Table of contents for October 2017 in Evo

I SUSPECT YOU’VE READ AT LEAST ONE HEADLINE proclaiming that by 2040 the last new petrol- and diesel-engined cars will have been sold in Britain, the motoring public forced into automobiles powered exclusively by electricity. I imagine you then read a little deeper to educate yourself on the matter only to discover that really this isn’t going to happen at all. This is the problem when politics and the motor industry mix. The former has absolutely no idea how the latter works or, indeed, what it is capable of. Not in some malevolent way, you understand, although the idea of the engineers at Jaguar building an XJ that vaporises unwanted politicians once the armoured doors have sealed shut does have an appeal. Rather, the motor industry is a remarkable machine…

IT WAS A FULL HOUSE OF ATTENDEES for evo’s first ‘home’ track evening of 2017 at the Bedford Autodrome. The result was a pitlane abuzz with chatter and a delicious spread of metal, ranging from a tidy Clio 182 Trophy all the way to a stealth-spec McLaren 570S, with a wide variety of shapes and sizes in between – all against the backdrop of a gently setting sun and the unmistakable aroma of cooling brakes and hot rubber. Toasty ambient temperatures meant there was bags of grip on track for the cars to exploit, with the 2.8-mile South-West Circuit’s final corner – a fast, sweeping right-hander – goading drivers in all but the most powerful cars to take it flat. Only those at the wheel will ever know the truth……

TCR IS RAPIDLY POSITIONING ITSELF as one of the most relevant tin-top series in the world. With cars heavily based on production vehicles and dozens of models eligible under the regulations, there’s plenty of ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ potential. And there are a few top-name drivers in the category’s international series, too. One of those is ex-F1 driver Gianni Morbidelli, who avoided a chaotic start to the second race at Oschersleben in July, round 14 of the series. Off the line the Civic of Roberto Colciago and the SEAT Leon of James Nash closed together on the nose of Jean- Karl Vernay’s VW Golf, pitching Nash and Colciago into spins that took out half a dozen others. Morbidelli sneaked his Golf through the spinning vehicles on the grass,…

TOYOTA YARIS GRMN // JAGUAR F-TYPE 2.0 // PORSCHE PANAMERA TURBO SPORT TURISMO // RANGE ROVER VELAR // FORD FIESTA ST-LINE // MASERATI GRANTURISMO MC YOSHINORI SASAKI, THE CHIEF ENGINEER ON YARIS GRMN, tells a lovely story about the birth of Toyota’s first hot hatch for at least a generation. During the GT86 project, for which he was assistant chief engineer to Tetsuya Tada, he and Tada were testing said coupe in Wales when a small hot hatch latched onto their tail. ‘I don’t know what car it was, a Clio, a Polo maybe, but I drove faster and faster and still couldn’t shake them off,’ says Sasaki. ‘When we finally got to a village we realised it was old lady driving. I said right then [laughing], we must make…

THE NEW RANGE ROVER Velar is designed to fill the ‘white space’ between the Evoque and the Range Rover Sport in the maker’s lineup. This was news to me: I thought that’s what the Land Rover Discovery Sport was for, but then that doesn’t have the all-important Range Rover badge. You could feasibly fit the Jaguar F-Pace into that slot too, now that LR’s sister company has its own SUV. You can draw your own conclusions on the styling, but if ever an SUV could be described as sleek, this is the one. Surfaces are clean and details are neat, from the ultra-slim LED headlamps (with laser high beams available) to the retracting door handles. To use them is to open the door on one of the best cabins you’ll…

The V8s The evo years THE FIRST FERRARI WE DROVE in evo was an F355 Berlinetta as part of our inaugural eCoty, held late in 1998. However, the first all-new Ferrari launched under our watch was the 360 Modena. We were first invited to Maranello early in ’99 for a technical briefing on the car we would return to Italy to drive later that same year. Looking back, the 360 was a radical car for Ferrari: the first with an aluminium chassis and body, the first where aerodynamics were a major influence and the first to deliver genuine usability. If we’re being harsh, it was also the moment Ferraris ceased to be classically beautiful, but then the F355 was a tough act to follow. The 360 was bigger than its…

YES, YOU PROBABLY WOULD NEED THE 576BHP 911 Turbo S Cabriolet to go head-to-head with McLaren’s 562bhp 570S Spider. That’s a decider we’ll come to when we get our hands on the new drop-top McLaren back in the UK. So instead, to represent Porsche in this month’s celebration of rapid roadsters, we’ve picked the turbocharged – small ‘t’ – 911 Targa 4 GTS, which allows us to ponder an alternative to the traditional convertible roof. In any case, in this new GTS spec the Targa is far from outgunned by its rivals in our earlier twin-test: its 444bhp puts it only 24bhp behind the Mercedes-AMG GT Roadster, and with PDK it completes the 0-62mph dash in a claimed 3.7sec – 0.3sec quicker than the AMG’s figure and only a tenth…

THE START OF JEREMY PARKER’S car history shows a progression from affordable old-style open-top sports cars to effervescent – and still affordable – hot hatches. After getting rid of his MG Midget, which needed so much work (including a reconditioned engine) that it forced him to learn how to maintain a car himself, he eventually got into a Fiesta XR2. That was then swapped for a Renault 5 GT Turbo, which was eventually treated to a 155bhp conversion from turbo specialists BBR. Jeremy then used a Morris Minor for daily driver duties before he got a company car, and it gave him the opportunity to indulge in some less practical machinery. He bought and used his Porsche 944 and Westfield Seven, then later a Lotus Elise, in sprints and hill…

NEW ARRIVAL THEY SAY YOU SHOULDN’T judge a book by its cover, and the first reviews of the new RS5 suggest that it is a perfect case in point. The bulging wheelarches, the big wheels and the attention-grabbing signature paint colour all look like a gauntlet being thrown down in the direction of the BMW M4 and Mercedes-AMG C63 Coupe, but it seems the RS5 is different to those cars, leaning more towards being a grand tourer than a harder-edged sports coupe. Game over, then? A pointless addition to our long-term fleet? Well, not so fast… This is still an RS model, after all, so it’s not exactly got a retired bank manager’s S500 in its sights. Rather it’s an RS model that, as you may have read in last…

THE MAJOR CAR MAKERS have a pretty good strike rate in styling alloy wheels for the cars that matter. Think air-cooled Porsche 911s, many a Ferrari, fast BMWs galore, RS Audis, Ford Escort XR3 and Puma, Lancia Delta Integrale, Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9 – and others you’re already shouting about That might have made things difficult for aftermarket alloy wheels makers, but when a wheel becomes ubiquitous, there are always those who want to stand out from the crowd, even if that crowd congregated to celebrate good taste. It’s slightly different today. Car makers have cottoned on to the financial potential of offering a choice of alloys, in a variety of sizes, and many of those wheels are good lookers. Why trawl the aftermarket when it’s so easy to just…

THE FEVER THAT surrounds the announcement and subsequent first drive of any 911 developed in Andreas Preuninger’s lair deep within Weissach is both predictable and wholly understandable. It has become a phenomenon that has helped spur on the prices of pretty much all older 911s and especially those with a motorsport connection. Yet here we are surrounded by the same sense of anticipation you might expect for the launch of a Preuninger product, but for a fourwheel- drive estate car. So it makes the Panamera Sport Turismo’s arrival all the more intriguing. Its debut is not exactly a shock, the model having been previewed as a concept at the Paris motor show in 2012, and following last year’s arrival of the new and updated Panamera saloon, the trim lines, engines…

RISKY BUSINESS, THIS downsizing lark. God help us and anyone who reads the internet the day Lamborghini is finally forced to ditch 12-cylinder engines, or when AMG bites the bullet and swaps its thundering V8s for hybrid-assisted V6s. Likewise, dropping a turbocharged, in-line four-cylinder engine into a Jaguar F-type might be considered a sign of impending apocalypse, given the coupe and cabrio have until now used a selection of more exotic supercharged sixes and eights. Thankfully, both those configurations continue, and the four simply brings an extra, more affordable option at the bottom of the range, with the same levels of style the F-type has always offered. Naturally, you can’t just throw any old engine at a sports car and hope it’ll stick, so Jaguar has pinched the 2-litre, 296bhp…

FOR MOST PEOPLE ,THE arrival of a 60th birthday is usually a sign that it’s time to slow down a little. Maybe even consider retirement. However, after six decades on sale, the Caterham Seven has no intention of kicking back. Three-score years on from its debut as the Colin Chapman-penned Lotus Seven, this lithe and lightweight machine is still setting the standard for drivers seeking hardwired driving fun. And it shows no sign of settling for the pipe and slippers just yet, with ever-faster versions and technical innovations keeping it fresher than its 1950s styling cues would have you believe. In an age of autonomous vehicles, the Caterham remains an ever-present reminder of the joys of being in total command of a car. This is driving in its rawest and…

‘It’s one of the few recognised performance benchmarks’ SOME YEARS AGO, GM ORGANISED AN EVENT AT the Nürburgring Nordschleife with the intent of showing that its cars handled well. It did so because this fact was not apparent from driving them on the road. This was back in the early ’90s, when French car makers were much admired for the agility and comfort of their cars, which is how I found myself heading downhill in a boggo Citroën ZX estate towards the wicked compression that is the Foxhole. We hit the bottom at about 90mph, the ZX, myself and four water mannequins, and when the suspension compressed to the bump-stops, the car took attitude and we headed up the other side with a handful of opposite lock. Exciting stuff. The…

IF OPPOSITES REALLY DO ATTRACT, then seeing the AMG GT Roadster and Audi R8 Spyder V10 go head to head along a great piece of road is a bit like watching King Kong and Alien get it on. And the results, as you can imagine, are nothing if not spectacular. The AMG is a traditional front-engined bruiser with a never-ending bonnet that just about manages to contain its twin-turbo V8 and quintessentially rear-drive chassis. The R8, on the other hand, is far more delicate in its appearance, and initially more exotic in its personality in that it is very obviously mid- rather than rear-engined. And when you fire up its naturally aspirated V10 engine for the first time, the sound that bursts forth is altogether more sophisticated in tenor beside…

‘A pH-neutral shampoo won’t attack protective polishes or waxes that are already on the surface of the car’s paint’ WHAT IS IT? A carefully crafted mixture of chemicals, dyes, fragrances and preservatives in an aqueous solution specifically designed to clean your car effectively without damaging the paintwork. DO I REALLY NEED TO USE IT? If you want your car to retain that showroom shine, then yes. Dirt, traffic film, bird lime – all these can damage your paintwork and need to be gently removed. CAN’T I JUST USE WASHING-UP LIQUID? No. It’s good for plates, less so for paintwork. It has a high salt content and will strip away the layers of wax and polish that are protecting your car. HOW DOES IT WORK? While the main ingredient in car…

FANCY UNLEASHING YOUR INNER McRAE or Mäkinen in a Japanese rally special? Of course you do. But with £15k to spend, what should you buy? evo’s Stuart Gallagher, Will Beaumont, Antony Ingram and John Barker offer some suggestions. SG: I know the brief says ‘rally special’, and to the best of my knowledge a Mitsubishi Evo IX MR GT Wagon (below) never took to the special stages. But beneath its Ikea-wardrobe exterior it’s pure Evo IX. Actually, it’s not quite pure Evo IX – it had the same 276bhp 2-litre MIVEC four-cylinder, delightful sixspeed manual gearbox and active centre differential but missed out on the Super-Active Yaw Control. Despite weighing 70kg more than the saloon, it was still good for a 4.8sec 0-62mph time and 150mph. WB: The Subaru Impreza…

Dateacquired May 2017 Totalmileage 5528 Mileagethismonth 2242 Coststhismonth £0 mpgthismonth 33.2 FLATTERY IS A GOOD thing in a car. Handling that is intuitive and rewarding can be appreciated by drivers of all skill levels. On the other hand, cars that make drivers feel clumsy and lacking in finesse are not going to lift the spirits as you approach, key in hand, anticipating the journey. It’s not just the dynamics, though. Other aspects can put a stone in your shoe. In my first few weeks with the Cupra I hadn’t got to the bottom of certain parts of the human-machine interface (HMI) or, as it transpires, the fine tuning of the car’s character with the various settings available for steering, chassis, engine and gearbox. Happily, I have now, having completed a…

‘The funny thing is that even I had never seen the car’s true colour until now’ Dateacquired April 2016 Totalmileage 79,347 Mileagethismonth 101 Coststhismonth £650 detailing mpgthismonth 29.8 OLDER CARS SUCH AS my 993 always feel like an occasion. Sliding yourself down into the leather bucket seat, turning the key and hearing that flatsix come alive. Finding first gear and pulling away with every mechanical movement feeling precise – it just gives you something to smile about. If you haven’t been in an older 911 before, one of the things you notice initially is just how much visibility you get thanks to the ultra-thin A-pillars. Another is how small the car feels on the road compared with a modern 911, meaning you can have fun placing it between the white…

AS IS THE CASE WITH many a fast car, it took a focused, hard drive to reveal the bigger picture – and the limitations – with our DS 3 Performance hot hatch. Let me preface this Fast Fleet update by stating that this car is easy and difficult to like in almost equal measure. I’ve mentioned the Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres in my last two reports because they are something of a marvel when worked in tandem with the limited-slip diff. Warm days and the twisty B-roads surrounding evo’s Bedfordshire office have provided the perfect opportunity to explore the benefits of such hardware. The articulate manner in which this car turns into corners then hammers out as the diff locks, and the blown 1.6-litre engine delivers a progressively larger…

I T’S NOT AS IF THE EXISTING Phantom, launched in 2003, had relinquished its claim to be the world’s best überlimo. But its eighth-generation successor – built around an allnew aluminium-matrix modular architecture that will serve the forthcoming Cullinan SUV as well as other future Rolls-Royces – is aiming not just to raise the bar, but to put it out of reach. Phantom VII had unusual, but highly distinctive, proportions. The new car is the work of Giles Taylor and his design team and is all about flow. It looks more traditionally balanced front-torear, with a swage line beginning just inboard from the top edge of the grille and moving outwards along the body to the tapered rear. The most potent aesthetic is the grille itself. For the first time…

THIS SEPTEMBER , THE AUTOMOTIVE summer will draw to a close at the sixth annual Concours of Elegance, to be held at Hampton Court Palace in Surrey. Presented in association with evo’s sister magazine Octane, the event takes place on 1-3 September and will feature a vast array of exotic machinery. Many of these cars will be available for viewing on the club displays – this year’s event is being supported by the Ferrari, Aston Martin, Jaguar and Bentley owners’ clubs, to name just a few – while the most exquisite examples will participate in the concours itself. The entry list is spectacular and diverse, although the era of ’50s and ’60s sportscar racing is particularly well represented. It’s tough to pick a star car, but the ex-Graham Hill 1962…

I ENJOYED READING JAMES DISDALE’S ‘WAGONS ROLL!’ twin-test between a new Mk7.5 Volkswagen Golf R Estate and a similarly priced but lightly used Mercedes C63 AMG Estate (evo 238). I can certainly relate to his points of view and comments. Eighteen months ago I part-exchanged my Audi RS3, which I had owned from new, against a second-hand 2014 C63 Estate, actually an Edition 507. While in truth my Audi was nearly as quick and was safe, comfortable and efficient, it perhaps lacked any real soul and – dare I say it? – was a little boring. This is something I cannot accuse the C63 of, even if this means the occasional accidental loss of the back end when pulling away at a junction or roundabout if it is at all…

HERE AT EVO WE’VE always been fans of the Ford Fiesta, which even in its humbler guises serves up more driving fun than buyers have any right to expect from a simple supermini. Spend time behind the wheel of one and it’s clear lots of investment and know-how have been lavished on steering and suspension that easily exceeds that of the competition. So when Ford reveals an all-new version that promises to be more grown-up yet just as entertaining from behind the wheel, we’re more than a little curious. Particularly when you consider that this car will form the basis of the next Focus ST. It’s evident Ford’s engineers have made all the right changes to the new Fiesta, which is loosely based on the same Global B platform as…

IT IS QUITE A DROP FROM the upper hall at the Geneva motor show. Not big enough to kill you, but enough to break a few bones as you crash onto the roof of a Nissan below. So it was worth putting up a struggle to not be pushed over the railings by an irate PR man from Maserati. I’d just been on the launch of the 1994 Quattroporte and our friend had taken offence at one of my criticisms (the car had conked out at the side of the road). Fortunately this chap, for whom anger-management classes had no effect, has left the industry. He’d not be pleased by my observation that the facelifted, 2018MY GranTurismo is very much like the current Ford Mustang. He’d have flown off the…

FOXHOLE, FLUGPLATZ, Schwedenkreuz: once names imprinted via fear and adrenaline on the consciousness of any budding or professional racing driver plying their trade, these days they’re just as likely to spring from the mouths of teenagers, shaving a tenth or two off their lap time while duelling other gamers in the ether. Yes, it’s the Nürburgring, 90 years young this year and as vibrant now as it’s ever been; an object of over-hyped annoyance for some, the holiest of petrolhead destinations for others. But this is surely the greatest racing circuit on the planet, and any doubters are usually those who’ve – to borrow a famously bastardised phrase from a bumper sticker – ‘neverbeen’. It is a place that enchants, that gets under the skin of people to the extent…

‘The lap record thing has always been nonsense’ DER NÜRBURGRING. WHAT MEMORIES I HAVE of this famous place. WheelTorque (remember them?) trackdays at which you circulated until your tyres, car or luck ran out. The gentleman with the satchel at the old pits who took your money for another lap. Losing an XK8 at the Mini Karussell and missing the Armco by a millimetre. Racing a Caterham in the 24-hour race. Rose-tinted visor? Possibly, but the place isn’t what it used to be. Public days are now expensive and, worse, are mainly spent in the car park or cafe waiting for the cleaning crew to sweep the remains of a superbike or car from the track; the delay can be particularly long if more gruesome cleaning is required. But what…

THE F1 TEAM MIGHT BE TOUGHING-OUT A TERRIBLE season, but McLaren Automotive is enjoying a purple patch of productivity and profitability. That looks set to continue with the arrival of this, the eagerly awaited 570S Spider. Sitting alongside the coupe 570S and the softer, more spacious 570GT, it completes a formidable trio of models that sit at the heart of McLaren’s Sports Series range. Given the company’s foldinghard- topped convertibles look so similar to their coupe siblings with the roof up, it’s likely the Spider will be the biggest seller in the 570 range. The roof itself is a really neat installation and takes 15 seconds to raise or lower. The rear window can also be lowered when the roof is up to let in some extra engine noise in…

ON THE ONE HAND, YOU can’t help but gravitate towards even just the idea of a 454bhp hot hatch. Especially one that rides on 20in wheels and tyres that do their utmost to burst out from under a quartet of quite magnificently blistered wheelarches. But on the other hand, when you realise that said hot hatch is actually just a concept car that will never, claim its creators, see the light of day in terms of production, you can’t help wondering why on earth they went to so much bother. Why put so much effort and skill and design savvy into a project that will never turn a wheel on the public road? Why, damn it, don’t they just make the Zoe e-Sport then bask in the glory that it…

‘WANT ONE’. THAT WAS THE SIMPLE but irresistible coverline when evo’s forerunner, Performance Car magazine, tested the then-new F355 in the summer of 1994. It was a sensational return to form for Ferrari. The previous 348’s slatted sides and tail had divided opinion, its on-limit handling was a handful, and technologically it was barely treading water. Worse, its shortcomings had been shown up by – horrors – a Honda. The NSX, released a year after the 348 in 1990, was proof that a mid-engined junior supercar could be sophisticated and useable as well as exotic and desirable. Stung, Ferrari accelerated development of a replacement. And it worked. With the 355, Ferrari rediscovered its mojo and reignited the desire. CHECKPOINTS ENGINE Tony Glynn at Ferrari specialist Foskers says the flat-plane-crank V8…