Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

Editor-in-chief @jack_rix @rixjack jack.rix@bbctopgearmagazine.com It’s been a tough month. The Rix household just changed its supermarket delivery service from Ocado to Tesco (the cost of living crisis is real – and yes I’m worried that my kumquats won’t be quite as plump), but what I didn’t do was stomp around the house swearing at my wife for giving our weekly groceries a radical rebrand. You can see where I’m going with this… Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but watching the pile-on reaction to Jaguar’s rebirth and subsequent Type 00 concept car has, at times, made it a bit embarrassing to be a human. Do I think Jag should be ignoring its entire heritage? No. Do I think the company needed a total rethink? Yes. My point is, none of…

1. USA Lambo Diablo falls off truck while being unloaded A Lamborghini Diablo on its way to its new owner was left precariously perched after the hydraulics controlling the delivery truck’s lift failed. Images show damage to the front wing, with a crane reportedly later called out to recover the car and prevent any more damage. The work of the devil… 2. New Zealand Dealer sends faeces pics after couple reject car A dispute over a rejected car culminated in Chris Schwartz, boss of iSeeCars Ltd, emailing Johannes and Chizelle Cilliers two poop pictures after they took him to court. “Please see attached paid in full,” Schwartz wrote. “Have a fantastic great day, I split it in two payment parts.” We’ll spare you the photographic details. 3. USA Scammers dress…

THE GOOD This is not remotely boring. Setting the branding debacle aside (mistakes happen… calm down, haters) this new look is really solid! Show me more! Matthew Smith The final production model (if it ever gets released) may positively surprise people. I won’t hold my breath, but I’m rooting for Jag Murat Ince IT’S VERY BEAUTIFUL. Awesome job Jaguar. Fabulous BlessBeNice Overall, it’s not that bad… in a world where a common criticism is “all cars look the same” refreshing to see something a little bit out there Nikk MacRae I like it. I don’t care that it’s polarising – it’s fresh and I hope that the real car is not too far away from this Martrich1098 THE BAD This is a perfume bottle with wheels made by a six-year-old…

The finest failures in automotive history MERCEDES VANEO Some cars achieve Epic Fail status thanks to their shoddy build quality, or their lacklustre performance, or the botched business plan that underpinned their creation. The Vaneo, however, flopped for none of these reasons. It achieved its fail status on account of oh God will you just look at it. TopGear takes no pride in being so very shallow in its judgement. Beauty, after all, is only skin deep. You should never judge a book by its cover. On the other hand, oh God will you just look at it. Introduced in 2002 and based on the bones of the quietly revolutionary (but famously tippy) first gen A-Class, the Vaneo apparently sought to answer the eternal car buying question of, ‘What if…

THE INCONGRUOUS CONCEPT OF A luxurious, coachbuilt Mini Cooper hit the swinging London scene in the early 1960s, a few years after the original Mini did. On this episode of TopGear: American Tuned, we turn up on the US side of the Puget Sound to check out a Canadian Mini restomod that recalls those heady times. Call this one North American Tuned. From comic legend Peter Sellers’ Hooper-built 1963 Morris Mini – featured in the Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark – to the “Mini De Ville” by Harold Radford & Co, one of which Sellers gifted to his then wife Britt Ekland, coachbuilt Mini Coopers were a product of an intense pop cultural moment. Fast forward 60 years or so, and this project by Spectre Vehicle Design…

BEST NEW CAR PARK AWARD Presented by Parking Review magazine, the British Parking Awards “recognise the leading examples of car park management, enforcement, design and teamwork”. The 2024 award for Best New Car Park went to… Blackpool Central multistorey.. FORECOURT TRADER OF THE YEAR At the 2024 Forecourt Trader Awards, MFG St Clears service station in Carmarthenshire took the top gong as the UK’s Forecourt Trader of the Year. Come on now, don’t try and tell yourself you haven’t got a favourite fuel station… CONCOURS D’LEMONS WORST OF SHOW Brought to you by the folks behind the 24 Hours of Lemons endurance race, this aims to lower the tone of the stuffy Monterey Car Week. Worst of Show in 2024 went to a brown, fur covered Lincoln with a horse…

What the electric car needs is a bit of romance… Amid all the samey crossovers and arguments over the rationality of EVs – or the fact they’ve been press-ganged into the culture wars – we could do with some EVs that attempt to shortcut their way into our hearts. Polestar, like Jaguar and perhaps DS, gets that. BMW and Merc make fast electric four-doors but they’re souped up airport VIP minicabs. Polestar is different. The 5 is a low slung, sports four-door, highly original, beautifully proportioned and chisel sharp. Under that skin is a brand new platform, engineered in Warwickshire by ex-F1, Lotus and McLaren engineers. Highlights include mixed materials for strength with lightness, and a battery with silicon rich anode chemistry that can take a 10 to 80 per…

LeTech’s Ineos Grenadier conversion is definitely one for the inner child. How can you not love this thing? The trick bit is the portal axle: simply put, the differential and driveshafts connected to it are repositioned higher up and hub reduction gear makes mincemeat of the toughest going. The Grenadier’s ground clearance increases from 186 to 450mm, its wading depth to 1,000mm. There are bigger coil springs and shock absorbers, it’s fitted with one piece forged alloys and massive BF Goodrich Mud Terrain KM3 tyres, and our car also has a Warn Zeon 12V electric winch with a pull capacity of 12,000 pounds. And roof mounted LED lights that could floodlight Wembley stadium. If it looks like it belongs on the moon, we get to try it somewhere that resembles…

My first piece of practical advice to anyone who is purchasing an EV is to avoid the fastest one. In fact, pick the slowest one. It’ll be cheaper, more effcient, will go further on a single charge and might even be lighter too. Plus, it’ll still beat most combustion cars in a traffc light drag race. Well, unless you’re buying a Dacia Spring. Anyway, for this test we decided to completely ignore that advice, bringing along an electric family SUV with well over 600bhp and a 0–62mph time of 3.3 seconds. Yep, it’s the new Porsche Macan Electric in full fat Turbo form. And yes, like with the Taycan, Porsche is sticking with its old school naming convention despite the absence of any actual turbos. The BMW X3 M50 xDrive…

GO TO TOPGEAR.COM FOR EXTENDED TG GARAGE REPORTS, AND TO EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE REPORT 5 MINI COOPER S £26,700 OTR/£34,700 as tested/£376 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: This might be the last stand of the petrol hot hatch DRIVER: OLLIE KEW THERE ARE MANY CHOICES WITH the new Mini. There’s the ‘looks identical but actually different’ electric one. Not quite enough range for the round trips I do most regularly. There’s also the entry level Cooper C. This, I suspected, is actually the best of the current Minis. Time to try it. I’d hoped it would arrive not wearing JCW garb, because to my eyes the standard Cooper bodywork is actually cleaner, cooler and prettier, and also looks ‘newer’. But nope, it was another ‘Sport’ trim, with exactly the same gratuitous diffuser…

Try a subscription to BBC TopGear magazine. Pay £5 for your first 5 issues then £23.50 every 6 issues and save 35% on the shop price.* SUBSCRIBING IS EASY. SIMPLY GO ONLINE, CALL OR SCAN GREAT REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE • Pay £5 for 5 issues, then pay £23.50 every 6 issues – saving 35% on the shop price • Unique and collectable covers – only seen by our subscribers • Get your copy before it hits the shops and never miss an issue! buysubscriptions.com/TGP225 03330 162 130 and quote TGP225** *This offer is subject to availability via direct debit only, and valid for UK delivery addresses only. This offer closes 28 February 2025. You will pay £5 for the first 5 issues and continue to pay £23.50 every 6 issues…

FAREWELL, A90 SUPRA, WE… KNEW thee very well, actually. Because the reveal took seven years and arrived 21 years after the A80 dump-valved itself into the horizon. Now, after just five short years on sale, Toyota has confirmed this jet black special edition is the last one. Hence why it’s called the ‘Final Edition’, with just 300 available worldwide. It’s bowing out via a series of updates that draw inspiration from the A90’s competition pedigree. Stuff like drifting, endurance and even NASCAR, as well as the championship winning GT4. So it’s more powerful. Much more powerful. That (BMW) 3.0-litre straight six – matched up exclusively to a (BMW) six speed manual gearbox – has been treated to a new intake air path and ‘optimised’ engine controls to somehow liberate a…

BMW M5 (E39) What is it? The new BMW M5 costs a smidge over £111k, which is… a lot. But peak M5 is the E39. Subtle, manual, 400bhp V8. So why not have that? Why are we interested? Because a 727bhp plug-in hybrid M5 that weighs 2.5 tonnes misses the point. Why not get something that does the job for much less? How many were made? Some 20,482 E39 M5s were made. They are known as a connoisseur’s car, rather than just the most expensive version of a 5-Series. Costs? Under £10k for a worn high miler, more like £45k–50k for a minter. But £25k would buy you a really decent one. Leaving £85k for maintenance.…

BATTERY POWERED CARS PRESENT huge difficulties at racetracks. They’re heavy and they can’t do a long stint before the battery goes flat. When it does, recharging demands time and high power electric infrastructure. So people suggest fuel cells as an alternative to batteries, to provide electricity for the motors. Bring along a tank of hydrogen on a truck, and you’ve got light cars and quick pitstops. Bingo. Except, not quite. Fuel cells aren’t very suitable for racecars for a simple reason. They don’t run hot enough, which makes it hard to get rid of their waste heat. A high power fuel cell runs at about 80°C. On a hot sunny day the air shimmering above black tarmac can go beyond 40°C – more in hot climates. So the radiator coolant temperature…

Q: WHAT’S THE MOST EXCITING CAR TECH IN 2025? At the start of a new year, it’s typical to look to the future and as TopGear’s resident breakdancing traffc cop at the intersection between cars, video games and technology, I’m pleased to report that there’s lots to be excited about as we head into the sci-fi year of AD2025. Here’s just a small selection of the technologies that I have my eye on. As a simracer, one gaming trend I’m interested in is the shift in emphasis from graphical fidelity towards higher frame rates, as we approach the limit of just how many beard hairs it’s necessary to render on a Call of Duty character’s face. Even I struggle to explain the concept of frame rate without slipping into a…

01 ASTON MARTIN VALHALLA The Valhalla is a survivor. We first saw it as the filling in a mid engine sandwich at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show – Valkyrie above it, ‘entry level’ Vanquish below. This was also the show where former CEO Andy Palmer, on a crazed pre-IPO pump, revealed an all new fully electric Lagonda sub brand. He was given the boot a year later, along with that Lagonda monstrosity and the Maserati MC20 rivalling Vanquish… but the Valhalla rode on. In 2021 we saw a new version – now AMG V8 powered – reshaped and re-engineered under the eye of Tobias Moers. Moers made way for Amedeo Felisa in May 2022, and Felisa for Adrian Hallmark in October 2024. It’s been musical chairs in the CEO’s offce…

They want you to think of French luxury, so henceforth DS will be naming its output like Chanel’s No 5 and No 19 scents. Welcome, then, to the DS No 8. There’s another number it wants you to notice: 469. That’s the WLTP range in miles, at least of the one with the biggest battery, smallest wheels and fewest motors (one). This is possible because it’s slippery, not just in its Cd but its reduced frontal area. Its floor and suspension might be similar to its platform mates, the Peugeot e-3008 et al, but the dash and cabin and roof are lowered to evade the air at speed. Options include uncommon cabin colours and textures, two-tone body treatments and a backlit ‘grille’, all helping nudge the design out of the…

“IT’S A 5M LONG MONOLITHIC PINK SUPER COUPE” Jaguar’s recent ad campaign manoeuvred the company onto the front line of the culture wars via appearances on Have I Got News for You, Radio Four’s Today programme and a gazillion splenetic online comments. But it’s a distracting sideshow, not least because Jaguar is a company that makes cars. The Type 00 concept previews a new electric flagship, due to be revealed at the end of 2025. That’ll be a £120,000+ four seat GT, most likely with rear hinged doors à la Rolls-Royce or Ferrari Purosangue. A new platform, dubbed JEA, underpins the Jaguar BEV, majoring on the handling, ride and refinement the company’s historically famous for. We’re promised a range of up to 478 miles WLTP and just as importantly 200…

08 DODGE CHARGER DAYTONA “THIS CHARGER IS HERESY ACCORDING TO THE CHURCH OF V8” “Is that one of those new soy Chargers? The one that’s all electric?” says Devon, a man in his silver years who drives a truck, but also has a V8 petrol powered Dodge Challenger back home, implying that electricity is feeble and… somehow left wing. A case not supported should he investigate the woke electricity that powers his home and drop a live toaster in his bath. I simply switch on Dodge’s new electric Charger Daytona and start to rev it. He flinches at the startup – it’s got the kind of exhaust fireup flare you get when someone lops the exhaust off a V8 with an angle grinder – and his face unfurls in wonder.…

Renault’s bringing sexy mid-engined hot hatch heroics back, via the medium of the deliriously arched Turbo 3E. It’ll be a proper road car. That you can buy. With money. And outrageous fortune. Because while today we rightly hail the return of the king of hot hatchery, it’s a) really very expensive and b) quite limited. But that’s for later. Let us add some important context charting the stratospheric progress of Planet Hot Hatch over the past 50 years via two amusing factoids. The first Renault 5 powered just by electricity was unveiled back in 1972 with a heady range of 37 miles. In 1980, the original mid-engined Renault 5 Turbo won hearts and minds with just 156bhp. Of course, this being the age of overinflation means this brand new electric 5…

Silence? At a land speed record attempt? You imagine there’d be excited chatter and bellowing engines, but it’s eerily quiet at the Papenburg proving ground in northwestern Germany. Not a breath of wind to knock the rusty leaves from the branches, or disturb the limp trackside wind sock. Two white pinpricks peer through the mid-morning mist. A faint hiss builds into an air shredding roar and in a neck tweaking rush, a black and orange Bugatti Mistral rips down the main straight. Brake lights and the orange underbelly of the air brake pierce the gloom. Andy Wallace has just set a new world speed record for a roofless car: 453.91kph (282.04mph). Polite applause ripples from Bugatti’s engineers, then silence reigns again. Another day at the office for the world’s fastest…

I’ll have to leave out the bizarre ‘how it came about’ tale, but the end result was photographer Richard Pardon and I pounding across the Gobi desert in an Infiniti QX80 in search of a Mongolian palaeontologist. Tricky, in a place that is vast, has no roads and unchanging landscape in every direction. Once located, and given trowels and brushes, Badmaa Zorigt opened our eyes. Scattered across the surface are dinosaur bones, mainly ankylosaurus and protoceratops (“basically a Cretaceous sheep”). Using drones to help locate likely locations, we eventually wind up at the Flaming Cliffs, where we discover and then excavate a velociraptor skeleton – a rare find as the delicate bone structure is less likely to survive 75 million years of Earth’s processes. Once extracted and swaddled in plaster…

STIG vs JESKO What do you get when you put a l, 578bhp Jesko Absolut and a tame racing driving on the TG track? Easy - an elated and euphoric Stig… and a blistering new track record HYUNDAI RN24 Looking for a recipe for future fun? We have it right here… take a decade of WRC rallying know-how, the loniq 5 N’s powertrain and finish off with a large dollop of mischievousness. Bake for 20 minutes. Hey presto CHILLED CHALLENGE If you’re feeling stressed and need to take some time out may we suggest relaxing with Honda’s Eco Mileage Challenge. A full 2.5hrs of cars driving slowly around a track set to lo-fi retro beats. And breathe… LET’S OFF-ROAD! The new Toyota Land Cruiser faces off against key rivals -…

JETHRO BOVINGDON If YouTube teaches us anything it’s that you can’t please all of the people even some of the time. Shoot a fully lit video with gratuitous action? “Nobody drives like that.” Drive more sedately and discuss the nuance of the driving experience? “What a boring video.” Feature a hypercar? “Shame no owners will ever drive their cars.” OK, what about something affordable and ordinary? Well, of the 18 viewers a third will suggest buying a used Golf GTI instead (to be fair, not a bad shout), a few will post sleep emojis and the rest will be bots talking about how to make millions in crypto. However, the real sin on YouTube is to have an opinion that deviates even slightly from the accepted reality. In fact, critical…

PEOPLE LOVE WHAT JAGUAR has been. A measure of that love is the social media pitchfork mob that assembled around its plans to change. But love never paid the bills. When Jaguar made brave cars – the final shape XJ, the I-Pace, the second generation XK8 – it struggled to sell them. When it made cautious cars – the E-Pace, the XE – it struggled even more. JLR’s own HQ company car park was full of Discoverys and Range Rovers, not Jaguars. I’m concerned that this latest directional swerve, to brave and expensive cars, might meet a similar fate. So I’m here to ask Jaguar boss Rawdon Glover for evidence that points to success for the dramatic new direction. “We have researched this intensely. We’ve spoken to about 1,000 prospective…

It wasn’t a long meeting at Dacia HQ… “Right folks, what are we calling the SUV that’s bigger than the Duster?” Frankly, that’s why we like a Dacia. Does what it says on the tin. And the timing couldn’t be better for this flagship – crossover demand remains high, but mainstream brands are squeezed on price. Along comes this mini-Disco moon buggy with a projected price of £25k–£30k and suddenly a Kuga or Qashqai look a bit out of ideas. Clever mild hybrid tech is imported from Renault (the Clio is among the best electrified superminis) yet Dacia claims the Bigster will be around 150kg lighter than the establishment’s family 4x4s. Plus, the boss insists his customers aren’t asking for touchscreens or haptic switches. So knobs and buttons will do…

It’s hard to know what’s more tantalising about BMW’s imminent Neue Klasse generation of neue autos: the prospect of exciting gains with battery tech and range, or the fact that the design language that created (caused?) the XM is about to be thrown in the bin. Toughie, innit? Either way, there’s a lot riding on it: big boss Oliver Zipse has called it “the biggest single investment in the history of the company”. No pressure then. Two cars will kickstart the overhaul in 2025. First an SUV (duh) to replace the iX3, then what amounts to an electric 3-Series. Now we’re talking. The Hofmeister kink survives and the kidney grilles won’t be anywhere near as gopping – X cars get a vertical design, with a horizontal treatment for saloons and…

“Not even scraped, smooth as butter,” says the idiot, as he drops the front end of the new £80,000 Toyota Land Cruiser off a rock shelf, sidestep landing with an excruciating CRUMP on a sharply Paleozoic bit of Wales. “That was it!” exclaims idiot #2, referring to the thing he should have warned idiot #1 about before he drove into it. Not the Toyota’s fault, but driver error. Or rather spotter error, and I’m sticking with that. But that’s what you get when you allow the inmates access to the car keys of the asylum – halfhearted health and safety and a whole bunch of actively dangerous enthusiasm. And yet here we are, off road in the kind of cars that can actually do it, rather than soft roaders that…

“THE FUTURE ISN’T WHAT IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE” The future isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. How else do you explain the surge in popularity of what we now know as the ‘restomod’? Three semi-classic Italians and a Swedish interloper sit by a dam at the summit of a mountain, each the purveyor of potent analogue sensation. The air is thin up here so they’re working hard, but then so are we. Want fizzy, granular steering? You’ve got it. Two Lancias, an Alfa Romeo – or is it? – and a Volvo. They’re big on mechanical rattle and hum, rather less interested in lane assist. We live in a secular world but these are cars as the good Lord surely intended. They have credibility, too. Automobili Amos, resurrector…

The problem with licensing a proper motorsport championship for a racing game, no matter how desirable the cars are, is that as part of the agreement you’re usually also stuck with the circuits it races on. That includes all their tedious, real world concerns like spacious run-off areas, collision dampening tyre barriers and adequate bathroom facilities. Sega’s arcade racer Scud Race proved there was another way. While it featured the cars from the short-lived BPR Global GT Series, which included race versions of the McLaren F1 and Ferrari F40, it had precisely zero interest in recreating places like Silverstone and Monza. Instead Scud Race had you drifting through a towering Aztec temple and across the cobbled courtyards of a vast Germanic castle. If you’d ever fantasised about leaving big rubber…

Try a subscription to BBC TopGear magazine. Pay £5 for your first 5 issues then £23.50 every 6 issues and save 35% on the shop price.* GREAT REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE > Pay £5 for 5 issues, then pay £23.50 every 6 issues – saving 35% on the shop price > Unique and collectable covers – only seen by our subscribers > Get your copy before it hits the shops and never miss an issue! SUBSCRIBING IS EASY. SIMPLY GO ONLINE, CALL OR SCAN buysubscriptions.com/TGSP225 03330 162 130 and quote TGSP225** *This offer is subject to availability via direct debit only, and valid for UK delivery addresses only. This offer closes 28 February 2025. You will pay £5 for the first 5 issues and continue to pay £23.50 every 6 issues -…