Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2020 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

Rebooting an icon. A delicate balancing act, and one easy to get horribly wrong. For every new Mini there’s a new Beetle. For every Ford GT there’s a Ford Thunderbird. In other words, for every sensitive, redolent homage, there is the sort of tin-eared tribute act you’d find playing in a flat-roofed pub at 10.30pm on a Thursday night. For example, 2007’s Fiat 500 ranks as a rare hit, a reboot that truly recaptured the spirit and charm of the original. More than can be said for Fiat’s subsequent attempts to stretch the nuova 500 in new and undesired directions. The 500L – a Panda-based mini-MPV thing evoking the original 500 much as Caesar’s Palace in Vegas evokes Rome’s Pantheon – was bad enough. But it was the 500L MPW…

Back in the days when it was considered fine to shoehorn thousands of people into an exhibition hall to rebreathe the same air, the watch industry loved to hold a big old trade show. Retailers and journalists from all over the world would descend on the Swiss cities of Geneva and Basel to see everything new that watchmakers had to offer. The most notable things were, firstly, that there are more watch brands than any sane person would care to remember. Secondly, at least half those countless brands claim to have some link to cars. Has it all gone a bit far? Watchmakers are generally a quiet and unassuming bunch, but apparently they can’t get enough of continually pheromone spraying themselves with the cologne of burnt rubber to make their…

Just how big do you want your car company to be? It’s a relevant question, because the Peugeot Group and FCA are finalising their merger – and taking, by the way, the silly made up name Stellantis. As with every mega-merger it’ll mean less biodiversity on Planet Car, because vehicles from different brands get pulled by the same engines and ride on the same platforms and use the same electronics. We’ll have Peugeot, Fiat, Citroen, Alfa Romeo, Vauxhall, Jeep, DS, Abarth and Maserati springing from the same gene pool. Plus, from the US market perspective, Chrysler, Dodge and Ram. You wouldn’t want them to share too much. Just like there are complaints when VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat knock out cars not easily distinguished. Can you really tell their crossovers…

£35,880 After government grant FOR Comfortable, nimble, plenty of space, lots of IDs incoming AGAINST Trying to avoid scaring anyone makes it a bit forgettable Volkswagen needs the ID.3 to sell in vast numbers, not simply virtue signal from the corner of the showroom. The born-again post-Dieselgate company makes no secret of the fact it considers the ID.3 its next definitive people’s car, after the Beetle and the Golf. And to please most people most of the time, the ID.3 is deliberately not an oddball. Digest its slabby-yet-slippery silhouette, get your head around the chunky drive selector, and the ID.3 has few surprises left up its sleeve. As a result, there’s little going on here that’ll alarm or confuse the traditional Golf customer. It’s just a five-door, five-seat hatch, with…

Never bring a knife to a gunfight. And never bring an Ariel Nomad R to a week-long camping extravaganza in Wales. It’s a less well known epithet, but recently invented since watching a brand new, near-600bhp Audi RS6 Avant turn up, at unusual speed, indifferently dragging behind it the giant stainless steel bullet of a Airstream Missouri. To call it a ‘caravan’ seems a bit mean. It’s more an aerodynamic flatlet. Or possibly a bijou mobile palace, hooked up to a hunk of German tendon on wheels. Suffice to say, Charlie Turner has full insulation from the elements, four comfortable berths, an oven and a luxury toilet. I have a tight spiral of bin bags, two plastic seats, a packet of fig rolls and a… spade. To explain: we are…

Ladies and gentlemen… start your engines, switch on your motors and wring out your socks, because TopGear’s festival of all things fast, Speed Week 2020, is almost ready to get underway. Please remember to drive sensibly at all times – unless egged on by a colleague and/or photographer – check all tyre tread is of a legal depth (because it won’t be for very long) and all tanks are brimmed. You will find alcohol hand gel in every vehicle, these are not for drinking around the campfire when we run out of beer, and please wipe down all surfaces with the diligence of a forensic scientist. All tents must be secured to the ground and not airborne over the lower hairpin and make sure you’ve had a large bacon, sausage…

Of all the cars I’ve ever driven… this is the daftest. I mean what is it for? Usually a good place to start. After a conversation with its creator, American drift legend Vaughan Gittin Jr, and several hours of thought, the best I can come up with is ‘cocking about’. And that’s fine with me. I mean, it’s not exactly a standard Ford Mustang Mach-E now is it? Most quick electric cars have a motor on each axle. Tesla is talking about putting a pair in the back of its quickest Model S. This has seven motors, each developing 200bhp, three on the front axle, four on the back. That’s 1,400bhp, and somewhere around 4,500lb ft of torque at the wheels. You can set it up how you like: 4WD…

A pair of hot hatches. Well, one warm and one slightly overdone hatch if we’re being pernickety. The track is as moist as a Nigella Lawson carrot cake and, to take this culinary comparison to its natural and welcome end, I’m sweating like a MasterChef finalist who’s just burnt his bouillabaisse. The circuit is open, 16 of the fastest and most exciting cars on the planet are in the pitlane and I have my choice of the keys. I’m drawn magnetically to the exotic stuff, but equally repelled by the absence of friction and a very real possibility of parking one in the Irish sea. My ego is screaming “GO BIG!” but my head takes the win as I drop into the familiar, squidgy embrace of the GTI’s tartan cloth.…

HELLO £50,635 OTR/£58,990 as tested/£570pcm WHY IT’S HERE To prove LRs are best when they’re more ‘utility’ than ‘sport’ DRIVER Tom Ford THIS ONE’S BEEN A LITTLE WHILE COMING: ORIGINALLY DUE TO appear in August, our TopGear Discovery Sport has finally managed to escape the clutches of the COVID shutdown, along with possibly the longest model designation on the fleet. Yes, the Land Rover Discovery Sport D240 AWD HSE R-Dynamic has landed. And I specced it. Which means that it gets plenty of testable options, the most obvious of which is Firenze Red metallic paint, a contrast black roof and downgraded black 18-inch wheels (standard being 20s – more on that choice later). I’ve also dropped in – on top of the already rounded HSE spec – a black exterior…

REPORT 2 £29,160 OTR/£29,170 as tested/£299pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s cool, but can it cope with family life? DRIVER Jack Rix AS AN INNER-CITY DWELLER WITHOUT OFF-STREET PARKING, I thought figuring out how to charge my EV would be a monumental headache, and then actually charging it a regular pain in the arse. But no, it’s fascinating, sampling what’s on offer and figuring out what works. Option one involves plugging a 10m extension lead into a three-pin socket in my hallway, running the cable down our front path, across the pavement (covered by a rubber mat to avoid any crippling law suits). Charging at a puny 2.3kW means 15 hours to 100 per cent, but of course I’m never charging from zero, so as overnight replenishment it’s working fine… not…

REPORT 2 £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 IF I HAD MY THREE WISHES ON THIS 208, I’D HAVE TO START OFF BY sorting out the driving position, and getting the engine start button to work straight away. Then I’d be deleting the panoramic glass roof. Now this isn’t a weight-obsessed grumble about the centre of gravity. The 208 is not a car that sells on handling. It sells on its spaceship interior. And why wouldn’t you want that bathed in all the glory of a beautiful summer’s day? Answer: heat. This is my bugbear with giganto-glass roofs: they provide a deeply ironic real-life case study of the greenhouse effect. And no matter how…

SPA TREATMENT WHO: STEPHEN DOBIE, DEPUTY EDITOR, TG.COM First ever visit to Spa-Francorchamps for a track day in my old Clio 200 Cup, me and my best mate decided to camp in a nearby field rather than stay in a hotel. More money for fuel and fine Belgian fries; you can see our logic. Cue biblical overnight rain and having to dry our tent out in the pit garage while we lapped the world’s greatest race circuit. In the blazing sun, I might add. Spa’s climate is best described as ‘changeable’. BACK TO SCHOOL WHO: PETER RAWLINS, SUB-EDITOR On the penultimate day of term, the majority of Year 13 hit the town for a celebratory night out before we all headed off to university. Naturally, me and two friends decided…

Pity the new Puma ST. Got a bloody tough job on its hands, this one. And that’s without having any decent rivals to speak of. There’s no VW T-Cross GTI, no such thing as a Cupra Arona, and Hyundai hasn’t quite got around to sprinkling the ‘N’ magic over a Kona. Save for this new Ford, it’s pretty barren on the small hot crossover scene right now. Note to self – we need a better collective noun for these things. No, the Puma ST’s problem is the enemy within. The Puma is, when all said and done, a Ford Fiesta wearing a puffer jacket and standing on tiptoes. That means this new 197bhp ultimate version is based on the greatest small hot hatch money can buy: the splendiferous Fiesta ST.…

Clearly, rumours of the Nissan Z car’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. “The Z, as a pure sports car, represents the spirit of Nissan,” explains Nissan boss Makoto Uchida, and this new prototype is a big, yellow clue as to the upcoming 370Z successor. There is a six-speed manual gearbox (yay!) and an ‘enhanced’ twin-turbo V6 of unspecified capacity, with an unspecified amount of power. We only know it’ll have more than before (the 370Z had 325bhp) because each successive generation of Z has, naturally, offered a bigger bang. Like any good child, it pays respects to its elders, too. Design boss Alfonso Albaisa admitted that after “countless studies and sketches”, he and his team decided that the Z Proto was to become a time traveller, taking in Z cars…

Pro ject CARS 3 Whereas the previous two Project CARS games were pitched as hardcore motorsport sims for the sort of people who wear their racing boots to bed, this third game has been remixed as a more accessible, arcade-y take with many of the sim options stripped out. It’s like Black Sabbath releasing an album full of bubblegum pop songs. But, whisper it, it’s actually better this way. Heavily reworked joypad controls mean it’s hugely playable even if you haven’t blown your life savings turning your desk into a force feedback cockpit. Meanwhile, the new, totally overhauled career structure is also a far more pleasurable way to interact with the staggering library of cars and tracks. For anyone who plans on playing from a sofa rather than a Sparco,…

01 Dinky Toys The miniature car division of Frank Hornby’s Meccano empire. Introduced in 1934, it survived World War Two despite its factory ceasing toy production, and continued as a household name until 1979, when declining popularity saw it swallowed up by rival brand Matchbox. 02 Matchbox Arriving in 1953, Matchbox focused on highly detailed toy cars that could fit inside a matchbox, because one of the creators’ daughters was only allowed to bring small toy vehicles into school. It survives to this day, now owned by American giant Mattel. 03 Hot Wheels Perhaps the most iconic small push-along car of all time, Hot Wheels has been going strong since 1968 when it stormed the market with brightly coloured hot rod miniatures. its genius was to fit all its model…

“FEW TURN THE ACT OF MOTORISED FORWARD MOTION INTO A MORE ARTFUL EXPERIENCE” £249,600 FOR Sublime build quality, engineering integrity, phenomenal refinement AGAINST Heavy, thirsty, costs a quarter of a million quid All-new, you say? Rolls-Royce insists that the only components carried over from the first Goodwood-era Ghost are the Spirit of Ecstasy that sits at the prow of that vast bonnet, and the umbrella that nestles within the B-pillars in that faintly Q-from-James Bond gadgety manner. It also maintains that this is the most technologically advanced Rolls-Royce yet, home to some new hardware that sharpens the brief to deliver a car designed to be driven by the owner as much as it is to be driven in. This isn’t quite luxury with a conscience, not with a 6.75-litre twin-turbo…

£250,000 FOR It’s a racecar with number plates. What’s not to like? AGAINST You’ll need to be a track day geek to make sense of it The 620R is the raciest road legal McLaren yet: think of it as a slightly softened racecar as opposed to a pumped up Sports Series car. Using the 570S GT4 as its base, it’s actually much more powerful. Motorsport regulations keep GT4 car engines wound below 500bhp but with the rulebooks duly binned, McLaren’s 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 now peaks at 620PS, or 612bhp. Homologating it for the street means it’s not eligible to race, but its overtly hardcore nature will likely stymie frequent road use, too. On first impression it feels surplus to the range – McLaren makes a GT4 race car and the…

At some point you have to have a word with yourself. “Enough,” says the inner monologue. “You’ve got away with it so far, there’s nothing to prove, your hands are sweaty and if you were to get out of the car right now, you’d look so ill and dishevelled that someone would immediately point the Covid temperature gun at your forehead.” That point did not come through the long right after Church, where a chance glance before walloping the brakes up the hill to Rocket revealed 140mph showing on the 911 Turbo’s speedo. No, by that stage I’d already given myself The Chat. Because clinging on to the 911 Turbo on a dry track in bright sunshine was a wisp of pink summer blossom compared to driving the McLaren 765LT…

“CHARACTER DOES NOT COME WITH PERFECTION” The weather is appalling. Water is gushing from the sky like a burst mains pipe, there are salmon making enthusiastic progress up Anglesey’s Corkscrew and a small ship has just launched into turn one after mistaking it for the North Sea. Last night, the campsite blew away. As in, literally blew away. At least one staff tent was last seen kiting itself merrily in the direction of Aberffraw, and no one has seen staffer Greg Potts since. My task for today? Assess convertibles. Ha-bloomin’-ha, TopGear office. It’s so dark that the first time I dare to venture out, the Morgan has its lights on. I think. Mainly because they don’t seem to do very much, a soft and careful light trickling from the headlights…

Welcome to the most intriguing clash of Speed Week 2020. Like a chart showdown between Iron Maiden and Billie Eilish – an icon of heavy metal vs something electronic the kids are into – logic suggests completely different entities for completely different audiences. Much like those artists surely live together in Spotify playlists somewhere, though, there’s plenty to suggest these cars might feasibly be rivals. Both are specced to £140,000, both have around 600bhp (the Porsche’s peak 751bhp figure is only for launch control), both dispatch 0–62mph in circa three seconds and both tip the scales north of two tonnes. Yowch. Or not. See, they’ve each been bestowed with an eyewatering amount of technology to counteract their heft. Four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering, torque vectoring, ceramic brakes, a roof tent (very…

“ITS 100-LITRE ENDURANCE TANK MEANT IT COULD REACH ANGLESEY WITHOUT STOPPING” Ever since lockdown lifted, I’ve been using my Big Book of Excuses to Drive so often I’m already planning a second volume before Christmas. You could argue this somehow correlates with the fact I have a six-month-old baby in the house too, but I also feel very strongly that every nappy used should be replaced instantly by means of a quick drive to the local Tesco. Before the global pandemic and war against people wearing (or not wearing) masks, I may have taken driving for granted. To the point it’d often feel like a chore, ditched in favour of air travel and – more recently – Zoom calls. Yet the moment we were all told not to go and…

Modern Formula One facilities are phenomenally safe. Run off the track and you usually have a Disneyland car park’s worth of asphalt in which to make your way back onto the course. Compare that to 1989’s Stunt Car Racer, where straying beyond track limits on the rollercoaster-like elevated circuits would see you plunging a minimum of 50 feet and ending up embedded in the dirt like a wayward javelin. The two things have more in common than you would think, though. Stunt Car Racer was the brainchild of Geoff Crammond, better known as the human scientific calculator behind the Grand Prix series of F1 simulators that started in the 1990s. Stunt Car Racer is what happens when hardcore physics nerds let their hair down: an utterly ludicrous racing game with…

REPORT 2 £54,340 OTR/£55,050 as tested/£504pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is the new Supra a better daily than a Porsche Cayman? DRIVER Rowan Horncastle “HERE WE GO AGAIN,” I THOUGHT AS ANOTHER WINDOW CRACKED open and started to roll down. It’s been the same for the last few weeks: predictable. A bit like when a dog spins around scoping out a landing pad for its latest arse egg. So I knew what was coming next. “What is it?” “The new Supra,” I say. “A what?” “The new Toyota Supra.” “Ah…!” Being British, they don’t ask any more. Just scan up, down and across the enchanting blue paint. Occasionally, I get a “Sick car!” to close off the conversation, but it’s normally a slow nod of appreciation. But the fact the Supra…

GOODBYE £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 Stephen Dobie AS THE JIMNY DROVE OFF INTO THE SUNSET IT LEFT NOT ONLY THE TG Garage, but Great Britain as a whole. Emissions regulations have booted the wee Suzuki from our showrooms, its gruff nat-asp 1.5-litre engine just no longer clean enough to limbo under tightening targets. It’s funny how Jexit’s softened my feelings. See, we’d not fully seen eye to eye. As an everyday road car, covering the sort of motorway miles I do, it was shambolic. Especially in a stern crosswind. Top tip, Jimny owners: whenever the Met Office sees fit to name a storm, stay at home. Its shrunk-in-the-wash dimensions are more…

REPORT 2 £57,720 OTR/£63,395 as tested/£692pcm WHY IT’S HERE Volvo is stopping diesel engines, but does hybrid suit a family SUV? DRIVER Andy Franklin OK, I’M GOING TO HAVE TO ADMIT IT, I’M A VIRGIN. THIS IS MY FIRST sexperience of charging up an electric car. And, like many of our readers, I suspect I’m not alone, as there are only 92,913 (SMMT, April 2020) electric cars registered for a UK population of 66.8 million people (ONS, April 2019). I’ll also confess I actually think a PHEV makes more sense in the short term, while we get to grips with creating an infrastructure that actually supports electric cars. Currently, I average 16 miles a day – just short of the UK average of 20.3 (DfT, 2019) – which is doing…

When Land Rover revealed the all-new Defender, one optional extra we didn’t bank on being available was the Explore R smartphone. Of course, you don’t actually need to buy a Defender to grab the phone, but it’s supposed to be just as rugged and has apparently been drop-tested from 1.8 metres onto steel. It runs on the Android OS, has a Gorilla glass screen that works with gloves, and is waterproof at depths of up to 1.5 metres for 35 minutes. Perfect for when you drop it into the toilet when you’re down the pub. Landroverexplore.co.uk; £399…

1 IT’S BASICALLY A VW ID.3 IN A FROCK Well, it’s the first Skoda to be based on the VW Group’s MEB platform anyway. That means you’ll be able to choose from either a 62kWh battery and 176bhp motor, or 82kWh and 200bhp. Skoda reckons up to 242 miles of range from the 60, and 316 miles from the 80 version. Both get 50kW DC charging as standard, or you can unlock 100kW+ rapid charging via the options list… 2 IT’S A RWD DRIFT MACHINE Perhaps the drifty bit is taking things too far, but it is exclusively rear-driven… for now. The 60 will hit, um, 62mph in 8.7 seconds, while the more powerful Enyaq 80 will do it two tenths quicker. Later, there’ll be a range topping vRS version…

Here we go then, Polestar 2 against Tesla 3. It’s the first time that someone has taken the battle directly to Tesla, so that’s a milestone in itself. No one has gone for the Model S’s jugular other than with plug-in hybrid saloons, and rivals have toyed around the edges of the Model X, building their own take on electric SUVs rather than copying the gawky MPV-ish Tesla. Technically the Polestar is a crossover, but don’t tell me these two won’t be cross-shopped. Almost identical price and size, premium image, these are the cars that are designed to convince mainstream buyers that electric is now a mainstream choice. A point on that. Both these cars have Performance after their name. You don’t want that. It adds thousands and you just…

PORSCHE 911 TARGA £98,170 FOR Beautifully built, lovely to look at, roof is a work of art AGAINST Neither as airy or good to drive as the full convertible As far as Porsche builds a boulevardier, this is it. The 911 Targa is only available in 4WD guise and costs from £98,170, making it about £10k more than the equivalent coupe. Worth it, if you like a bit of roof theatre, but not if you enjoy driving. Weighing 100kg more than the coupe it does blunt the dynamics. Diametrically opposed to the GT3 RS, then, but if you hang out on the Croisette, this is the one to have. OM SUZUKI IGNIS £13,999 FOR Looks ace and drives way better than the Jimny (RIP) AGAINST Not exactly quick, and it’s…

CORNER NAMES FACILITIES 1 WORLD’S BLEAKEST LAUNDERETTE Tumble drier turned fetid damp pants into warmer damp pants 2 PIT BOXES Aka snack storage, and accommodation for ex-tent owners 3 WORLD’S ANGRIEST WINDMILL Enough electricity to power Cardiff. Wobblier than a Morgan’s chassis 4 CONTROL TOWER With stunning views of the circuit, Irish Sea, and Jack’s air mattress at take-off speed 5 DELUXE CATERING Many a polystyrene-nested scotch egg wolfed down here 6 EXECUTIVE BATHROOM Many a dubiously prepared scotch egg regretted in here 7 HAPPY CAMPERS Wind-blasted tents uncomfortable, unless you’ve been in the Huracán’s bucket seat all day 8 EMERGENCY HOTEL Less likely to blow away in winds…

You’re right to be cynical about this pair of honed, hardened Speed Week veterans. Back in 2017, the BMW M2 Competition was a finalist in our horsepower extravaganza. The Alpine A110 won the whole shebang, pickling us in its cocktail of perfectly balanced small size, low weight, and Goldilocks power. Three years on, both have morphed into faster, stiffer, steeply priced evolutions that don’t seem to add up. The M2 CS isn’t a stripped club special. The good work done weaving the roof and bonnet from carbon fibre is undone by heftier uprated cooling beneath that new hood vent and standard adaptive suspension. You still get back seats, heated front chairs, aircon, and a hi-fi, though the armrest is deleted, to save 0.01 kilos. You’re spending £23,000 more than the…

Camp was instantly divided into the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. At one end of the spectrum, Ollie Marriage – who arrived in his own VW California equipped for a Tiki-themed weekend jaunt to the moon. At the other, Mark Riccioni – who’d never done a day’s camping. Luckily, he was familiar with torture (camping’s long-lost cousin), having driven his genuine Ferrari racecar across Snowdonia. For a lucky few, a selection of glampervans – a fantastically ironic golden Ford Nugget, VW Grand California and Mercedes Marco Polo – were available. Occupancy of these depended on two things: timeliness and luck. But with the warm, golden sun setting, we didn’t care where we slept. Fresh out of lockdown, we’d be happy with a bed of nails. So we did what everyone who…

THE FIRST FULL ROTATION OCCURRED AT 35MPH AND WAS LARGELY DUE TO THE FACT I WAS CONVULSING WITH LAUGHTER The second happened a lap later and even though I was still giggling like a child, the reason for the spin was me applying nothing like enough corrective lock, nothing like quickly enough. But then, driving a replica Aston Martin DB5 that contains plenty of E46 BMW M3 and runs skinny Avons from a historic race car does require some adjustment when your head is adjusted to a load of very fast modern tackle. And before you ask, no, you can’t buy this car. That might already have been mentioned earlier in this camping fantasy, but I’ll happily raise a hand to suggest that you bloody well should be able to.…

The Aston Martin Lagonda Vignale Concept was presented at the 1993 Geneva motor show alongside what would become the new DB7. It was produced for Aston by Ghia, a marriage of two storied design houses. The name came from Alfredo Vignale’s outfit, a noted Italian coachbuilding firm bought by Ford in 1973 along with Carrozzeria Ghia. You’ll know both badges better for being slapped on the side of top trim Mondeos for over 30 years. The Vignale concept was a generally well received attempt to gauge the interest in a four-door Lagonda. That endless sagging rear and pizza pan alloys evoke a long bygone era, while the deep-pile carpets, luxurious leather and wooden accents were designed to conjure the feeling of being in a gentleman’s club – the classy kind,…

LOOK AT THAT SMILING LITTLE TWINGO! C’EST BON? Oui, très bon. We’ll stop with the GCSE French, though. We’re here to pore over the recipe for what makes a great city car and see how that recipe has changed for Renault over the past three decades. Clearly, the first step of said recipe is a cute and likeable name. Back in 1992, Renault used a mash-up of twist, swing and tango to come up with the rather lovely Twingo. If you were questioning the MkI’s success, given only a handful of imports snuck into the UK – over 2.6 million were sold, and despite European production ending in 2007, it was built right up until June 2012 in South America. Handily, December of that same year also marked the arrival…

GOODBYE £98,850 OTR/£101,700 as tested/£1,158pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is the RS6 everything to everyone? With bells on? DRIVER Ollie Marriage THE RS6 LEAVES TOMORROW. I’VE JUST GIVEN IT A FINAL VACUUM out to get rid of concrete dust, canal weed, bike muck and the last dregs of garden waste from a tip run last weekend. It’s lived a life. I’ve found it bloody useful. Big boot. Swallows four and holiday gear no problem. Wears a roofbox well. Damn comfortable too. Barely hear the wind whistle around bikes on the roof and the ride on 22s is miraculous. Not once did any passenger say it was ‘a bit positive’. If you want an estate car, this is a goodie. But this is an RS6, emphatically not just an estate car. And…

HELLO £56,570 OTR/£58,365 as tested/£626pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can this hot hatch justify a sports car price tag? DRIVER Ollie Marriage THE DELIVERY DRIVER WAS IN PAIN. “YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE THE controls for the lumbar support are, do you?” he said, hobbling out of the sparkling A45 he’d just parked at mine. “I’ve completely done my back in driving down here.” I’d been busy taking in the £1,795 mountain grey magno paint, but this jerked me out of my reverie. “I’ve got this,” I thought. “It’ll be on the side of the seat or with the rest of the electric seat controls on the door.” But no. I couldn’t find it either. Because there are always better things to do than read the owner’s manual, I assumed there was…