Smith & Sniff's guide to the best new cars at FOS 2024

[Music] I'm Johnny Smith I'm Richard Porter together we're Smith and sniff and we're here after hours in the first glance padic yeah we've had to wait for everyone to go home basically because it's been so busy so busy um let's glance over here first of all this is the Alpine a290 and this is the production finished Al a290 so Rena 5 came out um and very exciting car it is too fully electric this is Alpine's first electric car and this is a hotter version of that hot hatch Renault 5 yeah what I like about this first and foremost is the fact that they've taken some Alpine Hall marks like those sort of like nostril rally lights from the A110 there's one over there they've made a little focal point of this you said earlier I love the fact that it's a wider track car 6 cm wider they're not mucking around here compared to the standard five what I think that means is great Renault sport hot hatchbacks clear Williams the 5 GT Turbo they always feel like the nose is nailed down the rest of the car kind of pivots around it so you think if they've widened the track maybe that's what they're chasing we don't know yet but what they have said is for things like the way the steering feels the way the brakes feel they've benchmarked it against the A110 Mid Engine sports car so that's promising pretty cool it does use a couple of actual components from the A110 not that many is one of them steering wheel actually that's a good question I don't know I was told that the steering wheel is not the same as in the five it is a bespoke Alpine wheel it is a bespoke Alpine wheel and it has a little over boost button which allows you to have like 10 seconds of like overtake it's called an OV button it's called overtaking fans I can't remember they did tell me in Paris when I first saw this car a few months back but the cool thing about it is it's only got the bigger battery the ren5 comes with two batter this takes the bigger battery I think it's uh just over 210 horsepower is it it's two power outputs actually this is a range so you can have I think 178 or 215 horsepower um I think this has got great promise I think it's got good promise because of the Renault sport kind of Heritage the um the thing I want to draw your attention to here CU obviously The Styling is different from the Rena 5 it's got a different body kit obviously that broader track some very interesting snowflakey wheels that look like bmwm Sport Wheels that's a comp here on the side here if you remember the mid engin mad80s Rena 5 Turbo 2 where they had air intakes here cuz the engine was in the middle this doesn't have an engine in the middle it's front-wheel drive front motor but that's where I think this is sort of paying homage to now just like the Rena 5 it's got independent rear suspension which is actually quite unusual for a car of this size and segment they haven't confirmed it officially but I reckon you can quote me on this one day I think they're going to do a twin motor vers so in other words an all-wheel drive version of this car it's great they're doing really good things at the moment right now Johnny before we move on yeah from this part of the paddock yeah can we just mention Hony are here indeed from China yeah you may not have heard of them they are actually China's oldest passenger car manufacturer you can't buy these in this country at the moment that one if you live in the Netherlands you can have one it's about 80,000 they are going to come to the UK at some point 2025 has been mentioned in the meantime this is just to wet our appetites that come here to Goodwood festiv speed to sort of gauge interest I guess uh Hony means red flag as in the symbol of China rather than a reason not to go on a date with and this is one of several Chinese Brands taking the show really seriously mg they're sponsoring the Festival of speed this year you may have seen the big thing in front of the house sculpture yeah up there along with an old MGB is one of these the new cyber cyer cyster cyber two-seater Roadster engineered in China but styled in London England uh where mg have a design studio um this we saw it last year at Festival of speed it is now perilously close to being on our streets there are two versions there's a rear wheel drive one and a four-wheel drive one if you go for the four-wheel drive one has two Motors one at each end 503 horsepower and n to 62 in 3.2 seconds so it's brisk yeah it's a it's a cool piece of work I'm looking forward to driving this it's kind of like an affordable Tesla Roadster that's coming out that you can actually buy you can actually buy yeah that's the crucial bit under the mg tarpo in beautiful tailored tarp over here let's just we are here after hours but we're going to do this stop us let's tug this off a second because this this is a car that you that wasn't at the festival speed last year this is the mg cyberster Coupe cuz look it's got a hard top yeah yeah now I don't think there's any word of this actually going to production yet no officially it's a concept but um at one point so was that and you're about to be able to buy it for £55,000 or £60,000 depending on version so there's a good chance I reckon we'll see this well that's what we're seeing with with with Chinese Brands they go from kind of idea to concept to reality really really fast that is the modern way of cars anyway let's retop this before a security guard gives us a good shoe um there we go look love it so I do like a put a fitted sheet on oh it's absolutely wonderful although that mirror is wonky hang on I've just noticed um the dukee uh sweet guy only allows vacuum cleaners with his name on on the premises he's having none of right let's go up here bentle here with a very updated Continental GT uh this is the GTC Cabrio there's a coupe over there both of them in this fabulous 1970s bathroom color I love it now the sad news is the W12 engine is no more booh his but the twin turbo V8 which we've already been able to have in this car is still here only now it's connected to a hybrid system a plug-in as well 771 horsepower yes so you got a 4 ler V8 under there with two turbos and then back here I think just behind the back axle this beautiful high creased hunch which I do really like it's 25.9 kwatt hours of batteries and also it allows you to do 50 mil of EV range only if you wish and then like you say when you combine the two you get all hell when itut what the torque is over 700 pounds feet I believe yes yes yes which is an awful lot of torque awful lot now you'll notice a few cosmetic changes the lights have sort of bled out here the backlights are a little bit bigger I think it's fair to say that the Continental GT which has been around with us for what more than 20 years now is one of those cars that just seems to get a little bit nicer and better with every generation so this yeah should be really very nice indeed we've said this before but I I think they it in The Last 5 Years it's properly appeared on my radar as a genuinely desirable car you have a radar hey what are you doing with it oh yeah I've got got a radar okay it it's much more discreet than that much more discreet than that one thing they have carried over from the old model i' forgotten that Bentley do this i' slightly cted off Rolls-Royce but it's a nice touch weighted wheel center badges nice we are here after hours so some of the cars are covered up but we wanted to show you this one which is Honda's Prelude Prelude let's have a little look at it now this officially is still a concept it says it there yes a concept with legally compliant door mirrors and wipers and Road car tires so you got a good sense that this is going to into production very very soon unfortunately at the moment because it's a concept Honda haven't released any details so uh as far as we know it's based on the Civic the engine is a 2.0 with a hybrid system uh they're not even allowing us to see the interior look they've completely blacked the glass in although someone from Honda did say to me it's it has a fully functional interior in it they're just not allowed to show it which means this car is almost certainly going to become a reality yeah behind you is the original' 7s Prelude and I think the last Prelude went out of production 20 years ago but it's really exciting to see that Honda are actually bringing back an old name and it's still being the same genre of car that it went out as which is a two door coupe um so I think from Now concept but if you want to see it in the showrooms all you have to do is believe believe yeah the electrification of lotus continues a pace this is the EMA the new sort of taan rivaling saloon um if you go for this R the top one you get 95 horsepower a range of just over 300 miles you'll pay £130,000 for it uh do you know why it's called the MAA I I actually don't know do you want to know yes oh I was hoping you wouldn't say that's why I'm here not interesting uh it's inspired by EMA uh Europe Middle East and Asia those are some of the markets they'd like to sell the car in and that's it yeah brilliant forgot America that's why you tune in everybody yeah for that fascinating fact moving on pole star uh they started with the pole star one and then the PO star two we're probably all familiar with now the three is here sort of SUV thing over there and the four here controversially with no back window the five is on its way big Saloon and then there's this it was called the precept concept now after po stars 1 2 3 four and five guess what this is called that's right yes it's on the Bonnet actually yes it's the Pulstar 6 uh it's a sports car with no roof yeah do you know what these sort of like this hard top kind of buttress thing it really reminds me from certain angles of the Jag ftype Project 7 oh but obviously bigger um I don't know whether it's going to be a 2 plus2 or not cuz this is obviously a concept car um but this is over 800 horsepowers 800 volt architecture double motor so four-wheel drive yep um similar layout to the existing poers with that huge kind of floating uh portrait tablet thing um made in China will be made in China officially a concept but this is going into production they're not pretending otherwise made in China along the five and uh what's not so well known about poar is that although many of their cars are made in China a lot of their engineering is done right here in the UK yeah now is it poar or poster pester pester like the 70s fabric so this year is the 45th birthday of the galande vargan Mercedes iconic G wagon but this is probably the biggest departure that we've seen in many many years because this is the first fully electric G wagon it's not called the gev or the evg cuz that would be really catchy it's called the Richard where hi oh there you are sorry couldn't see you from back here what's it called it's called the g580 with EQ technology yeah really really rolls off the tongue but I'm really fascinated by this because it promises to possibly be the best off-road capability of any G wagon because the great thing about electric car cars they got maximum Torque from zero RPM they're really good at creeping over things and you can actually hear and see things that you can't normally when there's an engine running but Mercedes have intentionally made sure this car cannot outgun the AMG the Piston VA AMG version because that's still their Flagship Car and it probably makes them more profit so you know two slightly interesting details about this car go on spare wheel holder on the tailgate oh not a spare wheel holder yes it's got the charging cables in it yeah another funny thing it's not funny it's just interesting and geeky up there you can see it see that that's an aerodynamic Aid that Mercedes say makes a massive difference that okay and the little cutout notch on this Wing here and there and there's a little air pocket here on the rear wing and there's a little blue line which doesn't make any difference it just tells people that it's electric and then there's a front grill difference he ah sort of blanked in but not quite that's my other slightly interesting thing oh that won't be on the UK cars this is a German car in the UK it's going to get the grill the same as every other G vargon so be a little more stealthy for some reason or other bye did you just fall down yes uh let's have a game of CSI tarpan uhhuh uh can you possibly guess what Tesla have brought to the Festival of speed and it's sitting under the sheet H I simply don't know perhaps we never will I just I if you had a gun to my head I still wouldn't be able to guess well if you drive one of these you probably have got a gun so uh let's move on to the Ford Capri I know o controversial extremely controversial so the Festival of speed is the place where Ford have decided after nearly 40 years to resurrect and bring back in their words not mine the legend okay remember everybody the the Capri was the European Mustang right sort of that Cliff Richard is the European Elvis but the thing is the Mustang was always a muscle car coupe all right and then when Ford brought out the Mac e yes it was an electric SUV family car but they'd never taken away the Mustang Ford took away our Capri yeah well I mean In fairness because nobody was buying it in fact they stopped making it for Europe in 1984 it was made only for the UK and Ireland for the last two years of its life and then it was deeply unfashionable and a laughing stock and it went away yes but these are the facts yes but as long as I've been a motoring journalist and 10 years more than that we have been promised the return of the Capri and now it's back and I actually think that it's a fairly interesting car in certain design aspects but I'm deeply offended by them calling it that when we don't actually have a car that that's anywhere near what the old car was to play with as well if they brought out a coupe and it was sat here now and go you can have a capri or you can have a capri e how many people buy Coupes these days we've just seen the Honda Prelude and the Honda Prelude has been really popular at the festival of speed and I'm really excited about it and so are hundreds of other people thousands tens of thousands of other a few local Dave we met yesterday um Toyota mate really call Coupes look here's the thing the caprius Ford's name they can put one they damn well please and the fact that cou don't really sell anymore and unfortunately whether you like it or not electric SUVs like this do they could put the name on it if they want because people who aren't car nerds recognize the name cost Millions to get people to recognize names they've shortcut that the Tabloid newspapers will go oh the Capri back they won't think to question it I think Ford have been very clever and I don't care what carbs say s there well I don't think Ford have been clever but it's based upon the volksvagen id4 architecture so it's vw's electric under pinnings essentially um up to 390 M range it's going to be three battery sizes choose from three or two or three power outputs it's going to start at 48,000 quid which is actually an enormous amount of money I think it's confusingly more than the Mustang macki in the UK which is a bigger I think more premium car who knows only Ford understand what they're doing ford are quite strange at the moment I think well you know they're doing their best anyway whether you like the idea of the Capri name on this or not come and have a look at it in the first glance Paddock but that's all for us for now bye-bye bye

Channel: Goodwood Road & Racing

Views: 90,279

Keywords: Goodwood, Festival of Speed, Goodwood Festival of speed, Smith and sniff, Jonny smith, richard porter, late brake show, first glance, ebay, honda prelude

Id: EJrq8tEFHHI

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2024