BBC Top Gear Magazine November 2025

@jack_rix @rixjack jack.rix@bbctopgearmagazine.com Ever since we first saw the Aston Martin AM-RB 001's shocking silhouette in July 2016 – like a sliver of Adrian Newey's brain extruded into an insectile sled – and the AMG Project One at the 2017 Frankfurt show, with its audacious idea to put a real F1 engine into a road car… we've been waiting (patiently) for this moment. A chance to put two F1 cars for the road head to head, to discover whose unhinged idea actually delivers the more rewarding driving experience. After both projects suffered multiple delays and public fails – yep, turns out developing two of the most mechanically ambitious motor cars ever made is quite tricky – we drove them both, separately, in 2023. The Valkyrie first in March on the…

When Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia was just 13 years old, Ugandan despot Idi Amin claimed that he had been instructed by God to expel the circa 80,000 Ugandan Asians from their country. They had 90 days to leave. As a child, Sukhpal had developed a love of cars by accompanying his father in a MkI Ford Cortina to the three Total petrol stations that the family owned in Jinja, a city 50 miles east of the Ugandan capital Kampala. Now, they arrived at RAF Greenham Common as refugees with nothing. A year later and they were finally resettled into social housing in London. “Can you imagine the cars that I saw in London at that time? That was the first thing that struck me,” he recalls. “There were Jaguar XJ6s and…

THIS IS THE FERRARI 849 TESTAROSSA. It replaces the SF90 and uses a 4.0-litre V8 with two turbos, supplemented by three e-motors, one which offers support to the rear axle, the other two managing a front wheel each, giving both AWD and torque vectoring capabilities as per the SF90. There's some 50-odd horsepower more than before, all carved from the internal combustion engine – mainly because the electric horsepower is limited to the 217bhp possible from the 7.45kWh lithium ion battery. So there's bigger turbos with low friction bearings from the F80, chunkier intercoolers, new cylinder heads to go with bigger blowers, a different block, intake plenums, valvetrain and fuel rail. All that drives through the same eight speed F1-style paddleshifted box, although as ever it's purportedly faster, better and…

TG's ASSOCIATE EDITOR RECKONS THE 849 TESTAROSSA HAS GOT IT RIGHT Did you ever get the feeling that the SF90 never really hit the spot, despite being a twin turbo V8 with nearly 1,000bhp? I did. I always felt like it was a gamechanger wrapped in the skin of an NPC from a computer game. Not so the 849. OK, so the Testarossa name is a stretch - and I think what makes people so aerated - but the car has influences… F80, Daytona, even 308. And I like it, mainly because it's different. I get a lot of 1970s vibes, and it honestly looks great in a subtle colour. Why the hate? “I like it, mainly because it's different” TG's HEAD OF CONTENT STRATEGY WORRIES THAT FERRARI HAS RUN…

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE OF POLESTAR. A FUTURE WRAPPED around a four door performance GT that looks very much like the entirely delectable Precept concept we first saw way back in 2020. Yup, like the biggest comic book movie teaser ever, we've been waiting five years for this thing. There are two versions that'll be offered in the UK. The entry level car costs £89,500 and offers 737bhp, 599lb ft, the ability to go from 0–62mph in 3.9secs, and a range of up to 416 miles. Plump for the Performance Launch edition (£104,900) and you'll get the full 871bhp we've been promised for half a decade, a mighty 749lb ft, adaptive MagneRide dampers, a 0–62mph time of 3.2secs and – predictably – less range. Just the 351 miles for this…

VEHICLE TD GRID, OR V2G TO ITS MANY fans, has been around as an idea forever even if it's only just becoming reality. In effect it time shifts and location shifts power generation. Because it saves the electricity grid money, it'll save electric car drivers money. Here's how. The grid has lots of spare capacity at night, because most homes, offices, factories and other buildings are asleep. So as with any commodity in surplus, the grid sells electricity cheaply then. Come the morning and teatime peaks, the grid has a hard job keeping up. So that pushes up prices. Another thing. There's more and more wind generation off the country's east coast and Scotland. Power lines to get it to the south and west are expensive and ugly. So we…