Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

OK. Whose New Year’s resolutions have already ended in ignominious failure, our good intentions struggling to be compatible with the reality of our lives? For me, a well-intended dry January saw me buckle in week two. So, for those of us who struggle to find the discipline to deliver on short-term goals, can I suggest we aim for a slightly broader, more ambitious plan with an extended timeline? Welcome then to the “TopGear 50 things to do before you die” issue. Our automotive bucket list. As a reader of this magazine, it’s a fair assumption that cars, car culture and everything else that goes around it to make the automotive world so fascinating form a core strand of your DNA (a chromosome you share with the team that makes this…

Nismo GT-R £149,995 WE SAY: THE FASTEST, MOST HARDCORE GT-R OF THEM ALL. WITH AN EQUALLY HARDCORE PRICE It’s a Nismo, not a Nissan. Which is to say that this particular GT-R is a product of Nissan’s performance and racing department, not the mass-market road-car division. I’m sure there’s more to this than inter-office semantics, but I’m sort of surprised that any GT-R falls under the remit of the same bunch that’s also responsible for the Pulsar, X-Trail and Qashqai. But there we are – only this version has been worked on so hard, to such an extent, that it is deemed worthy of not being labelled a Nissan at all. Nismo. They take the GT-R GT racing, both domestically and internationally, and a couple of years back they had…

Mini Clubman JCW £29,345 WE SAY: THE FIRST CLUBMAN JOHN COOPER WORKS WAS NUTS. MEET NUMBER TWO...  Mini’s first Clubman JCW was an unashamedly niche car. Its asymmetrical door layout and inverted-Tardis proportions made it deeply impractical, and its front wheels didn’t entirely have a handle on the 208bhp they were tasked with. Objectively, it was impossible to recommend, yet if you wanted something no one else had, there was oddball appeal. The new version has eschewed nearly all of that and grown up. Quite literally: it’s bigger than before, has usable boot space, and the rear passengers get a door each. There’s also 4WD as standard, so none of its larger, 228bhp power output is ever lost to wasteful wheelspin. Heck, it even rides with a degree of decency…

£68,073 Engine 3604cc, V6 turbo, AWD, 434bhp, 443lb ft Performance 30.1mpg, 217g/km CO2, 0–62mph in 4.4secs, 169mph Weight 2000kg Porsche doesn’t like it if you call this thing the Turbo S. A Turbo S, it says, should look different from the Turbo, and this doesn’t. A Turbo S should also have much more standard equipment than a Turbo, and this doesn’t have that either. What it does have is 39 more horsepower and 37 more torques, making it broadly as quick as the bigger, V8 Cayenne Turbo. Mechanical changes are limited to bigger front discs, the 15mm lower-riding PASM suspension and the switchable sports exhaust. We only drove it on snow. It was rather good there, and we bet it’ll be good in the UK too. Very fast, and as…

WE SAY: AMG PARKS ITS TURBO V6 TANK ON AUDI’S LAWN WITH GREAT SUCCESS What are the basics of these AWD V6 coupes? You almost feel sorry for the Audi S5, minding its own business, having annexed the all-wheel-drive, V6 posh German coupe market. Then the upstart C43 arrived. Audi’s V6 makes max power earlier than the Benz. AMG’s V6 has an extra turbo, makes a little more power, and the car supposedly weighs 120kg more than the Audi, though it feels the opposite when you drive them. Neither top 27mpg in the real world. Is Audi still king of the cabins? The Audi’s more open layout increases the feeling of space, helped by a lower windowline, and ever so slightly higher seat. It’s easier to see out of, but…

1992 SKODA FAVORIT FORUM PLUS Engine: 1289cc 4cyl, 56bhp Transmission: 5spd manual, FWD Performance: 0–62mph in 15.5secs, 94mph Economy: 54.2mpg, 121g/km CO2 Weight: 840kg I dearly hope at least one person who was travelling up the M4 that bleak Monday is reading this. Maybe it was you, in the Bentley Continental GT, agog as you were passed fair and square by 56bhp of prime 1992 Skoda. Or the typically shoddily driven black Ford Galaxy taxi. He was so shocked he almost dropped his phone. That’s the thing about the Favorit, the last Skoda to emerge before the Czech marque was swallowed up by the Volkswagen Group, beginning the steady rise from punchline to several hundred million euros on VW’s bottom line in 2016. Sorry to burst a few bubbles, but…

In the blue corner Name: Jack Rix Age: 32 Occupation: Deputy editor Secret weapon: BEng In the red corner Name: Paul Horrell Age: Unknown Occupation: Consultant editor Secret weapon: Encarta ’98 Gentlemen, these are your instructions. Obey the rules, protect yourself at all times, and only resort to violence if you really have to. Ding ding… JR: A 369bhp all-electric camper van? Hmmmm, when was the last time you saw a three-pin plug in the middle of a field? 10:03 PH: Can’t imagine anyone will use the 369bhp. Just think of the effect of a full-bore start on the cutlery drawer. It’s only there to get headlines in car mags. You fell into their trap, Mr Rix. It’s amazing how many customised VW T4 campers you see running up and…

You like cars. Therefore, we’re going to wager you like Cars. Pixar’s vehicle-based animation brought car geekery to the masses back in 2006, and 11 years later, the third in the series – yes, you guessed it, Cars 3 – launches this June. “It’s a lot like the frst flm in terms of the emotional heart and connection,” says Pixar’s creative director, Jay Ward. “The gearheads loved it for the authenticity, but I think Pixar and families loved it because you get to know these characters. This is a flm where you’ll get to know these characters deeply again.” Lightning McQueen has to face up to newer, more modern machinery threatening his reputation. The trailer is particularly dark and grown-up, with McQueen smashed up in a racing accident as new…

There’s a lot to like about the new Ford GT. It’s a remarkably original supercar, full of technologies and design/aero solutions that no one else has used. And it won Le Mans. (Well, it didn’t. It came 18th in Le Mans, but it won the class for cars that look like road cars, and if, like me, you’re more interested in road cars than racing cars, that’s the class in which we can invest a lot of sentiment.) It has heritage too, because 50 years ago the Ford GT40 won Le Mans outright. Still, at the moment what I like most about the Ford GT is that despite all of the above, nobody from its maker is banging on about it being cool. Because cool, as a descriptor of a…

THE ENGINE BIT So far back is the engine in the AMG GT R, that it’s basically midengined. It uses the same 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 as the standard GT, but the turbochargers nestled in the engine’s vee are new, boost has been increased from 1.2 bar to 1.35 bar and they can spin up to 186,000rpm – that’s 3,100 revs per second, fact fans. There is a little lag at low revs, but above 2,500rpm the turbos spool up fast and deliver massive mid-range torque. Elsewhere in the engine the compression ratio has been altered, the combustion has been remapped, the exhaust ports modified and the cylinder liners now wear the same Nanoslide coating as Lewis’s F1 car to reduce wear and friction. The overall result is an extra 74bhp…

Fezzing up Leno doesn’t own any Ferraris. “Too much hassle,” he says. “Every Ferrari has 27,500 miles on the clock, and they’ve always been too expensive.” I know it, you know it, but Jay Leno would make an awesome dad. He’s worth millions, has a reassuringly strong jaw line and you’d always know what shirt to get him for Christmas. He also has one the most mind-blowing private car and motorbike collections anywhere in the world, that as his adopted child you’d have free rein over. It would mean deserting your friends and family, moving to California and possibly sleeping rough under a 1931 Duesenberg Town Car, but we’ve taken all of this into consideration. It’s still worth it. Just to be sure, we paid him a visit at his…

Imagine a place where the roads have no speed limits. Where the only barrier to going faster is the size of your cojones and the output of your engine. Then, when you’re done scaring yourself in a straight line, you can pay a small fee and fling your car around the world’s most eye-popping racetrack. A 12.9-mile big dipper that cleaves through towering forests and twirls around snow-capped mountains – where it’s perfectly normal for a race-honed Porsche 911 GT3 RS to be seen flashing past a fully loaded camper van. Or the other way around, depending on who’s driving. And no, this isn’t some dusty Mad Max dystopia where tribes control the flow of vital natural resources, and the police cower in fear following a peasant uprising. This is…

Ken Block TopGear Hero Ken Block is a grand master in the art of sideways, as seen in his Gymkhanas and in the recent series of TGTV. Boss An ordinary Tuesday afternoon back in 2008. Curiously, an excited hush had descended in a corner of the office. Like anyone would do, I blindly nosed up to investigate. “You have to watch this video,” my colleague exclaimed, a little too breathlessly. It was Gymkhana: Practice, and it was mad. “Imagine going for a ride with this man,” he said. Fast forward to many years later, and I am going for a ride with this man. This man is Ken Block. The opportunity to be one of the first in the world to sample his newest engineering creation – the “Hoonicorn” –…

The most important thing to do before you die, according to many a clickbaited website, is to frolic in a slightly self-conscious manner with an imprisoned aquatic mammal. And while we’re sure that you should probably swim with dolphins 49 if you’re both consenting adults of the species, there is one thing that you absolutely should do, without hesitation, if you can drive. And that is take a roadtrip. 50 It doesn’t matter where, or in what. Because it is, to steal an appropriate cliché, about the journey and not the destination. Thing is, cars and roads go together like a lock and key, rope and a pulley, cheese and indeed pineapple. A synergy so complete that one looks a bit lonely and incomplete without the other. Cars, at their…

Ford Focus RS Mountune £32,149 (£899 for just the kit) WE SAY: LOUDER, FASTER AND FITTER. THE FOCUS RS HAS BEEN TO BOOT CAMP Those clever chaps at Mountune have given the Focus RS a once over, liberating an extra 25bhp and 30lb ft of thrust from the already thrusty 2.3-litre EcoBoost engine. That takes the totals to 370bhp and 376lb ft, and drops the 0–62mph time from 4.7secs to a Porsche 911-worrying 4.5secs. The FPM375 Power Upgrade, to give it its proper name, is fully compatible with your warranty and can be fitted at any Mountune-appointed Ford dealer in around 90 minutes. What’s more, it will cost you a mere £899. If you already own a Focus RS, that is. Your engine gets a new high-fow induction kit, a…

Toyota GT86 £26,410 WE SAY: REFRESH HASN’T TOUCHED THE ENGINE. A MISSED OPPORTUNITY?  Plenty has changed with the Toyota GT86’s mid-life update. On the outside, there are snazzier lights front and back and an optional spoiler. Inside, new infotainment and some plusher materials. Underneath the skin, meanwhile… oh, I don’t know. I didn’t bother to check. I just wanted to jump in and drive the thing. It’s that sort of car, you see. And my lack of professionalism proved helpful: it immediately highlighted the GT86’s improved steering. A check later on reveals that Toyota has made the wheel smaller, but a handful of other chassis mods seem to have really ramped up the communication spilling into your hands. It’s ace. Those mods comprise more effective aero, stiffer suspension, and new…

PEUGEOT 2008 DKR Winner of last year's Dakar Rally, a first for Peugeot since 1990, and the brand's fifth overall. Also the 12th win for its driver, Stephane Peterhansel. Because honestly, how different can driving on sand be from driving on snow? Ahem. REBELLION R2k Free-skier Jon Olsson had this thing built back in 2013. Underneath the LMPl-style body is an Ultima GTR, the V10 and gearbox from a Lamborghini Gallardo and, resumably, some pretty series winter tyres. We salute you, Mr Olsson. KEN BLOCK’S RAPTORTRAX Block likes to snowboard, so he built this to get himself and his mates deep into the wilderness. It is, fundamentally, a Ford F-150 raptor with all-terrain tracks and a 650bhp supercharged V8, lots of light bars and special suspension. LAMBORGHINI NITRO Quite literally…

IXOOST ESAVOX HI-FI You probably clocked the passing aesthetic resemblance between the new IXOOST ESAVOX and the business end of a Lambo, but this is more than just an iPod docking station with pretensions. For a start, the exhaustive collaboration (sorry) has resulted in a stereo with a carbon monocoque chassis, valved exhaust system for the bass speakers and passive shock absorbers to deal with bad auditory vibes. Not cheap, mind. From $24,000; lamborghinistore.com TRIUMPH STREET CUP Basically a stripped-back version of Triumph's Street Twin, the Cup gets a bullet seat, dropped ace bars and a removable cafe-racer seat cowl. There's also a 900cc parallel twin and a five-speed 'box with 54bhp and 60lb ft of torque. Good, huh? £6,600; triumphmotorcycles.co.uk MOTOCHIMP A horribly cute electric urban commuter from Japan,…

The internet has a lot to answer for. As well as being almost exclusively filled with cat videos and people angry at nothing at all, it’s also full of squeamishly trite memes and unattributed “quotes” about how to carpe one’s diem and have all sorts of adventures. The problem is, most of these homages to better living involve selling all of your possessions and moving to Bali to be a nude Pilates farmer, and appear to have no other real use than to produce an attractively over-fitered social-media profile. This is, quite blatantly, the preserve of the fantasist. Therefore, to counteract all the unachievable stuff you see in glossy travel guides, TopGear has come up with 50 car-based things to do before you shufe of your mortal coil. Some of…

Feast your eyes on this driving banquet – the superabundance of corners, the extraordinary views, the blithe joy of the tarmac as it winds its way to the distant landscape to the promise of hidden delight beyond. This is the Grossglockner, a road officially so legendary that its own webpage trills in Germlisch: “Motorised mountain friends have to check out the Grossglockner High Alpine Road with its unmatched driving experience and international events.” It is quite magnificent. Or there’s the Stelvio, Italy’s equivalent. It has 48 hairpins. But you knew that because you’ve passed your petrolhead’s basic certificate, and that subject is on the syllabus. These are the sort of places that’ll top the hit list when you Google “great driving roads Europe”. They are indeed breathtaking, and TopGear itself…

Let’s start with the email, as I fell off my chair when I read it. “We’d like to offer you the opportunity to drive the Audi R18 LMP1 car,” it said. Well, I didn’t actually fall off my chair, but I did actually spring to my feet as if electrocuted, clattering my right knee against the desk leg and then standing there, in the middle of the office, looking around spluttering and pointing at my laptop. When I calmed down, I realised this must be some sort of pre-Christmas gag – a kids’ electric R18 ride-on or some such nonsense. Because mere mortals getting to drive LMP1 cars... Does. Not. Happen. I know this because about a year earlier I’d spent some time with Mark Webber, and asked him if…

Stories. They’re the things that driving has a seductive little habit of producing. Admittedly a roadtrip across a postapocalyptic desertscape in some far-flung corner of the globe would probably produce more pub-worthy tales than a commute across postapocalyptic Slough, but you get the idea. And some of the best stories are born from adversity. Hassle. Tension. Which is why, if we’re talking about things we really should experience as drivers, we ought to discuss the idea of deliberately doing something that seems designed to bring on an aneurysm: drive in the rush hour of a major city 20 . Yep, we really are advocating this particular sort of automotive sadomasochism, simply because it will produce an experience that you’ll talk about forever. The endless, souldestroying crawl of London trafic at…

Some say he is the editor “Put simply, it’s a harder, faster, more focused Huracán” Imola is hauntingly quiet on this cold crisp November morning, and as I look out across the dark sinew of tarmac the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. While it’s fair to say that most empty race circuits feel a little melancholy – unused potential, perhaps – the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari has a more chilling edge than others. It’s probably the tributes: T-shirts, posters and myriad Brazilian flags that flutter in the breeze, their personal touches and messages interspersed by decaying flowers – all arranged on the catch fencing at Tamburello corner. The place that, on 1 May 1994, claimed the life of Formula One deity Ayrton Senna. Since…

Kia Optima Sportswagon 3 £24,495 WE SAY: HIGHLY FORGETTABLE. HIGHLY CAPABLE  Meet Kia’s first D-segment wagon (think Mondeo and Superb rival): an entirely European effort. Designed in the West, sold only in the West. No “one world” cost-cutting here. It’s certainly roomier inside than a Mondeo and more logical too. The eight-inch touchscreen makes up in usability what it lacks in resolution, the controls are all sensibly placed and the buttons are large. It’s like driving along in one of those easyuse mobile phones for pensioners that only do voice calls and the odd text. The boot, meanwhile, has a handily low loading sill for chucking your stuff over, so the dog won’t require the fencejumping ability of a Grand National winner to reach the 552-litre boot. This becomes a…

Porsche Panamera 4S £88,700 WE SAY: SIT BACK AND RELAX, IT’S THE PORSCHE FOR BACK-SEAT DRIVERS The new Panamera is a much better looking car. On that we can all agree. However, it’s still hard to know who it’s intended for. It should be obvious, shouldn’t it? It’s a rival for the sportier spectrums of the Mercedes E-Class and BMW 5-Series ranges, but with a bit of Maserati-rivalling style and badge kudos thrown in. It’s the right image and it’s the right size, sitting four people comfortably and providing a capacious enough boot. But then you drive it, and… well, it’s a curious one. Way too wide to throw down a B-road, and in this 4S guise, oddly ponderous too. Braking is disconcertingly vague and response slow-witted. The chassis itself…

It’s finally here – a rear-wheel-drive performance saloon. By Kia. Called the Stinger, it’ll arrive with a 255bhp 2.0-litre turbo four in the base model and a 365bhp twin-turbo V6 in the top-spec Stinger GT. According to Kia, the GT is the “highest-performance production vehicle in the company’s history”, with a 0–62mph figure of 5.1 secs and a top speed of 167mph. Both versions will channel the power through an 8spd auto, with no mention of a manual. Boo. An optional all-wheel-drive system is, thankfully, rear-biased, with torque-vectoring to keep things entertaining in the bends, while the rear-drive version comes with a proper, mechanical limited-slip diff. Size-wise, it has a longer wheelbase than the Mercedes-Benz CLS. The Stinger is “not about outright power and hard-edged dynamics at the expense of…

Intimidation, it turns out, is green. And wide, loud, long of bonnet, short of temper, fat of tyre and hairy of arse. Yes, the AMG GT R is a supercar. It conforms to all the tropes except the one that demands the engine should be behind the driver. So here it is on a track, creating balls-out smoky mayhem, thrashing a set of Michelin’s finest, the vapourised remains of which are filling my nostrils and fugging the cockpit. 02 A car with more power than traction (with the traction of, obvs) is something everyone ought to experience. It’s up for a spot of bad behaviour, the GT R. Which ought to come as no surprise. Ladies and gentlemen, we have surely reached peak AMG. But apparently we haven’t. Merc is…

The ultimate toolkit Does not need to be colourcoded, it just needs to have the right tools. Mainly cable ties and gaffer tape. And some spanners and sockets. And a hammer. Back in the old days, if you didn’t know how to strip a carburettor by the side of the road in a pitch-black rainstorm, or reset points with your teeth, you never made it to any social engagement more than a brisk walk away. But the art of maintenance is gently losing its grip; these days, we don’t fix anything, we just lob it and get a new one. Raw consumerism on a self-replicating cycle. And the same can be said of the car – albeit on a slightly smaller scale. Now obviously, these days the average car is…

Not all museums are tedious. London’s Natural History Museum, for example, has actual dinosaurs in it, and the Ufzi in Florence does a cracking cappuccino. But all pale in comparison next to the Petersen Auto Museum in Los Angeles. For starters, the building that houses it underwent a $125m renovation in 2015 and stands on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue like some sort of giant spaceport. It’s a truly gobsmacking piece of architecture, and one that’s worth the visit alone. But if you make it that far, we urge you to pop in and ogle one of the world’s finest car collections. The 300-strong “feet” is fluid. At any one time around half are on show, displayed in 25 “galleries” across three floors. Pay a little extra,…

It’s only the sound that’s a problem in the new Raptor. It doesn’t make nearly enough of it. The frankly polite noises the engine and exhaust produce just do not match the unhinged madness unleashed by this second-gen desert pre-runner. Something this big, this fast and this capable needs a well-thrashed V8 on full song to provide the necessary aural backdrop. Or, at least, that’s what your mind tells you. But your mind is wrong this time. Very wrong. While any car or truck can usually be improved by the addition of a bent eight motor, the very fact that Ford has left it out of the new Raptor is key to the truck’s extraordinary new appeal and abilities. By building the new one around a 450bhp/510ft lb twin-turbo V6,…

“Never meet your heroes”. So goes the old adage. In a world of false celebrity – where the label seems easily won and increasingly transient – meeting one comes laced with the risk of potential disappointment. But sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve been lucky enough to meet a number of genuine heroes, and while a few of them made the adage run true, the majority delivered on the levels of expectation. Actually meeting them merely added to the admiration I held for them and their achievements. Then there was Michael Schumacher. We had met briefly a number of times in my previous role working for Bernie Ecclestone, but I’d always wanted to drive with him, to see how the skills that had taken him to seven world championships translated into a…

VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT ALLTRACK Price/as tested £31,215/£34,795 Model Alltrack 2.0 TDI Driver Andy Franklin Why it’s here Does a rugged estate make more sense than a default SUV? 1968cc, 4cyl turbodiesel, AWD, 148bhp, 251lb ft 57.6mpg, 130g/km CO2 0–62mph in 9.2secs, 127mph 1670kg I’ve mentioned in previous reports that the VW Passat Alltrack won a caravan tow car of the year award, so we felt it would have been rude not to tow at least something, even if it wasn’t a caravan. In fact, I hate caravans. They remind me of depressing holidays, slow traffic and boring people. There’s one good thing about caravans, and that’s smashing them up. On the other hand, I LOVE trailers (there’s something quite manly and challenging about towing one), but what’s even better is towing…

A cursory web search reveals Trident has been “almost ready” to start selling cars since the early Noughties. Bought out in 2005, the last press release it issued touted the imminent availability of the Iceni, but that was almost three years ago, and we could find no evidence of any cars having been delivered to customers. So, fully expecting the company to have folded, we called the number on Trident’s website, which looks as though it hasn’t been updated since 2006. And to our surprise the phone was in fact answered. Two days later, an email from manin-charge Phil Bevan lands in my inbox. “The main delay has been funding,” says Phil, “as it’s still done in-house with no bank borrowings”. He says the company has had demonstrators for three…