Table of contents for January 2019 in Evo

TWO WEEKS BEFORE McLAREN revealed its fastest-ever production road car, the team behind the Bloodhound land speed record bid announced it had run out of cash and had been forced into administration. For many, the concept of a land speed record belongs in a time when the UK was still excited by having four TV channels, and newspapers printed in colour made the, er, news. Today, billionaire man-children fire their electric sports cars into space for fun, but an LSR remains one of the biggest challenges in both automotive engineering and human endeavour. No one has ever claimed a significant benefit of travelling at 763mph on land in a single-seat, four-wheeled rocket, but when Andy Green went supersonic in 1997 it felt like a genuine moment of pioneering adventure. Just…

NEVER MEET YOUR heroes, it’s sometimes said. But what if your hero is the Bugatti Chiron? The dream car that sent evo into raptures. ‘Quite simply, nothing combines the Chiron’s civility and savagery. Its capabilities are mind-blowing, its potency almost unimaginable,’ raved veteran road tester Richard Meaden. So, a hero very much worthy of a personal encounter. Although with a price tag of about £2.1million before local taxes, the chances of such a meeting are slim. But what about building your own Bugatti Chiron – at a fraction of the cost and an eighth of the size? The LEGO® Technic™ Bugatti Chiron lets you build for real your very own hypercar, with the full sanction and collaboration of the iconic French marque. It’s a 1:8-scale model and a marvel of…

A FAVE MOTORSPORT VHS OF MINE back in the day was Nine Days in Summer, a Ford promo film that followed the introduction of the Cosworth DFV V8 into F1 during the 1967 season. That year was the second season of the ‘Return to Power’; 3-litre engines with serious horsepower, the last full season before the appearance of aerodynamic wings – and cars unsullied by sponsorship, too. A different world, full of bold, primary colours, larger-than-life characters and majestic but savagely unforgiving circuits. And it’s the patriotically hued British Racing Green Lotus 49 Cosworth that springs to mind now, as I stand beside the new Ariel Atom 4, nearly 20 years after the first Atom appeared. The Atom 4 seems lower, sleeker, downright faster-looking than Atoms of yore, its bloodred…

‘THE A-SERIES MOTOR IS AS ANGRY AS A HORNET TRAPPED IN A GLASS JAR’ I’VE READ ABOUT IT LOTS OF times, but right up until a split second before the impact I never thought I’d do it myself. Let go of the steering wheel and shut my eyes, that is. Crashing a racing car is an odd feeling. Already in a heightened state, the instant you lose control your brain starts processing things at ten times normal speed. Things do genuinely seem to slow down and you find yourself making bizarrely lucid decisions. In this case wrestling the car into a slightly more favourable trajectory before letting go of the wheel, lifting my feet away from the pedals, shutting my eyes and bracing for the impact. As you may have…

NINETEEN FORTY-EIGHT. QUITE THE year for launching iconic car brands. Porsche popped into the world that year. So did Land Rover. And 70 years ago this year, Colin Chapman began building cars, too. Because the company that would emerge from his endeavours has perched on the edge of the precipice so many times during the last 30 years and more, it’s easy to become distracted by the traumas of its more recent history and overlook the considerable achievements of its production and racing car back catalogue. But for its 70th anniversary celebrations at its Hethel home on a sunny Saturday at the end of September, Lotus sought to remind us all – and perhaps just as importantly its new Chinese owner – that its heritage is rich and exciting. Considerable…

WATCHING A JAG XE GET lowered 15mm on its springs (the adaptive dampers have a track calibration) and its rear wing cranked to its maximum downforce setting is more like something from a Time Attack event than a magazine test of a supersaloon. There’s no denying it’s an impressive sight, as you’d hope for from a £150,000 limited-edition four-door saloon with a 592bhp, 516lb ft supercharged V8, all-wheel drive and a headline-grabbing 7min 21.2sec lap time around the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Today we’re at Anglesey Circuit to see how it goes and, more importantly, how it feels on a more typical racetrack. Despite the thuggish looks, first impressions are that the XE SV Project 8 feels surprisingly deft. The steering is free, accurate and responsive without feeling contrived or overly jumpy.…

‘I doubt a megabucks GT would have made for more agreeable progress’ WITH ‘MY’ CIVIC TYPE R LONG-termer required for one last photoshoot when I was hoping to be 250 miles away with it on holiday, I found myself in the unusual position of having the editor begging me to take ‘his’ M5 for the week instead. Much as I’d miss the opportunity to indulge in a late-evening run in the Honda on some of my favourite Lake District roads, I did have some concern that day-upon-day of the Type R’s fidgety low-speed ride might cause a mild grumbling noise to develop somewhere in the region of the front passenger seat. So all things considered, the trade sounded like a good one. And besides, you never turn down a free…

AS IT TURNS OUT, A MERCEDES-AMG E53 Cabriolet isn’t the ideal choice for a jaunt through Austin and its suburbs. Not that it’s inappropriate, as Mercedes products seem to make up one in every four cars in the Texas city. It’s more that southern summer heat and humidity mean you’re better off with the roof firmly closed and the air con cranked to an Arctic chill. Roof up, there’s not a lot to differentiate the £69,285 Cabriolet from the concurrently launched E53 Coupe. Refinement is excellent, with no more wind, road or powertrain hum than in the fixed-roof car, and only over the harshest bumps can you detect any shimmy from the open shell. When the mercury does eventually drop, it’s barely more blustery with the multi-layer hood stowed. We’d…

THIS IS NOT A RESTOMOD, A backdated modern or an icon reimagined. Nor is it a regular Mk1 Cortina that’s been restored to within an inch of its life and is now claiming to be an example of its more famous Norfolk-educated brother in order to massage its provenance and improve its result at auction. No, this is a run-of-the-mill 1960s Ford Cortina that’s been rebuilt with what feels like the evo reader very much in mind. Engineered by Retro Ford, this demo car showcases the Corby-based firm’s complete 2-litre Zetec conversion kit. Replacing the original Kent engine, in basic tune it produces in the region of 170bhp, which is around 100bhp more than the car would have as standard, and it costs £4351. Included in the price is a…

NO COMPANY HAS PERSISTED WITH rotary engines as long as Mazda. From 1967’s Cosmo 110S until RX-8 production ended in 2012, Felix Wankel’s design was a staple of the Hiroshima firm’s range, finding its way into everything from sports cars to saloons, pickup trucks and even a bus. Rumours have predicted its return ever since, and the design may finally have found its niche, with Mazda confirming that the pistonless design will live again as a range-extending engine for a future electric vehicle. The rotary range extender will be sold alongside a pure battery electric vehicle when it comes to market in 2020. Both will play a part in Mazda’s ‘Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030’ technology plan, which includes research into alternative fuels, and advanced powerplants such as its Skyactiv-X spark-controlled compression-ignition…

SO THE KEY QUESTION THAT HANGS OVER THE BULLITT Mustang is surely this: is it little more than a cynical marketing exercise on Ford’s part, or is it, in fact, a rather tasty new performance model in its own right? On paper you’d be inclined to plump for option one, because to be honest there isn’t a great deal of substance beneath that dark green paintwork to distinguish the Bullitt above or beyond a regular V8 Mustang. True, it boasts a natty new set of Torq Thrust 19-inch alloy wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport tyres, and to be fair the combination of that green paint and some subtly applied flashes of chrome around the rear windows do lend it a look that is markedly different to and, to these eyes,…

IF I HAD THE FIRST IDEA ABOUT MUSIC I’d shoehorn in a ‘tricky second album’ analogy right about now. But seeing as my audio tastes start and stop at Test Match Special I’m a bit stuck. So here is McLaren’s replacement for the F1. A car McLaren owners and fans have been waiting two decades for and a car that redefines today’s hypercars. As per the original, this is a money-no-object (within reason), no-compromise automobile that reinvents a genre and, perhaps, will once again make the establishment wake from its slumber and understand that at the higher echelons of the automotive world a ‘that will do’ approach isn’t an option. Neither is an SUV. Twenty years ago the last F1 was produced, the project cut short due to a financial…

ACCORDING TO BENTLEY, THE NEW Continental GT is a two-door, four-seat grand touring car of supreme, if not unrivalled ability. Which means what, exactly? Yes, it has two doors. Yes, it has four seats – although those in the back are pretty cramped, all things being equal. And no, you can’t really argue about its ability to ‘tour’: it has a nice big fuel tank to give it a real-world range of over 400 miles, despite its unceasing appetite for unleaded, and it also has an uncanny ability to eat motorways almost as if they don’t exist, courtesy of its 626bhp 6-litre twin-turbo W12 engine and its air-suspended, digitally controlled four-wheel-drive chassis. But is the latest Bentley Continental GT really and truly a grand touring car? And what exactly is…

Jaguar’s SVO division has made strong claims about Project 8’s on-track ability. Here we examine its lap alongside that of the track-honed Lotus Exige Cup 430 Circuit Venue Anglesey Layout Coastal Length 1.5 miles Direction Clockwise Conditions Dry, 15deg C GIVEN HOW DIFFERENT THESE TWO are, it’s uncanny how closely their traces follow one another. Predictably, the Lotus Exige Cup 430 (lapped in issue 253) fights physics less when changing direction and generating lateral load, but remarkably the Jag all but matches it under braking, despite being almost a ton heavier. That’ll be those 400mm carbon-ceramic discs and a generous footprint of Cup 2 rubber. The decel curves may plummet at identical rates, but the Lotus lets you roll off the middle pedal sooner and carry more speed through all…

I’M SURE THE UP IS GETTING faster. Not massively so, but I’d swear there’s a palpable increase in urgency. The little turbocharged triple isn’t a rev head, but it seems a little bit freer and more enthusiastic, the early bolt of boost pushing the stubby tacho needle round the dial with a bit more gusto. I know some cars like a lot of miles to loosen up; perhaps the Up is one of them. It’s continuing to get plenty of attention, too, and from people who know their cars. On a recent trip to Goodwood for pre-Revival testing I saw Mike Jordan (father of BTCC driver Andrew), who’s an avid magazine reader and total petrolhead. In a paddock filled with fantastic old cars he made a beeline for the Up,…

AFTER INTRODUCING THE RS4 IN Fast Fleet last month, now it’s time for the gritty reality. Well, not really; actually I periodically have to pinch myself that I’m living with a 444bhp estate car as my ‘daily’. It would, for most people after all, be a pretty skewed reality: a practical estate that also just happens to serve up supercar performance in all weathers. But as is so often the case, once you live with a car for a while, so its plus and, inevitably, minus points move more sharply into focus. I wrote at length in the introductory report that getting the right – generous – optional spec with the RS4 is crucial, and nowhere more so than when it comes to ticking the adaptive damping box. But while…

BEFORE WE HAD OUR FIRST taste of the Swift Sport earlier this year, we teased ourselves with an ordinary, not-at-all-sporty Swift to see if the base car showed any promise for the then-still-to-be-released Sport. And it did. Yes, it was too complicated with its many driver ‘assistance’ systems and its mild hybrid boost, but it was sprightly and entertaining in a way little superminis should be. But not better than the Swift Sport, surely? Actually, my memory of the humdrum, everyday Swift put it close to the Sport in terms of frivolous, smile-making fun, but I needed to try them back-to-back to know for sure. Suzuki obliged this month with a 109bhp 1-litre Swift SZ5 Boosterjet (the red car pictured here). As you’d expect there are plenty of similarities between…

IT WAS A REASONABLE EXIT from Bedford Autodrome’s far hairpin, and the long straight of the South West Circuit stretched out ahead of us. In no time at all the Seven seemed to be bothering its limiter in sixth gear, and a faster car – which we’d passed only a few corners back – decided to put the little lightweight terror in its place. This is a reality of tracking a relatively low-powered Caterham: it’s significantly quicker than most cars over the course of a lap, but sometimes egos come to the fore when expensive performance machinery is passed, and the long straight is their chance for revenge. And so it was that the Porsche pulled out of the slipstream created by the Seven’s brick-wall aerodynamic qualities, and passed with…

AS A LAST HURRAH BEFORE THE current Leon Cupra loses its SEAT badges and goes full Cupra for its next generation, the Spanish marque has launched this limited-edition estate version with a few choice upgrades. As well as the Cupra R’s redesigned wheels (mercifully without the copper-coloured accents), the Carbon Edition gets a front splitter, side skirts and rear diffuser in carbonfibre, dark-finish quad oval exhausts in place of the regular dual items, and, inside, body-hugging bucket seats. Under the skin is the same 296bhp iteration of the 2-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine as found in the standard Cupra 300, combined with the ST Cupra’s usual six-speed dual-clutch gearbox and Haldex-type all-wheel-drive system. On the face of it, then, the Carbon Edition is little more than a Golf R Estate in…

A LIST OF WHAT YOU MISS OUT ON if you buy the regular Hyundai i30 N rather than stumping up an extra £3000 for the i30 N Performance: 24 brake horsepower. An electronically controlled limited-slip differential. Larger brakes. Nineteen-inch wheels and specially developed Pirelli P Zero tyres. A 4mm lower ride height. An active exhaust valve. It’s a not insignificant collection of items, and one that might lead you to believe, as it did us, that the basic i30 N might feel a little hollow, desperate for a more aggressive set-up to help it come alive and give it the chops to compete with – and defeat – rivals from the likes of Volkswagen and Peugeot. Spoiler alert: we need not have worried. True enough, the i30 N doesn’t shine…

NO OTHER CAR MAKER I know of does evolution as aggressively as McLaren Automotive. Conceivably, very few others could without fracturing the hierarchical structures that underpin the way cars have always been marketed and sold. The once seemingly immutable rule so vigorously stress-tested by Woking’s wunderkind is this: the performance and abilities of a new model shall not be allowed to match, let alone eclipse, those of an existing or recently retired model from the next tier up. Witness Porsche’s unceasing manoeuvres to maintain daylight and a desirability gap between the optimally mid-engined Boxster/Cayman and the awkwardly rear-engined 911. It’s understandable for the 911’s sake, but leaves Porsche’s market strategy vulnerable to the F1-style open-ended, fast-rolling development ethos that has informed McLaren’s rise from rookie purveyor of a new but…

IT’S A SHORT DRIVE THROUGH THE Warwickshire lanes from Aston Martin’s familiar Gaydon HQ to its new engineering centre at Wellesbourne, but a significant one nonetheless. Not only because the towering structure that greets me on arrival is a visible reminder of the firm’s post-IPO ambition, but also because I’ve really enjoyed the drive here. And for reasons that will become clear, I wasn’t quite expecting that to be the case. Not long after I eased the broad and sharply creased snout of the Vantage out from Gaydon’s gravel car park was I convinced that this particular example is a much more cohesive and simply downright more desirable car than the blue one that starred on the cover of evo 250, and which took part in a four-car group test…

‘THE AERO HAS COME A LONG WAY SINCE 2001, AS THIS GT IS ABOUT TO PROVE’ WHAT. A. NOISE. THE MORGAN AERO GT’S 4.8-litre BMW engine has a note so deep in frequency that if I were to imitate it with my own vocal chords, I’d be coughing and spluttering within seconds attempting to reach those depths. The pulsating rabble ejected from the side-exit exhausts is the kind of sound that seals many a deal: it is reason alone for buying one of these cars, and Morgan knows it. And it’s this visceral experience that lies at the heart of its products – along with a level of personification beyond what the so-called premium brands can offer – which makes the Morgan approach so intriguing. Yet this is also a…

DRIVING A CAR THAT WEIGHS NOT A lot – as in less than 650kg – but which boasts a seismic amount of power – ideally 300bhp or more – has always held a unique, if slightly unhinged form of appeal for the genuine rev-head. At times it can feel as if it is not you but the car itself that is in control. And in a curious kind of way that’s a rather wonderful thing to experience on four wheels every now and again. But only if the car in question has been thoroughly engineered by people who really do know what they are on about. The perfect overpowered, lightweight, four-wheeled Exocet missile ideally needs a well-balanced, rear-wheel-drive chassis and pin-sharp steering without any form of power assistance. Most important…

LET’S START WITH THE GOOD STUFF. And there is oh-so-much very good stuff about the FK8 Civic Type R. Believe every positive word you’ve read about it: every group test win, every track battle victory. It really is that special. For me, it’s on a par with my all-time favourite hot hatches, namely the very best ones from Renault Sport. It’s fast, that’s for sure. With 316bhp it was never going to be anything but. Yet there’s so much more to it than that. There’s the confidence-inspiring composure, the remarkable sense of control, the lashings of feedback from every point where your body is in contact with the car. Never did I tire of the way you could snap the deliciously mechanical gearshift from third to fourth with just a…

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN IN THE pages of evo about the Ferrari 458 Speciale, from Jethro Bovingdon’s immersive early review (issue 198) and the team’s views when the car won eCoty in 2014 (issue 203), all the way to Adam Towler’s recent piece in issue 251 comparing all incarnations of Ferrari’s road-racing V8 models, culminating in the Pista. All these articles, and more, have resulted in the Speciale being at the top of my ‘want’ – nay – ‘longing for’ list for some time, and recently my perfect car finally became available. I’ve been lucky enough to have had three Rosso Corsa Ferraris in the past, so this one was always going to be in a different shade. I didn’t think I could live with a yellow Ferrari, and there…

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE ENGINE IN an Abarth 124 Spider sounds like? Me neither, and I’ve been driving ours for a couple of months now. It’s not the engine’s fault, I’m sure, rather it’s that the exhaust dominates. Everything. From the moment it fires into life and next door’s cat scarpers for the nearest hedge, there’s no escaping that caterwaul. Not surprisingly, it’s noisiest under hard acceleration, but whether at idle or on the move it’s a constant presence. I must admit on first hearing it I wasn’t sure how we would get along, and to be honest, I’m still not sure we do. It’s so rorty and parpy that at times you yearn for the ability to turn if off. But you can’t. It would be so much…

Renault Clio 1.9 diesel (Mk1) ‘My first car, donated by my mum. It was red, smelly, but capable of carrying all my possessions to and from uni.’ Volkswagen Golf GTI (Mk1) (1) ‘This was my first proper car, and it turned me into a petrolhead. It was brilliant, and the only car I’ve ever sold for more than I paid for it. Which was useful because I blew the engine up and the profit paid for the repair debt. I would buy it back in a heartbeat.’ Rover 214 ‘A company car hand-me-down, and the worst car I’ve ever driven.’ Lancia Delta Integrale Evo 1 (2) ‘Fragile, amazing, frustrating and intoxicating in equal measure. It’s easily the best-handling car I’ve ever owned. I sold it for £8000. I wish I…