BBC Top Gear Magazine June 2015

Convertibles used to be the cars that purists looked down on: wobbly show-offs bought by people more interested in being seen than driving. You might just about get away with a roadster designed from the outset to be rooffess, but there was still a condescension about soft-tops, a coupe being the ‘driver’s choice’. These days it’s somewhat different. With new materials and stiffer chassis – not to mention parallel development, rather than lopping the top of an existing car – convertibles and spiders suddenly have advantages. They drive barely differently from their hard-top brethren, yet they allow for that full-on 4D experiential performance, the removal of the roof allowing a greater assault on your senses from engine and environment. They add that visceral exposure without removing the driving pleasure. Things…

TWITTER.COM/BBC_TOPGEAR FACEBOOK.COM/TOPGEAR SECOND FLOOR A, ENERGY CENTRE, IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY LONDON LIMITED, MEDIA VILLAGE, 201 WOOD LANE, LONDON W12 7TN FROM TOPGEAR.COM Meet the 526bhp Startech Pickup. Are we looking at the greatest modifed Range Rover ever? Is this the Range Rover Aztec? Puma Seriously TopGear. Are you trolling us? Because if so, it’s working. InsomniacRyan To answer your question in the headline: no. Kristian Where’s the rest of this fire truck? Parttimetourist It’s pretty, but you can barely ft a cooler in the back of that. WookieJebus Well, it’s different. Peter Cavellini It’s awesome. Ugly, rubbish, but that’s what makes it awesome. @Peterson I love this, just the price is the question. If it’s below £100k then I’m on it. @Dawid God Strange Rover. @knosvoti Burn it now. @William…

The plunge has been taken and, more than endure it, I enjoyed it. I’ve owned my vintage Lagonda for some months now, written about it in these pages, in fact. It’s a glorious old thing with a supercharged engine, headlamps that threaten shipping, a gigantic steering wheel you could hang chairs and paying passengers of, all that sort of thing. Having bought it at auction, I awaited its arrival with the anticipation of a kid on Christmas Eve. And it did not disappoint, sailing into my drive on the back of a trailer. I admired and cherished every blemish and scar its 80-year life had etched onto its massive frame. I cleaned it, sat in it and rehearsed the many moves involved in starting it. Only I’ve never actually got…

There is nothing more important in life than where the brakes are on a car. It may not seem that way now. You may be burdened with other pressing concerns, ranging from cash flow to physical ailments, but there comes a moment when these are academic. That moment is the yawning one between the car going along and the car being the way you fervently desire it to be, which is stationary. Then your debit card pin number, your YouTube log-in details, the results of your scan, the problems with your central heating – everything else in the thousands of years’ worth of human experience and understanding, in fact – is immaterial. All that matters is where the brakes are. Normally, on a car with a manual ’box (such as…

If you spot a bit of C4 Cactus about this Citroen Aircross concept, then the designers have done their job. The Cactus has become the fuel for Citroen’s creative engines, the embodiment of the characteristics they will pour into every new car they launch from now on. “The Aircross shows what we can do with the spirit of Cactus. That’s the future of Citroen,” boss Linda Jackson tells TopGear. “We have to be diferent. For Europe, all our cars will ft this strategy. It’s an SUV because that’s such a big segment now.” She lists the new Citroen keywords: it expresses optimism through its design, humanity through its comfort, and smartness through its passenger-focused tech. But it doesn’t look exactly like a big Cactus. Design chief Alexandre Malval explains. “We…

Peugeot has a grand history of yes-build-it-now concept cars. Sadly, its record of actually building said concepts is rather less grand. But the 500bhp Peugeot 308 R Hybrid concept – despite its lofty headline power figure – looks barely a tax disc away from the road. Yep, 500bhp. That’s more-than-BMW-M4 power, from a Golf-sized hatch. Such go comes courtesy of a very plausible hybrid arrangement: Peugeot’s 1.6-litre four-cylinder turbo, augmented by a pair of electric motors. The former generates – as it does in Peugeot’s RCZ R – 270bhp, all sent to the front wheels. The two e-motors – one on the six-speed gearbox up front, the other on the rear axle – each add a further 115bhp, fed by a lithium-ion battery that can be recharged from the mains.…