Tag Archives: vehicles

NEW CARS

Jaguar Type 01 Spotted Testing

Jaguar has spent the better part of a century building cars that growled, snarled, and occasionally leaked on expensive driveways. Now it’s trying something far riskier: convincing the ultra-luxury crowd that silence is the future.

And somewhere along the sun-drenched streets of Monte Carlo, wrapped in bright red camouflage foil, the first real glimpse of that future just rolled into view.

Officially named the Type 01, Jaguar’s upcoming electric flagship represents the most radical reset in the company’s modern history. Forget evolutionary redesigns or cautious electrification strategies. This is Jaguar tearing up the old playbook and setting fire to the remains.

The latest prototype photos reveal a car that’s dramatically more realistic than the theatrical concept Jaguar previously showed the world. Gone is the exaggerated two-door fantasy-car layout. In its place sits a sleek four-door grand tourer with proportions that still scream drama, even if the packaging finally acknowledges the existence of rear passengers.

And make no mistake: this thing is enormous.

At 5.2 meters long with a wheelbase stretching 3.2 meters, the Type 01 occupies the same rarefied air as cars from Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Massive 23-inch wheels fill out the arches, while the endless hood delivers classic Jaguar theater—even if there’s no V-8 hiding underneath it.

That hood, Jaguar insists, contains nothing more exciting than storage space.

The company has publicly denied rumors suggesting the Type 01 would use a gasoline-powered range extender tucked beneath the nose. Instead, the front compartment will serve as a trunk, compensating for limited cargo space in the rear. Charging ports integrated into the front fenders further emphasize the company’s all-in EV commitment.

Still, Jaguar knows luxury buyers won’t accept compromise disguised as innovation. So the numbers attached to the Type 01 border on absurd.

Three electric motors.
1,000 horsepower.
1,300 Nm of torque.

Those figures place the Type 01 firmly in hyper-sedan territory, despite Jaguar positioning it as a grand tourer rather than an outright performance car. If the company delivers on those promises, the Type 01 could become the most powerful production Jaguar ever built—and easily the fastest.

But straight-line speed isn’t really the story here.

The real challenge is whether wealthy buyers actually want a six-figure electric Jaguar at all.

That’s where the company’s gamble starts looking less like confidence and more like desperation. Jaguar’s traditional clientele—buyers raised on supercharged V-8s, long hoods, and old-money British swagger—haven’t exactly been begging for an ultra-modern EV reboot. Dealers around the world have reportedly expressed serious concern about the brand’s dramatic change in direction, warning that many longtime customers are walking away altogether.

And honestly, it’s not hard to see why.

The high-end luxury market may be slowly embracing electrification, but the world’s wealthiest enthusiasts still seem deeply attached to internal-combustion excess. Cylinders still matter. Noise still matters. Presence still matters. For many buyers in this segment, an electric drivetrain remains something to tolerate—not celebrate.

Jaguar, however, appears convinced that the future customer is someone entirely different.

The company no longer wants to compete with traditional German luxury sedans or aging sports coupes. Instead, it’s chasing a younger, wealthier, design-obsessed audience that sees electric propulsion as progressive rather than sacrilegious. The Type 01 isn’t trying to be the next F-Type. It’s trying to become a rolling piece of modern architecture.

Whether that vision succeeds is another question entirely.

We’ll see the production-ready Type 01 later this year, before sales begin in 2027. By then, Jaguar won’t just be unveiling a new car. It’ll be revealing whether one of Britain’s most iconic brands can survive a complete reinvention without losing the soul that made it matter in the first place.

Source: Jaguar

News

Itala Returns After 92 Years as DR Automobiles

Few revival stories in the automotive world arrive with as much historical weight—and modern contradiction—as the return of Itala. A brand once associated with early Italian prestige has been resurrected after 92 years of silence, now re-entering the market under the engineering oversight of former Roberto Fedeli.

But this is not a simple heritage reboot. It is part of a far more complex industrial expansion led by DR Automobiles, a company that has spent the past two decades building its business model around adapting Chinese-sourced vehicles for European markets. With six brands already in its portfolio and roughly 34,000 cars sold across Italy and select neighboring markets last year, DR is now pushing beyond its home turf, setting its sights on larger and far more competitive territories like France and Germany.

Heritage, Rewritten

The revived Itala sits within DR’s “Historic Italian Brands” strategy—a deliberate attempt to fuse nostalgic brand equity with modern, cost-efficient manufacturing pipelines. Alongside Itala, DR is also preparing to relaunch Osca, a name originally founded by the Maserati brothers and once active in motorsport between 1947 and 1967.

The plan is as pragmatic as it is ambitious: both brands will share showroom space, effectively leveraging history as a dual-badging showroom experience aimed at emotionally anchoring budget-conscious products.

The First Modern Itala

Debuting this week at the Turin motor show, the first modern Itala is called the 35—a 4.4-meter petrol-powered crossover that underpins its engineering architecture on the GAC Trumpchi GS3. Pricing is expected to start at around €35,000 (£30,000), placing it squarely in the highly contested European compact SUV segment.

Yet DR is not simply importing and rebadging without intervention. Italian media reports suggest a multi-layered refinement program: Fedeli has reportedly tuned the suspension setup, while interior execution has been reworked by Italian suppliers, with red leather and Alcantara dominating the cabin. Exterior styling has also been revised, with design input attributed to Italdesign—a name that carries genuine weight in global automotive styling circles.

The result, at least on paper, is a familiar formula executed with Italian surface finesse: global architecture beneath, local tuning on top, and heritage branding wrapped around the package.

Expansion at Scale

Under the same strategy, DR is investing approximately €50 million into two new “production facilities” at its Macchia d’Isernia plant, where it already assembles knock-down kits sourced from China. The expansion is expected to create around 500 jobs, reinforcing DR’s increasingly industrial footprint in southern Italy.

The timing is no accident. As European emissions regulations tighten and development costs rise, DR’s model—lean platforms, localized assembly, and brand resurrection—sits in a growing niche between mainstream volume manufacturers and premium incumbents.

What Comes Next

If Itala represents the first step, Osca may represent the sharper end of the strategy. While no production model has yet been confirmed, Italian reports suggest a “proper sports car” is under consideration, potentially featuring a 2.0-litre engine sourced from Lotus-related architecture—possibly aligning with the turbocharged four-cylinder used in the current Emira’s Mercedes-AMG-derived setup.

For now, however, DR is focused on rollout infrastructure. Around 50 Itala-Osca dealerships are planned, with the first opening in Turin—the original home of Itala itself. It is a symbolic return, but also a strategic one: anchoring a revived brand network in the city where its identity was first forged.

A Familiar Modern Paradox

The rebirth of Itala is not a pure heritage story, nor is it a conventional product launch. It sits in the increasingly common space where globalized platforms, Chinese supply chains, and European branding intersect.

The question, as always, is not whether the story is authentic—but whether the product behind the badge is compelling enough to make buyers care.

And in today’s European market, that may be the only metric that truly matters.

Source: Autocar

NEW CARS

BYD Wants a Piece of the Defender Market with the New Ti7

BYD’s global expansion has largely been defined by sensible EVs and value-packed family haulers. But the Chinese giant is about to try something bolder: taking a swing at the king of the modern luxury off-roader. Enter the BYD Ti7, a seven-seat plug-in-hybrid SUV aimed squarely at the wildly successful Land Rover Defender.

And unlike some of the softer crossover imitators that merely borrow the Defender’s aesthetic cues, the Ti7 appears determined to weaponize them.

With squared-off proportions, bluff surfacing, and a tailgate-mounted spare wheel, the Ti7 leans hard into classic expedition-truck design language. There’s more than a hint of Toyota Land Cruiser in its upright stance too, although BYD’s interpretation feels more futuristic than retro. It’s ruggedness filtered through Shenzhen rather than Solihull.

Size-wise, the Ti7 slots neatly between the Defender 110 and Defender 130, giving BYD an opportunity to target buyers who want genuine three-row practicality without venturing into full-size SUV territory. That alone could make it one of the brand’s most ambitious products yet in Europe.

But the real story sits beneath the sheetmetal.

The Ti7 will be the first UK-bound BYD to use the company’s new performance-focused “DM-p” plug-in-hybrid system. The setup pairs a turbocharged 1.5-liter gasoline engine with dual electric motors — one on each axle — and a substantial 35.6-kWh lithium-iron-phosphate battery pack. BYD claims a 0–62 mph sprint in just 4.8 seconds, which would make this family-sized SUV quicker than many performance sedans from not that long ago.

More impressive still is the claimed electric-only range of 79 miles. If that figure holds up under real-world testing, the Ti7 could become one of the few plug-in hybrids capable of handling most weekday commuting without waking its combustion engine at all. In a segment where electrification often feels like an efficiency afterthought, BYD is making it central to the pitch.

Interestingly, the Ti7 isn’t being positioned as a hardcore off-roader despite the visual drama. While it shares DNA with the upcoming Denza B5, BYD says the two SUVs target very different buyers. The body-on-frame B5 is designed with genuine trail work in mind, whereas the monocoque-based Ti7 is aimed at customers who want the adventurous look without necessarily planning to climb mountains every weekend.

That distinction says a lot about where the SUV market is heading. The Defender itself has become less of a utilitarian tool and more of a luxury lifestyle statement, and BYD seems acutely aware of that shift. The Ti7 doesn’t need to out-crawl a Land Rover in Moab. It just needs to convince buyers that electrified performance, tech-heavy refinement, and bold styling matter more than locking differentials.

And BYD certainly isn’t lacking confidence on the tech front.

In China, the Ti7 is also available as a full battery-electric model compatible with BYD’s eye-opening “Flash” charging architecture, capable of handling charging speeds of up to 1500 kW. That’s a number so outrageous it almost sounds fictional in today’s infrastructure landscape. BYD plans to build 300 compatible chargers in the UK this year ahead of the launch of the Denza Z9 GT, although it remains unclear whether the fully electric Ti7 will follow the hybrid to Europe.

Pricing hasn’t yet been announced, but expectations are that the Ti7 will sit at the top of BYD’s UK lineup, above the BYD Sealion 7. That would likely place it directly in the orbit of premium European SUVs — exactly where Chinese brands once struggled to gain credibility.

Now they’re arriving with 4.8-second acceleration, nearly 80 miles of EV range, and enough road presence to make established players uncomfortable.

The Ti7 could make its UK debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this July, which would be fitting. Goodwood has increasingly become the stage where legacy automakers and ambitious newcomers collide, and BYD no longer looks like an outsider trying to get invited to the party.

It looks like a company ready to headline it.

Source: BYD