FORD RANGER RAPTOR LET NOTHING STAND IN YOUR WAY. CONQUER ALL WITH TERRAIN MANAGEMENT FEATURING FOX RACING SUSPENSION. #NoObstacles
ford.co.uk
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.
GET YOUR FIX We’ve made it as easy as possible for you to get TopGear magazine
Ed i to r @jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com
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H
ere’s a fun project. All you need is 787,372 Ford F-Series trucks – the number sold in the US in 2020, a relatively lean year by all accounts – placed nose to tail and then to follow the line in a Eurofighter Typhoon at its top speed of Mach 1.8. Do so and it’ll take 1hr 57mins before you clear them all. My point is: Ford F-150s... there’s a lot of them. There are two electric cars in this issue that have the power to change the car industry profoundly, but we’ll start with the truck – America’s bestselling vehicle for 44 years in a row, and now there’s an EV version: the F-150 Lightning. Thing is, your average F-150 customer probably isn’t too concerned by the plight of the polar bears. Ford knows this, so without imminent climate catastrophe as a motivating factor to go electric, it simply needed to build a better truck. And assuming your commute roundtrip is sub-300 miles, and you have access to a charger, the evidence is pretty overwhelming. From the mahoosive frunk that preserves the F-150’s barn-door front end styling – but fills it with nothing but sweet storage space – to the battery’s ability to power your home during a blackout (or your tools, or a cooler while you’re funnelling Bud Light at a tailgate party), and its supersized torque figure and towing capacity, it’s obvious why Ford’s scooped up 70,000 reservations already. By the time you read this, probably more. Tesla Cybertruck, Rivian R1T, Hummer or one of these? Who’d have thought America’s next great battleground would be the plug-in pickup. Meanwhile in Croatia, the Rimac Nevera. Sounds like a Nissan, is actually the first production ready electric hypercar we’ve been exposed to. A car, like Gordon Murray’s T.50, which is the expression of one man’s enormous brain. That it is mind-scramblingly fast, that it can distribute its torque to each wheel unlike anything else before, that it is built with the utmost care was all to be expected. What we care about more is whether it has soul. Something that lingers, something that raises the hairs on your neck just thinking about it, and... well, I won’t steal Jason’s thunder, but the answer is, it does. It’s spectacular, room for improvement in a few areas, but transformative in others... and the clearest sign yet that, while the Nevera is wildly expensive, fast electric cars are on the right track. Just ask Harris, who’s still perplexed by what the Audi RS e-tron GT did when he took it for a day out in Llandow... Enjoy the issue,
“YOUR AVERAGE F-150 CUSTOMER ISN’T CONCERNED BY POLAR BEARS”
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JACK RIX EDITOR Oliver Marriage ASSOCIATE EDITOR Tom Ford CONSULTANT EDITOR Paul Horrell EDITOR AT LARGE Jason Barlow US CORRESPONDENT Pat Devereux SENIOR ROAD TEST EDITOR Ollie Kew STAFF WRITER Tom Harrison EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Greg Potts
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HEAD OF CAR TESTING
BRAND MANAGING EDITOR
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, TOPGEAR PUBLISHING
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ART TEAM Andy Franklin Elliott Webb
CREATIVE DIRECTOR ART EDITOR
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Mike Channell, Chris Harris, Richard Holt, Sam Philip
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Our new all-electric range. Plug in, stand out. SEARCH: VAUXHALL ELECTRIC
EV range (WLTP Combined) miles and CO2 results for Mokka-e 136PS (100kW), Vivaro-e Life 136PS (100kW) and Corsa-e 136PS (100kW). Electric range up to 143 – 209 miles.* CO2 0g/km. Corsa-e, Mokka-e and Vivaro-e Life are battery electric vehicles requiring mains electricity for charging. Range data given has been determined according to WLTP test procedure methodology. The figures shown are intended for comparability purposes only and should only be compared to other cars tested to the same technical standard. The range you achieve under real world driving conditions will depend upon a number of factors, including but not limited to: the accessories fitted (pre and post registration); charging frequency; personal driving style; vehicle payload and route characteristics; variations in weather; heating/air conditioning; pre-conditioning and battery condition. For more information, contact your local Vauxhall Retailer. *WLTP figure includes 50% payload. EV range assumes that vehicle has been pre-conditioned prior to journey.
CONTENTS ISSUE 349 / JULY 2021
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# C A R C U L T U R E
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# C E L E B R I T Y
# G A D G E T S
E V E R Y O NE I S TA L K I N G A B O U T
FORD’S UP TOWN FRUNK America’s bestselling pick-up truck has gone electric, and everyone’s favourite tech YouTuber, Marques Brownlee, has had a play
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I
think this is the most important electric vehicle we’re going to see this year. More so than the Tesla Cybertruck, the Rivian or the Model S Plaid or anything else that may or may not come out in 2021. It’s the Ford F-150 Lightning – the battery powered version of the bestselling vehicle in the US for the previous 40 years straight. And I got to spend a few hours with it at my studio in New Jersey. So there are two versions. The standard range model costs just under $40,000 and has a 230-mile range. Then there’s the extended range battery option. That starts at just under $50,000 and has a 300-mile range. And get this – Ford told me that the 300-mile range is the EPA estimate with almost half a tonne of cargo in the back. This truck at my studio, with no weight in the trunk, was quoting me 367 miles. And looking at the indicator on the dashboard, its battery was 80-ish per cent full. Not scientific I know, but let’s just say a 350-mile real world range looks realistic if you’re not hauling huge loads. This is also the fastest truck Ford has ever made. You’re looking at 426 or 563bhp depending on which version you get. The extended range model does 0–60mph in 4.5 seconds. That’s faster than a Raptor – crazy and just so unnecessary. Torque is more important in a truck – both models put out 775lb ft, which is huge. Towing capacity is 4.5 tonnes. There are two great new features in this Lightning that I guarantee will impress you because you don’t see them in normal trucks. First is that since this truck doesn’t have an engine, it has room for an absolutely massive front trunk. Not only is it pretty sweet for a pickup to have covered, locked weather-sealed storage for things you don’t want to store in the bed or in the back seat, but it’s also just
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Enormous 15.5in screen, presumably not grime resistant after a hard day’s graft
about the biggest and most impressive front trunk I have ever seen in an EV. And then there’s bidirectional power. You know how you can already charge up at your house, and start every day with a full battery? Well if you get Ford’s own 80A wallbox, the F-150 Lightning lets you power your entire home from your truck battery in the event of an outage. It can keep your whole house humming for up to 10 days if you’re careful. You can power other stuff with the Lightning too. Lots of people work out of their trucks – outlets in the bed and frunk mean you don’t need to carry a separate generator for power tools, air compressors, table saws and drills, big lights and anything else that doesn’t run on battery power. So now I’ve got a pickup truck, a portable generator, and basically a Tesla Power Wall all in one vehicle. The inside is still pretty industrial, but you can get the same 15.5-inch portrait touchscreen as the Mustang Mach-E with the physical
volume knob at the bottom, which I do like. The F-150 I looked at was the highest trim level – Platinum – which can cost around $90,000, so it had leather seats and a sunroof and all kinds of other stuff. The gear selector folds down into the centre console, and then the elbow rest unfolds into a huge flat working surface, like a counter for your computer or paperwork. Plus there’s a household plug next to the display. The truck will get software updates and improve over time. And for your convenience it pulls in various compatible charging stations across several networks through the Ford Pass app. It can even account for your shorter range, using the onboard scales in the bed of the truck to measure how heavy your cargo is and adjust accordingly. Now I’m not a truck person and I haven’t driven it yet, but the Lightning seems pretty complete from every angle. Ford has made a more powerful, more responsive, more functional version of the original F-150 that everybody loves. And it just so happens to be electric. Ford has over 70,000 reservations already – none from the UK, because you guys aren’t getting it. And you know what? I think you’re missing out. Marques Brownlee
FA I L O F T H E C E N T U R Y # 5 2 2
COFFEE BREAK
VAUXHALL ADAM ROCKS AIR
What we’re watching/ listening/doing, while we should be working
I
n the market for a new car, but can’t decide whether you need an SUV, a city car or a convertible? Why choose, when you could have all three in one convenient package, courtesy of the veritable Swiss Army knife that is the Vauxhall Adam Rocks Air? Well, firstly because, mercifully, you can’t buy a new Adam Rocks Air any more. But even if you’ve recently developed the ability to time-travel back to 2014, we’d still strongly advise not buying a new Adam Rocks Air. (Not least because, seriously, you’ve just mastered time travel. There are more exciting and lucrative things to be done than queuing at your local Vauxhall dealership.) Because while the Adam Rocks Air (in addition to sounding like the Old Testament version of scissors-paper-stone) promised three cars for the price of one, it in fact offered one not very good car for the price of a lot. Though a cacophony of plastic cladding hinted at volcano-conquering off-road ability, the Rocks Air rode a mere 15mm higher than the regular Adam, with precisely no other concessions to all-terrain motoring. The Adam Rocks Air’s ‘electric folding canvas roof’, which Vauxhall grandly promised would provide ‘open air fun’, in fact turned out to be ‘a largish sunroof’. And the whole thing cost nearly 15 grand. Less Swiss Army knife, more wooden spoon.
Alan Partridge LIVE, 2022 “Stratagem” is a full-on mic’d up TED talk style show, officially curated by Alan. We’re expecting THIS to be the roadmap/mantra the UK will follow post COVID/Brexit. Tickets on sale now!
Mogwai, As the Love Continues The love for this Scottish outfit defo does continue with their new album. Mogwai’s music is largely lyric-free, so who knows WTF ‘Ceiling Granny’ is about
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
Royal Blood, Typhoons
Sweet Tooth, Netflix Jeff Lemire’s DC comic has been adapted by Marvel’s Iron Man. Need more? This Netflix original includes hybrid human animals, a global virus and a truly captivating story
I M AG E : M A N U FAC T U R E R
The loud, booming duo return with a new album produced and refined by QOTSA frontman Josh Homme. His touch is all over the Brighton band’s third album. Pure filth. 10/10
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CAR NE W S
SHADY BUSINESS The new Rolls Boat Tail may be marine inspired but is not in the least bit fishy
Y O U C A N ’ T B U Y TA S T E
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adies and gentlemen, welcome to the Rolls-Royce Boat Tail – a near 6m long grand tourer with removable canopy roof and something called a “hosting suite” beneath the rear deck. Based on the same basic platform as the Phantom, and likely fitted with its V12, Rolls has hand-built three of these for customers who “share a deep appreciation of contemporary nautical design”. Right. The Boat Tail is road legal, and Rolls claims it’s undergone all the same dynamic testing as its core models. The company’s existing aluminium architecture took eight months to adapt to its proportions and the new car features 1,813 bespoke parts. The so-called hosting suite has five ECUs of its own and a special wiring harness that took nine months to develop. The rear deck opens butterfly style to reveal to what is effectively a glorified picnic set. One side
is dedicated to drinks, with a double fridge designed specifically to hold (and rapidly chill) the customer’s favourite champagne. The other is for nibbles. There are even fans to keep your caviar from spoiling in the warm temperatures for which the Boat Tail was designed. Meanwhile a parasol springs up from the centre line for shade and there are a couple of tables, and storage for two stools. How much? Rumours are £20m+ making it the most expensive new car in the world. Tom Harrison
LN: Getting on the podium in Monaco was pretty special, this livery deserved that result. Cool trophy too. Of course the first thing you’ve gotta do after a result like that is call Mum.
DR: Not the easiest weekend in Monaco, but we looked good in Gulf racing blue. I love Monaco, it’s such a unique challenge in a modern F1 car and I’m counting the days until we hit those streets again.
LN: This was from behind the scenes at a promo video shoot where I had to imagine I was driving the car through the streets of Monaco. It was cool, but it’ll be a long time before you see me on the big screen.
BEHIND THE SCENES
LANDO & DANNY’S F1 DIARY LN: I’ve loved these colours for years. The old McLaren F1 Le Mans car from the Nineties was probably my first favourite car, I just loved the design.
DR: Dude, where’s my car? Visualising what I do in the car is a really important part of the process. Even in the pits.
McLaren’s dynamic duo pull back the curtain on the life of an elite driver
LN: Taking a moment to remember Mansour Ojjeh. He was a legend in F1 and a great friend to me and many.
LN: Had to go retro with the Gulf livery on the car. My classic style with a Gulf theme. Goggles and an ‘open’ face to really bring the Sixties vibe to life.
DR: I don’t usually cycle the track, but I fancied heading out with the engineers to be reminded of the tight streets of Baku.
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W
WAT C HE S
HIS AND HERS Once separated by gender, watches are becoming ever-increasingly fluid
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hat does a women’s watch look like? What does a man’s watch look like, come to think of it? If you’re picturing some tiny bejewelled time-keeping bracelet for her and a chunky chronograph for him, your ideas need a little updating. Yes, women do, on average, have smaller wrists than men, they are comparatively more likely to buy jewelled watches, but all women do not like the same watches or cars any more than men do. A confusing picture? The watch brands do often seem wrong-footed by customers’ refusals to be pigeonholed. Many companies, for example, do not label watches men’s and women’s at all. This is not related to modern debates about gender fluidity, more about how the watch market has developed along with the tastes of its target market. When the renaissance of the luxury watch market got into full swing in the early 21st century, case sizes started to get big, really big. Years back you rarely saw watches bigger than 35/36mm across, suddenly people started wearing 50mm or more. The gigantism has eased off slightly now, but watches are still massive compared with previous generations. The big watch trend was great for getting your watch choice noticed, but at the same time it left lots of smaller men, particularly in the Far East, sized out of the market. They instead turned to smaller watches traditionally worn by women. Smaller men wanted smaller watches, but didn’t want to shop in the ladies’ section – one reason for dropping the women’s label. But it cuts both ways. As well as men buying women’s watches, we’ve seen increasing numbers of women buying men’s watches. The mechanical watch revival has reeled in lots of women who are equally interested in how a watch works as well as what it looks like, which is at the core of why the posh watch market even exists today. The main reason luxury watches survived in the face of cheap quartz is that people appreciate clever, traditional machinery that can run indefinitely without the need for batteries. They like the tradition of watchmaking and are prepared to pay more for it. Yes the watch biz is also about glitz, style and getting noticed. But it is underpinned by an interest in craftsmanship and clever mechanical objects. Richard Holt
UNDER £2,500
TA G HE UER A QU A R A C ER This watch has a diving helmet engraved on the back, and TAG Heuer is all about outdoor pursuits. Whatever your game, or your frame, this 36mm steel-cased Aquaracer should suit, with screw-down steel crown allowing a beefy 300m water resistance. With rotating ceramic bezel. tagheuer.com; £2,350
UNDER £2,000
R A DO T RUE S QU A RE Rado is known for experimenting with different materials, and this collaboration with ice cool industrial designer Tej Chauhan has a 38mm case in high-tech ceramic. It comes on a leather strap and the automatic movement with 80-hour power reserve is visible through the transparent caseback. rado.com; £1,640
BLOW THE BUDGE T UNDER £1 0 0 T UDOR BL A CK B AY S & G Tudor does actually have a section dedicated to women’s watches, with plenty of precious stones and case sizes as small as 26mm. But the watch pictured
C A S I O G-SHOCK MINI
here is a mid-size model of the Steel & Gold version of Tudor’s incredibly
Fancy mechanicals are all very well, but if you really
popular retro-chic Black Bay diver. Bigger and smaller sizes are available, but
want a no-nonsense watch that won’t break – or
at a sweet 36mm, pretty much anyone should be able to wear this version.
break the bank – you can’t go wrong with a G-Shock.
Self-winding mechanical movement with 38-hour power reserve. Water
The MINI range is far from small, but shaving 3mm off
resistant to 150m. Steel case with yellow-gold bezel, yellow-gold crown,
the regular G-Shock’s 45mm case brings toughness
five-link bracelet in steel and yellow gold. tudorwatch.com; £3,070
within easier reach. g-shock.co.uk; £99.90
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MY LIFE IN CARS
ADAM PEATY
ADAM’S DREAM GARAGE
Team GB’s swimming champ on A45s and AMG GT Rs
L
ike any normal kid, when I was 17 I started out with a Renault Clio. Classic. It broke down every single time I wanted to get anywhere in a rush. Luckily I started to do well with my swimming that same year and at the time I was thinking about economy, so I bought a diesel Volkswagen Golf. I was in that community of modding cars when I was 19 or 20 years old, but there’s only so much you can do to a diesel. I did the exhaust system for some reason, I was questioning myself then. That was to make it look like a GTD because I couldn’t get insured at the time, not without paying ridiculous money. After the world championships I thought I could get something a little bit fancier, and ended up buying a Mercedes-AMG A45. I eventually started modifying that too. It had a four-inch downpipe, coilovers, new wheels, new intakes and a custom map after I got it onto a rolling road. I spent quite a bit of money on that car but I managed to get it to exactly
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how I wanted it. It sounded insane for a little four-cylinder. After that I thought “right, there’s nothing like a V8”. So, post-Olympics I got an AMG C63 S Coupe. That was brand new and it was my first car with a big-boy engine. I really enjoyed that car, but I only had it for about 18 months before I had the opportunity to buy an AMG S63 Coupe. I did miss the sporting edge of the C63, though, so after the S-Class I got an AMG GT R. That was a little bit too far though, it was a track car – similar to how my A45 ended up. It had a properly firm ride and I had to get something else as a daily. So, I bought a completely standard Jeep Wrangler. Now pretty much everything you can do to a Wrangler (which is a lot) I’ve done. It’s got a lift kit, carbon fibre fenders, a new grille, new bumpers all round and massive 36-inch tyres – it’s definitely a head-turner. I wanted to take it off-road properly, but as soon as it was ready lockdown hit. Now I don’t think I’ll do anything mad in it because I’ve spent
Which cars will take the medals?
too much money on it. It’s got the off-road looks and ability but I’ll never use it for anything other than going shopping, I’m one of those guys at the moment unfortunately. From the GT R I went into the new shape Aston Martin Vantage, but then I had a baby boy and obviously the family couldn’t fit. I can’t really use the Jeep as a family car either because it doesn’t fit in any car parks, so I got rid of the Aston and bought a Tesla Model X P100D. That is crazy fast. I’ve now got that, a Cupra Formentor and the Jeep Wrangler. Somehow I’ve ended up with three cars. My parents really weren’t into cars. My mum had an Austin Montego when I was really young and all I can remember is my dad shouting because with the whole family in the car it couldn’t get up steep hills. How was that even possible? Technology has come on so far and nowadays a three-cylinder can do what a V8 did back in the day, and we’ve got an electric future ahead of us. Adam is a brand ambassador for Cupra
MERCEDES 300SL If I came into a spare few million dollars, I’d buy a Mercedes 300SL Gullwing.
ASTON MARTIN VANTAGE GT12 I’ve always liked the GT12, and I think that supercars need to be rare to be special.
CUPRA BORN Given my current relationship with Cupra, the final spot better be the Born.
THE BIG QUES T ION
WHY IS THE BRAND-SPANKING-NEW TOPGEAR.COM SO BRILLIANT?
R
eports of my death have been greatly exaggerated, our humble website might have said, had our humble website gained sentience and a fondness for Mark Twain. This is largely because it is very much Not Dead. It has been reborn for 2021. It is new. It is fresh. It is Other Important Words. Welcome to the brand new TopGear.com. Like any good core model update, our new website sits not on a hastily cobbled together mish-mash of leftovers finished off with a new paint option and fancy wheels. No, the new TopGear.com is a full ground-up redesign; what you might say in CarSpeak as a scalable, lightweight future-proofed platform. (Or in Regular Human Parlance, ‘new’.) There’s all the latest news direct from TG HQ presented in a fresh, sparkly format covering everything in the world of cars: electricity, limitededition V8 supercars, videogames, old snotters restored to half-million pound exotics... the lot. We’ve also tested every new car available in the UK and packed the reviews into a shiny new database. You can peruse them at your leisure or get instant verdicts on the cars you want to research, or just fantasy shop.
After all, there’s never not a good time to read a review of a Bugatti Chiron. Want to know more? Find out what these cars are really like to own (probably not the Chiron) in our shiny new Garage section: long-term tests of the cars you need to know about, tested in the realm of something called the ‘Real World’. There’s a video vault heaving with the very latest from TG telly, Chris Harris (mostly doing massive skids in fast cars on track), quickfire tests of the best electric cars on sale today, and a rose-tinted look at the finest machinery from years gone by. We’ve updated our patented Big Read Feature Technology too, with brand new functionality, and all of our stories work across every device (though probably not your Sony Walkman, sorry). Goes without saying the shiny new TopGear.com is packed with the very best photos and words in the business. So what are you waiting for? Head over to the new TopGear.com now. Or later, if you want. After all, never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. Vijay Pattni
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THE KNOWLEDGE Need-to-know nuggets of automotive news
GAME OF THE MONTH
SPEEDLEGEND Fancy an unofficial MercedesAMG GT R speedster with 838bhp and an F1-style halo? You’ll be needing this – the brilliantly named, but fugly, BUSSINK GT R Speedlegend.
037 REBORN Yes, it’s another restomod. But this one... this one is reimagining the Lancia 037. It’s the work of Kimera Automobili and gets 500bhp sent to its rear wheels.
GE AR
BECKS X LUNAZ Golden Balls has whacked
Q BRANCH TOP TRUMPS
out his cheque book and splashed out on a 10 per cent stake in luxo electric start-up Lunaz. Back of the net.
M4 COMP CONV As surely as night follows day, and – in the UK – rain follows yet more rain, BMW has followed up the M4 Competition with this – the 503bhp M4 Competition Convertible.
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THE BEST ITALIAN CAR NAMES 02
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I M AG E S : M A N U FAC T U R E R
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CAR NE W S
5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE.. CUPRA BORN A handful of facts about the ID.3’s Spanish cousin, and Cupra’s first full EV
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THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT POWER AND BATTERY COMBINATIONS The Born is being positioned as the world’s first production electric hot hatch, although the entry level 45kWh model only gets 148bhp and 211 miles of range. The 58kWh version can be combined with either 201bhp or 228bhp.
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LONG-RANGE VERSION Go for the most powerful 228bhp setup and you can also combine it with a hefty 77kWh battery pack. The result is 335 miles of range (compared with 260 miles for the 58kWh). The extra weight will cost you 0.4secs on your quest to 62mph, but it also unlocks faster 125kW charging.
THERE’LL BE FOUR DRIVE MODES All Borns use a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive layout and Cupra says it’ll get the typical EV low centre of gravity, as well as “almost perfect” 50:50 weight distribution. For the full modern day hot hatch experience, there’ll also be four drive modes; Range, Comfort, Individual and the full-fat Cupra mode.
THE INTERIOR IS RECYCLED No, we don’t just mean that all the bits from an ID.3 have had their VW badges scratched off (although that is primarily the case). The standard Born buckets are made from recycled marine plastics, while the upgrade option uses old T-shirts and plastic bottles. It’s all part of Cupra’s promise that each car will be delivered net CO2 neutral.
IT WON’T NICK SALES FROM SEAT As you know, what is now the Born was once the Seat El-Born concept. We still don’t know whether Seat is planning its own MEB-based hatch, but Cupra boss Wayne Griffiths doesn’t think buyers cross-shop: “Seat buyers are young, entry level buyers. Cupra buyers want something unique and standout.”
WO R D S : G R EG P OT T S
Get that distinctive Cupra look at home: simply pair a dark blue suit with a copper arthritis bracelet
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THIS MONTH:
SHO W P ON Y
MARQUES BROWNLEE
HARD DRIVE We download YouTube’s #1 tech expert on whatever he’s been driving this month
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he weirdest part of testing the Ford Mustang Mach-E? I felt like I had to completely ignore the Mustang name while reviewing it. I mean, totally block it out. It carries so much baggage and expectation for some people – a sacrilegious thing for a Mustang to be an SUV and then on top of that, an electric one. For me though, the badge doesn’t matter. I don’t have much of a knowledge or connection to the Mustang’s heritage, I can forget what it’s called, I’m just reviewing this new electric crossover that happens to be from Ford, and happens to be called the Mustang. From that perspective, I was pretty pumped to give it a go. It’s very approachable – this isn’t some tricky to handle sports car or wild Cybertruck design, it’s something you could imagine seeing anywhere on the road, in any country. And you can play it up or down, pick a white or Grabber Blue one and you’ll get some attention, tone it down with grey and you can just slip on by. You’ve got to give it to Ford, for having the balls to put that Mustang heritage on the line, knowing there would be plenty of haters out there, but not making it too much of a spaceship to lose its appeal to ordinary drivers.
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DOPE TECH M B ’ S FAV O U R I T E F E AT U R E
The physical volume knob embedded in the screen is a great idea, I just wish it could be programmed
response as sharp as possible, but also because the ride, even in that mode, isn’t too harsh.
bit clunky and
Can’t argue with the screen
unintuitive. Roll
size in here – portrait works
on over- the-air
for me, although Tesla is
updates.
moving away from it.
V ERD I C T The Mach-E is a charming, accessible crossover. Not a master of any one thing, but the range, performance, tech, price, design and interior are all above average. Sounds like I’m down on it, but I’m not, that’s a hard thing to achieve.
C ONSUMER T E CH C OMPA R I S ON... My Logitech Anywhere mouse. Not particularly fancy, there are definitely more expensive options, but it works fine wherever you go.
T HE T E CH:
T HE DR I V E :
T HE WA N T:
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TOPGEAR’S GUIDE TO THE FUTURE OF EVERYTHING H MYT ER T BUS
“EVs ARE REALLY HARD TO RECYCLE AT THE END OF THEIR LIFETIME” JB Straubel, the man who basically invented Tesla’s significant hardware and made it work, now has a company, Redwood Materials, to do exactly this. Northvolt, the company perhaps on pole position for supplying EV batteries in Europe, is adding a recycling plant. Renault is repurposing Flins, a historic factory for making cars, into one that unmakes them. Gradually the processes for doing this will be improved. At the moment there are two. Pyrometallurgy uses heat and so takes energy, which needs to be renewable.
Hydrometallurgy uses chemicals, so they have to clean up the waste. Recycling will get easier as batteries improve. Carmakers are designing them with recycling in mind, so they will be able to benefit from cheaper materials down the line. Solid state batteries will also be easier to process than today’s gel-based packs. Many of these processors expect to take back your old phones and other e-waste too. A useful side benefit of the money invested in softening the car’s environmental impact. Paul Horrell
LATER
WHO KNOWS?
ZERO BLACK FOREST BIKE
ELECTRIC LAMBO CONFIRMED
ESTREMA FULMINEA
A sweetly named special edition of the Zero Motorcycles DSR. EV adventure bike heaven
It’s official, Lambo’s first EV will be a four-seat, two-door GT arriving later this decade
Set the vapourware detectors to max, it’s an Italian EV hypercar with 2,011bhp and solid-state batteries
NOW
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I M AG E S : G E T T Y, M A N U FAC T U R E R
E V U P D AT E
Every note. Every word. Every detail.
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DISCOVER MORE:
Monaco might be a stern test of an F1 driver, but what about the rest of us who have to watch?
I L L U S T R AT I O N : PAU L RY D I N G
“That’s a poor advert for the game.” What a phrase that was in the Eighties – the cornerstone of all terrestrial television sports commentary. Just reading those words, I hear David Coleman and Richie Benaud politely admonishing the sports they loved, without resorting to outright harshness. Does it matter if some or any part of a sport consistently falls into that category? It should do. Sport is now one of the most valuable commercial commodities and it has to alter its plot to satisfy the crowd. Football now uses a lighter ball and the game is faster. Cricket has the bombastic T20. And yet every year the Formula One rabble traipses back to Monaco knowing full well that unless there’s a colossal thunderstorm around lunchtime on the Sunday it will deliver a spectacle that makes a Serena Williams press conference seem exciting. I just don’t get it. Formula One cars outgrew the principality before Roger Moore became 007, and yet the layout and track width is largely the same as in the Fifties. So why would a sport that is quite literally fighting for its existence not do something about it? The money thing doesn’t wash. As Bernie proved, there are any number of tinpot countries willing to write vast cheques
“FORMULA ONE CARS OUTGREW MONACO BEFORE ROGER MOORE BECAME 007”
in the name of some weird, false global verification and, being the arch hypocrite that I am, they mostly work for me. People who disagree with me say that Monaco is Formula One. But that’s like saying a fifth day draw at Headingley in horizontal rain is test cricket. Yes, it could be considered an important component of a total season, or that only those who can appreciate the full complexity of a sport, the thrills and the lulls, can truly claim to be a fan. But we live in an age where teenagers switch off three minutes in if something doesn’t blow up. The great sadness is that Monaco is celebrated as the pinnacle of F1 because, rightly, it is considered the ultimate test of a driver. But it just doesn’t translate for the viewer. It’s a commentator’s nightmare – all they can do is remind us how difficult it is, how much skill is being deployed. Their football equivalents just have to sit back and grin when Messi is doing his thing. When you have to tell someone that something is exciting, it probably isn’t. An F1 calendar with 21 races can easily support a few that people know won’t erupt into five-abreast dicing, but the way F1 clings to the notion that Monaco is the jewel in the crown makes me worry for its future. If the people who run the sport thought that this year’s race was a sporting spectacle to match the Champions League final or, more tellingly, the British Touring Car Championship, then they must be a little out of touch with reality. The solution? Almost certainly something that was suggested in jest and rejected accordingly. Monaco needs a twist – sprinklers, or a reverse grid, or a joker lap, or frankly anything that alters the sense that once qualifying is over, there’s not much point watching the rest of the race weekend. Or, maybe, we go old school and give them all a manual gearbox to wrestle with. Watch that Senna onboard and absorb the potential for a mistake, a mistake that could be capitalised on by a following car. Now there’s a thought.
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#GODO
Spelunkers: Incomparable. Indomitable Unpronounceable. Let’s hear it for the ‘spelunkers’. The subterranean explorers of the 1970s who did for caving what Mallory did for mountaineering. And the inspiration behind ‘GMT-explorer’ watches, which provided 24hour timekeeping for light-starved cavers. Now we’ve resurrected the genre with the new C63 Sealander GMT. Not only does it boast a twin timezone movement, a hi-vis 24-hour hand and a dial that’s as legible as it is beautiful, but, happily, you don’t have to be a spelunker to wear one.
Sealander. Go anywhere, do everything. christopherward.com
The way we categorise cars needs to change, says TGTV script editor Sam Philip
I L L U S T R AT I O N : PAU L RY D I N G
If you’ve ever wondered what kind of crazy madcap capers go down in the TGTV office, last week we spent a solid hour debating how to categorise the Polestar 2. Life on the edge, us. See, having been overtaken by a Polestar 2 the previous day, and noting with interest that its driver was sitting several feet higher than me in my Seat Leon, I was of the strong opinion that the award-winning Swedish EV was an SUV. My boss was of the equally strong opinion that the Polestar 2 was not an SUV but instead a hatchback, on account of it a) looking nothing like an SUV and b) having a hatchback. Others weighed in. Someone else suggested it might be a fastback. At one point the phrase ‘five-door coupe’ entered the conversation, despite definitely not being a thing. Matters became surprisingly heated, especially considering there was no debate to be had in the first place, what with the Polestar 2 obviously being an SUV. It’s a growing problem, this. Indefinable cars. Take, for example, the Mercedes CLA Shooting Brake. It’s definitely not a shooting brake – far too many doors – but what is it? Saloon-estate? Wagon-coupe? Or what about the new Audi A7L? How, exactly, are you supposed to classify a saloon-
“LET’S RESIST THIS COMPULSION TO JAM EVERYTHING INTO A DECADES-OLD FRAMEWORK”
based-on-a-hatchback-based-on-a-saloon? The entire filing system’s gone right up the swanny. But, then again... so what? So what if a car doesn’t fit neatly into an existing category? If someone test drives a Polestar 2, and likes the Polestar 2, and thinks the Polestar 2 might be a good fit for whatever it is they want to do with a car, frankly it doesn’t matter a jot whether they think it’s an SUV or a hatchback or an African bull elephant named Hortensia. And it doesn’t matter what TopGear, or Polestar, or anyone else thinks it is, either. All that matters is that it works for them. Humans, we like tidiness and order. And it’s an enticing notion, filing the entire panoply of cars into a few boxes with nice simple labels on the front. But as any removals company will tell you, make your boxes too big, your labels too simple, you’re just creating headaches when it comes to unpacking. So maybe let’s resist this compulsion to jam everything into a decades-old framework. Times change, life moves on. Much that was once regarded as binary, as black-and-white, has turned out to be far more fluid, far more nuanced, and all the better for it. Between black and white is a big old rainbow. (Apparently that’s not actually how physics works, but hey, it sounds nice so I’m keeping it.) Which is to say: if a new thing doesn’t slot perfectly into a hoary old system of classification, that doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the new thing, that means there’s a problem with the system. Let’s find some new labels. Or, better still: forget the labels, throw out the filing cabinet and embrace life in its many and varied hues.
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Powerful grip and superior handling for high performance cars.
BE ONE WITH IT Be one with your tyres, and the road will be one with you. www.hankooktire.com/uk
What does the future hold for the motor show in a post-COVID world, ponders Paul
I L L U S T R AT I O N : PAU L RY D I N G
Many things have been absent from my life this past year, leaving me feeling bereft and sad. I won’t list them, though, because you might think me trivial. After all I’m still healthy and so are my loved ones, and the existence of this page of text testifies I still have work. You might have been less lucky and if so I’m sorry. After this misery, do motor shows count among the things we miss? Maybe not. Even before COVID scythed in, they were pretty much on their knees. Not enough people went, either to investigate cars to buy, or to queue up for ages to enjoy a fleeting caress of the unaffordable ones. Latterly many cars weren’t there anyway, their makers having lost the appetite for spending millions to park in a noisy, sweaty shed alongside their rivals. Hardly a differentiated premium marketing environment. For years, carmakers’ turning up at shows was driven by fear. They didn’t know which visitors were likely buyers and which were tyre kickers. Their nightmare was that one of those unknown buyers would miss them and spend with a rival. They had to be in it to win it. It hasn’t been like that for a while. If you’re their target, they’ll already have your data: who you are, where you are,
“FOR YEARS, CARMAKERS’ TURNING UP AT SHOWS WAS DRIVEN BY FEAR”
what else you like doing and eating and watching. So they’ll get in your face with targeted digital marketing, and come to meet you with a pop-up display at your favourite sports event, festival or shopping street. So motor shows are changing. Frankfurt was the apotheosis of the old sort. A teeming city of vast car brand cathedrals, it had become self-defeating. It took so long to trudge around you’d inevitably miss stuff. It imploded in 2019 – pre-COVID, note. Its replacement will be in Munich this September. But not just a motor show, oh no. It’s the Munich Mobility Show. All the German carmakers have signed up, but it won’t be the usual pissing contest row of giant stands. They’ll be mixing it up with tech start-ups. It’ll fill many of the squares in this compact city. You’ll be able to take short test drives. There will be scooters, ‘micro-mobility’, pushbikes, shared and multi-mode transit, livestreamed digital events. A conference will likely include anti-car speakers. The event’s head of comms tells me, “If Greta comes, good.” It could go either way. Maybe all these new facets will draw in more people, not least the families of the hardcore petrolheads, and give the show a new life. Or the loss of focus might cost it the critical mass of us old guard. Detroit, that most motorheaded city, had announced in 2018 something not altogether dissimilar for 2020. But of course that never happened so we never found out how well it worked. The Los Angeles show has also tried to be a multimodal digital event, but it always felt like little more than a squirt of ketchup to pep up a not-very-tasty motor show. Motor shows had to change. We just don’t yet know how.
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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
Performance unplugged The all-new, all-electric Audi e-tron GT quattro and RS e-tron GT will completely rewire the way you drive
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ombining all-electric efficiency with the spine-tingling performance – and unmistakable looks – of Audi Sport, the e-tron GT quattro and RS e-tron GT are the stars of Audi’s fully electric line-up. Here’s what you need to know about them...
LONG-HAUL TRAVEL The e-tron GT may be pure EV, but it’s also a true GT. The RS e-tron GT can travel up to 283 miles* on a single charge, and the e-tron GT quattro can go up to 298 miles* (official WLTP test value). You can charge at home overnight, but on the road the 93kWh battery can be topped up at super-fast DC charging stations at speeds of up to 270kW. The e-tron GT charges from
5-80% battery in approximately 36 minutes with a 150kW charger.*
PREPARE FOR LIFT OFF Activate launch control, and the e-tron GT quattro will deliver up to 530PS and go from 0-62mph in 4.1 seconds. You’ll go even faster in the RS e-tron GT, with up to 646PS in launch mode and a 0-62 time of just 3.3 seconds. So not only is it the fi rst all-electric Audi RS, but it’s also the fastest accelerating road RS in the Audi range.
21ST CENTURY QUATTRO There are two electric motors, one at each end of the car, sending power to all four
wheels. It’s a whole new way of thinking about quattro – Audi’s world-famous all-wheel-drive system, which was fi rst developed for rallying and road cars in the 1980s. For the e-tron GT, Audi is aiming to take driving dynamics into a new dimension with versatile air suspension and rear-wheel steering for increased agility (optional on the e-tron GT quattro; standard on the RS e-tron GT).
A SCI-FI SOUNDSCAPE The e-tron GT doesn’t just look futuristic, it sounds it, too. Both the e-tron GT quattro and RS e-tron GT have a special synthesised exterior sound, giving the quiet electric motors an audible presence. A unique sci-fi style ‘soundscape’ is also available. Known as e-tron Sport Sound, the interior cabin speakers produce a pulsating frequency that changes pitch as you speed up or slow
ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
*Official fuel consumption for the Audi e-tron GT range (kWh/100km): 20.3-21.5. CO2 emissions: 0g/km. The Audi e-tron GT is a battery electric vehicle requiring mains electricity for charging. Figures shown are for comparability purposes and may not reflect real-life driving results. Actual charging times will vary depending on various factors. Zero emissions while driving. Features RS e-tron GT with optional equipment. AudiConnect subject to network coverage and requires subscription after 3 years.
To discover more about Audi and the innovative new RS e-tron GT, visit audi.co.uk
down, like something picked up on some deep-space antenna.
SCIENCE WITH STYLE The e-tron GT is long, wide and low, giving it a swept-back silhouette and beautifully balanced proportions, combining graceful lines with muscular shoulders and shrink-wrapped metalwork. Its shape also contributes to some aerodynamic magic – with a drag coefficient of just 0.24, helping to maximise the all-electric driving range.
The e-tron GT comes with a choice of fine Nappa leather upholstery (as seen above) or a leather free package that is available on selected trims
Audi’s signature single frame grille, only it conceals a network of sensors here. There are controllable inlets – in the ribs beneath the headlights – which work as active aero devices, opening to help keep electronics cool or channel air to the front brake discs.
ECO-TECH FABRICS Along with traditional upholstery, the e-tron GT is also available with a leather-free package* which includes a material called Cascade, that’s partly produced using fibres from recycled plastic bottles and textiles. In all e-tron GT models, the carpet and mats are made from Econyl, which consists of 100% recycled nylon.
ACTIVE AERO
LIGHTSHOWS
EVs don’t need traditional air intakes, yet the e-tron GT’s front end is still inspired by
All e-tron GT models have a full-width LED lightbar across the rear, including
scrolling indicators, helping you to be seen in even the murkiest conditions. Helping you to see ahead, all models have LED headlamps with 3D-effect running lights. Vorsprung versions, and all RS e-tron GT models, have high-tech matrix LED units with a laser feature, to double the beam’s range at speeds above 43mph.
CONNECTED COCKPIT The cabin blends digital graphics with traditional displays, while the wraparound design puts the driver at the heart of the car, but there’s still room for four passengers (the underfloor battery is specially shaped to create rear legroom). It’s also highly connected, with 11 antennas linking it with the outside world. The Audi Connect Navigation & Infotainment package includes Amazon Alexa integration and Google Earth™ navigation.
BMW 330e TOURING £41,530/£52,165 as tested
The big test: plug-in wagons Peugeot’s new performance badge debuts not on a hot hatch, but on a hybrid estate that sits most comfortably on a company car list. Can it beat the current fleet champion? WORDS STEPHEN DOBIE PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD
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PEUGEOT 508 PSE SW £55,795/£55,795 as tested
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eugeot versus BMW isn’t a contest you’ll have seen often. That it’s taken the French maker’s most powerful and expensive car to draw the two companies together ought to illustrate the usual gap between their cars. And yet of the pair, passers-by only seem to have eyes for the 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered. Never mind drawing level with BMW in the desirability stakes, Peugeot’s leapfrogged it. While we don’t comment on the looks of cars too often – you’ve got your own eyes and mind to work out what you think – we’ll just advise not looking at the 508 too closely. It’s a gorgeous device from a few paces away, but some of the
finer detail is overwrought, those clumsily decaled winglets sprouting up along its skirts in particular. And is it just us who sees the Monster logo in its “kryptonite claws”? Viewed as a whole, though, it looks the absolute nuts. And at £56k in SW estate form (and costing around £950 per month on a personal lease), so it should. Peugeot keenly acknowledges that outside of the fleet car world, this will be a niche-interest halo car, the one that pulls you into a Peugeot showroom before you whirr out in an electric 208. But with its 13 per cent BIK rate, this petrol-electric 508 PSE could represent an affordable slice of exotica if work’s covering some of the bill.
The BMW 330e is probably peak company car, though. The safe-as-houses 3-Series design and dynamics, with a hybrid powertrain down on the 508’s output but accompanied by a £15k lower RRP and £475 monthly lease costs – half the price if you’re doing this privately – or 11 per cent BIK rate. Mind, spec it up to something approaching the PSE’s equipment levels and you’ll get perilously close on overall price. The 330e’s set-up is the much easier to digest, a familiar 181bhp 4cyl petrol engine paired up with one 111bhp electric motor to drive the rear axle only (xDrive is a £1,500 option). Its peak power is just a few bhp shy of simply adding engine and e-motor together.
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“WHERE THE PEUGEOT TAKES LEARNING, YOU JUST GET IN THE BMW AND INSTINCTIVELY KNOW WHAT TO DO”
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1 1. Press this to retain charge in the BMW’s battery and bugger up its fuel economy in the process 2. Winglets sprout from each side of the Peugeot. Don’t worry, you can lose the decals 3. A PHEV 3-Series is heavier than a petrol or diesel but drives nearly as sweetly. It could be the default choice south of an M3
Dig beneath the Peugeot’s skin and things are a little more complex, with a 197bhp 4cyl turbo familiar from the 208 GTI and RCZ coupe working with an electric motor on each axle for a combined 355bhp. While those twin e-motors make it four-wheel drive, only as much as 113bhp ever makes it to the rear axle. The car defaults to electric-only on start-up – and RWD – but as soon as the engine chimes in the power spread is front-biased. Which is just fine, actually. That’s Peugeot’s expertise, and this chunky estate car ends up feeling like a quicker, more tied-down hot hatch when you hustle it. The steering wheel splits opinion but it lends the 508 a boisterousness that’s hard not get drawn in by. It drives like no other 4WD estate. Above Electric, you have four modes: Comfort, Hybrid, Sport and 4WD. Given the car is fundamentally both hybrid and 4WD, that feels like too much choice. And yet there’s actually not enough: you can’t pair the softest suspension with the sportiest powertrain map. Full power only comes in Sport (other modes limited to 325bhp), but so does a knobbly ride on beaten up roads. The PSE’s suspension sits 4mm lower than a standard 508 while being 50 per cent stiffer and allied to three-mode adjustable damping. The car just never truly settles in anything but the comfiest setting, and neither does its slightly indecisive gearbox. If Peugeot allowed some mix ’n’ match its dynamics might be brilliant enough to overshadow other flaws. Some interior details are as overwrought as the exterior’s, and the option of six different dial layouts and five different massage functions seems like a distracting cherry atop a disorderly cake. Its button layout feels
unfathomable at first, but like an Indonesian jazz-fusion album maybe the lack of convention is what some of the 508’s wantonly ‘different’ buyers actually dig. You feel fully enveloped by its dark cabin, narrow windows and a wraparound dashboard, giving it a proper performance car feel. The flipside of which is that rear passengers ought not to be over six foot and while the frameless windows bring glamour with surprisingly little impact on refinement, the rear doors’ crudely fixed quarterlight of glass somewhat ruins the effect. Where the Peugeot takes learning and fathoming out, you just get in the BMW and instinctively know what to do. There’s no bedding-in process. For all its hybrid tech (again, with a multitude of modes) it’s as effortless to operate as BMWs ever have been, retaining the 3-Series schtick of being wholly conventional to operate while really quite special to drive. It’s a skill few cars truly nail – late Nineties Fords were particularly good at it, too – and it’s rarer than ever as touchscreens and autonomy tighten their grasp. It all contrives to make the 508 look severely try-hard; in the Beemer the basics are all nailed without fuss. Unlike the Peugeot, you don’t have to engage a different gearbox mode to ask for brake regen. You can click it all across into manual if you want. And for all the PSE’s smart, massaging bucket seats, it’s here where your bum is slammed down closest to the road. And like any stock 3-Series, the 330e offers a fairly vivid illustration of why design discombobulation elsewhere in the BMW range has irked so much, and what a complete direction change such complex styling is from the joyous grace of the company’s core model.
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PEUGEOT 508 PSE SW
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BMW 330e TOURING
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Specifications While you can still choose myriad petrol and diesel options, and Peugeot reckons the 508 is actually targeted at the higher performance M340i, this 330e is so deft to drive it’s hard to see how anyone cost-conscious would look elsewhere. Sure, it’s a faintly astonishing 300kg heavier than a 330i, but I think you’d need to experience the two together to truly care. Hopping into the RWD Touring shows how keeping things traditional often gives us the best driver’s cars. Even beside the Peugeot it hardly rides like a limo, but all told it asks less of its driver while offering them more. And with so much torque waiting to be slung at the rear axle, it’s not only quick, but really quite playful given the chance. Settle down and it does everything else so much more simply, the interior a sea of logic and its boot smaller but a more useful shape than the SW’s. Compare these cars on any remotely objective or financial level and the 3-Series stands embarrassingly proud of the 508. It’s also the one to go for if you love driving in its purest form (as pure as an automatically shifted hybrid can be, of course). It simply has to win. But if you love cars and their wanton diversity, their advancement, the sheer intrigue and lustre of something new and quirky that means you read this magazine rather than another, the 508 has a heck of a lot of draw. Particularly if it won’t technically be yours. Put it this way: the classifieds will be rightly littered with ex-business 330es in years to come. It’s such an affordable and difficult to criticise package. But I suspect the comparatively titchy handful of 508 PSE ads will be the ones you WhatsApp (or whatever communication we’re using by then) to your mates, the ones that stand out and you dare each other to take a punt on. I also bet they’ll have been more carefully looked after by more attentive, discerning owners. Wouldn’t you like to say you were someone who took a punt?
1 VERDICT
POWERTRAIN POWER ACCELERATION TORQUE
CLAIMED MPG, CO2
TOP SPEED
BMW 330e TOURING
2
PEUGEOT 508 PSE SW
Sweeter to drive and easier to operate, as well as significantly cheaper to lease. It’s an obvious victor
Objectively the loser, but there’s huge allure to its unique looks and dynamics. How brave are you feeling?
2.0T 4cyl + e-motor
1.6T 4cyl + 2 e-motors
288bhp
355bhp
6.1secs
0–62
4.5secs
0–62
310lb ft
354lb ft
176mpg, 39g/km
139mpg, 46g/km
137
155
1,905kg
1,875kg
RWD, 8spd auto
4WD, 8spd auto
mph
mph
WEIGHT
TRANSMISSION
BOOT CAPACITY
410 litres 1,420 litres (seats down)
8 SCORE
10
530 litres
1,780 litres (seats down)
7
TO P G E A R . C O M
10
› J U LY 2 0 2 1
043
9
10 L AND ROVER DEFENDER 90 D200 HARD TOP
Work horse £36,896 3.0TD 6cyl
197 bhp
(excluding VAT)
8spd auto
9.8 secs
D
CO2
29.5 mpg
251 g/km
FOR As good as ever on road and supremely capable off it AGAINST Pricy. Cargo bay isn’t as practical as a normal van’s
T
he ‘Hard Top’ name dates back to 1950, when Land Rover began offering a removable hard top for the erstwhile soft top Series 1. Nowadays it’s Solihull-speak for a ‘new’ Defender – TopGear’s reigning Car of the Year – with a load of nothingness where the rear seats ought to be. Available in both short-wheelbase 90 and long-wheelbase 110 form, this is 2021’s Defender at its most utilitarian. A vehicle for transporting heavy, bulky, important cargo.
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Sat in the driver’s seat there’s no way of knowing you’re driving a Defender Hard Top versus a normal five- or seven-seat Defender. At least until you turn your head to look out the non-existent left-rear window at an oblique junction or try to check your blind spots before changing lanes on the motorway. Ah. A sturdy full height partition (with a little grate so you can still see out the back window) separates driver and payload and means heavy objects won’t nut you in the back of the head in a crash. The 90 has 1,355 litres of space back there and can carry up to 670kg, while the 110 has over 2,000 litres of space in its much longer, slightly wider cargo bay and can transport up to 800kg of whatever you fancy. Both get a totally flat floor with space underneath for an assortment of clever, lockable storage bins, up to six integrated lashing points for tying your precious cargo down, heavy duty hose-down rubber mats and über-bright interior lights. Usefully the 110 keeps its blacked-out rear doors for side access.
There are no mechanical changes – the Hard Top uses the same excellent mild-hybrid six-cylinder diesels in 197, 247 or 296bhp flavours, the same eight-speed automatic gearbox and the same suspension as the SUV, so it’s just as accomplished on- and off-road. The 90 starts from £36,896 and the 110 from £43,771, both before VAT. Add the VAT back in and they cost the roughly the same as a normal Defender. So this is hardly the cheapest way of moving things around, but not all businesses work solely on spreadsheets. Sure, some businesses will actually use these things as Land Rover intended – think construction, infrastructure and telecoms companies. Others? Look at it this way... A new Transit would make a more practical food truck than an old Citroen H Van for all kinds of reasons, but that doesn’t stop businesses from buying, restoring and fitting out the old French workhorses with coffee machines, pizza ovens and God knows what else. Why? They’re cool. And so’s the Defender Hard Top. Tom Harrison
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8
10 F I AT 5 0 0 I C O N H AT C H B A C K
500 not out £25,495
(after gov’t grant)
CO2
42kWh battery
116 bhp
1spd FWD
9.0 secs
199 miles
0 g/km
FOR Range, style, tech, price versus rivals AGAINST Cramped rear seats, not as much fun out of town
T
his little car is a Very Big Deal. Because it’s a new Fiat 500, and this is only the third of those since 1957. OK, there was a large gap 1975–2007, but the more important thing here is that it’s Fiat’s first EV. A proper one, too – like the Honda e the new 500 has its own newly developed platform, body and interior. It shares no components with the hugely successful
046 J U L Y 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M
‘old’ 500, which Fiat says will remain on sale alongside the new car for the “foreseeable”. And it looks great, doesn’t it? The cheapest one comes with a tiny 24kWh battery and at £20,495 after the £2,500 plug-in car grant, is one of the least expensive EVs you can buy. Fiat claims 118 miles of WLTP range. So most people will rightly buy a 500 with the bigger 42kWh battery (as tested here), costing between £23,995 and £27,495, for its impressive 199-mile claimed range. With a clean sheet design Fiat could have totally reinvented the 500, but it chose to keep everything comfortingly familiar. To install the 117bhp motor under a conventional bonnet and have it power the front axle, to stick the charge port where you’d normally find the fuel filler and to calibrate the chassis and drivetrain so they don’t feel too alien. The cabin, too, is very much an evolution. Fine for two but a squeeze for four, the boot isn’t very big either, at just 185 litres, though you can flip the rear seats down. There’s decent storage elsewhere and material quality is broadly good, with exceptions. The driver sits high – the must-have heightadjustable seats are part of a £300 option pack, or standard on top trim. The steering wheel adjusts for reach and rake, but there’s not much space for your left foot and the side of the dash could do with a bit of padding, should you lean your knee up against it.
The flagship infotainment system is packed with features, broadly easy to use, and helped no end by having a strip of physical buttons underneath dedicated to the climate controls. The digital instrument cluster is excellent, and mercifully the controls on the steering wheel are physical buttons instead of terrible touchpads. They operate clever (and optional) level two driver assistance tech such as adaptive cruise and lane keep assist. The 0–62mph run takes nine seconds. The rate of acceleration starts to tail off thereafter, although when we tested the 500 abroad last year we did eventually hit its 93mph top speed. In the UK it’s happy enough on the
500e RIVALS Come and have a go if you think you’re cute enough...
Honda e A TG favourite, despite a meagre 137-mile range, for its feel-good factor and thoughtful design. Feels and drives like a quality item
Mini Electric Best handling small EV, because it’s a Mini and that’s its job. Clever to have electrified an existing car without compromising practicality
No Tesla-style screen here; base-spec 500s get a phone mount instead
motorway, but you’ll need to swap swift outside lane overtakes for considered passes. But the 500 belongs in town, and it’s here where it feels happiest. Though it’s bigger than the old one, the 500 is still a little car and ideally suited to ducking and weaving its way around congested city centres. It’s comfortable too, with a softness about how it porpoises off sleeping policemen and passes over potholes. The progressive throttle and brakes help you drive smoothly, and make precisely nipping into rapidly disappearing gaps all the easier. One pedal driving is available in ‘Range’ mode and takes some getting used to.
Ramp up the speed on your favourite B-road and you’re met with adequate traction and good roll control. But out here the 500’s ride gets a bit jiggly, and the remote, woolly steering that isn’t a problem in town limits how much fun you can have threading it through a series of bends. Not what the 500’s for, admittedly, but still – the Mini and Honda are better at this kind of thing. Ah yes, the Mini and Honda. More expensive and, with less range, not as versatile. It’s the 500 that wins the mathematical argument, but the Honda and Mini are more fun. And that matters. So, bring on the group test... Tom Harrison
Renault Zoe Unbeatable 245-mile range thanks to the comparatively massive 52kWh battery. A good, worthy car but not as cool as rivals
Mazda MX-30 Size and shape of a crossover, but with city car performance, range and price. RX-8 style doors are cool, but not practical
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7
10 DS 9 E-T E N S E 2 2 5
Neuf said £45,345 1.6T + e-motor
222 bhp
8spd auto
8.3 secs
P
CO2
176 mpg
35 g/km
FOR Peaceful big saloon, comfy, not sporty. Or German AGAINST Buzzy engine, daring to buy something different
T
he engineers at DS have done their job here. This executive saloon rides with a floaty pliancy that’s refreshing. It’s commendably quiet inside thanks to laminated double glazing. Based on a stretched version of the platform that brought you Peugeot’s stunning but cramped 508, there’s plenty of space for grown-ups front and rear. The cabin is impressively trimmed: insist your fleet manager bumps you to the ‘Opera’ spec upholstery, enveloping you in rich feeling,
048 J U L Y 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M
expensive smelling Nappa leather instead of the incongruously sporty Alcantara. It’ll be up to the marketing and advertising sorts to convince you it’s finally time to drop £40k–£50k on a big French car, not a Lexus ES or Volvo S90. Even DS top brass concede this flagship – despite boasting all the tech, space and superior refinement you get from the Germans – won’t make a pinprick in Mercedes’ or Audi’s profit margins, let alone a dent. Perhaps if it looked less derivative it’d score as many cooing glances as Volvo’s four-doors. The swivelling headlamp lenses and chrome brightwork glint gaily in the sunshine, but as a shape it’s nothing like as daring as a Peugeot 508 Fastback or even a Citroen C5X. DS insists it’s an avant-garde French fashion brand, but somehow this business express is a bit of a Louis Vuitton bag for life. Still, subtlety is a less risky game than look-at-me. The only heads you’ll turn are political aides wondering if they’re being spied on by a French diplomat. Inside meanwhile,
you can fiddle with the multiple rhomboid obsessed instrument displays, and wonder aloud why the rotating BRM clock sounds like it’s powered by a burnt-out Scalextric motor. The 12in touchscreen with shortcut keys and inboard window switches are all familiar from the DS 7 crossover, but in a lower, wider cockpit, it feels more upmarket somehow. There’s no diesel: choose from a 222bhp petrol or two PHEV options, one with 222bhp or a forthcoming 4WD rangetopper with 355bhp from the Peugeot Sport 508. We went with the middling version, got 17 miles of EV range versus a claim of over 30, and combined economy of 112mpg with the battery charged, against 38mpg with it flat. The engine’s buzzy when roused, but nothing about the 9’s wafty demeanour encourages time-saving driving. On merit then, this soothing machine deserves an outside shot. But at the time, we thought the Renault Avantime did too. And the Vel Satis. And the Citroen C6. Does anyone really vive le difference anymore? Ollie Kew
MUST TRY HARDER JAGUAR E- P A C E D 16 5
£38,230 CO2
D 2.0TD 4cyl
163 bhp
9spd auto
9.8 secs
44.0 mpg
7
10
168 g/km
JAGUAR’S SMALL CROSSOVER DOESN’T exude much Jaguarishness. The ride is bobbly, the car feels heavy beneath you. It’s just had a thorough overhaul in fact, swapping its old Ford platform for JLR’s newer underpinnings to create vital space for hybrid and plug-in batteries. Even this entry diesel now has a 48V
MINI COOPER S
Facial heir
boost, averaging a real world 40mpg and no longer clattering to life on a frosty morn like an undead skeleton trying to escape
£23,995
from a biscuit tin. Sweet dreams. Another welcome improvement is the 11in touchscreen. It doesn’t treat phone pairing like Korean peninsula peace
P 2.0T 4cy
176 bhp
7pd auto
6.7 secs
44.8 mpg
CO2
143 g/km
negotiations, severing ties every 10mins and refusing to see reason. It’s nice that the cabin has joined the modern era. Still, though, the E-Pace is more of a designer Vauxhall Mokka than truly premium. The same goes for the Merc GLA,
FOR Strong powertrain, endless personalisation options AGAINST Practicality still a cruel joke. Standard Union flag lights
Audi Q3 and BMW X1, phoned-in boredom boxes bereft of imagination. If Jaguar had tried a smidge harder, it would’ve shot to the top of that ho-hum class. Despite its tech gains, the E-Pace is haunted by the same problem. If you’re spending £35k–£50k on a suave British mini-SUV (and not fussed about handling) you buy a Range Rover Evoque. Precisely because unlike the Jag it doesn’t scream ‘entry level, bottom of the range’. Ollie Kew
5
10
050 J U L Y 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M
T
his is the modern Mini MkIII – born back in 2013 and revitalised with yet another facelift for 2021 and beyond. The Cooper S might not be too long for this world, however, because Mini is to be the first brand in the BMW Group to go fully electric. Anyway, check out the hefty new snout (very BMW) and that odd moustache-like surround. Apparently it offers a wider and more aggressive look, although we’re unsure why that would be necessary. Still, it fits with the piano black vibe that Mini is pushing; there’s also a new Black Pack that de-chromes the entire car. Shame – the Mini hatch is one of the few cars that suits a bit of chintz. Despite the electrification chatter, the Cooper S resolutely retains its small car, big engine character. The 2.0-litre turbocharged BMW four-pot is still present, sending its 176bhp to the front wheels. A 6spd manual gearbox is standard fit too, although here we’ve got the optional 7spd auto.
There isn’t the drama of a first-gen Cooper S – thank the lack of a supercharger for that – but 207lb ft of torque means it’s a pleasingly brawny powertrain. The £1,700 DCT is seamless when slushing shifts together and improves 0–62mph times by a tenth, but we’d stick with the notchy manual for a proper junior hot hatch feel. Perhaps the biggest update concerns the dampers. Not something we find ourselves saying often. Mini’s new adaptive suspension actually ditches the electronic damping of old, replacing it with a mechanical set-up that’s firm in normal driving but is far better at dealing with bigger jolts, sending less shudder through the cockpit and making the hatch feel more grown up as a result. Through the corners it’s as impressive as ever, although there is an artificial heft to the steering weight in Sport mode. Without a configurable individual set-up, you’ll often keep the Mini in ‘Mid’ mode to get the best steering, but that then robs you of the sharper throttle and noisier pop-pop exhaust sound in Sport. A slight catch-22, and a perfect example of why – if you’re looking for out and out driving pleasure – you’ll buy a cheaper, more powerful Fiesta ST. Greg Potts
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The overrun Small but perfectly formed reviews. The best of the rest from this month’s drives
9
MERCEDES-BENZ S500 4 M AT I C L A M G L I N E
7
10
The new Mercedes S-Class has arrived in Britain without, typically, some key bits of tech Merc
This car understands that a
KIA STINGER
sports saloon should be better than any other car in its class.
hyped up at its launch. All-wheel
£110,325
It’s front engined, rear drive, has
£42,655
steering, for example, or the
10
the right amount of power and
clever active suspension. Even
performance, is long and rakish.
FOR Mightily comfortable and
so, the new S really is mighty.
FOR Individuality, equipment,
All the good stuff. The trouble
quiet. Considered tech
There are few more complete
cruises well, handsome
is it doesn’t quite execute. The
AGAINST EQS threatens its
cars in which to cover long
AGAINST Thirsty, heavy, not
engine is a bit lazy, the gearbox
position as the flagship Merc
distances. But... you’re not
quite rewarding enough
not quite snappy enough, the damping pogos over bumps.
supposed to notice the engine in P 429 bhp
3.0T 6cyl
4.9 secs
32.5 mpg
CO2
202 g/km
a big, luxury car. And you do in the S. In unrelated news, Merc’s flagship EV is coming soon... TH
7
V W ARTEON SHOOTING BRAKE R-LINE eHYBRID
CO2
P 3.3T V6
356 bhp
4.9 secs
28.0 mpg
229 g/km
Shooting Brake as your next company car, low BiK rates for
MERCEDES-BENZ E300 CABRIOLE T
you’ll be wanting. The eHybrid is
thing, but the BMW leads. OM
10
The posh four-seat cabriolet market isn’t especially diverse and perhaps the E-Class’s utter
PHEVs mean this is the model
£42,170
330i M Sport. It’s a close run
6
10
If you’re luckily offered an Arteon
The same money buys a BMW
class dominance is to blame,
£51,010
so this mid-life facelift merely reinforces its monopoly. A slight
a Passat GTE underneath, with a FOR Looks the business, comfy,
1.4-litre petrol engine and 13kWh
FOR Roof-down refinement,
chink in its armour is this 4cyl
refined and cheap tax
battery for a combined 215bhp
roomy interior
petrol entry model; quick enough,
AGAINST Vocal engine, needs
and 34 miles of electric range.
AGAINST It’s much better
but just a bit uncouth when you
charging for max efficiency
Like all PHEVs it starts in e-mode,
with bigger engines
need an overtake and the revs loudly rise, interrupting the calm
then brings the engine into play P 1.4 4cyl + emotor
052
215 bhp
7.8 secs
201.8 mpg
J U LY 2 0 2 1 ›
CO2
32 g/km
TO P G E A R . C O M
as speeds climb. The trade-off is well handled and overall the car is a refined cruiser. TH
P 2.0T 4cyl
255 bhp
6.6 secs
34.1 mpg
CO2
188 g/km
that otherwise permeates the open E. Here’s a car that feels primed and ready for EV life. SD
O T R T O C O E D R I R D OU Y
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RIMAC NEVERA
OK, it’s only got 1,888bhp and can’t time travel... yet. But the Rimac
056 J U L Y 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M
WORDS JASON BARLOW PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD
Nevera electric hypercar is already rewriting the history books
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057
he software guys,” Miro says with a smile, “aren’t human.” The Croatians, you quickly learn, are a nation of plain speakers. Even about their own co-workers. Miro Zrnčević is Rimac’s chief test driver, a big, bluff guy who loves cars and has one of the key tasks on the company’s long-awaited Nevera: locating the soul of a machine whose colossal abilities are corralled by a frenzy of ones and zeroes, like the opening credits of The Matrix. This has sent him on a journey of discovery in parallel with the software guys. “It’s very strange,” he continues, “because during development I would drive the car and give them feedback. They would stare at the data on their laptops and say, ‘Is this better?’ And it would be, despite the fact that they’ve never even driven the car.” Better here takes on a wholly different meaning. Better here means ballistic. Or brain scrambling. Welcome to hypercar v2.0, a world where everything you know about very (very) fast cars is about to change forever. Sure, software has long played a role in setting parameters but never as profoundly as this. The Nevera’s top-line numbers game is seriously strong. Only 150 will be made, costing £1.7m each (plus local taxes). Top speed is 258mph, but Miro admits that despite a notably rigorous test programme they haven’t quite got there yet. What we do know is that it accelerates to 60mph in 1.85 seconds, 100mph in 4.3, demolishes the quarter mile from a standing start in 8.6 and eclipses 186mph in 9.3secs. This makes the Nevera marginally faster than a contemporary F1 car. Consider that it weighs 2,150kg – 700 of which covers the battery pack – and you get an idea how nuts the physics are here. Then again, we’re well acquainted with the crazy accelerative feats of the most powerful EVs. The Audi e-tron GT and Porsche Taycan have rewired expectations, and one of Elon Musk’s canniest marketing moves was to name the Model S’s most extreme set-up ‘Ludicrous’. This is an inadequate adjective for the Nevera, which really should have a mode called ‘Madness’. What we really want to know, though, is if this electric car goes beyond the cerebral and generates ye olde school fizz, the sort of physical response you get when a V12 ticks past 8,000rpm in third gear and rips the air asunder. We have a day to find out, a sunrise to sunset total immersion. The western coast of Croatia is a jewel. When I visited Rimac’s HQ in 2019, the trip was limited to Zagreb and its industrial hinterland, but the island of Pag is like another planet. Literally. Although Zrće Beach and Novalja town attract hedonistic clubbers, Pag is sparsely populated, sepia toned, and has a lunar landscape. This is down to the ‘karstic’ (mostly limestone) rock formations
RIMAC NEVERA
Jason’s getting all the right sort of attention in his electric hypercar
Right. Now for some chips and beans in the truckers’ lounge
The border police were very interested in Jason’s quilted gilet
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“THE NEVERA HAS A STRONG SENSE OF THEATRE”
060 J U L Y 2 0 2 1 › T O P G E A R . C O M
RIMAC NEVERA
and sporadic little bursts of green, and scything through this scenery in a car with almost 1,900bhp amplifies the sci-fi vibe. Then the topography changes and the Adriatic Sea appears seemingly out of nowhere, a silvery sheen overlaying pristine, perfect blue. A similar shade, in fact, to the Nevera we’re driving. How does it feel when you first climb aboard? Mate Rimac, the main man, wanted a car that was easy to use, so the butterfly doors eat into the roof in a Ford GT-like manner and you don’t need to be a Soviet gymnast to get in and out of it. The view ahead is useful thanks to emotively cresting front wings, the car easy to place on the road, rear visibility decent. And when you pull those doors shut they close with the resounding finality of a cell door in a Belorussian detention centre. Watch the Nevera on the move and the more you appreciate the nuances of its shape. It has a strong sense of theatre, but I’d put it closer to the Honda NSX than a Ferrari SF90. It’s not generic but there’s a certain familiarity to the form language, the shape largely dictated by aerodynamic and cooling requirements, including Rimac’s signature ‘cravat’ motif ahead of the rear wheelarch. “The necktie has provided a symbol of Croatian strength and identity since the 17th century,” says the company’s design director, Adriano Mudri. So now you know. Everything inside, bar the Audi R8-sourced HVAC, is proprietary, from the main infotainment system and all its software to the interior door handles, switchgear and air vents, which are made from billet aluminium. The steering wheel feels good and the indicators are Ferrari-like buttons. (Column stalks aren’t very Rimac-y and surely it’s only a matter of time before we’re ‘thinking’ our indicators on and off.) There are three high-definition TFT screens, running bespoke software and graphics. The main one is configurable, displaying all the info you need plus some stuff you probably don’t: there’s a real time torque display, which shows how much each wheel is coping with, a g-meter, and various other read-outs that are difficult to process on the move. The central screen handles infotainment, phone, navigation, climate control but it’s also where you go to adjust the seats. I’d be happier with a simple manual adjustment. The Nevera’s architecture encompasses a 6,960-cell, 120kWh lithium/manganese/nickel battery pack in an H shape along the spine and behind the cockpit. There are four surface mounted permanent magnet motors driving each wheel individually, the most advanced torque vectoring ever achieved, a power output
RIMAC NEVERA Price: £2,040,000 Engine: Four e-motors, 1,888bhp, 1,741lb ft Transmission: Two 1spd automatics, AWD Performance: 0–60mph in 1.85secs, 258mph Economy: 2.8mpkWh, 0g/km CO2 Weight: 2,150kg
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It takes around eight minutes of espresso to recharge Jason
TOYOTA CENTURY
“SQUEEZE THE THROTTLE...
Nice – a couple of Werthers in return for a cheeky snapshot
062
J U LY 2 0 2 1 ›
TO P G E A R . C O M
RIMAC NEVERA
THE RIMAC JUST WARPS”
Hope this is the right way, or that’s a 200 metre reverse job
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RIMAC NEVERA
equivalent to 1,888bhp and 1,741lb ft of torque. A pair of singlespeed gearboxes are connected to the front and rear wheels. The Nevera has a range of 340 miles WLTP, and hooked up to a 500kW charger (when they actually exist for public consumption) takes 19 minutes to go from zero to an 80 per cent state of charge. Yet there’s no future shock to the Nevera in everyday use. The drive controller is a rotary dial to the left of the steering wheel that you push to wake everything up, then scroll through P, R, N and D. Rimac is still finessing the haptics and there’s work to be done optimising its action. We bimble through town using a tiny fraction of the available firepower, drawing attention from the locals and a handful of speedy selfies. A rather rotund older lady remains wholly focused on her early morning ice cream. A man nearby cradles a beer with a similar fondness. The road to the mainland ferry is a smoothly surfaced joy, a looping pasta spiral through that other-worldly landscape punctuated by a couple of deeply tempting straights. Enough of the bimble. Squeeze the Nevera’s throttle and the resulting torrent of energy is like lava erupting from a volcano. Even a big multi-cylindered combustion engine takes a beat or two to get its act together but the Rimac just warps forward. That idea of ‘thinking’ your indicators on and off: well this is thought or intention instantly made real. Let’s just explode a myth here, though: fast cars aren’t all about simply going fast. The how, why and what happens along the way is what colours in the space between. The Nevera’s fully electric steering is well calibrated and allows you to pour the car in and out of corners with a linear motion. It’s not overflowing with natural feel but then ‘feel’ is a dark art these days. There are seven drive modes on offer, Sport being the optimum if you’re after the most rounded everyday drive by way of sharpened throttle, brakes, suspension and steering. Range is obviously leaner with the energy, Track turns everything up to 11, Custom allows you to mix and match, while Drift basically sends all the torque to the rear axle if you want to bonfire your Michelin Pilot Sports. That’s for later. Drive it in one of its less aggressive modes and the Nevera does a very reasonable impression of, say, a Bentley Continental GT. It’s suspended on double wishbones all round with electronically controlled dampers and active ride height, so it’s tolerably comfortable at everyday speeds, if occasionally crashy over sudden surface imperfections. Having crossed the Velebitski Kanal and picked up the road near Prizna, the Nevera reveals itself to be dense with layers of personality. The secret sauce here, of course, is the torque vectoring, a fiendishly complex set-up that effectively turns the Rimac into five cars in one. There are 77 separate ECUs and
Jason was only too happy to oblige Mr Rimac’s request
millions of lines of code hustling around its body – mainframe? – but rather than schizophrenia, the result is a remarkable bandwidth. The Rimac All-Wheel Torque Vectoring (R-AWTV 2) effectively supplants regular ESP and traction control systems, working predictively and responsively to make 100 calculations per second. Depending on mode, you can revel in all-wheel grip, neutralising understeer and finding a friendly balance, or send all the torque to the rear axle and do daft skids (later, I said). In Sport mode, the Nevera summons up the wieldiness you’d find in, say, the Porsche 911 Turbo, but punches out of a corner with the ferocity of something that has three times the Porsche’s horsepower (which it has). This hurricane force isn’t a surprise but its agility and poise are really something. As is the way it sloughs off its mass: it feels half a tonne lighter than it is, like a car with optimal weight distribution and centre of gravity rather than one with a Caterham Seven’s worth of battery at its heart. Miro and his team are still finessing the braking. An electrohydraulic brake booster with a pedal feel simulator distributes braking force between the friction brakes – beefy 390mm Brembo carbon ceramics front and rear – and the electric powertrain, according to which is thermally optimal. The Nevera offers the highest amount of regen braking of any EV currently on sale, and while there’s room for improvement in how the old and new blend, you can hustle effectively along a twisty road in one-pedal mode. The faster you go, the bigger the leap of faith. Then there’s the Nevera’s chassis, made entirely of carbon fibre – bonded roof, integrated battery housing and rear subframe – which gives it the torsional rigidity of a Le Mans Prototype. Rimac claims it’s the most rigid road car ever made, and at 70.000 Nm/degree it’s approximately twice as stiff as the far-from-floppy Lamborghini Aventador. There’s the odd creak and groan – carbon fibre can generate unusual acoustic anomalies – but mostly
“THE NEVERA’S AGILITY AND POISE ARE REALLY SOMETHING”
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“IT SOUNDS REALLY GOOD. A MIX OF WHOOSH, WHIRR AND SCI-FI”
THE RISE AND RISE OF MATE RIMAC How to launch your own electric supercar company in eight easy steps
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RIMAC NEVERA
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RIMAC NEVERA
“THINK OF RIMAC AS A SORT OF TECHNO PAGANI”
you’re just aware of how phenomenally well engineered the Nevera is. Yes, the urge remains to reach for shift paddles, and the seamless nature of the powertrain invariably removes a layer of interaction. It simply doesn’t sizzle like a V12. But as you can imagine, the availability of almost 1,900 expertly calibrated horsepower kinda compensates. And actually it sounds really good, an authentic mix of whoosh, whir and sci-fi. Not so far from a Chiron, then. And faster. Our drive culminates at Zadar airport, a runway being the only possible location to experience the violent thrust the Nevera is capable of. Performing a launch start is dead easy: select Track mode on the dash mounted rotary controller nearest your right hand, press the brake for a few seconds, then release and stand on the accelerator. The next 10 or 15 seconds are simply vapourised. Time ceases to exist, or at least exist in the form in which we recognise it. Whatever happens, I do it twice just to be sure. Then a third time to double check that what happened the first two times was for real. By this point my internal organs have swapped places, a situation that a spell exploring the Drift mode does little to help. Mate Rimac is a self-confessed data fiend so the central screen is also home to the Nevera’s telemetry, which can be downloaded to a laptop or smartphone for review. He meets us at the runway and once he’s happy that we’re happy, he gleefully tells me where I was accelerating most vigorously, what mode I was in, and how
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much power I used: 1,580bhp apparently. Not so much Big Brother as your genius Croatian cousin. Rimac has developed its own M2M data system to allow owners to analyse driving performance, metrics and map previews on all the usual platforms, and there will be over-the-air updates as and when. On top of all this, there’s also an AI driver coach, which uses the car’s 12 ultrasonic sensors, 13 cameras and six radars hooked up to the latest NVIDIA Pegasus operating system to overlay race circuits in real-time to allow drivers to work on the perfect line, and braking and acceleration points. There’s a lot to unpack. As the first true pure electric hypercar to land, there’s a pioneering feel to the Rimac Nevera. This thing’s quarter mile time blitzes the Bugatti Chiron Sport’s and its pace everywhere is intergalactic. But the most powerful ICE cars also generate huge character, and it’s their engines and the noise they make that tend to linger longest in the memory. Even the highest of high performance can become one-dimensional. But the Nevera feels like it’s been engineered and developed by people who aren’t just way ahead of the technological and software curve, they have an innate feeling for the hardware too. Put the elements together and you have a car that isn’t just entertaining, it feels like a significant step on the road ahead. Think of Rimac as a sort of techno Pagani, with as much focus on artistry as artificial intelligence. Those software guys are human after all.
TG’S ROUGH GUIDE TO ELECTRIC CARS
TG’S
ROUGH GUIDE TO ELECTRIC CARS Plug in as we take you on a lightning fast tour of our electric future. Warts and all
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DRIL L CO 2 C A P T U R E
R E F INE R Y
GE NE R AT E
Captured CO2 plus hydrogen are raw materials for synthetic petrol
E L E C T R OLY S E
Green electricity fed directly into car
S Y N T H E T IC P E T ROL P L A N T Green electricity used to make hydrogen for fuel-cell car
Petrol car can run on normal petrol from oil wells, or synthetic petrol made using green electricity
PETROL CAR ON SYNTHETIC FUEL
1kWh ELECTRICITY DRIVES...
WELL TO WHEEL Just how green is the electric journey from pipe to plug? WORDS PAUL HORRELL
FUEL CELL CAR
0.7 miles
1.1 miles
A comparison of CO2 emissions must include the whole energy chain. For petrol, powering the rigs, pipelines, refineries and distribution trucks adds about an extra 20 per cent to the CO2 emitted from the tailpipe. In the electricity transmission network meanwhile, about 10 per cent of the energy gets lost between generation and the socket. Also you need to feed about 10 per cent more electricity into the car’s socket than ends up in the battery, because the car’s onboard charger has an inefficiency too. So your EV’s generation-to-wheel consumption is at least 20 per cent more than the trip computer claims. Still, if it’s
green electricity, it’s a good result. Unfortunately if generation is a long way from the point of use, transmission losses grow hugely. That’s an argument for fuel cell cars running on hydrogen. Ships and pipelines can move hydrogen big distances. Green electricity – solar in hot empty deserts, or wind in remote steppes – could be turned on-site into hydrogen by electrolysis, or in effect reversing a fuel cell: water in, hydrogen and oxygen out. One proposal for the North Sea is to send offshore wind power to redundant drilling rigs, there producing hydrogen and sending onshore by the existing gas pipes. But while
ELECTRIC CAR
3.1 miles*
it’s possible to ship hydrogen, it’s not cheap and it takes energy to compress. So Porsche among others is looking at synthetic fuel. This takes renewable power – in this case from wind in Chile – and combines it with carbon captured from atmospheric CO2 to make a hydrocarbon that will burn in petrol engines. This is easily shipped to your usual outlet. It’s renewable, because the car (and the ship that transports the fuel) together put out only a little more CO2 than was captured in the manufacturing. Thus your old petrol car goes green! But at the moment the CO2 capture is nascent, and the resulting fuel will always be expensive.
*3.8mpkWh on trip less 10 per cent transmission loss and 10 per cent charger loss 070
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TG’S ROUGH GUIDE TO ELECTRIC CARS
ALTERNATIVE PROPULSION
Steamed up In 1968, GM commissioned inventor Bill Bessler to build a steam-powered version of its Chevelle saloon, but the project soon fizzled out
Fission tips Ford’s 1958 Nucleon got as far as a working scale model to demonstrate its uranium tech. No range anxiety here with 5,000 miles between fills
ELECTRIC VS PETROL Thought an electric car was out of your budget? Maybe not...
To me, to you The Chuckle Brothers were years ahead on their zeroemission quadricycle. The Chuckmobile did a lot of miles in its 21 series on screen
Air we go In 2008, Tata announced a car powered by air, stored using onboard compressors. Technical hitches mean the OneCAT remains on ice
On me head sun Dutch carmaker Lightyear launches its One this year. The car’s 5m2 of solar panels generate up to 7.5 miles of range every hour. If it’s sunny
WORDS PAUL HORRELL
It’s a frequent snipe that electric cars are for the privileged green elite. But if you can afford a new car you can afford a Vauxhall Corsa. And I’m about to prove that with a Corsa, electric gives you cheaper motoring than petrol. On a three year PCP, the electric SRi asks for a slightly higher deposit (£4,942 versus £4,103) than the petrol SRi but the monthly rental is similar: £249 for the petrol, £238 for the electric. Next, the running cost. Petrol is easy to work out. Say 40mpg, 24k miles over the three years, that’s 600 gallons and £3,400 at today’s petrol price. The electric is harder. You’ll need 6,000kWh at 4mpkWh. Normal rate home charging is 15p or so per kWh, off-street parking might be 25p/kWh. Or at work, which might or might not be free. So anything from zero to £1,500 over the term. Servicing and tyres: it’s about £800 a year for the petrol and £550 for the electric, representing a £750 saving over the term. Tax disc is £450 over three years for the turbo, zero for the electric. Now, the insurance is slightly higher for the electric, as it’s group 24E versus group 17E. But overall, the Corsa e is going to save a substantial sum over a three year ownership.
CORSA-e
CORSA
SRi 136 elec
<< SPEC >>
SRi 130 auto
PRICE (VAUXHALL STORE)
£24,710
£20,515 DEPOSIT
£4,942
£4,103
MONTHLY (3YRS PCP)
£237.80
£249.00
BALLOON (8K MILES)
£13,352
£9,170
FUEL COST (24K MILES)
£900 4mpkWh, 0.15p/kWh
£3,410 40mpg, £1.25/litre
INSURANCE GROUP
24E
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17E
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EV PASSNOTES
WAHT DOES YOUR EV SAY ABOUT YOU? The secret language of electric
It can be overwhelming when you first get behind the wheel of an EV – use our handy tips to get up to speed WORDS SAM BURNETT
HOW TO TELL E VERYONE YOU DRI VE AN E V
BMW i3
STYLE GURU You don’t want people to think that you couldn’t afford a bigger BMW
Turn up everywhere 90 minutes late – “Soooo sorry, I had to stop and charge my electric car”
Wear green. It’s a subliminal way of reminding everyone of your eco credentials
Hang around while plugged in. Shrug emphatically and roll your eyes at passers-by
Block in petrol cars parked at charge points, it’s a great chance to raise EV awareness Tesla Model 3
W H AT T H E Y D O N ’ T T E L L Y O U A B O U T E V s
MID-LEVEL EXEC You recently took the bold decision to save a lot of money on your company car scheme
The motorway ceases to exist. It’s the scenic route only from now on, sunshine
You’ll end up in a threeway fight over the plug at the Eurotunnel terminal in Calais
Calculate range easily by subtracting 10 from the distance to your destination
Charge points on long journeys are exclusively located in dodgy car parks Nissan Leaf
MINICAB DRIVER/ GRANDPARENT
THE FOUR T YPES OF E V DRI VER
You’ve put on a lot of weight buying snacks every time you stop to charge
Porsche Taycan
KEEN GOLFER
HYPERMILER
NEWBIE
TAXI
Dresses warm all year
Hogs the only free
Could be their first time
Approach with caution,
round, has never turned
charge point for miles,
charging. Doesn’t know
can be aggressive. No
on the air conditioning
doesn’t understand
where the socket is,
eco driving skills, needs
and plans journeys
what the fuss is about.
moved the car four times
access to a fast charger
with an air of military
Can usually be found
before the plug could
at least three times a
efficiency. Can usually
driving a plug-in hybrid
reach. Can usually be
day. Can usually be
be found slipstreaming
they don’t want to pay
found crying behind
found snoozing in the
an HGV at 53mph.
072
FREELOADER
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to charge at home.
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their large company SUV.
driver’s seat.
You charge at home because you don’t want to be seen in any of the places with a public plug
Mitsubishi i-MiEV
VERY EARLY ADOPTER Now a Bitcoin billionaire, but you can’t find anyone to buy your secondhand EV
TG’S ROUGH GUIDE TO ELECTRIC CARS
e-SCOOTER
e-UNICYCLE
e-CARGO BIKE
e-MOTORBIKE
e-BUS
WHAT IS IT
WHAT IS IT
WHAT IS IT
WHAT IS IT
WHAT IS IT
A kid’s toy on steroids
Single-wheeled,
A stretched bike with
A zero-emission
A large passenger
WHAT’S IT FOR
self-balancing
a big box on it
motorbike
carrying vehicle
Harassing pedestrians/
tiny vehicle
WHAT’S IT FOR
WHAT’S IT FOR
WHAT’S IT FOR
getting somewhere
WHAT’S IT FOR
“Last mile” deliveries
Filtering through traffic
Getting old people to the
faster. Technically these
Embarrassing yourself
around town or getting
and doing massive
shops and everyone
are only allowed on
TECH
your kids to nursery
torquey burnouts
else to work
private land until gov’t
Similar set-ups to
TECH
TECH
TECH
trials finish
scooters, although
Tiny e-motor provides
All the stuff you’d expect
Giant e-motors, huge
TECH
expensive options
assisted boost to riders,
from petrol bikes. Design
batteries, the latest
Regen brakes, ABS,
are terrifyingly fast.
with small batteries up
is the big battleground
quick charging tech – in
pneumatic tyres, cruise
Gyroscopes keep you
to 0.5kWh. Motor has to
here, with some fanciful
Sweden they’re trying
control. Usually has a
upright, while you lean
be under 250W and
looking efforts from
out pantographs
small 300W–500W motor
to steer. Flashing
15.5mph or the bike
bolshy start-ups
RANGE
and a battery capacity
coloured LEDs feature
needs to be registered
RANGE
Up to 160 miles, but only
up to 0.5kWh
prominently
with the DVLA
Up to 150 miles
along a certain route
RANGE
RANGE
RANGE
CAPACITY
CAPACITY
Up to 40 miles
Up to 75 miles
Up to 150 miles
Up to two people
Up to 85 people and
CAPACITY
CAPACITY
CAPACITY
PRICE
some shopping
One person
One person, three
About 100kg/500 litres
£2,700–£30,000 (many
PRICE
PRICE
juggling balls
of stuff
bikes eligible for gov’t
Up to £300,000 (or £1.50
plug-in grant)
with an Oyster card)
£300–£1,400 (rentable
PRICE
PRICE
in certain places)
£500–£1,900
£4,000–£8,000
IS IT LEGAL?
IS IT LEGAL?
IS IT LEGAL?
IS IT LEGAL?
IS IT LEGAL?
With the appropriate
As long as you’ve
Not in the UK
Not in the UK
Yes
licence
paid your fare
ELECTRIC AVENUES What about ditching the car entirely and using some fashionable urban mobility devices? WORDS SAM BURNETT
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IS THERE ENOUGH ELECTRICITY? Worried it’s the car or the kettle? Think again WORDS PAUL HORRELL
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Total electricity demand in the UK peaked just over 10 years ago when there were no EVs. It was around 375,000GWh a year. But 10 million cars would use 25,000GWh a year. Or one-fifteenth of the grid capacity we had back then. In pre-pandemic 2019, Britain’s consumption had fallen to 308,000GWh. So the grid can comfortably supply all the cars. By 2050, we’re going to be using far less fossil fuel for everything – industry and heating especially – and so grid capacity is planned to double. There are also plans to have four times as much renewable capacity as now. (In 2020 we got more of our electrical grid energy from wind, solar, bio and
hydro combined than we did from fossil fuel.) The big-energy roadmap is looking good. But energy is power across time. If everyone were to plug in their cars at once, it would break the grid’s power capacity. So cars must charge mostly at times of the day when there’s otherwise low demand. Flexible electricity prices can make it happen. When the juice is in excess or short supply, suppliers can drop or raise the rate. An app on your phone or house meter would know this and tell your car to start (or stop) charging if the price went below (or above) a threshold. There’s another reason for flexible pricing. The
most significant types of renewable electricity are in fluctuating supply. Solar stops at night, wind drops off in calm weather. So we need to use the electricity when it’s available. OK, so there’s enough. But is it in the right place? Most people will home charge. Most streets have enough power to supply their wallboxes, again because they’ll be encouraged via localised flex-pricing to charge the cars only when they aren’t cooking a roast. Rapid charging hubs will be different, as they’ll demand megawatts of power. Luckily high-tension pylons tend to run near major roads, so that hookup won’t be a big issue either.
TG’S ROUGH GUIDE TO ELECTRIC CARS
WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH...
AGON-e UNCLE
So, you’ve got your head around our electric future? There’s plenty more to come yet, and it looks bright
Don’t fear, Paul is here, and he’s on hand to answer your burning queries
WORDS PAUL HORRELL
“People keep going on about AC and DC charging. Huh?” AC charging is the slow kind, usually 7kW. All day or all night. Which sounds like an AC/DC song. If you use DC (it’s 50kW and up) you’ll charge in an hour or less.
“So when would I use them?”
WHAT ABOUT... SOLID-STATE BATTERIES
AC is for home or work charging, or a shopping centre. When you’re doing something else. DC is for a long trip and wanting to be stopped as briefly as poss.
1 “My car came without a DC cable” That’s right. DC cables are heavy, thick and sometimes even liquid-cooled. So they’re attached to DC chargers, like a petrol pump has its own hose.
“Why can’t I get my WLTP range?”
WO R D S : PAU L H O R R E L L
Because you go fast on motorways. Town or B-road driving, even with lots of acceleration and slowing, gets more miles. Also dress warmly, don’t use heating.
“I never see any chargers” Petrol stations have giant light-up signs, but chargers might be just a socket in a lamp post, or standalone pedal bin size. Find them with an app like Zap-Map.
The cells in today’s batteries have an
WHAT ABOUT... INDUCTIVE CHARGING 2
In principle, no different for cars than phones. Just
WHAT ABOUT... BATTERY SWAPPING 3
In 2012, Renault sold an electric version of the
electrolyte gel in the space
park in the right place and the
Fluence saloon in Denmark and
between the negative and
pad on the ground will send
Israel, and its battery could be
positive electrodes. But the gels
energy by electromagnetism to
swapped for a charged one in
are flammable, so the battery
a pad fixed under the car. You
minutes at stations around both
needs lots of safety measures,
can buy a ground pad for your
countries. The company, Better
pushing up its weight and bulk.
drive, and get the car-side
Place, went bankrupt. Tesla
equipment retrofitted on some
also opened a pilot station for
use a solid electrolyte. They can
cars. But really, is it so much
swapping the underfloor packs
Solid-state batteries instead withstand higher powered and
trouble just to plug in,
of the Model S, but it closed
faster charging. They’re more
especially at home? Still,
within a year.
fire resistant, so they need
it makes more sense for
smaller safety systems, making
street-side, where cables
stations and has passed 2m
them more energy dense. And
can be a trip hazard.
swaps. Nio’s second-generation
they need less rare materials. Great... but. Over time,
The more whizz-bang idea is to put the pads under traffic
Now Nio in China has 219
station is fully automatic and can do 300 a day.
twig-like growths (called,
lanes. If we can stomach the
appropriately, dendrites)
roadworks and cost, anyway.
and car architectures evolve,
emerge from the positive
Some very short sections on
would cars be held back by
electrode and push their way
test tracks have proven that a
having to use a standard pack
through the separating layer,
car can drive along, switching
design? The car industry has
So it works. But as batteries
and capacity falls. Despite the
from one pad to the next, and
a record of not-invented-here
high-profile efforts of Toyota
recharge as it moves. But is it
syndrome, so would it even
and Dyson they haven’t yet been
worth the investment, when
agree a standard? Nio is proud
manufactured at bearable cost
most charging happens at
of the proprietary tech in its
and scale and durability. BMW
home? And will the providers
battery and swap system.
and VW have joined the race,
and carmakers agree on
And as rapid-charge times
so expect them to be common in
standards for the system
approach 20 minutes, is it
the last quarter of this decade.
and payment?
worth all that investment?
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E-TRON GT vs M5 CS
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Supersaloon buyers, is it time to go electric? Audi says yes, BMW says not so fast... Harris has to decide WORDS CHRIS HARRIS
PHOTOGRAPHY MARK RICCIONI
In retrospect we probably shouldn’t have left the barbecue on the tarmac
On looks alone, the e-tron GT might be the car to get you into an EV
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E-TRON GT vs M5 CS
THE YEAR IS 2021. THE WORLD IS JUST RECOVERING FROM A GLOBAL PANDEMIC THAT HAS ALTERED THE WAY PEOPLE WILL TRAVEL FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. THE DEATH OF THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE IS NOW OPENLY DISCUSSED AND ELECTRICITY IS NOW ASSUMED TO BE THE ONLY SUBSTITUTE. You love cars, you are lucky enough to have the resources to buy a fast, expensive car, but you want to keep it for a few years. Can you still buy a petrol powered car and be sure it’ll retain some value or do you have to go electric – but if you do, is the infrastructure in place to actually use the car as you need? And in this parallel universe, like most people, you reach the conclusion that the internal combustion engine is a long way from dead. That most ULEZ will accommodate the very latest Euro 6 compliant machines. So you phone the BMW dealer and say, “I’m going to take that M5, boss, life’s too short.” “Pop in tomorrow and sort the paperwork!” he says. That night you see a picture of the new Audi RS e-tron GT – and you think “Christ, have I done the right thing here?” Because the e-tron is one of those rare automotive tricks – it is so attractive, you could potentially buy it on looks alone. The number of people who have been affected by this precise conundrum must amount to not very many souls, but the basic principle that has affected most lower value, lower performance cars is now proving vexing in new places. I mean is there really an electric alternative to the mighty M5? Porsche would say there most certainly is, because its electric Taycan is stealing sales from conventional fast saloon cars. And being part of the wider VW family has given Audi access to all of Porsche’s hard work, so it really is quite fair to say that the handily named RS e-tron GT is a rebodied Taycan that has been sent to Audi’s finishing school. The M5 CS plonked next to it here shares nothing with anything any other carmaker produces. It is a piece of
automotive folly whose £140k price tag proves that the world has gone slightly mad because its empirical offering over a much cheaper M5 Competition is both marginal and slightly undone by the fact this car is only a four seater. Fear not though, the CS is festooned with the kind of details that make people like us get all excited and which most ordinary people would find pointless. It has vast carbon ceramic brakes that save 23kg, it gets the new M3’s superb carbon shelled seats and a fancy new carbon bonnet. Those rear seats are now individual buckets too, which triggers my inner nerd because back in 1990 BMW offered the E34 M5 with a four seat option that made a 15-year-old me jiggle with excitement. Tyres are a little wider and the whole suspension system has been uprated to better control the 1,825kg mass. Yes, it’s almost all bits robbed from existing cars, but that shouldn’t matter. BMW has made this thing track ready, and as I’m typing this my pal Christian Gebhardt from Sport Auto magazine has just thrashed one around the Nürburgring in 7min 29.57sec, which is a truly silly speed for such a large machine. Oh, and it has yellow DRL strips that make it look a little like a renegade from Seventies Paris. In short, the £38,000 increase over the Competition makes little sense, but once you sit in it, the CS tugs so hard on the area of your brain marked ‘man-maths’ that the finance documents almost sign themselves. The Audi is less ostentatious, but it has arguably even greater road presence – like the Taycan its bodywork seems shrinkwrapped over the bodyshell and its Beyoncé hips look silhouetteracer compared to the M5. The car sits low and, viewed at the
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E-TRON GT vs M5 CS
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Still not quite sure how Harris won this game of musical statues
most unobjective level imaginable, I just love it from all angles. It’s butch, powerful and, to my eyes, better looking than a Taycan. This being Porsche’s R&D project, Audi hasn’t been allowed the full toy cupboard, so this RS model is a little down on power, but that still means 590bhp and 637bhp for limited periods of “overboost”. Normally electric tackle offers a big on-paper acceleration advantage, but the M5 darts to 62mph in just 3.0secs, 0.3secs faster than the Audi, then keeps pulling away. Half a tonne lighter, don’t forget. So Audi pitches this RS as being a little less the full-on sports saloon and more the GT compared with the Porsche. And that message seems quite absurd the first time you push that right pedal, because it’s inconceivable that anyone could need a faster car on the road in the UK. Flex a toe and it leaps forward with the type of immediacy no internal combustion engine can possibly replicate. And then you try to tip it into a corner, at which point the e-tron proves to be one of the most perplexing machines that I’ve driven for a while. Allow me at this point to air some of my deeply rooted journalistic prejudices. If you told me that a car developed by Porsche would have a variant whose chassis set-up was finished by Audi, I would assume that the latter would be less talented and less fun to drive. That it would mostly understeer, the brake pedal feel would be irritating and the interior would be swanky. These are the Audi expectations. But this Audi doesn’t do that. It turns without pushing, it rides with a suppleness that makes the Taycan seem a little harsh – and the M5 plain rough. Audis don’t normally do that. Then you hit the bad behaviour button and the thing confounds you even more. This is an electric Audi that likes to slide. I’m going to type that again just because it didn’t quite compute the first time. This is an electric Audi that likes to slide. Hoof it hard on a damp track and the e-tron will pull enormous angles – they don’t sustain in quite the way they would in a big RWD saloon car, but the surprise factor more than compensates for that small black mark. Of course such antics are mostly meaningless, but the way a car behaves at or beyond the limit informs the way it behaves in normal driving. The RS model that offers the best balance of ride, handling and on-demand silliness in probably 15 years is also its first electric model. Perhaps its most impressive trick is that it fashions some immensely complicated hardware – four-wheel steering, torque vectoring and Lord knows what else – into what feels like an intuitive, simple driving experience. But the weight, all 2,347kg of it, always gets you eventually. And that comes when you ask too much of the front axle – either corner speed or braking. And in what is now becoming consistent behaviour among these very heavy machines, when it does cry ‘enough’ the e-tron suddenly feels as heavy as an obelisk and
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summons the assistance of its electronic systems. Judder, judder, oooooooh – new underwear please. How a BMW saloon weighing nigh-on 1,900kg can feel so light afterwards shows you how lumpy these electric machines really are. Ah, the M5 CS. We could spend some time discussing the intricacies of why this car is so special – we will in a just a moment – but the bigger picture is perhaps more impressive. For quite some time now the whole E63 S/RS6/M5 debate has come down to badge preference – they offered pretty similar performance without much to decipher them from each other. The M5 CS is a cut above. It’s angrier, ballsier, sillier and more memorable than anything I’ve driven in this class before. This is meant as a compliment, but you’d half expect it to have a very well respected tuner’s badge on the back. As for the claimed 626bhp, it feels much stronger than that. There’s a key crossover in the way these cars behave. That point I described when the e-tron succumbs to weight and inertia, say 88 per cent of maximum attack? That’s almost exactly the moment the M5 removes its grey suit and thick specs, reveals the coloured spandex, stares straight down the camera lens and lets the cape flow in the wind. It’s at this point that it drives like no other car of its type. The steering is light but spookily accurate, the damping is just exceptional – hammer the suspension into all kinds of compressions and the car deals with it in one, smooth controlled reaction. The brakes are immense, the motor just keeps pulling and before long you’re just pulling up a gear and using the torque to make the rears squirm and sit in a very mild, but very permanent oversteer. On a track you can disconnect all the systems, go 2WD and napalm a set of rears in a couple of minutes. It’s an animal. And yet it’s still perfectly refined. BMW mentions a reduction in sound deadening, but I didn’t really notice it. Likewise the suspension, which always feels firm, but equally always stops short of crashing into poor surfaces. Just when you expect it to be harsh, it somehow manages just enough plushness to make you think “I could easily live with this”. I’m not going to discuss range and charging infrastructure and all that other stuff. Currently, as a device to get you to B from A there is no substitute for an ICE machine. But I’m still so torn – I love the idea of living with an e-tron GT just to see if it’s possible and whether it would prove interesting enough to justify the price. The cabin alone, much more conventional than a Tesla’s, makes me think that it might be. But the M5 CS is clearly the last of a breed. There won’t be another factory M5 like this car – in many ways it’s the summary skills of a lineage that goes all the way back to the E12 535i of 1981. A farewell tour to remind us just what BMW has given to this space. Remember, it’s still called the ‘M5 class’. And this one is pure class.
AUDI RS E-TRON GT
BMW M5 CS
Price: £110,950 Engine: Dual motor, 590bhp, (637bhp overboost), 612lb ft Transmission: 2spd auto on rear axle, AWD Performance: 0–62mph in 3.3secs, 155mph Economy: 2.9mpkWh, 0g/km CO2 Weight: 2,347kg
Price: £140,780 Engine: 4.4-litre V8, 626bhp, 553lb ft Transmission: 8spd automatic, AWD Performance: 0–62mph in 3.0secs, 189mph Economy: 26.8mpg, 257g/km CO2 Weight: 1,825kg
E-TRON GT vs M5 CS
Hit the gas to find out what the chunky headrests are for
Quite difficult to accidentally put diesel in this one
Losing dibs on the middle seat particularly painful in the M5
“THE M5 CS IS CLEARLY THE LAST OF A BREED”
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You’re the greatest living car designer. You need the finest V12 the world has ever seen. Who you gonna call? Cosworth, of course
COSWORTH
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Every great British firm began in an asbestos riddled shed like this
As Gordon Murray’s T.50 edges ever closer to sign-off, with the Valkyrie and Project One also inching agonisingly towards the finish line, the dominant narrative says this will be one of the last great driver’s cars – pure of purpose, free of frippery and powered by what promises to be the apogee of naturally aspirated road car engines. It is hard to imagine a man better suited to the task of creating the petrol-powered sports car’s swansong than Gordon Murray. And it’s fitting that the honour, when it comes to building the engine for this car, should fall to Cosworth. Murray and Cosworth go way back, having collaborated at Brabham to win the Formula One World Championship with Nelson Piquet in 1981. Both stalwarts of the sport for decades and both widely regarded as design and engineering pioneers par excellence, the relationship between Murray and Cosworth is one of mutual understanding and respect that has morphed into a sort of symbiosis with the T.50: Murray asks for something extraordinary, Cosworth delivers with a side order of OMFG. To and fro in secret for several years and then this, the GMA Cosworth V12, roars into life. A few core facts bear repeating here. This is a 3994cc 65-degree V12 with twin overhead camshafts making 653bhp at 11,500rpm (en route to a redline of 12,100rpm) and 344lb ft at 9,000rpm. It is of all-aluminium construction, using titanium for the valves and con rods. Its natural aspiration is ram air induction via four individual throttle bodies. Total weight is a scarcely credible 178kg. To best understand how Cosworth has achieved this, and why Gordon Murray made a beeline to its door in the first place, it is worth having a deep dive into the back catalogue of arguably the single greatest engine builder in the whole history of motorsport. Cosworth was founded in 1958 by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth, the latter ex-Lotus and the former actually still at Hethel when their project began. The pair started off building small capacity engines for formula and sports car racing using off the peg Ford units for which they would modify the cylinder heads. Their engines proved so dominant in competition that demand quickly outstripped supply and the Cosworth mods were made available in kit form. By the mid-Sixties Cosworth had begun to design its own heads, beginning with the SCA, a carb fed single cam design. But it was with the subsequent FVA where things began to hot up. This was a fuel injected 16v twin overhead camshaft design that provided the footings for a far grander concept, the 8cyl ‘double four-valve’ DFV.
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“Everybody just touch this bit here and say cheese”
COSWORTH
“THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MURRAY AND COSWORTH IS ONE OF MUTUAL RESPECT”
“JIM CLARK’S DFVPOWERED LOTUS 49 TOOK THE MOST WINS OF THE SCOT’S LAST FULL SEASON”
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In a curious twist of fate, it was actually Colin Chapman who commissioned the development of the DFV in a bid to return Lotus to the top of the F1 pile and used his influence to persuade Ford to invest heavily in the project. The subsequent 3.0-litre 90-degree V8 with bespoke Cosworth block and crankcase changed the face of top tier formula racing. Duckworth’s first ground-up engine was dry sumped with a flat-plane crank within an all-aluminium casing with drop-in cast iron liners and gear driven cams. Despite its lightweight construction, the DFV was also a stressed member, meaning it formed a load-bearing part of the chassis. It made a mighty 405bhp at 9,000rpm, a power figure that would rise by some 20 per cent during its F1 career and that was more than doubled during a turbocharged spell in Indycar. Jim Clark’s DFV-powered Lotus 49 won on its debut at the 1967 Dutch GP and took the most wins of the Scot’s last full season. The engine was made available to all comers the following year and soon comprised almost the entire field bar Ferrari. Everyone, including Enzo in all probability, wanted a sprinkling of the Cosworth magic. By the time the DFV was rendered obsolete in 1985 it had won 155 championship races. And all the while, Cosworth was winning on other fronts too. In tandem with DFV development came the BDA engines – Ford Escort blocks for which a new DOHC in-line head was devised. These tough and tunable units were the workhorses of European rallying and touring car championships for a decade or more. This once workaday in-line four even made it to Group B, by now heavily turbocharged and hunkered down amid the semi-spaceframe of Ford’s RS200. Cosworth continued in this vein throughout the Eighties, turning the Ford Sierra into a touring car tour de force, guiding Walter Röhrl to WRC glory in the twin-cam Opel Ascona and Michael Schumacher to his maiden world championship win in the Benetton B192, a car that produced 740bhp at an eye-watering 14,500rpm. Ford-based F1 teams were bread and butter to Cosworth for years, from Sauber and Minardi to Jackie Stewart’s short-lived Stewart Racing, which became Jaguar Racing then Red Bull, who
used a Cosworth V10 before falling in with Ferrari for the 2006 season, then Renault for the next 12 years. Cosworth also supplied engines to Williams at intervals and offered an off the peg CA2010 to foundlings such as Lotus, Virgin Racing and the ill-fated Marussia. In total, Cosworth supplied a barely credible 60 separate F1 teams over the years. In that time its engines have racked up 176 wins, third only behind Ferrari and Mercedes, and can count their part in 10 constructors’ championships and 13 drivers’ titles. So it would be fair to say that Cosworth’s performance pedigree is on the high side, and that Gordon Murray’s decision to visit its
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Seven hours of looking for a rattle later, turns out someone dropped a mint imperial
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Northampton HQ in 2018 and propose building the ultimate road-going engine was therefore based on pretty sound logic. One of the key figures at that first meeting was Bruce Wood, managing director of powertrain at Cosworth, who delighted in Murray’s wider vision for the T.50. “Engine building is often about bigger and bigger numbers – more power, faster vehicles,” Wood says, “but from the beginning with Gordon it was a lot less about the numbers and a lot more about the ethos of the car. The T.50 has been described as the last analogue supercar, one that’s actually got a clutch pedal and a manual gearbox, and is normally aspirated. What was important from the start was creating a car that offers a fabulous driving experience rather that a specific set of numbers.” The challenge that Murray brought to Cosworth was not simply to design and build another winning engine, but to connect it to the customer on an emotional level, through performance yes, but also through both aural and visual drama. Murray wanted 3.9-litres of displacement as a nod to the Miura, the world’s first mid-engined supercar, bookended here by the last of the old school. And he wanted it to be as high-revving and light as possible. “The appearance of the engine was a key thing,” Wood continues. “I like every Cosworth engine to look like a fabulous piece of art and engineering and Gordon was very keen on that too, hence the T.50’s gullwing glass engine covers. It had to look and sound glorious.” Wood points to engine revs as one of the most obvious ways of tapping that emotional nerve. A 1,000bhp hypercar that can never safely approach its redline on the public road is far less involving than something with half that power that spins into five figures. But
Like any true artist Cosworth makes sure to sign its masterpieces
littered with low weight, high-revving naturally aspirated race engines, each with a life expectancy of around 2,000km. The T.50 has a warranty of three years/60,000 miles, whichever comes first. “The architectural challenge is that trade-off between light weight and durability,” Wood explains. “And that is a trade-off you don’t really have in race engines. To get an engine to rev to that speed for that duration is a huge challenge.” Of course, Cosworth is no stranger to building road car engines, having supplied units for homologation specials such as the Escort Cosworth and Mercedes 190E 2.3-16 and producing the twin-turbo V6 in the B5 generation Audi RS4. More recently it created the enormous 7.3-litre V12 for the Aston Martin One-77, the most powerful naturally aspirated production unit in the world at launch in 2009, and has developed a larger, hybridised but still naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12 for the Aston Martin Valkyrie. Nevertheless, the requirements for the T.50 were without precedent. The GMA Cosworth is almost an engine in miniature, with its small bore and tiny, lightweight pistons naturally at odds with big power, forcing Wood and his team to get extremely creative. To find the necessary flow through the head its valves were configured with a compound angle, which eschews the normal parallel set up in favour of a conical shape with inlet and exhaust valves moving towards one another. The upshot
“PACKAGING WAS SOMETHING OF A HEADACHE IN A MID-ENGINE V12” is 167bhp per litre, the highest power density of any naturally aspirated engine in history. Unsurprisingly, packaging was also something of a headache in a mid-engine V12 three-seater with roughly the same footprint as a Porsche Cayman. The 65-degree bank angle was settled upon as providing the best balance between space for gubbins within the vee and room beneath for the complex airflow and exhaust systems. And then of course, there were emissions to think about, and a powerful naturally aspirated engine is on the back foot from the start. But Cosworth has not only made a very clean engine in the first place, Wood reveals there is wriggle room within should the regulations become even stricter in the future. Plenty about the GMA Cosworth remains shrouded in secrecy, but Wood appears delighted with progress to date. ‘XP’ mules are running around Millbrook as Murray and Cosworth’s technicians settle upon the perfect balance between performance and drivability and bench tests are taking the engine through complex, high revving and ear piercing daily simulations. We’ve around six months to wait then, until modern motoring’s Übermensch finds its way onto the public road, and it feels right, poetic even, that Cosworth has played so big a hand in getting it there. “Putting an engine in anything Gordon Murray was going to do to follow the McLaren F1 was going to feel like big shoes to fill,” says Wood. “But creating this ultimate vehicle is very much a partnership between GMA and Cosworth. We’ve come at it from every angle and with everything we’ve learned and put the best of all of that into this engine. And it’s been a fabulous journey.”
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Blue skies, gorgeous roads and four GTs to savour, led by the Roma – a more laid-back take on the Ferrari formula. Apparently... WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE
PHOTOGRAPHY GREG PAJO
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It’s very highly caffeinated, the Ferrari Roma. But that’s fine, because it’s 7am now and thanks to a bubbly barista at Cardiff West services, so am I. But two hours ago I wasn’t. The Ferrari, however, still was. And at 5am that wasn’t ideal. So before we do anything else, we need to discuss what our expectations are of these cars and how they behave. This used to be easy. These are grand tourers. Insert two plus luggage, point prow at Antibes, pitstop at Reims for a crate of champagne, dinner at some place with stars in Lyon, apply head to pillow, repeat the next day. But no one’s diet plan permits a contented belly waft through France these days. And besides, who drives all that way? You’ve heard all those old tropes before. GTs are dead and gone. The truth of the matter is that all these firms actually do build grand tourers. Only they’re called SUVs. Ferrari’s will be along shortly. The role of an actual grand tourer has changed. These cars, although built for that job, actually do another. They’re the Monday–Friday exotica, doing the things that everyone else does, just more raffishly. And with a sideline as supercars for the hip-replaced. Except the Porsche, it’s quite a drop for the buttocks, that one. Ease. That’s the key. They should make the business of getting about and using them hassle free. Connect and engage when you
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want them to, but know when to pipe down. Follow your mood, in other words. So for three days that’s how I used the Roma. Followed the M4 coneworks in and out of London, folded the back seats to fit guitars, put them back up for small nephews, did runs to the pub, supermarket, school. Then on a Tuesday morning got in and drove a very long way, very early in the morning. All told it hadn’t been particularly easy or hassle free. It was the low level irritations: the letter box load bay opening that leaves the bootlid at perfect headbutt level, the purpose designed phone slots that are too slender if your phone is wearing a case, the seatbelt alarm that sounds if you put anything heavier than a wallet on the passenger seat. And the not-so low-level irritations: how effectively the A-pillar and mirror block visibility at junctions, the reflections that render the centre screen practically invisible, the awkward thumb pad that ‘controls’ the instrument binnacle. And why, when you change the volume, don’t the sound levels change immediately? There’s a marked delay, enough time for you to think the change wasn’t registered, jab the screen a bit more and then jump out of the – overly firm – seat when the system catches up. All this stuff matters because it makes operating the car a trial. Interactions with the Roma aren’t seamless, you have to think,
process. It takes mental capacity which should be purely focused on the driving. Which brings us back to where we came in – this is a car that demands your full attention once you start moving. But it’s hard to do that when the cabin is also asking quite a bit of you as well. We know this isn’t necessarily a grand tourer, but we also know it’s designed to do a gentler job than the mid-engined F8 Tributo. In my head that meant it was more along the lines of the GTC4Lusso, and that chimed with Ferrari’s claimed rivals. The ones you see here. There’s the Porsche 911 Turbo S, the most powerful machine in the line-up, the definitive everyday supercar and our Performance Car of the Year last year – quite a compelling double act. It’ll test the Roma’s driver appeal and usability. Hardly a bargain these days though – it’s more expensive than the Bentley Continental GT V8. Until you start shovelling essential options into the big Brit. However there’s a car that understands exactly what job it was designed for better than any other here. Show it an autoroute and it would sniff out Antibes like a truffle-hunting hog. The Aston is closest in packaging, layout and general demeanour to the Ferrari. Not only because it’s low, rakish and prowling, but also irritating to operate. Not quite up to Roma standards as the steering wheel controls are logical enough, instead here it’s the cramped layout
“THE FERRARI’S TRIPLE SHOT ESPRESSO ROAD MANNERS MAKE IT FAR MORE TIRING TO DRIVE”
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GRAND TOURERS Bentley is the no-brainer choice for those who find it impossible to pack light
and ageing Merc-sourced infotainment interface that winds you up. It feels the most cottage industry of these four, but it’s a lovely car to settle into, soft seats, wonderful V12 growl when you start up, but you do soon notice slight wrinkles in the operating experience – and the leather. In the Ferrari, leather is stretched so taut you can see imperfections in the substrate beneath (I assure you that any conclusions you might draw from this about potential owners are purely intentional). The Bentley does it best. The air of all-pervading luxury and quality is easier to achieve when you’re not worried about how many kilos are being piled on. The Conti is the only one that you’d even consider trying to persuade an adult into the back of, is the most generous, the most imposing and, despite the sheer number of buttons, as easy to operate as the Porsche. Low slung it might be, but the 911 Turbo S is just so damned habitable. OK, it helps if you’re tech savvy as there’s a lot of screen management to do, but the basics are impressive. Instead of the Ferrari’s frustrations, here you nod with appreciation at the all-round visibility, the masterful packaging, the cabin organisation. Both it and the Bentley make you realise what’s possible when you have VW as a sugar daddy to keep you rolling in development budget. Dawn, and the Roma wakes like a startled cockerel, announcing its presence shrilly. The first few miles are irritating. I’m bleary and just want this car to get me to Wales with no effort, but it’s over eager for this time of the morning. It’s better once settled on the M4, but there’s road noise and the whole car is too active. All the others, I’ll discover later, have better motorway manners. The Porsche noisy but composed, movements instantly controlled, the Aston purring through miles authoritatively, and the Bentley just so commanding, seeming to take control of the situation and demolish distance without you being aware of it. And do so far more efficiently than you expect: 26mpg after 250 miles, against 21mpg for the DB11, 20 for the Roma and 30 for the 911. Dark clouds storm over Black Mountain, depositing wind, rain and hail, then just as quickly flee away, leaving the landscape with a freshly washed lustre. It’s perfect testing weather, on perfect testing roads. The tarmac is smooth as it rises up from the valley and, fully caffeinated, I’m now in tune with the Roma. It loves a well laid road, turning in eagerly and incisively and whipping through corners with little effort. The steering is super quick giving the front end a dart-like feel, and the throttle is equally immediate, ensuring you’ve got immediate torque on demand. It’s an incredible engine. Not the most melodious, but easily the most responsive across the mid-range. But as the road climbs higher it narrows and deteriorates. And now the Roma’s effortless eagerness starts to work against you. The ride loses its fluency, starting to buck and squirm, which makes it hard to plan your inputs, inputs that – with no play in the steering and throttle – are magnified. Suddenly you find yourself juggling a lot of activity and having to be very precise about it. It’s what I’d expected from the way the Roma likes to jink across motorway lanes, flit around roundabouts, but up here it feels unsettled. Don’t get me wrong, I have utter confidence in the front end’s ruthless bite, but the rear end can’t keep up, doesn’t have the same grip and composure, and yet the motor still wants to get all 560lb ft out every time you brush the throttle. Which means oversteer and the traction control clacking like castanets.
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You can of course drive slower, but the Ferrari never stops reminding you that it wants to go faster. On smooth roads it’s mighty but I can’t help thinking that making it as agile as an F8, but without the chassis sophistication and low centre of gravity fluency, is a mistake. I swap to the Aston and repeat the road. It’s a very different experience. I can swing the steering and in return get a more measured, calmer response, but again the rear axle lets it down. It squats and lurches, needs to be given time to settle. Now instead of desperately trying to keep up with the frenetic pace, you’re ahead of it, trying to encourage more from a car without the body control to keep up. This is a car that would love to take sweeping N-roads through France, give voice to that mighty twin-turbo V12. It’s a car to guide with your fingertips and sweep languidly along, not pick out apex points. So to the Bentley, with the surprising sideline that it will charge way better than you expect. Well, until you hit the brakes with the same vigour as the other controls. They bite well the first few times, but then 2,165kg of physics takes over. The V8 has less inertia than the W12 and forces the big coupe down the road with more punch than you expect. Plus the chassis can keep pace. It’ll understeer eventually (there’s the forthcoming Speed version if you want to counteract that), but body control is deeply impressive. What’s missing is connection, dexterity and feel. It’s a big, heavy car and can’t disguise itself on small, narrow roads. Think of it as the all-terrain GT. As long as those terrains are tarmac, it’s got you covered no matter how shambolic the surface.
“THE PORSCHE 911 TURBO S IS THE DEFINITIVE EVERYDAY SUPERCAR”
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“DARK CLOUDS STORM OVER BLACK MOUNTAIN, DEPOSITING WIND, RAIN AND HAIL, THEN FLEE AWAY”
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As car park views go, this just beats the 24hr Tesco on the Hanger Lane gyratory
Large Bentley hurtling toward sharp right-hander, no longer the code brown it once was
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The Ferrari looks oddly familiar. Can’t quite put our finger on it...
Ah, 6 Music – the station of choice when you’re having pictures taken
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The 911 Turbo is wider now than ever, yet in this company it still feels like a small car. The two Brits are broad on these roads, the Ferrari so over-agile it needs constant correction. The Porsche is the fastest across the ground by a very wide margin. You sit low, keyed into the tarmac and connected to it. Corners ruthlessly dispatched, you brake deep into the apex, then power out, all four wheels sharing the load. It likes to be tested, get its teeth into the road, show what it’s capable of. But it doesn’t need to behave like that to reward. The controls are all pitch-perfect, so you get satisfaction at any speed. Yes, there’s turbo lag, it doesn’t have the Roma’s reactive immediacy, but the thump is worth waiting for, the tingle of anticipation during the build-up to the boom, the explosion forcing laughter from your lungs. The 992-gen 911 Turbo is more aggressive now than perhaps ever, but although firm, because wasteful movements have been purged from the chassis, you get control without the distraction and waywardness that characterises the Roma. It works with you better than any other car here. I think it’s useful to consider these cars from a passenger’s perspective. So I carried people and asked them what they thought.
First choice, unsurprisingly, was the Bentley for its unruffled dignity and road flattening nature. Last was the Ferrari. Even travelling at modest speeds its trumpeting keenness made passengers feel on edge. I’m not sure what role Ferrari envisions for the Roma. It’s not the car I thought it would be. I assumed it would follow in the GTC4Lusso’s long-legged footsteps, but instead it’s more like a V8-powered 812 Superfast, anxious and sudden. The triple shot espresso road manners mean it takes a lot of managing and that makes it far more tiring to drive than its rivals. And the cabin just doesn’t function well enough, it grates on you when it should soothe. I’m not even persuaded that it’s particularly stunning to look at. It’s nice from the rear, but I think Aston does the long bonnet stuff more elegantly. Pity that the DB11 feels off the pace in terms of quality, kit and body control. It’s ageing fast now and slips behind the Ferrari into last place. The Bentley and Porsche are very different cars, but they occupy the top two slots. Still see a role in your life for a genuine grand tourer? The Conti GT is by far the best choice if Antibes beckons. For every other daily supercar need, Porsche has you covered. The 911 Turbo is an astonishingly complete car.
“THE BENTLEY HAS GOT YOU COVERED NO MATTER HOW SHAMBOLIC THE SURFACE”
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£/as tested:
Engine: Power: Torque: Transmission: 0–62mph: Top speed: Kerbweight: CO2: Economy: Score:
ASTON MARTIN DB11 AMR
PORSCHE 911 TURBO
BENTLEY CONTI GT V8
FERRARI ROMA
£178,495/£196,380
£155,970/£167,210
£154,800/£211,375
£170,659/£229,689
5204cc TT V12 630bhp @ 6,500rpm 516lb ft @ 1,500rpm 8spd auto, RWD 3.7secs 208mph 1,795kg 265g/km 24.8mpg
3745cc TT flat six 641bhp @ 6,750rpm 590lb ft @ 2,500–4,000rpm 8spd DCT, 4WD 2.7secs 205mph 1,640kg 271g/km 23.5mpg
3996cc TT V8 542bhp @ 6,000rpm 568lb ft @ 2,000–4,500rpm 8spd DCT, 4WD 3.9secs 198mph 2,165kg 275g/km 23.3mpg
3855cc TT V8 612bhp @ 5,750–7,500rpm 560lb ft @ 3,000–5,750rpm 8spd DCT, RWD 3.4secs 199mph 1,570kg 255g/km 25.2mpg
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Armoured cars: what can we learn from them, who are they for and how do they stack up as a daily driver? Tea, anyone? WORDS TOM FORD
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PHOTOGRAPHY DEAN SMITH
SANDCAT
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SANDCAT
Stamford, Lincolnshire – the ‘finest Georgian town in England’ according to the signage – is probably the least likely town in the UK to need the services of an armoured car. Barring light insurgency by the local knitting circle or a particularly sarcastic Neighbourhood Watch turf war. But at least the Plasan SandCat MkIV’s beige desert tones resonate with the local honey coloured sandstone. It actually blends better than you think, despite being seven-and-a-half tonnes of sci-fi looking, composite-built “light armoured tactical vehicle”. But here we are. It seems odd to be gently dawdling around a sleepy market town in this amount of overkill, but today, I have been gently applying this behemoth to my day to day diary, assessing its ability to cope with the mundane, rather than its more usual in-theatre duties. To that end, I’ve been to the supermarket, my gym, picked up some dog food, filled up with diesel (135 litres of it, which wasn’t particularly boring for my wallet), commuted, popped into my local pub for a mid-morning cuppa and generally done all the things I usually would. The most rational question here is simply, why? The decidedly irrational answer is because you’re looking at the future of the car. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? A normal car has nothing to do with a great big thing like this, a vehicle designed to absorb the worst that the world can throw at it, in some cases completely literally, and at bullet speed. But even though a Fiesta might not have an options list that includes a remote-controlled 12.7mm Browning machine gun, extra GPK (gunner protection kit) for the roof hatch (officially called a ‘cupola’) and six “universal firing ports” from which to... erm... universally fire, the SandCat is actually less intimidating behind the wheel than it might appear.
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Should have put a groundsheet down first, this’ll ruin the interior...
“Will the owner of the badly parked tank please make themselves known at checkout”
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OK, so it does have doors heavy enough to chop your fingers off if you trap your digits in them, windows thick enough to shrug off small arms fire, is nearly six metres long, more than 2.3 metres wide and over two-and-a-half high with a 16.6-metre turning circle, but that’s just a case of being sizeist, and nothing you couldn’t get used to. There may be slight concerns over parking, what with blindspots the size of France despite slinky angular windows that provide a view that’s more panoramic than you think, but there’s a standard reversing camera. And although it is not, it has to be said, the nippiest car in the Bertie Arms car park, this SandCat drives pretty much like a Ford Transit with an extremely full load. Of lead bricks. Wrapped in uranium. But it’s not the physical dimensions of the SandCat that we’re interested in here. It’s more the principles behind its design and construction that are likely to have some major effects on the future of the car you drive day to day. And that’s mostly to do with the materials your car will be made from, and how it’s put together. So how does this intimidating machine relate to real life? Well, the SandCat is based on the chassis of a heavy duty US-spec Ford F-Series truck, but the chassis and drivetrain isn’t the important thing. After all, a 330bhp/725lb ft, 6.75-litre diesel V8 isn’t exactly cutting edge. It’s more about what goes on A graduate of Coventry University’s top. And to explain that, we turn to a chap called Nir transport design course, Nir Kahn is Kahn, the man who designed it, and a man who has director of design at SandCat maker some very interesting ideas on how armoured cars Plasan. Armour isn’t necessarily his might influence the car you drive in 2030. passion – he was brought up on Lego “Historically, heavy armoured vehicles have and Tamiya R/C cars, earned the Gold been big welded steel boxes, while the lighter ones IBCAM award for his final project at have simply had armour panels inserted into or Coventry (a hyper-efficient saloon bolted onto the regular thin metal bodies of Jeeps with a composite structure, seriesand Humvees, or indeed civilian cars like Mark hybrid powertrain and optimised Riccioni’s 7-Series [see overleaf],” says Nir. aero) and has spent much of his time “One of the innovations employed on the in the military industry revolutionising SandCat is an architectural concept that we call the construction and aesthetics of the kitted hull. At its essence, instead of a welded protected vehicles. His greatest hits armoured steel box, the body is a bolted and bonded include the M1114GR HMMWV, Navistar assembly which allows us to use dissimilar materials MXT (UK MoD Husky), MaxxPro MRAP, – including composites – and to both make the parts Oshkosh M-ATV and JLTV, as well as and assemble the body cost-effectively in relatively the SandCat. He’s now bringing ideas high volumes. Rather than adding armour to a developed for mass production of vehicle, we build the vehicle from the armoured composite armoured hardware to materials, usually sandwiches of metals, composites, help the car industry cost-effectively and for higher protection levels, ceramics too. take weight out of passenger cars. Without being constrained by the pre-existing He also has a patent pending for a geometry of an unprotected vehicle, we can also mass-producible composite body-insave weight through design, optimising angles white architecture, and is a regular and surfaces to get the most effective use of the speaker and consultant on vehicle materials, designing for production to save weight design for composites. and cost together, perfecting the ergonomics, and as the icing on the cake, making them look good in the process, or at least to give them an appropriate aesthetic for their task.” Which all sounds perfectly reasonable – you build an armoured car from the composite armour, rather than bolting armour onto or into a pre-existing silhouette. Make the whole thing a kit and you can box it up and ship it efficiently to wherever in the world you need it. Make those elements sectional – you can swap bits of it out when damaged – and you’ve got an armoured car that’s lighter, stronger and easier to fix. Which is where it starts getting terribly relevant for stuff that we might see on the roads.
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PHOTOGRAPH Y: RONEN TOPELBERG
NIR KAHN
SANDCAT
Wookie shaved 10 minutes off his usual commute by driving through houses
“Is this button for aircon or the laser missiles?” “Dunno, try it and see”
There’s a new king of tailgating in town... Wook shows Audis how it’s done
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