BBC Top Gear Magazine September 2015

SUBSCRIBE TO TOPGEAR Get Britain’s number-one car magazine every month, delivered to you as a hefty paper offering, an interactive app or a digital edition. See page 76 for more details TOPGEAR.COM The website used to be held together by sticky tape and hope. Now it’s new and shiny. Enjoy TELEVISION Watch your favourite episodes again and again (and again) on Dave TOPGEAR SUPERCARS The best supercar stories from the last year gathered together. Available at selected retailers NEW CAR BUYERS GUIDE Comprehensive road tests for every new car on sale in the UK, available at all magazine retailers TOPGEAR PORTFOLIO Available exclusively at WHSmith,TopGear Portfolio is a collection of the best images from our archive When the second-generation Swindonbuilt Honda Civic Type R arrived on UK roads, it was…

TWITTER.COM/BBC_TOPGEAR FACEBOOK.COM/TOPGEAR INBOX@TOPGEAR.COM SECOND FLOOR A, ENERGY CENTRE, IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY LONDON LIMITED, MEDIA VILLAGE, 201 WOOD LANE, LONDON W12 7TN FROM TOPGEAR.COM The world’s most perfect McLaren F1 could be yours. One of just two LM specification cars is up for auction. Prepare to drool This is probably the best supercar ever to roll on the Earth. Dileesh It’s amazing that this 20-year-old (ish) supercar is still big news today. Sami Faheem Someone will buy this as an investment. No one ever drives them. Nuno Hipolito I picked up too many tickets with my Type S Civic. I’d probably tot up 12 points in the first 100 yards with this. Nigel Cullom But wouldn’t it be totally worth it? RRT One of my top ten cars. Farzan Zand Interestingly,…

360º Enjoy a truly immersive lap of Dunsfold Park in the Mercedes-AMG C 63 topgearpromo.com/mercedes F Watch the exclusive AMG engine test at: topgearpromo.com/mercedes rom its formative years in the late Sixties as an independent racing tuner, to becoming the whollyowned high performance division of Mercedes-Benz, 10 years ago, AMG has always been about one thing: the engine. Today the company is among the most revered names in motoring, combining the production of prodigious road cars with a habit of winning GT races, Formula 3 championships and multiple German touring car titles. AMG even lends its name and know-how to the all-conquering Mercedes Formula One™ programme. It is some roll call of success and little surprise that Mercedes’ fastest, most powerful models have come to be known, quite simply, as…

SPIDER OR SPYDER? FERRARI’S FIRMLY IN THE ‘SPIDER’ CAMP, BUT WHO ELSE USES ‘I’ AND WHO USES ‘Y’? “The previous Spider seems a wobbly lard bucket in comparison” It may not be the purist’s choice, but in many ways the Spider is the signature Prancing Horse. The first Ferrari, the 125S, was technically a Spider. In fact, seven years before Ferrari actually became Ferrari, Enzo produced an open car called the Auto Avio Costruzioni 815, powered by a 1.5-litre eight-cylinder. It had the princely power output of 70bhp. That was 1940. Seventy-five years later, a horsepower deficit is definitely not an issue the new 488 Spider faces. Powered by the same 3.9-litre twinturbo V8 that made its debut in the GTB earlier this year, the new car makes an identical…

A massive Audi’s murdered motorsport? How so? Because this self-driving RS7 this month lapped California’s 2.5-mile Sonoma Raceway in 2m01s. Right. Is that fast? Apparently so. Aud i claims the 560bhp super-hatch turned in a succession of al l-but identical times that were “ better than those of sports car dr ivers.” But which sports car drivers? We don’t know, and Aud i’s not telling - presumably because no self-respecting racing d river would want it know n that he or she had just been thrashed by a robot. But it’s a moot point whet her the RS7, on th is occa sion, lapped Sonoma faster than Seb Vettel or merely Ta ki Inoue. Because, sooner rather tha n later, a self-driving car will be monstering circuits faster than any…

If you don’t want a flying car, you are officially dead inside.But though the concept of a car-o-plane has been on the menu since the Fifties, the reality remains tantalisingly out of our reach. Until now, perhaps. This is the Terrafugia TF-X, a bold vision of a transportation future unbounded by roads, runways or aesthetics. The TF-X – which will seat four openminded humans – is capable of vertical take-off, thus negating the need for a runway. Wings furled, it’ll squeeze into a standard single garage, thus negating the need for a hangar in which to store your personal plane. It’s powered by a plug-in hybrid arrangement, a pair of electric motors combining with a 300bhp petrol engine to produce a megawatt of output. Yep, this is basically a Prius…