WE didn’t think we’d see the day, in 2025, when we’d be driving a brand-new car fitted with a petrol engine and a six-speed manual gearbox. Alas, with little more than a month before the year is out,

ESSENTIALS Volkswagen Golf R32 Price (new): £22,340 Powertrain: 3.2-litre V6, 238bhp 0-62mph: 6.6 seconds Top speed: 153mph Fuel Consumption: 24.4mpg Annual VED: £430 Alfa Romeo 147 GTA Price (new): £

FEW car brands have managed to nail the small car formula quite as consistently as Fiat. Ever since the original 500 was launched back in the late fifties, buyers have bought Turin’s smallest cars by

THE next decade saw buyers demand a little more from their small cars. They no longer needed to simply get from A to B, so brands needed to give drivers a more complete experience. More refinement, mo

Nobody does a five-cylinder quite like Audi. Or should that be nobody did a five-cylinder quite like Audi? Fiat, Mercedes-Benz, Alfa Romeo and others have dabbled, and Volvo was a past master, but now

RATINGS = Thrill-free zone = Tepid = Interesting = Seriously good = A truly great car = new entry this month. Cars in italics are no longer on sale. Issue no. is for our most recent major test of the