Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix @rixjack jack.rix@bbctopgearmagazine.com The world of cars and consumer tech have been hurtling towards a collision point for years… this month we have impact. Where were you when TopGear got the exclusive on the launch of Apple CarPlay Ultra? Yes, it’s car related and we tested the new system in a suitably fruity 700bhp Aston Martin, but in essence it’s a first drive… of some software. As TG contributor and YouTube tech king Marques Brownlee commented on our video with flat disbelief, “Tech videos on TopGear.” The tech takeover of cars has been creeping up on us for a while and only highlighted by the massive influx of new Chinese cars in the UK – every single one of which we drive and rate on page 72. For now, these…

IF YOU OWN AN iPHONE AND DON’T drive a car inherited from your grandma, chances are you’ll know all about Apple CarPlay, the now ubiquitous software that lets you mirror your smartphone on your car’s infotainment screen for a familiar looking and easy to use way of accessing navigation apps, podcasts, music, messages and more. Well, that’s now offcially old tech because the next gen CarPlay – CarPlay Ultra – has launched, and we’ve had a play. Whereas the old system was a mirror of your phone and selected apps, all the computing was done on the phone and the car displayed that info like a monitor. Here there’s a fair bit more going on. There’s still some stuff that’s mirrored and computed on the phone, but that’s now mixed…

There are bad years, and then there’s this. Life F1, 1990. Not only the worst season in the history of motorsport, but the worst season in the history of any sport. It started with a W12 engine designed by ex-Ferrari engineer Franco Rocchi, and a mysterious Italian businessman named Ernesto Vita. As F1’s turbo era came to an end in 1988, Vita – for reasons unclear – became convinced Rocchi’s unusual W12 was the perfect fit for the new naturally aspirated 3.5-litre regulations. He commissioned Rocchi to build him a race W12, certain the orders would immediately come pouring in from the big F1 teams. They didn’t. Weirdly, the big teams weren’t lining up to buy an unproven engine from an outfit with zero race experience. So, faced with an…

Q: CAN THE OUT RUN MOVIE BE GOOD? It’s been a bit of a red letter month for me, or perhaps more accurately a red Testarossa month. News recently broke that fresh off the back of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, which generated a billion dollars and introduced a whole new generation of kids to Jim Carrey’s hypermobile face, Sega’s next Hollywood project is going to be a movie based on legendary arcade racing game Out Run. This appeals to me on two counts, firstly I’m a huge fan of the original video game and secondly I find bad movies just as entertaining as good ones. Yes I’m aware there’s something wrong with me. Alright, we don’t know for sure that the Out Run movie will be terrible. It’ll feature…

1922 RLTF ● HIT Alfa was race first, road second. In the hands of Ugo Sivocci, the lightened, 6cyl RLTF gave AR its first big international race victory, taking the chequered flag in the 1923 Targa Florio. A couple of months later, the RLTF won the Ravenna Grand Prix, handing a first win to an ambitious young driver by the name of Enzo Ferrari. Enzo would run Alfa’s race outfit, before departing to establish his own car company. Whatever happened to those guys? 1932 P3 TIPO B ● HIT Vittorio Jano’s 8cyl, twin supercharged masterpiece – and the world’s first true single seater GP racecar – dominated track racing in the early 1930s, establishing Alfa as the Red Bull of the era, only 1,000 per cent cooler. Though it started…

China’s car output is now bigger than Europe’s and North America’s combined. Small wonder the Chinese have lots of companies and brands. The cat’s cradle you see here is a gross simplification. Before 1980, few private cars existed there. Then the state – national and provincial – built factories jointly owned with foreign carmakers, making the foreigners’ designs. Truly local cars appeared only gradually. This century, demand has exploded, with roads to match. Between 2000 and 2012, China built more highway length than the entire US Interstate system. The government has used EVs and PHEVs to encourage local brands to overtake the old foreigners. Life for them is getting harder now.…

SKODA ELROQ SE L 60 £33,350 THE ELROQ IS DESPERATELY hard to fault. And believe us, we’ve tried. Basically a shrunken Enyaq, it looks tremendous, drives neatly, is effcient and roomy, balances tech and switchgear, and still dares to be cheaper than rivals. Its one weakness is that its smaller footprint hasn’t unlocked any magic in the handling. Pity. The Born VZ proves the MEB platform can deliver… JH ABARTH 600e SCORPIONISSIMA £39,875 LIKE THOSE LITTLE JARS OF yeast extract you’ll love this or hate it, but if you insist on one you should get a limited run Scorpionissima before all 1,949 are gone. Doesn’t make sense unless you get the silliest fastest version. The drive is a surprise – feels like you can tip it into a corner at any…

What is it? A startup supercar by numbers: exotic Italian name, spaceframe steel chassis, with a hefty Chevy LS7 engine dropped in the middle and tuned to beyond 700bhp. Did they actually build any? At least a couple of working prototypes exist, drive, and have taken part in Italian supercar meetups and driving events. But even with modest targets of building just five cars per year, evidence of Evantras making it into even limited production is scant. Where are they now? The last announcement from Mazzanti was the lighter, purer, um, Pura model back in 2021, which apparently weighs 1,290kg and develops 750bhp from an LT2 V8. The Millecavalli version promises 1,200bhp from a twin turbo, 7.3-litre V8. The company doesn’t have a website, and has gone ominously quiet on…

What is it? A 2.5-litre five pot that you can pick up in great condition for £30k. Not quite a Bugatti Chiron – 355bhp vs 1,578bhp – but still a great choice. Why are we interested? It’s a coupe, it’s all wheel drive and has some driving characteristics that are very similar to the Chiron. Honest. So… it’s a driver’s car? The TT RS delivers on rapid cross country pace like you wouldn’t believe – on back roads, it’s a machine. Should I buy one? The TT RS does 0–62mph in 4.5 seconds and has a top speed of 174mph. For £16k–£50k, it’s a lot of fun for the money.…

FORZA HORIZON 5 £55, Playstation 5 You might be looking at this month’s game of the month and wondering if you’ve suffered some sort of head injury. Or wondering if we have. Didn’t Forza Horizon 5 come out nearly four years ago? Well yes, it did, just not on Playstation 5. Xbox’s flagship racer is now available on Sony’s console, rubbing shoulders with longtime rival Gran Turismo. And while other games released on PS5, such as The Crew Motorfest offered capable tribute acts, Horizon remains the top dog. What’s more, if you own a PS5 Pro, it’s actually the prettiest console version of the game available. If you’re a staunch Playstation loyalist who has not yet had the opportunity to bathe Mexico in tyre smoke, it’s still a great time…

We’re out in the high desert, 45 minutes or so from Las Vegas. Just over the hill there’s a firing range and an old graveyard for military helicopters… all around it’s sand, rock, wickedly jagged terrain, patches of spiky yucca and haunting Joshua trees. Soon the area will be torn up by the deranged Ford Bronco El Bandito and its 5.2-litre supercharged V8, which could drown out a raging firefight and a whole squadron of Black Hawks. But first we have to say hi to El Bandito’s handlers and start capturing the photography and video required. “So,” I begin. “Um, do you think it might be possible – and it’s fine if you can’t – but maybe you could…” I’m prevaricating because what I’m about to say sounds completely absurd…

In the realm of Very Fast Cars, things happen s-l-o-w-l-y. Last month, TopGear brought you a world exclusive Lotus Evija test drive. Revealed in 2019, the world’s most powerful road car wasn’t ready for either of its customers until mid-2025. If that strikes you as running later than a Northern rail service, what about the Aston Martin Valkyrie? The V12 F1 moonshot finally starred at TG’s 2024 Speed Week eight years (and two CEOs) after it was announced. And those are the cars that scramble out of the primordial ooze of a wishful rendering into carbon clad reality. If you slapped a deposit down on an Arash AF10 (2016), Dendrobium D-1 (2017) or heaven forbid the second gen Tesla Roadster (2017) your investment’s about as safe as $hawktuah coin. So…

When most people buy an F1 game, they expect to be doing the exciting bit – you know, the driving at 200mph. Occasionally though, a game appears that puts you in charge of the plate spinning management skills required behind the scenes to keep a Grand Prix team running. Yes, it does feel a bit like turning up to a fancy dress party as Batman’s accountant but, hey, it takes all sorts. Grand Prix Manager 2 from Microprose had to sell the fantasy of being a team principal way back in the mid 1990s, decades before Netflix made that seem in any way a glamorous role. Like most management games, it’s predominately staring at a series of tarted up spreadsheets, in this case balancing the budget and the performance of…

Actually, Merlin McCormack does not identify as a ‘car dealer’. Reclining in his tumbledown office, I ask how he prefers to be branded. “We like to wind people up. We decorated our f**king showroom like Terry Tibbs’ [the used car salesman from Fonejacker] because the thing is a complete farce. I dunno what I am. Guess I’m an idiot who likes cars.” Self deprecation and a sense of humour (along with a bottomless well of car knowledge inherited from his restoration mad dad) are part of what’s got Merlin, only 31 years young, here today. Lord of all he surveys here in his showroom – a ‘need to know’ location stuffed with 1960s Americana, late 1990s Ferraris, myriad Porsches and smatterings of esoteric Alfas, Fiats and Astons. We’re somewhere in…

THEY WILL BE PARTYING ON THE STREETS OF KRAGUJEVAC tonight, because the Yugo is back. Yep, entrepreneur, engineer, automotive exec and university professor Dr Aleksandar Bjelić has acquired the naming rights to Zastava’s communist cult hero, and he’s teamed up with Serbian designer Darko Marčeta to produce this 1:5 scale model that previews a future production car. Looks super cool, doesn’t it? And don’t worry, because the Yugo isn’t about to become yet another identikit crossover. The newly formed Yugo Automobile showed off its model at the Car Design Event 2025 and said that the production car would be a B segment hatchback, so it’ll rival things like the Toyota Yaris, Renault Clio and Volkswagen Polo. It gets better too. The new Yugo will apparently launch with combustion engines and…

What’s Frank up to? He’s no stranger to China, with trips aimed at getting flying cars (VTOL) on the way to production. He’s also just launched an eyewear range and is working on a “very exciting update” in the automotive world Yangwang U9 A NEW WAVE OF CHINESE CAR DESIGN IS upon us. While traditional European and US marques play it safe, Yangwang has thrown the rulebook out of the window. The Chinese are not merely catching up, they’re looking further ahead, charting a future in which they define the direction of aesthetics and performance. The U9’s design is unapologetically extrovert. Rather than conforming to European or US tastes, the U9 shows how the Chinese design language is evolving, without any heritage or baggage from the past holding them back.…

On the face of it McLaren has everything. A rich history including the most iconic road car of all time, nine constructors’ titles in F1, a personal story that takes in humble beginnings, personal triumph, outrageous Can-Am racers and cruel tragedy. Plus, it is dominating at the highest echelons of motorsport once again and has just announced a return to Le Mans in the Hypercar class. Oh, and the 750S is one of the greatest supercars ever made. What a dream. Yet it has just been taken over by Forseven. What is Forseven, you might ask? Well, quite. The LinkedIn page proudly states it is “Crafting unforgettable cars that blend British luxury with visionary technologies, forever.” It’s true that nobody has forgotten any of the cars. Mostly because the company…

BY LAW, ALFA ARTICLES START WITH AN ITALIAN exclamation. Here goes: mamma mia, the petrol Quadrifoglio lives! Bravissimo! Etc. Until recently Alfa planned the next Giulia and Stelvio as all electric. Now, CEO Santo Ficili says that’s changed. Tariff chaos and a slow in the EV transition mean that flexibility is a must. “There will be PHEV and HEV and BEV.” He goes on, “My dream is to keep alive the Quadrifoglio. We can’t forget this. Quadrifoglio can be BEV, why not? But it can also be ICE.” Viva V6. The electric Alfas will be first, with Stelvio at the end of this year and Giulia next – main versions first then Quadrifoglio. They can have up to 800V for fast charging, big batteries for long range, and rear or twin…

The Yorkshire Dales. The sun’s out. The roads twist and flow. The Ribblehead viaduct was just back there, now we’re getting stone barns and gambolling lambs. Spring is in the air, roofs are down, warm air buffets the cockpits and all seems right with the world. If you were pottering along here in an MX-5 you’d be pretty certain life didn’t get much better. And you’d be right. An MX-5 would blend in better, tread more lightly, be more lamb-like than either the Vantage Roadster or Roma Spider. You could save yourself a fortune, and that would be a very Yorkshire thing to do. They don’t really go in for a Prancing Horse up here. Earlier, driving through Hawes, I was feeling a little exposed. Rightly, since the word I…