This week Steve had a great time in the new Q4 Sportback, looks back on an extremely cordial interview with new JLR boss – Thierry Bolloré – and reflects on Ariel’s past and future.
Tuesday
What is this? A car with a square steering wheel? I drove to Audi’s headquarters in Milton Keynes to test drive the new Q4 Sportback E-tron 50 and discovered a spacious, complete, well-made but otherwise somewhat unremarkable machine, despite having two electric motors (the versions boggo have one) and its quattro system which supplies torque very intelligently to all four wheels.
The fun feature for me was its almost rectangular steering wheel – flat top and bottom – which took me decades back to the Austin Allegro’s pioneer “Quartic” wheel, designed to provide more legroom. below. The Quartic wheel received such scathing criticism – as did many of the car’s other attributes – that it was quickly removed. In the Audi, it works perfectly. The steering is at high speed, so even in town you hardly ever need to change your grip on the steering wheel. Funny to think that in the 1970s BL wasn’t really wrong, he just delayed the execution.
Wednesday
What a pleasure to spend time with the somewhat elusive Jaguar Land Rover CEO Thierry Bolloré who has proven to be an extremely cordial guy, clearly above his tenure and relishing the task of getting Jaguar back on track for profit. . It made me even more eager to see what Bolloré, Creative Director Gerry McGovern and the now united JLR design team do with New Jaguar, even if it seems like a devilishly daunting task.
We talked about a lot of important stuff, but I selfishly took a minute or two to regale Bolloré with my personal burning desire to own a car with the calm and sophistication of a Range Rover, expressed as a supermini SUV. He listened with more indulgence than the idea probably deserved, and then gave an interesting but disappointing hint on the priorities of the future Land Rover model. “Well,” he said with a smile, “I’m not sure we’ll deal with it now…”
Thursday
A day trip to Ariel near Crewkerne in Somerset where it all seems to happen at once. At one end of the company’s busy complex of buildings, the Ariel Hipercar project is going on in secret (although some interesting news will be announced soon), while at other places founder Simon Saunders and his group faithful will show you the collection of the first Ariel. mobility gear they’ve accumulated, dating back as far as the penny bike, and featuring an extremely rare Ariel car from the 1920s. The biggest news is that the jaw-dropping Atom 4 continues to generate all the power. asks he deserves. Construction was shut down for a few months last year, but everything has long been back in gear as they build cars for a continuing backlog of lucky customers. Whether your automaker is big or small, the same rule seems to apply: Good cars are the key to success.
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Source: www.autocar.co.uk
This notice was published: 2021-06-30 05:01:24
