Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com At which point do the TopGear Electric Awards become… the TopGear Awards? It’s a question I’m asked often, and a fair one. When we kicked off this idea of celebrating the world’s best EVs back in 2019 (in fact, that was just ‘The Electric Issue’, the first EV Awards came a year later in May 2020, but we’ll gloss over that) there were far fewer electric, or electrified cars around. We made the boundaries clear – a car had to be pure or a significant part electric to qualify for the EV Awards, but everything would be eligible for the main TG Awards at the end of the year. However, in that one we’d do away with any electric-specific categories, forcing electric and combustion cars to fight it…

TOYOTA LAND CRUISER £55,000 approx/£70,000 approx as tested Here is a question: what is an off-roader for? And here are some potential answers: a) going off-road or b) doing the school run. They’re the only answers that matter really. The Toyota Land Cruiser has always been firmly in the ‘a)’ camp. This is not an SUV that has ever captured the attention of the Land Rover set. But now it might. Because it’s had a makeover. Remember the Suzuki Jimny? It was around for years, capable yet wayward and largely unloved, then in 2018 it was given a funky facelift and suddenly everyone wanted one. As a tender to their Land Rovers presumably. It was still pretty rudimentary underneath, but have you seen the cuteness?! Well, expect a similar fate…

£203,000 FOR The beauty, the bandwidth, off the scale feelgood factor AGAINST Unreadable buttons with the roof off. D’oh How many truly beautiful cars can you buy right now? Not striking stuff like a Lambo Revuelto, or even mildly handsome fodder like most Volvos or Mazdas. I mean proper knuckle biting stunners. Not as many as you might think, are there? Especially with the likes of Maserati missing the mark lately and Jaguar being asleep. From the rear three-quarter angle especially, the DB12 Volante might be as good as it gets: the most beautiful car in the world. And you might argue we could leave it there, because the chief job an Aston Martin Volante has is to be a supermodel first, and a supercar last. Previous models have taken…

BMW 520i M SPORT £52,850 FOR As smooth, quiet and composed as you like AGAINST Polarising looks, couple of interior own goals, pricey The 5-Series train keeps rolling on – we’re into gen eight now, and it falls on the 520i to open the batting. It’s very impressive too – smooth, quiet and willing despite its not inconsiderable size, the 8spd transmission super slick and the 48V mild hybrid tech well integrated. It hasn’t lost any of its dynamic nous either, just a shame the looks are a touch Marmite and the interior feels overengineered in places. Who needs touch control air vents? PR MAZDA 2 HYBRID £29,020 FOR Strong efficient powertrain, better looking than a Yaris AGAINST Hard plastics, storage space, pricier than a Yaris Essentially a Toyota Yaris with…

As elephants in the room go, this one is really very elephantine. There is talk about having lightened it but the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT is still waaaay heavy. So if you wanted to make a track car, you surely wouldn’t start with a Taycan. Yet Porsche chose to let us loose on a track. Just as in the past it has bid us try its fastest Cayennes and Panameras on track, and they’re similarly weighty. At least the Taycan is lower than they are, and it accelerates like a firework. (Oh and to be fair, actual savannah elephants can be up to eight tonnes.) I’m with Lars Kern, who has wrestled it around the Nürburgring Nordschleife in a scant seven minutes, seven and a half seconds. No four-door has…

As every carmaker has converged in recent decades on the same neck of the mass manufactured vaguely premium woods, it’s been that bit more difficult to stand out and add value. Your legacy badge will only get you so far, you have to work harder now. Something hinted at with the Mercedes-Benz VRC concept. The VRC stands for Vario Research Car, a name that doesn’t even begin to hint at the Barbie Dream Car craziness to come. Revealed in Geneva, the VRC offered four cars in one – saloon, estate, convertible and pickup – different styles could be swapped in minutes. Mercedes tried to invent the car version of the Clarks desert boot (goes with anything), but ended up with that thing on your keyring that has a screwdriver, magnifying…

AH, AN E39. THE BEST EXECUTIVE SALOON THERE’S EVER BEEN? You’d certainly face fierce debate dare you disagree, and not least from us. See, we retrospectively named it our 1995 Car of the Year when we celebrated three decades of TG mag by bringing together our 30 CotY champions in Issue 376, with Chris Harris also describing it as “the most complete car I have ever driven”. And voting it his favourite of the lot amongst a sea of Ferraris, fast Fords, and, er, Fiat Multiplas. Make of that what you will… WHY THE HYPE? Born back in 1995 and the fourth generation 5-Series to roll off the production line, the E39 scored the perfect hat trick of being good to look at, drive and passenger in. Available with a…

CITY CARS These small cars are perfect for urban life, but the trade-off is a much lower range 1. DACIA SPRING PRICE: £14,995 RANGE: 136 miles We love the Spring – even if it’s not on sale in the UK until later in 2024. It would’ve been here sooner, but it only does 140 miles and they’re driving it from France. 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…

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In its years gracing this magazine with its trademark combination of industry insight and baseless slurs, FOTC has resisted tackling the Pontiac Aztek. Yes, the early Noughties SUV-thing was irredeemably, violently ugly: what more is there to say? It’s the lowest of low-hanging fruits. But the thing about low-hanging fruit is, it’s (a) delicious and (b) also literally right there, so let’s tuck in. Here’s something else to say about the repulsive Aztek: GM knew it was a snotter. It knew it was serving up a design that made onlookers physically queasy. During development, one appalled focus group attendee told company bosses, “I wouldn’t even take it as a gift.” Despite this, GM ploughed ahead with the Aztek, desperate to prove that, after years of beige anonymity, it could stand…

The manually wound movement is having a moment. Let’s get this straight – as we charge further into the world of AI, a mechanical watch that needs powering up via the crown is getting more popular. The question is, why? All mechanical timepieces once had to be wound up by hand. The automatic movement, where a rotating weight winds the mainspring, was first put into pocket watches back in the 1700s, but did not come into regular use until the proliferation of the wristwatch in the Twenties. For the first few decades of the wristwatch, the majority kept on with the manually wound movement. But automatic was the cutting edge and steadily became more widespread. By the time automatic chronographs were introduced at the end of the Sixties, auto winder…

01 HSV ‘Corvette’ When GM decided to make the new Corvette mid-engined, it couldn’t do the testing in the body of a Corvette. So it hit on the idea of clothing a mid-engined chassis in the bones of an HSV ute. And accidentally made something better looking than the C8 Corvette. Whoops. 02 McLaren F1 ‘Albert’ & ‘Edward’ In the early Nineties using carbon fibre to make cars was witchcraft. McLaren wasn’t going to risk an expensive F1 chassis on a test mule, so it used two Ultima kit car chassis instead. ‘Albert’ was fitted with the F1’s gearbox and a Chevy V8, while ‘Edward’ was the test bed for the first V12. 03 Lotus Esprit ‘458’ Lotus’ new core supercar was initially planned to feature the V8 from the Lexus IS-F. Weirdly,…

£55,990 FOR Ride-handling balance, bang for buck, supportive seats AGAINST Can’t escape the weight, styling changes very gentle Grab a quiet word with any Tesla engineer and they’ll all say the same thing: the first-gen Model 3 Performance was a pulled punch. Plenty of poke, but not a lot else. This new Model 3 Performance then is the car the engineers always wanted to make. Still a dual motor, although a new ‘performance 4DU’ rear motor unlocks a total of 503bhp and 547lb ft of torque (up from 444bhp and 471lb ft in the old one). The 0–60mph time drops from 3.3 to 2.9, top speed 163mph. Range is tbc, but with the Dual Motor Long Range model at 391 miles, think comfortably over 350 miles. Prices in the UK…

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“NOTHING ELSE COULD MATCH THE EX30’S VALUE, QUALITY AND ALL-ROUND APPEAL” Fresh. Upbeat. Perky. These are not words we tend to use around very many electric cars. They tend to be heavy, distant and solid. Which, ironically, are also words that historically could have been used to describe most Volvos. The EX30 manages to play to Volvo’s traditional strengths, yet also pushes into new areas. The firm might be Chinese-owned but Volvo retains its more boutique branding and tread lightly philosophy. Twenty-five per cent of the aluminium used, as well as 17 per cent of the steel and 30 per cent of the cabin trimmings, have lived previous lives. The aim is low lifetime CO2. It was this that caused us to name the EX30 our Eco Warrior of the…

A NAKED CAR IN A NAKED PLACE Hours from LA and light years from its celebrity culture the Cybertruck sits in a desert, as if sent from the future by Skynet. If it had zapped into existence on bolts of electricity, that would be no less believable than it driving here. It is not of this world. It’s a bewildering, alien machine. So let’s bring it crashing down to earth. Both metaphorically and literally at 60mph from about a metre above the deck. Then we’ll bounce it back up again through some whoops, scramble over rocks to the sky, plunge through sand dunes and a whole lot more. Put it through earth’s off-road wringer, in other words. Because TopGear is the first in the world to drive a Cybertruck with…

TOYOTA MR2 (2003) Price now: £2,495 Harris says: The mid-engined MR2 is basically a bargain Elise. It might not be quite as dynamic as the lightweight Lotus, but while a high mileage Elise is £15k, a MkIII MR2 could cost as little as two grand. PORSCHE BOXSTER (2000) Price now: £4,800 Harris says: Want something a little more practical? The car that essentially saved Porsche – the 986 Boxster – arrived in 1996 and shared many parts with the following 996-gen 911. Could quite easily be a daily driver, this. CATERHAM SEVEN (1999) Price now: £14,950 Harris says: Want something a little less practical? You might well have already considered a Caterham. Both are brilliant, lightweight British sports cars and both have similar attitudes to keeping the rain out. Honest Harris'…

01 Jaguar E-type Before Lego had worked out a way of integrating its own wheels into kits, it produced a huge number of 1:87 scale diecast toys to liven up the towns and buildings that kids were putting together. The E-type coupe from the Sixties was the coolest of the lot. 02 Set 400 The very first Lego set to feature wheels. The Lego System Set 400 came in a box with pictures of cars, trailers, tow trucks and ambulances. Imagine the delight as little engineers unwrapped this on their birthday in 1962. 03 Octan Fuel Tanker Designed by Torben Skov, Lego’s own fuel corporation was born with two sets in 1992: 6397 Gas N’ Wash Express and the brilliant 6594 Gas Transit fuel tanker. Octan’s president (aptly named President Business) was the…

The Lamborghini Urus SE scrawls a new line in the boisterous sands of the performance SUV. As a plug-in hybrid, too. Yep, Lambo’s ‘Cor Tauri’ electrification strategy moves on a notch by claiming perhaps its least controversial – and no doubt biggest selling – victim. A 612bhp 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 pairs with a 189bhp (and 356lb ft!) electric motor for totals of 789bhp and 700lb ft, the latter delivered from just 1,750rpm. That makes the SE the most powerful Urus, as well as the new benchmark in the super SUV category. More power than a Purosangue, DBX 707 or Porsche’s recently electrified Cayenne Turbo GT is quite a statement. It also heralds a 3.4secs sprint to 62mph, up a tenth on the outgoing Urus S despite the significant weight plug-in…

This is the brand new Aston Martin DBX – at first glance it appears not much has changed. It’s got the same Mercedes-AMG 4.0-litre V8 and the same 697bhp (707PS, hence the name) and 663lb ft as before. So what, you cry, has Aston done to this power-crazed 4WD manor house? Well, open the doors and ingest the details. Where the old DBX was awkwardly designed and touchscreen free, this new car is a modern revelation, taking inspiration from the revitalised DB12 and Vantage. There’s a new steering wheel, revised centre console, slimmer air vents and buttons below for important things like suspension modes, PDC and the shouty exhaust. There’s a 12.3in touchscreen for the driver and a 10.25in screen in the middle, both using Aston’s own Pure Black tech,…

GAME OF THE MONTH Pacific Drive Most driving games seem keen to fill our garages with hundreds of cars. But unless you’re a billionaire, that’s not a relatable depiction of car ownership. Pacific Drive, a haunting PC survival game, gives you just one car and you’re guaranteed to fall in love with it. It’s partly because cowering inside this battered, wood panelled station wagon is your best shot at surviving the mysterious Olympic Exclusion Zone and partly because as the game progresses you’ll have built it into a formidable, radiation resistant battle wagon. Scavenging for parts is a tense, creepy affair as you leave the relative safety of your car to strip derelict vehicles, siphon fuel and explore abandoned outposts. In spite of its weirdness, Pacific Drive captures the connection…

1 IT’S NOT BEING MADE IN MILAN This is the Alfa Romeo Junior, launched as the Milano until the Italian government said it couldn’t be called that as it’s made in Poland. Awkward. The first electric Alfa is related to the Fiat 600, Jeep Avenger and Peugeot 2008. There will be a hybrid, too, with a 1.2-litre 3cyl turbo. We might get the FWD petrol one in the UK but not the AWD one. 2 IT MOSTLY LOOKS LIKE AN ALFA It’s on the Stellantis eCMP platform, but the designers led by Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos have had a go. The overhangs are short, the rear referencing the Sixties Giulia TZ. The ‘scudetto’ grille comes in ‘leggenda’ or punchy ‘progresso’ versions. The phone dial wheels get a remix, and the 3+3 headlights are full…

The other day I was with someone whose best friend owns 60-odd cars, which my companion gets invited to drive. He’s on the lookout for a Porsche 918 at the moment. Today I’m scanning through the comments section of a TopGear review of a restomod. And as always happens with restomod reviews, a frequent contribution goes along the lines of, “Well I wouldn’t pay that money for car X.” Sometimes with the extra kicker, “You could get six of car Y for that.” Thing is, most people – me included – live in households with two, one or zero cars. If you presented me with a £150,000 restomod I might well say, hang on, I’ll instead buy something not unadjacent to my perfect garage. We operate on an essentially utilitarian…

£18,699 FOR Lightweight, value for money and quite fun to drive AGAINST Impressively slow, some cheap plastics inside The new Suzuki Swift is actually quite a rare beast. You see, this is a supermini – not an SUV or a crossover – being launched in 2024 with an internal combustion engine and a manual gearbox. This makes us very happy indeed. Although actually, while Suzuki refers to this as an all-new Swift, it’s built on the same platform as the previous car so is essentially a heavy facelift. It looks a little like the previous generation too, albeit if that car had suffered an allergic reaction to a bee sting. Poor thing. It’s pretty 2010s inside too, but in many ways that’s a very good thing. There are proper analogue…

IT’S the electric mopeds that want you dead. They bolt from pedestrian walkways, arbitrarily pelt across traffic lights, over- and undertake in vicious little chattering packs. Some have metre wide boxes strapped to the back, delivering items too big for a top box and too heavy for their own good. One was carrying a small coppice of 2.5m lengths of bamboo strapped to the side, like some lumberjack knight ready to lance the unwary. Even for cars, rights of way are fickle, vague and open to interpretation. And beyond all reasonable expectation… it kind of works. But for a time dilated foreigner, downtown Shanghai in rush hour is still a throb of culture shock. It doesn’t help that I’m in an MG Cyberster, the kind of two-seat convertible sports car…

“NINE HOURS OF WAITING LATER, RECOVERY NUMBER FIVE WAS UNDERWAY WITH THE RS” Earlier in the week, a message from film master Neil Carey landed in my inbox, stating “I wonder how many tow truck pics you’ve got?” Despite not sounding particularly thought provoking, it did send me down a recovery shaped rabbit hole to find out just how many images we’re dealing with. Neilo’s brain can be a fascinating place at the best of times, but there was a catalyst behind this message. One uploaded to my Instagram stories featuring a car I hoped wouldn’t be seen on a tow truck much, my 991.1 GT3 RS. A few years ago I bought a 991.1 GT3 – the ones famed for having a slightly explodey engine which Porsche then warrantied…

ARCADE, 1976 At what point does retro become antique? Night Driver is one of the earliest driving video games of any description, built using similar technology to blocky ‘tennis’ game Pong. Don’t let the reasonably detailed bonnet and cockpit on the bottom portion of the screen fool you, that was a vinyl decal applied to the glass of the monitor. The game was available in a standard upright arcade cabinet or a moulded fibreglass sitdown machine finished in a deeply Seventies coarse metallic flake. At the time it no doubt screamed ‘futuristic’, whereas now it screams ‘approaching pensionable age’. Even the ingenious title of Night Driver is clearly inspired by the limitations of the Seventies arcade hardware. If the game has to have a predominantly black screen, why not hand…

REPORT 6 VOLKSWAGEN AMAROK Using your Amarok as a family SUV? Whatever you sling in the flatbed, you probably want to keep it dry. Our Amarok’s got the electric roll cover (£3,100 including VAT and fitting) but isn’t perfectly watertight in full monsoon conditions, despite boasting the dirt and water defence kit (£360). Want to be totally drip-proof? You’ll need the full hardtop (£4,070). SP REPORT 4 NISSAN X-TRAIL After 9,000 miles the X-Trail needed a service. It went back to Nissan HQ (at a dealer this would’ve cost £350) and while it was there I got the chance to try a seven-seat 4WD version. The steering felt tighter with less torque steer. The rearmost seats were perfect for two children, but tight for adults and bootspace was limited. AF…