few months after Ferrari allowed the media to put the hard-top through its paces on Seville’s Monteblanco circuit.

Whilst a track is more in keeping with the Testarossa’s racing heritage, the Spider variant was launched in Tenerife, a very different set of circumstances that help emphasise the sonic boost one gets from dropping the top. Before we take to the road, a word about aesthetics.

Sandwiched between the Testarossa driving launches was an unprecedented event for Ferrari, the launch of its first EV. Inside and out, the Ferrari Luce turned out to be purpose-built for global controversy. Not from us – we loved it – but from the kind of person who believes Ferrari should only build cars that look like the 849 Testarossa Spider.

Horses for courses, naturally, but if you can honestly look at these images of the 849, and then back at the Luce and conclude that the latter is in some way aesthetically inferior, then we have very different definitions of successful automotive design. It’s true that in photographs the sober elegance of the Luce doesn't always stick the landing – it's very angle dependant.

In contrast, the aggressively idiosyncratic drama of the Testarossa is more like a Frankenstein's monster of this and that, devoted primarily to the twin gods of aerodynamics and thermodynamics, with aesthetics trailing a distant third.

Aerodynamics can be weirdly messy and counterintuitive, and Ferrari has leant hard into its idiosyncrasies. The vertical slash behind the cockpit still discombobulates, as does the prominent air intake just behind the door shut line; it’s clearly hyper-functional, required to suck air into the twin-turbo V8, but it falls short of the aesthetics of pitlane practicality.

According to Ferrari, this element creates ‘the pinched effect of a corset’, their words, not ours, but it adds an unnecessary verticality to a horizontal form. It is, as always, form that follows function, although drama has been allowed to elbow its way into the chat.

As Adam Hay-Nicholls previously noted, the Testarossa’s design ‘has a Lego quality. I had my reservations when I first saw renderings, but in the flesh, I’m won over. Certainly, it’s the most extroverted cavallino we’ve seen in years. It’s so brash you might confuse it with a Lamborghini. The 849’s immediate predecessor, the SF90, was quite nerdy and inelegant. Contrastingly, its replacement is a jock in catwalk couture.'

Kudos, therefore, to the Ferrari brand machine for realising its inherent elasticity. With the Luce, Ferrari has shown that it can accommodate so much more than just pin-up poster fantasies.

Back to the here and now and we’re very much in the land of automotive romance. The Testarossa has just landed in Tenerife and the island has not seen anything like it. The silvery press cars flash around the volcanic landscapes, rocky coasts, and semi-tropical plains looking to all the world like a fleet of UAPs.

It is undeniably dramatic, but also awkward and fussy. Created alongside the hard-top, it shares an identical silhouette, with a compact folding roof mechanism that stows flat on the rear deck. With the top down and rear wind-protector raised, there’s minimal buffeting but maximal noise.

As a hybrid, you have the choice as to whether or not that sonic signature is imposed on passers-by; it’s pretty easy to select EV mode and glide silently past unseeing crowds. With the cylinders firing, there’s definitely more pointing and waving; could EVs be damaging the egos of the super-rich with their stealthy ways? It’s not as if lack of power is an issue. In total, there’s 1050hp on tap, 830hp of which comes via the V8. Three electric motors put out 220hp between them, literally electrifying the performance and making silent running a possibility.

This is a flagship, so it makes sense that stats are impressive, power outputs are high and superlatives come thick and fast. The largest turbocharger ever used on a Ferrari. The most powerful Spider model Ferrari has ever made. The most powerful V8 Ferrari has ever made. There’s a lot of engine pornography here, more than enough to offset the angry men put out by the Luce’s lack of combustion (although the glass engine cover gives only a disappointingly distant glimpse of the mechanisms). If you have the space and conditions to try it out, then zero to 100km/h can be achieved in 2.25 seconds.

Other componentry is similarly impressive, from three new specially developed tyres (courtesy of partnerships with Pirelli, Bridgestone and Michelin) to the twin aerodynamic winglets at the rear, and Ferrari’s hugely sophisticated dynamics, suspension and power management systems. All of this is conveyed in an info-dump presentation film, narrated by a voice that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1970s school science programme. At the end of it all, we have absorbed a substantial amount of information and feel renewed respect for Ferrari’s unstinting attention to detail.

One person’s detail is another’s massive complexity, and to the uninitiated, the 849 Spider’s cockpit is quite daunting. Ferrari has returned to physical steering wheel buttons after a disastrous foray into capacitive switching and most everything to do with the car’s drive and suspension systems can be accessed from the wheel. With the best will in the world, it’s not an ergonomic walk in the park, although familiarity will eventually blunt some of the more esoteric angles. This is where the Luce definitely has the edge.

The Spider’s roof adds some weight – around 90kg – but doesn’t make an appreciable difference to the car’s performance. The roof has impressive stats of its own; it can drop or rise in just 14 seconds at speeds of up to 45km/h. Behind it, the two winglets evoke the visual drama of the 1970s-era Sport Prototype models like the 512M and 512S. Customers who feel the car is not sufficiently distinctive can opt for the Assetto Fiorano specification which amps up the aero, strips out some weight and punches up the cost.

Tenerife is an island of two halves, bisected by steep, steep gradients and thick bands of cloud that bracket its varied different elevations. Spectacular but busy coastal roads and the occasional highway contrast with quieter, twistier fare at higher altitudes, where cloud cover gives way to baking sun. It’s a place to enjoy the Testarossa Spider’s breadth of ability, from silent cruise through seaside towns to flooring it up the mountain roads.

There’s an intoxicating balance between the perfectly weighted steering and the responsiveness of the throttle, with the click of paddle shifters only cementing the harmonious relationship between driver and machine. On a public road, the limits are very distant, but the 849 has a surefootedness and verve that can transform all types of motion into some kind of pleasure.

Whatever Ferrari might think, and however hard its committed team of engineers works to hone and fettle the driving experience, a car like this is ultimately about the drama. In that respect, taking the roof off is the simplest way to amp up the brand’s key attributes, ie, the sound created by the V8 and the attention garnered.

As a result, Ferrari typically expects more customers to opt for a Spider, with identical looks, feel and performance but more options when it comes to enjoying the car. But let’s not forget the impracticalities, like the tiny luggage space, or the visual and aural aggression that isn’t necessarily what you want to convey 100 per cent of the time.

The 849 Testarossa Spider certainly scratches the itch for those beset by the cult of the brand, whether valued customer or mere civilian. For the vast majority of people, Ferrari’s sturm und drang is inevitably experienced as a vicarious pleasure, via an expat playboy noisily riding the lower gears as he races between pelican crossings in Knightsbridge, perhaps, or a lucky journalist rumbling through a remote mountain village.

For these fans, a Ferrari is considered to be a rare but thrilling part of the public infrastructure, a sonic and visual presence that gives pleasure without ownership. Trickle-down economics might be a phantom construct, but trickle-down joy is another thing altogether. Perhaps that’s the intangible Ferrari quality people feel might be missing from the Luce. The Testarossa has it in spades.

Ferrari 849 Testarossa Spider, from £442,467, Ferrari.com, @Ferrari

Beach cars are back in fashion and it’s not hard to see why. The stripped-back aesthetic of seaside-centric automobiles is the perfect intersection of nautical style and custom design. Castagna Milano’s custom Topolino Spiaggina, Fiat’s own Topolino Vilebrequin (recently updated for 2026), the closely related Citroën Ami Buggy, the revived electric Moke, the restomodded Fiat 500 Jolly Spiaggina Icon-e or even the Renault 4 JP4x4 Concept are all vying for the attention of smart seaside sets around the world.

Now there’s another addition to the pile. This is the Crayford Mini Mojito Mk2, a hand-built beach car available as both ICE and EV variants. The Mojito is a restomod, starting with a base spirit of genuine British Leyland Mini, seasoned with a variety of options and potentially endless customisation. In the UK, that originality has the added bonus of not requiring an MOT or road tax, as well as access to specialist classic car insurance.

The original Mini bodyshell is opened up by the removal of the doors and the addition of a sliding sunroof. Marine-grade weatherproof upholstery is added, along with sustainable teak flooring and a choice of four body colours – White Sand, Beach Yellow, or Surf Blue. We spoke to Kent Thirley, executive director of Crayford Automobiles – a company that has been modifying Minis since 1963 – about the design and spirit of the new Mk2.

Wallpaper*: What are the mechanical upgrades to the car made as part of the conversion?

Kent Thirley: There are no mechanical upgrades apart from retuning the Mini’s engine for low-end torque instead of top-end performance and installing Mini Cooper-spec disc brakes to ensure safe stopping capability in modern traffic conditions and an enhanced driving experience.

But, as the Mojito Mk2 is a hand-built car, clients have the option to either order a base car with upgrades already on it, or have upgrades retrofitted at the Crayford Automobiles factory.

W*: Is there any particular era or version of the original Mini that suits the conversion best?

KT: No. It depends entirely on the customer preference or what base cars we have in stock for immediate delivery at a specific time.

W*: Talk us through the various options available to buyers who want a really bespoke product

KT: There is no specific options list. As a low-volume custom coachbuilt car that’s delivered directly to the customer by the factory, virtually anything can be done – as long as the quality and safety of the base car are not compromised.

W*: Who do you think are the key buyers and target audience for this car?

KT: We expect our latest Mini Mojito to appeal to various buyers. This could include yacht owners, hotel groups, estate owners, or car collectors. However, as we are aiming to keep the entry price very attainable, this will likely open the possibility of ownership to many more people that want to own and drive something completely unique.

W*: Given the precedents from Fiat and Renault, were there any beach style Mini conversions back in the day?

KT: Not that we are aware of, other than a few ‘experimental’ cars made by Morris. But these prototypes were never sold to the public.

W*: What's the deal with Crayford these days? What else does the company do and is it still connected to the convertible specialists?

KT: The Mojito is the only Mini conversion currently being delivered by Crayford Automobiles. But there are other head-turning designs being worked on and we carry out ‘official’ restorations of original Crayford models – something that is helping to keep the proud Crayford name alive.

Crayford Mini Mojito Mk2, from £29,950, CrayfordAutomobiles.com, @CrayfordAutomobiles

Like many potential disruptive technologies, Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft were predicted, theorised, prototyped and over-hyped long before any practical solutions had even taken to the air. Emerging in parallel with concurrent disruptors like AI-driven autonomy, the eVTOL market is awash with potential players yet full-scale public services always seem to be a few years away.

Archer Aviation is one of the frontrunners in the race for this as-yet uncertain prize. Founded in 2018 by Brett Adock and Adam Goldstein, it is headquartered in San Jose, California, and its Midnight aircraft is currently undergoing flight tests on the route to imminent certification. Unveiled back in 2022, Midnight has 12 propellers, six to each wing.

The forward-facing props can tilt for vertical lift, whilst the rear ones are fixed to provide forward thrust. The design has the baked-in redundancy deemed essential for electric aircraft, with an expected operational range of 20 to 50 miles. Priced at $5m and built in a production plant in Atlanta, Georgia, Midnight can carry a pilot and four passengers and their luggage. The company also has an engineering hub in Bristol, UK.

Wallpaper* spoke to CEO Adam Goldstein and Julien Montousse, the company’s VP of design and innovation, about the Midnight and its projected use cases, routes and the expected debut date. One of Archer’s primary drivers has been design, not just in the corporate branding and presentation, but in the physical form of the aircraft itself. Montousse, a former senior director of design at Mazda North America, trained at France’s Strate, École de Design.

Wallpaper*: It’s clearly a very exciting time to be in aviation. What was the driving force behind Archer’s approach?

Adam Goldstein: Everything started with using multiple electric engines to fly a new type of aircraft. These are vertical take-off and landing aircraft. When you switch from combustion to these electric vehicles, you get advantages that you couldn’t get in the old world. It starts with safety. Helicopters, for example, have lots of single points of failure – instead, we have multiple levels of redundancy. You also get a lower noise profile and a better cost profile – there are both civil and defence applications for that.

W*: What’s Archer’s current timeline?

AG: On the civil side, we’re building the core aircraft and going through the certification process. eVTOL has resulted in a new category at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) called powered lift – it’s the first new category in 60 years. All that took a while to get going and we’re now in the testing phase. Our goal is to be flying aircraft as soon as we can. The FAA’s job is to pick a safe aircraft – their job is to tell us when we’re ready.

On the defence side, there is a different timeline. We have a partnership with a company called Anduril, which is building a new autonomous vertical-lift platform.

W*: Will the Midnight be autonomous?

AG: No, but the military and civil applications build on top of each other, so you need to gain all the experience, gain the hours, gain the credibility, gain the data, and then ultimately transfer that over. So whether it’s the framework on how to do it, whether it’s the actual hardware – the flight control computers, sensor suites, etc – or the software that you’re running. All that stuff gets proven out on the defence side and gives you enough ability to push over to the civil side, so they work really nicely together.

W*: Powered lift is a new category and that means all sorts of things that are new for the consumer, from safety to the way the technology is expressed and perceived. How do you translate that into industrial design that evokes confidence and clarity and explains everything it has to do?

AG: Electric engines scale down but remain very efficient. You no longer have to have one big rotor like a helicopter, instead you can have multiple sets of engines. The questions were how many engines should you have and where do you put them? You need enough redundancy so that a failure doesn’t crash the vehicle.

With two to four engines it’s very hard to stay balanced. Eight is safer, then ten, 12, etc. But if you have too many, it’s very hard to figure out where to put them, because when you’re flying, anything that’s sticking out just becomes draggy and hurts performance. You have this balance between performance and trying to make it look good.

We wanted a vehicle that created an emotional reaction, like a car. We want to bring the golden age of flying back – where people are excited to fly, they want to be in this vehicle, they want to touch the vehicle, take a picture of it. It’s a balance of performance and emotion.

Julien Montousse: The goal is to build an inspiring aircraft. Most modern airliners don’t invite connection – you might connect with the brand that operates them, but not the aircraft itself. We have four passengers and one pilot, and that intimacy requires some personal connection.

W*: Compared to the equivalent cabin size of a small passenger jet or other helicopter, what advantages does the platform and the technology give you?

JM: Weight is everything. We can’t allow any non-essential functions. The seats have to weigh just 20lb – they’re pared to the bone. And this creates this new type of design aesthetic that is much more athletic versus the opulence of a traditional private jet.

W*: How does this quest for lightness inform materials?

JM: We work with engineering to understand the load paths of the seats. By carving all the negative material away, we’re building a space frame-type structure. If you look at the seat for example, the seat only has like a quarter inch of cushion thickness. It’s extremely thin.

We’re also exploring circular design, taking some of the waste created by aviation and re-using it. For example, we collect carbon fibre offcuts and utilise [the material] as a kind of forged carbon to build parts of the cabin with. Bringing a circular design vision into a lightweight aircraft is something that no one has really done.

W*: Which elements are you most proud of being able to rethink them, taking those criteria into account?

JM: When you look at the Archer from far away, we wanted to build an identity. No plane has an identity today. We worked really hard to shape the lighting elements on the front, for example. A bird of prey was probably the most inspiring gesture that we embedded into the wing of the aircraft – it doesn’t look passive. We also wanted to show that the aircraft would fly beautifully just by looking at it.

W*: And in terms of the interior?

JM: The contouring of the seat makes you feel like you are connected with the aircraft, a kind of monocoque bucket seat that’s contoured to hold you securely. We’ve also designed a different kind of landing gear that allows for the aircraft to sit lower to the ground, which means that you can have that very fluid ingress and egress.

Other elements include a small display on the cabin, meaning that when you approach the aircraft, your name is displayed, your destination is displayed, and how much time you have until the door closes.

W*: What are the likely initial applications?

AG: You live in London, so you’ll know that Heathrow can be brutal to get to from the city. There is such stress associated with that, especially if there is traffic. I think that’s a really good route that we would like to start with. It’s our goal to target the high-end ride-share market… There are amazing routes all over the world; every city has two to three core routes that will always be busy seven days a week. Then there are also other missions like helping hospitals transport time-sensitive things like patients or organs.

W*: How does the operating cost compare to an equivalent-size helicopter?

AG: It’s substantially lower maintenance, with no piston or combustion engines. You don’t have to X-ray the gearbox to check for faults, for example. An electric engine is very simple. And because you fly much faster, you can do many more trips compared to something like an Uber.

Midnight has been designed around existing helicopter infrastructure, so we can fit within everything from the perspective of wingspan, weight and rotor downwash. As for charging, the goal would be to top off the battery every time you land.

W*: And what about timescale?

AG: We were selected as the exclusive air taxi provider for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. That’s still our goal for launch.

Archer.com, @FlyArcher

To the uninitiated, DS is an automotive outlier, selling a relatively low number of genuinely eccentric cars. Within the Stellantis portfolio DS sits towards the upper end of the market, below Maserati in the luxury and performance stakes but without the heritage and image. Like Maserati, it purports to offer a luxurious, individual experience but conveys a lot more eccentricity than it perhaps realises.

Wallpaper* recently travelled to Nice to experience the company’s newest model, the DS No.7. A replacement for the brand’s best-selling DS 7 Crossback, it joins the idiosyncratic flagship DS No.8. There’s also the elegant No.4 hatchback and the DS 3, the current iteration of the car that spawned the entire sub-brand back in 2009 when it debuted as the Citroën DS3.

Any actual connection to the Fifties ‘goddess’ is tenuous at best. With so many other brands looking to get the old band back together to roll out a show of their greatest hits, DS is to be congratulated on eschewing overt retro symbolism and actually setting out to do something different.

If you squint, you get a sense of the Citroën DS’s forward-focused massing – the car had a wider track at the front than at the back – in the way the No.7 appears to taper towards the rear. But ultimately, the ‘DS’ name is about evoking the past, not slavishly recreating it, whilst adding in a dose of contemporary French luxury.

The latter is expressed through an unconventional approach to interior elements, material choice and overall cabin ambience. It’s a mechanically crafted aesthetic that draws in part on French Art Deco style and the country’s luxury fashion brands. DS is a premium brand, rather than a luxury one, sitting a few notches above its Citroën siblings in the marketplace.

Accoutrements include a 14-speaker audio system by French firm Focal, pearl-stitched Nappa leather, electric rear view mirror, plush leather seats, laser-etched metalwork inside and angular forms outside. The aluminium dash and door trim bear Guilloché patterns, usually seen in high-end watchmaking, to create an additional visual texture.

Outside, vertical-horizontal LED running lights give the car a distinctive visual signature, matched with a sharply chamfered rear end. The production car is an evolution of the Aero Sport Lounge Concept created in 2020 (which would have been shown at the Geneva Motor Show had it not been cancelled by Covid).

At 4.66m long it has an extra 7cm over its predecessor, although the glazed roof and rear windows are both substantially bigger, making the interior much brighter. It’s not pretty, but that’s not really what DS is aiming for. The big Citroëns of old weren’t pretty cars either, but they did have class and presence, setting them apart from other more conventional offerings.

As the company reminds us, 22% of the European auto market is now taken up by premium sales, and it’s this pie that DS wants a part of. The old DS7 sold around 200,000 units in nine years, a not insignificant number, but small beer in comparison to a BMW X3, which sells rather more than that each year. Still, President Macron loved his.

The DS No.7 is a good deal better looking that the DS7, with a more chiselled profile and a much better interior. DS has cannily – or confusingly – pitched the car right in between the C and D segments in the SUV market so it can describe the car as ‘D-sized luxury at a C-sized price’.

The waters are muddied still further by the existence of no less than 11 variants, a testament to the innate flexibility of the platform but also something of a bet hedge by DS to cover everything from plug-in hybrids to FWD and AWD electric versions.

On the road, the latter trumps the PHEV every time, both in terms of power and refinement. The PHEV is not especially sporty, with an intrusive but uninspiring engine noise, but it does offer an impressive range of up to 1,040km (646 miles).

The Long Range BEV model doesn’t do badly either, with a WLTP rating of 740km (459 miles), or 480km at highway speeds (298 miles). Charging speed is limited to 160W, well down on the new standards. Only the BMW iX3 (805km) and Volvo EX60 (810km) promise to go further.

The high driving position, nicely weighted steering position and welcome poke of the BEV model make for an easy, unflustered drive, with suspension that’s adept at soaking up road imperfections (even if not’s the hydro-pneumatic ‘magic carpet’ ride of the original DS).

There is Gallic charm and class to be found here, resulting in a likeable, accomplished car that wears its individuality on its sleeve. We’re less keen on the boldly stated ‘DS Automobiles’ writ in chrome across the rear. It’s understandable – even manufacturers like Aston Martin and Porsche have reverted to spelling out their names to help hammer home brand recognition in newer markets. Ironically, these days strategy is almost inverted – cars wear prominent badges so that the unaware don’t mistake them for brand new and unfamiliar imported car.

The DS No.7 is an elegant outlier, cannily assembled to convey a quirky yet opulent richness and even more carefully priced to keep these qualities aligned with the competition.

For too long, the DS brand was writing stylistic cheques it couldn’t cash, promising an alternative take on mass-market luxury without managing to follow through on the aesthetics. These cars will always be a bold choice, but with the No.7, DS style finally matches the hype.

DS No.7 starts at £38,920 for the Hybrid Pallas model, rising to £66,690 for the E-Tense AWD Long Range La Première edition, DSAutomobiles.co.uk, @DSAutomobiles

Last summer, Peugeot joined the retro wave of 1980s-inspired auto design with the announcement of the forthcoming E-208 GTi. The all-electric performance hatchback is nearly here, albeit with a rather more muted roar than the original 205 GTi, the car that kickstarted the enthusiast community’s obsession with compact performance back in 1984.

Peugeot has been unashamed about the influence of the old upon the new, describing the original car as a ‘sporty yet subtle design… that set the template for every GTi model that followed’. Matthias Hossann, the company’s design director, describes how this the debt to motoring pleasure came about.

‘Designing E-208 GTi was really a question of balance,’ Hossann says, ‘Our philosophy was that we didn’t want to go too far in one particular direction, so it’s a balance between performance and elegance. We didn’t want the exterior design to be too overstated or to show off too much. If you love cars, you will look at E-208 GTi and immediately see that it’s a GTi because of its stance. If you’re not an expert, you will still see a beautiful 208.’

Unlike other contemporary retro efforts – the Mini, Fiat 500 and Renault’s 4 and 5 spring to mind – Peugeot’s approach to homage is rather more muted. Like the original, the E-208 GTi is wider and lower than the regular model it is based upon. The subtly flared wheel arches are finished with a pinstripe red-line graphic, just like the original, while there’s a new front spoiler and gloss black aerodynamic diffuser at the rear.

‘We have more than 200 years of history; heritage is our backbone and we are super respectful of that,’ admits Hossann. ‘But Peugeot also looks to the future. The reason we’re still here after 200 years of history is that we’re dedicated to producing carefully designed products for the new generation of customers.’

Back in 2018, the company showed the e-Legend concept, inspired by another classic Peugeot – the 504 Coupe – as another example of how the past is carried through to the present.

‘With both cars, we took heritage but pushed it into the future,’ the designer says. ‘It's always interesting looking at past colours and shapes, then we tweak it and move it into the future to make it a proper Peugeot. Once again, it’s a question of balance. With E-208 GTi, there was no question of doing a purely retro design. But we did want to keep our heritage. We're really proud of that, but we wanted to twist it with innovation and push it into the future.’

The large 18-inch wheels are another nod to the original 205 GTi, especially the Speedlines fitted to the 1.9-litre model. ‘The centre curve of the wheel is like the 1.6 and the exterior shape is more like the 1.9,’ says Hossann. ‘It’ll remind people who know all about 205 GTi of that car and people who don’t know about that will still say it’s a good rim.’

The new E-208 GTi will be available seven colours, a few of which are directly taken from the original 205 era. They include Okénite White, Elixir Red, Miramar Blue, Nera Black, Cumulus Grey, Selenium Grey and Agueda Yellow. Inside, red is very much the dominant colour as these images attest. Peugeot’s signature compact steering wheel uses leather and Alcantara and the 208 GTi is generously splashed around.

‘On the seats, we have a finish like we used to have in the 205 GTi with two materials: Alcantara and special red textiles, with a central red line that extends across the seat and backrest,’ says Hossann. The devil is very much in the details; just like in the original, flashes of red, elevated materials and uprated bodywork have come together to signify a heritage of performance.

‘I think E-208 GTi is a good example of using the right proportion of our heritage but taking it into in the future,’ Hossan concludes. ‘This is the overall mindset that we have in the design studio when we’re working on the next generation of Peugeot models.’

Peugeot E-208 GTi, more information at Peugeot.co.uk, @Peugeot

Think of this new book from Gestalten as more of a travel monograph than an homage to a famous brand, even if it’s the qualities and cult following of the latter that facilitated these gorgeous spreads of global imagery. Land is a book dedicated to the life-altering perspective offered up by Land Rover Defender ownership.

Subtitled From Workhorse to Cultural Object: The Land Rover as Design Icon, the book is divided into three sections, with the first focusing on those specialist workshops around the world that have decided to make the Defender their focus. As well as full restorations and EV conversions of this classic British workhorse, there are plenty of firms out there that will uprate and upgrade a Land Rover to deal with anything. We’ve covered a fair few on these pages, but Land will introduce you to many more.

It’s followed by a digression into Land Rover’s role as a contemporary cultural object, manipulated and modified by designers and artists. Finally, there’s the Adventure section, a slice of contemporary travel porn that fuses a host of contemporary obsessions, from van life to drone photography, to wellness, off-grid living, personal growth and a general sense of an aesthetically driven life.

Land – From Workhorse to Cultural Object: The Land Rover as Design Icon, €60 / £60, gestalten.com, @gestalten

Subtlety, thy name is not Lamborghini. The Italian master of automotive self-expression has unveiled the Urus SE Performante, the new flagship variant of its high-performance SUV. It supersedes the Urus SE, which in turn superseded the Urus S, which trumped the plain old vanilla Urus, originally released in 2017 and getting steadily wilder and more unhinged with each subsequent incarnation.

That’s not to say that Urus Mk1 was in any way subtle. In the 2010s, Lamborghini realised that it was lagging behind its peers in the race to SUV-ify the essence of its brand. The 2002 Porsche Cayenne, countless AMG, M-spec and S models from Mercedes, BMW and Audi respectively, and the 2015 Bentley Bentayga had been huge sales successes for their respective companies; the 2020 Aston Martin DBX and 2023 Ferrari Purosangue followed inevitably in their wake.

It’s also not without significance that Lamborghini has been part of the VW Group since 1998, giving it access to engineering and manufacturing know-how from a number of other brands. Cleverly, the Urus platform was shared with the original Bentayga, as well as the Audi Q8, Volkswagen Touareg and Cayenne.

The technology has since forked in various different directions, with an all-electric Cayenne making use of the Premium Platform Electric also used in the Audi Q6 e-tron. Like the Q8, Touareg and Bentayga, the Urus SE Performante has a hybrid system, with the ability to drive in pure electric mode. Yet somehow, Lamborghini has managed to make the Urus feel distinct and different, an embodiment of the brand's rebellious, outlier character.

These platform shenanigans are largely invisible to the consumer, such are the levels of customisation and tweaking between each brand, and, of course, the dramatically different design languages used inside and out. In this respect, the Urus takes the cake as the most authentic representation of its brand ethos, all slashes, creases, spoilers, wings and splitters – there’s so much going on that it’s surprising to find an actual family car underneath it all.

With the model getting a little long in the tooth, the SE Performante is a final flourish, dialling the design input up way past 11 in order to tap the howling extroverts that make up the Urus customer base. Described by Lamborghini as the ‘most sportive, the most performant Urus we have ever created’, the SE Performante gave the team at Centro Stile Lamborghini an aesthetic workout, overseen by design director Mitja Borkert.

Lamborghini’s dedicated studio was set up 21 years ago by Walter de Silva, one of the masterplanners of VW’s management of its spread of distinct, individual brands. Acknowledging that design – preferably outlandish – is a key reason why people buy into the Lamborghini brand, Borkert says simply, ‘We are not form follows function – we are form follows adrenaline. We give adrenaline a shape.'

The car makes its media debut accompanied by an AC/DC soundtrack, with the camera rolling fetishistically across the uprated details – a new 'power dome' bonnet, the deeper shark-nosed grille that bleeds into the carbon front splitter, an even wider front and rear, and new 23-inch wheels, topped off by a carbon fibre roof that swoops down to a prominent rear wing.

Inside, the Urus follows the Lamborghini playbook, with moody black Alcantara and red stitching, aviation-inspired control surfaces and the ambience of fighter jet. Or starship. It’s a fantasy environment come to life, something that comes across in the intense CGI imagery accompanying the launch, some of which looks as if it has been lifted straight from a games console.

Interior trim is Nero Cosmos, 'the darkest, blackest black microfibre that we offer', further adding to the Urus’ litany of Spinal Tap-style excesses. Launch colours include Giallo Crius yellow, Bianco Monocerus white, and Verde Hydra Matt green.

Borkert lists out the brand signifiers – 'For me, it's important that a Lamborghini has a pointed front, like a shark' – and the most dramatic components, like the widest rear diffuser ever offered on the Urus, as well as the plethora of carbon fibre – even the steering wheel. That contributes to a modest but handy weight saving of around 32kg.

There’s also a nod to the Lamborghini family history – its wilder side, at least. 'There’s a little bit of Countach influence in the taillights and the hexagon elements,’ Borkert explains, while the ultra-light Huracán STO influenced the red elements in the seats and horizontal lines on the bolsters.

'I like always to talk about the mission of a project,’ Borkert explains. ‘When we start a new Lamborghini, we define the mission with the interior, exterior and UX team. I told them this was the sportiest version, like in the racecars of the 1970s with the black front bonnet, less reflection – it looks cool – that's why the bonnet looks that way. It's the same for the interior – it is more […] like a deep, driver-orientated cabin where you take away all distraction.’

Appropriately enough, the Urus SE Performante is being billed as the fastest Super SUV in the world, with 0-100 km/h (62mph) taking just 3.3 seconds, and 200 km/h coming up in 10.8 seconds. The top speed is 312 km/h (193mph). All important figures for the typical Lamborghini customer.

Despite all this visual, aural and mechanical drama, the SE Performante will have to be as simple to use day to day as any other Urus – it is, after all, a family car, despite its mighty V8 and track-focused Corsa driving mode. Whether a contemporary SUV is focused on off- or on-road performance, they’re usually driven as symbols of potential, not practicality. The new SE Performante is no different.

Lamborghini Urus SE Performante, price tbc, Lamborghini.com, @Lamborghini

The Range Rover Long Wheelbase Autobiography is one of the current summits of JLR’s project portfolio, a model range that looks set to expand ever upwards into the luxury ether in the coming years. For inspiration, the company would do well to look at this one-off version of the LWB model, created by automotive modification specialists Urban Automotive and Visionnaire, the Italian ‘meta-luxury’ interiors brand.

The occasion is the launch of Visionnaire London at 171–175 Brompton Road, five storeys of immaculately curated interiors and accessories. The car itself, which made its debut at the Knightsbridge store, is a fully customised one-of-one edition, inspired in part by the Adele armchair by Marco Piva, the architect and designer who is one of Visionnaire’s regular collaborators.

That gives the interior a certain uplift from the usual smoky matte black / nightclub neon aesthetic, with elements like embroidered leather, bronze details and bespoke quilting. It’s not quite the gentleman’s club of old, more like the smartly crafted but slightly Boho style of Soho Farmhouse. Cream and green Alcantara upholstery reference the Italian craftsmanship of the Adele armchair in form and material.

The exterior is slightly shoutier. Urban Automotive favours the SUV and SUV clients aren’t shrinking violets, especially if they’re investing in styling elements that make their already unavoidable cars even more distinctive and unique.

The Range Rover has been given carbon fibre ‘Widetrack’ bodywork with a two-tone finish. Not only does this give the car a lower, more aggressive stance, but it includes a bonnet and front and rear bumpers in carbon fibre.

The entire project was overseen by Aro Omar of Arowonen, a multidisciplinary designer who has helped translated the Visionnaire aesthetic into the automotive realm. The dustbin lid-sized wheels rather let the side down, as well as give the Range Rover’s off-road abilities a bit of a downgrade, but they certainly align with the tastes and desires of many of the brand’s customers.

According to Matthew Welch, Managing Director of Urban Automotive, ‘the future of luxury is no longer defined by status or excess, but by individuality, craftsmanship and the pursuit of the truly exceptional. Our collaboration with Visionnaire was a natural meeting of minds, bringing together two brands that share an unwavering commitment to bespoke excellence and timeless design.’

Urban Automotive, Urban-Automotive.com, @UrbanAutomotive
Visionnaire London, 171–175 Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, Visionnaire-home.com, @VisionnaireHomePhilosophy

Beachman Bikes has unveiled the Aviator, a new line of three distinct electric motorbikes inspired by the ‘café racer’ sub-genre of racing machines developed back in the 1950s and 1960s from modified production bikes.

The electric era has given fresh impetus to the motorcycle market, encouraging those who would never normally consider a motorbike over, say, a scooter, to dip their toes into the world of performance two-wheelers. Beachman Bikes, based in Toronto, is rolling out the new Aviator in three distinct configurations in order to accommodate the varied legal status of e-motorbikes and bikes around the world.

First up is the Aviator Class 2 E-Bike, with a 55-mile range 2.8kWh battery or an 80-mile range 4.3kWh variant. Limited to 20mph top speed on the road or 35mph off-road, the E-Bike variant is offered in a variety of colour combinations, has space and pace to accommodate a passenger, as well as integral lockable storage. It’s pitched at first-time riders who want a step up from a conventional e-bike.

It’s joined by a Light Motorcycle version, with increased power, performance and capacity and therefore the requirement for insurance, registration and licence plates in the North American market, as well as a valid motorbike licence. Top speed is 45mph, with the same two battery options.

These two models will be followed soon by a flagship performance version of the Aviator, equivalent to a 125cc motorcycle. Range will top out at 125 miles and the available performance will easily match highway speeds.

According to Ben Taylor, who co-founded Beachman back in 2016 with Steve Payne, ‘Our new Aviator represents our next chapter – it reflects everything that we have learned from building some of the best two-wheel electric bikes in the world.'

The new range is based around an all-new frame, with an upright riding position, beautiful detailing and carefully deployed colour palettes. The craftsmanship is self-evident, from the leather saddle to the minimal controls and dials. Optional customisation is offered through a range of standard retro colours that can be applied to the ‘tank’ storage area, the leather bench seat, handlebars, grips, and saddlebags.

‘One of the biggest benefits of the new frame design is the built-in storage,’ says Taylor. ‘On a traditional gas motorcycle, that space is occupied by the fuel tank. With the Aviator, we were able to turn it into a lockable two-gallon storage compartment that's perfect for gloves, snacks, groceries, or whatever you need for the ride. It's one of those practical features that make everyday riding a lot more enjoyable without needing saddlebags or a backpack.’

Integral theft-protection systems bring added peace of mind and there’s a welcome absence of screens or apps to keep the riding experience pure and simple.

‘Our goal has always been to build beautiful machines that inspire people to get outside, explore their surroundings, and enjoy their ride,’ says Taylor. ‘The Aviator embodies that philosophy by combining thoughtful craftsmanship with powerful modern electric technology that feels approachable for new riders and rewarding for experienced ones.’

Beachman Aviator E-Bike, from US$5,499, Aviator Light Motorcycle from US$5,999, BeachmanBikes.com, @Beachman

Small is finally beautiful again. Fiat has its new small micromobility strategy, while Renault is rapidly downsizing and getting rave reviews in the process. Then there are tiny machines like the Microlino, the Citroën Ami and even the amiable Amble One are upending the contemporary idea of what small scale transportation looks like.

If there’s one voice that’s currently missing in action from this transition, it’s Smart. The progenitors of the tiny two-seat city car, thanks to the 1998 Smart City-Coupé, the company will be taking the wraps off its long-awaited Smart #02 at this year’s Paris Motor Show in October.

We travelled to Rome to get a sneak preview, courtesy of the Smart Concept #02, an elaborate, high-specification teaser for the production model.

Why Rome? It turns out that the city is something of a hotspot for Smart ownership over the years, something to do with the narrow, twisting streets, general scarcity of parking spaces and the Roman desire to always be somewhere as quickly as possible.

The short trip from the airport certainly confirmed the company’s claims – we’ve never seen so many Smarts in the wild within such a small slice of city, bumper to bumper, bumper to curb, whistling through traffic, tucked into tiny spots. Apparently, there are still several thousand in daily use across the city.

Given that the modern iteration of Smart is just as much a part of Chinese manufacturer Geely as it is Mercedes-Benz (Smart was originally purely a Benz off-shoot), the #02 must navigate urban culture and expectations in two very different parts of the world.

China is a very screen-focused market, where cars are a liminal space between home and work, providing connectivity and separation from the environment you are travelling through. In European cities, the most successful small cars have amplified the sense of being in the city, rather than being insulated from it.

The Rome event also marked the debut of the concept interior, as well as technical details of the new ECA platform that sits beneath this most diminutive of electric machines. Inside, innovations that should translate into production include the wave-shaped dashboard, a bench seat and oodles of oddment storage around the cabin.

Elements that probably won’t survive to the showrooms include the exterior straps with their gold fasteners and the exaggerated, Smart logo-strewn grille. This gives the little car the feel of an upscale designer accessory, a trinket for the town much like a fancy bag.

As other manufacturers are discovering, the one-size-fits-all global automobile is something of a phantom, with more and more market-specific models further bisecting the epic amount of choice available to the consumer.

Once upon a time, differences were marked in trim levels and colour choices; these days, it’s different strokes for different folks as Europe stays wedded to its SUVs, China prefers MPVs and the US, well, the US is still deep in the mythos of the pick-up truck.

With that in mind, you can consider the Concept #02 to be pretty China-centric in its styling, colour and trim. The original Smart Car was only available as a special import into the country but still garnered a cult following (although not quite as much as Italy, where c600k were sold).

The new model is expected to do even better, although it’s the European market that embraced Smart more than any other – a German reinterpretation of Italian sensibilities, filtered through Chinese finance and ambition.

The ECA platform promises much, with agility, safety and range prioritised. Although on the one hand, Smart’s team asks ‘why should cities redesign themselves around the car, when cars can re-shape themselves for the city,’ other Geely teams – not to mention Mercedes – are perfectly content to ramp up the scale and power of passenger cars.

But we’re here to revel in the smartness of Smart, and all the clever details that made the original so different. The #02 will have a similarly tight turning circle – 6.95m. It’ll pack a 35kWh battery, twice the power of the rather woeful first generation Smart Fortwo electric drive (which couldn’t even manage 70 miles). ‘It’s not designed to be a hero of long-distance travel,’ the Smart team admits, but a low three-figure range is enough for even the most colossal Chinese conurbation.

Smart Europe CEO Wolfgang Ufer doubles down on the European focus. 'European cities have always been the natural home of the Smart two-seater. Long before mobility became a challenge in urban areas worldwide, smart had already created solutions around the realities of city life… Urban mobility does not need to be more complicated. It needs to be more intelligent, more desirable and better aligned with how people actually live and move through cities.'

Look beyond the chunky, Lego-style influence, the accretions and accessories that resemble automotive charm bracelets, and that soft luxe white-and-gold colour scheme and sci-fi wheels and tyres, and you'll see a pretty accurate representation of the finished Smart #02. The first deliveries aren't expected until some time next year, when Smart will once again be fighting fit in the most challenging automotive arena of all.

Smart #02, available 2027, more information at UK.Smart.com, @Smart_Worldwide

Few companies have a more rightful claim to being part of 21st century micromobility than Fiat. The Italian manufacturer effectively defined the small family car with the original Cinquecento, a design that continues to resonate through that car’s successful descendants.

With the subsequent release of the Topolino quadricycle in 2023, Fiat doubled down on the value of small scale, positioning the micro two-seater as a chic urban or beach accessory, complete with partnerships with the likes of Vilebrequin and yours truly at this year’s Salone del Mobile.

The company went further in Milan with an exhibition, Ciao Futuro!, which explored the past, present and future of the small car in the city. Now the company has reaffirmed its micromobility credentials with new products and partnerships.

At an event in Vatican City, Fiat revealed the Multiplina Concept, a four-seater quadricycle that harks back to the original Fiat 600 Multipla introduced in 1956.

This tiny machine actually sat six people, using the same platform as the 600 saloon. Fiat describes the Multiplina as ‘the missing link between a Topolino and a car,’ and the available rendering shows a compact monobox design that takes its cue from the original.

Back in 1956, there was nothing like the original 600 Multipla. The model, which was in production until 1967, was also available as a taxicab. Packaging was everything – even the spare wheel was carried inside the cabin.

The little 633cc engine put out just over 21hp, with a top speed of under 60mph. Foot to the floor, the 600 Multipla would reach 50mph in about 43 seconds.

Another old-school archetype enjoying a revival is the three-wheeled truck. Last year, Fiat Professional unveiled the Tris, an ultra-compact commercial vehicle that’s broadly similar to the iconic Piaggio Ape three-wheeler. Variants of the Ape have been in production since 1948, familiar as everything from micro-scale coffee trucks to farm transport in rural Italy.

Fiat and its partners have been here before in recent years, with the Fiat 500 Jolly Spiaggina Icon-e and Castagna Milano’s Fiat Topolino Spiaggina, all referencing the wicker seats and canvas-topped originals created for Italy’s smart set back in the 60s.

The Tris wants in on the action. Just 3.17m long, with handlebar steering and an open cabin, the electric truck has a 56-mile range. In keeping with the spirit of multifunctional micromobility, Fiat also showed a new Tris variant alongside the Multiplina Concept.

Decked out in blue- and white-striped canvas, the Tris Dolcevita is perfect for the Italian Riviera, a hotel transit and beach boulevard machine designed in the spirit of the original Spiaggina, or beach cars.

Topolino sales are on the up, and the tiny bodywork is ripe for reinterpretation and brand partnerships, as shown in the current line-up, which now includes the open sided Dolcevita, the striped Topolino Sport and a new limited-edition collaboration with the swimwear brand, the Topolino Vilebrequin Collector’s Edition.

‘Our mission has always been the same: to make mobility simpler, smarter and more accessible,’ says Fiat’s CEO Olivier François, ‘Today, with Topolino, Tris, and our vision for the future – Multiplina - we are building on our legacy and creating a complete ecosystem for the cities of tomorrow: joyful, ingenious, sustainable, and unmistakably Fiat.’

Fiat.co.uk, "

Sadly, you won’t be able to buy the concept car shown here. This white and red monster of an EV rally machine is strictly for display; it heralds the announcement of a new capsule collection uniting French fashion brand Lacoste with Alpine, once the sporting side of Renault and now a standalone brand (which already has a partnership with Gucci in the bag).

The result is ‘Beware of the Crocodile - Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye’, a cartoonish blend of iconography that pushes the respective boundaries of each brand into edgier, more eye-catching heritage. The collaboration is also marked with a short film, The Test, featuring Lacoste ambassadors, actor Pierre Niney and Pierre Gasly, BWT Alpine Formula One Team driver.

The basis for the concept is the A290 Rallye, the performance-focused variant of the Alpine A290, itself a clear derivative of the Renault 5. The Rallye model is aimed at customers who want to get into electric motorsport.

Happily for the partnership, Alpine’s historic racing heritage dovetails perfectly with Lacoste’s status as the preeminent expression of sporting style and luxury. Founded by the French tennis player René Lacoste in 1933, a ferocious player nicknamed ‘the Crocodile’, the company has remained at the intersection of high fashion, sportswear and design.

The Lacoste x Alpine collaboration ably conveys this cross-pollination with just the right amount of strength, style and playful fury. The vehicle itself is straight out of the rally paddock, with a widened track, hefty spoilers and exposed carbon-fibre elements. Finished in bespoke white paint with hints of blue (redolent of Alpine landscapes, apparently), it has a purposeful, minimal appearance.

Inside, it’s more of a fashion-forward environment. Red envelopes everything, ‘as if the driver were literally stepping into the crocodile's mouth’, according to the two companies. As Lacoste proudly points out, there are no fewer than 290 crocodiles incorporated into the design, from semi-submerged creatures on the parcel shelf to a scattering of logos across the dash, a veritable bask of toothy menace.

Seat and door panels are finished in Lacoste's emblematic petit piqué fabric, with embroidery by Potencier, the workshop responsible for the embroidered crocodile logo that graces Lacoste polo shirts. 3D printing is also deployed throughout the interior, both for weight-saving, but also to express branding elements wherever possible.

All this design synergy has also resulted in a capsule collection. Comprising of polo shirts, T-shirts, accessories and co-branded objects, the Lacoste x Alpine Collection illustrates two French brands eager to join hands to promote their core values.

As Lacoste CEO Eric Vallat, notes, ‘by bringing together our heritage, expertise and creative standards, Lacoste and Alpine have imagined a project that celebrates French ingenuity through a shared vision of performance and elegance’.

Alpine-Cars.co.uk, @AlpineCars, Lacoste.com, @Lacoste

The BMW X5 has a lot to answer for. Usually cited as the first true SUV of the modern era of behemoth family cars, the first X5 was designed in BMW’s Californian studios and swiftly became the front-runner in a crowded field of elevated and oversized passenger cars that still dominate the global automotive landscape.

Times they are a changing, however, and whilst there’s still no shortage of fire-breathing, fossil-fuel burning SUVs out there, the form factor has proved especially attractive to electrification. There’s plenty of space for a sizeable battery, for a start, along with the retention of the sense of safety and status that an SUV conveys. In a self-proclaimed lifestyle vehicle, the switch from ICE to EV is relatively downside free.

The latest X5 is the model’s fifth generation. It continues BMW’s current push towards a new, highly efficient form of electrification, following on from the i3 and iX3. It’s also the first X5 represented in the Neue Klasse design language.

Interestingly, the X5 is being billed as the ‘first BMW model engineered to support five drive systems’, namely BEV, PHEV, diesel, ICE and Hydrogen. Barely ten years ago, the trends was towards visual diversification between powertrains. X5 shows how far the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.

The iX5 is the most interesting machine here, the first pure EV X5. In 60 xDrive configuration, it has a WLTP range of up to 525 miles, along with ultrafast 460 kW DC charging. All models share the monolithic Neue Klasse exterior design language, with the new era’s compact kidney grille.

Light signatures are also very distinctive, with what BMW is calling the ‘double-X’ daytime running lights, while other new elements include the ‘Winglet’ door handles and the ability to have all four doors power operated.

The simplified and more architectural Neue Klasse forms can only go so far towards minimising the X5’s considerable size. Unlike iX3 and i3, the larger X5 starts out more proportionally challenged, with a taller front and rear elevation and more space above the wheel arches. Specifying the largest available 23” wheels goes some way to normalising the looks, but overall the car’s scale is hard to disguise.

All that space is put to good use inside. The X5 gets the new generation interior, complete with Panoramic iDrive – a ribbon of information beneath the windscreen – and the choice of an optional Passenger Screen. The main screen isn’t exactly small, continuing the asymmetric design approach seen in the other Neue Klasse cars, and the graphics and responsiveness are top tier.

The powertrain agnostic will have plenty to choose from, although the straight up petrol version will only be available in certain markets. The bold can opt for the BMW iX5 Hydrogen, the company’s first ever hydrogen-powered production vehicle.

Performance options are available in the form of the plug-in hybrid X5 50e xDrive and X5 M60e xDrive, both of which feature 3.0-litre six-cylinder petrol engines paired with an electric motor. The flagship BMW X5 M60e xDrive offers a total power output of 612 hp, with a 0-62 mph sprint time of 4.5 seconds.

Standard features on top of the range models include a panoramic sunroof and sports seats, while the BMW Individual programme will take customisation as far as your wallet allows. There are also oodles of unique M Sport styling additions for the BMW X5 M60e xDrive model, including M Yellow double-X headlights, spoilers, different illumination for the grille and quad exhaust pipes.

Driver assistance systems are also upgraded, with the optional Motorway Assistant supporting hands-free Level 2 driving with automated lane changes, provided you glance deliberately at the relevant wing mirror for confirmation.

All new X5s get Driving Assistant Plus as standard, with adaptive cruise control and ‘AI-supported’ parking space detection and manoeuvring. The Parking Assistant Professional package brings remote-control parking functionality via your smartphone.

We’ll be driving the new X5 variants in due course.

BMW X5 and iX5, UK market launch in Spring 2027, more information at BMW.co.uk

In early July 2026, after circa 30,000 units built, the last petrol-powered Alpine A110 is set to sashay off its Dieppe production line. Debuted in 2017 at the Geneva Motor Show, the rear mid-engine, rear-wheel drive, lightweight and low-slung two-seater was an instant hit with critics, including this one. As I commented back then: ‘A delight in all departments. Design, performance, handling and overall feel-good factor are sky-high in this wonderfully pared-back but still high-quality sportscar.’

The car was also significant for resurrecting the long dormant Alpine brand – which traces its roots back to the early 1950s and a French garage owner in Dieppe called Jean Rédélé, who tinkered with Renaults to make them racier. With some of his greatest rally successes taking place in the French Alps, when Rédélé created his own brand in 1955, he named it ‘Alpine’ in recognition.

The A110 nameplate has serious history too. First produced as a similar two-seater sports car from 1963-1977, the original version has a wonderfully curvaceous body embedded with four round and distinctively arranged headlights created by the Italian car design master Giovanni Michelotti.

Owned by Renault since 1973 and merged with Renault Sport in 1976 with some motorsport success in Le Mans and elsewhere, the Alpine brand was mothballed in 1995 but slowly brought back to life via various concept cars in the early 2010s.

The modern A110 references the original’s form language and front face too, but in a suitably 21st-century way via Anthony Villain, Alpine’s current design director. Not a great deal has changed since the 249hp A110 launched nine years ago for just over £50,000, aside from an infotainment system upgrade and the addition of Apple CarPlay compatibility.

Some faster (and more expensive) editions were created – including the £75,840 300hp A110 GTS model driven to Le Mans for this article – but the basic formula remains the same. Keep the weight down – the basic 2018 A110 was just 1103kg, and the GTS is still only between 1119-1140kg depending on options (in a world where many cars regularly exceed two tonnes). Make it low, compact and agile – the A110 is 1252mm high and 4181mm long – and let a modest but fun 1.8-litre petrol unit do the rest.

As a test of that formula, taking the annual pilgrimage from the UK to the 24 Hours of Le Mans race seemed like a fine idea. It is a journey that has been undertaken for as long as the race has existed, starting back in 1923, due to the involvement of British racing teams such as Bentley and more.

London to Le Mans in an Alpine A110

Kicking off the 700-odd mile round trip from south London, it’s optimal to keep the A110 on regular roads without speed bumps – its sporty suspension will let you know about some asphalt imperfections – but where they cannot be avoided, it’s far from a deal-breaker, and not ‘crashy’ like some German rivals. The A110’s seats, although bucket-style racers, also have sufficient padding to keep its occupants in fine fettle for such a long drive.

But the proper fun starts when the roads clear, especially once through the Channel Tunnel and into France. The 300hp 1.8-litre petrol engine makes a cracking sound when clicking through the automatic gearbox via tall aluminium paddle-shifters, and 0-62mph in 4.2 seconds is easy. Press the orangey-red Sport button attached to the south-east edge of the steering-wheel hub and everything tightens up and becomes louder, which lots of the (mainly young and male) fans lining the route on the way to Le Mans liked a lot.

As soon as the A110 GTS popped out of the Le Shuttle car train in Calais, the unofficial Le Mans paparazzi were quick to photograph the little French motor alongside far more expensive and bigger-engined McLarens and Ferraris. This crowd response was repeated time and again along the route down to Le Mans, from kids at the side of the motorway or on top of bridges spanning it – videoing, photographing and urging you to just rev the perky engine further.

It should be noted that along the same route there were also French police pointing a different type of camera at the exotic automotive convoy, hoping to catch those straying over various variable speed limits. Which kept the mind focused on driving, at least.

Within those emotional bookends, the A110 GTS handles with an easy and controllable charm through twisty roads, and feels sublime accelerating up to top-end French motorway speeds and its 6300rpm max power.

It’s not a perfect car, though. Luggage space is limited to a little bit of storage room behind the seats, for a slim laptop case, and a tiny rear boot that will only house a soft weekender bag after a gentle downward shove. However, due to the A110’s rear mid-engined layout, there is also a shallower and wider luggage space at the front that might take a small aircraft carry-on bag or two.

Partly due to its keep-things-simple focus, the outgoing A110 only offers a small hole between the front seats behind your elbow to store a drink – and it’s not really cupholder-shaped – and the old-school USB slots alongside a phone jack underneath the floating centre console make charging modern mobile phones tricky. You’ll need a USB-C converter or a power bank for longer journeys.

Still, the A110 is a fine example of a small petrol sports car that does just what it should: turn heads, rev sweetly, propel you forward with confidence and aplomb and handle brilliantly – while putting a big smile on your face (and that of most people who see it). With only 40 or so left in UK dealers at the time of writing, plus a few more around the world, now could be a great time to invest.

It’s not the last A110, though. The next one, due in 2027, will be an all-electric two-seater coupé followed by a 2+2-seat version. With Villain involved in its design and Alpine’s engineers promising a still-low (if slightly higher) kerb weight, we’re hopefully confident the racing spirit of this car will not be lost.

Alpine has motorsport provenance in spades, both historically and now. Its A424 is competing in its final season of the World Endurance Championship – within which the 24 hours of Le Mans race is the most famous round – and its drivers performed decently in the mid-June race, finishing sixth and tenth in the Hypercar category.

Alpine is still involved in Formula 1 too, where it is currently underperforming but future-focusing its racing efforts, due to F1’s greater standing as the pinnacle of motorsport and the related larger (social) media attention. In the last few weeks Alpine announced that, from the 2027 season, its cars will race under a new name – ‘Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team’.

This headline sponsorship would suggest the world-famous Italian luxury fashion house finds Alpine as credible as those Le Mans fans lining the French auto routes. And the vehicle should look spectacular in Gucci’s iconic colours.

In an automotive world where so many historic brands have lost their way, Alpine seems like a great example of a marque with a compelling story past, present and future – and its management is spending time and resources to tell it convincingly.

Literally the last public interaction I had, while filling up the A110 at a random London petrol station before its collection by Alpine, was with a very regular elderly gentleman pulling in to pump up his car’s tyres and saying, unprompted, ‘What a beautiful car.’ He’s right. It is, in every sense.

Alpine-Cars.co.uk, @AlpineCars

The Honda Super-N is a mish-mash of design influences. Perhaps someone at Honda thought it would be amusing to make an electric car, shaped and styled like a retro games console and call it the ‘Super-N’. How they haven’t had ‘cease and desists’ from Nintendo’s famously litigious legal team, I don’t know, but I’m here for it.

While some brands – *cough* Renault – have been leaning into more literal reimagining and namesake recreations of ‘80s icons, Honda has chosen to take some small inspiration from its 1983 City Turbo II and make something completely new-tendo instead.

Based on the company’s beloved Kei car platform, the Super-N draws on Honda’s extensive experience in this segment but pushes beyond strict Kei car dimensions. Seeking better handling performance and more aesthetic creativity, large project leader at Honda R&D, Hidetomo Horita-san says, ‘With Kei cars, automatically, the design becomes boxy and not very beautiful.

‘In order to appeal to a European market, not that the car was designed for Europe, but as Europe is one of the leading regions when it comes to design, we were happy to go beyond the Kei car boundaries because that gave us a lot of possibilities and a degree of freedom in terms of the design.’

A wider track and longer body balance the practicality and sporty dynamics the team was looking for. Its Kei car roots are a refreshing reminder that small cars can be just as practical, if not more, than modern SUVs – forget the sloping roofs, porthole rear windows and shoe box boots.

As seen in the Honda Jazz, the Super-N is given the ‘magic seats’ treatment in the rear. This allows the back seats to fold completely flat or the seat bases lift up so you can use the rear floor space for taller items. As someone who uses a three door Polo like a van, this speaks to my Facebook marketplace soul.

Normally, practical means boring but Honda is bringing back the hot hatch vibe with a vibrant purple colour scheme inside and out. Boost Violet Pearl is the new paint colour which sounds like a power-up in Mario Kart but was actually inspired by the haiku-worthy phenomenon of lightning rising up from the earth in stunning bolts of purple energy, a fitting visualisation for a sporty little EV.

In keeping with Kei car regulations, in its normal modes, the Super-N’s power output is limited to 47kW but press the ‘boost’ button on the steering wheel and it delivers 70kW. Unlike boost buttons in the likes of the Genesis GV60, this isn’t a short-term burst for overtaking, if so inclined, you can drive around in boost mode all the time, like electric NOS that won’t blow up your engine.

Inside, the ambient blue lighting switches to purple, the dash display is reconfigured with three dials along the bottom showing battery temperature, rpm and power output – think Tron but on four wheels. Usually, that’s where performance modes stop, but Honda was keen to incorporate noticeable mechanical changes as well as a new soundtrack.

Simulated gear shifts combined with faux engine and exhaust noise coming through the Bose sound system make you almost forget you’re driving an EV; and for any would-be boy racers it comes with a ridiculously oversized subwoofer under the boot floor which sells the authenticity of the combustion sounds. You can even use the flappy paddles in ‘manual’ mode to make it ‘redline’ before changing ‘gears’. It’s very ‘80s kitsch, which is kind of the point.

Horita-san explains that the idea was to give drivers an instinctual perception of the vehicle’s dynamic behaviour in any given moment through audible cues. He says, ‘The most efficient and the most comprehensive way to transport that information is an engine sound, because an engine sound has the advantage that it changes its specific characteristic of sound, depending on the rpm.’

It’s a novelty but a welcome one that feels far better executed than the obnoxious artificial canned vroom vrooms in the Abarth 500e. Although it’s not a sports car, the firm bolsters and grippy fabric on the front seats hug you and give you the confidence to have some fun. Most of the time, just the front seats will be occupied, but two passengers in the back have a surprisingly generous amount of space for such a small car. So everyone can jump in for the late-night McDonalds runs and womp-womp bass sessions.

The Super-N has captured the magic of what hot hatches were in a sensible yet silly way, much like the salarymen of Tokyo clocking off after a long day in the office to sink a couple Asahi and sing karaoke until the early morning. Cruising around in its Econ, City or Normal modes, it’s a city commuter’s best friend: quiet, relaxing, top notch sound system, easy touchscreen interface. Find a back road on the outskirts of town, however, and it’s impressive how Honda has given such a small lightweight car so much dynamic presence.

In real world conditions, expected range is around 128 miles but city driving only will up that to 199 miles. It’s positioned as a fun second car or a less likely sole car for younger drivers, competing against the likes of the BMW 1 series and Audi A1, which believe it or not, due their competitive financing options, are now the first cars for many Gen-Z and Alpha drivers. In comparison the Super-N is a compelling option coming in at £18,995. If I had to choose my first car today, I’d be hard pushed not to press start on the Super-N.

Honda Super-N, from £18,995, Honda.co.uk, @HondaUKcars

Amble is a new mobility company out of Portugal, assembled by a team with a diverse range of specialism and a passion for industrial and mobility design. The team of four includes hotelier and entrepreneur José António Uva, industrial designer Julian Hoenig, Michael Tropper of London-based creative studio forpeople and Adrien Roose, one of the co-founders of e-bike manufacturers Cowboy.

Together, the four founded Amble as a bridge between off-road, quadricycle-style vehicles like golf buggies and fully street-legal vehicles for short-range mobility in small communities. Their debut product is the Amble One, a stripped-down, ultra simple electric buggy that’s also fully legal for road use in both the US and EU.

Amble One is built on a modular platform, so the passenger version you see here can be simply modified for cargo, light commerce and other use cases. The new company’s ambition is to have vehicles on the road for 2027, starting with hospitality orders with personal vehicles available the following year. The target start price is €20,000 / $25,000 plus local taxes.

The Amble One follows a long tradition of beach cars, island transport and remote mobility requirements. Rugged tyres give it light off-roading ability – perfect for gravel tracks and sandy lanes – while the canvas-toppped open framework is evocative of the classic Mini Moke and contemporary seaside-themed quadricycles like the Citroën Ami Buggy and Fiat Topolino.

According to Roose, ‘cars are engineered for speed, distance and efficiency. Yet many journeys are short, and for those journeys the car is often too big, too complex and too expensive. Amble is our answer: a new kind of electric vehicle designed for short-range mobility, where the journey becomes part of the experience.’ It’s not hard to imagine a fleet of Amble’s at António Uva’s own destination resort, the 780-hectare São Lourenço do Barrocal in Alentejo.

Then there’s the name, implying a journey without urgency and the opportunity to take in more of your surroundings. ‘Amble One is built to embody that idea in its open, simple design, with no unnecessary separation between interior and exterior, people and place,’ says Julian Hoenig, ‘No doors to close you in, no unnecessary screens to pull you away. It is about the people on board and how they enjoy the world around them.’

Michael Tropper describes the design approach as a holistic one, encompassing not just the way the materials – aluminium, leather, cotton and a cork-clad steering wheel – will patinate over time, but also the way in which the vehicle sounds and feels. ‘We believe that when you slow down, the world opens up, and your relationship to everything around you changes,’ he says.

Hospitality destinations eager to take a first bite include Amangiri in Canyon Point, Six Senses Residences Loire Valley and the Caribbean island of Mustique. ‘The best hospitality properties obsess over every guest’s touchpoint. Amble was built with the same thinking: a vehicle where the journey is part of the experience,’ says António Uva.

DriveAmble.com, @DriveAmble

One of Airbus’ five BelugaST aircraft has been moved from the company’s industrial flight line to the Aeroscopia Museum in Toulouse, ending a working life that began in 1995. The aircraft, an A300-600ST registered as F-GSTD, will become a permanent exhibit at the museum, joining Concorde, the Super Guppy and the A380.

Airbus’s BelugaST joins Toulouse’s aviation hall of fame

Developed to replace the Super Guppy, the BelugaST became one of the most recognisable aircraft in commercial aviation. Its bulbous upper fuselage, short cockpit section and rounded nose gave it the unmistakable profile of a beluga whale – a resemblance Airbus leaned into with the aircraft’s name. For aviation enthusiasts, it has long occupied a special place in the spotting hierarchy: not the fastest, rarest or most glamorous aircraft, but one of the most rewarding to see.

The aircraft was built for a specific job: carrying wings, fuselage sections and other large components between Airbus sites across Europe. The fleet helped support the company’s move towards higher production levels, with each aircraft able to carry a payload of 40 tonnes – roughly the weight of an adult humpback whale.

Aircraft F-GSTD turned 27 years old on 18 December 2025. Its arrival at Aeroscopia follows Airbus’ announcement earlier this year that the BelugaST fleet would be retired. From mid-2027, component transport will be handled solely by the larger BelugaXL fleet, which already serves 11 Airbus sites around Europe.

The aircraft’s career extended beyond Airbus logistics. In 1997, a BelugaST set a world record for the largest payload carried by air, transporting a chemical tank for a merchant ship. Two years later, another aircraft in the fleet carried Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People from Paris to Tokyo. The BelugaST was also used to transport the Columbus module for the International Space Station, large telecommunications satellites and, in 2003, three Airbus Helicopters rotorcraft on a 25-hour charter flight to Melbourne.

aeroscopia.fr

Lest you forget, Toyota’s origins lie in industrial weaving and textile manufacture. The company was built around Sakichi Toyoda’s automatic loom, invented in 1924, and it wasn’t until 1933 that the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works set up an automobile division. Toyota is now the largest auto maker in the world, a position it has held since 2008, innovating in both automotive and production technology.

In recent years, despite its early dominance of the hybrid car market (Toyota had sold over 15 million hybrids by the turn of this decade), the company has been a little lacklustre when it comes to committing to EVs.

Nevertheless, it hasn’t stopped turning out conceptual mobility visions, with urban areas a special consideration. From the tiny Toyota Land Hopper revealed at the 2023 Japan Mobility Show to the playful Kids Mobi concept shown two years later, Toyota seems committed to re-shaping the world of personal transport.

So where better to explore the interaction between next-generation mobility and people than in your own test laboratory? Woven City is a purpose-designed community in Japan’s Shizuoka prefecture, located close to Mount Fuji.

Described by the company as ‘a real-world test course for mobility innovation’, the ultimate aim is for this modest complex to serve as a place where Toyota’s experiments in mobility, autonomy, robotics and AI can be tried out in a full scale ‘live’ environment.

Comprising of clusters of offices and apartments on a triangular plot, Woven City is now in its initial phase. The idea for the complex stems from Toyota’s planned transition from a conventional car maker into an all-encompassing mobility company, a move it announced back in 2018.

The Woven City complex was unveiled at CES Las Vegas in 2020. The site was once home to the Toyota Motor East Japan Higashi-Fuji plant, once home to production of the first Toyota Century, the company’s enduring flagship (soon to become a more standalone entity). Today, it is overseen by a dedicated sub-company, Woven by Toyota.

Residents will be known as Weavers, while workers from Toyota and partner companies, startups and entrepreneurs will live and work alongside each other, part of a process known as kakezan, or multiplication, here meaning ‘the successful collaboration of diverse industries and individuals.’

Phase one began last Autumn, with 50 households currently occupied out of a total of around 300. Next up is the Inventor Garage, a hub/incubator space that Toyota hopes will be a cradle for next generation products, services and collaborations.

Right now, you can ride on the e-Palette autonomous micro bus,or see the diminutive Guide Mobi shifting goods. This ‘medium-sized, mid-speed autonomous transport robot’ is the modern equivalent of a mule, with the idea that autonomous systems will eventually co-exist with conventional road traffic and pedestrians.

Of course, the name Woven City is also closely linked to Toyota’s heritage - the company maintains working looms in the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology.

As the population of Woven City increases, Toyota hopes to catalyse innovation across four key areas - People, Goods, Information and Energy – with formal and informal partnerships taking technology into new and innovative directions.

Ultimately, Woven City will be the contemporary equivalent of a massive loom, knitting together various strands of today’s technological innovations into a cohesive whole.

Woven.Toyota

Thirty years on from the launch of the Land Rover model that dominated the compact SUV market in the late 1990s and early 21st century, Freelander is returning as a standalone brand with the backing of longstanding Jaguar Land Rover joint venture partner Chery.

The top five Chinese carmaker by global sales – already behind the UK smash hit brands Jaecoo and (to a lesser extent) Omoda – isn’t going slow with the project either. Pitching the new marque as a 'British Premium Intelligent All-Terrain Brand' it plans to launch six Freelander models inside five years in left- and right-hand drive configurations and across 90 markets, including the Middle East, European Union and the UK.

The Freelander has a laudable model history, trailblazing a more soft-surfaced exterior style of compact SUV with more passenger car-like interior creature comforts, in contrast to more rugged 4x4s (like the then very boxy and offroad-focused Land Rover Defender).

Launched in 1997, it quickly became Europe’s top-selling 4x4. And while it could still handle the rough stuff it boasted simpler ways to tackle such terrain, as the first vehicle in the world to offer the patented ‘hill descent control’ feature now commonplace across more serious SUV segments and beyond.

After two generations the model was discontinued in 2015, as other models from the JLR group such as the Range Rover Evoque became more popular. But a letter of intent between JLR and Chery in June 2024 announced the revival of the Freelander name – and this time as a brand in its own right.

Crucially for its credibility, a very significant Land Rover and Range Rover designer, Phil Simmons – with a CV including the 2001 Range Rover Mk3, 2017 Velar and 2018 Evoque Mk2 – was behind the new Freelander brand’s design relaunch.

Early in 2026 a teaser image of the Concept 97 vehicle was shown, to reference the Freelander’s original launch year and in late spring the brand officially launched with its first production model – the Freelander 8 – at the large and impressive Museum of the China Sculpture Institute in Wuhu, home of Chery International.

Wallpaper* was on hand to witness both the Concept 97 vehicle colourfully lit up at the Wuhu museum’s entrance and the five-metre-long Freelander 8 inside, the brand’s first showroom-ready car. In a private ante room where press cameras weren’t allowed there was also a full-size model of the next slightly smaller Freelander production car to follow, to show the consistency of design direction.

All three vehicles are more impressive than expected and in keeping with the original Freelander, including details like its ‘castle-style' body, interlocking headlight elements (from the Mk2), triangular rear side windows, dual peak bonnet and high ‘command’ driving position.

To keep things more 2026 than 1997 the Freelander 8 will offer nine switchable terrain modes, dual-chamber air suspension and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8295P chip, able to power up to eight displays at once in an ultra-responsive fashion.

The cabin of the six-seater Freelander 8 wasn’t available to jump inside just yet, but what we could discern through the windows revealed a smart and restrained interior with a large central screen and a full-width surround view driver display at the base of windscreen.

Reclinable ‘zero gravity’ seating will also be part of the kit list, to allow owners to rest better while recharging – as the SUV is set to offer full-electric, plug-in hybrid and range extender power units.

The brand will initially be built in China and exported around the world and likely to be priced well above current Chery export brands Jaecoo, Omoda and Lepas, but also well below Land Rover and Range Rover models, to avoid any clash. Sales are due to start from late 2026.

CheryJaguarLandRover.com, LandRover.co.uk

This is something rather special. The new Morgan Midsummer Coupé is the next stage of a collaboration between Italian design house Pininfarina and purveyors of hand-hewn sports cars from Worcestershire. It follows on from 2024’s Morgan Midsummer barchetta, fifty of which have been built and delivered over the past couple of years.

The Midsummer Coupé continues this blend of exotic design and handcraft, only this time in the form of a fixed head coupé. This time the commission is even rarer, with only nine cars being made available worldwide, in addition to this, Car 0, the so-called ‘artist’s proof’.

Morgan describes their approach as ‘contemporary coachbuilding’, and there’s certainly a lot here that wouldn’t be possible in a conventional car factory, let alone on the regular Morgan production line. Even though the Malvern Link facility already goes above and beyond what’s possible, the Midsummer Coupé is a showcase of technology and craft.

The latter is most evident in the hand-formed centre body, manipulated and shaped on the traditional English wheel system for hundreds of hours to achieve the precise curves and radii that shape the body. Panels are joined by solid aluminium riveting, a method dating back to early aircraft manufacturing. Digital scanning is used throughout the process to ensure complete accuracy.

The car also sits on an aluminium chassis, Morgan’s own new generation CXV Aluminium Platform – as seen in the Supersport and new Supersport 400, as well as the machine-billeted aluminium A-pillars.

What differentiates the Midsummer Coupé from its production siblings is the glazed roof and rear profile. The tapering tail sweeps up and over the passenger compartment, with four individual glass panels bisected by a line of chrome.

The treatment is both classically elegant and in keeping with the familiar Morgan aesthetic and cutting edge, in that the fixed glass panels are bonded directly into the aluminium roof structure, adding stiffness and saving weight (the car is on 2.5% heavier than a Supersport with a hardtop).

This fixed-head format is very different in character to the open-top and removable hard-top Morgan, as well as the completely open original Midsummer. A large luggage compartment will no doubt be supplied with specially fitted luggage in at least a few of the nine customer cars.

In practical terms, this also makes the Midsummer Coupé even better suited to everyday use than the Supersport, already one of the most practical day-to-day Morgans ever made. It also allows for some newly crafted components that depart from traditional Morgan details. These include the door handles integrated into the aluminium belt line, and the streamlined side window graphic, with a droppable window section.

The Coupé sits on 19-inch forged aluminium wheels that can take a contrasting paint colour, while the interior of Car 0 has a teak and pale leather trim inspired by nautical design. Future configurations will be completely determined by the customer. The Midsummer features the new Morgan gear selector seen in the Supersport 400 (the car has a BMW engine and gearbox). Roof-mounted window switches and teak-inlaid sun visors attach to an aluminium rail.

Jonathan Wells is Morgan’s Chief Design Officer. He describes the Midsummer Coupé as ‘the culmination of an extraordinary creative journey. What began as a celebration of coachbuilding, craftsmanship and collaboration has evolved into one of the most ambitious and rewarding projects we’ve ever undertaken,’ he continues, ‘Working alongside the team at Pininfarina, together with our own designers and engineers, has been both a privilege and immensely rewarding. Midsummer Coupé marks the closing chapter of that remarkable collaboration, but it also represents a defining moment in Morgan’s coachbuilding story.’

Car 0 is just the start. The nine cars that follow offer customers a rich canvas for their own tastes, guided by Morgan’s team. All cars will bear the Pininfarina Fuoriserie emblem (‘out of series’); beyond that, they will ‘share a common foundation yet [be] entirely unique in their execution.’

As Morgan’s Managing Director Matthew Hole explains, ‘the Midsummer Coupé began with a conversation. A client came to us with an idea and, rather than asking how closely we could meet that brief, we asked ourselves how far we could take it. Special projects [give us] the opportunity to apply our skills in different ways. Working closely with each client, we can explore new ideas, refine new techniques and continue to develop the knowledge that defines Morgan coachbuilding today.’

The approach that will increasingly shape more and more output from the Pickersleigh Road factory as Morgan invests in skills and options that only it can provide thanks to the scale of the production process and the close integration between design, engineering and manufacturing. There are very few companies who can create this kind of richly evocative automotive special project.

Morgan-Motor.co.uk, @MorganMotor

It might have been a company founded on the premise of one-size-fits-all mass production, but these days Ford does its best to cater for every single wafer-thin slice of the global demographic pie. From people’s cars to hypercars, pick-ups to EVs, there’s a Ford product for everyone, or so the company hopes. Along the way, that’s resulted in an awful lot of product, in amongst which there are plenty of gems, from elegant classics to performance stars.

We’ve assembled examples of contemporary re-takes of four of the latter, from iconic muscle courtesy of Ford USA to cult performance machines from its European division. Restomods now part of the mainstream, rivalling supercars in ability and price. With exotica of all stripes catered for by various specialists, this quartet of fast Fords shows the scope and depth of the scene.

Cape Advanced Vehicles GT MkII

The GT MkII is a new release from Cape Advanced Vehicles in Cape Town, South Africa. The firm has nearly 30 years of experience building exacting replicas of the Ford GT40, the Le Mans-winning race car developed in record time to take on Ferrari in the 1960s.

With only just over 100 original cars built, the GT40 has become a favourite for replicas and replicas over the years. There have also been official revivals in the form of Ford’s own GT90 concept and subsequent Ford GT, two generations of which were built in the 20th century as a homage to the original.

CAV’s GT MkII is only vaguely related to the GT40 replicas the company became known for. Instead, it’s a contemporary update of the GT40 aesthetic in both look and feel. Under the skin is Audi’s 4.2-litre V8, usually found in the Audi R8. It certainly delivers authentic levels of performance, but the stance and proportions of the new MkII imply that R8 componentry underpins a lot more than just the powerplant.

Kicking off with a edition celebrating the GT40’s 1-2-3 victory at the 1966 Le Mans, CAV has deployed a subtly altered update of the blue and orange Gulf livery so closely associated with these cars. Restomod Ford or reworked Audi? Collectors will decide.

CAV GT MkII, more information at CapeAdvancedVehicles.com, @CapeAdvancedVehicles

Ford Escort XR3i by Tolman Edition

From a homage to the sublime to a reputational reboot, the newest project from Tolman Edition is the transformation of another 1980s hot hatch icon, following on from its acclaimed reworking of the Peugeot 205 GTI. The XR3i Tolman Edition gives the 80s Escort a lavish overhaul that’s quite at odds with the plasticky, fragile feel of the original.

The fuel-injected XR editions of everyday Fords like Fiestas and Escorts tended to be highly prized by the era’s more hot-headed young drivers, meaning pristine originals are thin on the ground due to alteration and obliteration.

Tolman describe their approach as ‘non-invasive performance, reliability and dynamic improvements’, and the XR3i is present and correct in all its glory, with colour-matched white bumpers and futuristic badging. This is a truly niche offering, created as a one-off for a passionate client.

Under the bonnet, the stock engine has been given a 50% power hike over the original, while improved handling has been added to cope with the extra poke. It’s one of four different reworked 80s icons Tolman Engineering is scheduled to unveil this year.

TolmanEngineering.co.uk, @TolmanEngineering

Mustang 1967-68 GT500CR Carbon by Classic Recreations

Another popular Ford to revisit is the Mustang, which remains in production after seven generations. Brutishly charming, the various versions of the Mustang offer a mix of classic cruisers and V8-powered muscle cars.

It’s the latter that have the most traction amongst enthusiasts and restorers, with the models breathed on by tuner Shelby American the most sought after. Through a complex web of recreations, variations and licensing agreements, we have this, the Mustang 1967-68 GT500CR Carbon.

To the uninitiated, the GT500CR looks like a late series one model, back when the Mustang was bulking up in response to the surging popularity of the all-American muscle car. The body might look classic, but it’s entirely formed from ultra-light, high-grade carbon fibre.

Under that striped bonnet sits a 21st century Ford Performance Gen IV Coyote 5.0L V8 engine which can be tuned to put out a maximum of 900hp. Everything else about this mean machine is fully hand-crafted, creating a true restomod supercar from a relatively modest starting point.

Mustang 1967-68 GT500CR Carbon by Classic Recreations, from $549,900, Classic-Recreations.com, @ClassicCreations

Escort Mk1 RS by Boreham Motorworks

Another example of automotive extremism applied to a stock base car is the new Escort Mk1 RS by Boreham Motorworks. Originally introduced in 1967, the first-generation Escort was built in the millions, a sensible family car for Europe.

It was also an accomplished track and rally machine, with Ford’s works race team winning a swathe of titles in the 1960s and 1970s. These highly tuned versions gave rise to some rare and highly desirable road cars, including the Escort Mexico and RS1600.

Boreham Motorworks was founded to continue the legacy of these fast Fords, named for the location of the workshop that built the originals. The new company has been fully licensed to recreate the Escort by Ford itself – and it explicitly states that this is an all-new machine and not a restomod.

The company plans to make 150 examples for sale around the world, with the familiar Mk1 form subtly muscularised and made from steel, sitting atop a brand-new chassis and suspension system.

Inside, the interior is formed from leather and carbon, with modern (strictly analogue) instrumentation and a few more creature comforts than the original. Not too comfortable, mind, because the ambition is to build a sub-900kg car that is, in the company’s words, ‘the ultimate B-road car’.

Boreham have built their own naturally aspirated inline-four-cylinder engine, with a redline at around 10,000rpm and output of 330PS. Cult superstardom surely beckons.

Boreham Motorworks Escort Mk1 RS, from £295,000 / $400,000, BorehamMotorworks.com, @BorehamMotorworks

The Honda Prelude is a curious machine. The Prelude name itself dates back to the late 70s and over five very different generations the model walked the line between staid, dependable transportation for mildly gregarious retirees and heavily moddable road racer for young JDM enthusiasts. Yet after the fifth generation ceased production in 2001, the model wasn’t renewed.

That was until last year, with the arrival of Prelude gen 6, inspired in part by the fan community centred on the earlier cars and the absence of something a little more dynamic in the staid Honda line-up. The production car had been trailed by a concept car revealed at the inaugural Japan Mobility Show in 2023; the finished result is very similar.

Underneath, the new Prelude shares components with the best-selling Honda Civic (now on its 11th generation), but the design is almost wilfully idiosyncratic. The two-door liftback body is not exactly elegant, nor does it conform to any accepted standards of beauty and proportion.

It’s ungainly from some angles, with awkward cab-forward proportions, a stubby nose and long tail that conceal the car’s 4.5m+ length. It all conspires to give the Prelude a certain propulsive quality, as if the whole car is leaning forwards, and hints at power, rather than practicality.

The coupé is one of the most impractical typologies, one where form emphatically doesn’t follow function, but instead chases desire and status. It’s a shape that speaks to lack of external responsibilities; a car dedicated to its driver (and passenger), with a form factor that precludes banal day-to-day side quests like trips to a furniture store or giving three friends a lift.

And yet the Honda Prelude is having none of this. It’s not especially quick, although it is good to drive, and somehow the designers have found space for two rear seats and a substantial boot. Admittedly, back seat passengers will find their heads rubbing against the tailgate glass, but full points for trying. Even the Prelude’s long-lived nameplate implies that the car will never be the be all and end all of automotive sophistication.

Such staid and surefooted coupés flourish amongst owners who pride reliability over raucousness. There is definitely some clever hybrid tech at play here, with a modest battery driving the front wheels and charged by the 2.0 litre engine. The latter only contributes additional horsepower when required.

These are summoned using the ‘S+ Sport’ mode, which uses the steering wheel paddles to control a virtual 8-speed gearbox, which simulates the feel of changing up through the gears via a combination of software and brake regen. It’s fake but feelsome and while it might not get a true enthusiast’s pulse racing, it gives the car a little bit more character.

The interior is a much more successful concoction. Manual controls are paired with a modest screen, which in turn has simple, unpretentious graphics. Up front, seats are comfy and the view out is good, although as noted, back seat passengers won’t put up with it for long.

Honda reliably comes up with a selection of quirky cars despite its massive market share. Models like the late lamented Honda e passed effortlessly through the concept to production pipeline, and the new Prelude is in a similar vein. They stand in stark contrast to the multitudes of Civics, Accords and HR-Vs found around the world.

Yet all is not well in Hondaland. Last month it was reported that the company made its first annual loss in seventy years with much of the blame going on the slower than expected shift to EVs. More to the point, Honda barely offers any EVs in the European market; like its competitor Toyota, the company cracked the art of the hybrid but fumbled the shift to BEV.

The European arrival of the precious but pricey Super-N might help turns things around but cost-cutting saw the cancellation of a dynamic pair of futuristic EVs, the Honda 0 Saloon and Honda 0 SUV, that could have done much to re-shape the company’s image.

Another problematic jigsaw piece is the rise and rise of Chinese competition, bringing new features and regularly shuffled model launches at a pace that Honda cannot profitably achieve. For now, the one thing the Chinese brands don’t have is the fabled Honda reliability.

Honda’s cars might not set pulses racing – as the Prelude demonstrates – but they carry an unimpeachable reputation for longevity. The question is, do we want our cars to be regularly swapped out for better models just like smartphones, or to be a mode of transport that’ll accompany you for a decent chunk of your life?

Honda Prelude e:HEV, from £41,595, Honda.co.uk

Books that blossom into elaborate packaging and accessories are not uncommon, especially in the realm of high-end monographs. The newest publication from Assouline certainly falls into this category, being a richly-illustration celebration of the 80th anniversary of iconic Italian manufacturer Vespa.

Not only is there a book, but together, the New York-based publishers and Vespa have created seven bikes finished in the publisher’s signature red and decorated with patterns and motifs taken from the graphic Assouline Travel Series. These are paired with a selection of open-faced helmets that use the same identity.

The book itself is typically ambitious in scale and scope for the publisher. Put together by the writer and creative director Michael Köckritz, it draws upon reams of archive imagery – both from the company’s own records and from the myriad occasions in which Vespa has been at the forefront of style and glamour.

Vespa means ‘wasp’, a suitably buzzy name for a mode of transport that came to define the sight and sound of Italian city streets after World War Two. Industrialist Rinaldo Piaggio founded the company that bore his name in 1884, first to build rail equipment before diversifying into military machinery, including speedboats, seaplanes and aeroplanes. The company’s Tuscan factory was destroyed in the war and Enrico Piaggio, Rinaldo’s son, set up a new facility and a new mission; mass transit.

The original Vespa, the MP6, was engineered in house by Renzo Spolti and Vittorio Casini with fared-in bodywork styled by aeronautical engineer Corradino D'Ascanio. The monograph retells the story of the Vespa’s name: ‘After hearing the buzz of the engine of the first prototype, Enrico Piaggio commented, 'it sounds like a vespa!’.'

The name – and noise – proved an instant hit, with hundreds of variants produced over the decades. Taken up by everyone from youth subcultures to film stars, Vespa’s identity has remained as fluid and welcoming as the flowing lines of the bike itself.

Thankfully for the reader, this pan-cultural influence has resulted in some fantastic imagery, and the book is a visual feast for lovers of two-wheeled simplicity and timeless glamour. Keen riders will need to be quick if they want to snatch up the limited edition run of helmets, but the rest of us can just bask in the effortlessly good times chronicled within these pages.

Vespa, €120, available from EU.Assouline.com and Store.Vespa.com. A gift set including the book and helmet retails for €389

Vespa.com, @VespaOfficial_UK, @Assouline

Barcelona in early summer is not a bad place to put a new car through its paces. The city's grid of wide boulevards and tight Gothic Quarter streets makes for a useful test of any car's urban abilities – and then the motorway north allows for a foot-to-the-floor thrill. Volvo chose the location deliberately. The EX60, its new all-electric mid-size SUV, deserved a dynamic test ground to put its ambitions to the test.

Those ambitions are pretty considerable. The EX60 enters the industry's most fiercely contested segment, where the BMW iX3, Audi Q6 e-tron, Tesla Model Y, and Mercedes GLC Electric are already established cars.

Also, it carries the weight of an illustrious predecessor: the XC60, which in July 2025 surpassed 2.7 million sales to overtake even the beloved, iconically boxy 240 as the brand's best-selling car of all time. Designed predominantly for what Volvo calls the ‘progressive modern family’, it has to be ‘a car for all’. That is a considerable pair of shoes to fill.

This new EX60 design is the first car from Volvo’s third-generation Scalable Platform Architecture (SPA3). It includes mega-casted aluminium and cell-to-body manufacturing, next-generation e-motors, and unified software and hardware technology – Volvo says the EX60 has the lowest carbon footprint and the highest amount (27 per cent) of recycled content of any Volvo car to date.

Visually, Volvo has focused on curating an aerodynamic design. A drag coefficient of 0.26 makes this a genuine claim, rather than just a gesture. There is no intimidating front grille; in its place, a cleaner, more discerning face. The new haptic wing-grip door handles dissolve into the side profile, complemented by frameless doors, flush glazing, and the high-definition pixel ‘Thor's Hammer’ headlights. This latest iteration of Volvo’s tall vertical taillights is also a nice touch – reminiscent of the 1990s V70 design. Certainly, at first glance, the EX60 is a sleek-looking machine.

Volvo has utilised mega-casting and cell-to-body construction, the former to create a huge single-piece aluminium rear floor with battery cells integrated directly into the structure itself. The practical upshot is a lower, flatter floor and more usable interior space, alongside improvements in rigidity and impact protection.

Three battery options are available. The entry-level P6 – single motor, rear-wheel drive – offers 374hp and a projected range of up to 379 miles; a convincing case for most buyers. Our test car was the mid-spec P10 AWD, with 510hp and 0-60 in 4.4 seconds, and it felt every bit of it out on the motorway.

At the top of the range, the P12 AWD pushes to 680hp, dispatches 0-60 in 3.8 seconds, and still covers up to 503 miles on a charge. Across all three, 800V technology means a 10-80 per cent charge takes as little as 16 minutes. In practice, this means ‘range anxiety’ begins to feel like a thing of the past.

In terms of ride and handling, the chassis has been tuned to feel more dynamic than the larger Volvo EX90 – and it’s a decision that pays off. The standard Advanced Chassis includes Frequency Selective Damping, which reads the road mechanically and adjusts accordingly. Step up to the optional Active Chassis, available on the P10 AWD and P12 AWD, and the system monitors the car, the road, and the driver up to 500 times per second.

Alongside the car’s built-in HuginCore system (named for a bird in Norse mythology), there’s also Google Gemini with conversational AI, which means you can talk to your car naturally. For example, it can respond to requests for beauty spots to stop off at en route.

The urban leg of the drive felt reassuringly effortless. The car's suite of driver assistance systems – which includes five cameras, five radars and 12 ultrasonic sensors to give a 360-degree real-time view of the surroundings – takes the edge off city navigation. Out on the motorway, you can feel the powertrain options come into play. We put our foot down in our P10 AWD, and it certainly didn’t feel slow.

Inside, the cabin is where Volvo's Scandinavian restraint really translates. Sara Erichsen Susnjar, senior colour & material design manager at Volvo, says, ‘We wanted to create a calm, comfortable environment that instills a sense of control while also making you feel cared for. Each element is thoughtfully designed to serve either a functional or aesthetic role.’ It is calm, considered, and free of the gratuitous surface complexity that afflicts many of its rivals – a cocoon rather than a cockpit.

The UK gets two trim levels at launch – Plus and Ultra. Plus is no spartan entry point; alongside the exterior 20-inch, five-spoke matt/diamond-cut alloys and Matrix LED headlights, the interior comes with heated front and rear seats, three-zone climate control, a Bose premium sound system, and a panoramic glass roof. It sets a luxury tone from the outset.

The higher spec Ultra trim, which served as our test car, came with 21-inch, five-spoke graphite diamond-cut alloys (you can ‘supersize’ this further with the 22-inch, Y-spoke matt black option), high-definition pixel headlights, a Bowers & Wilkins high fidelity audio system, an Electrochromic roof, and the optional ventilated Nappa leather seats. Safety, as ever with Volvo, is non-negotiable: Volvo’s newly developed Multi-adaptive front safety belts, the HuginCore platform, and the Advanced Sensing Technology system are fitted as standard across the range.

One detail to note: Volvo plans on releasing the EX60 Cross Country variant mid-next year, and we caught a glimpse of the prototype model on the trip. Built on the same electric foundation as the EX60, the EX60 Cross Country has a slightly hiked stance – 20mm as standard, but using the standard air suspension's off-road mode, you can gain another 20mm, so 40mm total – and adaptive air suspension that fine-tunes height and damping for comfort and stability. The example we laid eyes on had a very appealing Ventilated Midnight Blue Tailored Knit interior option – exclusive on the Cross Country model. We’d be tempted to wait a few more months for this one.

What’s the verdict? Ultimately, what the EX60 delivers is coherence. It is as capable of a brisk motorway overtake as it is of wafting more glacially to the school gates – and it does both without the identity crisis that afflicts some of its more performance-focused rivals. Whether it can match the XC60's extraordinary commercial legacy remains to be seen. On the evidence we gathered and experienced, it has every right to try.

Volvo EX60, from £56,860, Volvocars.com, @VolvocarUK

If you can, cast your mind back to 2001. Labour secured a second landslide election victory, the countryside was devasted by a foot-and-mouth outbreak and the world was rocked by terrorist attacks in America. It wasn’t all doom and gloom – the first Harry Potter movie sparked a global phenomenon, while one Dr Richard Wiseman launched a massive global study to find the world’s funniest joke.

Among the wisecracks he uncovered, there were none about Škoda. Surprising perhaps, given the budget Czechoslovakian brand’s appalling Soviet-mobiles had been the butt of automotive humour for decades.

Things started to look up for Škoda when Volkswagen bought the company in stages during the 1990s, ultimately taking full control in 2000. Dragging the manufacturer into the 21st century was to prove a lengthy process; I visited the Mlada Boleslav factory in Prague back in 1995 and supervisors were still commuting up and down the production line on bicycles.

The 1996 Škoda Octavia was a hint of what was to come but it took the 2001 launch of the Superb to showcase what the now Czech company could achieve under VW control. Twenty-five years on and the Škoda Superb is now in its fourth generation, widely praised by motoring pundits and highly regarded by those who don’t give a stuff about the badge on the bonnet.

The Superb story actually began almost a century ago. The name originally debuted in 1935 on a model considered ground-breaking at the time. Measuring 5.5-metres long, the Superb was a luxury limousine for up to seven passengers. It was also built at Mlada Boleslav and you can see one for yourself at the nearby Škoda Museum.

The first modern-generation Superb had to do battle with the executive mainstays of the era like the Ford Mondeo and Vauxhall Vectra, models that both now extinct. It was based on the same platform as a VW Passat, with a wheelbase stretched by 10cm to offer rear-seat passengers palatial travelling space.

To celebrate the model’s quarter century, I had the chance to drive a pristine 2001 example from Škoda’s press fleet. It’s obvious why mainstream manufacturers back in the noughties were terrified of the Czech threat. My Mk I model dates from 2006, cost £21,715 and is laden with kit – satellite navigation, heated and eclectically adjustable seats included. A Mondeo Ghia was over £25,000 at the time.

The Climatronic heating system proves more efficient than some current models, while the leather seats are complemented by some dashboard wood trim that would have been the height of sophistication 20 years ago. Power comes from a V6 TDI – another benefit of cross-pollination with VW.

A decent-sized boot was par for the course back then, but it wasn’t until the Mk II version in 2008 that Škoda introduced the cavernous Combi estate. A practical hatchback refined the shape of the saloon, while the Mk III offered more efficient power trains and saw estate sales surpass saloon for the first time.

The current Superb is available as a hybrid, mild-hybrid, petrol or, surprisingly for 2026, a turbo diesel. The 2.0 TDI 4x4 is the sweet spot and costs around £46,000. A full tank in my test car showed total range approaching 700 miles. When was the last time you registered that in an EV?

There’s a swanky Laurin & Klement version – named after the original Škoda founders - that can cost upward of £53,000 but even an entry-level Superb SE has class-leading attributes. Both saloon and estate win endless awards, with the latter praised for carrying capacity and refinement. In some senses, Škoda is today what VW was seen as 25 years ago, a true people’s car with a wide bandwidth of models and abilities.

Dr Wiseman’s funniest joke? Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps: ‘My friend is dead! What can I do?’ The operator says: ‘Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.’ There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: ‘OK, now what?’

Is there a more self-aggrandising car name than Superb? Before the Czech company diverted into the vaguely sub-Tolkienesque nomenclature it uses for its EV range, it really set out its stall with the original 2001 car, creating a flagship that continues to endure, whether as a commodious hatchback or the high-end hybrid estate.

Škoda Superb, from £36,800

Taras Kravtchouk headed a visual design agency in his native Sweden before moving to New York, where he set up a maker’s space for all sorts of projects. That, he says, was also his opportunity to build some motorcycles, including reworked custom BSAs and Triumphs for Belstaff, among other clients. But his design training also got him thinking: why hadn’t any of the major motorcycle manufacturers built an electric motorcycle in the aesthetic spirit of a classic cafe racer – one perhaps super-streamlined, with a touch of Arne Jacobsen or Alvar Aalto to it?

‘At one point, motorcycles had come to be seen as cult objects – woven into fashion and art – but the industry then started to lean heavily into performance, so that motor motorcycles today tend to look like angular plastic bugs, as a lot of cars do too,’ says Kravtchouk. ‘I think that meant that most people interested in aesthetics had stopped looking at motorcycles as appealing objects. The industry speaks a lot about design but isn’t design-driven – and that’s one reason why it’s failing to get younger people into motorcycles.’

The result of Kravtchouk’s musings was the launch his motorcycle company Tarform, and its curvaceous Luna model, hand-built in Brooklyn at $48,000 a go. As he concedes, that was hardly a price that was going to get younger people into motorcycles either.

So now, launching in August 2026, comes the Vera – a stripped-back version, with a starting price of $18,000. It comes with a smaller, lighter battery – relative to the Luna – which means there is 30 per cent less torque. But this also makes the Vera more accessible for new riders put off by conventional motorcycles.

The look is, he says, ‘more futuristic’, with organic lines all sweeping to the rear to give a sense of forward movement. ‘Likewise, the Vera has to have a strong look against what else is available on the market to get non-motorcycle riding customers to pay attention,’ he argues.

The superstructure of the bike is made from forged carbon fibre – essentially a waste material – while, to retain structural integrity but also be sustainable, a flaxseed fibre-based resin (sometimes used to make surfboards) is employed for the body panels. The upholstery is made from a tea leaf-derived synthetic leather.

‘Swedes are just very conscious of sustainability,’ Kravtchouk laughs. ‘It’s something you learn about in school so, even if the mindset is different here in the US, it seemed like the obvious approach to take. The motorcycle industry works with a lot of toxic materials but it’s the responsibility of design to find better ways.’

The Vera will also come with Luna’s distinctive sound – indeed, it was the first electric motorcycle with what Tarform calls ‘living sound’, not synthesised or digital but with an instrument built in that amplifies the electromagnetic pulse of the motor.

‘A synthesised sound would feel fake to use, but we do think the sound the Vera generates not only means riders can feel confident that people can hear them but that it gives them a greater connection to the machine,’ says Kravtchouk. ‘People tell us sound was, for them, what was missing from electric motorcycles.’

Maybe that’s as true on the water as on two wheels. Tarform – which regards itself less as a motorcycle company so much as one specialising in electric mobility – is now hoping to develop an electric jet ski.

Vera, from $18,000, more information at Tarform.com, @Tarform

We’re in a sylvan landscape, barely a few weeks after the winter snows have melted, complete with carefree chipmunks and gambolling baby racoons, with scattered stands of quaking aspen making white vertical slashes in against the green hillside. It’s the kind of accessible paradise that lures America’s sizeable community of off-road enthusiasts into nature, swapping suburbia for a bucolic weekend reset getting back to the earth.

This is the precise scenario embodied by SUV ownership, for too long the preserve of gas-guzzling 4x4s with an accompanying culture of old-school machismo and true grit. Except we’re in an all-electric SUV, the new Rivian R2. Is this a fork on the path to the American dream or a genuine culture shift?

The Rivian R2 is no secret – the car was originally announced back in 2024 – but it’s taken a couple of years for the production version to arrive. Debuting earlier this year in Texas, a smaller sibling to the flagship R1 (now in its second generation), it’s an important model that’ll bring Rivian to the masses. When production at the company’s Normal, Illinois, plant has been fully ramped up, Rivian hopes to sell an entry-level model for just $45,000. European sales are also on the roadmap, and maybe even UK ones too.

It’s all part of an ambitious, tech-driven business plan mastered by Rivian’s charismatic CEO, Robert Joseph Scaringe. Scaringe – simply known as ‘RJ’ to his colleagues - founded Rivian the day after he graduated from MIT some 17 years ago; the company is just one of his portfolio of tech start-ups with lofty goals.

For now, Rivian is the most public facing, a company that spans the electric SUV market from the high-end, where customisation is an essential part of the customer’s wishlist to the everyday requirements of families and small businesses (an R2T pick-up is reportedly in the works). Next up will be the smaller R3 and R3X, already revealed but with no firm date for production set just yet. A ‘Rad’ performance sub-brand is also in the works, as well as an R1X.

Like other tech-first automakers born out of start-up culture, Rivian is very much in the aggressive investment phase, currently rolling fast down a runway of unknown but ultimate finite length. As Max Koff, Chief Engineer on the R2 programme admits, creating the R1 was akin to ‘building the plane as we were flying it’, along with all the outlay required to set Rivian up as a holistic lifestyle brand, complete with Concept Experience dealerships, its own charging network, a burgeoning line of lifestyle accessories and a strong community.

Now the brand is firmly entrenched and customers acquired, along with the familiar digital-era entourage of enthusiasts, fanboys, dedicated YouTube channels and the inevitable haters, the learnings from the R1 can be parlayed into R2.

From a strictly engineering point of view, R2 is also an exercise in clever cost-cutting, retaining all the desirable characteristics of the brand while value engineering the hell out of the platform and production process. As a result, it’s smaller, lighter, cheaper and therefore hugely more accessible. The company needs R2 to be a volume seller from the outset.

This approach hasn’t compromised quality of function. For example, we’re told how the R2’s streamlined processing power reduces the R1’s five individual processors down to one ultra-high-performance units, while simplified wiring looms saves some 2.3 miles of wiring over the R1. One area where simplification has enhanced function are the steering wheel-mounted Halo switches. These twin rocker units are truly multifunctional, combining context-aware switchgear with roller controls to provide fingertip physical access to a wide range of systems.

It neatly addresses the widespread customer call for more physical controls with the need to cut the Bill of Material (BOM) cost of the car as a whole. Buttons are expensive, screens are cheap. Halo is the best of both worlds, and certainly among the more intuitive systems we’ve tried.

A lot of thought has gone into the ‘digital handshake’ for new users, which akin to the set-up process when switching phones. A series of onboarding instructions and tutorials walks you through how to operate the Halo, setting up the driver profile as you do so.

Like all of Rivian’s HMI operations, it’s slickly rendered and animated, with a real attention to graphical detail and legibility. If we must have screen-based systems, Rivian’s is one of the best, an interface that tailors itself automatically to whether driver or passenger is doing the inputs.

At time of writing, the voice-activated Rivian Assistant wasn’t available to test. In common with almost all car voice-based control systems, RA is powered by AI. According to Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid, this ‘agentic’ system (meaning it can hop between different apps in order to complete chains of commands) will continue to evolve through OTA updates. Ultimately, you’ll be able ask the car to book, say, a work meeting and it’ll find a slot in your calendar and send out the necessary invites. Something to do whilst driving along hands-free, perhaps.

The fairest 4x4 by far

Visually, the R2 cops some justified criticism for being a scaled-down R1. At just under 40cm shorter, R2 can’t fit R1’s 7-seat set up. The interior is still spacious and flexible, with optional rear mattresses, the optional Rivian-branded cooler and travel kitchen, and power take-off points.

Next year you’ll be able to buy the Treehouse, Rivian’s much-vaunted rooftop tent set up (it’ll also be compatible with the R1 and other SUVs). With a panoramic window, inbuilt lighting and cooling (powered by the car) and an integral step ladder, it’s an open invitation to sample a night or two under canvas, even if the R2 doesn’t have the R1’s trick self-levelling suspension to create a flat pitch.

At the front, the friendly Rivian face cements the comparison with its larger sibling; you’ll see the same graphic treatment on the R3 and R3X when they eventually appear. Buyers for the ‘basic’ R2, the Standard edition, will have to make do with slightly less – no ventilated front seats or heated rears, five speakers not nine and an absence of rear USB sockets, for example – all in the quest to keep costs below the magic $45,000 figure. The launch edition, as well as the Premium and Performance specs, are generously specified in comparison.

So is the car any good? First impressions behind the wheel are very favourable. The R2 is planted and responsive, with direct steering, excellent visibility and the benefit of instant electric pick-up. It makes light work of Utah’s busy highways but really comes into its own on the twisty back roads that take us to an off-road course.

Despite aggressive regenerative braking, the R2 showcases how effective a well-engineered EV can be at fulfilling a variety of roles – spacious family car, fine-handling sports wagon and, as we soon discover, more than capable off road.

The tracks and trails around Park City, Utah, are a popular spot with the state’s off-road community. Through wooded glades and across open hillsides, the R2 handles the often deeply rutted tracks with aplomb. Rivian has done away with fully automated systems like hill descent control, often found in luxury 4x4s with low rates of engagement with the muddy stuff.

The reasoning is that an EV powertrain is inherently better at managing the car’s mass through a mix of braking and regenerative deacceleration. A particularly tricky downhill section sees the car tripoding as we inch across canyon-like furrows. Rivian’s own stats show that 35% of R1 owners regularly give their cars a proper work-out like this, perhaps three times as many as typical Range Rover driver.

An AI-powered vehicle or a vehicle to power AI?

Rivian’s team stresses that the goal was to build the best car for the price and the sector; the fact that it’s electric is neither here nor there. In the US as in Europe, EV take-up is on the wane, so the intention is to win over customers through quality and features, rather than initiate another skirmish in the tiresome culture wars. Yet the R2 presents us with a paradox.

On the one hand, this excellent machine is the embodiment of old-fashioned American values; visit a national park, drive a trail, do a hike and ride your bikes (preferably a model from the Scaringe-owned ALSO), pitch your roof tent and spark up the travel kitchen. This frontier utopianism is deeply enmeshed in the American dream.

On the other hand, Rivian is also a gateway to AI-powered autonomy with wide-ranging social impacts. Scaringe is a vocal cheerleader for AI’s benefits, explaining how the advances LLMs have created in generated imagery, words and video is now moving swiftly into autonomous driving and robotics. Information on his own robotics start-up, Mind Robotics, is still deliberately scarce, but as he confirms, it has big plans in the offing for AI-driven industrial robots, starting with Rivian’s own factories.

‘It’s an exciting time in human history,’ Scaringe tells a roundtable deep in the Utah wilderness, ‘I think we’re so lucky that get to be alive at the birth of AI.’ He does concede that AI is ‘moving faster than the average person understands – I do think that’s going to be a problem.’ But he is also of the belief that robotics can solve all underlying issues.

‘I know this first hand – there’s an extreme lack of labour [in the US]. We don’t have enough people if we want to bring manufacturing back to the USA,' Scaringe says, 'All jobs are going to change fundamentally because of these incredibly powerful tools… We can’t just ignore the fact that AI is coming - it’s going to have enormous impacts on the way the fabric of society works, and we need to prep our kids, we need to prep our existing workforce.’

Advocates of all these technologies expect them to be seamlessly integrated and adopted into all aspects of everyday life, from automobiles to workplaces and homes, a process that is very much happening right now. Against the backdrop of this mix of caution, boosterism, and grand robotic plans, the Rivian R2 feels rather humble and off message. Is this very likeable car nothing more than a Trojan horse for big tech’s obsession with robotics, automation and AI?

Rivian is certainly explicit about the R2 being an AI- and software-defined vehicle, a machine that will live and die on the quality of future over-the-air (OTA) updates and the incremental additions to its skill set. The hardware for autonomy is baked in, albeit only to the much-vaunted ‘Level 2+’ stage.

If you’re not familiar with the five levels of autonomous driving, one through five, don’t worry. It’s an industry-managed set of goalposts that has been known to move ever-so-subtly as the scale of the challenge is realised, refined and then re-attempted.

In short, Level 0 is the car as well all knew it, fully manually operated. Level 1 includes tech like adaptive cruise control, whereas Level 2 incorporates several systems to make up the now familiar (and mandatory) ADAS package - Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. Level 2 cars can apparently ‘drive themselves’ with the car self-steering and operating the throttle and brake depending on the road conditions and surrounding traffic, but the driver is expected to be able to take back control instantly.

Level 3 is a big step forwards, handing over near complete environmental awareness to the vehicle, although the driver still needs to be present and alert. Level 4, as seen in Waymos and other robotaxis, don’t need a driver at all but are generally geofenced to certain areas with granular levels of mapping.

Level 5 is the still theoretical future, wherein cars exist as fully autonomous machines that will potter about the road network with no human oversight. This utopian premise posits the car as an agentic assistant in physical form, apparently unlocking a myriad of social and economic benefits.

Hence Level 2+, a newly inserted stepping stone between two existing but rather widely spaced footholds. Rivian calls its system ‘Universal Hands-Free’, UHF, and it splices the sensor data collected from the car with a growing database of information captured by its user base. Think of it as an LLM for driving, with real-world info feeding back into the AI to constantly improve car’s abilities. To date, 20% of customers – R1 owners – use UHF for up to 40% of their driving and early R2 adopters will be rewarded with a lifetime subscription to Rivian’s Autonomy+ package.

UHF works great on the highway and the introduction of eye tracking instead of steering wheel sensors creates a more authentic hands-free experience. Some capabilities still lag behind the promise. The much vaunted ‘Point-to-Point’ driving is not ready just yet, nor is auto parking or traffic light recognition.

UHF ‘will not stop or slow down for traffic lights or stop signs’, as we discovered almost a little bit too late. The ‘full’ service will be a subscription package (or a one-off payment), and although the R2 is stuffed with sensors, it’s not hardware-ready for Level 3 and above. Stepping stones yet again.

Unless you’re Rivian’s investors, autonomy is still something of a sideshow for many customers. Aside from Mind Robotics and its commercial van division, another cornerstone of the Rivian business model is a new robotaxi, based on the R2 and being developed with Uber, presumably as a direct competitor to Waymo.

Will the association dent the friendly image of these SUVs? Interestingly, Rivian baulked at selling the R2 to American law enforcement, mindful of the downside of having the car associated with the police. Might a robotaxi variant also damage the individualist image of these cars?

AI and autonomy are actually Rivian’s big bet for the business, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it to look at the cars and the culture they’ve engendered to date. Out here amongst the aspens, surrounded by a friendly corral of R2s with delicious food cooked on a tailgate kitchen, debates about the impact of artificial intelligence and autonomy feel very distant. The analogue granularity and practical features of the R2 are at odds with the glassy, detached and inherently inhuman, if not actually anti-human, qualities of AI.

Cars are an expression of the cultural milieu of their place of origin. With California shifting from its role as an epicentre of free-thinking creativity and tolerance towards being the global HQ of the increasingly dystopic tech sector, Rivian embodies the social changes that are facing us all.

Rivian R2 Performance with Launch Package, from $57,990, Rivian.com, @RivianOfficial

The last time England won the football World Cup, a small Italian sports car manufacturer had just launched a svelte new model. Measuring 43 inches high, with a mid-engine, rear-wheel drive set up, this radical Lamborghini would impact supercar design for decades to come. With bodywork penned by the late Marcello Gandini – then at Bertone – it was designed in a matter of mere months yet is still described as the most beautiful car in the world.

Fewer than 800 Miuras were built between 1966 and 1973 at an initial price (in the UK) of around £8,500, a massive amount of money when the average house cost £3,500. Just 400 are believed to be still in existence and the current auction record is a heady £3.85 million.

Company founder, Ferruccio Lamborghini, initially opposed building the mid-engine road car, saying the design would be too noisy and impractical. Fortunately, his team of rebellious young engineers disagreed, designing the mechanicals for the P400 concept entirely after hours.

After a reveal at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1966, it was a further 18 months before the first Miura arrived in Britain. Chassis #3198 proved a crowd-stopper at the Earl’s Court Motor Show in 1967, especially when parked alongside more austere offerings from Triumph, Austin and Rover.

Finished in blue over white, that particular Miura certainly caught the eye of travel company boss, Thomas Cook. He didn’t hesitate to open his cheque book, insisting the show car was resprayed a vibrant shade of orangey-red, with a silver lower section. The car returned to the Sant’Agata factory to be refinished, coming back to Cook’s Norfolk home wearing the plate OPW 8F.

Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Miura is widely regarded as the first true supercar. Before the Miura, sports cars were based on machines that had proved successful on the racetrack. This low-slung two-seater, however, was specifically designed for the road and, with a top speed of 170mph, the fastest production car in the world.

The Lambo quickly gained celebrity status – Frank Sinatra, Rod Stewart and Elton John just some of the stars unable to resist Marcello Gandini’s jaw-dropping design. A Miura also featured in the three-minute opening sequence of the original The Italian Job movie, surging through the Alps with a Matt Munro soundtrack.

The 345bhp Miura proved so fast in 1966 that it left the legendary Jaguar E-Type chasing exhaust fumes. To add to the glamour, early models featured the now iconic ‘eyelash’ headlight surrounds. It was the one aesthetic touch sadly dropped on later variants, such as the 1972 SV model I’m driving in Italy to celebrate the 60th.

The tiny cabin is like a greenhouse without air con, which was a rare and expensive option. The 3.9-litre V12 also had overheating issues, which doesn’t help. Indeed, Lamborghini fitted the car with two engine cooling fans – one operated manually via a switch on the roof when things really warmed up. Monitoring the water temperature gauge is essential.

As I quickly discover, both the brakes and steering are woefully inadequate by modern standards, while the clutch action is heavy and there is limited seat adjustment, forcing my thighs to bang against the underside of the steering wheel. Forget a radio, that transverse V12 engine behind me drowns out any whines of discomfort.

The flickering speedometer reading seems a little optimistic too – what a Miura must feel like above 100mph almost beggars belief. The large steering wheel and lack of power steering means the Lamborghini requires true physical effort to navigate around corners, or when parking at low speed.

The Miura’s steel chassis was highly advanced and featured strategic holes that made the framework extra light. However, with an engine mounted behind the driver, Miura handling is entertaining at best. The rear-biased weight means front-end steering feels light, while handling can be further affected as fuel is used up from the front-mounted petrol tank.

Of course, compared to a modern Lamborghini, such as the hybrid Revuelto hypercar, the Miura is old-fashioned, dated and a complete handful to drive. However, if you must ask which is the most desirable, you’re probably missing the point.

Lamborghini.com, @Lamborghini

In a surprise move, Audi has returned to the supercar market with the announcement of the new Nuvolari. Named for Italian racing driver Tazio Nuvolari, who raced for Audi’s predecessor Auto Union in the inter-war years, the new car will be limited to just 499 units and promises to be the ‘fastest and most powerful production vehicle in the brand’s history.’

The ultra-dramatic looks have hints of last year’s Audi Concept C, which was speculated to form the basis of the forthcoming Audi TT revival. Whether that’ll happen before the Nuvolari (which won’t arrive to customers until the first half of next year) remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, it’s a bold statement, visually and technologically. The 1,001 PS power output comes courtesy of a twin-turbocharged V8 paired with a high-performance hybrid system. The emphasis is very much on combustion, given the lithium-ion battery is only 7.3 kWh, and the engine itself is promised to rev to 10,000 rpm, far above what’s normally found in even the most rabid road cars.

Performance stats look set to match the swiftest EVs, let alone combustion equivalents, with a proposed 0-62mph acceleration time of 2.6 seconds, going on to 124mph in just 6.8 seconds. Top speed is a reputed 217mph. Quattro four-wheel-drive is on board, naturally, with two electric motors on the front axle and a third electric motor located between the mid-engine V8 and the transmission.

The other driving force behind this new focus on supercars is Audi’s entry into Formula 1 this year. Motorsport has influenced the car’s active aerodynamic system, which includes a variable rear wing with three configurations, closed, low downforce and high downforce, with the latter positions used in the car’s performance-oriented driving modes, Dynamic, Dynamic+, and Track, to maximise and minimise drag, either automatically or via a dedicated steering wheel button. There’s also a motorsport inspired energy management system that uses maximum regenerative braking to charge the battery as well as assisting the Launch Control function with electrical boost.

Visually, the Nuvolari represents a clear, contemporary update of a supercar aesthetic Audi premiered with the R8 back in 2004. Elements like the contrast colour side blade (made here from carbon fibre) are present and correct, as is the broad-shouldered stance and silhouette. Finished in what is describing as its new signature colour, Titanium (also found on the Concept C and the F1 car), the overall effect is of a machine chiselled from a solid lump of metal.

That metal is of course aluminium, which forms the basis of the chassis, as per the Audi Space Frame concept the company pioneered and refined over many years. The body panels themselves are formed from carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP), something that Audi has up until now only used for aerodynamic components and for its F1 programme. It’s a weight-saving approach that is wholly in line with the Nuvolari’s ambitions to be the brand’s most significant performance car to date.

The interior is especially minimal, with a graphic simplicity to the components and switchgear that evolves Braun product design. No details of the UI or UX have yet been released, but Audi stresses that the ‘reduced architecture’ is all about putting vital information in front of the driver and minimising distraction. The HMI will have colour accents that evoke the Auto Union Type C race car of the 1930s – as driven by Tazio Nuvolari. Materials used on the interior include anodized aluminium and carbon fibre for the seat structure.

Audi’s famous quattro drive system is also getting a new iteration in the Nuvolari, heralding an evolution of one of the brand’s strongest identifiers. So-called quattro predictive ride distributes torque and braking around each wheel, improving agility, predictability and security on all types of road surface. The Nuvolari is also capable of driving in fully electric mode for short distances.

The R8 was Audi’s first ever mid-engined sports car. Produced for 18 years over two generations (production ended in 2024), it remains one of the most recognisable and desirable models in Audi’s portfolio. The R8 famously shared components with sister company Lamborghini, and under the skin the Nuvolari probably has quite a bit in common with the Lamborghini Temerario.

The R8 was practically unique for its time, with the closest rival being the Porsche 911. In contrast, this new supercar will take Audi into a more luxurious market segment currently occupied by the likes of Ferrari and McLaren.

Audi.com, @Audi

For over a century, the lawns of the Grand Hotel Villa d'Este on Lake Como have hosted some of the rarest classic cars in existence. The hotel’s Concorso d'Eleganza traces its roots back to 1929, when it began as a showcase for coachbuilders – the carrozzerie – on the shores of Lake Como.

At its peak, more than 100 entries – from Pininfarina to Ghia, Touring, Castagna and Stabilimenti Farina – would jostle for attention, as sports cars designed like spaceships and streamlined saloons were paraded on the lawns between Villa d’Este and the green-blue water of Lake Como.

Today, the BMW Group-sponsored Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este is really no different; it celebrates some of the greatest one-offs of the past century while serving as a platform for BMW to rip the covers off its latest concepts and creations. Wallpaper* was there to explore the 2026 edition (15-17 May).

‘The event has been going for over 100 years now, and has always been about these fantastic one-off classic cars that I'm always amazed by,’ says BMW Group's design director Adrian van Hooydonk. ‘For the last ten to 15 years, we've been trying to add to it in the form of concept vehicles. It was quite daunting at first, because you meet the people that collect these cars and know their cars, all of them analogue, all of them hand-built, and then we come in with something fancy and new, but over the years, people have come to appreciate that.’

From 2019, Como gained another car event in the shape of Fuoriconcorso. Set in the steep surroundings of the 17th-century Villa del Grumello, this year’s Fuoriconcorso celebrated German engineering under the banner ‘KraftMeister’. A stark contrast from the oh-so-Italian setting and the themes of past years.

Where the Villa d’Este Concorso trades on coachbuilt elegance, Fuoriconcorso leans more into automotive obscurities, youngtimers and cult classics. Think restomods and 1990s tuner cars, alongside behemoths like the 700-hp, twin-turbo V12 Mercedes-Maybach Exelero from 2005 and the 1970 psychedelic Porsche 917-043 'Hippie Car'.

With world premieres from Brabus, Alpina, Bizzarrini and Kimera Automobili, the two shows are the main pillars of Como Car Week; a series of events that rivals Monterey as the most compelling date on the global concours calendar.

The rebirth of Alpina

‘This year is quite special, because [what we’re showing is] not just a concept car, it is the relaunch of the BMW Alpina brand,’ says van Hooydonk. The weekend’s headline act came fresh from van Hooydonk’s studio, where the BMW design team had been busily developing the first glimpse of what lies in store for the Alpina name, which was brought under BMW control in early 2026.

Called the Vision BMW Alpina, the sleek, 5.2m-long car leads with an exaggerated, forward-leaning shark-nose, referencing the 1978 Alpina E24 B7. Power comes from a non-hybrid V8, and the 20-spoke wheels anchor it to Alpina’s spiritual home of Buchloe.

But the four-seat coupé isn't a production model and likely never will be. The first BMW-made Alpina to make it to market will be a 7-series super saloon, complete with a V8 at its heart. ‘We are not going to flood the market with Alpina products,’ assures van Hooydonk. ‘We’re going to take a careful approach, we’re going to have some patience and start one by one, and then build it slowly.’

With the BMW Group’s latest marque positioned to fill the rather large ‘white space’ between the most expensive BMW and fellow group marque Rolls-Royce, Alpina ‘was and is about quiet luxury’, van Hooydonk tells me on a terrace overlooking the sparkling water. The refined BMWs ‘[were] much faster than the standard product, but not ostentatious’, cars, in which ‘you could go almost undercover’. You can read more about the Vision BMW Alpina here.

BMWAlpina.com, @BMWAlpina.official

The world premieres

With the classics rooting most of the two events in the past, a handful of world premieres this year hinted at what the future holds for highly bespoke, limited-run supercars. Kimera Automobili launched its bonkers V8 Koenigsegg-powered K-39, an Italian hypercar that references both the 1981 Lancia Beta Montecarlo Turbo Group 5 racing car and the Lancia 037 Group B rally car, only this is no restomod. The K-39 is Kimera’s first car built from the ground up, which includes a carbon-fibre monocoque, a V8 engine, a manual gearbox and rear-wheel drive.

At Fuoriconcorso, tuning house Brabus unveiled the Bodo, a long, sweeping million-euro, grand tourer with 1,000hp twin-turbo V12 ‘hyper-GT’ named for late founder Bodo Buschmann. Beneath its all-carbon body lie the reworked bones of a twin-turbo V12 Aston Martin Vanquish, with styling seemingly referencing the Mercedes-Maybach Vision 6 concept car from 2016.

At the other end of the spectrum, Bizzarrini marked the centenary of founder Giotto Bizzarrini's birth with the Centenario Edition: a gloss-black, gold-wheeled special edition of its 5300 GT Corsa Revival. The car will be the last of the ‘reborn’ 5300 GTs, with the company confirming that it will soon launch an all-new model.

The winners

Of the two Como events, Fuoriconcorso is an unjudged, curated show with no official winner, whereas the Concorso d'Eleganza remains the true battleground, where the finest classic cars come to be judged. In 2026, more than 50 cars competed across classes curated by period and coachbuilder.

This year’s top honour was awarded to a 1937 BMW 328 ‘Bügelfalte’ – a one-off racing roadster built at the Munich plant, named for the distinctive metal edging on its front wings. Its owner, Stefano Martinoli of Italy, took home an A Lange & Söhne 1815 Chronograph in 18ct white gold, the crest of the Concorso hand-engraved on the case back.

When it came to the public vote, it was a 1963 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster that won the most hearts. Finished in white with a contrasting black hardtop, the roadster came complete with vintage luggage, skis and snow chains on its rear wheels.

ConcorsodEleganzaVilladEste.com, @ConcorsodEleganza_vde

The announcement of the Series II versions of Rolls-Royce’s first EV, the Spectre, will get more attention than it would otherwise have received given the recent tempestuous debut of the Ferrari Luce. Rolls is not the kind of company to acknowledge, let along get flustered by, a potential rival, but we must all agree that the (presumably coincidental) choice of colour is a useful one.

Right now, the Spectre is pretty much the only EV that matches the Luce’s stratospheric price and socio-economic strata, despite the large gulf between the image and intention of both brands. Whereas Ferrari’s decision to court the family market baffled normally clear-thinking analysts (in addition to tripping the hair triggers of the perennially opiniated), Rolls is more than happy to lay bare some pertinent stats.

According to their own customer – sorry, client – research, Rolls discovered that the Spectre is ‘typically the second Rolls-Royce in a seven-car garage,’ and is used each for around 4,000 miles (6,500 km) each year. Spectre owners usually charge at home and drive the four-seater car on their own. In short, this big EV is very much an occasional car, perhaps put to use on the occasional weekend trip to the continent.

The starting price of the original Spectre was around £333,000; although the Goodwood company’s copious options list and bespoke opportunities can push each car closer to the Luce’s £474,320 they’re unlikely to exceed it. However, there’s also the sportier Spectre Black Badge, which can very easily be brought into Luce territory.

So what’s new in Series II? A Rolls overhaul is a subtle event, but the headline stats are an increase to the official range, up by 18% to a Luce-beating 390 miles (628km). Charging is quicker too, and the Spectre Series II Black Badge takes the crown of the most powerful Rolls-Royce in history, delivering some 1100Nm of torque in Rolls-Royce’s coyly named ‘Spirited’ mode.

The other differences are cosmetic and are largely concerned with how much you’re willing to spend to transform Spectre Series II into a personal statement. This includes the introduction of the Duality Twill and Placed Perforation interior finishes, introduced to the Spectre for the very first time. The Black Badge gets the shadowy but showy ‘Iced Black’ matte exterior finishes and there’s a new 23” wheel design.

While you don’t get performance statistics out of Rolls-Royce, the numbers the company has released are no less stellar. For example, that Duality Twill cloth interior uses some 2.6 million stitches and 10 miles of thread. Available in Lilac, Chocolate, Black and Sage, it can be finished in 50 different thread colours.

One alternative to the twill is Placed Perforation leather is also available for Spectre Series II, which displays artworks on seat surfaces uses three different-sized perforations or on the door cards, where the patterns can also be backlit.

According to Domagoj Dukec, Director of Design at Rolls-Royce, ‘Spectre has consistently been recognised as one of the most elegant automotive forms of the modern era. Clients frequently cite its design as one of the defining reasons for their commission, and it will undoubtedly take its place in future collections of remarkable motor cars.’

There are plenty more lines to read between in the announcements surrounding Spectre Series II, such as Rolls-Royce’s assertion that electric power ‘…delivers an experience completely in tune with the marque’s values, confirming Rolls-Royce’s authority in shaping the future of super-luxury motoring.’

The company is certainly going through a phase of doubling down on its luxury credentials, such as the Project Nightingale cars, part of a new Coachbuild Collection, and a determination to find new and compelling material and accessory stories in each model.

Spectre Series II gets a new high gloss ‘Brindled Walnut’ veneer, made from waste walnut blended with eucalyptus fibres to create a striped pattern material from which veneer can be cut and polished. There’s also a new fascia design with over 8,000 integrated pixel-like lights and a brand new aviation-inspired timepiece.

‘This motor car’s extraordinary reception around the world has also established Spectre as one of the most compelling canvases for Bespoke in our contemporary product portfolio, inspiring clients to pursue ever more individual and ambitious commissions,’ says Chris Brownridge, Rolls-Royce’s Chief Executive, ‘With Spectre Series II, we extend those possibilities even further. This refinement of a modern masterpiece is made in the spirit of our co-founder, Sir Henry Royce who said: ‘Small things make perfection, but perfection is no small thing.’’

Rolls-Royce Spectre Series II, price tbc, Rolls-RoyceMotorcars.com, @RollsRoyceCars

Renault is having more fun with the R4, keeping the 5 as a halo product (soon to burnished even further by the Turbo 3E) with a purity of form and presence. The 4, on the other hand, has already spawned a couple of concepts, the 2023 4EVER Trophy and the 2026 JP4x4 Concept, both playing into the car’s more upright, 4x4-focused stance. The former evokes the original R4’s rallying history, while the latter is a contemporary update of a beach buggy/surf wagon.

After a fortnight spent in Renault’s new 4 and 5, the conclusion is inescapable. Small EVs are not just here to stay but they’re the most useful and appropriate application of the entire technology. But what about space and range and performance, we hear you cry? Surely hefty-platformed SUVs with multiple rows of seats and capacious amounts of kWh are what’s needed to make the most of this ever-advancing technology?

Certainly in Europe, small cars have always hewed closest to the everyday use case of the vast majority of drivers. EU stats show that the average daily miles driven maxes out in Germany, with 19km per passenger, going down to just 5.6km in Greece. If a car is a necessity, then small, efficient, and attractive is the way to go.

What has changed is affordability and desirability. Car prices have steadily risen this century, with smaller cars becoming disproportionately more expensive as manufacturers eschew bare bones simplicity in favour of high levels of equipment and better-quality materials. When EVs first arrived, the inevitable cost of batteries pushed up these prices even more, initially precluding small cars from benefitting from the technology. Renault’s first ‘compact’ EV, the Zoe, was offered with a battery that had to be leased to offset the initial purchase price.

This finance model hasn’t survived falling battery prices. Chinese firms led the way by leveraging the economies of scale to create a number of sub-£20k small EVs. It’s taken older European brands a little longer to find the resources to create competitors that – if they can’t quite beat the Far East on cost – offer a far more attractive route into electrification.

Partly this is down to heritage. Renault, Peugeot, Citroën and Fiat were at the vanguard of compact car design in the post-war era, shaping what we know consider to be icon after icon, even if at the time they were simply seen as unique, affordable and highly desirable small cars.

By bottling some of that nostalgia and fusing it with the next generation of EV platforms, these self-same companies have taken giant strides in re-shaping the modern EV market. The past few years have seen the electrified return of the Renaults 4, 5 and Twingo, Fiat’s 500, 600 and Panda, along with Peugeot’s reputation for hot hatchback magic and the upcoming revival of none other than the Citroën 2CV. Throw in the BMW Mini-E and a number of similarly attractive offerings like the Dacia Hipster concept and Hyundai Inster, and what you have is an undeniable revival.

The modern definition of a small car certainly does not mean like for like. The electric 5 is shade shorter than 4m long (the 4 a little larger at 4.144m), a substantial increase on the 3.5m long original (for reference, the contemporary Topolino is just 2.5m long, versus the 3.2m length of the original Fiat 500). There’s more legroom in the 4, thanks to its longer wheelbase; the 5 is a little bit cramped for four adults.

Both Renaults feel compact and nimble, certainly when compared with the better-selling SUV sector. To drive, the 5 is much more spirited than the slightly softer 4, even if the near-identical cabins don’t do much to differentiate the feel of the dash. The info screens aren’t overwhelming, graphics are bright and dynamic without being frustrating, and sit’s simple to switch off nagging alerts. There are also physical switches for heating, ventilation and volume, although the angular gear selector stalk feels a little bit flimsy.

Neither car offers a revolution in the way of available range – both share the same 52 kwh battery (with a smaller 40kwh variant available in the R5), giving an official rated maximum of just over 250 miles. That’s not colossal but Renault’s tech manages the battery well, making the estimated range easy to exceed on a warm day with a light touch on the accelerator.

The 5’s verve makes it harder to resist pressing on, although more enthusiastic drivers can go for the mechanically and visually similar Alpine A290. There will also eventually be a supercar-beating 5 Turbo 3E, a limited production with a six-figure price tag.

Each model contains pleasing design touches that don’t ever tip over into kitsch – even the 3D printed vignettes in the centre console. The 5 has a raft of music-equalisation presets shaped by none other than synth wizard Jean-Michel Jarre, while the big ‘5’ logo on the bonnet doubles up as a charge indicator.

The little Renaults are already contemporary classics, plying a rare but rich seam of sales success and critical acclaim. We experienced the slightly more upmarket Roland Garros edition of the 5 (shades of the old Peugeot 205 Lacoste, perhaps), which adds tennis-chic design touches. It comes in Diamond Black as standard, with optional Arctic White, Midnight Blue or Matte Shadow Grey bodywork.

Renault has also announced the Plein Sud variant of the 4, with its roll-back canvas roof reminiscent of the original Renault 4, which in turn appropriated it from the Citroën 2CV. As previously mentioned, the 2CV is coming back, with a concept promised for October’s Paris Motor Show.

According to Citroën CEO, Xavier Chardon, ‘the new 2 CV will re-enchant electric mobility for a new generation through a highly desirable model… [it is] not simply the return of a legendary name. It is the return of a bold and optimistic idea of progress. A profoundly Citroën idea.’

Renault might be getting the attention right now, but the competition is hotting up. In the Stellantis corner you have the Fiat Grande Panda, soon to be joined by its bulked-up Fiat Grizzly sibling, all of which are sold alongside the closely related Jeep Avenger, Vauxhall Frontera and Citroën C3.

In addition to the 2CV, Citroën also originated the ultra-small Ami, the car that forms the basis of Fiat’s delightful Topolino. With news that Mini too is thinking again about the sub-3.6m sector, along with the imminent arrival of the new version of the Smart #2, the small car is most certainly back. This time let’s hope it’s for good.

Renault 5 Roland Garros+, from £26,945, Renault.co.uk

Renault 4, from £23,445, Renault.co.uk

The internet loves a controversy. The online commentariat will no doubt have plenty more to say about the new Ferrari Luce, even though no one outside of the company will get to drive the car for many months. It also feels facile to qualify the design as ‘controversial’ when the vast majority of naysayers haven’t seen the Luce in the metal.

Wallpaper* has. At the launch event in Rome, Marc Newson, and his colleagues Jeremy Bataillou and Christopher Wilson, talked through the genesis of the car, designed with Jony Ive and the rest of the LoveFrom team, while chief tester Raffaele de Simone gave his impressions of what it will be like to drive.

‘We were trying to get our heads around how to solve the challenges of five seats and four doors – challenges we’d not only expect but which we’d look forward to trying to solve,’ says Newson. ‘Pretty early on, we came up with the idea of the glass house or passenger cell – an element that encapsulates the interior. That in turn enabled us to separate – at least intellectually – the body of the car.’

Describing the glazed upper body and the aluminium-panelled bodywork as ‘two design elements that work in unison’, Newson walks us around the way the two interact. ‘You have the passenger cell that sits within the body of the car, expressed obviously through colour but also with a physical gap from the body,’ he explains. ‘The cell is a smooth, aerodynamic object that starts right at the very front of the car and extends seamlessly all the way to the back.’ As for the impact of optional colours and trim over and above the curated and colour-matched launch quintet, Newson is philosophical. ‘It’s quite controlled – the options are prescriptive,’ he says, ‘it’s not a free for all.’

The bodywork doubles as the primary aero form, from the big front wing, ‘where you’d normally have a bonnet, to the wing at the back doing the same thing, but with a smaller gap’. Subtle aerodynamic details abound, like the hidden knurling underneath the ‘bonnet’ wing to break up the airflow over the windscreen into many individual channels, reducing wind noise.

The benefits of Ferrari’s bespoke electric platform are plain to see on the interior. ‘The amount of interior space we’ve eked out of this platform is really impressive – it’s a bit like a Tardis,’ Newson says. According to Newson, the rear-opening door creates the best sense of distinction between inside and out, creating a portal that you step through to the spacious interior. A completely flat floor enables three across at the rear, and the electrically reclinable rear seats are also mounted slightly higher than the front.

‘We really wanted to touch on everything, to make sure everything felt in sync, right down to the user interface,’ Newson concludes. The ‘key ceremony’, wherein the e-ink faced rectangular key sinks into the glass centre console to activate the car, is just one of many ultra-focused details.

We especially like the way the controls indicate the current cabin temperature to help guide you to the right setting. Every spin of the (real) needles on the digital dials and embedded clock/chronometer is paired with an equally satisfying on-screen animation; nothing flashy or distracting, just pure graphical simplicity.

Behind the wheel

All this painstaking work was undertaken closely with the dedicated team of engineers and drivers at Ferrari, led by Raffaele de Simone. In a demonstration that’s somewhat akin to having a Michelin-starred chef describe a dish rather than let you taste it, de Simone attempted to convey the way in which the Luce’s performance upends tradition.

‘In the past, if you wanted more performance you had to reduce comfort and space. More comfort, and you had less performance. In the Luce, this relationship has been redrawn,’ he enthuses. De Simone attempts to describe how the complex approach to throttle mapping and power delivery doesn’t dump maximum power the millisecond you depress the accelerator. He implies that Ferrari test drivers – let alone ‘regular’ Ferrari customers – simply aren’t ready for these levels of torque.

Instead, the power is sliced, albeit not in way that is nostalgically linked to the revs of an engine. Then there’s the noise – amplified in the cabin in performance mode and projected out via front and rear speakers. ‘The sound helps the driver manage the car,’ de Simone says. ‘We didn’t want a fake nostalgic sound… there’s no reference to other Ferraris.’

Challenged as to whether or not the traction control can be completely disengaged (someone, somewhere, always thinks they know better), the test driver shrugged and said no. ‘It would be like having a horse in a bathroom full of glasses,’ he said in thickly accented Italian, a vivid mental picture indeed. ‘We give you the tools to go around a roundabout until the tyres die,’ he adds.

Will the future Luce ownership cadre be seeking this kind of experience or simply want a Ferrari badge, regardless of the better ergonomics, less inconvenience and the – much overlooked – ability to turn up somewhere without announcing your arrival with a fanfare of largely unwanted noise?

As previously noted, this is luxury motoring without the traditional signifiers – not brave, just different, and perfectly on brand for a company born of innovation and individuality.

Ferrari Luce, $550,000 / £438,406 + delivery, Ferrari.com, @Ferrari

One can scarcely imagine how a car company could be more controversial than Ferrari in 2026. The new Ferrari Luce is a triumph of unconventional thinking and devil-may-care dial-shifting. It’s the company’s first pure EV – unnecessary for some, heretical to many – and what’s more, it’s been designed and shaped on the West Coast of the USA by no less than Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson of LoveFrom.

When the Luce’s luxuriously minimal interior broke cover earlier this year, many Ferraristi were frothing. If they’re still upset, then the company would do well to leave them far behind, for the Luce is unlike almost any Ferrari that’s gone before. The launch of this car has been impeccably mediated from the outset, ever since powertrain details were revealed last autumn and the interior components shown at an event in LoveFrom’s home city of San Francisco.

Now we’re in Rome to see the whole car at an event shrouded in secrecy. Legions of security personnel check everyone’s multi-stickered camera phones at every opportunity. To the frustration of content creators, faced with a beautifully curated architectural interior, exterior and lovingly produced displays, the highly symbolic launch was off-limits to private photography.

The event took place at Rome’s Città dello Sport, designed by Santiago Calatrava and opened just last year. It’s a spectacular but troubled sports complex known as ‘Calatrava’s Sail’ (Vela di Calatrava), 16 years late and reportedly costing around €740m. Ferrari overlooked this inauspicious contemporary white elephant and chose instead to highlight the city’s association with its heritage – today (25 May 2026) is precisely 79 years since the marque won its first race victory, when the Ferrari 125 S of Franco Cortese triumphed at the Baths of Caracalla circuit in the 1947 Gran Premio di Roma.

The Luce inside and out

The secrecy clearly worked. As the plethora of online speculation – and outright outrage – indicated, the Luce was so eagerly awaited that any leaks would surely have surfaced. Spy shots proved useless, leaving the many predictive renderings far off the mark. So far, in fact, that Ferrari must be congratulating itself on the leftfield choice of LoveFrom as a way of utterly befuddling normally perceptive industry watchers. So what exactly has Ive, Newson and their team done to upend the company’s traditional aesthetic?

In some respects, one could argue, tradition has actually been slavishly adhered to, with every fact, facet and anecdotal datapoint from the Ferrari mythos carefully chronicled and dissected in order to achieve a greater meaning. This is evidenced by LoveFrom’s hefty tomes of research – dated spring 2022, to give you some idea of this car’s gestation period. They demonstrate a thoroughness of thought and a desire for knowledge, as well as total mastery of their subject. As Newson later confirms, ‘Jony and I are car enthusiasts, obsessives even – I’ve done the Mille Miglia 14 times.’

The end result, if you can believe it, is probably the most practical, everyday Ferrari ever made. Sure, there have been four-doors before – the Purosangue (and the aforementioned one-off Pinin, as well as a few off-book specials) – as well as many more four seaters (including the epic 612 Scaglietti, the FF, GTC4Lusso, Mondial, 412, and 365 GT/4 2+2), but none to date have offered four doors and five seats, let alone a hatchback-style boot.

It’s also massive, the biggest, heaviest car Ferrari has ever made, but only just: at over 5m long, 2m wide (without mirrors) and 1.54m high, the Luce is longer but fractionally narrower and lower than the Purosangue. The kerb weight of 2,260kg is roughly equivalent to the ICE car’s 2,170 kg. Rear-wheel steering tightens the dynamics, as does the use of no fewer than four electric-traction engines with electrically controlled active suspension (a system first used on the Ferrari F80).

Yet these are obviously not the accolades Ferrari is gunning for. Try these facts instead: the Luce is the fastest four-door, the fastest five-seater, the most luxurious, and the most spacious, as well as the most aerodynamic production Ferrari ever made. Purists who eschew all these metrics in favour of their misguided ideals will therefore be missing out. But let’s not offload the company’s bravery onto its customers. Anyone who thinks the typical UHNWI consumer needs a pat on the back for going electric when the offering is as plainly desirable and accomplished as this is as deluded as the Ferrari fanboy who thinks the brand has desecrated itself.

It’s true that the rich are notoriously competitive and self-conscious, but most arguments we’ve heard against the Luce’s credentials are that it doesn’t offer the sonorous drama, ergonomic awkwardness and sheer impracticality that defines a supercar or hypercar. The latter’s emotional magnetism also comes with emotional baggage, as well as scant opportunities for real-world use, hence the over-supply of low-mileage examples of practically every hypercar ever built.

Just as playing a vinyl record on a £50,000 Linn Sondek LP12-50 turntable induces an addictive level of friction and inconvenience in the quest for sonic perfection, so the byproducts of inefficiency have come to define combustion-powered performance – engine and exhaust noise, heat, friction, smell. These are inconveniences many have come to passionately adore, shaped into a soundtrack that defines lives and loves. There are those who feel that a supercar will always be the antithesis of what an EV has to offer, precisely because of this perceptible friction. As a result, how can the Luce qualify as a ‘true’ Ferrari?

As will become apparent, the newest Ferrari ticks all the checkboxes of a luxury EV – comfort, convenience, performance and sophistication – and then some. Having thoroughly explored the car in the metal (first drives won’t be until later in the year), Wallpaper* can categorically state that the worriers and naysayers underestimated LoveFrom from the outset.

The design collective is not a loose assemblage of earnest but talented dilettantes, but one of the most sophisticated industrial design agencies in the world. Working with Ferrari has meant complete immersion in the world of Maranello. ‘We’ve been hand in glove with Ferrari for six or seven years, completely embedded in the organisation,’ Marc Newson begins, adding that ‘what’s interesting and pertinent to this project is the integration of the interior, exterior and UI – in a way that’s not typical in the car industry.’

Both Newson and Ive and their colleagues know a thing or two about holistic design experiences. From iPhones to superyachts, theirs is a world of meticulously intended consequences; things look the way they do because is the best way for them to function. ‘[As a result] we couldn’t disassociate the interior from the exterior,’ Newson continues. ‘As industrial designers, the way we’ve approached this project is a collection of around 500 individual design products. I can’t remember a car where someone has spent time designing the aluminium seat rails. Everything is completely new from the ground up.’

‘Each component is a self-contained object,’ confirms LoveFrom’s interior leader Jeremy Bataillou. ‘This enables new thinking – they would still be beautiful objects if you took them out of the car.’

Electrification – not 100 per cent confirmed when the project began – gave the project team the impetus it needed to push back on traditional car design strictures, thanks to that painstaking research into the company’s design history. ‘I’m not sure [if being outsiders] gave us any more licence, but there was clearly a desire on Ferrari’s behalf to have fresh eyes and look beyond their comfort zone,’ Newson explains.

New thinking abounds, from the way the windscreen wipers dock alongside the A-pillars, leaving a near-seamless front surface descending from windscreen down to bumper, to the electric platform's enabling of the fifth seat, a space usually given over to the transmission tunnel. At the same time, there are visual elements that evoke classics from the range, like the rear halo lights, seen on everything from the 360 Modena and the 458 Italia to the 365 GTB/4 Daytona.

Aerodynamics helped dictate the form, from the purist glass house, integral aero elements and active grilles that divert airflow for cooling without compromising drag, to the ride height that lowers subtly at speed. The near-seamless glazing sits above unifying bodywork that wraps around it, further defining its form, with the whole ensemble a careful exercise in scale reduction thanks to a clever mix of painted panels with black sills and lower structure to elongate the relatively tall four-door crossover form. The five launch colours – Azzurro la Plata, Giallo Luce, Rosso Dino, Bianco Artico, and Rosso Fiammante – include classic takes on Ferrari red and yellow, along with a tasty blue, and technical-looking grey and orange.

The massive 24-inch wheels at the rear and 23-inch at the front, as well as the sleek rear window, further edge the Luce towards a sleek saloon silhouette – we’re reminded of the 1980 Ferrari Pinin concept. The wheels come in two designs, a more classic open five-spoke pattern and an aerodynamically optimised and closed-off turbine design that can be specified with body-coloured details. At the front, a pure aero form dives beneath a body-coloured ‘bonnet’, while the rear doors, which open up coach-style at the push of a button, give access to a spacious and impeccably trimmed cabin.

The Luce’s interior is beyond reproach, from the slick action of every single switch and dial through to the clarity of the graphics and the smoothness of the animations. Once you’ve hurdled the apparent irony of one of the primary progenitors of our screen-focused, highly scrollable reality doing away with touch-centric car interiors, what is left makes undeniable sense.

According to Newson, ‘a return to physical buttons seemed obvious to us. [Jony and myself] have owned old Ferraris. We like being able to access things in a spontaneous way.’ Newson quotes Ive as saying that ‘just because a vehicle is electric doesn’t mean you have to get carried away with the electronics’.

‘Touchscreens and capacitive switches are completely inappropriate for cars,’ Bataillou says with conviction.

‘Ferrari were very receptive to this idea from the get-go,’ Newson continues, ‘although this simplicity has a lot of complexity behind it.’

The ribbed leather seats and door cards, glass-faced consoles, and highly detailed recycled aluminium controls and accessories (just check that rear ceiling-mounted grab handle) speak to the timeworn simplicity of classic interiors and implements. Even the multifunctional dials and digital displays developed with Samsung Display, fuse the satisfying exactness of a vintage watch face with modern information demands, including mapping from both Google and Apple. A 21-speaker audio system with 3,000W of amplification channels Ferrari’s new Audio Signature, more of which later.

‘The interface work followed the initial vision from the very first meeting,’ says LoveFrom’s HMI team leader Christopher Wilson. ‘But there was also constant evolution with the test drivers and in simulations. We iterated and iterated.’ In terms of legibility and precision, the binnacle evokes the necessary simplicity of aircraft. ‘There’s quite a lot of aviation design in there,’ Newson admits, ‘particularly helicopter references. It’s the rationality of how things are designed in that sector.’

A true Ferrari?

So is the design and engineering acumen on display true to the Ferrari ethos? In our polarised era, the Luce must still straddle two opposing world views. Naturally, the company describes the car as a pure Ferrari, a sports car ‘designed for deeper engagement and performance, with a unique and recognisable character.’ In keeping all the engineering – right down to the battery packs – in-house, the Luce project has included 60 new patents.

As already noted, stellar performance is often a by-product of electrification, rather than its primary raison d'être, so here at least the Luce’s capabilities are most definitely on brand. The cited figures include a 0 to 100 km/h time of 2.5 seconds (thanks to that roof-mounted launch control – a future social media staple, we predict) with 200km/h reached in 6.8 seconds.

The top speed will be somewhere in excess of 310 km/h. It’s also worth noting that while a Purosangue delivers a range of around 578km on a full tank of fuel, the Luce’s maximum range is a not dissimilar 530km. More to the point, you won’t feel short-changed by having to haul around a barely stressed V12.

Unlike the ersatz combustion sound favoured by companies as diverse as AMG, Abarth and Dodge, Ferrari has developed a system that works a little bit like an electric guitar pick-up, with an accelerometer on the axle picking up the ‘dynamic texture and vibration of the rotating components’. This signal is then filtered and amplified, depending on the drive mode, and can be heard inside and outside the car, with the interior system providing a bit more detail and grain depending on throttle response and driving mode.

Radical luxury on four wheels

There is quite literally nothing that Ferrari could have done to forestall the inevitable deluge of dismissive snark that will come their way from some quarters. The internet is going to hate it, but then the internet hates everything. Instead, let’s not just celebrate Ferrari’s bravery but also acknowledge its quiet mastery of luxury design, edging the brand into a realm that hitherto has only been associated with names like Rolls-Royce and Bentley.

At 550,000 euros, or about £440k (exact pricing TBC), the Luce is twice as much as the Merc-AMG and the Jaguar Type 01 and probably punches well above the Bentley Barnato and even the Spectre. Arguably, the Luce is more technologically sophisticated and finely resolved than all of the above.

Yet the price is irrelevant. To a certain extent, the badge is too, for this is a car for people less concerned with what a Ferrari was than what a Ferrari can be for them. The prancing horse might carry with it an inescapable gut punch of emotion, especially in Italy and markets with a more slavish devotion to heritage, but there’s a new generation of wealthy buyers who are simply committed to acquiring the best, regardless of brand.

These people are happiest when collaging their consumption from a patchwork of obscure heritage brands, luxury suppliers, tried and tested mainstream products and brand-new start-ups. Hence the success of Tesla as a status symbol amongst early adopters in Silicon Valley, a mantle subsequently passed to Rivian and Lucid. There aren’t decades of heritage to kowtow to, simply the understanding that – at the time – these were the companies doing the best work at the cutting edge.

In the auto industry, it’s taken legacy brands the best part of 15 years to catch up and recognise electrification as an opportunity to convey innovation first and heritage second. In fact, having the latter inform the former is a habit that some companies still can’t kick – witness Mercedes-AMG’s penchant for concocting emotion from memory and cultural meaning, from angry V8 sounds to vibrating seats. Equally, Jaguar’s brave Year Zero approach started off as all tone and no substance, triggering a reputational catastrophe.

At the other end of the scale, Rolls and Bentley swathe their EVs with traditional forms and materials, while the lack of publicly affirmed action from Lamborghini, McLaren and Aston Martin implies they have neither the cultural nor financial capital to take either path just yet.

Ultimately, what emerges strongest from the Luce is a new definition of luxury. Ferrari expects 80 per cent of production will go to buyers who are new to the brand and therefore don't know or care about the complex emotions conjured up by combusted hydrocarbons. For them, the Luce has more in common with a Birkin bag or a Leica M6 than an F1 car. It’s a superyacht for the road, with every cleat, catch, switch and hinge made to measure, money no object. Thanks to LoveFrom’s obsessiveness, the Luce is a far more bespoke object than any amount of marquetry or stitching can create.

The look is clean, the lines are calm, the image is tasteful; the Luce is no outrageous four-wheeled flex, even though stats suggest it can more than keep up with the best of the rest. It might not be cheaper to buy but it’ll certainly be a great deal cheaper to run than the anxiety-inducing complexity of the over-fettled hypercar (Ferrari promises support for electrical components, including batteries, equal to that provided to its ICE cars).

On top of that, the packaging makes it more practical for daily life than almost every other luxury EV. In terms of look, feel, package and performance, the Luce could just be the most radical Ferrari of all time.

Ferrari Luce, from c€550,000, Ferrari.com, @Ferrari, LoveFrom.com

Project Cosmos was one of the most secretive projects in Lürssen’s portfolio. The German superyacht builder launched the 114.2m vessel last August from its Rendsburg shipyard, about 80km north of Hamburg.

Now the vessel has been delivered and the name revealed. Nausicaä is exceptionally sophisticated, not just technically, but in interior and exterior form. Designed completely by Marc Newson, Nausicaä has pushed the boundaries of what is possible in superyacht design.

Named for a character in an early Studio Ghibli film (Nausicaä from the Valley of the Wind), the yacht was commissioned by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Newson was given unprecedented creative freedom, allowing him to approach the shape of the hull and superstructure in innovative new ways to maximise the amount of deck space and accommodation.

The vessel instantly recognisable as a Newson design, not least because of the focus on simplifying complex technical components to their most graphically precise forms, such as the four radar spheres above the bridge. It also carries through the ethos of a conceptual design to a finished, fully functional object, something that characterises Newson’s work across every field, from watches to car design.

‘It is extremely challenging for a design project, of any description, to literally deliver on the vision conceived and presented at concept stage,’ Newson acknowledges. ‘Here, I am very proud to say that every detail, at every scale, has been realised at the most coherent level. Working with an immensely creative client has enabled rare opportunities to push the boundaries and test the limits of form, material and functionality.’

A superyacht is perhaps the largest bespoke design project outside of architecture, with the added demands of function and utility in every conceivable condition. The hull and superstructure of Nausicaä are fluid and dynamic, with scarcely a single flat surface used throughout the design. Lürssen’s manufacturing expertise in steel – honed over 150 years – was put to the test, with what the shipyard describes as geometrically precise ‘vast cylindrical steel forms’ used throughout the design.

Another singularly distinctive part of the design is the Skydome feature on the upper deck. This glass structure is formed from seven vast curved panes of glass, each 3m x 2.8m and 62mm, weighing in at 1,050kg. It’s part of the owner’s office suite and comes with bespoke internal bronze shutters to close off the outside world. It’s paired with a private sky terrace. Demonstrating Newson’s love of pushing materials to their limits – and the technical and manufacturing skills of Lürssen and its suppliers – each pane had to be hot-bent using gravity to achieve the form.

Another virtuoso piece of glazing wraps around the entire upper deck, interspersed with doors and technical spaces finished in the same gloss black to give the impression of a single unbroken form. At the bow, there’s a 19m wide observation lounge, with wall-to-wall glazing. The aft deck is open and spans the yacht’s entire 18m beam. Here there’s a pool and Jacuzzi as well as twin stairs down to the swim deck.

Lürssen CEO Peter Lürssen describes glazing technology as a core part of the company’s reputation for innovation. ‘From (2004’s) Rising Sun to (2024’s) Kismet, and now Nausicaä, we continue to push the boundaries of scale and structural complexity, creating spaces that are both aesthetically dramatic and functional for our clients. It is rare to find a modern Lürssen yacht that does not break new ground in glass engineering.’

Nausicaä has been designed to ensure that these views are worthwhile, with an Ice Class 1D hull providing enough strength for voyages through polar seas. On board, there are the facilities and equipment to tackle any kind of voyage, from the fixed helipad above the bow to the dry dock at the stern, where a 12.5m sportsfish tender can be launched via a sledge system. This retractable system extends over the swim platform to allow the tender into the water and disappears when not in use.

Inside, there are further innovations. Maezawa, the founder of Tokyo’s Contemporary Art Foundation, has given over part of the main deck to an internal gallery, with space for a revolving collection of art and sculpture in a two-level atrium, complete with circular viewing deck. In the aft atrium, there are elements like a bespoke sushi bar and table tennis area, all of which have been shaped by Newson’s studio.

Nausicaä was initially billed as the first yacht powered by a methanol fuel cell and the plan is still to install this pioneering powerplant in the hull at some point in the future. For now, there is a diesel-electric plant with five engines – two primary and three auxiliary – driving fully electric Azimuth thruster pods.

The onboard battery plant can deliver up to 2 MW of power, allowing for zero emission operation when moored for extended periods of time – sufficient to power all hotel systems simultaneously at peak load. This allows the yacht to operate silently, with zero local emissions, for extended periods.

Marc-Newson.com, @MarcNewsonOfficial

Lurseen.com, @LuerssenYachts

Considering Icelanders still eat horse and puffin meat, it would be fair to assume they couldn’t give a monkey’s for political correctness either. After all, this is a country that went to war with Britain over cod fishing rights and still hunts whales. Yet on the road, Icelandic drivers must be some of the politest in the world, pulling over as a 4x4 bundles up behind them on a vast lava desert, sometimes even proffering a cheery wave. They’re either super-friendly, or fully aware that the Ineos Grenadier was gestated with very dubious steering.

At launch in 2022, this Land Rover lookalike was equipped with heavy duty, hydraulically assisted steering, designed for off-road extremes. But because it prioritised ruggedness over on-road precision, the turning radius was huge. Notably, the steering wheel didn’t self-centre afterwards either, requiring far too much driver input to straighten out.

While irrelevant when scrabbling up the side of an Icelandic fjord, the Ineos was downright painful to manoeuvre in a Waitrose car park. Well, it was, until now. Thankfully, owners no longer need to fit an aftermarket solution that might invalidate their warranty because the 2026 Grenadier is very much ready for duty.

Loaded with a variable-rate steering box, driving this outsize off-roader is something of a revelation. The first 45 degrees in both directions is considerably faster through the steering wheel, which stops the Ineos wandering wide around corners like a stray goat.

Anyone who has driven a classic Defender might wonder what all the fuss is about but these days an upmarket truck like the Grenadier – staring at around £63,000 – is expected to perform equally well on road. And although new Defender is more practical as an everyday drive, it’s impossible not to be tempted by the Grenadier’s rugged, all-purpose persona.

Outstanding in the dirt, despite some annoying oversights – the worst a daft 30/70 split-opening rear door designed to allow access while hitched to a trailer but deeply frustrating if you actually want to put stuff in the boot – you have to award Ineos 7/10 for effort and 10/10 for the balls to actually build a new ‘Land Rover’ in the first place. The Grenadier packs genuine presence and far more street cred than the current, ubiquitous Defender.

To prove the point, I’ve been packed off to Iceland, where outside of urban Reykjavik, learning off-road driving techniques is a rite of passage. My motor is the very latest Ineos, fitted with a macho set of chunky BF Goodrich tyres.

Our destination is Eleven Deplar Farm, an uber-luxury adventure retreat in a remote, 15th century sheep station. Situated on the Troll peninsula, it’s a five-hour drive from Reykjavik through demanding roads and tracks – the sort that require a driver’s full and undivided attention.

Cosmetically, Grenadier looks the same. New for 2026 is a carpeted interior, rather than utility rubber and plastic, while compulsory safety kit includes an overspeed warning that can now be quickly turn off on the infotainment home page. The front seat backs now include nets for carrying bits and bobs but annoyingly the split-opening rear door system remains.

Even so, new Grenadier is a vastly improved driving experience, especially the 3.0-litre petrol, which will plough through any fuel crisis guzzling at around 19mpg. Best of all, the retro design is still so classic Landie-looking that approaching Defender owners often flash their headlights in appreciation, before recoiling in horror when they spot the badge.

With stays at around £5,000 a night, the well-heeled adventurer often arrives at Deplar by private helicopter. Instead, I’ve taken the low road, a chance to give the Grenadier’s latest point-and-shoot steering a proper workout.

And it genuinely is a revelation. With a tighter steering ratio, there’s noticeably less wander on uneven Icelandic highways, which makes driving more relaxed and enjoyable. Unless you spend a majority of your driving life off-road, the 2026 Grenadier is a massive improvement.

Ineos Grenadier, from £62,695, IneosGrenadier.com, @Ineos_Grenadier

Eleven Deplar Farm, ElevenExperience.com, @ElevenExperience

The official announcement of the production-ready Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé makes a good addendum to our recent piece on the future of electric performance, if not something of a mea culpa. Although it’s true that Chinese firms are powering ahead with all-electric GT cars, we were definitely remiss not to flag up this new contender from Sindelfingen, the production version of the car teased with last year’s DayGlo Concept AMG GT.

The launch event in Los Angeles certainly stressed the power and performance of the big new coupé. A replacement for the original Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door, it eschews the original car’s signature hand-built AMG V8 in favour of batteries and three electric motors; it’s performance sub-brand’s first venture into electrification.

Mercedes itself has weathered a shaky start to become a major player in long-range EVs. It’s now in the process of blending EV and ICE models together in a single unified line-up, rather than keep them as separate, distinctive identities.

That won’t apply to the big GT, as it was always intended as a singular one-off, distinct from any Mercedes equivalent. In its first-generation ICE configuration it had few direct rivals but, as noted, the speedy GT EV sector is hotting up. Will the historic Mercedes-AMG badge be enough to switch buyers to electric?

Two things stand out. The first is that Mercedes-AMG is not au fait with subtlety. You can spec this beast to bear more logos than a Vuitton handbag, from the stylised three-pointed stars in the lights, front and rear, to the seats, headrests and headliners.

In launch specification, the mix of black and red leather, carbon fibre and carbon fibre gives off a slight seediness but Merc will offer buyers the chance to demonstrate their own taste, or lack of – for a price.

That price will probably end up exceeding the £178K+ of the outgoing model, but we’ll wager it will still slip comfortably under whatever Ferrari ends up asking for the Luce. In terms of design, the two models are chalk and cheese, with the Italian offering refined elegance and good taste and the German contender going all out to grab your eyes and ears.

Yes, the Merc-AMG will come with the synthesised sounds of a V8 (a path Ferrari will very much not be taking), just in case you’re feeling threatened by the absence of physical cylinders under the long bonnet.

The GT’s stats are impressive, from charge speed to range and outright performance. In GT63 trim (a cheaper GT55 model is also available) power peaks at the equivalent of 1,169hp, with a top speed of 186mph and a 2.4 second sprint time to 62mph. As you’d expect from a performance brand’s first dedicated EV, in other words.

The big 106kWh battery suggests a range of around 370 miles when pressing on, or a maximum of 432 miles with a featherweight right foot. High speed charging peaks at 600kW, meaning you can add over 250 miles of range in around 10 minutes.

Visually, the car is dominated by its whale-like front grille, more prominent and pushed forwards than ever before. The fastback-style body culminates in a cut-off tail, with the rear light configuration mirroring that of the original concept. Luggage space is excellent, really amplifying this car’s GT credentials, with a separate frunk bolstering the capacity.

Inside, it’s more Reeperbahn than Autobahn, with the now familiar Mercedes cliff of pixels facing down the driver and passenger. The easily information-overloaded might want to sit in the back, where it’s a little bit calmer.

Ultimately, however, calm isn’t really the AMG way. The overall style, sound and ambience of the new 4-Door Coupé makes this abundantly clear.

Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé, more information at Mercedes-AMG.com, @MercedesAMG