Innholdsfortegnelse for Febuary 2023 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com “IS LOVE FOR THE ELECTRIC HYPERCAR DWINDLING BEFORE IT’S GOT GOING?” It’s the week before Christmas, the UK is covered in a thick icing of snow and as everyone merrily forgets that even a 4x4 on the wrong tyres is as useful as Kwasi Kwarteng’s calculator, I’m looking forward to the year ahead. We’ve just had our 2023 editorial planning meeting – a predictably shambolic, mince pie fuelled romp through the big cars and events coming in 2023. A chance to strategise how we keep the world’s most beautiful, creative and ambitious car magazine stocked with stories that deliver more information, entertainment and escapism than ever… before we all decamp to the pub to celebrate together in the traditional manner, and forget most of it. So before I…

THIS MONTH: CADILLAC LYRIQ REGENERATION GAME The single motor Lyriq manages 312 miles of range on a charge. Its one pedal mode actually has two settings for ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ with the latter able to deliver up to 0.3g when you lift off the accelerator. GLARING OMISSION This is probably the dictionary definition of nitpicking, but that’s because I liked the Lyriq so much. It has a huge panoramic roof, but it probably needs to be more tinted. You can close the cover of course – if you don’t then glare can be an issue. SPORTING CHANCE This is a Cadillac, so it’s nice to see that the Lyriq is quiet, softly sprung and relaxing to drive. I do wish that it could be sportier when required, though. A bigger step…

£54,370 FOR Useful motorway vigour, comfy seats, decent range AGAINST Impractical shape, doesn’t live up to the badge We’ve been looking forward to this one. Nearly a year after it was announced we finally find ourselves on home roads in the Enyaq Coupe vRS, with more power, lower suspension, and the promise of sportiness that few EVs have really honoured thus far. In the waiting period, inflation has done its thing to the price, of course, up from sub-£52k (punchy) to £54,370 (ouchy). Performance figures aren’t at the mercy of market forces, so the 295bhp we were promised remains as is. The additional oomph comes from the extra motor you get over the standard car, allowing for 339lb ft, all wheel drive and 0–62mph in 6.4 seconds. All Enyaqs top…

£58,900 FOR Upgraded suspension works very well, interior a nice place to be AGAINST V6 is thirsty. It won’t be classed as a CV for tax purposes The Ranger has had a comprehensive makeover, and in an exciting twist to the usual run of things, the best version has been launched in Europe before the normal stuff. So what’s changed from the original? The answer is, bluntly, a lot. Most. Nearly all. There’s a new 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol engine mounted in that ladder frame for a start, which packs 288bhp and 362lb ft of torque through a 4WD system that now features electronic locking differentials fore and aft, plus there’s a two-speed transfer case, a 10-speed auto and new suspension. The 2.0 diesel will remain an option from 2023…

NISSAN QASHQAI E-POWER £32,950 FOR More useful than a plug-in hybrid, still reasonable value AGAINST It’s all a bit sensible and dull, why no EV option yet? Going from plucky outsider to establishment favourite is tough. Just what Nissan has done with its third gen Qashqai – the same package families fell in love with, plus a sleeker look and fancier trim. The party piece hybrid set-up is basically an EV with a tiny 2.1kWh battery and onboard generator. What makes this better than a ‘normal’ hybrid is that the e-motor is beefy enough to do the heavy lifting. It’s great around town and never gets too noisy. SB BMW X1 sDRIVE 20i £33,775 FOR Electric version is punchy, plenty of interior space AGAINST Petrols can be coarse, occasionally dopey…

WHAT IS IT? Just the M car we’ve really been waiting for. BMW says it’s the successor to the 2002 Turbo, but there’s also strong 1-Series M Coupe energy here. It’s about creating something the right size to be truly useful, while amplifying the attributes that make the Alpine A110 and Porsche 718 Cayman go-to cars. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? It’s M Division’s last pure combustion car. A sad moment, but what a way to bow out. The M guys cherry picked some of the M3/M4 hardware – the 3.0-litre straight six turbo, active locking rear diff, gearboxes and more – but the M2’s wheelbase is 110mm shorter than the M4’s and steering, diff and stability control all have bespoke calibration here. As well as the familiar eight-speed auto, the…

WHAT IS IT? It’s Lotus’s last ever combustion engined car and now the only sports car you can buy from Hethel. RIP Elise, Exige, Evora etc. The Emira is set to enter another dimension this year, with the option of a smaller, lighter 4cyl engine mounted midships. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? The Emira has only been available with Toyota’s ageing 3.5-litre s/c V6, but the 4cyl will be AMG’s extremely angry 2.0-litre turbo with an 8spd DCT. PUB AMMO When the Emira was unveiled we were told the 4cyl would be a 360bhp hardcore track option……

→ Midnight on a boat in the East China Sea. Or is it the Sea of Japan? Or the Yellow Sea? It’s very strategically placed, is Jeju. That’s our destination, an island an overnight ferry ride off the bottom of South Korea. So far the port experience has gone a long way to convincing me that Dover… you know what I’m going to say here, don’t you? That Korea’s industriousness and organisation has found slick new ways of loading cars and directing people, so the whole experience whisks past so fast you barely get a whiff of fish in the nostrils. Er, no. I park up at the terminal in Mokpo and am instructed to unload any bags I want to take onboard. Then I’m told to drive the car…

WHAT IS IT? The Prancing Horse’s answer to the Lamborghini Urus and Aston Martin DBX. It’s a 4WD Ferrari with a front mounted V12 pumping out 715bhp and 528lb ft through an eight-speed double-clutch box, capable of 0–62mph in 3.3 seconds and more than 190mph. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? The Purosangue is not short of controversy. Apparently it’s the first four-door/four-seater to occupy a new niche that definitely isn’t an SUV. Nope. No way. Ahem… PUB AMMO It has parts adapted from the GTC4 and SF90, as well as the 812 Competitzione.…

“Guys, I’m struggling a bit,” comes the call over the radio from the 1972 Volkswagen Type 2, nicknamed ‘Solbrit’, that’s just rolled to a stop halfway up the hill ahead. Uh oh. This part of our ID.Buzz test could be over before it’s even begun. We’re on the Wrynose Pass in the Lake District, headed towards the Hardknott Pass, one of the gnarliest and steepest roads in the UK. We wanted to face the Buzz off against its 20th century predecessor, by means of a hillclimb – no small task, with the Type 2’s original rear-mounted, air-cooled engine renowned for overheating when tackling even the slightest of gradients. Looks like its living up to its reputation. But hold your horses, because at the wheel is Kit Lacey, founder of classic…

WHAT IS IT? Dacia’s gamble to keep its plucky 4x4 an honest bargain basement 4x4. The next Duster won’t be another crossover, more ‘rugged mini-Defender’. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? Expect a chunky aesthetic with elements of the Bigster concept, and Dacia’s first Renault-derived hybrid drivetrain underneath. PUB AMMO Dacia is one of the few brands not ranting about going fully electric. Low demand from diehard customers and associated costs mean Dacia may be one of the last carmakers to embrace the plug.…

One of the problems with owning extremely specialist cars is that they require extremely specialist maintenance. And the problem with extremely specialist maintenance is it requires an extremely specialist attitude from an extremely specific mechanic. That person is not and never will be me. I am hopeless with mechanicals and my patience goes from Philips screwdriver to hammer and chisel in roughly half a turn. The goals I set from a car are also slightly different to what it actually needs. And nobody knows that more than Paul at ICS Motorsport. Paul does things properly. His main battle with the Ferrari isn’t stubborn bolts or wiring, it’s me. I enjoy making noise, being an idiot and putting cars in situations they were never designed for. Paul? His focus is speed…

There have been plenty of games that offered you the opportunity to ply your trade as a humble cabbie, Crazy Taxi for example, or the Grand Theft Auto series, for those people who don’t fancy doing any of the hundreds of more interesting activities in that game. None of those games, however, ask you to somehow scratch out a living ferrying passengers around in a sealed off, psychopath riddled prison city in the distant, dystopian future. And you thought being an Uber driver on a Friday night was a thankless job. Quarantine was a, usually quite literal, collision between Crazy Taxi and iconic first person shooter game Doom, which had debuted only a year beforehand. The floaty handling of the game was explained away by the fact that your vehicle…

GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR MORE MIND-BLOWING MANUFACTURER GUIDES What’s Tesla and when did it start making cars? Elon Musk did not found Tesla. How about that? In fact, Tesla was founded on 1 July 2003 in Palo Alto, California by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. The former was Tesla’s first chairman and CEO, with Musk coming onboard as chairman in 2004 along with a boatload of cash he made inventing PayPal. Tesla didn’t build its first car in 2003, though, or in 2004. In fact, no new car wore the Tesla badge until the Lotus Elise-based Tesla Roadster arrived in 2008. Tesla’s first bespoke car, the Model S saloon, finally went into production in summer 2012. Eberhard was sacked by the board in 2007, with two further CEOs unable to stem…

“WELCOME TO THE MOST EXTREME FORD GT EVER BUILT” Though outwardly it looked broadly the same as the cars it succeeded, famously the Ford GT40 MkIV was a completely different animal underneath. And it is to this 7.0-litre leviathan that Ford has paid homage for the very last track-only 2023 Ford GT available to purchase. Welcome then, to the most extreme Ford GT ever built: an 800+bhp racing machine with all the shackles not just loosened, but thrown into a pit and burned. Just 67 of these nutjob GTs will be built, in honour of the Le Mans-winning 1967 GT40 MkIV. And like that first MkIV, this new one’s packing some serious power. Ford Performance only says the 3.5-litre twin-turbo EcoBoost V6 has been “specially engineered” to target more than…

“Well Chad, looks like we’re all done here. Engine, suspension, brakes, interior, the whole lot. That’s officially a sign off. The new Sebring is ready to roll. Let’s get those production lines a-fired up!” “Copy that, boss. Only, just before we press go, I was wondering. What if we spent just a bit more time making it… less awful?” “Sounds like a lot of extra work. I’ve already had all these sheets laminated. Have you ever tried to un-laminate a sheet, Chad?” “I know. But at the same time – hope I’m not speaking out of turn here – isn’t this new Sebring terrible by most objective measures?” “You are speaking out of turn, Chad. It’s terrible by every objective measure!” “So who’s gonna buy it?” “No one, Chad! That’s…

Historians can argue all day long about what won World War Two, but the one thing they all agree on is that without the massive expansion of US air power, things could have turned out very differently. And the wristwatch played a vital role, employing a neat little function that has since become commonplace. In bombing raids precise timing is crucial and the Allies relied on clockwork to coordinate attacks. Even the best quality watches were not that accurate by today’s standards, with precision of plus or minus 30 seconds a day. So pilots needed to synchronise timepieces before heading out, and this required a ‘hacking’ mechanism. On a quartz watch, when you pull out the crown it breaks the circuit powering the mechanism and the ticking will stop. A…

Inertial Drift: Twilight Rivals If you’re familiar with the Nineties Japanese animated series Initial D, you might be staring at the title of Inertial Drift and wondering where all the extra letters came from. This expanded and upgraded version of the 2020 game, Twilight Rivals Edition, is that classic street racing cartoon in all but name. Newcomers to this 4K-upgraded next-generation update of the 2020 original, which is out now on Playstation, Xbox and PC, will have to get their heads around the Drift Stick control method. It splits out the angle of your drift to the second joystick on your controller, something that at first feels a bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, only at 150 miles per hour. Once you get…

01 Riva Aquarama ‘Lamborghini’ Built in 1968, this stunning Ferrucio Lamborghini-commissioned Riva Aquarama ditched American V8 power for two Lamborghini V12s, good for a combined 700bhp and 55mph (or 48 knots). It was built in just 278 days in order to be ready for Mr Lambo’s summer holiday. 02 MTI Super Veloce The Riva’s modern equivalent is this carbon-fibre hulled 1,550bhp catamaran, commissioned as a one-off in 2017 for £1.75m. Inspired by the Aventador SV, you get Lambo-spec paint, switchgear and it came with a $25k sound system as standard. 03 Riva Ferrari 32 Forty of these 32-foot prancing seahorses were built in the early Nineties, complete with a not-at-all pointless F1-style wing over the top. At the back, there’s Testarossa-style slats and quad exhausts. Power comes from twin 400bhp V8s…

£68,990 FOR An electric car that’s fun for more than just the 0–62 sprint AGAINST Even its maker admits such geekery is a tough sell BST doesn’t stand for anything. This isn’t the Bloody Swift Thing or the Battery Speed Teleporter. It’s actually a contraction of ‘Beast’, the nickname given to the one-off speedy Polestar 2 commissioned for the Goodwood Festival of Speed last year. The story the engineers like to tell is that Polestar’s boss Thomas Ingenlath set them a challenge – to make his Polestar 2 company car more fun. The result was the ‘Experimental’ Polestar 2 one-off that made silent-but-violent runs at Goodwood in 2021. And guess what? The boss – and enough Polestar fans – liked it that it’s gone into limited production. Very limited, in…

03 BMW 3.0 CSL → On one hand, the new BMW 3.0 CSL is everything that TopGear stands for. Power. Driving. Heritage. Wings. Stripes. The glorious lack of apology on which a brand is built. The focused concept reaching – albeit limited – production. On the other… there are issues. The ingredients are absolutely there, sweating potential: a 552bhp/406lb ft variant of the 3.0-litre straight six turbo – the most powerful iteration yet – and mentions of things we don’t quite understand the practical applications of, but sound quite racy. A rigid crankcase. A forged, lightweight crankshaft and 3D-printed cylinder head core. Titanium backbox (worth a 4.3kg saving alone) and aluminium bracing in the bay. Ooh, we nod knowingly, excellent. The cooling system and oil supply systems are for high performance…

They’ll be busy at Hethel in 2023, with customer deliveries of its latest cars set to begin. We first saw the Evija back in 2019, and four years later the bonkers 1,972bhp, 4WD electric hypercar will finally get to scare the crap out of those who shelled out £2.4m for the pleasure. The Eletre will be a slightly more sensible arrival. Prices for Lotus’s first SUV start at just under £90k and a 112kWh battery will supposedly offer “at least” 300 miles of range. Oh, and for those wanting even more neck-snapping acceleration, there’ll be an R version with 900bhp and 727lb ft of torque. Lotus needs this to be a big seller……

WHAT IS IT? The first electric step for Hyundai’s N performance offshoot. So far it’s all been about hot hatches, with the i20N and i30N leading the charge. Next year it’ll be about, er, hot hatches. Hyundai will reveal an N version of the Ioniq 5 EV. It won’t tread on the toes of the existing N line-up (we can safely assume it’s not going to be a featherweight), but instead with 4WD and a likely £60,000 price tag, it’ll clash heads with the likes of the Audi RS3 and Mercedes-AMG A45. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? Power. Because we can already guess what its mechanical make-up will be thanks to another car that is available on the market today: Kia’s EV6 GT. That uses twin motors that develop a combined…

WHAT IS IT? Polestar’s biggest effort yet; a giant, five-seat, pure electric SUV with a 111kWh battery and a possible 379 miles of WLTP range. Initial cars are all dual motor, with 483bhp/620lb ft, or a Performance Pack option with 510bhp/671lb ft. And gold bits. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? It’s quick, big and full of tech, with the typical Polestar low fuss/eco conscious interior. And it looks good; Polestar is on a roll. PUB AMMO The headlights and wing blades on the front and back are inspired by the Precept concept. Not a bad thing. Anything else from Polestar? The 3 is based on the same platform as the new flagship VOLVO EX90, so you’ve got options if you want a more sensible scandi-style SUV. Here’s hoping the 3…

19 PORSCHE 911 DAKAR → Wanna play a game? Have a guess at how many models of Porsche 911 are now available. Wrong. There are currently 25. Twenty five! That’s two dozen and one different flavours of the iconic arse-engined sports car that encompass the worlds of hard top, soft top, Targa, turbocharging, softcore T, hardcore bewinged RS and middling GTS. After all that you’d think that the blades on Porsche’s niche-cutting machine were blunt. But you’d be wrong – yes, it’s found yet another hole in the market to plug: the off-road market. Yippee! Ladies and gentlemen, lovers and haters, with great pleasure we give you the 911 Dakar – a jacked-up 911 that believes driving doesn’t have to end when the tarmac does. The recipe is simple: a…

→ If the ID.Buzz is to succeed as more than just a Pixar-faced novelty act propping up VW’s maligned ID range, then it needs to succeed not just as a credible EV and a £60,000 item, but as a family car. And the quintessential active outdoorsy family lifestyle vehicle is, without a shadow of a doubt, the Volvo XC90. It’s the least objectionable large premium SUV. It’s 276 per cent less ‘powerfully built company director’ than a BMW X5. You might consider giving way to one as it indicates to depart Waitrose. It outwardly projects its mission – to look after your family, not sneer at other people’s. The Buzz is even more doe-eyed, and you’d imagine it’s also much better packaged. No bonnet to park, a taller tailgate –…

WHAT IS IT? Three years since its reveal on stage, Tesla’s all-electric and curve-allergic pickup truck is promised to be in production by the end of this year. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? Since the road-going pyramid’s unveil, Tesla’s hope to be the first EV truck on the huge US market has been gazumped by Rivian with its R1T pickup, and Ford with its F-150 Lightning. PUB AMMO There are already over 1.5 million preorders in the bank, each yearning for a range of up to 500 miles, a 0–60 time of 2.9secs and a 6.4-tonne towing capacity. That’s serious talk.…

IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT MKII GOLF? Does look a bit funny, doesn’t it? Can’t quite put our finger on it… This second-gen Golf was the car that cemented the concept of a solidly built, smooth-talking family hatch. It was built from 1986 to 1992 with around 6.3m trundling out the factory. The company’s engineers liked to show off and amuse themselves occasionally. The GTI proved the Golf could perform on the road, and this model, the Country, was an outlandish 4x4 spun off the first AWD-equipped Golf (the Syncro) that could do the business off-road. HOW DID VOLKSWAGEN MAKE IT? VW actually let the clever folks at Puch in Austria have their wicked way with the MkII Golf – the company that built the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen and came up…

Ferrari has finally given the gaming community what it always wanted. Maranello’s Vision Gran Turismo is a single-seat, tin-topped virtual racecar with insane aero and beautiful bodywork that drapes itself over the wheels and creates giant open side channels that direct airflow around the cockpit and over the side pods. Even though this is only for PlayStation, that’s a patented Ferrari aero solution. There are also plenty of links to the past. That straight line rear end with its amazing light bar evokes the 512 S, while the gorgeous 330 P3 is also referenced as a design influence. The rear wing and that massive rear diffuser are inspired by the new Ferrari 499P Le Mans hypercar. The powertrain also takes influence from the 499P, using the same 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6…

There was a famous old Volvo 145 in our family when I was young. It was a tank of a thing and my parents used to put a whopping great canvas tent and big foldaway canvas canoe on the roof – with three kids in the back too. The great joy of it was me discovering the cigarette lighter and realising that it made pretty patterns in the front seat when hot. I thought if I could make the Olympic rings on the red seats then that would look quite nice. I got something of a telling off for that. Then my dad moved on to another Volvo – he was very much a safe driver as you can detect – after which he had an Opel Rekord. That was…

Want to add a more adventurous feel to your 911 without splashing out on the new 911 Dakar? This official Porsche roof tent should do the trick, and it’ll mean you instantly have the coolest set-up on the campsite. VW California owners eat your heart out. The hard-cased, pop-up tent is compatible with the 911, Macan, Cayenne, Panamera and Taycan, and comes with two side windows and a skylight for taking in the great outdoors. We’re told an official Porsche heated blanket is on the way too, so you can camp out in the winter safe in the knowledge that everything you own is Porsche branded. porsche.com; £4,635…

1 IT’S THE FIRST FULL EV ABARTH Wearing extremely bright acid green paint, this is Abarth’s take on the all-electric Fiat 500. You should start to see them on British roads in the middle of the year, so long as people are happy to part with the anticipated £30,000 asking price – or around £35k for this limited edition version. 2 IT’S NIPPY The Abarth uses the same 42kWh battery as the top-spec Fiat 500e, but here you get a 149bhp motor (a pokey 35bhp more than the most powerful Fiat 500e) and a welcome 173lb ft of torque. That equates to a 0–62mph sprint of seven seconds, a full two seconds quicker than the Fiat. 3 IT WON’T KEEP YOU WAITING It has three drive modes – Turismo (for…

A luxury SUV you can charge up at home and use to trundle about silently is not a new thing. Porsche’s first plug-in Cayenne arrived back in 2015, a Range Rover Sport fed by cable as well as pump was only two years later. Others are available from Audi, Mercedes, Volvo, BMW, Bentl… you get the picture. Hybrids are now the biggest sellers in the range. They’re low tax and – if used properly – cheap on petrol. These two also pitch a curveball: they’re sporty. Porsche genuinely believes buyers want the Cayenne to handle like a sports car. Range Rover believes different; that the appearance of sportiness is what they actually want, so what matters is attitude. The Sport is the Range Rover that hints the shotguns in the back…

£32,790 FOR Tidy dynamics, vibrant interior, good warranty AGAINST Annoying indicators, would you admit to driving it? If you’ve assumed a horrific spelling error has been made, think again: this is indeed the Ora Funky Cat, a small EV from China, where it’s known as the Good Cat. This is intriguing because parent firm Great Wall Motor went Dutch with BMW on development and a whopping great factory for it, so this might well be our first taste of… the next gen Mini Electric. Can I get an “ooh!”? No? Never mind then. Rest assured the Mini won’t look this cutesy, though those curvaceous lines let the Funky Cat pull off the same trick as the Hyundai Ioniq 5 in that it’s bigger than it appears. It’s hatch-sized, 35mm longer…

£45,510 FOR Good looks, comfy tourer, lots of space AGAINST Not as dynamic as its image would suggest Right, let’s clear this one up nice and early: the Volkswagen Arteon Shooting Brake is not, by definition, a shooting brake. A shooting brake comprises two side doors. This, as you can see above, has double that. So henceforth, we shall call it what it is – an estate. Regular readers may recall that we previously tested the all-singing, all-dancing R version – a car we liked but very much – but that’s not the Arteon that most people will buy. The plug-in hybrid as tested here, however, very much is. And it remains a very good looking estate, particularly in sporty R-Line trim, immediately catching the eye with its sharp lines…

It’s all in the imagination. Well, sometimes. Having just given a list of movies to the man from BMW who’s in charge of the new 7-Series’ Theatre Screen, I suspect he’s wondering whether to get on with downloading them or have me sectioned. “What would be really great,” I blabber, “is that bit where Leatherface is brandishing the chainsaw above his head. Then there’s the scene in No Country for Old Men where Javier Bardem’s psychotic hitman terrorises the gas station attendant with a coin toss… ‘You need to call it, I can’t call it for you, it wouldn’t be fair…’” It’s odd, don’t you think, that for all the intergalactic firepower summoned up by BMW’s all-new 7-Series techno starship, that a screen that folds out of the roof is…

WHAT IS IT? The seventh-gen Mustang was revealed at the 2022 Detroit show, with sharp creases and lines where the curves used to be. It’s probably gone keto, or something. This is only the second model to make it to the UK, since the car officially went on sale back in 2015. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? A Dark Horse version (pictured) with an appetite for race tracks, that gets a 500bhp version of the Coyote 5.0 V8, trick suspension and a bespoke six-speed manual. PUB AMMO Ford says that the Mustang is the most liked vehicle on Facebook. But that’s only since Thomas the Tank Engine was booted off for sharing conspiracy memes.…

WHAT IS IT? It’s a Maserati MC20 that you can’t use on the public road. Yep, under that aggressive, bewinged carbon bodywork is Maserati’s latest V6-engined supercar, but with the wick turned up to such a great extent that it no longer complies with the laws of the highway. This is the sort of silliness we like. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? The 3.0 Nettuno V6 is now dry-sumped and fitted with a new set of turbos to increase power from 621bhp in the road car to 730bhp in the 24. And for the proper racecar feel, that power is sent to the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential box and an LSD, with a target weight of less than 1,250kg. PUB AMMO Just 62 examples of the Project24 will…

→ This is a car that’s going to take some wrapping our heads around. Gone is the V8, taking with it both a simple link to the rear axle and the ‘eloquent muscle car’ vibe of C63s of old. What takes their place is writ large in a new suffx – this is the Mercedes-AMG C63 S E-Performance, and it’s a hybrid. An uprated version of the AMG A45’s 2.0-litre turbo engine claims to be the world’s most powerful production four-cylinder – with 469bhp – and pairs with an electric motor for peak outputs of 671bhp and 752lb ft. Supercar numbers. But there’s a figure that doesn’t belong in that realm: the saloon and estate C63 come in at 2,165 and 2,190kg respectively. Their predecessors weigh around half a tonne…

→ This rather stretched-looking vehicle is the Land Rover Defender 130. Now, a 110 with an extra chunk of bodywork plonked on the back and extra seating is not something that would usually have TopGear salivating, but if you’ve ordered one then it’s quite likely you’re desperate for delivery and won’t be seeing it until well into 2023. JLR currently has fewer chips than a kebab shop at closing time, with production delays that would make the builders of La Sagrada Família wince. The 130 is the fourth model in the Defender range – the others being the 90, the 110 and the commercial-spec Hard Top. Most closely related to the 110, there’s an extra 340mm of body added to the 130 behind the rear wheels and seating for eight…

WHAT IS IT? The production version of Renault’s super cool, retro-ish pure electric supermini, as rendered above. It’ll be attainable, too, sporting a 134bhp front mounted motor, a target price of around £20k and a proposed range of nearly 250 miles on a charge. WHAT’S THE BIG TALKING POINT? The ‘Renault 5’ is a hell of a badge to bring back – it’s a cult icon. But the styling of the nouvelle 5 concept shown in 2021 has been a hit… so it’s on. PUB AMMO There’ll be a larger EV crossover too that pays homage to the Renault 4. Anything else from Renault? How does an ALPINE R5 sound? Quiet, sure, but also… enticing. Think larger 215bhp motor from the Megane E-Tech, lowered suspension, swollen bodywork and lashings of…

IS IT A GOOD EV? vs TESLA MODEL Y Say camper van and people think VW. Say EV and it’s Tesla: the Hoover or the Biro of electric vehicles. I’m not just talking about range and charging here, but also about the other stuff that electric power enables: packaging, comfort, dynamics. With the ID.Buzz, all this reflects its origin in a conservative 85-year-old German car company struggling with software. The Tesla too reflects its origin, in a radical 19-year-old California-born tech company that has struggled to come to terms with car manufacture and ergonomics. The Model Y is basically a tall Model 3, which means it’s low in drag and comparatively light. This AWD long range one has a 75kWh usable battery and two motors, and still it squeaks under…

Busy times ahead… Even if the Cybertruck does emerge without the usual Tesla production delays (and quality control mayhem) in 2023, there’s a lot on its controversial boss’s plate, notwithstanding his recent Twitter takeover and other interests like SpaceX and Boring Company tunnelling. Construction of the Semi truck (claiming a 500-mile range fully loaded) needs to begin in earnest, while the flagship new Roadster – revealed in 2016 with fanfare of 0–60 in 1.9secs and a rocket-propelled optional booster (really) is still nowhere to be seen. A much rumoured $25k city car good for 250 miles of range is also supposedly in development. As is a humanoid robot. Makes you wonder how Elon finds the time to tweet.…

The long history of the concept car is one that is wrapped up tightly with a sort of glow-up by association, the idea that a brand can boost its fusty image by punting out a crazy looking bag of bits at a motor show and wowing the crowds. Take Mazda, for instance. The company had worked with esteemed Italian styling house Bertone throughout the Sixties to inject a bit of Latin flair into its cars and steal a march on its fellow Japanese rivals. The 1963 Mazda Familia was styled by a young Giorgetto Giugiaro, who went off to work for Ghia, while the relationship between Bertone and Mazda blossomed. But was Mazda cool? Not an easy case to argue there. The company gave Bertone a blank sheet commission to…

BMW 760Li (2004) Price now £5,750 Harris says We may not have thought it in period, but the Bangle-era 7-Series can now be considered a relatively good looking BMW. Plus, the mega 760 can now be bought for less than half the price of a Dacia Sandero. AUDI A8L 6.0 QUATTRO (2005) Price now £6,995  Harris says Want the VW Group’s gloriously brawny W12 engine but in a package that’s more discreet than a Bentley Conti, and more reliable than a VW Phaeton? This mega-spec, 444bhp long wheelbase A8 is your answer. MERCEDES-BENZ S600 L (2000) Price now £8,000  Harris says Now to complete the German barge trio with an S-Class. This W220 S600 has just 81k miles on the clock and has had a full engine strip down before…