I have always had a soft spot for Honda. But does the pint-sized Honda Super-ONE EV make me love the brand more? Or less? Over the years, I have owned two Honda Civic EK4 SiRs and a Honda Odyssey, so I would consider myself more than just a casual admirer of the brand. Honda, to me, has always been one of those manufacturers that understands how a car should feel. There is ...
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The new Audi Q3 has grown up rather nicely. At least that's the first thing that struck me when I saw it in person. The previous Q3 was handsome enough, in that safe and quietly confident Audi sort of way, though this new one looks sharper, more expressive and far more self-assured. The lines are cleaner, the stance is stronger, and the whole car now carries itself with more of ...
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The Honda ZR-V, while capable, fills an awkward gap in the modern-day Honda lineup. Honda has spent decades earning a reputation for building sensible cars. Cars that simply work. They may not always be the loudest, the fastest or the flashiest, but they have a habit of quietly getting under your skin through engineering integrity rather than marketing bravado. This makes the ZR-V an interesting proposition. On paper, it fills a gap between ...
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For years, enthusiasts have asked the same question whenever Ferrari unveils a new flagship model. "When will the manual gearbox return?" For the longest time, the answer has always been the same. Faster lap times, quicker gear changes and modern performance demands meant Ferrari's dual-clutch transmission had become the natural evolution of the marque. The manual gearbox, while romantic, was simply no longer the quickest way around a circuit. But, driving a Ferrari has ...
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The BYD Seal 6 DM-i is the brand’s first plug-in hybrid sedan for Singapore, and it is an excellent all-rounder with excellent range and a surprisingly decent drive. If you’re looking to buy a BYD sedan in Singapore right now, you essentially have three choices. There’s the Seal, which is the OG BYD sedan offering, the Seal 6 EV, which is the slightly smaller and more affordable option, and then the ...
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The Mercedes-Benz GLE400e, while getting on a bit in age, still proves that adding a bigger battery pack isn't just a novel concept. Just a few years ago, buying a luxury SUV was wonderfully uncomplicated. If you wanted something that could climb a mountain before dropping the children off at school, you bought a Range Rover. If driving mattered above everything else, the BMW X5 was the obvious answer. And if you ...
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Aion’s UT compact electric hatch offers plenty of cheekiness, but under its cute facade lies a car that delivers excellent value. In all my years of driving, I’ve never come across a car that has promised to cure motion sickness. But the new Aion UT has a setting called ‘Motion Sickness Relief’, which apparently tries to smoothen the driving experience by reducing the regenerative braking and energy recovery to a minimum, ...
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There are some cars that feel like a normal model change, and others that feel like the start of something much bigger. The new BMW iX3 belongs firmly in the second group. This is the first of BMW’s Neue Klasse generation of cars, and that alone makes it significant. The phrase Neue Klasse, or New Class, looks back to a very important period in BMW’s history, when the brand found a ...
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Dongfeng enters the EV sedan space with the evocatively-named 007, but does this slick contender have what it takes to battle the rest?
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Dongfeng wades into the Cat A electric SUV game with the Vigo, but beyond its funky looks lies a somewhat rough, unpolished diamond. They say good things come to those who wait. My Dongfeng Vigo test drive was rescheduled twice due to various circumstances surrounding the car. Given the proliferation of similar other Cat A electric SUVs on the market though, I can’t say that it was a delay I minded ...
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Toyota does not usually rush into things. This is, after all, the company that turned hybrid motoring from a curiosity into a global habit, one Prius at a time. So when it finally decided to build a proper battery-electric SUV, you expected something deeply considered, perhaps even revolutionary. And it kind of is, apart from its name. The Toyota bZ4X, admittedly, sounds like someone dropped a keyboard down a staircase. It stands for ...
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There are few vehicles that can claim to have reshaped an entire segment quite like the Porsche Cayenne. When it arrived in 2002, purists were horrified. Porsche, a company synonymous with low-slung sports cars, had decided to build a family SUV. Yet history has a funny way of proving critics wrong. The Cayenne not only became one of Porsche's best-selling models, but also paved the way for an entire generation of performance ...
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The EV market is moving quickly. Manufacturers are racing to launch new models, chase longer range figures and introduce ever more technology. Against that backdrop, the Subaru Solterra XT might seem like a late arrival. After spending time with the car, I suspect Subaru would be perfectly happy with that observation. The Japanese brand has rarely been the first to jump on a trend. Instead, it has traditionally taken a more measured ...
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Family cars were a simple thing in the past. If you had more than two children, elderly parents, or a habit of transporting half the neighbourhood, you bought an MPV and accepted your fate. Then SUVs arrived, and suddenly everyone wanted height, presence and the illusion of adventure, even if the most challenging terrain was the basement carpark at Marina Bay Sands. Tesla, for all its dominance in Singapore, has never properly ...
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Audi has spent the last few years trying to make its model naming system sound clever, which is usually the first sign that things are about to get confusing. The plan was simple enough: even numbers for electric cars, odd numbers for combustion-engined ones. This is why the new A5 became the replacement for the old A4, even though the A5 used to be the swoopy coupe-ish thing. Then Audi realised, perhaps ...
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