Future Car Challenge is go

The inaugural Brighton to London Future Car Challenge is attracting big hitters and the latest groundbreaking automotive technology.

Manufacturers such as Honda, Toyota, Vauxhall and Volkswagen are pulling out all of the stops to enter prototype cars and development vehicles on the 57-mile run from the coast to the capital on Saturday, November 6.

Many will not have been seen in the UK before, including the fully-electric VW Golf Blue-E-Motion, and all will be fighting it out for prizes given to those which use the least mount of energy.

Honda, Mercedes and Toyota are all entering fuel-cell cars, Vauxhall is bringing its range-extended electric vehicles and Gordon Murray will make the trip in his T.25 city car. Toyota also has plug-in hybrids on the event and, like a swathe of other manufacturers, is entering other low-CO2 cars.

All of the 60+ entrants will parade into London along Pall Mall, past the RAC and on to a display in Regent Street where the prizes will be awarded.

Event organiser the Royal Automobile Club wants the Future Car Challenge to showcase new and emerging technology to the public in the same way that the original 'emancipation run' did more than a century ago.

That emancipation run is now celebrated each year in the RAC's Veteran Car Run from London to Brighton which sets off from the capital the day after the Future Car Challenge.

What Car? will be driving every possible type of technology on the Future Car Challenge so that we can provide you with the most comprehensive possible report and video from what we hope is the first of many runs.