Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

A good name goes a long way. However well engineered your new super-lux limo, if it’s not topped with a badge laden with history and heritage, it’s gonna struggle. So when Daimler bosses were deciding what badge to slap on their yet posher Mercedes S-Class, a car to rival the Rolls-Royce Phantom for the affection of our planet’s least philanthropic billionaires, if only they’d had such a recognisable brand to call upon. Like, say, ‘Mercedes-Benz’. A name that denotes ‘posh car’ around the world. But Daimler bosses decided the three-pointed star just wasn’t deluxe enough for their Vegas penthouse on wheels, instead dusting off a name remembered by literally no one under the age of 100. Which, in fairness, may have been the target market. Maybach. The name was as…

1 You’re French, but you lived and worked abroad. How did you see Citroen as an outsider coming in this year? When I left France 20 years ago, Citroen was original and innovative with, say, the CX, but at the same time trying to find its way. Some other cars were a tough sell. Now Citroen is much more mainstream and has succeeded in repositioning itself at the heart of the market. It has vehicles with great style. They’re competitive and clearly aligned to a brand. When human beings recover from an illness, they can’t go straight to full speed. You have to get up, stand up straight. Citroen is standing up straight, upright and confident. The brand has defined an identity it is proud of. 2 What does that…

Car companies do a good line in less is more. Take Porsche – from the 968 Club Sport to the latest GT2 RS, there is a trusted formula. Strip it down, power it up, then sell a car with fewer bits for more money. The watch equivalent is the skeleton. Remove the dial, shave a load of metal from the movement, and you have a watch that is both more desirable and expensive. The first skeletonised clocks appeared around 1760 and were the work of André Charles Caron, a Frenchman who was official clockmaker to Louis XV. This was an incredibly prestigious job at a time when the science of horology occupied some of the most brilliant minds in the world. In the 18th century, accurate timekeeping was the key…

1 Lamborghini Huracán indicator switch The Huracán is essentially an Audi R8 made pointier and more impractical in every single way. And yet, there’s a little switch on the left of the steering wheel that replaces a traditional indicator stalk. It’s an acquired taste, but once mastered, feels perfectly natural. 2 McLaren 720S Spider glass buttresses No surprise that McLaren pops up a few times here – it pulls off little tricks to make supercars everyday liveable like no one else does. For instance, parking the 720S Spider should be tricky, but the rear buttresses are made out of glass, so you can look straight through them. 3 Pagani rotary seat adjusters Sticking your hand between your legs and having a good twist isn’t always socially acceptable. But in a…

FOR A mad, frantic, incessant, buzzing hornet of a car AGAINST Standard Nomad’s playfulness has been diminished Here’s an Ariel Nomad wearing an R, which you’ll have already correctly assumed means it’s a faster one. The standard one, with 235bhp, is capable of 0–60mph in 3.4secs, this one… accelerates like a ball bearing in a pinball machine. Ariel already offers a supercharger kit for the standard Nomad, taking the 2.4-litre up to 290bhp, but if you want a full house track toy… well, personally, I’d say just turn up with off-road tyres and long travel Fox suspension and have at it. But Ariel thinks different. Remember the Atom 3.5R? Pretty much the maddest of them all, powered by a supercharged 2.0-litre with 335bhp and Sadev sequential gearbox. Well, that’s the…

“REALLY, THE COUNTACH WAS MORE OF A LOW FLYING SPACESHIP THAN AN UNTAMED BEAST” Sure, it’s age dependent, but this is surely the poster car of all time. The Miura may have claimed first dibs on the word ‘supercar’, but the Countach is the one that sent jaws accelerating south at high speed. Almost 50 years since it appeared in prototype form at the 1971 Geneva show, it still does. This is probably the most outrageous looking production car ever made. Marcello Gandini had already sent car design hurtling in a quasi sci-fidirection at Bertone with 1968’s Alfa Romeo Carabo and Seventies Stratos Zero, progenitors of the so-called ‘wedge’ look. These were concept cars around which the Italians pivoted away from curves and sensuality, to create a radical new idiom.…

“LEGEND HAS IT THAT EVEN A DRIVER AS GIFTED AS WALTER RÖHRL HAD HIS HANDS FULL WITH AN ON THE LIMIT CARRERA GT” Easy to forget now, but Porsche was in a bit of a pickle in the early Nineties. Money was too tight to mention, and every project had to justify its existence. In triplicate. This is why the Cayenne came to pass, a car whose existence was heresy to the faithful but would turn out to be one of the most quietly influential of the 21st century. Not least in keeping Porsche afloat. So the Carrera GT was a genuine outlier. Even as things got existential, Porsche wanted to reassert its position at the top table. A concept car appeared at the Paris show in 2000, the world…

There was a point recently where this M6 track car idea seemed like a terrible plan. I think it was after the seats had been thrown aside and the 35-year-old carpet was being prised away from the floorpan. This was quickly quashed at the sight of what lurked under the carpet. I’m not sure if you can call it carpet, as it appears to be the only thing holding it all together. Forget a carbon monocoque chassis; this M6 utilises man-made fibres infused with oxidised metal to deliver a chassis as rigid as an answer from Dominic Cummings. Not that any rust should come as a surprise, however. But for those crying out for a sympathetic restoration, there’s nothing sympathetic about the condition of the bits being removed. They’re about…

Given that we spent a good proportion of our childhood driving around backwards in racing games trying to cause as big an accident as possible, it’s remarkable that it took until 1995 for Destruction Derby to truly legitimise the pastime. Born in an age when racing games were becoming steadily more sophisticated, Destruction Derby offset a wave of sensible simulations with a welcome blast of vehicular anarchy that came straight out of Wimbledon dog track. That’s not to say it wasn’t a technologically impressive achievement. Like fellow early PlayStation titles Ridge Racer and Wipeout, Destruction Derby boasted texture mapped polygons and the action progressed at a fair lick, that was at least until you unceremoniously T-boned another car and ground to a halt. The key difference was that, thanks to…

GOODBYE £25,295 OTR/£25,295 as tested/£350pcm WHY IT’S HERE To see if the original baby crossover can reclaim its crown? DRIVER Esther Neve THAT’S ALL FOLKS – TIME FOR THE JUKE TO LEAVE US FOR PASTURES new. It’s been with us for six months, covered many thousands of miles and been driven by half the team. When it arrived, we were tasked with answering a tricky question: could it reclaim its crown? Tricky. I remember attending the launch of the original Juke – it was a revolutionary concept and created a completely new sector of the motoring market. Since then, though, many other car manufacturers have caught on to the baby crossover concept and the segment has become crowded with alternatives to the car that started it all. So, where the…

REPORT 8 £18,499 OTR/£19,149 as tested/£252pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can it possibly be as charming to live with as it is to look at? DRIVER Ollie Kew WE NEEDED A SUPPORT VEHICLE FOR THE VW T-ROC’S TRIAL-BY-TRAIL. The Jimny was perfect – handy in the rough, dinky enough to park out of shot behind a medium-sized leaf, and with the rear seats flipped flat, almost enough room for one of snapper Mark’s cameras. So, the Jimny was politely nicked from Stephen Dobie’s house for a day in the woods. I don’t want to get mired in some Freudian debate about compensating for whatnot, but it was tricky not to feel intimidated when the Jimny tick-tocked into the quarry and barely reached the wheel hubs of some of our off-road enthusiasts’…

Ford really isn’t messing around. After a 24-year break, the Bronco is back, and it wants for nothing more than to bludgeon the Jeep Wrangler and Land Rover Defender into a muddy submission. And on the strength of its spec, looks and price, it could well do just that. Available with either two or four doors, the big Bronco (there’s a smaller Bronco Sport too… more on that later) is based on the same platform as the Ford Ranger pickup – a “fully boxed, high-strength steel chassis” that allows for 17 per cent more suspension travel than “the closest competitor”. Naturally four-wheel drive is standard – base spec cars get a two-speed electronic shift-on-the-fly transfer case, while the ‘Advanced’ system has a two-speed electromechanical transfer case for auto shifting between…

Remember the all-electric Ford Mustang Cobra Jet from earlier this year? A drag racing monster that could do a quarter mile in the low eights at 170mph. Impressive. Not as impressive as this, though. The Mustang Mach-E 1400 – a 1,400bhp example of Ford’s controversially named EV SUV. Goodness gracious. Built by Ford Performance and pro drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr’s company RTR Vehicles, it’s a one-off prototype that Ford says is “aimed at bridging the gap between what an electric vehicle can do and what customers tend to believe that it can do”. Want grip? There’s four-wheel-drive mode where seven electric motors (three attached to the front axle and four to the rear) work with the ultra-high-performance lithium nickel manganese cobalt battery to provide all that power to all four…

Of course, it had to be an SUV. Everything is an SUV these days. The iX3 is the first fully electric BMW SUV; a change of direction from the company’s game changing i3 city car and i8 hybrid sports car. And – for an SUV – it’s plenty fast, too. BMW quotes 0–62mph in 6.8secs, and a top speed of 112mph. Also, it’s rear drive. Winner. Underneath the X3’s bonnet is the latest EV tech the company has to offer; indeed, it’ll be fitted to the production iNext and i4 from 2021 onwards. The motor is 30 per cent more power dense than any existing BMW Group motor, 93 per cent more efficient, and able to generate 282bhp and 295lb ft of torque. There’s a 74kWh battery onboard – again,…

Greyp G6.X Limited Who could be better placed to build an electrically assisted mountain bike than the man behind Croatia’s greatest ever EV hypercar manufacturer? Yep, in case you weren’t aware, Mate Rimac also builds bikes. Rimac Automobili’s sister company Greyp has been going since 2008, but its latest product – the G6 – has really caught our attention. The X is the top-spec G6 and comes complete with a carbon frame, carbon wheels, Öhlins suspension and a 250W electric motor. As you’d expect from Rimac, the battery tech is pretty impressive too. The high-density 700Wh unit provides a pedal-assisted range of around 60 miles, but it’s also swappable so you can bring a fully charged spare along in your rucksack. More stats? Well, the G6.X weighs 25kg, can hit…

“HAVING 487LB FT INSTANTLY SUPPLIED TO ALL FOUR WHEELS PELTS THE 2 ALONG WITH EASE” FOR Beautiful design and build quality, Scandi-cool image AGAINST Performance Pack’s suspension too rigid without adjustment The Polestar 1 coupe wasn’t really what Volvo’s electric offshoot is all about. It was a limited edition £140k luxo-hybrid. This new all-electric Polestar 2 saloon, and its upcoming cousin, the Polestar 3 SUV, are where we find out how seriously to take this ‘electric performance brand’. Prices start at £46,900 (at the moment), for a Polestar 2 equipped with a 78kWh battery pack and electric motors on the front and rear axle. Polestar says it’s planning a two-wheel-drive version, and a 2 with a smaller battery, which will bring the cost down towards 30-something thousand. It won’t be…

FOR Comfy, capable, respectable AGAINST Sometimes you wish for more simplicity I suspect I’m in one of the least sorted versions of the facelifted E-Class. UK-spec cars aren’t ready, and this German one has air suspension, which won’t be available here. The ride’s lumpy, as if the wheels are too heavy. Coils on the pre-facelift car were smoother, and I suspect still are now – Mercedes claims no significant changes in that department. Also, I’m in the E300 e, the plug-in hybrid. Again, this brings drawbacks. The petrol engine is a diesely sounding thing which you notice all the more because much of the time it’s absent, its job replaced by electric urge. Also the battery makes a lump in the boot floor the size of a trombone case. Ah,…

Join me as we scoot across into the centre seat of the Murray T.50. It’s much easier than in the McLaren F1 as the carbon fibre main chassis spars no longer frame the centre seat. So sit backwards on the high sill, pivot around, slide feet across flat floor into footwell, wriggle bum over and drop down into cupping seat. You’ll now give an involuntary sigh. Several reasons for this, the least of which is the small bit of physical exertion you’ve just undergone. Above that is the sense that you have plugged yourself in and the fit, the driving position and sculpted seat are all perfect. And then the symmetry of it all hits you. From the BAC Mono to the McLaren Speedtail, a central seat is just better.…

“IT’S BRILLIANT, AS POINTY AND RESPONSIVE AS A GIANT, 4.7-LITRE V12-POWERED GO-KART” In a world redefined by McLaren’s virtuoso F1, the F50 was the first Ferrari supercar that found itself on the back foot. It also had the unenviable task of following up the epochal F40, the last car developed under the by now rheumy but still ferocious eye of Enzo Ferrari himself. Underappreciated for much of the 25 years that have elapsed since its arrival, there’s been a correction of late, and anyone who’s been lucky enough to drive an F50 will tell you why, when their heart has stopped trying to escape through their ribcage. It’s brilliant, as pointy and responsive as a giant, 4.7-litre V12-powered go-kart. That engine shared plenty of DNA with the 3.5-litre used by…

Necessity is the mother of invention. When BMW needed to fast-track its M1 supercar’s homologation, the answer came in the form of a one-make race series that people still get dewy-eyed about 40 years later. The resultant M1 Procar was devastating looking – a bewinged, fat-tyred, mid-engined cartoon extrapolation of the great Giorgetto Giugiaro’s delicately hewn wedgy original. Better still, F1’s powers-that-be agreed to let the series run as a support race, the five fastest drivers in that weekend’s F1 practice sessions up against world sports car and European touring car drivers. With cash for first, second and third positions, and an M1 for the overall winner, the grids were busy and egotistical. Niki Lauda won in 1979, Nelson Piquet in an expanded 1980 series. BMW Motorsport Works’ red, white…

THE OLD CAR LOOKS SO… TAME. YOU SURE IT’S AN RS6? Yup. Things were different back in 2002, when the ‘C5’ generation, the first RS6, was launched. With a twin-turbocharged 4.2-litre V8 co-developed with Cosworth, it really shifts. Fast even by today’s standards, with a 0–62mph time of less than five seconds. But save for those necessarily swollen wheelarches and two ovular exhausts, it could just as easily be a 2.0-litre diesel. A non-car person would never guess it was anything special. Which is precisely the root of its appeal. Subtle is classy. Subtle is cool. THE NEW RS6 IS MANY THINGS. BUT IT ISN’T SUBTLE Every generation of performance car looks angrier than the one it replaces. Conceptually, a family car crossed with a performance car remains a cool…

HELLO £22,815 OTR/£23,595 as tested/£285pcm WHY IT’S HERE Does an EV have to be pricey to be good? DRIVER Tom Harrison THE MORE OR LESS IDENTICAL VW UP, SEAT MII AND SKODA CITIGO have been around since 2011, and we’ve rated them since day dot. In the early days only the Up got the option of electric propulsion, but now they all do. In fact with the Mii and Citigo it’s e-power or nowt, which makes them their respective manufacturers’ first ever EVs. Happily things have moved on since the earliest circa 2013 e-Ups. They were vastly expensive relative to a normal Up, Mii or Citigo and wouldn’t even do 90 miles on a charge. The new-gen cars have double the battery capacity and almost double the range. We’re talking…

Mini JCW Clubman GOODBYE £35,045 OTR/£37,425 as tested/£415pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s a hot estate, and who doesn’t love one of those? DRIVER Jason Barlow Mini Electric HELLO £30,900 OTR/£33,900 as tested/£427pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is the electric Mini also the best Mini? DRIVER Jason Barlow THE HANDOVER HAPPENED AT BMW HQ IN FARNBOROUGH. 87.5 MILES down there in the JCW, return home in the Electric. Instantly, you have to think different. A breezy cruise down (although the JCW doesn’t ride brilliantly), then reality: the Electric’s digital display informed me that we had 90 miles of range – on a full charge. Do electric cars need to be ‘run in’, like in the old days? 90? Part of the deal with EVs involves secondguessing. Mini’s 141-mile range claim was being…

THE GOOD 0–60 in 2.9 seems conservative considering there’s 807 torque-filled AWD electrified horsepower ready to jump off the line Honda Rules WHOAA!!!!! Maximillian H Brady Well, that’s just beautiful! Prince Traz Sold out? :( Hendra_Di Probably the most beautiful Lambo ever. Especially that paint Zaid Baig THE BAD That’s a bit low on hp and performance to be considered a hypercar. Seggs and Bugattis have 1,300hp or more for the same price range Greg Taylor I need to stage a military coup to afford one AdAstra Too bad it’s all sold out, I have a couple million dollars lying around that I don’t know what to do with Timothy Sou THE UGLY Piece of shiittt Patrick Grebien How P155ED would you be if you won the lottery, And still…

Such are the strange times that we live in, the F1 season has only just kicked off and F1 2020 has already landed in our laps. Understandably, the game’s a snapshot of what could have been rather than a true reflection, but that does mean you get to hack around the new Hanoi and Zandvoort circuits long before Lewis and chums do. New this year is My Team mode which has you not just as the star signing of a new 11th F1 team, but also running the financial, logistical and branding side of the business. For us, that means firing our teammate if he beats us too many times.…

Pretend, for a minute, you’re the boss of a big car company. The time has come for you to sign off on the development of a new, small electric car. And you have a number of options. You could take one of your existing, petrol-powered cars, remove its engine and stick an electric motor in its place. Cheap? Perhaps. But tricky, and you run the risk of having to fill the boot with batteries because there’s nowhere else that you’re able to put them. Or you could develop something entirely new – as countries transition from ICE to EV at different rates, a platform that can do both makes a good deal of sense. But if you’re feeling brave, why not give your engineers carte blanche to do whatever they…

AUDI RS5 SPORTBACK £67,505 FOR Foolproof handling, nicely styled, luxurious AGAINST Punchy but forgettable engine, the subtlest of updates Bigger infotainment screen, tweaked grille, an RS mode shortcut button on the wheel. That’s the new stuff on this RS5 Sportback, updated a year after it was introduced. The rest is as you were, so a 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 that can seriously shift, and safe, secure handling. We’d go for the identically endowed RS4 instead and enjoy not having to worry about bootspace. If you insist on something swoopy, take this over the Coupe.JR FORD FOCUS ST MOUNTUNE m330 £569 (+ Focus ST) FOR Uncannily smooth torque boost, simplicity, value AGAINST ST’s nemesis, torquesteer, is back with a vengeance Mountune’s upgrade adds deeper oceans of torque to this already muscular hatch,…

McLaren F1 Every great story has a strong beginning, and the McLaren F1 is no different. On 8 March 1990, Gordon Murray addressed the newly recruited McLaren Cars team in the company’s Genesis HQ. The meeting lasted 10 hours. “I went into the detailed targets: maximum weight 1,000kg, maximum width 1.8m, front and rear overhangs the absolute minimum because I wanted to concentrate the mass within the wheelbase to minimise the polar moment of inertia. Aerodynamically we had to maintain the centre of pressure position, something production car manufacturers never addressed and which accounts for high-speed instability. I just listed everything that was inherently bad on mid-engined sports cars and said we intended to avoid it. “The engine question remained open but I thought a 5.0 V12 would do the…

“THE CHIRON MOVES SO QUICKLY, IT REALLY DOES PROVOKE STRANGE SENSATIONS IN THE DEPTHS OF YOUR STOMACH” Even the most poverty stricken rental car has been engineered to do things most of us never get to find out about. So it’s worth considering for a moment the lengths Bugatti had to go to in order to make a car with 1,479 bhp work in every global market its parent company Volkswagen sells cars in. The Chiron is here because it’s a feat of engineering beyond anything in the 135-year history of the motor car. The Veyron, the Chiron’s equally important predecessor, was dubbed the automotive world’s Concorde. There was no sequel to that, but Bugatti decided to have another crack at it. This isn’t just supersonic, it’s a moon-shot. “It’s…

“THIS IS A LANDMARK CAR FOR AN UPSCALE BRAND” There’s a rhinoceros in the rearview camera. The parking sensors are having a light digital panic, and I’m suddenly rehearsing the phone call I may have to make to Aston Martin, though there’s probably no tick box for ‘impaled by a rhino horn’ on the insurance form. Luckily, I happen to be in Aston’s newest and most rugged variant, the DBX SUV, so at least there’s a fair bit of metal in which to hide. A comforting thought, right up until one of the glorious beasts – her name is Mirijam, apparently – ambles around to the front of the car and snorts softly, the kind of bass infrasound that reverberates in your chest and makes you want to go and…

TOPGEAR: SOCRATES! LONG TIME NO SEE. LET US TALK OF DRIVEIN CINEMAS, FOR THEY ARE BACK! SOCRATES: So I hear, TopGear. But please, let us begin at the beginning. To know where we are, we must know from where we have come. TG: Most wise, Socrates. Well, the story of the drive-in begins with an obese, angry mother. S: As do so many great quests. TG: Quite so. In New Jersey, in the late Twenties, a young entrepreneur named Richard Hollingshead found himself cooped up at home with his frustrated, overweight mother. S: Why was she frustrated? TG: Because she was very enormous, and therefore could not visit the cinema. At least not in comfort, and not without several shoehornwielding ushers to extract her afterwards. So her diligent son decided…

HELLO £23,775 OTR/£25,225 as tested/£318pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is a small French car supposed to be posh and grown up? DRIVER Ollie Kew ON THE VERY DAY THE PRIME MINISTER GAVE THE BRITISH PEOPLE that infamous ‘simple instruction’ to stay at home, a Peugeot 208 was delivered to my house. Not this Peugeot 208, though. The blue one that arrived had 99bhp and a manual gearbox. Ordinarily, the whole TG team would’ve had a steer. Instead, it became a lockdown companion, covering a handful of miles on weekly shopping trips to keep the battery alive. When lockdown eased it went away, and I wrote about how it’s so refined at speed, so beautifully put together inside, and so utterly planted in corners, it simply doesn’t feel ‘French’. It has a…

REPORT 7 £85,865 OTR/£103,815 as tested/£1,086pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s one of the world’s cleverest PHEVs. But will it stay relevant? DRIVER Charlie Turner AS THE LOCKDOWN RESTRICTIONS EASED AND HAVING BEEN RECENTLY reunited with the Panamera following its time with Tom Harrison, I took the opportunity to stretch its legs in the name of team morale. An editorial team thrives off creativity and we have many of our best ideas in the pub, but with current restrictions preventing that I decided it was high time I took the pub to the team. Loaded with a suitable amount of creative juice supplies in the form of Camden Hells and Curious Brew I set off on my socially distanced delivery round. The joy of going for a properly long drive following…

ECONOMY RUN WHO: ROWAN HORNCASTLE, ED AT LARGE TG.COM This one is easy: the road trip from London to Austria for Speed Week 2015. To save money, someone thought it’d be cheaper to drive the Range Rover Sport SVR than put it on a trailer. What they hadn’t accounted for was a lot of autobahn driving and my heavy right foot. For large chunks of Germany I had it pinned up against its 165mph velocity belt with the live fuel consumption reading less than 1mpg. THE AMAZING SPYDER MAN WHO: CHARLIE TURNER, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Having already driven the P1 and the LaFerrari launch in the diary I headed to Weissach for seat time in the 918, with Dr Frank Walliser as my guide and passenger. Following a toddle round local…