5d6 yjt by darielsoreale

NEW 508 PIONEERING PERFORMANCE AGAIN 360 hp – CO₂ From 46 g/km* – All Wheel Drive

Official Fuel Consumption in MPG (l/100km) and CO₂ emissions (g/km) for the new 508 PEUGEOT SPORT ENGINEERED range are: Combined N/A – 138.9 (0.0 - 2.0) and CO₂ 0 - 46 g/km. The fuel consumption or electric range achieved, and CO₂ produced, in real world conditions will depend upon a number of factors including, but not limited to: the accessories fitted (pre and post registration); the starting charge of the battery (PHEV only); variations in weather; driving styles and vehicle load. The plug-in hybrid range requires mains electricity for charging. The WLTP (Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure) is used to measure fuel consumption, electric range and CO₂ figures. Figures shown are for comparison purposes and should only be compared to the fuel consumption, electric range and CO₂ values of other cars tested to the same technical standard. The figures displayed for the plug-in hybrid range were obtained using a combination of battery power and fuel. *Figures shown are for the new 508 PEUGEOT SPORT ENGINEERED. Information correct at time of going to print. Visit peugeot.co.uk for further details.

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etro is like spilled couscous these days, it’s flippin’ everywhere. Retro sweets, retro clothes, retro dogs, retro Netflix shows, retro burgers, retro furniture... and endless retro cars. From on the nose modern reimaginations like the Countach LPI 800-4 and Fiat 500, to more subtle DNA extractions like the new Ford Bronco (via the boom in restomods that take an old car as a starting point, and bend the rules from there), we can’t get enough of four-wheeled stuff dunked in nostalgia and rolled in rose-tinted glitter. So what is it about retro, whether heavily smothered or sparingly applied, that’s so universally appealing? We all like to think we’re shrewd operators, capable of analysing a car’s future depreciation trajectory, usefulness in any given situation and real world running costs to the tenth of a penny. That is, we all like to think we buy cars with our heads, but the tug of our hearts is so much stronger. Personally, once something crosses from ‘need’ into the ‘want’ zone, I will do anything to justify the expenditure in my brain. But there’s more to it than that. By decoupling from the modern world’s relentless thirst for the latest technology, you find licence to keep or reinstate features and sensations we cherish from the past, but still make use of the cutting-edge bits with benefits. Case in point, Singer’s DLS project: a car engineered by the finest F1 minds, hewn exclusively from stuff at the bleeding edge of materials science but presented in a package that you don’t need a degree in electronic engineering to understand. It doesn’t need level 4 autonomy or triple 12in touchscreens to justify its worth in this world. It simply focuses on making your eyes, ears, fingers and buttocks happy. And that’s something we can all get on board with. Do we need to go as far as an EV that mimics a manual gearshift, simulates a flat-six soundtrack and smells of fuel? Perhaps not, but as we move to our electric future, a carmaker’s ability to tickle us on an emotional level is becoming ever more important. When we’re all browsing new cars based on slight variations of the same battery/motor/four wheels formula, the driving experience will become largely irrelevant; it’s the way cars make us feel that’s going to lure us in. And retro styling is a wonderful way of plucking those heartstrings. No wonder Renault is building its bright new future around fully electric resurrections of the 4 and 5. Smart move. Enjoy the issue,

“WHAT IS IT ABOUT RETRO THAT’S SO UNIVERSALLY APPEALING?”

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# N E W C A R S

# E N T E R T A I N M E N T

# C A R C U L T U R E

E V E R Y O NE I S TA L K I N G A B O U T

GHOSN’S GREAT ESCAPE

Arrested on charges of financial misconduct, he fled Japan in a music box. A new BBC doc tells the story behind the story WORDS NICK GREEN

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PHOTOGRAPHY BBC

# C E L E B R I T Y

# G A D G E T S

# G A M I N G

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or 20 years Carlos Ghosn, CEO of the Renault Nissan Alliance, ruled the car universe. And he was famous. In Japan his face adorned bento boxes and Manga comics. A poll even revealed that most Japanese woman saw him as the perfect father of their children. He had homes in Paris, Amsterdam, Rio, Lebanon and Tokyo and had a compensation of 13 million euros a year. And then it went wrong. In the most spectacular way possible. Arrested on charges of financial impropriety, he spent 13 months in and out of Kosuge, one of Japan’s most infamous prisons. And then his story took the weirdest of turns as he skipped bail, escaping in the most audacious way. From global car superstar, he’s now the world’s most famous fugitive. It all started in November 2019 as the 65-year-old Ghosn left his home in Lebanon and flew on Nissan’s private jet to Tokyo for some meetings. Ghosn reckoned he had flown this journey more than 600 times, but this time it would be very different. As he arrived at Tokyo airport he was told that there was a problem with his visa. He was taken to a room and waiting there was someone from the Tokyo prosecutor’s office. He was told that he was under arrest for “issues relative to his compensation”. It was a complete shock. That evening he had planned to eat sushi with his daughter in one of Tokyo’s finest restaurants. Instead he would spend the night wearing prison fatigues and sleeping on a floor mat. Some comedown... Lebanese-Brazilian Carlos Ghosn had been the car industry’s poster guy. During the Nineties Nissan had found itself billions of dollars in debt and sinking fast. And then it joined up with Renault. As part of the deal Ghosn, then Renault’s number two, went to sort out the mess. He sharpened up the product, changed the working culture and fired more than 20,000 Nissan employees around the world. Within a year of joining the Alliance, he cut the debt of the company and edged it closer to profit. By the time he was arrested the turnover of the Renault/Nissan/Mitsubishi Alliance was an astonishing $200 billion. Like many other TV directors, I had been following the story and become desperate to sink my teeth into it. I pitched my ideas and three months later I was sitting in front of Carlos and his wife in Beirut discussing the best way to tell his story. He told me that while in his prison cell he’d been expecting Nissan to send in a battalion of lawyers to sort the situation out. But the cavalry never came. It was being reported he was accused of misusing company assets and under-reporting his salary, something he strongly refutes. The press coverage of the case swung from amazement at his fall, to anger at his profligate lifestyle. The parties he attended and eye-watering amounts of money he was making made him a poster boy for greedy CEOs. After more than 100 days in captivity he was released on bail. During this time, Ghosn tried to understand what was behind his arrest. He soon started to believe that he was the victim of a conspiracy playing out at Nissan board and government level. The conspiracy – he argued – was tied in with Nissan’s fears of being fully taken over by Renault, which was partially owned by the French government. Ghosn argued he was caught up in a political storm and soon he started to believe that the whole system was working against him. He was arrested again, accused of more financial crimes, and once again released on bail (his bail costs reached a

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The story of Ghosn’s recent life – not the sitting in a bar by the sea bit – is more astonishing than the craziest fiction

“ I SAT IN FRONT OF CARLOS AND HIS WIFE IN BEIRUT DISCUSSING THE BEST WAY TO TELL HIS STORY”

Storyville Carlos Ghosn: The Last Flight Watch Nick Green’s full documentary on iPlayer and make up your own mind on Ghosn

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“Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the doors and see the people.” Erm, thanks. Anything you want to say about Nissan?

dizzying $13 million). His lawyers told him that the various trials he faced could take years to process. And it got worse. After the second bail he was told that he could have no contact with his wife. A single phone call, email or a text would land him back in prison forfeiting the $13 million dollars bail. He began to worry that he would die alone in Japan. It’s at this point that be became open to other possibilities. With his options reducing, a friend asked whether he had ever considered escaping from Japan. And so begins the defining chapter of Carlos Ghosn’s life... Ghosn was convinced that his phone was bugged. He also came to believe that he was being stalked by ‘followers’, people from Nissan who tracked him from a distance checking for any breaches of bail. His first challenge was how to communicate secretly. At huge cost he bought a secret smartphone with which he started to make a plan. One of those he made contact with was former Green Beret Michael Taylor. Taylor and his team first needed to know Ghosn’s routine: what security measures were in place to monitor his behaviour. They wanted to know whether there were any cracks they could exploit. There were two pieces of information they knew would be critical. First, Ghosn was not

wearing a security bracelet. He could move freely without being tracked. Second: he was allowed to leave his apartment and stay away for a night without needing to ask permission. It meant that there would be at least 24 hours before Ghosn would be flagged as missing. The team quickly realised the only option open to them was to get out via private jet. Taylor’s plan was to pretend to be a travelling musician. As absurd as this sounded it was the perfect distraction. It also meant that he could travel with big music boxes, the size of which could fit a grown man. The gang would fly in their private jet to a quiet airport – Osaka – and then they’d travel to Tokyo to pick Ghosn up. On the morning of 29 December 2019 Ghosn got a call that they were on their way. The plan was go. Ghosn had been told to wear something unusual for him. He chose jeans and trainers. A CCTV image of him just after he left his apartment showed him wearing dark glasses, a baseball hat and a face mask. He was told not to look anyone in the eye and to stay silent. They met with Ghosn at the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo to begin their journey. They got a taxi to the train station and then a bullet train to Osaka. Taylor and his team had hired a hotel room by Osaka airport where they had left their

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music storage boxes. One had breathing holes drilled into the bottom. He got in, was covered with a sheet and then they headed to the airport. They decided the best time to get Ghosn out would be over the holiday season. They believed the greater number of casual workers at the airport would make the plan more likely to succeed. The quality of staff would be lower. The team also banked on the music box being too big to pass through a scanner. But that didn’t mean that a customs guard couldn’t ask to look inside. But this is when Taylor’s rock star cover story triumphed. The same guards that greeted him when he arrived in Tokyo a few hours earlier were now working the night shift. “How was the concert?” a guard asked. “Fine,” they replied. Perhaps because they were playing at being rich and famous, perhaps because they were flying on a private jet, they were ushered through to the plane without issue. They had 30 minutes to wait before their allotted take-off time. Ghosn described it as the longest half hour of his life. And then they were given clearance to push off. They first flew to Istanbul where he changed planes before heading home to Beirut. And what of Ghosn now? He fights on, telling the world of his innocence. Yet the Japanese authorities believe that his escape is proof of his guilt. He has a red notice against him meaning that if he crosses an international border he can be arrested and deported to Japan. He goes everywhere with armed security (who ironically drive him around in a Nissan) and there are metal bars across the windows. He has his freedom of sorts, but for a man of the world it’s not much of a life. Nick Green

FA I L O F T H E C E N T U R Y # 2 2

PERODUA KENARI

COFFEE BREAK What we’re watching/ listening/doing, while we should be working

here’s nothing wrong with cheap, unpretentious urban transportation. And, give 2000’s Perodua Kenari its due, it was nothing if not very cheap and very unpretentious. Based on the Daihatsu Move kei car, the Kenari was, for its size, quite practical, on account of boasting the precise proportions, and indeed dimensions, of an actual shoebox. It wouldn’t cost you much in fuel, not least because all your family and friends would politely turn down the oﬀer of a lift. And you didn’t need to worry about a big repair bill in the event of a shunt, mostly because it was impossible to tell which bits had actually been damaged. All good, then. The only teeny, tiny issue was... oh dear Lord would you just look at it. Wearing an expression that said “I know, I can’t believe they did this to me either, please end my pain”, the Kenari’s woeful, pity inducing face was only matched by its woeful, pity inducing stance and bodywork. Never before has a car looked so sorry for itself. Never before has a car had more reason to look so sorry for itself. Kenari, incidentally, translates as ‘canary’: a name that, according to Perodua, denoted the “joy and freedom” that imbued this car. The traditional fate of the canary, of course, was being sent to quietly, expendably perish at the bottom of an inky mineshaft. In the case of the Kenari, it’d have been a mercy killing...

Pig, in cinemas 20 August Nicholas Cage’s new movie about, yup, you guessed it, a pig, sounds like it’ll be full of hammy acting (arf) but actually promises to be a crack[ling]er (arf arf)

International Dog Day, 26 August TG loves dogs almost as much as it loves cars. Have a Bonio with us on this special day

TopGear magazine fix You can download the latest edition and back issues direct to your phone or tablet from the App Store. Because when life gives you lemons... settle in and read TG

Mare of Easttown, Sky

New music alert Lapping up the indie minimalism and deadpan lyrics from Wet Leg and Self Esteem, the former’s debut ‘Chaise Longue’ is perfection. The wave of post punk indie continues – whatever that sentence actually means

I M AG E : M A N U FAC T U R E R

Utterly brilliant crime drama starring Kate Winslet. A small-town detective investigates a murder as her personal life is already sinking faster than the Titanic. Winslet’s Mare is HARD AS NAILS!

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CAR NE W S

I AM LEGEND LA-based Legende Automobiles is building our new favourite restomod

“I

n a world that has become increasingly more digital, we were yearning for a time machine that could transport us back to the analogue Eighties.” The words of Legende Automobiles as it unveils this, the Turbo 3. It’s a reborn Renault 5 Turbo, and although just a render for now, it may be one of the most cohesive reinventions yet. It’s designed to reverse some of the cost-cutting measures Renault made for the second-gen Turbo 2, which brought it closer to the price bracket Renaults would usually inhabit. With the blank-cheque culture of restomodding, though, the 5 can be ramped right back up to the max once more. The source of the turbocharged engine is as yet unspeciﬁed, but we’re told it makes 400bhp. The suspension matches that of a 5 Maxi rally car to help make sense of it all,

Y O U C A N ’ T B U Y TA S T E

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rest assured. The Turbo 3’s body is mostly carbon too and is wider to accommodate larger wheels (16in front, 17in rear), yet the 5’s cartoonish proportions remain intact. The lights are all LEDs and Legende is adamant it ﬁts the company ethos of “only using technology to improve electrics or materials”. Speaking of materials, check out the interior. Climate control, cupholders and digital dials bring things up to date while wild shapes and colours call back to the ﬁrst batch of 5 Turbos over 40 years ago. Stephen Dobie

LN: Having a full crowd of fans at my home race was awesome. We’ve missed them so much, it was so good to have them back cheering us on. When I got off stage I was still shaking.

DR: There’s always that one guy that has to park right next to you in an empty car park. Throwback to an incredibly hot Silverstone, turns out the UK does get nice weather, occasionally!

DR: P5 at the team’s home race. Happy with that! My best performance in a McLaren so far, but there’s definitely more to come. Silverstone is such a cool circuit, it has a special place in my heart.

BEHIND THE SCENES

LANDO & DANNY’S F1 DIARY

LN: P3 in Austria, almost exactly a year after my first podium at the same track. There’s something about this circuit that I love. It’s so fast and flowing.

LN: Can’t remember what Jose said but clearly I found it hilarious. These moments help take the pressure off.

McLaren’s dynamic duo pull back the curtain on the life of an elite driver

DR: As a kid, I’d have done anything to stand next to this car, let alone touch it, or drive it. I’d have cleaned it all day.

DR: Driving Senna’s car at Goodwood was really special. Also incredibly loud! This is the actual chassis from Suzuka 1990, when Senna and Prost crashed.

LN: Loved taking Senna’s MP4/5B up the hill at Goodwood, had to show my support for England in the Euros too!

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WAT C HE S

BACK INTO FOCUS The watch world looks set to come out strong post-pandemic

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lright, so the world has spent the best part of two years being turned upside down in ways none of us ever expected. But what has all this global turmoil meant, I hear you ask, for the watch market? When the first lockdowns came, the industry was worried, like we all were. When factories closed, of course production slowed down. But now that business has for a while been cranking back towards full speed, it looks like the pandemic may even, dare we say it, have been good for business. Here are three silver linings in the COVID cloud. 1. A boost in demand. Nobody really needs a watch, let alone a collection of watches. So you’d think that as tough times hit, people would cut back on luxuries and concentrate on necessities. Not a bit of it. The bleaker the times, the more people want to cheer themselves up. As soon as the watch factories opened up, they found order books full. 2. Online sales. The watch market, particularly at the luxury end, has been slow to embrace e-commerce. They figured that somebody spending car money on a watch deserves the full boutique experience and the right to touch before they buy. It is still the preferred way of doing business for most brands, but the pandemic has sharpened their focus. They have finally realised that if people are prepared to buy expensive watches on the internet, it seems like a curious business decision to refuse their bank details. 3. A sense of adventure. The watch industry has always been keen to associate itself with anyone who runs, climbs or swims as fast, high and far as humanly possible. But this last year of soaring sales has seen more watches than ever that are designed for vigorous outdoor pursuits. So while our ability to actually go out and do stuff has taken a hit, our desire for watches that make us think about adventure has apparently grown. There are more than enough new adventure watches to fill every page of this magazine and most of the others on the shelf. Here is a carefully curated selection: one for driving; one for diving; one for climbing; and one designed for a bit of light soldiering. Thankfully no watch comes with any obligation to take part in the activity it was designed for. That’s the beauty of the watch market – they can still sell adventures, no matter what is happening with the rest of the world. Richard Holt

UNDER £4 , 0 0 0

BREMON T SUP ERM AR INE The British company is still best known for pilots’ watches, but now has a full range, including this stylish diving watch, with unidirectional ceramic rotating bezel for timing dives. Automatic movement with 38-hour power reserve. Water resistant to 300m with 40mm stainless steel case. bremont.com; £3,695

UNDER £1,000

SE IK O A L P IN I S T Seiko is a great for confusing the watch snob, making everything from budget watches right through to Grand Seiko-made masterpieces. Somewhere in between is the retro-styled Alpinist, celebrating the Fifties, when it started making watches for mountain climbers. Water resistant to 200m with 39.5mm steel case. seikowatches.com; £720

BLOW THE BUDGE T UNDER £500 CHOPARD MIL L E MIGL I A The Mille Miglia is not the terrifying race it once was, but what the modern event lacks in high speed action, it more than makes up for in elegance, with some of

EL L I O T BRO W N HOLT ON

the finest historic Alfas, Bentleys and Bugattis roaring through the streets of Italy

For a no-nonsense military watch look no further.

past adoring crowds. This year’s rally went ahead to rather thinner crowds.

Designed to be a tough companion in the field, it

Chopard has been title sponsor and official timekeeper since 1988 and every

comes with a steel case coated in anti-reflective

year presents participants with watches. The Mille Miglia 2021 Race Edition has

gunmetal PVD. With olive drab NATO strap and

a COSC certified automatic chronograph movement with 48-hour power

rotating bezel. Water resistant to 200m.

reserve, 44mm steel case and is water resistant to 100m. chopard.com; £6,640

elliotbrownwatches.com; £425

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MY LIFE IN CARS

ALEX ALBON

ALEX’S DREAM GARAGE

The Red Bull F1 and AF Corse DTM driver on growing up with Minis in Milton Keynes

y first word was Ferrari, well I used to say “Rari”, but it was clear that I’d caught the bug for cars pretty immediately. My parents didn’t drive anything interesting at all. We had a lot of American cars actually. I have a big family – four other siblings and my mum and dad – so we had to have seven seaters. We’d always end up with weird Lincolns or Mercurys. Those did have TVs in the headrests though, so we would bring a PlayStation 2 and play racing games in the back of the car. We also had a family Peugeot 407 estate at one point. I’d be at school Monday to Friday, and then I’d leave for the racetrack early on a Saturday morning. I’d wake up at 4am and my dad would fold the rear seats down and make a bed in the back. I was probably seven or eight years old at the time and I’d sleep for the full journey and then wake up ready for practice. It was probably slightly illegal, if not a little bit frowned upon.

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When I was around 15 we lived on a farm and I had a classic Mini which was technically my first car. I’d pretend to be a taxi driver for my siblings; that was until my friend told me he knew how to drive, but he clearly didn’t and he crashed it. I’ve always wanted another. I’d probably have to remove the back seats and bring the seating position back to fit in it properly, but I’d fit a super fast steering rack and maybe even make it rear-wheel drive. That would be fun. I got my road licence when I was 18. I didn’t pass first time – I failed on parking. Racing drivers aren’t designed to go backwards. I only just passed second time around too. I went onto my stepdad’s insurance after that – he had a Mini JCW. If you know Milton Keynes, you’ll know it’s just one roundabout after another, and a JCW is quicker than pretty much anything there. My wheels paid the price – I destroyed all four alloys trying to find the fastest line. I’m much better at it now, but I was trying to find the limits back then. I learnt

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Which cars will make the podium?

some good lessons. If you want to be quick around Milton Keynes you need to be using all of the road... safely though, of course! I only bought a car myself for the first time last year – it’s a basic but super comfortable Mercedes GLE. I was mostly running around in the Mini until I got to F1, then I was given a Honda Civic Type R. That was really nice, although I wasn’t too kind to the wheels on that either. Again it was quicker than any supercar around Milton Keynes. I took it to Skye in Scotland with my girlfriend, although I think I enjoyed it more than she did. I had an Aston Martin DB11 after that. We had different company cars at every track though, usually a Vantage or DB11. That was cool. We did plenty of track days too, especially in 2019. I remember one in Austria where it was snowing – you’d hit black ice and get completely out of control but the passengers would think “ah that’s great he’s sliding it around”. I was thinking “you have no idea how close we were to crashing there”.

SINGER PORSCHE 911 I’d go for a restomod like this, the craftsmanship and detail are insane.

ALFAHOLICS GTA-R I really like their work at Alfaholics, I don’t like too much electronic input.

BMW M3 TOURING I’d probably wait for the M3 Touring. I’m not a fan of the grille, maybe I could get it remodelled.

T HE G O OD

The hatch’s arse looks mighty Justaboss101

Performance is mental, this is Ferrari F430 performance in a family hatch SuperStevie

I’d take this over an A45 Kyle Luke Holloway

I hope they keep the 5cyl powerhouse around for as long as possible Hypercaraddict I WISH THEY WOULD BRING THIS TO THE USA, I’D BE FIRST IN LINE TO BUY ONE

Alan Walker

T HE B A D

It looks like an angry chipmunk Nicklaus Nylin

Fake grille on the rear bumper is a BIG SHAME Maxime MG

Looks like a Peugeot

T HE UGLY

Can’t wait to see them being driven 110 per cent between the lights in town by knobheads in tracksuits Dante71 FIRST TRIP WOULD BE TO THE BODYSHOP TO HAVE THE BLACK FACE MASK PAINTED

Michael Tadourian A FIVE-DOOR RS3 JUST MAKES NO SENSE

Rubo Stars

GREAT ENGINE BUT IT LOOKS WORSE THAN THE OUTGOING ONE Mujahid Ali

COMMENT S

AUDI

elcome to the third stanza in Audi’s ongoing love affair with its multi-award-winning 2.5-litre 5cyl engine, and the car that’s wrapped around it. The new RS3 is now the only hot hatch to have more than four cylinders; all five kick out 395bhp and 369lb ft of torque. With launch control engaged, though, this new RS3 will do 0–62mph in 3.8 seconds – three-tenths quicker than the outgoing RS3.

Scooby Dobbie

Who designed this garbage? Walcott Joel

A big stupid spoiler away from turning into a Civic Type R James Etchells

WILL IT STILL UNDERSTEER LIKE A BROKEN SHOPPING TROLLEY? Matt Sutherland

You still get a 7spd dual-clutcher and 4WD. Plus, there’s a torque splitter as standard; a device that does away with the rear diff, and in its place adds an electronic multi-disc clutch on each driveshaft. So each wheel gets the right amount of torque for any given situation, and one extremely fun one... Yes, most importantly, it means the new RS3 will officially drift. Prices in the UK start from £50,900 for the hatch (Sportback) and £51,900 for the saloon. Vijay Pattni

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THE KNOWLEDGE Need-to-know nuggets of automotive news

GAME OF THE MONTH

SUPER CHARGER This is Audi’s bonkers rangeextender EV that’ll enter the Dakar Rally next year. It’s called the RS Q e-tron and uses two e-motors from the company’s Formula E car for a total of 671bhp

SIZE MATTERS Welcome to the new MercedesAMG SL. Please wipe your hands before entering. Just like in the S-Class, the SL will get a mighty touchscreen betwixt driver and passenger. Here, it’s 11.9 inches

GE AR

I’M THE CAPTAIN NOW It turns out Tom Hanks has great taste in cars, because of course

MOMO PROTOTIPO BLACK EDITION

he does. His glorious FJ40 Land Cruiser, complete with GMsourced 4.3-litre V6 and Porsche seats, is going up for auction soon

LIFE ON MARS Tired of supercars that are too fast for the road? Let us introduce Marc Philipp Gemballa, son of Uwe. His creation – the Marsien – was once a 911 Turbo S. It’s now an all-carbon, dune-bashing 750bhp monster

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TOPGEAR TOP 9

CARS WITH OPTIONAL WINGS 02

I M AG E S : M A N U FAC T U R E R

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› SEPTEMBER 2021

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COLOUR LIKE Effortlessly juggle two different time zones with our ﬂagship dual-time watch, Lander GMT. Instantly recognisable by its unique sea-green dial and luminous white numerals, housed in an exceptionally comfortable 39.5mm marine-grade steel case and powered by the new Sellita SW330-2 ‘Top Grade’ movement, with an improved power reserve of up to 56 hours. Explore the range at Farer.com

CAR NE W S

5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE..

VALKYRIE SPIDER

A handful of facts on Aston Martin’s new crop-topped V12 hypercar

2 3 4

IT HAS NO ROOF, DUH Yep, the Spider is great news for all those who put a deposit down on Aston’s £2.5m hard-topped hypercar, only to realise they couldn’t fit in Adrian Newey’s snug cabin. Chopping the roof off does seem at odds with the Valkyrie’s obsession with aero, but Aston claims the extra headroom makes it even more like an F1 car. Can’t argue with that.

THE GULLWING DOORS ARE GONE Clearly the Valkyrie’s gullwing doors couldn’t be transferred to the Spider – they wouldn’t be much use attached to the new removable carbon-fibre roof panels. In their place is a pair of front- hinged butterfly doors with narrow letterbox windows, but the aforementioned roof panels will also get a couple of polycarbonate sections to let in light.

IT’LL TEAR YOUR HAIR OFF Forget rearranging a hairdo, the roofless Valkyrie will have a good go at tearing your barnet from your scalp. The 6.5-litre Cosworth V12 makes 1,000bhp on its own and it’s paired with an additional 160bhp electric motor for maximum attack. The Spider keeps all of the madcap underside aero trickery of the hard-top too.

ASTON WON’T BUILD MANY

THE COCKPIT IS EXACTLY THE SAME

Just 85 Spiders will make it into production,

Like with most of the exterior, changes to the interior

with deliveries expected to begin mid 2022.

are minimal. For example, you’ll still sit in a lightweight

They’ll join the 150 coupes and 40 non-road-

carbon bucket seat with your feet raised and your

legal AMR Pros to make a grand total of 275 cars.

body angled slightly towards your passenger. The

No price yet for the Spider but if you’re expecting

carbon tub has been modified for extra strength, but

change from £3m, you may be disappointed.

the cabin keeps its Newey-designed teardrop shape.

WO R D S : G R EG P OT T S

No roof makes the Spider feel like an F1 car, says Aston... exactly what we thought when we drove the VW Eos

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TOPGEAR’S GUIDE TO THE FUTURE OF EVERYTHING H MYT ER T BUS

“AN EV ISN’T MUCH GOOD TO A ROAD WARRIOR” drivers. He says: “We have the data to conﬁrm that EV use is surging. With some adaptations to the way they work, companies have been able to use EVs in heavy use situations.” And that includes car drivers on long trips, he adds. It’s true that in going beyond the range of their car after charging overnight at home, a company driver would have to take a few minutes on a map or app ﬁnding a rapid charger en route. But I imagine that’s a pretty small price in return for their spectacular BIK tax saving.

Besides, if it is a bit awkward now, it’s getting better fast. In choosing a company car, remember you’ll have it for the next three years. Motorway charge hubs are sprouting like a rash. Quick charging life for CCS socket drivers is quickly approaching the convenience Tesla folk have known for years. If you’re not on open motorways, you might do a day on one charge anyway. Check your trip computer average speed. If it’s, say, 35mph, then eight hours is only 280 miles covered. Paul Horrell

E V U P D AT E

028

ON A CHARGE

POWER RANGER

Brace yourself for Everrati’s latest project – an electric GT40. Worry not, though, it’s based on a replica

Mercedes is working on a ‘Vision EQXX’ 1,000km electric special, enough to drive from Paris to Monte Carlo

SEPTEMBER 2021 ›

TO P G E A R . C O M

Elon Musk has tweeted that all EVs will be soon be allowed to use Tesla’s Supercharger network. Good idea?

I M AG E S : G E T T Y, M A N U FAC T U R E R

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63 6 9 50

We’re all drawn to different body styles, says Chris. Only some of them are objectively worse than others...

I L L U S T R AT I O N : PAU L RY D I N G

Strange what a slight difference in body style can do to alter the way we feel about a car. Take the new LR Defender – the car the Discovery 5 should have been. As a three-door, on those little white steel wheels and plump, knobbly rubber it is a thing of rare joy because it’s an off-roader that seems fit for purpose. And to my eyes it looks superb – the short wheelbase, the stepped roof and the swollen arches make me think ‘Landy’. And smile. Add two doors and some wheelbase and I’m thinking ‘Land yacht’. The five-door Defender loses all the chirpy Tonka toy appeal of its stumpy brother and presents a kind of boring uncle frumpiness that my limited understanding of car design doesn’t allow me to explain properly. And these quirks have always been the case. Twists on a theme elicit very different reactions from people – mostly they are just personal responses, sometimes they have a broader cultural reference. Some countries just don’t like hatchbacks and prefer saloons. No one knows why, they just do. BMW clearly likes estate cars. Can you name a single one of its saloon cars that isn’t better looking as an estate? I can’t – but then I’m an estate car fanboy and prefer just about everything

“BMW’S 5 GT IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE ULTIMATE BODY DERIVATIVE CLUSTER BOMB”

formatted for carrying dogs. But if I try to deploy some level of scrutiny to that BMW statement, even a thicko like me can suggest lines and shapes and proportions that are more pleasing when the Bavarian art department thinks ‘labrador’ rather than ‘sales targets’. As for the 5-Series GT, pass me the chuck bucket. Actually, the 5 GT is an example of the ultimate body derivative cluster bomb: the ‘Chinese market’ version. Now mechanically, this can mean many things: bigger, smaller, faster, slower. But there is only one consistent attribute to all cars that we are told were made specifically for the Chinese market – they all look a bit rubbish. The 5 GT is a 5-Series whose proportions have been subtly adjusted in the name of crapness. Why the Chinese appear to like slightly wonky versions of good-looking things isn’t clear, but they are just the latest in a long line of nations who seem to have a strange approach to the automotive aesthetic, or perhaps have just had one foisted upon them. Brazil used to suffer some very strange variations on European hatchbacks, as did corners of Africa. It was a bit like the scene in Toy Story 3 when all the dolls had limbs from other, more sinister creatures. Car cyborgs. Sometimes these changes lead to remarkable partisan behaviour: in the late Nineties a modified VW Vento driver considered themselves a completely different species to a Golf owner, despite being separated by a boot and a pair of headlights and I can completely understand why. It’s down to car tribalism – we attach ourselves to something we like and that becomes a safe place. There will be three-door Defender lovers and people who think the long body is elegant, and the short one a mere childish novelty. And that’s the way the world works. Until, sometimes, you reach the shattering conclusion that the body style tribe you choose is full of people you find a tad obnoxious. And that’s when you sell the X6.

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#GODO

Watch-wearers of the world – unite! When Karl Marx told the world’s workers they had nothing to lose but their chains, he could have been talking about the original proletarian mode of transport: the bike. Coincidentally, cycling was the inspiration for the new C63 Sealander Elite chronometer. Not only does the smart pop-out crown stop it digging into your wrist when you’re riding, but the super-light titanium case makes it effortless to wear. Though Karl would have surely loved these utilitarian features, we think its sleek design is more ‘Wiggins’ than ‘Marx’.

Sealander. Go anywhere, do everything. christopherward.com

TGTV script editor Sam Philip has got a secret to share... and he wants carmakers to listen

I L L U S T R AT I O N : PAU L RY D I N G

My name is Sam, and for many years I suﬀered a debilitating fear of buying toilet roll. To be clear, the issue wasn’t toilet roll itself. For the job at hand, as it were, there’s no better material. The issue was the buying of the toilet roll. Speciﬁcally the buying of a multipack of toilet roll, and the transporting home thereafter. See, on a rational level, I knew no one would notice me lugging a 24-pack of Andrex up the high street. And that, even if they did, they would likely think, “sensible chap, far more economical to buy in bulk”. I knew no one was thinking, “wow, is he planning to use all that, on his own, today?” But I could never shake the suspicion that everyone was thinking, “wow, is he planning to use all that, on his own, today?” At my nadir, I would remove the rolls from their multipack, arranging them at the bottom of the shopping bag, hidden under the rest of the less shameful, less absorbent goods. Reader, things were bad. I am pleased to say I have conquered my fear, through the tried-and-tested therapeutic method of ‘being told by your wife to stop being such a priggish arse’. And so to cars, where I am currently in the market for a family runabout. I need it

“CARMAKERS FEEL THE SAME ABOUT FAMILY LIFE I ONCE FELT ABOUT A CUSHELLE MULTIPACK”

big, I need it boxy. I need, in other words, an MPV. (Yes, I am aware a car journalist ought to be lugging his offspring around in something more exotic: an air-cooled 911, perhaps. But if you need to move children and bikes, an air-cooled 911 won’t do the job, not least because its boot is full of engine.) However, as you know, carmakers don’t want to sell us MPVs any more. A few years back, Renault offered – depending how large your family, and how small your self-respect – the Scenic, Grand Scenic, Modus, Grand Modus, and Espace. Now, if you’re in the UK at least, not one. And it’s not just Renault. Ford C-Max? Gone. Seat Alhambra? VW Sharan? Gone. Vauxhall Zafira? Gone. (I mean obviously I’d never have bought a Zafira, but still, nice to have the choice.) The MPVs have been replaced, of course, by SUVs. Many have offered theories explaining this tectonic shift, but my suspicion is that it’s not about commanding driving positions or the illusion of greater safety. It’s that carmakers feel the same way about family life that I once felt about a Cushelle multipack. That it’s a shameful secret to be squirrelled away at the bottom of the shopping bag. Tips runs? Soft-play trips? Not for us! We’re off to conquer the north face of the Eiger! Carmakers! I’m not off to conquer the north face of the Eiger! My life is boring! I’m OK with this! We all have dull, daily, necessary functions to perform, so, please, get over this squeamishness. Make cars for those of us who aren’t ashamed of our unglamorous, unavoidable duties. Please, give us big, square, people boxes on wheels. Ideally with a discreet boot storage compartment for our big bags of bog roll.

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Anyone else think electric cars are a bit... samey? Fear not – there’s hope yet, says Paul

I L L U S T R AT I O N : PAU L RY D I N G

Variety being the spice of life an’ all, I have a beef with electric cars. I really do love their motors’ smoothness and quick wits. But with this near-perfection comes precious little variation. While, duh obvs, there are differences in magnitude of power, in quality of delivery they’re pretty uniform. And they’re not just samey in performance, they resemble one another in styling and design too. Of course, for most daily driving purposes these are pretty satisfactory ways to power and package a family car. But as the Niagara of new ones gushes towards us, I find myself struggling to pick one over another. Combustion cars provide more variety – that’s even the normal ones, not just the specialist mid-engined tackle. Petrol or diesel? How many turbos (or none), or cylinders? Gears selected manually or automatically? Engine mounted longitudinally or transversely? These things affect the way a combustion car drives of course, but also its proportions and what accommodation lies within. This drab similarity of future EVs has been worrying me, but I’m happy to have found some countervailing voices. First, Gordon Murray. A man with previous on V12 engines, and not a fan of battery mass in the context of sports cars. But

“THIS DRAB SIMILARITY OF FUTURE EVs HAS BEEN WORRYING ME”

he sees the way the wind is blowing and has founded a new subsidiary company, specifically to design and engineer EVs. “A battery’s advantage is that it doesn’t change mass during discharge. A fuel tank is up to 100kg lighter when empty than full.” So he’s always striven to place the tank near the car’s centre of gravity, otherwise the handling will alter as it drains. “So a battery can be sited away from the centre of gravity. It’s the heaviest thing in the car. Unlike a combustion car, the motors are lighter, so the second heaviest thing is the occupants, and then the powertrain after that.” So while your standard EV puts its battery under the people, Murray wants to move the battery and drop the seat height too. And this is isn’t for an exotic car; he’s conceiving a third-party hatchback. Luc Donckerwolke, head of design at Genesis, is obsessed with layout and proportions as much as surface. He just designed an electric concept, the Genesis X, that isn’t only magnetic to look at but proportioned rather like a BMW 8-Series. The pretty one from 1990. Surely that’s not feasible for an EV? Not when his group is doubling down on its new people-over-battery platform, as in the Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6? He says that yes, roomy crossovers with flat floors will boss the market. But there can also be cab-backward cars with ‘impact zero’ on the proportions. Absent an engine, a long nose can house the aircon, high-voltage electronics, drive motor, even luggage. The battery can be tucked behind the people. “I hope we don’t go to just one typology. People will get sick of SUVs. There is interest in diversity. We must design cars that make us dream.”

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DRIV HONDA E ADVANCE £29,160/£29,710 as tested

The big test: EV fashion statements We know they both look great, but can Fiat’s new electric 500 outdrive a TopGear fave – the Honda e? WORDS GREG POTTS

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PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD

FIAT 500 ICON £27,995/£30,132 as tested

o you need a second car to act as the family runaround, and because you care about plastic in the ocean and furry animals, it needs to be electric. It also needs to shout about that fact, because what’s the point in doing something good for the world if your neighbours don’t know about it? Oh, and it needs to be cool, because to accept a compromise on range you’re going to have to really love it. Luckily, both of these cars represent fantastic pieces of design. The Fiat 500 instantly catches the eye thanks to its recognisable shape and love-it-or-hate-it rose gold paint, but get up closer and you’ll realise this is far from an old

500 with some batteries in it. There’s not a single part here that you’ll ﬁnd in the ICengined 500, which we ﬁrst saw way back in 2007 and which will continue to be sold alongside its electric sibling – although it feels massively out of date in comparison. This EV-only 500 is longer, wider and taller than the car it’ll eventually replace and blends that Fifties-inspired design with ultra-modern surfacing. Lower spec versions start at a very reasonable £20,495 after the government grant too, and for extra style points you can even have a rag-top roof for £2,650, making it one of the only all-electric convertibles you can buy in the UK. And what a cute face!

Talking of faces, we’re fairly used to seeing the Honda e’s lovable mug by now, but that shouldn’t cloud any judgement on just how good it looks. It’s the car that people stop to chat about and the one that everyone coos over throughout our day-long shoot. It’s admirably diﬀerent and almost impossible not to like. Plus, much has been made of the price of the little Honda, but as tested the Fiat actually costs more. Our Japanese contender here is the more powerful and slightly more expensive 152bhp Advance model, but the only option needed is £550 of metallic blue paint, so purchase price is £29,710 after the grant. At the time of writing, the cheapest available e will set you back just

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“GET ON THE MOVE AND IT’S ALMOST IMMEDIATELY CLEAR THAT THE HONDA IS THE ONE YOU WANT TO BE DRIVING”

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The £300 optional height adjustable seats in the Fiat are a must-have

11. Honda’s claimed range is 62 miles less than the Fiat’s, but it does support 100kW charging compared with the 500’s 85kW 2. Fins along the bonnet shutline house indicator repeaters. Careful not to cut yourself 3. Fiat has fancy buttons instead of doorhandles. Back-up lever in case of emergency

over £28,000. The Italian on the other hand, is in top-spec Icon trim here with the larger of its two available batteries. So, with an additional £2,137 of options its on-the-road price is just on the wrong side of £30k. The Fiat does comprehensively win the range battle to claw back some credibility. Its 42kWh lithium-ion battery is paired with a 117bhp motor and a more conventional FWD set-up, so claimed range is 199 miles on the WLTP cycle, or a more realistic 150. The Honda and its 36kWh battery claims 137 miles, but in the real world that’s more like around 100 miles. In our time with the pair, it’s the Fiat that’s more efficient too – managing 4.2mpkWh versus the Honda’s 3.9 – although the Honda can rapid charge at a useful 100kW compared with just 85kW for the Fiat. Both suffer from accelerated battery use at motorway speeds, but the Honda is nicer and quieter to be in while doing the time. The seating position in the Fiat is also slightly off, just as it has been with recent combustionengined iterations. There’s nowhere to rest your left foot and no height adjustment to the recycled fabric seats (unless you shell out an extra £300 for the comfort seats), so you sit bolt upright. The rest of the interior is well designed with a 10.25-inch touchscreen and separate climate controls. Hurrah! Although rear legroom is almost non-existent for the two in the back. The instrument pod displays speed and charge levels clearly, and there are some neat

touches like the silhouette outlines of Turin. Unfortunately things are let down by some cheap plastics and poor planning – there’s no cover for the central storage bin which looks messy, and the fancy door opening buttons have to be accompanied by a black lever lower down. No such trouble for the Honda. With its retro lounge-like interior, six-screen action and handy 12V socket, it feels more premium inside. Every button and knob has a more expensive action, and the better placed fabric seats are softer, more stylish and more supportive than the Fiat’s. The camera that can replace the rearview mirror is something you’ll likely turn oﬀ almost immediately, but the wing mirror replacements work well once you’re used to them. The Honda also gets four doors for easier rear access, but there are still only two extra seats back there and it actually has a smaller boot than the Fiat (171 litres plays 185). Both do without any kind of frunk, which means the only place for your charging cables is in a bag in the boot. Get on the move and it’s almost immediately clear that the Honda is the one you want to be driving too. You sit low and longer-legged in the e, and it feels much livelier than the 500 with the rear-wheel-drive set-up (and Michelin Pilot Sport 4s) making a huge diﬀerence. It’ll get to 62mph a full second quicker and Honda includes paddles behind the steering wheel to adjust the level of regenerative braking if you aren’t in one-pedal mode. Pull the left paddle instead

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HONDA E

03 05 01

02 06

FIAT 500

04 01 05

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Specifications of braking into a corner and it can become remarkably addictive to drive, with the fully independent suspension soaking up bumps and limiting roll. The steering has a nice weight, whereas the Fiat’s is incredibly light all the time, not just in town where such a trait can be useful. The Fiat feels less sophisticated to drive on the whole, its pedals and steering looser and less progressive. It’ll hold its own in a 0–30mph traffic light sprint thanks to 162lb ft of instant torque, but it’s nowhere near as fun to drive, even if it is just around the roundabouts of your local city centre. There’s plenty of grip, but the slightly bouncy ride doesn’t take kindly to mid-bend bumps. It’s also a shame that Fiat has only included three drive modes. You’ll want to avoid Sherpa – that switches off everything you don’t need and limits power – which means in everyday driving you’re left with Normal mode, which allows the car to completely coast and only deploys regenerative braking with the first stage of pedal travel, or Range mode, which switches to full one-pedal driving and max regen. With most customers likely to have come from a combustion-engined car, it might have been wise to feature a compromise between the two, or to let the driver adjust the regen with wheel-mounted paddles. Fiat has put additional volume and skip controls behind the wheel instead. Perhaps that’s a hint at buyer priorities... Beware Fiat 500 prejudice, though. As alluded to earlier on, the all-electric 500 is leaps and bounds better than its IC-engined counterpart and will make a fantastic polar bear-friendly city car for many. In fact, with that real world 150-mile range it could even serve as an only car if you rarely frequent Britain’s motorway network. The same can’t be said for the Honda, but it wins this test thanks to superior quality and more satisfying driving manners. It’s also the one you want to be in, the one you want to be seen in and the one you really want to own. It’s the ideal second car.

1 VERDICT

POWERTRAIN

HONDA E ADVANCE

TORQUE

CLAIMED RANGE / TEST FIGURE

FIAT 500 ICON

Lovable inside and out, and drives brilliantly to back up the looks. Only let down by range

Electriﬁcation brings a massive step forward for the 500, just not quite as polished as the Honda

1 e-motor, RWD

1 e-motor, FWD

152bhp

117bhp

POWER ACCELERATION

0–62

8.0secs

0–62

9.0secs

232lb ft

162lb ft

137 miles / 105 miles

199 miles / 150 miles

100

1,555kg

1,465kg

36kWh

42kWh

171 litres

185 litres

TOP SPEED

mph

WEIGHT

BATTERY SIZE

BOOT CAPACITY

8 SCORE

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PORSCHE 911 GT3 TOURING

Wingless wonder £127,820 4.0 6cyl

503 bhp

6spd man

3.9 secs

CO2

21.9 mpg

292 g/km

FOR Mesmerising engine and handling, low key bodywork AGAINST Is it perhaps too polished? Getting hold of one

ave the manual. There are plenty of other choices to make when buying a GT3 Touring, but that’s the only one that really matters. It puts you more in touch with this incredible ﬂat-six engine, makes you think more, be more involved, use diﬀerent parts of this engine’s strident, far reaching range. Cracking shift, too. And besides, the pull of the PDK paddles is a bit soft. Just bear in mind you won’t save a penny. All GT3s, regardless of gearbox or whether

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you choose the Touring package, cost £127,820. Let’s put money to one side now, as these things are oversubscribed already. Touring package, that’s the key here. It’s a commonly held misconception that the Touring is a backed off GT3, fitted with softer springs, dampers and a more forgiving set-up. It’s not, and hasn’t been since it first appeared in 2017. This is a cosmetic package. The big wing goes, and in its place comes the pop-up spoiler from the regular 911, the exterior brightwork is aluminium rather than black and inside you have leather not Race-Tex. The aim is a lower key experience, less track focused due to the downforce reduction. This car is about tactility rather than power and numbers. I can tell you the 4.0-litre nat-asp flat-six has gained 10bhp since the last generation, but that’s not remarkable. It revs clean through to 9,000rpm, which is. Getting in the car, having the rev counter in pride of place and seeing that the 12 o’clock point is 5,000rpm and that’s only halfway round the

markings... well, if you still think that petrol has a place, these things matter. The purity, noise and drama is a vital reminder of just how dull electric is. Two nitpicks. It could – should – be louder inside. The noise is almost too smooth. And the gearing in the manual (as ever with Porsche) is too long. Zero issues with the manual shift though – the cross-gate action from second to third is the slickest I’ve come across in years. You never forget that this is a hardcore car, very precise in its movements, especially its steering and turn-in thanks to the new double wishbone front suspension, which even at modest speeds has detectably improved the front axle’s bite and grip. It’s more incisive than ever, and firmly sprung (although the way the suspension rounds the edges off even big hits is a delight). Not raw, just perfectly filtered. Not a huge step on from the old one, but still a car you could drive daily. To have this tactility and precision in such a desirable, understated package is unbeatable. Ollie Marriage

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10 GENESIS G80

Mindful sort £45,800 2.5T 4cyl

300 bhp

8spd auto

6.0 secs

CO2

26.1 mpg

205 g/km

FOR Looks, beautifully made, fabulous interior refinement AGAINST Drive, 2.5-litre petrol engine is vocal when pushed

enesis is Hyundai’s luxury diﬀusion line, a well-known quantity in its home market and the US, now tilting at the establishment in the UK and Europe. Many have tried and indeed are still trying, but Hyundai’s top brass see it as a matter of honour to lock swords with the big players. And they want to do it by being diﬀerent. Last year, Genesis shifted 130,000 cars globally so the ambition is certainly not being thwarted.

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The G80 really does do different, an imperious looking saloon whose dropping rear roofline and cut-off tail suggest coupe-like grace in a sector populated by largely trad saloons. And it’s big, measuring 5mm shy of five metres long. It’s available with the choice of a 2.2-litre, 207bhp four-cylinder diesel in rear-drive only form, or a 2.5-litre, 300bhp turbocharged four-cylinder petrol which gains all-wheel drive, as tested. It may seem nuts coming to market with only two ICE options while everyone else embraces electrification, but the truth is that these cars are here to establish a bridgehead for the brand and the Genesis modus operandi. As it happens, the G80’s engine isn’t its best feature. It’s vocal when stretched and expresses only modest enthusiasm for high revs or spirited acceleration, should you decide to energise its two-tonne mass. Better to wind it all in and enjoy its terrific rolling refinement. Double glazing is standard on the front windows, an option on the rear, while it also has a system that’s similar to the technology you’d find in noise-cancelling headphones. The upshot is a car of phenomenal decorum. It’s a road-test trope to nominate Audi as architect of the best car interiors. Well, Genesis is here to raze the traditional hierachy. The G80’s cabin is superbly screwed together, thoughtfully conceived, and delivers the perfect blend of digital and analogue.

In some respects the Genesis G80 is as soothingly reassuring as a BBC Sunday night sitcom. Whatever else is bothering you, the G80’s goal is to make all the bad stuﬀ go away. At least for the duration of your journey. Provided you don’t start asking it dynamic questions it doesn’t really want to answer, it’s generally impressive. It’s extremely well made, easier to operate and less showy than some of its rivals, and ticks all the tech boxes. The interior experience, in particular, is worldclass. We suspect that what’s coming might be more exciting, but as a mobile manifesto for a new brand this’ll do just ﬁne. Jason Barlow

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10 L AND ROVER D E F E N D E R 1 10 V 8

Pitch perfect £101,220 5.0S V8

518 bhp

8spd auto

5.4 secs

CO2

19.5 mpg

327 g/km

FOR Commendably silly, masses of V8 character AGAINST Pricey, mpg figures in the mid-teens

he new Defender’s programme director Stuart Frith recently told TG that a V8 wasn’t in the product plan when the project began eight years ago, but the team built a couple of mules early on and in the end it was just too good an opportunity to miss. And boy are we glad of that. Oﬃcially this is badged the P525. You’ll recognise the engine – it’s JLR’s familiar supercharged 5.0-litre unit that makes 518bhp and 461lb ft of torque here. That power is sent

046 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M

to all four wheels and means that the longwheelbase 110 can do 0–62mph in 5.4 seconds. LR has toughened up the Defender’s chassis to cope with the extra grunt – and weight – of the V8. That means larger diameter anti-roll bars, stiffer suspension bushes and bespoke spring and damper rates. There’s also a new electronic active rear diff and a Dynamic mode for the terrain response system that sharpens the throttle response, weights up the steering and livens up what Land Rover calls “continuously variable damping”. This is a good thing. However, the Defender V8 isn’t actually one of JLR’s SVO products, so despite the extra tuning it isn’t supposed to be stiff and hard riding. There’s plenty of heave and pitch under heavy acceleration and braking – call it character. This version of the Defender is far from elegant, but it turns in well, copes with quick cornering and then blunderbusses its way across any following straight section, while the nose rises up and makes a break for the sky.

The smooth eight-speed ZF automatic gearbox is the same as you’ll ﬁnd in all other Defenders, although here you get wheel-mounted paddles for manual upand downshifts, and you still get the full range of oﬀ-road capabilities. If you can park the feeling that everyone else on the road – especially those who are scooting around in miniscule-looking hatchbacks – thinks you’re a bit of a pillock, then it’s a fantastic thing to drive. Greg Potts

BOWLER DEFENDER CHALLENGE

£99,500 CO2

L AND ROVER D E F E N D E R 1 10 P 4 0 0 e

2.0T 4cyl

£65,915

c300 bhp

8spd auto

n/a secs

n/a mpg

n/a g/km

I’VE HAD MY DRIVING DEITY EXPERIENCE. OR more accurately, the new Bowler Defender

FOR Unexpectedly rapid, seamless PHEV integration

Challenge has handed it to me on a plate,

AGAINST No seven-seat option, four-cylinder a little grumbly

its chunky tyres, stripped out interior and

because while it may look intimidating with bombproof underbody protection, this short wheelbase 90 rally car is a softy

2.0T hybrid

398 bhp

8spd auto

5.6 secs

CO2

85.3 mpg

76 g/km

n the outside at least, the Defender P400e looks almost identical to its combustion-engined siblings. The only giveaway to its electrified nature is the newly sprouted charging flap on the left rear flank. Yep, it’s a full plug-in hybrid. A 2.0-litre turbo four-cylinder petrol engine produces 296bhp under its own steam, but it’s paired with a 105kW electric motor and when both work together there’s a maximum of 398bhp and 472lb ft of torque. Very healthy. In fact, in a 0–62mph sprint it’ll only be two tenths off the 110 V8. The Defender’s standard eight-speed auto is present again, and the P400e is permanently in four-wheel-drive mode whether you’re running on electric power alone, a bit of both or petrol power. It’s also unique in that all-electric drive can be combined with the low-range ratios, so the car’s off-road abilities are never compromised. The battery is a 19kWh lithium-ion unit that can provide up to 27 miles of EV range, and 50kW rapid charging means 80 per cent from flat in just 30 minutes. It’ll do 85mph in EV mode too, but at that point aero – or lack of it – really is the arch-enemy of range.

It is a big old bus, the 110 with added batteries. It weighs 2,525kg, but does manage an impressive 3,000kg of towing capacity. Obviously, Land Rover’s official efficiency figures have to be taken with a pinch of plug-in salt – we managed 36.8mpg, but you’ll do much better if most of your journeys are local. The Defender only gave us a driving score of 56 per cent and suggested we take a look at its eco tips. Must try harder. Things always start off in Hybrid mode, but a new button on the centre console allows you to switch to either EV or Save. Both of them are self-explanatory. With the two power sources working together it gets up and goes, although the four-cylinder is a little less refined than its larger capacity siblings when asked to work hard. The switch between electric and petrol drive is fairly seamless, though, and there’s a decent feel to the brake pedal despite its regenerative properties. The extra weight doesn’t seem to have harmed the Defender’s progressive steering and general on-road manners either. If PHEVs suit your day-to-day lifestyle, this is the Defender to buy. Just be aware that with batteries under the boot floor, you can only have it in 110 form and you can’t spec the seven-seat option. Still, just tick the box for the front row jump seat if you need extra kid-carrying space – they’ll love it. Greg Potts

designed to suit drivers of all abilities. Bowler is reviving its one-make race series with this car. The Challenge first ran between 2014 and 2016, when competitors drove old Defenders with diesel engines, manual gearboxes and a tendency to roll over like submissive dogs. This all-new version is based on the monocoqued P300 Defender, so features a turbocharged four-cylinder engine that usually makes 296bhp but breathes a bit freer here thanks to a less restrictive exhaust. Major changes were avoided to keep costs down (that purchase price gets you the car, the Bowler rally conversion and entry into the championship) so the standard eight-speed automatic gearbox also remains. Bowler reckons that’ll be great for newbies, though, as you can progress from leaving it in auto to using the new column mounted paddle shifter. It’s massively confidence inducing and Fox Racing dampers mean that you can launch it into the air and it’ll barely rebound on touchdown. Electronic nannies have had to be switched off including the traction control and stability control too. This is as analogue as the new Defender will get, and it’s bloody brilliant. Greg Potts

TO P G E A R . C O M

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047

10 T O Y O TA YA R I S C R O S S DYNAMIC F WD

Fashionably late £26,465 1.5T 3cyl hyb

114 bhp

CVT auto

11.2 secs

CO2

65.7 mpg

98 g/km

FOR Hybrid stuff works well, some interesting ideas here AGAINST Ride needs some improving, sometimes sluggish

oyota is a bit stubborn – got there ﬁrst with all that hybrid malarkey, to be fair, but a bit slow on the uptake with some of the latest automotive fashions – electric cars, stylish tiny SUVs, that sort of thing. Still nothing electric, but this new, higher Yaris hopes to ﬁll a gap in the range as it must surely be bleeding sales to taller, less practical, but more fashionable cars. Cross? Must be furious. The Yaris Cross looks alright for what it is – it’s got a sort of manga Volvo XC40 thing

048 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M

going on with its bluff front and rear and even the squared wheelarches have a first-gen RAV4 vibe. With its handy urban frugality and inoffensively stylish look, this Toyota’s got school-run mums firmly in its Cross-hairs. It’s frugal because there’s only the one powertrain option, the familiar 1.5-litre 3cyl engine from the Yaris complete with fancy hybrid set-up. The new car also uses the same TNGA platform that underpins a load of other Toyotas (including the boring, normal height Yaris) and has been credited with making them much more fun to drive than in recent times. It’s still relative, of course – the Yaris Cross does feel similar to the standard car, and it’s fairly chuckable and light. Could be we’ve driven too many heavy cars recently – the car’s 1,200kg kerbweight tips it just over, say, the Juke. The traditional CVT scream is refreshingly muted, thanks to improved low down torque from the engine and electrics. We even got about 57mpg on our route of mixed urban and country roads.

The ride is a bit disappointing – quite firm and fussy, to the extent that the mirrors were vibrating – but we must lob in the caveat that we were behind the wheel of a left-hand-drive pre-production car with a few more tweaks to be made to ride and refinement before UK deliveries start in September (orders are already open). The comfortably squishy seats help improve things – the interior might not match the pizzazz of the outside, but it’s all very solid and there are some nice places to hide things up front. There’s decent room for rear passengers and 400 litres of space in the boot. A nice touch back there – a 60:40 split flexible floor, for added practicality. The clever thing about arriving late to a segment as established as this is that you can look at everyone else’s efforts and make your own improvements. Except being stubborn, Toyota has stuck firmly to its middle of the road credentials and come up with a perfectly useful option that’ll appeal to sensible types without pushing any boundaries. Sam Burnett

O T R T O C O E D R I R D OU Y

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MUST TRY HARDER CITROEN C3 AIRCROSS

£17,320 CO2

P 1.2T 3cyl

108 bhp

6spd man

10.1 secs

51.5 mpg

136 g/km

MOST ‘B’ SUVS ARE BORN FROM SUPERMINIS – the Ford Puma is essentially a larger Fiesta, the Seat Arona a scaled-up Ibiza, the Renault Captur is an enlarged Clio and so on. But though it too is based on a supermini, the Citroen C3 Aircross has altogether more practical origins. Because it effectively replaced a

FERRARI PORTOFINO M

M is for Modiﬁcata

mini-MPV, the C3 Picasso, and Citroen didn’t want to totally alienate its existing MPVloving customers, the Aircross had to be

£175,360

practical. And it is – uncommonly so among little SUVs of this size. It’s also good value, with prices starting at a little over £17,000, and endearingly quirky to look at and sit in.

P 4.0TT V8

612 bhp

8pd auto

3.5 secs

15.7 mpg

CO2

409 g/km

It’s also emphatically Not Sporty – that’s

FOR Better brakes, more power, more dynamic, looks great

not Citroen’s vibe. Where other firms do their best to convince you their crossovers are dynamic and fun to drive, Citroen

AGAINST There are more Ferrarilike Ferraris, for a bit more cash

openly admits it’s focused on comfort. Fine by us in principle – the C5 Aircross and new C4 are especially soft and floaty. But not the C3 Aircross. It’s been stiffened up to cope with the extra height over the C3, so doesn’t ride as Frenchly as you might expect. It‘s still softer than rivals, so it pitches under heavy braking and acceleration and rolls through bends, but patters over imperfect road surfaces, thumps through potholes and generally bobs around following the camber of the road. Disappointing. Tom Harrison

050 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M

t would be damning the Portofino M with faint praise to say that this is “just a facelift” of the standard Portofino – this is much more than mere lunchtime aesthetic tweaking – but yes, this is an evolution of the familiar GT/Spider convertible, bearing as it does Ferrari’s usual ‘M’ (for Modificata) suffix that denotes cars that have had a “significant boost to their performance”. It’s not so much a Portofino on steroids as much as a Portofino that’s been down the gym. Easy identifiers? The M features more aggressive intakes on the front bumper, with a new drag reducing vent on the top at wheelarch height, a new grille and a more pert rear thanks to a redesigned exhaust. There’s a new rear diffuser, new wheels and lots of little detail changes. In terms of hardware, in comes the 612bhp bi-turbo V8 and 8spd paddleshift from the Roma Coupe. Also better aero, better brake feel, two more options on the manettino drive selector, more driver assistance systems and

other improvements that make it nicer – by that we mean faster/more satisfying – to drive. But all that doesn’t make it a racetrack refugee. The M is tougher, yes, but still supple, and as good at slow-speed showing off as it is at full-gas thrills. The new gearbox is spot on for pottering as well as redline bashing and the car also rides somewhat more languidly in the softest settings – which is appropriate. And while the improved brake pedal feel might be more noticeable on the track, it also helps you be smooth on the road and in traffic. Saying that, when you go fast, the engine bares its teeth, and if you’ve got the traction control settings in the correct positions, will either allow you to slide within safe (er) digital fencing, or go full ‘off’ and risk your no claims discount. The potted version is really that the Portofino M is a better car than the standard Portofino in pretty much all of the key aspects. It’s not cheap at £175k, and probably wouldn’t be considered a definitive vehicle for the marque, but it’s more dramatic than stuff like a £150k-ish Porsche 911 Turbo Cab, and more theatrical than anything Mercedes makes in the sector – it just depends what you’re looking to use it for. Tom Ford

The overrun Small but perfectly formed reviews. The best of the rest from this month’s drives

VOLVO V60 RECHARGE PLUG-IN H Y BRID T6 AWD

The current-gen Volvo V60 is a good-looking car, isn’t it? Plug-in hybrid power doesn’t change

The new C estate is physically

MERCEDES-BENZ C 2 0 0 E S TAT E

bigger than the car it replaces, so now boot and cabin space are on par with the BMW 3-Series,

that, and suits the big Swede. You

£46,130

£n/a

get up to 36 miles of EV range

and it has all the same S-Classgrade tech as the C saloon. Our

and a decent turn of pace from FOR A glorious way to travel if

the combined powertrains, with

FOR Comfy cabin with good tech,

car had a 1.5-litre petrol motor,

you prioritise comfort

the electric motor on the rear axle

more spacious than before

and though quiet and smooth

AGAINST It’s a big two-tonne bus that feels its weight

providing 4WD. It’s pricey versus

AGAINST Some cheap cabin

generally, it’s too buzzy for a

rivals and you’ll feel the weight of

materials, 1.5-litre not our choice

Merc and feels down on power. The 2.0-litre diesel is far better.

the batteries under braking, but P 2.0T 4cyl hybrid

335 bhp

5.4 secs

134.5 mpg

CO2

41 g/km

the interior is a wonderful place to be and Volvo does seats

201 bhp

7.5 secs

43.4 mpg

CO2

149 g/km

model year update, and while the myriad changes for the MY22

FORD KUG A FHE V

answer quirks we’ve had to

the new C-Class you want, just not with this engine. TH

The plain hybrid Kuga has a much smaller battery than the plug-in – just 1.1kWh versus 14.4kWh. You

Plus Four appear subtle, they

£64,995

So the estate is without doubt

Morgan has embraced the

MORGAN PLUS FOUR MY22

P 1.5T 4cyl

better than anyone. GP

can’t charge it from the mains and

£33,595

it has no meaningful electric-only

hurdle in our long-term test car.

range. Instead, both power

FOR S ubtle model year tweaks

Same styling, same chassis, but

FOR Cheaper than PHEV, very

sources are constantly traded for

fix some annoying flaws

there are comfier seats, a pair

economical, no need to plug in

max efficiency. It’s as economical

AGAINST It’s still a car that

of USB ports in place of a 12V

AGAINST No PHEV-style tax

as the diesels but much quieter

requires effort day-to-day

socket, a less fiddly roof

breaks, wooden (actual) brakes

and more refined. A worthwhile

mechanism and the option of a P 2.0T 4cyl

255 bhp

5.2 secs

39.0 mpg

CO2

165 g/km

electrified option if you don’t

lockable valuables box behind the seats. It all adds up to a car that’s easier day-to-day. SD

P 2.5T 4cyl hybrid

187 bhp

9.1 secs

52.3 mpg

CO2

125 g/km

TO P G E A R . C O M

have anywhere to plug in, but if you’re a company car driver you’ll want the tax-friendly PHEV. TH

› SEPTEMBER 2021

051

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054 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M

Recreating an Eighties icon like the Countach? Good luck with that. And yet Lamborghini has taken a brave pill and dived right in WORDS JASON BARLOW PHOTOGRAPHY DENNIS NOTEN CGI RETOUCH JOHN W YCHERLEY & MAGICTORCH

TO P G E A R . C O M

› SEPTEMBER 2021

055

COUNTACH REBORN

ell you didn’t think Lamborghini was going to sit this one out, did you? The world’s most consistently flamboyant carmaker has gone back to the source... welcome to the Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4. Imagine that the world’s greatest supercar had never ceased production, evolving instead through model cycles to rock up in 2021, 50 years after its shocking debut looking like... this. Only 112 will be made – referencing the original’s LP112 internal codename – costing north of £2m each. And they’ve all gone. Anniversaries are easily won excitement generators and irresistible money spinners. Sant’Agata has been here before, of course. The Countach bowed out in 1989 with an actual Anniversary edition, although that car was celebrating the company’s 25 – mostly turbulent – years in the game (the car itself was a mere 18 at the time). Horacio Pagani was the man who dared to reframe the epochal original, an act akin to daubing a moustache and little round glasses on the Mona Lisa. Less well remembered is 2006’s Miura concept, a 30th anniversary reimagining of the car that kick-started the whole mid-engined supercar thing in the first place. Walter de Silva did that one, but Lamborghini and its then-new boss Stephan Winkelmann evidently weren’t feeling it. Half a century, though, is a substantial chunk of time. And both 1971 and the Lamborghini Countach are worthy of committed celebration. The Sixties changed everything, for good and bad, and it wasn’t until ’71 that the new decade announced that things were going to be different round here. The Stones gave us Sticky Fingers,

056 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M

While ergonomics on the original were comical, in here it’s positively spacious

TO P G E A R . C O M

› SEPTEMBER 2021

057

“THE WORLD’S MOST FLAMBOYANT CARMAKER

HAS GONE BACK TO THE SOURCE”

TO P G E A R . C O M

› SEPTEMBER 2021

059

COUNTACH REBORN Marvin Gaye his politically charged masterpiece What’s Going On, while David Bowie figured out who David Bowie was going to be on Hunky Dory (these are unquestionably three of the greatest albums ever made). Meanwhile, in Turin a car designer called Marcello Gandini had spent much of the previous five years rehearsing his moves before setting the controls for the heart of the sun with ’71’s Lamborghini Countach LP500. If high performance Italian cars had previously dedicated themselves to a notably sensuous form language, things were definitely changing. You get the impression that Gandini would have made the wheels hexagonal if only that hadn’t defied 5,500 years of engineering evolution. Instead, he did the next best thing and ensured the wheelarches were acutely angled, along with the rest of the car. The trifling matter of being able to see out was dealt with by introducing a periscope – periscopio – in place of the rearview mirror. Not many cars used a periscope, and the channel it carved into the Countach’s roof would become a signature element. As did the infamous scissor doors, the only solution on a car as wide as this but another masterstroke. (See p64 for our interview with the maestro.) However, designing a car like this is one thing, building it quite another. And this is where Lamborghini stunned the world by actually putting Gandini’s UFO into production. “Earlier in the Sixties there was the Porsche 911 and the Jaguar E-type,” Lamborghini’s design director Mitja Borkert tells TopGear during a world exclusive preview of the new car in a secret viewing room. “We were coming out of the post-war aerodynamic design ethos and into something truly cutting edge. Especially in Italy. The big names were fermenting a design revolution but the Countach was the only one that became a reality. This is another thing that makes it so special.”

The Seventies can keep the flares, unless we’re talking about wheelarches

060 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M

Borkert grew up in communist East Germany so was denied the full schoolboy poster-on-the-wall Countach experience. In fact, the first Gandini-designed car he remembers seeing was the Citroen BX. A cool thing in its own right, especially in a sea of Ladas, but no Countach. Five years into the job running Lamborghini’s Centro Stile, Borkert now knows every millimetre of every car the company has ever made. But none more than the Countach. “You can keep looking at it and never get tired,” he says. “The original was the culmination of that four-year period that resulted in the Alfa Romeo Carabo, the Bizzarrini Manta, Stratos Zero and Maserati Boomerang. We were going to the Moon, Concorde was in development, there were student uprisings in Paris and Prague. There was a lot of revolutionary thinking, and cars acquired a lot of hexagonal shapes and powerful graphics.” Now Mitja and his team are risking the wrath of that corner of the internet that a) loves to reimagine hero cars and b) wastes no time abusing a carmaker if it goes there itself. This all-new 50th anniversary Countach is a risky enterprise and a reputation killer in the wrong hands. Fortunately, disaster has been averted. Weirdly, given its inspiration and the brand behind it, it’s a masterpiece of restraint, a homage that builds out on the original’s key elements without tipping into pastiche or, worse, appearing to be retro. Yes, once you know it’s a Sián underneath, you can see a bit too much of the donor from some angles, but look at the flat plan of the nose, the asymetric rear wheelarches, and the way the ducts behind the side windows keep faith with the ultra-controlled surfaces of the original. This is closer to the original than the later bewinged and more tumescent iterations, the ones that corrupted themselves for the coked up, big hair, metal loving Eighties. It’s taut, tight and looks terrific.

Its full name is Countach LPI 800-4, and its technical spec will be familiar to anyone acquainted with the recent Sián hypercar. In actual fact, this isn’t a new car but another run-out for the hard points that underpin the hugely successful Aventador and its derivatives. The engine is a 6.5-litre V12 that produces 774bhp, aided and abetted by a 48V e-motor that throws another 34bhp and 26lb ft into the mix. So the ‘I’ part of LPI stands for Ibrido, indicating Lamborghini’s first steps on a journey that will eventually culminate in full electrification. Needless to say, Lamborghini goes about things its own way: this hybrid uses a supercapacitor rather than a conventional lithium-ion battery. So while a supercap can’t store as much energy as a normal, equivalently sized battery, it has three times the power density and can also charge up pretty much instantly. Which makes it the best solution in the new Countach, where the motor’s power and the energy harvested under braking is used primarily to torque-fill during gearchanges. This is an area in which the Aventador’s fun but gnarly single clutch sequential box has never done its best work, shall we say, and we know from our experience in the Sián that the e-motor helps. It sits between the engine and gearbox, and weighs just 34kg. The chassis and body panels are made of carbon fibre, for enhanced structural integrity and lighter weight. We doubt that anyone signing on the dotted line for a 50th anniversary Countach will be persuaded by its hybrid tech, though. This is all about bragging rights. But it also very deliberately reins in the showbiz. “The Countach went through a lot of versions during its life, although fewer than 2,000 were made, so the idea was to have a clean, solid and timeless design for this one,” recently returned CEO Stephan Winkelmann tells TopGear. “We wanted to highlight the best elements, the squared off

wheelarches, the quad exhaust, the air intakes, and the amount of tyre that’s visible at the rear. We didn’t want to overload the car. “This is a pure celebration of something that happened 50 years ago. As a rule I don’t like retro cars, I prefer to have a forward-looking vision. But the original didn’t just change Lamborghini’s DNA, it changed everything in the world of super sports cars, so this is a valid exercise. The Countach is always the reference car. It was the first of a kind.” So it’s modernist rather than madcap. It’s also worth noting Mitja Borkert’s form in this regard: during his time at Porsche he authored the magnificent Mission E (the Taycan’s conceptual precursor) but was also responsible for the 917 Homage. This is a guy with an amazing knack for riffing off a company’s greatest hits without coming off like a tribute act. He concedes that renderings for a Countach 50 have been around for a while before the management finally gave it the green light. There may even have been pop-up headlights on one iteration. “I couldn’t and wouldn’t go straight to this,” he confirms. “We created cars like the Terzo Millennio first. The Sián was a car for a concours event, where you take a glass of Prosecco and walk around the car and think, ‘do I like it? Do I not like it?’ It was intended to be a car with a lot of flavours inside, like a very complicated wine. The Sián is spectacular, it’s part of the continuum that gave us the Veneno and the other limited run cars. I know full well that some people don’t like it. That was part of the plan. But when it came to the Countach, I said to my guys, ‘Now I want the clean car that everyone is expecting from me.’” The NACA duct has grown significantly, Mitja admitting that getting air into the engine was the biggest challenge of all. “Just as it was for Gandini,” he smiles. But while he admires the Quattrovalvole, the new

These slotted rear intakes are faithful to the original 1971 show car

Mitja Borkert with his homework. Don’t stress Mitja, you’ve passed with flying colours

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“THE COUNTACH IS THE ULTIMATE GAME CHANGER...

car’s movable rear wing is preferable to an outsized fixed aero appendage. The drama of the original’s cut-off rear is repeated on the new car, including the quad exhaust pipes. The bianco siderale colour of the show car references Ferruccio Lamborghini’s personal Countach LP400 S but includes some metallic blue elements for more depth. Inside, the car gains an enlarged multimedia screen, 3D printed air vents, while the cabin is finished with a very Seventies square motif. There’s even a little button marked ‘Stile design’ which displays the design DNA of Lamborghini. Fortunately, there’s substantially more room inside than in the comically cramped original, though still nowhere to put your mobile phone. Speaking of which, the alloy wheels use the ‘telephone dial’ design motif. Overall, it’s a highly sophisticated piece of work, all the more so because it was completed as Italy’s COVID lockdown began and the team worked remotely. “The Countach is the ultimate game changer,” Mitja concludes. “I recall seeing one during Pebble Beach on Highway 1 and you could identify it from a mile away. The Countach went out of production in 1990 but I always had the feeling there was unfinished business, that the perfect Countach was not there yet. “The NACA duct on the LP400 was a bit of an add-on. I love the QV because the wheels and wheelarches got wider. The Anniversary was a bit too much for me. So yeah, unfinished business. I wanted to do a car that was super clean and puristic. There’s just one line on the front wing and we wanted to play with big surfaces at the rear. I’m more than happy to play around with those different shapes on the different cars we have. The Essenza is a five and a half metre racing projectile. The Sián is a car beyond design. But the Countach is pure sculpture.”

BUT THERE WAS UNFINISHED BUSINESS”

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We visit the design genius at home in Turin to talk Miura, iPhones and what he really thinks about the modern remake of his most famous work... WORDS JASON BARLOW PHOTOGRAPHY DENNIS NOTEN

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MARCELLO GANDINI

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“Yes, I designed this car. And yes, I designed this house... and a few other things”

You can keep your Henry Moore... this is our kind of sculpture garden

MARCELLO GANDINI

There comes a time in life when some sentimentality or nostalgia is surely inevitable. Not if you’re Marcello Gandini. Here he sits in the atrium of his splendid house – a former abbey, which he converted himself, obviously – in the hills near the northern Italian powerhouse of Turin. He’s 83 now, a spry, elegant man lately in need of a stick to get about. But his mind remains as sharp as a tack, his views often mischievous, unconventional and philosophical. One of the true legends of car design, whatever status the world has conferred on him is lightly worn. “Generally speaking, a car that everyone used to like isn’t liked any more, or it’s liked a lot less,” Gandini notes, a cigarette perched delicately between slender fingers. “The Countach, for better or worse, is still enjoyable to look at 50 years later. Whereas the Miura annoys me a bit.” His eyes narrow and he runs a hand through an enviably thick head of hair. Cigarette ash tumbles to the floor. The Miura is widely regarded as perhaps the most unequivocally beautiful car ever made, the one started by Giorgetto Giugiaro just before he left Bertone in 1965 and completed by Gandini (although the exact nature of its authorship will forever be contested). It’s difficult to see what could possibly annoy anyone about it. Gandini, though, dismisses the car as a crowd-pleaser. “It’s just not my thing anymore. When I designed the Miura it was important for me and Bertone to do something new that was acceptable to everyone. The Miura was aggressive but had a softness, it was more easily assimilated because it was in the tradition of great Fifties and Sixties sports cars. It was the beginning of my career so

I was being prudent. After that, though, I wanted to do something totally different...” Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers suggests that genius is rarely if ever born but is instead the result of family background, education, opportunity and hard work. No one doubts their brainpower, but Bill Gates and Steve Jobs also happened to be in the right place at the right time. The Beatles, meanwhile, had racked up 10,000 hours of practice before they signed their record deal. Sure, they had three world class songwriters but they grafted. Gandini and Giugiaro were born within two weeks of each other in August 1938 and their careers took flight in a Turin that was awash with highly skilled fabricators working in a business that was booming off the back of Italy’s post-war economic miracle. Although each likes to be referred to rather grandly in conversation as maestro, neither thinks of himself as an artist so much as a problem solver. But both had artistic roots and Gandini, the son of an orchestra conductor, attended a Liceo classico in Turin. “I refused to play the piano because I was forced to do it when everyone else was outside playing games,” he recalls. “But I still have my father’s piano here.” His first foray into car design came when he reworked a friend’s OSCA 1500 for a hillclimb. “I used wire mesh like you would on a chicken coop,” he says. “I was born a designer of mechanical things. But back then it was impossible to make a living doing that. I liked cars but in terms of making them go fast, not because of their shape. If you want a device you have to know what it’s for first. Otherwise how can you design it? You cannot separate design from mechanical substance. With regards to styling it’s a fact that you have to create emotion. Without it a car is useless.” He takes a drag on his cigarette and rearranges his slight frame in the chair. More mischief. “When you’re young the important thing is to work because it’s important to eat. I got to eat every day by designing cars so in that sense I had some success.” This is not a man who dwells much on his past, and the memories commingle with some left-field musings. His early sketches were done directly onto his bedroom floor, he says, and he confesses he didn’t really have a clue what he was doing. By the time he came to Bertone’s attention, he’d racked up some credits for notable carrozzerie, including Touring and Ellena. He says that Giugiaro threatened to leave if Bertone hired him, but then his great rival departed anyway. Once he got going, Gandini barely drew breath. He rarely slept either. The Miura’s design was completed at midnight on Christmas Eve 1965, the prototype constructed and ready for the Geneva show barely two months later. “It took 24 days to produce the first model,” he remembers. He worked for 66 hours straight on another project before finally relenting and getting some shut-eye. For 1967’s Marzal – all sci-fi dazzle and impossible glazing – he and his team worked through the night to finish the one-off show car, only for a cleaner to turn up at 6am, take one look at it, and throw his broom down in disgust. Everyone’s a critic... Then came the Countach, the original and arguably definitive disrupter. “We wanted to distance ourselves as much as possible from what had gone before,” Gandini explains. “It was important not to repeat anything at all, to do something completely different. For me, this has always been critical. A Lamborghini should be a Lamborghini, but above all it shouldn’t be like any other Lamborghini. I don’t want to sound pompous but the Countach is more like a work of art because it wasn’t conceived to please people, it had to have its own soul.”

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MARCELLO GANDINI

The name, he says, came from one of the guys who worked for him. “He was a huge man, very strong, with enormous hands. He spoke almost entirely in the Piedmontese dialect and he used the term often. It actually means ‘contagion’ but he used it in the sense of admiration or amazement. I chose the name and we cut out the script that appeared on the show car and stuck it on. No one saw it until the car went to Geneva.” I ask him if he regards the Countach as the apotheosis of an idea he began developing on 1968’s Alfa Romeo Carabo and 1970’s Stratos Zero. The former pioneered the famous scissor doors, while the latter introduced the ‘wedge’ silhouette that audaciously rejected the sensuous form language of countless beautiful and mostly Italian sports cars from the previous two decades. What was he thinking? Or smoking and drinking? “Well, they’re from the same family, let’s say. It was about the evolution of surfaces that was not too common at the time and trying to create something that made sense. I don’t know to what extent logic was involved although that’s something we’ve been taught about since the period of the ancient Greeks. Look, there are times when you succeed in obtaining a result, and times when you don’t. I don’t question this part of the process but I do sometimes question why I’ve made bad cars. There were periods when unfortunately I allowed myself to be inﬂuenced and I made bad things, or at least things that weren’t good enough. I always preferred having to do things in a short amount of time, when I have less time to listen to other people or when I’m forced into a corner.” He pauses, and gently positions his cigarette in the ashtray on the table. I read a quote to him, in which he says he prefers the “archive of memory that easily erases the disagreeable items”. There’s a hint of a smile, the ﬁrst.

“I THINK ABOUT WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO HAPPEN TOMORROW” “Honestly I prefer to think about the future, or current things. I’ve always refused to live in the past except that people kindly take an interest in my life. I would have a hard time living if I didn’t think about what I would like to happen tomorrow.” I ask him what he thinks of Apple’s iPhone. “I have all the admiration I can muster for Steve Jobs who invented that. Obviously if others hadn’t already done things, from quantum theory onwards, the cell phone wouldn’t even exist, and Jobs might not have done anything... but as it is, he took an incredible step.” Marcello Gandini, you sense, is not easily impressed. His house is fabulous, and he’s proud of another that he designed and built in Corsica. There’s also a helicopter, a truck, and the interior of a Turin nightclub on his CV. But this architect of some of the greatest and most inﬂuential cars ever made doesn’t have a garage stuﬀed with exotica. Not his style, you could say. A Lamborghini employee tells me that when Gandini last visited the factory in Sant’Agata he turned

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up in the family’s rather careworn Mitsubishi Colt. He remains an engineer of ideas, the archetypal problem solver. And there are still problems to be solved. “There has been an enormous evolution in car manufacture. But what has really been achieved? Man has been replaced by a robot, yet the operations have remained more or less the same. I had an idea about reducing the size of factories, rather than just replacing humans with robots. That makes no diﬀerence, although robots are more reliable. I wanted to reduce the size and cost of the factory itself, and also to drastically reduce the number of components and pieces of sheet metal needed to make a car. I took out some patents for this concept and sold them to Renault in the Eighties and another one to India. But no one has the strength, power or will to change the actual factory concept.” With that, he stubs out a cigarette. I want to ask him about the concept of ‘hauntology’ – a nostalgia for lost futures, as coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida – and the

SOME SERIOUS WEDGE GANDINI’S GREATEST HITS

The Countach Anniversary was the work of one Horacio Pagani. Wonder what happened to him...

persistent presence of past objects. Is the man who designed the future destined never to escape it? But Gandini has another meeting, this one with Lamborghini’s design director Mitja Borkert who has just arrived from Bologna. Among other things, he wants to show him a model of the ‘new’ Countach, the 50th anniversary car. The past explicitly haunting the present, and brilliantly so. Touchingly, and despite his own formidable CV, Borkert remains a true design fanboy. He’s brought a model of the LP500 and a Gandini biography for the great man to sign. But he’s also masterminded the ultimate homage, and it’s apparent he’s a little nervous as he presents it to his predecessor. “For years I’ve been studying the essence of the Countach,” he says. “The silhouette inﬂuences all Lamborghinis. I was joking with my designers that between the concept car and the ﬁrst production car you added the air intakes and the NACA duct. We faced the same challenge today because the wind hasn’t changed...” And then the master smiles at the apprentice. “Good job,” he says simply.

Alfa Romeo Carabo

Alfa Romeo Montreal

BMW 5-Series (E12)

Citroen BX

Fiat X1/9

Lamborghini Miura

Lamborghini Countach

Lancia Stratos Zero

Renault 5

Renault Magnum

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u o y r o f h s a We’ll pay rce born in the if you we

Fancy an Eighties classic? Forgot to invest in Bitcoin? Here’s TG’s guide to the affordable(ish) icons WORDS SAM PHILIP

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EIGHTIES CARS BUYING GUIDE

GROUP 1 BRIT BRUISERS

TVR TASMIN YOU’LL PAY – £9,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – YOU’RE BATTLING A CRIPPLING MID-LIFE CRISIS. AND WINNING! There aren’t many Eighties TVRs left on the road today,

motoring, might provide you with several minutes of very exciting motoring before punting you into a ditch while simultaneously suffering terminal mechanical failure. At least, it will if you avoid the four-cylinder ‘200’ model,

most having been punted into a ditch or suffered terminal

which is less likely to deliver a serving of Armco, but more

mechanical failure, quite often simultaneously. But you

likely to see you overtaken by a bicycle. Stick to the V6

can still pick up a Tasmin for under 10 grand, which, while

or V8 and avoid any with badly repaired crash damage.

unlikely to provide you with many years of trouble-free

Because there’s definitely going to be some crash damage.

LOTUS EXCEL

JAGUAR XJS

YOU’LL PAY – £10,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – ROGER MOORE. FROM A DISTANCE

YOU’LL PAY – £8,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – A PURVEYOR OF TOP-SHELF MAGAZINES. BUT A SUCCESSFUL PURVEYOR OF TOP-SHELF MAGAZINES

It’s not one of the prettiest Lotuses. Or one of the best driving Lotuses. But it’s still a Lotus, and with

If you’re talking bang for your buck, it’s tough to beat a Jag.

its doorstop silhouette and pop-up headlights, is

Shop wisely, and that might even be the bang of plentiful V12

quintessentially Eighties. Thanks to plenty of Toyota under

performance rather than the bang of a head gasket letting

the surface Excels have proved more reliable than other

go for the final time. The XJS offers a lot of car for the cash with

Lotuses, making this the perfect car in which to live out your

just eight grand securing you a British classic that announces

Eighties James Bond fantasies without being in quite the

to the world “yes I’ve done alright for myself”. Admittedly

right car to live out your Eighties James Bond fantasies.

followed by “not necessarily through entirely legal means”.

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HONDA CRX YOU’LL PAY – £8,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – TO THOSE IN THE KNOW, A JDM CONNOISSEUR. TO OTHERS, A CIVIC DRIVER The Eighties Japanese performance legend you really want, of course, is the first-gen Toyota MR2. But prices for the original Mister Two have skyrocketed, so why not opt instead for the (slightly) more practical, (slightly) more affordable CRX? Lissom kerbweight, double-wishbone suspension all round and rev-happy engines mean the CRX drives as good as it looks. And – with lines allegedly inspired by the Alfa Romeo Junior Zagato – it still looks good...

FORD ESCORT XR3i YOU’LL PAY – £9,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – A RAM-RAIDER. BUT A RAM-RAIDER WITH TASTE The XR3i was the fast Ford that established fast Fords as the boy-racer chariot of choice. Of course, those Eighties boy racers will today be dad racers or even grandpa racers, but let’s not dwell on the relentless march of the ageing process, and instead appreciate the timeless thuggishness of Ford’s original FWD hot hatch (if not its somewhat limited performance).

EIGHTIES CARS BUYING GUIDE

GROUP 2 BLUE-COLLAR HEROES

OPEL MANTA B2 YOU’LL PAY – £12,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – A TRAGIC GERMAN CAR OBSESSIVE. SO THE BEST SORT OF CAR OBSESSIVE In the German language, der Mantafahrer – the Manta

seems to have become more socially acceptable in recent years, particularly the post-1982 ‘B2’ generation and its shoebox styling. Find yourself a clean example, ignore the fact that no stock Manta – even the range-topping GTE

driver – is a well established stereotype – an aggressive,

– was especially rapid, and revel in the neat handling and

macho man obsessed with his car and his hairdresser

unusual sensation of driving an Opel/Vauxhall that won’t

girlfriend. Well, it’s time to reclaim the reputation of Opel’s

send onlookers into a stupor. Beware examples with rotten

pre-Calibra coupe, because the Manta is a design that

rear arches. Beware any that’ve been heavily modified.

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EIGHTIES CARS BUYING GUIDE

GROUP 3 CONTINENTAL CLASSICS

MASERATI BITURBO YOU’LL PAY – £12,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – YOU’RE LIVING THE DOLCE VITA DREAM. ON THE BACK OF A RECOVERY TRUCK The BiTurbo was not only Maser’s first volume production

And boy, did stuff go wrong. Early BiTurbos were hideously unreliable, but Maserati soon got its act together, with later examples only quite unreliable. But you’ll forget all that when you slip into the luxurious cabin, a riot of pale wood

car, but also the world’s first to employ twin turbocharging.

and velour and many buttons, up to a quarter of which

On the upside, this meant some pretty serious performance

may still work if you’re lucky. A Gandini redesign in 1987

from its compact V6, with later examples nudging 250bhp.

softened the BiTurbo’s lines, but we’ll take the in-yer-fascia

On the downside, it meant a lot more fiddly stuff to go wrong.

styling of an early car. And full RAC membership.

BMW E30 320i YOU’LL PAY – £8,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – A MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE. IN A SO-SO BONUS YEAR We had to have a BMW somewhere. The blue and white roundel is the epitome of thrusting Eighties materialism, the decade establishing BMW as the go-to brand for the greed = good generation. E30 M3s have become silly money recently so why not go the other way with an understated 320i? Crisp, timeless lines, BMW’s legendary ‘M20’ straight-six under the bonnet, the breeze through your flock-of-seagulls barnet. Lovely stuff.

RENAULT GTA TURBO YOU’LL PAY – £13,000 YOU’LL LOOK LIKE – A DISCERNING SPORTS CAR ENTHUSIAST. OR A NAIVE SPORTS CAR ENTHUSIAST Old 911 too predictable – and too reliable – for your discerning tastes? Want something with more glass than the actual Louvre? The GTA Turbo has a 200bhp turbo V6 in the back, fibreglass bodywork to keep weight down, a super-low drag coefficient and spicy handling – what’s not to love? Um, maybe its chronic rust issues. (Quite how a car that’s mostly made of plastic can suffer so badly from rust we’re not quite sure, but trust Renault to find an answer.)

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FORD BRONCO

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Need to get from Texas to Colorado in a hurry? Well saddle up, that’s what the new Bronco was made for WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE

PHOTOGRAPHY DW BURNETT

FORD BRONCO

BRADY. ‘THE HEART OF TEXAS’. Literally and – as I’m about to discover – metaphorically. The air stirs lazily, barely sifting the high summer heat it carries. I descend from the cool cockpit and slam the flat door. It’s quiet in town. Not much moves, and nothing moves fast. Then... Quick footsteps. “Say, is that mine?” I can’t decide if the guy is joking or not, but the expression sure is serious. As he strides across the baked, dusty street, I notice the Ford sign on the wall of the garage he’s just left. “Ah’ve bin waiting months for this. Boy, it’s a fine lookin’ thang”. He’s still walking, excitable arms jabbing and semaphoring like a TV evangelist. The boots stutter fractionally as he reaches out to pat the Bronco, “I don’t remember orderin’ the Sasquatch pack, have you thrown that on for free?”, he exclaims, “and why’s it on manufacturer plates?” The penny drops. This, unfortunately for the lead salesman of Brady’s Ford dealership, is not his now-six-weeks-behind-schedule demo car. Still, it’s the first Bronco anyone in town has seen, so across come the mechanics who’ll one day be working on it. Solidly built is an early impression, bigger than they expected, too. They’re excited about it and so are their customers. The Brady (pop 5,513) community has already ordered six, but there’s much chat about delays caused by the nationwide semi-conductor shortage – only one buyer is actually expected to take delivery this year. One chap disappears, returning minutes later with an original 1976 Bronco. Its 302 V8 sounds terrific, belying the 125 horses contained within. He has another, a gorgeous green pickup, in the garage behind. It’s like a film set inside, there’s so much dusty Americana.

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We’d only stopped here for the mural on the wall opposite, but end up shooting the breeze about TopGear, about Ford, about Texas. They lean back and drawl, the conversation only drying up when one of the techs, asked if NASCAR still mattered, shrugged and said, “Yeah, but I stopped going when they banned me taking my confederate flag.” There’s a line in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy, freshly arrived in the Land of Oz, informs Toto “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”. It first came to me after a sunset walk around metropolitan Austin last night when photographer Dave turned and said, “We’re going to see some stuff tomorrow because Austin... well, Austin ain’t Texas.” The phrase will dance through my head again tonight, when we park up after 745 miles at a Super 8 motel in a small town called Las Vegas (no, the one in New Mexico, pop 13,753), and while checking in a huge guy in camo gear walks in behind me with a hunting rifle, waves it at the clerk and says “I’m just bringin’ it in from my truck for safekeepin’”. That night I do not consider myself kept safely. This Bronco is my key to a world I don’t really recognise. Same language, different barriers. Here’s a car to prise them open though. Everyone, everyone knows what it is, knows the heritage, the tech spec, wants to talk – and knows embarrassingly more about it than I do. When we grab a late lunch just north of Justiceburg I sit in the diner booth genning up. In days gone by, the toughest, most rugged off-roaders had a separate ladder frame chassis with beam axles at either end and a body on top. That’s still the current Jeep Wrangler. The latest

These guys were clean shaven when they went on the Bronco waiting list...

The Generation Game, except American style. New TV show potential?

Spartan interior is low on luxury but high on wipe-clean-afteroff-roading practicality

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Defender was a radical shift, using a monocoque chassis and fully independent suspension at each corner. The Bronco is more aligned with the Jeep (its separate chassis will underpin the next Ranger pickup), but has independent double wishbone front suspension. Over here we’d say it’s a proper 4x4, in America it’s an adventure truck. If it came to Europe – and having driven it I think that’s less likely than ever – I’m not sure what we’d use it for. We don’t have the same yee-haw attitude to punting about in the boondocks, because we don’t have boondocks to punt about in. And it’s not aligned with current European tastes – we’re moving ahead, embracing electric, but here’s a rugged truck with a choice of two petrol engines, neither with a hint of hybridity. No V8 mind you – choices are the 2.3-litre four-cylinder Ecoboost familiar from the Mustang, and the motor we have, a twin-turbo 2.7-litre V6 Ecoboost with 330bhp and 415lb ft. That’s progress, I guess. The Lone Star state isn’t ready for electric. The distances are too big, the towing needs too hefty. Only once all day do we pass within 20 miles of a Tesla Supercharger. An enlightened attitude to speed though, with many single carriageway roads carrying 75mph limits. Here’s another surprise: wind turbines outnumber nodding donkey oil pump jacks. Hadn’t expected that. For the energy generators – and most oil production out here is a rusty one-pump porchfront operation – wind must be so much more cost-effective. You put a fan up, feed electricity straight to the grid. We stop by a silent pump jack. A pigeon flies out from its nest in the back of the donkey’s head. It’s dusty, bleak and remote, No Country for Old Men territory. Suddenly the head rears and it creaks into life. Another pigeon flies out. The smell of oil is instant and potent, but this is crude in more ways than one. We love the end product, but this is petrol’s abattoir stage. It’s best not to look where it’s come from. Texas is only embracing one end of the energy switch at the moment, but with everyone out here mounted on a pickup, it makes me realise how potentially vital the F150 Lightning is for Ford, how that could be the real revolution. The Bronco is a plaything, people want it because of the headlights, the attitude, the retro vibrations that strum straight back to the 1965 original, even though it’s been 44 years since Ford last introduced a new one – the MkII that eventually died in disgrace, forever associated with one fallen angel’s low-speed flight from justice. The Bronco is a short-range image builder, full of fun and zest for life. It’s probably at least partially responsible for making me think a 185-mile late afternoon detour is entirely sensible. Roswell, New Mexico: a four town, three-hour hop along the 380 just to take a picture by a daft sign. Worth it. Especially for the sign above a shop that reads “Ancient of Days: rocks, fossils, Christian supplies”. Dave and I, slurping iced coffees, try to work out what those might be. These distances should be purgatory for anything with a ladder frame, 35-inch tyres and lift-out roof panels. But I’m impressed by

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FORD BRONCO

“THE BRONCO IS A SHORTRANGE IMAGE BUILDER, FULL OF FUN AND ZEST FOR LIFE”

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FORD BRONCO Price: $34,995/$62,605 as tested Engine: 2.7 V6 twin-turbo, 330bhp, 415lb ft Transmission: 10spd auto, 4WD Performance: 0–62mph in 5.9secs, n/a mph Economy: 20.5mpg (EPA), n/a g/km CO2 Weight: 2,321kg

“WE STOP AS THE SUN DROPS AND FIND A DIRT ROAD, JUST TO KICK UP A ROOSTER”

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FORD BRONCO

how well engineered it feels. It’s not euro-sophisticated, but the panels insulate well (only whistling in strong crosswinds), the Goodyears are quiet and although it patters on most surfaces and big hits to the rear wheels are transmitted into the heavy back axle and shudder into the car, it doesn’t destabilise things. You’re not having to constantly correct wayward steering. The front end tracks straight and true. Handy north of Roswell as I reckon there’s not a single corner before our overnight stop another 140 miles distant that I can’t steer with my knees. We stop as the sun drops and find a dirt road, just to kick up a rooster. I take out the roof panels, but only the front two fit in the boot with all our gear. Airflow is not managed at all, but who cares? The centre section and whole rear come off too, and for the full surf truck experience all the doors unbolt. And whole bumper sections, front wings, wheelarch extensions. You can basically dismantle your Bronco. Best leave the leftovers somewhere secure. We nearly forget the centre panel, used as a drone landing pad. We wake up to mountains. If I’d run a finger along the horizon last night, they would have been tiny braille bumps, far away and bleached peach by sunset. They must’ve closed in after dark. A palette of brown, of soil and earth and scrub, has become green, lush pastures, moss, trees. The sense of emptiness has gone. It’s trite to say that Texas is huge, flat and open, but here’s a measure of how much space there is. There’s no knock down and rebuild. When a building outlives its usefulness it’s just abandoned, a replacement erected somewhere in the vicinity. We passed endless shacks, presumably the original farmhouses, now tumbled into ruins. There’s less of that now, a greater sense of preservation at this, the south-east corner of the Rockies. Proper roads, proper curves, inclines and elevations that ask more of the car. It doesn’t have all the answers. The engine, smooth and muscular where it matters, is good, with enough thump to make the top spec Bronco feel significantly lighter than its 2,321kg kerbweight. But the 10-speed auto is slow and slurs, quick kickdowns quite beyond it, manual control only via an awkward switch on the side of the gearlever. A seven-speed manual is available with the four-cylinder. All things considered, nah, probably not.

The Sasquatch pack adds 35-inch tyres, electronic diff locks, Bilstein shocks, raised suspension and more. It’s the Bronco in its least tarmac-friendly guise. And yet the independent front suspension allows you to place the car accurately, to steer without having to take second bites at the wheel through corners. I expected vagueness and squidge, and while hardly tactile or incisive, it makes a decent fist of corners. Both brakes and throttle are sharp, the Bilsteins manage roll well, it copes. Tell you what though, these balloon tyres don’t half contain a lot of air. The frantic hissing started several hundred yards back and shows no sign of letting up. Taos, New Mexico is something of an off-road mecca. I’d scouted Red River Pass, a trail that hairpinned high into the mountains. We’d swung off the tarmac, I’d twisted the console mode dial to Baja, automatically engaging four-wheel drive, and off we’d gone. It was narrow and loose, in places rockfalls had clearly tumbled across the track, sweeping away vegetation, forcing me to sashay a somewhat vertiginous edge, but the Bronco was taking everything it faced in its stride. Confidence growing, I decided to pick up the pace. And then the hissing began. “Puncture,” said Dave matter-of-factly. “Maybe it’s just a leaf caught in...”, I replied. “No, puncture, we need to turn round and get back down fast.” Less matter-of-fact now, but then it was all happening on Dave’s side, the hissing and the vertical drop. We sweep into trees and the track opens out, so we pull over and take stock. A sharp rock has sliced deep between the tread blocks. But that’s fine: whacking great spare on the back door, a jack under the boot floor... It’s a scissor jack, one of those poxy little ones they put in superminis. With an extension plate to make it Bronco-sized. I’m not convinced it’s man enough for the job, so we lift it the old-fashioned way: run the front wheel up a bank until the rear waggles in the air. The bolts aren’t done up too tight, not a locking wheelnut in sight and I manage to heave, what, 35kg of wheel and tyre about without herniating a disc. As I fasten the busted rubber back on, it’s still hissing.

The Bronco will shrug off any obstacle with ease. Except maybe a low-emission zone

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TOYOTA CENTURY FORD BRONCO

Is that the sound of wind whistling in the treetops or another puncture...?

A slight misreading of the ‘hands at 10 to 2’ command there

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“THE BRONCO IS CLOSE TO UNSTOPPABLE IN THE ROUGH”

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Pikes Peak. A literal high point of the 1,100-mile trip

ILLUSTRAT ION PE TE LL OY D

HOW TO IMPORT A BRONCO TO THE UK STEP ONE: Buy it. From a dealer in the US. One nearer a port will lower your transport costs, but those are small in the grand scheme. Bronco is in demand so expect to pay above list price.

Corners, and lots of them. Welcome to the mountains

STEP TWO: Ship it. Firms such as CFR Rinkens or ShipMyCar can handle all transportation for you. Sharing a container with another car will cost about £950.

STEP THREE: Watch where it sails from. Houston, New York and Savannah are nearer, cheaper

Las Vegas. No, the other one. watch out for gun-toting camoclad people in hotels

ports than Los Angeles. On top of shipping put aside £1,200 to cover such essentials as loading fees, customs and insurance.

STEP FOUR: Once cleared, it’ll need an IVA test, which checks its UK road suitability and

Dust trails followed by zero steering input for many miles

legality. The modifications (orange indicators etc) cost about £700, the test itself about £200. Another £200 should cover six months’ road tax.

STEP FIVE: You’re about £3,500 in now, so prepare for the shockers: your $50k (£35k) midspec Bronco may have looked a bargain, but cars less than 30 years old attract duty and 20 per cent VAT – respectively around £3,500 and £7,800. All in? About £15,000 to get your Bronco to Blighty.

Roswell. No alien has ever been. They crashed 75 miles away

Donut around a nodding donkey. No greater tribute to oil

Brady. Beards here. Deﬁnitely not of the hipster variety

Austin. Texas for hipsters. Unlike the rest of the state

FORD BRONCO

Bronco takes on Pikes Peak... wins! Local wildlife disappointingly unimpressed

The situation curtails the fun slightly. I can’t risk another issue up here and we haven’t seen another person in half an hour, but I’m convinced that continuing to climb will be worth it. It is. The land opens up, the trails split into an off-road playground: fast tracks, axle twists, heavy roots, near vertical slopes. The Bronco makes mincemeat of it all thanks to some very clever tricks. A row of rubberised buttons tops the dash, allowing me to lock the front and rear differentials, to hydraulically disconnect the front anti-roll bar to improve axle articulation, to lock the inside rear wheel to enable tighter turns on the loose. And it all works, can be operated on the fly (OK, low range requires neutral). The Bronco is close to unstoppable in the rough. It’s more mechanical than a Defender, more connected to what’s happening at the wheels. And you can take the panels off to buff out the damage afterwards. Here’s the feel and feedback I was after – it doesn’t clank or lurch, just picks its way reassuringly over everything in its path. Special mention for the one-pedal mode. Much like in an electric car, lifting the throttle applies the brakes – very handy for precisely controlling your speed. Americans love their hardcore, heavy duty, gulch-crawling rigs and Ford expects many buyers to use the standard car as a jumping off point. There are 200 dealer accessories to choose from, and a row of auxiliary switches up by the mirror should you fit a winch, lightbar, CB radio, electrified roofrack or whatever. Screens adjust to the mode you’re in (seven to choose from, never bothered with Eco), you get useful camera views, but mainly the Bronco is simple and logical to operate. The GOAT modes (Goes Over Any Type of Terrain, rather than Greatest of All Time, although I’m sure Ford wouldn’t mind you getting that wrong), are very similar to Land Rover’s Terrain Response, but they work. There’s space and storage and this $62,605-as-tested First Edition has plenty of toys that makes it look decent value to my eyes. Out here many disagree, including the bloke leading a conga line of ATVs through the rough, “First one I’ve seen man, love it, but it’s sooo much money.” A base three-door starts at $29,995, the fivedoor $5k more. You don’t get much on those, but in sterling that’s a starting price in line with a well-specced Fiesta. There are one or two issues with the interior. The Brady bunch may have praised quality, but to a European eye the plastics are still rickety. It’s quite a hop up into the cabin and while the grab handle might be well integrated, it’s in the wrong place to help you. The instrument display is poor, the second row sits much higher than the first and struggles for headroom, the side-opening tailgate means you lift the glass separately. We regain the tarmac without further puncturing, heading down from Bobcat Pass to drift north across the high plains, where we

watch heavy squalls come at us from miles away. Great blobs of rain crack against the windscreen with similar violence and frequency to yesterday’s Texan bugs. Only this time I don’t need to stop and scrub with Sprite and a rag to see where I’m going. It’s when we hit the I-25 highway that I realise how much of the 1,100 miles we’ve covered so far has been on single lane roads. There’s more traffic, the land’s character – and my connection to it – is lessened. The road up Pikes Peak is much more than 12.42 miles long. The race start is getting on for halfway up. It’s not a hillclimb first and foremost, it’s a tourist trail, nose to tail puffing cars full of wheezing occupants. Following minivans at 25mph is not the adventurous finale I had in mind, especially when the summit proves to be a chilly building site swathed in fog. So I descend a bit, park and wait for the Peak rangers to send me on my way. Out through the upright windscreen I see bare mountain, rock, trees like bristles on a toothbrush, all America laid out below. The Bronco is just the sort of car to conquer this territory. That it’ll prove a big hit across these United States I have no doubt, that it’s been so emphatically designed for here is equally obvious. It looks brilliant, has real ability. Much more bandwidth than a Wrangler, but like Jeep’s old-timer it’s too compromised for a British audience bred on modern Land Rovers. If it came to us I can’t see it repeating the Mustang’s success. Ford does something called the Bronco Sport out here. A Kuga-sized school run device that has most of the looks, but little of the ability – that would work for us. But mainly I’m just happy Ford has been true to the Bronco’s roots. It’s no retro-pastiche. If I’ve learned one thing from people along the way it’s that authenticity counts, and they consider this to be made of the right stuff. The rangers arrive, mainly for a look-see. “We want one of these so bad it hurts,” one says. “Any idea how long the wait is?” I tell him I believe it stretches well into next year and that a man in Brady, Texas is way ahead of them in the queue.

“I HAVE NO DOUBT THE BRONCO WILL PROVE A BIG HIT ACROSS THE US”

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LAU Is it a boat? Is it a car? No! It’s a soft-top, street legal, off-roading amphibious vehicle... and a man in a silly hat WORDS OLLIE KEW

PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD

NCH

Signs of ageing include (so I’m told) gratefully acknowledging a dismal July rain shower “will be good for the garden”, noting that footballers, policepeople and – eventually – politicians are getting younger, and being astounded at what now constitutes a school trip. My dad would have considered a half day visit to a local paint tin lid factory as enthralling as a Solo-guided tour of the Millennium Falcon. Thanks to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award I was able to trudge up and down Scafell Pike in dense fog powered by a hearty breakfast of tepid boil-in-the-bag beans and Kendal mint cake. But kids these days, I tell you, they don’t know they’re born. There are 40 of them screeching around the shores of their local caravan park’s private lake. Year 5 has just enjoyed a ‘kayaking lesson’ and after, as a treat, they’ve been towed behind a speedboat on those inflatable inner tube donuts, three abreast. They’re so irretrievably off-their-nuts on a giddy dopamine high, none of them has noticed the car-goyle that’s sidled through the trees and nosed down toward them in front of the slipway, on a collision course with the murky depths. Even for a generation used to seeing the world through the prism of a glitter-eyed filter, this must be a weird sight. A young Captain Birdseye, perched in Barbie’s rip-off Jeep, eyeing an ominous sky. A photographer scurries around. Into the scene rolls an immaculate Aston Martin DB11 Volante, carrying a short private registration.

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Not often that you see a unicorn at a zebra crossing

Out climbs an overly well-dressed man, white hair swept back with designer sunglasses keeping the ’do in check. Scarlet leather ankle boots don’t suit the terrain of the muddy, puddle-blotted car park. But David Richards, founder and boss of legendary British motorsport god Prodrive, isn’t bothered. Locking his Aston, he strolls over and greets a couple of company engineers. “Bit warmer than when we were last here, gents?” he grins. If it wasn’t for Dave’s eye for a machine, a laugh, and a slice of good business, I wouldn’t be here today, in this hat, squirming as Year 5 begin to gather, chatter, and point quizzically. “I was on holiday in Los Angeles a few years ago and saw one there,” Dave explains. ‘One’ being a Watercar Panther. It’s the work – obviously – of a Californian start-up which emerged in 1999 with the noble goal of building the world’s fastest amphibious car. To do this – somewhat unfairly in my humble opinion – you don’t have to build a machine that’s rapid in both disciplines and take an average. It only has to be quick on the water, and in my book, that makes it more the world’s fastest road legal boat, but there we are. After two decades of toil, the one-oﬀ, Corvette V8-powered WaterCar Python prototype reached a veriﬁed v-max of 127mph. Of course, to sell such a craft to the general public would be irresponsible. WaterCar agreed, went back to its dealer, sorry, drawing board, and reined everything in. Swapped out the

Pah, used to be a Corvette V8 in here. Health and safety gone mad

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WATERCAR PANTHER

Seven long blasts of the horn either means he’s sinking, or he’s just been cut up

Stop looking so worried Ollie, just drive where the boss is pointing

Is it a car? Is it a boat? Well, sort of both. Right now, it’s ‘on plane’, actually

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450bhp V8 for a 300bhp 3.7-litre Honda V6. Ditched the Dodge/Vette lovechild styling for something approaching a Jeep Wrangler with elephantiasis. Filed 27 patents along the way, because heck, if you’re onto a dead cert winner, you don’t want any Tom, Dick or Cletus pinching your big idea, huh? The result is a 1.3-tonne RWD fibreglass mutant capable of 70mph on land and 38 knots on open water. That’s about 44mph, making this the only amphibious car fast enough to tow a waterskier. Which explains why WaterCar charges $158,000 for one... without an engine or transmission. Want a powerplant? It’s $198,000, with a custom paintjob on the house. Panthers have been on sale since 2013, yet they’re not moored 10 deep from Monaco to Majorca. Funny, that. I fancied mocking the name but it turns out the big black cats are in fact adept and lethal swimmers. Every day’s a school day. Panthers are also agile and graceful on dry land, though. Hold that thought. When a gentleman who owns a couple of watercraft, bought with the proceeds of a championship-winning racecar business, is on his holidays and happens across the world’s fastest amphi-car, the script writes itself. “I said I’d buy one, on the basis that we could ship it back to the UK, have a look at it, and then we’d control the European distribution rights,” explains Dave, somehow with a glint in his eye despite them being hidden behind shades. We can be confident that this particular example is the best WaterCar Panther. It’s had three years at British finishing school. You sense Prodrive’s had fun here. Engineers Oliver and Lee snigger (out of earshot of the boss) that – thanks to the aft positioning of the weighty V6 and the jet drive – with a light fuel load, the Panther will perform wheelies. The makes-a-911-look-balanced weight distribution isn’t something Prodrive could solve. Efforts have been concentrated on fundamentals like waterproofing wiring, engine cooling and sealing leaks in the fibreglass hull. You expect watertight seals for £200k? The Panther, then, joins the illustrious roster of American automobiles owing success to a sprinkling of Anglo nous. Ford GT40, Tesla Roadster, now this. You’re welcome, guys. Actually, I’m lying. The Panther is not a success. Partly because the American mothership has gone bust and there won’t be any more Panthers unless someone buys the tooling, which would seem unlikely given there are now two types of motoring start-ups: electric cars, and flying cars. Swimming cars don’t get a look in. Mostly though, the Panther is (despite the valiant efforts of Prodrive’s brightest and best) absolute rubbish. Those enormous wheelarches are invisible from the sit-up-and-beg captain’s chair. In a canal – or a contraflow – the hull is miles wider than the extremities you can actually see. We narrowly avoid a scale reconstruction of the Ever Given Suez constipation on Witney’s high street. Though it’s lighter than, say, an Audi A4, it lumbers along with the drunken reflexes of a two-tonne Chevy or GMC. The combo of knobbly marshmallow tyres and surprisingly direct, hefty steering make attempts to change course puckeringly fraught.

“IT’S A BIZARRE SENSATION TO STEER A CAR DELIBERATELY INTO WATER”

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Modes include: Shiver Me Timbers, Batten Down the Hatches and All At Sea

Panther doubles as handy water butt for dousing your veg patch

“Nice try Dave, but the ride’s a bit choppy and it handles like a bo-... ah, forget it”

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WATERCAR PANTHER

“THE PANTHER SKIPS ALONG THE SURFACE IN A MAELSTROM OF SPRAY AND V6 HOWL”

Meanwhile, the engine’s a sharp-edged slathering madman. An ever present aroma of unburnt fuel vapours wafts around. Being normally aspirated, throttle response is zippy, the rasp deafening. It’s incongruously coupled to a hopelessly vague four-on-the-floor manual, but torque is plentiful, so set up camp in third. Special mention for terror goes to the brakes. Wilwood Racing calipers peep through the spokes and you think “phew, pedigree”, but you’d be better off raising a mainsail and hoping for a headwind if you require an abrupt halt. The Prodrive boys know this. They don’t expect folks to saddle the kids into the cramped rear seats, fill the bijou under-bonnet cargo bay with lifejackets and beer then set sail on summer holiday. It’s a convenience gimmick should you tire of dragging your boat from the lakehouse down to the waterline. Cut out the middle man. Charge right in. The makers recommend entering the water at no more than 15mph. Ha. Try 1.5mph. It’s a bizarre sensation to be sat in a car, with a rearview mirror and seatbelt only to steer it quite deliberately into a body of water, not quite slowly enough. A bow wave washes over the bonnet. There’s an awkward silence punctured by water trickling out of the starboard bilge tank – a genius instant karma feature should you be at the light next to a bolshy cyclist. But we’re safely bobbing, and commence the conversion.

First, select neutral. Hold a button marked ‘wheels up’ until there’s a beep. This hydraulically tucks all four wheels into the arches so they’re not dragging below. Forget to select neutral and this process bends the driveshafts. Congrats, your WaterCar is no longer a car. Next, prod the trim planes button. Finally, tug a lever next to the handbrake to activate a power take-off from the V6, which is now running the water propulsion jet. No more than 15 seconds after wading into the drink, the Panther is ready to swim. The trick is to hold the revs at 6,000rpm as the craft accelerates and then feather it down to 5,000rpm once the boat comes ‘on plane’. In waterspeak, the fins deployed earlier are now acting as submerged wings. This hydrodynamic lift overcomes the car’s buoyancy and lifts much of the hull out of the water, decreasing drag and allowing more manoeuvrability. And speed. The Panther rises from the surface like an airliner gaining lift, and skips along the surface in its own maelstrom of spray and V6 howl. Perhaps Dave continued with his calm pace notes after this point. I’ve no idea. Couldn’t hear a word. If you’ve a molecule of mechanical sympathy it’s cringeworthy to keep your foot planted with the revs singing, but the Prodrive engineers promise they’ve flooded this motor and got it smoking hot, and it’s never detonated. Handling? Familiar if you’ve ever done any slippery surface ice driving, or go-karted in the wet. You gracefully pendulum from one ‘drift’ to the next, constantly countersteering port and starboard. Except, instead of spinning out when you lift off the throttle, you drop ‘off plane’ and settle low into the water like a crocodile. Presently, bilge collected under the bonnet sloshes forward into the overworked radiator, concealing the Panther in a furious hiss of steam. Consider it an impromptu smokescreen, like an old battleship evading fire. Some habits – like stabbing the brake pedal as the pontoon looms and wondering why you remain on a collision course with Oxfordshire – take a while to unlearn. Keep the wipers maxed. And try not to run over your wake – the Panther rears skyward on water even more readily than on terra firma. To end your voyage and make port, perform the same button presses in reverse. Disengage jet drive lever, raise the planes, don’t forget to drop the wheels to prevent embarrassing graunches, and gingerly slot into first gear. Here goes. Aligned with the slipway, I wait for the lurch as tyres touch concrete, dump the clutch and execute a flawless dismount from the deep with the combined effortlessness of Sir Roger Moore and the swagger of Captain Jack Sparrow. My juvenile audience is impressed. The Panther is “sick”. Thankfully Dave and I are not. We’ve brought bemusement, hilarity and wonder to the highways and waterways of Middle England. When would that ever get old?

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BEST OF THE BEST

Singer’s DLS project was about one thing – making the perfect air-cooled 911. Has it inadvertently made the perfect car? WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE PHOTOGRAPHY MARK RICCIONI

“NO HOLDS BARRED, HOW GREAT CAN AN OLD AIRCOOLED 911 BE?” ROB DICKINSON, FOUNDER SINGER VEHICLE DESIGN

SINGER’S DLS PROJECT

he eyes fitted as standard equipment to most human heads have a field of vision roughly 210° wide and 120° tall. We have IMAX vision, experience the world in widescreen, and can, to a limited extent, see behind us. Our eyes are radar dishes for visible light, wide open and receiving, permanently pulling in a fabulous amount of information. And right now my scope is exceptional, photons arriving from a rich, clear sky, gently swaying Welsh moorland, distant mountains, a willowy, dancing slice of tarmac and an angry gold dial. My eyes are happy, happy, happy. No human eye ever had a zoom function. So why, with peripheral vision greedily absorbing this spectrum of blue, green, black and gold, and at a range of at least 50 metres (albeit closing fast), can I spot an index finger lifting off the steering wheel of a car heading towards me? At this distance it can only be about five pixels tall. Our eyes are good at detecting movement, we focus in a fraction of a second. The finger waggles. Slowly, calmly. The effect this tiny movement has on me is dramatic. Heart rate spikes to the red line at a rate even the astonishing flat-six snarling

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“IT’S A ‘WHAT IF’ PROJECT THAT GOT COMPLETELY

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SINGER’S DLS PROJECT

OUT OF HAND AND TOOK FIVE YEARS TO FINISH”

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SINGER’S DLS PROJECT

away behind me can’t match, palms prickle, mouth goes dry. In what is definitely a very unblinking blink of an eye my IMAX experience has been traded for a telescope. Two seconds later and the waggling finger is past. As is the police car it was travelling inside. No flashing lights or awkward conversation, the warning has been taken on board, and now my heart rate descends, hands unclench and vision opens back out. I tell you this because it’s analogous to how you experience this car. You drink it in, all senses set to absorb, but then for whatever reason a single element spikes, temporarily capturing all your attention. At various times I find myself captivated by the shaping of the peanut headrest; the sucking noise as the intake manifolds open; the way the front left wheel rides the kerbs at Llandow’s chicane; how rear tyre, wheelarch and slender carbon spear set each other off. That last attention spike sees me crouched behind the DLS for about 10 minutes, studying the rear from every angle, convinced visual automotive perfection lies somewhere between this and Eagle’s Low Drag GT. But even as you focus in, your subconscious is still being rewarded, tickled and teased by the whole. But there’s no clash, all these sensations and experiences and views and sounds complement each other, because they’re all focused on the same thing: delivering the best possible driving experience. What, then, is the Dynamics and Lightweighting Study? Singer already restores 964-generation Porsche 911s originally built between 1989 and 1991. It has a fully deserved reputation for dazzling beauty and fabulous road manners. So what, for roughly four times as much money, are you getting here? In the words of Singer’s founder Rob Dickinson, the plan for the DLS was “no holds barred, how great can an old air-cooled 911 be?”. Not just a restoration, but an entire re-engineering, a ‘what if?’ project that got completely out of hand and has taken five years to finish. The reimagined Porsche 911 has been reimagined again. It’s what happens if a 30-year-old arse-engined German sports car is handed over to an F1 team, basically. The advanced engineering department at Williams Racing has done behind the scenes what Singer was already doing on the surface. The car has been through an entire computational fluid dynamics process, has redesigned front suspension, a unique engine and aerodynamically efficient bodywork. It rolled off the truck at Llandow like Tom Cruise rocking up at the Bridgend Odeon, a dazzling presence with an inner glow (thankfully no overwrought bonhomie or crowd surfing). The ducktail rear end is clearly riffing on the 1973 Carrera RS – a spoiler that didn’t actually do that much. Now it does. Look closely, spot the flush fitting glass to clean up airflow, the roofline dropped by 20mm, semi-concealed by a bridge spoiler that channels air down the plexiglass rear screen to a ducktail spoiler that’s now 22mm taller, more upright and fitted with a 5mm Gurney flap. The underbody aero incorporates brake cooling, balance ensured by a front splitter. This era’s 911 had a reputation for lift-off oversteer, a legacy of trailing arm suspension and the engine slung out the back. Manage to get past the apex and with the rear axle acting as a fulcrum, the tail would squat, weight come off the nose and you’d get understeer as you accelerated out. Singer and Williams haven’t fought to alter that characteristic behaviour, just bring it under control. Myriad changes have been made, but here are a few favourites. The gearbox casing has been shortened and recast in magnesium, allowing the engine to be shunted forward a couple of inches, torsional rigidity is up 60 per cent thanks to a mostly hidden 40mm full FIA rollcage, while the carbon body panels are structural, enchancing stiffness. The lower arm and MacPherson strut original front suspension are now double wishbone – something that Porsche has only just done itself on the latest GT3.

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“IT ROLLED OFF THE TRUCK AT LLANDOW LIKE TOM CRUISE ROCKING UP AT THE BRIDGEND ODEON”

Exquisite level of workmanship in a gloriously indulgent cabin. Well worth a couple of million. If you happen to have that kind of cash lying around...

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“IT’S DESIGNED TO BE AS

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USABLE AS ANY OTHER 911”

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“Everything is important”. Nowhere else is Singer’s mantra more obvious than the pristine engine bay... 4.0-litre flat-six is almost as good to look at as it is to use. Almost

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“IT DESERVES A PLACE ON ANY LIST OF THE FINEST INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES EVER, SIMPLE AS THAT”

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SINGER’S DLS PROJECT

I remove a wheel to have a look, and can’t believe how light the forged magnesium BBS rim is. Michelin developed a bespoke tyre for the DLS, Brembo opened its brake catalogue and told it to pick whatever it wanted. These laid up carbon CCM-R brakes are similar to the Chiron’s, but in a car that weighs less than half, I reckon have better stopping power and far superior feel. Bosch did the stability control. These are massive, top end suppliers usually working for giant corporations on business worth hundreds of millions. And yet they all wanted to be involved in a project to restore just 75 old Porsches. It sounds nuts, but that’s Singer’s reputation for you. And then there’s the engine. Porsche abandoned air-cooled flat-sixes when the 993 died 25 years ago. Without a jacket of water being pumped around, they’re lighter and more compact (I’ll come on to noise separately), but worked hard the big fan on the back can’t blow enough air to dissipate the heat. On road-going engines, Porsche never dared fit more than two valves per cylinder. Now it’s four valves per cylinder, plus twin injectors in the throttle bodies. Melting is prevented by exotic materials: Inconel and titanium exhaust, magnesium fan, sodium-filled titanium valves and so on. To ensure your experience is as undiluted as possible engine interference has been minimised. The aircon and power steering draw off a large lithium-ion battery under the bonnet, the alternator only engages when the flat-six has spare load. The intention is that there should be nothing between you and getting absolutely everything from a naturally aspirated motor that revs to 9,300rpm and appears able to caress every single nerve ending you possess. But that’s not how the DLS experience starts. It begins when I’m standing there, eyes wide and absorbing, drinking in bodywork, stance and proportion. Then zooming in on the details, the anodised finishes, the surprising heft of the carbon door, the way it slam-clanks closed. And now the interior. The feel and texture of the wheel, the view ahead, bright sun sparking off the jewelled rev counter. I give the gearlever a waggle, turn around and see that the rear compartment is every bit as beautifully trimmed as the front, run fingers over textures, wriggle in the cupping seat. Because without even driving anywhere this car delivers like almost no other. This build-up is intoxicating. So I turn the key. The needles flick, there’s a mechanical click or two, some electronic ticking. Another twist and an angry bark of revs, settling into a tight growl. Heavy clutch down, tight gearlever into first, notice the weight in all the controls, but also the sheer tactility and precision. A couple of gentle laps pass in a generally overwhelming sensory bombardment. There’s a richness and depth here, but also instant rhythm and flow, a sense all components are complementing each other. The dampers are the first standout detail I notice. They’re not that stiff, but instead have an uncanny ability to calmly soak up punishment while maintaining superb control. They’re from Exe-TC, the same firm that supported Sébastien Loeb for most of his WRC championships – so rally, not race, spec which indicates how Singer envisages this car. Unlike modern hypercars it’s not a locked and downforced pseudo-racer, but is designed to be as usable as any other 911. But that’s for later. Right now I’m totally captivated by the engine. No flat-six in my experience has ever revved faster, demolished gears quicker or been angrier than this one. There’s real ferocity in this 4.0-litre, the kind that you only get with a high revving naturally aspirated engine pushing not much weight. It’s deeply fast, but it’s the charisma and noise that distinguishes it, less air-cooled rasping chunter than I expected, but more snarling fury and motorsport intensity. It deserves a place on any list of the finest road-going internal combustion engines mankind has devised, simple as that.

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The rest of the car isn’t cowed into submission though. The classic handling traits are still there. You need to be patient coming out of slow corners or you’ll push into understeer. Lift off through quicker turns and you’ll immediately feel the back end perk up and start to arc wide. At that point you have a choice. Prod the super accurate throttle and you can exploit that, discovering the DLS has a drift sweet spot a mile wide. Or you can gather it back up and work both axles more evenly, in which case what will surprise you is just how confident you feel in the front end and how nice it is to have steering with actual feel and linear behaviour that isn’t super sharp just off centre. It’s just an utter joy. Compared with a regular Singer it’s much keener and more capable, both more reassuring and flattering. And just so, so supple. This makes the chassis sound like a softy partnered with an animalistic engine. That they work supremely well together speaks volumes – and you can of course tighten up the four-way adjustable dampers. Maybe a fraction more front-end crispness for me, but I adored it on track. But road driving is far more fascinating – 6am the next day and this time the Singer is effortlessly bestowing its A-list blessings on an unremarkable hotel car park outside Oswestry. I climb in and despite having spent probably eight hours in it yesterday, just sit there and soak it up again. And then I drive this £2m machine most of the way across Wales. The light is soft but rich, uninterrupted by

cloud, traffic is light and flowing, I’m in and out of patches of dappled shade, rowing the gears back and forth, revelling in how easy it is to get the heel and toe downshifts just right. I lower the window just to listen to the engine’s howl and thrum beat back from stone walls, then more gearshifts, to hear the overrunning exhaust rumble and crack alongside the addictive induction. Bar a handful of mid-range overtakes, which reveal how strong and clean the mid-range is, I’m barely exercising the car, instead letting it find its own rhythm and pace. I decide I’d happily drive this every day. It’s small, threads simply through tucked away towns, has remarkably easy-going low speed manners, good space and great visibility, only needs a slight voice raise inside. The turning circle isn’t that special, the stability control is slightly blunt in standard Key Up mode and the steering isn’t quite as nuanced, talkative and alert as in a Lotus. But compared with anything new? This is way beyond them. Most are so focused on doing the numbers and times that they have forgotten about sensation. Electric will exacerbate that. No the DLS is not as clean, honed and ruthless, it demands more of you, but my word does it repay your investment. It’s the Apple computer of returns. Sticking with the financial reference, yes, it’s a vast, titanic amount of money, but is this intrinsically worse value than a Bugatti Chiron or a Rimac Nevera? Because I tell you what, right now I wouldn’t swap this Recaro for any other seat attached to

“RIGHT NOW I WOULDN’T SWAP THIS RECARO FOR ANY OTHER SEAT ATTACHED TO FOUR WHEELS”

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SINGER’S DLS PROJECT four wheels. Beyond Bala you’re lifted above valleys onto hillsides, around lakes and over moors. Dew-dusted vistas spool through the upright windscreen, landscape matching the magnificence of this cabin, the DLS finally in a suitable environment. And as the splendour increases, so does the speed. Cruising with teeth, let’s call it. I just want to drive, not worry about photos or filming, just refuel and go again. It almost skates over the surface, the suspension delivering this soothing primary ride, while underneath you feel the very texture of the road, but it does nothing to deflect the car or discomfort you. Calmly astonishing, this thing. It could just deliver beauty and speed, yet it’s wonderfully multilayered with abilities that creep up on you. Even in the ridiculous scheme of things that I call my job, this is right up there. As Axl Rose once sang, it takes me away to a special place. In fact I’m going to go further and stake a claim on this being the greatest road car I’ve ever driven. The DLS is indulgent and effervescent, masterful in its broad brushstrokes, meticulous in its detail, it delivers at every conceivable scale and stimulates the senses. One in particular. It’s the noise. Over and above each of this car’s remarkable attributes the sound this epic flat-six makes (not forgetting its response and reach) stands proud. It was the facet that spiked my attention more than any other. My ears still tingle. Hopefully they’ll never stop.

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HEADLINER

SWEET SIXTEEN Somewhere in Lincolnshire the world’s most outrageous F1 engine is being brought back from the dead W O R D S J A S O N B A R L O W P H O T O G R A P H Y H U C K L E B E R R Y M O U N TA I N

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The terrible temptation of the ageing Formula One fan is to opine that motor racing isn’t as exciting as it used to be. This is rubbish. But one thing that is categorically true is that contemporary F1 cars don’t sound as good as their predecessors. Today’s hybrid engines are weedy compared with the normally aspirated V8s that they replaced, which in turn weren’t as sonorous as a Nineties V10 pulling 17,500rpm, never mind the V12s that came before them, yada yada yada... Yet all must kneel before the mighty BRM Type 15 V16, a post-war monster consisting of 36,000 separate parts that makes a sound like gathering thunder on a day when said thunder is dealing with a particularly nasty hangover and has just stubbed a toe on the door frame. It’s well worth a Google, except that no computer speaker can handle the vast complexity of the sound this thing makes.

In fact, everything about the first BRM is complex. Even Einstein would have had trouble figuring out the physics of this engine. Here’s the key fact: largely indebted to the British aviation industry, and despite having 16 cylinders, the inaugural BRM engine displaced just 1,490cc and produced 600bhp at almost 12,000rpm. This was in 1950. It would be another 30-plus years before an F1 engine would match that. On which basis, you may wonder why the BRM hasn’t been awarded a particularly grand seat in the pantheon of the greats. In a word, reliability. The V16 may have been technically mesmerising, but it was also fearsomely complicated. As indeed is the story of how it came about in the first place. “Did the engine actually get to 600bhp? Did Fangio reach 200mph in it?” Simon Owen, grandson of BRM’s main man Sir Alfred Owen, ponders. “We don’t think that the BRM story has been told properly. The company started in 1947, the same year as Ferrari, and in our Sixties pomp in Formula One it was often

“EVEN EINSTEIN WOULD HAVE HAD TROUBLE FIGURING OUT THE PHYSICS OF THIS ENGINE”

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BRM versus Ferrari. Obviously Ferrari carried on, we didn’t and it all petered out in the mid-Seventies. But we want to throw some light back onto BRM and what it achieved because it really is an incredible tale. And it begins with the Type 15 V16.” The ‘we’ is Simon and his brother Nick, acting on behalf of their father John, along with cousin Paul. They’re all scions of the Rubery Owen dynasty, at one point the biggest privately owned company in Europe, employer of 17,000 people, and the prime mover behind this quintessentially British motor racing odyssey. Simon talks animatedly about the BRM archive, a vast trove of blueprints, archive material and memorabilia that amounts to a sociocultural history of Britain during this fascinating post-war period as much as it does a brand history. But for now the main focus is on building the three ‘new’ V16s that were originally planned and had chassis numbers allocated alongside the three that did make it. His father John, who was at BRM’s original test base at the Folkingham airﬁeld in Lincolnshire

when Juan Manuel Fangio tested the car, will be getting one. “Watching the likes of the Pampas Bull [José Froilán González] and Fangio master the power of the V16 was very special,” he recalls. “In a selﬁsh way, I have always dreamed of hearing that sound again but now I’d like to share the sensation with others.” The other two are up for grabs, a rare prize indeed among the well-heeled and knowledgeable historic racing fraternity. The job of reincarnating them has fallen to globally renowned historic motorsport specialist and BRM experts, Hall & Hall. But before we get into that, we need to delve into BRM’s history. That takes us to the doorstep of a certain Raymond Mays, who dispatched a letter to the leading ﬁgures of British industry a month or two before World War Two actually came to an end pitching the idea of a national Grand Prix racing team. Mays is one of those characters you simply couldn’t make up: he attended the prestigious Oundle School where he knew Amherst Villiers – who would later develop the supercharger used on the Blower Bentleys

Rick Hall – a man with a surplus of cylinders at his disposal. He makes them all work properly

The BRM’s sleek chassis can also be used as a very expensive canoe

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Spitfire didn’t just inspire the engine layout – exhaust pipes are modelled on the plane’s 20mm cannons

“IN THOSE DAYS IT DIDN’T MATTER HOW DIFFICULT IT WAS – THE ATTITUDE WAS, WE’RE DOING IT” 116

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and would become immortalised in his friend Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel – and was a successful driver in the early days of motor racing. There’s a fabulous photograph of him driving a Bugatti in a hillclimb in Caerphilly, staring aghast as a rear wheel shears off and overtakes him. In 1933, he co-founded English Racing Automobiles, but he built out on this idea when he used his connections and charisma to sell the idea of a British racing team to rival the predominantly French and German giants of the time. Patriotic industrialists such as Oliver Lucas, Tony Vandervell, David Brown and Alfred Owen were the leading lights in a consortium that encompassed more than 100 companies, variously promising financial or material support. Game on. Alongside former ERA mainstay Peter Berthon, British Racing Motors was founded in 1947, based in the Old Maltings behind Mays’ family home Eastgate House. The first BRM was conceived as a showcase for British engineering genius and know-how. Thus the car acquired its astonishing technical specification, its power unit directly inspired by the Merlin engine that had proven so key to the success of that glorious warbird, the Spitfire. Prime among its features was the Rolls-Royce centrifugal two stage supercharger, a device that required 124 separate components supplied to BRM by 24 external suppliers. It had a vee angle of 135° and every nut, bolt, bracket and steering arm was exquisitely manufactured from solid pieces of the highest quality steel. “The supercharger has two oil filters, two scavenge pumps, two pressure pumps and crossover gears,” Rick Hall tells me. “Some of the machining in there has proven difficult with modern techniques. Yet back then the guys were working with lathes and mills, there were belts and all sorts flying around. “You look at the engine and can’t believe it’s only 1,500cc with a whacking great supercharger on it that can run at four times the engine speed. In fact, I knew the guy who designed it. I’ve got a Merlin engine downstairs, you can see that this is basically a scaled down copy of it. A lot of the parts on the V16 are like jewellery, they’re just beautifully made.” Says Hall: “The rev counter drive alone must have 50 pieces in it. Of course, they could have had a housing with a cable on it, and it would have been job done. But they insisted on using what the aero industry had done. In those days it didn’t matter how difficult it was – the attitude was, we’re going to do it.” Fair enough. Except that this bloody mindedness led to delays, and when the car did run it would spin its wheels in fifth gear at 140mph... The pressure to deliver soon became intense. The engine would repeatedly misfire at 11,000rpm during testing, and there were problems with the way the cylinder liner was sealed up into the head. This led to countless explosive failures. With the countdown on to a scheduled gala appearance at the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone in August 1950, Berthon was now living in the control tower at Folkingham airfield. This wasn’t just about debuting a new racing car, it was a matter of national prestige. In the event, Raymond Sommer managed three laps to qualify for the race, Mays one, but both BRMs swiftly expired on the grid. It was an embarrassment, of course, not least because the outside world had no idea what

divine madness was occurring within that engine. A lunched engine is a lunched engine. A young Stirling Moss would later grapple with the supercharger’s relentless boost while testing the car at Monza, and it’s thought that the power output rose from 160bhp at 7,000rpm to 380bhp at 9,000, and on to more than 600bhp beyond 10,000rpm. Imagine trying to race the thing. The situation would improve, though. In 1953, BRM raced 11 times, and even won a few races. Fangio and González appeared to have conquered the unruly beast. It had a successful afterlife in Formula Libre. A lighter, friendlier MkII was commissioned, with Tony Rudd – later to achieve greatness as the father of ground effect at Lotus – dispatched by Rolls-Royce to oversee things. In September 1952, Rubery Owen assumed control, and the grand adventure could really begin. In 1962, Graham Hill won the drivers’ championship and the team the constructors’ title. Among the driving alumni you’ll find names like Mike Hawthorn, Jackie Stewart, Dan Gurney, Pedro Rodríguez, Jo Siffert and Niki Lauda. But if history records the V16 as a folly, it’s surely one of the greatest in motor racing history. “There are a lot of things that can go wrong. We’re not reinventing the wheel because they did that,” Rick Hall notes. “But it’s the same complex piece of machinery we’re talking about. Until you see the amount of design and effort that went into it, you really can’t fully appreciate it. It was intended to be the most powerful Grand Prix car ever. To make something so complex reliable at the sort of revs it was doing was years ahead of what anyone would have imagined at the time.”

Type 15’s biggest competitor these days is the decibel meter and the marshal wielding it

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TOP F I VE

BONNET SCOOPS

1959 ASTON MARTIN DB4 GT The standard DB4 already had a rather lovely bonnet scoop, but 1959’s lighter, refreshed GT needed more air into its 3.7-litre straight-six

1970 PLYMOUTH ROAD RUNNER

CONCEPTS THAT TIME FORGOT

Plymouth’s brilliantly named Air Grabber bonnet received a refreshed design in 1970 to this vacuum operated, shark-toothed scoop

MERCEDES F 400, 2001 1970 AMC REBEL ‘THE MACHINE’ In the same year, AMC stuck a rev counter on the back of the massive ram-air intake attached to its Rebel muscle car. Because why not?

2004 SUBARU IMPREZA WRX STI King of the modern scoops, we reckon the ‘Blobeye’ WRX STI had the most iconic bonnet addendum of all the Imprezas

2006 MINI COOPER S WORKS GP When BMW-owned Mini launched its first hot hatch special, it made the already iconic little bonnet scoop the new centre of attention

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“FINDING AN ALTO WORKS HAS BECOME EVEN HARDER THAN THE GT-R NEXT TO IT” rismo u T n a his Gr addition g n i v ’s reli er obscure k r a M noth rt 13: Repo ays with a d glory

t wasn’t enough to just complete the task, it had to be finished with all golds. Partly for your own OCD and partly because it’d reward you with a better car at the end. Ivan Pavlov wasn’t on the development team for Gran Turismo, but there’s a strong chance one of his distant cousins was. Because the rage and frustration felt while trying to complete the in-game licences would usually result in both PlayStation controller and TV, plus anything else in the near vicinity, having their structural integrity compromised. At least this level of virtual conditioning wouldn’t leave a series of long-lasting effects on someone who first played it back in 1997. Which is exactly why you’re looking at the latest obscure addition, a 1989 Suzuki Alto Works. Its box-like shape is there for a reason; it’s a Japanese kei car. That means it needs to be a certain size and weight (small, light) and it needs to be powered by an engine no bigger than 550cc (which later increased to 660cc from 1990 onwards). In Gran Turismo circles, the Suzuki Alto Works would be one of the first cars you’d get access to in the game – typically within those dreaded licence tests. You’d have limited funds and the 1,000m time trial felt like it lasted an eternity. But this was all essential as you worked your way through the ranks before being trusted with something altogether beefier... like an R34 GT-R Skyline.

Good job this Suzuki Alto Works, because nothing else in Mark’s garage does

Ironically, finding an Alto Works has become even harder than the hallowed GT-R pictured next to it. Even though by today’s standards you could buy almost 50 Suzukis for one R34 GT-R. Providing you can find ’em. Go on then, what makes it interesting? Back in 1949 the Japanese government created the kei car category, which quite literally translates to ‘little car’. Those eligible can only be a certain size, weight and power, but tick all the boxes and owners can reap a range of tax and insurance benefits. Not to mention kei-only parking in parts of Tokyo, too. This particular Alto is an early front-wheeldrive model boasting a five-speed manual box, three-cylinder 550cc engine, some zebra-like carpets and not much else. Later engines gained an extra 6bhp along with four-wheel drive, but they always remained tiny. You’re looking at just over 3m long and 1.5m wide. In fact, it’s barely 10mm wider than it is tall. Why buy it? I’m officially out of excuses; I thought it’d be quite entertaining while everything else was broken. The steering column rattles at idle and the intercooler takes up more room than the actual engine. The crumple zone goes all the way to your pelvis and the speedo suggests it’ll do over 100mph. Though I fear the only man brave enough to do that would be Wing Commander Andy Green, who’d need to lose about 2ft of height before he’d be able to get into the thing. Mark Riccioni

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PROGRESS REPORT

(2008)

MAZDA RX-8 vs MAZDA MX-30 (2021)

120

AN RX-8? I’VE NOT SEEN ONE OF THOSE FOR AGES.

WHAT’S THE ROTARY LIKE AS AN ACTUAL ENGINE?

Nor had we. See, though the RX-8 was a reasonably popular

The MX-30 weighs almost 400kg more than the RX-8, has 78 fewer

choice in its heyday, since it went off sale in 2010 the little Mazda

horsepower and takes three seconds longer to reach 62mph from

has earned itself a reputation for being tricky to keep in fine fettle.

a standing start. But most of the time the instant torque from the

And for drinking engine oil at roughly the same rate most others

e-motor means it feels so much faster. The RX-8’s 221bhp doesn’t

consume super unleaded. Nowadays you can pick one up for next

arrive until you’re almost at the redline and it only has 156lb ft of

to nothing, but be careful, it’ll cost you £££s to run and maintain,

torque. Which makes it a proper laugh to drive quickly, when you

and the potential for cataclysmic mechanical failure is significant.

can really wring it out, but bloody hard work the rest of the time.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?

IGNORING THE POWERTRAIN, DO THESE FEEL SIMILAR TO DRIVE?

The engine, which is precisely what makes this car so special.

No, not really. The RX-8 is properly entertaining in an old-school

The RX-8 was the last Mazda to be equipped with a rotary engine;

rear-drive coupe kind of way. It’s well-balanced, agile and steers

a technology with which Mazda has become synonymous, and

with real precision. That the MX-30 – 13 years this particular RX-8’s

that ever-tightening emissions regulations effectively killed off a

junior – steers and rides better than the majority of affordable,

decade ago. That said, Mazda has been talking for a while now

mainstream EVs is evidence, were any needed, Mazda still gives

about resurrecting the rotary as a range extender for its first

a damn about making cars handle properly. There is something

all-electric production car, the MX-30 crossover.

that more obviously binds these two cars, though...

GREAT NEWS!

IT’S THE DOORS, ISN’T IT?

It is. Mainly because rotaries are smooth, compact and lightweight

Correct, and aren’t they just the coolest things you’ve ever seen?

relative to conventional ICEs, so they’re ideally suited to this kind

Not massively practical admittedly – less of a problem in the RX-8

of application, but also because the MX-30 is crying out for more

than the MX-30, given the kinds of cars they are – but cool to look at

range. Mazda claims it can travel 124 miles between charges, but

and operate. The handles to open them are so similar, I wouldn’t

in reality you’re looking at fewer than 100 miles of usable range.

be surprised to learn they had the same part number.

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WO R D S : TO M H A R R I S O N P H OTO G R A P H Y: M A R K R I CC I O N I

There’s more that links this rotary sports car and electric crossover than you might think

CARS NAMED LIKE PLANES

T R I UMP H SP I T F IRE (19 7 3)

LESS THAN £5K

#31

R EM EM B ER IN G

RETRO GAMING

TWISTED METAL

TH E C LA S S IC S

PLAYSTATION, 1995 F ORD MUS TA NG (1966)

LESS THAN £ 10K

Twisted Metal was released for the original PlayStation console mere weeks after Destruction Derby, but rather than relying on anything as rudimentary as head-on collisions, this car combat game featured vehicles bristling with more weaponry than an Apache gunship. With a plot that sounds like a straight-to-DVD Saw spin-off, Twisted Metal takes place in the far flung future year of 2005, where a mysterious figure named Calypso, who lives beneath the streets of LA, organises a deadly vehicular combat tournament. What that means in practice is driving around in circles, peppering each other with rockets and machine gun fire in a sort of clumsy, ultra-violent automotive ballet. Endlessly entertaining in split-screen multiplayer, it was the cast of bizarre, horror movie characters that gave Twisted Metal its

BR I S T OL BE A UF I GH T ER (198 4)

unique flavour. Your options for each deathmatch included a sort LESS THAN £4 0 K

of murderous Mr Whippy in an ice cream van, a maudlin ghost in a Corvette C2 or, best of all, the literal Grim Reaper riding around on a motorbike. We had no idea he was quite so ‘hands on’. With such a fantastical cast of characters, it’s perhaps surprising that the levels themselves were a relatively conventional tour of urban and suburban Los Angeles. It’s only the final arena that truly stands out, a rooftop level which had you hopping between skyscrapers long before Fast and Furious 7 made it cool. A cult favourite, Twisted Metal spawned several sequels and spin-offs, including the deliciously dark Twisted Metal Black on PS2, but after a lacklustre response to the PS3 reboot in 2012, there’s been absolutely zip since. Which is doubly a shame, because in addition to being a classic videogame series, we find a well placed homing missile to an enemy car’s exhaust pipe to be extremely effective. Mike Channell

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TO PG EAR ’ S LO N G -TE RM CARS . TESTE D & VERI FI E D

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BMW M3 Competition HELLO £74,000 OTR/£86,745 as tested/£1,260pcm

WH Y I T ’S HERE Is BMW’s mighty M3 still the performance saloon benchmark?

DRI VER Rowan Horncastle

THINGS MOVE OUT OF THE NEWS CYCLE QUICKLY THESE DAYS.

Doesn’t it feel like a lifetime ago that our feeds were filled with substantial scotch egg meals, the European Super League and the great M3/M4 grille controversy? People lost their minds over all three of them. But especially when they saw that BMW had slapped some fat nostrils on the benchmark performance saloon. People like me. Was I wrong? Well, having lived with a new G80 M3 Competition for a week or so now, I’ve mellowed to its face. Or become blind to it as there’s also a lot to unpack with this sixth-gen M3, which is a useful distraction. The new M3 is bigger, heavier, faster and techier than before. It has an uprated ‘S58’ straight-six that was first seen in an SUV. It’s connected to an eight-speed auto (not DCT) that has the possibility to feed all four wheels. These make ‘M people’ (not the band) wary. So I’m thankful we’re going to be spending a lot of time with this car. So what exactly do we have to play with? Well, quite a tasty spec. It’s an M3 Comp: so four doors, 503bhp, rear-wheel drive and no chance of a manual all slathered in the superb oxymoronic subtle-but-punchy Isle of Man Green paint. With extras, this is an £87k BMW M3. Eighty seven grand! But then you’ve got to remember that the M3 is now effectively occupying the space the M5 used to. Which kinda justifies the price.

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But it is quite the hike. The last M3 that TopGear ran (the spiky F80) was as generously specced as you could get it, and that came in at £64,560. It’s been an eventful first week, having spent about eight hours working out what all the buttons do, securing the fastest parking ticket in BMW UK’s history and finally suffering a puncture. But what I have found is that there’s plenty more to talk about than that grille. And we haven’t even got onto the driving, which is pretty special too.

SPECIFICATION 2993cc, 6cyl twin-turbo, RWD, 503bhp, 479lb ft 27.7mpg, 234g/km CO2

GOOD STUFF

A 3-Series, but with a few button presses turns into an animal with relentless speed.

0–62mph in 3.9secs, 155mph 1,805kg

MILEAGE: 463 OUR MPG: 24.4

BAD STUFF

An M3 used to be the benchmark attainable performance saloon.

BMW 128ti REPORT 4

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Does BMW build a better Golf GTI?

DRI VER Vijay Pattni

PLASTERED ALONG THE REAR

side sills of our long-term BMW 128ti are bright red ‘ti’ decals. I’ve already noted how the 128’s target audience might not necessarily care nor appreciate the revival of a badge that BMW holds dear to its heart. But what I haven’t is the manifestation of that badging. Does the 128ti need additional ‘ti’ badging plastered across the sides? Do the badges have to look like they came from the Nineties? Does it need those bright red air intake accents up front and at the back just behind the rear wheels? Spoiler alert: no, it really doesn’t. It’s a minor point but ruins an otherwise quite lovely spec (‘mineral’ grey with 18in ‘Y’ spoke alloys). It’s a cracking car and continues to impress. So much so, I haven’t mentioned the grille.

REPORT 5 £30,345 OTR/£32,045 as tested/£400pcm

This month: the BMW 128ti’s rev counter

£33,340/£36,140/£348

WH Y I T ’S HERE

Mazda MX-30

Vijay Pattni: If BMW hadn’t plastered it with ‘ti’ badging inside and out we’d probably say “why hasn’t BMW made it different from a regular 1-Series?”. But it has made it different to a regular 1-Series by plastering it with ‘ti’ badging inside and out. And in this instance? We’d prefer slightly less jazz hands. The ‘ti’ badging can be evocative, but not in the Ninetiesera graphics of our test car. Plus, anticlockwise rev counters: lovely on an Aston Martin, less so on a small BMW hatchback. Very tricky to read, especially when going quickly, which is kind of the point of a hot hatch, innit?

WH Y I T ’S HERE Does Mazda’s first EV have substance beyond gimmicky (but cool) doors?

DRI VER Tom Harrison

THIS JOB IS MAINLY ABOUT FINDING CREATIVE EXCUSES TO DRIVE

cars you’ve always wanted to have a go in. Cars like the Mazda RX-8. Which, as you may have noticed, has the same kind of doors as “our” MX-30. Tenuous enough of a link for you? When the RX-8 was new my dad borrowed a grey one for a weekend and I distinctly remember being captivated by those doors and the noise. The doors because, well, children are easily amused (and they are cool, aren’t they?) and the noise because the RX-8’s rotary engine spins all the way up to a 9,000rpm redline. And you have to take it there. Constantly. In the RX-8 peak power and torque don’t arrive until 8,200 and 5,500rpm respectively. And as you’ll have read on p120, the MX-30 is undoubtedly the faster car. Though it’s down on power, weighs vastly more than the RX-8 and would comfortably lose a drag race, the MX-30’s instantly accessible, point-and-squirt torque means most of the time it destroys the RX-8 in real-world conditions. Especially around town, where using 9,000rpm is plain antisocial. Even where I live in Essex. Soon, you may be able to get an MX-30 with a little rotary engine under the bonnet to extend its meagre 124-mile claimed range. Pop the bonnet and you’ll see there’s certainly space for one alongside the tiny e-motor. Mazda has rubbished reports it cancelled the project. No other manufacturer currently sells a range extender hybrid in the UK. BMW was last to do so with the i3 REX, but took it oﬀ sale when battery tech got to a point the i3 could travel far enough unassisted. We applaud Mazda for doing things its own way, as indeed it always has, but remain of the opinion the MX-30 ought to just have a bigger battery.

SPECIFICATION

1998cc, 4cyl turbo, FWD, 261bhp, 295lb ft

Electric motor, 35.5kWh battery, FWD, 143bhp

GOOD STUFF

40.9mpg, 158g/km CO2

3.3 miles per kWh, 124 miles

0–62mph in 6.1secs, 155mph

0–62mph in 9.7secs, 87mph

1,445kg

1,750kg

MILEAGE: 2,199 OUR MPG: 39.9

A longer range MX-30 may be on the horizon... we’ll keep you informed, obvs.

BAD STUFF

MILEAGE: 1,942 OUR MPKWH: 3.6

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The only downside is that you’ll need to put petrol in it.

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AUDI E-TRON GT REPORT 3 £106,950/£107,080/£1,313

DEARLY DEPARTED

WH Y I T ’S HERE Is Audi’s Taycan a better all-rounder than Porsche’s?

DRI VER Ollie Marriage

NISSAN GT-R

Kia Soul EV

Long-termers we still miss

GOODBYE £34,545 OTR/£34,545 as tested/£406 pcm

WH Y I T ’S HERE Does this EV to do the job of a normal good value family car?

DRI VER Paul Horrell

THE BEST ASPECT OF HALF A YEAR IN THE SOUL? NOTHING ABOUT IT

drove me bananas. Which sounds like faint praise. But just look at all the largely great cars that occasionally, or frequently, send us into paroxysms. We have a section of TG Garage devoted to these infelicities: What were they thinking? So this is point one about the Soul. It never troubled the compilers of WWTT – no small achievement. As a standard-size compact slightly crossover, it’s on the money. Enough space, slightly raised driving position. The steering might be numb but it’s accurate, and a multi-link rear suspension and alert powertrain actually mean that on smooth twisty roads it’s by no means a chore to pedal. On the motorway, it settles nicely. Koreans are good at electronics. The adaptive cruise control and lane centring assistance are reliable and smooth. The phone pairing and CarPlay work robustly. The inbuilt traffic mapping is fine too. The ergonomics of the menus and displays are almost flawless, so I can live with the graphics being a bit Windows 7. Not just the small electronics but the big high-voltage stuff also leads the field. Kia’s EV efficiency is really good. I’ve been regularly getting 4.3mpkWh in summer, which is 275 miles of range from the 64kWh (net) battery. Or say 3.8mpkWh at a motorway 70mph, which would be 240 miles – but you can never maintain 70 for 240 miles, so you always do better. In snowy winter, those numbers were 3.4–3.8mpkWh. In the time the Soul has been with me, the car hasn’t changed but the landscape has. Rivals are multiplying. In the sub-£35,000 field, you have to look hard to get this much range. VW’s ID.3, with 58kWh battery and 204bhp, doesn’t go as far. And doesn’t give you a volume knob. WWTT?

4.0 miles per kWh, 280 miles

GOOD STUFF

The EV part of it worked really well. Rest of it was trustworthy, useful and easy to live with.

0–62mph in 7.6secs, 104mph 1,757kg

MILEAGE: 5,712 OUR MPKWH: 4.2

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GT. The matrix LED lights do their clever thing and provided the camera in the windscreen reckons the road is clear and you’re doing over 43.5mph, on come the lasers. They’re sited in the ‘X’ of the headlight, a monochromatic blue laser beam with a 450-nanometre wavelength. That passes through a phosphor converter transforming it into white light with a 5,500K colour temperature. A lot of science to be able to see further ahead on the autobahn. The claim is the lasers oﬀer double the depth penetration of the regular lights (which still stay on), a total range of 600m. The result is amazing – the GT’s headlights are good already, but when the lasers shine (a little icon appears on the dash) it’s like you’ve turned on a WW2 searchlight. A bright, narrow beam extends as far as the eye can see. For full eﬀect, drive down a narrow, hedge-lined road – it gives you a better idea of just how far ahead you’re seeing.

SPECIFICATION

SPECIFICATION Electric motor, 64kWh battery, FWD, 201bhp

Rowan Horncastle The allure, mystique and dominance of Nissan’s GT-R is something marketers can’t bottle. And it’s not the result of paid social advertising or influencers, either. It’s down to technical innovation, motorsport dominance and a little game called Gran Turismo. The R35 instantly became a bang-for-your-buck yardstick and YouTube icon. But that was over 10 years ago. And it’s still on sale today. It’s actually been on sale so long we’ve run two of them over the years. I did the second stint of ownership a few years ago and it was phenomenal. See, as things have got a bit more clinical in the car industry, the GT-R’s grit and mechanical character now really resonate. It’s also still monstrously fast and capable – as I found driving it across the Alps and on an ice lake in Sweden. Better still, they’re now more affordable than ever. Long live Godzilla!

LATE RUN HOME IN THE E-TRON

Twin electric motors, 4WD, 93.4kWh battery, 469bhp 3.5 miles per kWh, 298 miles 0–62mph in 4.1secs, 152mph

BAD STUFF

Somehow it doesn’t look like a car for car lovers, and doesn’t really drive like one.

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2,347kg

MILEAGE: 5,665 OUR MPKWH: 2.7

Aston Martin DBX REPORT 3 £158,000 OTR/£185,500 as tested/£1,899pcm

WH Y I T ’S HERE It’s the car to save Aston Martin – is it good enough?

DRI VER Adam Waddell

THE FIRST TWO REPORTS FOR OUR LONG-TERM ASTON DBX SAW OUR

recently departed editorial director Charlie Turner spec the car with input from Aston’s design guru Marek Reichman, then help with the build at the factory. But it falls to me to deliver the first report on living with the DBX. That’s right, I’m driving a £185k, 180mph car built by a journalist. The quality control people wouldn’t sign off unless they were confident it was screwed together properly, and all seems as it should be in that respect. First impression on the road is that the DBX is massive – it feels bigger than a Range Rover, but it’s only 1cm wider. Perhaps the fact the Rangey is 15cm taller makes the Aston feel much wider. Regardless, I’ve found myself adjusting my routes to avoid the dreaded width restrictors and switched my supermarket of choice purely on the basis of the parking space widths. The styling may be a little more understated than the Lamborghini Urus but it looks unmistakably like a true Aston Martin. The first thing you note on start-up is the delightful burble of the 4.0-litre V8. It’s a satisfying sound and so much more dignified than the all-out aggression of the Range Rover Sport SVR. Better still, on the move the handling is just as you’d hope – closer to a proper GT car than a big, heavy SUV. No doubt the fact it’s both lower and lighter than a Range Rover or a Bentley Bentayga helps there. There will always be those who don’t think that sports car makers should

be producing SUVs, but I disagree. The DBX looks, feels and drives like an Aston should, and all that with the family onboard. It’s a polarising car but personally I love it. It’s more digniﬁed and less opulent than the Urus, Bentley Bentayga and Rolls-Royce Cullinan – and while the Range Rover and Porsche Cayenne are cheaper, they’re far more common on the road. The DBX isn’t cheap but it feels more than a little bit special and if you’ve got the budget, why not?

SPECIFICATION 3982cc, TT V8, AWD, 542bhp, 516lb ft 19.8mpg, 323g/km CO2

GOOD STUFF

A practical family SUV that looks, sounds and drives like an Aston Martin should. What’s not to like?

0–62mph in 4.5secs, 181mph

BAD STUFF

2,245kg

MILEAGE: 4,634 OUR MPG: 19.7

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At £180k+ including options, I’d expected a touchscreen. It’s my only gripe so far though...

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WHAT ELSE WE’RE RUNNING REPORT 2

REPORT 5

SEAT LEON

VAUXHALL MOKKA

REPORT 5

REPORT 2

PORSCHE TAYCAN

HYUNDAI TUCSON

REPORT 2

REPORT 4

MERCEDES-AMG E53 ESTATE

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VW GOLF GTI

CUPRA FORMENTOR REPORT 4 £48,045/£48,660/£596

WH Y I T ’S HERE Just what is the Cupra Formentor... for?

DRI VER Tom Ford

SO THE SAGA OF THE CUPRA’S

RACECAR RELATIVE

Morgan Plus Four

infotainment has been settled. Having now messed with, prodded and poked it, it would seem that the latency and grumpiness of the system has been banished after the update. It’s not magically made it a nicer user experience, but at least now I can get to the experience. And to be fair, I’ve dug around and ﬁgured out some set-up conveniences that have helped. For instance, if you press the Cupra button on the steering wheel and hold it, it switches from Cupra (full attack), into whatever mode you were in last, instead of cycling the settings. Handy, because after a bit of testing, I’ve found a set of parameters for the Individual setting that suit the back roads driving I tend to do. Excellent.

REPOR T 11 £62,995 OTR/£71,245 as tested/£279pcm (Morgan finance scheme)

WH Y I T ’S HERE They claim the Plus Four is a modern Morgan. Time to see if it’s true

DRI VER Stephen Dobie

I’D FORGIVE YOU IF THE PHRASE ‘MORGAN OWNERS’ MEET’ HAS YOU

picturing a motley crew of flat-capped folk convening for a cream tea. And I’m sure that does happen. But this Morgan owners’ meet was altogether different: a track evening at Donington Park. While there was a small bunch of new, CX platform Morgans like our Plus Four, a far bigger proportion of attendees were track-prepped classics with adorable rollover hoops sprouting from their interiors. A solitary 3 Wheeler pulled the evening’s average wheel count a whisker below four. After nearly 10,000 miles of enjoying our mint Mog on road, it was huge fun to let it fully breathe on track. All told, I was pleasantly surprised by how it coped; light, quick power steering and decent Avon ZV7 rubber ensure you can commit considerable speed into a corner. The one area I’d undoubtedly improve were I to drive on circuit often would be the brakes. They are very tangibly not up to repeated big stops, and I quickly adjusted my driving style for smoother, earlier braking. All the better as a relative newbie to Donington’s plunging curves anyway. I also finagled a go in the hard-topped Four pictured: a road legal racecar developed with University of Wolverhampton students. The roof is new (but will make it to the stock options list) while there are semi-slick Avons, retuned suspension and an interior that’s stripped of luxuries before the fitment of a roll cage, harnessed buckets and a removable wheel. Our Plus Four proved an amiable track toy, so it’s no surprise that a bit of concentrated lightweighting and fine-tuning morphs it into a more precise and very accessible racecar. Morgan will even sell you one with an auto if you want. For now, I want to nick its tyres, seats and wider-angled rearview mirror...

Livery pays homage to Morgan’s ’62 Le Mans class victory

Made by students. Their dissertation scores highly on circuit

A transformative part of the car: skinny, figurehugging buckets

SPECIFICATION

SPECIFICATION 1998cc, 4cyl turbo, RWD, 255bhp, 258lb ft 39.0mpg, 165g/km CO2

GOOD STUFF

1998cc, 4cyl turbo, AWD, 306bhp, 295lb ft

Our Plus Four is a sharper track toy than I had dared to imagine.

31.4mpg, 193g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.9secs, 155mph

0–60mph in 5.2secs, 149mph 1,013kg

MILEAGE: 9,460 OUR MPG: 42.7

BAD STUFF

Its racecar cousin is sharper yet. The brakes could be stronger, too.

Steering wheel can be removed and taken into the pub with you

1,644kg

MILEAGE: 4,006 OUR MPG: 28.3

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Toyota GR Yaris GOODBYE £29,995 OTR/£34,375 as tested/£396pcm

WH Y I T ’S HERE Does this hot hatch genuinely channel the spirit of the WRC?

DRI VER Ollie Marriage

I DIDN’T SO MUCH LIVE WITH THE GR YARIS AS CONSUME IT IN HITS.

And over the past eight months, I’ve realised that’s what our experience of performance cars should be. Intoxicating spikes of drama and excitement that briefly punctuate extended periods of duller, more ordinary behaviour. Name me one sports car, weighing more than a tonne and costing less than six figures, that isn’t trying to be multi-dimensional. They all are, aren’t they? They want to be your one-stop driving shop. And so they’re compromised. And as soon as you allow compromise to creep in, the first thing to suffer is the stuff you wanted the car to be good at originally. But not the Yaris. It’s a hot hatch, therefore the default daily package. But the hatch bit of that job? It was no Golf GTI. Tiny boot, cramped and awkward to access back seats. I also never relished doing distance. The car’s demeanour was “I’ll do this, but I really can’t be arsed”. But at doing the job it was designed for? Outstanding. Utterly joyous. The little 1.6-litre three was a genuinely gutsy, exciting, punchy motor. And nothing went to waste. Not one horsepower, not one scrap of traction. Nothing went wrong or fell off, although a sacrificial pheasant resulted in a £244 fix for a new fog light and undertray. It wore OZ Rally Racings for a while. But not as long as I expected. It looked terrific, but I was surprised how much the ride deteriorated, how much heavier the car felt on the road.

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Plenty of people keep telling me it needs more power, but eight months on I still don’t ﬁnd myself agreeing. They also claim it’s expensive. But I don’t think there’s another car sub-£100,000 that has more charisma, is stronger willed or more eager to show you a good time. For a bespoke motorsport project that’s received a bit of road gloss you’re looking down the barrel of a bargain. This is up there with the best cars I’ve ever run. It got under my skin. I’m gutted it’s gone.

SPECIFICATION 1618cc, 3cyl turbo, AWD, 257bhp, 266lb ft 34.3mpg, 186g/km CO2

GOOD STUFF

Everything about its attitude, excitement and tenacity.

0–62mph in 5.5secs, 143mph 1,280kg

MILEAGE: 6,215 OUR MPG: 27.1

BAD STUFF

Nothing that remotely dissuades me from wanting to own one.

EXHAUST BECAUSE KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO RENAULT From greatest hits to lowest moments, everything you ever wanted to know... and a fair bit you didn’t WORDS TOM HARRISON, JOE HOLDING

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I M AG E S : M A N U FAC T U R E R

What’s Renault, and when did it start making cars? Renault is a French car manufacturer that was founded in 1899 by three brothers: Louis, Marcel and Fernand. Louis was an engineer who built his own prototype vehicles, and on Christmas Eve back in 1898 the 21-year-old demonstrated the potential of his ‘Voiturette’ by betting his friends it could drive up the steep Rue Lepic in Paris. He duly won the bet and managed

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to secure his ﬁrst 12 orders that same night. Renault was born. With Marcel and Fernand looking after the business, Louis set to work on design. The original Type A was unveiled in the following June, ﬁtted with a De Dion-Bouton engine that could muster 1hp and a top speed of 20mph. Two months later Louis and Marcel entered the vehicle into the Amateur Drivers’ Cup

event racing from Paris to Trouville, ﬁnishing ﬁrst and second. A string of successes in other events would help put Renault on the map, but in 1903 Marcel was tragically killed in a race between Paris and Madrid, and Louis never raced again. Fast forward to the present day and Renault is one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world by volume. And it’s still racing too.

EXHAUST

Renault’s greatest hits

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FACTOID Former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn was at the centre of one of the most bizarre motor industry stories when he was arrested in Tokyo accused of ﬁnancial irregularities and It was an extraordinary development given it was Ghosn who turned

What’s the cheapest car Renault builds... and what’s The cheapest car (if you can call it a car) in Renault’s line-up is the Twizy. Prices start from just under £12,000, but bear in mind that it doesn’t qualify for the government’s plug-in car grant as it doesn’t meet the minimum range requirement of 70 miles. You’ll also have to fork out an extra £545 if you want doors. Yes, really. At the other end of the scale, the Megane RS hot hatch costs from over £33,500, and the

highly tuned 300 Trophy model bumps that up above £38,000. The latter gets a Cup chassis and a limited-slip diﬀerential for improved handling, perfect for track days or for shaving a few tenths oﬀ the school run. Not long ago, Renault made a limited edition R version of the RS 300 Trophy that shed 130kg thanks to carbon wheels and a very, very drastic diet. The cost? £72,000.

becoming something of a national hero in Japan. Another twist came as Ghosn ﬂed house arrest in December 2019, slipping past authorities while hidden inside a music equipment box. Ghosn was smuggled to Lebanon, where he has remained ever since (see p12).

What is Renault’s fastest car? Renault has been competing in F1 for decades, so its fastest ever car is technically a Formula One car of some description. Its fastest road car, though, is undoubtedly this: the Megane RS Trophy R. It

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lived up to its price tag by setting the lap record at the Nürburgring for front-wheel-drive cars, clocking a time of 7mins 40.10secs around the Nordschleife, more than three seconds faster than

the previous benchmark set by the Honda Civic Type R. The 1.8-litre turbo engine produced 296bhp and hit 0–62mph in 5.4 seconds on its way to a heady top speed of 163mph. Carbon ceramic brakes, carbon wheels and

aerodynamic improvements also helped set it apart from the standard car. Only 30 £72,000 ’Ring-spec cars were made, with the rest of the 500-unit run made up of entry-level models costing £50,000. Boo.

EXHAUST

NOTABLE PEOPLE

The Renault brothers Louis did the engineering, Marcel and Fernand ran the business

Amédée Gordini Italian racer-turned-builder/ tuner. Behind legendary Renault road and race cars

Jean Rédélé Founded Alpine, which Renault merged with Gordini to make RenaultSport

3,753,723 Renault has dozens of facilities across Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. It has several factories in its home market of France, a few in Spain, and others in Portugal, Slovenia, Russia, Morocco, India, South Korea, China, Brazil and Mexico, among many more. It even has a lab in Silicon Valley. In 2019 Groupe Renault – which refers to Renault and Dacia, Alpine and Lada, the other brands that it owns – sold 3,753,723 vehicles worldwide. However this ﬁgure fell by a whopping 21.3 per cent to 2,949,849 vehicles in 2020 and cost the company many, many billions; unsurprising given the impact of COVID-19.

What’s the best concept Renault made?

Carlos Ghosn Formed the Renault-Nissan Alliance. Had an interesting few years since...

Fernando Alonso When you think about Renault in motorsport, you think of its two-time F1 champ

Hard to pick one, because Renault does exceptionally good concepts. The DeZir (pictured) is certainly one of its more striking eﬀorts: the two-seater coupe was revealed at the Paris Motor Show in 2010 featuring a 150bhp, all-electric powertrain capable of 0–62mph in ﬁve seconds and 100 miles of range. On paper,

anyway – sadly Renault never actually put it into production, intending it as a design exercise more than anything else. Something that did spawn a production car was the 1990 Renault Roadster Laguna, which won a design award and eventually led to the creation of the short-lived Renault Spider.

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What’s been Renault’s What’s been Renault’s best moment? worst moment? Renault showed a commitment to motorsport right from its inception in the early 20th century, and has a whopping great trophy cabinet to show for it more than 120 years later. As the engine provider for F1’s constructors’ champions six times in a row between 1992 and 1997 (with Williams and Benetton) and four straight with Red Bull between 2010 and 2013, Renault won two titles of its own in 2005 and 2006; the same years its star driver Fernando Alonso was crowned world champion. Alpine has always been closely linked with Renault. Together the two brands won the inaugural World Rally Championship in 1973, the same year Renault bought a majority stake in its racing partner to save it from ﬁnancial trouble. Bringing Alpine back in 2017 with the superb, TG award-winning A110 was a master stroke.

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Arguably the low point for Renault came in 2009, when the F1 scandal now known as Crashgate came to light. Having been sacked from the team for his poor performances midway through the season, driver Nelson Piquet Jr alleged that he had been asked to crash on purpose at the Singapore Grand Prix the year before. The deployal of the safety car manipulated the race in such a way that teammate Fernando Alonso – who was unaware of the plan – could claim victory. Infuriated by his dismissal, Piquet Jr came clean and pointed the finger at team bosses Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds. The FIA banned the pair from F1 (later overturned in court) and Renault was disqualified, albeit with a two-year suspended penalty. The ruling was controversial as it meant the cheating effectively went unpunished. The reputational damage was huge, however, and by the end of 2010 Renault had sold the last of its shares in the F1 outfit to a private investment firm.

EXHAUST

LOGO EVOLUTION 1900 Features initials of all three Renault brothers. Not used on cars

19 19 Renault built tanks for the Allies in WW1, this logo reflects that

192 5 And so arrives the diamond shape, almost 100 years ago

What’s Renault’s most surprising moment?

19 4 6 A splash of colour for the first time. Yellow is officially Renault’s

There are a few candidates, but the one that stands out the most is the time Renault stuck a 3.0-litre V6 engine inside the Clio. If you’re not sure why that’s a bonkers thing to do, imagine strapping a rocket booster onto the bottom of your grandma’s stairlift. In 1998 Renault unveiled the Clio RenaultSport V6 concept at the Paris Motor Show, and the response was so overwhelming that it asked TWR to make the thing a reality. So in 2001, the Clio V6 was launched. Based on the Clio 172 (but much, much wider), the Clio V6 got new suspension, an anti-roll bar and a limited-slip diﬀerential, while the engine was plonked in the middle at the expense of the rear seats. The Phase 1 car’s engine was borrowed from the Laguna, but 230bhp was enough for 0–62mph in 6.4secs and a top speed of 147mph. Phase 2 models upped the ante to 255bhp, dropping 0-62mph to 5.8secs. Back then, that was fast.

19 7 2 No more Renault lettering. Nice and simple

1992 More shininess through the Nineties, the name makes a return

2021 A simplified version of the ’72 logo. Fitting, now the Renault 5 is back

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EXHAUST

Now you’re a Renault expert, it’s time to buy one... Renault Clio 200 / 2009-2012 / £6,000-£12,000 What is it? There have been numerous performance cars spun from the Renault Clio during its nearly 30 years. But perhaps none are as sharp, precise and downright fun as this one. Which, with bundles of joy like the Clio Williams and Clio V6 in the family, is quite a claim. But something good was clearly in the water when RenaultSport was putting the ﬁnishing touches to the Clio 200 in 2009. Few hot hatches have ever been so ﬁt for purpose.

Driving

WORDS STEPHEN DOBIE PHOTOGRAPHY SIMON THOMPSON

This is utterly magic. Sorry to jump straight to the ending, without any dramatic build-up, but

there’s simply no evading the fact this thing is spectacularly good to drive. The sign of a truly great car is when there’s no one standout element; each component is so well judged, and matches the rest so sweetly, that you can’t mark out a single area that stands tall above the others. So it is with the wee Clio we have here. Hot hatches shine best when the road’s not so straight, of course. The Clio’s reactions are razor sharp, and while grip is tenacious, there’s a playful edge if you go looking for it. Fast Clios of old ask of close attention into quick corners, but the 200 faithfully follows its driver’s intentions.

Gearbox Syncromesh failure is not unknown. Most cost-effective remedy is a whole new transmission

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Steering Steering racks can be a weak point. Listen for unusual noises while parking

A Ford Fiesta ST or Mini Cooper S is the more tail happy car, but neither has the Clio’s overall composure. And some thoughtful braking or a smart lift of the throttle makes it nicely adjustable and more than willing to pick up its inside rear wheel. On track, the Clio’s balance is simply superb. You might have guessed it’s a firm car, particularly if you’ve got the Cup chassis fitted. But it’s not unremittingly stiff; there’s some aggression over badly broken roads, but you only need build a small amount of speed for the body control to sharpen up and the whole thing to feel perfectly judged.

On the inside If we’re talking perfect spec, you want the Recaro seats. They were a pricey £850 option when new, but you know what? They were worth every penny of that. Years later, they still manage to make the plusher Recaros in the new Fiesta ST seem overwrought. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve encountered a better performance car seat, and it’s worth hunting out a car with them on board when you’re browsing the classiﬁeds for your new-to-you Clio. They can be retroﬁtted, too, mind, and some people pop them in other models, like the Clio V6.

Servicing

Tyres

Annually or every 12k. Don’t worry if it’s done a track day or two, just make sure oil changes were on time

These things go through tyres (especially fronts) quicker than you might expect. Bear than in mind when buying...

Belts Belt changes needed every five years or 72k. Check this has been done, and budget for next time

Next month: Mazda

CITY CARS

These small cars are perfect for urban life, but the trade-off is a much lower range

SUPERMINIS

You drive mostly around town, with occasional need for longer distances? Try these for size

FAMILY HATCHBACKS

A good electric family hatch needs decent range without compromising interior space

1. HONDA e

1. BMW i3

1. H Y UNDA I IONIQ 5

PRICE: £28,215–£30,715 RANGE: Up to 136 miles

PRICE: £33,805–£34,805 RANGE: Up to 189 miles

PRICE: £36,995–£48,145 RANGE: Up to 298 miles

TG’s reigning city car of the year has retro-tastic

Remember when BMWs used to be cool? Well the

Hyundai’s newest addition is much bigger than it

styling, but the range isn’t great. No worries – you don’t need to drive anywhere, just sit inside it.

i3 does. Perhaps the only model in the company’s range where everyone else will be tailgating you.

looks in pics, but comes with solid range, loads of space and a host of life-enhancing touches inside.

2. MINI ELECTRIC

2. PEUGEOT e-208

2 . P O L E S TA R 2

PRICE: £26,000–£32,550 RANGE: Up to 145 miles

PRICE: £27,225–£31,475 RANGE: Up to 217 miles

PRICE: £39,900–£45,900 RANGE: Up to 337 miles

The electric version of the home grown favourite squeezes the BMW i3’s powertrain into a familiar package. Range not massive, but the car’s still fun.

The e-208 is competent and stylish, but ultimately you’ll fall into one of two camps: outraged about the tiny steering wheel or you don’t understand the fuss.

Undercover Volvo offers Scandinavian attention to detail paired with a level of build quality that would shame a number of much more expensive cars.

3 . F I AT 5 0 0 e

3 . R E N A U LT Z O E

3 . V O L K S WA G E N I D . 3

PRICE: £20,495–£27,495 RANGE: Up to 199 miles

PRICE: £27,595–£32,095 RANGE: Up to 245 miles

PRICE: £27,120–£38,800 RANGE: Up to 340 miles

The latest version of the 500 offers sharper looks, good value and decent range – and a parcel shelf full of soft toys shouldn’t hurt the battery too much.

They grow up so fast, don’t they? The Zoe’s not long turned eight, but a recent refresh has given the car a boost. The entry model is a touch underpowered.

VW has brought the impressive all-round skills of the Golf to bear on the EV market, with budget/range compromises that will suit everyone’s needs.

4. V W e-Up

4 . VA U X H A L L C O R S A - e

4. KIA SOUL

PRICE: From £21,055 RANGE: 159 miles

PRICE: £22,360–£26,745 RANGE: Up to 209 miles

PRICE: £32,445 RANGE: 280 miles

It’s always been one of the finest city cars out there, but you’ve got to be sure you could cope with all of

A Peugeot e-208 in a Vauxhall suit – the EV’s gone fully mainstream. This is the one to buy if you don’t

A lot of electric vehicles lack soul, but not this one. There’s a distinct style/practicality trade-off, but Kia

the Yorkshire-accented jokes that plague the e-Up.

want anyone to notice you’ve taken the plunge.

also has sensible shoes if those are what you want.

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READY TO MAKE THE SWITCH? W E S E P A R AT E W H AT ’ S H O T F R O M W H AT ’ S N O T

COMPACT SUVS

Small, but perfectly formed. These cars are a perfect second motor or teeny family wagon

FAMILY FRIENDLY SUVS

Slightly larger electric cars that are designed to cope with everything you can throw at them

PREMIUM SUVS

Go big or go home, we say. Wafting along in style is perfect for an electric powertrain

1. PEUGEO T e-2008

1 . F O R D M U S TA N G M A C H - E

1 . J A G U A R I- P A C E

PRICE: £30,730–£38,580 RANGE: Up to 206 miles

PRICE: £40,350–£67,225 RANGE: Up to 379 miles

PRICE: £65,245–£76,695 RANGE: Up to 286 miles

Wait, when did Peugeots become so desirable

The Mach-E isn’t really a Mustang at all, or a men’s

The I-Pace is the electric vehicle you’ll want to

again? The e-2008 is surprisingly fun to drive and offers a chic interior with lots of nifty touches.

razor, but it looks pretty good. It’s definitely a Ford though, so relentless competence is guaranteed.

show off to your neighbours. If they’ll listen to you. Decent range, solid performance and great looks.

2. HYUNDAI KONA ELEC TRIC

2 . S K O D A E N YA Q

2. BMW iX3

PRICE: £27,950–£37,200 RANGE: Up to 300 miles

PRICE: £31,995–£42,900 RANGE: Up to 330 miles

PRICE: £58,850–£61,850 RANGE: Up to 282 miles

The Kona is highly specced, offers a solid slug of range and looks pretty sharp too. Good value, good range and good looking. What’s not to like?

As usual, Skoda offers a down-to-earth and slightly cheaper alternative to whatever Volkswagen is pumping out. To great effect, as it turns out...

Slightly stealthier than some of BMW’s more aesthetically challenging EVs, this car is essentially an electric translation of the best-selling X3 SUV.

3 . V O LV O X C 4 0 R E C H A R G E

3 . V O L K S WA G E N I D . 4

3 . A UD I e-tr on

PRICE: £49,950–£56,700 RANGE: 249 miles

PRICE: £32,150–£55,540 RANGE: Up to 323 miles VW’s new electric SUV gets the basics right and

PRICE: £62,025–£88,425 RANGE: Up to 252 miles

‘Normal’ XC40 is a peach, and electric version adds Polestar 2 powertrain to great effect. Expensive, but you won’t have to explain to everyone what it is.

of the buttonless interior fence you sit on, really.

Audi’s effort is the safest premium bet if you’re worried about switching, but overall it’s a fairly conventional EV, just with cameras for mirrors.

4 . VA U X H A L L M O K K A - e

4 . A UD I Q 4 e-tr on

4. MERCEDES-BENZ EQC

PRICE: £29,340–£32,495 RANGE: 201 miles We’re not exactly sure how to feel about finding a Vauxhall stylish, must be the pandemic strain. New

PRICE: £40,750–£65,070 RANGE: Up to 316 miles Audi’s version of the ID.4 matches solid powertrain with predictably decent interior. Low-profile exterior

The EQC is terribly fancy, but loses out to rivals in terms of practicality and performance. It’s a comfy

Mokka-e gets PSA undercrackers, so it’s decent too.

too, if you don’t want to shout about going electric.

car, but doesn’t really move the game on in any way.

offers impressive range – just depends which side

PRICE: £65,720–£74,610 RANGE: Up to 255 miles

F OR ALL T HE FAC T S, S TAT S AND IN-DEP T H RE V IE W S F OR E V ERY NE W C AR ON S ALE GO T O T OP GE AR.COM/RE V IE W S

PERFORMANCE EVs

For when money’s no object and the sky’s the limit on car performance

SPECIAL MENTIONS

The EVs that have caught our eye, for all the right reasons. Who said they aren’t cool?

“I’VE BOUGHT ONE! WHAT NOW?” You have a home charge

1. RIMAC NE VERA

BEST FOR IN A HURRY

PRICE: £1.7m RANGE: 340 miles Brain-scrambling performance from the Croatian

The new Kia EV6 arrives later this year and with its 800V charging system you’ll be able to juice up with

entry, and sure £1.7m is a lot, but you’ll basically save that on petrol in no time. Welcome to the future.

60 miles of range in five minutes. That’s provided you can find a rapid charger that’s, er, rapid enough.

point. Don’t you? Well, get one. There’s a grant, so it’ll cost you less than £500. If you don’t have a driveway, to get an overnight or allday recharge check zapmap.com for posts near home or work that give between 5kW and 7kW. Always make sure that you know in advance the

2 . P O R S C H E TAY C A N

BEST FOR REINVENT ING THE WHEEL

PRICE: £72,850 RANGE: Up to 301 miles

Tesla polarises like no other carmaker, but it’s certainly exciting that the facelifted Model S is

The entry-level ‘affordable’ Taycan RWD is pick of the range – still a great powertrain and top notch interior, but it’s more laid back and easy to live with.

challenging some of the basics. Like why should a steering wheel be round? What was that? Safety?

supplier for the post you want to use, and register on its app or get its dedicated RFID card. Rapid (DC) chargers, at a slightly higher price, are best used for long trips, like you’d stop for fuel. They take roughly as long as filling with petrol and having a full English. In winter, keep plugged

3. TESLA MODEL 3 PERFORMANCE

BEST FOR THE SUMMER

PRICE: £59,990 RANGE: 352 miles

Fancy a soft top to enjoy the sun? The choice is a

Ignore all of the Tesla hype and what you’re left with is a solid car with impressive performance. Tesla’s charge network means it isn’t just for early adopters.

500e Cabrio or a Smart ForTwo with a tiny range that

pre-warming the battery

probably won’t reach the seaside. Nice to dip your toes in the water while you charge up to get home.

and cabin increases range.

in until you drive away, as

When possible, choose heated/cooled seats over cabin heating and aircon. Try to drop your motorway speed by 10mph: it’ll hugely increase range, getting you there far more quickly if it

4 . A U D I e -T R O N G T

BEST FOR SELF-CHARGING

PRICE: £80,850–£106,950 RANGE: Up to 298 miles

The versatile Sion from Sono Motors can add up to 150

If it looks like a Taycan and quacks like a Taycan it must be alright. Audi’s pitching this in a subtly

miles of range a week just by sitting out in the sunshine thanks to 248 solar cells glued all over. You can pre-

different way – more for touring than for sporting.

order it in the EU, but there’s no sign of a RHD version.

avoids a recharging stop.

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TG’S BIG

BAFFLED BY ELECTRIC CAR JARGON? YOUR GUIDE TO DECODING THE FUTURE IS HERE EV

plug. Fast or level 2 refers

accurate than the old NEDC

Supercapacitor

Let’s start with a simple one.

Volts, amps and Watts

to the wall mounted AC

standard, but still optimistic.

Supercapacitors can charge

EV means electric vehicle, as

We’re going to go full science

charging boxes you can

opposed to one powered by

teacher on you and use an

install in your house or office,

petrol, diesel, used chip oil,

analogy. Imagine a river: the

which go up to 7.4kW on

Shorthand for ‘regenerative

for bursts of speed – and can

Chanel No 5 or magic.

Volts are how fast the river

normal 240V single phase

braking’. Electric motors work

tolerate more charge and

flows, the amps are how

AC, or 22kW on industrial

by using electricity and

discharge cycles, but they’re

much water is flowing, and

three phase. Rapid or level 3

magnets to spin a shaft. So,

still not as energy dense as

Must not be pronounced

the Watts are how easily it’ll

is the high-power, DC supply,

if you were to spin it manually,

batteries, so you’re unlikely

‘Bev’, like your favourite lunch

carry you downstream.

this is the sort you’ll find at

say, by coasting, you will then

to see them as direct battery

motorway services and

generate electricity, because

replacements. More likely

dedicated charging areas.

generators are basically

to supplement a petrol

motors operating the

engine’s performance.

opposite way.

See Lamborghini Sian.

BEV

lady, but ‘B-E-V’. It stands for battery electric vehicle. As

and discharge more quickly

Regen

than regular batteries – good

opposed to what... steam-

Logical, metric countries use

fuelled? Just call them EVs

kilowatt to measure power

like everyone else.

from petrol and diesel

CHAdeMO is not the result

engines. For the rest of us a

of a cat walking across a

kilowatt is 1,000 Watts, and is

keyboard. It’s basically the

How far you’ll get in your car

The Congestion Charge

The internal combustion

the most common measure

fast-charging standard

from the amount of energy

Zone in London. From 7am

engine. Confusingly, ICE

of power in an EV. A kilowatt

Japan came up with.

you put into it. So, it’s been

to 10pm, it’s £15 to drive in this

can also stand for in-car

is equal to about 1.34bhp.

Competing standards

fuel from a tank for most of

zone. Used to be cheaper

include CCS and Tesla

your life, now it’s a battery.

and apply over fewer hours,

ICE

entertainment (ie the stereo, touchscreen and so on).

kWh Stands for kilowatt hours and

PHE V Plug-in hybrid electric

CHAdeMO

Superchargers, which all look reaaaaally similar.

can cut two ways – how much power you’ve used (which

Range

CCS

CCZ

but it’s been ‘temporarily’

Range anxiety

hiked to cover post-COVID-19

The fear of being very far

costs for the authorities. But,

from home, on a dark and

with an electric car you can

cold night, without enough

pay a one-off £10 for an exemption that lasts a year.

vehicle, or a hybrid with a

a utilities bill does), or how

The DC charger you’ll most

bigger battery that you can

much capacity there is in a

likely use across the UK and

power to make it to a

plug in to charge, giving you

battery. For instance, a Tesla

Europe. Works in everything

charging station. In the

a short, say 20-mile, electric-

Model S has 100kWh of

from a Tesla to a VW.

short term, the solution is

ULEZ

more rapid charge stations,

The CCZ is there to ease

in the long-term, better

traffic; London’s Ultra Low

only range. Amazing tax-

capacity, of which you’ll

dodging mpg figures in the

be able to use about 90,

Supercharging

official tests, not so amazing

because fully depleting

If it looks like a CCS charger

energy density and more

Emissons Zone is to ease

in real life... unless you plug in

a battery is a great way

and works like a CCS charger,

efficient cars should ease

pollution. The ULEZ is in effect

to ruin it forever.

it could very well be a Tesla

our furrowed brows.

every hour of every day, and

every night and use the car

Supercharger. But you can’t

exclusively for short trips.

AC and DC MHE V

use it unless you’re in a Tesla.

AC stands for alternating

mpkWh

will rain down with great

Li-ion

vengeance and furious

A contraction of lithium-ion,

application of a £12.50

which refers to the chemical

charge if you drive into

The mild hybrid EV, or MHEV,

current, and DC stands for

the very bottom rung of the

Batman comics... er, wait...

Not content with the unholy

make-up of a typical battery

the zone in a petrol car

electrified vehicle ladder. A

direct current. AC’s better for

union of litres of petrol and

pack. The 12V brick used to

that doesn’t meet Euro 4

small electric motor assists

long-distance transmission,

pints of milk, the UK’s uneasy

start your petrol-powered car

standards or a diesel car

the engine, but doesn’t have

because it can easily be

blend of metric and Rees-

is a lead-acid battery, but

that doesn’t meet Euro 6

enough gumption to push the

transformed (to higher

Mogg leaves us measuring

lithium-ion is now the global

standards. The good news

car on its own. MHEVs usually

voltage, lower current,

EV economy in miles per

norm for powering new EVs.

is that full EVs are exempt.

manage a fuel saving of

so fewer heat losses).

kilowatt hour. So, if you have

about 10 per cent compared

Transforming DC power

50 usable kWh, and run at

is a faff but, because DC

4.0mpkWh, you’ll do 200 miles

Solid-state battery

Fuel cell electric vehicles, like

charging stations can be as

before you’re stranded.

The next big step in battery

the Toyota Mirai. Separating

tech – holds more energy

hydrogen and oxygen takes

than an equivalent-sized

a lot of energy, but reuniting

li-ion battery, or the same

them in just the right way

with a pure petrol car.

RE X Refers to range extenders,

big as they need to be, they can employ high-voltage

W LT P

FCEV

or small internal combustion

power, giant transformers

Stands for ‘Worldwide

engines used as generators

and rectifiers and get huge

Harmonised Light Vehicle

amount of energy but in

releases energy. You can

to recharge EV batteries on

power – up to 350kW.

Test Procedure’. A way to test

a smaller and lighter pack.

burn hydrogen, but in a

new cars to see how much

They’re easier to cool, too,

hydrogen fuel cell you

which means you can charge

generate electricity to drive

the move. Engine can be converting fuel to electricity,

Slow, fas t and rapid charging

fuel, or energy, they use, how much greenhouse gas they

them quicker before they get

an electric motor. It’s also

which is fed to the motors

Slow or level 1 charging is

expel, and how far they get

too hot. At least five years

easier to move H2 over long

that supply the motive force.

when you use a regular wall

on one tank/charge. More

until any come to market.

distances than electricity.

run at its most efficient rpm,

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New Leatherman EDC Multi-Tool

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MODIFYING CARS IS AN ATTITUDE! Monster Design. Monster Performance.

UK’s fast growing BMW & Audi body styling and performance parts store. From premium carbon fibre parts and bespoke fully-forged wheels to performance upgrades and industry-leading car detailing products, we have something for everyone. Our aim is to revolutionise the UK’s motorsport industry by bringing the best brands across the globe on one platform. Please visit our online store to see the full range of products we offer or get in touch with us via our socials.

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@ s p i n m o n s t e r s

T :

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TO P G E A R . C O M

› SEPTEMBER 2021

153

WH0: OLLIE MARRIAGE WHERE: LLANDOW, UK After Ollie drove the operatic Singer he was full of praise – hit a lovely B4 during a rendition of Nessun Dorma for the team.

WHAT: FIAT STRADA WHERE: TURIN, ITALY Italy is a treasure trove of old crapboxes. Jason Barlow hit pure gold when he found this exquisite example. Bravo Strada!

WHAT: CAR NIGHT WHERE: MODENA, ITALY In celebration of the Mille Miglia coming to town, all the locals got out their finest metal. Park where you like, folks.

WHO: GREG POTTS WHERE: TILSHEAD, UK Wouldn’t say “oh, yes” for us, but did manage “ask me about renewing your home insurance one more time and I’ll bite your arm off”.

WHAT: THE GOLDEN COMPASS WHERE: THE COTSWOLDS, UK We’d only heard about it in stories, but the golden compass leads car journalists to a magical land where the petrol flows and the lunches are free.

WH0: PETER RAWLINS WHERE: AMESBURY, UK Pete getting plenty of opportunity to practise his ‘seriously unimpressed’ face as he deals with a flat tyre on the Honda e.

BEHIND THE SCENES

MAKING IT HAPPEN HOW TO CO NTACT US SUBSCRIP T ION ENQUIRIES A ND BACK ISSUES: 03330 162 130

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editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com

top.gear@bbc.co.uk

TopGear, dsb.net, PO Box 3320,

TopGear, Second Floor, 1 Television Centre,

3 Queensbridge, Northampton, NN4 7BF

BBC Studios, 101 Wood Lane,

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London W12 7FA

facebook.com/ TopGear

154

SEPTEMBER 2021 ›

TO P G E A R . C O M

twitter.com/ BBC_TopGear

@topgear

FROM ONLY

SHELVING

.99 EX.VAT

£119.99 INC.VAT PLUS DELIVERY

100% MONEY BACK GUARANTEE

PACK OF 3 HEAVY DUTY SHELVING BAYS FREE HEAVY DUTY UPGRADE

Each shelf now holds over a quarter of a tonne

STEEL CONSTRUCTION

Height 1800mm

FOR GUARANTEED STURDINESS

3 BAYS + 8 REALLY USEFUL BOXES

POWDER COATED

FOR EXTRA DURABILITY

EXTERNAL DIMENSIONS 285h x 385w x 470d mm

MDF DECKS

STRONGER THAN CHIPBOARD

NO BOLTS

£40

QUICK, EASY ASSEMBLY PRODUCT

CODE

PRICE EX. VAT

PRICE INC. VAT

SAVE INC. VAT *

CARRIAGE INC. VAT

TOTAL INC. VAT

3 x Bays (1800h x 900w x 450d mm)

AAAG

£99.99

£119.99

£121.18

£17.99

£137.98

ACFC

£149.99

£179.99

£127.16

£23.98

£203.97

4 x Bays (1800h x 900w x 450d mm)

AAAU

£129.99

£155.99

£165.56

£23.98

£179.97

3 x Bays (1800h x 900w x 600d mm)

AAAL

£139.99

£167.99

£23.98

£191.97

4 x Bays (1800h x 900w x 600d mm)

AABD

£184.99

£221.99

£23.98

£245.97

3 x Bays (1800h x 900w x 450d mm) Choose Depth

0 0m id th 9

*Savings based on the single unit price of £64.99 & £73.99

with 8 x 33.5L Nestable Really Useful Boxes

MIN SPEND £349 EX VAT**

ONLY

£149

£179.99 INC.VAT PLUS DELIVERY

SAVE £52!

CHOOSE YOUR DELIVERY DATE**

STORAGE & ORGANISATION KIT ONLY

£119

STORALEX BUSINESS BUNDLE 4 SHELVING BAYS + WORKBENCH

PLUS DELIVERY

STORAGE & ORGANISATION KIT

62L

Height 1800mm

TOUGH PLASTIC BOXES (mm)

EXTRA DEEP 600MM BAYS

lf UDL per she

400kg UDL per shelf

HALF PRICE! BUSINESS BUNDLE

£172 FROM ONLY

.99 EX.VAT

£143.99 INC.VAT

595d x 395w x 335h

200kg

.99 EX.VAT

.99 EX.VAT D 6 0 0 epth mm

£207.59 INC.VAT PLUS DELIVERY

Width

90 0m

CLIP ON LIDS

62L CAPACITY MADE IN THE UK FROM TOUGH RECYCLED PLASTIC BOXES FIT SHELVES PERFECTLY, 2 PER LEVEL PRODUCT

CODE

PRICE EX. VAT

PRICE INC. VAT

SAVE INC. VAT*

4 x Bays (1800h x 900w x 450d mm) Plus 1 x Workbench (900h x 1200w x 600d mm)

AADE £172.99 £207.59 £171.55

4 x Bays (1800h x 900w x 600d mm) Plus 1 x Workbench (900h x 1200w x 600d mm)

AAUY

£219.99 £263.99 £225.55

CARRIAGE INC. VAT

TOTAL INC. VAT

£23.98

£231.57

£23.98

£287.97

PRODUCT

CODE

Storalex VRS 280kg bay 1800h x 900w x 600d with 8 x 62L tough plastic boxes

ADBZ

PRICE EX. VAT

PRICE INC. VAT

SAVE INC. VAT*

CARRIAGE INC. VAT

£119.99 £143.99 £52.78 £23.99

TOTAL INC. VAT

£167.98

SIMPLIFYING STORAGE

Open Mon-Fri 8:30am-5:30pm Carriage charges are per 3/4 bays. Additional bays incur extra charges. Go online or call for details. *Saving calculated on buying single item price. ** Extra charges for Saturday delivery and choosing a delivery date apply, go online for details. † Conditions apply, see online. Carriage prices to Mainland UK only with some exceptions – go online for details. Prices correct at time of going to press. E&OE. Copyright Tufferman 2021. All rights reserved. Co. number 8224210. Tufferman Ltd Unit 4, Galleywood Ind. Estate,Rignals Lane, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 8RF.

TM19001

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