Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2016 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

Enzo Ferrari once said: “Aerodynamics are for people who can’t build engines,” but those tasked with carrying on his legacy through the F12tdf have shown they clearly have a very frm understanding of how to deliver both. No car leaves the gates of Maranello without a suitably heavy weight of expectation, but the spec sheet of the F12tdf reads like it’s a car with something extra to prove. Its wonderfully pure (but somewhat rabid) normally aspirated 6.2-litre V12 produces 770bhp, red-lines at 8,900rpm, will demolish the 0–62mph dash in 2.9 seconds, hit 124mph in 7.9 and will carry on until it reaches 211mph. It produces 87 per cent more downforce than a “standard” F12 (no, that’s not a typo but may explain the F12’s wayward nature) is 110kg lighter and…

As the rest of the industry diverges towards four-cylinder turbos, there’s a lone salmon battling its way upstream. Mazda has yet again shown why it’s the world’s most nonconformist car manufacturer with a show car that heralds the unlikely return of the rotary engine. The fact that it looks sensational is somewhat beside the point. Boiled down, it’s a two-door, two-seater, rear-wheel-drive sports coupe that previews a successor to the RX-8, but its name won’t be an obvious numerical progression. “Will it be called RX-9? Well, all previous RX-7s have been two or 2+2 seaters and the RX-8 was a four-seater, so what would that make RX-9? A six-seater? This concept is a two-seater, so you can imagine which number fits best,” Kiyoshi Fujiwara, Mazda’s head of R&D told us…

There are a few moments in history where science fiction becomes science fact. Take the inventions of the aeroplane and the internet, for example. Both were unthinkable, or at least improbable, right up to the day that the inventors of each walked into their offices and announced: “You know that idea you said would never happen? Well, watch this…” Standing here in a shabby, heavily graffitied tin warehouse in the cheap end of Oakland, CA, a few miles across the bay from San Francisco, it’s hard not to have the feeling that another of those watershed moments is upon us. It might look just like a supersized science project, but this 15ft tall robot, nicknamed simply Mark 2 as per Iron Man lore, is quite possibly the future of gaming…

RESSENCE TYPE 3 Another month, another Belgian watchmaker. And whatever’s in the waffles must be working, because it’s a belter. In an effort to reduce the glare and distortion caused by light bouncing around between the dials and crystal glass, Ressence has flooded the upper layer of its Type 3 with a reservoir of gloopy oil. Suspended in this oil are floating discs, which take the place of conventional hands and dials. The discs constantly revolve, like moons around a planet, giving the watch a slightly dizzying effect beyond the usual tick-tock of a second hand. But the best bit is the oil temperature gauge – there for a good reason, as the fluid has an optimal running temperature. Just like in your engine. £27,000; ressencewatches.com PAUL SMITH MEN’S SILVER…

W hat’s groundbreaking about the new Navara is that, if you buy the four-door ‘Double Cab’ version (as around 80 per cent of Europeans will), you get multi-link rear suspension instead of leaf springs. And for the handful of you who haven’t immediately flicked over to read about a tyre-wrecking AMG instead, here’s why that makes the Navara the most likeable pickup around. Essentially, you don’t need to be troubling the 1,000kg payload capacity, or the 3,500kg towing ability, to get the rear end to settle down and stop behaving like a disgruntled camel. It’s no crossover – despite what Nissan will tell you – but it’s much better-mannered than the leafsprung ‘King Cab’ entry-level version. Maintaining that sort of dead-lift penchant with much less archaic suspension deserves applause in…

A s the classic parable tells us, the wise man did not build his house on the sand; neither did he base his crucial premium-chasing family hatchback on the underpinnings of a relatively noisy, cramped rival. But for Nissan’s posh offshoot Infiniti, it’s a case of beggars can’t be choosers, if it ever wants to crack the magic, um, four-figure sales mark in the UK. So, Nissan’s Sunderland plant has hired another 300 workers and been retooled with the equipment that alliance partner Daimler has been using since 2012 to build the current Mercedes A-Class. The result is the Q30, and in several ways, the result is surprisingly strong. First there’s the styling – wilfully artistic and sculptural. Good. Marmite cars are needed if Infiniti is to dent even Lexus’s…

Fascinating fact: the new C63 Coupe is 85kg heavier than the C63 saloon. Is that fascinating? I think it’s quite fascinating. People with proper grown-up interests – politics, campanology, normal human conversation – seem to disagree. But how, exactly, do you start with a 1,715kg car, remove two doors, and end up with a 1,800kg car, a gain equivalent to a junior heavyweight boxer? Were the C63 Coupe a TG conversion, the blame could be pinned on “really ropey welding” or “even ropier maths”, but AMG tends to be a bit more precise about such things. Don’t blame the powertrain. The C63 Coupe uses the same 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 as the saloon, generating the same 510bhp in S guise, and the same 476bhp in non-S guise. Like the saloon, all…

This isn’t a story about the Tucson. It’s not even about Hyundai really. It’s about Korea, although the development of one is wrapped up in the fortunes of the other. So where to start? I was going to begin with some sort of random observation about the Tucson and use that to illustrate the scale and ambition of this country, but then we went to Ulsan, and the scale and ambition blew my mind. It’s a city of 1.1 million people — about the size of Birmingham – and it’s home to the world’s largest car factory and the world’s largest shipbuilding facility. Both are Hyundai facilities. In my ignorance, I expected the place to be positively Victorian, a mad, dark mash of mills and smog and noise and chimneys,…

1993 RENAULT CLIO WILLIAMS Price when new: ￡13,275 Engine: 1998cc 4cyl, 145bhp at 6100rpm, 129lb ft @ 4500rpm Performance: 0–62mph in 7.8secs, 134mph Transmission: 5spd manual, FWD Economy: n/a mpg, n/a g/km CO2 Weight: 990kg 1991 PEUGEOT 205 GTi Price when new: ￡11,375 Engine: 1580cc 4cyl, 115bhp @ 6250rpm, 98lb ft @ 4000rpm Performance: 0–60mph in 8.7secs, 122mph Transmission: 5spd manual, FWD Economy: 36.2mpg, n/a g/km CO2 Weight: 850kg Uh-oh. I’m approaching a cliche at 52mph. Could be more, but the speedo needle has got the shakes. Eyes back on the road. A greasy roundabout, lined with hedgerows, is imminent. Shortly, the Peugeot 205 GTi will nonchalantly ping off into an unsalvageable heap of lift-off oversteer, landing in its preferred habitat on the set of Autumnwatch. But, somehow, the accident,…

There’s some sort of evil lurking in those exhausts. And I’m not just talking about the torturous scream when you wind the engine up past 6,000rpm, or the bloated resonance at lower revs that sounds like the devil himself showing his appreciation after a good meal. Hidden deep between the pyrotechnics and the snorts, I could swear the car is laughing at me – a malevolent chuckle from deep down in its boots. Supercars don’t come any more intimidating than V12 Lamborghinis, or at least they shouldn’t, and this is a bull with extra balls – the Aventador LP750-4 SV Roadster. It’s the same trimmed-down, beefed-up recipe as the SV Coupe, but without a roof to guard you from the sensory bombardment. It will be louder and windier, that much…

REPORT 3 1998cc 4cyl turbodiesel, FWD, 120bhp, 236lb ft 68.9mpg, 109g/km CO2 0–62mph in 10.5secs, 116mph 1320kg ￡20,845/￡24,004 Total mileage 7545 Driver Paul Horrell Why it’s here Why are small FWD crossovers taking over the world? One of the most exhilarating things in life is having your mind changed. Well, I came to the 500X as a lifetime sceptic of crossovers. Has 6,000 miles of stewardship turned me into a raving disciple of the faux-by-four genre? Er, not quite. Fact is, I love driving too much, and the compromises with high, bluff vehicles are too great. But I now better understand why other people, less picky about dynamics, do love crossovers so. Regular hatchbacks look too alike: only us spotters can tell a Focus from an Auris. But non-petrolheads keep…

Welcome to SEMA, a pimped-up, slammed-to-the-floor trade show like no other. For one week a year, the Las Vegas Convention Center’s strip-lit halls – when it isn’t playing host to middle-aged men dressed as superheroes, or the very best in adult entertainment – are filled with the most outlandish creations the tuning community has to offer. It’s an event where the great pendulum of taste can swing drastically from the sublime to the ridiculous. So take our hand, and let us be your guide through this year’s wacky creations. THE SUBLIME 1 4WD Dodge Challenger Dodge has sprinkled some spice into the age-old V8 muscle-car recipe: 4WD. “Sacrilege!” we hear you cry. But you’ll be glad to know this wide-bodied 450bhp concept can light up all fours easily. 2 Mazda…

ESSENTIAL WORKS Men dress up as traffic cones for Halloween. Stand in road blocking traffic until police intervene FARE DODGER Taxi passengers trick driver out of ￡140 fare by claiming fully clothed mannequin is their sleeping friend ROBO REPAIRS University of Leeds is handed a ￡4.2m grant to develop pothole-mending drones. With tarmac bombs, presumably DISABILITY: IDIOT Man is fined for illegally parking in a disabled space while in court admitting to regularly parking in disabled spaces DRIVER ASSISTANCE Volvo starts testing kangaroo-avoidance technology in an Aussie nature reserve using a fleet of XC90s “Numbers are made to be overcome. Of course they are important, but the experience is way more, and it’s not related to numbers.” Speaking to TG.com, Horacio Pagani says headline power and performance figures aren’t everything…

Mixed messages emanate from Audi on the launch of its S8 Plus. Its own product manager is very keen to stress that it remains an S8, because an oligarch’s barge doesn’t fit the aggressive, ultra driver-focused remit of an RS product. Then, RS head Heinz Hollerweger refers to the Plus, what with its 597bhp, 553lb ft outputs, optional ceramic brakes and speed-sensitive Dynamic Steering, as “an RS8 in all but name”. Better go and drive it and see who’s telling porkies. Outfitting the 4.0-litre V8 with two freer-breathing turbochargers, along with an ECU remap and new exhaust valves, boosts power by 85bhp and torque by 74lb ft. Speedwise, it’s every inch the autobahn king, romping from a steady 120mph to, say, 160mph and beyond with sneering ease. It’d crack 200…

Following an afternoon spent fanging this new 770bhp Ferrari around the Italian countryside, you’d be forgiven for needing a quiet word with yourself, followed by a lie-down in a shuttered room. The F12tdf, it seems, asks as many questions as it supplies answers. A contemplative moment isn’t on the agenda. Not today. But on our return to Fiorano, sweaty-palmed and eyes agog, we do get an impromptu five minutes to download Ferrari’s highest-profile employee: Sebastian Vettel. At the previous day’s Finali Mondiali end-of-season hoopla, his Scuderia teammate Kimi Räikkönen had explored the F12tdf’s limits by doing donuts on Mugello’s main straight. You’ve got to love the guy. Vettel is fresh from a few, rather more considered laps of Fiorano in the gathering dusk. The F12tdf’s big party trick, of course,…

It’s 5:30am, the new 911 is parked in our narrow alleyway and I desperately want to drive it. Too many sports cars start from cold, making macho with high-rev posturing and exhaust parps. They’d furiously wake the whole street. I want to leave everyone in peace, but not badly enough to walk away from the 911. Nervously I turn the key. The Porsche purrs into a discreet idle and tiptoes away into the darkness. See, the 911 isn’t only brilliant at going rabidly fast. A huge part of what makes it such a wonderful automotive life-partner is that it’s also great company when caged in by the stubborn realities of everyday conditions and roads. Everything just works, and works with a deeply satisfying precision born of decades of careful evolution…

HYDROGEN GETS A BAD PRESS. Mention you’re driving a hydrogen-fuelled car, and you can see it on people’s faces. Their eyes narrow, their forehead furrows, and their lips silently form the phrase “Hindenburg disaster”. Or “hydrogen bomb”. That the hydrogen-fuelled car could be a safe and clean journey to the future is, to put it mildly, a difficult sell. TopGear decides to face the matter head-on. You want explosive? We’ll give you explosive. Let’s take the Toyota Mirai and stuff its hydrogen-filled backside with fireworks, then drive down the motorway, replenish its tank to 10,000psi, then proceed into the capital to deliver the fireworks to a bonfire-night display. The Mirai is a big car but it doesn’t have a vast boot. Its carbon-fibre hydrogen tanks, not to mention the hybrid…

REPORT 6 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 7377 Driver Ollie Kew Why it’s here Can we expose chinks in the ultimate Golf’s armour? This is a good car at 40 grand-plus, but a spectacular one at midthirties. Starting from the outside in, then, let’s go all Osborne and make cuts. Pearly white paint: still growing on me, but can’t be worth ￡960 more than (￡0) flat white. I’d take dark blue (￡540) instead. Minus ￡420. But 19-inch rims (￡895)? Absolutely. Look the business, and don’t knacker the ride, especially if you choose the freakishly malleable adaptive dampers (￡830). Reversing camera? Nope – this is not a difficult car to park, and the mechanism sounds like a drill…

REPORT 7 1997cc, 4cyl TD, FWD, 176bhp, 195lb ft 56.5mpg, 130g/km CO2 0–62mph in 8.7secs, 135mph 1703kg ￡27,165/￡33,510 Total mileage 4070 Driver Adam Waddell Why it’s here Is Ford’s family favourite still a sensible family choice? In the summer, when he’d only just been announced as the new host of TopGear, I decided to make a day trip to Chris Evans’s CarFest event at Jody Scheckter’s farm in Hampshire. The combination of music, food and F1 cars hoofing it along the farm roads sounded like a good day out, but I wasn’t planning to stay the night. However, I inevitably ended up having a great time and regretted having to stay off the beer and drive back to London rather than camping. What hadn’t occurred to me at the time…

REPORT 4 1618cc, 4cyl turbo petrol, FWD, 215bhp, 206lb ft 39.2mpg, 186g/km CO2 0–62mph in 7.0secs, 137mph 1341kg ￡21,995/￡23,295 Total mileage 3695 Driver Vijay Pattni Why it’s here A hot hatch crossover? Is that really a thing? You’re probably not even reading these words because there is a big, adorable dog in the boot of a smallish car in the picture above. Why is there a dog in the boot? Well, why not? Joking aside, dogs make up a fundamental part of our society; some have jobs, some don’t, yet all are excellent (and prone to more than the odd comedy moment). To this end, a car will, in its lifetime, more than likely have to accommodate a dog. Especially in the UK. Which brings us to the Jismo (sorry,…

REPORT 7 1984cc, 4cyl turbo, 4WD, 306bhp, 280lb ft 38.7mpg, 169g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.9secs, 155mph 1365kg ￡40,310/￡48,970 Total mileage 10,298 Driver Ollie Marriage Why it’s here Does the TTS have real sporting smarts? Something had been bugging me about the Audi TTS. It was nothing to do with its speed. I tested that the other day and can now confirm that an unmolested TTS is still a deeply rapid car. It did 0–60mph in 4.4secs and 100mph in 10.3. The combo of 4WD, twin-clutch gearbox and launch control is supereffective. Nice upshift parps, too. But I digress. What’s been bugging me is the sense of occasion I get from driving it – or rather the lack of it. I’m not talking about the things I interact with, touch and…

Take Japan’s very best lightweight roadster of recent years. Add some Italian styling fair. Revive iconic nameplate. Serve with a pair of vintage aviator shades and an Amalf coastal road. As recipes for success go, the new Fiat 124 Spider’s sounds a sure-fire winner. After all, the new Mazda MX-5 – upon which Fiat’s two-seater is closely based – is one of our favourite little sports cars, offering crisp, accessible handling, and fun at sensible speeds. An Italian tweak to the MX-5 formula should be the most cast-iron money-spinner since Universal Pictures said, “Crazy idea, guys, but reckon anyone would watch a Fast & Furious sequel?” So why is it we’re struggling, on first impressions at least, to get entirely amped by the 124 Spider, a car originally slated to…

The Evoque Convertible is not the first drop-top SUV (our American friends have already been subjected to the horror of the Nissan Murano CC); nor is it the first soft-top Land Rover, as countless well-worn Fifties farm hacks will attest. But it is the most controversial. Who, exactly, is this car for? Rich people? Certainly. The cheapest soft-top Evoque is £47,500, which is £5,200 up on a hard-top, for which you get four entirely usable seats, a five-layer top that retracts in 18secs and reappears in 21 at speeds up to 30mph, and a whopping 260kg weight increase, due to hugely reinforced body pillars, floor sections and doors. OK then, it’s not for your open-top Defender-loving Land Rover enthusiast, but Land Rover has nevertheless toiled away with centre of gravity…

Sometimes I pine for the old days of nationalised industry. We’ve just invited China to build us and run a nuclear power station. Where’s nationalised electricity when you need it? We obviously trust China. Oh, wait a minute, we’re told by the same government that we need our own nuclear deterrent as a bulwark against unstable powers – um, like China. The other day, having got my head in a spin trying to buy a rail ticket from the several companies that own our fractured train network, I ventured to a friend (who himself works for that national asset, the NHS) that they’d be better nationalised. “What, like British Rail in the Eighties? It was crap,” he huffed. Yup, but face it, everything was crap in that era apart from…

SPEC SHEET CAPACITY Pilot + 5 passengers TOP SPEED 400mph MAX ALTITUDE 30,000 feet TIME TO MAX ALT 11 minutes RANGE Up to 1,200 miles POWER 2,600 shaft horsepower What have we here? It’s a cross between a plane and a helicopter. So it takes off vertically like a jump jet, before the props rotate forward for the transition to high-speed flight, at which point, lift comes from the wings. Isn’t that called a tilt rotor? Yes, but technically the TriFan doesn’t have rotors. It has ducted fans. Three of them, as you might have guessed from the name. Two in the wings, and another in the fuselage (covered after take-off). What’s it like inside? It seats one pilot and five passengers, who sit in leathery luxury. The cabin is…

Many of us are worryingly accomplished drinkers, and not bad drivers to boot, though put these things together and our greatest national hobbies become – without question – devastatingly incompatible. It was the same when driving meant operating a horse; in fact, the UK passed its first drink-driving law in 1872. Violating it while in charge of a carriage, steam engine, horse or cattle carried a maximum fine of 40 shillings and one month’s imprisonment. But it wasn’t until 1927, well into the age of the motor car, when a Chicago chemist named William McNally invented the first breath test. The accused would blow air through a chemical bath, which would change colour depending on how much booze was imbued. It was primitive, yet popular with housewives, who could test…

REAL FX RACING Slotless racing is this year’s New Thing. This one blends old-school handset controls with wifi comms and artificial intelligence, and races are staged on a smooth plastic track, meaning you can overtake whenever you like, and drive back on if you slide off, which you will. Rather than the cars whizzing around in a blurry vortex, they actually move a bit slower, mostly because – unlike Scalextric – you’re responsible for steering, not just throttle. But you do get some help from optical sensors, which act like a driver aid to keep you between the lines. How much assistance you get is up to you. If you’re playing alone, the AI takes control of the other car, giving you a virtual opponent to race. The handset even…

“We want to solve the problem for all those who want to spend more on an SUV,” smiled Bentley marketing boss Kevin Rose at the official announcement of the Bentayga in 2014. As problems go, it seemed one unlikely to be raised by Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions. (“I’ve had a letter from Dimitri of Holland Park, who can’t find a 4x4 expensive enough…”) But here it is, the SUV catering to all those disappointed to receive change from £200,000 for their specced-to-the-gunnels Range Rover Autobiography. The Bentayga is, Bentley boasts, “the fastest, most powerful, most luxurious SUV in the world”, a mission statement all but guaranteed to get you on Greenpeace’s naughty list for 2016. But a justified one. The Bentayga employs a reworked version of Bentley’s 6.0-litre…

HELLO 1496cc, 4cyl petrol, RWD, 129bhp, 111lb ft 47.1mpg, 139g/km CO2 0–60mph in 8.3 seconds, 127mph 1050kg ￡22,445/￡23,105 Total mileage 2805 Driver Sam Philip Why it’s here Is 2015’s simplest sports car also its best sports car? This is TopGear Garage’s new two-seat sports car. It makes just 129bhp and has precisely no hybrid assistance or turbocharging. It doesn’t have adaptive damping or a switchable sports exhaust. It doesn’t have four-wheel torque-vectoring technology or a fancy-pants double-clutch gearbox. It has a 1.5-litre, naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine, a six-speed manual transmission feeding the rear wheels, and, um, that’s it. It is bloody brilliant. Yes, we’ve got the new Mazda MX-5 on our fleet. Better still, we’ve got the entry-level MX-5: the 1.5 rather than the dangerously overpowered, 158bhp 2.0-litre version. It’s…

HELLO 1496cc, 3cyl turbodiesel, FWD, 114bhp, 199lb ft 78.5mpg, 95g/km CO2 0–62mph in 9.4secs, 126mph 1190kg ￡17,235/￡19,350 Total mileage 1909 Driver Simon Carrington Why it’s here Is a Mini with more doors still a Mini? Mini is a past master at finding gaps in the market and exploiting them. Having launched new Mini, BMW set about giving us the Paceman, Countryman, Clubman and Convertible. The ‘normal’ Mini is now called Mini Hatch, and the latest addition to the range and the TG fleet is the Mini Cooper Hatch D five-door. Sadly, the addition of some back doors has meant that any semblance of good looks has instantly vanished. The wheelbase had to be lengthened to fit them in, which has had the effect of simply stretching the car. In fact,…

GOODBYE 898cc, 3cyl petrol, RWD, 89bhp, 100lb ft 65.7mpg, 99g/km CO2 0–62mph in 10.8 seconds, 103mph 943kg 12,595/13,765 Total mileage 7511 Driver Sam Philip Why it’s here Is this the best city car on the market? After nine months and some 7,500 miles, it is time for our Twingo to meet its maker. Literally, it’s going back to Renault. Usually, after six months or more in possession of a car, you’ve got a pretty strong idea how you feel about it. But I’m still genuinely unsure where I stand on the Twingo, which has proved quite the little Jekyll and Hyde during its TG stint. On the plus side, I remain a fully paid-up advocate of the Twingo’s innovative (or, rather, entirely uninnovative but long-forgotten) rear-engine, rear-drive layout. By reducing…

“Most cars have an angle where they look their best, where you can stop and stare for a few seconds and drink in the detail. The X6 manages not to. There just doesn’t seem to be an angle where all the bits fit together.” So said that organ of record TopGear magazine when it tested the original X6 at its launch in 2008. We concluded – along with the rest of the right-thinking world – that the original SUV-coupe was, both conceptually and visually, a bit of a minger. So why do we find ourselves wanting an X6 now, albeit a want we’ll only admit quietly and after a few beers? It’s certainly not because age has been kind to the X6’s looks. Some designs are simply ahead of their…