Car Reviews

There’s no school like the old school, and you can’t get much more old school than this.

It’s hard to imagine a brand that has enjoyed such a renaissance and undergone such a change, while seemingly remaining the same, as MINI.

Ask the man in the street who the king of hot hatches is and chances are you’ll get a whole different bunch of answers. One name that will come up time and again though is Renault.

Upon reviewing the VW Scirocco last week, we said that it’s one of the most forgotten cars of its type. While still true, this week’s car is Korea’s version of “hold my beer”; if the Scirocco is forgotten, Kia’s pro_cee’d GT is invisible. It’s been on sale since 2013, and we don’t recall ever seeing one that isn’t a press car. There’s not even that many in the classifieds — we found 40 in the entire country.

When it comes to small coupes, there’s few as popular but forgotten as the Scirocco. Volkswagen first introduced it over 40 years ago, and though there was a 16-year gap in production that covered all of the 1990s, it’s sold more than a million.

There’s few model nameplates quite as enduring as the Honda Civic. In fact the first car ever made was a Honda Civic.

The global financial crisis in 2008 focused many people’s minds on value for money and no-frills products. But can no-frills motoring be a thing? We’ve been out and about in Europe’s cheapest new car to find out.

After a tricky start to life in Europe, Infiniti has been coming on leaps and bounds lately. The Q30 hatch and QX30 crossover have given it some mass market appeal, but we’ve been looking at the opposite end of its product range.

While other manufacturers are turning to electrification in droves, the brand that started it all off in earnest was Tesla. It’s still the only name most people think of when you say “electric car”, and we’ve had the chance to test out a couple of examples.

Scroll back to 20 years ago and the concept of a supercar coming from anywhere other than a niche manufacturer from Italy or maybe the UK was ridiculous. Audi clearly had different ideas, and we’ve been out driving the new generation of its R8 to see how it has done second time around.

As the Kia brand has been changing direction for a more European ethos, one car stands apart. The Sorento SUV has a distinctly more American flavor, and we’ve been driving it around Cheshire to sample it.

With a million sold, Mazda’s MX-5 is the world’s most popular two seat sports car. There’s a new version in the showrooms now though that aims to bring something a little bit different to the table. We’ve been to find out all about it.