Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

CONTENT TEAM OF THE YEAR MOTORING MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR The automotive industry is a constant battle zone, with the apex predators of the species constantly evolving to stay ahead of the pack. For some, being best in class is a core message that drives the whole organisation forwards, with the fear of losing the title too damaging to contemplate. For others, each successive generation is designed to challenge the market leader and prove their worth. Welcome, then, to an issue that celebrates the best of that dog-eat-dog battleground. It’s hard to think of a more sector-defining product than the Porsche 911 – a car that has been shorthand for the term ‘sports car’ for the past 52 years. In its latest iteration, in line with the rest of the…

SKIN TIGHT Mercedes wraps new SL in latex to promote fashion collection. Russian supermodel an optional extra GUILTY CONSCIENCE Florida woman’s Focus automatically dials emergency services as she flees the scene of an accident. Arrested. HEAVY SMOKER Welsh police attempting to stop a Peugeot 309 are forced to slow after driver uses home-made smokescreen. SQUEAKY CLEAN Chinese city of Nanjing to start fining the drivers of dirty vehicles because they affect the appearance of the city. STRAIGHT-LACED City council in Linz, Austria, condemned as “shameful” after it scraps gay-themed pedestrian crossing lights. “I mean he must really hate me, I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I’m losing a second just because of that” Seb Vettel on Fernando Alonso, over team radio at the Abu Dhabi GP. The lapped Spaniard…

OUR CHOICE OF THIS MONTH’S TOP-SPEC STUFF ICON E-FLYER It may resemble some Edwardian contraption, but this is very much a 21stcentury creation from the Californian retrogods at Icon, who specialise in putting old souls in new bodies. Having said that, it does borrow some early ideas, such as battery power, which at one time propelled most new-fangled motor carriages before petrol engines came along. So it’s an electric bicycle, of which there are many, but the difference is in the detail: hydroformed aluminium frame, forks made from billet aluminium and steel, handcrafted leather plus brushed nickel and brass details. You could almost treat it as an ornament. It’ll do 20mph in street spec or 36mph if you go for the race version, which you should. The range is about…

“ This is Ken Block’s kind of supercar” A car built to do skids. When all’s said and done and whether you actually choose to indulge or not, that’s the raison d’être of this new Lamborghini Huracán LP580-2. OK, one of the raisons. The other is both more relevant and prosaic: it enables Lamborghini to lower the ownership entry point by around £20,000. This allows the 4WD Huracán to continue its battle against the Ferrari 488 GTB and McLaren 650S, while the 2WD version can fight on a new front against the McLaren 570S, Audi R8 and Porsche 911 Turbo. OK, so it’s cheap for the top sector and expensive for the lower, but the arrival of this model undoubtedly enhances and extends Lamborghini’s market appeal. But let’s get back…

If the Volkswagen Polo GTI is the sensible and sturdy pocket hot hatch of today, then the Seat Ibiza Cupra aims to build on those charms by injecting a bit of spice into the recipe. This is a tough marketplace, and so the Seat, borrowing from that Polo GTI, junks the old ‘twin-charged’ 1.4-litre petrol engine in favour of a meatier 189bhp/236lb ft 1.8-litre turbo – gains of 11bhp (modest) and 52lb ft (mighty). The Cupra comes with a manual six-speed gearbox only and an XDS electronic diff, theoretically giving it the hardware to take on the best in class. Has it worked? To an extent. The Seat eclipses the Polo GTI with sharper looks, a more entertaining drive and a noisier exhaust. In terms of the dynamics, the Cupra…

There are many words that could be used to describe this Audi RS6. Slow is not one of them. But you knew that, just as you know that slow is not a word that applies to the standard RS6. We ran one for a year on our long-term fleet and it was a 552bhp rocketship with Shuttle-beating payload abilities. Audi claims it’ll do 0–62mph in 3.9secs. Ours hit 60mph in 3.4secs. So while you may not get the economy you expect (28mpg, yeah right), you do more than get the performance. Swings and roundabouts, and we’ve always preferred a roundabout. Anyway, this one, predictably, is faster. Much faster. More speed and bigger numbers than you’d credit when all that’s been done is a tweak of an ECU and a new…

ABARTH 695 BIPOSTO Price: ￡32,990 Engine: 1395cc 4cyl turbo, 187bhp, 199lb ft Performance: 0–62mph in 5.9secs, 143mph Transmission: 5spd manual FWD Economy: 45.6mpg, 145g/km CO2 Weight: 997kg Are modern performance cars too easy to drive? The McLaren 675LT and Ferrari F12tdf are two of 2015’s stars, as sexy as Lea Seydoux sashaying down that train carriage in SPECTRE yet more than happy to serve up 1,436bhp between them without trying to pull your arms off. Assuming you leave all the electronics on, anyway. Forget them. We are somewhere on the edge of San Marino under a thankfully cloudless autumn sky, we’ve just bounced across our 312th craterous Italian pothole, and I’ve flubbed yet another gearchange, when the realisation hits me that this little Abarth is the trickiest car I’ve driven…

Their hyper-exclusive hypercars battle it out for the hearts and minds of well-heeled collectors. Now the founders enter into a war of words as they take on TopGear’s probing questions Growing up, who were your car-industry heroes? Horacio Pagani: Fangio. He was my friend, first of all. He was an extraordinary person and the inspiration for the Zonda. There is a book by Roberto Carozzo called Fangio: Cuando El Hombre Es Más Que El Mito [Fangio: When the Man is More than the Myth] that summarises what he was. He was very rich, intellectually, humanly. A person of great simplicity. Our relationship was very deep. Then Bertone, Giugiaro, Pininfarina, Riva, for example. All of them are great men, not just great designers or entrepreneurs. Christian von Koenigsegg: My real hero…

The new Vauxhall Astra has a stop-start system like no other car I’ve ever driven. Rather than restarting the engine when the driver depresses the clutch pedal, the Astra instead waits until you have selected first and moved your right foot from the brake pedal across to the accelerator. This is weird. And, we suspect, it’s all in the name of making the Astra travel a fraction of an inch further on a tank of fuel than any of its competitors. After all, a win is a win, even by the smallest of margins. By minutely lengthening the time the engine isn’t running, Vauxhall must’ve saved, oooh, maybe .000001 of a gallon and a carbon dioxide or two. When it has tough rivals to do battle with, and when efficiency…

REPORT 7 1984cc, 4cyl turbo, AWD, 296bhp, 280lb ft 40.9mpg, 159g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.9secs, 155mph 1495kg £ ￡31,475/￡41,330 Total mileage 8763 Driver Ollie Kew Why it’s here Can we expose chinks in the ultimate Golf’s armour? Before I met the Golf, I’d never lived with an automatic before. Yes, I’m one of those confounded ‘enthusiasts’ (hate that word) who doesn’t want a hand-crank start or manual choke but likes to change gears using a gearlever and clutch pedal, despite the fact ￡1,415 worth of dual-clutch auto will make my Golf R do the same task more quickly, and make it kinder to the environment. Exclusively on a rolling road, you understand. Ignoring the fact the Golf R’s manual is a sweet little ’box with a light, satisfying change action…

If your ATM were to spew out a wad of 11-quid notes, you wouldn’t take long to slither downhill from superficial delight to profound suspicion. This is how you should take the official mpg figures of your new car. A new report shows how rapidly the gulf between test-fantasy and road-reality is growing, and how it’s happened. And guess what, it isn’t even illegal cheating, even though the report is from the same people that bust open the whole VW emissions scandal, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). You’ll remember it was an ICCT research project, working with West Virginia University, that tested the real-world NOX emissions, which led directly to hashtagdieselgate. Lately ICCT has put a dragnet across an ocean of real-world fuel-consumption data. Its sources include magazine…

1. WHO Ross Collins 2. WHAT Crash testing 3. WHERE Detroit, USA 4. WHEN 1971 In the Thirties, the crashtest dummy was still a thing of the future. So if you wanted to understand how a human body fared in an impact, you had two choices: a) find a willing stuntman, or b) strap a cadaver into the driver’s seat. Actually, you couldn’t even strap it in, because proper seat-belts were yet to be invented. Instead, in order to understand the crushing forces involved, researchers would drop metal balls onto a corpse’s head, or throw it down a lift shaft before taking readings from crude accelerometers. Unsurprisingly, this raised a few scientific issues, along with some troubling ethical concerns. So by the early Fifties, cadaver testing was phased out. Early…

AUTODROMO GROUP B Like the cars that it evokes, Autodromo’s Group B has a very low kerbweight. Just 52 grammes, in fact. That’s light for any watch, especially one with an automatic movement on board. For this we can thank a titanium capsule that holds the movement, which is then mounted to a stainless steel chassis (or case, as we should call it). Each watch comes with two nylon straps with the look and feel of mini racing harnesses – one in grey, one the dial colour. The high-contrast face is modelled on the rev-counter from a Lancia 037, while the graphics have a suitably Eighties vibe to match... £690; pageandcooper.com TAG HEUER CONNECTED Swiss giant reveals a smartwatch to much fanfare. You can toggle through three classic Heuer dial…

It looks better in the flesh. Honest. In fact, the Clubman is probably the best-proportioned Mini you can currently buy. There’s science to back that up, too: it’s the biggest Mini yet, at over 4.2 metres long. Unlike the hatches, then, there’s enough metal to host everything Mini’s excitable designers have concocted. Doe eyes included. There’s also proper room for adults in the back, thanks to over 100mm more wheelbase than a five-door Mini hatch, and unlike the old Clubman, it’s all reached via two proper back doors. It’s a more grown-up Mini in more ways than one, see. A new platform (shared with the BMW X1) helps it ride with a compliance alien to Minis. There’s little fidgeting in town, and it breeds plenty of confidence on bumpier back…

A new car or an options pack? Even if you frenziedly ferret around the configurator, it’s impossible to tick-box your way from a Macan S to a GTS. Engine and suspension tune are both bespoke here. Clarify, please Well, as on most current Porsches, GTS means a bit of extra power (though staying shy of the top-level Turbo engine) plus a sharper-than-normal chassis set-up, and some tasty trim and options. More power you say? It wedges itself between the S (3.0 twinturbo V6, 340bhp) and the Turbo (3.6 twinturbo V6, 400bhp). It uses the 3.0, rated at 360bhp thanks to liberated induction and exhaust breathing, and extra boost pressure. And the chassis? Whether you opt for steel or air springs, it’s lower than the S and firmer. Adaptive damping is…

JAGUAR XF 3.0d S Price: ￡49,946 Engine: 2993cc twin-turbo V6 diesel, 296bhp @ 4000rpm, 516lb ft @ 2000rpm Transmission: 8spd auto, RWD Economy: 51.4mpg, 144g/km CO 2 Performance: 0–62mph in 6.2secs, 155mph Weight: 1750kg BMW 535d M Sport Price: ￡49,070 Engine: 2993cc twin-turbo straight-six diesel, 309bhp @ 4400rpm, 465lb ft @ 1500rpm Transmission: 8spd auto, RWD Economy: 52.3mpg, 148g/km CO2 Performance: 0–62mph in 5.3secs, 155mph Weight: 1810kg “The Jaguar XF’s V6 offers a monstrous landslide of torque” Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was a Jaguar you didn’t have to make excuses for? Yes, Jaguar has possibly the best-looking car range on the planet – which bathes in a warm glow of heritage its most sworn enemies would give their entire marketing budget for – but imagine if the British…

A cushion. Or perhaps a pillow. Of all the things that don’t feature on the Lamborghini options list, but damn well should, this is number one. Oh dear, the seats: they’re as thickly padded as a pair of pallets. Maybe that’s what they are, y’know, under the Alcantara. I have plenty of time to appreciate this, as every jiggle of the especially jiggly suspension causes the seat to rub rawly at the skin of my lower back as we process up the M6. Maybe Vaseline should be an option too… This, as my mother would say, is no one’s fault but my own. I wanted to find out just how hardcore the latest, greatest crop of hardcore track cars is, and racetracks aren’t the place to find out. They just…

HELLO 1998cc, 4cyl turbodiesel, FWD, 105bhp, 251lb ft 68.9mpg, 109g/km CO2 0–62mph in 8.9secs, 135mph 1430kg ￡23,290/￡30,320 Total mileage 6820 Driver Esther Neve Why it’s here Is the Superb estate more than just a huge boot? I clearly remember the first time I travelled in a Superb. The first reason I remember it so clearly is that I was being chauffeured to the airport from a Skoda event – a bit of a treat. The second reason I recall it so well is that I was struck by the ENORMOUS size of the rear cabin space. This happy memory is one of the reasons I was thrilled to take custody of the Superb wagon. Although I don’t have a troupe of mini-mes to transport around, I do like the flexibility…

REPORT 3 1999cc, 4cyl diesel, RWD, 178bhp, 317lb ft 67.4mpg, 111g/km CO2 0–62mph in 7.4secs, 140mph 1565kg £ ￡34,775/￡43,815 Total mileage 1880 Driver Jack Rix Why it’s here Has Jag really cracked the ‘3-Series’ thing? A funny thing happened the other day – I saw a Jaguar XE on display in an airport. Nothing remotely amusing about that, I hear you cry, except it turns out it was actually a new XF. I’ve never had glasses, my optician assures me I have 20:20 vision, and yet I had to walk around the back of it to find the badge to make sure. Several days later, strolling down the pavement, a similar thing occurred. I spotted a lovely racing green XF rolling towards me in a traffic jam. Or was it?…

REPORT 2 1496cc, 4cyl petrol, RWD, 129bhp, 111lb ft 47.1mpg, 139g/km CO2 0–60mph in 8.3secs, 127mph 1050kg £ ￡22,445/￡23,105 Total mileage 3108 Driver Sam Philip Why it’s here Is 2015’s simplest sports car also its best sports car? A couple of weeks back, I parked the MX-5 in St Albans station car park and took the train. Awful experience. Wouldn’t recommend it. Getting the train, I mean. Can’t even adjust the air-conditioning as you want it. Anyhow. I returned from this harrowing experience to discover someone had parked their very shiny, equally red, last-generation MX-5 right next to our new one. I’ve no idea whether this was deliberate or mere chance. It’s St Albans. There are a lot of red MX-5s. The odds of such a coincidence are high. Nice…

GOODBYE 6166cc, supercharged V8, RWD, 707bhp, 650lb ft 15.6mpg, n/a g/km CO2 0–62mph in 3.9secs, 199mph 2013kg $60,990/$65,695 Total mileage 7800 Driver Pat Devereux Why it’s here What’s it like to live with a 700+bhp muscle car? There’s a game I play with every long-term test car: what would I instantly swap it for, and why? It focuses the mind on the things you like and the things you hate. And it also makes you do a quick comparo of all the competitor cars in your current one’s group. I asked myself – and was constantly asked by other people – this question about the Challenger Hellcat, and, in the six months it lived with me, I never once could think of a car – any car – I’d rather…

Fear not, you can have it in other colours. This is the 675LT Spider, a 666bhp super-cabrio described by its maker as “the fastest open model ever to wear a McLaren badge”, and by people with eyes as “pushing the boundaries of car paint in new and dangerous directions”. McLaren calls the colour Solis. The suggestion from the TG office was Mucus Sunrise. Frankly it doesn’t matter. The 675LT Spider – effectively a 650S Spider turned up to 11, 12, and possibly higher still – promises to be so very rapid that you’ll be gone long before spectrum-sensitive bystanders can say: “Look! A supercar painted the colour of baby sno—” Because, sensibly, the Spider doesn’t mess with the mechanical formula of the 675LT Coupe, a car we heralded as “the…

It’s worth getting something straight, right from the start. The Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell is the first hydrogenpowered passenger car to go into full commercial production. Fact. This makes Hyundai the first manufacturer to build a car with a genuinely new, wholly emissionsfree, potentially sustainable alternative to the internal combustion engine since, well, since the car was first invented. So why doesn’t it look a bit more radical? In truth, there’s no reason for it to be. The ix35 Fuel Cell is next generation technology, concealed in a reassuringly familiar package. The ix35 itself has been with us since 2010 and enjoys a reputation as an affordable, mid-market SUV. It’s fair to say nobody would have foreseen it becoming the totemic carrier of milestone technology that looks set to usher…

Sure, the dedicated helmsmen will flock to the tyregargling C63 Coupe, but the diesels will be the bigselling 2dr C-Classes for people who reside in the real world. On air suspension (an £895 option), the C250d proves wonderfully… Merc-ish: refined, economical, rapid and capable of absorbing truly gruesome tarmac. The two-door is lower and wider than the C-Class saloon, and feels just a little more planted on the road. At the same time – and in a welcome departure from the German norm – it’s not self-consciously sporty, trading snappy reactions for chilled cruising. Fine by us. If there’s a weak spot, it’s that engine. Merc’s 2.1 TD has never been the smoothest operator and remains short on refinement compared with the BMW 4-Series’ silky units. Things quieten down as…

It’s the new 911, promise. What, you were expecting the styling to change? Surely you’ve learned by now, that’s not how the 911 works. But, oddly, how the 911 actually works – how it’s lobbed down a road – is all new. It’s not a facelift. It’s a brain and heart transplant. The new 991’s still flat-six powered – Porsche hasn’t totally lost its mind – but there’s a 3.0-litre, twin-turbo boxer where the last-gen Carrera S had 3.8 litres breathing at atmospheric pressure. It equals more power and torque with lower fuel consumption and emissions (officially...) so we’ve brought a mighty Jaguar F-Type R and artisan BMW i8 along. The ￡100k sports-car bookends, so far as power and efficency are concerned. Anyway, welcome to the end of the day.…

CORVETTE STINGRAY Z06 WITH Z07 PACKAGE Price: $101,325 Engine: 6162cc supercharged V8, 650bhp @ 6400rpm, 650lb ft @ 3600rpm Performance: 0–60mph in 2.95secs, 186mph Transmission: 7spd manual, RWD Economy: 19.0mpg, n/a g/km CO2 Weight: 1495kg “ WE’VE GOT THE THREE MOST SPECTACULAR CARS ON SALE IN THE US” The sun is fading now. It’s dropping quickly behind the distant mountains, lighting up the desert dust in the atmosphere into an impossibly gorgeous wash of pinks, reds, purples and blues. But we haven’t got time to dwell on that now. We are still steaming around the big track at The Thermal Club in search of answers in three of the most soughtafter and spectacular cars on sale – or nearly on sale – in the US: Chevy’s techno tour de force,…

GOODBYE 1984cc, 4cyl turbo petrol, 4WD, 306bhp, 280lb ft 38.7mpg, 169g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.9 seconds, 155mph 1365kg £ ￡40,310/￡48,970 Total mileage 11,612 Driver Ollie Marriage Why it’s here Does the TTS have real sporting smarts? The interior. That’s what I’m going to miss most about the TTS. It’s just brilliant. The air vents, the dash, the steering wheel controls, the quality, the shaping, all of it. Except the driving position, that’s of the long-arm/shortleg variety. But the tech and the way it’s integrated? I’ve not driven anything that comes close. New 7-Series? Way too complex. Lambo Huracan? Same basic tech, but Audi does it so much better. I’ve also enjoyed the speed the TTS delivers. There’s plenty of that. And don’t get me started on the LED Matrix headlights…

GOODBYE 1997cc, 4cyl turbodiesel, FWD, 176bhp, 195lb ft 56.5mpg, 130g/km CO2 0–62mph in 8.7 seconds, 135mph 1703kg 27,165/￡33,510 Total mileage 4290 Driver Adam Waddell Why it’s here Is Ford’s family favourite still a sensible family choice? IN DETAIL A couple of years ago, I ran a Skoda Octavia vRS estate for six months, and I loved it. Rather like the Seat Leon Cupra estate that we currently have on our long-term test fleet, the Octavia offered great fun from a driver’s perspective while delivering all the practicalities demanded by family life. This relatively new breed of hot-hatch-based estate cars are considered to be excellent value considering everything they deliver, but if you are prepared to trade some performance, I reckon our Mondeo is possibly even better value. OK – we’re…

REPORT 12 Rolls-Royce EJ200 turbofan, Nammo hybrid rocket, 47,700lb thrust 200 litres of jet fuel and 800 litres of rocket fuel per run 0–1000mph in 42.0secs, 1050mph 7750kg Weeks to go 13 Run by Mark Chapman Why it’s here It’s Bloodhound SSC... Now things have died down and we’re basically waiting for the days to lengthen and the weather to improve, I thought you might like to learn a bit more about some key aspects of the car that we’ve previously touched on, but not covered in depth. So, safety. I appreciate this doesn’t bode well, but the primary design criteria for the whole project isn’t top speed, but keeping Andy safe. It’s just that no one gets excited about that when there’s a jet engine and a rocket motor…

For years, I wholeheartedly believed the urban myth that the Mitsubishi Starion was so called because the Japanese engineers involved in the production of the little rear-wheel-drive sports car couldn’t pronounce the word “stallion”. It was a cheerful and innocent stereotype, reinforced by the fact that I’d seen adverts for the Starion featuring a horse’s head, and that the peculiar little car was called the Colt Starion in the UK, which inferred some sort of horsey association. It probably didn’t help that the name is actually a cut ’n’ shut of ‘Star of Orion’, and also refers to the legendary Arion, a god-bred, immortal, surprisingly fast and uncommonly loquacious… horse. You can see where the confusion arose. Also, I was only eight, and my exposure to Japanese culture was almost…