Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i BBC Top Gear Magazine

My earliest car memory is of a four-and-a-bit-year-old me sat in the back of my Dad’s 3.0-litre Ford Capri outside the circus. The show was over, and people were heading home; sadly, our departure wasn’t going so smoothly. It was cold and icy, traction was limited, our offside rear had become good friends with a steel drainage grate and we were going nowhere. With Dad opting for the ‘brute force and ignorance’ approach that has long been the family motto, all the car’s power was being deployed in an effort to free us. Power turned to heat, which eventually turned to traction, and we fired out of the space leaving behind a glowing drainage culvert and a number of further converts to my Dad’s sideways-to-victory driving style. Fords were a…

Chevrolet may well have put electric cars into prime time. It’s wrapped decent range, acceleration and styling into an EV you can actually afford. The Bolt, on sale in the US this autumn, will have a 200-mile range, do 0–60mph in 7.0secs and cost less than $30,000 (£21k) after tax breaks. And yes, it looks more than palatable. The value is in the battery. It holds 60kWh of energy, double the newest Nissan Leaf’s, and indeed close to the 70kWh of a base Tesla Model S, which is twice the price. And it’s not stripped bare: the cabin has a 10.4-inch centre screen and a high-speed internet connection for updates and its own hotspot. Because it’s a Chevy, you won’t actually be able to buy it in Europe. Of course,…

PETROLIFIED CAR PRINTS There comes a time, somewhere around your third divorce, when you must take down those car posters and consider buying a nice landscape or something. Or you could buy one of these prints, some of which make it socially acceptable to hang a picture of a Lambo on your wall. Cleanly rendered in simple frames, they let the cars speak for themselves and might even provoke grown-up discussions about design, aesthetics and how to remove old Blu-Tack stains. From €25; petrolified.com F1 CHESS SET It’s a game of strategy, patience and boredom. Thankfully the grand prix season’s over, which leaves us free to play with this chess set made of used F1 car parts. Each piece has been hand-polished, lacquered and given a felted bottom. £9,950; mementoexclusives.com…

WHICH BOOT IS BEST? Well, it’s a classic case of what you read on paper not necessarily translating into a real-world advantage. At 505 litres, the A4 has the biggest boot in its class – 55 ahead of the Merc – though the tables are turned if you flip the seats, with the Audi mustering 1,510 to the C-Class’s 1,600 litres. Y’see, the Benz is actually a more useful space. Its loading sill lip is tiny, so you can slide heavy stuff in easily, while the A4 has a step. And if you’re spending more time with the seats folded, the C250’s flatter load bay, greater hidden storage and one-touch folding seats out-boot the A4. ANOTHER STAR TREK CABIN? Up front, meanwhile, the A4 is, predictably, a pretty exquisite place…

Two thousand, six hundred and eighty-five kilos should not be able to move this quickly. Two thousand, six hundred and eighty-five kilos should not be able to do 190mph. Imagine the kinetic energy involved, the defiance of physics. Einstein taught us that the speed of light is constant and everything else bends around it, whereas in the world according to Bentley, weight is the constant. While everyone else is dieting, Crewe informs us that the correct driving characteristics are only achievable if your car weighs the same as a small planet. They have a point, though. The way the Mulsanne Speed drives can only be achieved through the appliance of weight and momentum. It’s a smooth-rolling bulldozer of a car, as deflectable from its course as Halley’s comet. It’s been…

Understated, eh? Well, apart from the pinstriping and those fiddly wheels. But otherwise no hints that what you’re looking at is the World’s Fastest Production Diesel. No, really it is. It’s a mark of the times that about 10 years ago, this really mattered. Performance diesels were all the rage, Audi showed an R8 TDI concept, Mercedes a triple-turbo SLK, and, for a short while, I actually held the world record for highest top speed in a diesel, hitting 174mph in a DMS-tweaked BMW 535d. But those days are gone. The mainstream marques are all fixated on electric power now, as it absolves them of CO2 responsibility, and VW has made sure the less knowledgable flank of the car-buying public views diesel cars with the same wary eye they view…

1974 FORD MkI ESCORT MEXICO WHY IT MATTERS Rallye Sport. That’s what Ford’s RS moniker stands for, and the Escort wears the letters more proudly – with greater credibility – than most, because it’s arguably the greatest off-road racing car of them all. The MkI overspills with so much pedigree, it couldn’t be contained in the RS1600 model, so Ford created this – the Mexico – to pay homage to Hannu Mikkola’s victory in the gruelling 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally. That said, the MkI Escort Mexico is a bit of a fibber. For one thing, the iconic colour daubed over it is called Sebring Red, when it’s clearly as orange as a tanning sponge. And really, it was never properly badged as an RS either, despite the…

Suddenly, Land Rover, the great 4x4 specialist, looks a bit short on, er, 4x4s. Three Range Rovers and two Land Rovers is all it has. At Mercedes they’re breaking out like the hives. Count ’em: GLA, GLE and GLE Coupe, GLS, plus today’s subject, the GLC (and a GLC coupe to come). Plus, of course, the mighty GL to provide the pure-bred bedrock that brand Land Rover, in this post-Defender age, sadly lacks. Meanwhile BMW will soon have a range that encompasses every X number from 1 to 7. This tectonic shift towards crossovers isn’t happening because people’s needs have changed. People still fondly imagine a 4x4 will get them through unexpected snow and floods, but it’s not so. As soon as your high-traction, high-clearance vehicle arrives at the otherwise…

REPORT 7 1984cc, 4cyl petrol, FWD, 276bhp, 258lb ft 42.2mpg, 158g/km CO2 0–62mph in 6.1secs, 155mph 1440kg ￡29,205/￡32,020 Total mileage 8783 Driver Dan Read Why it’s here Is it really the king of hot hatch estates? This story begins in 1993, with the RS2 Avant. The result of an engineering hook up between Porsche and Audi, it was arguably the first proper performance estate and certainly the fastest in the world when it was launched. It was a cult hit, the formula was repeated and so began the age of the express estate. Now, 22 years on, here are two of its modern descendants – our long-term Leon and an Audi RS4 Avant. The family tree has split, so they wear different badges, and there are other distinctions: the Audi…

REPORT 4 1998cc, 4cyl VTEC turbo petrol, FWD, 306bhp, 295lb ft 38.7mpg, 170g/km CO2 0–62mph in 5.7secs, 167mph 1378kg ￡29,995/￡30,520 Total mileage 2816 Driver Tom Ford Why it’s here Is the Type-R a practical daily driver? The TopGear Garage Honda Civic Type-R is horrifically ugly. I’ve stared and stared at it, but there is no angle where it doesn’t look awkward and deliberately odd, no secret front-three-quarter pose that magically makes it handsome. There are bits of GT-R in the exhaust, lots of plastic in the arches and front end, and a decent hint of Boeing in the rear wing. It’s ’orrible. Thing is, I kind of like ugly things, especially when they’re brutally effective. And the R is both of those things, emphasis on the brutal. The effective bit…

There might be some emerald tint of envy colouring the picture, but mostly when we see someone driving a Porsche, we regard them as discerning and canny people. Well, here’s a newsflash. Porsche thinks they’re idiots. People so blind to the value of money that they won’t feel insulted or repelled when, having signed up for a £72,523 Cayenne GTS, they’re taken for an extra £2,307 just to get satnav, a system which doesn’t even have Bluetooth. Even if they’re impermeable to their mates’ laughter at the absence of navigation, they still have to live without DAB radio at £324 – plus £446 for Bluetooth.   I guess it takes a twisted kind of genius to be a ‘product manager’ (that’s the job title) in a car company. The task…

SPEC SHEET ENGINE 6cyl diesel POWER 700bhp TRANSMISSION Automatic, 8WD TOP SPEED (LAND) 65mph TOP SPEED (WATER) 6.2mph RANGE (LAND) 290 miles RANGE (WATER) 12 miles CREW 3 PASSENGERS 1 3 LAUNCH DATE Late 2016 Give us the basics… It’s green and wedgy and makes 700bhp from a six-cylinder power pack, or ‘engine’ as anyone outside of the American military would call it. It also has eight-wheel drive. What else? ACV stands for Amphibious Combat Vehicle, and its basic job is to transport US Marines from ship to shore, whether that shore is rocky, sandy, snowy or any combination thereof. So it can swim? The V-shape hull is good for buoyancy – a quick glance at an actual boat confirms this – but it’s also the perfect shape to deflect…

This story – and it’s one of the most famous in automotive history – begins in May 1963. US behemoth Ford had spent months courting Italian upstart Ferrari, a company still only 16 in ’63, which was how the ascetic Don Frey found himself face-to-face with the wily, operatic Enzo Ferrari. A deal was finally on the table, pooling resources on road and track, but when it came down to it, Il Commendatore bailed. “My rights, my integrity, my very being as a manufacturer… cannot work under the suffocating bureaucracy of the Ford Motor Company,” he thundered. According to a new book on the GT40, Frey remembers Ferrari “shouting words that cannot be found in any dictionary”. No deal. Perhaps the passage of time has introduced some dramatic licence but,…

WINTER TYRES Lexus fits wheels & tyres made of solid ice to NX. Unlikely to make production, for fairly obvious reasons... BACK TO THE PRESENT Florida man drives Dodge Challenger through building in an attempt to travel through time. Fails. LESSONS IN LOVE Netherlands government confirms driving instructors can offer lessons in return for sex. CATCH OF THE DAY Aussie fisherman lashes shark to the front of his Jeep, is investigated and could be fined up to ￡2,500. BOOZY LUNCH Woman with rare intestinal condition that turns food into alcohol is cleared of a drink-driving charge in the US. “I don’t know why it became such a big thing” Fernando Alonso on the time he went viral after borrowing a marshal’s chair when his engine expired in qualifying for the…

BREMONT JAGUAR MKIII What started as a special edition for the sort of people who could actually afford an E-type has become a thoroughly democratised watch of the masses. Well, sort of. This is the MKIII, the third in a line of Jaguarthemed watches by Bremont, and it’s the least expensive – under half the price of the MKI, mostly because it has a less exclusive movement, though it’s still an officially certified chronometer. It’s slimmer than the others, and the caseback is no longer transparent, though the crown is still engraved with the tread pattern of the E’s original tyres. Like the car on which it’s based, it’s hard not to love. £3,495; bremont.com REC P-51 AUTOMATIC The last time we heard from Jonathan Kamstrup he was making watches…

T he Renault Megane is now 20 years old. Yup, that makes us feel rather old too. Blowing out the score of candles on its gâteau d’anniversaire is this, the all-new, fourth-generation Megane. And it’s got a tough shift ahead. The first two Meganes couldn’t be built quickly enough, each having a solid stint as Europe’s best-selling car. Megane MkIII, meanwhile, hasn’t proved nearly as popular. It’s not the rise of the crossover to blame, either: Renault insists the hatchback class the Megane jousts in is more key than ever. Around 30 million so-called C-segment cars sold in 2015, nearly double 2005’s figure. While the new Clio and Captur have made Renault cool again, all the talk around Megane MkIV is of style, tech and quality downsized from above, namely…

It’s properly caked on now: a crust of mud, salt and grime streaming down the boot in a series of abstract waves – an art car, TopGear style. I’m surprised “clean me”, or the French equivalent, hasn’t been inscribed on the back by a witty local. Perhaps they appreciate that every particle of it has been hard-earned, that we’ve chosen to wear them like a billion tiny trophies, each a reminder of the colossal examination we set for the RS. Stop. Rewind four days. I’m at Ford’s Pilot Plant in Cologne, trickling a pristine car out of the gates. Given mine are the first hands outside the company to be granted access to the RS, I decide it’s prudent to prove they’re a safe pair. I indicate left, look both…

Please understand that this is more of a dare than an instruction. Go to the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile website, and, assuming you’re feeling lightly masochistic, download the Formula One technical regulations document. It’s 90 pages long and full of such gems as “3.12 Bodywork facing the ground: fully enclosed holes are only permitted in the surfaces lying on the reference and step planes forward of a line 450mm forward of the rear face of the cockpit entry template…” Riveting stuff. You can do the same for LMP1, too. 79 pages of equally impenetrable motorsportese. It would be half that number, actually, if it were all in one language, but since Le Mans, the ACO and the FIA are all French, the LMP regulations run in two columns, French on…

Three left (mind the taxi) and three right tightens into two right (traffic lights on green) and open four left (dodge late-night bus, get in left-hand lane), 40, narrows (indicate left, into Coventry Street), and stop at the signal (a policeman is flagging me down). Having successfully co-driven myself around Piccadilly Circus in the Hyundai i20 WRC car, I can’t for the life of me think why the evening-all gang might want a chat. Maybe they’d spotted that I’d been a bit tardy with my downshift into the tight right, but my line past the bus where the camber changes ready for the three left down Haymarket, was, though I say so myself, spot on. Polished boots march to my side of the car, and a stern face stoops to…

HELLO 3982cc, twin-turbo V8 petrol, RWD, 469bhp, 479lb ft 33.6mpg, 196g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.2secs, 155mph 1785kg ￡61,000/￡62,910 Total mileage 7850 Driver Charlie Turner Why it’s here Is this the most diverse performance car on the planet? To the uninitiated, KV15 ZWM could easily be mistaken for just another C-Class estate. The aggressive styling of the previous-generation C63 having given way to a more subtle, more reserved muscularity that oozes quality, rather than screams performance. A somewhat less subtle announcement of its intent manifests when you turn the key, and the potent performance of what lies beneath makes itself known. The old 6.2-litre V8 has been replaced by an all-new 4.0-litre twin-turbo unit from the AMG GT. In C63 configuration, it uses a wet sump (the GT uses a dry…

The new Lexus LC 500 is proof that manufacturers really do listen, if we beg hard enough. When the LF-LC concept first appeared at the 2012 Detroit show its purpose was merely to illustrate Lexus’s future design strategy, but so dramatic was its shape that pretty soon the pleading began. Four years later, and the Japanese 6-Series is ready to roll, and looking just as eye-popping as the concept. It’s a design to which the printed page can’t really do justice – constantly morphing depending on where you stand. I recommend lingering a little on the front three-quarter angle, crouching down perhaps to take in the bulging rear flanks – the wheels straining to bust out of their arches. Stop at the blacked out B-pillars and allow a nostalgic thought…

It appears no mention of Volkswagen can be made without considering, um, that-which-shall-not-be-named, but let’s set it to one side and focus on this. Ignore the cute face and pugnacious stance for a moment, because it’s an important little car. It was unveiled as Volkswagen’s keynote concept at the Consumer Electronics Show, and is the first car to sit on the firm’s brand-new small-tomedium drivetrain architecture built specifically for electric vehicles. Y’know, because The Future and all that. The Budd-e, then, is a vision of electric mobility in the year 2019, according to Volkswagen. The concept, zero-emission van is powered by two electric motors (one on each axle), powering all four wheels; the front motor produces 110kW, while the rear kicks out 125kW. Both are powered by a flat, spacesaving…

Superman is flying over Dubai. His cape billows in the warm, gentle breeze and below him the desert landscape stretches out as flat as the board it actually is… Superman is plastic, about four inches tall and currently being manoeuvred around by Yves Rossy, who, in one particular way but perhaps not many others, is the full-scale, living embodiment of the Man of Steel. He is Jetman. A name that, appropriately enough, harks back to the glory days of superheroes, the dream of flight, the right stuff, of iron-jawed, steely-eyed men looking off to the sunset before strapping in to touch the void, to go beyond, to explore new frontiers. And, well, with his carbon wing and quad jets, there’s never been anything quite like the Jetman before. But while…

These days, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is dominated by Germans, but in the early Fifties they were slightly unwelcome guests. The French had just sent them packing, after all, so when a Porsche team entered for the first time in 1951, they struggled to find digs. But the race squad did find a willing host in the small commune of Teloché, close to Arnage and Mulsanne to the south of the circuit. Their base was the tiny Garage Provost and the nearby Café du Sport, where the cars and crew were prepped and fuelled. It would be their race HQ for the next 30 years or so. From there, it was a short drive to the track, which – in those days – meant firing up the racecars…

Y ou get the sense, chatting to Lotus CEO Jean-Marc Gales before bumbling out into drizzly Norfolk in the new Exige, that this is the car Lotus wanted the Exige to be three years ago, but couldn’t afford it to be. Gales bemoans the old cableoperated Toyota gearshift and appears irritated by the old heater system (“Misted-up cars is our biggest complaint from customers”). So really, this new Exige is basically a troubleshooter. Except, because this is a Lotus, the solution to every niggle has been to make it lighter. Up to 61kg lighter. So, that pesky HVAC system? A heater pipe has been junked, the whole caboodle redesigned, with the net result a 5kg saving and the ability to cope with the sweatiest of track-day enthusiasts. Ventilating the engine,…

TopGear doesn’t really do style advice. If you could see us, tapping away at our keyboards, you’d know why. But even we can see there’s something a bit odd about the way this new RX looks. You might call it controversial. And we would’ve – had we been able to find anyone who actually liked it. But, hey, one person’s ocular torture is another’s beauty. Suffice it to say that the RX’s styling isn’t really our thing. Happily, the rest of it is a bit more conventional. Remember, the RX is Lexus’s X5-sized SUV/crossover thing, and traditionally one of the company’s bestsellers. The new one is longer, wider and therefore more spacious than the car it replaces, and there’s even a conventional 2.0-litre petrol engine on offer – minus all…

The Focus RS comes from a family of innovators, so it was hardly going to toe the line. The Mark I had a pioneering limited-slip differential, the Mark II brought the torque-steer-quelling RevoKnuckle front suspension geometry and the Mark III’s gift to the world is its torquevectoring four-wheel-drive system by GKN. It uses a pair of electronically controlled clutch packs either side of the rear drive unit to manage the torque splits – both front/rear and side/side. Up to 70 per cent can go to the back – and 100 per cent of that to either the left or right wheel. By comparison, the Golf R’s Haldex system can only send 50 per cent of the torque to the rear and distributes it by braking the inside disc. Ford says…

In volcanoes, or perched on a precipice of a Swiss Alp – that’s where Bond lairs should be located. But if Sam Mendes were looking for a new baddie abode for the next Bond flick, TopGear has found the perfect spot. It’s not the usual aluminium-furnished glass box, rather a corrugated enormo-shed in rural Japan just a few hours north of Tokyo. But it does have a few surprises. Ahead of me there are lasers. To the left and right of me, lasers. Behind me – you guessed it – more lasers. All cutting, machining, welding and piercing titanium to millimetric precision. A smattering of faces hide behind surgical masks. They’re making parts for new technologies that harness energy from temperature changes in the sea. All that’s missing is a…

HELLO 2979cc, in-line 6cyl, RWD, 425bhp, 405lb ft 32.1mpg, 232g/km CO2 0–62mph in 4.1secs, 155mph 1560kg ￡56,505/￡64,560 Total mileage 1805 Driver Ollie Marriage Why it’s here Which side of the lairy/liveable line does the M3 live on? Meet Toothless. Yep, barely arrived on the fleet, but already got a nickname. This is good. Cars that gain nicknames seem to have more about them – more character, more fun, more part of the family. Saying “I’m taking the M3 to the shops” isn’t half so personal as “I’m taking Toothless.” So Toothless is off to a flying start. There’s the beginnings of a feeble pun in there, given how the name came about. Have you seen How to Train Your Dragon? Cracking film. So my kids come outside to see the…

REPORT 4 1999cc, 4cyl turbodiesel, RWD, 178bhp, 317lb ft 67.4mpg, 111g/km CO2 0–62mph in 7.4secs, 140mph 1565kg ￡34,775/￡43,815 Total mileage 2430 Driver Jack Rix Why it’s here Has Jag really cracked the ‘3-Series’ thing? This picture shows how I like to drive everywhere in my XE. In my mind. Fantasies of heroically oversteering through crowded junctions or performing acrid burnouts to crowds of adoring fans on Streatham High Road are never far from my thoughts. After all, this is a rear-wheeldrive saloon with genuine sporting pedigree, and I am a keen helmsman by trade. Sadly, my reality is quite different. That pesky thing – the law – and fear of injury, to myself and others, prevents me from driving like a lunatic on public roads. However, given the freedom of…

REPORT 8 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 9691 Driver Ollie Kew Why it’s here Can we expose chinks in the ultimate Golf’s armour? Ive had a hot hatch-crazy month. After fawning over countless delightful fast Fords at their secret shed of, um, old sheds, I had a play in both the MkI and MkII Focus RS. Handy to have a refresher when the Golf R’s next challenger, the 345bhp third-gen RS, is imminent. And then it was up to Oxfordshire, via an Ashes to Ashes timewarp, to pitch Peugeot 205 GTi against Renault Clio Williams. Truly great hot hatchbacks – some of the finest ever. And it was the Golf R that took me there. Which leads…

L ife can be hard for a big French saloon when you live in a world where BMW, Mercedes and Audi dominate the executive barge sector like burly doormen to an exclusive nightclub. And if you’re Citroen, you have to accept that deposing the kings of pin-sharp driving dynamics isn’t probably on the cards. So you go leftfield, and hope to sweep up those customers for whom all that thrusty executivity really isn’t a thing. In 2005 that meant the Citroen C6, a wafty, art deco-ish take on saloon luxury. Now, it’s not unusual for European buyers to be more than a little sniffy about big modern French barges, and the XM – which the C6 sort of replaced – didn’t make much of an impression. But the C6 made…