Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com My wife has a problem. Well, two if you count me. She finds ordering at a restaurant disproportionately stressful and will often change her mind at the very last moment, just before our waiter falls asleep standing up, to go for the same thing as me. I’m flattered if I’m honest, what do I care if she wants the gnocchi too? And I get it, there’s safety in numbers, comfort in following the herd, solace in knowing that if you’ve made a terrible decision you’re not the only one who’s going to look like an idiot. And so it is with cars, where being a bestseller perpetuates bestseller status. How else can you explain the Vauxhall Corsa being near the top of the sale charts for decades, despite…

THE GOOD There are going to be some truly epic group tests in the next year or so. Bolide / Valkyrie AMR Pro / Gordon Murray T.50S anyone?Andrew_Robinson They just made my dream come true. InsaneAron You would almost think they might be going for a future Le Mans entrance… maybe, if we’re lucky!Alex What an absolutely absurd machine, I love itTBP Loss of power not an issue, Halfords will remap for £99Richard Docherty THE BAD Hideous Magnus Oxer Another pointless supercar which only a few ultra-rich will buyDavid Remmington Hopefully they actually prove its capabilities otherwise it’s quite pointless, we need some good last hurrahs before the world goes pretty silentBob Bobby Bobson IT MAY BE FAST BUT IT’S RIDICULOUS LOOKINGDavid Bussabarger Not a hope in hell it’s going…

Halo cars are exciting, aren’t they? It’s 2021, and in my opinion Tesla is still at the top of the EV pile. This Model S Plaid is the best, newest and most expensive thing that it makes. Greatest electric car in the world, then? Well, essentially this is just a facelift with a new powertrain (but what a powertrain). The Model S retains its general shape – it’s a big, four-door hatch with tonnes of storage – which I think still looks great. You’ll notice the wider tyres on the Plaid – 285 on the front, 290 on the back – and wider arches to accommodate them. The whole car itself is slightly wider too. All the chrome has been blacked out except for the logos front and back, and…

£18,300 (est) 1.0T 3cyl 109 bhp 6spd manual 9.7 secs 57.6 mpg 113 g/km FOR Good value motoring at its most sensible AGAINST Only petrol options, could be more interesting You won’t have noticed amid all that other hubbub, but Skoda canned the tiny Citigo mid-2020, so the new fourth-gen Fabia defaults to the entry point in an ever-popular, SUV-heavy range. Skoda’s proud of 4.5m sales in 22 years – it helped establish credibility after years of cheeky jokes. To mangle Bob Monkhouse, they’re not laughing now. A modern Skoda guarantees relentless competence. But if you’re looking for any of that fancy electric stuff from a car this size, you’ll have to go elsewhere – no EV supermini from the VW Group until 2025. Five engines are available at launch,…

£39,900 64kWh battery 221 bhp 1spd auto 7.4 secs 273 miles 0 g/km FOR Well equipped and well priced. Fantastic interior AGAINST Only a £3k jump to the 335-mile Long Range Single Motor Polestar has its foot in the door in the UK and Europe, so it’s time for further variants of the Model 3 rival it calls the 2. Until now, we’ve had to make do with the full fat twin-motor AWD 2 with its 78kWh battery and barnstorming 402bhp. Poor us. Prices for that Long Range Dual Motor kick off at £45,900, though, so to bring the entry price of ownership down, we now have the £39,900 Standard Range Single Motor. We’re big fans of this simplistic naming strategy. A single electric motor is mounted up front and…

WANT AN IDEA OF HOW ABNORMALLY RAPID THE CZINGER 21C IS? I’ve just watched, hands on cheeks from the pitlane, as it ripped its own roof off down the straight at Willow Springs. A polycarbonate panel peeled back like a can of tuna and sent cartwheeling into the air… ta-da! The Czinger 21C Spider gets an early reveal. To be fair it did have one of our GoPros suckered to it (with Czinger’s permission) which at somewhere north of 150mph was clearly undoing the good work of that wing, and imparting some fairly serious lift. Cue a swift operation to reattach with black tack and gaffer tape. Good as new. Apparently the beautifully finished bodywork, perched atop of this prototype chassis and powertrain, was only fitted a few weeks ago…

“MY BRAIN IS WIRED TO ALWAYS GOES FOR THE MOST EXTREME OPTION AVAILABLE” Sitrep on the M6. Or as it shall now be known by its codename, TopGear HS2. Because the timescale, budget and work required have all been massively underestimated by its project manager – me. It’s also now quite a large and expensive hole, so the only sensible solution is to throw even more of the above at it. That isn’t a bad thing though; it’s officially classed as a long-term project now and that’s good news for my accountant because it means invoices are few and far between. Encouraging words when the bare shell is currently sat in a paint shop. If anyone needs me, I’ll be running TopGear’s first edition in the Cayman Islands. There is…

You can’t control when inspiration strikes, so it must have been a blessing and a curse when Cryo Interactive came up with a concept for a grand sci-fi racing game in 1993, a time when most home computers could barely render your family finances spreadsheet. Instead of the development team attempting to construct a full, Blade Runner-esque dystopian cityscape out of the four or so polygons available to them, they instead landed upon a cunning plan. Rather than real-time 3D graphics, the swooping, sweeping circuits would actually be a much higher quality pre-rendered CGI video, with the car sprites overlaid on top. Your accelerator acted less like pressing a gas pedal and more like fast forwarding a VHS copy of The Lawnmower Man. Against all the odds MegaRace played pretty…

REPORT 3 £24,455 OTR/£25,085 as tested/£273pcm WHY IT’S HERE The old Mokka was appalling, can the new version impress us more? DRIVER Esther Neve LAST ISSUE’S COVER CAR WAS THE BEAUTIFUL, NEWLY REIMAGINED Lamborghini Countach. A potent reminder of an era from 30 years ago that featured everything from rolled-up suit jacket sleeves to New Romantic ruffs and epaulettes. Happy days. The Eighties speak loudly to me – those were my young formative years. The fashion, the music, the cars… I remember the XR3is, the SRis, the 5 Turbos. They were the distillation of style. Anyway, a recent phone call with Adam Waddell – who briefly looked after the Mokka before he took ownership of the Aston Martin DBX – highlighted that there’s something of the Eighties about the Mokka.…

REPORT 4 £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 FOR REASONS BEST KNOWN TO ITSELF, A RUBBER TRIM STRIP CAME unstuck the other day. It just fell down when I opened the rear door. It’s a small thing, it stuck half-heartedly back on, but it speaks to a wider issue with the e-tron GT at the moment – I’m not convinced the behind the scenes quality is where it should be. Superficially all is well. The materials are great, the design is clean and well executed, it feels expensive inside, right where it should be for a luxury electric car costing this much. As an object, I have no issues. But… The speaker grille over the tweeter on the…

REPORT 4 ASTON MARTIN DBX With 542bhp on tap the DBX truly delivers on its sporting credentials. But that’s only half of what’s required from a Sport Utility Vehicle – it’s the ‘utility’ bit that concerns me. With the seats folded it offers 1,530 litres of capacity, and it has all the usual storage pockets and bins. It’s also got all the gizmos to take it off-road, but I can’t see anyone ever wanting to do that. It’s too special to be a workhorse. AW REPORT 6 MAZDA MX-30 Some things I’ve learnt public charging in the MX-30. First, know what charger you’re aiming for before you leave, and have a plan B if that one doesn’t work out. Download Zap-Map, because it’s brilliant for finding chargers, telling you everything…

REPORT 3 £67,515 OTR/£68,200 as tested/£1,065pcm WHY IT’S HERE Does a semi-lairy hybrid AMG wagon make sense? DRIVERS Jason Barlow OPPOSABLE THUMBS ARE ONE OF THE THINGS THAT SEPARATE humankind from animals and wildlife. Dolphins, we’re told, are unusually bright but they don’t have thumbs of any sort. This is surely an evolutionary fail. Fast-moving thumbs, meanwhile, are one of the things that separate the young and the old. I watch my 18-year-old daughter’s thumbs ablur on her smartphone as she uploads something and it’s like looking at that Quicksilver dude from X-Men. I haven’t yet asked her to try the touchpad or steering wheel controls on the E53 but I can only assume it’ll be second nature to her. My digits are substantially less keen. Mercedes is positioning itself…

01 Mazda R360 Coupe The very first Mazda passenger car. Powered by a rear-mounted, air-cooled V-twin engine that made a mighty 16bhp. The Japanese public loved it though, and within a year Mazda had captured two-thirds of the competitive kei car market. 02 Mazda Cosmo The first-gen Cosmo was the sports car that introduced Mazda’s Wankel rotary engine to the world. Producing around 110bhp from just 982cc meant that buyers got the power of a bigger engine with the tax breaks of a smaller one. 03 Eunos Cosmo The final Cosmo was marketed by Mazda’s short-lived premium offshoot Eunos. Introduced in 1990, it was a luxury 2+2 coupe with a supremely complicated 300bhp twin-turbo, triple-rotor Wankel engine. Also the first production car with a built-in satnav. 04 Mazda MX-5 The…

Of the current crop, the MX-5 is the most sprightly with a 0–62mph time of 6.5secs. Brisk, rather than breakneck, but completely in keeping with the car’s ethos. The Mazda 6 has the highest top speed of any Mazda currently on sale on these shores, topping out at 142mph. However, you need to rewind past the turn of the millennium to find the fastest Mazda ever built. The RX-7 sports coupe enjoyed a production run that began in 1978 and ended in 2002, encompassing three generations in that time. The last of those – the RX-7 FD – was sold in the UK with 237bhp, enough for 0–62mph in 5.1secs and a top speed of 156mph. Not that it was very successful: sales were so poor that they were halted…

The first thing you will notice about the watches this month is that they are a little, well, unusual looking. An analogue watch face has a number of essential elements. An hour hand and a minute hand are bog standard. Generally there’s a seconds hand too, and possibly a date. You might add a stopwatch, a calendar or even go crazy and add a little indicator that tells you what mood the moon is in. But you need an hour hand and the minute hand, as this is how the time has always been told, right? Wrong, actually. A quick glance at the ornate clock on the north tower of Westminster Abbey might tell you that it has two hands. But on closer inspection it in fact has just one…

Lawn Mowing Simulator Making good on our commitment to cover games related to any form of four-wheeled transportation, allow us to present Lawn Mowing Simulator, which earns its place in this organ because it features those ride-on lawn mowers beloved of Americans and Premiership footballers with enormous gardens. Brilliantly, this is a game that takes the act of mowing a lawn extremely seriously. It features sophisticated physics not just for the mowers but also the blades of grass, authentically licensed mowing machinery and even takes advantage of the graphical power of the latest Xbox Series X video game console. That’s an impressive level of commitment for a game that simulates what we consider to be quite an annoying chore. At least you don’t have to worry about the weeding.…

01 Volvo 850 BTCC Volvo’s 850 was a bold call rolling up to the start line against a field of saloons, and it was only revealed at the last minute. “Many thought it was a joke,” Volvo explained. It didn’t set the world alight and the team switched to a saloon the year after, but who cares – it had ambition and threw the dice. 02 Jules Proto 6x4 Many, many cars have attempted the fearsome Dakar Rally. Few, however, looked as unlikely as this: the Jules Proto 6x4. With an aesthetic straight from RoboCop the Proto wore a Chevy 350 V8 matched to a Porsche gearbox and 4WD. Raced in 1984. Retired in 1984 after the chassis snapped. 03 Mercedes 300 SEL Nicknamed the ‘Red Pig’, this Benz was…

EV fans hate PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) because they’re a fudge. Not the real thing. Petrolheads hate them because they add weight and complexity to a car. Almost everyone accuses them of being a tax dodge. As usual, it’s not so simple. They’re best for people who run a regular daily trip that’s somewhere around the battery-only range, plus occasional long trips on petrol. Crucially, those people need to have a socket at home or work. If they don’t plug in daily then yes, PHEVs are nothing but a tax dodge. But the evidence says otherwise. Most PHEVs are connected to manufacturer-run apps gathering driving data. Volvo says that half the miles driven by its PHEVs are electric. So, contrary to what you might believe, people actually do plug…

£268,012 5.2 V10 631 bhp 7spd DCT 3.0 secs 20.3 mpg 331 g/km FOR Very aggressive, trackfocused dynamics, V10 still the star of the show AGAINST Raucous and demanding on road, and to look at A Lamborghini Huracán turned up to… well a good notch above the Performante. The new STO (Super Trofeo Omologata) claims to take the road-going Lambo experience a step closer to the GT3 racer – its first car, it claims, where track ability takes precedence over road driving. Pushed further than the Aventador SVJ, in a bid to tackle rivals such as McLaren’s 620R or 765LT, the AMG GT Black Series and whatever Ferrari chooses to name the inevitable hardcore version of the 296 GTB. As far as numbers go, the STO’s engine struggles to hold…

LEXUS LC500 SPORT+ PACK £87,925 FOR The takumi approach has kept the LC feeling sharp AGAINST It’s pricey, it’s niche and it surely has a shelf life 5.0 V8 467 bhp 4.7 secs 24.3 mpg 262 g/km Japanophiles ought to adore ‘takumi’, the philosophy that’s gone into crafting the sharply styled LC. The “precision skills of Lexus’ master craftspeople” have led to “detailed refinement of driving dynamics”. Fancy way of saying the latest update has brought geeky tweaks and weight saving that make the LC500 subtly sharper to drive, and even more likeable. How long can thirsty nat-asp coupes survive, though? SD HONDA CIVIC TYPE R SPORT LINE £35,400 FOR (Still) one of the best drivers’ cars in the world. Ever AGAINST Amateur interior, dodgy styling, can you actually buy…

CLASS: SUPERMINI // CAR: VAUXHALL CORSA // TASK: LEARNING TO DRIVE Britain’s bestselling car. Is also the car that teaches Britain to drive. This is not a coincidence. Plenty of learners go on to buy a Corsa. They want transport and here’s a small, affordable, easy car that’s already familiar to them. Tick, tick, tick. These people are not like you and I. But they are the majority. And the majority do not buy ‘good’ or ‘interesting’, they buy ‘ease’ and ‘value’. Vauxhall supplies thousands of cars to driving schools every year. I suspect it’s a profitable enterprise. But how easy is a new Corsa to learn in? I’ve been asking myself questions like this a lot recently since I have a learner of my own at home. My daughter…

Must be difficult living with an icon. They start to believe in their own legendary status, getting ideas above their station. They’re a nightmare to replace. Imagine what it must have been like for Fiat, stuck with the 500 on sale for almost 20 years and no idea how to replicate the success. Sure, the company did pretty well with its small cars – the 126 made a decent fist of things when it went on sale in 1972, the 1980 Panda was everywhere for a while, and the’91 Cinquecento was well respected. But icons? A hard sell. The Italian automobile association took matters into its own hands at the 1992 Turin motor show, holding a competition of sorts and asking a few domestic design studios to see if they…

WASN’T THE MkI FABIA vRS… A DIESEL? When the first-generation Fabia vRS was launched back in 2003 it was unlike any other hot hatch its size. For it was powered not by a rev-happy petrol engine, but by a 1.9-litre turbodiesel plucked from the VW Group parts bin. This, remember, was only a couple of years after the UK government introduced tax breaks for diesel-powered cars, and a couple of years before Audi started winning with diesel at Le Mans. In 2003, and up to and beyond the death of the MkI Fabia vRS in 2007, everyone thought diesel was the future. And boy were they wrong. DIESEL ISN’T DEAD YET THOUGH, RIGHT? No, but demand is falling and it seems unlikely we’ll see many more new diesel-fuelled performance cars.…

REPORT 5 £37,380 OTR/£43,155 as tested/£325pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s the easiest car in the world to recommend, isn’t it? DRIVER Ollie Kew HAVING SPENT THREE MONTHS AND 3,000 MILES IN THE ‘BASE SPEC’ 242bhp GTI manual, we’ve swapped into a Clubsport. This ought to give us a more rounded idea of where the sweet spot of GTI life is. To round off on the red car, we had no reliability or build quality issues in those 3,000 miles. The Moonstone Grey Clubsport arrives with over 6,000 miles on the clock already. And no, it hasn’t emitted any buzzes, rattles or squeaks either – despite life on £725 19in rims instead of 18s. Along with the paint (£380), a heated front seat and steering wheel pack (£270), rearview camera (£300),…

REPORT 5 £48,045/£48,660/£596 WHY IT’S HERE Just what is the Cupra Formentor… for? DRIVER Tom Ford A CAR IS NEVER ACTUALLY TOO small, you just have too much stuff. Or people. Anyway, here’s an interesting Rubik’s Cube of a problem: five people and a medium dog, bedding and camping gear, clothing and the random detritus of three teenagers, all packed into a Formentor for three days away. Now, it may have similar bones to an Ateca (Seat’s small-ish family SUV), but it’s lower in the roofline and less square, so you have less interior volume. Worth noting here that the boot is reserved for the dog. An immediate solution comes in the form of a roof-rack or roof box, which means you basically decant the contents onto the roof. Now…

REPORT 12 £62,995/£71,245/£279 WHY IT’S HERE They claim the Plus Four is a modern Morgan. Time to see if it’s true DRIVER Stephen Dobie IT HAD TO HAPPEN EVENTUALLY: after almost a year, our Mog finally developed quirks I couldn’t just shake off as ‘character’. So it went back to the factory, both for its 10,000-mile service and to have an iffy roof latch and dodgy driver’s door seen to. The latter had taken to staying locked no matter what I did with the key or blipper, leaving me to gracelessly squirm through from the passenger door to unlock it from the inside. My own attempts to fix it – with wanton application of WD-40 – had inevitably been in vain. Latch and lock have been faultless since someone with…

GOODBYE £26,025 OTR/£26,025 as tested/£267pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is this all the sensible car a sensible family could need? DRIVER Sam Philip SUMMER HOLIDAY TIME, AND WITH FOUR HUMANS AND A COUPLE of bikes to transport to the opposite side of the country, that means something’s going on the roof. And – after a brief discussion with my wife regarding the merits of al fresco child seats – it’s agreed those somethings should be the bikes. Which means… roof bars. Now, with no rails, tracks or fixed mounting points to be found on the Leon’s roof, I was intrigued – not to mention a little concerned – exactly how this would work. The official Leon roof bars (£210 from Seat) clamp into the door jambs, which sounds a bit precarious…

The answer to both questions really depends on where you are and how a particular currency is performing against other major currencies. In Britain the Mazda 2 city car is the most affordable route into the ownership club with prices starting at £16,475 for the SE-L version. Mazda doesn’t do performance models or supercars, so none of its prices look astronomical on paper. The CX-5 is the steepest car on its books with prices starting at £27,545 for the SE-L and climbing up to £38,785 for the full-fat GT Sport Auto version complete with all-wheel drive and a 2.2-litre diesel engine. You might expect the electric MX-30 to dwarf these figures given that EVs tend to cost a pretty penny, but no: base models start from £26,045 and only the…

1,175,139 The majority of Mazda’s cars are built in Japan, with plants in Hiroshima, Miyoshi and Hofu. Some models destined for the North American market are constructed in Salamanca, Mexico. Mazda also has facilities in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, China and Russia, while a US base in Alabama is being built as part of a joint venture with Toyota. In 2020 Mazda built a total of 1,175,139 vehicles, 20,303 of which were commercial vehicles. The overall figure represented a 21 per cent overall drop on the previous year, with factories shut down during the global COVID-19 pandemic.…

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: £26,000–£32,550 RANGE: Up to 145 miles The electric version of the home grown favourite squeezes the BMW i3’s powertrain into a familiar package. Range not massive, but the car’s still fun. 3. FIAT 500e PRICE: £20,495–£27,495 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.…

Porsche is planning on its own customer electric race series from 2025. And this is the concept for the car: the Mission R. Well, you might have expected as much from the makers of the Taycan, competitor in Formula E and LMP1 hybrids. The Mission R makes no excuses. No need for short races, or battery swaps. They say it’ll do the equivalent length race to a 911 Carrera Cup round, which is 30 or 40 minutes depending on the type of circuit. And the lap times will be faster, matching the current 911 GT3 Cup. They won’t spend long plugged in in the pitlane. Battery recharge time to 80 per cent is just 15 minutes, using a special 350kW charge unit each team would take to the track. That’s…

This is the car aiming to prove family hatchbacks still matter in a world increasingly beset by crossovers. As you very well know, Vauxhall has joined the Stellantis cinematic universe, and so this new Astra sits on the EMP2 platform that also underpins the Peugeot 308. It’s only a smidgen longer than the MkVII Astra but gains more in the wheelbase. That ‘Vizor’ front – first seen on the Mokka – is a striking affair, allied to sharper lines and creases outlining the handsome new hatch. Yes, we’re still talking about a Vauxhall Astra. Being an Astra means it gets a wealth of drivetrain options, and for the first time in its history, will be offered as a fully electric variant – yup, never saw that one coming. No details…

SHARRON’S DREAM GARAGE Which car is going to get the gold? McLAREN 720S If I was going to pick a supercar it would be a modern McLaren – probably a 720S. PORSCHE CAYENNE I’d need a family friendly car in there, so I’d go for the Porsche Cayenne. MINI CABRIOLET I bought my Mini brand new six or seven years ago, and it’d definitely stay in my dream garage. As soon as I turned 17, I learnt to drive in a Triumph Dolomite. After that I used to steal my dad’s car all the time – it was an awful Austin Princess. It looked like a wedge on wheels. The first car that I ever bought myself was a Citroen 2CV. I remember pulling the gearstick off when I was…

Planning on ordering a Model 3 using Tesla’s swanky online only buying experience, but in need of an extra battery to charge the thing? How about one that could literally power your entire town? Elon has made it possible to add the massive 3MWh Megapack to your basket on the website. The Megapack is technically a pre-assembled battery pack (complete with scary sounding modules, bidirectional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC main breaker and controls) for commercial sites, but who’s to say you couldn’t stick one in your back garden? If you’ve got $1.2m to spare, that is. Tesla.com; $1,235,890…

A handful of facts on Renault’s new full-electric hatchy crossover thing 1 IT ISN’T A HATCH OR A CROSSOVER Like with the revivals of the 4 and 5, the Megane will be electric only. It’ll also be the first French car based on the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance’s CMF-EV platform. There are lots of crossover tropes – narrow windows, 20in wheels and plastic arches – but it’s only 50cm taller than the current Megane. 2 THE RANGE IS DECENT That low roofline and the low centre of gravity are thanks to super slim 110mm battery packs. They can be either 40kWh or 60kWh in their capacity, with the larger of the two providing a WLTP range of 292 miles. There’ll also be two motor options, with either 128bhp or 215bhp being sent…

FORD MUSTANG MACH-E £41,330 / £41,330 as tested VOLKSWAGEN ID.3 £28,435 / £31,020 as tested HYUNDAI IONIQ 5 £44,945 / £48,320 as tested Franz Carl Müller-Lyer didn’t design Hyundais. He was a psychologist, and he died in 1916. His relevance here is the optical illusion he identified. A straight line with outward-pointing arrows at the ends appears shorter than one the same length but with inward-pointing arrows. The Ioniq 5 is a wheeled optical illusion. It’s actually the same size as the Mach-E. Yet something about it makes it look hatchback-sized. Is it all the straight lines and arrowheads? Or the proportions, which closely match the Volkswagen ID.3? The VW and Hyundai look the same size when photographed singly. When parked side by side the VW is lost in the…

CLASS: LARGE CROSSOVER // CAR: NISSAN QASHQAI // TASK: RUNNING ERRANDS As the UK awakes from a COVID-induced slumber, ‘Sunderland to south of Inverness’ is hardly the dream roadtrip you’ve been craving for irresistible travel inspiration. But as the UK car industry also awakes from a COVID-induced slumber, it’s a crucial one. Beaten and bruised by Brexit and a pandemic, it’s been craving good news. And right on cue, Nissan has served it up. A billion-pound investment is bringing a battery gigafactory to the company’s Wearside plant, creating over 6,000 new jobs and turning Sunderland into a self-proclaimed “world-first EV manufacturing ecosystem”. The car you’re looking at here won’t yet be part of that, but it’s a vital stepping stone – gen three of the crossover OG, the Nissan Qashqai.…

CLASS: HATCHBACK // CARS: VW GOLF (& ID.3) // TASK: PARKING “THE AVERAGE BRIT SPENDS 44 HOURS A YEAR SEARCHING FOR A SUITABLE PARKING SPACE AND ACTUALLY EXECUTING THE DAMNED MANOEUVRE” British specialities: weatherrelated small talk, public transport grumbling, and first in line: queueing. But before we can get to our politely lining up pastime, the car’s got to be left somewhere, and that’s a modern life bugbear that’s getting worse, not better. According to a recent survey, the average Brit spends 44 hours a year searching for a suitable parking space and then actually executing the damned manoeuvre. Time and fuel wasted looking for parking costs the UK economy £23.3 billion a year. Your insurer’s annual bill is eye-watering too: the RAC estimates two-thirds of Brits have suffered a…

01 FIRST WORLD TITLE (1997) Valentino picked up the first of his nine world titles at the tender age of 18. It was his second season in the world bike racing championship’s third tier – nowadays known as Moto3, in the late Nineties it was called the 125cc Championship. After a consistent but unexceptional opening year, Vale really turned the screw second time around, winning not only 11 of 15 races on his Aprilia, but the hearts of most spectators with his vibrant celebrations – a number of them dressed as Robin Hood. 02 FIRST MOTOGP WORLD TITLE (2001) Naturally, Rossi’s 125cc title saw him graduate up to the 250cc Championship, where history repeated itself and he took rider’s honours in his second season in 1999. Then it was up…

LESS THAN £5K VOLKSWAGEN GOLF GTI MKII (1990) Price now £4,000 Harris says Conventional wisdom says you want a GTI 16v, not this 8v. You probably also crave three doors rather than five. And this one wasn’t even registered in the Eighties. Alter any of those and you pay bigger money. LESS THAN £10K PORSCHE 944 (1998) Price now £8,995 Harris says These used to be the really cheap way into Porsche ownership, but prices have crept up. This one appears to tread a fine line between looking nice, but not so nice you’ll never actually drive it. LESS THAN £15K MERCEDES 190E COSWORTH (1985) Price now £12,450 Harris says Are you surprised to see the E30 M3’s contemporary rival so cheap? This one’s done 156,000 miles and described as…

REPORT 6 £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 HERE’S A TOP TIP. IF YOU DRIVE something silver and you’re going to brush bumpers with a car during tight parallel parking, make sure it’s not bright green, the evidence is overwhelming. To be fair to my mortified 18-year-old neighbour, he had no idea there’d been contact, and I believe him. It was a superficial scuff and why else would he park next to the scene of the accident? He’s an honourable young man who immediately apologised and offered to wash the car for free. A close inspection conducted with the sweaty teen hovering nervously had me reckoning itd buff out. So, disaster and a second…

REPORT 3 £37,400 OTR/£39,565 as tested/£425pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is Hyundai’s crossover as ambitious underneath as its looks suggest? DRIVER Andy Franklin A BUSY FEW WEEKS FOR THE TUCSON. IT’S MANAGED TO DO NOT ONE but two summer family holidays in a short space of time. Which I know is a bit rich, but I’m only getting them in before the winter lockdown. I do often wonder if manufacturers send their cars to families before production starts to see how they cope – if they don’t they should, as it can be a brutal test. For the first holiday we went as a full family in one car and then for camping in two cars due to the insane amount of equipment needed. So it was an all-round test for…

REPORT 3 £74,000 OTR/£86,745 as tested/£1,260pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is BMW’s mighty M3 still the performance saloon benchmark? DRIVER Rowan Horncastle THE THREE PEAKS CHALLENGE IS BASICALLY LE MANS FOR GORE-TEX enthusiasts. The aim of the game is to climb each of the highest peaks in England, Wales and Scotland – Scafell Pike, Snowdon and Ben Nevis – in less than 24 hours. It just so happens that in the shadow of these mountains are some of the UK’s best driving roads, and when you string them all together in less than a day, it makes for quite the proving ground. It’s exactly what I needed. Not the hellish hiking (well, the lockdown paunch may disagree) but a properly chunky drive of the M3. See, the new BMW G80 M3…

Mazda is a Japanese carmaker that hails from Hiroshima in the south of the country. It was started in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co by Jujiro Matsuda, manufacturing cork as a substitute sealing material. When demand dwindled it dropped ‘cork’ from its name in 1927 and began building machinery instead. Its first vehicle was the Mazda-go, a threewheeler truck that entered production in 1931. The name originates from Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god of wisdom, intelligence and harmony, but is also a nod to company founder Matsuda (the two names are pronounced similarly in Japanese). A string of commercial vehicles followed, with production halted during World War Two. Hiroshima of course was devastated by the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1945: Mazda’s base just a few miles…

Mazda has produced many stunning concept cars over the years – 1983 MX-03, 1995 RX-01, 2007 Taiki or the 2015 LM55 Vision… The 2015 RX Vision, though, is quite possibly the most beautiful concept car ever built. Revealed at the Tokyo Motor Show, it featured the ultimate expression of Mazda’s ‘Kodo’ design language and was built to fit a next-gen ‘Skyactiv-R’ rotary engine, as the company likes to periodically remind us that it has occasionally built cars with rotary engines. No sign of a road car that looks like the RX Vision but you can drive it on Gran Turismo Sport if you fancy getting your PS4 out the attic.…