Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

The issue that you have in your hand is a 172-page testament to the fact that the car industry we all love has never been more vibrant, diverse and creative, or offered a broader range of stunning creations at any time in its history. At TopGear, we work hard to deliver you the broadest range of content and the best access to this fascinating world on a monthly basis. An issue of TopGear should let you dream a little, open doors that most can’t get access to, take you on an adventure, entertain and excite you, and answer the questions that make you the best-informed audience in the world, and issue 298 doesn’t disappoint. Let’s start with our cover story, where the battle for the hot-hatch heartland continues with the…

B ehold the barmiest, least rational car you’ll see today. It’s Jaguar’s latest Special Vehicle Operations project. In the baldest terms it’s an XE saloon that costs a fver short of £150,000. Naturally, Project 8 is rather more than that. Following on from Project 7, it’s even more bespoke and specialised. Jag’s SVO boss describes it as the company’s “most track-focused and powerful road car ever”. Yep, even the XJ220 is outshone. Out goes a rep-friendly diesel engine, in comes a 5.0-litre supercharged V8. It’s familiar from a whole suite of Jaguar performance cars, but none has yet ofered the 592bhp – or nice round 600PS – of Project 8. Despite copious carbon fbre components, this is a 1,745kg car, making it several passengers heavier than a regular XE. Doesn’t stop…

It all started of with a 1936 SS2 Jaguar 1.5-litre, which I bought from a scrapyard in Guildford for 19 quid. This amazed my parents when I got home to Hampshire because they asked, “How did you get here?”, and I replied “I’ve got my own car.” “What sort?” “A Jaguar!” This raised quite a lot of eyebrows, as you might imagine. It was a beautiful car, and it taught me a lot about car mechanics. The big problem was the engine was on the way out, and I lived in Cornwall Gardens in London and the only way we could get the car going was to ring Bell’s Garage around the corner, and for fve quid they would tow it around the block until we could get the engine…

£62,900 WE SAY: AUDI’S QUATTRO RIVAL TO THE M4 AND C63 ACTUALLY FEELS MORE LIKE A HEALTHY S5. AWKWARD… C an I make a confession? It’s been fve days since I drove the new RS5, and I’m still not entirely sure I’ve made my mind up about it. It’s like leaving the cinema unsure if what you’ve just watched is a misunderstood future classic or just plain… plain, really. It lingers in your head for a few days, threatening to become an opinion. Is this just another onedimensional fast Audi with its personality muzzle clamped on tight, or in fact a really clever, relevant super-coupe? Awards ceremony envelopes at the ready… Tell you what, though, the new RS5 is defnitely a superior sequel. So much better in every department (except soundtrack)…

T he hot-hatch experience is defned by third gear. The tricky dogleg throw across the gate has been dealt with, the weaving, tugging torque steer of second gear is no longer pulling you across the road and you’re now in the everything gear. Third, in a modern turbo hatch, will not only take you beyond the legal speed limit on a British motorway, but also deliver enough oomph to snap through roundabouts if you can’t be arsed to snick back down through the dogleg to second. Most importantly, third is the B-road gear, the Wales gear. I’m not saying that others won’t be deployed, because there’s some cracking sweepers around here where fourth is the more natural choice, and a handful of tight hairpins that demand second if you’re to keep…

Report 2 Alfa Romeo QV £61,000 OTR/£73,505 as tested ROWAN HORNCASTLE Y ou’ve heard it a million times: imitation is the sincerest form of fattery. But when does imitation cross the boundary? Well, having spent more time in the Alfa’s cabin, this is a point I’m struggling with. See, anyone familiar with Audi and BMW cockpit controls may see some visual similarities between them and the Giulia’s gearstick and rotary menu control. When I say similarities, I mean, they look exactly the bloody same to me. But making things look the same is easy, emulating the tactility and haptic pleasures is much, much harder. And this is where the Giulia comes up short. Both the BMWesque gear selector and Audi-style rotary control feel incredibly cheap and plasticky compared with its German…

Report 4 Citroen C3 £16,825/£18,710 as tested T his C3’s main innovation is ConnectedCam – a built-in dashcam in top-spec Flair models that lives in the rearview mirror. Triggered (a bit haphazardly, in my experience) by heavy braking or jagged steering, it saves 2min clips to an app on your smartphone. Or, push a button on the unit and it snaps a photo to instantly upload to your Facebook or Instagram. The recording device is supposed to bring young driver insurance costs down, the social media hit to make it marketable. The ConnectCam app itself is clunky, and you’ll only discover that after a tedious set-up process involving four disclaimer screens needing your permission to bypass privacy settings and use your location (sapping battery life and data allowance) at all times.…

Report 3 McLaren 570GT £154,000/£199,485 as tested M onth three of life with the 570GT, and being a generous and benevolent dictator (but mostly because I had to travel to LA and Korea for business) I took the opportunity to allow a trusted few to prise the keys from my hands. Returning from my travels and with the mileage now reading 4,235 it was clear that the car had been busy. But the problem with lending your latest (temporary) prized possession to others is that they can tend to be a little critical. Both Ollie and Rowan came back from their forays in the GT hugely impressed with its ability to cover distance and act as a GT with particular praise for its civility and lack of road noise at speed…

Report 3 Aston Martin DB11 £157,900 OTR/£187,005 as tested T he DB11 has been puzzling me for a while now. And here’s why: it rides too well. I know, I know, this sounds mad, but we’ve long been fed cars that compromise comfort for schportiness. The DB11 doesn’t do that – it’s a big GT cruiser and it rides like a big GT cruiser should. It’s wonderfully plush, the rear axle has plentiful travel and the whole thing soaks up punishment like a sponge. It’s one of those cars that feels calm and efortless. As long as you don’t drive it too hard. It’s majestic around big, wide, smooth sweepers, but tight corners and roundabout exits? Well, there the softness counts against it and what you get, even with the suspension…

THINGS WE’VE LEARNT THIS MONTH L aurent Hurgon is one of RenaultSport’s test pilotes, and no doubt he could drive the high-speed handling track at the company’s vast Aubevoye facility backwards with his eyes closed while singing La Marseillaise. But even so, this is something else. Politely, he asks if I’m OK going quickly as we set of. Yep. “And a dreeft?” Yes, dreeft away. We want to see what the Alpine A110 is made of. What follows is illuminating. First, this particular track is brilliant, and throws all sorts of nasties at a car. Second, like all world-class drivers Laurent conjures magic out of the machine with magnifcent economy of motion. It’s like that bit at the end of The Matrix where Neo beats the bad guy in slo-mo. Third,…

G o on, take a wild guess at what type of car we’re currently all buying in droves. No, not V8-engined twoseater sports cars, unfortunately, but supermini-based SUVs, and new ones are arriving at such at rate we’ve barely got space for them. This month? Just the four… And yet for all our cynicism, they’re a diverse bunch. As SUVs get smaller, the customer gets younger and funkier, or so says marketing research, so the design needs to refect that. Take the new C3 Aircross. Citroen says it “brings a breath of fresh air to the compact SUV segment”, and that it “invites fans of style, well-being and adventure to live a whole new automotive experience”. We say if it’s even half as good as the PR fuf, Citroen is surely…

You know a true enthusiast’s car when people refer to it by its internal code. Launched in 1983, the AE86 (or Hachi-Roku as it’s colloquially known) was the 1600cc, RWD variant of the MkV Toyota Corolla. You could get it with one of two faces – a Levin (fxed headlights) or Trueno (retractable ones) – and the choice of two bottoms, a hatchback or coupe. But the awesome Etch-A-Sketch lines and pristine proportions weren’t the things that got petrolheads frothing. It was the fact it adhered to a golden yet simple TG equation: RWD + an afordable, lightweight (970kg) chassis = fun. However, one man is held responsible for catapulting the AE86 to being part of the zeitgeist. His name is Keiichi ‘Drift King’ Tsuchiya. He was a renegade racer.…

12.03.17 All rally we’d been carrying six tyres for security – four on the car and two spare – all the other teams had only fve. I knew with that extra weight we were never going to be able to do the best time on the last stage – I wanted a steady run just to make sure I gathered a few points. When we set of everything felt really good, no issues, then we got to the fnal part of the stage. Within the last kilometre is one of the iconic places of Rally Mexico – the ‘El Brinco’ jump. We came down fne but the next corner is probably the trickiest in the stage, a real fast right-hander through a compression at speeds of about 120kph. It’s blind…

BEST BIT If the software is good, the results can be brilliant WORST BIT Confusing term covers several technologies and abilities Lots of carmakers boast of torque vectoring, but they’re not, strictly, saying the same thing. Only by knowing their technology can you have much idea of the result they’ll get. The principle is to send diferent drive torque to each tyre to help control and steer the car. Around a bend, if the outside rear tyre gets extra drive, it’ll rotate the car towards the apex and cancel understeer. Speeding up the inside one quells oversteer. The best way to do this is to control the output at the rear driveshafts. In 4WD cars this depends on the centre power take-of’s programmed clutch packs pushing extra drive to the…

£ n/a WE SAY: NEW DESIGN LANGUAGE, BUT AWFUL CVT GEARBOX Doesn’t look like a Mitsubishi, eh? A new design chief arrived when this project was starting off three years ago. This year, Nissan bailed out Mitsubishi Motors by taking a significant shareholding. So although on the surface it’s the first to wear a new Mitsubishi design language, underneath it’s one of the last “pure” Mitsubishis. In future they’ll use Nissan- Renault platforms. Replacing the ASX or Outlander? Neither. It squeezes between them in size, on point for what the industry calls the Qashqai market. Family-friendly then. And still with decent Mitsubishi off-road chops. Does it drive like, oh, an Evo 10, or like another boring crossover? The new 1.5-litre turbo petrol smears its torque over a wide range. It…

£42,000 (est) WE SAY: IF ONLY THE NAMING DEPARTMENT WAS AS ON MESSAGE AS THE REST OF KIA... A t risk of puncturing the suspense, the new news is this really is a very agreeable car. The old news is it labours under a terrible name. No, not Kia, you fools. Stinger. What were they thinking of, calling a car Stinger? Anyway, they were stuck with Kia. They actually chose Stinger. The Kia badge does OK on stuf like the Soul and Sportage. But this slinky-looking rear-drive hatch-cum-coupe is diving into colder, choppier waters. The BMW 4-Series Gran Coupe is the main rival, or the Audi A5. No pressure, then. This is the twin-turbo V6 one, knocking on 170mph. But that won’t be the seller among the Stingers. If any version…

WE SAY: IF YOU FANCY PETROL POWER IN YOUR SPORTY JUNIOR EXEC, ITALY OUTDOES BRITAIN Petrol? In a repmobile? Why? If you are the stereotypical rep, your fleet manager won’t be chopping in his diesels until the tax sums add up. But say you’re spending your own money? Diesel sales are down nine per cent so far in 2017, so a petrol saloon could be more depreciation-proof, and do rear-drive handling justice. While the Alfa’s 2.0-litre four-pot makes 197bhp (a 276bhp Veloce model is coming soon) this new Ingenium-engined XE is one rung up in brawn, sending 247bhp to all four wheels as standard. It’s pricier (£35.6k vs £31.5k), but only 26lb ft stronger, so the Jag doesn’t feel much quicker. Surely the costs don’t add up? The petrols are…

SEATS LIGHTEST EVER A new Type R means new seats. They feel a lot like the old ones – no bad thing, those were excellent – but are lighter and redder than anything that’s been in a Civic previously. Crucially, they’re mounted much lower than before for a better driving position M agazine cover stories bring to mind the famous quote from Fight Club. The frst rule of a magazine cover story is you get the car there in one piece. The second rule… well, you can guess. Basically, don’t crash it. Point a car into the scenery, and not only will you be on tea duties for the rest of your career, but the next issue will hit the shops with 18 blank pages and a gaping hole on the…

J ust how far have we come to get to this point? I’m not thinking geographically, but philosophically – the geography of this morning’s 90-mile drive to Salisbury Plain has merely provided the evidence. It’s early summer and every farmer is tooling between felds in a battered Daihatsu Fourtrak, Defender or rusting pickup. The Plain itself echoes with the rattle and clank of heavy armour, but in the dust kicked up by each tracked vehicle lurks a Land Rover, aerials waving, suspension jouncing. It’s the cement that binds the military machine together. Agriculture and warfare – the two furnaces in which our love of the SUV was forged. How much hammering on the anvil has it taken to get us to the Skoda Kodiaq? The Mini Countryman? Can you imagine either…

Goodbye Mercedes-Benz E220d £38,430 OTR/£55,480 as tested I f you fancy a new E-Class these days, £35,205 will get you on the road in an entry-level E200d SE saloon. It’s a lot of car for the money, but it’s very easy to bump that price up signifcantly with a few ‘must-have’ options. Our long-term test car started out as a £38,430 E220d AMG Line saloon but, by the time pretty much every box on the option list was ticked, it came in at a whopping £55,480. Those ‘essential items’ included 20in AMG alloys at £595, Nappa leather at £1,595 and the gorgeous matt grey paint job at £1,795. It’s a pretty car to start with, but once the kit’s added it turns more heads than you’d expect for a 2.0-litre diesel…

MY EPIC ROAD B77, Austria In just 30 miles it has everything you could possibly want: a narrow valley, an ascent of about 3,000 feet, long, sweeping curves, tight hairpins, a ski resort, and great views of the Alps. Johannes Diebold, TG.com road blasts, UK I know three without having to stop and think about it. The B1398 between Scunthorpe and Lincoln, the B1206 and B1218 between Elsham and Barton and the B1225 between Caistor and Horncastle. Eddie Tear, TG.com Corners, eh? Where would we be without them? In a straight line, some distance from where we’d started, that’s where. Getting a corner right can be the diference between winning and losing a race – and, indeed, the diference between “getting around the corner” and “ending up in a crumpled…

Every new car that mat ters, rated or slated Ford Fiesta ST-Line X 140 5dr £18,945 WE SAY: KEEP THE CHANGES TO A MINIMUM, DETROIT SAID. YEAH RIGHT, SAID EUROPE... F our years ago, Detroit briefed Ford of Europe to do the new Fiesta. Do it, but not overdo it. The platform had been brand-new only fve years before, most of the engines less than that. So just go over the looks, eh? And, of course, replace the dash, the main element of which was modelled on a Motorola clamshell phone that had gone of-trend even in 2008. Finally install a better suite of driver aids. Didn’t happen like that. The new Fiesta is pretty much all-new. Ford changed the seats to get more adjustment, so it had to change the…

£32,530 (Tekna +) Engine 1598cc 4cyl TD, 4WD, 128bhp, 236lb ft Performance 0–62mph in 10.8secs, 118mph, 57.6mpg, 129g/km CO2 Weight 1518kg If you want someone or something to blame for the whole crossover craze, lay that blame squarely at the Nissan Qashqai. This is the second gen, which went on sale in 2014. Many other CUVs have launched since, so to keep it competitive Nissan has redone the front end, upgraded the interior, added more safety tech and tweaked the handling. All very worthwhile – the QQ still has a lot going for it and is among the better cars in its class. But it’s not the unassailable class leader it once was. An Ateca or CX-5 is more fun, both have better interiors, more modern-feeling infotainment and are just…

£27,500 WE SAY: NEW KOLEOS IS GOOD ENOUGH TO MAKE US FORGET THE OLD ONE I t’s once more into the breach for the Renault Koleos, as the French widen their assault on the SUV market. On looks, at least, it’s of to a good start, with a face that emphasises the company’s distinctive design language. C-shaped daytime running lights will make it recognisable in your rear-view mirror, and the full LED headlights on higher-spec models should help at night. Renault has put its best foot forward when it comes to standard equipment, and there are just two trim grades to choose from. The entry-level Dynamique S Nav gets 18in alloy wheels, half-leather interior and an infotainment system that allows full integration with your smartphone. Unsurprisingly, there is a variety of…

£44,675 WE SAY: MERCEDES ACIDENTALLY UNDERMINES ITS OWN FLAGSHIP. OOPS T errible news, Mercedes S-Class Cabriolet owners. Not only does the new E-Class Cabriolet look almost exactly like your car, but in many ways it’s very nearly as good. Interior, engines and tech are per the E-Class Coupe. The new roof, meanwhile, is a multi-layer fabric job that can be stowed or erected electronically in 20 seconds at 30mph or less. Tech and know-how was borrowed from the S. As much is obvious from the moment you start moving. The acid test of a good convertible is if, after a hour spent driving around with the roof up, you forget it is one. And in the E-Class you certainly do. Not bad roof-down, either, although the “AirCap” system that claims to…

WHAT IS IT LIKE ON TRACK? THE LATEST CIVIC TYPE R ARRIVES on the back of a new Nürburgring lap record for a front-drive car: 7mins 43.8secs. Dare we challenge the significance of this in the real world? Not according to Hideki Kakinuma, the Civic Type R’s chief engineer. “It’s basically a development tool for us. It brings the weak points of a car to the surface. The lap time is a verification that every department has achieved its objectives. Having said that, even we were quite surprised when we managed the lap time we did...” A TG verification lap of the ’Ring will have to wait, but a 30-minute session on a different German circuit, the Lausitzring, south of Berlin, erases any doubt about objectives met or fudged. Three…

They say that if you remembered the Sixties, you weren’t there. Well, the Nineties were a whole heap of fuzzy fun, too. In the Nineties, popular culture was cheerfully inclusive. A bit lairy, perhaps, but inclusive. And so were the cars. On the one hand, Subaru charged relative buttons for the Impreza Turbo, the car that Colin McRae worked wonders with on the world’s rally stages. On the other, a former ICI engineer called Peter Wheeler had wrestled a left-feld British car company into a world-beater. After decades of hits and misses, TVR really hit a groove as the Nineties achieved lift-of. TVRs were red Marlboros, the equivalent of a night on the tiles with Britpop’s most committed hedonists. They looked like rock stars’ cars, and spoke with a strong…

T he frst time you uncork the 812’s 6.5-litre V12 and allow it to scream to that 8,900rpm limiter in third gear you ask yourself one simple question: “Does it feel faster than an F12 – I mean, can you really feel the extra 59bhp?” Is that two questions? Feels like just the one to me. And this is actually a very difcult question to answer, because even though I’ve driven many F12s, when 40°C asphalt is lightly griddling the Pirelli P Zeros just behind your bottom and you have the motive force of eight warm hatchbacks lurking at the end of your right foot, it can be hard to summon your inner journalist and come over all mature and objective. So I thumped the right pedal, the 812 spat itself…

Hello Honda Civic £25,405 OTR/£25,930 as tested A big hello, then, to the new Honda Civic. With emphasis on the ‘big’, for the tenth (tenth!) generation of Japan’s answer to the VW Golf is frankly enormous. Honda boasts this new Civic has the longest wheelbase in its class. I don’t doubt it. If someone told you this was the new Accord, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Such embiggifcation confers many advantages. Particularly in the “interior space” department. The Civic’s cabin is, as the estate agents would have it, generously proportioned. Masses of legroom, front and back, and a monster boot into the mix. Swallows a road bike without requiring removal of a wheel or lowerment of a saddle. Just pop down the rear seats and fing it in. But the Civic’s…

Report 6 Ford Mustang £35,745 OTR/£37,830 as tested S he’s been nicknamed ‘Bluebell’. I know, not the most macho of names for a 5.0-litre, manual V8 Mustang but Grabber blue is very blue, so it kind of just stuck. And fnally we’ve upgraded from the (admittedly excellent) winter tyres to something a little stickier... 19in Pirelli P Zeros, to be exact, in 275/40 and 255/40 favours back to front. Initial impressions: noticeably more wayward in cold conditions for early starts thanks to diferent ‘hysteresis loops’ for the relevant rubber compounds (yes, I’ve been researching things on the internet again), but slightly sharper steering, less wander under braking and much more aggressive turn in. Quite a surprising amount more. Plus, there’s much more lateral grip, and it feels as if the sidewalls…

Report 7 Mitsubishi L200 £24,949 OTR/ £29,938 as tested S o here it is. The product of much worry, many late nights and the glorious realisation of ambition over budget: TG magazine’s Project Swarm. A monster Mitsubishi L200 that combines proper military-spec hardware and a little bit of show car theatre to create something… er… unique. It’s been described as “Project Swamp”, a “Dessert Warrior” – presumably to take on particularly extreme Banofee-road situations (sorry) – and “Really obnoxious, yet somehow utterly brilliant”. Most people just want to know why, and what the wing is for. And to take pictures. Many, many pictures. First of all, the why. Well, Swarm has been designed as a pre-runner to tackle deserty-type of-road. So it’s got all manner of trick bits ftted to make…

Goodbye Audi Q2 £23,245 OTR/£28,655 as tested T ime for the Q2 to go back, which means verdict time. And here’s the easy bit. If you have decided you have a roughly Q2-shaped hole in your life, and a roughly Q2-sized amount of money in your wallet, and you’re wondering how to fll the former and empty the latter, I can happily recommend the Audi Q2. This is a deeply profcient motor vehicle. The 1.4-litre turbo petrol is smooth, and peppy, and proof there’s life after diesel. The handling is tidy. The interior is lovely. The info-wotsit gubbins are the best infowotsit gubbins in the business. Big ticks all round. Nothing to complain about here. The problem, however, is deciding if you do indeed have an Audi Q2-shaped hole in your…