Matt Prior

St Albans

Automotive Journalist and Presenter at Autocar

"You, Sir, at the worst car reviewer on the internet." Also @ automattictransmission on Instagram.

Articles

Matt Prior: I bought an Audi A2 for £500 – and it's brilliant

4 days ago | msn.com | Matt Prior

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I bought an Audi A2 for £500 – it's still brilliant after 26 years | Autocar

6 days ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Prior

One of the things people love to say about the Audi A2 is that it was ahead of its time. It’s the opinion people seem to hold most about the small Audi. And I get that: if you pulled the wraps from it today, it would still look modern. In October last year, Audi did just that, when it revealed the A2 E-tron concept restomod to celebrate the car’s 25th anniversary, and it looked as fresh as a piglet.
What would happen if we all stopped buying new cars?

1 week ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Prior

What if we didn’t buy any new cars for a year? That’s a thought experiment suggested by Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioural science at the University of Warwick, writing to the Financial Times recently. Oswald used data from the RAC Foundation and Autocar to estimate that UK buyers will spend £80 billion on new cars this year. Which is, technically speaking, a shedload of money.
Digital or analogue: which is best for instrument clusters?

1 week ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Prior

This week, the screen I will mostly be looking at is the one pictured below, after a hire car lottery ran out of Kia Picantos and provided me with a Volvo XC60. I’m not unhappy about this. The XC60 is a comfortable car and this is mostly a comfortable screen to look at.
10 fun and affordable sports cars that will rekindle your love of driving | Autocar

2 weeks ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Saunders |Jack Warrick |Richard Lane |Matt Prior

With the ever-increasing number of SUVs on our roads, finding proper, dependable sources of driver entertainment isn't quite as easy as it once was. It's especially hard to find a sports car on a real-world budget, but our list of the best affordable sports cars will help you find a phenomenal drive without breaking the bank. They may not be as numerous as before and many don’t seem as affordable in these inflationary times, but they exist, and they’re cars that demand to be seized and cherished.
This special G-Class is less Chelsea, more tractor - and I love it

2 weeks ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Prior

If I had all the money, I don’t think I’d buy a new Mercedes-Benz G-Class. It’s a fine car, of course, but I don’t have the gall to mis-space the letters of my gel numberplates, and big alloys and low-profile tyres on serious 4x4s just look wrong to me.
Software is 'defining' your next vehicle - but do you really care? | Autocar

4 weeks ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Prior

When is a car company not a car company? There are a couple of paths into this way of thinking. One – and this is among my least favourite topics, but I suppose we must delve into it – is the idea that car makers are gradually becoming software companies that just happen to also make cars. Eek. Volvo’s Jim Rowan, several weeks ago uninvited from being Volvo’s Jim Rowan, spoke positively about this trend in March.
8000-mile mega-test proves the Ineos Grenadier is more than a modernised Defender | Autocar

1 month ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Prior

Following a solid showing in our hardcore off-road test back in January, the very same Ineos Grenadier has now joined our long-term fleet. Ineos makes a thing of how rugged and dependable it would like the Grenadier to be, so it arrived with 10,000 miles on it. We’ll add as many as we can for the full ownership experience. I’m to be its custodian, for a couple of reasons.
An imperfect car is often easier to love

1 month ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Prior

I don’t just mean it’s possible to like bad cars. It is, of course, but that’s a different conversation that usually involves nostalgia. What I mean is that there’s an attraction to the underappreciated, to a character that’s trying to do a good thing against difficult odds. The film reviewer (and classic Ford owner) Mark Kermode says he would rather a film set out to achieve something noble and miss its mark than achieve its goal of being blandly efficient.
Opinion: Nissan shouldn’t rush to replace the legendary GT-R | Autocar

1 month ago | autocar.co.uk | Matt Prior

Matt is Autocar’s lead features writer and presenter, is the main face of Autocar’s YouTube channel, presents the My Week In Cars podcast and has written his weekly column, Tester’s Notes, since 2013. Matt is an automotive engineer who has been writing and talking about cars since 1997. He joined Autocar in 2005 as deputy road test editor, prior to which he was road test editor and world rally editor for Channel 4’s automotive website, 4Car.