Category Archives: NEW CARS

NEW CARS

Renault Captur Eco-G 120: The 1,400-Kilometer Commuter That Runs on Common Sense

The compact-SUV world is full of big promises—hybrid this, electric that—but Renault has just taken a refreshingly pragmatic approach with the updated Captur Eco-G 120. It doesn’t plug in. It doesn’t need a charging station. And yet it delivers one of the longest driving ranges you’ll find in a mainstream crossover: up to 1,400 kilometers on a combination of gasoline and LPG.

In other words, this might be the most quietly clever powertrain Renault has built in years.

At the heart of the new Captur Eco-G 120 is a reworked version of Renault’s familiar 1.2-liter turbocharged three-cylinder (HR12), derived from the TCe 115. With direct injection and a flex-fuel petrol/LPG setup developed in-house, output rises to 120 horsepower and 200 Nm of torque, gains of 20 hp and 30 Nm over the old Eco-G 100. That might not sound like hot-hatch territory, but in the real world it cuts the 0–100 km/h sprint to 12 seconds, a full second quicker than before—and in this segment, that’s noticeable.

Power goes to the front wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox, and while Renault hasn’t chased performance for its own sake, the extra torque makes the Captur feel more relaxed and more willing when merging or overtaking. This is a small engine doing grown-up work.

But the real headline is efficiency—both financial and environmental. When running on LPG, the Captur emits around 10 percent less CO₂ than its petrol-only equivalent, with emissions rated at 117 g/km on gas and 133 g/km on petrol. Consumption starts at 7.2 l/100 km on LPG and 5.9 l/100 km on gasoline, which makes this Captur cheaper to run than the outgoing Eco-G 100 despite the power bump.

Renault has also made the LPG system more usable. The gas tank grows from 40 to 50 liters, and together with the 48-liter petrol tank, it gives the Captur that 1,400-kilometer theoretical range. For anyone who does long motorway slogs or simply hates stopping for fuel, that’s borderline absurd—in a good way.

Importantly, this isn’t some aftermarket conversion. Renault has been doing LPG systems for more than 15 years, and the Eco-G 120 is designed from the factory to run on both fuels. The LPG tank lives where the spare wheel would normally sit, so there’s no loss of cargo space or petrol capacity. It’s all clean, integrated, and OEM-approved.

And buyers seem to be noticing. In 2025 alone, Renault registered more than 15,600 LPG vehicles, nearly 5,700 of them Capturs, marking a 60 percent increase over the previous year. In markets like France—where about 1,500 LPG stations keep distances between fill-ups below 60 km—the appeal is obvious: fuel bills can drop by up to half.

Renault didn’t stop with the engine. The latest Captur also benefits from a series of tech and safety updates. New aerodynamically optimized rearview mirrors, borrowed from the Clio 6, reduce wind noise and can even project a logo onto the ground when you unlock the car, if you tick the right option box. Inside, a new driver-monitoring camera watches for fatigue and distraction, and if you fail to respond in semi-autonomous driving mode, the emergency stop assist will bring the car to a controlled halt with the hazard lights flashing.

Parking tech gets an upgrade too, with high-definition reversing cameras and a 360-degree 3D view, making the Captur feel more premium than its price suggests. Automatic versions also ditch the old MySense system in favor of a new Smart mode, which seamlessly switches between Eco, Comfort, and Sport depending on how you drive.

Speaking of price, Renault has pulled a neat trick: the Captur Evolution Eco-G 120 starts at €26,400 in France, exactly the same as the outgoing Eco-G 100, or €210 per month on a finance plan. More power, more range, and better efficiency—for the same money—is the kind of upgrade buyers usually only dream about.

The Captur Eco-G 120 won’t headline any Nürburgring lap times, and it isn’t trying to. What it does offer is something far rarer in today’s SUV market: a genuinely smart powertrain that lowers emissions, cuts running costs, and lets you drive from one end of Europe to the other without obsessing over where to refuel.

Sometimes, the cleverest tech isn’t electric—it’s just well-engineered. And Renault seems to have nailed it.

Source: Renault

NEW CARS

Next-Gen Citroën C4 Promises Radical Design and a Rebellion Against Boring Hatchbacks

Citroën has never been very good at blending in, and it doesn’t plan to start now. As the current C4 edges into retirement—six years old and counting, making it the oldest car in the brand’s lineup—Citroën is preparing a replacement that, in the words of its own design chief, “has to look very different.” Translation: the next C4 is about to get strange in a very French way.

That’s refreshing news in a C-segment world dominated by safe, conservative hatchbacks that look like they were designed by a committee armed with spreadsheets. Citroën, on the other hand, is aiming for something more radical. Design boss Pierre Leclercq says the fourth-generation C4 will be “highly bespoke,” deliberately separating itself from everything else in the brand’s lineup—which, outside of the tiny Ami, has quietly turned into a sea of crossovers.

In other words, the next C4 won’t just be a shrunk C5 or a stretched C3. It won’t adopt the chunky, box-on-wheels vibe of Citroën’s newer crossovers either. It will stay a hatchback—and a defiant one at that.

Cheap Bones, Expensive Attitude

Under the skin, the next C4 could take a very different path from its Stellantis cousins. The current model rides on the CMP platform, shared with cars like the Peugeot 208 and Opel Corsa. But Citroën is reportedly considering switching to the more cost-focused “Smart Car” architecture that underpins the new C3 and C3 Aircross.

That might sound like a downgrade, but Citroën sees it as an opportunity: lower production costs mean a lower sticker price, which frees the brand to spend its capital on what it really cares about—style and character.

That’s classic Citroën. Historically, this is the company that gave us hydropneumatic suspensions, single-spoke steering wheels, and dashboard layouts that looked like sci-fi props. Even now, Leclercq insists experimentation should be central to the brand’s role within Stellantis.

“Citroën has always been a bit experimental, and should be the experimental brand of the group,” he said—and he means it.

Bold Enough to Be Polarizing

Citroën CEO Xavier Chardon is just as blunt. The brand, he says, doesn’t want to be “generic” like Volkswagen or Toyota. It wants to take risks—even if that means not everyone will love the result.

“I’m not afraid if people hate our design,” he said. “But I don’t want anybody to think our design is mainstream.”

That’s a gutsy thing to say in a market where customer clinics and focus groups often sand off every sharp edge. But it’s also exactly the kind of attitude that could make the C4 interesting again. The outgoing model tried to straddle the line between hatchback and crossover, which left it a bit confused. The new one, by contrast, sounds like it will pick a lane—and then swerve creatively within it.

A Hatchback with a Point of View

What we shouldn’t expect is a cookie-cutter shape. Leclercq has already ruled out a boxy, two-volume crossover profile. The next C4 will remain a hatchback, but one driven by “new concepts” rather than a simple replacement brief.

That suggests we might get something genuinely different in a segment that desperately needs it. While rivals fight over who has the sharpest LED headlights or the most aggressive fake vents, Citroën is trying to answer a more interesting question: what if a compact hatchback didn’t have to look like everyone else’s idea of a compact hatchback?

If Citroën pulls this off—combining low prices with bold design—it could give the C-segment something it hasn’t had in years: personality. And honestly, in a world of painfully sensible cars, a little weird might be exactly what we’re missing.

Source: Autocar

NEW CARS

Capricorn 01 Zagato: The 900-HP Yellow Comet That Thinks It’s a Race Car

By the time most boutique hypercars have finished their first digital render, the Capricorn 01 Zagato has already built three working prototypes and shipped one of them across Europe. The latest version landed at the Retromobile show in Paris just months after the car’s first public appearance in Belgium, making one thing very clear: this isn’t a vaporware fantasy—it’s a functioning, fire-breathing machine.

The first Capricorn 01 appeared in classy Verde Knokke green over brown leather, a look that nodded politely toward Italian grand-tourer tradition. The Paris car, however, throws subtlety out the window. Finished in a vivid Giallo Sole yellow with blue suede inside, it looks less like a vintage Zagato tribute and more like something that escaped from a modern Le Mans paddock.

And that’s exactly the point.

Capricorn describes both versions as “engineering-driven vehicles,” which sounds like marketing fluff until you realize that they’re fully operational prototypes, not static show cars. Even more impressive, a third example is already being assembled at the company’s facility in Mönchengladbach, Germany. This is a startup acting like a serious manufacturer.

The Zagato influence is unmistakable. The trademark double-bubble roof arches over the cockpit, while almond-shaped headlights peer out from an aggressively sculpted nose. The body is packed with race-bred aerodynamic elements, including flying rear struts that recall the Ford GT, gullwing doors, a deeply channeled hood with twin exhaust outlets, and a full-width light bar across the rear. It looks dramatic because it is.

Inside, the Capricorn 01 rejects modern touchscreen minimalism in favor of something far more tactile. There’s a cluster of matching analog dials, a visible open-gate manual shifter, and a round steering wheel fitted with rotary controls. Blue suede, exposed carbon fiber, and modern racing buckets complete a cockpit that feels more like a homologation special than a luxury hypercar.

But the real story sits behind the seats.

The Capricorn 01 is built around a carbon-fiber monocoque and powered by a mid-mounted, supercharged 5.2-liter V8 sourced from Ford and heavily reworked. Output is claimed to exceed 900 metric horsepower and 1,000 Nm of torque—numbers that put it firmly in the upper reaches of the hypercar world.

That power goes only to the rear wheels through a five-speed manual transmission, which feels almost rebellious in a segment obsessed with dual-clutch gearboxes and all-wheel drive. With a curb weight under 1,200 kilograms, Capricorn claims a 0–100 km/h time under three seconds and a top speed of 360 km/h. Whether those figures survive independent testing remains to be seen, but the power-to-weight ratio suggests they’re not fantasy.

The first customer cars are scheduled for delivery later this year, and Capricorn says only a “minimum number” of the planned 19 units are still available, each priced at €2.95 million. That puts the 01 Zagato directly in the crosshairs of Ferrari, McLaren, Bugatti, Koenigsegg, and Pagani—names that usually don’t lose sleep over newcomers.

But Capricorn isn’t exactly new to the business of going fast. The company has supplied lightweight components to Porsche’s LMP1 program, Peugeot Sport’s Le Mans and Dakar racers, Mercedes, Lotus, and Caterham in Formula 1, and Volkswagen’s WRC effort. This may be their first road car, but they’ve been quietly shaping the racing world for years.

The Capricorn 01 Zagato doesn’t feel like a startup’s hopeful first step. It feels like a company finally deciding to put its name on something wild. And if the prototypes are any indication, the hypercar establishment just got a bright yellow new problem.

Source: Zagato