BBC Top Gear Magazine October 2024

@jack_rix @rixjack jack.rix@bbctopgearmagazine.com How often does a truly revolutionary car come along? I’m not talking about a next-gen sports car with incremental clicks to power, downforce and lap time, or a supermini with new flip up seats. Forget the road less travelled, these are the cars that turn hard left into the undergrowth by approaching styling, software, handling, propulsion, infrastructure and/or packaging in a way as yet unseen. Please make your way to the stage, Toyota Prius. Yes, the Honda Insight technically got there first, but it never caught on like the Prius, which brought fuel efficiency and a green glow to the masses. When it comes to EVs, many laid the path for the revolution that’s underway but the Tesla Model S proved they could be fast, sexy and…

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“I am not Adrian Newey, I’m Duncan from Bishop’s Stortford” says Duncan Cowper, a specialist lime plasterer from Hertfordshire. Duncan might not be F1’s greatest car designer, but he’s stood near the start line of the Pikes Peak race in Colorado and we’re looking at the Dax Rush he’s designed, built and brought over here to compete (for the second time) in what is probably the world’s most extreme hillclimb. And Duncan’s car… isn’t slow. Duncan has turned up to Pikes with a car that looks very much like a Caterham, except it’s a Dax – a UK sports car company from Essex now known as JK Sports cars that produces GRP Cobra replicas complete with 8.2-litre V8s. Back in the day, Dax produced several different GRP kits, including a…

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2007, A NEW BMW M5 Touring has entered the world – this is only the third M5 Touring model ever to leave the BMW factory. And everything about it is enormous. The stiffened body is 5m long and almost 2m wide. The boot offers a 500 litre cargo bay, until you flip down the split-folding rear seats (not quite flat) and uncork a 1,630 litre chasm riddled with lashing points for securing your outdoor lifestyle equipment. Underneath, it naturally shares its oily and volty bits with the latest M5 saloon – the first plug-in hybrid M5. The first plug-in hybrid M car, in fact, if you ignore the XM. Which we, like most buyers worldwide, are more than happy to. That means there’s a 4.4-litre…

In Waves, Jamie xx Jamie xx’s new album ‘In Waves’ drops 20 September. End of summer cruising tunes for Paul Horrell… very suitable for driving Nomads into the sea School’s back The kids are back in their classrooms. The holidays are over. The ideas of what to do with them today are dried up. The wallets are empty but those new black shoes are skibidi (I think?), but definitely have rizz MOCO Masters at MOCO London Warhol. Hirst. Koons. Emin. Basquiat. Haring. Kusama. Legends of modern and contemporary art on show. If you’re more of a fan of 19th century marble arches stand outside and look across the street Below par ice cream Can confirm that end of/out of season trips to the seaside can sometimes result in odd ratios…

ANYONE FOR AN ALL-NEW, 1,000BHP, V12 POWERED, MANUAL gearbox, fantastically mad looking hypercar? This is the Nilu, by the newly formed Nilu27. It’s the brainchild of Sasha Selipanov – a designer who’s worked for the likes of Bugatti, Koenigsegg and a few other relatively small marques – and it wants to show two fingers to digitalisation and electrification. Sitting in a mid-mounted position is a 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 that’ll rev to almost 12,000rpm. It can actually run to over 15,000, though a lower red line was ultimately chosen to find the right compromise between performance and reliability. We’re told that Nilu27 is not “a numbers brand” mind, and the car will be dictated by experience and emotion instead. Note the 12-into-1 gloriously exposed exhaust headers, culminating in the high,…