Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com Of all the showdowns we’ve had on the cover of TopGear magazine over the years – Ferrari F50 vs F1 car, the hypercar Holy Trinity, Bugatti Veyron vs… two more Bugatti Veyrons – ‘Lotus takes on Tesla’ is the coverline I never thought I’d write. But here we are, the year is 2023 and everything is turning turtle. It would be easy to get salty about Lotus daring to produce an electric SUV, built in China, aimed primarily at the Chinese and North American markets. Because armed only with only that information, it’s impossible to see how the Eletre could have a shred of Lotus DNA contained within its whale-like proportions. DNA hewn from pared back, lightweight, sports cars with telepathic handling and decades of F1 success. But…

Porsche and Xbox’s 75th Anniversary collection sees a number of Series X consoles painted in classic Porsche racing liveries. There’s the Salzburg colourway that was on the 917 that gave Porsche its first ever overall win at Le Mans, the Hippie livery from that same year and the tribal-style white and blue of the Le Mans-winning 911 GT1 from 1998. Oh, and that’s not forgetting the excellent Pink Pig 917 from 1971, the Martini colours of Moby Dick and the current 963 livery. Sadly these won’t be offered for general sale, but gamers are able to enter a sweepstake for a chance to win one with a matching controller. FREE TO ENTER; porschexbox sweepstakes.com…

1 IT HAS AN “N GRIN BOOST” MODE On one hand the Ioniq 5 N is an important electric milestone for the South Korean giant’s performance division, and on the other it’s a hot hatch/crossover that will dispatch the 0–62mph sprint in 3.4secs and features something called “N Grin Boost”. This unleashes a power hike from the standard 600bhp to 641bhp for 10secs. 2 CORNERS ARE NOT FORGOTTEN One of the key parameters of the Ioniq 5 N is its “corner rascal” capabilities. Apparently this lightly embarrassing phrase encapsulates WRC-grade engineering (Hyundai’s won two WRC titles and taken 25 wins since 2014, to be fair). The integrated drive axles are WRC-inspired, whatever that means, to better deal with all that e-motor torque. 3 IT GETS A BEEFED UP CHASSIS The body…

BMW M2 £62,420 / £70,410 PORSCHE 718 CAYMAN GT4 £81,700 / £99,575 AUDI RS3 SALOON £53,520 / £57,190 “THERE’S A STRONG AROMA OF ‘ENJOY THIS LOT WHILE YOU CAN’ ABOUT ALL OF THIS” Stick a bookmark in this one. I’m not sure how many more times TopGear will bring you a good old fashioned sports car battle featuring one naturally aspirated engine, two manual gearboxes and three completely electric free powertrains. Progress is great of course, but these are the last dance sports cars as you know them. BMW isn’t protesting any claims its new M2 is the last non-hybrid M car. Porsche has confirmed the next Cayman will be electric, with its batteries heaped in the centre to evoke a mid-engined ‘feel’. And the future of all Audi RS…

£90,000 (est) FOR Drives well, a convincing effort from a start-up AGAINST Not quite as sporty as it looks This is the HiPhi Z, the somewhat bolder, brasher, more extrovert sibling of the gullwing doored X (see p49). The pair are the launch cars for the automotive offshoot of Chinese mobility startup Human Horizons – the X plays the role of a conventional luxury SUV, the Z being a wilder, more attention grabbing super saloon. Its chief designer once worked at BMW, though if you’re seeing elements of either i3 or i8, neither is in his portfolio. Perhaps there’s some Nissan GT-R from some angles too. Stylistically, there’s plenty going on. How successfully it all mishmashes together is something only you can truly decide. Still, it’s certainly up there on…

MERCEDES-BENZ GLC COUPE 300 4MATIC £61,325 FOR Looks alright, tidy interior, adequate head and legroom AGAINST Hesitant gearbox, firm ride, no plug-in hybrid variant Like the standard GLC SUV, the second gen GLC Coupe is very much about evolution rather than revolution. And as ever, that rakish roofline results in a little less headroom, bootspace and much reduced rear visibility in the name of ‘style’. The Coupe is further let down by a poor gearbox, too firm sports suspension, and no plugin hybrid option (unlike the SUV), which makes the near £6.5k premium compared with its sibling a tough pill to swallow. PR KIA SORENTO EDITION 1.6 HYBRID £51,055 FOR Properly spacious, very practical, solid all-rounder AGAINST Hybrid option not as economical as it should be A bit of a dark…

It’s one shared with many and particularly with the sort of people who pick up motoring magazines. Perhaps you have it, too. Let’s call it Icoulddothatitus. Luckily, I get regular treatment for the condition. In this job, you’re often treated to passenger rides with exceptional driving talents. Just recently at a Ferrari event I got to sit beside Carlos Sainz Jr in a 296 GTB. Roughly seven seconds after exiting the pitlane I knew deep in my bones that I would never be able to drive like him. The aggression, confidence and control were mind scrambling, elating and soul destroying in equal measure. I’ve had similar experiences over the years with WRC drivers, former DTM champions and ex-F1 drivers. There is no doubt in my mind that high level racers…

IN THE 1910s, THE ‘AUTOMOBILE’ WAS A PLUCKY NEWCOMER to the transport scene. If you wanted to go anywhere reasonably far away within Britain or the US, you used a train. To get the bourgeoisie and their luggage from their country retreat to the railway station, companies adapted a rudimentary car chassis with boxier bodies bolted on top. Logically, the British called these workhorses ‘estate cars’. The Americans termed theirs ‘depot hacks’, but that morphed into ‘station wagons’. And that is how – not for the last time – two nations divided by a common language came up with completely different names for the same thing. You say tom-A-to, we say estate. And they’re trousers, not pants. For most of the following century, the estate car did its duty. Part…

It is easy to forget that mammoth Japanese carmaker Toyota hasn’t always been GR Yaris cool. All those years ago back in 1999, we were smack dab in the era of the fifth generation Starlet and eighth generation Corolla. Cars so devoid of personality they made merely dull look interesting. In the UK we had yet to roll into the new millennium and the delights of the all-new Yaris and first generation Prius, models that had the kernel of a snifter of something about them, even if it was just hope of better times to come. In the middle of all this and bringing no hope to the table was Toyota’s NCSV concept, revealed at the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show in October and even wheeled out at the Geneva show…

WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE, THEN? To the right we have the third generation Astra GSi, Vauxhall’s hot hatch hero from the Nineties and one sure to yank on the heartstrings of every boy racer from that era. To the left we have the eighth generation Astra GSe, the first car to wear Vauxhall’s new performance sub-brand badge and a clear nod to its fast hatchbacks of old. FYI, the GS stands for ‘grand sport’, the i denotes ‘injection’ and the e ‘electric’. TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE OLD ONE In the UK, very early GSis were powered by a 2.0 8V engine, with 1.8 16V and 2.0 16V engines introduced later. This is the latter – just in case the stickers hadn’t given the game away – with 148bhp…

HELLO £62,995 OTR/£66,607 as tested/£680pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is the ownership experience as bright and sunny as the car itself? DRIVER Ollie Marriage THAT’S NOT A VW ID.BUZZ YOU’RE LOOKING AT. BUT THAT’S FINE, because this is a story with a lengthy back story. I’m taking you back to May 2017 and I’m in the south of Spain to ‘drive’ the ID.Buzz concept. It’s predictably dreadful, but the experience of being in it is wonderful. It’s bright, airy, cool, and stacked with neat details. VW is promising to have it in production in 2021. And that triggers something in me. You see, about a month prior I’d just bought a nearly new VW California Beach. My family all adore it. In four years, I think, we might well be looking…

REPORT 7 £40,155/£42,985/£704 WHY IT’S HERE Has the world finally come around to a non-sporty large French car? DRIVER Jason Barlow THIS MONTH I’M GOING TO flatter the C5 X by comparing it to the Rolls-Royce Spectre. I’ve just driven it in California, and it’s as close to flawless as any car has ever come. And here’s the thing: step out of the £330k Spectre and into the C5 X and there’s a significant crossover. In essence, these two cars are designed to repel the intrusions and iniquities of the real world as effectively as possible. The Citroen is absolutely at its best on the motorway or long sweeping roads, when the presence of its combustion engine is pretty much imperceptible. Its primary ride is better resolved than its secondary one,…

HELLO £14,795 OTR/£15,445 as tested/£213pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s no longer the UK’s cheapest new car, but is it still a TG hero? DRIVERS Greg Potts BAD NEWS! THE DACIA SANDERO IS NO LONGER THE CHEAPEST NEW car that you can buy in the UK. The £7,695 Citroen Ami is hardly a car so we won’t count that, but the Kia Picanto can be had for a few hundred quid less. Well, it could before its recent Stormtrooper facelift – Kia hasn’t confirmed UK prices for the new look version at the time of writing, but we’d wager the entry point will still be exceptionally low. And yet, the size-up Sandero still remains a budget icon. The range now kicks off at £13,795 for the really-very-basic Essential trim, but this car…

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Even the blindest optimist wasn’t expecting the Nitro – launched in Britain in 2006 – to be a smash hit. Chrysler’s UK offerings of the period had set the bar very low indeed. But, like a champion limbo dancer, the Nitro eyed that low, low bar… and somehow managed to dip lower still. Dodge claimed the mid-sized SUV was tailored to European tastes. Quite which mad European was unclear. The exterior styling was clearly targeting the ‘Texas toddler’ demographic, while the base engine was a 3.7-litre V6, which made a great deal of noise and almost no power. At least the Nitro’s interior could have been described as impressive, provided the word “impressive” was immediately followed by the words “that Dodge thought it could get away with something so cheap…

The Fifties was a bumper decade for the car industry. Tail fins proliferated in the US as aircon, power steering and electric windows went into production cars for the first time, while in Europe the Mercedes 300SL and Aston’s DB4 GT both beat the magic 150mph barrier. The leap forward in the watch industry was just as big. There were some technological breakthroughs, like early electronic watches that laid the ground for the quartz revolution of the Seventies. And a load of earlier inventions were made mainstream, as anti-shock and anti-magnetic movements, along with chronographs and self-winding movements, became increasingly popular. But the main development was a flourish of post-war style. Increasing demand for luxury watches gave companies freedom to invest and expand their offering, and the Fifties saw the…

THIS MONTH: TOYOTA PRIUS SLUGGISH It may have more power than before, but even with 217bhp the Prius Prime isn’t actually that quick. The 0–60mph sprint takes 6.6secs, so compared with an EV acceleration lacks urgency. TAKE ME TO A LIGHT BAR I know it’s been said many times, but I do love the design. It has a lot to do with the new lights – there’s a full width light bar at the back and the aggressive headlights actually remind me of Ferrari’s SF90. Who’d have thought those two cars would ever be compared? Both hybrids, I guess. TECH TUTORIAL I really like the software on this car. It has wireless Apple and Android, but if you want to use the built-in infotainment it’s intuitive, well designed and has good…

£48,950 FOR Decently packaged, competitive range, styling AGAINST Still a firm ride, not much else It’s got a new grille. Or more accurately no grille at all, just an aero-friendly blanking panel. It’s just about enough to let you know that after three years on sale, the Polestar 2 has now been facelifted. We already know its strengths. The 2 is good looking, well built, practical and easy to drive. But it wasn’t the most effcient and didn’t have the longest range. That, rather than the outward appearance, is what has been upgraded. The changes are substantial. But also slightly involved, given that you can choose between two battery pack sizes that have four different power outputs. Here are the key changes: the Single Motor versions have switched from front-to…

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1 IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT THE GRAN TURISMO VIDEO GAME While the thought of watching A Player grind out credits on Trial Mountain for nine hours straight in a grey Japanese sports car might feel like the most authentic Gran Turismo experience possible, that’s not exactly exciting to watch. Which is the same thought that crossed director Neill Blomkamp’s mind when first offered an early script for a Gran Turismo movie. “That literally makes no sense,” he told TG. “And then I read the script, and thought ‘Is this true?’ So I researched Jann Mardenborough and the GT Academy, everything that Nissan and Polyphony did together, and thought ‘Holy crap this is awesome’.” Indeed, the real life story of a shy young gamer winning an improbable racing simulator competition who…

It sounds like a riddle, when you think about it: one of the most prolific carmakers on the planet doesn’t actually have any real cars. It’s reproduced some of the world’s most iconic shapes, birthed its own concepts, has surfed the currents of fashion and technology during 77 years of existence, and been responsible for more joy than it’s possible to measure. Tamiya is, in a small, quiet way, a legendary carmaker. And yet all it makes is toys. But to describe Tamiya’s output as ‘just toys’ is to miss the point by quite a – scale – distance, and to figure out why these little agglomerations of plastic and metal are so compelling, we need to know where it all started. So here’s a little potted history of the…

Price now: £3,500 Harris says: A second generation Audi A8 with a 4.1-litre V8 diesel engine. What could possibly go wrong? When it was new this engine made 322bhp, and now the whole car costs less than a 50,000-mile Dacia Sandero. Price now: £4,475 Harris says: When the second gen Scandi luxo barge was introduced in the mid-Noughties, Volvo offered it with a Yamaha-built 4.4-litre V8 under the bonnet. And yes, this was the engine used in the Noble M600. Price now: £6,995 Harris says: What on earth were they smoking at Lexus when they came up with the concept of a luxury hybrid saloon that used a CVT gearbox paired with a 5.0-litre V8 and AWD? Still, it’s now a bargain used buy… Honest Harris' Bargain Corner…

GOODBYE £59,545 OTR/£65,521 as tested/£665pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is this the SUV antidote you never knew you needed? DRIVER Charlie Rose TO THE CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE TG OFFICE, OUR BELOVED two-tone fun bus is no more. For the past six months, the Multivan has been one of the most popular cars in the TG Garage, much more than just a glossed-up van. In fact, we were so distraught to bid it farewell that we shamelessly pleaded with VW to let us keep it until the end of summer. Alas, the answer was nein. However, it did have a grand gesture up its sleeve. Brace yourselves for the entrance of TG’s fresh Multivan XXL. This is a Multivan Style Long. The wheelbase remains unchanged, but VW has extended the rear…

HELLO £54,075 OTR/£63,975 as tested/£773 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can an electric BMW look, feel and drive… like a BMW? DRIVER Jack Rix THE i4 FEELS LIKE AN EXIT POINT OF A 10-YEAR U-turn from BMW. From the swashbuckling audacity of the i3 (launched in 2013) and i8 (a year later) – both of which totally reimagined car design, materials and powertrain layout to stride boldly into our electric future – to this, a 4-Series Gran Coupe with its oily giblets removed and replaced with batteries. It hardly feels like progress, does it? And yet, this is BMW listening to what the people want. Yes, the i3 and i8 were and still are wonderful cars, but they never sold in suffcient numbers to justify the colossal R&D input. What the mass…

GOODBYE £39,045 (£47,370 for Vorsprung ed.)/£49,030 as tested/£794pcm WHY IT’S HERE Fast Audis are consistently inconsistent – is the S3 a hit or miss? DRIVER Ollie Kew THE INESCAPABLE QUESTION THAT HUNG OVER THE S3 DURING ITS half year at TopGear was ‘What was Audi trying to achieve with this car?’ When it replaced the previous S3, what was the vision for its successor? I’ve a feeling it was ‘erm, more of the same’. The old S3 got replaced because according to the factory calendar, it was time for a new one. Not because Audi had invented anything new or amazing to make it better, and not because it had fallen way off the pace in any given area. So this was a car of incremental changes. A bit snarlier to…

GOODBYE £129,750 OTR/£150,050 as tested/3,272 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can the most powerful M car be a proper luxury car? DRIVER Rowan Horncastle IT’S TIME TO WAVE GOODBYE TO OUR BMW M8… BUT NOT BEFORE ratcheting up the jeopardy and making our insurers sweat with a little track action. But this is something BMW encourages. See, pounding cars around racetracks is M’s raison d’être. And it’s good to know they put their money where their mouth is by giving you a free track day if you buy the M Driver’s Pack. Which we have as part of the £20k (!) ‘Ultimate Pack’. Zing! For ease, we signed ourselves up for a day at Brands Hatch (it doesn’t have to be used in the UK). You don’t need to be a track…

CITY CARS These small cars are perfect for urban life, but the trade-off is a much lower range 1. HONDA e PRICE: £37,395 RANGE: Up to 136 miles This TG favourite has retro styling and a brilliant interior, but it’s very expensive and the range isn’t great. Somehow we can’t help but love it though… 2. FIAT 500 PRICE: £28,195–£37,195 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…

There are few things in life as dependable as the Porsche 911. Reliably a competitor, always a contender, the archetypal sports car. It’s also almost impossibly prolific; in terms of recent models you’ve got Carrera, Carrera S, Carrera T, Carrera 4 and 4S, Targa, GT3, GT3 RS, GT2 RS, Speedster, Sport Classic, Turbo, Turbo S, Dakar, GTS, GT3 Touring, convertible versions of most… you get the idea. Working out which 911 suits you best can take some navigating. But Porsche has decided to keep things simple as far as TopGear is concerned. If you want the ‘best’ 911, it’s probably this: the Porsche 911 S/T. So what makes TG think that this might be ‘the one’? Well, the S/T is Porsche’s present to itself upon the 60th anniversary of the…

Welcome to a modern version of the V8 Vantage-based RHAM/1 ‘Muncher’ Le Mans racer. Keen Aston Martin enthusiasts will have already amassed a certain level of familiarity with this brand new car, because of course it looks just like the gloriously bonkers Aston Martin Victor we saw in 2020. Where that Victor utilised a free breathing, tweaked and comically enormous 7.3-litre One-77 sourced V12, the new Valour opts for Aston’s 5.2-litre twin-turbo 12-cylinder mounted in a bespoke version of the company’s bonded aluminium platform. In what Aston describes as a “mouth-watering, end of an era specification”, it punches out 705bhp and 555lb ft of torque. That’s sent to a bespoke, six-speed manual and mechanical limited-slip differential. Aston’s keen on emphasising the driver-centric and old school nature of the new Valour,…

Lego 2K Drive Lego might nominally be aimed at kids, but we all know that it’s actually about people in their 30s spending £150 to build a 1,000-piece Lego Technic Porsche 911 GT3 RS. That’s why we’re perhaps embarrassingly excited by Lego 2K Drive, out now on Xbox, PlayStation, PC and Nintendo Switch. It’s an open world racing game, à la Forza Horizon, but where all the vehicles are built from the iconic, be-nippled plastic blocks. The game is an entertaining kart-style racer, with accessible handling, several large areas to explore and the odd bits of story added to taste. The real appeal though is the car building, which gives you access to the sort of Lego collection that even the rich kid who lived down the road couldn’t have…

01 Peugeot 402 Eclipse Thought the 206CC was the first Peugeot to wear a disappearing hard-top? Non. As far back as 1931 this bulky and cumbersome mechanism was patented for the 402. The roof didn’t fold – it simply lifted itself into the boot in one giant section – but few ended up buying one. 02 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner Undeterred, Ford had another crack at the one piece foldaway roof between 1957 and 1959, producing almost 50,000 examples. The ‘Hide-Away Hardtop’, as it was marketed, relied on seven electric motors… and ate up all the bootspace. 03 Porsche Boxster Spyder RS For the most extreme Boxster, Porsche redesigned the roof to make it 7.6kg lighter, and changed its mounting points because of the new intake pods. You could extend the diet further…

MYTH BUSTER “RANGE ANXIETY IS FOREVER” Surveys say that among people thinking of a new car, the thing that mostly puts them off electric is range anxiety. Fair enough; if you had a petrol car and had to stop and get petrol every 200 miles it’d be a pain. But among people who actually have an EV, range isn’t the number one concern. They charge up at home, or at public points near home, and nearly always drive within their out and return range. Like petrol owners seldom go beyond that same distance. Range anxiety? They plan for a charge stop if they’re going on a trip longer than that. It’s not hard. So when Zap-Map, the chargepoint finder app, surveyed EV drivers, their number one worry wasn’t that there…

Back in the late Sixties hot weather would bring a vile yellowish smog to hang over Los Angeles, causing or worsening all sorts of nasty breathing illnesses in huge numbers of the people. It was mostly, though by no means wholly, caused by dirty car exhausts. So Congress passed the Clean Air Act which meant that by the mid-Seventies cars would need catalytic converters. GM, Ford and Chrysler went mad, furiously lobbying against this imposition, saying the cars’ performance and economy would be ruined and the downtrodden customers would have to pay higher prices. That’s always how car companies do their lobbying: spin it that the poorer buyers are the victim, because eliciting sympathy for multibillion corporations is a much harder sell. The first couple of years of catalysed cars…

£36,495 FOR Great value for the straight line performance on offer AGAINST That’s its only party trick. Dull to drive You think this is a hot hatch, but actually it’s more of a conundrum. I don’t think I’ve ever driven a hot hatch that’s less of a hot hatch. For starters, there’s the way it looks. Utterly nondescript. That’s a set of 18-inch wheels by the way. Eighteens! That’s what hot hatches wore 20 years ago. Step inside and there are no changes. OK, the red stitching on the seats is new, but it doesn’t do anything to help hold you in place through corners. More has obviously gone on underneath, or the hot hatch comparison would be entirely null. What we have here is an uprated MG4, but instead…

£63,285 FOR Brutish power, impressive engineering, comfort AGAINST Still a hatchback for crazy money, brutish handling There are hot hatches and there’s the AMG A45 S. It’s so hot you’ll need barbeque gloves to pick it up. It’ll make you cry if you touch your eyes after handling it, you can fry an egg on it. It’s been facelifted, that’s why we’re looking at it. Real hard in fact, seeing what’s different. Is that…? No, that’s the same. Maybe…? No, there before. It’s a tech focused upgrade – bells and whistles rolled out across the A-Class range. The A45 had bells and whistles, now there are some new ones. The steering wheel with its touch controls. Works sometimes, is occasionally infuriating. The latest version of MBUX has an OEM satnav…

It’s raining in Norway. Not a gentle patter, either, more a deluge wrapped in a downpour, the sweet smell of petrichor swamped by the sheer volume of water hosing out of the sky. The forest holds a gloomy edge, sweating myth and looking like a thousand dark bedtime stories, suspicious, soggy huddles of spruce and alder plotting with the Norwegian pines. And yet the roads are good. Incredible, even. Two lanes of scarred tarmac that shift and loop through the landscape following the contours of the lakes, rising and falling like a breath. Apart from the disconcerting drag of the pools of standing water, driving doesn’t get much better than this – a Lotus doing what it was born to do – attack an interesting, twisty road with vim, engaging…

“NOBODY NEEDS EIGHT CARS LET ALONE EIGHT CARS WHICH HAEMORRHAGE MONEY WITHOUT MOVING” Using Instagram as a photographer is a bit like living with a toddler. The most innocent comments can result in a total meltdown, pictures are presented to you completely unpromoted (requiring immediate feedback) and there’s seemingly no filter to what people will ask you at 4pm on a Tuesday. In between the obvious queries relating to money or requesting I get someone a job on TG despite them being based in Mumbai, there’s one particular subject I can’t run away from without some kind of intervention. “Do you actually know what’s in your garage? Because it doesn’t make sense in the mag each month.” If this page required a new strapline that statement sums it up. Because…

N64, 1999 One of the great joys of racing video games is the opportunity to drive cars you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to get your hands on without being immediately frogmarched out of the dealership. It’s safe to say that, even back in 1999 when the ‘New’ Beetle was still actually new, it didn’t exactly feature in our automotive fantasies, which is why the arrival of Beetle Adventure Racing on N64 was such a surprise. Not as much of a surprise as how good it was, though. This underrated gem apparently began life as Need for Speed 64, before some higher-up at publisher Electronic Arts inked a licensing deal with Volkswagen, presumably over an eye wateringly expensive lunch. One hard left turn in the development studio later and the game…

REPORT 2 £48,380 OTR/£50,030 as tested/£629 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can Mazda join the large/luxe SUV party? DRIVER Andy Franklin UH OH! THERE APPEARS TO BE A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX. LAST MONTH I was getting all giddy with this version of the CX-60, but then the following day a problem occurred. If, like me, you have children that are sport mad, you’ll know that the summer season is all about tournaments. Which in turn means a lot of driving to random sports fields for competitions. After the latest event, the family all piled into the Mazda to leave, but when I started the CX-60 a warning sign appeared on the dash: Hybrid Battery Malfunction – Stop the Vehicle in a Safe Location. I figured I was safe in the…

GOODBYE £41,600 OTR / £47,185 as tested / £643 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is this hatchback where the DS master plan finally comes good? DRIVER Esther Neve THAT INCREDIBLE ITALIAN OSTERIA, THE CHEEKY RAT RUN NO ONE else uses, the amazing charity shop packed with bargain priced designer gear… we all have secrets best kept strictly between friends so they aren’t spoilt by the masses. Well, now there is another thing to add to the list – the DS 4. Yes, you read it here first. DS has been cruising along under the radar, hiding its light under the proverbial bushel. It seems most people just aren’t aware of it, probably in part because there are very few on the roads. This has suited me just fine all the while I…

REPORT 2 RANGE ROVER Recent surveys have revealed what we knew all along: those who buy full hybrids rarely charge them. Not me. I’ve run EVs enough to appreciate the benefits they bring, so run the Rangey on electric as much as possible. I’ve even charged away from home, which is daft because it costs more than running on petrol (47.6p per mile vs 30.4). OM REPORT 5 SKODA ENYAQ vRS The Enyaq’s grille had been bugging me, it reminded me of something. I was visiting my nephew, out came the toys and there was the trigger – Chick Hicks, the ‘baddie’ from Cars. A Burt Reynolds-style lip slug for Chick, but something rather different for our oversized Stabilo: a faintly ridiculous lighting thing that puts you in mind of…

What’s Lotus and when did it start making cars? Lotus dates back to 1948, when a smart fellow called Colin Chapman built his first racing car in his garden shed – much in the manner of all great British sports car companies of the middle 20th century. The Mark III of 1951 was the first car to be called a Lotus – it was a racing car built to 750 Motor Club rules – while the iconic Seven was the first road car from the firm (the rights to the Series 3 were sold to Caterham when production of the lightweight sports car ended in 1972). Lotus entered F1 from 1958 onwards, Stirling Moss winning its first GP in Monaco in 1960. Lotus was famed for pushing the boundaries of innovation…