Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2018 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

We will see more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the last 50.” This statement by GM CEO Mary Barra has become the mantra for the current [sorry] pace of change of the automotive industry. While there have been milestone moments, for the most part, the journey of the automobile has been one of steady evolution, not revolution. But the rise of the EVs has turned the industry on its head, and this new car landscape is incredibly complex to navigate and often creates more questions than answers. Questions like… where’s all the electricity going to come from? What happens when the batteries need recycling? Will internal combustion engines be banned, and what happens to all the classics? What happens if I run out of charge?…

Aston Martin’s ultra-luxury, Rolls-Royce-baiting offshoot, Lagonda, has confirmed it’ll unveil an all-electric battery-powered SUV by 2021… and given us this teaser sketch to enjoy. The design will be an evolution of the Lagonda Vision concept we gawped over at the 2018 Geneva motor show. The last time the Lagonda name appeared on an SUV concept, in 2009, the car was powered by a 6.0-litre V12 and looked like the lovechild of a whale shark and a Rolls-Royce Phantom. Already this looks like a commendable improvement.…

This is the BMW X7, BMW’s biggest, most luxurious SUV. It’s a decent chunk bigger than an X5, a touch bigger than a Range Rover (though not quite as massive as a Merc GLS), and can seat up to seven people in leathery, technological comfort. TopGear was invited to do some final shakedown driving before its proper launch later this year, so the car is still in full camouflage, and the interior was covered in carpet, hence the Tron graphics and lack of interior shots. The chunky exterior dimensions certainly pay dividends on the inside. All three rows get plenty of space, although the boot is small when the third row is up – no surprise. There are three sunroofs, so it doesn’t feel claustrophobic, and you can get in…

PIRELLI COLOURED EDITION P ZERO TYRES Painted calipers not enough? Let us discuss the P Zero Coloured Edition tyres. Made for all the best supercars in sizes of over 19in and customisable in any colour you could ever want, these Joseph-and-his-Technicolor-lacquer-coat rubbers average at £3,000 per tyre. Pirelli has also announced the Connesso upgrade – a smart tyre with an embedded microchip that monitors pressure, wear, temperature and longevity, even offering Pirelli Concierge to find approved dealers via a smartphone app. Price and release date TBC, so you’ll have to stick to the entrylevel rainbow ones for now. From £1,800 each; shop.pirelli.com BLUETOOTH TYRE SPEAKER Here is a full-sized, 205/55R16 upcycled tyre with a huge great speaker in the middle. Forget your Bang & Olufsen in-car audio – with Bluetooth…

Coast to coast, LA to NY, 3,300 miles all in, five days to do it and interstates – you know, those multi-lane fast bits – were not allowed. This was the imbecilic challenge we set ourselves in the new Ford Focus ST. Turns out, America is bigger than we thought. First things first, the car was immense. “We feared Ford might have lost its chassis magic with the MkIII Focus, but I’m delighted to report it’s still there. This car is touched by genius,” said Sam Philip, although he was suffering from “Guantanamo Bay-grade sleep deprivation” at the time. It all started so well, cruising through the deserts in the West, a flying visit to the newly paved Pikes Peak, a race with a train along Route 66, an encounter…

Aston Martin Vantage £120,900 Taken in isolation, the new Aston Martin Vantage is a terrific car. But no car operates in isolation. They compete. On power, price, philosophy, bootspace, brand, looks, layout – you name it. Because, being capitalists at heart, we’ve learned that competition improves the breed. Bottom line? The Vantage is competing for your money. Aston Martin wants you to invest in it, over and above all the other cars you could put your £120,000 into. And there’s a lot of them about, as £120k is now the sports car/supercar bridging point: Audi R8, Mercedes-AMG GT, various Porsche 911s, McLaren 540C, BMW i8, Jaguar F-Type SVR, Lotus Evora GT430 – they’re all there or thereabouts. Price would be the conventional way, the capitalist way, to sort this out,…

Aston Martin DB11 AMR £174,995 The DB11 AMR sounds like an upgraded, more sporting version, right? Actually it replaces the standard V12. Why? That’s the $64,000 question. Well, the £174,995 question. Here’s our best guess. The original DB11 didn’t drive as crisply as it should have done. It was fine if you were just cruising about, but when you leant on it, the DB11 kept on leaning. The rear axle was chiefly to blame – too much squidge and roll meant not enough precision on turn-in, and heavy rearward weight transfer on exit. Aston needed to improve it, but not alarm existing owners, so moved the new car away from the old by making it more sporting, altering the cosmetics, giving it a new badge and more power. And £17,500…

Volvo V60 D4 Inscription Pro £40,860 Been watching some lovely old Volvo-estate promo films. In faded-Ektachrome colours, a safari-jacketed Swedish dad takes the extended family for a lakeside picnic in the PV444 Duett, American team-moms do the school run in 240s, and of course gundog-owning hearties and tweed-capped antique dealers fill their 760s. But the previous V60 wasn’t like that. It was a cute Focus-based ‘lifestyle wagon’. Chances of it swallowing a chest of drawers or a retriever: zero. Well, the new V60 is a proper Volvo estate. It’s 10cm longer in the wheelbase than before. At 4.8m long, it shades the Merc C-Class and Audi A4 estates. That means oceans more rear-seat and boot room. Prices start at £31,550. Volvo estate: let’s talk boot first. It’s as versatile as…

My son drove this car before did. He's 13. No laws were broken. My phone rings while I'm being shown around the car by Christian Koch, the VGT's technical project manager. A breathless voice at the other end: "Have you driven it yet?" "Hey, Luke, er, no, in about 20 minutes or so, I think. Why?" "Well," and I can clearly detect a giddy excitement at the other end, trying desperately to masquerade as nonchalance, "I already have. Can you just check a couple of things for me? I think the brakes are a bit rubbish and the handling seems clumsy. It's very fast, though." A quick snigger and the line goes dead. This is the trouble we now have. Well, that I have as parent to an irritatingly precocious…

Hello Skoda Karoq £28,415/£29,270 as tested The Yeti is dead! Long live the Karoq. We loved the Yeti at TG Towers. I remember the original concept; I loved the Tonka-toy looks and bug-eyed front end. It screamed utility. So we welcome the Karoq with cautious optimism. Has it retained the soul of its predecessor? First impressions say not – it looks a VW Group copy-and-paste job – but maybe it’ll surprise me once I know it. Our car is a top-of-the-range Edition spec, which comes packed with stuff. The choice features for me are the 19in Crater alloys that look so much better than any other wheels available, smart green metallic paint, a huge 9.2in touchscreen, chrome roof rails, electric boot, LED adaptive headlights and a panoramic sunroof. Options we’ve…

Hello Volkswagen Arteon £40,305 OTR/£47,810 as tested The Golf is the universal answer to about 90 per cent of all motoring questions, yet as a brand Volkswagen wilfully fails to get the blood pumping. (Unless you are an American corporate lawyer, but we’ll leave the ongoing rumble of Dieselgate to one side for now.) The Arteon is the result of VW’s Grail-like quest for soul. We know that the sum of its parts is pretty damn good – it’s a Volkswagen – but can the Arteon be greater than that? A perfect candidate for the TG Garage treatment, then. Let’s start with its design. VW is so keen to distance it from the Passat CC – a car I always thought really well proportioned – that it gets a new…

Hello Hyundai Ioniq £29,295 OTR/£29,860 as tested I am most excited about testing a plug-in hybrid, as I have nowhere to plug it in. Hear me out. Like, I suspect, a whole lot of people for whom electric power should make sense, I don’t have a driveway. But in every other regard, a plug-in fits the bill: I do a stack of urban commuting, perfect for electric, but need something that’ll get down to Cornwall without hours of breaks for recharging, so a pure EV is of the table for now. So does a plug-in make sense if you’re limited to charging up at work, or from public charge points? Time to find out. The Ioniq employs a 60bhp e-motor fed from an 8.9kW battery recharged from the mains, with…

Hobart, NY is just the sort of place you could do with an all-electric, no-compromise off-roader. Something to navigate the gnarly, snow-covered hills in, enough juice to reach Manhattan – 150 miles south – to blow of some steam, and no pulsating V8 to disrupt the peace. No coincidence this is the home of Bollinger Motors, maker of the B1, the world’s most rugged, aerophobic, all-electric SUV. SUT, to be precise. Robert Bollinger, the boss, likes to call it a Sports Utility Truck. I’m standing in front of the first and only prototype in existence, jacked up in the small workshop where it was built, and there’s definitely a military chunkiness to it. Next door, through the glass partition, is an office occupied by Robert and three of his trusted…

It was only a matter of time before Audi decided it wanted a piece of the fantastically pointless coupe-slash-SUV pie and, like BMW and Mercedes-Benz before it, resolved to give us a car that would combine the best (or worst) bits of coupe and SUV. Traditionally, these things aren’t, as their manufacturers would claim, the best of both worlds. Not in our experience, anyway. They’re not as elegant or good to drive as a conventional saloon or coupe, or as useful and good of-road as a proper SUV, yet somehow command higher RRPs than either of them. Because that is apparently what the people want. But, with any luck, the Q8 – a car that, you guessed it, “combines the elegance of a four-door luxury coupe and the convenient versatility…

Welcome to the latest one-off from Maranello, for when a normal Ferrari is far too affordable. The SP38 – which uses the chassis and running gear from a 488 GTB – was built for “one of Ferrari’s most dedicated customers” who has a “deep passion for racing”. And very deep pockets. Revealed at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este car show on the shores of Lake Como, the SP38’s “general direction” was inspired by another twin-turbocharged Ferrari, the F40 – whose influence, Ferrari says, can be seen in the rear wing, engine cover, four roundel rear lights and gorgeous five-spoke alloy wheels. The former “creates a suggestive frame surrounding the tail volume”, while the slatted engine cover is a clamshell-type arrangement in carbon fibre. Apart from the wing being 10 times…

Uber likes to disrupt the status quo. The ride-sharing app has become modern shorthand for a minicab, and among the most prominent standard-bearers for the gig economy. Yet, in the face of gigantic financial losses, various personnel departures, dubious ethics and a so-far disastrous foray into driverless taxis featuring a pedestrian fatality while testing in Arizona in March 2018, the company continues to forge ahead with its vision of reinventing urban travel. Its latest idea is UberAir, the “world’s first urban aviation rideshare network”. That’s right, Uber reckons the next step in getting you to the movies or home from a hen night is to have one of its driverless cars drop you of at a Skyport and let one of its four-seater, five-rotor electric aircraft take over for the…

Quite unlike anything we've seen from Nomos, is the Autobahn. Noted furniture designer Werner Aisslinger is behind the design, which he says was inspired by "vintage sports cars". He likens the date window to an odometer, and says the dial's curved edge is reminiscent of the "outside lane of a racetrack - or the fender of a vintage racecar". The 41mm case contains an in-house Nomos movement, whichever of the three colourways you choose, nomos-glashuette.com; £3,800 FARER HUDSON All of the British watchmaker's pieces are named after famous explorers. Its new hand-wound collection is no different. Unashamedly retro, with their 37mm cases, but pricey for what they are. farer.com; £975 MB&F HM7 AQUAPOD Massive, insane and priced accordingly. The HM7 flying-tourbillon is limited to 50 pieces, made from grade-five titanium…

Volkswagen Touareg £50,000 approx. When the Touareg was launched, VW was bombarding us with potty torque figures. Now it’s tech. For its MkIII, the flagship has sacrificed its off-roadiness to become more of a premium, hi-tech SUV. Using the same MLB Evo architecture as the Cayenne, Q7, Bentayga and Urus, the car has increased in size but dropped 106kg thanks to aluminium suspension, plus a body that’s largely aluminium too. Being 44mm wider, 77mm longer and lower than the MkII, it’s a bit easier on the eye. The somewhat dumpy looks have been sharpened up with more powerful, svelte lines. But it’s inside where the engineers have gone to town. It’s one of the biggest cabin overhauls from VW in decades, repositioning the Touareg entirely and bringing it bang in-line…

9/10 Bentley Continental GT £159,100 (£208,060 as tested) 5950cc, twin-turbo W12, 4WD, 626bhp, 664lb ft 23.2mpg, 278g/km CO2 0–62mph in 3.7secs, 207mph 2244kg VERDICT: Still sophisticated and mature. Now sportier and faster, too. 1405mm 4850mm 8/10 Mercedes-AMG S63 Coupe £127,515 (£155,960 as tested) 3982cc, twin-turbo V8, RWD, 604bhp, 663lb ft 31.7mpg, 203g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.2secs, 155mph 2065kg VERDICT: Meet the hooligan. Loud, proud yet mellow when necessary. 1422mm 5051mm…

It’s not so quiet now. I’m not sure how many boys are orbiting the I-Pace because they won’t stand still long enough to be counted. One is plugging a charge lead into another’s ear, while another lounges in the minuscule front load bay. “Hey,” comes a cry from inside, “you can play noughts and crosses on the ceiling.” Within five minutes the locusts have swarmed, discovered every nook and cranny, been to the very depths of the infotainment menu system, and even discovered how to manually adjust the fan speed, which I’d singularly failed to do. You want a car destruction tested? This beats the Nürburgring, hands down. This is the generation for whom electric cars will soon be the norm. These boys know cars, yet not one of them…

A zombie shuffles in our direction, his glazed, lifeless eyes fixed on a glowing screen clamped to a plastic stick. Overhead, a man fires of rounds from his Canon, points hysterically and hops on the spot like a sugar-drunk four-year-old. Stage right, a queue forms outside a glass temple marked with the sacred T. In front of me, an average-looking saloon car. “A system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object” – that’s how the Oxford Dictionary defines a cult. A fair assessment, I’d say, of what Tesla and its all seeing eye, Elon Musk, have become. It’s certainly not a car company as we know it. Car companies don’t burn through hundreds of millions of dollars every month, consistently miss production targets, keep shareholders…

Hello BMW M5 £89,645 OTR/£101,900 as tested Two weeks after the M5 arrived I took it to the Lake District. This was an important moment. Up until that point I’d spent a lot of time in it, but it had all been on motorways. To South Wales, down to Exmoor to help out on last issue’s Fiesta ST test, up to Liverpool to catch a fight to the Isle of Man. One and a half thousand miles calmly done, but not much evidence of personality, no real justification for the hefty £89,645 price tag (£101,900 with options, making this a six-figure supersaloon), no real idea of what happens when you uncork 600bhp of 4WD M5. What had happened? Why was the M5 not straining at the leash? Because it’s not…

Report 4 Mercedes E350d AT £58,880 OTR/£61,260 as tested Things are picking up pace with the Mercedes E-Class All-Terrain (Project E-AT) in readiness for a little adventure, so I should probably bring you up to speed. First, we’re going on a bear hunt (with cameras, not rifles) on the Eastern Estonian/Russian border fairly soon. This involves a large ancient forest and many muddy tracks, though not hardcore of-roading, hence the BF Goodrich All-Terrains and pair of spares – one on the roof and one in the back. Larger sidewalls necessitated a smaller wheel, though no less than 18 inch, thanks to the AT’s large brakes, so I went with a little-known aero wheel from a German Mercedes catalogue used on base models. Painted black, they look chunky and useful, though…

Goodbye Porsche 718 Cayman £42,897 OTR/£52,435 as tested Tom Harrison: What’s our Cayman doing there? Have you gate-crashed some sort of historic race meeting? Stephen Dobie: A little bit. As a final hurrah before the 718 left, I thought I’d prove that four-cylinder Porsches are neither new nor anything to worry about. The 924 GTP and 356 racers you see here both use four-cylinder engines, yet still get an invite to the Goodwood Members’ Meeting. Therefore any complaints about our Cayman being a fat-four are lazy or irrelevant. TH: Um, thank you. But my issue isn’t that our Cayman is a flat-four. It’s that it used to be a fat-six, and TopGear lore dictates that more is always better. Porsche giveth and Porsche taketh away. SD: Well, yes. Parking the…

Bypassing the traditional press release and champagne-soaked reveal party, Tesla boss Elon Musk took to Twitter, not to wind up the internet for a change, but to tweet specs for new all-wheel-drive, dual-motor versions of the Model 3. The fast ones. The standard all-wheel-drive option, he says, adds $5,000 to the price of a regular Model 3 (it’s $44,000 for the regular long-range version). It manages the same 310 miles of range and 140mph top speed of a long-range Model 3, but drops the 0–60mph time from 5.1 to 4.5 seconds. The standard car (that’s the $35,000 entry-level one) with its 220-mile range, does it in 5.6 seconds. A range-topping ‘Performance’ dual-motor version Musk claims has “better handling” than a BMW M3, will “beat anything in its class on track”…

Good news, if you’re of the deluded belief that the new 513bhp, 6m 56.4secs ’Ring-lapping Porsche GT3 RS isn’t track-focused enough. It comes in the shape of the GT3 R: a track-only, stripped-out racing 911 based on the new road-going RS but sandwiched between the 911 Cup and RSR racers. That means more aero, less weight, more power. The GT3 R is built on an aluminium-steel chassis, but the roof, front hood and fairing, wheelarches, doors, side and tail sections as well as the rear lid and interior trim are made of featherweight CF composite. And anything that’s normally glass has been swapped out for plastic. The GT3 RS’s 4.0-litre flat-six is wound up to 542bhp and connected to a very serious sequential 6spd ’box with electronic shift actuator for…

Some cars are so good-looking that they shine from any angle, in any level of light and in any setting, but if you’re chasing the ultimate shot of your prize machine, Canon is here to make that happen. Light is obviously a vital ingredient that will dictate the nature of the shots you end up with. The light is at its softest and warmest around sunrise and sunset, but don’t let that stop you shooting at any time. Whatever the light level, make sure when you position the car that the light flows naturally down its surfaces and angles. In terms of perspective, shooting from low down adds an extra element of drama, whereas a shot from higher up gives a more detailed view of the car. In reality though,…

What really strikes you when first driving the New Renault Mégane R.S isn’t necessarily its performance, remarkable though it might be, but the level of comfort. A stylish sport seat (complete with embroidered R.S. headrest, naturellement) offers a snug ft with side support around the hips, waist and shoulders, while the steering wheel’s adjustable ‘reach and rake’ helps you achieve optimal driving position. A nifty optional extra for an even more expert-looking seat is the grey Alcantara upholstery with red stitching. Your driving position is further complemented by the easy-to-reach gear shift paddles, manufactured from aluminium (de rigeur in many modern-day competition cars) for both reliability and feel. At the cutting edge At the central display is Renault’s high-end R-LINK 2 multimedia system with an optional 8.7-inch TFT screen. This…

Lotus Exige Sport 410 £85,600 The Exige range has got a bit bamboozling over the last few years. But allow us to make it very simple for you; the new 410 is the one you want. It’s the last iteration of the MkIII Exige before we get a new one in 2020. Until then, the mid-engined lightweight will be divisible into three specs of hardcoreness; 350, 410 and 430. The new middling £85k Sport 410 bridges both the performance and £40k price gap between the other two. The formula is classic Exige; a diddy bonded aluminium chassis with a 410bhp Toyota-sourced supercharged V6. At 1,054kg, it’s the lightest V6 Exige ever and more of a softened of 430 (less downforce, less power, no traction control) than juiced up 350. It’s…

01 WILL I WANT TO TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME? Car chat. It’s right up there with football banter for immediate alienation of anyone who doesn’t know a double-clutch from a 4-3-3. But something is occurring. I’ve spent two days with the I-Pace and everyone – and I do mean everyone – has a question or five, strident opinions on the charging infrastructure and, judging by the battered Micra they’re driving, no previous interest in combustion-engined cars. Frankly, it’s exhausting, but also a fascinating social shift – the electric car hasn’t yet become personal transport for the masses, but it is mobilising their minds. In a world obsessed with food Deliverooed to your doorstep, cheap taxis at your fingertips and the world’s music library in your earbuds – convenience above…

Even if an EV makes sense financially and practically, can it win hearts as well as minds? That’s why the I-Pace finds itself glued to Santa Pod’s Pro Peak Performance start line. How do folks with metaphorical petrol in their veins and literal ethanol up their nostrils take to a battery-powered imposter? Cagily. I join the queue alongside a Mustang with headers sprouting through the bonnet like a mechanical tribute to that scene from Alien. Picking my way down the line is mainly a hazard perception test, because no one who works on a machine that’ll give your kidneys tinnitus expects a car they can’t hear approaching. A Mexican wave of amused frowns follows until I arrive next to Simon Gough’s Racepak Camaro. Its driver looms over, pokes his baseball…

1 TORQUE n/a Ib ft Fair to say, it will have A LOT 1,696Ib ft the same as three McLaren 720Ses TESLA TOP SPEED 250+mph 2 CHARGING 80 per cent in 30 minutes (250kW fast-charger) n/a… but we'd bet on 81 per cent in 29 minutes RIMAC TOP SPEED 258 mph 3 BRAKES n/a but presumably it will have some 390mm carbon-ceramic 4 INTERIORS Minimal, with a chopped Knight Rider-style steering wheels and big central screen. Roof panel lifts out, can be stored in boot No key – facial recognition is enough to unlock/start the car, which can also read your mood. Stowage in the back for two helmets 5 MOTORS 3 One front, two rear 4 Two on each axle 6 RANGE 620 miles* *on the industry-standard MUSK CYCLE…

Hello Ford Mustang $64,740 Keen viewers of TopGear TV may recognise our latest TopGear Garage recruit. It’s the same Ford Mustang that Matt opted for last series to take part in a triple-header across the States in order to celebrate the sheer wonder that is the V8 engine. And now, somehow, it’s in our garage in west London. Magic. This isn’t any Mustang, though. It’s a Mustang GT350 R. But not just any Ford Mustang GT350 R. Oh no. A Ford Mustang GT350 R tuned by a man called John Hennessey, that tune being approximately 850bhp. Which we’ll have to deal with in the wet. In the UK. On semi-slick tyres. Yee-haw! Now, you’re probably aware that the Mustang is now on sale as a right hooker in the UK for…

Goodbye Nissan GT-R £83,875 OTR/£85,650 as tested When speaking to the GT-R’s head honcho, Hiroshi Tamura, he told me that a GT-R had two distinct natures. Or, more specifically, colours. The first part of its name GT is known as the ‘blue zone’ (comfort), while R is the red zone’ (performance). His predecessor – the GT-R’s father, Mizuno – chased the red zone. Tamura has boosted the blue with better ride comfort thanks to new suspension settings, a more refined gearbox and a plusher, leatherier interior. There’s now so much more squidge, Tamura believes it’s the most blue GT-R ever. To test this, I thought a leggy winter roadtrip was in order. So I spoke to SeaSucker, who supplied a stupidly sturdy suction cup ski rack into which I fed…