Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com Every year we assemble the most ridiculous collection of fast cars launched in the past 12 months. We call it Speed Week to do justice to the sprawling, multi-day itinerary and logistical minefield of our own making. Really, it’s our annual hunt to find the best performance car of the year, and has taken us to roads and racetracks all over the world. This year, for reasons not entirely of our own making, Speed Week returned for the first time in nine years to the TopGear test track in tropical Dunsfold, and that deserved recognition. Go big or go home? We went big and went home, assembling the largest group of contenders we’ve ever had – 26 in total – much to the irritation of our insurers. Themes?…

If you’re looking for a material from which to construct your car, metal is widely regarded as a better choice than cloth. More robust, more rigid, less likely to shrink if you accidently put it on a 60?C boil wash. However, for all its advantages, metal is very bad at folding efficiently into a small space, at least if you plan on unfolding it again at any point thereafter. All of which is by way of saying: folding hardtop convertibles have big butts and we cannot lie. This is why, with the tiniest handful of exceptions, they tend to boast all the visual elegance of botched surgery. Unfortunately this significant downside failed to deter, for a terrifying chunk of the Noughties, pretty much every mainstream manufacturer from cooking up a…

You don’t have to remember the Seventies to know they were rubbish. The decade was one long avocado-bathroomed nightmare with nothing to look forward to but power cuts and Morris Marinas. But it is also the decade that gave us Rocky, David Bowie and the Lamborghini Countach. Can it really have been so bad? For the watch industry the answer is easy. Yes, it was very bad. Watch companies faced a very real threat to their very existence. Switzerland was the centre of the watchmaking world, but by the beginning of the Seventies it was clear that quartz from the Far East was going to do the business of timekeeping far more efficiently than clockwork lovingly but expensively fettled by Swiss craftsfolk. The gold standard of accuracy had always been…

THIS MONTH: HUMMER EV PROTOTYPE Let’s start with the obvious. Whether it’s in pickup truck or SUV form, the new Hummer EV is absolutely huge. Both fill a US-sized parking space from corner to corner and both are over six feet tall at the top of the door. It’s crazy seeing these on the roads, although I highly doubt they’ll fit on anything other than a five-lane motorway in the UK. It’s not just the dimensions that are massive either – the pickup weighs over 4,100kg, but it’ll still manage 0–60mph in around 3.0secs thanks to a 1,000bhp triple-motor set-up, and up to 300 miles on a charge. I haven’t had the chance to drive either of these next-gen Hummers – there’s still only one working example of each and they…

£35,395 FOR A right old giggle to drive, oodles of drive mode options AGAINST Firm, thirsty, heavier than an equivalent hot hatch This may be the last N product launched with solely internal combustion. All hints are that N will soon be electric, potentially making this near-300bhp chonk something of an unexpected send-off. Perhaps an appropriate one, though. The i30N’s powertrain is squeezed into the slightly smaller (though 50kg heavier) Kona, which means it stays FWD. A 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo petrol provides 276bhp and 289lb ft, yielding a 5.5secs 0–62mph time and a 149mph top speed. If you’re buying into the SUV world for a pretence of off-roading nous, then in addition to an N-honed stability control set-up is a dial of sand, snow and hill descent modes you’ll almost…

SPEED WEEK TRACK CORNER GUIDE 1. NO-NAME Though ‘oh dear, the tyres are quite cold’ might be an apt title. Erk 2. CHICAGO Lots of run-off. Scene of many spins. And impromptu grass cutting 3. HAMMERHEAD Tricky in the dry, invisible in the wet. And the bump halfway through seems to be growing. Last known residence of the Ferrari SF90’s left-rear tyre 4. FOLLOW THROUGH Easy flat. In the 84bhp Caterham 5. BENTLEY Easy flat. In the BRX Hunter. Preferably through the tyres 6. SECOND-TO-LAST If the invisible turn-in point doesn’t get you, the dodgy surface change surely will 7. GAMBON No pressure, everyone is watching from the pits. And judging…

I’M CALLING IT THE CROTCH TICKLER, MAYBE THE NADGER MASHER… HAVEN’T DECIDED YET. Either way there’s a large piece of metal waggling around between my legs and making me feel ever so slightly on edge. Its linkage to the rounded knob in my right hand (steady) changes gear apparently, although there’s so much wind rush, spray and chunter from the engine I’ve got no idea what gear I’m in nor how fast I’m going. And I couldn’t care less because I’m sideways everywhere, beaming and basically a swashbuckling GP driver from the Thirties. Welcome to Memory Lane where even genital torture devices are thoroughly approved and imperfections aren’t just overlooked, they’re actively encouraged. There’s a reason why retro is running through the car industry faster than chlamydia through Fresher’s Week…

“SOME ARE REFERRING TO THIS GROUP AS THE CLOWNS OF OUR WHEELED CIRCUS” There’s no science here, although there could be. We could put cones out to measure the longest skid. Could have got the M3 over, as that’s got a drift analyser that tells you how many seconds and yards you’ve been sliding for, then seen if anything could beat it. But we don’t need to do that, because it’s immediately clear that if this is just a question of what does the best skids, for how long, at the daftest angles, while creating the most smoke, there’s one runaway winner. The BMW M5 CS. How has BMW made so much Pirelli last so little time? “It can’t,” as one of the team puts it, “even get out of…

MERCEDES 300CE (1988) Price now £4,950 Harris says The W124 series is one frequently fawned over by selfproclaimed used car experts. Well, take their advice on your own terms with the coupe version. There’s little to beat dropping the windows on a sunny day. PORSCHE 928S (1983) Price now £9,850 Harris says The 928’s story is infamous: Stuttgart made a frontengined, V8 coupe to supersede the 911 sports car… and look which is still with us. All of which doesn’t stop early 928s being achingly pretty. This one’s a steal. BMW 840CI (1996) Price now £10,995 Harris says The pop-up light appreciation club is in full pomp, making the days of the bargain BMW 8-Series numbered. Very few now sit below the 20 grand mark; this example’s nudging 100,000 miles.…

REPORT 6 £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 I’M USING NÜRBURGRING MODE ALL THE TIME. THERE, I ADMIT IT. GO ahead, judge me. I care not. Here we have scientific proof that – contrary to what some insist – Nürburgring lap times do not equal horrid road cars. In very simple terms, Nürburgring mode dials the GTI Clubsport’s engine, gearbox and e-diff map to ‘GRRRRR’ but knocks the suspension back to ‘ahhhh’. That means it can ride the kerbs and compression of the Green Hell at huge speed, with composure, maintaining traction, grip, and stability. And naturally, that combination is pretty darn useful in Great Britain, where country lanes aren’t just scarred and bumpy: they…

HELLO £26,605 OTR/£27,200 as tested/£321pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is this the comfiest family car you can buy? DRIVER Sam Philip BEFORE THE C4 ARRIVED, I’LL BE HONEST, I WASN’T QUITE SURE what to expect. I knew the backstory, of course: the C4 has long been Citroen’s middle-of-the-genre C-segment hatchback, an on-the-nose rival for the Focus, Golf and Astra. But with Britons apparently deciding they’d stick instead with their Focuses, Golfs and Astras, Citroen has reinvented the C4 as a… well, whatever you’d call the car in the image above. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. I’m all over cars that defy classification, if they work for their occupants. But the C4’s reinvention did mean I was struggling to get my head around how big it was. Now it’s…

HELLO £40,535 OTR/£42,305 as tested/£644pcm WHY IT’S HERE To expose “sports crossovers” as the silly idea they are. DRIVER Paul Horrell OH WE DO ALL LOVE A FAST HANDSOME ESTATE, AND HERE IS ONE. A stablemate of the Cupra Formentor that Tom Ford is currently running, it has 310bhp and 4WD, and a seven-speed DSG is mandatory. A quick rundown of the other specs. Beginning with the fact it’s £40,535 plus a glass sunroof and Desire Red paint. At that money it’s going to have to be good. It’s certainly quick. Under five seconds 0–62. Doesn’t actually feel quite that rabid, but of course its drag-sprint time will have been flattered by the traction of 4WD and the quick DSG shifts. This is the top VZ3 trim level. It has…

What’s Ferrari, and when did it start making cars? Ferrari is possibly the greatest, most storied fast carmaker of them all, not least according to Ferrari itself. It may rarely miss a chance to trumpet its own legendary status, but then Ferrari has plenty to trumpet. The Italian manufacturer isn’t just one of the most recognisable car brands in the world, but one of the most recognisable brands, full stop. That black-on-yellow horse is as iconic as the Olympic rings, the Nike swoosh or the Apple, um, apple – and it’s adorned some of the fastest, most beautiful, most significant, most expensive cars in history. That equine logo, incidentally, is officially titled the ‘cavallino rampante’, generally translated as ‘prancing horse’. But according to TopGear’s dog-eared Italian dictionary, ‘cavallino rampante’ could…

Next month: Vauxhall What is it? Technically not a Ferrari. Or at least it wasn’t at launch. It was unveiled at the Paris show in 1973 under the firm’s Dino brand, as a 2+2 supplement to the gorgeous Dino 246 GT. Ferrari badges crept on over the course of its seven-year life, but unlike the 246, it’s not since flourished into legend status and thus remains one of the cheapest ways into prancing horse ownership, good ones starting around £50,000. Yet it ought to be an icon; it’s a car of firsts. Driving The 308 craves confidence and positivity. But you’ll know that as soon as you’ve climbed in and realised the cliches about offset pedals in Seventies supercars are justified. Man, this thing makes you contort your body to…

Daniel Craig once admitted that he’d rather “slash his wrists” than play James Bond again. He was being mischievous but he also strongly suggested that Spectre wasn’t the send-off he wanted. Above all else, No Time To Die is Craig’s film, a giant of a movie that leans heavily on all the things we love about Bond – the action sequences, the fabulous locations and yes, the car chases – while stirring in elements that are unfamiliar. Bond movies have always been explosive, but this one makes your ears buzz, widens your eyes, and most importantly knocks you sideways emotionally. It also lands with more pressure on its shoulders than any mere film – even a Bond one – could reasonably cope with. Traumatic in pre-production and obviously delayed by…

Say hello to the Volkswagen ID.Life, an electric supermini that could cost the same as its combustion engined counterparts when it arrives in 2025. “Isn’t it cute?” yelled VW brand boss Ralf Brandstätter when it was unveiled. As specced here, performance goes some way beyond cute. Into Polo GTI territory, actually. The motor makes 234bhp, and 0–62mph takes just 6.9 seconds. The battery is a 57kWh box, for 250 miles of range. But you can bet there will be cheaper versions with less power and smaller batteries. To make a profit out of this thing Volkswagen’s got to churn it out in bulk. To help sell more, there will be Cupra and Skoda versions too. The plan is to build all three, and their batteries, in Spain. It uses a…

WRC 10 Usually when the latest sports game arrives, it’s all about the new stuff. The team updates, rule changes and, if it’s FIFA, the latest comedy footballer haircuts. In WRC 10 the biggest new addition is the old stuff. Specifically, Anniversary Mode, which celebrates the WRC reaching the grand old age of 50. Something that is happening, err, next year. Anniversary Mode does its job well, highlighting the new larger garage of retro rally weapons in a series of increasingly demanding challenges. Elsewhere WRC 10 does debut two brand new rallies. Estonia is a beautiful, verdant blast along sun-dappled gravel country roads, whereas Croatia features tarmac with more bumps and potholes than a teenager’s forehead. So about the same as your average British B-road. Much of the game is…

01 Ferrari SP12 EC Ferrari’s Special Project (SP) cars are one-off coachbuilt specials commissioned by impossibly wealthy Ferrari fanatics. British guitar enthusiast Eric Clapton’s favourite Ferrari is the Seventies 512 BB, so he asked Ferrari to make a rolling homage to the Boxer. 02 Lamborghini Miura 2006 Lamborghini doesn’t do ‘retro’ very often, but it can pull it off to a tee. Remember this? In 2006, Lamborghini celebrated 40 years of its original rule-breaker with this rebodied Murciélago LP640. However, the car was never sold to the public. Right decision? 03 Mercedes SLS AMG AMG’s first bespoke not-a-tuned-up-Mercedes car was a front-engined two-seat super-GT with roof-hinged gullwing doors. It was a modern muscle car nod to the 300SL, complete with explosive door hinges that blew the doors off in the…

£45,490 FOR Solid efficiency, clever regen. Refined too AGAINST Heavy for its size, cramped rear There are two types of electric cars. Learn this simple life hack about how EVs are born and the whole changing of the guard towards battery-powered motoring becomes a heck of a lot more digestible. No, I don’t mean ‘Teslas’ and ‘everybody else’. The two types of electric cars are: cars that were designed and built from the tyres up to only ever be electric (better packaged, usually more aerodynamic but rather expensive to produce) and combustion-engined cars that have been adapted to run on electricity (with batteries stuffed in the void where the fuel tank and exhaust would’ve lived). Mercedes has, until about five minutes ago, been firmly in the second camp. It says…

£64,770 FOR Still the best-driving, most desirable small posh 4x4 AGAINST Bits of the cabin feeling left behind now The Porsche Macan went on sale over seven years ago. It was based on an Audi Q5 platform that had been knocking around since 2008. By rights, this thing should be pensionable, off-the-pace, unrecommendable rubbish by now. And yet, because Porsche got its small SUV so achingly right, it’s actually still the most desirable, best to drive, most complete car in its class. And since it’ll have to soldier on until at least 2023, it’s just had its second facelift, and a bit of a model line-up jiggle. Last time Porsche overhauled its entrylevel SUV, it updated the infotainment but left the rest alone. This time the touchscreen’s been upgraded again,…

“THESE CARS SHOULD EXIST TO MAKE US ZING AND GRIN” Lamborghini has enjoyed a bumper few years off the back of tasteless people wanting to drive very fast trucks, but its sports car game has been weak for a long time. The ancient Aventador has a yearly appointment with a blind cosmetic surgeon and the Huracán apparently exists to remind everyone how good the Audi R8 is. There’s the odd special to keep tasteless people with even more money happy, but not much to remind us what the company used to be capable of. Photographs of the new Huracán STO – yes, the font does read STD to some of us – suggested more of the same. Silly styling and peacock ambitions. It takes about three minutes to realise that…

“IF YOU’RE GOING TO ADD MORE VOLUME AT LEAST MAKE THE SOUND A GOOD ONE” I don’t wish harm upon anyone, but if I was forced, I’d choose the genius responsible for making cars sound like a dog scratching itself on laminate flooring. The pop and bang map. Racecars make many good noises because they’re expected to do things no road car could ever imagine. Their engines are measured in running time – not mileage – and there’s no Euro 6 emissions standards to meet. Either add performance or leave it off. Your road car on the other hand is a slightly different story. Got a three-or four-cylinder engine? Embrace it. The sound your car makes should be authentic and I’m all for fitting an exhaust which ramps this noise…

Looking back at the original Grand Theft Auto now, it’s hard to believe that the all-conquering GTA series started life as a slightly ropey looking top-down crim sim. Whereas today you can make out every individual high definition hair in the lead character’s stubble, we spent most of the first game trying to work out which indistinct blob of pixels was our character’s head. Don’t forget, though, back in 1997 games didn’t habitually look this basic. Even for the time, GTA’s aesthetic felt retro, particularly compared with Gran Turismo which came out in the same year. What GTA got right, however, was binning off the lantern jawed heroism that most video games of the time foisted upon you, swapping it for an illicit dose of filthy criminality. If an Escort…

REPORT 7 £30,345/£32,045/£400 WHY IT’S HERE Does Mazda’s first EV have substance beyond gimmicky but cool doors? DRIVER Elliott Webb MAZDA CALLS THE DOORS ON the MX-30 ‘freestyle doors’. I get it, they look interesting, they look cool, but they don’t work for me unless I’m driving on my tod. This is a small, family SUV – there would usually be more than one person in the car and usually the other people need assistance getting in and out. I don’t have a problem donning a hat and playing chauffeur, opening the doors to said people, but I do have issues with the lack of space… especially when parking in any car park, next to any car. Peak annoyance hit when my son arrived in the world and I wasn’t…

GOODBYE £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 LOGIC SUGGESTS A 2,000-MILE ROADTRIP IS THE VERY BEST WAY TO get to know your car on a very intimate level. So even after a full year and 12,000-odd miles on its cheerily basic odometer, it felt right to throw countless pounds at COVID testing companies in order to take my Morgan Plus Four overseas. And my drive to Germany’s Allgau region was like a goodbye greatest hits album just as a band’s lead singer is about to depart on their solo career – a vivid reminder of all the tracks you love, as well as the few stinkers you always…

REPORT 6 £48,045/£48,660/£596 WHY IT’S HERE Just what is the Cupra Formentor… for? DRIVER Tom Ford WEIRD ISN’T IT, BUT AS SOON as you drive a particular car, you immediately become sensitive to the model, and start to pick up on when you see another one. Formentors were not common when mine arrived six months ago, but I’ve seen a few now, and they actually look nicely distinctive out in the real world. Props to the lady in the PHEV version near the M6 services singing her heart out to Dolly Parton. In fact, not very many are ‘my’ 310bhp VZ – usually something more economical like the lady working nine to five. Seems like those hot hatch buyers are still headed the Golf R’s way. Still, it’s nice to…

REPORT 6 £33,340 OTR/£36,140 as tested/£348pcm WHY IT’S HERE Does BMW build a better Golf GTI? DRIVER Vijay Pattni THERE’S ONLY ONE CHASSIS SET-UP ON THE 128TI AS WE’VE TOLD YOU repeatedly – 10mm lower than a regular 1er, stiffer and so on – but there are three little buttons that affect the response of the engine, the gearbox it’s attached to and the accelerator. They are: Eco Pro, Comfort and Sport. Eco Pro first. Maybe because I’m a sadist, I drove BMW’s rorty little hot hatch in a mode that felt like the entire car was driving through an enormous pool of custard. Maybe it was like The Matrix, when it feels slow but only because it’s superfast. Or maybe it was just slow because it’s trying to eke…

01 Ferrari 250 GTO In 1962, a 250 GTO would have set you back around $18,000, although only if Enzo had approved your purchase himself. Nowadays it holds the top two spots on the ‘Most Expensive Cars Ever Sold’ list – top was a $70m sale in 2018. 02 Ferrari Testarossa The Testarossa’s impossibly wide, wedgetastic shape and cheese grater air intakes were peak Eighties. Combined with a howling 385bhp flat-12 it made for quite the package, and sales were strong to reflect that. 03 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder SWB Almost certainly the prettiest convertible ever built, the 250 GT California Spyder SWB also stakes a claim for prettiest car ever built. Particularly popular with some rather well-known folk in Hollywood… 04 Ferrari F40 A speedo that reads to…

1 IT’S REMARKABLY SIMILAR TO THE EQS Just as the bigger EQS is a luxo-saloon with all the high-end decadence of an S-Class, so the EQE is an electric car of roughly E-Class size. Don’t they look similar, though? The slippery styling is back, although the EQE isn’t quite as aerodynamic as the 0.2Cd EQS because it’s shorter. 2 IT DOESN’T REALLY SHARE ANYTHING WITH AN E-CLASS In fact, it shares next to nothing with its ultraconservative combustion-engined sibling. It sits on the same all-new EVA2 platform as the EQS, and will take on stuff like the Tesla ModelS and BMW i4. Check out the über long wheelbase that makes room for the giant cabin and big battery. 3 THERE’LL BE PLENTY OF POWER The launch car, the EQE 350,…

At altitude in the Rockies, everything feels surreal, and a little bit dangerous. The views are stupendous; enormous, jagged mountain ranges layered one after another in every direction, the trees are wilder, the sunlight a little more pure, unfiltered by all that pesky oxygen. The air is so thin above 12,000 feet, I’m starting to think the clouds are all clown faces. But really, what’s hardest for me to believe is the sheer existence of the truck I’m sitting in right now. In the US there have been announcements from pretty much every major carmaker for electric versions of their current trucks, but so far not a single fossilfree version has rolled off of an assembly line. Tesla’s Cybertruck? Still a concept fantasy. But today, the wait is over. Meet…

“IT’S WEIRD TO SAY, BUT AT CERTAIN POINTS IT ACTUALLY FEELS LIKE A TUBBY NISSAN GT-R” £51,895 FOR Fun to drive, fun to look at, practical enough. Range and charging are excellent AGAINST It’s a bit big, may be a bit odd looking for some, not exactly cheap Inevitably, when a car appears that’s based on the same platform as something that’s already been released, comparisons flourish – see Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron GT for reference. But it’s surprising how different cars that share bones and blood can feel, even with a pure electric architecture, which is conceptually harder to imbue with ‘character’ than when you have potentially a different engine and gearbox to play with. The Kia EV6 is a perfect example. It’s a large, pure-electric hatchback-slash-SUV with…

MERCEDES G400d £87,925 FOR The best workhorse available. Right engine, right car AGAINST Costly. And diesel. Still the right fuel for it though Yes, we all get giddy about the G63, but really it’s a nonsense. Too much engine for the chassis. If you want harmony in Merc’s hardest worker you want the G400d and its 516lb ft at 1,200rpm. It replaces the G350d and boasts an extra 43bhp and 74lb ft. Yes it’s heavy (2,489kg), heavy too on fuel and wallet, but this is endgame engineering – a car so teaktough and fit for purpose that no job can withstand it. The best version of the best off-roader. OM AUDI SQ5 SPORTBACK TDI £58,575 FOR Feels like a high quality item. Fast cross-country AGAINST Pricier and less spacious than…

“HOW DOES 500KG OF NEGATIVE LIFT FROM 0MPH GRAB YOU?” Adusty, disused hangar beyond Gambon corner on the TopGear test track is a deeply unremarkable place to survey the upstart that could signal a future path for British supercars. And track days. And motorsport. We do like an underdog. First things first: it’s not as big as you think. The McMurtry Spéirling is a single seater that could hide in the shadow of a Caterham. Imagine if you hit a Keaton-era Batmobile with a cuteness-o-matic ray – it’s tiny. And yet, under the bubble canopy, beneath the gullwing door, there’s room for a lithe 6ft-plus driver. Reclined, with legs raised above bottom height, cradled in a carbon seat and peering through the screen as if sailing a one-man submersible: as…

I am a Gen Xer. A phrase that means nothing to me. I am generation 205 GTi. A phrase that means everything to me. My colleagues aren’t; some would call them millennials, but mostly they self-identify as generation Clio 182. As a result they’re kind of persuaded about the 205, about why it’s here in the final five at the expense of the Caterham 170R, Lotus Elise or Bentley GT Speed, but there’s a detectable scepticism too. Let’s answer that first: those cars all do something familiar – we know, to a greater or lesser extent, how they’ll perform, how they’ll reflect against the others. They’re great, but none was going to shake one of the other four loose. Two cars went straight through because they had thrilled us at…

The Vauxhall Omega was sold in the UK between 1994 and 2003, and was principally known for two reasons: police cars and the fact that everyone had a friend whose dad drove one. It was the dream drive for a mid-level exec who wasn’t quite important enough to warrant a BMW or a Jaguar. It was even sold as the Cadillac Catera between 1996 and 2001, so you might even have had an American friend whose dad drove one. It was styled by US designer Wayne Cherry, who worked for Opel/Vauxhall in the Eighties and shaped an entire generation of cars you remember from back in the day – the Astra, Calibra, Corsa and Tigra among many others. Then he popped off to America and sorted out a load of…

PHWOAR. THAT LOOKS LOVELY… Let’s assume you’re talking about the Inka Orange 2002 and not the resale grey (with red lipstick) 1-Series. I’d argue few designs have aged as delightfully as the 02 Series, a bunch of compact cars chiselled down from the Neue Klasse saloons which kickstarted BMW’s modern era back in the Sixties. There’s a new, all-electric Neue Klasse coming this decade, which yes, does mean a potential design reboot at Munich. BUT WILL THE CARS BE THIS CLASSY? Impossible to say, but it’s easy to assume ‘unlikely’; the 2002 is devilishly well appointed even without such an arresting hue. There’s another pertinent reason for revisiting it: this one is the tii, launched 50 years ago and here providing some context for why the heck the ti badge…

REPORT 4 VAUXHALL MOKKA It had to happen. Of course it did. The Mokka has suffered a puncture, and a proper good one as well – just off the shoulder. Yup, an inch-and-three-quarter-long screw somehow buried itself in the Michelin rubber necessitating a new tyre… costing £170.40. The most expensive tyre you can get for the Mokka the tyre fitter told me. I’m just hoping it lasts long enough to get my money’s worth. EN REPORT 3 BMW M3 COMPETITION Our G80 M3’s colour sure as hell gets attention. You’d think its controversial face would be the main talking point, but the colour has become the go-to icebreaker for the casual car enthusiast to interact with me. It’s a funny colour. In bright sunlight, it pops into a strong shade…

REPORT 5 £158,000 OTR/£185,500 as tested/£1,899pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s the car to save Aston Martin – is it good enough? DRIVER Adam Waddell OVER THE PAST FEW WEEKS, THE INTERNET HAS BEEN AWASH WITH spy pictures of a DBX at the Nürburgring. Eyewitness reports claim that the engine being tested sounded remarkably similar to the V12 from the DB11 and DBS. If there is a V12 version of the DBX in the pipeline, this will no doubt excite a lot of people, particularly if it comes with lowered suspension and additional sports styling as rumoured. However, I do wonder whether it’s entirely necessary. You see, one of the things I’ve been enjoying most about living with the DBX is that it’s so very civilised. The styling is remarkably understated,…

GOODBYE £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 THE E53 WASN’T JUST SEMI-LAIRY, IT WAS ALSO A SEMI-LIFER. AN S500 is incoming but until then a few weeks in the 53’s more traditionally AMG 63 S brother has been illuminating. It’s a relatively simple proposition compared to the ‘lesser’ car, with its 604bhp, innate driftiness, and near £100k (before options) cost. Yes, you know where you are with this thing. The E53 is much more pragmatic – and enigmatic. Its 3.0-litre straight-six engine gets a 21bhp and 184lb ft boost from the starter-alternator motor that sits between the engine and gearbox. That’s fed by a 48V system that also feeds an electric compressor to obviate the lag from the…

READY TO MAKE THE SWITCH? WE SEPARATE WHAT’S HOT FROM WHAT’S NOT 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…