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The crucial new Volvo EX60 electric family SUV, described as a "cornerstone" of the firm's future line-up, will be revealed on 21 January.

The Swedish firm has been gradually hyping the launch of the new EV for months and CEO Håkan Samuelsson has now confirmed its reveal date on social media platform LinkedIn with an early look at the finished car.

Tucked behind a group of workers at the Torslanda plant in Gothenburg, where it will be produced, it appears to have a low bonnet line and a smoother, more aerodynamic design than its combustion-engined counterpart, the XC60.

Narrow front headlights featuring Volvo's 'Thor's Hammer' design, similar to those on the EX90 large SUV, can also be seen.

Samuelsson said the car has been "designed and developed in Gothenburg" and "can't get much more Swedish". 

Volvo confirmed that the EX60 will be its first car to use the firm's "latest technology base", adding that it will "deliver a longer electric range than any Volvo car before it". It is set to beat the Volvo ES90 saloon, which is expected to offer an official WLTP range of 435 miles using a 106kWh battery.

The new technology base that the EX60 will use is Volvo's advanced, highly scalable SPA3 platform, which is effectively a successor to the platform that underpins the EX90 and ES90. This new architecture will allow Volvo to add both smaller and larger cars to its line-up, and can accommodate a wide range of battery sizes.

As with those models, the EX60 will be designed around an advanced software stack, giving it the capability to accept over-the-air updates and extra features.

Anders Bell, Volvo's engineering and technology chief, called the SPA3 platform "100% electric and 100% Volvo Cars", rather than a shared Geely group platform, such as the SEA platform used for the EX30 crossover.

"Because it's 100% electric, we've been able to remove all the old constraints of the combustion engine," said Bell. "We very much took a first-principles approach to it. You will see the highest level of supremely well-integrated technology coming together in these products."

The EX60 is likely to broadly match the dimensions of the XC60 (pictured below), the brand's best-selling car.

Bell said the SPA3 is “a big step from a mechanical perspective, but from a software electronics perspective it's a straight evolution”.

He added: “All the work we're putting into the EX90 will go directly into the SPA3 cars as well. It's basically the same software stack.

"SPA3 is designed from the beginning to be much more scalable, in size and price point and across regions, but also scalable in volume.

"It's designed for scale in every dimension: when it comes to size, my job is to make sure that the company has optionality. We are designing [the SPA3] to be scalable from B to F [segments], to make sure that we have flexibility and that we can launch the products that markets decide they want when they want it.”

Since all future new Volvo models will share the same basic tech stack, Bell added that it will allow for more focused and rapid development. “Because it’s all one technology stack, there's no repeat of work,” he said. “It's the same software stack, same basic electrical architecture. Yes, it's scalable in size, price and capabilities, but it's not spreading our products in different ecosystems. 

“Everything we do gets married to the Volvo connected car cloud. If you look at successful tech companies, they're all single tech stack companies where all their products are interlinked. Apple is a good example: hardware, software, telephones, laptops – they’re basically all interconnected with the same software. That’s one example of where we need to be converging as a technology company going forward.

"Our focal point is safety, sustainability and creating this fantastic customer experience, all wrapped in this Scandinavian design, on one tech stack."

As previously revealed by Autocar, the EX60 will also be the first Volvo designed to benefit from megacasting – a technology set to be introduced with the SPA3 that allows for entire sections of a car to be created as a single part rather than multiple elements.

That, along with other changes and the more modular nature of the SPA3, will lower production costs.

When it arrives, Volvo's EV line-up in Europe will consist of the EX30, EC40, EX40, EX60, ES90 and EX90, with the addition of the EM90 MPV in China.

Renault will launch a UK-specific marketing campaign for the new sixth-generation Clio in a landmark break from the established convention of global advertising – channelling the spirit of one of the best-known car ads of all time.

The company will look to replicate the success of Papa and Nicole, the fictional father and daughter it created for advertising the first-generation Clio in the UK during the 1990s. 

Ranked by various surveys as the most popular car adverts ever aired in Britain, the Papa and Nicole sequences played a significant role in driving the huge commercial success of the original Clio – and changed the face of automotive marketing.

In 1998, an estimated 23 million people watched the final instalment of the campaign – which gained comparable status to a long-running TV series in its own right – wherein Nicole left her would-be groom (played by comedian Vic Reeves) at the altar and drove off into the sunset with her new partner (Bob Mortimer) in the then-new Mk2 Renault Clio.

The brand has not confirmed whether Nicole and Papa themselves will return to the screens to advertise the new sixth-generation Clio, revealed last week at the Munich motor show, but marketing boss Arnaud Belloni told Autocar that the campaign will leverage the unique cultural status of Renault in the UK.

“Renault has a very specific story in the UK," he said. "Renault has always been good in the UK when it was not trying to behave like a French brand. I studied in London when Renault was not very good… Renault was a nobody brand when I was here in the early 1980s.

“But after Clio, and Papa and Nicole, and the French players for Arsenal and Manchester United – Thierry [Henry], [Eric] Cantona and all those guys – it changed completely.

“Renault was good in the UK when it was playing the pop culture. Papa and Nicole, Va Va Voom, Thierry Henry - these were the good times," he said, referencing the legendary Arsenal striker's early noughties stint as a Clio ambassador. 

Traditionally, car makers tend to create one universal campaign for a given model and adapt it to suit different regions with bespoke voiceovers and subtitles - and indeed Belloni said that is Renault’s standard policy - but the Clio needs a unique treatment. 

"There is only one car for which I've said, since day one, I will do a specific movie for in the UK - and it's the Clio, because of Papa and Nicole. That's the only one. Otherwise, we cannot afford it any more. 

"When I entered Renault five years ago, I discovered that for the launch of the Mk5 Clio, there were basically 10 campaigns over the world - and most of them were completely crap, by the way.

"It cost Renault a fortune for no results, so when I came, I made just one, and the one was good. But I do think that Renault has the maturity to accept one exception - for Clio."

He said the Clio has “a cachet, a legacy” in the UK that merits a bespoke style of messaging and communication and he went so far as to suggest: “Clio is part of Britpop culture - Clio could be English, by the way. If we had a factory in the UK, it could have been enormous."

Belloni said he will begin working on the campaign with Renault's UK leadership team in early 2026 in preparation for the Clio's market launch around a year later.

Right-hand-drive versions of the supermini are subject to an extensive delay as a result of earlier uncertainty around the UK’s zero-emission vehicle mandate framework, which had threatened the firm’s ability to sell the petrol-powered Clio here at all. 

BMW has pledged that its first software-defined vehicle, the new BMW iX3, won’t suffer from the software issues that have hampered rival firms.

The electric SUV, revealed at the recent Munich motor show, sits on a new EV platform and features a new computing architecture built around four ‘supercomputer’ chips that run all of the vehicle's key functions. 

BMW has developed the entire software stack for the system in-house.

While rivals such as Volvo and the Volkswagen Group have struggled with their efforts to develop software-defined vehicles, BMW’s Neue Klasse chief, Mike Reichelt, is confident his firm will avoid bugs and issues.

“For us it was really important [to develop the software stack in-house],” said Reichelt. “It’s like the transformation from the combustion engine to electric mobility: the biggest step is when you reach this change in the middle of the company. 

“Every engineer at BMW is dealing with this new technology. Every function in the car has a hardware part and a software part, so we speak about function and owner and not about the hardware side or software side.

"Every engineer has to go into the digital world; that’s the transformation. 

“For me, it’s a failure when you believe you can take digital development outside the company or to another part of the company and the rest makes cars like it has for the last 20 years. So we changed it.

"For example, in our Driving Experience department, half of the engineers work in electrics or electronics, and it’s a little bit more every month.”

You see that squiggly little map of the Nordschliefe stuck to the rear ends of quite a few cars these days. 

Quite often they’re BMWs, and if not from Munich they’re usually performance machines that might even have visited the track represented by this stick-on cartography. Occasionally said decal will be applied in irony, perhaps to the rear-end of an imported Mazda Bongo or a Vauxhall Astravan. Although the commitment with which the latter are usually driven somewhat diminishes the irony.

And it’s Vauxhall that at one point decided to do the adorning itself, applying an outline of the Nürburgring’s north circuit - aka the Green Hell - not only to the tailgate of a run of Corsa VXR Nürburgings - but also their ‘B’ pillars and grilles, too. 

Given the endless runs of frequently quite lame supermini limited editions it would be easy to conclude that this VXR variant was another of the same, its mini-maps signifying trim and equipment fiddlings, and no tweaks for the 189bhp VXR powertrain. But no - there was a lot more to it than this.

Which was just as well given that this VXR’s creators, GM’s Opel Performance Centre in Germany, boldly labeled it ‘Nürburgring’.

Given the track’s reputation, and the fact that you can buy laps in your own car, this amounts to more than a drum-roll’s worth of expectation. If you were a keen Corsa-ist, you might notice the Nürburgring’s lower ride height, a special set of gunmetal 10-spoke alloys and a pair of fat exhaust pipes erupting from the ends of black diffuser. A glance inside would reveal a sizeable pair of promisingly racy Recaro seats, complete with cut-outs for a full race harness. With all this virtue signaling, the Opel’s Performance Centre was already in deep, and would have to deliver.

The team certainly selected the right weapons. The most potent was a torque-sensing Drexler Motorsports mechanical differential, making this the first Vauxhall or Opel to feature such kit since the demise of the rear-wheel drive Omega. 

Inverted Bilsten monotube dampers, progressive rate springs and lightweight Brembo brake calipers were also installed, while those 10-spokers were forged and the car sat two centimetres lower. 

Adjustments to the turbocharger, a new ECU and a redesigned exhaust extracted another 13bhp from the standard VXR 1600 engine, taking the total to 202bhp, and you could extract 207lb ft of torque during frenzied moments of full-throttle acceleration.

That all sounded great, but so many times has Autocar been told of the great efforts invested in the latest Vauxhall chassis, only to experience disappointment 500 metres later, that stepping into this ambitious Corsa did not invite much hope. The venue was Rockingham’s handling circuit, the Autocar test team present for three days of driving everything from snappily spoilered shopping hatches to hypercars whose alloys would cost much the same money as this Vauxhall.

This time, though, the story was different. Your reporter was amazed to discover a front-drive Vauxhall that not only resisted understeer, but seemed magnetically attracted to any bend’s apex if you aimed its rather lively wheel accurately enough. 

You could adjust the Corsa’s line with the throttle – almost unheard of in Vauxhalls – you could feel the edge of its generous adhesion and generally have a brilliant time behind its neat, leather-skinned wheel. Suddenly, Vauxhall had a contender to pit against the Renaultsport Clio 200 Cup, the Mini Cooper S and the Fiesta ST.

Only, it didn’t. Because this special edition cost over £3700 more than the Cooper S, and almost £4400 extra over the admittedly less potent Fiesta ST. And so the Nurburgring stayed rare, despite its considerable talents. Vauxhall nevertheless had another go, renaming this car the Clubsport, and fitting a different exhaust.

Little else changed, including the price, which produced the same banging-your-head-on-a-brick-wall effect for the Clubsport’s creators. Both cars are rare, then, but not so rare that you can’t find them for sale, and at vastly less than the £22,000 odd they cost when new. 

Today you’ll pay from £4000 upwards, the best costing closer to £10,000. That’s still not cheap, but it’s great value for a car that’s a riot to drive and pretty well equipped with it. It also has the merit of not being the most obvious hot hatch, but among the most effective.