Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2019 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

If the content of this issue proves anything, it’s that mankind’s creativity when it comes to propelling ourselves around deepens with every passing year. The diversity of the solutions to the problem of getting from A to B has never been broader. Put simply, 2019 will be an incredible year on planet car. At one end of the automotive gene pool, the EV goes mass-market with the arrival of VW’s ID range, the start of a product offensive that by 2022 will deliver 27 pure EV models across the VW Group. The irony that the manufacturer that accelerated the demise of the internal combustion engine faster than any other through its own misadventures now being the one best placed to capitalise on the shift change in the automotive landscape isn’t…

Lexus has sliced the roof from the LC coupe. It’s officially a concept, but the shutlines between the boot and the cabin suggest there’s a roof mechanism already in there. Indeed, everything looks quite production-ready. Save, perhaps, for the 22in wheels, which give the LC convertible wonderful stance, but are probably a bit problematic when it comes to ride quality and pot hole negotiation. A production version will be Lexus’s most expensive, least attainable vehicle. Expect a starting price of £85k or so.…

Audi R8 £128,000 (est.) WE SAY: THE SUPERCAR FOR NON-SUPERHERO DRIVERS GETS A MILD REFRESH The most everyday of the everyday supercars. Might not sound like a vote of confidence, but it is. Because alongside the sound ergonomics, 95th percentile cabin, reliability and build quality you have a screaming 8,700rpm V10. Unusual juxtaposition: Audi, doyen of the aspirational, being one of the last bastions of natural aspiration. Now with more power. As you can tell by the edgier nose, the R8 has been facelifted. Still a two-model range, but with the Plus now renamed Performance. That’s received a boost from 604 to 612bhp, while the entry level is up from 533 to 562bhp. The rear-drive-only RWS? That’s gone. Elsewhere, the promise is a sharpened driving experience, achieved by stiffening the…

Jeep Trackhawk vs Range Rover Sport SVR £89,999 vs £101,145 WE SAY: SUPERCHARGED SUVS AHOY. WHICH MONSTER PLANET SPINNER WINS? You won’t believe what the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk does when you engage launch mode. I couldn’t. It was bloody hilarious. Afterwards. Fairly shocking during it, if I’m honest. So you come to a halt, apply as much pressure as possible to the brake pedal (my left leg maxed out at 108bar), wallop the throttle and note that you are already moving forwards. Yep, the Trackhawk is that eager for the off. Or, to put it another way, 400mm Brembo stoppers aren’t man enough to prevent 707bhp of supercharged V8 getting going. You release the brakes. The rear wheels spin, the nose heaves into the air, there’s a furious bellowing…

13 VOLKSWAGEN ID TG RENDER The Beetle and Golf… Volkswagen has been defined by these two massive hits. Now the company says this new electric car will be just as important. If things go to plan, the ID will reinvent Volkswagen itself. The ID is electric now, it’ll be autonomous later, and there will be dozens of cars on this one platform – a total of a million a year being churned out by 2025. Yet even a step this big sounds like foot-dragging. This VW will be a decade behind the first Nissan Leaf. For most of that time, VW reckoned there wasn’t enough infrastructure to make electric cars a truly mainstream thing. So there wouldn’t be profit to justify investing in a specialist EV rather than the half-arse…

19 ASTON MARTIN VALKYRIE When I met Adrian Newey to discuss the Valkyrie back in summer 2017, something he said lodged in my brain like a fish hook: that the 12-into-one exhaust system, rather than two six-into-ones, “makes it sound like it’s revving twice as high as it actually is.” For an engine we now know red-lines at 11,100rpm, that’s quite a claim. Probably why I’m standing in a dingy corridor somewhere in the Cosworth factory (the acoustic sweet spot, I’m told) with my ear pressed against a cold steel door, and mildly fearful of what’s about to be awoken on the dyno the other side. What occurs is a sound every bit as pure and piercing as we’d prayed for. A sound impossible not to compare to F1’s manic…

It is, let’s be honest, a dark time of year for telly. Masterchef: The Professionals has finished. Strictly’s done until next autumn. It’s nearly a whole year until the next Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas special. But fear not, because TopGear TV is back to make your Sunday nights up to 14 per cent more bearable! Series 26 (or possibly Series 3, or Series 4, depending which calendar you’re using) brings five all-new one-hour episodes, which see Matt LeBlanc, Chris Harris and Rory Reid – with a little help from The Stig and Sabine Schmitz – set out to tackle the big motoring problems of our age. Y’know, serious consumer stuff. Discovering the best family estate car with the help of some Norwegian wingsuiters. Building a new mountain with the help…

Goodbye Hyundai i30N Performance £27,995 OTR/£28,580 as tested “I adore hot hatches and this might be my current favourite.” Words I wrote in issue 309 when the i30N first arrived in the TopGear Garage. It’s faced numerous hurdles during the 10 months it’s had to prove me right – a brand-new Renault Megane RS, my weep-inducing inner London commute, some literal mountains to climb on a huge 4,000-mile Eurotrip (issue 317) – but it’s swept aside each one with aplomb. It feels made exactly to my dream spec: 6spd manual only, proper hugging sports seats and just enough power and grip to thrill, but not so much of either that it feels stifled or suffocated as a road car. I’d go as far as to say it sits in the…

Goodbye BMW M5 £89,645 OTR/£101,900 as tested Three years back I ran a BMW M3. Without a shadow of doubt one of the most entertaining, memorable cars I’ve ever had. For its farewell, my son and I loaded up with bikes and headed off to the south west for a few days’ hiking and riding. Bigger car now. Bigger son, too. So the stakes have been raised. Bike Park Wales this time and hiking in the Brecon Beacons. If I run an M760Li, I’ll be off to the Alps. Folding rear seats (part of the £1,195 Comfort pack along with steering-wheel heating, the massive display key and heated seats for four) mean you can get two bikes inside the M5. But think of the winter muck. Way better to carry…

Report 3 Mercedes A-Class £28,700 OTR/£30,830 as tested Last month I whinged about the lack of a ‘proper’ USB socket; this month I shall turn my attention to the A-Class’s augmented reality satnav. It says a lot about Merc’s family hatch that the user experience is defined more by the digital trinkets than by the way it drives. I will get around to such old-fashioned questions as “is the steering satisfying to use?”, “is it comfortable?” and “are the engine and gearbox actually fun or merely methods of propulsion?” eventually, I promise, but for now we stay firmly on A-Class home turf. A genuine world-first, this augmented nav, although I’m sure every Merc and many other manufacturers will follow suit soon. It works thusly: as you approach a junction, roundabout…

Goodbye Merc-AMG GT R £143,245/£153,960 In its six months in the TopGear garage, the AMG GT R has impressed with its daily usability, and entertained with its unrivalled drama. But, if we’re honest, as our time with The Hulk draws to a close, it’s become clear that the UK isn’t big enough to ever truly uncork the car’s full-on road potential without appearing on the national news. So, keen to provide the GT R with a suitable send off, Rowan Horncastle and I decided to return it to its birthplace – Affalterbach, northeast of Stuttgart. The epic adventure started, as they often do, queuing for the Eurotunnel. We arrived in France at 10am, by which time the office had come to life. My phone was pinging with emails firing in,…

On-demand flying taxis that will cost no more than folding yourself into a grubby Prius are creeping closer to reality. This is the Nexus, from Bell Helicopter, shown as an actual model at the CES show in Las Vegas in January. Capable of carrying a pilot and four passengers (plus their kebabs) it uses eight articulated eight-foot fans to take off vertically, and can fly 150 miles between charges at up to 150mph. Uber is working with several manufacturers on eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft, and plans to launch in 2023. Who wants first go?…

Audi A1 vs Mini Cooper £22,350 / £20,710 WE SAY: SMALL CARS, TEENY ENGINES, POSH BADGES, BIG PRICE TAGS The Audi A1 isn’t just late to the party – it’s not even bothered with a costume. The first A1 arrived a yawning nine years after the reborn Mini basically invented the small, cool, posh car for the 21st century. Now it’s back, and the sequel has almost dabbled with the Mini’s sacred territory – retro. Look! Those three (fake) intakes under the bonnet – straight from the Sport Quattro. The A1 is that guy who turns up to a fancy-dress party still wearing his crumpled suit from the office, and tells everyone he’s come as James Bond. In S line trim (bigger fake intakes, sportier seats, 17in wheels) it looks…

£42,300 Engine 2494cc 4cyl + AC motor, RWD, 220bhp, 221lb ft Performance 0–62mph in 8.6secs, 118mph, 47.5mpg, 114g/km CO2 Weight c. 1750kg Distressingly, the Lexus RC300h looks sporty, but very much isn’t. Oh, there’s an interesting exterior and rear-wheel drive, squinty headlights and brilliant seats, but once you get going, it falls off a cliff of desirability. The hybrid system is fair enough plodding along and being efficient, but as soon as you ask for even the smallest amount of vim, the E-CVT drags the engine response down, the noise flatlines and life becomes one shade greyer. The chassis – now with various improvements – isn’t bad at all, and the ride is good, but the engine and transmission package simply frustrates at all but the slowest speeds – at…

“IT’S LOW, WIDE AND SHORT – IT’S A TWO-SEATER ON AN ABBREVIATED WHEELBASE TO FOSTER AGILITY” 01 TOYOTA SUPRA Finally. You can now at last drink in the looks of the Supra. Or, to use its official full name for the first, and possibly last, time: the Toyota GR Supra. Huzzah: the real production Supra. Was ever a car more teased and trailed, hinted and hyped? Now this really is the one, due to arrive on roads near you… albeit, sigh, not until late summer. Stare, why don’t you, as it flares its nostrils, narrows its eyes, puffs out its chest, pulls in its stomach and flexes its shoulders? It seems to know darned well how closely it’s being watched, and strikes an on-point paparazzi pose. It’s low, wide and…

Contrary to popular belief, Bugattis can do corners. And we’re promised the new Divo takes things to another level. Named for two-time Targa Florio winner Albert, the wild-looking hypercar is effectively a rehashed Chiron (shhhh). Only with the emphasis on handling rather than outright speed. So the 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 produces the same 1,479bhp and the seven-speed twin-clutch ’box is identical. 0–62mph takes 2.4secs, just like the Chiron, but the top speed is down to a measly 236mph. That’s because there’s a lot of aero going on. The wing is 1.8m wide now – giving 90kg more downforce at top speed. Underneath, there are stiffer springs, dampers and anti-roll bars. Meanwhile, carbon-fibre wiper blades, grooves cut into the wheel spokes, less insulation, a lighter sound system and deleted storage in…

07 ASTON MARTIN VANQUISH ZAGATOS Beauty and madness, Aston Martin calls it. It’s a brilliant juxtaposition, but they’re not the only ones that can push that envelope. As all four members of the latest Aston Zagato family are gently decanted, the sky above us simultaneously darkens and seems to get bigger. There’s a bleakness exacerbated by the presence of two monolithic nuclear power stations. This is Dungeness, a spit of land jutting out of the Kent coast, a shingle desert, but a place that’s fiercely protected by its inhabitants and beloved of anyone who can see beyond the conventionally beautiful. The same could be said of Zagato. In 2019, this most defiantly original of Italian carrozzeria will celebrate its centenary. Ugo Zagato applied aerospace techniques to car manufacture; he worked…

14 ARIEL HIPERCAR 0–100mph in 3.8secs. Gulp Yep, 100mph. Not kph. Ariel’s 1,180bhp electric HIPERCAR (High Peformance Carbon Reduction) is a collaboration with numerous British brands including Delta Motorsport, and could rewrite EV performance as we know it. The 42kWh battery pack will be juiced by a gas turbine range extender after 15mins of track time, and yes, it’s road-legal. Expect emissions to match a supermini, Bugatti-busting urge and a £200–£300k price, Ariel hints. Watch this space. 15 MERCEDES-AMG A45 400bhp… in a hatchback In fact, expect 416bhp in the A45 S, according to leaked technical documents. AMG is pushing the 2.0-litre, 4cyl turbo engine to its limits for its next hyperhatch. You thought Merc would allow the 394bhp Audi RS3 to win the power war? Hah! As this teaser…

“It was a flying saucer, silver and it was sitting hovering over a telephone pole. If my brother was alive today he would tell you the same story. I totally believe it. You really think this is all that exists? You’re very shallow-minded.” After barely an hour on the Extraterrestrial Highway we’re hearing, unequivocally, that otherworldly beings are out here too. It’s just hard to take it seriously when Pam, the lady telling us her story, is doing so from behind a grotesque alien mask. “We were playing hide and go seek in my grandma’s back yard, and however long it takes a 10-year-old to count to 100… that’s how long I saw it. There were four white globes in a diamond shape, and they all shot off in sequence.…

Hello Hyundai Santa Fe £43,295 OTR/£44,485 as tested Believe it or not, the Hyundai Santa Fe has been around since 2000. That precedes plenty of the familiar SUVs we know today. Like the BMW X3, Audi Q5, VW Tiguan and many more. The original was, as you can imagine, quite terrible. In fact, sadly it’s taken until now for Hyundai to actually catch up with its European heavyweights, mainly on quality, ICE and dynamics – OK, that’s just about everything important, then. But the rise of Hyundai continues and the Santa Fe is now knocking at rivals’ doors both for quality and, more importantly, bang for buck. One can only be impressed at the level of kit it comes with, and the only thing we added was metallic paint and…

Goodbye Ford Tourneo Custom £40,480 OTR/£40,480 as tested Time to say goodbye to the Tourneo Custom. It’s been one hell of a useful ride… We opted to try out the new Tourneo (basically a Transit with seats) to see if a family of five can face living with a vehicle of this size, compared with a seven-seat SUV. As well as family-car duties, the Tourneo has been a useful support car – its highlight being PCOTY last year (see issue 314). But while it’s second to none for having ample space, for passengers and luggage, for being easy to drive, being practical, looking good and being reliable, there was one area it wasn’t quite as good as I hoped it’d be… the seats. The Tourneo has a mind-numbing number of…

The M3 has matured in a fascinating manner over its 33-year life, growing from a pugnacious little four-cylinder coupe into a turbocharged fire-breathing saloon. It’s spawned many iterations along the way, folding hard-top convertibles and two-seat track-day specialists among them. The car you see here, though, is the only one to use eight cylinders. Sold between 2007 and 2013, the E90 series of M3 used a highly strung V8 engine and came with three different body styles and your choice of two gearboxes. You can now buy one for less than £15,000, considerably cheaper than even the meekest 1-Series costs new. The four-door here loses the carbon roof that brings a ton of geeky cool to the coupe, but there’s something deeply satisfying about such a sensible shape clothing a…

Oh dear. This is the Byton M-Byte, a fully electric SUV from a Chinese start-up that’s full of tech (AI, 5G) and will be available before the year is out. It also has a 48in screen stretching from A-pillar to A-pillar. But that's not all… it has a seven-inch touchscreen in the steering wheel. Placed just above the airbag, this display doesn’t rotate with inputs – it remains orientated correctly the whole time, just like in an old Citroen C4. So, in the past few months, the Chinese have managed to land on the far side on the Moon and make a tablet on wheels. Where do they go from here?…

Elon Musk’s plans for world domination stepped up a notch recently as The Boring Company unveiled its first underground test tunnel in Los Angeles. Musk’s aim is to reduce congestion in built-up areas by allowing cars to pelt through a giant network of tunnels at around 150mph. The original plan was to build ‘electric skates’ that would carry parked vehicles. However, we now know that retractable ‘tracking wheels’ will come down from all four corners of a car and run along the sides of the tunnel instead. To travel in the tunnels will require an electric car with the ability to drive autonomously at 150mph, thus creating business for Tesla in the process. Clever Elon. These side-facing wheels will act like horizontal stabilisers, keeping the Tesla from hitting the wall…

HPI RACING VENTURE TOYOTA LAND CRUISER Nowadays r/c cars are serious things that command serious prices. Take HPI Racing’s Toyota FJ Cruiser. It’s just shy of £400, but underneath it’s running some proper hardware. Permanently locked diffs, oil-filled shock absorbers, telescoping driveshafts feeding all four wheels and much besides means off-road it basically cannot be stopped. The motor and control electrics are even positioned to replicate the big FJ’s weight distribution. As for the body, you get LED lights, proper bumpers (the rear with a mounted spare wheel) and a functional roof rack. For tiny things. hpiracing.com; £374.99 TOBYRICH SMARTPLANE PRO It’s an r/c aeroplane you control with an app on your phone, naturally. The SmartPlane Pro can perform complex pre-programmed stunts at the touch of a button, or you…

Seat Tarraco Xcellence £30,410 WE SAY: IT’S A ROOMY, GOOD-LOOKING SEVENSEATER, AND THE POSHEST SEAT EVER The Tarraco completes Seat’s threesome of SUVs, joining the little Arona and midsize Ateca. And it’s a biggie, built to rival the likes of the Hyundai Santa Fe and the Skoda Kodiaq, which of course is also the Tarraco’s not-so-distant cousin. But it’s not just a range-topper in terms of size. It also gets upmarket materials, higher specs and more equipment than its showroom subordinates. Its silhouette is very similar to the Kodiaq’s – unsurprising given the shared architecture. Seat reckons the Tarraco is the sportiest SUV in its segment, which is overselling things a bit. But while it’s hardly a hot hatch, it’s not a hippo either. It’s mildly engaging around corners; surefooted…

Hyundai i30N Fastback £29,995 WE SAY: HYUNDAI? DOING A SEXY NICHE SUCCESSFULLY? TIMES HAVE CHANGED Archetypal things loved by the Brits: queuing in the rain, an underdog, Mary Poppins and hot hatchbacks. In a wobbly time for national identity, it’s a relief to know old habits die hard. Hyundai’s unexpectedly spectacular first hot hatchback, the i30N, has been such a runaway success it’s spawned a sleeker longtail spin-off. Welcome to the ‘Hyundai i30 Fastback N’, as its maker insists. For the benefit of common sense – because we’re right and proper British – we shall call it the i30N Fastback. From the front doors forwards, it’s identical to the i30N hatchback. At the opposite end, the abruptly square hatch backside has been chamfered into a svelte slope, culminating in a…

05 PORSCHE 911 CARRERA S Yep, you’re correct – it doesn’t look much different from the last one. Which itself was quite clearly related to the one before it and, now you come to mention it, wasn’t dissimilar to the one before that. There were a couple before that one which bore an uncanny resemblance to the new 2019 992’s lozenge silhouette too, because, and this might come as a shock, if you take a rear-engined coupe, give it a pair of small rear seats and a low bonnet line, you’ll end up with something that looks like a 911 pretty much every time. Many people don’t like this styling outcome. “It looks like the last one,” they froth around internet forums. “It’s an arse-faced Nazi s**tbox,” they say as…

Given that Land Rover’s brand DNA – its genuine article Britishness – is largely built around the legend of the Defender, it’s incredible the company has had to plough on without it since the veteran was finally laid to rest in January 2016. Reinventing it is an unenviable task. It’s got to maintain that go-anywhere, zero-bullshit authenticity while aceing crash tests, catering to the city crowd who lust for the image, and avoiding alienating the mountain rescuers, lifeguards and farmers who depend on a Defender for their livelihoods… and sometimes their lives. Design boss Gerry McGovern has spearheaded Land Rover’s renaissance by gentrifying the products, sprinkling motifs from the wildly successful Evoque into the Discovery and Range Rover. But adding swept headlights and 23-inch wheels to a Defender won’t do.…

Volvo is on superb form. Since it was taken under the wing of China’s Geely, it’s flourished, with smartly designed, refreshingly un-thrusting saloons, wagons and SUVs that’ve rediscovered the art of waftiness. But if you want a more sporty Swede, plans are afoot. Volvo’s racing team cohort Polestar has been jettisoned from the mothership to be a standalone electric performance brand. Its first car, the imaginatively titled 1, looks identical to Volvo’s stunning 2016 Coupe Concept, and is, erm, not electric. It’s a plug-in hybrid, capable of up to 93 miles of range from a 230kg battery, powering twin rear motors with a combined output of 215bhp. Up front, a tuned 2.0-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine, resulting in, when you’re fully charged, 591bhp and 728lb ft of combined four-wheel-drive punch. The…

Uh-oh. Chris Harris is broken. Mouth agape and head in hands, he’s temporarily paralysed from what I can only describe as – don’t quote me, I’m not a doctor – Optic Nerve Overload. I can’t blame him. We’re in a large, anonymous warehouse on a large, anonymous industrial estate somewhere in Switzerland. Inside this large, anonymous warehouse sits the greatest collection of left-field, usable performance cars from the past 40 years. Possibly the greatest collection of cars in the history of ever. It’s a real hotchpotch of horsepower – rows and rows of rare-groove nostalgia sitting in perfect herringbones. Just look at them: the biggest hits from Alpina and AMG, a flood of Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. Renault R5 Turbos, iconic manual Ferraris and mint Range Rovers. Then there’s stuff we never…

Hello Ford Fiesta ST-3 £21,995 OTR/£24,890 as tested Having claimed our coveted TopGear Magazine Car of the Year award (Issue 316), the Ford Fiesta ST has fallen straight out of the afterparty and into the TopGear Garage. Initially, we were cynical about the move to lop off a cylinder… we were wrong. We were worried about them fattening it up by force-feeding tech down its throat… we shouldn’t have been. See, over the last year, the little hot hatch has impressed us time and time again. It’s breezed a 1,700-mile road trip around Britain, seen off the likes of Porsche and Ferrari at our Performance Car of the Year and earned Chris Harris’s seal of approval. But now it’s got its biggest test yet: living with us rabble for six…