Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2015 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

The ingredients of a great road trip are deceptively simple. Take a car that gets your adrenaline rushing, mix in some agreeable company and a few nicely curving roads and you’ve got all you need for a decent little jaunt. But what happens when you combine those elements with the heart-stopping drama and unmatched beauty of an Alpine landscape? The Grand Tour of Switzerland, that’s what. Spread over 1600km of the most delectable tarmac, cobbles and mountain roads in existence, the expertly designed route has been precisely formulated to fling you straight into the heart of this thrilling country. And few places are as crammed with sights as Lucerne. Approaching from the east, this ancient city languishes on the shores of its eponymous lake. Bursting with history and artistic tradition,…

NEXT MONTH: DAYTONA BEACH IN THE FIFTIES In 1962, Beryl Swain entered the Isle of Man TT Race. Ten years earlier, she’d met and married motorcycle shop owner Eddie Swain. But she wasn’t some ordinary Fifties housewife. “Not only does she hold down an office job and run a home,” said a hopelessly chauvinistic Pathé film at the time, “But she has an unlikely hobby… and she’s good at it.” The hobby, of course, was racing bikes. With Eddie as her mechanic, she mixed it with the best of ’em at circuits around Britain, and even bounced back from a hefty crash and concussion. But, as the archive report put it, “It wasn’t enough to stop Battling Beryl”, who found her niche in the 50cc class – the one she’d…

MIKI ELETA TIMEBURNER If you possess meaty wrists, and provided they are yours, this is one for you. It’s called the Timeburner and it’s basically a wearable engine. A big, thumping engine like you’d find in an old motorcycle. The movement – instead of driving hands as it would it an ordinary watch – is geared to a crankshaft and conrod, which push and pull a piston, just like they would in an actual engine. The piston then pumps through a time scale, which juts along your wrist and replaces traditional minute markers on the face. The hour markers spin on a disc beneath the dial, visible through a cutout section so you can actually tell what time it is. Each one is handmade by a man in Germany. £5,377;…

Jaguar insists that the slightly grumbly diesel and quality glitches we spotted three months ago during our XE pre-production drive have been eliminated. Now that we’ve driven the real deal, including a first go in the 237bhp, 2.0 4cyl turbo, and an extended run in the 178bhp diesel, the clouds of doubt have finally parted. The XE is a corker. It’s also that rare thing: a clean-sheet piece of design and engineering. There’s nothing reheated, rebooted or facelifited – there’s an all-new platform that’s 75 per cent aluminium, new engines, and a new multi-link rear suspension that can absorb vertical and lateral loads without getting remotely flustered. It also weighs roughly 20kg less than the equivalent BMW 3-Series. Yes, the XE makes a major case for itself as a company…

Ordinarily, we don’t fill our pages with cars you can’t buy in the UK. Not beyond an occasional sampling of America’s latest wheeled oil-rig fire. But the Espace? That’s a European household name, a transporter of generations. And four decades after it basically invented the MPV segment in Europe, the Espace has not only ditched the van-with-windows look, it’s shunned the UK too. No right-hand drive this time, and no UK sales. Mon dieu. In fairness, such has been the rampant success of the crossover that the last Espace was guillotined in 2012. Renault’s bosses insist image-savvy UK buyers simply aren’t interested enough in sevenseat people carriers to justify tooling the new one for right-hookers. We’ll get a seven-seat SUV (think Kia Sportagefghter) spun of the same all-new platform in…

We had an Audi RS3 at our Swedish ice-lake test (issue 268). It did OK there, sliding about happily enough to make us anxious to drive it on dry tarmac. And here we are, in the 362bhp RS3 on winding roads and on track – though Ingolstadt needn’t have bothered with the latter. Why? Because despite its seamlessly rapid-fire seven-speed twin-clutch gearbox, 55kg diet versus the old RS3, a McLarenstyle brake-steer system on the rear axle and the supposed ability of all 343lb ft to meet up at the rears for fun ’n’ games, the RS3 is far from a circuit natural. How could it be, when the glorious five-cylinder engine (and it really is glorious) and gearbox are north of the front axle? Under steer only arrives after prodigious…

It was in the village of Haltwhistle where an otherwise unremarkable drive took a turn for the surreal. Now, I’m not saying that there’s anything inherently bizarre about small villages in the northern reaches of Northumberland, but as we cruised through in a new Mercedes-AMG GT S, it all got a little unsettling. First, a small troop of patently feral children stopped doing whatever it was they were doing, lined up and saluted, as if on a parade of paramilitary street urchins. Immediately afterwards, a man – who, thanks to a mane and beard of implausibly glossy white hair resembled a geriatric lion or possibly some sort of of-duty wizard– appeared at the front door of an otherwise nondescript grey terraced house and roared something approving and yet entirely unintelligible,…

Want an example of Nürburgring times boggling minds? Look no further than the McLaren P1, and the anticipation for its 2013 scufe with its hybrid hypercar rival, the Porsche 918 Spyder. Porsche bared all first, the 918 looking composed as it clocked 6:57 at the hands of sports-car racer Marc Lieb. Three months later, it was McLaren’s turn. The P1? “Sub-seven minutes” with chief test driver Chris Goodwin as pilot. Nothing more specific, and with the time described as the P1’s “final development objective”, closing the book on the project while opening a rankled discussion. Conspiracy theories came thick and fast. At one end, it had lost to the coolly driven 918 while on its ragged edge. At the other, a lap time in the 6:30s had led McLaren to…

TEST OF THE MONTH REPORT 3 2993cc, V6 diesel, 4WD, 290bhp, 443lb ft 40.4mpg, 185/km CO2 0–62mph in 6.8secs, 138mph 2115kg £ £76,250/£95,250 Total mileage 11,532 Driver Tom Ford Why it’s here Is there any point in a Range Rover ‘Sport’? There’s been a small ‘incident’ in the life of the TopGear Range Rover Sport, and I’m alarmed to report that it involves deception, light vandalism and replacement parts. Essentially, it goes something like this: while I was out on another job, the RRS was given over to the care of a senior member of the team. Nothing too strange about that, except that when it comes to ‘my’ Garage vehicles, even the hardiest tester tends to prefer to take pretty much anything else in the office car park. Why?…

GOODBYE 1199cc, 3cyl turbo petrol, FWD, 108bhp, 151lb ft 60.1mpg, 107g/km CO2 0–62mph in 9.3secs, 117mph 1020kg £17,190/£19,810 Total mileage 8280 Driver Paul Horrell Why it’s here Is the Cactus more than a quirky novelty? Citroen says its terrific new Aircross concept (see p26) “shows what we can do with the spirit of Cactus”. Yup, the Cactus is such a success they’ll orient the whole brand the same way. I’ve now had half a year getting to know that spirit. Is it one that intoxicates or spooks? Its style may be novel, but it’s no novelty. The surfaces and cut-lines are drawn with enough discipline to counteract the danger of toy-like softness from its rounded corners. Well, that’s my view. Some people told me it’s hideous, especially the airbumps, which…

REPORT 2 6210cc, V8 supercharged, 623bhp @ 5700rpm, 627lb ft @ 3800rpm 14.3mpg, 428g/km CO2 0–62mph in 5.2secs, 110mph 2,789kg $95,000/£60,000 Total mileage 8712 Driver Tom Ford Why it’s here Because you just would, wouldn’t you? I did think, for a while there, that if I drove the V-Raptor every single day for a few weeks, commuted in it, shopped in it, attempted to park it and generally lived with it, that I would inevitably become bored and therefore stop wanting to actually buy one. After all, it’s a super pickup scaled and designed for America, and therefore slightly at odds with UK sensibilities. Once past the initial rush of driving around in essentially a giant Tonka toy, I would, I reasoned, prefer to do my daily business in something…

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…

Dusk falls. My hotel room looks over the river at one of the world’s top-five tallest buildings. Its height is well disguised by the forest of other skyscrapers – many in outlandish shapes with disco night-lighting – that reach around it. The streets below are full of Mercedes and Audis and BMWs and Range Rovers, mostly the mid-to-upper-end stuff. I was of in another part of the city this afternoon and came back in an Uber cab, a plug-in hybrid that, from where I was sitting, ran delightfully smoothly. It could be one of many megacities, but what makes Shanghai different is the rate of change. The land now sprouting that vertiginous skyline was just farms only 25 years ago. My sophisticated cab is locally developed and built, but only…

Dear Uncle TG My much beloved and recently departed great-uncle has left me a 1933 Morris 10 saloon in his will. Do you have any idea how much it might be worth, for insurance purposes? HK, Cirencester “For insurance purposes”? When insuring a car like this, do remember to take out cover for fire, theft and accidentally selling it when you realise you could make a few quid of your dead relative’s stuff. Dear Uncle TG Someone recently told me that my Volkswagen Polo and my neighbour’s Skoda Fabia are the same car. Is this correct? Jane, by email No, this is not true. If they were the same car, you and your neighbour would constantly argue about whose turn it was to drive. And, indeed, to whose workplace you…

The reason a ‘trailer’ is so called is because it is designed, utterly, to ‘trail’ behind your car in a dynamically passive state. The expression ‘reverse a trailer’ is a bit of a misnomer, because, once you’re pushing it along, it becomes something else, and you enter a world of deep misery compounded by the forces of darkness. Here’s a handy dufer’s method I learned from a caravanist many years ago: 1 First, line up your car/trailer rig, roughly, with wherever you imagine your trailer is going to end up. Now put your hands in the ‘quarter to three’ position on the steering wheel. 2 Look in the door mirrors, not over your shoulder. If too much trailer is present in the right-hand mirror, move your right hand down. You…

People like the S-Max. It and the Galaxy (also new this year) account for more European sales than all other big MPVs combined. Taxi fleets buy the Galaxy, and human beings buy the S-Max. Both are based on this year’s Mondeo platform. And, in case you’re wondering why Ford doesn’t have a position in the ever-growing big crossover market, it soon will have, with the Euro diesel version of America’s Edge. That’s mechanically much the same too. Hardly anyone buys the petrol engines. You need torque for a vehicle like this – it’s fairly lardy – and you get that from the 2.0 diesel, especially the 150, 180 and 210bhp versions. I tried the 180 and it’s pretty civilised. You can also add a quick-acting paddleshift transmission and even 4WD.…

Much as I hate to perpetuate a stereotype, the Audi TT Roadster is certainly not a sports car. Not in diesel powered TDI Ultra form anyway, using the grunty but hardly goading 182bhp 4cyl from the Golf GTD. Yes, the fact that you’re not so hunched and bent-legged in the seat any more means the driving position is superior to the old Roadster’s, and the clever part-plastic new roof is 6dB better insulated and 3kg lighter than before. The looks have also survived the morph to cabrio as intact as the previous model, principally because the new TT’s redrawn exterior isn’t a tenth as radical or gratifying a restyle as its class-leading cockpit. As a box-ticking, empirical device, the TT Roadster is undoubtedly a better car than the one it…

We were expecting a sunset, one of those soft, ripe ones, all satsuma sun and peach-skin sky. It’s why we made such haste across Exmoor, why we didn’t allow the salty tang of Braunton’s fish and chip shops to divert us, why we risked the tricky slipway down onto the beach at Saunton Sands. It had been a fresh, fragrantly beautiful day up on the moors, perfect weather for convertibles, and we were full of hope that we’d be able to watch God’s bright orange ping-pong ball bob about on a fiery sea, the perfect backdrop for our two seductively potent sports cars. Of course, as soon as twin-turbo engines got a scent of sea air, the cloud rolled in. Not the fluffy-bunny stuff, but the fat high-level kind that…

“IF THE CORVETTE DOESN’T WORK HERE, IT HASN’T GOT A HOPE ANYWHERE” Dionne Warwick was wrong. LA isn’t just a great big freeway. It’s a great big freeway surrounded by some of the very best driving roads anywhere in the world. Roads that are well-surfaced, warmed by the almost permanent sun and with views that make you want to just stop and point stupidly at them. Sure, LA has more than its fair share of traffic problems – the lava-slow freeways being one of the main everyday headaches at any time after 2.30pm. But it also more than makes up for those with its vast network of almost deserted canyon, coast and ridge roads that spin their web across the county, from the shining Pacific Ocean in the west all…

REPORT 7 1582cc, 4cyl turbodiesel, FWD, 126bhp, 192lb ft 47.1mpg, 158g/km CO2 0–62mph in 11.7secs, 110mph 1406kg £21,450/£21,450 Total mileage 5493 Driver Simon Carrington Why it’s here Can the Soul hack it as an urban family runaround? Our Soul’s full name is the New Soul Mixx, and it comes with an OTR price of £21,450, which is £8,000 more expensive than the entrylevel Start trim. The question is, what do you get for your money and is it worth it? On looks alone, I’d say it was, as I’m quite taken with our ‘Soul on steroids’. Chrome doorhandles, gloss black bumpers, tinted glass and Urban Styling pack are all standard with our Soul, and are all a good investment, as far as I’m concerned. The lower down the range you…

REPORT 3 1984cc, 4cyl, FWD, 276bhp, 258lb ft 42.8mpg, 154g/km CO2 0–62mph in 5.7secs, 155mph 1421kg £28,865/£32,980 Total mileage 2410 Driver Adam Waddell Why it’s here Has Seat got its hot-hatch groove back? Seat has been bombarding us with hot versions of the Leon Cupra of late. First up, there’s the Cupra 265 which is a brilliant little car – great fun and plenty fast enough, but sadly only available as a three-door. Then there’s our car – the slightly more powerful Cupra 280. If you are so inclined, you can add the Sub-8 pack, which for an additional £4,200 will, thanks to a number of sporting tweaks, get you round the Nürburgring in under eight minutes, but, to be honest, I wouldn’t bother, because the standard Cupra 280 is…

REPORT 4 Rolls-Royce EJ200 turbofan, Nammo hybrid rocket, 47,700lb thrust 200 litres of jet fuel and 800 litres of rocket fuel per run 0–1000mph in 42.0secs, 1,050mph max 7750kg Weeks to go 14 Run by Mark Chapman Why it’s here It’s Bloodhound SSC... We had a bit of excitement mixed with relief the other day, when Andy Green’s seat arrived. Alongside the rocket and jet, it might not seem like a key component, but somehow the fact that this is the part that needs to keep Andy safe should – heaven forbid – anything happen, does tend to concentrate the mind on the importance of its design. We popped it in the car so Andy could jump in and check the fit and get some idea of his driving position.…

“China will likely be the biggest car market... forever.” So says Mercedes sales chief Ola Källenius, reflecting on a 2014 in which Chinese customers bought over 18 million cars. In the UK, we bought 2.47m. With growth looking even stronger in 2015, China will this year or next surpass North America as the world’s biggest car-buying country – and then stay there. Consider that: no matter if and when China’s superheated economy cools, the forecasting boffins can’t see it ever being overtaken in terms of car sales. That makes China, in strictly numerical terms, the centre of the automotive world. Such dominance matters to the rest of us, particularly the rest of us who reside on a chilly, windy island on the edge of the Atlantic. Though there’s no question…

TG TOP FACT The H2 is based on the track-only H2-R , which has a faintly staggering 325bhp Hang on, this is a car mag… Sorry, yes. But just look at this thing for a minute. It’s the newest Ninja, the fastest-accelerating street-legal motorcycle ever, a biker’s Veyron, and worthy of our attention. Why’s it so fast? There have been plenty of 1.0-litre hyperbikes before, but, unusually, this one is supercharged. And ramming air into the engine results in much more power – 207bhp, to be precise. Is that a lot? Put it this way: it has the same output as a Golf GTI but weighs roughly one-fifth as much. So TopGear maths says it should feel five times as fast. Which is partly why it has traction control. What’s…

PLANET TG/ #04 THE DEAR LEARNER North Korea claims leader Kim Jong-un learned to drive aged three. Presumably he was too chubby for a pram... In a swiftly deleted Tweet, Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal promises every Saudi pilot bombing Yemen a new Bentley. “I’m still driving my Ferrari. It’s a 458 Italia, and I just got the LaFerrari. It should be coming soon.” Justin Bieber says he’s swapping his 458 for a LaFerrari. Sigh. “The pecking has completely ruined the back of my car” Pride of jealous peacocks in small Devon village of Clyst St Mary mistake reflections of themselves in bodywork for potential love rivals. STAR IN AN UNREASONABLY PRICED CAR This month: Quentin Tarantino Car: Cadillac Coupe de Ville Verdict: Remember Reservoir Dogs? Mr Blonde had one…

From the historical and artistic leanings of Lucerne, with its famous lake, to the lively, lovely towns and highlands of Bern-Bernese Oberland: driving the Grand Tour of Switzerland affords you some pretty epic sights. Brace yourself on the next and final leg of the tour for a glut of unreal experiences. Starting with Emmental on the eastern border of the region. If there’s a place that epitomises Switzerland, this is it. Famous for cheese it may be but in summer, views of rolling green hills set against distant snowcapped mountains are par for the course. And while we’re using golfing terminology, Emmental strikes an albatross with a trio of attractions – gorgeous vistas, traditional Bernese farmhouses and the Gantrisch Nature Park characterise this well-known region. Make a point of stopping…

SURVIVAL LE MANS GUIDE HAIBIKE SDURO HARDSEVEN SL It’s the middle of the night and you fancy nipping down to Arnage to watch some hot-and-heavy braking action. But it’s miles away and the woods are muddy. Which is where this comes in – it’s a pedal-electric hybrid mountain bike with a Yamaha motor making 52lb ft of torque. The motor assists your legwork, so it feels like you’re getting a constant push along. A 4–6 hour charge should give you 80 miles or so of range, and when the battery’s flat you can rely solely on manpower. This is the entry-level, hard-tail version, but it comes with disc brakes as standard, so you can haul it down from big speeds on the Mulsanne... £1,850; fullycharged.com HEIMPLANET WEDGE This is Heimplanet’s…

Remember that wacky relative who’d always ‘steal your nose’? A hilarious act when you’re three years old. But when you’re 21, and, **spoiler alert**, blatantly aware that they haven’t pilfered your proboscis, you wish they’d bring a bit more than that one trick to the family barbecue. The previous-gen Corsa VXR was that relative. The later ones fitted with a facewarping Drexler mechanical limited-slip differential were peaches – TG Awardworthy, in fact – but, ultimately, a bit of a one-trick wonder. Well, we bring good news. Vauxhall’s second proper crack at a go-faster Corsa is more homogenous, mature and wellrounded. But, crucially, still fun. Powering the front wheels is the same 1.6-litre turbo engine from the old car, but with new air filters, intercooler and a reworked Remus exhaust (previously…

What’s this, then? Skoda’s brand-new Rolls-Royce rival, the third-generation Superb. Rolls-Royce rival? Indeed. See, apart from the Phantom and Ghost, the new Superb is – to our knowledge – the only car to secrete not one, but two umbrellas within its doors. It is, quite simply, the most rainproof car you can buy for the cash. If you and a passenger want to stay dry on the walk from driveway to front door, it’s this or a Roller. Any other Rolls-like qualities? Size. Though admittedly not quite of Phantom LWB dimensions, the Superb is vaster than ever before: 3cm longer and 5cm wider than its really-not-very-small predecessor, with more space inside too. It’s customary in reviews of big cars to note there’s “room for one six-footer behind another”, but in…

So here’s a thing. Given the choice, more TG staffers would rather own a Golf R than a BMW M4. This is not, as it may seem at first, utter heresy. The Golf is just that good. And it’s not an impractical thing by any stretch of the imagination – especially the five-door – but the clobber that comes with a couple of young children is enough to fill the boot of a standard hatch twice over. That’s where this comes in. The Golf R Estate is analogous to the hatch in all but body style. There is the same 2.0-litre turbo four – a heavily revised version of the one from the Golf GTI with a modified cylinder head and a bigger turbocharger. That means 296bhp and 280lb ft.…

TopGear delves into the enigma of the man responsible for the quattro, Veyron, XL1 and 917 IT’S IN THE GENES Ferdinand Porsche, Piëch’s grandfather, designed the original Beetle, among other landmark early German cars Generally, the departure of car company chairmen is a matter for the ghetto of the business pages. It might slightly move the share price or affect the careers of the management underlings, but it’s of precious little concern to you and me. Ferdinand Piëch’s resignation, though, is something we all need to mark. Oh, sure, he was responsible for growing the Volkswagen Group into an enterprise for which 600,000 employees build 10 million cars a year, and accumulating mainstream and exotic brands like a stamp collection... but mostly it’s about the cars. Ferdinand Piëch has had…

Never swerve around animals. That’s what we’re told. But at this sort of speed, the unsuspecting little bird in front of us gives Jordi Gené little choice but to deviate if the Seat Leon Cupra ST he’s manhandling is to remain unscathed. Gené is taking me on as full-bore a Nürburgring lap as my passenger-seat ballast allows. Had our winged friend skipped onto the most famous toll road in the world when Gené was alone, aiming for a sub-eight-minute lap time in order to best the Audi RS4 Avant’s ‘fastest estate’ record, it would have possibly undone all the Spaniard’s hard work in the six minutes beforehand. That’s how fine the margins are when you’re trying to wrestle a fast lap out of a front-wheel-drive car. And that makes riding…

Driving through southern Germany, we spot the perfect place to try out the Mustang’s most American feature. A newly surfaced road, so unsullied they haven’t even removed the hardware that diverts traffic around it. The mulleted gents in orange dungarees load their steamroller onto a truck and head of, then we sneak past the barriers to do our thing. Deep in the Mustang’s menus is an option called ‘line lock’. Huh? It’s designed to heat up the back tyres just before a drag-strip start. I engage first, confirm line lock on the menu, stop, press the brake pedal hard, confirm again, then come of the brake. Automatically, the front brakes clamp themselves tight while the rears release. Bang. I lift the clutch while hitting the gas. The back tyres squeal…

REPORT 3 1998cc, 4cyl turbo petrol, FWD, 271bhp, 266lb ft 37.7mpg, 174g/km CO2 0–62mph in 5.8secs, 158mph 1280kg £36,430/£38,445 Total mileage 4982 Driver Dan Read Why it’s here Can you live day-to-day with the most hardcore hot hatch? Let’s assume that, if you buy a Trophy-R, you’re probably quite enthusiastic about track days. More enthusiastic than your average hot-hatch owner, but not quite as enthusiastic as your average Ariel Atom driver. Or maybe you’d love to have an Atom but can’t afford a second car for those days when you need to transport a puppy. Which for me is every day. That’s the fairly specific brief the Megane manages to meet. Now it might seem obvious to bang on about the everyday advantages of a hot hatch, but this isn’t…

REPORT 4 Electric motor, FWD, 88bhp, 162lb ft N/A mpg, N/A g/km CO2 0–62mph in 13.5secs, 84mph 1468kg £20,043 Total mileage 3173 Driver Jason Barlow Why it’s here Can a family live with a pure electric vehicle? Have EVs finally reached what pop psychologist Malcolm Gladwell lucratively identified as the ‘tipping point’? Recent figures from the SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) tell us that sales of plug-in hybrids in March rose by almost 1,000 per cent compared with the same period in 2014. True, pure EVs enjoyed a less stellar 131.5 per cent year-onyear increase, but an overall tally of 6,104 cars is still good news for fans of the breed. So much so that if you’re thinking of making the jump, do it now: the government’s £5k…