BBC Top Gear Magazine November 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 82 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 WH Smith, Top Gear Portfolio is a collection of the best images from our archive With its 68 stone steps ranged over five flights and a…

TWITTER.COM/BBCTOPGEAR FACEBOOK.COM/TOPGEAR INBOX@TOPGEAR.COM SECOND FLOOR A, ENERGY CENTRE, IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY LONDON LIMITED, MEDIA VILLAGE, 201 WOOD LANE, LONDON W12 7TN This is Peugeot’s Fractal, and it looks excellent. We hitch a ride in the pintsized sports car concept Why do they keep teasing us? They should just make them. Just do it. Ze dud The things I would do for this car. Work, for example. Topsy Turvy Bugs me to see Peugeot rolling out such brilliant concept cars, only for their production models to remain some of the most drearylooking things on the market. They should look to sister company Citroen for advice on how to make cars that are still practical but push the boat out a little design-wise. Creat1ve This should’ve been their Vision GT concept. It would thrash a…

Porsche goes for the full Jetsons styling in the Mission E cabin Four-seat electric Porsche – words you never thought you’d see together “Porsche full-electric car customers don’t only want to drive fast. They want to charge fast too” This concept car is Porsche’s deadly serious pitch for an all-electric super-saloon. It appeared at the Frankfurt show, making everyone who clapped eyes on it palpitate slightly. And it’s as fast as it is beautiful. “With this car, we intend to start a new era with Porsche, similar to the 911, 50 years ago,” the firm’s R&D chief Wolfgang Hatz tells us. “This is more than a show car, it’s a concept car that we can realise. To put it into production, we’ll need three to three and a half years.”…

1 It brought the Frankfurt show to a standstill For something so compact, the 2&4 sure caused big waves at the sausage-fan’s motor show of choice. Honda’s 80 brightest sparks were given a MotoGP engine, four wheels and told to go away and dream. This is the fizz-inducing result. Eventual winner, Martin Petersson, is a bike designer by trade, hence the fusion of two worlds. 2 It has the power-to-weight ratio of a Veyron When 212bhp has just 405kg to push along, it doesn’t hang about. No official performance figures exist, but with 523bhp per tonne it’s on a par with the original Veyron. Enough to comfortably dust the Jazz Hybrid, then. 3 It’s practical, sort of... Tricky to justify to your spouse as the sole family runaround, sure, but…

As speed increases shutters in the wheels close so air can slip by Call that a longtail, McLaren? This is a longtail... Retractable front spoiler fun for Jimmy Hill impressions, also reduces drag Ever peered out of the window of an airliner as you head off on your holidays, noticed how the wing elongates and pivots to generate more lift and cut drag, and wondered how that sort of engineering would look if it was applied to a car? Meet the Mercedes Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile. No active spoiler here – the whole rear of the car telescopes out by 390mm at 50mph, cutting CO2 emissions at a stroke by 3g/km. Meanwhile, the front bumper retracts 60mm under the car’s illuminated snout, winglets sprout from the front wings to deflect air…

Please be upstanding for the new bedroomwall hero. Though an inevitable conclusion given that its predecessor was the most successful open-top Lamborghini ever built, this new, naturally aspirated Huracán Spyder nevertheless faces quite a fight. Because with such opponents as the new Ferrari 488 GTB and McLaren 650S Spyder gunning for it, small wonder the Lambo is able to open and close its electro-hydraulically-operated, lightweight soft top in 17 seconds, at speeds of up to 31mph. There’s a rear window – like the Aventador Roadster – that can also be opened or closed in either of the roof positions. Seal it open for that full V10 experience. Ah yes, the V10. Other than the new roof and a pair of movable fins that start on the seatbacks and continue along…