Table of contents for Car Of The Year 2017 in Evo

WE LAST MET GIAN PAOLO Dallara 15 years ago. We’d travelled to Dallara’s Varano de’ Melegari factory just outside Parma to talk with him about his part in the development of the Lamborghini Miura (evo 047): a fascinating tale, told by one of the nicest and most charming people I’ve met in the car world. His two heroes of engineering, he told us, were Alec Issigonis and Colin Chapman. ‘One day,’ he said, ‘I would like to make a modernday version of the Lotus Seven.’ That day has come. On his 81st birthday, Dallara was presented with the first production Dallara Stradale, the eponymous racing car manufacturer’s first ever road car. It’s a project the company has been working on for decades, though development has often stalled while it concentrated…

letters@evo.co.uk @evomagazine @evomagazine ASTON MARTIN ACHIEVED ITS GOAL OF making the DB10 look like a shark for Spectre, but I think it may have missed the mark with the new Vantage. It looks more koi carp than tiger shark. It certainly has the ‘fish lips’ thing going on; you know, when celebrities or WAGs go that step too far with the fillers… Maybe the design team spent most of their time on the rear of the car, which is spot on: the lights, the ducktail spoiler and the defuser all look great. But it’s definitely not the beauty it once was. I know Aston wanted more aggression to appeal to a new market, but a bit too much of the elegance that set its cars apart has been lost. One…

SEAT’S HIGH-PERFORMANCE CUPRA arm has become something of a conundrum. A decade ago, the sporting Spanish sub-brand was a byword for fast and affordable fun. Fast-forward to the present day and it’s all, well, a bit of a muddle. The rot set in with 2017’s Leon Cupra 300, which had 296bhp (up 10bhp) but lost the option of the hardcore Sub8 pack. Then we were told there would be no go-faster version of the new Ibiza. Yet against this backdrop was the revelation that SEAT was allowing Cupra to go it alone as a dedicated performance brand. This was good news, until we learnt the first model to be born under the new regime would be based on the Ateca SUV. With this in mind, what do we make of…

OPEN THE DR I V ER’S DOOR ON THE Peugeot 208 GTi by Peugeot Sport and you’ll see red. I don’t mean metaphorically – the Lilliputian steering wheel and its correspondingly weird relationship with the instrument binnacle still split opinion, but they’re hardly offensive. No, I mean literally, if you look down, on the floor. The 208 doesn’t have red carpets like those glorious GTi classics that emerged from the Mulhouse plant years ago, but it does at least have scarlet carpet mats, and you’d be right to read something into that link with its past. This is a Peugeot hot hatch with plenty of the old fire smouldering in its sump. After years of underachieving, Peugeot – or specifically Peugeot Sport – is back on form, and not just…

HOW MANY TIMES HAD WE BEEN THERE? How many times had we listened to the hype, crossed our fingers and dared to believe that, yes, the new Alfa Romeo was going to be the one: the one that signalled the triumphant return of this once glorious brand after decades in the doldrums? Too many times, is the answer. And yet, when Alfa revealed that it was reviving the Giulia name for its new compact saloon, we all felt that familiar feeling of hope rising once again. Then it was revealed that it would be rear-wheel drive, and there would be a 503bhp Quadrifoglio version. This had to be it. Finally Alfa was going to deliver the sort of car that its rich back-catalogue so desperately deserved. For once, we weren’t…

PUT SIMPLY, THE MACAN TURNS the SUV rules of engagement on their head. Up until now, most have been so dynamically compromised, Porsche’s larger Cayenne included, that a drive in one caused your heart to sink faster than the fuel gauge in an AMG G63. Not the Macan, and particularly not in GTS guise. It all starts with the driving position, which despite the raised ride height gives the sense that you’re hunkered low in the car, helping create an impression of an instant connection with the tarmac. Then there’s the steering, which has more than a hint of the weight and response of a 911 or Boxster. There’s plenty of bite on turn-in, too, the Macan locking tenaciously onto your chosen line and clinging on gamely all the way…

CAN YOU EVER HOPE TO BE OBJECTIVE about the Bugatti Chiron? Less of a name and more of a superlative-in-waiting, the Chiron was born to be the new benchmark by which all other hypercars would be judged. So, now that the dust has settled on what was unquestionably one of the drives of 2017, what do we make of this utterly extraordinary new Bugatti? Well, inevitably, and despite making it a much warmer, more tactile and more entertaining machine, those numbers remain impossible to ignore: £2.1million before taxes; 16 cylinders; 8 litres; four turbos; 1479bhp; 1180lb ft; zero to 124mph in 6.5sec; restricted top speed of 261mph; unrestricted top speed of 280mph. Even in a world inured to outrageous figures, the stats are mind-blowing. Reading those numbers is one thing;…

THE NEW M5 DOES sideways better than any previous generation, which might seem an odd accolade given that the F90 is the first ever all-wheel-drive M5. It wears no badges announcing the move, even though in engineering terms it’s one of the biggest changes in the model’s history, and maybe that’s because at the push of a button (two pushes, actually) it can be rear-drive only. All the better to drift the rear tyres into oblivion… This feature is a novelty only if you’re unaware of one of the F90’s main rivals, the similarly all-wheel-drive Mercedes- AMG E63 S, which was first to market with a rear-drive option. This is the car the new M5 stands toe-to-toe with, the BMW’s biturbo V8 having been boosted by 40bhp to 592bhp (600…

YOU’D HAVE THOUGHT THAT FAST, petrol-powered compact estate cars would represent a decent little earner for car makers. Affordable, practical, quick and fun, these machines are surely manna from heaven for keen drivers who don’t want to be slowed down by a growing family. Yet when our Focus ST first drove up to evo’s offices just over a year ago, it could count only the SEAT Leon ST Cupra and Skoda Octavia vRS Estate as real rivals – the Golf R Estate is also out there, but with a price tag five grand north of the ST’s, it’s in a very different league. With so few competitors and an attractive asking price (£26,515 basic, or £28,565 for our generously equipped ST-3), the Ford should have a clear route to success,…

WHAT DOES A MAN WHO IS officially a legend look like? You might expect some sort of leviathan, a character striding straight out of the pages of a DC Comic. But Xavier Foj is a relatively diminutive 58-year-old. He’s clearly physically fit (he doesn’t smoke or drink) but, weighing around 63kg, standing 170cm tall in his Sparco racing boots and with grey hair cut short, he looks more like an architect. Which he is. Foj is one of just six inductees into the Dakar Legends club. Names such as Peterhansel, Roma and Despres are relatively well-known to anyone with even a passing interest in the most famous of rally raids, but Foj is hardly recognised outside his native Spain. Yet he has competed in 27 Dakar rallies, winning his class…

TO STEAL CRASSLY FROM RADIOHEAD, THERE should be no alarms and no surprises with the new Audi RS4 Avant: we’ve already driven the same mechanical package in the RS5, after all. Then again, that may not be such a bad thing, because there’s the same irrepressibly eager 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6, that fast-acting and rear-biased four-wheel-drive system with its Sport Differential on the rear axle, and the replacement of the old twin-clutch ’box with a more conventional eight-speed torque-converter. It’s a package that has left us enamoured with the RS5, although not, it must be said, on initial acquaintance. However good the RS5, it’s inevitably the RS4 that generates the most anticipation. That’s what a certain amount of tradition can do for a car, and in the RS4’s case it has…

YOU ONLY NEED TO SKIP AHEAD TO eCoty to see how highly we regard Alfa Romeo’s comeback car, the Giulia, and not only in 503bhp Quadrifoglio guise, because the Veloce and Super are pretty special, too. But a D-segment saloon will only take a car maker so far; in the 21st century you need an SUV, and the Stelvio is Alfa’s offering. This range-topping Stelvio Quadrifoglio is pitched squarely at Porsche’s Macan Turbo. It has the 503bhp 2.9-litre twin-turbo petrol V6 and eight-speed auto gearbox from the Giulia Quadrifoglio, the only change to the drivetrain being the addition of Alfa’s Q4 fourwheel- drive system. In normal mode it’s 100 per cent rear-wheel drive, reacting to sensors monitoring grip and slip levels to determine how much drive needs to be directed…

NO ONE IS UNMOVED BY THE CIVIC. IT’S as brash and bold as the Golf R is subtle and demure. With its mahoosive hoop spoiler, it’s like a throwback to the days when Imprezas and Evos ruled the practical performance car world. Kids go nuts for its lairiness, but some grown-ups who can choose a £30k fast hatch simply won’t consider the Honda because of how it looks. Which is a great shame because in doing so, they deny themselves one of the great fast hatch experiences. We rate the Golf R very highly, and we like the Focus RS too, but the Civic Type R transcends them; it is astonishingly good, not simply in what it does but how it feels and, ergo, how it makes you feel. The…

HARD TO BELIEVE IT’S TWENTY-ONE years since I drove out of Hethel’s gates in a Series 1 Elise that I was to spend the next 50,000 miles and two years driving. It never conked out, never failed to get from A to B, and never stopped entertaining me while doing so. It went to the Ring. It took a toddler and myself camping in France. I damned nearly lived in the thing. Much has happened at Lotus since. Changes of owners and bosses, fantasy model plans and a steady stream of Elises, Exiges and Evoras with a baffling array of names: Cups, Sprints, GTs, Sports and a host of numbers denoting power or power-toweight. Sometimes you forget that Lotus still makes a simple Elise. It’s called the Sport and there…

SO THERE WAS THIS PUBI USED TO frequent – whenever I had an interesting car on test, basically – and it was run by a delightful old bloke called Derek Bovet- White, who used to fly Hurricanes during the Second World War. He was a complete car nut. He had a V12 XJS with a manual gearbox and a silly exhaust, and an XK150S among other toys, and all sorts of people who were into cars would turn up at his pub, The Anchor at Barcombe Mills in East Sussex, for a natter – about anything, really, but mostly about the burning of petrol. One day, one of Derek’s oldest mates was due to arrive in what Derek claimed was ‘the most beautiful car in the world’. ‘You wait, you’ll…

TWELVE MONTHS, HUNDREDS OF TEST CARS, hundreds of thousands of miles driven – all whittled down to ten class winners and one evo Car of the Year. Over the last seven years the McLaren Automotive journey has been a flat-out ride to the top. The hurdles it hit in the early days with the MP4-12C have been cleared and the company’s expansion has been nothing short of remarkable. Since 12C morphed into 650S, the Super Series range has feared nothing the establishment has sent its way, and the 720S is the culmination of this confidence, ability and desire to be the best. Throughout the year the 720S has proved its credentials at every opportunity. From our first drive back in May (evo 236), contributing editor John Barker concluded: ‘The new…

LIFE ISN’T EASY FOR THE NEW M5. How so? The M5 badge remains the solid gold standard for supersaloons: it’s the model with all the history, the prestige. This latest F90 M5 has a 592bhp twin-turbo V8, a chassis developed by an M division that, if very recent evidence is to go by, is getting back to its best, and combines the undoubted benefits of all-wheel-drive traction with the ability to be rear drive and ESP-free on demand. What more could anyone possibly want? My relative apathy suggests quite a bit more (or should that be less?), and here’s why. The new M5 is under pressure from all sides, not least the weight of history. Its distant, E28-based ancestor invented the genre by blending supercar performance with the quality, specification…

TO THINK OF CONVERTIBLES AS summer vehicles only is to miss out on some of the year’s more beautiful and immersive drives. Restrict top-down driving to the warmer months and you don’t get to experience the hiss of tyres against a damp road surface, the sensation of a cool gust on your face as your toes and hands are smothered in heated air, and the evocative views of a landscape lit all day long by a lowhanging sun. Our soft-top Mustang might be more appropriate for Route 66 than the A66, but it’s proving far from unpleasant as the autumn colours fade. Part of that is down to the heated seats (they’re cooled too), but the Stang’s big V8 has to take some credit. It could be the cool ambient…

THE VW POLO GTI HAS ALWAYS struggled to make its mark on the hot hatch landscape. Stuck in the shadow of the more illustrious Golf, there’s a sense that the smaller car has been deliberately held back so as not to risk stealing its big brother’s limelight, that it’s a model that’s about the show rather than the go. Now, however, there is hope for the Polo, because the Golf’s relentless push upmarket has created a gap in VW’s line-up for something more youthful and fun. It also can’t have escaped the attention of Wolfsburg’s top brass that cars such as the (deep breath) Peugeot 208 GTi by Peugeot Sport and Ford Fiesta ST have proved to be surprisingly successful. The result is that this all-new Polo GTI is claimed…

WHAT IT IS TO BE AN ITALIAN car maker. A blithe disregard for consistency has to figure and Alfa Romeo knows this better than most. Over the decades the Milaneseborn marque – these days based in Turin – has lurched between lovely and lamentable with equal facility and, in the 4C, managed to combine both extremes in one car. Then again, through much of the nineties and noughties nearly all Alfas were defined by a shifting palette of unresolved talents that hinted at past glories but somehow ended up being mediocre. None of which, of course, necessarily precludes a hike to the sun-kissed uplands of rival-vanquishing excellence. But for an underachieving brand that had taken great gulps from the well of goodwill, the Giulia Veloce isn’t just a return to…

THERE MUST BE DAYS WHEN THOSE AT BMW’s M division wish the E30 M3 had never seen the light of day. That boxy slice of ’80s motoring perfection is rightly regarded as one of the best drivers’ cars ever made, but it’s also been a millstone around the neck of any subsequent compact saloon or coupe wearing the M badge. Heavier and lacking the original’s competition pedigree, these later machines were great, but not always the greatest. There was often a caveat or two that kept them from being considered among the pantheon of all-time performance car heroes. And in the case of the F82 M4, the critics had a point. When it landed in 2014, it was the first two-door 3-series to ditch the M3 tag and, most shockingly,…

WHAT DOES THE SUPERCAR of 2017 need? Performance, naturally. Colossal, mindbending performance of the magnitude that separates it from the merely fast with the appropriate insouciance. That’s a given. I mean, have you seen how fast a hot hatch is these days? Yet that’s just the start. It also needs a blend of track-ready dynamic performance and everydayuse comfort, mixed with a deftness of touch Fred Astaire would have aspired to: Ring-attack war paint smeared on one moment, ambling down to the shops the next. We demand that it looks low, broad and sexy, comfortable in the role of Instagram doyen; an object of desire for adolescents everywhere, but also sophisticated enough for those with the actual means to fund such a purchase; able to make brazen, purposeful exhaust noise…

FOR JUST A MOMENT I’m fourteen again, staring at the distinctive trapezoid tail lights of a Honda NSX. Six small oblongs illuminated behind a band of red polycarbonate, joined by an extra sliver of LED light emanating from the trailing edge of the integrated spoiler with every tap of the brakes. I can just about hear the growl of its twin tailpipes over the mechanical gnashing behind me, reverberating off the long walls of every tunnel on Tokyo’s seemingly endless ribbons of expressway. The reverb disappears as we emerge onto long raised stretches of road between monolithic apartment blocks, punctuated by the occasional flicker of light from an occupied room. Now and then we scythe across the metal span of a bridge, skyscrapers and a lone Ferris wheel lining the…

TO BEGIN WITH, THE ALPINE A110 was quite a long way wide of the mark in terms of where it needed to be to take on the Porsche 718 Cayman. And that has always been Alpine’s core mission with the A110. In the early days, though, it was a bit ropey beside its arch nemesis from Germany. How do we know this? Because we drove an early prototype of the A110 well over a year ago now, having been invited to do so by Alpine’s Dutch boss Michael van der Sande and his amiable team of mostly French engineers. We spent two days driving it and talking with its creators, finding out exactly what Alpine’s intentions were with the car. They said they wanted to build a sports coupe in…

NOT ALL TUNING COMPANIES ARE equal. While plenty make great modifications and tease out impressive power figures, and many take over manufacturer warranties, very few have such a close relationship with the original manufacturer that they get access to a car before its release and can offer an upgrade as soon as it goes on sale. One such tuner is Abt Sportsline. The Bavarian company can trace its history all the way back to 1896, when blacksmith Johann Abt fitted a device to a horse-drawn carriage that allowed it to be converted into a sledge when it snowed. Later it became an agent for Horch and then Audi, but it wasn’t until the late ’60s, when another Johann Abt, grandson of the founder, started racing and offering upgraded parts, that…

‘It made perfect sense for us to swap cars to find out what we thought of each other’s long-termer BOTH ARE FOUR-SEATER SPORTS coupes, both cost a touch over £60,000 and both have 400-andsomething bhp. Both are also currently on our fleet, so it made perfect sense for Dickie Meaden and me – respective custodians of evo’s Lexus RC F and Audi RS5 – to swap cars for a couple of weeks to find out what we thought of each other’s long-termer. Looks-wise, the RC F was already a winner for me. I’ve seen a few on the road and they always grab my attention. Much as I love the styling of ‘my’ RS5, and its own ability to turn heads, I suspect it relies too much on its unusual…

I’M NOT SURE OUR SKODA SUPERB could look much more boring. It’s not a bad-looking car per se, but it’s so sensible with its practical ride-height and three-box shape, and its grey paint only makes it blend into the background even more. It’s almost too discreet, as if it’s trying so hard to go undetected that it’s ended up looking like an unmarked police car. I understand that muted tones are perfect for a photography car – so it’s less obvious in reflections in tracking shots – but this Superb’s lack of glitz and aesthetic aggression mean it’s hardly a tantalising prospect. So when the Skoda’s duties as camera car on last month’s M2 v RS3 shoot were complete, and logistical reasons meant that I’d be driving it home and…

I MENTIONED THE GOLF’S CLEVER adaptive LED headlamps in a previous report, but it’s only now the winter nights are drawing in that the set-up’s brilliance has really started to hit home. There have been some outstanding safety advances over the past few decades (ABS, ESP, airbags – the list goes on), but I truly believe this type of matrix headlamp ranks with the very best. It’s when they’re left to their own devices that they, and excuse the pun, really shine. Simply twist the rotary light controller to ‘auto’, flick the stalk for main beam and then let the sensors do the rest. Once activated thus, the system’s ability to effectively ‘mask off’ oncoming traffic or vehicles that you’re following, yet still fully illuminate the verges and empty stretches…