April

A month of contrasts kicked off with our four-page tell-all scoop on three crucial electric Volkswagen SUVs – ranging from diddy little urban crossover to full-sized autonomous flagship – which only made the new Lamborghini Revuelto reveal story on the next page all the more dazzling, and there was more V12 goodness beyond that in the form of Gordon Murray’s T33 Spider. Who said all cars are the same?

Read on, Macduff: Richard Lane’s epic first drive of the eagerly anticipated Mk2 BMW M2 awaited. Scintillating, he said, but a world away from the accessible baby M car it once was. And so to more mainstream (and electric) propositions overleaf: the VW ID 7 and Mercedes-Benz EQE – less overtly exciting, perhaps, but no less important entrants into their respective maker’s portfolios. Happily, both impressed.

These themes of duality and dissimilitude continued over the rest of the month: the first details of Dacia’s cheap and cheerful Mk2 Duster trickled out in the same week as we drove a new W12 Bentley with 650bhp, Ford brought hands-off driving to UK roads just as we celebrated some of the market’s best-handling sports cars, and the annual Autocar Awards issue celebrated Rolls-Royce’s redefinition of the ultra-luxury segment at the same time as commending Nissan’s approach to affordable mass transport. If you’re worried about the increasing homogeneity of EVs or a dwindling public enthusiasm for the automobile, you’d do well to browse these four issues on the Autocar Archive (see p2) and reassure yourself that neither is necessarily true.

This month’s “hold the cover!” phone call came from Mark Tisshaw, when JLR gave him the first details of the 600bhp, £100k-plus super-GT that will spearhead Jaguar’s electric rebirth. JLR also announced that it will launch the electric Range Rover in 2024, embark on a quality improvement drive and secure EV battery supply from a plant operated by parent company Tata. Of course, we later found out just how significant that last announcement will be for UK automotive…

Out on the road, there were two German icons for us to celebrate in April: the Audi TT, which bows out of production after 25 years in 2023, and the BMW 3 Series, which is… well, just bloody brilliant, really – and more popular than ever. Matt Prior took the Audi to the Isle of Wight to find out if it still merited its often overlooked ‘Tourist Trophy’ moniker, while Vicky Parrott spent a busy week in the Beem