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  Mercedes-Benz means business with the new little brother of the   Mercedes EQS   luxury saloon: a super-slippery travel soap of an executive EV, rather than a full-size bar.  Specifically, the EQE means global fleet business. Unlike the bigger EQS, this new all-electric saloon will be built in Beijing as well as in Bremen. And eventually coming down to an equivalent sub-£70,000 entry price, it should hit significantly greater sales volumes than its longer and pricier relation. This is every inch the downsized EQS, for better and worse, from its teardrop-shape outline to its almost seamlessly smooth surfaces and its ever so gently arcing ‘one bow’ silhouette. Being a bit shorter in the hind quarters might better balance its looks, I suppose, but honestly, Mercedes can put down my name in the ‘unconvinced’ column on the design-feedback spreadsheet. I just hate to see one of the originators of luxury car design abandon so many of its...

  A headline power output can often give the biggest clue to a car’s positioning in a line-up. In the case of the   Aston Martin   DBX 707, that 707PS (or 697bhp) is the highest power output yielded to date from   Mercedes-AMG ’s superb twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 petrol engine, which quickly signifies the latest version of the SUV as the range-topper, and by some margin. That it indeed is. Yet this is a high-performance range-topper that goes far beyond the usual ‘uprate it, lower it, stiffen it’ approach, being more akin to a facelift or a remastering. The  Aston Martin DBX  done better, in other words. Not that the DBX was wanting for much. It got a four-and-a-half- star Autocar road test rating less than two years ago, after all. Yet since then, Aston Martin has  appointed a new CEO in Tobias Moers , who has already overhauled the Vantage with the  Aston Martin Vantage F1 Edition  (effectively the car that...

  No car has a wider audience than the Golf. The universal appeal of the classless quality hatch transcends all rivals, whose makers both resent and respect the subculture that’s grown up around Volkswagen’s defining best-seller. The new Golf looks utterly different, yet reassuringly the same, a calculated, deliberate, reinterpretation of a design theme that began nearly 30 years ago. So the arrival of the fifth edition is a momentous and anxious time for Wolfsburg, which plans to build 600,000 of the trademark cars in 2004. Of course, VW goes through the same concerns with every generation, but that doesn’t make it any the less worrying. The question, as always, is will Europe’s car buyers accept yet another generic Golf? After testing the new car in Germany, we’d ask, why not? The Golf is the premium hatch in the eyes of most customers, positioned above the rival Focus/Mégane/Astra et al, a perception only reinforced by the Golf Mk4’s expensive interior, a feel-good experience th...

  I drove a Citroen Saxo recently, and for the first time ever it made me feel glum. Usually its lightness, fizzy engine, sweet steering and near-desperation to oversteer take me back to my teens. But this time, I realised, was the last time. Crash regulations, corporate handling paranoia and the desire for bigger, heavier cars mean the days of the kart-like hatch are gone. But just because you’ve seen the word ‘oversteer’ in the first paragraph of this story, don’t think we’re going to misjudge the Saxo’s replacement.Fun is still relevant; a lot of these things are bought by young, keen drivers who know what handling is and want to learn how to use it. But economy, practicality and value are more important still. The C2 shouldn’t be compared with its predecessor but with the Daihatsu Charade, which, despite its tiny Japanese K-car dimensions and a sub-six grand price tag, manages to provide a decent ride, space for four adults, a three-pot engine with real personality and unbeatab...

  Lotus is making a big splash with its new Exige. The Norfolk company has released this sneak preview of the second generation Elise coupé spin-off. The Exige will be the first Lotus powered by a Toyota engine – the Celica T-Sport’s 1.8-litre four-cylinder with VVTL-i variable valve timing. Out goes the old Exige’s five-speed ’box, replaced by the Celica’s six-speeder. Peak power is 190bhp and the high-revving engine is red lined at 8350rpm. Lotus claims the new Exige will sprint to 60mph in less than 5.0sec and max out at more than 140mph, making it comfortably the fastest of the current Elise family. Suspension tuning and tyres are biased to serious road and track use, much like the original Exige which ceased production in 2000. The mini Group C race-car styling is revived with larger air intakes, front splitter and rear spoiler. The new Exige will be launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2004 and will go on sale in April for around £33,000. Although the same Toyota engine...

  Hope, then disappointment. My relationship with Renault seems to have been stuck in this cycle for some time. The Avantime, the Vel Satis and to a lesser extent the Megane promised much with their extraordinarily bold styling but couldn't deliver the full package. The Megane is a good car, but not as good as the Focus, despite five year's extra thinking time. The others? Well, the fact that Renault has already canned the Avantime tells you all you need to know. So although I love the styling, I was prepared to be disappointed again when I first drove the new Megane Scenic. The opportunity came with the arrival of the first right-hand-drive cars in the UK. You can order one now, and deliveries start in mid-September. I needn't have worried. Instead of trying to persuade us that we need a whole new kind of car, as it did with the Vel Satis and Avantime, Renault has just applied its radical but consistent family styling to a very well proven, successful product. The original...