BBC Top Gear Magazine January 2024

Tesla doesn’t operate like other companies, you’ve probably spotted that. Specifically, the way it engages with media is a little different. And by different I mean it normally doesn’t give a fig about what the automotive media does or says, plus it doesn’t have a traditional press department or press fleet. We normally hear about any product news around the same time you do, when a news alert pops up on our phones. A bit like Ferrari shuns traditional advertising, because F1 does the brand awareness thing and every one of the 250,000+ Ferraris on the road are rolling billboards, Tesla has Elon Musk’s Twitter, sorry ‘X’ account, to do its marketing. Which is why getting the chance to drive and learn about the Cybertruck ahead of the global embargo…

If it looks like a GT-R and terrifies like a GT-R, is it… well, it’s actually called the Nissan Hyper Force, a radical high performance electric supercar that capped off Nissan’s run of concepts at the Japan Mobility Show. Concept, yes, but all the hallmarks of a future electrified Godzilla are present and correct, including a bombastic power output and bleeding edge tech. The HF Concept features a solid-state battery – they’re finally here!(ish) – and produces up to 1,000kW of power, which equates to 1,341bhp in old money. Nothing old about the way it’s delivered, of course. That herculean output is harnessed by e-4ORCE all-wheel-drive tech, packaged up inside a lightweight, angular body that not only pays homage to the current GT-R – boxy silhouette, quad tail-lights, anger –…

Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story, Disney+ Rather than making his own F1 film, down-to-earth megastar and massive petrolhead Keanu Reeves hosts this unscripted documentary recounting how Ross Brawn and his Brawn GP team won the F1 titles in 2009. Sidenote: new Bill & Ted movie should star Keanu and Jenson Genie, Sky Cinema Melissa McCarthy and Paapa Essiedu star in another of Richard Curtis’ Christmas crackers TopGear magazine fix You can download the latest edition and back issues direct to your phone or tablet from the App Store. Because when life gives you lemons… settle in and read TG NYAD, Netflix Annette Bening and Jodie Foster feature in the true story of Diana Nyad who, aged 60, achieved a lifelong dream of swimming 110 miles from Cuba to Florida. When…

The problem with the Presto wasn’t that it was too daft. It wasn’t daft enough. The unmistakable handiwork of the Swiss mavericks at Rinspeed, it attempted to solve that age-old riddle of ‘small car, easy to park/big car, fits more people’ with the aid of an ingenious extending wheelbase. Yep, it stretched. A central electric motor elongated the Presto’s floorpan on the fly, transforming it from two-seat roadster into capacious four-seat roadster at the push of a button. FOTC has no issue with this. FOTC is all here for transforming cars. The problem with the Presto was that it just didn’t transform enough. It extended by a grand total of 750mm, thus in fact transforming from ‘two-seater’ into a ‘two-seater with small amount of space behind for very uncomfortable rear…

Though Mazda’s Japan Mobility Show stand was awash with MX-5 messaging – even going so far as showcasing a mint MkI – this stunning new concept coupe instead doffs its cap to the RX-7. About. Time. Welcome to the classiest show car on display in Tokyo. It’s called the Mazda Iconic SP, a compact, classically proportioned sports car built to simply embody “the joy of driving”. The fundamentals are fairly straightforward. There’s a rotary engine featuring twin rotors, though here – as in the MX-30 R-EV – it’s used merely to charge the battery which in turn powers the electric motors. No word on how many motors, but we know the rotary has been fitted “in the centre of the car, resulting in a low hood”. Mazda’s designers were keen…

FLASH GORDON We’ve finally been given the keys to the GMA T.50, so what else could we do other than an epic 900-mile roadtrip along the length of the Pyrenees? We bagsied the centre seat for the experience of a lifetime. XX-RATED Meet the Ferrari SF90 XX Stradale, the first road legal model in the firm’s unhinged ‘XX’ series. We’re talking 1,015bhp, double the downforce of the ‘regular’ SF90, and more. The results are unsurprisingly… spectacular. AWARD WINNERS ASSEMBLE Forget the Oscars red carpet, we’ve gathered all the award winners that matter in one place. Take a walk around TG’s best cars of the year and then you can leave comments about why all our picks were wrong. ANGLE GRINDER It’s been a long time coming (almost four years to…