Table of contents for March 2022 in Evo

RAISE THE SUBJECT OF TUNING OR modifying and you conjure up thoughts of more power, more noise, more of everything. Not that there’s anything wrong with this; there’s much to be said for seeing the whites of your own knuckles shine brightly back at you as your right foot tentatively squeezes the accelerator to unleash who knows what. But is chasing horsepower really what’s required today? evo is no stranger to questioning the horsepower arms race, as it really is nothing more than a route one approach to getting one up on a competitor or making this year’s model look more enticing than the last. But power, as the saying goes, is nothing without control. So it’s time to give the engine tuners the day off and open the floor to…

AFTER A SLOW START, BENTLEY’S momentum towards an electrified future is gaining pace. What began two years ago with the somewhat lacklustre Bentayga Hybrid is accelerating towards the 2025 launch of the firm’s first all-electric car, to be assembled at its Crewe facility in a new ‘Dream Factory’. Further electric models will be released at a rate of one per year thereafter – some replacing existing petrol models, others entering new sectors – to make a five-strong range by the end of the decade. In the run up to all this, from 2024 Bentley will add hybrid variants to its Continental line-up (coupe and convertible), and from 2026 all Bentley models – existing or new – will only be offered as hybrids or as full battery electric vehicles. Right now,…

I LIKE JOHN BARKER. HE’S A GREAT GUY. UNASSUMING, unshakeably calm and with a dry wit of razor sharpness. A couple of beers with John is a very fine time indeed. However, he is literally the last person on earth you want bearing down on you in a Toyota GR Yaris on a freezing cold morning as a bumpy, narrow, glistening road disappears around a sharp right ahead. Especially when you’re in a much more powerful, much faster car. Something like the BMW M4 that I’m currently driving, heart in mouth and so preoccupied with what’s going on behind that I swear I can hear the demented warble of the Toyota’s three-cylinder motor filling the cabin. On another day I’d probably indicate left timidly and let the Yaris romp past in…

WHEN IT COMES TO THE BUSINESS OF MAKING fast cars go fast, all-wheel drive remains something of a conundrum. Chasing traction has always made sense, especially as engine builders have always managed to generate more power than tyre makers can provide grip. Trouble is, all those additional differentials and driveshafts come at a price, for not only do they add weight and complexity but, in successfully delivering steadfast traction, all-wheel drive often seems anathema to the purist driver’s view that grunt should always outstrip grip. When Audi introduced its quattro all-wheel-drive system, it sparked a revolution. But like many engineering advances the concept of driving all four wheels was nothing new, having been applied to agricultural vehicles as early as 1893. Perhaps inevitably, the world’s first all-wheel-drive road car –…

FOR A BLOKE WHO NEVER CONSIDERED car photography to be a commercially viable career path, Richard Pardon has done rather well for himself. Embedded with the Williams Formula 1 team for the 2021 and 2022 seasons. Official photographer for Porsche Motorsport during its first two seasons in Formula E. Porsche, Bentley, Mercedes-Benz and Bugatti amongst his car manufacturer clients. Contributor to several major global car magazines, including evo. And a man successful enough in these endeavours to have owned two Porsche Cayman GT4s in succession, followed by a 964-series 911. Even so, Pardon retains a slight sense of disbelief that things have worked out so well. ‘I just turn up and take pictures and they turn out like they do,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how or why. That’s just…

FOR A BLISSFUL, HEADY MOMENT BACK in the early noughties, it looked like we were on the cusp of a bright, brave new era of British sports cars. TVR was flying with the Tuscan and Sagaris; Morgan was reinventing itself with the Aero 8. And then there was Noble. Noble had an entirely different take on the Great British Sports Car with its turbocharged, mid-engined recipe and pseudo Group B/C styling, but the M12 and its derivatives attracted glowing reviews in their frequent group test appearances, and with a new car in the M14/15 waiting in the wings the marque looked set to launch into the stratosphere; anyone who’s driven an M400 couldn’t help but be wowed by its stunning performance and beautifully deft handling, if not perhaps, with the…

@evomagazine @evomagazine @officialevomagazine HAD YOU FORGOTTEN ABOUT the McLaren GT? Don’t be embarrassed, we too had pushed it to the back of our minds during the scramble to drive 765LTs and the (long) wait for the new V6-hybrid Artura (we’re promised we’ll be driving it… soon). But still exist it does, filling that gap for those who find a 720S too extreme and the now defunct 570Snot practical enough. Launched back in 2019, the GT is astand alone model in the McLaren line-up. Based on a stretched Sports Series MonoCell tub it’s 5mm longer in the wheelbase than both the 720S and 570S and 140mm longer than the former overall. It’s also, claims McLaren, the most aerodynamic of its series production road cars thanks to its hammerhead nose and long…

DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE DUTCH Reach? No, nothing to do with Mark Rutte’s followers on Instagram. Nor is it anything smutty. Instead it has everything to do with Rule 239 of the newly revised Highway Code that came into effect at the end of January. But the Leon was ahead of the game. Much of the new technology on the Cupra (I nearly wrote SEAT and I confess I still say SEAT half the time, but you won’t find a single mention of Cupra at seat.co.uk, not even in the small print) is annoying or just plain bad. For example, there’s the Lane Keep Assist that has tried to steer me into oncoming traffic on a country road. Or there’s the Front Assist emergency braking that has tried to…

BACK IN THE C8 AFTER A MONTH IN Canada and the US, and holy crap the summer tyres are frightening when it’s wet and cold! They’re a bit of a liability, in fact. If you have a new Corvette, or similar, whatever you do during October half-term, make sure you change your tyres for genuine winter items. Even though it was -2deg C here in Geneva, the Vette started first time, and it felt great to be back in it. I don’t know if I left them on a month earlier or if it’s automatic, but it was welcome that the heated seat and heated steering wheel came on magically for that first cold morning start. With the conditions encouraging a more gentle driving style, the C8’s cylinder deactivation has…

RATINGS * = Thrill-free zone ** = Tepid *** = Interesting **** = Seriously good ***** = A truly great car = new entry this month. Cars in italics are no longer on sale. Issue no. is for our most recent major test of the car (D = Driven, T = Driven Too, F = feature). Call 0330 333 9491 for back issues. Engine shows details of the car’s combustion engine, or for BEVs the total output in kW of the car’s elecric motors. Weight is as quoted by the manufacturer for the car in basic spec, e.g. with a manual gearbox. In most cases this is to DIN standards (i.e. with fluids but without a driver), but where the manufacturer only quotes a ‘dry’ weight (i.e. without fluids) this…

THE NEW M135i IS NOT LIKE THE OLD M135i. My neighbour has the old model and often fires it up at 7am as he heads off to work. I don’t mind at all because it’s the most wonderful-sounding alarm clock. There’s so much soul in the low growl of the 3-litre straight-six, so much character, that I often entertain thoughts of owning an M135i just for how it sounds. Well, that and the fact that its 321bhp is delivered to just the rear wheels. The latest M135i is a completely different animal. It has a 2-litre, four-cylinder engine, installed transversely and powering the front wheels, mainly. It shares its floorpan and running gear with its stablemate, the Mini Countryman JCW All4. And given that the JCW is a chunky ‘Mini’…

IT’S THE QUESTION I DON’T WANT TO ask and the one nobody wants to answer. ‘So, erm, how many Grecales do you hope to sell?’ You see, mentioning sales figures and projections around Maserati people is likely to induce mild panic and sweating. I’ve sat through many bullish meetings with Maserati execs over the years, most notably one with a bold plan to expand to 75,000 sales globally by 2018. In reality they’ve never even managed half of that figure and last year produced just 17,000 cars. Despite the Levante. The Grecale is the Levante’s little brother and the first new volume model since another relaunch that started with the gorgeous mid-engined MC20. Think of the Grecale as a Porsche Macan rival, but with a luxury twist. A kind of…

WE KNEW IT WAS COMING; THE NICE man from Toyota had told us it was when he briefed evo on the GR Yaris at the beginning of 2020. That little hot hatch rocket was merely the amuse-bouche to this full-blown homologation special, a Group N road car for the modern ages – the GR Yaris GRMN. Afforded the full motorsport treatment, the GRMN version of Toyota’s instant classic benefits from a stiffer shell and a lower chassis with the option of a Bilstein coilover kit, substantial changes to the drivetrain, the option of Circuit and Rally packs, and such exotic jewellery as a carbon reinforced composite bonnet and roof panel. The result is what happens to a GR Yaris if you feed it 100 octane fuel after midnight. That stiffer…

RECENTLY I FOUND MYSELF IN THE MARKET FOR A NEW car, so I consulted my bible (evo) to narrow down my choice. My first test drive was in an Alfa Romeo Giulia Veloce, a 4.5-star car. Although a lovely thing, on the yumping, twisting and poorly cambered backroads of my chosen test route I found it frustrating. The gearbox mapping in D mode was too eager and the traction control intervention left me annoyed. The second car, a 5-star car, test driven on the same day and roads and from the same dealer network, was a revelation: poised, compliant, aggressively set up and superbly balanced in its chassis and control interfaces. I went back and put an order in there and then. I think the Alfa sales guy thought it…

SHOULD WE HAVE TAKEN AN ELECTRIC CAR to the Borders? After all, the rise of the all-wheel-drive performance car has taken a quantum leap when it comes to premium electric vehicles. Porsche’s Taycan and Audi’s e-tron GT (both pictured above), along with the Polestar 2 and Tesla Model 3, could all have joined our party to splash about in some British winter road grime Or could they? Because while an EV would have wafted north in silence with some unexpected opulence thrown in for good measure, especially if you’d found yourself in a Taycan, it was what would have happened once they arrived that ultimately left us with no choice but to leave them at home. With the available charging infrastructure in the test area, we estimated any EV would…

WE’RE IN THE SCOTTISH BORDERS IN mid-January, not far from Kielder Forest. Officially the temperature is a little above freezing, but it’s the sort of cold that gets deep into your bones. The roads are slicked in a wet grey film of salt and grime, the tarmac mostly smooth but with occasional potholes and the associated scatterings of gravel. It should be made for the Quattro. Only right now I’m struggling to feel it. I’m tagging along with the main four-wheeldrive group. Deputy ed Towler has offered to lead me to the day’s first photo location, so we’re heading out of Hawick and up into the hills. Adam is aboard the 911 Turbo S – 640bhp, 0-62 in 2.7sec, 205mph, state-of the-art computerised four-wheel drive and winter tyres. I’m in…

The Pagani Zonda is seen as one of the great analogue supercars, but 23 years on from its launch, does it still have the same impact? We find out behind the wheel of Horacio Pagani’s own Zonda F USCLE MEMORY IS A CURIOUS thing. It’s been a while. I haven’t driven a Pagani Zonda F since 2013, when we gathered together the most incredible array of ‘analogue supercars’ including Ferrari F40 and F50, Porsche Carrera GT and, of course, XP5 – the prototype McLaren F1 that hit 240.1mph at Ehra-Lessien on 31 March 1998. Before those surreal few days I guess my last taste of the F would have been back in 2006. Yet I instinctively twist the smooth circular metal grip of the key and hold it there, waiting…

AS HE LEAPS FROM THE BALCONY AND GRABS THE rope, time slows down and you see the effortlessly graceful swing of a hand down to a sidearm. Time speeds up again and the arc of our hero’s fall positions him perfectly to fire the single shot required to do the job. An immaculate, feline landing on the ground and a cheeky wink at a stunned passer-by – or maybe at the audience, depending on how the director feels about breaking the fourth wall. The world has been saved from another megalomaniac/alien/dinosaur (delete as appropriate). Lights up, leave the cinema. Months later you’re walking through Leicester Square in London and see that someone has unfurled the crimson Axminster outside the Odeon. You wander over and manage to look through the crowd…

DARKNESS IS VERY MUCH A PART OF the British winter. We might not be plunged into nocturnal gloom like Scandinavia is, but this time of year it still feels like a long slow crawl towards the springtime sun. Not that it seems to bother the F-type, which has spectacularly effective headlights. They really do work brilliantly, which is pleasing as during my configurator frenzy when speccing the car I selected the optional Pixel LED headlights. At £1225 they were one of the more expensive options (if you, ahem, ignore the £5k spent on the Petrolix Blue SV premium paint), but they’re genuinely worth every penny. I have to confess the advances in headlight tech had rather left me behind. What they do is plain to see, but how they do…

BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER CHRISTMAS is a bit of a blur in evo Fast Fleet life. Prior to overdosing on mince pies there’s the rush get the final photoshoots of the year in the bag, the occasional end-of-year meet-up, the last-minute purchasing of something you’re never going to consume and the present delivery service that’s a great excuse for getting out of decorating the tree. The ‘during’ part can mean days of nothing happening interspersed with bursts of activity to alleviate the boredom, then the ‘after’ kicks off with a deadline for the magazine we didn’t quite finish before the Brussels were done and a flurry of New Year test car rotations. What’s all this got to do with the E63 S? Not once did I have to think twice…

LAST TIME I MENTIONED THE DISCOVERY of the ST’s ‘flat-shift capability’ – a system that allows you to upshift at high revs with the accelerator still pinned to the bulkhead. This is a tech feature that has snuck into various cars without much fanfare and remains mostly unknown. I bet not many GT3 owners are keeping their foot in at 9000rpm and snicking through an upshift as fast as their arm can move. They could, though. So, is it a gimmick or is it genuinely useful? I think the answer is probably a bit of both. The Focus ST is, of course, more road car than track machine and hence the benefits of flat-shifting are measured more in fun than saved tenths. And there’s definitely something enjoyable about practising the…

NEWS, INTERVIEWS, TECH AND EVERY NEW CAR THAT MATTERS SOME OF THE FINEST ASPHALT IN THE UK can be found in a Victorian railway tunnel in Northamptonshire. Just a few weeks ago the final 2.7km of black stuff was laid in Catesby Tunnel by a company that usually surfaces race circuits, creating a unique test facility. Originally built in the 1890s to speed goods and people to London by rail, Catesby Tunnel was abandoned in the 1960s but has now been restored and repurposed by a group called Aero Research Partners Limited (ARP), primarily as an affordable alternative to traditional wind-tunnel testing, though it could be put to many more uses. Buried some 30ft underground and absolutely straight, the tunnel offers consistent temperature and humidity, while its new surface was…

ASTON MARTIN HAS produced many landmark cars over the years. The most powerful luxury SUV in the world probably wasn’t one the connoisseurs were expecting, but that’s exactly what the British company has achieved in creating the DBX707. If the name doesn’t give it away, allow us to explain. The 707 represents the 707PS that the 4-litre twin turb ocharged V8now produces. That’s 697bhp in old money, which admittedly doesn’t sound quite so catchy in the world of marketing. The 155bhp increase over the regular V8 DBX (which remains in production alongside the China-only six-cylinder mild-hybrid model) has been achieved by fitting new turbochargers and air intake system, uprating the cooling system and adding a fruitier exhaust. These changes have also resulted in peak torque climbing to anotin consequential 664lb…

BETWEEN THE GT40 OF 1964 AND THE first GT of 2004 the world didn’t see much mid-engined action from Ford, save the RS200 homologation special. It’s rarely acknowledged that in the 40-year gap Ford actually came tantalisingly close to fielding another interesting mid-engined sports car, developed under the resolutely unsexy codename GN34. This project started in late 1983, when Ford’s Special Vehicles Operations unit proposed an ambitious sports car to take on Porsche and even Ferrari. Sticking it to GM’s long-running Corvette and a rumoured mid-engined Chrysler wouldn’t have hurt the corporate ego either. To make this possible, however, the small and agile SVO team would have to avoid getting bogged down in the slow-moving ooze of internal processes set up to squeeze out humdrum saloons, not exciting two-seaters. To…

Brew Metric $399 brew-watches.com Despite looking like a product of the 1970s, Brew’s Metric was in fact introduced only last year. It quickly became a sell-out success too, so it’s no surprise to see it returning in 2022, the range now bolstered by three new colour schemes. The green variant pictured here is by far the most arresting, but if you’d prefer something more subtle, blue and navy options are also available. TAG Heuer Autavia Chronometer Flyback £5800 tagheuer.com Never one to miss an anniversary, TAG Heuer is celebrating 60 years of its ever-changing Autavia line with the release of three new limited-edition models. Top of the trio is the version shown here, which features a black DLC (diamond-like carbon) case, a ceramic bezel insert, mint green indices and an…

UNLOCK ALL OUR SUBSCRIBER ONLY PERKS • Just £1.66 an issue, usual shop price £4.99 Continue to save 9% on your subscription thereafter • FREE G3 Pro clean and shine set • Unique subscriber-only covers • Receive £10 off all evo track evenings • £150 Buyacar discount • Never miss an issue – FREE delivery direct to your door • NEW! 10% off the evo shop YOUR FREE GIFT: This dynamic duo includes G3 Pro Body Prep Shampoo 500ml and G3 Pro Resin Superwax 500m. Use it together to give that professional showroom finish. Get your’s when you try 3 issues of evo for just £5 today. Hurry! Limited stock available so you’ll need to be quick. JOIN EVO TODAY SEARCH: dennismags.co.uk/evo OR CALL: 0330 333 9491 QUOTING CODE: DFEB22…

THE UNDERGROUND CAR PARK at GMA’s new Windlesham HQ is shrouded in darkness as we descend the stairs. Someone, helpfully, switches the lights on, and there it is: a millimetreperfect model of the new T.33. In that very first moment your subconscious can’t lie; it’s an unfiltered reaction that speaks volumes. Diminutive, attractive and classical are the three words that spring instantly to mind, that last one because, slightly bizarrely, the T.33 has more of a whiff of ’60s racer and Miura about it than of a modern supercar that’s just turned left out of the gate at the Nürburgring. The front sits proud and pointedly off the ground, the curves are smooth and unbroken, and there appears to be no wings in sight whatsoever – it’s astonishingly graceful. There…

HERE ARE TWO EXAMPLES of a rare automotive breed that is becoming rarer with each passing day. Not only do they share body styles (both two-door sports coupes) and mechanical philosophy (both 5-litre V8s, not a turbo in sight, and strictly rear-wheel drive only), but when they’ve burnt their last drop of E5 98 RON their replacements are destined to follow them in name only. In fact the Mustang is already evolving into its future self in the guise of the Mach-E, anall electric SUV, and Lexus recently teased a new electric sports coupe that will glide into the slot the RC F will vacate in the company’s product line-up in a few years’ time. Ford’s sixth-generation Mustang, here in Mach 1 guise, needs little introduction, is a firm evo…

THE M3 HAS STAYED ON ITS MICHELIN Pilot Sport 4 S tyres, and to be honest, it’s a great testament to them that so far I haven’t really missed a set of ‘winters’. I usually toggle the HUD to M mode on start-up, partly so I can see the tyre temps on the dash, and you know that when they’re reading single digits on a frosty morning the car is going to be a bit skittish for the first few miles. It never feels dangerous, but even with heat in the tyres you’re always aware when you start to push a bit harder that there’s a lot of power and weight involved with the M3 on the move. On a greasy, wintry road surface it doesn’t take much commitment for…

SINGLE-DIGIT TEMPERATURES AND snow arrived a little sooner than I anticipated, and they’re conditions that a C63 isn’t awfully well suited to, as a near zero traction departure from one of Cadwell Park’s steep, sodden fields recently made rather clear. Although an all-out winter wheel and tyre set-up is appealing, the cost is tricky to justify given the miles I cover, so instead the AMG has been treated to some Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S rubber and a promise that I’ll (attempt to) keep use to a minimum until warmer weather returns. Helping to make the most of those tyres will be the Quaife limited-slip differential that I now find myself in possession of. I hadn’t intended to take the plunge for at least another few months, but having worked…