Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2017 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

It’s raining hard, and has been since our arrival at Knockhill. The team has ducked into the cafe, and Harris is currently pushing a troubling piece of haggis around his plate, sniffing it occasionally and taking bets on who’s brave enough to eat it. The fact that the Scots have a word for weather like this (dreich) speaks volumes about the questionable sanity of heading north in the hope of sunshine for supercar testing in September. Throw into the equation a circuit with zero tolerance to getting your lines wrong and even less tolerant run-off, a combined output of 6,251bhp and value of £1,616,572, and it’s fair to say that our minds were definitely focused. On a more positive note, and brightening the bleak meteorological outlook, this is without question…

Batten down the hatches, stock up on Spam and prepare for war, as John Hennessey is – once again – going into battle with Bugatti for the title of the world’s fastest car. Not that he’s ever lost the title, that is. See, the Not-Guinness-Certifed-But-Still-Chufng- Quick 1,244bhp, 270.49mph Hennessey Venom GT is still, technically, the fastest car in the world. Just in one direction. But Bugatti now has a faster car, the Chiron. And is planning a top speed run in 2018. So, not wanting to be Top Trumped, Hennessey is rearming to futureproof his pride. With this, the Venom F5. Named after a particularly destructive breed of tornado (not the refresh button on your keyboard), it’s the latest road-legal land rocket to conform to Hennessey’s ‘Minimal Maximus’ philosophy (that’s…

The first car I drove, the first road car, was the Suzuki ‘Jeep’ – the square one before the Vitara. My dad would let me drive it in the feld across from the house; he remembers looking out the window and seeing me going backwards at 40mph. The first car I bought after I passed my test was using £2,000 of my race winnings from karting. It was a Vauxhall Cavalier 2.0-litre, the 8V not the 16V (couldn’t aford that), and it was dark blue – a 1990 G-reg with 90,000 miles. I put some 17-inch wheels on it, Sachs suspension and obviously the speakers every kid had when they were 17. When I was 19 years old, I bought a Ferrari. It was yellow, a 355 GTS, second-hand; it…

Porsche 911 GT2 RS £207,506 WE SAY: IT’S PULVERISED THE ’RING RECORD, BUT IS IT A CAR ONLY SUPERHEROES CAN MASTER? Every new car that matters, rated or slated I’ m at Silverstone driving the GT2 RS on the day of the bombshell. 6:47.3. It’s the ’Ring lap time, the fastest ever recorded by a production car, fve secs faster than the Lamborghini Huracán Performante, 10 secs ahead of Porsche’s own 887bhp 918 Spyder. Whatever you think of it as a measurement, its integrity, relevance or otherwise, you can’t deny the numbers tell an impressive story. The irony that my phone binged with the news of how fast the GT2 RS can get itself around a notoriously tricky circuit while I’m tentatively feeling my way around somewhere much tamer isn’t…

from £66,942 Audi A8 WE SAY: AUDI’S LUXOBARGE LOOKS AND FEELS AMAZING. SHAME THE TECH LAGS BEHIND If you want to see what a manufacturer is capable of engineering, you look at its fagship. Its supercar, or its big saloon. So as Audi’s new big saloon, the A8 ought to be a good indication of what the brand’s immediate future will look and feel like. With one caveat – it’s not quite fnished. According to its maker, the new A8 is the first production car that’s been “developed for conditional automation at level three”, here via a system called Trafc Jam Pilot. In theory it enables drivers to take their eyes of the road and do something else, like watch a flm on the infotainment screen, at up to 37mph…

From £20,875 Skoda Karoq WE SAY: THE CAR THAT KILLS THE YETI AND GETS AWAY WITH IT... The completely new Karoq parks itself in the spot vacated by the weird and wonderful Yeti. So it’s a midsize crossover to compete with the Nissan Qashqai and a million cars like it. It’s slightly longer, wider and roomier than the Yeti, and inherits a new family face from the bigger Kodiaq (Skoda’s naming strategy involves an Alaskan island and a linguistic workout, so we’ll just ignore it). Will we miss the Yeti? With its love-it-or-hate-it looks and sheer usefulness it was a TG favourite, but let’s not get too nostalgic. Over the years it grew from a four-eyed oddity with a back-to-basics appeal into something much more mainstream. The Karoq goes further.…

W elcome to Knockhill, home to the track section of Speed Week 2017. It’s been chosen not because it places us close to some of the greatest driving roads on the planet, nor because on the day we arrive we can watch the Red Arrows perform a fly-past at the opening of the new Queensferry Crossing on the Firth of Forth. Not even because it has a cracking cafe in the paddock, or because they gave us a set of keys and let us have the run of the place, but chiefly because of the challenge it poses a road car. The main straight is bumpy, and picking your braking point for the unseen entry to Dufus Dip is nigh-on impossible. The plunge downhill from there is like a narrowing…

With the suspiciously ripe lunchtime haggis still fermenting in our gizzards, the TG team set about whittling the full roster of finalists down to the seven that would be allowed to continue through to the more demanding road section of this test. Why seven? I’ve no idea as to the significance of the number – maybe Mr Editor was once a handy lower-middle-order batsman, or a lusty back-row forward – who knows? But seven it was. The process of elimination seemed unduly harsh on some machinery, but that’s life. There were three no-brainer qualifiers for me, the first of which was the Ford GT. Accepting that it really is terribly easy to be blinded by the charms of a bright yellow almosthypercar that goes like the clappers, the GT was…

The CX-5 feels surprisingly big when you first get in it. Of course, it’s not really and no bigger than the lastgeneration one, so why do I still avoid width restrictors? Maybe I’m just being extra cautious in my old age, which is why, when negotiating a particularly narrow back street in Hampstead, a loud thwack shocked me to a stop. Thanks to my new Garmin dashcam that I’d only just started using that day, I captured the whole thing. But there was no need to review it, as the damage was fairly obvious. The white van man had smashed my wing mirror with his brand-new Transit. As you can see from the screenshot below, I couldn’t be any more in the gutter and he was way over my side.…

You can’t properly attach the Nomad’s car cover if you have the side panels on. So I’d done without the Perspex for a few days. Mistake. Road debris means they’re an essential. Unlike the cover itself, which, although cheaper than the panels (£420 plays £540) is so awkward I’ve ditched it. I attach far more value to those panels than the cover itself. But fitting those Perspex sheets is – somewhat unbelievably – an even trickier task than putting the ruddy cover on. The trouble is my arms aren’t five feet long, and that means I can’t reach down both sides of the frame to nut-and-bolt it on, and (quite rightly) there’s not enough gap twixt glass and frame to squeeze a finger through. I tried during some downtime at…

Three seats are better than two. Driving the BP23 OK, it’s a 720S fitted with an interior mock-up of McLaren’s forthcoming three-seater F1 tribute, but time to start get very excited indeed Look closely at this McLaren 720S. Notice something unusual? That’s right, it has a central driving position. You know what this means – it’s a mule of the BP23 Hyper GT. Now don’t get too excited and assume I’ve driven a disguised BP23. I haven’t. I’ve driven a 720S with the steering wheel in the wrong place. First deliveries of the BP23 won’t take place until late 2019, and the early sketches of the interior were only done three or four months ago. This car has been on the road just a couple of weeks. In fact, it’s…

£19,695 Kia Stonic First Edition 1.0 T-GDi ISG WE SAY: ANOTHER WORTHY BUT AVERAGE BIJOU CROSSOVER n Drives this month, you’ll fnd the new Seat Arona and Hyundai Kona. Small crossovers with jumbled names are fooding the market quicker than cash-in books by novelty Twitter accounts, chasing an apparently insatiable desire from savvy, fashionable urbanites who desire nothing more than spending proper hatchback money on a fauxutilitarian supermini. About time Kia had one too, then. I If we say that the Stonic is one of the better small crossovers to drive, that may sound like damning it with praise so faint you’d need an ear trumpet to hear it. Actually, it’s none too shabby. The steering, as it is in the Rio, is too light to actually have any fun,…

WE SAY: FRAMELESS-WINDOWED FOUR-DOORS HELP YOU DODGE A BORING SALOON WITHOUT BUYING AN SUV What exactly is it? Not a new Passat CC, if you believe Volkswagen. Despite it being a similarly swoopy ‘coupe-saloon’ with frameless windows and a Passat platform beneath. In fairness, it’s longer than the CC and has five doors, not four. The bestselling 4-Series of them all. Yep, the five-door version of the two-door version of a four-door outsells BMW’s traditional coupe and cabrio. It’s just been facelifted, though looks little different to before. Is it as snug as a coupe? Nope. The boot is ginormous: it matches a Passat with the seats up, but the hatchback makes it more usable. Boot size triples when you fold the seats. There’s tons of legroom in the back…

I t’s entirely natural that when faced with a line-up that includes a 710bhp McLaren, hulk-green AMG GT R, a demonic-looking Lambo and one of only two Ford GTs in the country – all with keys in and engines gargling away – the humdrum stuf tends to get ignored. Let’s face it, in a room full of underwear models you wouldn’t be gazing longingly at your other half. Yet this morning the world has fipped upside down, because it’s behind the three hatchbacks, with less horsepower combined than one McLaren 720S, that the queues are forming. Perhaps the entire TopGear staf has developed a need to deliver more down-to-earth consumer advice? Perhaps we really are just a nation of hot-hatch lovers, and this is the indisputable evidence? Nope, it’s raining…

Sun and rain. They had a big effect here. When the clouds gathered, the rain fell and the track darkened, I thought one was a revelation, another a total liability. When the sun shone, the wind blew and the track dried, those positions were reversed – one danced, the other dulled. The third car? Well, that wasn’t fazed by anything at all. Sensible representatives of the German big three. Who’d have thought they’d deliver anything other than a perfectly polished performance? But here’s the thing – each of these has a very strong character, a certain way of doing things that colours the way it drives as well as the conditions it thrives in. They’re not direct rivals. They don’t sit in the same class. We’re calling them the super-saloons,…

I turn left out of Knockhill because I need fuel. The GT3 is on fumes, range three miles, so I can’t even enjoy what must be one of the best turnleft-out-of-circuit roads anywhere in the world. No worries, a steady early afternoon pootle gives me time to get used to sitting on the left, which I definitely need to do before driving the Ford GT and that even rarer fish, the VW Up GTI. Currently one of only two in existence apparently, which means the insurance valuation outstrips that of the Ford GT. Fascinating fact: you can option your 911 GT3 with a long-range 90-litre tank which, given how fuel-efcient 911s tend to be, means a 450-mile range. That’ll help where we’re going, a land of lochs, mountains and precious…

In the last few years, I’ve been warden to a diverse array of TG Garage inmates. A 158bhp Mazda MX-5, an 88bhp Renault Twingo, a 150bhp Audi Q2. In sixmonth stints with each of these petrolpowered cars, I’ve had all but identical economy – just over 40mpg. It’s what I’m getting in this 180bhp, big-boned Civic, too. Conclusion: all cars – at least excluding oddities like ‘plug-in hybrids’ or ‘diesels’ – are, in normal driving, exactly as economical as each other. Or, at least, they are if they’re used for a 60-mile commute of motorways and urban traffic through the crowded southeast, by someone who occasionally employs the accelerator pedal. Makes sense, I guess: traffic and some degree of social conscience mean my speed is rarely limited by the amount…

Brakes are quite a crucial component of a car. Without them, things can get very airbag-y, very quickly. So, telling your passengers that the brake pedal in your 200mph super-saloon isn’t actually connected to any mechanical componentry – rather your foot sends electronic pulses to a computer to tell the car to slow down – rufes an eyebrow or two. See, the Quadrifoglio uses what’s known in the business as ‘brakingby- wire’. This fghter-jet tech currently isn’t popular, with Toyota being the only other manufacturer using it since Mercedes-Benz made a U-turn on the technology 10 years ago, reverting back to hydraulic after many, many complaints. So why is Alfa backing it? Well, it’s 4kg lighter than a traditional set-up, builds brake pressure notably faster (so you can stop quicker),…

For years, if not decades, the two Venn-diagram ovals for ‘Volvo’ and ‘big sensible estate’ intersected almost completely. A great motoring truth was that Volvo was King Estate. They were roomy, safe and sensible. They weren’t great to drive. But then the Volvo’s estate rivals weren’t either, so it didn’t matter. Now it does. During the time I had the V90, the new 5-Series Touring and new E-Class estate arrived. They have more alert steering, smoother suspensions and more decisive automatic transmissions. Mind you, part of the problem is the V90 couldn’t initially be had with adaptive suspension. That’s now available, but this non-adaptive V90 doesn’t ride or steer as well as an air-sprung XC90. Still, the Volvo made me happy. It occupies welcome psychographic territory. Where once a Volvo…

Always losing your car key? Great news! Polestar’s Phone-as-Key lets you use your mobile. You can share your key virtually with anyone else, too R emember a few months back when Volvo’s rare-groove performance arm, Polestar, announced it wanted to reinvent itself as the electric performance-car brand? Well, it’s not messing about. This is the Polestar 1 (note logical naming policy, Audi) and it’s not a concept, it’s the real thing – a 592bhp, plug-in hybrid, M4-sized, 2+2 coupe you will be able to own from mid-2019. And yes, it’s near identical to the Volvo Coupe Concept from 2013. While this car is a stopgap between petrol and electric, Polestar has confrmed subsequent models will feature pure electric drivetrains. These include Polestar 2 – a saloon in late 2019 that…

SWINCAR E-SPIDER OFF-ROADER Tearing around a muddy field on a quad-bike billowing diesel too anti-eco for you? SWINCAR has come up with the solution, with this fully electric, no-emissions 4x4 buggy. The E-Spider is powered by a lithium-ion battery pack that offers four hours of charge and up to 60 miles of range, depending on how much strain you put it through. Each wheel gets its own individual suspension and electric motor to cover variations in gradients, while the E-Spider can tackle snow, mud and 70-degree inclines. £13,945; swincar.fr DTV SHREDDER Think of it as an off-road Segway. The DTV Shredder is a ride-on machine combining skateboarding, motorcross and jet-skiing, and claims to take on most challenging terrains in all weathers. Fold it up to take on any adventure. £4,999;…

Next year the RAF celebrates its centenary, so naturally one of TCs favourite watchmakers has done something special to mark the occasion. Only the Bremont 1918 is no ordinary watch, because the movement contains actual parts from four aircraft - a WWI RAF SE5a, then a Spitfire, Hurricane and Blenheim. All are still flying and two of them fought in the Battle of Britain. From £8,495; bremont.com IWC AQUATIMER “YEARS” IWC claims ‘ceratanium’ - from which this 50th anniversary Aquatimer is made - is “as light and unbreakable as titanium, but also as hard and scratch-resistant as ceramic”. Digital perpetual calendar, too. £38,795; iwc.com ORIS BIG CROWN D.26 286 HB-RAG Another limited edition, this time inspired by the Dewoitine D.26 - a plane commissioned by the Swiss government in the…

Porsche Cayenne Turbo £96,193 WE SAY: NEW CAYENNE LOOKS FAMILIAR BUT DRIVES BETTER THAN EVER It’s 15 years since the Cayenne elbowed into showrooms and instantly put you of your dinner. But, like it or not, after 700,000+ sales, the car that transformed Porsche’s fortunes is still going strong. This is the all-new, third-gen model and it’s the fastest and lightest of the lot, which says something about the amount of engineering efort that’s gone into it. If only they’d tried so hard with the styling. You’d have to own a Porschebranded anorak to spot the diferences, so allow us: it’s longer, lower and broader, has a wider gob, muscle-ft bodywork and a full-width LED lightbar between the rear lights. But the Cayenne has always been more about driving, and…

“L et’s get the job done, have fun,” says Editor-in-chief Charlie Turner at the end of his welcome speech. “Don’t be that person...” We all get it. That person is the one who gets carried away and runs out of talent. That person gets remembered for all the wrong reasons. It’s worth saying, because this is TG’s Speed Week, and it is stupidly easy to get overexcited. Think about it: Knockhill Race Circuit in Scotland, all to ourselves. The weather is schizophrenic, the corners blind and the adrenaline high. And then there are the cars. Thirteen of the best performance cars of the past year, all in one place, fuelled and ready to go. Balance-of-Power rules don’t apply, meaning that you can be storming around in a supercar and fnd…

Knockhill Racing Circuit in Scotland, in the kind of rain that depresses ducks. My group? A ruinously expensive/exclusive Ford GT, the only slightly less top-end Lamborghini Huracán Performante and a lightly feral McLaren 720S. Erm… yay? Nothing like starting at the pointy end. I am, however, as likely to complain about driving three of the most superlative supercars of 2017 as I am to moan about winning the lottery, even if I am convinced that I just saw a salmon trying to swim up Turn 3. And so, lightly threatened by all three cars, I decide to go for the one least likely to immediately spit me into an advertising hoarding for Caber Coffee: the Lamborghini. I know, it seems like a woefully misguided idea that the least intimidating of…

Can’t beat a GT3, can you? Seriously. That’s not a rhetorical question. Is it possible to build a superior track-ready, road-legal sports car than Porsche’s two-seater 911? Two German companies have had a go recently. One of them is called AMG. The other, cheekily, is Porsche itself. So they’ve got a head-start. The new GT3, or 991-gen 911 v2.0 if you prefer, conceals a new 4.0-litre flat-six behind some rethought aerodynamics. The facelifted front bumper is droopy-lip ugly, but working in tandem with a steeper rear wing and token diffuser, it squashes the Revenge Of The GT3 into the track – or an unsuspecting road – with the same force as the current GT3 RS. Its naturally aspirated alto of an engine (“engine” seems too uncultured a word for the…

Six months into BMW 530d ownership and, for the first time, I’ve needed to use the remote control parking. Sure, I’ve played around with it to baffle family and friends, but thanks to particularly snug parking bays outside reception at the Goodwood racing circuit, it was an actual requirement. For those who have no idea what I’m on about, it’s a feature that lets you start the engine and roll the car forward or backwards (while the car micro-steers itself) via the touchscreen on the enormodisplay key. The idea being that it lets you use tight side-by-side parking bays without crunching the car next door. It works, but beyond showing off, it’s a bit of a gimmick. If a space is too tight, find another one and walk a little…

Regular readers might remember I previously ran a Nissan X-Trail, a direct competitor to the Kodiaq. In our recent £30k family SUV test (issue 298), the Kodiaq came out on top. But I wanted to get them together and see how they fitted to my needs, as I remember the X-Trail being a very good package. And, after spending some time with the (E)X-Trail, I don’t disagree with our results, but I do feel it’s closer in the real world. Dynamically and financially, the Kodiaq beats the X-Trail hands down. It’s better value, feels much more like a car, has a lot less body roll. While the X-Trail wallows, the Kodiaq will get the kids to school, fast. But, for me, the interior packaging is crucial, and the X-Trail is…

Usefulness. That’s why we’ve got a Discovery. Because we always need a car on the feet that can handle stuf. So obviously it’s been pressed into service immediately – bikes and dogs seemed a reasonable place to start. First impressions? There’s an awful lot of tech to negotiate: the towbar whirs in and out electrically, the seats lift and drop via buttons as well. Or an app on your phone, apparently. Haven’t quite fathomed the drop-down seat fap that replaces the split tailgate yet – how it works or the role it plays. Sometimes it lowers when you open the boot; sometimes it doesn’t... Plenty of time for that. Introductions, then. This is a Discovery in top-line trim – a Td6 HSE Luxury, which, I’m almost ashamed to admit, costs…

Ollie Marriage: So that’s it, time’s up for our GTs. Let’s start with the Macca. Charlie Turner: I love the 570, but it’s not a GT. Got more space than the DB, though. OM: More total boot litres, I grant you. But I can carry four – and regularly do. And I actually managed to get a bicycle inside the DB11 once. Had to put it on the outside of yours with the front wheel on the back deck. What do you use that area for? CT: All kinds of stuff. Stuff that you might want to arrive in your lap mid-journey if you brake a bit hard, mainly. Ultimately you end up putting everything in the front. OM: That’s because you drive it like a sports car. CT: But…