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Bring Back the Box: Why the MPV Deserves a 2026 Comeback

Does your washing machine come with a raised ride height? Would you pay extra for a storage unit with a rakish roofline? Do your Amazon parcels arrive sporting flared wheel arches and a “sport” trim badge? Of course not. When it comes to moving people and stuff, the truth is stubbornly simple: boxy works. Always has.

And yet, family-car buyers in the UK—and pretty much everywhere else—have collectively decided that what they really need is an SUV. A tall one. A chunky one. Preferably with fake skid plates and wheels that look like they were borrowed from a Tonka truck. In making that choice, they’ve traded space efficiency and real-world practicality for something they believe looks fashionable. Whether SUVs are still “cool” when literally everyone, including your grandmother and her bridge club, drives one is very much up for debate.

What’s beyond debate is what we lost along the way.

The Multi-Purpose Vehicle—long the unsung hero of family transport—has been pushed to the margins. Once-familiar names like Zafira, Galaxy, Picasso, and Voyager have quietly slipped into history. Even the Renault Scenic, for years the poster child of sensible European family motoring, has shape-shifted into an SUV. If you want a new MPV today, your options are mostly limited to vans with windows and seats bolted in.

To be fair, modern van-based people movers are far better than their ancestors. They’re refined, surprisingly decent to drive, and massively practical. But no matter how plush the seats or how clever the infotainment, there’s still a lingering school-minibus vibe you can’t quite shake.

Which is why a recent six-month stint with Volkswagen’s ID. Buzz felt like a reminder from the past—and maybe a postcard from the future. Yes, there’s a Cargo version, but crucially the Buzz is based on a passenger-car EV platform, not a commercial vehicle shell. And it proves something MPV fans have known all along: if your goal is to fit people and their belongings inside a vehicle, nothing beats a purpose-built box on wheels.

The Buzz isn’t perfect, and it isn’t cheap, but its basic philosophy is spot-on. Upright sides. A tall roof that’s actually usable. Seating that works with the laws of physics instead of against them. You don’t climb up into it or fall down out of it—you just get in. What a concept.

Encouragingly, there are signs that manufacturers might be rediscovering this forgotten logic. Kia has rolled out the PV5. Lexus sells the ultra-luxurious LM. Volvo has the EM90. In China, premium MPVs like the Zeekr Mix and Denza D9 are thriving, quietly proving there’s real demand for vehicles that prioritize space, comfort, and flexibility over aggressive styling cues. Mercedes is also lining up the VLE, another signal that the segment isn’t as dead as it once appeared.

The catch? Most of these are large, expensive, or aimed at markets outside the UK. But shrink those ideas down. Make them affordable. Pitch them as mid-size family cars rather than luxury lounges. Do that, and it’s not hard to imagine serious sales volume.

Which brings us to a modest proposal: 2026 should be the year of the MPV revival.

Not the dowdy, beige boxes of old, but modern, intelligently designed people movers that lean into what they do best. Cars with genuinely flexible seating systems, sliding doors that make school runs painless, clever storage solutions, and interiors that can morph from family shuttle to DIY hauler in minutes. Wrap it all in clean, understated styling, and suddenly “practical” doesn’t have to mean “boring.”

SUVs, after all, have become the cane toads of the automotive ecosystem. They evolved an early advantage—buyers liked the look, manufacturers liked the margins—and promptly multiplied until they crowded out nearly everything else. Now the market is awash with big faces, bluff noses, and vehicles that promise adventure but rarely venture beyond a speed bump.

The MPV can be the antidote. It’s more useful than an SUV unless you genuinely go off-road. It’s more honest about its mission. And unlike SUVs, it isn’t burdened with awkward questions about efficiency penalties, unnecessary weight, or why you need all-wheel drive to do the weekly shop.

Most of all, more MPVs would bring something the family-car market sorely lacks: choice. Real choice. Not just the same tall hatchback in slightly different outfits.

While we’re at it, let’s also bring back a few estates. But that’s a crusade for another day.

For now, the message is simple. The box was never the problem. We just forgot how good it was.

Source: Auto Express

News

Arizona Wants to Let the Fast Cars Run Free—At Least in the Daytime

Speed limits are a compromise. Not between physics and machinery, but between the best drivers and the worst ones sharing the same ribbon of asphalt. They’re written for the distracted, the hesitant, and the underprepared—not for the person in a well-sorted car on a clear road with both hands on the wheel and eyes far ahead.

Arizona lawmakers are flirting with the idea of acknowledging that reality.

State Rep. Nick Kupper has introduced a proposal that would remove daytime speed limits on select stretches of rural interstate, effectively creating American autobahn zones where “reasonable and prudent” driving replaces a posted maximum. If it passes, Arizona could become the boldest U.S. state yet to admit that not all highways—and not all drivers—are created equal.

The bill, officially titled the Reasonable and Prudent Interstate Driving (RAPID) Act (HB 2059), would allow the Arizona Department of Transportation to designate limited sections of rural interstate as derestricted speed zones. No blanket free-for-all here: the plan applies only outside urbanized areas with populations over 50,000 and only during daylight hours. Once the sun goes down, an 80-mph cap snaps back into place.

Before anyone imagines ADOT tossing out speed limit signs on a whim, there’s a long checklist attached. Any eligible highway segment would have to pass engineering and traffic studies, meet high-speed roadway design standards, and show a crash rate below the statewide average over the last five years. In other words, the road has to earn the right to go limit-free.

There’s also an important asterisk: commercial vehicles don’t get to play. Trucks and other commercial traffic would remain bound by the standard 80-mph limit or lower, regardless of time or location.

Kupper points to Montana as precedent. From 1995 to 1999, the state famously removed daytime speed limits on rural highways, relying instead on a “reasonable and prudent” standard. While average speeds did rise, a later legislative audit found that crash and fatality rates per vehicle mile traveled continued to decline and stayed consistent with neighboring states.

The lesson, according to that study, wasn’t about the numbers printed on signs. It was about behavior. Seatbelt use, attentiveness, and overall driving habits mattered more than posted limits. In short, the human factor outweighed the speedometer reading.

“Most drivers can tell the difference between a crowded city freeway and a wide-open stretch of rural interstate,” Kupper argues. “The RAPID Act accounts for that difference.”

For enthusiasts, the appeal is obvious. Modern cars—especially performance sedans and grand tourers—are engineered to cruise comfortably and safely at speeds that would’ve seemed outrageous a generation ago. On the right road, in the right conditions, the limiting factor often isn’t the machine but the law.

HB 2059 will be formally taken up once Arizona’s 2026 legislative session begins. Whether it survives the political and public-safety gauntlet remains to be seen. But the proposal itself is notable: a rare moment when lawmakers are willing to question whether one-size-fits-all speed limits still make sense on wide-open, modern interstates.

If nothing else, Arizona is asking a question few states dare to ask anymore—what if the road, the car, and the driver actually matter more than the sign?

Source: AZ Free News

News

The Internal-Combustion Engine Refuses to Die

For one brief, shiny moment, it looked like the internal-combustion engine was on borrowed time. Automakers were tripping over themselves to announce all-electric futures, governments were sharpening the knives with hard deadlines, and anyone still talking about pistons and camshafts sounded like they’d missed the memo. Then something interesting happened: reality showed up.

Yes, last month electric cars outsold gasoline-powered cars in Europe for the first time. That’s a milestone worth acknowledging. But at the same time—and this is the part that complicates the neat “EVs win, ICE loses” narrative—car companies quietly started writing very large checks to keep gasoline and diesel alive.

Five years ago, the script felt settled. EVs would surge, internal combustion would fade, and by the mid-2030s we’d all be driving silently into the future. Today, the plot has thickened. Instead of planning funerals for combustion engines, manufacturers are extending their life expectancy—and spending billions to do it.

General Motors’ recent $888 million investment in its Tonawanda, New York, plant is a perfect example. The money will keep GM’s V8 engines alive and kicking, marking the largest single investment the company has ever made in an internal-combustion facility. In an era supposedly defined by kilowatts and charging curves, that’s a thunderous vote of confidence in eight cylinders and gasoline.

Stellantis is making similar noises. Chrysler plans to pour $13 billion into U.S. manufacturing, including new internal-combustion development. A large SUV with a traditional engine is on the way, as is a midsize truck. The HEMI V8 has already clawed its way back into the Ram 1500 lineup, and Dodge has restarted V6 production for the Durango. If you thought the muscle-era hardware was headed straight for the museum, think again.

This isn’t just nostalgia talking. At the IAA Mobility show in Munich, Horse Powertrains—an engine supplier owned by Geely—unveiled its compact C15 engine, a small-displacement unit making between 94 and 161 horsepower with a turbocharger. More importantly, it’s fuel-flexible, capable of running on gasoline, ethanol, methanol, or synthetic fuels. That kind of adaptability suggests a future where internal combustion doesn’t disappear, but evolves.

Mazda, long the industry’s most charming contrarian, went full Mazda at the Japan Mobility Show. The company showed a rotary-engine concept tied to microalgae that capture carbon emissions. Mazda claims the algae’s oil can be refined into a carbon-neutral fuel to power a hybrid system. It’s delightfully weird—and very on brand.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects are quietly at work. BMW and Mercedes-Benz are developing new V8s. Nissan is refining gasoline engines with fuel-saving technology. Honda is preparing a new V6 hybrid. Toyota, never one to put all its eggs in a single basket, is working on a new V8. In China, engineers continue pushing thermal-efficiency limits for gasoline engines, squeezing more work out of every drop of fuel.

Policy has shifted, too. In the U.S., President Trump scrapped the previous administration’s target of 50 percent EV sales by 2030 and eliminated the $7,500 federal tax credit for new electric cars. Not coincidentally, EV sales in the U.S. dipped after incentives disappeared. In Europe, regulators softened their stance as well. Instead of a total ban on combustion engines from 2035, the EU lowered emissions targets from a 100-percent reduction to 90 percent compared to 2021 levels—leaving the door open for hybrids well into the next decade.

None of this means the EV revolution is over. Far from it. Global electric-vehicle sales continue to climb and are expected to hit around 25 percent of the new-car market by year’s end—more than 20 million vehicles. Europe remains a growth engine for EVs, and electrification is still the long-term goal for most automakers.

What has changed is the timeline—and the certainty. Rather than betting everything on a rapid, all-electric leap, manufacturers are hedging. They’re developing EVs and internal-combustion vehicles in parallel, acknowledging that infrastructure, consumer behavior, regulation, and economics don’t all move at the same speed.

The takeaway? Reports of the internal-combustion engine’s death were, as it turns out, premature. Gasoline and diesel aren’t winning the future—but they’ve been granted a stay of execution. And judging by the billions being invested, they’re not going quietly.

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