BBC Top Gear Magazine March 2015

CONTENT TEAM OF THE YEAR MOTORING MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR SUBSCRIBE TO TOPGEAR Get Britain’s number-one car magazine every month, delivered to you as a hefty paper ofering, an interactive app or a digital edition. See page 86 for more details TOPGEAR.COM Check out TopGear.com for your daily dose of TG. Or you can join us on Facebook and Twitter As exquisite as it is, the Bugatti Veyron has a lot to answer for. When it launched in 2005 with a stratospheric 987bhp (1,000PS), its nearest ‘rival’ in the battle for hypercar supremacy – the Porsche Carrera GT – was delivering just 612bhp. By pole-vaulting the performance standards so far ahead of the opposition, it started an engineering arms race that had a profound effect on all that followed. Natural…

TWITTER.COM/BBC_TOPGEAR FACEBOOK.COM/TOPGEAR SECOND FLOOR A, ENERGY CENTRE, IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY LONDON LIMITED, MEDIA VILLAGE, 201 WOOD LANE, LONDON W12 7TN FROM TOPGEAR.COM The 380bhp Porsche Cayman GT4 is here. Any thoughts from around the world? This will go down as the greatest sports car ever made; just wait. Patrick Clancy First the 488, then the Focus RS, and today the Cayman GT4!....thank you, car world! TDagR What a car, but no PDK! What about disabled drivers! Don’t get me wrong – I used to love a manual ’box, but now I have no left leg! Shaun F I’d have the GT-R over this. The Cayman just isn’t special. Chris Kim The mid-engined stick-shift Porsche returns. Huzzah! MrJC22173 Hmm… I would like to point out that a Camaro Z/28 is still…

When Mr Cameron came to power nearly five years ago, he and his team announced that they would end New Labour’s relentless war on the motorist and, as a sign of things to come, promptly abolished the absurd M4 bus lane. Soon afterwards, amid much fanfare, the same team announced that they were looking into the possibility of raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph and allowing people to pull up on a yellow line if they were only stopping for a packet of fags. We were all very pleased and thought: “At this rate, Corvette Stingrays will soon be given away for free on the NHS.” But, instead of doing these things, the various Ministers for Transport have simply sat on their fat arses doing – how did James…

I’ve been working in Africa. Not unusual – I generally wash up there with a flm crew a few times each year. What made it different this time was that I was involved – albeit in a tiny way – in something worthwhile. You may have seen recently the work of Operation Health for Comic Relief, a project centred in the rural village of Iyolwa in eastern Uganda. Essentially, it boils down to rebuilding a vital clinic that serves 20,000 people, equipping it with lifesaving kit and enhancing the local health workers’ training to provide essential care. We’re not talking a cutting-edge hospital here, we’re talking about improving the current set-up of a bare shell that has no running water or electricity but does have a surplus of rats, bats…

If Karl Benz hadn’t invented the car, then someone else would have. The internal combustion engine was being developed furiously, and road vehicles with wheels were already established, so combining the two seems like a pretty obvious idea, like adding an electric motor to a hand drill. So is the Benz Motorwagen the most influential car of all time? Yes, in that it was the first; but no, because all it really did was win the first motor race. Last month, I curated a small exhibition, Cars that Changed the World, at London’s ExCel. The Benz was in it. So was the Model T. But the car that changed the world more than any other, I decided, was a toy: the Corgi James Bond Aston DB5, with ejecting baddie. Look:…

So here it is: the Ferrari 488 GTB, the turbocharged replacement for the 458 Italia. It’s a car that seems to have courted controversy, simply because it introduces turbocharging into Ferrari’s heartland mid-engined supercar, following on from last year’s California T. But why the grimace and the slightly dismissive attitude to a Prancing Horse with boost? Admittedly, the 458 Speciale’s 9,000rpm, 605bhp 4.5-litre naturally aspirated crescendo will be missed, but a Ferrari with forced induction isn’t exactly new, and I doubt any of us would pass over the opportunity to own or drive an F40, 288 GTO or 208 GTB Turbo. So let’s not quickget ahead of ourselves – turbo Ferraris are not necessarily a bad thing, and the 488 GTB has some tricks up its newly fared sleeves to…