Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2024 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

As Ollie Marriage eloquently explains on page 40 in his intro to the phenomenon that is TopGear Speed Week… we’re lucky sods. It really is the best week of the year (once the logistical cluster bomb is behind us) and our goal is always to take you with us. Not literally of course, there’s barely space for Stig in our hold luggage, but through the media of thoughtful words, eye popping photography and all the video, website and podcast content we create for you to enjoy too. Among a hard drive’s worth of memories, there’s always a moment or two that stick out for me, an elevation from mere fun to giddy euphoria. The first came as we left the Navarra circuit, three days of incredible hospitability and tyre abuse…

HOW DO YOU FOLLOW A 40 YEAR bloodline that’s a roll call of hypercar royalty? The 288 GTO, F40, F50, Enzo, LaFerrari… and now F80. A name that celebrates the company’s 80th anniversary, occurring in 2027, although first deliveries of the 799 £3.1m F80s are scheduled for late 2025. It is motivated not by a soaring naturally aspirated V12 like the LaF, but by a twin-turbo V6 hybrid powertrain – a heavily modified version of the V6 that took the 499P to back to back wins at Le Mans. It’s the configuration also used in F1. Boxes ticked. It’s also more compact, power dense and lighter than a V12 and thanks to a pair of electric turbos produces 888bhp on its own. The other 295bhp – for a total of…

JAGUAR RACING AND THE LOST DIAMOND At the 2004 Monaco GP, Jaguar Racing ran a special livery to promote the film Ocean’s Twelve. It placed a $300k diamond into both cars’ nose cones. When one R5 crashed into the barrier on the very first lap, the diamond was nowhere to be found… LEWIS HAMILTON BEATS TONY SCOTT’S NASCAR LAP TIMES In 2011, Lewis Hamilton took part in a promotional ‘seat swap’ with NASCAR winner Tony Stewart. Stewart went out to set the car up, before Lewis jumped in and started beating his times despite having never driven a NASCAR cup car. Whoops. LUCA DI MONTEZEMOLO BEACHES A CALIFORNIA In 2009 at Ferrari’s World Finals in Valencia, company chairman Luca di Montezemolo beached a California convertible in a gravel trap. Even worse,…

CIRCUITO DE NAVARRA Opened: June 2010 Length: 2.7 miles FIA Grade 2 licence: All motorsport sub-F1 Pit garages: 32 Info: Extended by 650 metres in summer 2024 with new turns 6, 11, 12, 13 and 14 Lap record: 1.27.348, Frederic Vervish, Panoz DP09 (previous track layout) OUR FAVOURITE CORNERS 1 THE KINK Just like Followthrough. Easy flat. In the Valkyrie, that is. Maybe not the Range Rover 2 SKID CORNER Final resting place of many Michelins. Don’t forget to wave to the photographer in the gravel trap 3 GONE TO POTTS Tricky opening radius uphill left with a blind apex. Recently resurfaced 4 THE CORKSCREW Not as scary as Laguna Seca’s, but a still tricky downhill left hander HOW TO GET HERE: BY AIR Direct flights to Bilbao (2 hour drive from…

You will not be surprised to hear that both of these cars are pretty much nailed on for TG hero status already. The Porsche 911 S/T is essentially a combination of all the best bits of Porsche’s latest GT cars, but made even better. It was first unveiled to the world back in August 2023 to celebrate 60 years of the 911, with just 1,963 planned for production. It uses the 518bhp 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat six from the GT3 RS but avoids that car’s rather conspicuous aero and adds a manual gearbox. It also saves weight in many ways to tip the scales at 1,380kg, making it roughly 40kg lighter than a manual GT3 Touring. And yes, they’re already being flipped for roughly twice the £231,600 base price. The…

There’s an intensity to the McLaren 750S that’s irresistible. It has so many fantastic ingredients – from the clever hydraulically cross linked dampers to the stunning driving position that places you right at the head of its arrowlike silhouette – but above all it’s the outrageous urgency of the experience that lives long in the memory. Every drive ends with the same thought: “How can this be legal?” Followed quickly by, “Thank God it is”. So, I’m excited to experience the 750S at full flight again on the Circuito de Navarra. But, rather shockingly, I’m even more excited about the Corvette Z06 configured with the extreme, track focused Z07 package. The spec sheet is mouthwatering all on its own, but the stated inspiration behind this car has tipped me over…

Cowshit flow-vis. It plasters the Valkyrie’s barge boards, coats the delicate aero elements, clads the carbon. Provides a deeper boundary layer than regular flow visualisation paint, but less actual… flow. Although that surely depends on the bowels of the ruminant involved. Either way, safe to say it’s not a new aero engineering technique that Adrian Newey needs to keep an eye on. The smell for one thing. And if it dries on… Ah, the perils of being first up the Piedra San Martín early on a chilly, misty morning. The overnight deposits sit like mines on the tarmac, detonating under tyres, sending slurry shrapnel far and wide. Don’t follow too closely now. And yet there’s the GR Yaris, tucked right up behind. It’s our pest. A nuisance. The fly the…

The watches magazine that came with this issue recalls how Senna and time were a match made in heaven for watch companies – especially TAG Heuer, which sponsored McLaren. Senna was smart with his brand marketing, but it was Sir Jackie Stewart who started the trend of using his image to sell by partnering with Rolex. He wears a GMT-Master to this day… now that’s loyalty. That time we… TOOK THREE DEUTSCHE MARQUES TO 2013’S FRENCH SPEED WEEK Speed Week’s location in 2013 was Circuit de Charade in France, perhaps better known to racing fans as Clermont-Ferrand. The circuit is a legend, immortalised in film, revered and feared by Grand Prix drivers and about to be trashed by TG. But we had to get there first. Three of us flew…

CITROEN E-BERLINGO £28,131 THE E-BERLINGO VAN AVEC windows aesthetic means many dismiss it out of hand. More fool them after its recent facelift. It now wears the French firm’s signature new look and logo. Thanks to a battery upgrade, the range is up by around 50 miles. As a people carrier it’s a versatile, practical, and, dare we say it, fun little thing. Far more space for sub £30k than a whole heap of e-crossovers. PR POLESTAR 4 LONG RANGE DUAL MOTOR £70,990 THIS IS THE FIRST TIME OUT in a 4 with a final spec screen system – good news, it’s much better than the horrid setup in the bigger, dearer 3. The 4 is the nicest driving car Polestar makes, especially on adaptive suspension when it’s among the…

It’s been a little over three years since SR Autobodies first disassembled my R34 Skyline. The original plan was for an underside resto only, but unsurprisingly an old, Japanese tuner car tends to have quite the chequered past once you start peeling back the layers. Truthfully, the reassembly has been parked for some time while we source and order the mountain of replacement parts required. But there’s one upgrade which arrived recently, and it looks even better than expected – the Nitron R3 suspension. Upgrading the GT-R’s suspension has been on the cards for a while now, but choosing the right brand can feel like a bit of a minefield on older Japanese cars. During their prime, every tuner in existence created their own coilovers, flooding the market with options.…

1. UK Lando laps Silverstone in life-sized Lego McLaren P1 Ever wondered what Formula One drivers get up to in their spare time? Lando Norris recently completed a lap of Silverstone in a life-sized Lego McLaren P1, made from 342,817 pieces and powered by 768 Lego motors. As scary as his first time in an F1 car? We reckon he was probably bricking it… 2. Denmark Biker hit with 86 fines due to self-recorded helmet cam A 29-year-old motorcycle rider in Denmark has been charged with 86 traffic violations due to footage recorded on his own helmet camera. After he was initially detained for riding a motorcycle witout licence plates or holding a valid permit, police viewed the footage and took subsequent action. 3. Russia Chechen warlord accuses Elon of…

IN MOTORSPORT, LOADS OF CLEVER innovations have sprung from a close reading of the rulebook. For Sam Albert, a loophole in the American Rally Association regs led him to an unconventional project: a 2004 Subaru WRX STI with a Ferrari V8. Albert, a rally driver and instructor at Dirtfish Rally School in Washington State, started the build after discovering the American Rally Association allowed a naturally aspirated engine of up to 4.5 litres to run unrestricted. A search for a fitting powerplant led him to the power dense Ferrari F136 V8. He found an example that was close enough to the price of a competition tuned Subaru flat four and got to work. Not surprisingly, pairing Japanese with Italian wasn’t quite as easy as it is at, say, a Las…

ASTON MARTIN VALKYRIE Price: £2.5 million Engine: 6.5-litre V12 + e-motor, 1,139bhp, 682lb ft, RWD Performance: 0–62mph in 2.6secs, 220mph Weight: 1,270kg (dry) WHAT IS IT? Late, that’s what. We’ve wanted Aston’s road-going F1 passion project at Speed Week for yonks. It’s here at last. No noise or mileage limits. No caveats or excuses. Bring on the noise. WHY IS IT HERE? To see just how strong the TG team’s necks are. And to find out if one of the most tortuous supercar development projects ever undertaken was worth it. AUDI RS6 GT Price: £177,115 Engine: 4.0-litre bi-turbo V8, 621bhp, 627lb ft, AWD Performance: 0–62mph in 3.3secs, 190mph Weight: 2,075kg WHAT IS IT? An auf wiedersehen run-out special of the V8-powered Audi über wagon, before it’s replaced by a V6 hybrid…

“IT’S POWERED BY A NEW V8 HYBRID POWERTRAIN WITH A COMBINED OUTPUT OF 1,257BHP” This is the new W1. The diffcult follow up album to the untameable P1. The hypercar that needs to make the ballistic 750S seem merely pedestrian. The one that lines up against the new Ferrari in a once-in-a-decade face off. McLaren’s mic drop moment. Forgive me if we start with a stream of big fat numbers, but the W1 is that kind of car. It’s powered by an all new V8 hybrid powertrain with a combined system output of 1,257bhp. The 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 makes 915bhp by itself (which is more than a P1 made in total), aided by what McLaren refers to as an ‘e-module’ that throws another 342bhp in the direction of the rear…

VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE £2,626 (when new) HERO Trailblazing concept, driving engagement, charismatic engine ZERO Dodgy brakes, not much refinement, lack of safety features “YOUR DRIVING STYLE ADAPTS THE MORE TIME YOU SPEND WITH THE BEETLE” THE VW BEETLE DRIVING IS underpowered, but that means you can drive full throttle everywhere. It feels like the fastest car in the world, until you check the speedometer. This gorgeous example has an air cooled 1192cc engine that produces just 34bhp. It takes nearly 26secs to reach 60mph. There’s no rev counter, so you listen for the engine noise when changing gear. The harder you rev and faster you go, the louder it gets. It has special resonance with me, as the Beetle is part of my heritage. My great uncle was German and lived…

GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR EXTENDED TG GARAGE REPORTS, AND TO EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE FAMILY CARS, THREE WAYS WHY THEY’RE HERE Jack, Vijay and Ben try to convince each other why their new long-termer is best… without it all ending in tears BEN PULMAN I’LL KICK THINGS off: these cars are three different ways of carting about children and canines, and given those small creatures drop food and fur respectively, in six months’ time I think you’ll all concur mine is best. VIJAY PATNI In six months I think I’ll still be picking out dog hair from mine. Anyway, Ben, as well as being entirely incorrect, remind us what yours is again? A big… car? Joking. I like the Kodiaq, but there’s inoffensive, universally acceptable design, and then there’s borderingon-forgettable. BP…

JAGUAR F-TYPE £104,880 OTR/£109,360 as tested/£1,132 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: Was Jag’s final petrol sports car the wrong car at the wrong time? DRIVER: GREG POTTS I NEVER THOUGHT I LIKED THE Series 3 Jaguar E-type. Without having driven one, I’d always subscribed to the view that the 5.3-litre V12 couldn’t replace the legendary XK straight-six engine, and that it was too bulky and bulbous in its looks and general footprint as Jaguar chased sales across the pond. Back in 2019, I’ll admit that I didn’t think I was a fan of the facelifted Jaguar F-Type either. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I preferred the slightly more upright face of the stunning pre-facelift car. So, before saying goodbye, I thought it’d be a good idea to get the final…

THE FRANKLIN FILES WHAT IS IT? This Triumph Herald Convertible was our creative director’s first car. Ignored for nearly 20 years, he’s decided to bring it back to life WRITER: Andy franklin LAST YOU HEARD, THE MIGHTY Triumph was being stripped. The rear quarters were the worst and needed much welding. Meanwhile I was busy stripping down, grinding, cleaning and sanding the chassis back. Luckily as a kid I had caked it in underseal, so the main chassis had remained in a solid state. Next stage was setting about restoring all the suspension and brakes, probably the hardest part so far. Some bolts were so rusted I needed impact drills to remove them. Then I set about the ride height, my biggest bugear with the original Herald. I bought a…

There have been a number of teams caught cheating over the years in F1 – in 2007 a bloke in a Woking copy shop rumbled the wife of McLaren’s chief designer, who was spotted with 800 pages of sensitive Ferrari documents. Then in 2009 Renault was caught having engineered a win for Fernando Alonso at the 2008 Singapore GP by getting hapless teammate Nelson Piquet Jr to stick his car in a convenient wall. A particular treat was the Tyrrell team, which ran its cars underweight in 1984 – refuelling was banned, water top-ups weren’t, so in the final round of stops they’d load up the cars with water and lead shot, which would litter the pits. The 1994 F1 season was one to forget in most ways, but a…

Joanne Smith is responsible for a car crash almost every single day. Sometimes even twice a day. Thankfully, she isn’t some kind of West Midlands-based Pastor Maldonado. Being responsible for pretty much all of the passive safety crash testing that takes place at Horiba MIRA in Nuneaton, Smith smashes up cars for a living. “It’ll be 30 years in January that I’ve worked here,” she says. “It has completely changed in that time. When I first started as a test engineer most cars were only just getting airbags and seatbelts were just developing to have pretensioners. The roads were a very different place.” In the early days of her career, it wasn’t always so pleasant to see how the sausage was made. “I used to drive an original Rover Mini.…

LOOK MA! NO HANDS! Has our autonomous future just arrived, or is it all BS? Jack Rix headed to Elonís Robotaxi launch party in Los Angeles to hitch a ride and hold on tight VALK vs REAL WORLD Jack and Jethro had the pleasure of driving the Valkyrie around the Navarra track at Speed Week (see features). Nice and safe, with run-off zones and no road furniture… perfect. Time to see how it behaves on the road TOO MUCH WEIGHT, OR GREAT? Big. Heavy. German. Not a record-breaking frankfurter, but the new BMW M5. We sent Tom Ford to drive the new 700+bhp hybrid and report back ALPINE A390_B Star of the Paris motor show, Alpine’s all new jacked up, four-door, coupe-SUV thing will will take on the Porsche Macan…

Let’s be clear. We’re not branding Luca Badoer himself as an epic failure. After all, the Italian racing driver has lived, it seems, a happy and fulfilled existence. We’re talking specifically about Luca Badoer’s racing career. And, even more specifically, the bit of Luca Badoer’s racing career circa summer 2009. A talented junior racer, Badoer spent much of the 1990s as an F1 journeyman, competing in four-dozen Grands Prix for back marker outfits – BMS Scuderia, Minardi, Forti – without ever troubling the scorers. At the turn of the millennium, he became Ferrari’s offcial test driver. Then, in July 2009, when Ferrari driver Felipe Massa was injured by a flying spring in qualifying at the Hungarian Grand Prix and ruled out for the rest of the season, Maranello turned to…

MILES PER GALLON ISN’T A MEASURE OF fuel consumption but of economy. A higher number means lower quantities of fuel used. Which is higher economy. This upside down way of looking at things inhibits our ability to understand how we use fuel and even how we might save it. For example, do you know how much extra fuel a roofrack uses? Or aircon, or underinflated tyres? No, because you can’t just add their fuel to the car’s baseline when you work in economy, but you can if you work in consumption. I always wondered about bikes on top of a car. An Australian website has carefully researched it, using the metric measure of consumption rather than of economy. Two bikes on a rack cost 1.4l/100km at a steady 62mph. That is…

I have never seen anybody with steam blowing out of their ears. Or spitting feathers. But back in 2017 at the launch of the then new F90 generation BMW M5, I trigger an M division engineer into an almost cartoon rage. The walls are covered in glorious old images of BMW race and road cars looking impossibly cool and exciting: leaping over Pflanzgarten at the Nürburgring, power sliding on a wet surface at a tyre testing facility, streaming through those peculiar German roads lined with little white marker posts. I look around and politely ask, “How did you let AMG eclipse all of this heritage to become the king of fast saloons and coupes?” People fall quiet. He pauses and his cheeks start to colour. I wonder if he’s trying…

For everyone that gets to go, it’s the best week of the year. I’m only sorry we can’t take you all with us. Instead we have to do that with words and pictures and attempt to convey what went on, how the cars performed and made us feel. The premise of Speed Week is simple: gather together the cream of the year’s performance cars and compare them. The best way to do that is to spend a couple of days with them on a track, as that gives us a location to capture great, dramatic shots in safety and see how the cars behave on the limit (aka getting the overenthusiasm out of our systems), then do a day or two on a great road to build the fullest possible…

Jack Rix: After 721 years in development, we have a Valkyrie at Speed Week. And when I say we have one, we’re not talking about a couple of mollycoddled demo laps with an instructor looking disapprovingly over our shoulder. Save for a couple of engineers keeping tabs on its vitals, briefing us on the start-up procedure and tucking it in for the night, they’ve literally lobbed us the keys to deploy it as we see fit on road and track. For five whole days. May we remind you this is no ordinary car. Even calling it a car seems a bit of a stretch. It’s the brain biscuit of Adrian Newey who cares not about your comfort, or eardrums, or ability to parallel park or listen to your favourite podcast.…

Range Rover Sport SV vs Nomad 2 WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE We switched the SV’s carbon wheels when we took it off-road. Carbon rims. FFS. Like they make a blind bit of difference. Maybe they’d look more authentic after a machine-gunning of gravel and dust, but we’re not here to conduct the hottest Range Rover Sport’s destruction testing. No, we’re here to referee its dual purpose promise. The claim of course is that the SV is now track ready. While also being as imperiously capable off-road as it ought to be. In a few pages Ollie Kew will put its track competency to the test against an Audi RS6, but first I’m heading into the rough around Navarra’s smooth fairway of tarmac and testing it against Ariel’s new Nomad 2. These…

“Oooooh, what is that? Is it a Lamborghini?” The exceedingly bright MG Cyberster that you see on these pages has just been delivered to my flat, and my neighbour has responded by delivering a line that’ll have MG’s advanced design team in London and its SAIC bosses in China grinning like, well, the Cyberster’s happy face. Lambo probably less so. While up close it may be rather obvious that the two-seat, droptop MG hasn’t come straight from Sant’Agata, from a distance it is easy to mistake the Cyberster for a car that costs well into six figures. Just look at those scissor doors. Inca Yellow paint – an old British Leyland colour and now a £695 option – certainly helps. The weather is in a typically British mood, and while…

VOLKSWAGEN ID.3 £42,305 OTR/£51,195 as tested/£451 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: Is the revised ID.3 easier to live with? DRIVER: Paul Horrell FOUR YEARS, ONE FACELIFT AND several OTA updates after VW started delivering the original ID car, the ID.3 still has its flaws. But my experience now is of a car that’s reliable and usable in its software, as well as its hardware. But yeah, the flaws. While the interface is reliable now, VW is still cheaping out on the processor. Even if you’ve parked for just a couple of hours, the navigation starts up with a 30 second spinning ball. Still, CarPlay is stable and snappy and even projects its navigation arrows onto the HUD, so mostly I was using the native navigation merely so I could test it.…

VAUXHALL CALIBRA WRITTEN BY: vijay patni WHAT ELSE WE’RE RUNNING REPORT 4 INEOS GRENADIER It’s the Fieldmaster, so I took it round some fields. Off road mode engaged to silence the parking sensors and slacken the ESP, it lumbered across trenches and ruts with not a squeak from chassis or trim. Then Wading mode for deep water. Should call it the Fordmaster but I think another brand might have something to say about that. OM REPORT 2 BMW i5 All two of you who follow Formula E will know there is a thing called ‘fanboost’, where fans vote to give their favourite driver more power. It’s a good gimmick, but not as good the BMW i5’s very own boost button. It gives lOsecs of full power - like a sport…