BBC Top Gear Magazine August 2015

It’s fair to say that it’s been a busy few weeks on Planet TopGear, and unless you’ve taken to living in a cave, I’m sure it won’t have escaped your attention that there’s been big news this month with Chris Evans joining the team on 16 June as the new host of TopGear. I caught up with him on his Radio 2 breakfast show, as he performed his role as the nation’s favourite alarm clock. What became immediately clear was that, unlike most blokes, multitasking isn’t a problem for Chris. I watched as he simultaneously tuned, loaded and processed every element of the broadcast while somehow finding time – with the second-bysecond countdown ticking away in the background – to review the papers and edit the many communications that fire…

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 Video: Four FXXKs. An empty Imola race track. Much throttle. Lots of noise. Time to kill your speakers This is what F1 should sound like. Martin Schmiedmayr And look like… Harris Nageswaram These cars have a heart and soul in their sound that F1 just can’t seem to accomplish… Tekoa Semeniuk Ferrari should really enter an LMP1 car! Lawrence James I think I’m getting addicted to watching this. The noise from that V12 is just so fabulous. frz1998 I just found my new morning alarm noise. Then again, I won’t ever get out of bed to turn it off – I’ll just sit there listening all day.…

“The question wasn’t ‘Why would you do it?’ but ‘Why wouldn’t you?’” CHRIS EVANS ON TAKING THE TG JOB Chris Evans does not have a problem with multitasking. A point which becomes increasingly clear as I sit in the studio of his Radio 2 breakfast show and watch him simultaneously process myriad instructions from his production team, read edited snippets that fire in at an incomprehensible rate from every available multimedia channel and absorb the daily papers. He is also loading, fading and generally masterminding every aspect of the broadcast, with the constant countdown from one item on the playlist to the next clicking away portentously in the background. He’s also answering questions from me as the music plays, and doesn’t appear to be intellectually overloaded. At all. It’s… impressive.…

Of all the things we know about this beautiful and heart-stoppingly fast car, the most convincing fact is apparently the most inglorious. The Giulia’s design and engineering haven’t been done in some historic yet high-tech corporate HQ, but in an abandoned Iveco trucks building on the edge of Modena. Bear with us. There, in semi-secret, 600 specially recruited engineers are free to do what’s right for Alfa alone, and on a big budget. No Fiat or Chrysler engineers lurk down the corridor to prod them into cheapskate parts-sharing. CEO Harald Wester calls it a skunkworks – they operate freely and far faster, he tells TopGear, than if they were part of the main corporate R&D machine. First fruit is the Giulia Quadrifoglio. A RWD twin-turbo V6-engined supersaloon. It packs 503bhp,…

1 It’s the Lotus Elise among limos Okay, it’s not draped in carbon like a Pagani, but BMW’s new flagship has a ‘carbon core’ and a 130kg weight loss against its predecessor. Carbon fibre is strategically used in the pillars to lower the car’s centre of gravity, increase stiffness and, of course, shed weight – a feat aided by aluminium suspension, brake and wheel carrier components. BMW claims the entry-level version weighs just 1,725kg. That’s i8 nous paying off, right there. 2 iDrive has gone touchy-feely Yup, the love-it/loathe-it infotainment system has gained a touchscreen, but keeps the rotary dial and keypad. The idea is you’ll use the touchscreen for logical functions like pinch-to-zoom on maps and dialling phone numbers, but stick with physical controls for, say, scrolling through a…

1 Ford ups the hothatch power war Back in February, Ford claimed its new ultimate Focus would have “over 316bhp”. Now we know how much “over” – it’s a 345bhp AWD monster. Which would be very impressive… 2 Mercedes wins hothatch power war …If AMG hadn’t decided to give the facelifted A45 a ridiculous 381bhp. Yeah, take that, RS3. Camshaft and piston tuning has unlocked the grunt. Where will it end? 800bhp Fiestas? 3 It’s almost time to say goodbye to the DB9 Sending Aston’s lovely GT out in style before next year’s replacement is this, the, erm, DB9 GT. The 6.0-litre V12 gains 30bhp and the GT rides on bespoke 20-inch alloys. 4 This is the new Audi A4. Apparently Slipperiest in its class, nicks the TT’s virtual cockpit…