Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2016 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

There are some for whom a car is merely 15ft of conveyance, a dispassionate white good which serves as a means of getting from one place to another. But if you’re reading this magazine, it’s more likely than not that your relationship with cars exists on a very different, more engaged, more passionate, deeper-rooted level. For many of us, looking at and talking about cars is a central and hugely enjoyable thread throughout our lives. Dig deeper into what fuels that relationship, and it soon becomes clear that, for most of us, cars, our passion for them, the technology they drive and the freedom and spirit of adventure they encapsulate, represent a fundamental part of the joy of life. This month we delve deeper into that relationship and explore what…

WE SAY: A REIMAGINING OF A CLASSIC THAT’S NOT A TRAVESTY? BRING IT ON... Old rally cars really do it for me. And it looks like I’m not alone. They’re back. Top early-Seventies Monte Carlo contenders were the Lancia Stratos, Alpine A110 and Abarth 124. Their four-decades past is overtaking us. Renault is reviving Alpine on a car inspired by that original. Fiat ditto with the Abarth. (No chance of a production reinvention of the Stratos, sadly, though Michael Stoschek famously commissioned his Ferrari-Pininfarina one-of.) One other offence I’d like to be taken into consideration. I owned and rebuilt a Fiat 124 Spider. We all have some sort of lodestone that steers our motor emotions, and for me it was always beautiful Pininfarina roadsters with plenty of camshafts and carburettors.…

WE SAY: BABY V6 AMG IS LOVELY... PROVIDED YOU CAN FORGET THAT THE C63 EXISTS You can have a very handsome car in the new C-Class Cabrio, and a refined top-down cruiser. But not at the same time. The standard-fit Aircap gadget, which electronically erects a table tennis net atop the windscreen, does a terrific job of batting airflow over the top of your head (for front-seat occupants at least; those in the fairly spacious rears had better staple their eyebrows down), but it does for the car’s lines what a Disneyland bumbag does for fashion cred. The rear deck’s air deflector stands up defiantly, but could you drive along towing an ungainly plastic tea tray like Connery’s bulletproof DB5? Either your hair looks smart, or the car does. Of…

WE SAY: FORD DECIDES TO GIVE THE REST OF ITS MODEL RANGE A HEADACHE If you don’t read magazines in page order (who does?), you might have seen a Fiesta ST elsewhere in this issue, because its small size encloses a whole bunch of fun. This end-of-the-line ST200 is the same size but more so. This isn’t straightforward. It has 10 per cent more power and 20 per cent more torque than the regular ST. The name reflects the power output, 200PS, which is 197bhp. But wait. The regular ST has 10-second overboost, taking it to… 197bhp. Still, the ST200 has overboost too, to 215PS (212bhp) and 236lb ft, and it goes for 15secs. You won’t be mashing the throttle for 15 seconds uninterrupted, so really it’s a 212bhp engine,…

WE SAY: KIA AIMS TO TEMPT YOU INTO A HYBRID SOFTROADER... BY FIGHTING ITS OWN SPORTAGE. EH? Another me-too crossover? Nope, the Niro is different. This is Kia’s Prius – a petrol-electric hybrid in its own, bespoke skin built on an entirely new platform. And it’s impressively proficient, without being massively impressive. Oh great, another droning CVT hybrid? Fear not. What we have is a 1.6-litre, 104bhp normally aspirated petrol engine accompanied by a 32kW (43bhp) electric motor and 1.56kWh lithium-ion battery, driving the front wheels through a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. Proper gearbox, then. Must be pretty grunty Peak outputs are only 139bhp and 195lb ft, but more importantly, economy of 74.3mpg and 88g/km of CO2 emissions are decent for a non-plug-in EV. You need 16-inch wheels for such…

This is the Mercedes-AMG GT R, and you’ll be delighted to know it’s just as shouty as it looks. It is the most honed AMG model, and the most powerful, since the old SLS Black Series. There are so many highlights, it’s very hard to know where to begin. But let’s be obvious, and begin with its green (and really quite mean) exterior. The paint is called Green Hell, to honour the track – the Nürburgring – on which much of the GT R’s development has taken place. The roof is carbon, unpainted for extra paddock kudos. It’s wider than the already wide AMG GT S, that more muscular body smothering broader tracks. The front splitter not only gulps in extra air, but actively directs it via moving flaps. Unlike…

F355 BERLINETTA Engine: 3496cc, V8, 375bhp @ 8250rpm, 268lb ft @ 6000rpm Performance: 0–62mph in 4.7secs, 183mph Transmission: 6spd manual, RWD Economy: N/A mpg, N/A g/km CO2 Weight: 1350kg (dry) L x W: 4250mm x 1900mm 488 GTB Engine: 3902cc, V8 twin-turbo, 661bhp @ 8000rpm, 561lb ft @ 3000rpm Performance: 0–62mph in 3.0secs, 205mph Transmission: 7spd DCT, RWD Economy: 24.8mpg, 260g/km CO2 Weight: 1525kg L x W: 4568mm x 1952mm Progress is a moot point in Maranello. Engineers measure it empirically, and in those terms 2016’s Ferrari 488 GTB administers a ginormous Gucci loafer-clad kicking to 1994’s F355. It’s harder, faster, stronger, better made, much better equipped, more efficient, and, when it comes to active and passive safety… well, let’s not even go there. You can switch off the ABS…

SCREAM IF YOU WANNA GO FASTER When the Ferrari Land theme park opens next year in Spain, it will become home to Europe’s tallest, fastest rollercoaster, affixed to which will be one of the world’s largest Ferrari badges, standing 12 metres high and weighing nine tonnes. We don’t yet know the ride’s name, but here are some other facts about it: Height: 367 feet Acceleration: 0–112mph in five secs Steepest angle: 90 degrees That makes it only marginally less terrifying than Ferrari’s other rollercoaster in Abu Dhabi, which happens to be the fastest in the world with a top speed of 149mph. ROAD WARS According to the World Economic Forum, Britain’s roads are in a similar state to those in Namibia or Puerto Rico. In fact, in the WEF’s Quality…

BLUE MICROPHONES LOLA HEADPHONES BLUE MICROPHONES LOLA HEADPHONES Many headphone reviews concentrate, quite reasonably, on the quality of the sound being poured into your ear holes. That, of course, is why you strap a couple of small, noisy bins onto your head in the first place. And in that respect, these Blue Mic Lola cans do an admirable job, provided you don’t mind looking like the bloke who waves ping-pong bats in front of planes at the airport. The most interesting thing about them, though, is the headband. Usually these things are springloaded and pinch your head like a vice. These, however, are inspired by the wishbone-style suspension of F1 cars, meaning they’re more adaptable, more flexible, and therefore help to form a tighter seal around your ear, resulting in…

Curry hooks and getting two six-footers behind each other. Popular buzzwords in adenoidal practicality tests but definitely not what this exercise is about. Even though I can confirm 1,260 litres of Discovery boot is more than enough to happily drift a Crazy Cart while moving at 30mph, I’m not here to be a fun sponge. What I’ve brought along are bastions of utilitarianism, intravenous lines to fun and go-anywhere giggles. See, a truly utilitarian car – one that dispenses with styling flimflam and overwrought luxury in favour of proper function – can be as, if not more, joyous than trying to rip your face off with downforce. It’s a disparate group, I’ll give you that. But a rear-wheel-drive Ariel, portal-axled Unimog, mostly front-drive £10,000 Eastern European SUV and a seven-seat…

What do a £300k Roller, a pill-shaped diesel hybrid, a pure electric saloon and an £8k city car have in common? Nothing. Not a sausage. Yet each one in turn is triggering the same involuntary spasms in my cheeks, causing the edges of my mouth to curl upwards. Most curious. There can be only one explanation: that joy needn’t necessarily come from cremating a set of tyres and generally acting like a yob. There’s pleasure in cleverness, too, in exceptional design that fits the brief and then some, because when a set of engineers really put their heads together something outside of the box often emerges. And things that are different, tend to be fun. Take the VW Up, probably the least unusual thing here, but with its three-cylinder engine…

It looks ridiculous. It serves precisely no purpose. It’s bright orange. It’s an off-roader with open flanks to aid mud ingress and has only two driven wheels, it’s a super-fast lightweight with a winch and light bar. I mean, come on, the Ariel Nomad is a mishmash, a lash-up, a vanishing point of irrelevance. And the most fun car that any of us has ever driven. My favourite moment of this whole test, even more amusing than watching Paul Horrell donut the Crazy Cart or Charlie Turner attempting to disembark the Pocket Classic, was seeing the Nomad in the long grass. It was more dog than car, a Jack Russell with a scent in its nostrils, zapping back and forth, tongue lolling out, tail waving in the air. Just plain…

You don’t see many fluoro supercars in Streatham, the dodgy end. I know this, because moments after opening the 650S’s butterfly door, swinging my leg over the chunky carbon sill and stumbling into the middle of the road, I’m descended upon by at least six of my neighbours, all with bouncing, chocolatesmeared children in tow. It’s a full-time job being a supercar owner. First-world problems, I know, but it really is exhausting threading it through traffic without clouting the wing mirrors, smiling and waving at every enthused pedestrian and finding a parking space where you can see it from your bedroom window. A fitful night’s sleep follows, ravaged by anxiety dreams and no fewer than five curtain twitches to ensure it’s still there and without a fresh set of racing…

5204cc V10, 4WD, 602bhp, 413lb ft 23.0mpg, 287g/km CO2 0–62mph in 3.2secs, 205mph 1454kg HELLO You play with car configurators, right? If not, you should – hours of amusement. Anyway, Audi said we could spec our own R8, at which point everyone in the office had a go. I was sent PDFs of R8s in green, stealth ones in grey with small wheels, but the key point here is that WE HAVE AN R8 COMING! It’s nearly here now in fact, just a month away. And yes, that’s the spec we settled on in the picture above. Vegas Yellow with carbon sideblades and the 20-inch anthracite wheels. I know, I know, it’s loud and shouty. But what you have to remember is that loud and shouty cars stand out on…

1968cc, 4cyl turbodiesel, FWD, 187bhp, 295lb ft 65.7mpg, 113g/km CO2 0–62mph in 7.9secs, 143mph 1530kg REPORT 6 My last long-term test car was a Mondeo estate, and though I liked it very much, I couldn’t help feeling it was a little barge-like in its proportions. Depending on your circumstances, that’s possibly no bad thing, but living in London, it felt like a big car. Conversely, the A4 feels like a much smaller car. It’s 14cm shorter and 10cm narrower than the Mondeo, which might not sound like much of a difference, but it’s enough for you to notice when living with the car in the city. In fact, the A4’s dimensions are somewhere between the Focus and Mondeo estates – and yet its boot capacity is greater than both. But…

WE SAY: DON’T THINK OF THIS AS A DOWNMARKET ABARTH OR SIMPLY A REBADGED MX-5 The Abarth 124 is fun, but it’s £30k for 170bhp. That might seem, in horsepower terms, a poor return in investment. Most people will probably stick with the Fiat. It makes 140bhp, but really it’s hardly slower, and you pay comfortably less for it. Like the Abarth, it’s powered by the MultiAir variable-valve engine from the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, but here it’s 30bhp less. But the critical number is torque. The Fiat’s figure is just four per cent less than the Abarth’s, and their gear ratios and final drives are the same. In other words, until the moment you really have a go at the red line, the Fiat is as lively. Unfortunately, it doesn’t…

Cutting the roof off a car ruins it, especially a fast car. No, it’s no good. Not the car, but my prejudice. I keep reciting the truism that a decapitated C-Class is an idiotic, unnecessary place to deploy 503bhp of RWD-only dragon breath, but I can’t help myself. I’m enjoying it. Sorry. Yes, it’s a bit lumpen when you lean on it (because it’s a two-tonne wideboy), but it cackles with vigour, and is approachably playful where an M4 attempts homicide. Germany has just perfected muscle cars. SPECIFICATION 3982cc bi-turbo V8, RWD, 503bhp, 516lb ft 26.4mpg, 208g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.1secs, 155mph 1925kg…

On the night Porsche unveiled its new v2.0 Panamera, even its design bods admitted the first car (of which a tidy 150k were shifted) was fairly challenging on the eye. So we’ll come to the new car’s Bentley-shared platform, Ferrari-baiting performance and Starfleet cabin shortly. Firstly, just look at it. Better, isn’t it? The new allaluminium Panamera is actually 5mm taller overall than the old car, plus 35mm longer and 5mm wider (gulp), but shaving 20mm off the rear roofline has banished the seamammal profile and blessed it with proper grace. Slimmer LED lights help too; the 911 Carrera 4-style light strip is set to become a feature on all Porsches. And inside, it’ll still seat four six-foot burly types, in extreme comfort. Want to carry five and their kit?…

In the blue corner Name: Ollie Kew Age: 24 Occupation: road test editor Secret weapon: girlfriend’s cakes In the red corner Name: Tom Harrison Age: 23 Occupation: staff writer Secret weapon: inscrutability 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… OK: At last, a Mini that looks different to the twee Summer Wine creations Oxford’s been stamping out for over a decade… 15:07 TH: True, if by “different” you mean “really quite odd in comparison to”. Where’s the engine in this thing, anyway? 15:09 OK: Given this is Mini’s Next 100 concept, spitballing what form its trendy city car could take over the next century, an ‘engine’ will soon seem as archaic as…

01 VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE The Beetle doesn't really lend itself to immortalisation in brick form, does it? The world's best-selling automobile is rather curvy, see, and Lego, as you'll know from treading on it at 2am, really isn't. So, Lego cheated and invented several new pieces. Not fair! 02 GHOSTBUSTERS ECTO-1 This is more like it. A collection of familiar standard pieces which collectively couldn't be anything other than the '59 Cadillac station wagon driven by Bill Murray 5 Co. in the 1984 classic. Just try building it without humming Ray Parker Jr's dance floor filler... 03 24-HOUR RACE CAR OK, so this Technic LMPl-style prototype isn't based on a particular modern racer, but they all look the same, so we're not complaining. It's got working gullwing doors, a whirring V8…

You can keep power. Shove torque up your jacksie, for all I care. What counts for me is the raw emotion that a car drags out of you. Yes, performance numbers play a part in eliciting some emotional response. Brake horsepower, pounds feet and the configuration of the cylinders in an engine are useful theoretical metrics that indicate whether a car might be interesting in some way, but the ultimate benchmark surely has to be a driver’s empathic response to a car. The Range Rover Sport SVR grabs you by the feels every time, thanks to one brutal addition: it has an exhaust note that sounds like Brian Blessed stepped on a piece of Lego. It’s this noise, allied to the sheer size of the Range Rover Sport SVR that…

It’s 6am, and the mercury is already heading rapidly north at Nardò, VW Group’s top-secret test facility on the heel of Italy. After multiple security checks of increasing ferocity, we’re finally into the inner sanctum and staring at the reason for all the secrecy: the Lamborghini Centenario. Hunkered down on the tarmac, it’s a monument to carbonfibre precision that would rival any modernist sculpture on its visual merits. Except, in this case, your appreciation of its stunning lines are disturbed by thoughts of its brutish potential. The Centenario is Lamborghini’s posthumous birthday present to its legendary founder Ferruccio Lamborghini, who would have been 100 this year. But it represents more than a nod to the old man – it’s the most recent in a chain of jaw-dropping motor-show unicorns that…

1998cc, 4cyl, FWD, 118bhp, 150lb ft 47.9mpg, 137g/km CO2 0–62mph in 9.0secs, 119mph 1230kg REPORT 3 There’s an obvious problem with small SUVs, and it’s this: you can miniaturise the car, but you can’t shrink the stuf you put inside it. Not until someone fnds a way to turn a Labrador into a pug and a large suitcase into a handbag. In other words, packing the CX-3 for a weekend away results in some overspill. There are only three of us, including the animal, but once you add some basic goingaway things such as four wellies and a soft mountain of dog towels, it gets a little tight and smells a bit weird. Time for some accessories, then. The Thule roof box (£253), an ofcial Mazda option, isn’t the sleekest,…

2979cc, twin-turbo V6, RWD, 410bhp, 405lb ft 27.2mpg, 242g/km CO2 0–62mph in 5.0secs, 177mph 1810kg GOODBYE Two of Italy’s great brands, Alfa Romeo and Maserati, are in the midst of a comeback campaign. The same bloke, Harald Wester, is in charge, and though the new Giulia is off to a strong start, six months with the Ghibli suggests that there’s still work to be done. Maserati is the company that made arguably the most irresistible racing car ever in the shape of the mid-Fifties 250 F, and one of the coolest playboy gran turismos in the form of the Allemano-bodied 3500 GT. But the Sixties gets further away every year, and the latest Ghibli is aimed at company directors, retired company directors, and people who might be eyeing up the…

XE 2.0d R-SPORT Driver Jack Rix Why it’s here Has Jag really cracked the ‘3-Series’ thing? Price £34,775/£43,815 1999cc, 4cyl TD, RWD, 178bhp, 317lb ft 67.4mpg, 111g/km CO2 0–62mph in 7.4secs, 140mph 1565kg A couple of weeks ago, I had my goodbye spiel for the XE all done and dusted. A trusty, if unspectacular, companion for the last 10 months, could do with more space, engine is a bit grumbly, blah, blah, blah. And then, on the drive to the TopGear test track for the ‘Joy Machines’ feature you can enjoy in this very issue, I decided to show the XE some love. By love, I mean toggle across to Dynamic mode, switch the ESC to Trac and use the plasticky paddles behind the wheel to change gear for myself.…

I f anyone can flog a bad car, it’s Bond. The BMW Z3’s appearance in 1995 film GoldenEye was a low point for the world’s most charming spy, but when the Z3 went on sale in 1996, a year’s production sold out instantly. Clearly, none of those customers had ever tested one and must have been sorely disappointed to find it didn’t come with a built-in parachute or Stinger missiles behind the headlights, and was a bit of dog to drive. In 1996, I also hadn’t driven one, mainly because I was a 13-year-old boy. So, left to look but not touch, my soft spot for the Z3 grew. Those “gills” in the front flanks, the curvaceous bonnet and the tight rear proportions all appealed to a teenager who hadn’t…

WE SAY: IT’S TIME TO WELCOME YOUR NEW NORDSCHLEIFE OVERLORDS Over the past year, the hot hatch arms race has intensified with seemingly never-ending one-upmanship to be the King of the Nürburgring. But now, VW has joined the party and drawn a pretty significant line in the sand thanks to this, the Golf GTI Clubsport S. It’s a £35,000, 400-car limitedrun, striped-out, semi-slicked, überpowerful and aero’d version of the standard Clubsport (now known as the Edition 40) that has Renault, Seat and Honda spitting feathers and scratching their heads as to how to go faster around the legendary Nordschleife. The CSS managed a 7:49.21 lap around the Green Hell – 1.5secs faster than Honda’s Civic Type-R – to claim the front-wheel-drive production-car lap record. To give you some perspective, that’s…

I need to 'fess up to one or two things, before we start. My name is Brendan Waterman and I am a petrolhead. I'm also about to become a dad for the first time and me and 'the mum to be' have actually been looking at new cars that would meet our changing needs. It's no coincidence that the new SEAT Ateca is on that list: a nice high driving position (a particular priority for the wife); a great list of standard features & options (the DSG gearbox, electric boot operation and full-link connectivity would be top of my list) and a lot of space inside, including a 510 litre boot. On paper, this new SEAT definitely ticks all the boxes. But in my capacity as a motoring journalist (well,…

WE SAY: THE FF’S SUCCESSOR MATES 4WD AND 4WS WITH V12 GOODNESS Maybe the name was too literal. FF. Four-seater, four-wheel drive. Not very sexy. Whatever the reason, it’s now the GTC4Lusso. As names go, this one is a bit clunky and not strictly accurate (the initials stand for Gran Turismo Competizione), but it does talk to Ferrari’s history. And Ferrari is good at liaising with its back catalogue, not just through plucked names, but through model continuation – the mid-engined V8 sports car, the front-engined V12 coupe. These are long-running themes over at Maranello. The FF may have introduced 4WD to the Ferrari idiom, but its strategy was entirely familiar. Here was a front-engine V12 four-seater that could actually seat four, and for extra brownie points, swallow their luggage…

Billund is Denmark’s second biggest airport, eclipsed only by the one that serves the capital, Copenhagen. This is entirely down to the presence of a certain toy manufacturer, Lego. This makes Billund the Maranello of the toy world, a place of pilgrimage for the faithful, and ensures that Lego, like Ferrari, is the engine of the town’s economy – a quadturbo, 16-cylinder, 16-litre engine at that. But although there are Lego versions of various Ferraris, it’s actually a Porsche that’s brought us to this pleasantly unprepossessing corner of Scandinavia today. Last month, the company’s Technic line unveiled a magnificent and magnificently complicated iteration of the 911 GT3 RS, complete with functioning dual-shift gearbox, steering and engine. Almost as desirable – and in many ways as ingeniously engineered – as the…

1 Racing is a cruel mistress The biggest lesson that can be taken away from Le Mans this year is that to finish first, first you have to finish. 23 hours and 56 minutes into the race, Toyota’s #5 car needed to complete just one more lap of the 8.5-mile track, and a maiden victory would be theirs. And then in a twist a bad Hollywood script writer couldn’t dream up, catastrophic power failure enabled the #2 Porsche to coast past on the finish line, and because it took 11 minutes for Kazuki Nakajima to limp home on the final lap, they weren’t even classified. This being a gentleman’s sport, Toyota driver Anthony Davidson quickly tweeted his congrats to Porsche, while the rest of the grid responded with an outpouring…

When you’re already among the best at something, just how do you find new ways to push the limits? For Castrol, continual development and refinement of its products is a given; finding new ways of doing it is the really interesting bit. Like the idea of testing yourself, against… yourself, for example. Introducing the concept behind Clone Rivals Two of the undoubted stars of this fourth Titanium Trial were the iconic supercars chosen to feature in the Clone Rivals films. Th e ultra rare Koenigsegg One:1 and track-only Aston Martin Vulcan have played a crucial part in Castrol’s relentless, ever-evolving programme of research and development; the pinnacle of automotive technology deployed as it was meant to be in the pursuit of maximum performance. So, when you already work with the…

Bushy beard, tweed jacket, sleeve of tattoos. Steel-framed single-speed bike, even a fixie, but definitely no drops. Freelance, working in new media. Lunch involving quinoa from a street-food pop-up. It doesn’t take much of an anthropologist to identify the tribe that congregates just down the road from where I live. Shoreditch High Street is the UK’s centre of gravity for the hipsters. Seriously, these people are so thick on the ground you couldn’t spill a single-estate artisan-roast flat white without staining some app developer’s canvas iPad sleeve. But guess what? None of them would actually self-identify as such. They adhere to all the tropes, but they think it was all their own creative brilliance that put the look together: “I am an individual; they are hipsters.” The exact opposite is…

Great engines are fun – we know that. But it’s a different kind of fun depending on the means by which air enters the cylinders, whether drawn in by the pistons or encouraged by turbos or mechanical supercharging. The Hellcat’s supercharged urge is the gift that keeps on giving. At low revs, it’s urgent but usable because you get just what you expect when you expect it. No ifs or buts or delays. And so it goes, all the way to the red line. I slapped against the rack’s end stop while oppositelocking my way around the Hammerhead. With the traction control turned on. A slightly unseemly supercharger scream accompanies the big-hearted V8 bubba sound. Which is appropriate, as supercharging feels like alwayson free additional displacement. And remember the Hellcat…

The word has been worn wafer-thin with overuse, but in this case nothing else will do: the Ford GT40 is the most genuinely iconic racing car of all time. There’s one sitting in front of Team TG right now, ultra-low and black and gold with a big number two graphic on it, under the roof of an otherwise unremarkable outbuilding in the heart of Ford’s sprawling Dagenham factory. It’s in good company: alongside it is a 2006 GT road car, the Blue Oval’s last go at rebooting the coolest corner of its huge heritage, and a contemporary supercar hero in its own right. TG editor-in-chief Charlie Turner and I will shortly be piloting this pair from the UK to Le Mans. Ford’s 2016 WEC effort is well under way, but…

1995cc, 4cyl turbodiesel, 4WD, 183bhp, 295lb ft 43.5mpg, 170g/km CO2 0–62mph in 9.5secs, 125mph 2250kg HELLO A little while ago (issue 277) Ollie Marriage visited Korea. I know, I know, why do we care? Well, we care because he was there to see Hyundai’s operation. And he saw it through the windscreen of a Tucson – a car he was well pleased with. Fast-forward six months, and the wheels that so impressed Ollie over there have arrived on UK shores – with one (this time in attractive dark silver not the questionable brown he had in Korea) making its way to the TopGear Garage and into my grateful hands. TG’s Tucson is extremely highly specced as standard – it’s a Premium SE, which comes with practically the entire options list…

1998cc, 4cyl, RWD, 158bhp, 147lb ft 40.9mpg, 161g/km CO2 0–62mph in 7.3secs, 133mph 1075kg REPORT 4 Please, I beseech you. Beat me with a bale of twigs as I beg your mercy, for I am a fool. A buffoon. A bonehead. A simpleton fit for nothing better than to be mulched into budget dogfood and fed to the beasts of Battersea. Last month, I cruelly, scurrilously, half-wittedly accused Mazda engineers – those decent, honest bastions of society – of neglecting to equip the MX-5 with a boot-release handle, thus requiring the driver to retrieve the “keyless entry” fob from his or her pocket should he or she wish to gain access to its trunk. As a handful of diligent, polite TG readers diligently, politely pointed out to me on social…

1598cc, 4cyl turbo, FWD, 266bhp, 243lb ft 47.0mpg, 139g/km CO2 0–62mph in 6.0secs, 155mph 1205kg REPORT 2 You join me in Belgium, at the World Rallycross. What a spectator sport this is. Jumps, paint-swapping, drifts, and mid-engined hot hatchbacks that could outrun a Le Mans prototype on dirt. It’s all noodly turns and switchbacks cunningly heaped to keep the action in visual range of one sweep of the head. Peugeot Sport obviously liked the look of it, because it entered three 208 GTis into the fray. If any motorsport could actually sell road cars, it would be WRX. Do you want a fast car, a nigh-on indestructible car, a car driven by nine-time WRC king Sébastien Loeb? Of course you do. But the 308 GTi is the newest road-going fruit…

2979cc, twin-turbo in-line 6cyl, RWD, 425bhp, 405lb ft 32.1mpg, 232g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.1secs, 155mph 1560kg REPORT 7 It was utterly inevitable really. It was tipping down, and Dunsfold is genuinely hazardous when it’s streaming wet – like driving on patches of ice. And Matt LeBlanc was in my M3, and as we know by now, Toothless isn’t the most forgiving of cars to go skidding about in. We’d had a chat about it, and I’d softened the suspension and put the traction into M Dynamic mode – it allows a bit of slip, but will save your bacon if it needs to. The wildcard to throw in at this point is that Matt was neither alone nor unobserved in my car. No, this was just before the new series…