#BrownCarGuy – News, Views & Reviews!
The Changan Deepal S05 arrives in Britain with 303 miles of claimed range, rear-wheel drive and enough technology to keep a small branch of Currys busy. Has this unfamiliar electric SUV earned a place on your shortlist?
Amazon has replaced Clarkson, Hammond and May on The Grand Tour, and the BBC has just confirmed the revival of Top Gear. But has anyone stopped to ask if we really need these car shows?
Top Gear is coming back. The BBC has officially confirmed it, although there’s no word on when, what form it will take or who will present it. Meanwhile, Amazon is relaunching The Grand Tour next month with an entirely new trio: Thomas Holland and James Engelsman from the hugely successful Throttle House YouTube channel, joined by trainspotter and social media personality Francis Bourgeois. All six episodes arrive on Prime Video on 4 September 2026.
The Kia EV2 is the smallest and cheapest electric car the Korean manufacturer sells in Britain. That usually means a worthy little urban runabout built to a price, with the interior ambience of a bare cupboard and unpainted bumpers. But the EV2 has other ideas. It arrives with the upright stance, bold lighting and visual confidence of something at least one size larger – and a couple of grades more expensive.
Let me start with something that should be so staggeringly obvious that having to write it feels rather like explaining to an adult that fire is hot, cliffs are high and attempting to headbutt a moving train is unlikely to improve your afternoon: if you drive dangerously on a public road, film yourself doing it and then upload the footage for likes, follows, shares, notoriety, validation or whatever tiny digital pat on the head you are desperately seeking, you are not proving that you are a petrolhead, a skilled driver, a rebel, a hero or the missing member of some bargain-basement Fast & Furious tribute act; you are proving that you are prepared to endanger your own life, the lives of complete strangers and, because the consequences never stop with the person holding the steering wheel, the future freedom of every responsible enthusiast who enjoys cars without treating the rest of the population as unwilling extras in a stunt video.
Here is something rather important that is probably buried three menus deep in your next car. Actually, scrub that: it may already be buried three menus deep in your current car, somewhere between the ambient-lighting colour selector and the setting that makes the dashboard bong furiously because you dared to glance at the heater controls it forced onto a touchscreen in the first place.
Do speed cameras have to be yellow? Is the famous “10% plus 2 mph” allowance actually written into law? Can you briefly exceed the limit while overtaking, or argue that a 20 mph restriction is absurd for the road? Speeding law inspires more folklore than almost any other part of motoring. Unfortunately, repeating something confidently in a pub, owners’ club or WhatsApp group does not turn it into a defence.
If you still think MG is simply the company making affordable electric family cars, think again. I was invited to MG’s London headquarters for an exclusive technology preview, and what unfolded wasn’t merely another product presentation. It was a statement of intent. From a cheeky little electric hatch that wears its British heritage proudly on its sleeve, to a dramatic performance SUV concept, plus a roadmap for hybrid powertrains, semi-solid-state batteries and autonomous driving, MG is making it abundantly clear that it wants to be seen as far more than just a value brand.
For more than thirty-six years I’ve made my living in the media. I’ve written for newspapers, edited magazines, presented television programmes, hosted radio shows, produced online content, attended hundreds of international launches and interviewed some of the biggest names in the automotive industry. I’ve seen the media world from almost every angle imaginable. Then, six years ago, I started BrownCarGuy on YouTube, not because I had to, but because I genuinely believed something remarkable had happened. For the first time in the history of broadcasting, ordinary people had finally been given a chance to compete with the biggest media organisations on the planet.
The other day I found myself driving around London. Well, “driving” might be stretching the definition somewhat because most of the time you’re crawling along, staring at the back of somebody else’s hatchback while trying to remember whether this particular road is still 30mph, has become 20mph, or was quietly changed last Tuesday while you weren’t looking. And it got me thinking that perhaps the future of motoring isn’t going to be electric versus petrol, hydrogen versus batteries or even SUVs versus saloons. Perhaps the real battle is going to be something entirely different. Perhaps the future is going to be driverless cars versus restomods. Bear with me, because the more I thought about it, the more it actually started to make sense.
