#BrownCarGuy – News, Views & Reviews!
I first drove the MG Cyberster earlier last year on a brief test at Millbrook Proving Ground. Enough to intrigue, enough to raise eyebrows, but not enough to truly understand it. This time, MG handed me the keys for a week. Living with a car exposes its truths. Its cleverness. Its quirks. Its brilliance. And occasionally, its foibles.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Toyota C-HR. When the original arrived, it felt like a small act of rebellion from a brand better known for playing things safe. It was sharp, angular, unapologetically different, and crucially, it didn’t try to hide its personality. Better still, in its early years you could even buy one with a petrol engine and a manual gearbox, complete with rev-matching. A crossover that actually wanted to be driven. That alone made it stand out.
Remember the 1980s? When the world ran on optimism, synth-pop and questionable fashion choices? I mean, I personally sported a pastel green blazer in crinkled material with roll-up sleeves and shoulder pads large enough to land Airwolf on. But you know what? Best decade ever in my not-so-humble opinion. Especially for music, movies and motors.
So imagine my delight when Toyota handed me the keys to something straight out of that era: their own 1986 Toyota Corolla GT Coupé, better known to you, me and every manga-obsessed drift fan on earth as the AE86 Hachi-Roku.
The 2026 MG S6 EV arrives without theatrics, yet the moment you walk around it, sit in it and drive it, you realise MG has shifted up a gear. This is the brand’s new family-sized electric SUV, the one many households have been waiting for. It sits on the same modular platform as the MG S5 EV but stretches everything further. A 77 kWh battery, rear-wheel-drive or dual-motor all-wheel drive, up to 329 miles of official WLTP range, and prices sitting roughly between forty-one and forty-four thousand pounds. MG is not pretending this is “budget” anymore. It is aiming for the mainstream.
Japanese car companies have always been on the leading edge of engineering. Innovating, developing, breaking new ground – surging ahead of the crowd in surprising new ways. And Suzuki’s latest new car… doesn’t conform to any of that. Well, apart from the ‘surprising’ bit.
Because the new E Vitara isn’t truly Japanese at all. It’s more like a takeaway tikka delivered by a samurai. And given how much Brits love a good curry, Suzuki’s first fully electric car – designed and built by Maruti Suzuki in Gujarat, India – rolling off the boats onto our roads at barely believable prices, is surely going to go down a treat. You won’t even need the Alka-Seltzer for this one.
Mazda’s flirted with electrification before – remember the MX-30? Stylish, well-built, and charmingly unconventional, but with a range so short you’d start worrying halfway to the shops. Even Mazda later admitted it needed work, adding a rotary range-extender to make it more usable.
I get a truck and I’m a kid with a Tonka Toy again. Okay, I won’t bash it into the table leg or drop it from the kitchen counter, but I still want to drive it with a big grin on my face. So when Isuzu asks if I would like to review the 2025 Isuzu D-Max V-Cross, despite the fact that I reviewed this generation of the pickup twice just a few years ago… I found myself struggling to decline.
Full transparency, I didn’t so much want to review it, as I just wanted to rock around in it! And when it turned up, I wasn’t disappointed, because they sent their Instagram special. A D-Max that had driven into the accessories warehouse and come out wearing EVERYTHING! More on that in a bit.
Honestly, the 1990s don’t seem that long ago – however, it was the decade that popularised email and the World Wide Web; we got mobile phones that weren’t bricks, as well as digital SLR cameras, Sony Discmans and MP3 players; 170Mb was a lot and Y2K was terrifying but never actually happened.
Sometimes, car manufacturers end up with a ‘safe bet’ seller. Occasionally by design, but usually by chance. You may think that’s a golden egg for any car maker, but it can also be a poisoned chalice. It becomes so invaluable that the company simply can’t afford to get it wrong.
For Kia, that car is the Sportage – its best-selling SUV, the top performer across Europe, and, rather astonishingly, its global bestseller too. So when the Koreans tweak the formula, it’s a big deal.
Before we get into all the details of the Polestar 4, let’s answer a question that might be preying on the mind of the uninitiated – what exactly is Polestar? Well, it used to be the performance and motor-racing arm of Volvo. After Chinese giant Geely took over Volvo, Polestar was separated into a standalone brand in 2017 to focus on producing only electric cars.
