Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix @rixjack jack.rix@bbctopgearmagazine.com When the idea of a hot hatch supertest was first floated, hooked around the arrival of the shiny new Alpine A290 on UK soil, we weren’t optimistic about attendees. After all, this is a genre dying out faster than Prince Harry’s inheritance, and yet a quick brainstorm scraped together 10 new or recently refreshed contenders, with a couple of recognised favourites thrown in. More than enough for re-establishing the hot hatch order. What struck me though, on arriving at a bitterly cold Anglesey circuit to see our hot hatch buffet laid out in the pitlane, was the menagerie of metal, a mix of household names and total newbies, traditional powertrains and ballistic grade electronics. GTI, ST, Type R, these are the staples in a hot hatch diet…

NO, YOU’RE NOT SUFFERING FROM SOME kind of concept car deja vu – we have actually seen a version of these cars before. First unveiled at CES 2024, they were originally the Honda Saloon and Space-Hub concepts. Newly updated and with the covers whipped off at CES 2025, they’re now to be referred to as the 0 Saloon and 0 SUV prototypes. Honda’s 0 Series is supposed to be a complete reset with “thin, light and wise” EVs. These two cars will both be on sale in 2026 and five others will follow by 2030. Unfortunately, four of those will be SUVs. Still, Honda says the four door (far right) will be the flagship and that its “low height and sporty styling sets it apart from other EVs”. Anyone else…

THIS MONTH: L O T US ETERNE What is it? One of the glut of six new Lotus models promised during the company’s bizarre Dany Bahar led reveal binge in the autumn of 2010. Perhaps the most controversial, alongside a new Esprit supercar, Elise sportster, two-door coupe and more, was a four-door super saloon set to challenge the new Porsche Panamera. Did they build any? No – this strange chapter in Lotus history ended in firings, legal wranglings and Lotus going back to making winged Elises and Exiges until the Chinese money came along. The closest any of the new models got to existing was a prototype V8 for the new Esprit being bolted into a Ferrari 458 test mule. Where are they now? Well here’s the funny thing: for…

ROAD MAINTENANCE SIMULATOR 2 £25, PlayStation/Xbox/PC Another addition to the genre of almost hypnotically boring job simulators, Road Maintenance Simulator 2 tasks you with repairing the virtual roads you’d usually be racing around. You’ll be dabbling in everything from pruning trees to clearing snow, and placing road signs. There’s even complete freedom to run wild with the line painter, if you’ve ever wanted to make a T junction look like a schoolboy’s exercise book. There’s a sort of mindless, rudimentary fun to be had until you run up against some bug or poorly explained feature, at which point you come to a dead stop and have to reckon with how you’re spending your limited time on Earth. Not recommended, then, but on the other hand if you really think about…

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In the cold light of day, our vibrant hot hatch final five gladdens a cynical petrolhead’s heart. Five manufacturers. No platform sharers. We’ve got a supermini and four proper family cars. Two manuals (the Yaris would’ve been nominated regardless of the gearbox – the only car here to offer a choice) and an EV to break up the turbo monopoly. There’s more diversity here than an episode of Star Trek. But I’m uneasy. How is the most affordable car here the wrong side of £40k? And why is nothing in our final reckoning actually new? Sure, the Audi’s fresh from a facelift, but there’s nothing truly hot out of the oven. OK, there was the Alpine, but it’s not quite there yet. Did we already reach peak hot hatch? Are…

Hot hatches are regularly underestimated as proper drivers’ cars. Don’t make that mistake. A good hot hatch is as captivating to drive as any sports car – and capable of giant slaying feats because it suits our roads so well. Here’s how to get the best out of one. 1. THE FRONT WHEELS The front wheels have a lot to do. There might be more purity to the uncorrupted steering of a rear drive car, but there’s so much fun to be had with the tussle and scrub of a car that’s trying to do everything with the front wheels. Be smooth, don’t overwork the tyres – they’ve got a lot on their plate. 2. BRAKES Trail braking a hot hatch is a skill for all seasons. Don’t just brake…

It sounds sacrilegious, but some of us reckon the Sterrato might be the best Lamborghini ever. Super slidy, looks great, can take lots of punishment. Likewise the Porsche 911 Dakar. Sure, the limit is much lower than in racier 911s, but life’s easier when you get there. It’s an interesting direction of travel. The Land Rover Defender Octa is on a similar trajectory but arrives from the opposite end of the spectrum. The mission statement here is to create the world’s fastest off roader. Trying to define that is like nailing jelly to a wall, and a Nürburgring lap time isn’t going to tell the whole story. It’s about bandwidth, creating something that can do preposterous things off road while also behaving in normal conditions. So Octa is the answer…

Google ‘silly cars – Japan’ and you’ll be fed images of kei trucks and kaido racers, or maybe even those Mario Kart go-karts that whizz around central Tokyo. But those are all white belt, this lot are 10th degree black belt bizarre. The locals call them ‘high lift’. Inspired by American monster trucks, they are the exact opposite of the Japanese kei truck. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, these giants roamed the streets of major cities across Japan. Hilux trucks, Land Cruisers and Delicas all became favourites among Japan’s cash laden youth. All good things come to an end though, and once the economic bubble burst, these behemoths started dying out. One garage in the northern city of Sendai, though, keeps the side exit torches burning – 4x4 Presents…

Now we know what you’re thinking: will I understand Round Up 5: Super Delta Force if I haven’t played the previous four games? Well don’t worry because, not only were there no ‘previous four games’, you’ll definitely understand Round Up 5 if you ever played Chase HQ, which was the game that this merrily and shamelessly ripped off. Round Up 5 did offer its own spin on the formula. For a start, rather than settling for a relatively modest Porsche 928, Round Up 5 opted for a bright yellow Ferrari F40. If you’re not going to pay manufacturer licensing fees anyway, why settle for less? It also borrowed OutRun’s schtick of splitting the road at the end of each stage, giving you the option of which criminal to pursue next.…

8/10 HYUNDAI SANTA FE ULTIMATE HYBRID £50,700 1.6T 4cyl hybrid 212 bhp 9.6 secs 41.5 mpg 155 g/km LIFE’S HARD ENOUGH, DON’T you want your car to make things easier? The Santa Fe delivers with a seven-seat package that actually seats seven, and a range of hybrid options to suit everyone’s needs, based off a workhorse 1.6-litre petrol. There are lots of neat touches, and a few silly ones that you’ll show off to your friends once and never use again – like the UV sterilising glovebox, for instance. SB 8/10 SKODA ELROQ £33,350 63 kWh 201 bhp 8.0 secs 99 mph 260 miles SKODA’S NEW COMPACT SUV is all very sensible, following closely in the Enyaq’s footsteps and debuting the Czech firm’s smart new Modern Solid design language. Here it’s available…

£44,625 OTR/£46,697 as tested/£442 pcm  WHY IT’S HERE: Can this livened up EV prove that electric hot hatches are worth a go? DRIVER: GREG POTTS UP UNTIL NOW I HAVEN’T REALLY driven the VZ as a hot hatch should be driven. It’s hardly the car’s fault – my lack of home charging and the subsequent constant range anxiety means that I’m often unwilling to trade efficiency for a little bit of fun. And yet, stick the Born VZ into its sportiest ‘Cupra’ drive mode and it’s really quite impressive. The suspension immediately tightens up and the body is controlled well through bends, but the ride avoids being too crashy and there’s actually decent steering feel. Helps when the rear wheels are doing the driving, of course. The ‘Sport’ setting for the…

There was outrage on Twitter at the end of 2024, not because its owner (who purchased the platform to remove political bias and embrace free speech) decided to go ahead and do the exact opposite from his own account, but because the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, decided to remove its World Of TopGear exhibition triggering speculation as to what would happen to all of the star cars. “I had no idea there was even an exhibition there!” gasped one Twitter user, which is understandable considering it’s only been at the museum for the past… oooooh… 15 years. “This wouldn’t have happened if the original three were still there,” bemoaned yet another. Random. Resident pain enthusiast and Land Rover Defender owner, Simon Bond, was tasked with finding homes for the various…

£76,140 OTR/£79,481 as tested/£1,141 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: Does a utilitarian off-roader work as a lifestyle vehicle?  DRIVER: OLLIE MARRIAGE IT’S CALLED THE GRENADIER BY LeTech, and right now my plain normal Grenadier is dead to me. All I want is this daft, trans-Icelandic thing on its silly big wheels with a silly big row of orange spotlights. I spend an afternoon churning about in the mud and hoot like a hyena the whole time. Short of nosing it up against a tree, it’s essentially unstoppable. LeTech is a German modifier of off-roaders. It famously created the G4×4² for Mercedes and has now partnered with Ineos to work on the Grenadier. The aim is to add a new level of capability to what – as I’ve found out over the past…

£49,990 when new /£27,000 as tested WHY IT’S HERE: Is a used Tesla just as good as a new one? DRIVER: PAUL HORRELL OUR LONG TERM TEST REPORTS don’t commonly end with the odo as high as 37,699 miles. But then they don’t usually start at 30,000 as this secondhand one did. So let’s first answer the questions we posed in that first report… “Will longevity of the fit and finish be an issue?” Well, there are some strange mismatches between panels and interior trim parts. Those haven’t got any worse, and apart from slightly shiny driver’s seat leather they don’t strike me as any different from my memories of driving Model 3s when they were new in that era. “Is the dreaded battery degradation really a thing?” Well, Tesla isn’t…

STIG vs SUPERVAN A 2,000bhp, electric Ford Transit with silly downforce, slick tyres and Stig behing the wheel. It couldn't be the fastest thing on four wheels to ever lap the TopGear track… could it? SANTA’S LITTLE HELPER No better place to do a roadtrip than New Zealand, just ask Ollie Marriage. Heís been from top to toe of the antipodean islands in a Santa Fe to deliver copies of the magazine to subscribers OCTA-GONE The most powerful Defender ever was launched to the world in South Africa. Jack Rix tries his best to break the 626bhp, 553lb ft, rally ready offroader on a variety of harsh and unforgiving terrain F-ZERO TO HERO OK reader time to strap in for some 1,013bhp, 516lb ft singly seat V10 madness. Kiwi David…

The finest failures in automotive history “I have not failed,” Thomas Edison once said. “I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And when it came to winning Formula One races, no team found more ways that didn’t work than Minardi, the plucky Italian outfit that, over 21 glorious years, became a byword for wholehearted motorsport failure. A family business, Minardi competed in Formula Two in the early 1980s. The fact this yielded no great success failed to dissuade the team from stepping up to F1 in 1985, where it continued its admirable strategy of ‘losing, but enthusiastically’. The stats are impressive, just not necessarily in a good way. Over two decades in F1, Minardi contested 346 races and some 20,000 laps in total. Championships? Zero. Wins? Zero. Podium finishes?…

Pub ammo While the Golf GTI was launched in Europe in 1976, it didn’t arrive in the US until the early 1980s FOUR DECADES HAVE PASSED, GIVE OR take, since Volkswagen Golf GTI owners in the States started bolting on Koni shocks, Monza dual tip exhausts, and Kamei body kits. (Not to mention adding Fittipaldi steering wheels, Blaupunkt Berlin stereos, and Escort radar detectors by the score.) No doubt, the Vee Dub tuning community has grown a bit since then. MkVIII GTI owners enjoy a bounty of bolt-ons that make a 1980s aftermarket catalogue look sparser than the Five Guys menu. But how to choose the right gear? What if you just bolted on everything? Sorting through a bevy of bolt-ons is the theme of this episode of TopGear: American…

LOTUS EXIGE S2 Mid-engined sports cars may be beautifully balanced, but it’s very tricky to show off the engine when it’s buried deep in the car. Lotus swapped the K-series engine for Toyota’s 2ZZ-G E four pot when it launched the Series 2 Exige, but it didn't look all that exciting with the cover popped up. LEXUS LS 500 Lots of carmakers fill their engine bays with black plastic covers these days (the supercharged VS F-Type R springs to mind), but none seem to have gone as far as Lexus with the current LS 500. There is actually a twin-turbo 3.4-litre V6 under there, but you wouldn't know it. JAGUAR XJS Ask most hypercar creators and they'll tell you that big V12s shouldn't just sound like a work of art,…

The day you become the owner of a Citroen SM should be a good day. It is a stunning creation. Elegant yet bewildering, ingenious yet flawed, prescient yet ultimately a dead end – the SM is genuinely unique and almost impossible to describe. Other than to say it is wilfully, brilliantly, infuriatingly and gloriously French. So, so French. But it has an Italian (Maserati) engine. Like I said, the SM confounds at every turn. It is something else entirely. In case you’re unfamiliar with the SM, I’d encourage you to have a poke around the web and drink in the sheer insanity of it all. The short version is that it’s a front-engined GT car launched in 1970 that built on the innovations of the DS saloon and combined them…

Anglesey, early January and the sun’s not long up. The point is we can tell. There it is, in the sky, golden fingers of light reaching down in front of Snowdonia. Which is currently living up to its name. We’re heading that way tomorrow, but let’s not worry about that now, because today our luck is in. Truth be told, we’ve all been looking forward to this test since we toddled off to munch mince pies. Hot hatches. They’re brilliant. They’re also a rapidly dying breed for reasons that I… well… I, um, I just can’t work out. We’ve got 10 cars here, and that’s pretty much every hot hatch available today. A decade back we did a similar grab ’em all hot hatch test. In the end we had…

AMÉDÉE GORDINI Racer, engineer, entrepreneur One of those engineers (props too to Carlo Abarth) who took affordable mass made cars after WW2 and hopped them up for both racing and the road. A succession of big hearted, small engined Renaults bore his name – Dauphine, R8, R12, during which time Renault bought his company. Next in that line was the MkI R5 Turbo Alpine (Gordini in the UK because Chrysler owned the Alpine name here). OK, he was in his 80s by then so had little to do with developing that car. But it bore his spirit. It was by many definitions the first hot hatch – by weeks versus the Golf – and it spawned generations of hot hatches from Renault and later RenaultSport, which egged on rival Peugeot…

Peugeot 205 GTI 1984 #BUILT: 332,000 PRICE NEW: £8,445 PRICE NOW: £15,000 The car that, above all others, epitomises and defines the hot hatch. It wasn’t the first, it wasn’t the fastest, but back in the late 1980s, it was the greatest. Pretty, light, with a lusty 130bhp 1.9-litre engine (yep, we rate that over the 1.6), wonderfully engaging steering and a chassis which entered into legend, the 205 GTI remains perhaps the most iconic hot hatch of all – even today, some 40 years since it first appeared. Such a pretty car, and driving one today with its fabulously slim pillars, light cabin and tinny doors is a reminder of just how far safety has come. Just 860kg people, and not an airbag in sight. Renault Clio 182 Trophy…

Ah, the great outdoors. Fresh air, endless sky and the instant need to stand hunched over the blackened bars of a sausage laden BBQ. Of course, the reality of camping in the UK is a caravan in a boggy field eating lukewarm baked beans on toast, but whichever way you look at it, camping requires a whole lot of stuff to make the ordeal bearable. This is where the Japanese excel. Being comfortable is as much a part of Japanese culture as mastering chopsticks or eating hamburgers without the buns. Portable stoves, drip coffee brewing, assorted bento boxes and comfy chairs all slot together with unparallelled levels of organisation. The outdoor lifestyle is big business in Japan and the number of gizmos and gadgets is impressive. Unfortunately, there are very…

£10,000 (£15,440 new) 2.0 4cyl 158 bhp 7.6 secs 47.9 mpg 1,275 kg HERO Cheap to buy, economical and fabulous looks ZERO No power steering, sounds like a van at times, base for many kit cars MY UPBRINGING IN A FAMILY OF carholics coincided with the fabulous era of 1990s Japan, when NSXs battled Ferraris, GT-Rs broke Nürburgring records and the first of the 10-second Supras emerged. Toyota ruled my roost, not the MR2 initially, but the MkIV Supra. It was the first ‘fast’ vehicle I was introduced to: my brother owned a twin turbo mimic of the one in Fast and Furious. He even used it as the courier car for his chippy. My early enthusiasm for pestering my siblings to teach me about cars, combined with my ability to…

£116,200 OTR/£122,250 as tested/£1,490 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: Why is our new Audi RS7 Performance such a hit with the public? DRIVER: ROWAN HORNCASTLE YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF THE North Coast 500 – the epic 500 mile self drive loop that lassos the stunning coastal scenery of the Scottish Highlands. But Yorkshire wants to bring the smoke to Scotland. With the help of the same mastermind behind the NC500, its tourist board has stitched together its own scenic tapestry and called it Route YC (short for Yorkshire Coast). Unlike the NC500 which struts its stuff as one continuous loop, Route YC is more of a spider’s web – a 250 mile network of overlapping concentric circuits that stretch from Withernsea, which clings to the county’s southern hem and the Humber,…

£44,635 OTR/£47,960 as tested/£516 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: All the car your family will ever need – but will you want for more? DRIVER: BEN PULMAN WITH SCHOOLS ON A BREAK, ENFORCED CHILDCARE evaporates any chance of a decent long term report. Even the generic family stuff you do can’t be reported on properly because you’ve incessantly got tiny humans with you. So, welcome to the worst holiday photo album ever. I haven’t got a picture to illustrate our (smug) zero emission run to the airport with a full boot on 15 December because it was 5.30am, dark, we were running late, and had a mountain of luggage. And I haven’t got one from the return journey either as our son was sick on the flight. Apologies. The following day’s six-hour…

THE POTTS REPORT 2 WHAT IS IT? 1991 BMW E30 Design Edition in neon green 1/50 WRITER: KATIE POTTS “IT’S REALLY MINE NOW.” I STILL can’t quite believe it, standing here with the keys to my very own BMW E30. The drive back was filled with smiles all around from myself and all the people I passed in London, giving me a thumbs up and showing appreciation for seeing a classic car driving past them. The first thing it needed when I got home was a good wash, after sitting for so long it had gained a lovely green tinge to the canvas roof (almost matching the body, how appropriate). And, oh boy, once clean, reality hit – I can now see all the imperfections and rust properly. But this…

Buying a car is the easy bit – you spend months looking for exactly what you want, read what everyone has to say about it, then when you find the perfect car you turn up and it’s gone. Repeat until you’re ready to lower your standards and hand over some cash for a vehicle that you don’t quite want. Selling is a whole different kettle of ball games, it’s that much tougher trying to persuade someone to hand over their precious notes for something that it’s been firmly established you don’t want anymore. It requires organisation and a thick skin. I realise that I fundamentally lack credibility on the topic – the last car that I sold was a second gen Mercedes A-Class during one of the more relaxed periods…

When Hironao Yokomaku joined a French restaurant aged 16, little did he know how much he’d influence Japan’s car culture in the following decades. Now aged 63, the Tsukuba based tuner shows no signs of slowing down having just unveiled a new project alongside Fast and Furious actor Sung Kang. Because for nearly four decades Yokomaku-san has led the iconic Japanese tuning brand VeilSide. Many of us will be familiar with VeilSide’s work from the Tokyo Drift edition of Fast and Furious – especially the ‘Fortune’ Mazda RX-7 which remains a poster car for the entire franchise. But long before F&F became a household name, VeilSide had established itself as one of Japan’s most advanced tuners, building the fastest cars in the country with exteriors almost as loud as the…

1. USA  Self-driving taxi goes rogue, drives in tight circles in a car park Are we ready to hand over control to driverless cars? LA tech entrepreneur Mike Johns became trapped in a Waymo robotaxi on his way to the airport after it began continuously doing loops in the car park. Good luck trying to get them to believe that one at the check in desk. 2. Uruguay Artist creates Pagani Zonda out of 100,000 gold coins A Uruguayan artist by the name of Joaquin Arbiza was commissioned to create a one off, definitely not V12 powered Pagani Zonda art car. The lifesized model car is built from over 100,000 coins and showcases the collector’s admiration for mildly famous footballer Lionel Messi. Impressive, huh? 3. USA Driver returns car by…

THE GOOD The worst aesthetic part of the Y was the ugly front end. With the current changes it looks OK FastDoc It’s not a bad looking car Jon Gillespie Basically they got rid of the ugly bits and kept the rest the same. Pretty logical approach. Works for me Simon Harrison Looks great, will probably upgrade from my Model 3 Jon-Lennart Landaas ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS Lee Reid THE BAD Now it just looks like any other crossover on the street. Way to not stand out! Larry Moore DID THE DESIGNERS JUST USE TRACING PAPER? Max McKenzie Looks like the same garbage it was before Jamie White Yawnnn… still a Tesla, innit? Honest Wow they added a light bar front and back like everyone else did five years ago Shameke Forsythe…

FORD FOCUS RS (2016/17) What is it? A blue collar hero, but one that looks like it wants to eat a racetrack. If you can, Grasshopper Green is the colour to go for. Luridly excellent. Why are we interested? Because for under £20,000 you can get yourself an AWD, 350bhp proper tarmac terrorist Focus RS. Seems like a no brainer to us. Kind of a cheap, modern restomod? Yup. A well sorted and revived RS has to be more attractive than the latest warm hatch. How many are there? RS? MkI, 4,500-ish with 2,150 in the UK. MkII was 11,500 with 4k in the UK, 500 fewer built of the MkIII with the same sold here.…

A TRIP OUT OF CALAIS DOWN FRANCE’S A26 any time from Christmas to Easter will put you in a convoy of UK plated cars with ski boxes on the roof. Very many of them will have AWD. Too many will come back with body damage. See, 4WD will get you up a mountain better than 2WD. Double the traction. But it’ll make not the slightest difference to how you come down. Exactly the same braking ability. Or lack of it. You’ll notice your ski guide turns up at the bottom of the lift in a careworn Renault Kangoo not a shiny Audi Avant quattro. That’s not just because you don’t pay them enough. Look. They’ll be on winter tyres, which are more critical in snow than 4WD. Remember, traction –…

Q: CAN SIM RACING HELP ‘PROPER’ RACERS? I renewed my racing licence in December. Not because I’m batting away calls from racing teams desperate to secure my services based on my mediocre iRacing results, but because if I didn’t renew it before the end of 2024, it would expire and I’d have to do the test again. Not something that tends to keep Lewis Hamilton up at night, I’d imagine. He’s probably lying awake, staring at the ceiling, worrying about which special edition, one of a kind Ferrari he’s going to spec to drive to work this year. Going through the renewal did make me reflect on the one and only season of motor racing I completed, back in 2018, and how it related to the sim racing that has…

After a few years of F1 drivers being less keen to leave their seats than United fans after an away win at City, there’s a huge buzz around the changing of the guard in 2025. Six, yes six rookies will be joining the sport. So what impact will the class of 2025 make? Filling a seven-time world champion’s shoes is tall order, but 18-year-old Italian prodigy Andrea Kimi Antonelli is an audacious talent, with a glittering karting career behind him. A member of the Mercedes junior team since 2019, I interviewed him back in 2022, and despite his diminutive age (and stature) he has a calm confidence about him. He blitzed F4 and has won in F2. But his free practice debut at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix ended in…

Jack Rix INTO FOCUS The hype had been deafening, we couldn’t give it an easy ride. So we didn’t, collecting it from the factory in Cologne in the depths of winter and hot footing it to the fabled cols of the Rallye Monte Carlo and back. Five days and over 2,000 miles of hot hatch punishment and ham fisted, computer assisted drifts. Bliss. In fact, surfacing this memory has made me scour the classifieds. Ollie Marriage ALTITUDE SLICKNESS Four Fords on the Col de Galibier. The XR3i couldn’t cope with the altitude and kept stalling. The ST was so wayward it wanted to torque steer off the side of the mountain. The ST170 was deft but gutless. The new 2019 Focus ST was brilliant. Sometimes it’s not about how good…

Suzuki Swift Sport 2006 PRICE: £2,200 With just 123bhp on tap from its high revving, nat asp 1.6, the first Swift Sport was only really fast enough in a straight line for a ‘warm hatch’ title. And yet, lift off the throttle mid-corner and, with the rear of the car overtaking the front, you’d realise that it was a serious bit of mini hot hatchery. Sportier bumpers and spoilers, stiffer suspension, twin exhaust pipes, and red sport seats were a giveaway too. Plus, you can now get one for the price of a monthly energy bill. Renault Megane RS 225 Cup ’05 PRICE: £2,500 Obviously, what you really want is the hardcore Megane R26.R – the car that pretty much created the track day ready hot hatch genre – but they’re…

“THE JAPANESE ARE EXTREMELY GOOD AT PROBLEM SOLVING” We’re crawling along a river bed, a convoy of Jimnys and Buggies unperturbed by boulders and icy torrents. “It doesn’t look like Japan, right?” a driver yells, while wrestling his Suzuki over Martian terrain surrounded by mountains covered in an explosive display of autumnal colours. He’s definitely been on the sake, because you couldn’t get any more Japanese than this. What he means, I think, is that despite Japan building some of the world’s greatest off roaders, and the country being 75 per cent mountain and 65 per cent dense forest, off roading isn’t as popular as you might think. Not compared to Australia, the UK or US. Japan’s 27 million acres of national parks pales in comparison to the USA’s 840…

Back to that river bed. I knew that Jimnys had a reputation for being capable off roaders, but this is just on another level. Walking alongside them, they had less trouble than I did on foot. I’m with an assortment of deconstructed Jimnys and a tube frame buggy. Full disclosure, there are probably more challenging trails and off-road parks for getting those wheels up and down in articulation, but for the convenience of getting this ragtag bunch together, in a picturesque location, we’ve gathered here, in the mountains of Gifu prefecture. Finding places to enjoy the great outdoors from the comfort of your 4x4 is a bit tricky in Japan. Shiro-san, today’s unofficial leader and owner of the off-roading shop Benchmade, tells me there aren’t really any written rules about…

I have often been accused of not factoring in enough time for photography on a shoot. On this occasion I also forgot to account for eating, sleeping and going to the toilet. A company called Trans Am Worldwide is to blame. It had just built a Chevy Camaro SS-based tribute to the 1977 Trans Am roundly abused by Burt Reynolds in the all time movie classic – Smokey and the Bandit – complete with 717bhp 7.4-litre supercharged V8. Our mission was clear: borrow the car and see if we could do what Bo Bandit had done before – drive from Atlanta, Georgia to Texarkana, Texas (to secure a crate or two of bootleg beer) and back in 28 hours. Well, we donned our stetson (standard equipment) and gave it a…

We’ve seen it coming from a mile off. No, not the canary yellow, hippo sized BMW M5, which is to Q-car subtlety what Elon Musk is proving to be to international relations. I’m talking about hybrid. It’s everywhere now, from crossovers to supercars, electrical assistance boosting power and efficiency. And yet here, in the car segment it’s surely most suited to, hybrid has achieved a level of controversy never seen before. There aren’t many better homes for a plug in hybrid system than a super saloon, you’d imagine. They’re not supercars, so there’s space to package the hardware. You’ve got a comeback if anyone challenges you for driving a gas guzzling V8, and outrageous figures to brag about among your people. It adds a dimension to the car, improves response…

£79,355 OTR/£93,395 as tested/£1,274 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: Is an XXL dad wagon still a versatility king when it’s electric? DRIVER: ANDY FRANKLIN ACCORDING TO THE RAC, ITS PATROLS ATTENDED 22,703 pothole related breakdowns in 2024, due to the UK suffering from an epidemic of an estimated one million potholes. And that’s just on my school run. You might wonder how someone damages their car when the potholes are clearly there to be seen? Driving home from a New Year celebration, it was wet and dark. I saw the small puddle and thought nothing of it. Hitting it should have only made a small splash… sadly, hidden underneath was a huge pothole. There was an almighty bang and the car lurched. You can see in the picture where the wheel dropped…

£115,435 OTR/£117,375 as tested/£1,784 pcm WHY IT’S HERE: Is the biggest Defender the best? DRIVER: JACK RIX THE 130 HAS BEEN ON AN OFF ROAD ADVENTURE. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the country so it was left in the hands of Ollie Marriage (outdoor enthusiast, default expedition leader) and Harry Rudd (videographer, tasked with driving it from Sussex to Strata Florida in Wales and bringing it back unscathed). Things didn’t go to plan. Mr Marriage first. “Quite funny to see a fountain gushing up from a Welsh bog. That’s what happens when you puncture a tyre underwater. It takes me a second to work out what’s going on. And a further second to realise I’m seeing double. Yep, the same rock slices the sidewalls of both nearside tyres. Swear words happen.” Mr…

REPORT 6 MINI COOPER S After six months l’m ready to passfair judgement on the touchscreen saucer the Mini dépends on for almost ail interior interactions. The full report is on TopGear.com, but in short: not punchably awful, but forces me to breathe in poisonous fumes on a regular basis. C+, could do better. OK REPORT 4 VAUXHALL ASTRA GSe An annoying rattle has developed in the driver’s door. O at least I think it’s in the dh/^’s door. Could be further down below. Elsewhere, l’d noticed that the wheelnut caps were starting to corrode - see the pic-but after the GSE’s recent service, those hæ/e been swapped out. Though it’s nw/missing one. D’oh. VP REPORT 3 VOLKSWAGEN ID.7 TOURER With the mercury hovering little higher than 0°C, it’s certainly…