Author: Jon Reay

The 5N is one of the most talked-about electric cars of the year, but how has Jon Reay found it?

I’ve never been much of a believer in magic. By that I mean both the Harry Potter and David Blaine varieties – neither a flying broomstick, nor a sleight of hand with a deck of cards does much for me. But what I think we have here is the car industry’s first stab at a proper ‘illusion’, and for once it’s actually got my attention.

Electric cars, we’re constantly reminded, are never going to be as good as petrol ones. Aside from the usual arguments about charging infrastructure, cobalt mining, range anxiety and so on, the world is full of car enthusiasts that like the sound and feel of burning carbon – and they’re not prepared to accept anything less.

Enter Hyundai: a rather surprising saviour to car enthusiasts the world over. For the last few years its engineers have been blazing trails in two totally different directions. Their range of electric cars, like the Ioniq 5, are about as good as it gets in the EV world. Then there’s its range of N-badged hot hatches – giant killers that seemed to come almost out of nowhere when they appeared on the scene a few years ago.

Strangely, it’s taken Hyundai until now to realise that those two teams don’t have to be sequestered away in different bits of the engineering centre – and if this car is the proof of what they can do when working together, perhaps it should’ve combined them a bit sooner.

What we have here is the first electric car that actually – properly – feels like a petrol-powered one. It sounds like one. It accelerates like one. It changes ‘gear’ – and hangs on the rev limiter – just like one too. If this is all sounding a bit cheesy, well, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so. We’ve been here before with fake engine noises and electric cars. But this is a next level trick – think David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear.

Plonk someone behind the wheel of the Ioniq 5 N, and – without telling them – I’m sure they’d be none the wiser that the petrol engine under the bonnet is 100% imaginary.

So how is the trick done? Software – a lot of software. Like a PlayStation game, the Ioniq is just doing an extremely good impression of a conventional car: copying the sounds, the throttle response, the torque curves and more. The whole act goes so far that, should you find yourself in the wrong ‘gear’ and hit the throttle, there’s a little delay factored in while the imaginary gearbox pretends to shuffle its cogs around to get you a lower ratio. At some point, there must’ve been a conversation about that: just how long should a shift from 6th to 3rd take? ‘Musn’t make it too quick – has to feel believable’.

In a way, it’s sort of madness. Volkswagen probably spends millions of euros trying to make its DSG automatic gearboxes shift even a tenth of second faster than the last generation did – and then here’s Hyundai, deliberately engineering in the exact opposite.

Logic dicates that you should drive the 5 N with all this trickery turned off: an electric car trying to be a petrol car is never going to be as quick as one unburdened by such things. But speed is just one part of the experience.

Hyundai hasn’t simply ramped up the power output and called it a day, of course. There’s four-wheel drive to help apply that to the road, some pretty beefy brakes to stop the two and a quarter tons of metal from flying off the edge of a Welsh B-road. Special mention must also go to the springs and adaptive dampers Hyundai has fitted: quite how a car of this size can handle so well without breaking any passengers’ spines is beyond me.

That’s the thing with the 5 N: it’s only a monster when you actually want it to be. Family-oriented performance cars always need some duality of purpose – and lots of them do, to some degree. But whether you put your Audi RS4 into ‘Comfort’ mode or not, it’s still going to wake the neighbours when you start it up at six in the morning.

On the flip side, the Ioniq lets you potter around town in serene, silent comfort much like any other electric car. You can plug it into your house overnight and get 200 miles of range for a fiver. Perhaps most compellingly, it’s even available on a salary sacrifice scheme.

Amusingly though, it’s not for any of these reasons that the Hyundai finds itself here in Wales. Our little team of EV advocates, agnostics and sceptics were all united by one thing: we all thought the Ioniq was an absolute riot to drive, no matter what happens to be hiding under its duck egg blue bonnet.

With any luck, this is the start of something bigger. Perhaps this is what proper petrolheads were looking for from an electric car: put simply, something that’s pretending not to be one.

Illusion or not though, Hyundai has created something properly magical with this car – because here, in a rainy layby in Wales, a group of people saw what the future of performance cars looked like. And for once, they didn’t hate it.

Facts at a glance

• Price: £65,000
• Engine: Twin electric motors, 84kWh battery
• Power: 650bhp (boost)
• Torque: 740Nm
• Max speed: 161mph
• O-60mph: 3.4 seconds
• Range (WLTP): 274 miles
• Emissions: NA g/km CO2

The 2 Hybrid is one of Mazda’s smallest models, but does it offer a big-car experience? Jon Reay finds out.

I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for our Mazda 2 Hybrid. After a whole year of driving Mazda’s poshest, biggest and most expensive (at the moment) car – the CX-60 – suddenly swapping into its second cheapest model was always going to be an eye opening experience. And indeed, it has been – but not for the reasons you might expect.

Our dearly departed CX-60 was a bit of a bruiser in every way: size, power, weight, and even price. By comparison, the 2 Hybrid couldn’t be more different. One third of the power, nearly half the weight, and pretty much half the price too – assuming you’re up for twisting the salesman’s arm a bit.

It would be understandable to find that this turns out to be half the car the CX-60 is, then. But surprisingly, it seems to do a lot of things just as well – and in lots of cases, better even.

Let’s get the obvious differences out of the way first: you’re not getting a spacious load-lugger here. Even as superminis go, the 2 Hybrid is pretty compact: sneaking in at under 4 metres in length. Thanks to its rather bulbous roofline, that doesn’t mean a claustrophobic cabin – but don’t expect long-legged adults to be comfortable in the back for too long. The boot is far from the biggest in its class too, but perfectly fine for a bit of shopping.

With that said, it’s surprising how much stuff you can squeeze into the 2 Hybrid given a bit of Tetris-style manoeuvring. If we’re honest too, this isn’t the size and shape of car you’d expect to be regularly carting four adults around in. For the odd occasion though, it’s more than spacious enough.

Next up, let’s talk performance. Waving goodbye to the CX-60 and its 3.3-litre diesel, the 2 Hybrid couldn’t be more different on paper. Its engine is less than half the size, has half the number of cylinders, and comes with – gasp – a CVT automatic gearbox, rather than its bigger brother’s dual-clutch one.

And yet, in lots of ways the 2 Hybrid feels far more sprightly than its bigger brother. The clever hybrid system means you take off at a surprising rate from a standstill – thanks to an electric motor doing most of the work. There’s quite an adjustment going from a conventional car into a hybrid like this: you quickly realise you can nip out of junctions much faster than you’re expecting, for example.

As for that often-dreaded CVT gearbox, it seems that Mazda – or rather Toyota, who actually developed it – has finally got the hang of making the experience not completely miserable. It helps that the 1.5-litre, three cylinder petrol engine almost sounds sort of sporty, but the real secret is letting that 79bhp electric motor to take care of most of the power delivery.

The result is a very unstressed, almost serene driving experience, with the petrol engine barely noticeable half the time. It’s also extremely smooth: no clunky gear changes (because there are no ‘gears’ as such), no awkward jumps between electric and petrol power, and a completely linear feel to how it accelerates.

In fact, after a few weeks behind the wheel, jumping back into a more conventional petrol or diesel car can feel like going back in time. Cars like the 2 Hybrid are about as close as you can get to an electric car, without having to plug it in at night.

So what are we missing from the decidedly posh CX-60, then? Well, the 2 Hybrid certainly isn’t as luxurious inside. Mazda’s trademark premium-feeling interior is missing in action here – partially because this is a cheaper car, but mostly because this is actually a Toyota in disguise (did we mention that?).

And while it’s far from being short of standard equipment, a few things have curiously fallen off the options list. There’s no way of getting heated seats or steering wheel, for example – which is a bit odd given that the older, cheaper, non-hybrid Mazda 2 has had both available for a while now.

Beyond that though, there’s very little to fault about the 2 Hybrid. In fact I’m amazed how well it’s fitted into performing the same routine as the CX-60: piloting me up and down various bits of motorway for three to four hours at a time without inducing any back ache. It’s even doing baffling levels of fuel economy: despite my heavy right foot, I’m managing around 62mpg on average.

So there you have it: perhaps you don’t need that luxurious, enormous, £50,000 SUV after all.

Facts at a glance

• Model: Mazda 2 Hybrid Homura
• Price: £27,290
• Engine: 1.5-litre petrol hybrid
• Power: 114bhp
• Torque: 120Nm
• 0-60mph: 9.7 seconds
• Top speed: 109mph
• Fuel economy: 67.3mpg (WLTP combined)
• Emissions: 97g/km
• Mileage: 2,900

The current generation Audi RS4 is nearing the end of its time on sale, but is this limited-edition throwback model the one to have? Jon Reay drives.

What is it?

Few performance estate cars can claim to have quite the heritage of Audi’s RS4. When it stormed onto the scene in 1999, resplendent in bright yellow paintwork, it was a bit of a revelation: mixing Porsche 911 levels of performance with a boot the size of a studio apartment.Several generations and 25 years later though, it’s time to wave goodbye to the RS4. With Audi having a rejig of its model lineup – with even numbers going on electric models – this will be the last ever petrol-powered car to be badged RS4.

Naturally, it couldn’t let that happen without giving it a proper send-off, and so here you have it: the most powerful, meanest, most expensive RS4 that’s ever been made. It’s also one of the rarest: just 250 are being built, and only 50 of those are heading to our shores.

What’s new?

Well, there’s the paint for starters – though perhaps ‘new’ is the wrong word. Called Imola Yellow, it’s a throwback to the original 1999 model that was available in the same lurid shade. White-backed dials are another nod to the RS4 of 25 years ago – though naturally on this 21st-century generation, they’re actually on a digital display.Then there’s the 20-inch forged alloy wheels – all eight of them. Buy an Edition 25 and you’ll get two sets: one in silver with road tyres, and another set in black with semi-slick ones for track driving.

Under the skin is where Audi has really splashed the cash, though. It’s squeezed an extra 20bhp out of the already muscular 2.9-litre V6, thrown on some manually adjustable suspension, and even tweaked the rear differential for more ‘driving fun’.

What’s under the bonnet?

Under the skin is where Audi has really splashed the cash, though. It’s squeezed an extra 20bhp out of the already muscular 2.9-litre V6, thrown on some manually adjustable suspension, and even tweaked the rear differential for more ‘driving fun’. Overall you’re getting 464bhp and 600Nm of torque, equating to a 0-60mph time of 3.7 seconds and a 186mph top speed.

You’ve also got more powerful ceramic brakes included as standard – they’ve been optional on Competition-specification RS4 models – while Audi has also tweaked the camber at the front to make the handling even more engaging.

What’s it like to drive?

In lots of ways, quite similar to a regular RS4. For the usual trips to the shops or long slogs down the M1, it feels just like any other Audi A4: refined, reasonably comfortable, and incredibly easy to drive. That’s no bad thing of course: 90% of an RS4’s life will be spent doing practical, family things – and it’s no good being three seconds a lap quicker at the Nurburgring if the tradeoff is making the Labrador sick in the boot.

What you won’t notice on those jaunts to Waitrose or the tip, though, are the result of the tweaks to the engine and chassis. Get the Edition 25 on the right roads and you’ll find a gulf start to open up between it and the standard car. It’s just as powerful, just as capable, but there’s some added – and much-needed – bite to the way it drives.

Turn-in is crisper than on the regular car, the engine note is more raucous, and the new rear diff gives a degree of playfulness that’s usually missing from performance Audis.

Whether you truly feel the extra 20bhp, though, is a bit harder to fathom. It’s certainly not slow, and truthfully you don’t feel yourself crying out for more power – but it’s worth noting that even this version is still beaten in the BHP stakes by a BMW M3 Touring.

How does it look?

Audi doesn’t really subscribe to the idea that performance cars should look as mad as they feel to drive, and even for this limited edition, it doesn’t particularly feel like they’ve gone bananas – £3,000 yellow paint job excluded, of course.

Were you to pick one of the other two colour choices – black or grey, by the way – you’d probably struggle to tell this apart from the normal car. There are ‘Edition 25’ badges etched into the rear windows, and various bits of trim are now ‘Matt Carbon’, but in reality, you’d have to be a bit of an Audi nerd to notice.

Controversially, it’s also had its roof bars deleted – though we imagine it wouldn’t take much persuading for a dealer to add them back on.

What’s it like inside?

Again, Audi has played it relatively safe inside: think of this as a normal RS4 with some added tweaks, rather than a stripped-out, weight-saving track monster. There’s yellow stitching here and there, a smattering of yellow mood lighting, and yet another etched Edition 25 badge – this time on the centre console.

The biggest difference is a pair of carbon fibre bucket seats for front passengers: exquisitely made, very grippy, and surprisingly comfortable to sit in. One slight downside is their rigid backs eat into rear passenger space – any occupants in the back are likely to have sore knees after an hour of being pressed up against them.

This generation of A4 is now ever so slightly starting to show its age, of course. There’s not the same level of snazzy touch screens and tech that you’d see in rivals from BMW and Mercedes, and its dimensions haven’t ballooned quite in line with theirs either.

What you can’t fault is the quality of materials. This car comes from an era where Audi really built things properly – everything has a reassuring heft to it, and feels perhaps a touch more premium than some of their newer models, dare we say.

What’s the spec like?

As this isn’t a lightweight track monster, Audi has resisted the temptation to strip things out of the interior in a bid to save weight. So, what you’re looking at is the equivalent of a top-spec RS4 ‘Vorsprung’, with a few added styling extras.

Those carbon fibre bucket seats aren’t electrically adjustable, of course, but they are still heated – we’re not savages, after all. Bang and Olufsen stereo, automatic cruise control, climate control, an electrically-operated boot – it’s all still there.

As, perhaps you might expect it to be, given the price tag. Our car, in Imola Yellow, is a shade over £119,000 – but black and grey aren’t far behind. That’s a lot of money for an RS4, whichever way you look at it.

Verdict

It’s hard not to feel nostalgic when it comes to the Edition 25. A quarter of a century since it first appeared, cars like the RS4 are finding it increasingly difficult to remain on sale.

As a farewell to a legendary nameplate then, the Edition 25 has done its job. In lots of ways, it’s the most accomplished RS4 that Audi has made: on paper the most powerful, and to drive, the sharpest yet.

When it comes to handing over your cash for one though, it’s a slightly harder sell. As impressive as this version is, the regular RS4 is already such a good all-rounder that the substantial premium is slightly difficult to justify. If you want an Edition 25, you’ve got to really want one.

Facts at a glance

• Model as tested: Audi RS4 Edition 25
• Price as tested: £119,180
• Engine: 2.9-litre petrol
• Power: 464bhp
• Torque: 600Nm
• Top speed: 186mph
• 0-62mph: 3.7 seconds
• MPG: 28.2mpg
• CO2 emissions: 227g/km

Jon Reay has been checking out one of Mazda’s most compact models.

Say hello to our latest long term test car: the Mazda 2 Hybrid. And no, we’ve not used a photo of a Toyota by mistake – this really is a Mazda. Or at least, that’s what it says on the boot lid.

The more observant of you might’ve noticed that this particular car is a bit of an imposter. Yes, the 2 Hybrid might claim to be straight out of Hiroshima – Mazda’s home city in Japan, if you were wondering – but it does share rather a lot of parts with the Toyota Yaris. Which is to say, almost all of them.

To Mazda’s credit, they have changed a few bits and pieces to differentiate the two cars. The design of the grille – shaped to resemble cars like the 3, CX-5 and so on – was dreamed up in Mazda’s European design studio in Frankfurt. As was the bit of body coloured plastic between the rear lights, which replaces the Yaris’s gloss black alternative.

Our car is a near-top spec Homura model, which happens to get some black alloy wheels that are also unique to the Mazda – and we must say, they look rather smart. Beyond that though, there’s very little to set the 2 Hybrid apart from its Toyota twin.

Collaborations like this are nothing new in the automotive world, of course. Designing and building cars is an expensive business, and so it’s often more financially viable to pool your knowledge with another company.

In the case of this car, Mazda found themselves in need of a small hybrid car to slot into its showrooms – not something they’ve ever tried making before. Rather than spending billions to reinvent the wheel, they turned to a company that knows a thing or two about hybrid cars: Toyota.

So here you have it: the Mazda 2 Hybrid, designed largely by Toyota, built by Toyota at its factory in France, but sold to you by your friendly Mazda dealer.

Which does rather beg the question, why would you choose this over a near-identical Yaris? That’s something we’re hoping to answer in the next few months as we put the 2 Hybrid through its paces.

I’m pleased to say that things are off to a very good start. If you’re going to base your supermini on another existing one, you could certainly do a lot worse than a Yaris. It’s a car that’s really now got into its stride, not only in terms of how its clever hybrid drivetrain works, but also as a package.

The 2 Hybrid inherits a lot of positives then: it looks good, it’s got a well-designed and spacious interior, and on paper at least it’s incredibly fuel efficient. On top of that, if Toyota’s past efforts are anything to go by, it should be incredibly reliable too.

Does it actually feel like a Mazda, though? Not really, but then why would it – not a single part on the 2 Hybrid is shared with any other Mazda.

That said, while it doesn’t technically share a bloodline to the likes of the MX-5, this does seem to be a car that handles quite neatly. It’s even pretty quick for a car of this type: the electric motor of its hybrid system giving some much needed zing as you accelerate away from a standstill.

Time will tell on what the 2 Hybrid is like to live with, but first impressions are certainly positive. I think our car, painted in ‘Glass Blue’, looks spot on – and I think I prefer the design of the Mazda front end to Toyota’s original look.

The real question will be: which one is the better buy? I’d like to be able to say that it doesn’t really matter – because whichever you pick, you’re still getting fundamentally the same product. But things aren’t quite as simple as that, as I’m sure we’ll come to explain over the coming weeks and months. Was the 2 Hybrid the right choice? I suppose we’ll find out soon enough…

Facts at a glance

• Model: Mazda 2 Hybrid Homura
• Price: £27,290
• Engine: 1.5-litre petrol hybrid
• Power: 114bhp
• Torque: 120Nm
• 0-60mph: 9.7 seconds
• Top speed: 109mph
• Fuel economy: 67.3mpg (WLTP combined)
• Emissions: 97g/km
• Mileage: 1,300

This month, the CX-60 has been munching up the motorway miles, but is a diesel engine the right choice? Jon Reay finds out.

I’m sure I say this every time, but it’s been a busy month for the CX-60. We’ve not quite managed all four corners of the UK, but it doesn’t seem far off. Various bits of East Anglia, the North West and the North East have all been plumbed into the Mazda’s sat nav in the last few weeks, and unsurprisingly it’s taken things in its stride.

One of my favourite things about our CX-60 is its ability to simply shrug off long journeys, be them motorway or B-road based. It’s simply a joy to hop into the drivers seat and point the exceptionally long bonnet down the nearest dual carriageway – and that’s not something I could say about the CX-5 it replaced.

A trip to Manchester saw the Mazda performing duties as a camera car, both hauling videographers and their gear around the city, and even proving itself suitable for some car-to-car filming around the city centre, a la Top Gear. If any budding filmmakers are reading this, I can confirm the CX-60’s boot is perfectly sized for holding a cameraperson.

Then it was off to the opposite coastline for a visit to Sunderland, there for a visit of a – ahem – rival car maker’s UK car plant. So as not to offend the poor Mazda, I opted to leave it hidden in the hotel car park.

Norfolk was ticked off the CX-60’s i-Spy geography book this month, with something of a (long) day trip to Norwich and its surrounding coastline on the cards. This is simply what happens when you have a long-legged car like our Mazda: 260 mile round trips suddenly seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to do for a coffee and a mooch round some shops.

Things did come slightly unstuck on the undulating, up-and-down road surfaces around the Norfolk Broads though. I’ve mentioned before – a lot – my gripes with the CX-60’s bouncy suspension, but it officially met its worst enemy here. Anything that’s not reasonably flat is this car’s absolute undoing, and on this sort of tarmac it’s just comically rubbish.

With the Mazda’s 1st birthday arriving, it was also time for its first service – which happily for me meant a trip to the excellent Rockingham Cars in Corby. We’ve crossed path before for tyre-related maladies and recalls, and they’ve always been incredibly friendly and helpful.

Slightly more painful was the estimate: around £350 for a first year service. Sounds a bit chunky, but compared to what a BMW or Mercedes dealer would charge for a similarly-sized diesel SUV, it’s not actually too bad. And I suppose a 3.3-litre car does take a lot of oil, after all.

That sorted, a stay in Kent for a few days gave some welcome respite from motorway journeys – although not necessarily to the CX-60’s benefit. We’re often being told that diesel-engined cars aren’t suitable for short journeys, but truthfully it’s not an issue I’ve ever come across in our Mazda. It’s frequently taken back and forth to the shops without any particular complaints, though I admit, living in my particular bit of Midlands means even visits to Tesco involve a dual carriageway of some description.

After two or three days pottering around a small seaside town with its 30mph speed limits though, our car quickly made its displeasure known. ‘Fast Idle Engine Cleaning. Idle Returns to Normal When Cleaning Is Complete’, flashed a message on the driver display when we flicked on the car one morning. Translation? You’ve not driven long enough for the diesel particulate filter to clean itself out, and now look what you’ve done.

This is not a situation unique to Mazda – effectively all diesel cars are similarly equipped for emissions purposes. Most simply tell you to ‘keep driving’ to fix the problem, but Mazda’s solution is to simply make the car rev itself a bit higher when it’s sat in park. It’s a neat solution, but how long this would actually take to ‘clean’ the particulate filter I couldn’t say – I gave up after a few minutes and pointed the car at a dual carriageway instead.

What this does demonstrate though, is that picking a diesel-engined CX-60 is probably not the best choice if you’re simply using it for the school run. You probably didn’t need me to tell you that of course, but in nearly a year of long journeys with the car, the issue simply hadn’t occurred to me.

That is the first, and only situation in which I’d recommend the plug-in hybrid version over the diesel though. Our car’s 3.3-litre straight-six simply fits the character of the car so well, and is something of a dying breed these days. Go on – you won’t regret it. Just… start visiting a supermarket in the next town instead.

Facts at a glance

• Model: Mazda CX-60 Homura
• Price: £50,705
• Engine: 3.3-litre diesel
• Power: 250bhp
• Torque: 550Nm
• 0-60mph: 7.4 seconds
• Top speed: 136mph
• Fuel economy: 54.3mpg (WLTP combined)
• Emissions: 138g/km
• Mileage: 15,200