News

Chery Adds Lepas to Its Growing UK Lineup

If you thought the UK had reached peak Chinese-car saturation, Chery would like a word. The fast-expanding automaker has confirmed that Lepas, its fourth brand for Britain, will land later this year, joining Omoda, Jaecoo, and Chery itself in what’s quickly becoming one of the most aggressive foreign market pushes in recent memory.

Lepas isn’t just another badge-engineering exercise. Chery says the brand was conceived specifically for Europe, and its name—apparently a mash-up of leopard, leap, and passion—suggests it wants to feel more energetic, more aspirational, and more premium-adjacent than your average budget import. Whether it lives up to that promise remains to be seen, but the intent is clear: this is Chery aiming for mainstream dominance, not niche curiosity.

Two Crossovers, Three Powertrains, One Big Strategy

Lepas’s UK debut will be built around two compact crossovers, the L4 and L6. They’ll ride on Chery’s T1X modular platform, which also underpins the Omoda 5, Jaecoo 5, and Jaecoo 7. That might sound like corporate copy-paste, but it’s actually the point: massive shared volume equals lower production costs, which equals more competitive pricing.

Both models are expected to be offered with internal combustion engines, plug-in hybrids, and full battery-electric drivetrains—what China calls “new energy vehicles.” In other words, Lepas isn’t picking sides in the powertrain wars. It’s selling whatever the customer wants, which is exactly how you grow market share fast.

Styling: Familiar, But Not Accidental

Design-wise, Lepas walks a careful line. The cars take heavy influence from Chery’s Tiggo SUVs while also nodding toward European brands like Audi, with smooth surfaces, rounded edges, and a quietly upscale vibe. That’s not a coincidence. Chery wants Lepas to feel like a European-market brand, not a Chinese transplant.

The tricky part is internal competition. When you already sell multiple crossovers at similar sizes and prices, things can get messy. Chery’s management knows it—so much so that one internal presentation was literally titled “Too many brands?”

Their solution? Reposition everything.

  • Tiggo will go chunkier and more family-focused.
  • Omoda will lean into sharper, more aggressive, polygon-heavy styling.
  • Jaecoo will keep its outdoorsy, rugged image.
  • Lepas will sit in the sleek, modern, urban space—more style-led and tech-forward.

It’s not unlike what Volkswagen Group has done for decades, only Chery is doing it at hyperspeed.

Volume Is the Weapon

Chery isn’t pretending this is about art or brand purity. It’s about numbers.

“By offering different brands on the same platform, the volume is very big and that gives us a good price,” said Chery International president Zhang Guibing—and that one sentence explains the whole strategy.

And it’s working.

Last year, Chery’s three UK brands captured 2.65 percent of the British new-car market, beating Mini, Tesla, and BYD. That’s not a foothold—that’s a beachhead. With Lepas joining the party and more models coming across the board, Chery could soon be rubbing shoulders with brands like Renault, Skoda, and Kia.

Lepas isn’t just another crossover brand. It’s a signal that China’s carmakers are done playing on the fringes of Europe. They’re not here to sell a few bargain EVs—they’re here to compete head-on with the industry’s biggest names, in the heart of one of the world’s most brand-loyal markets.

If Chery gets the pricing right—and history suggests it will—Lepas could become the one that finally makes buyers stop asking, “Why would I buy a Chinese car?” and start asking, “Why wouldn’t I?”

For a company already outpacing Tesla in the UK, that’s a terrifyingly plausible future.

Source: Autocar

News

FAT Ice Race 2026 Delivers the Ultimate Porsche Mash-Up

By the time the first Cayenne Electric slid sideways across a frozen airfield in Zell am See, it was clear this wasn’t going to be a typical Porsche press debut. Snow dust hung in the air, the Austrian Alps framed the scene, and a 1,156-horsepower electric SUV was drifting in front of a crowd more used to air-cooled 911s and rally legends. Welcome to the FAT Ice Race, where history and the future collide—sometimes literally.

The Ice Race has always been a glorious contradiction. It mixes priceless historic racers, rally cars, and weird one-off Porsche creations with a modern car-culture festival vibe. So the debut of the all-new Cayenne Electric here wasn’t just marketing—it was a statement. Porsche wasn’t politely introducing its next electric SUV. It was throwing it sideways on ice in front of some of the most demanding enthusiasts on the planet.

And the numbers suggest it had every right to be bold. The Cayenne Turbo Electric packs up to 850 kW (1,156 horsepower) and 1,500 Nm of torque, which means it delivers more twist than a GT3 Cup car multiplied several times over. On ice, that could easily become chaos. Instead, Porsche made it look controlled, playful, and oddly graceful.

Behind the wheel, Porsche test drivers and lucky passengers discovered what electric torque does when it’s filtered through serious chassis tuning. With instant response from the motors and a carefully calibrated off-road mode, the Cayenne Electric could meter out its power with surgical precision. Instead of spinning helplessly, it pivoted around its rear axle, carving clean arcs through snow and ice like a 2.5-ton drift missile.

Michael Schätzle, Porsche’s Vice President for the Cayenne line, was clearly enjoying the shock factor. After taxi laps, he described a car that feels balanced, sporty, and far more engaging than anyone expects from an electric luxury SUV. Watching it slide past a line of classic 356s and historic race cars, it was hard to argue.

Adding to the spectacle were Porsche legends Timo Bernhard and Jörg Bergmeister, hustling a resurrected 964-based buggy around the same course. One car ran on old-school internal combustion and mechanical grip. The other ran on electrons and software-controlled torque. Together, they told Porsche’s story better than any press release ever could.

The FAT Ice Race isn’t really about winning. Organizer Ferdi Porsche calls it “fun over speed,” and that philosophy shows. With about 8,500 fans, DJs, art installations, and food stands, the event feels more like a winter festival than a race meeting. But that’s exactly why it works. It keeps motorsport relevant to a generation raised on social media instead of pit lanes.

Porsche leaned into that idea with the debut of Porsche Youngsters, a new global community initiative designed to pull younger fans into the brand’s club culture. For them, watching a silent, sideways Cayenne Electric drift past a 1960s race car probably made more of an impression than any museum visit ever could.

And that’s the real point of the Cayenne Electric’s icy debut. It wasn’t about lap times or efficiency ratings. It was about proving that electrification doesn’t have to be sterile or boring. If a 1,156-horsepower SUV can drift on a frozen racetrack while surrounded by Porsche legends, then the future of performance might not just be electric—it might actually be fun.

Source: Porsche

Restomod

Red Bull Technology and Singer Design

There are restomods, and then there are Singer restomods—the kind that make you wonder whether Stuttgart’s original engineers would smile, cry, or quietly take notes. Now Singer Vehicle Design has taken its obsessive reimagining of the Porsche 964 to a new level by teaming up with Red Bull Advanced Technologies, the engineering skunkworks behind Formula 1–grade simulations and structural wizardry.

Yes, that Red Bull.

The goal? Fix the one thing vintage 911s have never been great at: rigidity—especially when the roof goes missing.

Singer’s customers are the sort of people who know exactly how a car should feel at 140 mph through a fast sweeper, and they aren’t shy about asking for more. “Our clients are some of the most demanding drivers in the world,” says Mazen Fawaz, Singer’s head of strategy. “To achieve the standards they expect, we only work with the best.”

So Singer called in the people who build race cars that survive 300-kph curbs.

Step One: Tear It Down to the Bone

Every Singer restoration starts the same way: total annihilation.

The donor Porsche 964 is stripped of everything—body panels, interior, suspension, drivetrain—until only a bare steel monocoque remains. What’s left looks more like an archaeological artifact than a car. That naked shell is then cleaned, inspected, and prepped for what amounts to structural surgery.

This is where Red Bull Advanced Technologies enters the picture.

Using high-resolution 3D scanning and old-school hand measurements, RBAT digitally recreates the entire 964 chassis in a virtual environment. Every seam, every weld, every curve of 1990s Porsche steel is mapped. But the real magic comes next.

Formula 1 Math Meets a 1990s 911

RBAT feeds that digital 964 into Finite Element Analysis software—the same kind of simulation used to determine whether a Formula 1 monocoque will survive a 200-mph crash. The software twists, bends, and loads the Porsche chassis in thousands of virtual scenarios, identifying exactly which areas are weakest, especially in Cabriolets and Targas, which lack the structural help of a fixed roof.

Then the engineers start reinforcing.

RBAT designed 13 bespoke carbon-fiber structures that integrate into key load-bearing areas of the 964’s steel chassis. These aren’t bolt-on braces or aftermarket roll cages—they are carefully engineered, bonded and joined during the restoration so they become part of the car’s skeleton.

The result? A 175 percent increase in torsional stiffness.

That number is not a typo.

According to Singer and Red Bull, the reinforced open-top cars now match the rigidity of a coupe—something Porsche engineers in the early ’90s could only dream about.

Why Rigidity Matters

Chassis stiffness isn’t something you brag about at car meets, but it’s the secret sauce behind everything that makes a car feel right.

A stiff chassis means more precise steering, more consistent suspension behavior, better braking stability, and fewer squeaks, rattles, and shudders over rough pavement. It also means the car feels calmer and more refined at speed, even when it’s being driven hard.

In other words, it makes a 30-year-old 911 feel like a modern performance car—without losing its analog soul.

Built for Singer’s Brutal Turbo Cars

This Red Bull–engineered structure was developed specifically for Singer’s latest tribute to the legendary mid-1970s 930 Turbo. These aren’t gentle classics. They pack between 456 and 517 horsepower, send it all to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transmission, and now sit on a chassis that’s finally strong enough to handle that kind of punishment.

That means fewer compromises, even in a Cabriolet or Targa. Roof off. Throttle pinned. No flex. No drama.

The Ultimate 964

What Singer and Red Bull have done here is more than just reinforce a classic Porsche. They’ve solved one of its fundamental flaws using tools developed for modern motorsport.

It’s a fusion of old-school air-cooled character and bleeding-edge structural engineering—a 911 that looks like 1990 but behaves like 2026.

And if you think that sounds expensive, you’re right. But for Singer’s clientele, perfection is the only acceptable option.

Source: Singer Vehicle Design

Cars and catalogues