Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com “RENAULT’S PRODUCED SOMETHING COOLER THAN LIQUID NITROGEN AND I WANT ONE” Are electric hot hatches actually viable? I want the answer to be an emphatic yes, we all do, right? Because a world without hot hatches in it is like a bacon sandwich without ketchup… not completely unpleasant, but ultimately a bit dry. But hang on, doesn’t an electric version of a pumped up hatch go against everything that made them great in the first place? A hot hatch should be if not cheap, then certainly attainable. As it stands, electric cars still cost more than a petrol powered equivalent. A hot hatch should also be relatively small, nimble and chuckable (usually through the nearest hedge, backwards) whereas batteries are heavy and handling therefore cumbersome. Just ask the…

Are you a gamer with far too much money and a penchant for Bugattis? Well, you’re in luck, because New York-based soundsters Master & Dynamic have combined your two favourite things. As part of a collaboration with the hypercar builder, M&D has unveiled the limited edition MG20 Bugatti gaming headphones, which feature 7.1 surround sound, magnesium ear cups, and plenty of leather and Alcantara. We’re told the colours are inspired by popular Chiron combinations, too. We’re particularly keen on the Chiron Super Sport 300+ style black and orange look. $599; masterdynamic.com…

1 IT DOESN’T HAVE A REAR WINDOW In Polestar’s desire to offer something over and above the standard approach to SUV coupes it has declined to fit a clear glass viewing area at the back of the 4. The removal of the rear window wasn’t an accident it had to design its way out of, instead a byproduct of wanting to offer more rear headroom. 2 THERE ARE CAMERAS INSTEAD The panoramic roof stretches behind backseat passengers’ heads to aid the feeling of space, while the actual view out the back is taken care of by a pair of digital cameras feeding images into the rearview mirror. Polestar promises you won’t get sick looking at it, countering that with this digital set-up you’ll see more of what’s going on behind.…

“A CLOUD OF CONFUSION HANGS OVER THE NEW SL. IS IT NOW A SUPERCAR, OR STILL A GOLFER’S BOULEVARDIER?” Every veteran car building company has an enduring model that defines it. A touchstone product that evolves with the times but manages to stay in touch with the founder’s ethos. No matter what niches the company expands into, these cars endure as the bedrock of the original vision. Porsche has the 911. Bentley has the Continental. For BMW it’s a 5-Series saloon. Ferrari doesn’t carry over names, but the 812 Superfast has a lineage that stretches back through 550s and Daytonas into the days of the 250. These cars are vessels for the glory days. Mercedes has an embarrassment of riches in this department, being the company that got a head…

£36,640 FOR Cabin trim, a good diesel, comfy up front, rides well AGAINST Numb to drive, cramped back seat, can be pricey I was pretty brassed off with Mercedes when it launched the current generation of A-Class in 2018. It had put too much effort into the baubles – especially the fancy screens and comms – and not enough into the fundamentals. Most versions had dull engines, clunky transmissions and primitive suspension. Well, for the facelift, Mercedes has doubled down. Most changes are minor style ones and tweaks to the screen system. The mechanical bits and dynamics go unchanged. You don’t become one of the most successful car companies in history by listening to me. Outside, notice new grille and lights. But only if you’re a real spotter. Inside, the…

TOYOTA COROLLA GR SPORT £32,990 FOR Stylish looks, improved performance and economy AGAINST Still hardly fun, coarse CVT, minimal room in the rear Don’t get your hopes up – this isn’t the 300bhp hot hatch, rather a regular Corolla kitted out in sportier trim. And despite the GR badge, there are no dynamic enhancements to speak of. But it does get Toyota’s fifth-gen hybrid tech, with the 1.8-litre engine now producing 138bhp (up 18bhp), and the 2.0-litre 193bhp (up 15bhp). Shame it’s still dull to drive and the noisy CVT remains, which rather discourages you from making use of the extra power. PR VOLKSWAGEN GOLF GTE £39,360 FOR Performance is fairly perky, decent cruising ability AGAINST Interior, let’s not pretend it’s sporty like a GTI, shall we? The once imperious…

HONDA MONKEY Back in the Seventies, Honda’s Monkey was the diddy motorbike. It incited palpitations of want in pretty much every flare-wearer worth their hippy bath salts. Now it’s back! This time as a £4,049 reskinned MSX125 (or Grom, as it’s more affectionately known) and tartaned up for 2023. Being the size of a large house cat and having 9bhp, it’s easy to dismiss the new Monkey bike as a toy. But it’s not. It’s a proper bike. DUCATI DESERT X The adventure bike market has exploded, and Ducati has finally given us a bespoke off-road option: the deeply cool Desert X. Channelling vibes from the Paris-Dakar’s golden era and the Lucky Strike Cagiva Elefant, this £14,095, 937cc beast has twin fuel tanks and massive ground clearance to get you…

“NO RHINO, NO FEATURE” This was the warning from editor Rix. Not something you’d usually overhear in the TopGear office, of course, but then I had just suggested that we could put the new South African-built Volkswagen Amarok to the test by deploying it with one of the many anti-poaching teams looking after resident rhinoceroses in the posh pickup’s new home. Now dear reader, I wish I could claim that – with this ultimatum ringing in my and photographer Fleetwood’s ears – we set off searching for our horned friends across the African savanna for days on end, traversing tricky terrain in the Amarok and avoiding the more bitey creatures around with the hope of possibly catching a glimpse of one of the circa 16,000 white rhinos in existence. As…

LESS THAN £15K CATERHAM SEVEN 1700 SUPER SPRINT (1994) Price now: £14,995 Harris says: Tell anyone that you’re buying/building a kit car and it’s pretty likely they’ll imagine a Caterham Seven. This is one of the cheapest around but still only has 11,000 miles on the clock. LESS THAN £18K BEAUFORD SERIES 3 (2000) Price now: £17,995 Harris says: Designed to look like something from the Thirties, this Brit-built Beauford uses a Nissan powertrain and both the front and rear suspension from a MkV Cortina. LESS THAN £20K WESTFIELD XI (2009) Price now: £19,995 Harris says: A replica of the Lotus Eleven, this Westfield was put together in 2009 and features a modified 1380cc A Series engine from a classic Mini. Honest Harris' Bargain Corner…

GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR MORE MIND-BLOWING MANUFACTURER GUIDES Who is Alfa Romeo and when did it start making cars? Alexandre Darracq was a big cheese in the French market in the early 1900s and started an Italian offshoot. Its factory moved from Naples to Milan in 1906, but Darracq grew tired of poor sales and wound the company up in 1909. His chairman, Ugo Stella, gathered some investors and founded a new company called Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobil, snapping up Darracq’s assets in the process. Alfa produced some road- and racecars over the next few years, before entrepreneur Nicola Romeo bought up a chunk in 1915. He focused the company’s efforts on military hardware in World War One, then post-war got involved in trains. The first Alfa Romeo car – the…

CITY CARS These small cars are perfect for urban life, but the trade-off is a much lower range 1. HONDA e PRICE: £36,920–£38,120 RANGE: Up to 136 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. FIAT 500 PRICE: £30,645–£36,645 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. 3. CITROEN AMI PRICE: £7,695–£8,695 RANGE: 47 miles Say hello to your little French friend. The pared back Ami is the perfect car for the city streets, as long as you don’t have ambitions to go…

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It seems the humble city car is spluttering its last. Low profit margins and ever more stringent emissions regulations mean the tiny, cheap urban runabout looks likely to soon go the way of the Wispa Mint (rest in peace, you magnificent chocolatey-toothpastey creation). Car magazine etiquette obliges we must mourn this mass extinction of cheap ’n’ cheerful transport. But, as we enter the city car’s final hours, we must remember that not all of them were midget gems. For every VW Up, there was a Perodua Kelisa. Or a Proton Savvy. Or a Hyundai Amica. Sure, the Amica was cheap. Cheerful? Not so much. The list of positives was as stumpy as its wheelbase. Innovative, minimalist design? No. Pared back practicality? Also no. Peppy urban handling? Very much no. The…

Rock stars love a good watch. From John Lennon’s Patek Philippe to Slash’s Breitling, a handsome watch has long been a vital part of the stage uniform. But while some may just see it as a prop to make them look cool, others take it to the next level, so obsessed that it’s a wonder they have any time left to make any music. When Eric Clapton gets into something, he doesn’t do it by halves. His love of Ferraris is well known, having bought so many over the years that in 2012 he was allowed to commission a one-off all of his own, the 458 Italia-based SP12 EC. But his automotive addiction is mild compared to how he feels about watches. He has bought countless Rolex and Patek Philippes…

THIS MONTH: MERCEDES VISION EQXX SIGHT UNSEEN Visibility is a bit of an issue. There are solar panels on the roof which can add a couple of miles of range on a sunny day, but that means there’s no rear view. AERO, DYNAMIC The overall design and aerodynamic teardrop shape is probably my favourite thing about the EQXX. It gets a swooping roofline and a long tail with loads of extra active aero. The magnesium aero spec wheels are extremely cool too. CRAMPED STYLE That roofline is very cool and swoopy, but the back seats are basically a prop. If this were a real production car, you’d question their presence. There’s almost no legroom and headroom is terrible. WAIT SAVING You might expect this eco warrior to be snail like.…

£90,560 FOR Interior’s nice if you like stitched leather, fancy tech AGAINST Not remotely sporty, nothing new, so expensive Nice that you have options if you’re in the market for a giant electric SUV. The Germans fall neatly into a row – Audi (see opposite) does electric versions of normal cars, BMW produces space age craziness and Mercedes falls in-between. Mercedes is baffing though – its latest wheeze is building slightly different versions of its combustion cars on the EV-specific EVA platform. Like the EQE SUV, for instance. Is it an electric GLE, or a taller EQE? Who knows, but at least there’s a little something for everyone at Mercedes. It could make a nice electric family car, but do you really want the kids eating ice creams in the…

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IMAGES @AUTOMOTIVEAI GLOSSARY PATINA /PAT’I-NA/ A weathered surface or sheen that gives the appearance of long use. Not to be confused with ‘rust’ 1959 MINI COUNTRYMAN Subtle one, this. BMC’s original ’59 Mini had an estate version, the Clubman, but it was a stretched two-door. The Countryman, technically a sub-compact crossover, didn’t appear until 2010. So what would an Alec Issigonis-designed Countryman have looked like back in the early Sixties? Well, wonder no more – weird doors aside, you can see how good it might have looked. 1974 RANGE ROVER SPORT Another one that looks real. The Range Rover Sport appeared in 2005 as a mid-sized luxury SUV. The first Range Rover appeared in 1969, and was two-door only until ’81, so an imagineered ’74 RRS has ended up looking…

It’s 8.30am in Shalford, the headquarters of Gordon Murray Automotive. It’s been like the countdown to Christmas for the past few weeks, crossing the days off until this moment. OM: Today Jack and I get to ride shotgun (double barrelled…) in the remarkable T.50 – a hypercar with the footprint of a Porsche Boxster, three seats and a 3.9-litre naturally aspirated V12 that revs to over 12,000rpm. Gordon doesn’t know or care how long 0–60mph takes or what the top speed is. This car is all about weight saving and sensation, about righting the supposed wrongs of the McLaren F1. Our pilot is Indycar legend and GMA development driver Dario Franchitti. The car sits outside the front door looking trim and petite. The doors swing up. While Dario shuffes over…

“PAIN ISN’T INFLICTED OVER SECONDS OR MINUTES… IT’S A RELENTLESS 24 HOUR A DAY MARATHON” In 2004 James Wan released Saw, a horror film centered around a serial killer nicknamed Jigsaw. Rather than simply kill his victims, Jigsaw would test their will to live by putting them through deadly games, often resulting in great pain for the survivor, and a brutal death for the other. These ‘games’ include a face mounted exploding bear trap (with the key behind your eye socket), a shackle that could only be removed by cutting off your own foot and – perhaps most terrifying of them all – trying to sell an old AMG Mercedes-Benz on eBay. It remains Jigsaw’s most twisted game to date. Because unlike the others, the pain isn’t inflicted over seconds…

If you’d been instrumental in two of the greatest racing games in history, you’d be forgiven for relaxing a bit. Maybe finding out exactly how comfortable laurels are? That’s not what Yu Suzuki, the bloke behind Out Run and Daytona USA did. Instead, he produced Ferrari F355 Challenge, an arcade game that was, at the time, one of the most sophisticated racing simulators available. As the title of the game implies, you weren’t exactly spoilt for choice when you dropped your pound coin into the slot. Would you prefer a red Ferrari F355 or a yellow one, sir or madam? At least the F355 in question was the stripped down, track focused Challenge spec that raced on circuits around the world in the late Nineties, with its distinctive perforated rear…

Although McLaren says meticulous analysis was done to improve the 720S, a sense of impishness has entered the previously rather uptight Woking lexicon. While the numbers never lie and the 750S’s 579bhp per tonne power to weight ratio is class leading, the new car is definitely more… punk rock. Sharper, sonically enhanced, and more interactive, think of it as more accessible and less intimidating than the knife edge 765LT. The 4.0 twin-turbo V8 now makes 740bhp and 590lb ft, and rockets to 62mph in 2.8secs and 124mph in 7.2. Sure, the 720 was hardly deficient in that department, but a whole load of fine tuning has gone on to liberate a bit more soul. We know what you’re thinking, though. Did McLaren’s design team nip down the pub while their…

Right, this is it: the MG Cyberster electric sports car in production form. And credit where credit’s due, it looks like the real deal. We say looks like because… we’re still waiting to see the thing in the metal. However, MG has used the Shanghai Motor Show to announce that the Cyberster will go on sale in the UK and Europe in the summer of 2024. Good seasonal timing, as it also happens to be a convertible. Which brings us to the details: there aren’t any. We continue to wait on those all-important performance specs, which means we can only remind you of the initial claims: 0–62mph in less than three seconds and very nearly 500 miles of range. “This is the perfect time to introduce an MG that completely…

Forza Horizon 5 certainly knows how to tug on our nostalgia. The new Rally Adventure downloadable add-on kicks off by placing you in the same Colin McRae Ford Focus RS from 2001 that we spent many an hour wrapping around trees on the original PlayStation. For your 20 quid, Rally Adventure serves up another wodge of gorgeous, idealised Mexico, this time riddled with switchback laden canyon roads designed to make the most of four-wheel-drive gravel cannons. This is a somewhat authentic rally experience too – there is the option to turn off the racing line and rely on the brand new pace notes system to warn you of what lies ahead. Rally Adventure is not quite as out there as the Hot Wheels add-on that preceded it – this is…

01 Mini Cooper SE Convertible Electric SUVs? Loads of them. EV superminis? Aplenty. Electric convertibles? Not many, so far. Mini’s not likely to change that: only 150 battery powered soft-tops are UK bound, and each starts at a massive £52,500. Which is a lot, for only 125 miles of suntan boosting range. 02 Aston Martin Cygnet It gets more bizarre with every passing year: a 97bhp Toyota iQ city car treated to new lights, bumpers and leather hide inside, and marketed as an Aston Martin. Only around 150 were sold, as you’d expect with a price tag north of £30k – three times what the mechanically identical iQ cost. 03 Fiat Abarth 695 Tributo Ferrari This was Fiat’s attempt at cornering the high spec city car market: an Abarth 500…

“ YOU CAN SAVE TIME BY DRIVING SLOWLY” This came up when strategising for our M25 electric car challenge a month ago. Some folk think that by driving slowly to use less energy, they’ll spend less time charging and arrive faster. They’re wrong. Except in a few limited circs, anyway. Drive at 70mph. In three hours, if the motorway’s clear, you’ve done 210 miles. Your cautious friend in an identical car drives at 60, taking 30 minutes longer. Even if you’re unlucky and can find only a 50kW charger rather than an ultra rapid, in half an hour you can take on 25kWh, which is about 80 miles’ worth, just as your friend rolls up to the charge station. But your friend would argue their battery is less depleted. True.…

Is the dust settling around the Aston Martin Valkyrie and Mercedes-AMG One? I can’t find any tester who unreservedly likes either. Full disclosure, I haven’t driven them – frankly I don’t have the skills to take full advantage of any car so fast. I’ll leave it to the hotshoes, including our own Chris Harris and Ollie Marriage. But, ahem, I seem to be skilled at predicting the future. For years I’ve been saying they’d never work. In July 2018 I wrote, “They’re ‘road cars’ in the sense of road legal, but severely compromised as such by their track mission. Equally the track car bit will be undermined by the need to do speed bumps and emissions tests.” Two years before, in 2016, I’d interviewed Adrian Newey, Red Bull Racing’s tech…

£79,585 FOR Hey good looking… but not a cheap date AGAINST Avoid digital mirrors and coupe shape Audi’s quest to confuse us all with its naming strategy continues at pace with this, the new Q8 e-tron. Nothing to do with the existing petrol, diesel and hybrid Q8, this is a heavy facelift of its first electric car – the e-tron SUV – introduced in 2019. Still there? Probably easier to think of it as a rival for Merc’s EQE (opposite) and BMW’s iX SUVs. Which is a good place to start, because compared to those two the Audi is a chiselled underwear model, nicely proportioned, striking from the front with the grille now melting into the headlights and the obligatory full-width lightbar at the back. For even more style points…

£31,095 FOR Unpretentious, comfortable, and above all, great value AGAINST Bland looks, dull drive, small-ish boot, avoid the hybrid We were as surprised as anyone to discover MG’s mid-size SUV topped the UK’s sales chart back in January. It’s slipped down the pecking order since then, but we’ll let it bask in its former glory a little longer. Surprised, because it’s no understatement to say the HS is a little, well, dull to look at. It’s hardly going to have the neighbours glancing enviously in your direction, is it? The HS’s real trump card, however, is its value for money – because with prices starting from £23,495, it undercuts pretty much every one of its mid-size SUV segment rivals by a couple of grand at least. Which, given the current…

VS DEFINE AMERICA. THE STARS AND STRIPES, THE HAMBURGER, THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, COWBOYS, THE CORVETTE. Easy, huh? But that’s not what I’m driving at. It’s the only country where inserting a car in a list of cultural touch points seems natural. The Corvette. Seventy years of history this year. They’ve been building Corvettes for nearly a third of the time America has been a country. No wonder there was such a fuss when, after seven generations of the horse pulling the cart, the eighth went mid-engined. But it retained a pushrod V8, because y’all drive torque, right? But pushrod engines nestle their single camshaft down in the centre of the vee, where it turns to actuates rods that travel back up the sides of the cylinders to operate the…

Sometimes you look at a concept car and if you have your contacts in it’s immediately obvious why it took a few tweaks to shuffle it through to the final production line. It ran on tank tracks, for instance, or instead of a steering wheel you turned into corners using chill vibes. You know, the practical stuff. Look at the Mercedes-Benz SLK concept study from the Turin Auto Show in 1994, though, and you wonder where it all went subtly wrong – haunches filed down, headlights given a lick of eyeliner, the whole thing slightly jacked up. Didn’t harm the car’s chances on the market – more than 308,000 were built between 1996 and the car being yoinked off sale in early 2004. Strangely, the concept’s front end looks more…

THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT THE SAME Correct and yet… not. If you want an example of technological evolution without dismantling expectation, then look no further than the Audi S3. The original appeared in 1999 and featured quattro all-wheel drive, a turbocharged four-cylinder and the kind of Goldilocks format that meant it could operate as a rapid, practical daily. That’s the subtle green one. The 2023 version, here in chirpy Miami blue, also has the same basics, but drive one immediately after the other and you’ll be surprised at just how little the overall vibe has changed in 24 years. OK, BUT IS THAT A GOOD THING? We think so. So yes, they do look different – but they’re still recognisably fraternal. The oldster is softer, more rounded, with modest…

GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR EXTENDED TG GARAGE REPORTS, AND TO EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE Ora Funky Cat REPORT 3 £31,995 OTR/£32,790 as tested/£398 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is Chinese domination of the small EV scene inevitable? We find out DRIVER Greg Potts IT’S WELL KNOWN THAT THE NEXT MINI ELECTRIC WILL FEATURE MUCH of the same hardware as the Ora Funky Cat, thanks to a joint venture agreed between BMW and Ora’s overlords at Great Wall Motors. It’s likely to be an all-new, collaboratively developed platform that underpins the next-gen Mini EV – which will once again look almost exactly the same as its combustion-engined counterpart – but it could potentially use the Funky Cat’s current motor or battery tech and so on. That’s one for the future though, because the Funky Cat…