Why new cars aren't always "better than the old one"

Matt Prior questions whether brands should be bolder with performance models as electrification takes hold

I used to think that ‘it’s better than the old one’ was one of the lazier tropes in this business.

New reviewers would get steered away from writing things like ‘they’ve improved it’, because if a company had spent a billion quid developing a new car using the latest technology, it would be fairly catastrophic if it wasn’t better than a vehicle they had designed a decade earlier.

So catastrophic that, with very few notable exceptions aside (such as Nissan’s 2010 Micra), it tended not to happen.

Last week, though, our cover featured one of those ‘man bites dog’ lines about the latest Mercedes-AMG C63: “It’s not as good as the old one”. Gulp.

This is worrying for companies that need to replace driver’s cars with ones that do the same thing but with powertrains they’re being manoeuvred into.

The old C63’s endearing V8 engine has been replaced by something with half as many cylinders, less charisma and more weight. And while I haven’t driven the new BMW M5 yet, it will come in at more than 2400kg.

We’ve got used to these cars being a certain way, and I don’t think it’s a guarantee that they will do the same thing, only better, in the future.

This brings me to cars like the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, of this week’s road test.

It doesn’t aim to do things better than were done by earlier hot Hyundais, like the i20 N and i30 N, because that’s no longer possible. Instead, it just sets out to do something entirely new, and it nails it.

I do wonder: if you can’t necessarily improve something, maybe you need to reinvent it.