Índice para September 2015 em Evo

1 Controls cover the Vulcan’s steering wheel, and their functions have been allocated by wheel manufacturer Beru F1 and Aston Martin works driver Darren Turner. For example, the left-hand spoke has buttons for pitto-car radio and headlight flashing, the right-hand spoke buttons for the pitlane speed limiter and selecting neutral. These are illuminated, but other controls are etched and UV-painted, thus saving weight by not having them illuminated from behind. These include a switch for the wipers (also on the right-hand spoke) and rotary controls for the ABS and traction control (below the central boss). 2 Lurking behind the oblong carbonfibre and Alcantara-swathed steering wheel are the gearchange paddles, as well as controls for the indicators. 3 Etching and UV paint also make an appearance on the three knobs sitting…

WHILE THE MAJORITY of manufacturers bow under the pressure to downsize and turbocharge engines across their ranges, Ford is sticking with its naturally aspirated V8 philosophy for the forthcoming 526bhp Shelby GT350 Mustang. There’s one big difference with this latest engine, however: Ford has ventured down a path that we in Europe have been walking for a while now by employing a flat-plane crankshaft. For generations, American muscle cars have been thrown down quarter-mile stretches by large-capacity, cross-plane-crank V8s. However, the GT350’s V8 will use a flat-plane crank similar to that you would find in a Ferrari – or a McLaren or a Porsche 918 Spyder, for that matter. So what is the difference between a flatplane and a cross-plane crankshaft, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each…

HANDS-ON APPLE CARPLAY APPLE’S PROPRIETARY INcar infotainment system, CarPlay, has been sneaking into vehicles left, right and centre of late. It is, for all intents and purposes, the answer to all of your infotainment-system woes. Until recently, you had no choice but to live with a car manufacturer’s own infotainment interface, and that could mean learning a new system – and all of its quirks – each time you changed car. CarPlay changes all that for iPhone 5 and 6 users, however, by essentially enabling the screen in a your car’s dashboard to act as a repeater for your iPhone’s display. We sampled CarPlay in a 2015 SEAT Ibiza, which when specified with the ‘Full Link’ option offers both Apple CarPlay and Google’s equivalent, Android Auto. Plug your iPhone into…

Every new evo car that matters, reviewed and rated Test location: Brecon Beacons, Wales GPS: 51.846606, -3.224787 IN PURELY dispassionate terms, a performance SUV can be an impressive and broadly capable thing, but it’s difficult to escape the thought that these cars are fundamentally at odds with themselves. The tall, heavy body of an off-roader – or at least a vehicle that bills itself as an off-roader – is absolutely the worst starting point for a performance car, and then by fitting stiff suspension and low-profile tyres you compromise any off-road ability that the car might have had. No matter how capable sporting SuVs get, they will never make a great deal of rational good sense. In the curious world of fast cars, though, good sense needn’t be the main…

Test location: Grendon, northamptonshire GPS: 52.222778, -0.705442 THE PADDLESHIFT IN a Continental GT has never been something I’ve much bothered with. for a start, the paddles seem to be positioned slightly out of the way so that they don’t initially fall easily to hand. Then there is the fact that the ZF automatic gearbox does a very good job of shuffling its octet of ratios on its own. finally, when you’ve got a gargantuan 605lb ft of torque on offer, as in the GT speed, there is really no such thing as ‘the wrong gear’. As a result, I probably didn’t even extend an index finger towards a paddle for the first few hundred miles in this car. When I did decide to do a bit of digit dabbing, however,…

A SHIRTLESS MAN IS WALKING IN FRONT of me. To complement his lack of shirt he has also dispensed with his shoes and, though the surface is uncomfortably gravelly, he walks with a simian strut befitting of a bloke who thinks it’s perfectly okay to whip his top off in public places. In between where his shirt was and where his shoes used to be, he is sporting a merciful pair of small shorts, thereby sparing everyone the sight of his arse whilst simultaneously preventing him from noticing his own genitals and immediately rutting a wheelie bin. The shirtless man spots a trio of other shirtless men slouched on the ground against a wall and acknowledges them with a guttural grunting noise that gives no clue as to his nationality,…

Thank you for recognising just how great a drivers’ car the V8 Vantage really is (Mercedes-AMG GT group test, evo 210). I’m the fortunate owner of a MY09 Sports Pack-equipped V8 Vantage (mechanically the same as the tested N430 but for 10bhp and 15lb ft) and I’ve driven most of the newer and even faster competition, yet none has tempted me out of my Aston. The Vantage is deservedly appreciated as a beautiful and desirable thing, but it seems to be erroneously viewed as a good-but-not-great drivers’ car. That perception sells it short, as your review demonstrates. Looking back through evo’s tests, Sports Pack-equipped V8 Vantages, as represented by the N400, N420 and N430, have all received five stars. Dan Prosser shows how underrated the Vantage is, saying he ‘just…

MORE THAN MOST CARS THAT WILL BE LAUNCHED IN 2015, the Mazda MX-5 needs to be understood before it is driven. I first sampled the little roadster on a one-day launch event in the south of France, and on such occasions the temptation is to leap in the car, give it death from the very moment you’re out of sight of the PR team and cover as much ground as you can in the couple of hours you have with it. But if you approach this MX-5 like that you’ll come away feeling a little confused, trying to piece together the unusual dynamic traits and wondering if it isn’t just a bit… soft. I know this only because that’s exactly what I did. The arrival of a brand new MX-5…

‘MOST ONLOOKERS ARE HOPING TO SEE SOME JAMMY GIT STUFF A NEW SUPERCAR INTO A T YRE WALL’ AFTER FIVE-AND-A-HALF MINUTES, the lap is over. I slowly meander through the weaving pitlane entry and bring the bright red Audi R8 to a halt as the crowd begins to surround us. I turn to staff snapper Aston Parrott and say, in a high-pitched voice I’ve never heard before, ‘I don’t remember a bloody thing!’ The call came a couple of weeks before the Le Mans 24 Hours. ‘Come and drive the new R8 a month ahead of the international launch,’ Audi said. ‘You’ll be one of only a handful of titles who’ll get to do so.’ That’s an important new car, we thought. We should go. As the details were drip…

THIS IS THE FIRST TIME WE’VE HAD THE opportunity to pit the most potent hot hatches of the moment against the clock. It’s an intriguing proposition, for not only are we desperate to discover how they compare against one another, but we’ll also learn how they compare with some of the more exotic and expensive metal we’ve lapped. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets… We start with the more mainstream VW and BMW. For a car that feels so poised, balanced and within itself on the road, it’s a surprise just how quickly you push through the Golf R’s polish on a circuit. The tyres are the major issue – they just can’t support the corner speed, direction changes and traction demands you make on track, so understeer is the…

AT THE GENEVA MOTOR show in March this year, I interviewed Carsten Pries, the boss of product for BMW’s M division. Expecting he would nod along in begrudging agreement, I suggested that the reception for the new M3 and M4 had been somewhat mixed. Instead, he flashed an enormous smile and said that he could not have been happier with the way the models had been received. Given that we at evo, and several others, had given it a shoeing on more than one occasion, that was a little hard to swallow. But divided opinions were a theme of my seven months in the M4. Long before a new car arrives on the Fast Fleet, one of our team of road testers will drive it on the international launch, another…

I’M NOT ENTIRELY SURE ‘service’ is the appropriate term any more. to me, a service should be a grubby affair involving mechanics thoroughly checking big mechanical objects with a hammer and an inspection torch, then replacing the majority of the car before finally handing it back with a big bill and a smile. Today, as I’m sure the majority of you are aware, a service – especially one early in a car’s life – is mostly a visual inspection and computer interrogation. The range rover sport has had its first ‘service’ this month. looking at the schedule, this amounted to mostly checking (tyre condition, drive belts, wipers, lamps) and resetting (oil level and service indicator). of the grubby stuff, the, erm, pollen filter was replaced, as were the engine oil…

UNTIL RECENTLY MY relationship with our Fast Fleet Kia had been longdistance, in that I only ever observed it while passing through the cloggedup evo car park. Not once had I slid behind the perforated leather of its rock-hard steering wheel, but curiosity, the general approval of my colleagues and its looming final collection prompted me to act. After all, with a Mk1 Focus RS and an Integrale on my own fleet, I clearly rather like hot hatches. Kia pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat when it styled this car (actually it hired Audi TT designer Peter Schreyer, which when you’re Kia amounts to the same thing), because the tapered front graphic and sprawling proportions just look right. To my eyes the three-door Proceed GT is handsome in…

Q I run a Mk5 Golf GTI but would now like something more exotic, with greater speed and purity. It has to be a Porsche. However, I’m stuck on which one… My budget is £25k, but I’m willing to save for longer for the right car. I’m keen on a gen-two Cayman (981) or a 911 (997.1), so would appreciate your expert view on both (engines, gearboxes, spec and so on). Gary Paddock A The great thing about buying a 911, especially in your price range, is that there are so many examples to choose from. You can afford to be picky, but while you might be tempted to go for the bestspecced car you can find, don’t rule out the basic models such as the 3.6-litre Carrera (321bhp in…

Overview WE DON’T HAVE ANYTHING QUITE LIKE THE TUSCAN today, though we might in the future if New TVR comes to fruition: a reasonably priced, properly powerful rear-drive coupe/convertible with a serious power-to-weight ratio, and nothing to get you out of trouble if you louse it up. ‘hairy arsed’ used to be the term for cars like this, and over the years plenty of Tuscan drivers have discovered just how hairy, evo’s David Vivian among them. On eCoty 2000 he found himself a passenger in a Tuscan (even though he was still holding the wheel and pressing the pedals) as it careered through a dry-stone wall in north Wales. Not backwards, as you might expect from a car with no traction or stability control, but front-first, a victim of Peter…

Innately rIght on most amerIcana , the racing stripe is a rare thing indeed in the world of European road cars. In fact only very special models from the likes of Renault and Ferrari are brazen enough to flaunt something so jazzy. Bucking the trend is Alpina, which has offered racing stripes on every one of its BMW conversions since 1974. Known simply as the ‘Deko Set’, these unusually sophisticated decals underline Alpina’s modern-day role as understated antidote to the BMW M-car and are an elegant strand of the brand’s DNA. Their genesis was in the mid-’70s, when Alpina began asking customers whether they’d like to give their car a ‘new identity’ and a ‘sporty appearance’. If so, rhombic designs were applied to the flanks of the car – then…

WATCHING THE SECOND SHIFT IN the paint shop all wander out and stand around in their white boiler suits taking photos of the 3-Eleven is reassuring. If Lotus employees are excited about it then it bodes well. The rest of the company had been shown the car in the morning, but these boys hadn’t been around then so it’s the first time they’ve seen what has been something of a secret squirrel project and they’re clearly enthused. As they reluctantly drift away and slowly reveal the car they’ve been clustered around, it’s easy to see why they’ve lingered so long, because the green and yellow car sitting in the sunshine is a bit of a stunner. With a 0-60mph time of under three seconds in race trim, it’s also the…

IT’S NOT SURPRISING TO SEE that Lamborghini’s video of the Aventador SV at the Nürburgring has surpassed a million views on YouTube. Riding on board with Pirelli test driver Marco Mapelli as he hustles 1525kg and 740bhp over the bumps and cambers of the Ring is both awe-inspiring and terrifying. But as the 27-year-old Italian explains, the footage and scorching 6min 59.73sec lap time only tell half the story. ‘You know, I wanted the car to move a bit underneath me to avoid the understeer that comes from the all-wheel drive,’ says Mapelli. ‘But by the end of the lap, the road tyres were increasing a bit too much in terms of pressure, so the rear of the car was moving more and more.’ Frightening as a loose car on…

Test location: A507, Bedfordshire GPS: 52.025074, -0.316210 A DIESEL CONVERTIBLE isn’t top of the desirability stakes in the evo car park. but when it has an Alpina badge on its tail we tend to stop and take note, then look at the spec sheet to see what Buchloe’s meisters have produced for us to taste. in the case of this d4 ‘bi-turbo’ it’s a four-seat convertible with a breathed upon version of BMW’s 3-litre, straightsix twin-turbocharged diesel. this makes the d4 convertible unique, as BMW doesn’t offer this body with a similar level of diesel power. To save you checking, in BMW’s 435d convertible the 3-litre twinturbo diesel produces 309bhp at 4400rpm and 465lb ft between 1500 and 2500rpm, and is only available with xdrive four-wheel drive. With an eight-speed…

SOMEONE RECENTLY ASKED IF I rued the performance shortfall of my classic cars in comparison to more modern machinery. Whether, they very pertinently said, driving road-legal racers such as the latest Porsche GT3 and the 918 Spyder – cars genuinely capable of inducing vertigo – leaves me just a wee bit disillusioned when I climb back into my beloved F40 or similarly elderly 930 Turbo. The short answer – the only answer, for that matter – is of course ‘no’. Anyone firing up a machine three decades old is chasing a different encouter to the person who habitually buys the very latest metal simply because objectively it’s the best thing yet. Clunky gearboxes, the aroma of fuel and oil, mediocre visibility, horrendous turbo-lag and fragile electronics all need to be…

THERE’S A BUMP JUST BEFORE THE APEX. Hit it quickly enough and it’ll flick the inside wheels an inch or two into the air, leaving the outer tyres to dig in and negotiate the car around the bend. It makes for a dramatic cornering photograph, but it’s a spectacle that’s even more impressive to witness in person. I’m standing on the outside of the corner, and as Jethro Bovingdon approaches the third-gear left-hander he hardly seems to slow down. He turns in, hits the bump and, just as planned, the car rides up on two wheels. The weight settles on the right-hand Cup 2 tyres, which smear themselves into the abrasive surface leaving a thick, black stain running for six feet or so at mid-corner. I’ve never before watched a…

THE FINAL ORDER WAS DECIDED ON A judges’ vote, and all four of us placed the BMW last. While it’s fair to say the M135i is a more grown-up sort of hot hatch and not directly pitched at the likes of the Renaultsport Mégane, the Golf R’s performance shows that a more mature approach needn’t extinguish a car’s sense of fun. ‘Funnily enough, I enjoyed the BMW a lot on the way home,’ says Jethro. ‘It’s maybe the most enticing when you’re at six or seven tenths because of that engine and the rear-wheel-drive balance. It’s just a shame it starts to unravel when really pushed.’ In fourth position is, perhaps surprisingly, the Civic Type R. It isn’t the result Honda will have hoped for, but the car’s performance in…

in association with PART1: THE CARS by DAN PROSSER As the wide, low and insectile LMP1 cars fight for outright victory at Le Mans, it can sometimes be easy to forget the connection between these machines and the performance cars that we drive on the road. But the likes of the Audi R18 e-tron quattro, Porsche 919 Hybrid and their predecessors act as rolling test-beds for all kinds of technology that we can benefit from. ABS, traction control systems, fuel management, twin-clutch gearboxes, tyre compounds – all are, or were, developed and tested to some degree on the Circuit de la Sarthe. The cars we’re guiding across northern France to the 2015 race – the Porsche 911 GT3 and Ferrari 458 Speciale – rank amongst the ultimate road-going models to…

THINKING BACK ON OUR Caterham build, I should’ve known it was going to be troublesome when I turned up on day one and there weren’t any instructions. A rather disgruntled-looking Dan Prosser was pacing about in front of a vast pile of boxes, each daubed with a Caterham logo and each containing parts more alien to me than the last. The Mission Motorsport guys (who were kindly hosting our build in their garage) had neatly arranged everything we needed to put our 420R together before we arrived. It probably took less than a minute for Prosser and me to make a mess of this as we gradually got more and more overexcited at the sight of all the bits that would soon bring our Caterham to life. Or so we…

IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE my last Fast Fleet report, and I’m not proud to say the celica hasn’t moved from its cosy workshop space in over six months. sound familiar? this is exactly what happened last year, albeit for slightly different reasons. One of the main causes for this year’s lack of action comes from the car’s awkward mot expiry date. December is not usually the best time to be laying out cash on a car that’s likely not going to be used on the salt-ridden winter roads, so I hatched a plan to simply leave it until spring. then spring came and went, and the celica is still sitting around with no tax or mot… The other issue is that I’m easily distracted, and with the celica out…

A FEW WEEKS AGO A PAIR of emails dropped into my inbox, one from Jethro Bovingdon, the other from nick Trott. the basic message in both was: can we borrow your f40 for a video shoot with the new Ferrari 488? other than a brief outing for a service, the f40 has spent the last nine months in hibernation. this looked like a great opportunity for it to get a bit of exercise with a driver I trusted, so I agreed. With all the arrangements in place, Jethro collected the car from its place of slumber as planned. that’s when the problems started. the first sign of something amiss was a text message asking how to get the suspension to drop. not good, as this is supposed to happen automatically…

YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT sitting on your washerdryer with a desk fan pointing at your face as you read this, but if you were, you’d have some idea of the vibrations and wind roar that until recently accompanied ownership of my eunos. The former was the result of the mismatched tyres and sub-optimal wheel balancing present on the car when I bought it. The offside rear in particular was looking quite unhealthy, with a series of worrying splits in the sidewall and even a few chunks missing. The nearside rear had its own problems, namely that it was the lone Yokohama among Firestones, and was beginning to resemble a racing slick. A trip to Tyres northampton to fit the set of Dunlop Sport bluResponse rubber mentioned last month has fixed all…

THE LAST FEW MONTHS have seen me spending more time ensconced in the 458’s cosy cabin than ever before, partly because my commute includes a scandalous 30-mile section of 50mph limit on the M1. Sitting stationary there, watching the water temp rise, I can’t shake off a slightly nervous feeling that the 458 will overheat. It never has, of course – the huge fans always kick in bang on 98 degrees – so I can only put it down to the first Ferrari I owned: a 308 GTS QV that would often tick and hum in heavy traffic before the inevitable happened. I’m often asked how long we’ll keep the 458 on the 6th Gear Experience fleet. A year or so ago I’d have said not much longer. However, I…

RM SOTHEBY’S RECENTLY ANNOUNCED IT WILL BE ADDING another day to its annual Monterey auction during the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance week. It will now run from August 13 to 15. This is due to the consignment of the ‘Pinnacle Portfolio’, which is described as a ‘private automobile collection of unprecedented value’. That’s a bold claim, but when you look through the full list of cars, it becomes very clear that this is an extremely serious collection of incredible machinery. It’s difficult to know where to start, but we like the look of the McLaren F1 ‘LM-spec road car’ (top). Built to special order by the division now known as McLaren Special Operations, chassis 073 was the penultimate F1 to leave the Woking production line, and it had a few…

Great drives: Mallorca, Puig Major and Sa Calobra Start point: 39.781312, 2.707371, Sóller The road: Ma-10, Ma-2141 Perfect for: Porsche Boxster, Lotus 2-Eleven THE TRAMUNTANA MOUNTAIN RANGE IS ONE OF THE most spectacularly beautiful places I have ever been. UNESCO clearly agrees, as the area was awarded World Heritage status in 2011. Situated on the northern side of the Balearic island of Mallorca, it possesses a combination of coastal and almost Pyrenean drama, and at times the roads seem perfectly formed. Beginning in the town of Sóller, head up the Ma-10, which climbs northeast towards the island’s highest mountain, Puig Major. This is a relatively flowing, fast road with a white line down the middle. The pines either side frequently shroud the view, but you are always aware of how…

ALFA IS BACK! YES, ONCE again the clichéd headline is being wheeled out as one of the best-loved automotive brands (Alfa’s words, not ours) has revealed its new Giulia saloon. This is the car the company hopes will take the fight to BMW’s 3-series, Mercedes’ C-class, Audi’s A4 and Jaguar’s XE in the executive saloon sector. Of more interest to evo readers will be the range-topping Quadrifoglio performance model, which will square up to the M3, C63, RS4 and forthcoming XE R in the performance saloon arena. Crucially the Giulia will aim to steer the company onto a path of growth and success that will yield seven new models over the next three years and see a five-fold sales increase from 2013’s 74,000 cars sold to a target of 400,000…

The dates don’t clash so you can do both, but if you fancy giving the Goodwood Revival a miss this year (or if you are planning to anyway) I have an excellent suggestion for an alternative. It’s the historic car festival called the circuits des Remparts. It’s held in angoulême, a town in France midway between the cognac and dordogne regions. It’s a classic French walled town, but what puts it on my map is its weekend-long historic festival that this year takes place on september 18-20. In 1939 a street course was laid out around a town that makes even Monaco look spacious. that first year the main race was won by Raymond sommer driving an alfa Romeo. Presumably the organisers knew that it would be unlikely that they…

1 EIBACH Eibach’s track record speaks for itself: the firm says its suspension contributed to more than 1000 race wins and 70 championships in 2014. The company’s philosophy is not to build extreme products, but suspension systems that are suited to their intended use. Pictured, clockwise from above: Golf Mk5/6 4WD hollow, two-way adjustable anti-roll bars – £396.40 Nissan 350Z front arm (camber and caster adjustable) – £492.24 (pair) BMW E36 and E46 3-series rear camber arm – £311.20 (pair) Vauxhall Astra VXR (first-gen) Pro Kit springs – £164.16 (set) E36 M3 coilovers – £1179.36 (set) Ford Mk2 Focus RS and ST spacers – £119.04 (pair) 2 BILSTEIN Another firm heavily invested in motorsport, and whose parts are used widely as OE on new vehicles. Damper kits offer more control,…

It’s one of the most famous motor races in the world and perhaps the toughest – the Le mans 24 hours is a legendary endurance test of man and machine. and, of course, tyres. michelin has been competing at the Le mans 24 hours since 1923, and in 2015 – as fitted to the no. 19 Porsche 919 hybrid, driven by nico hülkenberg, nick tandy and earl Bamber – notched up its 24th overall win; that’s its 18th in a row. all the teams in the frontrunning LmP1 class choose michelin tyres, as do about 60 per cent of the entire Le mans grid. What makes michelin’s race tyres such a popular choice is their unique mix of longevity and consistent performance throughout their operating life: these are factors appreciated…

Test location: b660, Cambridgeshire GPS: 52.401834, -0.372667 IT PROBABLY HASN’T escaped your notice that we quite like the Ford Fiesta ST here at evo. It isn’t perfect (what is?) but it meshes its on-the-road attributes so well; no rival has quite such a generous ‘sweet spot’, though several have nicer dashboards. The genius of the Ford-sanctioned and warranty-protected Mountune upgrade is that it’s essentially invisible. you could be driving the standard car, the only difference being the relationship between the angle of the accelerator pedal and the numbers on the speedo dictated by the new 212bhp power peak (up from 179bhp). The pitch-perfect virtues that make the ST special aren’t squeezed or distorted. It just has a little more where it counts and edges closer to some notional ideal of…

SO TOP GEAR IS NO MORE, AT LEAST IN its present guise. It seems astonishing to me that the sorry saga of an angry man deprived of his dinner has gripped an entire nation and sent shockwaves through a worldwide community of car fans. That said, there’s something deeply gratifying, not to say reassuring, that a show dedicated to the four-wheeled exploits of three puerile middle-aged blokes is bigger than Kim Kardashian’s gargantuan buttocks. The lefties within the BBC might have hated Top Gear and JC’s knack of lurching from one controversy to the next, but they sure as hell loved the money it made, so with a bazillion pounds of revenue stream at stake it’s no wonder the Beeb wasted no time in announcing that the show will go…

From the forums: community.evo.co.uk/forums Not sure about the overall design but love the wheels. The 503bhp turbo petrol V6 sounds tasty. Alex_ Looks like a 3-series/Lexus IS-F mashup. Quite like it, though. Will be great if Alfa can finally deliver a real rival to the usual Germanic offerings. JezH Might have an unintended consequence of decimating Ghibli sales, of course… Jobbo Judging by the video it looks pretty good and sounds even better. Also, the first ‘numbers’ we’ve been told about (503bhp and 3.9sec to 62mph) are rather promising. In true Alfa tradition it will probably be great yet flawed (as per 8C and 4C reviews). Piro I think I saw an active front splitter in the video, moving around… _Who_ Presumably a normal splitter not screwed on properly. mattcambs…

SEPTEMBER 1989. THE DODGE VIPER RT/10 makes its debut at the Chicago motor show. Its immense eight-litre V10 develops 400bhp and it’s wrapped in a glassfibre body so muscular as to make TVRs look malnourished. Why then were all eyes on the delicate Japanese roadster across the hall? The one with a power output little more than a quarter of the Viper’s and rolling on wheels that, to this day, are referred to as ‘daisies’? The Goodwood Motor Circuit on a windy Monday morning seems a world away from the glitz of an international motor show, but the quaint surroundings are somehow an appropriate environment to explore the MX-5’s appeal. Its links with the 1960s sports cars that inspired it have been endlessly repeated. The Lotus Elan-like body. The exhaust…

I’M ASSUMING YOU’VE ALL HEARD OF Jaguar Land Rover’s relatively new Special Vehicle Operations – or ‘SVO’ – division? Not least because one of evo’s founders, a certain Harry Metcalfe, now acts as a consultant for SVO. But I bet you don’t know the scale of this ‘skunkworks’ outfit. You see, it’s not some afterhours club made up of half a dozen engineers cramming V8s into everything they can find. In fact it’s part of another, larger group, confusingly called Special Operations, which consists of a 500-strong team headed up by former chief technical officer of Williams Advanced Engineering, Paul Newsome. Special Ops has a number of subdivisions, of which Heritage and SVO are the most exciting. The former supplies parts, servicing and restoration for older models, while SVO is…

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE year I started the search for a Porsche 996.1 GT3. It’s a car I’ve always loved, and a little financial reshaping (i.e. man maths) meant that I could finally afford something a bit tasty. By february it was clear that most were selling before they were advertised; by March it seemed that the remaining UK cars had pulled a Lord Lucan and disappeared. I got a sniff of two GT3s (one up north and one in London) and offered good money for both, but the owner of one decided to keep it at the last minute and I was beaten to the other by just a few hours. The search then went overseas, with help from a few Twitter buddies, including @dr_nadav, plus Jeten Chetty…

The Trophy breached 10,000 miles this month, thanks to a ten-day, 1500-mile european jaunt. our first destination was the brilliant dijonprenois circuit for the Grand prix de l’age d’or historic race meeting. Five hours on French autoroutes is hardly the most scintillating drive, but it provided an excuse to use the Mégane’s cruise control for the first time. I don’t bother at home as the roads are too busy, but it was just the job in France, where the motorways are almost deserted and sneaky gendarmes lie in wait for speeding rosbifs. Long journeys have a habit of revealing a different side to a car’s skill set, and so it was here. In terms of humdrum functionality the Trophy falls a little short. The high load sill made hefting our…

THE ST CONTINUES To be a daily delight. With summer now here, its 17-inch wheels have had another tyre change, leaving the winter pirellis behind and donning bridgestone Re050s (which were the original fitment). These have improved the ride quality, and while they’re not as grippy as the contiSportcontact 5s I opted for in the autumn, they are predictable and good fun. Although I originally questioned the need for the fully loaded ‘ST-3’ trim level, I’ve certainly got used to having all the toys. As Viscount Tonypandy once said when asked how he found living in relative luxury after growing up a miner’s son in darkest Wales, it’s very easy to adjust upwards! even the little extras make you feel good, such as opening the door at night and seeing…

WHAT IS IT WITH ALFAS? WHILE usually flawed packages, on the right road they can be utterly brilliant. ‘Musical’ is the best way to describe their V6 engines, and the beautiful looks stand out in a market full of conservative German boxes. At least this was the case in 2002, when the 3.2-litre 156 GTA saloon first made an appearance. Perhaps it’s the charismatic styling and attractive Italian interiors, but what Alfas offer is often greater than the sum of their parts, and that’s why they have such loyal and eager followers. It’s also why values of the 1990s GTV 3-litre V6 currently sit far above those of its comparable rivals, and it’s why the 156 and its hatcback sibling, the 147 GTA, very much have Next Big Thing potential.…

VIBRA-TECHNICS BMW E36 ENGINE MOUNTS £117.60 vibra-technics.co.uk I was warned that these Vibra-Technics mounts would be a bit harsh on my relatively small-engined 3-series, as they are designed for the 3.2-litre M3. At tickover, when the car is cold, there is an unpleasant vibration, but at anything other than those exact revs, NVH is imperceptibly different to what you get with the standard mounts. On the move, the new mounts make a huge difference, allowing the engine to react immediately with the car. Indeed, it’s no longer a mass that feels semi-independent from the car. Through quick direction changes the car is more agile, and exiting a corner is much smoother now, without having to wait for or anticipate any extra engine movement. The front end now feels composed at…