Opinion: there’s hope yet for a fun motoring future

As I write this, the sun is shining and the temperature has picked up. It’s finally spring and my optimism is rising. It helps that there seems to be good news every single day at the moment. (Not in the wider world, which is a disaster, but in our little automotive enclave.) After several years of oppressive doom and gloom for car enthusiasts it appears the oft touted winter of our passion has been rolled back, the heavy frost is thawing and maybe, just maybe it’s spring for us, too.

Do I feel bad that EV sales are failing to ignite as anticipated, causing manufacturers all sorts of problems? I do not. Am I happy to see the likes of Porsche reinvesting in ICE technology and trying to adapt new EV only architecture to accept engines? Oh yes. Does the news that Mercedes is developing a new V8 engine and will stick it back in the C63 model ASAP fill me with glee? I’m afraid it does.

Perhaps I should feel a tinge of guilt. We are all meant to want to save the world. But instead I find myself heartened by the power of the people. For years publicly pious and mostly disingenuous politicians have made decisions on our behalf that sound great on the election campaign trail but have no grounding in reality. For once, a large majority of people in all markets have just said, “Well, we can make our own decisions". To put it politely.

This is not to say that I hate EVs. But boy, have they been shoved down our throats. Usually new technology takes over once it’s better, cheaper and more convenient than the incumbent. Right now it’s none of those things in all but a very few use cases. As many have said before, legislate the end goal and let the engineers do the rest. Legislating the path to said target from a position of limited knowledge and experience is a fool’s errand.

All that being said, my hopes for the future of fun motoring is even being bolstered in the EV segment, too. I couldn’t care much for yet another 1,000bhp saloon or 2,000bhp supercar that weighs more than the moon and has an appeal half-life measured in seconds, but projects like the new Renault 5 Turbo 3E are genuinely intriguing. It references old heroes but isn’t slavishly stuck in the past and the look, feel and promise of the technology within is lip smacking.

There’s a film on TG’s YouTube channel (that you can watch below) about the 3E but just think reimagined Group B look, RWD and 540bhp from two in-wheel motors that offer precise torque vectoring, plus a hydraulic handbrake. And just 1,450kg! It’s an extreme concept and, sadly, a huge chunk of change at over £120,000, but at least it’s provocative and recognises that a conventional sports car or supercar with a sonorous engine replaced by electric motors just won’t cut it. For an EV to be truly fun requires a wholly different approach.

The real challenge is to bring this sort of thinking into the grasp of normal people who can’t blow well over £100,000 on a car with a very narrow capability window. Luckily, while manufacturers work out the solution to that conundrum, we’ve all been granted a reprieve. The road ahead is long, exciting and paved, for the foreseeable future, with V8 engines.