Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul 2021 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

Here’s a fun project. All you need is 787,372 Ford F-Series trucks – the number sold in the US in 2020, a relatively lean year by all accounts – placed nose to tail and then to follow the line in a Eurofighter Typhoon at its top speed of Mach 1.8. Do so and it’ll take 1hr 57mins before you clear them all. My point is: Ford F-150s… there’s a lot of them. There are two electric cars in this issue that have the power to change the car industry profoundly, but we’ll start with the truck – America’s bestselling vehicle for 44 years in a row, and now there’s an EV version: the F-150 Lightning. Thing is, your average F-150 customer probably isn’t too concerned by the plight of the…

In the market for a new car, but can’t decide whether you need an SUV, a city car or a convertible? Why choose, when you could have all three in one convenient package, courtesy of the veritable Swiss Army knife that is the Vauxhall Adam Rocks Air? Well, firstly because, mercifully, you can’t buy a new Adam Rocks Air any more. But even if you’ve recently developed the ability to time-travel back to 2014, we’d still strongly advise not buying a new Adam Rocks Air. (Not least because, seriously, you’ve just mastered time travel. There are more exciting and lucrative things to be done than queuing at your local Vauxhall dealership.) Because while the Adam Rocks Air (in addition to sounding like the Old Testament version of scissors-paper-stone) promised three…

What does a women’s watch look like? What does a man’s watch look like, come to think of it? If you’re picturing some tiny bejewelled time-keeping bracelet for her and a chunky chronograph for him, your ideas need a little updating. Yes, women do, on average, have smaller wrists than men, they are comparatively more likely to buy jewelled watches, but all women do not like the same watches or cars any more than men do. A confusing picture? The watch brands do often seem wrong-footed by customers’ refusals to be pigeonholed. Many companies, for example, do not label watches men’s and women’s at all. This is not related to modern debates about gender fluidity, more about how the watch market has developed along with the tastes of its target…

GAME OF THE MONTH Circuit Superstars Judged solely on the chunky Micro Machines graphics of this top-down PC racer, you might expect something with about as much depth as the shallow end of the kiddie pool. What you actually get are cars with a surprising amount of weight and momentum, considering their diminutive toybox proportions. After a couple of corners pinballing off the barriers, you’ll get your eye in and begin drawing beautiful racing lines all over the screen. There’s clearly plenty of love for real-world motorsport in there too, with cutesy takes on old grand prix machinery, modern GT cars and even European truck racing. Most importantly, all of it can be tackled in either online or local multiplayer. The game is in what’s called ‘early access’ at the…

01 Quattroporte {TRANSLATION: four-door} Maserati didn’t exactly vacillate over what to christen its first multi-aperture saloon when it first built one way back in 1963. “It’s got four doors, unlike our other cars, so how about… uh… that?” It’s recycled it for every generation of its biggest, baddest four-door since. 02 Competizione {TRANSLATION: competi tion} ‘Competition’ is not, in English, a particularly evocative word. But, when articulated in Italian, comp-e-tiz-i-on-e becomes a gloriously exotic mouthful. And it tends to be worn by some rather interesting cars too, from the Alfa Romeo 8C to the Ferrari 812 and, erm, the Abarth 595. 03 Testarossa {TRANSLATION: redhead} Yep, it’s the ginger Ferrari. Except, the Testarossa’s name doesn’t really owe anything to playground jibes about hair colour after all. It’s simply a literal…

The weirdest part of testing the Ford Mustang Mach-E? I felt like I had to completely ignore the Mustang name while reviewing it. I mean, totally block it out. It carries so much baggage and expectation for some people – a sacrilegious thing for a Mustang to be an SUV and then on top of that, an electric one. For me though, the badge doesn’t matter. I don’t have much of a knowledge or connection to the Mustang’s heritage, I can forget what it’s called, I’m just reviewing this new electric crossover that happens to be from Ford, and happens to be called the Mustang. From that perspective, I was pretty pumped to give it a go. It’s very approachable – this isn’t some tricky to handle sports car or…

£36,896 (excluding VAT) FOR As good as ever on road and supremely capable off it AGAINST Pricy. Cargo bay isn’t as practical as a normal van’s The ‘Hard Top’ name dates back to 1950, when Land Rover began offering a removable hard top for the erstwhile soft top Series 1. Nowadays it’s Solihull-speak for a ‘new’ Defender – TopGear’s reigning Car of the Year – with a load of nothingness where the rear seats ought to be. Available in both short-wheelbase 90 and long-wheelbase 110 form, this is 2021’s Defender at its most utilitarian. A vehicle for transporting heavy, bulky, important cargo. Sat in the driver’s seat there’s no way of knowing you’re driving a Defender Hard Top versus a normal five- or seven-seat Defender. At least until you turn…

£45,345 FOR Peaceful big saloon, comfy, not sporty. Or German AGAINST Buzzy engine, daring to buy something different The engineers at DS have done their job here. This executive saloon rides with a floaty pliancy that’s refreshing. It’s commendably quiet inside thanks to laminated double glazing. Based on a stretched version of the platform that brought you Peugeot’s stunning but cramped 508, there’s plenty of space for grown-ups front and rear. The cabin is impressively trimmed: insist your fleet manager bumps you to the ‘Opera’ spec upholstery, enveloping you in rich feeling, expensive smelling Nappa leather instead of the incongruously sporty Alcantara. It’ll be up to the marketing and advertising sorts to convince you it’s finally time to drop £40k–£50k on a big French car, not a Lexus ES or…

MERCEDES-BENZ S500 4MATIC L AMG LINE £110,325 FOR Mightily comfortable and quiet. Considered tech AGAINST EQS threatens its position as the flagship Merc The new Mercedes S-Class has arrived in Britain without, typically, some key bits of tech Merc hyped up at its launch. All-wheel steering, for example, or the clever active suspension. Even so, the new S really is mighty. There are few more complete cars in which to cover long distances. But… you’re not supposed to notice the engine in a big, luxury car. And you do in the S. In unrelated news, Merc’s flagship EV is coming soon… TH VW ARTEON SHOOTING BRAKE R-LINE eHYBRID £42,170 FOR Looks the business, comfy, refined and cheap tax AGAINST Vocal engine, needs charging for max efficiency If you’re luckily offered…

“IT SOUNDS REALLY GOOD. A MIX OF WHOOSH, WHIRR AND SCI-FI” 1988 Mate Rimac is born in Livno, in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina. His parents move the family to Germany in 1991, as war in the former Yugoslavia breaks out. They return to Croatia in 2000 2005 Mate Rimac wins local, national and international awards for his electronics inventions, one of which includes the iGlove. He applies for two international patents 2008 Buys a 1984 E30 BMW 3-Series, replaces engine with own EV powertrain. “Green monster” makes 590bhp and sets five FIAapproved records. Rimac Automobili founded in 2009 2011 Rimac Concept One is shown at Frankfurt motor show, completed on eve of press day. Rimac now consists of eight employees; resists urge from an investor to relocate to…

It’s a frequent snipe that electric cars are for the privileged green elite. But if you can afford a new car you can afford a Vauxhall Corsa. And I’m about to prove that with a Corsa, electric gives you cheaper motoring than petrol. On a three year PCP, the electric SRi asks for a slightly higher deposit (£4,942 versus £4,103) than the petrol SRi but the monthly rental is similar: £249 for the petrol, £238 for the electric. Next, the running cost. Petrol is easy to work out. Say 40mpg, 24k miles over the three years, that’s 600 gallons and £3,400 at today’s petrol price. The electric is harder. You’ll need 6,000kWh at 4mpkWh. Normal rate home charging is 15p or so per kWh, off-street parking might be 25p/kWh. Or…

e-SCOOTER WHAT IS IT A kid’s toy on steroids WHAT’S IT FOR Harassing pedestrians/getting somewhere faster. Technically these are only allowed on private land until gov’t trials finish TECH Regen brakes, ABS, pneumatic tyres, cruise control. Usually has a small 300W–500W motor and a battery capacity up to 0.5kWh RANGE Up to 40 miles CAPACITY One person PRICE £300–£1,400 (rentable in certain places) IS IT LEGAL? Not in the UK e-UNICYCLE WHAT IS IT Single-wheeled, self-balancing tiny vehicle WHAT’S IT FOR Embarrassing yourself TECH Similar set-ups to scooters, although expensive options are terrifyingly fast. Gyroscopes keep you upright, while you lean to steer. Flashing coloured LEDs feature prominently RANGE Up to 75 miles CAPACITY One person, three juggling balls PRICE £500–£1,900 IS IT LEGAL? Not in the UK e-CARGO BIKE…

It’s very highly caffeinated, the Ferrari Roma. But that’s fine, because it’s 7am now and thanks to a bubbly barista at Cardiff West services, so am I. But two hours ago I wasn’t. The Ferrari, however, still was. And at 5am that wasn’t ideal. So before we do anything else, we need to discuss what our expectations are of these cars and how they behave. This used to be easy. These are grand tourers. Insert two plus luggage, point prow at Antibes, pitstop at Reims for a crate of champagne, dinner at some place with stars in Lyon, apply head to pillow, repeat the next day. But no one’s diet plan permits a contented belly waft through France these days. And besides, who drives all that way? You’ve heard all…

As if by magic, there is one man you can turn to on the TopGear magazine team who probably has an example of something utterly ridiculous in his garage. And that man is photographer extraordinaire, Mark Riccioni. A man who, as well as owning several patently silly other cars, also happens to have an ex-Bulgarian government armoured E32 BMW 750iL knocking about the place. A car purportedly used to transport the Bulgarian finance minister, sporting a V12 and four-inchthick laminated glass, its own oxygen supply, a loudspeaker system and doors that weigh as much as a small hatchback. Officially designated as a ‘protection’ car (750iLP), it demonstrates how different bolted-on armour is to something bespoke like the SandCat. Essentially, in Mark’s Seven, there are literal metal armour plates welded into the…

It wasn’t long ago when having a friend on the internet seemed a bit weird. Granted, when their display picture was that of a Slipknot mask and their username read XX_GOATSLAYER_99, it was a justified concern. But in 2021 – not least because we’ve all relied on the internet for sanity this past year – it’s now completely normal. There are still plenty of questionable e-friends out there, providing your search is a bit more specific. Not in a Silk Road way, that’d be very bad. But if they’re into a very particular type of car culture, and they’re from somewhere like Germany, chances are they’ll either be wonderfully eccentric or a cannibal. Time to introduce Till Dönnebrink. He’s not a cannibal, but he is German. And he’s a man…

REMEMBERING RETRO GAMING THE CLASSICS PLAYSTATION, 1996 Legendary Japanese game designer Kazunori Yamauchi is so synonymous with the painstakingly authentic Gran Turismo series, it’s difficult to imagine that there was a time when he wasn’t fettling increasingly micron-perfect recreations of every variant of the R32 Skyline. Bizarrely enough though, before the very first GT game landed on PlayStation in 1997, Yamauchi’s previous effort was Motor Toon Grand Prix 2, a luridly coloured cartoon racer. It’s a bit like discovering that the Dutch master Rembrandt began his artistic journey with crudely drawn willies in a biology textbook. Believe it or not, Motor Toon Grand Prix 2 does display some of that Yamauchi magic though. For a game that has no business adhering to the laws of physics, the handling is surprisingly involving, with…

REPORT 3 £85,580/£100,722/£1,073 WHY IT’S HERE Because it’s the cool one that could make us all fall in love with EVs DRIVER Jack Rix WHILE FILMING OUR EV AWARDS video, red Taycan 4S (green one still in bodyshop) met blue Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S. I shan’t wang on about why any reasonable person would buy a saloon version of a car when an estate equivalent exists… but why would any reasonable person buy a saloon version of a car when an estate equivalent exists? It makes no sense. Only if the estate equivalent was hideously ugly would I be drawn to the less practical option. In the case of the Taycan, the Cross Turismo definitely isn’t. It looks better – more interesting from the rear, more muscular from the…

Esther Neve Le Mans, 2009 – the year Peugeot was victorious with its astonishing 908. Also the year I took ownership of the magazine’s long-term RCZ… on my way to cheer Peugeot on at the epic 24hr race. I remember when we shot the super-cool RCZ concept back in Issue 170. It was a total revelation. My god, I wanted that car, and my campaign to run one started at that precise moment. ‘My’ RCZ arrived when I was on holiday in Cornwall, so it was delivered to a colleague to keep safe (thanks Katie!). The first time I actually saw it was at the Eurotunnel on our way to that year’s Le Mans… and I can tell you that threading a nigh-on 1.9m-wide car into and along a remarkably…

REPORT 6 £29,995/£34,375/£396 WHY IT’S HERE Does this hot hatch genuinely channel the spirit of the WRC? DRIVER Ollie Marriage IN THIS AUTOMOTIVE DEMOCRACY I think most of us perceive the GR in a similar way. We see it as the tough nut underdog, a junior Nissan GT-R, Godzilla’s own Scrappy-Doo (to utterly bastardise a film pairing). So it follows that the market for GR Yaris tuning parts has exploded. And yet. I’ve driven this car for five months now, covered thousands of miles, got back into it after driving vastly costlier, quicker metal, and never, not once, found it slow or dull to drive. A guy followed me the other day. It was a bit inconvenient. I was on my way somewhere and had pulled over for a rural…

01 Porsche 959 The 959 was a proper spaceship. Developed to compete in Group B rallying (but not finished in time. Though it did win the Dakar Rally) it had active AWD, sequential twin-turbocharging, adaptive suspension and a kevlar body. Unheard of for ’86, when the 959 came out. 02 Porsche 935 The original 935 dominated sports car racing in the late Seventies, even winning Le Mans outright in ’79 despite not being in the top class. Porsche revived the name with the spectacular GT2 RS Clubsport-based track only 935, pictured, in 2019. What a thing. 03 Porsche 917 One of, if not the most famous and fearsome racing cars in the world. The car that earned Porsche its first two overall wins at Le Mans (1970–71) and went on…

I think this is the most important electric vehicle we’re going to see this year. More so than the Tesla Cybertruck, the Rivian or the Model S Plaid or anything else that may or may not come out in 2021. It’s the Ford F-150 Lightning – the battery powered version of the bestselling vehicle in the US for the previous 40 years straight. And I got to spend a few hours with it at my studio in New Jersey. So there are two versions. The standard range model costs just under $40,000 and has a 230-mile range. Then there’s the extended range battery option. That starts at just under $50,000 and has a 300-mile range. And get this – Ford told me that the 300-mile range is the EPA estimate…

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Rolls-Royce Boat Tail – a near 6m long grand tourer with removable canopy roof and something called a “hosting suite” beneath the rear deck. Based on the same basic platform as the Phantom, and likely fitted with its V12, Rolls has hand-built three of these for customers who “share a deep appreciation of contemporary nautical design”. Right. The Boat Tail is road legal, and Rolls claims it’s undergone all the same dynamic testing as its core models. The company’s existing aluminium architecture took eight months to adapt to its proportions and the new car features 1,813 bespoke parts. The so-called hosting suite has five ECUs of its own and a special wiring harness that took nine months to develop. The rear deck opens butterfly…

Like any normal kid, when I was 17 I started out with a Renault Clio. Classic. It broke down every single time I wanted to get anywhere in a rush. Luckily I started to do well with my swimming that same year and at the time I was thinking about economy, so I bought a diesel Volkswagen Golf. I was in that community of modding cars when I was 19 or 20 years old, but there’s only so much you can do to a diesel. I did the exhaust system for some reason, I was questioning myself then. That was to make it look like a GTD because I couldn’t get insured at the time, not without paying ridiculous money. After the world championships I thought I could get something…

“EVs ARE REALLY HARD TO RECYCLE AT THE END OF THEIR LIFETIME” It’s true that an electric car is harder to recycle than one with an engine. Traditional scrap metal recycling is easy, and combustion cars have big steel bodies and chunky aluminium drivetrain castings. Whereas the components and minerals in the motors, electronics and batteries of electric cars are harder to tease apart. But not impossible. Because those elements are worth a lot, it’s worth doing. Also, digging lithium out of the ground might eventually have to stop because it’ll run out. Closed-loop recycling won’t. JB Straubel, the man who basically invented Tesla’s significant hardware and made it work, now has a company, Redwood Materials, to do exactly this. Northvolt, the company perhaps on pole position for supplying EV…

Many things have been absent from my life this past year, leaving me feeling bereft and sad. I won’t list them, though, because you might think me trivial. After all I’m still healthy and so are my loved ones, and the existence of this page of text testifies I still have work. You might have been less lucky and if so I’m sorry. After this misery, do motor shows count among the things we miss? Maybe not. Even before COVID scythed in, they were pretty much on their knees. Not enough people went, either to investigate cars to buy, or to queue up for ages to enjoy a fleeting caress of the unaffordable ones. Latterly many cars weren’t there anyway, their makers having lost the appetite for spending millions to…

£25,495 (after gov’t grant) FOR Range, style, tech, price versus rivals AGAINST Cramped rear seats, not as much fun out of town This little car is a Very Big Deal. Because it’s a new Fiat 500, and this is only the third of those since 1957. OK, there was a large gap 1975–2007, but the more important thing here is that it’s Fiat’s first EV. A proper one, too – like the Honda e the new 500 has its own newly developed platform, body and interior. It shares no components with the hugely successful ‘old’ 500, which Fiat says will remain on sale alongside the new car for the “foreseeable”. And it looks great, doesn’t it? The cheapest one comes with a tiny 24kWh battery and at £20,495 after the…

A comparison of CO2 emissions must include the whole energy chain. For petrol, powering the rigs, pipelines, refineries and distribution trucks adds about an extra 20 per cent to the CO2 emitted from the tailpipe. In the electricity transmission network meanwhile, about 10 per cent of the energy gets lost between generation and the socket. Also you need to feed about 10 per cent more electricity into the car’s socket than ends up in the battery, because the car’s onboard charger has an inefficiency too. So your EV’s generation-to-wheel consumption is at least 20 per cent more than the trip computer claims. Still, if it’s green electricity, it’s a good result. Unfortunately if generation is a long way from the point of use, transmission losses grow hugely. That’s an argument…

THE YEAR IS 2021. THE WORLD IS JUST RECOVERING FROM A GLOBAL PANDEMIC THAT HAS ALTERED THE WAY PEOPLE WILL TRAVEL FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. THE DEATH OF THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE IS NOW OPENLY DISCUSSED AND ELECTRICITY IS NOW ASSUMED TO BE THE ONLY SUBSTITUTE. You love cars, you are lucky enough to have the resources to buy a fast, expensive car, but you want to keep it for a few years. Can you still buy a petrol powered car and be sure it’ll retain some value or do you have to go electric – but if you do, is the infrastructure in place to actually use the car as you need? And in this parallel universe, like most people, you reach the conclusion that the internal combustion engine…

Stamford, Lincolnshire – the ‘finest Georgian town in England’ according to the signage – is probably the least likely town in the UK to need the services of an armoured car. Barring light insurgency by the local knitting circle or a particularly sarcastic Neighbourhood Watch turf war. But at least the Plasan SandCat MkIV’s beige desert tones resonate with the local honey coloured sandstone. It actually blends better than you think, despite being seven-and-a-half tonnes of sci-fi looking, composite-built “light armoured tactical vehicle”. But here we are. It seems odd to be gently dawdling around a sleepy market town in this amount of overkill, but today, I have been gently applying this behemoth to my day to day diary, assessing its ability to cope with the mundane, rather than its…

Concept cars are supposed to be forwardthinking, but Peugeot invented our kind of emotional support bubble back in 2000. The 607 Feline concept greeted the dawn of a new millennium at the Geneva show with a mindless gurning grin, debuting the beginnings of a new grille design for the French firm that paved the way for the likes of BMW to turn up to 11. It was framed by ginormo headlights that looked like they should have been able to challenge the sun for sheer lumens. Unlike most concepts, which are revealed before a car is actually launched in order to tantalise you with an exotic attractive car that never turns out to be as stylish in production practice, the 607 Feline concept was revealed a number of months after…

THEY DON’T LOOK LIKE CARS… You’re right. They’re not cars, they’re vans. Which are sort of like MPVs with practicality ramped up to a million. But please don’t mistake these two for any vans. They’re the definitive van, the Ford Transit – commercial royalty and one of the most important vehicles in the history of Britain. REALLY? MORE IMPORTANT THAN MR BEAN’S MINI? Yep. With over eight million sold, the Ford Transit is one of the biggest names in motoring and the UK’s bestselling commercial vehicle. It’s beloved of brickies, posties, chippies, roadies and everything in between. We’re certain at some point in your life a Transit has had a part to play; whether it’s delivering you to the hospital, helping build your house or deliver things to it. So,…

HELLO £158,000 OTR/£185,500 as tested/£1,899pcm (Aston finance) WHY IT’S HERE It’s the car to save Aston Martin – is it good enough? DRIVER Charlie Turner SOME PEOPLE’S DEFINITION OF LUXURY COULD WELL BE DEFINED BY unlimited choice, and in the automotive space the ability to personalise every element of your new vehicle so it meets your precise requirements creates an opportunity for the car firms to add revenue to every vehicle. The scale of choice available on the DBX presents opportunities to create something you know no one else will have, but equally opens the door to some truly terrifying taste bypass specification nightmares. For me, the DBX looks best in technical colours, but being an Aston it should exude luxury. So, having chosen Ocellus Teal we added a dark…

REPORT 2 £48,045 OTR/£48,660 as tested/£596pcm WHY IT’S HERE Just what is the Cupra Formentor… for? DRIVER Tom Ford I’LL START WITH SOME CAVEATS. AS A CAR, I AM VERY MUCH ENJOYING the Cupra Formentor. I like the way it looks, I like the space it has to offer – especially in the back with teenage family members – I like the slightly rambunctious way it drives when you feel like it. But there’s something I’m really struggling with, and that’s the multimedia interface. Very rarely these days do I get infuriated with a car, but I have to say that I’ve come pretty close to losing it with the Formentor’s touchscreen this month. Something that is not, it has to be said, the fault of Cupra as a brand,…

HELLO £106,950 OTR/£107,080 as tested/£1,313pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is Audi’s Taycan a better all-rounder than Porsche’s? DRIVER Ollie Marriage EVERY TIME I START THE AUDI IT INSISTS I SET IT UP AS A NEW USER. I gave it 10 minutes before deciding it could wait. I’ll get round to it, but the first few days after you take delivery of a new car are enough of a bombardment without the struggle and frustration of linking car and phone at a deeper level than Apple CarPlay. That, by the way, was easy. I’m trying to work out the styling. It looks great from a distance, but get close and it loses those lovely proportions. Nose-wise the grey grille is better had in body colour, a £350 option, but the light signatures…

GOODBYE £54,645 OTR/£62,995 as tested/£769pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is the new 4-Series good enough that we forgive its cursed face? DRIVERS Ollie Kew and Vijay Pattni OK: AHH, THE ACTUAL, PHYSICAL TOPGEAR GARAGE. HAVEN’T BEEN down here much recently. Vijay, I’ve got a quandary. After six months with the new BMW 4-Series, my respect for it as a piece of engineering is boundless. It’s so crushingly complete, except… I don’t yearn to own one. As you’re the owner of this very fine grandfather to the M440i – a 1999 straight-six powered BMW E36 328i – why do you think that might be? VP: The reasons are possibly many, varied and nuanced. But for starters, that 440i doesn’t have the ‘relaxed predator’ gait earlier BMWs majored on. OK: The E36 was…

It’s a range of two halves, Porsche’s. On the one hand, you’ve got what the company’s reputation is founded upon: world class sports cars. The Cayman, Boxster and 911 all feel unbeatable, resisting attack from swathes of rivals that only ever seem flawed in comparison. On the other hand, you have the sensibly shaped cars, namely the Panamera, Macan and Cayenne SUVs and Taycan EV. They’re the breadwinners, especially those latter two. And still really bloody good. The least amount of money you can spend on a Porsche is the £45,230 price tag of a completely basic 718 Cayman. The most? Until recently it was the £750,000 you could throw at the mighty 935 racecar, bigger money than a 918 Spyder cost new for a 911-based plaything that should have…

280,000 Porsche sold 280,800 cars in 2019, its best year ever. Sadly they weren’t all GT3 Tourings. Purists might want to cover their eyes, in fact: around two-thirds of the company’s sales these days are SUVs. Yep, Porsche is a sports car company at heart, but it probably hasn’t escaped your attention that it’s branched out a little over the years… The 718 and 911 sports cars and the Taycan electric car are built in Zuffenhausen (south-west Germany) as are all of Porsche’s own engines. The Panamera saloon and Macan SUV are put together in Leipzig (east Germany) while the Cayenne is built in Bratislava, Slovakia.…

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated, our humble website might have said, had our humble website gained sentience and a fondness for Mark Twain. This is largely because it is very much Not Dead. It has been reborn for 2021. It is new. It is fresh. It is Other Important Words. Welcome to the brand new TopGear.com. Like any good core model update, our new website sits not on a hastily cobbled together mish-mash of leftovers finished off with a new paint option and fancy wheels. No, the new TopGear.com is a full ground-up redesign; what you might say in CarSpeak as a scalable, lightweight future-proofed platform. (Or in Regular Human Parlance, ‘new’.) There’s all the latest news direct from TG HQ presented in a fresh, sparkly format…

CUPRA BORN 1 THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT POWER AND BATTERY COMBINATIONS The Born is being positioned as the world’s first production electric hot hatch, although the entry level 45kWh model only gets 148bhp and 211 miles of range. The 58kWh version can be combined with either 201bhp or 228bhp. 2 YOU’LL BE ABLE TO BUY A LONG-RANGE VERSION Go for the most powerful 228bhp setup and you can also combine it with a hefty 77kWh battery pack. The result is 335 miles of range (compared with 260 miles for the 58kWh). The extra weight will cost you 0.4secs on your quest to 62mph, but it also unlocks faster 125kW charging. 3 THERE’LL BE FOUR DRIVE MODES All Borns use a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive layout and Cupra says it’ll get the typical…

BMW 330e TOURING £41,530/£52,165 as tested Peugeot versus BMW isn’t a contest you’ll have seen often. That it’s taken the French maker’s most powerful and expensive car to draw the two companies together ought to illustrate the usual gap between their cars. And yet of the pair, passers-by only seem to have eyes for the 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered. Never mind drawing level with BMW in the desirability stakes, Peugeot’s leapfrogged it. While we don’t comment on the looks of cars too often – you’ve got your own eyes and mind to work out what you think – we’ll just advise not looking at the 508 too closely. It’s a gorgeous device from a few paces away, but some of the finer detail is overwrought, those clumsily decaled winglets sprouting…

£23,995 FOR Strong powertrain, endless personalisation options AGAINST Practicality still a cruel joke. Standard Union flag lights This is the modern Mini MkIII – born back in 2013 and revitalised with yet another facelift for 2021 and beyond. The Cooper S might not be too long for this world, however, because Mini is to be the first brand in the BMW Group to go fully electric. Anyway, check out the hefty new snout (very BMW) and that odd moustache-like surround. Apparently it offers a wider and more aggressive look, although we’re unsure why that would be necessary. Still, it fits with the piano black vibe that Mini is pushing; there’s also a new Black Pack that de-chromes the entire car. Shame – the Mini hatch is one of the few…

“The software guys,” Miro says with a smile, “aren’t human.” The Croatians, you quickly learn, are a nation of plain speakers. Even about their own co-workers. Miro Zrnčević is Rimac’s chief test driver, a big, bluff guy who loves cars and has one of the key tasks on the company’s long-awaited Nevera: locating the soul of a machine whose colossal abilities are corralled by a frenzy of ones and zeroes, like the opening credits of The Matrix. This has sent him on a journey of discovery in parallel with the software guys. “It’s very strange,” he continues, “because during development I would drive the car and give them feedback. They would stare at the data on their laptops and say, ‘Is this better?’ And it would be, despite the fact…

1938 LANCIA APRILIA SPORT ZAGATO Ugo Zagato’s aero fascination inspired this one-off. WW2 destroyed the original, but Zagato reproduced nine in 2006 1960 ASTON MARTIN DB4 GT ZAGATO One of the best-looking cars of all time? The DB4 sneaks onto this list ahead of the stunning Fiat 8V Coupe 1964 ALFA GIULIA TZ2 ZAGATO With a longer, swoopier fibreglass body, the Giulia TZ2 racer was somehow even more gorgeous than the TZ1 it replaced 1986 ASTON MARTIN V8 ZAGATO Zagato really leaned into Eighties style with its aluminium-bodied Aston Martin V8. What a brilliantly bonkers (and boxy) thing 1989 ALFA ROMEO SZ Cheating, because the SZ was actually designed inhouse at Alfa with only a little input from Zagato, but crikey it has aged well…

REPORT 3 £30,345/£32,045/£400 WHY IT’S HERE Does Mazda’s first EV have substance beyond gimmicky (but cool) doors? DRIVER Tom Harrison THOUGH THE MX-30 IS THE SAME size and shape as a crossover, its tiny battery and cramped rear seats mean it competes with the style-led city cars… like the new all-electric Fiat 500, which you can read more about on p48. If you compare like for like, the 500 and MX-30 are there or thereabouts when it comes to price. And while the the big-battery Fiat has a huge range advantage over the Mazda, the MX-30 has a much bigger boot, more comfortable and easier to access rear seats and a better infotainment system. Yet I think for most people the Fiat is an easier sell. But the MX-30 is…

REPORT 5 £34,545 OTR/£34,545 as tested/£406pcm WHY IT’S HERE An EV to do the job of a normal good-value family car DRIVER Paul Horrell I HAVE A STANDARD TEST OF A CAR’S VERSATILITY: WILL A ME-SIZED bicycle fit in the back? I mean laid down flat, with the rear seats folded. In most smallish hatches, I have to take the front wheel off. But the Soul will swallow it intact. I have to move the front passenger seat forward, but then in it goes. The warm weather means the Soul is using less energy. My most recent battery charge took me from home in north London to somewhere beyond Chelmsford and back, then on another day from home to somewhere beyond Guildford and back, and on another day from home…

REPORT 2 VOLKSWAGEN GOLF GTI A few years ago I ran a brand new Golf R. Its engine didn’t regularly top 30mpg until it was a few thousand miles old. By 14,000, it was good for mid-30s. Happily, this GTI has done 1,000 miles with us now and is already returning mid-30s on average and over 40mpg on the motorway. Better lubricant technology? Nah. I’ve just grown up a bit. OK REPORT 2 BMW 128ti Ssh, nobody tell Ollie Marriage, but while he wasn’t looking I commandeered the 128ti. I have A Question: what does ‘128ti’ mean? Five characters, and only one makes sense. The… 1. It’s not a 2.8-litre, and ‘ti’ isn’t relevant because it’s not a tourer and anyone who remembers the original ‘ti’ won’t be looking at…

REPORT 8 £62,995 OTR/£71,245 as tested/£279pcm (Morgan finance scheme) WHY IT’S HERE They claim the Plus Four is a modern Morgan. Time to see if it’s true DRIVER Stephen Dobie ENGINES ARE ONE OF THE FEW COMPONENTS WHEELED INTO THE Morgan factory from an outside source. Namely BMW. They arrive on a crate from Munich before being shoehorned betwixt wood and aluminium barely touched. That’s been the case since the 4.4-litre V8 from the E39 M5 made its way into the gloopy faced Morgan Aero 8 over 20 years ago. Our Plus Four shares its 4cyl turbo with the BMW 128ti hot hatchback that’s also joined the TG Garage, as well as Toyota’s entry level GR Supra. Handily, I’ve spent time in both of late, and they each highlight just…

Porsche is quite an irritating company if you a) write reviews of cars or b) comment on reviews of cars on the internet. You see, Porsche is a company that rarely makes a misstep. Its cars are consistently fantastic and well reviewed to the point that rumours of them arriving at motoring magazines with their gloveboxes full of cash are almost as old as the company itself. Porsche began making cars in 1948, when the first examples of the 356 received road certification. But company founder Ferdinand Porsche built his first car – called the P1 – in 1898 and he opened the Stuttgart office of his engineering company in 1931. Porsche is a German company, so the gap between 1931 and 1948 is explained by… well, you know, that…

Simple. Because it’s the fastest car anyone has built if you use a 13-mile stretch of German toll road as your speed benchmark. In 2018 Porsche beat its (and Stefan Bellof’s) own record by whipping round the Nürburgring in 5min 19.5secs with its 919 Hybrid racecar. See, when Porsche’s big cheeses pulled the company’s endurance racing programme, the engineers behind the 919 weren’t ready to quit. So over a slightly sombre beer they decided to develop a car now freed from stringent motorsport regulations to its nth degree, utilising all their ideas previously stymied by rulebooks. Whether this officially counts as the all-time ’Ring record or not feels negligible when you get stuck into the onboard video of Timo Bernhard’s lap. Try watching it without feeling drunk two corners in.…

No prizes for guessing 1983’s Gruppe B was the precursor to the 959 – Porsche’s design team firmly keeping its promises again – which also makes it the precursor to quite a large chunk of the technology adopted by the bulk of today’s supercars. And it’s named after the most iconic and infamous motorsport rulebook ever, the 959 originally destined for stardom in rallying’s Group B era. The car wasn’t completed in time to nip onto the stages before those regulations (or lack of) were ditched, but the 959 did compete in the Paris-Dakar – winning in 1986 – and even claimed a class victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours in modified 961 form.…

CITY CARS These small cars are perfect for urban life, but the trade-off is a much lower range 1. HONDA e PRICE: £28,215–£30,715 RANGE: Up to 136 miles TG’s reigning city car of the year has retro-tastic styling, but the range isn’t great. No worries – you don’t need to drive anywhere, just sit inside it. 2. MINI ELECTRIC PRICE: £24,400–£30,400 RANGE: Up to 145 miles The electric version of the home grown favourite squeezes the BMW i3’s powetrain into a familiar package. Range not massive, but the car’s still fun. 3. FIAT 500 PRICE: £19,995–£26,995 RANGE: Up to 199 miles The latest version of the 500 offers sharper looks, good value and decent range – and a parcel shelf full of soft toys shouldn’t hurt the battery too much.…