Innholdsfortegnelse for Jun-22 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com Supercars are silly. They just are. All except the new breed of electro-hypercars (which are too fast for the human brain to compute) are antisocially loud, they’re too low to drive over a speed bump at more than 2mph even with a nose lift kit, and with their wings and vents and ducts and fluorescent paint they mark you out as someone who’s trying to compensate for a deficit in other areas. But hang on a minute, you say, they’re the apex of modern science, the point where experimental engineering becomes a reality. Where impossibly exotic materials meet never seen before propulsion methods and designers captivate us with alien silhouettes and rule breaking proportions. They’re the point where racing reaches out a finger and touches the road giving…

You know that sinking feeling when you’re baking a cake and, having mixed up the batter, slopped it into the tin and popped the whole thing in the oven, you spot a vital ingredient – the eggs, maybe – still sat proudly on the kitchen counter, rather than where it should be, inside the cake? (Yeah, TopGear, always down with the relatable youth references.) That was the Honda CR-Z. The eggless cake. Because the little coupe’s list of ingredients looked frankly excellent. Honda pitched the wee Z as a sporty hybrid, its petrol-electric drivetrain promising a consummate blend of entertainment and economy. It looked neat as a pin, especially in white (all Hondas look best in white), with its pinched rear deck referencing Honda’s iconic CR-X of the Eighties. The…

What sort of person buys a brightly coloured watch? Believe it not there are plenty of watch buyers out there who decide what brand they like, how much money they have to spend and then when it comes down to it, swerve past watches in regular tones and go for something horribly garish. And it’s getting more common by the day. Getting funky with the colour scheme didn’t used to be an option. In the pre-electronic era, when watches were tools rather than trophies, you picked your metal and went from there. Almost everything had a steel case, so if you wanted something different you would have to go for gold – solid or plate, depending on your budget. When watch companies started introducing colour it was more about functionality…

Mario Kart Booster Course Pass Desperate for more Mario Kart on your Nintendo Switch? The bad news is you’re not likely to get Mario Kart 9 in the next two years, sorry. The good news is that, over the course of those two years, Nintendo will be remastering 48 courses from previous games in the series and cramming them into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, eventually doubling the number available. The Booster Course Pass, as the add-on is known, is available now for just over 20 quid along with the first ‘wave’ of eight circuits. Graphically they’re less spectacular than the main game, but the layouts are typically friendship-ruining Mario Kart brilliance. We particularly like the courses lifted from more recent mobile phone game Mario Kart Tour, which previously you could…

This is the Ford F-100 Eluminator concept, and it’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. It combines a Ford F-100 from 1978 with a brand new Mustang Mach-E GT – the lightly bonkers performance version of the all-electric SUV. So, you get the looks of a vintage, two-door pickup, but with an 88kWh (usable) battery and a pair of electric motors that drive the front and rear axles. That means there’s a frankly ridiculous 480bhp and 634lb ft of torque on tap. Now, EV restomods are not typically something I’m into. I’m all about modern tech, clean lines, minimalism and efficiency. But there is something fascinating and more than a little charming about a thing that looks like this and yet can move so quickly. It’s now my favourite two-door…

Land Rover talks about a “harmony of proportions” and “precise detailing to create the impression that the vehicle has been milled from solid”. Fundamentally, it looks like a Range Rover. From three quarters of the way round, it looks like the old one, albeit one that’s been ritually sandblasted until it’s smoother than a palace tablecloth. It’s refreshingly bereft of creases, lines and fussy detailing. The most notable change in a design that is so reductive as to be dangerously close to ‘unnoteworthy’ is found dead rear, with slender light motifs shining through a heavily tinted black panel flush with the tapered boat tail. It’s all deeply tasteful, but should age more gracefully than the wanton aggression sold to you by BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Bentley. What’s especially good news for…

To chauffeur or to drive oneself? Land Rover has covered both bases. There’s a long-wheelbase RR stretching 200mm longer than this five-metre beast, but rear seat space is generous even in this ‘base’ five-seat bench model. I’ve a nagging feeling that travelling back here is something that is done only by minor royals and disgraced politicians, association footballers or entertainers who ‘will not be making any further comment at this time’, but I digress. How to quantify comfort? The TopGear method is simple: to successfully cut, cream and jam (in that order, no arguments) fresh scones while blasting across Buckinghamshire. At motorway speeds the Range Rover’s ride really discovers its finest hour: the air-sprung float is just-so, never wallowing, but also far less tautly strung than one of those horrid…

Top Gun is the film that turned a promising young actor called Tom Cruise into a movie star. In fact, you could say he went supersonic. Which is apt, because a whole 36 years later, he’s back in the cockpit for Top Gun: Maverick, and wait until you cop a load of what he and a new generation of precocious aviators get up to. It is mind-blowing. Cruise’s return as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell rather flies in the face of the film’s best remembered line (“I feel the need, the need for speed!”) but, hell, the guy’s been busy in the interim. Not shy of a sequel – Mission: Impossible 8 is currently in production – Cruise nonetheless refused to revisit Top Gun, and when he finally did come round to…

Alexander Calder, 3.0 CSL An engineer turned sculptor, Calder became famous for his huge abstract ‘mobiles’, a form of kinetic art that initially used motors to work but then relied on air currents. Rehearse d his art car moves on an aircraft for US carrier Braniff. Frank Stella, 3.0 CSL “My design is like a blueprint transferred onto the bodywork.” Uses a black and white square grid to reflect the car’s engineering, with a graph paper effect. A works BMW entry in the 1976 Le Mans 24-Hour race, it didn’t finish. Roy Lichtenstein, 320i Group 5 One of the great figures of Pop Art, and an influence on Koons. “I wanted the lines I painted to be a dep iction of the road showing the car where to go.” Raced…

REPORT 4 £36,125/£37,270/£450 WHY IT’S HERE Can millions of Qashqai owners be wrong? DRIVER Esther Neve IT’S TAKEN A VERY LONG TIME, SO long that I was wondering if indeed there would ever be anything to frustrate or annoy me about the Nissan, but at last it has happened. Look at the word QASHQAI on the boot of the Nissan. Does anything strike you? Yes! The spacing between the letters is all skew-whiff. The kerning (specialist publishing term meaning the space between two individual letters in any word) is not right. A very cursory measure (don’t use these figures as absolute please) show that the spacing in centimetres between the letters is thus: Q–A 2.5, A–S 2.5, S–H 3.3, H–Q 3.3, Q–A 2.7 and A–I 4.0. Essentially, the I is…

HELLO £32,260 OTR/£36,035 as tested/£443pcm WHY IT’S HERE Does Honda’s eco-champion stand out from the crossover crowd? DRIVER Sam Philip PEARLY WHITE AS JOEY ESSEX’S DENTAL FURNITURE, A HONDA HR-V has joined the TG fleet. And, first things first, smart looking thing, innit? At least in the ‘Premium Sun White Pearl’ two-tone paint of our test car – a £550 option, I’m afraid. Under the bonnet there’s just one powertrain option: a full hybrid, though interestingly not a PHEV. It’s a powered-up version of that from the Jazz, comprising a 1.5-litre naturally aspirated petrol engine, a pair of compact e-motors and a dinky battery. At low speeds, the ICE doesn’t drive the wheels at all, instead acting as an efficient generator to feed the 1.1kWh battery. But at higher loads,…

REPORT 5 £40,130 OTR/£46,850 as tested/£595pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is it the thoughtful and better alternative to a Tesla Model 3? DRIVER Tom Ford So what is it? Well, the P2 fairly regularly suggests that it needs to do a software update – exactly like your mobile phone. Most of these are the same as your device; software fixes that you don’t really catch. But if you order the £850 hop-up via the Polestar online shop, your car simply goes to sleep for 90 minutes and then wakes up with another 67bhp and 15lb ft of torque. So you get a grand total of 475bhp and 502lb ft, 0–62mph down 0.3 of a second from 4.7 to 4.4secs, and a 50–75mph time down to 2.2 seconds, half a second quicker…

01 Jaguar MkII Popular with crims, rozzers and British Saloon Car Championship drivers alike throughout the Sixties, the 3.8-litre, straight-six-engined Jag MkII was a proper sports saloon. Looks stunning too, wouldn’t you agree? Ripe for a restomod, we reckon. 02 Jaguar XK120 Jag’s first sports car since production of the SS 100 ended, the XK120 launched with a new 3.4-litre straight-six dreamt up while the engineers were on fire watch during World War Two. The running gear was also used in the Le Mans-winning C-type. 03 Jaguar XJR-9 Mention the Le Mans 24-Hour Race to folks of a certain age and many of them will instantly think of the Silk Cut Jaguars. The monstrous XJR-9 – complete with its 7.0-litre V12 engine – won Le Mans in 1988 and ended…

86,270 Jaguar has long been associated with Coventry, where it moved in the late Twenties. The iconic Browns Lane plant opened in 1951, which is where all those lovely sports cars were screwed together before production switched to Castle Bromwich in 2005. While most of the current range continues to be made in the Midlands, manufacture of the E-Pace and I-Pace SUVs has branched out to the Magna Steyr plant in Austria, while other models have localised factories in China and India. Jaguar sold 86,270 cars in 2021, down 15.8 per cent on the previous year, which was down on the year before that. Erp. Did something happen that stopped people buying cars?…

CITY CARS These small cars are perfect for urban life, but the trade-off is a much lower range 1. HONDA e PRICE: £34,365–£37,465 RANGE: Up to 13 miles This TG favourite has retro styling and a brilliant interior, but it’s a smidge expensive and the range isn’t great. Somehow we can’t help but love it… 2. MINI ELECTRIC PRICE: £28,500–£35,050 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 500 PRICE: £22,995–£32,995 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. 4. V…

▶ #NEW CARS ▶ #ENTERTAINMENT ▶ #CARCULTURE 010 JUNE 2022 TOPGEAR.COM ▶ #CELEBRITY ▶ # GADGETS ▶ # GAMING This is the new 7-Series. Unlike Mercedes (which builds petrol and diesel S-Classes and then creates a different all electric limo – the EQS – in a new bodyshell) BMW is staying old school. Build one car, then offer it with or without batteries. The 7 can be specced with straight six or V8 engines (no V12 this time) – or as a purely battery powered i7. Incidentally, all UK 7s will have a charging cable – we’re only getting the PHEVs (which BMW says will go 50 miles on e-power) and the i7, with its 102kWh battery and 382-mile range. The unplugged straight-six and V8 engines are confined to the…

This is the Genesis X Speedium Coupe concept. It doesn’t preview a future model, nor does it resemble a ‘conventional’ concept in any way. According to Genesis, it’s a “freestyle” design exercise riffing off the Genesis X Concept. A car that better explores the Genesis “design processes as we explore ideas for the next wave of EVs”. At least that’s what chief creative officer Luc Donckerwolke says. Not just a freestyle design rap, but also a signal Genesis wants EVs to be fun to drive. “The name encapsulates Genesis’s belief that the emotional value of driving will remain strong in the era of electrification.” Indeed, we’re told the face of the concept shows the Korean carmaker’s transition to an all-electric future, the huge grille replaced by DRLs that combine low…

01 Plymouth Road Runner Arriving at the end of the Sixties, the Road Runner was designed to be simple and cheap. Plymouth paid a reputed $50,000 for the rights to name the car after the cartoon nemesis of Wile E Coyote, and use a silhouette of the speedy character on the side of the bodywork. Beep beep! 02 Dacia Jogger Nothing about this boxy seven-seat bargain is racy. But no one ‘wins’ a jog either. A jog is leisurely. You don’t take jogging seriously. It takes no specialist equipment, so it’s probably the cheapest sport. Turns out Dacia’s latest family hero has an appropriate name after all. 03 Checker Marathon The sister car to the Checker Taxi, the Marathon was aimed at the company car market. Despite being ugly and…

“THE GRID BURNS FUEL SO EVs AREN’T LOW CARBON” I thought even electric car doubters had finally grasped that this is a myth, but I saw it crop up again the other day, so we need to lay it to rest. “Electric cars don’t reduce CO2 because grid electricity is generated with fossil fuels.” Some of it is, but nevertheless they do. In 2021 UK electricity took 214g/kWh on average to generate and send through the grid. That includes, for the gas component, the drilling and distribution of the gas. On windy, sunny days, CO2 is less because of all the wind and solar; with no wind and darkness the fossil content rises. So charge your car on a windy night. Now, 1kWh will get a normal EV about 5km.…

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The cliché that’s followed the last few Range Rovers around is that they’re no longer 4x4s first: they’re luxury cars that happen to be several feet in the air. That was fine when the shape of a luxury car was a ruddy great saloon barge. In the lifetime of the previous Range Rover, the kingdom was invaded by – in no particular order – the Bentley Bentayga, BMW X7, Aston Martin DBX, and if you’re really stretching the budget the Rolls-Royce Cullinan. So it’s now less a case that the Range Rover is a high-riding S-Class and 7-Series rival, and more that the shape of luxury cars in 2022 is SUV. Obviously these come with inherent compromises, such as ‘ensuring it doesn’t topple over in a corner’. That’s seen to…

It might be apocryphal, but Keith Richards apparently once described Mick Jagger as a “lovely bunch of guys”. Whatever could he have meant? After two days and many miles in various different iterations of the new Range Rover, a similar thought lodges in my head. They’re all very good, a few of them are probably even great, but there are some behavioural… inconsistencies. Take the long-wheelbase version, and let’s make it a P400 SV version, mainly because one of those was dispatched to San Francisco airport to pick me up (I know). I sat in the back, and decided fairly swiftly that the ride quality wasn’t quite as sumptuous as you’d hope. Out of the back of an elongated SV and into a regular P530 switches things up somewhat. Its…

ROLLS-ROYCE MOTOR CARS AROUND SINCE 1906 NOW OWNED BY The Germans… BMW this time KNOWN FOR Buckingham Palace with numberplates. Except heavier Charles Rolls noted over a century ago “The electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean. There is no smell or vibration. They should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.” Smart man, every word is still true. Take range out the equation and batteries and motors are the perfect solution for an ultra-luxury car – silent, powerful, effortless – which is why Rolls-Royce has been flirting with the idea of electricity for a while. The 102EX concept in 2011 worked fine but had a range of not-very-much, while the 103EX in 2016 envisaged a much more radical, driverless future. The Spectre is something radical in…

You walk up to the MC20. Of course you do – you’ve seen it from a distance so you want a closer look. It’s a rare beast, hasn’t suffered Instagram overexposure, so there’s lots for your eyes to dwell on. But there’s a catch: next you’re going to drive it. Hardly a catch, you’re thinking. But as you take in the Perspex rear screen, peer in at the dark, bare cabin, swing a door up to reveal a cutaway carbon sill, realise there’s something of the Group C racer about this new Maserati and remember the next three hours are not going to be spent spanking around Dunsfold but in crushing motorway monotony… the sparkle dulls. You think, “Well, I know what to expect: noise, vibration, road chatter and a…

“THEY FIT… FOR ABOUT 1/10TH OF A ROTATION BEFORE THE INNER BOLTS HIT THE CALIPER” This month’s update was going to focus (again) on the big GT-R rebuild. But, as it’s currently having all its paint removed by Spike’s Vintage Restorations, it’s reached the point of terror where I have to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Especially when being reminded of its value, weeks before renewing my mortgage. Siri, please block any emails which feature ‘invoice’ in the subject. It’s not all been disassembly and destruction, however. I’ve gone and bought another set of AMG wheels for another S-Class. I adore this car; its 6.0-litre V12 has a ‘Brilliant’ exhaust fitted which makes it sound like an old F1 car. That’s not praise either; the system for all that noise…

REMEMBERING RETRO GAMING THE CLASSICS For our money, Daytona USA is the greatest arcade racing game of all time. And by ‘our money’, we mean specifically the small fortune in pound coins that we pumped into this spectacular sit-down cabinet in the seafront arcades of our youth. Time was that every coastal town from Bognor to Blackpool had a full multiplayer Daytona USA set-up, allowing you and seven mates to thunder around stripping the paint from each other’s stock cars. With your face pressed up against a 25-inch screen, the sweeping, swooping circuits were a technicolour rollercoaster ride and force feedback steering threatened to yank your pre-pubescent noodle arms clean out of their sockets. The secret genius of Daytona’s multiplayer, though, was that the game subtly slowed down the leaders…

REPORT 6 £27,995/£30,132/£257 WHY IT’S HERE What’s it like to live with an urban EV without home charging? DRIVER Greg Potts I RECENTLY SPENT A FAIR BIT OF time in a Tesla Model Y for our 11-car electric family car test (Issue 359). Living with a Tesla for a week led me to a revelation We all know how good the Supercharger network is, but what’s often overlooked is just how much useful tech Tesla puts into its most affordable family cars. I’m not talking about the lane assist, the fancy cruise control or any of the active safety systems – the 500 has all of those in some form or another. No, what really sells the Tesla is the knock-off Mario Kart game Beach Buggy Racing 2 and the…

REPORT 7 £84,870/£93,646/£1,010 WHY IT’S HERE Can ‘the only sports car you’ll ever need’ turn its hand to anything? DRIVER Ollie Marriage I’VE BEEN DOING THIS JOB A long time. Sometimes I think I’ve seen it all. And then James Deane drifts his Falken BMW Formula Drift car three feet off the Porsche 911’s back bumper, and I’m forced to think again. What a day. I’ll save the full story of what we were up to for a future issue, but I wanted to tell you about the 911’s role. To have a hope of keeping ahead of James and getting the shots we wanted, we needed a fast photography platform. It needed to have broad, smooth, strong body panels so we had lots of options for where to fit…

GOODBYE £110,325 OTR/£110,325 as tested/£1,841pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s the world’s default super limo but is it too clever for its own good? DRIVER Jason Barlow GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR EXTENDED TG GARAGE REPORTS, AND TO EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE THE NEW RANGE ROVER IS ARGUABLY THE S-CLASS’S NUMERO UNO luxury car nemesis, even if it is a lofty SUV. More than ever, the big Brit is pushing into trad S-Class territory. With that and internecine strife from the EQS – whose pure-electric MO ramps up the refinement to an amazing level – the S-Class is beset on all sides. Can it keep its head? Honestly, KW21 GYD frustrated me on an unexpectedly regular basis, but boy do I miss it. I didn’t personally dig the cream-coloured interior, but every journey in an…

The cheapest Jaguar on sale is the XE repmobile, which costs £30,210 for the entry level 2.0-litre diesel with no ticks on the option list. Given a rental-car sparse Ford Focus starts at about £23k, that XE seems like pretty good value to us. If your Gen Z eyes aren’t able to comprehend the three-box shape of a saloon (which rules out the next cheapest car, the XF), then the E-Pace crossover is available at a smidge under £37k. The most expensive modern Jag is the F-Type R convertible, which costs the ripe sum of £105,225 for its 5.0-litre supercharged V8, all-wheel drive and a kit list longer than your arm. Prefer your Jags new but old? Then you need one of those continuation classics like the XKSS or C-Type.…

Jaguar’s made a number of beautiful concept cars, but going for one of its more recent – the jaw-dropping C-X75 – is a no-brainer. Not for its glorious styling, nor the gas turbines that extended the range of its batteries… but because it represents a story of resurrection. A story of an overly ambitious concept car that was canned but then reborn with an actual use. Namely as the baddie’s car in a Bond film. Alright, the futuristic powertrain was gone, replaced by a supercharged 5.0-litre V8. All the better for allowing the C-X75 to thump and slide its way through the cobbled streets of Rome on the tail of the equally bespoke Aston DB10.…

WHEN IT GOES WRONG, IT GOES WRONG The take-off angle will determine how high you jump. The higher you jump, the longer the landing slope you need. During the first practice lap at the UK round of Extreme E last year, I was first on the ‘knife-edge’. What happened in the air was a shock – a stream of swear words as I took off and started to tip forward, all I could see was the ground. The only thing I could do was slam the throttle and let the front wheels pull me forward as I landed. THE SECONDS BEFORE ARE KEY There’s a moment in the air after a long run up, switching between brake checking and accelerating, where the only thing in your mind is the completely…

THE GOOD Beautiful… the electric SUV I’d pick when the time comes to crossover to EV Daniel Bidwell Hmmm. Bit of space here. Why? Because across TG.com, plus TG’s Facebook and Twitter channels, this was the only positive comment we could find… No, really THE BAD Why has every company made such a royal mess of their naming for their electric line-up? Sideways 720S Unless EV obsessed, I doubt anyone would buy this and not a GLS Iván It looks like the lights and windows are just stickers, as if they were all afterthoughts palmino WELL IT’S LESS DISTINCTIVE THAN THE BMW BUT IT’S STILL THE SIZE OF A BUS Arthur Templeman The size of it you’re gonna need a lot of electric power to keep it going Kevin Ewers…

01 IT’S THE GRAN TURISMO SPIDER We’re all familiar with the 296 GTB, Ferrari’s 10/10 (as rated by TopGear) PHEV supercar, but Maranello has revealed the convertible 296 GTS just in time for summer, complete with two-piece folding hard-top roof that drops behind the seats in 14secs at speeds up to 28mph. 02 THE POWERTRAIN IS FAMILIAR Believe it or not, this 2.9-litre motor from the GTB is Ferrari’s first production V6 (although its engineers have nicknamed it the “piccolo V12”) and it comes complete with a 164bhp e-motor that can power the rear wheels. The electric stuff should mean the car is good for around 15 miles on a full charge from its 7.5kWh battery. 03 IT’LL SOUND GREAT ON THE MOVE “Of course, it’s a Ferrari V6,” you…

BMW 330e xDRIVE £44,985/£52,260 as tested MERCEDESBENZ C300e £44,895/£45,580 as tested Stay with me here. I know, it’s two monochrome German saloons in a miserable grey English setting. Turn over and there’ll be a Koenigsegg, probably. But give this one a read, because it probably has a lot to say about the future of the car. Big claim. How so? Well, this is more than just a quick face-off to see if the new Mercedes C-Class is better to drive and nicer to be inside than the BMW 3-Series. And I’ll not bother with faux suspense: it isn’t. We’ll come to the reasons why in a minute, though. Because it’s the versions of the new C-Class and 3-Series present that form the main plot thread. They’re the plug-in hybrids, or…

Lord the seats are soft. The Range Rover actually makes its most impressive first impression on your bottom. The chairs feel as though they’ve been stuffed with Labrador ears. You sit between your captain’s armrests addressing a cabin which isn’t a huge new departure for Land Rover. It’s resisted the urge to ‘do a Hyperscreen’. Of course, there’s a touchscreen swallowing all the functions that once festooned this neck of the woods with switchgear, but it is – fire the cannon and raise the flag – a good one. Chassis no. 994 here only had one minor screen freeze, which is unheard of given LR systems usually crash more often than an F1 pay driver. Seamless Apple CarPlay pairing. Rapid map rendering. It doesn’t even get unnervingly hot, like others’…

If you weren’t paying attention, it’d be possible to be underwhelmed by the new Range Rover. From all angles except the rear it looks quite a lot like the old Range Rover. Beside the (at long last) nigh-on uncrashable touchscreen and the game-changing rear steer, it’s hardly dripping with notable new features or world firsts. So you might presume that it’s a pulled punch. Actually, it’s doubling down on what it does best and leaving the Germans to fight over pixels and widgets. This is a deeply refreshing modern luxury car, because it doesn’t seek to bombard you with gadgets and woo you with technology. It’s Jeeves with wellies on, not Elon Musk. With an on the road price now stretching into six figures, a Range Rover is a very…

We know not to hope for too much from a concept car that makes it into production, don’t we? After all these years we’ve been conditioned to it. Expectation versus reality and all that. Take the 1996 Renault Megane Scenic, for example. It was itself an innovative car – it invented a whole new segment and started the compact MPV craze. Not too many cars around that can boast of anything like that. But the 1991 concept version, revealed at the Frankfurt Motor Show, promised something that would have knocked your socks off and even given you somewhere useful to store them. The concept car was designed by the Renault team headed by Patrick le Quément, but built for the French carmaker by the Italian coachbuilder Coggiola, which also knocked…

YIKES, THESE TWO LOOK… DIFFERENT Kia has earned plenty of plaudits for its design-led approach of late, but back in the day affordability was very much at the forefront. The first-generation Sportage, first revealed at the 1991 Tokyo Motor Show and officially launched in Asia in 1993, was essentially a Mazda Bongo under the skin, sharing several components including the engine, transmission and differentials. Two years later it made its way over to Europe where it remained on sale until 2003, when this example rolled off the production line. WHAT’S UP WITH THE NEW ONE’S FACE? Five generations in and Kia’s really turning the design screw. The Sportage is only the second car after the all-electric EV6 to wear the company’s new “opposites united” design philosophy, but its Tiger nose…

HELLO £46,035 OTR/£49,400 as tested/£659pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s the bedrock of Volkswagen’s all electric future push DRIVER Paul Horrell GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR EXTENDED TG GARAGE REPORTS, AND TO EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE I GOT MY HANDS ON THE ID.4 SO RECENTLY THAT I HAVE NOTHING TO report on its efficiency, nor how it drives beyond what I said in the original road test. But that was a while ago and since then the model line-up, and the number of rivals, have both expanded. This one is a Family Pro Performance. ‘Family’ is the middle trim level, ‘Pro’ means the bigger battery size, which is a useful 77kWh net. ‘Performance’ is the more powerful motor, 204bhp. The styling makes no apparent attempt to disguise the bulk. It’s hardly a thing of beauty…

GOODBYE £55,795 OTR/£55,795 as tested/£830pcm WHY IT’S HERE Fast Peugeots are usually best kept small. What about a fast PHEV wagon? DRIVER Charlie Rose OUR TIME WITH THE 508 PSE, TG’S VIDEO PRODUCTION MULE, HAS come to an end. What better send-off than a day at the TopGear test track, and what’s the first thing you do when arriving at an open track? Flick it straight into Sport mode and give it some welly, of course. Doing so unleashes full power, increases throttle response, stiffens the dampers and provides maximum regen to keep the batteries full of juice. It does feel remarkably punchy off the line with the instant torque from the electric motors but at higher speeds you notice the engine working very hard to keep the momentum going.…

REPORT 3 £51,295 OTR/£74,146 as tested/£1,004 pcm WHY IT’S HERE To live the life most Defenders can only dream of DRIVER Sam Burnett GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR EXTENDED TG GARAGE REPORTS, AND TO EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE FAIR WEATHER IS ALWAYS PREFIXED TO SOMETHING TO TURN IT INTO an insult, but what’s wrong with doing something when the weather is nice? It just seems sensible. I’m a fair weather person, but Mrs Burnett fancied doing a little light tramping across Devon and who am I to argue? You’re not allowed to do wild camping on Dartmoor because of the plants and that, but we found a ‘wild campsite’, which meant sleeping in the woods with better toilets. Plus it was the only place with room. An ordinary tent wouldn’t cut it, but Land…

REPORT 7 BMW M3 Our M3 is fitted with the gorgeous gold £7,995 M Carbon ceramic brakes. They’re available on all M3/4 models and are absolute whoppers (400x38mm fronts) but save 13kg. Even though their operating window is between 50–700°C they’re no hassle to live with day-to-day and are yet to squeak. If you’re into track days you’ll love them as they really help slow the 1,780kg beast down and lack fade. And, boy, are they powerful. RH REPORT 2 FORD MUSTANG MACH-E GT A holiday to Cornwall has to be one of the most rigorous family EV examinations imaginable. For starters there’s the matter of getting all the stuff into the car. Then there’s the 241-mile game of chicken between driver and range-o-meter. And once you arrive, the roads…

GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR MORE MIND-BLOWING MANUFACTURER GUIDES Jaguar Cars can trace its roots back to the Swallow Sidecar Company, founded in 1922 by Sir William Lyons. SS made – surprise! – sidecars for motorcycles, before developing a spin-off company called SS Cars and producing its own actual, four-wheeled saloon car in 1935: the SS Jaguar 2½ litre. Jaguar was used as a model name until 1945, when the company decided to sell off the sidecar business and renamed itself Jaguar Cars, focusing on sports cars powered by a straightsix engine designed before the war. The XK120, XK140 and XK150 formed a fairly delectable sequence through the Fifties before the Jaguar – the legendary E-type – launched in 1961, with a bunch of luxurious saloons following it to help cement…

The XJ220 was not only Jaguar’s fastest ever car, but also the world’s fastest car for a short period in the early Nineties – both for its 213mph top speed and 7mins 46secs Nürburgring lap time. In 2022 the car turns 30, which its slippery modern shape belies (and its swivel headlights perhaps don’t). Maybe if the McLaren F1 hadn’t so quickly taken its world record, the XJ220 legend would be stronger. Equally if Jaguar had stuck with the V12 engine that was proposed in the original concept car rather than filling half the space with a Metro 6R4’s V6 turbo, maybe the big XJ would be surrounded by more fame than infamy. Either way, car fans know the XJ220’s very existence is cool. It survived a crippling recession, after…

What is it? It’s the fully loaded, full-fat Jaguar XKR-S Convertible. The pinnacle of the rag-topped second-gen XK range which first reached customers in 2012 and sadly left us when the XK was killed off in 2014. The XKR was no slouch, but the S and its brilliantly named twin-vortex Roots-type supercharger managed to extract 542bhp and 502lb ft of torque from the 5.0-litre V8. That allowed for a 0–62mph time of 4.4secs, a top speed of 186mph and claims of a sub-eight minute lap time around the Nürburgring lap time – even if you went for this convertible over the coupe. The latter was possible thanks to an overhaul of the XKR’s suspension, with stiffer springs and dampers combined with a more aggressive active differential, lighter wheels and sharper…

WHAT: MASERATI STORAGE WHERE: WIDECOMBE-IN-THE-MOOR, UK Maserati MC20 has all the storage a multimillionaire supercar owner could wish for – perfect for your £3.99 petrol station meal deal. WHAT: BROKEN CAMERA WHERE: SALISBURY, UK How much action is too much action for the number one selling action cam on the market? How about falling off a V12 Vantage and getting run over? WHAT: DAZZLING LAMBORGHINI WHERE: LONDON, UK This is what happens when rich people park under trees. Completely different class of bird in the posher parts of town, you know. WHO: PETER RAWLINS WHERE: WANTAGE, UK “What do you mean our expenses don’t have an allowance for afternoon tea? It’s an essential!” New Range Rover might’ve gone to Peter’s head. WHAT: POLAR BEAR WHERE: ARJEPLOG, SWEDEN Stumbled across filming…