Add source Login
More Golf R than GTI: Kia EV4 GT hot hatch driven

More Golf R than GTI: Kia EV4 GT hot hatch driven

We get an early taste of the dual-motor EV4 GT to see if it can bring the classic hot hatch into the electric age We have had small electric hot hatchbacks like the Alpine A290 and large ones like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N but as yet nothing in the real heartland of Volkswagen Golf GTI -sized machinery. Cue the phrase: until now. To be fair, the lack of traditional family-sized electric hot hatches has been due to a near total absence of donor cars. Almost all 4.2- to 4.4m-long, five-door, five-seat EVs have been homogenised crossovers, in part because of the need to accommodate the depth of a battery pack. But a few years down the line, that just feels like an excuse. Where's the creativity? The Kia EV4 was arguably the first electric family hatch in the traditional mould, and now Kia has decided to turn it into the first Golf GTI-sized electric hot hatch as well. The Cupra Born , Volkswagen ID 3 and MG 4 are the closest conceptual rivals, but those are noticeably taller and their hot derivatives either feel more like trim levels than bespoke performance models (the VZ and GTX) or are unengaging to drive (the XPower). You might have noticed that I tested the Kia EV4 GT, this bona fide hot hatch version of the EV4, almost six months ago. Talking shop for a moment, last autumn Kia brought an early prototype of the GT to a Car of the Year event in Denmark, where it was launching the EV4, to give jurors a clearer idea of the full model range (which also includes a saloon) to come. We got there thinking this GT prototype was for static display, but the keys were handed over for short drives in exchange for a signature with lots of dos and mainly don'ts, one of which was don't write about it until now. It seemed to catch even Kia representatives at the event by surprise, because information on the car we were testing was close to non-existent. The press release that came from the event focused only on some guff about the 'GT wrap' that hides the car's final styling underneath. There was no slideshow to sit through, as is de rigueur with any car tested on these first drive pages. The horror! Nor was there an engineer to sit in the passenger seat, as is almost always the case with such prototype drives, given the value of mules like these can run into the millions and they have their quirks. We were simply told not to press the literal big red button on the centre tunnel. Credit to Kia for trusting us with it. At the time, it was an intense half an hour or so of journalistic investigation mixed with car reviewing to find out not only what the EV4 GT was and what it wanted to be but what it was like too. It was a fun 30 minutes, as it turned out. My starting point for this car was actually a conversation with Kia development chief Manfred Harrer a few weeks earlier, in which he accepted the notion that the dynamic enjoyment of Kias hadn't kept pace with the improvements in design and desirability of the cars and he said the GT models would be his starting point in trying to address that. He has made good progress: the EV4 GT feels a good deal more alive than the standard EV4 on which it is based with both its powertrain and its chassis and the adjustability they offer together. Its dynamic personality is more Golf R than Golf GTI, not just owing to the technical fact that it has four-wheel drive (thanks to an additional 94bhp motor for the rear axle) rather than front-wheel drive (the 194bhp motor from the standard EV4 remains at the front) but also in how it goes down the road. The suspension makeover from the standard EV4 feels significant: the GT does a Golf R impression in offering superb comfort and compliance alongside plenty of grip and stability when being pushed. It uses the clever system we have seen before on Hyundai Group models, whereby a front-facing camera scans the road ahead and prompts the suspension to adjust in milliseconds for any bumps ahead. The steering feel is also much improved, addressing a particular Kia weak point. The EV4 GT seems like a car set up almost exclusively for road use, rather than track use, as I suspect it would feel a bit stodgy and heavy on the smoothest surfaces with only cornering speeds and trying to slide around to think about. The EV4 GT can still put a smile on your face around a corner as well as impress you with how it is able to handle a bumpy road, being capable of searing cross-country pace, and unlike many fast EVs it has far more in its repertoire than rapid standing-start acceleration. Still, it is quick: a 5.6sec 0-62mph time is claimed and a 120mph top speed estimated, although according to the performance data logger you can view on the central touchscreen, someone had got the former down close to 5sec dead. The virtual gearshift function made famous by the Ioniq 5 N also features, and among the driving modes is one labelled GT (enabled by a button on the steering wheel) that makes everything as fast or as stiff as it goes. Michelin Pilot Sport 4S 245/45 tyres front and rear are wrapped around 20in alloys and behind them are some beefed-up brakes with, on this liveried prototype at least, some fetching neon-coloured calipers. The EV4 GT receives some meaningful upgrades over the donor car in a cabin that feels classy with some sporty touches. Best among them are new sports seats that make it seem like you're sitting lower than in the standard EV4, and they feel great too, with an Alcantara-like wrapping and leather trim. Piece it all together and you get a car that shows lots of promise and in several different ways. It shows that more humble Kia hatches can be as good to drive as they look, that this GT can display proper dynamic clarity and positioning without you really knowing anything about it and that electric cars can make for enjoyable traditional hot hatches with the right tuning. As with the Golf R, there are hot hatches that are simply more fun to drive - the Honda Civic Type R s of this world. But there's hope here that there is life in the family hot hatch yet in the electric era. Tech Spec: Kia EV4 GT Feature Specification Price £46,000 (est) Engine Two permanent magnet synchronous motors Power 194bhp (front), 94bhp (rear) Torque na Gearbox 1-spd reduction gear, 4WD Kerb weight 2100kg (est) 0-62mph 5.6sec Top speed 120mph (est) Battery 81.4/78.0kWh (total/est usable) Range, economy 300 miles (est), na CO2, tax band 0g/km, 3% Rivals Alpine A290 GT, Cupra Born VZ

Classic status at last? It's time to give the Austin Allegro some love

Classic status at last? It's time to give the Austin Allegro some love

Everyone loves to hate the Allegro, but it was revolutionary and popular when new - and quietly charming now Naming the Austin Allegro as one of my favourite cars might seem wilfully contrarian, seeing as it has come to be viewed as a symbol of what could only be described as a 'malaise era' for British car manufacturing. People of all ages seem to hate the 'All-aggro'. Some have even put the downfall of the British motor industry on those Harris Mann-designed shoulders, so glaring were its reliability issues and so uncompetitive was its performance in most core respects. It was downright dangerous in some regards too: a lack of structural integrity led in extreme cases to the rear window popping out when the car was jacked up and there were several cases of wheels falling off in motion. British Leyland management blamed strikes and the government's three-day week. Workers meanwhile, blamed poor designs, optimised for money saving and efficiency rather than quality. There's probably a bit of truth to both sides of the story, but there's no denying the issues. Indeed, the only time the Allegro seems to enter modern automotive discourse is when it turns up near the top of a web article about 'the worst British cars ever made' or similar. But I can only assume that anyone awarding the Allegro this most dubious of accolades has never driven one or at least has only skimmed the contemporary media coverage. When the car was launched back in the spring of 1973, reviews were actually positive. Autocar's own read: "Compared with the much older Austin 1300, it is a big step forward in all respects. Apart from its advanced engineering, the Allegro comes with a very complete list of standard equipment and in 1300 Super form offers very good value for money." And it still holds up today. I once drove an Allegro 3 more than 600 miles, from Peterborough to Seneffe, Belgium, where some examples were made, and back. It was white with a sorrel (brown) interior, making it possibly the most 1970s thing I've ever seen. It broke down only once, which honestly is fine for a car of that age. And my overriding impression was that it was actually a pretty good car: comfortable suspension, a big enough boot for a weekend away, easy to park and, like with most old cars, a fantastic view of the road. It even sat at 60mph pretty easily. History paints this unloved Austin as an automotive antihero, but I can only report that we had quite a lovely time together, and I came away feeling like the car had come to be rather unfairly lambasted. I would have had a worse journey in a similar-vintage Volkswagen Beetle, I bet, and people aren't quite so mean about that. All hail the Allegro, then. It was a car that had to be built down to a price during a time of great national unrest but, instead of playing it safe, British Leyland doubled down and made something really weird, with Hydragas suspension, edgy, futuristic styling and a ' quartic ' steering wheel that didn't really work but somehow manufacturers have started copying some five decades later anyway. Actually, thinking about it, now we've had Renault 4 and 5, Ford Capri and Fiat Grande Panda , surely the stage is set for an electric-powered Allegro reboot? Anyone? No? Just me, then

"Sounds simple. Isn't." Six brilliant hours in UK's most confusing race

"Sounds simple. Isn't." Six brilliant hours in UK's most confusing race

We race a Suzuki Swift at Silverstone in an incredibly convoluted budget endurance event A race that "everybody enjoys but nobody understands" is how someone describes the Birkett Six-Hour Relay race to me. Since 1951 it has been a season-ending fixture race for the 750 Motor Club, which itself has been around for so long promoting affordable club motorsport that it's the first place I'd think to send someone who wanted to go low-cost racing. I've done a few 750 Club races and without exception they've been friendly and approachable. But perhaps none more so than the Birkett, named after its creator (and 750MC founder) Holland Birkett. Its name is otherwise descriptive. It lasts six hours and is a relay. Teams have up to six drivers, none fewer than three, and you can enter several cars per team. One is on track at a time and when it pits, as it passes its garage, the next team-mate can head out instead. Sounds simple. Isn't. At the end of the six hours, the team with the most laps wins? Not so fast. There is a winner from that point of view but this is also a handicap race and the proper winner, if you like, will be the one who is judged to come first after the pace of all its respective team's cars has been adjusted, so it's not as simple as pitching a Suzuki Swift Sport against a Caterham 420R in a straight fight. And, even then, it's not totally straightforward because what if one team has three moderately quick BMWs and a rival has one really quick Caterham but two quite slow hatchbacks? A handicapper could calculate for the two slower cars, yet then the Caterham could do all the hard work and well, let's put it this way, after the race there's a lot of hanging around in the pit lane in the dark while such calculations are made. As my friend said, nobody really understands it, but they all want a good time, so it's best not to overthink it. I have not been overthinking any of it since an opportunity to race in the Birkett arrived. John McGuinness of multiple Isle of Man TT-winning fame turns out to be too busy and I am not too proud to be mentioned as 'tbc' in the programme stepping into his shoes. I'll be driving the 750MC's own Suzuki Swift Sport Challenge car, which I'll share with another TT and Dakar rider, James Hillier. It's his first four-wheeled race but, well, he's raced at the Dakar and the TT, so he knows what he's doing. We're in a team with two Honda Civic Type R s, both front-runners in the 750 Club's Type R Trophy, a quite serious championship for quite serious machines, with airboxes that look like they could swallow a sandwich. The Swift's mechanicals are, in contrast, pretty much standard, which will leave it as one of the slowest cars in the field. The Hondas are much quicker and that puts us in Class A. A team with four Caterhams is in Class D. A team of four Clios is Class A too, so I'm not sure they're working them out according to overall speed, and I'm not really thinking about it. I'm not sure anyone is taking it too seriously. Chef Tom Kerridge is racing in a Renault Clio and the most pressure anyone at the event is under is probably his team's caterer. What I do know is that there are 67 teams, so outside of pit-lane handovers and breakdowns there will be that many cars out on circuit at a time. In recent years the Birkett has been held on Silverstone's 3.66-mile GP circuit, which is one of the few British tracks that will feel big enough for so many cars. But such is the disparity in car speeds that I suspect it will be busy. I've raced in a Britcar 24-Hour race with around 60 cars in the field and that felt much busier than a Citroën C1 race with 99 cars all going roughly the same pace. At least it will be daylight all the way through. And from a competition standpoint, the good thing about having a breakdown in this race is that if one car fails to proceed, the team can send out another once it has been recovered. So there should be 67 finishers. The club's Swift Sport Challenge is a relatively new series, one of several start-up one-model trophies from the past few years. Among the rather nice things about it in addition to its rather splendid logo is that the Swift Sport is a great fun car in the first place, and the modifications do nothing to dent that character. The Swift is a small car, one of the more compact superminis on sale but by the time it's stripped out, it gets a race wheel and a race seat mounted low in the cabin, it actually feels quite big. I think it's the low driving position and high window line that does it. But it's still road legal and registered one of the key draws of the series. It's not unusual, series organisers tell me, for racers to drive their car to the event and then home again. There are single-make series where potential for crash damage would render that a risky operation, but the 750MC is a friendly club on and off track. Race entry fees are low. You could, and people do, have a car, bring it to a handful of races a year and spend only a couple of grand a year doing it. Used cars can be £1500 and prepping them £6000-£7000. I know that's still not the cheapest hobby in the world but there's not much better in racing circles, you don't have to have a support car, it will have resale value and the rest of the time you've got a Swift Sport for exciting trips to the shop. The radio even still works in this one. I listen while waiting for my stints because it pays to be buckled up and ready during the previous driver's turn, just in case anything happens to them on circuit. Communication is all by pit board and hand signal but I can see when a previous driver has been called in and get waved out as soon as they roll past my pit garage. It's not just difficult to know where in the field I am: it's impossible to be sure because, while live timing in the garage shows the field with the theoretical weighting applied, the finishing order will be adjusted again after the event. So once out on circuit, I just put my toe in and go about having a nice time driving the door handles off a Swift while not getting in anybody else's way. And I have not had many better times driving a car. The Swift moves around a bit under braking, it turns keenly, I can feel it pitching a wheel into the air on the way into corners and it revs rather happily on the way out. Karting excepted, I sometimes find that I most enjoy racing after the event, once the perilous bits are finished with. But not here, not now. I'm having a ball. We're not doing too badly, either, my teammates and I. Deep into the final hour, the adjusted order has us running top five or thereabouts, and we have a Civic on circuit to keep up our lap speeds and keep the opposition behind. Alas this is perhaps our undoing: the Swift doesn't spend quite enough time on circuit to avoid the adjudicators knocking us down a few spots, to seventh overall, rather than the podium finish we might have just squeezed. But nobody likes a hard-luck story when there are vanishingly few luckier ways to spend a weekend.

"Sounds simple. Isn't." Six brilliant hours in UK's most confusing race

"Sounds simple. Isn't." Six brilliant hours in UK's most confusing race

We race a Suzuki Swift at Silverstone in an incredibly convoluted budget endurance event A race that "everybody enjoys but nobody understands" is how someone describes the Birkett Six-Hour Relay race to me. Since 1951 it has been a season-ending fixture race for the 750 Motor Club, which itself has been around for so long promoting affordable club motorsport that it's the first place I'd think to send someone who wanted to go low-cost racing. I've done a few 750 Club races and without exception they've been friendly and approachable. But perhaps none more so than the Birkett, named after its creator (and 750MC founder) Holland Birkett. Its name is otherwise descriptive. It lasts six hours and is a relay. Teams have up to six drivers, none fewer than three, and you can enter several cars per team. One is on track at a time and when it pits, as it passes its garage, the next team-mate can head out instead. Sounds simple. Isn't. At the end of the six hours, the team with the most laps wins? Not so fast. There is a winner from that point of view but this is also a handicap race and the proper winner, if you like, will be the one who is judged to come first after the pace of all its respective team's cars has been adjusted, so it's not as simple as pitching a Suzuki Swift Sport against a Caterham 420R in a straight fight. And, even then, it's not totally straightforward because what if one team has three moderately quick BMWs and a rival has one really quick Caterham but two quite slow hatchbacks? A handicapper could calculate for the two slower cars, yet then the Caterham could do all the hard work and well, let's put it this way, after the race there's a lot of hanging around in the pit lane in the dark while such calculations are made. As my friend said, nobody really understands it, but they all want a good time, so it's best not to overthink it. I have not been overthinking any of it since an opportunity to race in the Birkett arrived. John McGuinness of multiple Isle of Man TT-winning fame turns out to be too busy and I am not too proud to be mentioned as 'tbc' in the programme stepping into his shoes. I'll be driving the 750MC's own Suzuki Swift Sport Challenge car, which I'll share with another TT and Dakar rider, James Hillier. It's his first four-wheeled race but, well, he's raced at the Dakar and the TT, so he knows what he's doing. We're in a team with two Honda Civic Type R s, both front-runners in the 750 Club's Type R Trophy, a quite serious championship for quite serious machines, with airboxes that look like they could swallow a sandwich. The Swift's mechanicals are, in contrast, pretty much standard, which will leave it as one of the slowest cars in the field. The Hondas are much quicker and that puts us in Class A. A team with four Caterhams is in Class D. A team of four Clios is Class A too, so I'm not sure they're working them out according to overall speed, and I'm not really thinking about it. I'm not sure anyone is taking it too seriously. Chef Tom Kerridge is racing in a Renault Clio and the most pressure anyone at the event is under is probably his team's caterer. What I do know is that there are 67 teams, so outside of pit-lane handovers and breakdowns there will be that many cars out on circuit at a time. In recent years the Birkett has been held on Silverstone's 3.66-mile GP circuit, which is one of the few British tracks that will feel big enough for so many cars. But such is the disparity in car speeds that I suspect it will be busy. I've raced in a Britcar 24-Hour race with around 60 cars in the field and that felt much busier than a Citroën C1 race with 99 cars all going roughly the same pace. At least it will be daylight all the way through. And from a competition standpoint, the good thing about having a breakdown in this race is that if one car fails to proceed, the team can send out another once it has been recovered. So there should be 67 finishers. The club's Swift Sport Challenge is a relatively new series, one of several start-up one-model trophies from the past few years. Among the rather nice things about it in addition to its rather splendid logo is that the Swift Sport is a great fun car in the first place, and the modifications do nothing to dent that character. The Swift is a small car, one of the more compact superminis on sale but by the time it's stripped out, it gets a race wheel and a race seat mounted low in the cabin, it actually feels quite big. I think it's the low driving position and high window line that does it. But it's still road legal and registered one of the key draws of the series. It's not unusual, series organisers tell me, for racers to drive their car to the event and then home again. There are single-make series where potential for crash damage would render that a risky operation, but the 750MC is a friendly club on and off track. Race entry fees are low. You could, and people do, have a car, bring it to a handful of races a year and spend only a couple of grand a year doing it. Used cars can be £1500 and prepping them £6000-£7000. I know that's still not the cheapest hobby in the world but there's not much better in racing circles, you don't have to have a support car, it will have resale value and the rest of the time you've got a Swift Sport for exciting trips to the shop. The radio even still works in this one. I listen while waiting for my stints because it pays to be buckled up and ready during the previous driver's turn, just in case anything happens to them on circuit. Communication is all by pit board and hand signal but I can see when a previous driver has been called in and get waved out as soon as they roll past my pit garage. It's not just difficult to know where in the field I am: it's impossible to be sure because, while live timing in the garage shows the field with the theoretical weighting applied, the finishing order will be adjusted again after the event. So once out on circuit, I just put my toe in and go about having a nice time driving the door handles off a Swift while not getting in anybody else's way. And I have not had many better times driving a car. The Swift moves around a bit under braking, it turns keenly, I can feel it pitching a wheel into the air on the way into corners and it revs rather happily on the way out. Karting excepted, I sometimes find that I most enjoy racing after the event, once the perilous bits are finished with. But not here, not now. I'm having a ball. We're not doing too badly, either, my teammates and I. Deep into the final hour, the adjusted order has us running top five or thereabouts, and we have a Civic on circuit to keep up our lap speeds and keep the opposition behind. Alas this is perhaps our undoing: the Swift doesn't spend quite enough time on circuit to avoid the adjudicators knocking us down a few spots, to seventh overall, rather than the podium finish we might have just squeezed. But nobody likes a hard-luck story when there are vanishingly few luckier ways to spend a weekend.