Audi London City has closed down. On 30th June, 2018, the iconic London Audi dealer in Mayfair closed its doors for good. I didn’t know that it was going to happen and it happened all of a sudden.
This dealership has been there for more than 20 years and was one of the first digital Audi dealers. I had many good memories there and took hundreds of photos.
Closing down such as an iconic dealer was a big shock.
Therefore, I wanted to write this post and share the photos I took ovet the years at the Audi Mayfair dealership.
The new Bentley Continental GT is basically a mansion on wheels. Even though it shares the same modular platform with the Porsche Panamera, it is still 2.2-tonne! However, you are getting lots of luxury. You might be saying that a massage seat is available with the Renault Megane, but you get more than a massage seat in a Bentley.
You will get state-of-art attention to detail making for a luxury experience. The new Continental’s interior is a luxurious visual experience, and you love looking at the details.
Even though the S-Coupe offers better and more enhanced driving assistance systems and a little bit more comfort, you won’t get this visual experience with a Mercedes-Benz.
Long story short, the new Bentley looks stunning from the inside. It offers an average level of technology. However, the Bentley team told me that they will be transferring more technology directly from the Porsche. As they share the same platform, implementation will be easy.
The Bentley Continental GT is designed for long journeys. It is not a car to compete with or race a Ferrari.
A few weeks ago I was at the Financial Times Car Summit 2018 in London. This year’s most favourite topic was autonomous driving.
What will happen in the future? Are we going to drive cars or they will drive by themselves? How can we trust computers? Will the joy of driving be gone?
These were some of the questions raised during the sessions and the coffee breaks. There was one thing in common in every conversation – autonomous driving is coming and it is extremely hard to resist.
I would like to start covering this topic from my point of view and based on the feedback I heard from people. Personally, I really love the idea of autonomous driving. When I first read about the Mercedes-Benz S-Class’s (W220) radar-guided cruise control function in 1998 (I was 17 at that time), I was very excited about the idea.
It was called Distronic and, in the modern world, it is prehistoric. Even a Lego Technics car can offer this technology now. Back in those days, it was an amazing feature. A car drives by itself; basically it brakes and accelerates using front-facing radar.
Years have passed and autonomous driving has started to appear on every manufacturer’s option list. I mean semi-autonomous driving, and mostly up to level 2. This means that you have to hold the steering wheel and be in charge, whilst the car is partially driving itself.
It is an amazing feature. When you consider the daily stop-and-go traffic, you cannot enjoy the driving experience. Regardless of the horsepower under your bonnet, you are only travelling a little bit faster than a bicycle. Under these conditions, autonomous driving takes over. Why should I be controlling the car when I’m travelling at extremely slow speeds. The car should be doing this. It is a serious waste of brain power. Hopefully, you can do this with most of the cars available on the market.
Actually, the Audi A8 offers level 3 autonomous driving. This mean that you can take selfies whilst the A8 drives by itself up to 60 km/h on the road.
As I mentioned motorways, that’s another place autonomous driving should take place. Think of the last time you were driving on a motorway and there were no cars. Basically there was nothing, but you still had to concentrate on driving. Again, at times like that, the car should be handling the ride.
There are lots of conditions when the car should be driving instead of being driven.
For some people, it is against the passion they have for driving. We really like changing gears, controlling the throttle and enjoying every bit of the driving experience. However, times are changing, and people now find driving less exciting. Traffic congestion, accidents and many more adverse situations make us move away from pleasure in the driving experience.
Also, you can do other thing instead of driving. A 3-hour journey in the car means, 3 hours of not checking out social media channels and avoiding messages.
We are more connected than ever before in human history. We check out news quickly, consume it and forget it. According to Spotify, we judge a new song by listening for less than 10 seconds before skipping it. We don’t really give it a second chance. The side effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is that we consume everything quickly. Consequently, being disconnected from the digital world is not an option for everyone.
Whether we like it or not, autonomous driving is coming, but will we like it?
Level 5 autonomous driving will be fully automated driving. You just get inside the car and tell it or type where you want to travel to. The rest will be done by computer. Until it breaks down as the result of a bug or is hacked by your silly friend! Also, you will be restricted to roads. You can’t even do a tiny bit of off-road experience with your latest Range Rover, even with level 5 autonomous driving. This is because off-road areas are already pre-defined.
It will be hard to explain this to the car. I just want to drive to look around, or I want to go around Harrods 28 times today, to slow down in front of the doors and then to accelerate rapidly around the rest of the building.
Level 5 autonomous driving is a bit surrealistic for this era, but it will happen. Lots of people will buy cars without having a driving license, and the traffic jams will be more epic than ever. Analogue cars and level 5 cars will share the same roads and the congestion will be worse than ever. Many people will be afraid of getting inside a level 5 car because, some newspaper will cover the front-page with a horror story of a level 5 car that has never happened.
However, we will still need the level 5 car, but how? Imagine an alternative highway to the existing ones. When you wish to travel from Birmingham to London you will go to the station and pick up any car that’s available to travel to London.
This car will use a road that can’t be accessed by any other type of vehicle. As a result, level 5 cars can speed up and travel to London safely with the other vehicles. In addition, in the event of a breakdown, the other vehicles can couple with the broken-down car and keep everything moving without any interruptions.
People will love it, because it will be safe. The level 5 car can’t go crazy and drive along a random road. If something goes wrong, you can easily stop the car on the autonomous motorway. Congestion won’t increase because the level 5 cars will be using a different route.
It will be extremely hard to change all the cars on this planet in one night and turn them into fully autonomous cars. The transition period will be really long.
So, will I still be driving as I do today? Perhaps! Remember, airplanes fly by autopilot during most of the flight. However, if the autopilot thinks ‘I don’t understand what’s going on’ it tells the pilot ‘Now you have the controls’. This has worked really well for a very long time. Please watch the movie “Sully”.
There are too many variables in daily driving, even sometimes ones that we can’t understand. Although computers will get smarter, they will always need a human hand to find a solution. Also, people will trust a car with a human being inside that can control the steering. Imagine what you will do if you see a car driving by itself and you are about to cross the road.
Most probably, the car will be kinder than most drivers and give way. However, how we can understand or be sure that the car will give way?
Autonomous driving is inevitable. However it is very important to understand human behaviour. A level 5 car can be the best driver on this planet but if people don’t trust it, there won’t be any feasible applications. People will still prefer good old cars with pedals and a steering wheel.
The automotive industry should focus on the behavioural science aspect of autonomous driving. How they can convince people to trust a level 5 car? What architecture should be developed to create a comfortable transition from the analogue car to the level 5 car. Unfortunately, the technology and the behavioural science applications are not travelling at the same speed. First the technology arrives and then the behavioural part is developed. However, this time, with the introduction of autonomous cars, behavioural science should be travelling at the same speed to make things easier and smoother for people.
The photos above are the Rolls-Royce’s future level 5 autonomous car concept, 103EX.
The fourth generation BMW X5 is revealed today. It’s been 20 years since the first generation X5 and more than 2,000,000 vehicles were sold during this time. However, this time it’s a bit special.
The fourth generation BMW X5 arrived a couple of years earlier than expected. As the third generation X5 is only four years old, we have been expecting a facelift instead of a brand new vehicle. However, BMW decided to reveal a new model to honour the 20th year and the new modular platform.
This time, the BMW X5 features a proper off-road feature. Until now, BMW has never offered an off-road mode button or a differential lock. Actually, the torque-vectoring system mimicked the differential lock effect until now.
The fourth generation BMW X5 offers a new dimension and sees the rebirth of the X5. It features a rear-differential lock, an off-road driving mode and air suspension. You might be thinking that these are already available with the Range Rover. However, the Range Rover doesn’t offer the level of semi-autonomous driving which is available with the X5.
At the moment, the BMW X5 is capable of Level 2 autonomous driving. It can drive by itself but you still need to be in control.
The exterior looks better than that of the previous generation, and the interior is probably one of the most luxurious yet. The interior resembles the Bentley Bentayga a little, and you won’t believe you are inside an X5!
Overall, the new BMW X5 is a brand-new experience. With its new off road capabilities, BMW is bringing us back to where the SUV story started. If you are planning to have a new SUV, this is the one you should have.
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I have been waiting for an SUV from Rolls Royce for a long time. The SUV market is a dream land for any car manufacturer. People from any segment love to buy SUVs with any style. For Rolls-Royce, it was a really bold decision to offer an SUV under the Rolls-Royce name. However, I don’t find it that awkward.
Nowadays, you can buy an enterprise level cloud service from a book store, Amazon Web Services. Your mobile phone operator basically acts as an internet service provider. You pay to watch TV-Series on Netflix, while they are free on BBC. So, the Rolls-Royce and SUV concepts are not that far away from one another.
Do I like the Cullinan? Yes, kind of. The only missing features are a long-range gearbox and proper differential locks. Without these toys, you can’t really do off-road. However, people don’t really care about this. They wish to own a Rolls-Royce SUV that can drive them to the Swiss Alps or in the untouched deserts of Dubai.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to view the interior of the finished vehicle. As I have vanished from the eye of the car industry, it is not that easy to see a vehicle before anyone else. Alternatively, I have to be an influencer (aka you have lots of followers, whether real or fake).
Anyway, from what I have seen with my limited window, the Rolls-Royce Cullinan does look better than the Benteyga. The Phantom’s modular platform has been used for the Cullinan. The engine is still a BMW V12 with heavy modifications and a ZF automatic gearbox. I can’t ignore the know-how of BMW’s xDrive technology from the X-Series vehicles.
Never underestimate BMW’s xDrive technology. It is one of the most rapidly responding traction control systems on the market. The luxury of Rolls-Royce is the pinnacle, and Range Rover only has the SV Coupe to keep up the race. The personalisation is something I really don’t like, but many people love it, and that’s where Rolls-Royce takes over the game.
Overall, the Rolls-Royce Cullinan is a good-looking SUV and much smaller than the Phantom (hopefully). Will it change the SUV market? Yes, for the luxury segment, but the Toyota Land Cruiser will not be affected by the Cullinan. I am definitely sure that Rolls-Royce will increase their sales figures with the SUV. They have been losing customers to Land Rover and Bentley for a long time. Now it is time to take them back.
Would I buy it? Interestingly, I liked it. I am not a Rolls-Royce customer, not really into the personalisation drama, but the Cullinan is nice.
On the second day of the Financial Times Car Summit, the CEO of Volvo Cars, Håkan Samuelsson, announced that their next-generation infotainment system would be developed with Google. However, SEAT and JLR are taking another route: they plan to develop their infotainment systems in-house and thus maintain ownership of the user data. They may even develop their own app ecosystems and use the data for their advertisement platforms inside these ecosystems.
The critical issue is whether a car company can hire a computer engineer (specializing in AI and machine learning) from Apple, Facebook, Google or UBS. Usually these companies offer very generous six-figure pay cheques. Can a car company pay an AI machine-learning coder at the same level as Google?
I think it will be a serious challenge for the car industry to attract people from the tech industry. As Apple and Google are generating more revenue than the car companies, the budgets of the car companies may not be able to accommodate the necessary costs.
Therefore, it is a reasonable decision to work with Google, or alternatively Apple, on these infotainment and self-driving technologies.
I know it has been a long time since the Autosport International 2018; however, I kept the photos secret on purpose to give you a cool flashback.
Porsche revealed their hardcore monster, the 911 GT2 RS at the Autosport this year. Officially, this car managed to go around the Nürburgring in 6 min 47.3 sec! This figure will probably sound meaningless if you just drive the GT2 RS around town.
In case you haven’t realised, the 911 GT2 RS has 700 HP (3.8 lt turbo flat-six boxer engine) and sends all those horses to its rear wheels. Hopefully, the engine is on top of the rear wheels; you won’t have lots of wheel spin but you will have some!
The acceleration to 100 km/h is in 2.8 sec, thanks to the PDK. You can’t achieve this via manual gearbox. And the top speed is 340 km/h.
Inside, it is not the most comfortable Porsche you could ever experience. The GT2 RS is designed for the track; however, it is not as hardcore as the GT3, it does still have some daily driveability, and you have the air con, sat nav, Apple Car connectivity and so on.
However, it wouldn’t be the perfect car for doing a weekly shop at your local supermarket.
Despite this, deep inside you wish you had one and could drive all day :)
Two days ago in East London Ford Europe launched the new Ford Focus, the fourth generation Focus. This launch is important because it is the 20th year that the Focus has been in production.
I felt sad when I realised the press launch was just next to my WeWork Spitalfields office. For a long time, I gave up on the automotive industry. I was an early blogger and couldn’t get a grip with the press officers. They couldn’t identify what I was. So, I gave up. Nowadays, there are more bloggers than journalists. However my bad experiences prevented me from attending the press launches. However, this time, I really wanted to be at that press launch.
In 1998, Ford made a serious decision and ceased the production of the Escort. In its place they created a brand new model, the Focus. The first generation Focus had a revolutionary design and state-of-the-art handling. Twenty years ago, most of the manufacturers were using torsion beam suspension, but the Focus offered with the multi-link rear suspension.
The interior quality was adequate for the time, and with regard to reliability, the Focus was the benchmark. As a result, you still see them running.
The exterior design? It was like a spaceship landed on Earth. Everyone was talking about the Focus and looking at it. If Instagram had been available in 1998, Focus would be really popular! However, the second and the third generations never managed to improve on the exterior design of the first generation Focus. They were in the shade of the iconic first generation model.
Now things have changed. We live in a connected world and people don’t buy cars anymore. Bear in mind, my first car was a 2004 Ford Focus. Now, living in London, I don’t have a motivation to own a car.
The fourth generation Focus is unique. It was launched onto the market with state-of-the-art technologies. Now, it can detect a pothole and the suspension prevents the wheel dropping into the pothole. The car then tells the rear-wheel to do the same. A similar technology is used in the Audi A8, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the Rolls-Royce Phantom.
Also, you can now adjust the firmness of the suspension. There is 360-degree cameras, semi-autonomous driving, adaptive cruise control, traffic sign recognition, cross traffic alert, wrong way alert, inflatable seatbelts, post-collision braking, pre-collision assist with pedestrian and cyclist detection. And lastly, there is a new SYNC3 system, which is not really tempting.
Avoid the entry level Ford Focus model because it has torsion beam rear suspension to reduce the cost. The new Focus is based on a new platform called C2, and Ford decided to follow the route of the VW and introduce torsion beam. The dual-clutch gearbox has also vanished from the Focus. BMW has removed it as well! Now you can get 8-speed automatic (1-lt 123HP and 148 HP / 1.5-lt diesel 118HP and 2-lt diesel) or 6-speed manual.
Overall, the new Ford Focus looks amazing. Just replace the badge with an Audi one and people will not know the difference. I really loved the Vignale spec. It is expensive but worth it. However, I felt really sad not attending the press launch in the Focus’s 20th year.
I know it is bit late to write about Autosport International 2018, but it is on purpose to refresh your memories! I would like to start with the Bentley Continental GT3. It is basically based on the Continental GT which you can buy from a Bentley dealer. However, a couple of things are different than the road-going version.
It is lighter! The Continental GT3 is designed for racing, not for showing off. Therefore, Bentley has removed anything that is not necessary for racing. The end result is a weight of 1.3-tonne! The engine? As the GT3 is a racing machine, Bentley has not revealed the real figures relating to power output. However, they claim it is more than 550-HP from a 4-lt V8 twin-turbo engine. Again, the Continental GT is more powerful than this car, but it is heavier!
At the moment, you can see this Bentley in the Intercontinental GT Challenge.
Since the Range Rover was first introduced, we haven’t seen a coupe version recently, despite the fact that the initial Range Rover was a coupe. Why coupe? The answer is very simple. A short wheel base works better off-road. In particular, when you try to go over an obstacle, the shorter wheel base makes your life easier. That’s why the Lada Niva and the Mercedes G-Wagon are offered with short wheel base versions.
The reason why Land Rover offers a coupe Range Rover is not for improved off-roading. That’s very obvious given the standard 23-inch wheels! I really don’t know any other passenger vehicle with standard 23-inch wheels except buses and trucks.
Long story short, the Range Rover SV Coupe is just an expensive limited edition. Unfortunately the Land Rover team did not wish to revive the off-road DNA of the Range Rover with this coupe. The proof? The body is lowered by 8mm! When you add this up with the 23-inch wheels, the only off-roading you can do will be climbing the pavements in Mayfair, London. Just forget any other off-roading experience with this Range Rover.
The SV Coupe is powered by a 5-lt V8 Supercharged petrol engine with 565-HP and 700Nm. The transmission is an 8-speed ZF auto, and this monster needs 5.3-sec to reach 100 km/h! The top speed 257 km/h!
What about the technology? Like the original Range Rover, it offers nothing close to the Audi Q7, the Bentley Bentayga or the aging Mercedes GLE/GLS class! There are laser and LED headlights but the rest is outdated technology from 2012!
Overall, the Range Rover SV Coupe looks amazing, and has revived the real Range Rover. The performance is mind-blowing. The interior is the best interior in its class. However, the lack of driving assistance systems and semi-autonomous driving features just make this car outdated from the beginning.
Keep in mind that the SV Coupe is limited to 999 vehicles with a starting price tag of £240,000!
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