Table of contents for June 2023 in Evo

NOT SO LONG AGO THE CEO OF A CAR company, a small but significant one that plies its trade in the upper echelons of the driver’s car market, told me he could never launch a new model with less power than one it replaced. ‘The marketing team would crucify me. Our customers would walk away. I don’t even want to think about what our dealers would say.’ I, and a couple of other journalists present, tried to convince him otherwise, but he was adamant it would be commercial and career suicide. But chasing power is one of the leading factors as to why new cars are larger, and therefore heavier and less efficient overall. More power requires improved braking performance and more sophisticated dynamic components that are larger and therefore…

INITIALLY LAUNCHED IN 2016 AS ALFA Romeo’s most potent Giulia model without a four-leaf-clover badge, the Veloce applies some of the Quadrifoglio’s magic to a more affordable, practical saloon. Over half a decade on, the model has been given a midlife update, but are the tweaks enough for it to keep up with the latest German rivals? Alongside the refresh comes a rationalisation of the Giulia line-up. Quadrifoglio aside, all UK cars now receive the same 2-litre turbocharged ‘GME T4’ four-cylinder, all with 276bhp and 295lb ft. The 197bhp 2-litre petrol is therefore no more, joining the 2.2-litre diesel in retirement. So while there are three trim levels – Sprint, Veloce and Competizione – the names no longer imply different power outputs. An eight-speed ZF automatic remains standard across the…

THESE ARE, FOR MOST OF US, TESTING FINANCIAL TIMES in which head will probably be winning the battle over heart when it comes to cars. Clearly there are a different group of people out there, however, or those with a ‘special kind of madness’ as Richard Meaden so poetically put it in the end-of-term report for your Maserati Ghibli Trofeo (evo 309). A quick check online reveals that the car in question is less than two years old, but in that time it has dropped from its initial purchase price of £136,500 to a value of £81,500, having covered around 13,000 miles – a financial hit of £55,000 in the intervening period. Say it again, but slowly: fifty-five thousand pounds. We all read evo because a car to us is…

COMBINE THE PRICE TAGS OF THE contenders in this test, including options, and you reach a grand total of £96,820. And no, Dean Smith didn’t forget to photograph a car. Or two. Such are the peaks the market continues to scale that a pair of seemingly small, punchy specimens start at forty grand apiece. Then hurtle towards fifty with a handful of extras. Plenty of people might never notice, leasing either of these for circa £500 a month rather than buying outright. And as hot hatch and coupe icons alike drop from the price lists with worrying frequency, you might even argue we should be thankful this test remains possible at all. Each car represents the latest iteration of a very familiar recipe. The Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport is the…

TRY TO FORGET McRAE IN FULL FLIGHT. THE horns, whistles and hollers as people realise what’s about to come over the hill. Forget that distinctive flat-four noise, the great cracks of anti-lag and the little blue car coming into view at 90 degrees to the direction of travel and then disappearing again in a vortex of mud, gravel and balletic mechanical violence. Forget the ever-more-extreme road cars wearing wafer-thin body panels and cling film-like glass, fitted with literally ‘the cheap seats’ because they were lighter and likely to be thrown away when the car was competition-prepped anyway. Forget the Spec Cs and Type RA-Rs with trick centre differentials and twin-scroll turbochargers and the sort of focus to make a GT3 or CSL blush. We’ll come back to these cars later.…

I TURN TO LOOK AT ASTON. ASTON TURNS TO look back at me. We turn our heads in unison back to the closed barrier ahead through the windscreen. Oh, bother. We’re in the Austrian Alps, aiming for what promises to be a spectacularly photogenic location via a mountain pass. Only problem is, there’s a makeshift barrier in place ahead of us. We’re not sure who put it there, or why, or if moving it would technically be trespassing. To get to the location we have in mind by another route would take around three hours, maybe four. We sink dejectedly a little deeper into the 911 Dakar’s carbon bucket seats. Its 3-litre flat-six thrums away patiently behind us, idling expectantly. Google Maps is scrolled. There is another possible route. It involves…

DID YOU READ JETHRO’S INTRODUCTORY report last month to ‘his’ M5 CS ownership? Did you question whether a grown man should have such an unhealthy infatuation with an inanimate object? Feel a little bit of sick rise at the back of your throat as you reached the conclusion? Not just me then. After such fawning praise you may be surprised to hear he left FWW at the back of the evo car park this month as he disappeared across the Atlantic with the family. I don’t think he left any of his offspring behind, but thankfully he did leave the CS’s key. Like Jethro, I adore the CS. Have done since I first drove one during the second (or was it the third?) lockdown. I fell for it so strongly…

I ADORE THE HURACÁN EVO RWD. I ENDED up spending a lot of time in the metallic green press car that got within a whisker of winning eCoty in 2020, driving it in all sorts of conditions, on all sorts of roads, and I enjoyed every V10-enriched moment. So I should love the (all-wheel-drive) Evo Spyder even though I’m not a big fan of convertible supercars. I think they never look as good, their torsional stiffness is often compromised, which makes their dynamics fuzzy, and I rarely want to be blown about, sunburned/frozen and slightly deafened at speed. I accept that the Huracán is a very good convertible in the sense that the integrity of its mostly aluminium monocoque has been minimally compromised by lopping off the roof. It feels…

‘RACING CAR FOR THE ROAD.’ IT’S ONE of the great automotive clichés. And like most clichés, it’s rarely true, of course. Even the hardest of hardcore sports cars are generally designed as road cars first and foremost, and if they do wind up on a GT racing grid at Spa or Silverstone, it’s usually in a re-engineered, evolutionary form (or, depending on how relaxed the regs are, a clean-sheet design with only a passing resemblance to a distant road-going cousin). But the wild-looking KTM X-Bow GT-XR you can see here really was designed as a racing car first – and subsequently house-trained into a productionised road car rather than the other way round. And it’s evolved from the original, minimal X-Bow into something bigger, more potent – more supercar than…

IT TOOK A WHILE FOR MASERATI TO jump on the SUV gravy train, launching the Levante in 2016 and then revealing the smaller Grecale in 2021. We drove a late pre-series-production Grecale on winter tyres in issue 305, but this is our first steer of an example as Maserati hopes a great number of people will buy it, and we’re driving it on UK roads to boot. Should you divert your Porsche Macan deposit to your Maserati dealer, the underpinnings of your new performance SUV are favourable. The Grecale is based on a stretched version of Alfa Romeo’s Stelvio platform and in this Trofeo model there’s a lusty twin-turbocharged V6 based on the MC20’s but with a wet sump, new turbos and cylinder deactivation, yet still with the complex pre-chamber…

THE LOFTY BRAVERY LEVELS OF ’70S RACING drivers are not generally disputed. But some things add extra context. I’m trying the Lotus Type 56B’s lay-down cockpit for size: next to my left elbow, hidden within the monocoque, is a propshaft that would be spinning at goodness-knows-how-many rpm; just behind my shoulders, a gas turbine engine limited to a casual 37,000rpm; and, back in the 56B’s short racing life, there would have been 350 litres of kerosene and petrol swimming around in side tanks to fuel it. I had to point my toes like a gymnast to post my feet under the front axle to the pedals. It’s tight in here, precisely packaged to the point of claustrophobia. We’re stationary inside Classic Team Lotus HQ and the turbine is silent, sleeping,…

Richard Meaden: Impreza Turbo 2000 AWD Ask me my most memorable Subaru moment during my time at evo and I’d say driving the Impreza P1 in north Wales alongside a Ferrari 550 as the final to our Greatest Driver’s Cars feature (issue 066). However, it was my very first drive in the then brand-new Impreza Turbo 2000 AWD back in 1994 that really sticks in my mind. I was a greenhorn road tester at Carweek, the long-defunct weekly offshoot of Car magazine, and was tasked with writing the first drive on the Impreza Turbo (above left). Nobody on the mag seemed that bothered about the cheap and cheerful Subaru, but I totally fell in love with it. I haven’t driven an early Impreza Turbo for at least a decade, but…

IT’S EARLY APRIL AT THE NÜRBURGRING. BMW’S marketing department have hired the Nordschleife exclusively between the hours of 8am and 4.30pm and have their eyes on setting some impressive lap times. In a workshop nearby, the cars are being prepped. The priority is the new M2, but the M division feels that the M4 CSL and M5 CS have plenty of time left in them. Their previous runs were heavily compromised by patches of damp and a mulchy leaf cocktail. I would love to be a fly on the wall for this little adventure. Who doesn’t want to see how these Nürburgring lap times are achieved? Even those windbags who moan about the ‘relevance’ of the Ring. Yet for all the excitement I’m in a darkened room, dreading opening the…

AN IMPORTANT TEST FOR A FAST ESTATE car is to find out how it performs on a long journey, so when John Barker and I were making plans to visit Maturo Competition Cars in the Netherlands for a recent Ignition story (evo 308), we decided to drive there in our Superb long-termer. With the car full of photographic kit and luggage, we headed down to the Eurotunnel, brimming the Skoda’s tank on the way. After the short train journey to Calais we changed the car’s instrument units to kilometres and began our 315km/196-mile drive to Veghel. Comfortable in the sports seats and with podcasts playing to help pass the time, progress was truly effortless. John mentioned how impressed he was by the refined ride and even enjoyed the dual-clutch gearbox,…

OUR ARTEON HAS MORE THAN LIVED UP to its practical billing during its time on the evo fleet so far, its Shooting Brake body style making it the default choice for hauling families or cumbersome items, or sometimes even both at the same time. Yet while this R version is a sharper steer than the R-Line model we ran a while ago, its generous dimensions still make it an unusual choice for a spirited track session. Nevertheless, this month our big Volkswagen found itself at Brands Hatch, with a remit to tackle the Indy Circuit’s challenging corners, dramatic elevation changes and patchwork of surfaces in the company of a number of other fast VWs celebrating the delivery of the company’s 10,000th R model in the UK (a Tiguan R, since…

THE 993 HAD BEEN STORED AWAY for a few months while the weather wasn’t so great, but with a new MOT needed I finally had an incentive to get back behind its wheel. The flat-six fired up on the first attempt and I didn’t have to travel far before the car put a smile on my face again. The 993 represents everything I love about performance cars, being manual and rear-wheel drive, with great looks and the performance and soundtrack to match. I also appreciate a car that’s enjoyable even when driving short distances, and it definitely achieves that – to the point where journeys that are supposed to be short often turn into much longer ones… A date with an MOT tester ensured things didn’t get out of hand…

AS FAR AS VALUE FOR MONEY GOES, YOU WON’T DO much better than a Mk3 MR2. While they might lack the exotic appeal of the F-type and modern amenities of the Abarth 124, they bring drop-top driving back to basics. Sold between 1999 and 2007 as Toyota’s alternative to the MX-5, it offered the same mid-engined, rear-drive layout as its predecessors, and was the marque’s last true sports car before the launch of the GT86. Chief engineer Tadashi Nakagawa described the Mk3 MR2 as having broken the ‘cycle of growth’ in the industry, something almost completely unheard of today. The car’s dimensions and weight were both notably lower than its predecessor’s, making it a much more desirable driver’s choice. Pair its 975kg kerb weight with its 1.8-litre DOHC naturally aspirated…

THERE’S A NEW TRACK PACK OPTION available for the Focus ST, a welcome introduction for a car that has, it’s fair to say, underachieved over recent years. Ford’s all-rounder should be at the core of any hot hatch market, but it’s the smaller Fiesta ST that has been far more convincing overall in recent times. Perhaps the Track Pack, available only on the five-door manual Focus ST, not the auto or the estate, can redress the balance. Excitement for the Track Pack may initially be tempered by learning that what you’re really seeing here is, in effect, the upgrades from 2021’s ‘ST Edition’ applied to the facelifted Focus that was unveiled last year, including the Edition’s KW coilovers and cosmetic enhancements. But it doesn’t quite stop there, because Ford Performance…

MERCEDES STILL DOMINATES THE LIMO world. In 2022 it sold 11,000 S-classes (down seven per cent on the year before) and 7500 examples of its electric EQS, taking first and second places in the European chart for F-segment cars (industry speak for limos). Meanwhile, the combined sales of the cars filling the remaining eight positions in the top ten fall short of the total achieved by just those two Mercedes. That’s gotta sting in the boardrooms when signing off a new rival to Stuttgart’s unbeatables. Clearly BMW has an ample supply of Jungle Formula in its boardroom because it’s now on its seventh generation of 7-series, which is offered either as a plug-in hybrid with a 3-litre turbocharged straight-six petrol engine, or as an electric-only model, such as this i7…

‘THE SOUND IS FERRARI 458 BUT WITH A DEEPER NOTE WHEN THE EXHAUST VALVES OPEN UP’ THE Z06 ISN’T HARD TO FIND IN THE MULTI-storey car park; it’s low, wide, festooned with wings, and looks like it’s been coloured in with a highlighter pen. I expect the searing hue to be called Acid Drop or Ballistic Banana but apparently Chevy calls it Accelerate Yellow. Hmmm. Turns out that most of the Corvette colour names are similarly lame: Rapid Blue, Red Mist, Silver Flare… Which is a shame because the rest of the Z06 is a riot. It was a bold decision by Chevrolet to make the C8 Corvette mid-engined after seven generations and almost 70 years using the classic front-engine, rear-drive layout. It’s almost as if the bosses looked…

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IF WALLS COULD TALK… I’M STARING at the gentle patina of a well-used workshop, one that has reverberated countless times to the harsh blat-blat-blat of flat-four Subaru World Rally Car engines and the primeval thumpety-thump of a Group A Impreza. But it has also rung to the piercing bark of Ford Cosworth DFVs, maybe Indy Cosworth DFXs too. For this building was once part of the headquarters of March Engineering, the highly successful race car constructor of the ’70s and ’80s with five Grand Prix victories and five straight Indy 500 wins to its credit. The corridors probably still echo to the footsteps of Robin Herd, Max Mosley and Adrian Newey amongst other famous alumni of the marque. Even the dyno has a tale to tell, having been previously installed…

WE POSED A VERY SIMPLE QUESTION WHEN the Cupra Born arrived on the evo Fast Fleet eight months ago, namely: is the Born the first all-electric hot hatchback? If you’ve been following our reports you may already have a sense of what our answer to that question is. As a refresher, the Born 230 V3 is the flagship of the range, featuring a 228bhp tune for its electric motor, plus extras such as 20-inch wheels and electric seats. Our car also had the larger 77kWh battery (£2770), along with Aurora Blue metallic paint (£840) and the ‘Tech Pack L’ (£740 and including auto parking, wireless phone charging and a proximity key). These options took the 230 model’s base price of £39,205 up to £43,555. The Born’s bespoke EV architecture places…