Table of contents for October 2016 in Evo

“You can even pick up a gear selector trimmed in stingray skin” TAKING DELIVERY OF a new car is exciting – as thrilling for some as spending the next years driving it. The process of buying a new car, however, is a necessary evil, poking around your potential purchase in a characterless showroom before sitting down to sign your life away. That is unless you’re ordering a new Bentley from the high-end showroom at the Conservatorium Hotel in Amsterdam. for one, the process with Bentley has always been a little more special than signing on the line for a Nissan leaf, but the Amsterdam outlet has also recently adopted technology from Sony to make the experience as detailed and interactive as possible, despite the hotel showroom – with its 78-square-metre…

letters@evo.co.uk @evomagazine @evomagazine A NOTHER MON TH A ND A NOTHER GR E AT car I couldn’t buy even if I had the £3million in the bank. I am sure the Aston Martin-Red Bull 001 will be a stunning car to marvel at, let alone drive, but with reputedly over 350 people chasing only 99 cars, will any of the cars ever be driven except for on and off a trailer on its way back to Gaydon for its annual service? Why do manufacturers (including Porsche, Ferrari and McLaren) make so few of these iconic cars and allow the speculators to make so much profit? I thought Ferrari had the correct idea in the past to make one car less than demand. Supposedly 1315 F40s were produced, but that hasn’t…

Test location: B645, Cambridgeshire GPS: 52.256728, -0.311346 Photography: Aston Parrott A TASTE AS TO HOW FAR Ford can take its current Mustang is easy to savour with the company’s own 526bhp GT350 – a car our very own Henry Catchpole feasted on back in issue 221. Head off-menu stateside and the likes of Shelby will serve current Mustang owners with a full platter of tuning options to salivate over. It’s all very tantalising when you can dine at European supercar horsepower tables for the cost of a drive-thru. Although in the case of this British-made Sutton CS700, it’s quite an expensive drive-thru. Built by the ‘Bespoke’ division of exotic car dealer Clive Sutton, the CS700 is the UK’s specialist take on the aftermarket, all-American muscle-car dream. With a potential for…

Test location: Merče, slovenia GPS: 45.70378, 13.90603 Choosing between the C63 and C63 s is simple. because even though the s costs £6910 more, the 4-litre twinturbo V8 is recalibrated to produce 503bhp (34bhp more than the non-s), you also get an electronically controlled limited-slip differential, active engine mounts and a Race transmission mode. And choosing which body style to go for is simple: it’s the coupe, surely? the saloon and estate have a less sophisticated multilink rear axle than the coupe and the new Cabriolet, and because the Cabriolet doesn’t have a fixed roof, it will be a heavy, wobbly mess by comparison. won’t it? well, the Cabriolet is indeed heavier. the drop-top C63 s, despite not having a complicated and heavy metal folding roof, is still a whopping…

TEN YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE PRODUCTION of the last TVR ended, but the company’s influence on the sports car market is still clear to see. The current crop of loud, brawny sports cars such as the Aston Martin Vantage and Jaguar F-type would arguably never have existed had the Griffith and Cerbera not set the mould. The established manufacturers offer no gratitude, however, as it’s their cars that are going to give the new TVR the hardest time. Without big money TVR will be, as it always has been, the underdog, but its outsider position and individual take on what a sports car should be is what made TVRs so loveable and helped us overlook their foibles. If the reborn company can channel some of this character into the new…

Short, bumpy, narrow and lined with thousands of spectators, the hill climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed wasn’t the ideal location to experience the Bugatti Chiron for the first time. But you don’t say no to the opportunity to ride shotgun in the world’s most powerful production car being driven by Le Mans-winner and friend of evo Andy Wallace. As inappropriate a piece of tarmac as it might have been, on the hill the Chiron’s performance was still breathtaking. I mean that quite literally. The initial acceleration from standstill is impressive. If you’ve experienced launch control in a 911 Turbo S or a Nissan GT-R, it will feel familiar. But at the point where the acceleration in those two begins to wane, the Chiron just keeps charging forwards at…

‘If the next M5 uses a version of this partcarbon chassis, it will inherit a superb platform’ FAREWELL TO THE MOST sophisticated car we’ve ever run on Fast Fleet. It was a car that wormed its way into our affections, but one that also frustrated at times. Our BMW 730Ld M Sport was one of the latest, sixth-generation 7-series. Its styling won few friends; it reminded us that the most distinctive big Beemer of recent years was Chris Bangle’s sunkenbottom E65 of 2001. The colour (Black Sapphire) attracted praise as often as the leather interior (Ivory White Exclusive Nappa) attracted dirt, and the options (not chosen by me, I hasten to add) lifted the price from £71,350 to £101,305. Yes, you read that correctly – this 7 arrived with £30,000…

FOR WEEKS I HAD BEEN avoiding all forms of communication with evo HQ. Technical problems with email, terrible phone signal, baby changed the router settings, natural disasters, gone racing – I wheeled out everything I possibly could from the Dickie Meaden book of excuses. In my case it wasn’t because I was late delivering some work, however, but because I was trying not to have a conversation about handing back the Audi RS Q3. It was a different story from when the RS Q3 first arrived. Initially I was a little disappointed, specifically with how small it was for occupants and in terms of load space (though at £50,095 after options, up from £46,120 basic, its price was anything but small). At six-foot-two I found the pedals were too close…

‘I’ll soon be investigating more serious bracing to curb the MX-5’s chassis flex’ FUN THOUGH THE LAST evo track evening that I attended was (see issue 216), the then 23-year-old Eunos proved far from fighting fit. After only a couple of laps the brakes were fading badly, and I drove home to the disconcerting sound of the engine and road speed being out of phase, thanks to a slipping clutch. Those issues were swiftly rectified with a trip to MX5 City in Doncaster to fit a set of EBC brakes and a new Exedy clutch (evo 219), but I had to wait until the first track evening of 2016 to properly test their worth. And worth it they are. The clutch, now nicely bedded-in, is more than up to the…

SLOTTING IN SOMEWHERE BEHIND the 8C and the new Giulia Quadrifoglio, the 156 GTA is one of Alfa Romeo’s most appealing modern models, but it’s always been heavily compromised on bumpy UK roads. Years of research from loyal owners has uncovered ways to make it better, however. A Quaife ATB helical limited-slip differential will helps tame the Busso V6’s 221lb ft of torque. Autolusso (autolusso.co.uk) will supply and fit one for £750. Autolusso will also supply and fit a Bilstein B12 Pro-kit (springs and dampers) and Eibach anti-roll bars for £1475 all-in. Combined, they improve body control over the poorly damped original suspension and reduce roll. Now you’ve fixed the handling, why not celebrate by enhancing the note of that 3.2-litre V6? Alfaholics (alfaholics.com) can supply a full exhaust system…

+= new entry this month. * = grey import. Entries in italics are for cars no longer on sale. Issue no. is for our most recent major test of the car (D = Driven, R = Road test or group test, F = Feature, FF = Fast Fleet). Call 0844 844 0039 to order a back issue. Price is on-the-road including VAT and delivery charges. Engine is the car’s main motor only – additional hybrid tech isn’t shown. Weight is the car’s kerb weight as quoted by the manufacturer. bhp/ton is the power-to-weight ratio based on manufacturer’s kerb weight. 0-60mph and 0-100mph figures in bold are independently recorded, all other performance figures are manufacturers’ claims. CO2 g/km is the official EC figure and EC mpg is the official ‘Combined’ figure…

15-18 September 2016 “Pretty much anything can be run in the top class but it tends to be dominated by derestricted NASCARs” T h e S i l v e r S t a t e Classic Challenge is an extraordinary juxtaposition of danger and safety, and of nutters and professionals. it has a tremendous domestic following in the US and is little known anywhere else, and it attracts the most incredibly diverse collection of people and cars. Of the latter, anything can compete on the 90-mile stretch of closed public highway in Nevada – anything from NaSCars to crappy Dodge estates. and i should know, because i competed in the Silver State Classic in said crappy Dodge estate in 2005. the Silver State Classic Challenge inc. is a non-profit…

“Pirelli’s P Zero World could create local hubs for car enthusiasts and small-scale car meets” PIRELLI HAS CHOSEN Los Angeles as the city in which to open the first P Zero World. Despite the name, however, it’s no theme park but a tyre shop – the greatest tyre shop you could imagine. A tyre shop dedicated to just one brand might seem an unusual concept, but Pirelli doesn’t consider itself as just a tyre brand. Its involvement in fashion through the Pirelli Calendar has helped define it as more of a luxury brand than its competitors. Indeed, P Zero World is to Pirelli what the Apple Store is to Apple – an environment that’s as much about educating people about the brand as it is about selling products. As well…

THIS MONTH RENAULT SPORT CLIO RS16 // SUTTON MUSTANG CS700 //ALFAWORKS GT4C // MASERATI QUATTROPORTE GTS //MERCEDES-AMG C63 S CABRIOLET //CADILLAC CT6 THE TEAM This month, we drive Cadillac’s new S-class rival, the CT6, so we asked our road testers to name their favourite limo: NICK TROTT Editor ‘A slightly lowered, blackedout 1964 Lincoln Continental please.’ STUART GALLAGHER Managing editor ‘The best limo is the one that takes me home after a night out – normally an A8. Or a 200k-mile Mondeo’ HENRY CATCHPOLE Features editor ‘The Lincoln Town Car limo that John Barker drove for a lap time of the West Circuit in issue 100. Poor thing. ’ DAN PROSSER Road test editor ‘A wide-body Caterham with leather seats is basically a limo. So that.’ JETHRO BOVINGDON Contributing editor…

Test location: Royston, Hertfordshire GPS: 52.04810, 0.02416 ‘There’s a proper root and branch revision of the suspension geometry and damping’ PROBLEMS. THE FIRST hint that all might not be well with Alfa’s 4C came when Richard Meaden attended the car’s 2013 launch, based largely at Alfa’s flattering Balocco proving ground in northern Italy (evo 189). Doubts crystallised a month later on the Route Napoleon in the south of France. A full sport-spec 4C had been parachuted in to that year’s eCoty as a wild-card entry on the strength of its lightweight, carboncored build, Elise-eclipsing spec and knee-weakening looks, yet it came more ‘last’ than any other car in the history of the event. It flat-lined on every judge’s scorecard save for a faint blip of sympathy from one, maybe reflecting…

Test location: Joachimsthal, Germany GPS: 52.96839, 13.75017 THIS CADILLAC DOES NOT have a V8. I know what you’re thinking: what is the point of having a true American car that doesn’t have a big, burbling V8? Well, the new CT6 is Cadillac’s latest attempt at breaking into the European market, and this is its Mercedes S-class rival. As such, it’s been designed to appeal to people who are more interested in luxury, fuel economy and dynamic finesse than small-block Chevy V8s. So, instead of a V8, the CT6 has a 3-litre twin-turbocharged V6 producing 411bhp and 409lb ft. With four-wheel drive standard, that’s enough to propel the 1950kg Cadillac to 62mph in 5.7sec. There is no choice of transmission – the CT6 comes with an eight-speed automatic. In fact, there…

For many oF us, the late Peter Wheeler’s 24-year tenure at the helm is TVR’s definitive era. For the latter half of those years, Ben Samuelson worked closely alongside him, initially in PR and marketing roles. Though it was never reflected in his job title, as Samuelson won Wheeler’s respect and trust, his input helped shape the marque and its years of success. Their perhaps unlikely, and certainly unconventional, bond (at least in the context of the motor industry) reflected the spirit at TVR in those days. For the first five or so years of evo’s existence, TVR was a staple marque. We always relished the opportunity to test the cars, and though our relationship with TVR – and therefore Wheeler and Samuelson – was sometimes rocky, there was a…

Ic a n s t i l l r e m e m be r the last time I drove a thirdgeneration, ‘FD’ RX-7. But that’s because it was also the first time. It was way back in 1993, when the car was new and causing a stir in the UK. There was a real buzz about it, and I’m not just talking about its audible rev limiter. Even those who would not normally be drawn to Japanese performance cars found the fast and voluptuous rotarypowered Mazda very hard to ignore. The same was true of Toyota’s bewinged A80 twin-turbo Toyota Supra and Nissan’s slightly more discreet, but no less appealing, 300ZX. That this was also the heyday for Honda’s NSX makes it clear how strong the Japanese brands were…

SOMETIMES A GREAT drive sneaks up on you when you least expect it. That’s what just happened with the Bentley, after a tedious journey back from a historic-racing weekend at the French circuit of Dijon-Prenois. I didn’t drive the Conti GT out to Dijon as logistics dictated it was better to travel with the team, but it was waiting for me back at Raceworks Motorsport’s workshops at godawful o’clock on Monday morning. We were reunited after a five-hour journey through France, a delightful three-and-a-half hour wait at the Chunnel and a two-hour trip north from Folkestone. By the time I sank into the embrace of the Bentley’s seat, it was just after 3am. As you can imagine, enthusiasm for anything other than sleep was in short supply. The sound of…

FOR WHAT’S PERCEIVED to be an old-school saloon – in fact I described it as such last month – the VXR8 GTS has a lot of technology. It’s not intrusive, so it’s easy to just jump in the big Vauxhall and drive, but it’s worth paying attention to what’s available to the driver in order to find the sweet spot in all the settings. Beneath the tech is some lovely and heavy-duty engineering. The basics are that the VXR8 GTS has that ‘LSA’ 6.2-litre pushrod V8 with two valves per cylinder. It’s boosted by an Eaton supercharger to produce 576bhp at 6150rpm and 545lb ft at 3850rpm. The car weighs 1834kg (we’ll verify this on our scales soon) and features MacPherson struts up front and multi-link rear suspension. There’s a…

‘When you break open something as complicated as a gearbox, the money in your wallet evaporates in a flash. Pffft’ JUST LOOK AT IT! THE immaculate finish, the red cam covers, the Porsche script – looks awesome, huh? But followers of this long and protracted account on my SC’s engine woes may be wondering why, after nearly a year, the newly rebuilt 3-litre engine is not actually installed in the Slate Blue body of my 1982 911. Well, I must’ve done something despicable in a previous life, because things aren’t going well under the rear deck of the Porsche. In fact, things are going really badly. When Ollie from RPM Technik was fitting the engine to the gearbox, he noticed that something wasn’t quite right. He sent me a short…

APP CSR Racing 2 £ f r e e Apple and Google Play stores Sequel to one of the world’s most popular mobile games (130 million downloads and counting), CSR Racing 2 lets you drag-race players across the world in real-time. There’s a large selection of stunningly rendered real-world cars – including Ferraris and McLarens – to choose from. T- SHIRT GT3 RS £ 2 3 porscheclubgb.com/shop Car clubs aren’t known for their tasteful attire, but Porsche Club GB has proven it’s an exception with this T-shirt. Available in grey, blue or brown, it’s based on a print by Joel Clark and displays the 991 GT3 RS in its most striking hue – Lava Orange. TOY Porsche 919 Hybrid and 917K Pit Lane £ 6 9 . 9 9 shop.lego.com…

T h i n k P i r e l l i , T h i n k P z e r o . A n d i T ’ s n o T hard to see why, not when the F40 connection is so strong. Neither should we forget that there hasn’t been a time in the past 30 years when a hearty contingent of the world’s fastest cars hasn’t worn tyres bearing that special name, letter and written-out number. Porsche 996 GT2, Jaguar F-type R, Lamborghini Huracán Spyder… and those are just the P Zero-shod models sitting in the evo car park as these words fall on this page. However, if the Pirelli P Zero is what you might rightly call exotic, then the P7 landed from another…

Test location: Circuit des Ecuyers, France GPS: 49.109205, 3.507581 DRIVING A PURPOSEbuilt competition car on circuit is an enlightening experience. Whereas most road cars feel all at sea on track – not enough grip, far too understeery in their balance, body control much too sloppy – racing cars are altogether more capable on circuit. Of course they are. That’s what they’re built for. To drive a competition car on track really is to have your eyes opened, though, and for one simple reason: in a road car you concentrate on the car, but in a racing car you concentrate on the circuit. It’s all to do with dynamic ability. Road cars, even sporty ones, tend not to have the grip, control and precision to really perform on circuit, where cornering…

Test location: Sicily, Italy GPS: 37.59999, 14.01535 THE SALOON CAR WITH the world’s most exotic name for something as prosaic as ‘four-door’ has just had a mid-life facelift. That means a subtle resculpting of the front and rear, a reworked interior, minor calibration tweaks to gearbox and engine, and new GranSport (sporty) and GranLusso (more luxurious) trim options. The UK line-up comprises a diesel (V6, 271bhp), the S (twin-turbo V6 petrol, 404bhp) and the rangetopping GTS, as driven here. The £110,405 GTS’s Ferrari-built twin-turbo V8 produces the same 523bhp at 6800rpm as before, and despite 479lb ft from 2250rpm (on overboost, and also unchanged), it’s entirely happy with being wrung out right to the limiter. It’s an oilysmooth engine, but its note won’t make you grin from the moment you…

‘In recent years this simplest and most readily accessible of car-based pleasures has become a distant memory’ CAR CLEANING: CHORE OR DELIGHT? It might seem odd to find a eulogy to washing cars in a magazine dedicated to driving them, but I’ve long believed that if you really want to get to know a car, you have to take the time to run a sponge over it. I’m not talking about the half-baked magazine-photoshoot job using ice-cold river water in some remote Welsh lay-by. I’ve spent enough of my life doing just that to know there are few things more unpleasant and less satisfactory. No, I’m talking about a proper, lose-yourself-on-a-Sunday-morning wash and wax. There was a time when this blokey ritual was as much a part of my motoring…

The Col du Grand Saint Bernard. I don’t know why, but I’ve always wanted to explore this pass that runs over the ridge between Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. So it’s with some glee that I tap ‘Aosta, Italy’ into the navigation menu of a Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe. At the foot of the col on the Italian side, Aosta will be our base for the next couple of days. It’s 566km from Stuttgart Airport, the C63 S and me, and a lot further for evo staffers Will Beaumont, Aston Parrott and Louis Shaw, who are driving from the UK in an M4 fitted with the Competition Package and a Lexus RC F. God knows how much petrol we’ll use, and I shudder to think of the cost in road…

1479bhp. 261mph. £1.9million. The son of Veyron is – should be – outstanding, but while the Chiron is far from ordinary, does it have the shock and awe of its predecessor? The Veyron, with its sub-three-second 0-60mph time, four-figure horsepower output and 253mph top speed, set the template for modern hypercars, but did it also inadvertently provide Bugatti with the impossible challenge of building a replacement that genuinely moves the concept on? We’re still a couple of months away from our first drive of Bugatti’s latest extreme-mobile, but having been granted an audience with those responsible for its development, and having experienced its enormous power from the passenger seat, we can now bring you the A to Z of the Bugatti Chiron. A Active aero When completely retracted, the rear…

‘I haven’t even started the engine yet and the DB11 already feels like it is going to be good company’ FROM THE FIRST TUR N OF THE wheel, this feels like a different Aston Martin. The knurled rim is familiar as I go clockwise for ‘N’, then anticlockwise for ‘E’ before heading back through the rotational clicks like a navigational safe-cracker for ‘W’. It’s just so much easier to use than any Aston before. Of course, I’m not talking about the steering wheel here (we’ll get to that in a bit), but rather the much smaller, more circular item perched on the transmission tunnel between the seats. Peel away the beautiful brogue leather and you’ll now find a Mercedes system underneath much of the switchgear in this new Aston, but…

‘Mechanically the options on the RS6 are what Meaden calls “evo-reader spec”. I hope you agree’ FROM ONE ESTATE CAR to another, and VW parentage aside, there is very little that links evo’s outgoing Skoda Octavia vRS to our incoming Audi RS6 Avant Performance. This time last year I managed to hold on to the keys of a regular, 552bhp RS6 long enough to convince myself that Audi’s über-estate was a mighty machine to have custody of. All I needed was an excuse to ask Audi if I could run one, the problem being that evo had already enjoyed the long-term company of an RS6 when the car was new in 2013, and to run another with nothing new to say isn’t really the done thing. Then, at the end…

THE ADVANTAGE OF talking over the phone rather than face-to-face is that, if you’re a raging buffoon like me and you haven’t the foggiest idea what the cleverer person is waffling on about, you can hide your baffled look and just say ‘oh right’ – all while googling what it is that the cleverer person just said to you. This time around that cleverer person was managing ed Gallagher, and what he said was: ‘Your new long-termer is here. It’s a 308 GTi.’ Cue an ‘oh right’ and a very speedy change of subject as I didn’t have Google to hand. Could it be that I’d misheard and he’d said ‘GTS’? Perhaps Ferrari wanted to promote its approved pre-owned network and supply us with a 308 GTS for a year.…

‘I tore around for two months in an Impreza that I now didn’t want to sell. Why? Because I was having too much fun’ I’VE SOLD THE IMPREZA. Had to. I miss it, too, which is dumb because I barely drove it, my wife hated it, and it did its best to cost me more in the short period I owned it than my 911 SC has. But let’s rewind. I bought the Impreza to drive to the Monte Carlo Rally in – a bargain rally weapon bound for one of the most fabled motorsport events of all time. It was a feature idea nominated by Jethro Bovingdon and seconded by others in the office. When it became clear (by the speed at which our publisher left the building when…

AT LAST, MY MX-5 HAS ITS new tyres fitted. They’re Dunlop SportMaxx RT 2s and they’re excellent. The car now has bags of grip – more than the OE Bridgestone Potenzas ever offered – and I can drive it harder, but that ever-present body roll has become even more irritating. The Mazda is so small and light and now has so much grip that I just want to drive it as hard as possible, but every time I do, it feels a bit like it’s about to flip over on turn-in. I can’t really blame the tyres for that, and with a bit of setup tweaking I’m sure the MX-5 would be fantastic. I understand that this car isn’t really about driving beyond seven tenths, but surely any owner would…

THERE AIN’T NO SUBSTITUTE FOR cubic inches… is what they used to say, and for decades we swallowed the line. But then came downsizing and turbocharging, and today everyone’s at it, from Ford to Ferrari. So you could say that Volkswagen was ahead of the curve with the Mk6 Golf R. When the company announced in September 2009 that the replacement for the Mk5 R32 and its 3.2-litre V6 would be nothing more exotic than another turbocharged 2-litre four-pot, many lamented the passing of the über-Golf. That was until they drove the Mk6 R… Truth is, the 3.2 was always a little bit flabby and flaccid. The pumped-up 2-litre TSI actually kicked out more power (266bhp versus 246) and torque (258lb ft plays 236) and it weighed a useful 35kg…

‘I’m on my second Golf R after the first was written off in an accident. I knew another long search was in store – there are only around 800 Mk6 Rs in the UK and finding one with a good spec is a challenge. Prices are holding well, and a cherished example doesn’t stick around. ‘A fellow member of vwroc.com heard about my accident and contacted me to say he was thinking of selling. Three weeks, several emails and four hundred miles later, I was the owner of this late-2012 model in Rising Blue metallic. ‘It belonged first to VW as their demo car, so has every single option, including the Recaro buckets – an expensive option at almost £3500, but coupled with the RNS 510 satnav and upgraded Dynaudio…

W H E N A N A S T O N M A R T I N enthusiast talks about the Vanquish as ‘the bridge’, they’re not heading for a rousing middle eight but referring to a car that straddles the era of hand-built V8 leviathans from Newport Pagnell and the VH-platform cars that have emerged from Gaydon in the years since. Just 2578 of these flagship Astons were built between 2001 and 2007, and compared with later Ian Callum-penned creations, their more brutal, masculine lines mean very few people don’t see the original Vanquish as one of the most handsome cars ever to wear the marque’s winged emblem. The Vanquish has never enjoyed the best reputation for reliability, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the very early cars often gave…