Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

Just weeks before the launch of the Cheery Bong II, I am sad to report I’ve been relieved of my duties as lead test driver for Rong Un Motors. There were many reasons for this parting of ways. For me, it came down a difference in creative vision: my desire to make the Cheery Bong II the best-handling supermini on the market, against the Rong Un management team’s desire to ignore everything I suggested. For the Rong Un management – as they made clear in an extensive and, in my opinion, unnecessarily personal letter – it came down to the fact I’ve spent a year outlining their lax health-and-safety practice in a monthly column in TopGear magazine. Also the fact I attempted to claim $2,000 on pay-per-view adult movies as…

Le Mans 2021 just got even more interesting. We’ve already heard Aston and Toyota say they’ll compete in the WEC’s new top-tier ‘hypercar’ class, and now Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus has thrown its hat in the ring too. SCG says it’ll field a pair of these SCG007s (no, this isn’t Bond’s next car) in the WEC, but also offer the car to privateer teams and build a “limited run of road-legal examples”. Power comes from a 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged V6 of so-far unspecified origin sending 641bhp to the rear tyres, while a KERS system will deal a further 148bhp to the front. SCG is the project of Jim Glickenhaus – friend of TopGear, collector of many interesting Ferraris (including the Modulo, which we’ve driven) and now, builder of his own hypercars and…

Electric powertrain. Autonomous capability. Retro styling. An interior that’s also a ‘living space’. Crossover ride height. Hyundai’s not messing around – the 45 concept has every trend covered. And doesn’t it look… good? The best-styled Hyundai ever, you might wager. “Taking a look to the past is essential for moving forward,” says design boss SangYup Lee, telling us the 45 draws inspiration from the 1974 Pony Coupe Concept, year dot for Hyundai design and a surprisingly handsome, Giugiaro-penned Seventies wedge. The name refers to the 45 years that separate this concept from that Pony, but it also “owes itself in part to the 45-degree angles at the front and rear” which is the design direction we can expect from Hyundai’s fully electric cars. Cameras replace mirrors as part of a…

01 Porsche’s electric upstart Porsche isn’t afraid of carpet-bombing the apple-cart with a few controversial decisions. But now the age of the electric Porsche is here with the battery-powered Taycan, and that’ll have purists sobbing into their Porsche owners’ club polo shirts. Until they drive it, perhaps. 02 AMG’s turbo 4x4 hatchback Think AMG, think big V8s and a snakey trail of rubber once part of unsuspecting rear tyres. And then, in 2009, AMG got into hot hatches. With no room for a V8, and no justification for RWD, the resulting A45 took AMG into a new era of 2.0-litre turbo, AWD misbehaviour. 03 BMW’s front-wheel-drive hatchback When it launched the original RWD 1-Series, BMW’s marketing campaign fixated on how the only RWD car in its class was so well…

UNBELIEVABLE TEKKERS BYTON M-BYTE ELECTRIC SUV IS REAL SHOULD I CARE? Yes, because its 48-inch curved screen is the largest display ever fitted to a production car. You’ll be able to control from either the 7in one on the steering wheel, or the eight-incher in the usual spot. SHOULD I BE SCARED? Only if the person driving is easily distracted by a 48-INCH SCREEN IN FRONT OF THEIR FACE. SHOULD I TELL MY FRIENDS? If you can afford the £40,210 entry ticket, then by all means, gloat away. For that, you’ll get a single, rear-mounted electric motor putting out 268bhp and with 72kWh of battery capacity – meaning 224 miles of range. SHOULD I SPEND MY MONEY? Are you a tech nerd? Then, yes. Chinese owned Byton’s strapline is “data…

There’s no escaping it. The season of giving is nearly here. This can often mean aimless online scrolling or, worse, shopping centre wandering. Luckily, LEGO® Group is here to save the day with its I Love Cars partnership, whether you’re looking for the perfect present for the mini petrolhead in your life, or looking for hints to drop, in a fresh effort to avoid the dreaded car-themed socks. Take a look at some of its finest car models. Let’s start with the grown-ups, shall we? If you or a fellow car nut are looking for the ultimate building project to keep you off the streets and out of the way, you could do a lot worse than the LEGO Technic™ supercar range, led supremely by the incomparable Bugatti Chiron –…

“THE RIDE IS MORE AGREEABLE THAN IN MOST SALOONS” £163,000 FOR Slightly calmer McLaren is amazingly good for long trips, yet loses little in recreational blasts AGAINST You can take a lot of stuff with you, but packing isn’t easy I’m suspicious of the idea of a GT, at least as they mostly are these days. Nearly all are front-engined coupes, which shows little progress from when the idea was born 90-odd years ago. They’re mostly powerful and heavy. The grand-touring job description includes twisty roads for fun, so they have harsh suspensions and noisy tyres, which spoils their showing on the motorways that a GT also needs to eat up. And, oddly, they often have risibly small boots. Small wonder people give up and get a fast SUV. McLaren…

£42,475 FOR Classy to look at, comfortable to sit in, better tech than ever AGAINST Not the quickest of SUVs, even without every seat filled Fancier lights and retrimmed bumpers suggest LR has deployed standard facelift tactics for its best-selling car. Which is a red herring, as there’s been a complete change of architecture beneath the car, with similar underpinnings to the new Range Rover Evoque. Why so much effort? Electricity: the answer to most automotive questions these days. This platform is shaped to swallow batteries and motors, and thus the Sport launches with a bunch of mild-hybrid engines and will soon offer plug-in hybrid powertrains. You’d assume a full EV is something they’re playing with too. The Sport’s current range of engines don’t need plugging in; nor do they…

Avery warm welcome to TG24. Literally, seeing as we’re in southern Portugal. For the past few years, we’ve called this Speed Week, but when we sat down to start planning, we were imagining it as the ultimate track day of this year’s greatest performance cars. Which was a bit of a mouthful, so we started stripping the concept back, until we were asking ourselves, “Track day? Why only day? What about night?”. And 10 seconds after that we were planning Le Mans. But where could we go that would allow us to run for 24 hours? Not Le Mans – that’s primarily on public roads. And what about noise restrictions? Those can be a killer. Step forward the awesome 24-hour-authorised, noise-limit-free Portimão circuit. And a plan designed to reflect our…

The idea of unlimited motorsport has been an avenue of fascination denied us since the death of the Can-Am series in the mid-Seventies. But as a way of marketing a new technology, especially one perceived to lack both speed and excitement, Volkswagen created the ID.R. It is the single most insane electric car ever made, Rimac included, because it can rearrange the driver’s vital organs like nothing short of a Formula One car. Actually, in a straight line, or at least from rest to 125mph, the leccy VW might have the legs on a current F1 car – it accelerates from standstill to 125mph in under five seconds. In the time your brain has acknowledged the violence of this 4WD-assisted mayhem and sent a strongly worded message to your voice…

Hot hatchbacks normally arrive at Speed Week as the underdogs. The worthy ones with the big boots where we keep the melted chocolate bars. This year, the shopping trolleys are out for blood. A £35k fast Ford, a Mercedes A-Class that’s more powerful and expensive than a used Ferrari 360, and a Renault Megane without satnav, holes instead of foglights and priced to fight a Porsche Cayman GT4. Sure, the last A45 was a record-breaking nutter, and Renault’s no stranger to emptying out a Megane, but this feels like the moment when hot hatches really got gentrified. These cars take themselves seriously. So shall we. No getting bogged down in monthly payments or sweet spot semantics here. Which is the most heart-zappingly exciting hatch, period. The Focus ST is better…

Turns out the 306 isn’t red. “This isn’t news,” I hear you say, “The rear offside panel was mostly orange, and there was a pinkish hue to much of the rest of it.” Yep, oxidisation’s a git; but no, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Because I’m talking about actual science. “When we put the spectrometer on the paint,” Jonny Leggett of Reflex Auto Design tells me, “it was actually only 76 per cent red; the rest was about 16 per cent violet and a tiny bit of black and white.” Is that really what the Peugeot paint is made up of? “Nah, this is a Hyundai red.” Confused? Me too. So here goes. Paint changes over time. The sun and weather get to it, the tones change. Paint the…

Normally, when the steering wheel is spinning freely between your fingers, it’s evidence of a catastrophic steering column failure that’s about to end in an expensive accident. In the case of Ivan ‘Ironman’ Stewart’s Super Off Road, it’s just how the arcade cabinet was designed. This was an era before force feedback wheels made every racing game a workout and hustling the game’s teeny trucks around a corner had you spinning the rim like a roulette wheel. Super Off Road’s tracks were an immediately identifiable series of muddy arenas, liberally decorated with berms, banked corners and water splashes, and the four brightly coloured trucks bucked and bounced their way across the terrain in a deeply satisfying fashion. This was definitely a game best played while clashing elbows with two friends,…

DON’T PANIC, EVERY LITTLE THING IS GONNA BE… RUINED WHO: ELLIOTT WEBB, ART EDITOR I drove a used Tesla Model S to Bicester for a photoshoot. Nothing remarkable there – but, a 4am start on the day O2’s network (including all internet access) went down across the country wasn’t ideal. O2’s failure appeared to shut down the Tesla’s big screen, leaving me no way of getting to the satnav or even the button to turn the headlights on. After a worryingly older-than-old-school journey with no map to hand, I arrived, mildly traumatised from ‘my future is here’ trip in the Tesla, and attempted to Google how to reset it. It was then I discovered that no O2 = no Tesla… REMOTE-CONTROL FUNNY WHO: TOM HARRISON, STAFF WRITER I was driving…

1 It’s often said your cars are too similar to one another. Rivals make both front- and mid-engined cars. Before you ask, McLaren will not make an SUV. But I get really pissed off the people say we’re making the same car again and again. Look at the Speedtail, the GT, the LT, the Senna GTR. Completely different. 2 All V8 turbos though, and that carbon tub? It’s absolutely not true to call it the same tub for each car. Yes we’ve had a V8 since the 12C, but with two blocks, five different heads, hybridised and not, with outputs from 540bhp to 1,100bhp. We don’t sell engines to anyone else. Our stuff is our stuff. Well, OK, the P1 had a brake booster that was shared with a Porsche…

THE GOOD Looks like a Jaguar if you squint. They should be flattered. I think it’s the headlights Alistair Brooks WEIRDLY, I KINDA LIKE THE BIG GRILLE BUT I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY IT’S SO DIVISIVETBP When I first saw it, I thought of an Alfa Romeo Mustafa Ahmadzai THE BAD Great!! A pedestrian mincer!! Benjamin Carr Suddenly the Chris Bangle era wasn’t so bad after all Steffen Tabbert Christiansen FROM BEAMER TO BEAVERTang23 Maybe some tuning company will come out with aftermarket bits that will correct that front end. Like that company that corrected the offset rear number plate of the latest Discovery hazy leftie THE UGLY I am guessing the designer of the front was a fan of Freddie Mercury and Ronaldo Steve Gee The grille looks like an…

Lego Technic Land Rover Defender This is no toy. Just like the full-size version has to please the die-hard nutters who want the ability to climb a vertical rock face and wade across the Atlantic Ocean, Lego Technic’s new Defender has packed in some serious functionality – so grown-ups can justify buying it too. Included is an independent suspension set-up, operable steering and a six-cylinder engine. The 4spd sequential gearbox is also super-detailed and can switch between low- and high-range, for those really steep staircases. Plus, you get the roof rack, winch and storage boxes from the options list. The best bit? Open the rear door and, when it’s riddled with mud and sand, you can simply hose it out. There’s a feature the new real-life Defender doesn’t have. Lego.com;…

“IT LOOKS AND OPERATES AS YOU’D EXPECT THE TOPMOST BMW TO” £123,435 FOR Refined, fast, with awesomely lavish trim and masses of tech AGAINST Lacks involvement and prettiness, but the Convertible provides some remedy Most powerful production BMW engine. There’s a good headline. Four-wheel-drive where you can switch out the front wheels, for driftular purposes. There’s another one. Carbon roof. Track mode… None of which gives any sense at all of what the M8 is actually like. I just can’t imagine anyone taking this to a track. Not like M2s, or M3s when they’ve got a bit secondhand and modified. Oh sure, at their limit, the M8’s high speed acceleration, braking and cornering are forceful enough to demand a track to show off. So BMW thoughtfully provided one. But then…

PORSCHE 911 C2 £82,793 FOR As quick as you’d ever need. £10k cheaper than 911 S AGAINST Almost tediously good. And does it have to be so wide? It’s the 992’s relentless quest to be demonstrably faster and ‘better’ than the last 911 that hobbles it. It’s wider. It’s got bigger, noisier tyres. Tick, tick, tick. Great on paper, aloof on road. Still, now you’ll save £10k by picking the ‘non-S’. You get slightly smaller wheels, the same world-class interior and just a smidge longer to gas it before the police extract your licence and several hundred pounds from your pocket. This 911’s so complete, it’s unfair. OK AUDI A6 ALLROAD £56,000 FOR The least tosser-ish car Audi makes. Quite cool, really. AGAINST Brittle ride, tardy gearbox, ugly stepped grille…

3PM I’m two laps in, ratcheted into the Atom, concentrating hard and sweating liberally when I feel it. Weight on the outside corner of my eyelid, then the drip as sunblockinfused perspiration makes contact with cornea. Dull warmth builds quickly to an ocular emergency. I wipe frantically with my grimy fingers and make the situation 42 times worse. It’s both sides streaming now, vision terminally blurred, speed and racing line long since abandoned in favour of keeping it out of the gravel. And I can hear them coming… By this point I’m operating a two seconds open, two seconds shut policy – it’s the best I can do. That and pray they see the Atom in time to take evasive action. Sounds like the Jag first, full metal racket, explosions…

Ferrari 1965, Ford 1966, Porsche 1982, Audi 2010. None of them did it as well as us. The formation finish. Yes, the Renault’s lagging slightly, but give us a break, we were dead on our feet. And, if we’re honest, slightly surprised with our top three. Twenty-four hours earlier, only the Megane had been on our radar as likely to make it through to the winner’s circle. Road-test radar also suggested the Porsche Cayman GT4 and McLaren 720S Spider would be up among the leaders, but neither excited us as much as they should – the McLaren because we’ve basically seen it all before (Tom Harrison’s point about built-in obsolescence is a very good one), the Cayman because we all had the sense that the first GT4 was that bit…

Before Group B, world rallying transformed some rather mundane machinery into titans. Escorts, Chevettes and – heaven help us – Talbot Sunbeams acquired quasi-mythical status hammering at improbable angles through Welsh forests. Fiat’s 131 saloon was no exotic – a Torinese Cortina – but its Abarth rally makeover gave it tumescent wheelarches, four expressive headlights, two spot-lamps and three constructors’ championships in 1977, ’78 and ’80. Better still, the works cars were sponsored by Italy’s lamps national airline Alitalia for two of these seasons, a livery that also appeared to almost abstract effect on the Lancia Stratos. If ever there was a case of a car being greater than the sum of its parts, though, it’s this formerly humble Fiat saloon. The Alitalia logo was created by Landor Associates, whose…

ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER THING… There is that, yes. But in terms of generational DNA, they are VW Golf-based derivatives. What you’re looking at is 45 or so years of technological advance and market-driven taste change. In 1974, we got a neat Giugiaro-designed small coupe from the bones of a Golf (pretty much everything bar the drivetrain was re-engineered, mind), in 2017, we got a T-Roc small SUV. Sigh. THERE WERE MORE MODERN SCIROCCOS, THOUGH? There were. Originally there were two generations of angular Scirocco, the first being the one you see here (’74 to ’81) and the Type 2 from ’81 to ’92. Then there was the more rounded rebirth in 2008 which ended production in 2017. Properly quirky Golf-spawn probably died with the…

HELLO £58,335 OTR/£74,755 as tested/£613pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is this the thinking family’s Bentley Bentayga? DRIVER Adam Waddell THE TOPGEAR MAGAZINE ROAD TEST OF THE NEW TOUAREG LED WITH the line “The VW faces an uphill struggle against brand-laden rivals, but is actually just as good”. After spending a month with the car, it’s hard to disagree. It shares its underpinnings with the Porsche Cayenne, Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus and Audi Q7, so some quality DNA is in the mix. However, while its pricier siblings all boast distinctive styling and brands that will impress the neighbours, the Touareg is remarkably understated – to my mind, that’s no bad thing. That said, the new model does feature a fair bit of exterior chrome, so it’s not entirely bling-free. But, inside the…

Ferrari couldn’t resist. It’s watched the likes of the Aston Martin DBS, Lamborghini Aventador and Bentley Continental GT running away with the ‘ultra-quick, mega-pricey suntanmobile’ market and decided enough is enough. The 812 Superfast has lost its top. This, at long, long last, is the open-top Ferrari 812 GTS. Big buttresses, aren’t they? The humped rear deck hides a folding hard-top roof that whirrs electrically away in 14 seconds at up to 28mph, exposing the 812 GTS’s two occupants to the unholy fury of one of Ferrari’s finest-ever engines. It’s a naturally aspirated, 6.5-litre V12, which can wake the dead from three counties away and then outrun the zombie hordes with a 789bhp, 530lb ft punch. It’s a monster. Ferrari has traditionally let its open-top V8 cars do the heavy…

This is the Mercedes-Benz EQS. Essentially, the fully electric S-Class of the future. Don’t believe us? Mercedes calls it “a trailblazer for the entire Mercedes-Benz EQ family,” meaning it does for Merc’s electric range what the S-Class has traditionally done for, well, almost the whole car industry. Given Jaguar’s making the next XJ electric, it’s also further proof that the luxury car market as a whole is going silent. And possibly self-driven. But while the EQS comes equipped with Level 3 autonomy, we’re assured it’ll still be a satisfying thing to drive. This isn’t Ludicrous Mode quick, but it’s ample. Peaks of 470bhp and 560lb ft are spread across both axles for torque-vectored AWD, and allow 0–62mph in 4.5secs. Mercedes claims a WLTP-tested range of over 400 miles and says…

Britain was once the biggest watchmaker in the world, so how did we let the cheeky Swiss take top spot? Of course, there is a lot to like about Switzerland beyond ski slopes, big Toblerones and Roger Federer. Like cheese, cuckoo clocks and the alpine horn. But all good things have a downside, and there is no getting around the fact that Switzerland is on the pricey side. According to The Economist’s Big Mac Index, Switzerland is runaway winner of the award for most expensive fast food in the world. So it’s surprising when you hear how Switzerland came to steal Britain’s watchmaking crown: cheap labour. In 1800, Britain made around 200,000 pocket watches a year, half the world’s output. Then the Swiss, making good use of the vast numbers…

The Audi AI:TRAIL makes the new Defender look like a Luddite. An electric, autonomous off-road thing with 34cm of ground clearance that can ford rivers half a metre deep. The 22in wheels each get their own electric motor for precisely controlled all-wheel drive and a total of 430bhp and 738lb ft of torque. Range is 250–300 miles on road, 155 miles off it, while the tyres can self-inflate/deflate depending on the terrain. On-road, there’s level 4 autonomy, off-road, you’re in control. At night, roof-mounted drones fly ahead of the car to illuminate its path, and back seats turn into hammocks when you stop to make camp.TH…

First a note on the decline of the hatchback. Twenty years ago, these three – the Vauxhall Astra, Ford Focus and Mazda3 – sold a combined 1.24 million cars in Europe. Ten years later, that number had halved. By last year, it had almost halved again. Doom, meet gloom. Maybe not a reason to read much further, though. Maybe I ought to throw in some speculation around the next Focus RS or Mazda’s new atmospheric engine that breathes only atmosphere. Trouble is, I suspect both are figments of the imagination. The world has moved on (the Nissan Qashqai now outsells both the Focus and Astra in Europe), and the old-time big-hitters are left swaying against the ropes. None of these three adapted quickly enough or well enough. Ford still has…

MY HAIR IS A SOURCE OF MUCH JEALOUSY AT TG TOWERS. Chiefly because I have some, while many of my colleagues do not. I am therefore much better at testing roadsters. Sure, I may not be able to get a McLaren 720S Spider as heroically sideways as Ollie Marriage, but I can certainly tell you how much of a mess you’ll look after a reasonably swift lap of Portimão. The answer, in case you too are follically well-endowed, is a bloody big one. Nothing here is as fast down the circuit’s more than half-milelong pit straight as the 720S Spider. Not even the Porsche 935 or VW ID.R (which clatters almost immediately into its top-speed limiter). A good exit out of the final corner would see it sail past 175mph,…

It’s all very well deciding to do the TG24 in a far corner of Europe, but making it a reality was a titanic effort. Cars had to be taken there from all over Europe, with half the grid sent out on transporters from the UK (big shout out to emrogerstransport.com). Repsol (repsol.com) ensured we had to venture no further than pit garage 35 to brim the tanks, supplying us with their brand new Efitech 100 fuel, which claims to not only improve response, but reduce consumption. In tests using a variable-compression single cylinder, engine fuel use dropped by 18 per cent. All we can say is that we used less than half the 15 barrels they sent. But the biggest vote of thanks has to go to Portimão (autodromoalgarve.com) itself.…

GOODBYE £67,740 OTR/£72,145 as tested/£892pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is there more to the Velar than style alone? DRIVER Ollie Marriage A CAR SHOULD EXCEED YOUR EXPECTATIONS. IT’S AS SIMPLE AS that, really. And if it does, it’s A Good One. I didn’t think the Velar would, but it has. There have been issues, and I’ll come on to discuss those, but as I look back across the last nine months and 18,000 miles, I’m struck by how fondly I view a car I thought would rub me up the wrong way. This may be you right now, thinking the Velar isn’t a proper Land Rover. But let me tell you this: I’ve towed with it; I’ve carried stuff in it and on it; it’s been off-roaded, road-tripped and camping-tripped. We’ve…

HELLO £159,900 OTR/£200,345 as tested/£3,000pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is living with lux all it’s cracked up to be? DRIVER Ollie Marriage I’D GONE IN THINKING BLUE. THREE HOURS LATER I’M STILL UNDECIDED: should it be Verdant or Light Grey Satin? I’m quite proud of myself for having whittled it down to two shades from the 150 painted sculptural shapes on the table in front of me. Of course, 50 per cent could be thrown out with ease: anything that said “my personal colour scheme is steel grey over deep mahogany accessorised with a bright white signature aperture”. California is not Crewe. But this corner of Crewe is hardly Crewe either. I’m in the Commissioning Suite at Bentley Motors Ltd, agreeing how TG’s new Conti GT should look (that’s not it…

REPORT 4 £18,305 OTR/£19,280 as tested/£239pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is a Ryanair-spec family hatch a hidden motoring gem? DRIVER Ollie Kew MANY THINGS ARE ENJOYED NATIONWIDE BUT AREN’T NECESSARILY forces for good. Love Island. Pumpkin-spiced lattes. Cats. Popularity does not always equate to goodness. But the Ford Focus is an exception. Other hatchbacks have offered plusher interiors and swankier images. The Focus is damn good to drive. Since we’re wistful sorts, we needed to put the new Focus in some context for cheap family cars that are fun to hurl around and, well, there’s only one benchmark. An S-reg Ford Focus 1.6 LX. The £13,350, 1998 benchmark. Oh yes, we know you come to TopGear for the Koenig-ghinis, but you stay for the 21-year-old light turquoise hatches. This Focus LX,…