Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix @rixjack jack.rix@bbctopgearmagazine.com Want to feel terrible about your driving abilities? I can heartily recommend a passenger lap with The Stig. Preferably after you’ve recently driven the same track in the same car. What you thought were braking zones are very much flat, plus the car appears to exist only in two distinct states – full acceleration or violent braking with a little steering for fun. It’s extraordinary and mildly depressing at the same time. And all the more astonishing because in recent years performance cars have become so outrageously, vividly fast that everything is happening at twice the speed with half the thinking time. Yet Stig remains unfazed. His commitment to extracting every last millisecond of performance from whatever he happens to be driving, be that a lawnmower or…

DS HAS REVEALED A TRIBUTE TO A car that… er… bankrupted Citroen back in 1974 and was the main reason for its merger with Peugeot. A hearty welcome back to the glorious Citroen SM, via the medium of a gloriously wild concept car featuring all the hits: partly enclosed rear wheels, a squat, stretched silhouette and rectangular lights at both ends. It’s also literally called the DS Tribute, built to help showcase the marque’s future design language. Sign us up. Let’s get straight into the design, where the SM’s relaxed proportions have been retained, save for the now 22in wheel size. Almost everything else has been reimagined though, from the thickness of the pillars to the shape of the roofline. The light signatures are faithful to the original, albeit with…

TEST DRIVE UNLIMITED SDLAR CROWN £50, PlayStation/Xbox/PC If you’re not familiar with the Test Drive Unlimited series, which hasn’t had a new entry in 13 years, you might be unaware that it essentially pioneered the open world online racing genre now dominated by Forza Horizon and The Crew. The ingredients are right for the new game. Solar Crown is set in a roughly 1:1 scale Hong Kong, which turns out to be the perfect setting for an open world racer. The combination of tight city streets and winding mountain passes offers plenty of variety, and every corner of the map feels hand crafted. It’s just a shame the graphics can’t keep up, on consoles in particular this looks like a game from a decade ago. Handling wise it’s a strange…

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How to play • Choose a number between 1 & 5 • Choose a number between 1 & 10 • Choose a number between 249 and 999 • Choose another number between 1 & 10 • Finally, another number between 1 & 5 Now apply all those numbers to the table opposite. For example, if you picked 1, 8, 346, 9 and 2… your Ferrari hypercar is the Ferrari LaTesta346 GTO Ultraquick. Please be advised TopGear does not accept any responsibility for you or your family being sued for copyright if you accidentally guess the correct name of the new Ferrari. It could happen…

PRICE: £2.85m ENGINE: 5.0-litre twin-turbo V8, 1,578bhp, 1,106lb ft TRANSMISSION: 9spd LST, RWD PERFORMANCE: 0–62mph in 2.6secs, 300mph+ WEIGHT: 1,420kg TIME TARGET: The original CC was (spun) across the line in 1min 23.9secs by OG Stig – so it’d better be a heck of a lot faster thanks to 20 years of progress The Jesko Attack drives like a conventional supercar. Brakes like one, turns like one, grips like one. But it doesn’t accelerate like one. I’ve gone on record before as saying there’s not much faster than a McLaren 750S or Ferrari 296GTB, there’s not really anything beyond that level of performance. Boy was I wrong. It takes a 296 GTB 5.5secs to accelerate from 100 to 150mph. The Jesko does it in little more than half that. Above…

PRICE: £192,600 ENGINE: 4.0-litre flat six, 518bhp, 343lb ft TRANSMISSION: 7spd PDK, RWD PERFORMANCE: 0–62mph in 3.2secs, 184mph WEIGHT: 1,450kg TIME TARGET: Nothing quite as spicy as a domestic, so let’s put the 991 GT2 RS that set a 1:13.4 back in 2019 in the crosshairs. Yes, the GT2 RS has 172 more horsepower than the new GT3 RS, but the new kid has oodles more downforce – what will win, power or aero? Simply the most extreme, aero obsessed, track focused Porsche 911 to ever wear numberplates. A mighty 860kg of downforce at 177mph is the headline, but not the whole aero story because it’s covered in active bits, too. There’s hydraulically actuated DRS at the back in that enormous swan-neck rear wing, moving flaps hidden in the front,…

PRICE: Blank cheque ENGINE: 5.0-litre s/c V8, 600bhp TRANSMISSION: 6spd seq, RWD PERFORMANCE: n/a WEIGHT: 1,500kg TIME TARGET: There was a time when a mid-engined supercar with 600bhp weighing 1,500kg represented pant-wetting performance, but these days it’s merely mildly fast. Especially when the chassis is designed to drive down stairs without shaking itself to bits and pitch sideways at the slightest provocation. If it makes in round in one piece it’ll be a result You might know it as the Jaguar C-X75, a gorgeous hypercar proposal from 2010 that was due to make production, before being cancelled by the bean counters, much to everyone’s disappointment. Originally, it was shown with a carbon monocoque, a high-revving 1.6-litre engine and electric motors, and even micro jets as range extenders. But this car…

Christian von Koenigsegg and Mate Rimac are in the back seats. John Hennessey was fastest to our BMW hire car and wangled the front seat next to me. I’m driving. The consequences of having an off are unthinkable. Unplug these three and Instagram car channels would be empty of content, hypercar forums would have nothing to debate and exotic car buyers would be forced to limit themselves to cars from Gordon Murray and Horacio Pagani. Who were both meant to be here incidentally, but instead had to send their apologies. Gordon, Horacio, you’re both much missed – next time. Maybe they’d heard about my driving. I’m doing a track guide for the bosses before they go out and drive each other’s cars. Trouble is I’ve never been to Sonoma Raceway…

THE FRANKLIN FILES WHAT IS IT? This Triumph Herald Convertible was our art editor’s first car. Ignored for nearly 20 years, he’s decided to bring it back to life WRITER: ANDY FRANKLIN WELCOME TO MY PERSONAL project car, and possibly the project with the longest lifespan of anything in the TG Garage, spanning about 30 years. Having passed my test aged 17 in 1995 and wanting to own a car but with zero funds, I managed to persuade my dad to buy me a Triumph Herald Convertible 13/60 for £1,500. As a boy he’d grown up with them, so I knew he’d rather buy me that than a more modern hot hatch of the day like a Peugeot 205. In hindsight this may have been an error. After serving me…

How do you do, fellow kids? In 2003, Toyota’s hip ’n’ happening youth brand Scion sauntered onto the US market – skateboard over shoulder, baseball cap jauntily askew – aiming to elicit a feverish OMG from the millennial crowd who viewed the Toyota badge as impossibly geriatric. But barely a decade later, Scion was dead. What happened? Things started brightly. Scion offered, initially at least, some interestingly boxy designs, a youth focused range of options and accessories (exhaust kits! Decals! Tamagotchi holders! OK we made the last one up!) and a no haggle price policy, because if there’s one thing the youth hate more than anything in the world, it’s an extended conversation about money with some dude in his 50s. The kids were on board. In 2004, Toyota announced…

MCLAREN F1 – GORDON MURRAY The F1 was the fastest road legal car ever when unveiled in 1992, but its three-seat layout came from a sketch Gordon Murray had penned in college in the 1960s. Murray’s manifesto for the Fl included an obsession with weight reduction and tactility. ARIEL ATOM – SIMON SAUNDERS Simon Saunders worked as a car designer for Porsche, Aston and GM, but in the 1990s he turned his dream of building a ‘new Lotus 7’ into a reality. Launched in 1999, the Atom was built to take advantage of the growing track day market. BUGATTI VEYRON – FERDINAND PIECH In 1997 Piech sketched an idea for an 18-cylinder engine. Hethen purchased Bugatti and drove its relocation back to Molsheim. The Veyron did end up with only…

Has there ever been a bigger waste of money than the bizarre mission to create fully autonomous vehicles? A as there ever been a bigger waste of money than the technology that nobody asked for and that – if it ever came to pass – would destroy the very companies throwing good money after bad to force it into existence. Think about it. If autonomous vehicles worked reliably and could be proved by some spurious system to be safer than human beings, how long do you think it would take for governments to ban us from being in charge of piloting our own vehicles? And once your car is just a box to transport you, why would you care about the history of the company who built it? About its…

It’s 5:45am and five new Ferraris are parked up, headlights playing high tech tricks with the rain. That’s 60 cylinders and 32,480cc. You would expect that lot to generate quite the cacophony but they’ve settled into a surprisingly subdued idling beat. What gives? Ferrari’s chief development driver, the amiable but heroically rapid Raffaele de Simone, was on hand last night to do the briefing, so the prospect of jumping into £400k’s worth of hot new Italian supercar before the first coffee of the day is marginally less intimidating. Yet regular Ferrari watchers will know that the company’s approach to ergonomics is idiosyncratic. There are fighter aircraft whose cockpits are easier to master. “I know how much you love the capacitive switchgear in our cars,” Raffa joked. “We have made some…

Friends, the death of the city car has not been greatly exaggerated. In the past couple of years Ford, Vauxhall, VW, Skoda, Seat, Peugeot, Renault – heck, even Smart – have all exited the scene. The reasons aren’t complicated. Tiny cars demand carefully managed prices to maintain their wafer thin margins – they’re not routinely specced up with forged carbon dashboards, shag pile leather and 37 speakers. That was manageable until legislation demanded anti-collision radar, drowsiness sensors, lane keep assist and had to withstand the same crash test as a three tonne ubertruck. Then there’s the propulsion. Trying to profitably package a useful electric drivetrain into a city runabout is like expecting a Jack Russell to romp the Grand National. So, we end up in a bizarre world where governments…

PRICE: N/A ENGINE: Four e-motors, 50kWh battery, 2000bhp+, 1,239lb ft TRANSMISSION: Single speed, 4WD PERFORMANCE: 0–62mph <2.0secs, 205mph WEIGHT: 1,684kg TIME TARGET: We’re looking firmly at the non road legal part of the leaderboard for this one. The Renault R24 F1 car’s 0:59 time is safe, but can a van really beat a McLaren 720S GT3X (1:07.2) or Caparo T1 (1:10.6)? The Ford Supervan 4.2 is, in essence, a ‘lightly modified’ electric Ford Transit with four motors and over 2,000bhp. It has carbon ceramic brakes and forged magnesium wheels and slick tyres, which means either Stig is about to break the world record for most Amazon parcels delivered in a minute, or we’re about to see the laws of physics bent in new and interesting ways. The ‘4.2’ denotes this…

PRICE: £77,940 ENGINE: 2.0-litre turbo 4cyl, 400bhp, 369lb ft TRANSMISSION: 6spd seq paddleshift, RWD PERFORMANCE: 0–62mph in 2.7secs, 170mph WEIGHT: 700kg TIME TARGET: Thirteen years ago a first gen Atom fitted with a 500bhp V8, a sprinkling of downforce and weighing very little rocked up at the TG track and blitzed it in 1:15.1. This new one might have an inferior power to weight ratio and half the cylinders, but brakes, tyres and aero have come a long way… can it slay one of its own? This angry looking assortment of wings and scaffolding poles is the Ariel Atom 4R, and it’s the second wildest incarnation of the cheek flapping Atom to date. Here we have a 400bhp version of the Honda Civic Type R’s 2.0-litre turbo engine – that’s…

What you’re looking at is definitively not a new Lotus road car. It’s a pure concept called the Theory 1, a car that seeks to distill traditional Lotus values into a vehicle that’s also woven marrow deep with technology, a bit of creative free space for designers to figure out what Lotus actually stands for. A difficult question to answer when the technology is apparently sprinting in the opposite direction to what many would consider established Lotus values. Timely stuff, too, given that Lotus’ past two launches have consisted of two flavours of the same car in the Eletre large SUV and Emeya tall saloon, and good as they are, they’re big, heavy, tech-tilted luxury electric cars built in China, released in China before Europe and based on Chinese platforms.…

DO/DON’T MEET YOUR HEROES $10,000+ 6.2 V8 160 bhp n/a secs n/a mpg 2,500 kg est HERO Dictionary definition of tough, surprisingly easy to drive ZERO Slow, noisy and drinks diesel, but it’s all the better for it WHAT YOU SEE HERE IS A GENUINE AM General High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or HMMWV for short. Although because that’s hardly a catchy abbreviation, it’s colloquially known as the Humvee. And no, it’s not a Hummer – that was the brand name used for civilian versions and was eventually sold to General Motors in the late 1990s. Got it? In the late 1970s the US army wanted a single vehicle that could replace the 1950s M151 and a number of other larger trucks. It set out draft specifications and three companies…

INCLUDING GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR EXTENDED TG GARAGE REPORTS, AND TO EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE GOODBYE “ We arranged a meeting with its 514bhp turbocharged grandad” PORSCHE CAYENNE S COUPE £88,100 OTR/£113,484 as tested/£1,982 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: Is Porsche’s big SUV still a game changer 20 years on? DRIVER: ROWAN HORNCASTLE HAVING CLOCKED UP OVER 12,000 miles (including commutes, monster roadtrips, track days, and off-road adventures), I can confidently say I’ve wrung every last drop out of the Porsche Cayenne’s capabilities. In fact, the only thing I regretfully didn’t use effectively was the tow bar. But to truly grasp how far the Cayenne has come in its 20 odd years and 1.25 million sales, before I said farewell I thought I’d introduce our car to its ancestor – the Cayenne…

There are some historic cars that will sadly never pass through the hands of common folk like you and I. These rare, historically significant and radically experimental cars will forever remain unobtainable, squirrelled away by museums and manufacturers as mementos of bravery and madness. Unless, of course, you’re Yuji Watahiki from Mito, eastern Japan. He’s built one out of aluminium. In his shed. Easily qualifying for ‘mad rare old-timer’ is the Tyrrell P34 six wheeler Formula One car, an oddity so bizarre it only raced for two years. “The Tyrrell is the most unique of all F1 cars, so I challenged myself to build one,” says Yuji flippantly, as if justifying today’s choice of T-shirt. “I love F1 cars from the 1970s because they were all different. Today’s grid is…

1. Japan Nissan trials new cooling paint cabin tech Nissan is trialling a new paint designed to lower cabin temperatures and reduce the use of the car’s aircon system. Nissan claims that in initial tests the paint has shown a 12°C reduction in exterior surface temps and up to 5°C inside, compared with a traditional paintjob. Next up, thermal underwear. 2. USA Hot Wheels reveals toy car in need of love Hot Wheels has announced a new Not Wheels limited edition designed to celebrate the old, beaten up cars many of us started out driving. It features a cracked windscreen, mismatched panels, much rust, three wheels and the warning CAR DOES NOT ROLL. Yours for $30, which is probably not far off what the scrapper paid you for your first…

PORSCHE 911 CARRERA What is it? A basic 911 Carrera lists at £99,800 incl VAT, with 390-ish bhp and 183mph top. Same silhouette as other 911s, similar cachet. Why are we interested? Because the best thing about a basic 911 is that it’s engineered for the GT3 RS. So you get 75 per cent of the vibes, for £92k cheaper. How many were made? Unlimited. No price war flipping and investment wars with a basic 911. Even new it’s £35,800 less than the GTS. Good residuals, too. Costs? Is a GT3 RS on a normal road really 90 per cent better per pound than the Carrera? We’d argue no. In fact, it’s easier to play with more of the time.…

IF YOU’RE DRIVING ALONG A STRAIGHT stretch of road at moderate speed and you switch the adaptive dampers from comfort to sport, nothing should change. Not if the dampers are truly adaptive. Because in a straight line they shouldn’t need to firm up (at least if the car isn’t heaving and pitching excessively). But they nearly always do. Because going straight and gently is the exact circumstance when you can most easily look down and find the button or screen menu. So the engineers know that you’ll want to feel a difference, justifying the money you spent on the option. Adaptive dampers, see, adapt. The clue’s in the name. If they have no need to be stiff, they should remain soft, as on a gently straight road. Then when you turn…

Q: ARE ARCADE RACING MACHINES DEAD? If you’re familiar with the little retro videogame section squirrelled away in the back of this very magazine (p111), you may have noticed I have a particular fondness for 1990s arcade racing games. To me they represent the golden age of arcade gaming – the era of Daytona USA, Ridge Racer and Sega Rally – where smooth and colourful 3D graphics blew away whatever pixel-pushing 16-bit console you had parked under the telly. In fact, the technology that powered Daytona USA and Sega Rally in particular was adapted from cutting edge military tech developed by Lockheed Martin, though I’m told that’s not a good enough reason to describe war as ‘not all bad’. It might not have occurred to us at the time, but…

1 Return of the king! If you happen to be reading this anywhere near Enzo Ferrari’s grave, may we suggest you clear the area, because he’s about to spin up like one of Elon Musk’s boring machines. According to highly reliable sources, who were in no way paid in pints of lager and pork scratchings, the final Ferrari to be signed off by Enzo himself could be immortalised/spoiled forever in a limited run modernised tribute… and our digital artists have been beavering away imagining how a 2024 F40 could look. Rumours suggest it’ll follow the Monza SP1/SP2 (812 Superfast based windscreenless missile inspired by the 750 Monza and 166MM from the 1950s) and Daytona SP3 (very slatty tribute to sports prototypes from the 1960s, based on a LaFerrari with the…

PRICE: £850k ENGINE: 3.1-litre flat six, 350bhp, 11,000rpm TRANSMISSION: 6spd manual, RWD PERFORMANCE: n/a WEIGHT: 846kg TIME TARGET: Do we really care? By Tuthill’s own admission this is a car designed primarily to be enjoyed on a B-road, between 40–80mph, not a track. Still, Stig only knows one driving style – flat out and fearless – so hearing him ping it off the limiter and heel-and-toe it into corners will be a victory whatever the clock says It’s called the 911K, it’s loosely based on a 1972 911, and it’s the work of Tuthill Porsche, a company most famous for building the world’s best rally prepped classic 911s. This though, is something entirely different – it’s the ultimate purist’s Porsche, with a little dash of psychopath thrown in. Every single…

The view reflected in the new Vantage’s wing mirrors is glorious. Broad shoulders, wide as a powerlifter’s, yet shapely and sculpted. A reminder, every time you glance in the mirror, that you’re driving something muscular and powerful. There’s something else, too. The unblinking glare of a baleful headlight. Ah yes, that’ll be the Porsche 911 Turbo S tucked up behind. It won’t be shaken off, not a chance. Were this a contest of speed alone, it’d be over before it began. The 4WD Porsche has traction the rear drive Aston can only dream of. It slingshots out of corners, not wasting a single horsepower in its quest to hurl you down the road. But that’s not all it’s about, is it? Cars like this should be an event to drive,…

CARS WE ONCE OWNED THAT STOLE OUR HEARTS FOREVER LAND ROVER SERIES IIA 1968 WRITTEN BY: TOM FORD WHAT ELSE WE’RE RUNNING REPORT 2 FORD RANGER RAPTOR Raptor life is fun. But frustrating. Fun because it’s got character in abundance and it’s easy to appreciate that it is a highly evolved machine with a very specific purpose. So it feels special all the time. Frustrating because Baja is 5,507 miles from my house. Need to find somewhere to let it loose ASAP…JB REPORT 5 ALFA ROMEO STELVIO QV In a bold display of irony, the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio, a 512bhp all-wheel-drive SUV, got stage fright as it struggled for traction on a steep driveway. Do we blame it on those Pirelli P Zeros and the rear biased AWD system?…

You don’t need to be an expert to know that a car seat does not look like a cow, but how does it get there? We spoke to Ryan Boyce, from the leather experts at Bridge of Weir in Scotland, where some of the fanciest carmakers get their leather from. You’d think fancy cows would be the order of the day, right? “The best source of cattle for automotive leather manufacturing are those which have been well cared for,” explains Ryan. “Breed plays a less important role than you might think, but the husbandry and welfare on the farms from which they are reared are what really makes the difference.” But surely a bit of sun cream and moisturiser is needed for that supple finish? Well, no, but our terrible…