Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

073 Secondhand superheroes As 2018 begins to spool up, our collective appetites have been spiked by the promise of 12 months punctuated by stunning and varied automotive wonders – including the Aston Martin Valkyrie, new Ford Fiesta ST, Porsche Mission E and Jaguar I-Pace. Yes, the start of the year is an excellent time to dream a little. While new cars are the lifeblood of our shared interest, they tend to be tough to describe as a bargain. This month, we help to lift the ongoing pre-Brexit blues by offering the TopGear guide to buying secondhand, brought to you with the help of ‘Honest’ Harris. Few early conversations about an issue have elicited such an animated response from the team as our first discussions about the cars we’d buy if…

PUB AMMO Does the 720S stand a chance? McLaren claims a standing quarter for the P1 in 9.8 at 152mph. We’ve clocked the 720S in 10.19 at 146mph. So the P1 has it on paper, but throw corners into the mix, and lightness, and the 720S claws it back. Should be close... A few years back, when he lived in the internet rather than being shackled in the belfry of TopGear Towers, Chris Harris was the first journalist to bring together the modern hypercar trinity of McLaren P1, LaFerrari and Porsche 918 on track. That track, specifically, was Portimão, on Portugal’s Algarve coast. The fastest of the trio, in Harris’s annoyingly able mitts, was the McLaren. Now, two years later, Harris is back at Portimão to answer a supremely interesting…

Helo!* I’m Simon Coggle, co-founder and Disruptor-in-chief of Caliburnus Automotive, the start-up aiming to beat Bugatti to build the first 300mph production car. Now, if you think running Wales’s most exciting supercar company means a life of schmoozing millionaires, and rebuffing the advances of Europe’s least inhibited supermodels, you’ll be as surprised as I was to discover it involves a whole lot of hard work, tough decisions and heated meetings with strong-minded investors. For example, this week we were treated to a welcome, but surprise, visit from Dimitri, one of our biggest, and indeed widest, backers. “Coggle, I see you hiding behind water cooler. Answer door or I smash door down and cut your bloody feet of,” he greets me with his customary ribald humour. Once I retrieve my biro…

Every new car that matters, rated or slated Hyundai i30N £27,995 Honda Civic Type R £32,995 WE SAY: ONE IS OUR REIGNING CAR OF THE YEAR, THE OTHER IS CHASING IT HARD The Fender Telecaster is one of the great sounds of rock, but too often it’s on rhythm while the Stratocaster takes lead. Venus Williams brought the world a new kind of tennis. But Serena has won more matches. The i30N Performance pack is a hot hatch of awesome engineering depth, and 275bhp for 0–62mph in 6.1secs. Its only issue is the car whose triple exhausts it is now chasing. The Civic Type R, ditto, but 320bhp and 5.8. Hyundai’s argument goes that the i30N isn’t about chasing numbers or headlines. It’s got the engine that its chassis wants,…

Audi RS4 Avant £62,175 WE SAY: MAKE A DULL FAST AUDI TALLER, HEAVIER AND MORE PRACTICAL. RESULT? A GOOD FAST AUDI… Like Tottenham Hotspur, or the served temperature of Chicken McNuggets, the quality of an Audi with the RS initials embedded in its front chickenwire is one of life’s great dependable inconsistencies. In 2017 we got a cracking TT RS, a numb and crushingly disappointing RS5, then the vastly improved RS3. Previous RS4s have wavered between must-try-harder and hard-to-beat. And the new one is basically that RS5 with a loft conversion. So the old RS4’s naturally aspirated, 8,000rpm V8 is gone, as is its twin-clutch gearbox. Instead, a 40 per cent torquier, 31kg lighter, 2.9-litre, twin-turbo V6 is crammed between four rings and the front axle. Behind it lives an…

Lexus LS from £97,995 WE SAY: LOOKS GREAT, HAS AMAZING TECHNOLOGY BUT THAT ENGINE IS A BIT, WELL, DISAPPOINTING Lexus = different. In a market dominated by the Mercedes S-Class, successfully disrupted by the Tesla Model S, and populated by heavy hitters like the BMW 7-Series, Audi A8 and Porsche Panamera, the fifth-gen LS refines Lexus’s aesthetic wilfulness–there are 5,000 separate elements in the spindle grille–and revels in the fact that this is a defiantly Japanese product. “Brave design” is a Lexus USP–much depends on the emphasis–and this thing is contemporary verging on the abstract. There’s quality of execution and imagination inside to rival Rolls-Royce’s exquisite new Phantom. Lexus has even managed to invigorate the interior real estate where door meets dashboard, creating a sense of flow that’s heightened by…

Toyota Yaris GRMN from £26,295 WE SAY: A HOT HATCH OF QUALITY FROM TOYOTA SUBBRAND GAZOO RACING The best Toyota Yaris ever. And that’s not merely the faint praise that it first appears… It also happens to be a 26-grand Toyota Yaris. A completely sold-out 26-grand Toyota Yaris, making any qualms you have about its price null and void. And it’s a car whose ethos needs celebrating. Toyota was among a number of manufacturers seemingly dropping performance cars a decade ago, as an economy crisis (and increasingly stringent emissions rules) put lots of them off making fast stuff entirely. The Yaris GRMN is a car that simply wouldn’t have made sense back then, but an increasingly strident hot hatchback market seems the perfect time for Toyota to launch a new…

HARRIS SAYS “Possibly the best M car of all time” HARRIS SAYS “Makes its successor seem sterile. Candidate for best Audi ever” BMW E46 M3 // £7,000–£36,000 (excluding CSL) Buy it for the engine. The 3.2-litre 338bhp nat-asp straight-six is one of the all-time greats–high-revving, punchy, ultra-responsive and with a soundtrack to die for. That way you get the almost equally brilliant chassis for free. The E46 was the M3’s sweetest spot, perhaps one of the finest compact sports coupes of all time, and you can now have one for sub city car money. Best spend supermini money, though–£12k–£15k will buy you a decent one. BMW E39 M5 //£10,000–£40,000 + 5.0 V8, manual gearbox. Pure. Simple -Valve timing a bit brittle This is a brilliantly simple car. Beefy 5.0-litre 394bhp…

HARRIS SAYS “Insert Prodigy CD and drive like a loon” Ford Fiesta ST // £8,000–£18,000 + Best hot hatch of the past five years - Firm ride, grandpa The Ford Fiesta ST was one of those rare machines that soared to the top of its class the moment it arrived on the scene, and remained one of the best cars in the world throughout its entire time on sale. After previous Fiestas spawned lacklustre ‘performance’ flagships, the ’13–’17 ST put Ford back at the peak of the fast supermini pile. And frankly, it didn’t rock up looking all that promising. Ford threw a body-coloured diffuser, a few ST badges and an alloy gearknob at the ST – you had to get inside one to appreciate the superbly supportive, heated Recaro buckets,…

HARRIS SAYS “Indulge your inner Tommi Makinen. Worth it for the turn-in alone” Remember when Japanese performance cars were the thing? Movie and video game fame in the late Nineties and early Noughties lifted the highly turbocharged produce of the Far East into the stratosphere. One of the greatest examples of the breed is the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, especially in its ninth generation. The IX got a whole new engine over the VIII, and is the last of the truly thrilling Evos before the curiously mainstream X came along. The one to buy is this Evo IX MR FQ-360 by HKS. Forget what a mouthful its name is – this is an appreciating classic. “They’re the ultimate for value and are becoming highly sought after; their prices have doubled in…

There’s no Sega Rally machine. I’m in Akihabara, Tokyo’s famously geeky district that has street upon street of gaming merch shops and arcades. Some of them are seven storeys high and wear big, neon Sega lights, but they seem to have omitted the Sega game as far as we’re concerned. Luckily, I’ve got a friend I can call. Junya Matsushita has found mild Instagram fame for publishing pictures of his car. Objectively, it’s a 20-year-old Japanese saloon which was once the company car of a man called Colin. Subjectively, it’s one of the most special rally cars of the modern era. It’s a 1998-vintage Subaru Impreza WRC car, and tonight it’s all mine. I don’t even have to push a constant stream of Yen into a coin slot. Now, I’ll…

It looked like a small, innocent stream. The kind of stream that potters through an Andean mudflat never offending anyone, not really having much to say for itself apart from the odd languorous gurgle or quiet splash. Certainly no cause for alarm for a big, capable pickup, or its experienced and confident driver. After all, we’d just driven over part of the Andes in Chile and had managed to traverse puckeringly barrierless mountain roads, successfully run the gauntlet of the vagaries of South American driving and even crossed a small waterfall which had inelegantly bitten off part of the carriageway. Which means that when the brand new Merc X-Class flumped into the area immediately around the stream – an area with all the properties of clay-based quicksand – with the…

Report 5 Mini Cooper S Works ££22,155 OTR/£29,430 as tested Winter suits this Mini. The tyres have lost some grip as temperatures fall and dressings of mud and salt lubricate the roads. So it’s a more playful car in corners, more like the Minis I’ve always most enjoyed. Jab it into a bend and it’ll understeer; get on the power too soon and the same happens (their front roll-stiffness means BMW-era Minis have always been light on traction). But turn in sympathetically, or use a trailing throttle, and it becomes biddable. For these conditions, the soft damper setting is correct (they’re switchable between two fixed states, not between two adaptive programmes), and the ESP is best in its intermediate setting. Other winter goodness? It has heated seats. TBH I didn’t…

Report 6 Ariel Nomad ££36,538 OTR/£55,313 as tested Remember last month’s little mishap? I was doing some rally rides for Mission Motorsport, and the driveshaft got yanked out of its housing. Well, Ariel came to my rescue and loaned me a supercharged car while my one was being fixed. This was interesting. To supercharge or not to supercharge was a regular topic of conversation in the office, because the one moan I have about the naturally aspirated Nomad is that it lacks guts at the bottom end. The gearing is long (70mph is 2,400rpm), but the 2.4-litre doesn’t get into its stride until torque peaks at 4,300rpm, so you have to be quick with the six-speed stick if you don’t want to have diesel Golfs hurtling off into the distance.…

TopGear telly is back! The world’s biggest motoring show returns to your screens this February with an all-new six-part series, starring Matt LeBlanc, Chris Harris, Rory Reid and a veritable cornucopia of motor vehicles new and old. There will be speed. There will be noise. There will probably be several occurrences of driving into things that shouldn’t be driven into. Since we were last on your screens, the motoring landscape has entered a state of flux. The UK government has signed the death warrant for the internal combustion engine, self-driving technology is on the rise, our roads are under closer surveillance than ever before. What the world needs is a voice of automotive sanity. Some wisdom amid the chaos. Series 25, therefore, sees Matt, Chris and Rory, um, entirely ignoring…

The Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE. A muscle car so extreme that it’s actually been banned in Europe. So Rory Reid, always prepared to put his own life on the line in the name of consumer research (and skidding around in muscle cars), was on the first plane to America to discover whether a European could indeed drive the 650bhp Camaro without instantly bursting into flames or being chopped into a thousand wafer-thin slices. Luckily for Rory, it transpired the ZL1 1LE was non-toxic to European drivers. And, as he discovered at Willow Springs racetrack, really rather good fun to drive on a big fast racetrack like “Big” Willow. So, inevitably, the producers – never keen to allow anyone to have too much fun without stepping in to spoil things –…

Volkswagen Polo GTI £21,140 WE SAY: POLO GETS MADE OVER BY A MAN WITH SERIOUS PREVIOUS New Polo means new Polo GTI. This is good news for many reasons. Chief among which is a man called Karsten Schebsdat, VW’s head of chassis engineering and dynamics. He had a hand in the first Ford Focus, then he went to Porsche for a bit and did GT3s and much besides. Now he’s at VW–leading a team whose credits include the Golf GTI Clubsport S and Up GTI. This is a man who knows how a car should handle. And his head is awash with reasons why the new Polo GTI is measurably better than the car it replaces. Since it’s based on the new MQB A0 platform, like the Seat Ibiza, the…

Toyota GT86 // £12,000–£26,000 + Basic RWD thrills, now half-price -Only very small children fit in the back The car that proved that motoring journalists know nothing. Lauded by the press as a total driving hero and heir to some sort of nebulous automotive superstardom, the GT86 sold in relatively modest numbers to the UK driving public, who clapped loudly at the idea and then immediately eschewed the rear-wheel drive chassis, manual ’box and naturally aspirated engine and went and bought a billion AWD, DSG and turbo VW Golf Rs. But that’s not to say that the press were wrong about the hero bit. Both the GT86 and sister car the Subaru BRZ (which is exactly the same, bar the badges) are something of a wonderful anomaly. Why? Because this…

HARRIS SAYS “Basically a VW Phaeton in a gym slip” Bentley Continental GT // £19,000–£70,000 (2003–2011) + W12 thrust, everyday usability, it’s a Bentley - Smell of overpriced cigars, complicated electrics When it launched in 2003, the Continental GT didn’t have many rivals. Oh, there were saloon-based two-doors like the Merc CL600, and there were minority-interest 2+2 supercars from the likes of Ferrari and Aston. But as a fabulously swish-looking, opulent-feeling and seriously swift means to do the daily duties of an actual normal car, the Conti GT absolutely hit a sweet spot. And the market responded. So don’t snap up the first one you alight upon, because there’s plenty of choice out there. The W12 thrusts like something on LHR Runway 2, but it’s all neatly contained by a…

“What’s it like, any good?” “I’m expecting agricultural vibrations but there aren’t any” A cabbie has pulled up alongside me on the run from Regent’s Park to King’s Cross and is admiring the next-gen black cab I’m testing. “It’s decent,” I say. “Sweet,” he says. “I can see myself cutting up some serious buses in that!” Before I can respond, he’s off, thrusting his TX4 across the path of an unsuspecting double-decker as he heads towards St Pancras. The TX eCity I’m in has been attracting attention like this all day. Young and old look on with curiosity. They’re pointing, taking pictures, or jabbing their friends in the ribs to look at the long-overdue replacement for the London black cab. Most of them seem to like it, and while I’m…

Hello Mercedes-Benz E350d All-Terrain ££58,880 OTR/£61,260 as tested We’ve seen this sort of thing before: a lightly jacked-up estate car with a few bits of cladding and all-wheel drive, the kind of thing that isn’t exactly equipped with savage-but-unused off-road ability, but can cope with a muddy field or two without skidding around like a newborn deer on a polished wood floor. You may be familiar with Audi’s Allroad models, Skoda’s Scouts, VW’s Alltracks and the like, and this is Merc’s version. An E-Class estate on Air Body Control suspension that sits 29mm higher than the normal E – bigger tyres accounting for 14mm, the remainder due to the higher-riding suspension. And you get extra clearance of another 20mm up to 19mph by selecting the All-Terrain driving programme from the…

Report 3 Audi SQ7 ££72,895 OTR/£94,920 as tested At no point since taking possession of the SQ7 have I cursed the interior for a lack of technology or Fisher Price materials. I can connect my phone via Bluetooth, the satnav is intuitive and the DAB radio works. It also looks and feels better-built than my house, but that hasn’t stopped Audi from ploughing on and revealing its dazzling next-gen interior in the all-new A8. And dazzling really is the word with a digital instrument cluster and two other screens flushly integrated into the dash shining away at all times. As a result, there’s barely a button or dial to be found – even the vent controls are super-slick, touch-sensitive screens with haptic feedback. Overkill? I’ll let you decide. Thing is,…

Hello Vauxhall Insignia Sports Tourer SRi VX-Line ££26,900 OTR/£34,575 as tested There was a time when the latest Vectra or Mondeo was big news because in the days of company cars that’s what everyone seemed to be driving. The big Vauxhalls and Fords were also the cars banging doors in the BTCC on our TV screens every Saturday, but things have changed. These days it’s the Astra and Focus in the BTCC and your next-door neighbour is more likely to be hankering after an SUV, or something German, rather than an Insignia or Mondeo. As a result, I have to admit that neither of these cars have been particularly on my radar, and consequently the new Insignia has been something of a revelation to me. First of all, it’s a…

Report 2 Porsche 718 Cayman ££42,897 OTR/£52,435 as tested The 718 Cayman’s big headline is its engine. After a decade of howling flat-six Caymans, this one launched with a flat-four boxer turbo in the middle. Emissions regs are to blame, of course. But while it was greeted with more than a smidge of outrage, I think some of the dissenters were ignoring that one of the performance car icons uses a boxer four. I refer to the Subaru Impreza Turbo and its myriad successors. By chance, I’ve experienced two of the most exciting versions this month, providing some nice context for the Cayman. One is an ex-WRC car once tested by a man called Colin (p110), running perhaps the greatest, most pulsating flat-four engine in history. The other is the…

Report 6 Mazda CX-5 £30,195 OTR/£31,555 as tested Younger readers might only think of Mazda as a seller of quite worthy but dull cars with, of course, the MX-5 being the exception, but old codgers like me get very misty-eyed around lightweight rotary coolness. The first thing I think of when I think of Mazda is rotary, and for good reason. Epic Le Mans success and memorable road cars have ingrained that sweet high-revving shrill in my brain. When I sleep I can sometimes still hear that ringing in my head as I stood by the bus stop chicane at the Daytona 24 Hours and the RX-8 racecars shifted down from the limiter shooting 8ft flames out the back. Proper. I know my big CX-5 has a heavy diesel lump…

Report 9 Alfa Romeo Giulia QV ££61,000 OTR/£73,505 as tested You may remember the Giulia recently got posted back to Alfa as it kept going limp. Initially, its techies struggled to identify the fault, but pinned it down to an electrical glitch in the wiring loom. This gremlin duped sensors into thinking there was an issue with the turbos, giving the car’s brain the impression it’d grenade itself imminently. That’s why it’d shut all the fun of Race mode down and nestle itself into a safety net, instantly transforming it from a fire-snorting super-saloon to salesman’s repmobile. To rectify it, a section of wiring was snipped out and replaced. So far, so good – it hasn’t skipped a beat. But what about that dicky speaker? Well, that still sounds like…

PUB AMMO The life of a Sumo is as far from a pampered Premiership footballer as you can get. There’s no salary until reaching the upper ranks, traditional dress must be worn at all times and driving a car is strictly forbidden... presumably for the sake of poor old power-to-weight ratios. If you like cars – and if not, may we humbly direct you down the magazine rack to the “Needlecraft and Patchwork” section – you’ll be aware Japan is a Really Quite Interesting Country. So Really Quite Interesting, in fact, that Series 25 dedicates a full hour to exploring the quixotic charms of the country we’re legally obliged to refer to as ‘The Land Of The Rising Sun’ at least once in each paragraph. First of, Chris sets out…

It's difficult to imagine how different the South Korea of today is, compared to the country that was still emerging from social and political unrest at the start of the Seventies. What was once one of Asia’s poorest nations has developed into one of the world’s wealthiest. The capital, Seoul, is now among the world’s most visited cities, due in no small part to the combination of a rich and varied history (more than 2,000 years of it) and an increasingly thriving economy. But what South Korea didn’t have, back in the day, was much of a car culture. The Hyundai Motor Company, for example, was not founded until the late Sixties; it did not build its first, all-Korean model–the Pony–until 1975. And yet, today South Korea is one of…

Renault Symbioz £n/a WE SAY: RENAULT GAZES INTO THE BOULE DE CRISTAL The Renault Symbioz is not a real car. It’s a one-off, designed to showcase Renault’s vision of what motoring will look like in the year 2023, when the level-four autonomy it offers will not only be legal, but also commercially viable and socially acceptable. This is not the next Espace. It does not preview a future Renault (or so they say…), but lessons learnt and technologies implemented here will work their way onto series production cars in the coming years. And the Symbioz isn’t based on an existing Renault, either. That would defeat the point. This purpose-built, semi-autonomous, ‘connected’ EV was developed from the ground up over two years. It rides on a bespoke EV platform–the 72kWh battery…

Subaru XV 2.0i SE Premium £28,495 WE SAY: CHALK THIS UP AS A MISSED OPPORTUNITY. IT COULD HAVE BEEN LOVELY… Hmm. Looks familiar? New, though. Pretty much all the way through. It’s now on the better, safer, more modular SGP, or Subaru Global Platform. You can make out the new one because it has slightly more angular wheelarches, a sleeker grille and headlights, and a few other tweaks. What’s it for, exactly? Well, it’s a soft-roader that can actually do off-road. Permanent AWD (60:40 front:rear) and a set of electronic programmes that mimic locking diffs–called X-Mode–make slippery surfaces a breeze. It’s also notably safe: in the UK we get standard-fit Subaru Eyesight dual monitoring cameras, which means the XV detects anything likely to interfere with your mood and takes action…

WE SAY: KIA’S BUILT A PROPER, GERMAN-RIVALLING SPORTS SALOON. WATCH OUT, AUDI… Ha, Kia vs Audi. Really? Believe it. The Stinger’s imposing size and neat detailing give it head-turning, premium barge presence. Underneath, a rear-drive chassis honed by ex-BMW M boss Albert Biermann. It’s loaded with equipment, too. While the Stinger GT-S is Kia’s performance and brand flagship, the S5 is merely Audi’s middling sports saloony coupe thingy. But with a turbo V6, 4WD and eight-speed auto, it’s very similar to the RS5’s set-up… So, which is best to hoon? The Kia. And not because we’re juvenile rear-drive drift fantasists. The Stinger has a genuinely brilliant chassis–it disguises the car’s weight with agility, and its ride irons out naff British roads. The steering is numb, but quick, and the turbocharged…

Porsche 911 T vs GT3 Touring £85,576 vs £111,802 WE SAY: ZUFFENHAUSEN DOES IT AGAIN, STOKING YOUR FANBOY DESIRE… There’s a bit of an analogue revolution going on at Porsche right now. No, not a return to handrolled panels and crossply tyres, but a recognition that pleasure isn’t necessarily linked to lap times. The Cayman GT4 was the first to place sensory experience ahead of raw speed, then the 911R, then the GT3 with an optional manual gearbox, and now there’s two more old-school-flavour 911s to add to that list. We begin with the 911 GT3 Touring Pack, essentially a GT3 with its wing deleted… but there’s a little more to it than that. For instance, did you know the Touring name was first used on the 2.7-litre Carrera RS…

HARRIS SAYS “So much better to look at than drive” Renault Clio V6 // £20,000–£45,000 + Mini mid-engine supercar - With a fondness for ditches It’s official: the lesser-spotted Clio V6 is hurtling towards extinction. While there were 400 phase 1 and phase 2 cars on UK roads in 2005, there’s now a mere 212 registered. To be fair, it was a rare car in the first place–more Ferrari F40s were built than Clio V6s–but it’s the V6’s fondness for inserting itself backwards into hedges that has culled the numbers. You have to question what Renault’s board were smoking when it was signed off: a rear-mid-engined hatch with a 227bhp V6 nicked from the Laguna instead of back seats, cartoonishly wide bodywork, 13m turning circle and a short wheelbase that…

The key to a mountain. I kid you not. I have it in my hand. I’m standing outside a nondescript building in an ordinary town and I have a bemused expression on my face. The actual key to a mountain? It looks more like a tool, with a triangular indentation cut in one end. Two minutes ago a man opened his desk drawer, handed it over with a shrugged “Voila, c’est tout”, and then I found myself back on the pavement, clutching, well, something rather amazing. The mountain is Mont Ventoux. You might be familiar with it, you might know some French and be able to work out its name has something to do with wind. You might like your cycling and know something of its reputation as a savagely…

Report 5 Mercedes S500 cabriolet ££111,215 OTR/£126,520 as tested Given the sheer crushing ubiquity of its S-Class saloon sibling, Merc’s S coupe and cabriolet are oddly enigmatic cars. But TG’s Lifer is unquestionably one of the best cars I’ve ever run, its 4.7-litre twin-turbo V8 an imperiously, almost contemptuously, fine thing. But it’s now history. The 2018 car (that’s it in the pics) gets the ‘jetwing’ grille, reworked sills, and floating OLED rear lights. The engine is a detuned version of AMG’s 4.0-litre V8, although with 463bhp and 516 torques, ‘detuning’ here is clearly a relative concept. Merc claims 34mpg and 188 CO2s, versus the 32.5 and 204 of TG’s car. A noble improvement, but the old unit has the edge in terms of response and character. Drive our car…

Report 4 Land Rover Discovery ££66,595 OTR/£77,970 as tested For the first time, the Discovery has been working hard this month. That’s not to say it’s lived the life of Riley over the last few months: it’s carried people, driven off-road and so on, but each time, a caveat. The electric seats make it a hassle to get anyone into row three, the 21-inch diamond turned wheels are too pristine to clout through clag, and the InControl TouchPro system is a disaster. I threw the last one in there because it needs mentioning. Again. Also fuel economy is almost exactly 3.5mpg worse than it says on the display (come on Land Rover, you’re better than that). But on this? It shone. This was a five-day adventure to France. It began…