Inhaltsverzeichnis für July 2017 in Evo

I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS REGARDING AN ITALIAN car manufacturer that doesn’t reside in Maranello. It would appear that, 12 months on from its international launch, Alfa Romeo’s Giulia is doing the numbers in the showrooms. According to recent figures released by JATO Dynamics, the four-door saloon ranked fourth in Europe’s Jan-Feb 2017 sales charts for the snappily titled Premium D-Segment. Its 12 per cent market share put it behind only Audi’s A4 (18 per cent), BMW’s 3-series (22 per cent) and Mercedes’ C-class (31 per cent). Of the 31,254 total sales in this segment, 3900 were Giulias, the Alfa leapfrogging more established models such as Jaguar’s XE (9 per cent), Volvo’s S60 (4 per cent) and Lexus’s IS (3 per cent). Although, when you include estates and coupes in…

EXHAU STSAND THE aftermarket: why bother? Manufacturers now expend tens of thousa nds of hours and millions of pounds developing their performance cars to a high state of tune, and the exhaust system is critical to that process. Can the aftermarket really do better? Well, the aftermarket exhaust industry has come a long way since the days when it simply created nice shiny systems out of stainless-steel tubes, said they’d last forever and give you lots more horsepower, and ensured they made plenty of noise to drown out the sound of often empty promises. Reputable aftermarket firms today have to comply with EC regulations concerning sound levels, exhaustgas emissions and manufacturing standards, and employ universityeducated engineers to operate sophisticated design software to create their products. The goal of any aftermarket…

HAVING QUALIFIED ON THE FRONT ROW OF THE grid, Toyota’s pair of TS050 Hybrids were in a strong position to win the 2017 World Endurance Championship’s opening round, at Silverstone in April. It wasn’t to be that simple, though. The two cars fought for the lead throughout the opening third of the six-hour race until the no. 7 car, being driven by former F1 star Kamui Kobayashi, returned to the pits with a mechanical fault. Rain during this elongated stop then caught the Japanese driver unawares when he rejoined the race and he subsequently left the track momentarily at Vale. The no. 7 car’s misfortunes weren’t over yet, either. Three-time WTCC champion José María López later came off at Copse, and hard. The shunt removed most of the Toyota’s front…

BMW M5 // LOTUS ELISE SPRINT 220 // MERCEDES-AMG E43 4MATIC SALOON // PORSCHE MACAN TURBO PERFORMANCE PACKAGE // BIRDS BMW M235i CORNER ONE: GET ON the throttle early at the apex, a few degrees of slip-angle from the rear, an almost undetectable squirm from the nose, an easing of the steering angle but little more. Slingshot acceleration. Smirk. Yeah, that’s quick. Tap the screen. Corner two: on the throttle early again, the fabulous sensation of a generously loaded supermarket trolley arcing into a drift around the hairpin of the condiments aisle; smoking Michelins. This is the same car. A clever car. They call it ‘two cars in one’. They also use the word ‘inevitable’. ‘They’ being BMW M boss Frank van Meel and vice president of engineering Dirk Häcker,…

IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE the words ‘My Macan Turbo isn’t fast enough’ drifting past the cappuccino maker of a Porsche Centre, and yet here, for another £5524, is an official way of making Porsche’s sports-car-onstilts offer even more genre-busting performance. In essence, a Performance Package-equipped Macan Turbo squeezes the most power and torque yet out of the M46-series V6, with 434bhp and 442lb ft of torque, the latter from 1500 to 4500rpm. These are small but notable increases over the standard car (394bhp, 406lb ft) and enable nearly half a second to be chopped from the 0-62mph time – now 4.4sec – while the 169mph top speed is up 4mph. The additional output is achieved via more aggressive camshafts and an ECU remap, and is combined as standard with the…

THE LITTLE BLUE LIGHT WITH IN THE instrument display tempers your enthusiasm. So do the still-hard front tyres, which scud lightly across the cold road surface as you pull out of the hotel car park. The fat rear tyres too, which slip a degree until the electronics catch them. When a car is as hyped as the new Porsche 911 GT3 – when the guy who oversaw its development, and has been integral in every other GT3 before it, has declared it the best one ever – the first urge you feel when at long last you get to drive it, after countless months of spy photos and studio shoots and motor show reveals, is to pull the damn pin and set the thing off. But the engine and gearbox…

‘HOW DIFFERENT CAN THEY ALL BE?’ ASKED A CAR-SAVVY friend, nodding at the brace of glowing orange McLarens but referring to the extended range. To be honest, I’ve had to do my homework. Back in 2011 I drove the original, the MP4-12C, and arriving back for my second stint at evo magazine I find there are swarms of the blighters. There are ‘Sports Series’ and ‘Super Series’ and ‘Ultimate Series’, but to the untrained eye they all look pretty much the same. During this test three people will ask if the 650S (the more orangey one) is the £866,000 P1… Dive into the technical specs and you’ll find that beneath their unstressed skins, Sports and Super Series cars are created from the same essential ingredients: a carbonfibre tub, double-wishbone suspension…

‘GIVEN WE WERE GOING TOIN CREASE the power, the last thing we wanted to do was increase weight. That’s where the aero came from – how could we make the car more efficient, particularly around the cooling. We knew that with 710bhp the thermal output of the engine was increasing, but we didn’t want to increase the size of the radiators and add more coolant because of weight. From the P1 we knew the door ducts were extremely efficient for airflow, but this is the world’s most complex door: we’re brave, we supported the idea without [initially] completely understanding the solution. ‘There are big changes to the engine. It needed a relatively small increase in capacity – 3.6mm on the stroke – but the crank, cylinders, heads and intake manifold…

THE SAYING GOES ‘WIN ON SU NDAY, SELL ON Monday ’, the idea being motorsport prowe ss helps shif t road cars. But this concept hasn’t really been necessary for the VW Golf, and the GTI has certainly never needed a high-profile race car to boost its popularity. Nevertheless, here is a Golf with a ga rgantuan wing sprouting from its rear window and a set of arches that would shame a World Rallyc ross car. It ’s called the Golf GT I TCR. So why, 40 or so years into its life, has VW made the Golf into a prop er race car? Well it’s not to sell more road cars. What Volkswagen is looking to sell is the Golf GT I TCR itself – to anyone who want…

WANTIT. BUYIT. OWNIT. LOVEIT. W E'RE BECOMING INCREASINGLY FAMILIAR with Japanese metal featuring on the classic car and investment scene. Unsurprisingly, the Honda NSX and Nissan Skyline GT-R have led that movement, but there’s a second wave of Japanese performance classics that are experiencing a revival in interest and values, and they include some of the more attainable favourites of the era: the Mk4 Toyota Supra, the FD-generation Mazda RX-7 and the Honda S2000. Arriving in 1993, the Mk4 Supra was one of that select band of Japanese performance cars that really changed the global perception of what the nation’s manufacturers could offer. In fact, the advanced Supra, with its active aero (a retractable front spoiler) and serious twin-turbo power, must have caused more than a few rival brands a…

THESE DIMINUTIVE TVRs HAVE OFTEN lived in the shadow of their more glamorous Tuscan, Cerbera and Sagaris relations. However, with an engine – the Speed Six – from the same family and a better-sorted chassis (than early Tuscans, certainly), they hold serious appeal. The drop-top Tamora (pictured above) was one of TVR’s less successful efforts during the later Wheeler years, but then it did have some very big tyre tracks to fill, following on from the Chimaera. Arriving in 2001 as the company’s entry-level model, the Tamora used the 3.6-litre version of TVR’s homegrown, naturally aspirated straight-six engine. With 350bhp and weighing just over a ton, it can reach 60mph from rest in 4.5 seconds and has a claimed, although possibly not proven, top speed of 175mph. Perhaps the Tamora’s…

I HAVE TO CONFESS to being a tad nervous when travelling along the ‘smart’ sections of the M1, with no hard shoulder, on those early journeys with the rebuilt Murciélago. The thought of being stranded there during my daily commute is my worst nightmare. There’s no real reason why this should happen, of course, but driving this car after its lengthy repair following a collision with an oak tree back in 2012 has been like getting reacquainted with an ex. A reasonable number of miles have now been added to the odometer and up until recently the car’s behaviour had been exemplary. Problems have, however, arisen when third or fifth gear is selected. Occasionally, lifting off the power causes the gearlever to snap back into neutral. I thought the shift-rods…

‘The list of new cars I’d rather have been driving at the time was a very short one’ WITH THE WEATHER having turned a corner, the R8 Spyder is really coming into its own. In fact, it’s only with the sun shining and the temperatures up a few notches that I’ve realised just how much of the Spyder experience I’ve been missing out on for the past few months. I’m not one of those militant roof-off-regardless types who’ll happily cruise along top-down in any weather just as long as they’ve got a woolly hat on. Call me a softy, but I prefer the roof up in the rain. Anyway, I’ve never felt more affection for KP66 GMV than I did a few weeks ago in sunny north Wales. Once we’d…

new entry this month. * = grey import. Entries in italics are for cars no longer on sale. Issue no. is for our most recent major test of the car (D = Driven, R = Road test or group test, F = Feature, FF = Fast Fleet). Call 0844 844 0039 to order a back issue. Price is on-the-road including VAT and delivery charges. Engine is the car’s main motor only – additional hybrid tech isn’t shown. Weight is the car’s kerb weight as quoted by the manufacturer. bhp/ton is the power-to-weight ratio based on manufacturer’s kerb weight. 0-60mph and 0-100mph figures in bold are independently recorded, all other performance figures are manufacturers’ claims. CO2 g/km is the official EC figure and EC mpg is the official ‘Combined’ figure or…

NEWS • NEW METAL • ALAIN PROST • MOTORSPORT • WATCHES IF IT’S BETTER TO BURN OUT THA N to fade away, then Neil Young would have appreciated MG Rover’s efforts to sustain itself before finally running out of cash back in 2005. In the preceding years the ailing brand dug enough pennies from the cracks of a Longbridge sofa to turn a bunch of geriatric saloons and hatchbacks into a surprisingly appealing range of sporting models, culminating with the barmy Mustang-engined, reardrive ZT and the ugly but rapid SV coupe. The brand’s reintroduction to the UK in 2011 as MG Motor, under Chinese owner SAIC, has proven less successful. China’s roads are full of new-age MGs, but outside its home country you’d be forgiven for forgetting the brand exists…

AMOUTHWATERING CAST of cars for a new concours event in central London is taking shape. Visitors to the City Concours, to be held on 8-9 June on the lawn of the Honourable Artillery Company and in association with evo’s sister-magazine Octane, had already been promised a successful Le Mans D-type from 1957 and one of eight Touring Superleggera Disco Volante Spyders. However, we now know that many more treasures from road and track will put in an appearance. As you’d expect, the 1960s will be well represented, with a Lamborghini Miura, a Ferrari 250 GT Pininfarina Coupe and the ultra-rare trans-Atlantic mash-up that is the Iso Grifo (V8 by Chevy, mechanicals by Bizzarrini, styling by Giugiaro) among the entries. Cars from the following decade are no less impressive, and a…

A LOTUS WEARING THE Sprint badge has to be pretty special. Step up close to the Elise Sprint and you’ll see that it is, with an impressive amount of high-quality, gloss-finish carbonfibre lavished on it. The engine cover is made entirely from the lightweight material, as is the rollhoop cover and the vented bonnet panel. Swing open the door and there’s more of it on the sills; you’ll also spot the open linkage for the gearshift and a blanking plate where a radio head-unit should be. It looks like a comprehensive weight-saving programme and it is, though some of the measures that help the car to its impressive kerb weight are general improvements enjoyed by other models in the new Elise lineup. ‘Sport’ is the standard Elise trim level and…

‘There’s thumping torque and urgently delivered topend power’ AFTER 38 YEARS IN business – a good many as sole UK importer of Hartge’s tuning parts – there isn’t much that Bucks-based Birds BMW doesn’t know about the inner workings of the Bavarian brand’s dynamic make-up, or how to modify the company’s myriad suspension and damping setups for the peculiar demands of Blighty’s bobbly blacktop. Perhaps the most intriguing ‘dynamic package’ it currently offers is for the M135i and M235i, cars we love for their outstanding turbocharged straight-six engines and stonking performance. Nevertheless, they fall a little flat in the chassis department, not least by failing to put their 321bhp to the most effective use. Birds’ demonstrator is an M235i and the mission, according to Kevin Bird, is to ‘provide the…

ANGLESEY, NORTH WALES (COASTAL CIRCUIT ) Circuitlength: 1.55miles Direction: clockwise DEPENDING ON YOUR PREDILECTION, you’re either looking at this feature thinking ‘Oh great! The new GT3!’ or ‘Oh great. The new GT3.’ Naturally, being evo, and therefore hugely biased towards Porsche (if you believe what the internet says), we’re in the former camp, but we do sympathise if you feel it’s only been five minutes since the gen-one 991 GT3 was introduced. (It’s actually been four years.) The big news with the gen-two car, or at least the stuff that grabbed headlines, was Porsche’s decision to offer both PDK and manual forms. It’s certainly a welcome development, though the relative merits of stick versus paddles is a story for another day. Besides, we may display Luddite tendencies, but even we…

WE’RE NOT EXACTLY IN FERRARI’S BACK YARD BUT we are in its neighbourhood. In a red supercar. Which is kind of bold. So too is choosing Rome at 8am on a Monday morning as the starting point for the launch of any new car, let alone a 710bhp supercar, what with all the traffic and the generous variety of crappy surfaces its roads throw up. The cockpit of the 720S is an oasis of calm, however. The excellent visibility and sense of space McLarens are noted for is enhanced on the new car by even slimmer pillars and glazed roof-cum-door panels, and the ride is doing its customary outstanding job of quietly neutralising the often crumbly and ruckled asphalt passing beneath the 720’s wheels. Meanwhile, the new 4-litre version of…

‘I REMEMBER WRITING DOWN THE targets for the new car and there were some gasps initially, but everything we set out to do we’ve achieved and even exceeded in some areas. ‘One of the first decisions was to have no side intakes, but that made the cabin tighter, and it had to be no less roomy than the 650S. Yet despite the car being narrower, the interior dimensions are bigger. It’s a beautiful place to be and more opulent, with Bridge of Weir leather and machined-fromsolid materials: the car is not just about dynamic feel, but engagement. From the moment you open the door it welcomes you in. We’ve looked at ways we can supplement that [feeling], so for example, we have an app called Variable Drift Control – it’s…

AN ORIGINAL MINI METRO KICKED OFF Hamish’s driving career, just as it did for so many kids who reached their late teens in the 1980s. A Peugeot 309 SRi came next, but the thrills from the staid-looking but talented hatch were short-lived as it was rear-ended by a JCB. A (much safer) Saab 9000 followed and was succeeded by the first of Hamish’s beloved BMWs – a 2.8-litre Z3. Four years later came an E39 Alpina B10, then a BMW M535i, then another Alpina in the form of an E46 B3 S, which was ‘a fantastic cruiser with one of the creamiest engine sounds – a perfect example of everything Alpina does well’. The M635 CSi was a disappointment, though, particularly the handling, which isn’t an accusation you’d level at…

TOY Lego McLaren 720S£12.99 lego.com McLaren asks £208,600 for its 720S. For roughly 1/16,000th of that you could have its Lego equivalent. Also included is a designer minifigure complete with designstudio desk and drawing board, and the car is in the right colour, too: McLaren Orange. Available from 1 June. PRINT Sound Stories –Walter Röhrl’s Audi£600 rachaelclegg.com Sound Stories is a collection of artwork by Rachael Clegg, replicating the sound profile of classic race cars and motorcycles in colours appropriate to their liveries. This painting depicts Röhrl’s Quattro at San Remo in 1985; another represents Stefan Bellof’s 6:11.13 Ring lap in 1983. BOOK Toyota MR2 Coupe&Spyders£35 veloce.co.uk Now in its second edition, Brian Long’s book on Toyota’s mid-engined sports car comprehensively covers every generation, from the model’s debut to the…

ELECTRIC CARS MAKE A lot of sense in London. And since that’s where I live, the editor suggested I run around in his semi-electric i8 for a few weeks. From a distance, the i8 seems a bit wide, low and conspicuous for everything that driving in the capital entails, by which I mean nipping down rat-runs, thudding over speed bumps and making rude gestures at van drivers who have just taken exception to your car and noisily called you a WAN’AHHHH! But after some time with the BMW, this turns out to be wrong, at least on the first two points. In fact, the i8 is a good city car. It’s not as wide as it might seem, the view out is decent, and the ride is very acceptable over…

A COUPLE OF MONTHS ago my Carrera received something of an overhaul. A massive suspension overhaul, in fact, comprising new anti-roll bars, new bushes, new Öhlins springand- damper units, new track-rod arms and new drop links. An involved job (see evo 234), but the original components were getting on for a quarter of a century old, so were well overdue for a refresh. Now that the car is out on the road, however, the benefits of the new hardware, and of the geometry being spot-on, are clear. Most noticeable is that the thicker, H&R anti-roll bars keep the body far, far flatter through bends. Throw in the effects of the new track-rod arms and the set of fresh bushes and the 993 responds to steering inputs more enthusiastically than I’ve…

You have much less feeling in modern F1 cars than you had in the past Howdo you divide your time between the needs of Formula 1 and Formula E? Formula E is more work than you’d think, because the series is growing and we’re already planning for the changes this year. F1 too this year is going to be busy for me – I think I will eventually have to choose either one or the other. Could Formula E become the more important sport? We need to keep the concept and the magic of Formula E, such as the city circuits, while welcoming more constructors and keeping budgets stable – and always put the money into the development of the technology. If we do that, the sport will always grow.…

‘There’s an even spread of torque and power well matched to the nine ratios’ AUDI DOES IT, BMW TOO, and now Mercedes-Benz is romping up the inside to join its German rivals in a race to fill the Niche Gold Cup. And after backing its AMG C and E-class thoroughbred stallions with a 4-litre, hot-vee twin-turbocharged V8, Stuttgart’s largest automotive stable has turned its attention to training its E-class to become a two-thirds AMG champion in the guise of the E43. Available as a saloon or estate, the E43 has been bred to take on Audi’s S products – specifically the lesserspotted, 444bhp S6 – and BMW’s forthcoming 540i Performance. You could also line up Jaguar’s new 375bhp XF S in the stalls, too. To the untrained eye the E43…

‘The question is then, is it as good to drive as it is to look at?’ IT WOULD BE ALL TOO EASY to introduce Ford’s new $450,000 supercar with endless references to yesteryear, because we all know where the story for the Ford GT began… Henry Ford tries to buy a Ferrari with which to compete at Le Mans in the 1960s, Enzo rudely rebuffs him, Henry builds his own version of a Ferrari to do the job. It’s called the GT40 and with it he humbles Ferrari. The end. Except there’s an intriguing new story doing the rounds about the birth of the latest Ford GT, and it only recently came to light at the car’s launch in the US. Initially Ford wasn’t going to build a new GT…

‘Hyundai has created a car that rides and handles brilliantly on UK roads’ THE INTRIGUINGLY NAMED N-CAR PROJECT is the reason Hyundai managed to persuade BMW’s M division boss to jump ship and spend the rest of his working life in Korea. Because at the time (early in 2015) Albert Biermann was having a ball at BMW. Having masterminded everything from the M3 GTR’s outrageous victories in the American Le Mans Series to the production of numerous road-going M3s, M5s and M6s, he was very much The Governor at BMW M and had no reason whatsoever to leave. Until he met the chairman of Hyundai, Chung Mong-koo, who offered the 59-year-old German a blank sheet of paper, a very big pay package, and the promise that he could do anything…

‘We wanted the 720S to look like it was doing 200mph when standing still’ ‘OUR DESIGN PHILOSOPHY COMES FROM how McLaren started off with Bruce, was born on the track, and essentially that’s about everything for a reason. In the years I’ve been here we’ve taken that basic principle and turned it into a design statement: “Great design tells a great story.” By that we mean you can look at our cars and understand how they work; it’s authentic, not just a trend. ‘Below the statement we have our design pillars. There’s “Everything for a Reason”: every material, every profile earns its place. Next is “Always Brave”. That’s about the culture of the company, how we’re comfortable with taking risks early in a project. There’s “Perfect Proportions” and “Truth to…

THERE ARE RUMOURS THAT, in the not too distant future, the Golf GTI – the hot hatch staple by which all others are measured – will become fully electric. Purists and diehard Golf GTI fans will fervently object to the concept, but to ease us into such a radical development, VW has produced the GTE: a part petrol, part electric hot hatch. Here, in its facelifted and updated ‘Mk7.5’ form (the white car in these pictures), is it good enough to tempt the more progressive car enthusiast away from buying the petrol-powered norm? VW’s refreshed Golf GTI Performance (the red car) is the ideal yardstick to help us answer such a question. The GTE’s drivetrain comprises a 75kW (101bhp) electric motor that slots between a 148bhp 1.4-litre fourcylinder turbo petrol…

Mercedes-AMG GT R Engine V8, 3982cc, twin-turbo Power 577bhp @ 6250rpm Torque 516lb ft @ 1900-5500rpm Transmission Seven-speed dual-clutch, rear-wheel drive, limited-slip differential Front suspension Double wishbones, coilovers, adaptive dampers, anti-roll bar Rear suspension Double wishbones, coilovers, adaptive dampers, antiroll bar Brakes Ventilated carbon-ceramic discs (option), 402mm front, 360mm rear Wheels 10 x 19in front, 12 x 20in rear Tyres 275/30 ZR19 front, 325/30 ZR20 rear Weight 1555kg Power-to-weight 377bhp/ton 0-62mph 3.6sec (claimed) Top speed 198mph (claimed) Basic price £143,245 SE L EC T ‘R AC E’ MODE A N D make sure the ESP is off. With your left foot firmly on the brake pedal, fully depress the throttle. ‘Race Start’ flashes up in the central display and the revs flutter around 5000rpm, V8 coughing and popping, the sense…

I HATE SQUEAKS AND rattles in a car. I find them distracting when I’m trying to enjoy driving, though not as distracting as those half-drunk bottles of water my colleagues leave wedged under the passenger seat of every test car they drive, and which break free the moment you reach a decent stretch of road and then roll around the passenger footwell like some kind of budget G-meter. It’s as if cup holders and door pockets had never been invented. Anyway… At least when I know where the squeak or rattle is coming from I can try to ignore it. But when I can’t identify the source, there’s always a nagging doubt: what if something really important is working itself loose? That’s exactly what’s been bugging me about the noise…

GIVEN THAT THIS IS A CAR with ‘corporate purchase’ writ so very large across its outer being, you have to admire Ford for stuffing the Focus ST Estate’s inner soul with such a surprising amount of feisty rage. After all, there can’t be too many high-flying reps out there clamouring for nearly 250bhp beneath their right loafer. So Ford could just have adorned the Focus with all the relevant ST finery and not gone so wild with the power output. Oh, and the torque, all 265lb ft of it. It might have been better with less. Am I suggesting it has too much power? The car’s previous keeper, Antony Ingram, thought as much. The ST fair shoots down the road, but you get the sense from the writhing steering wheel…

WITH OUR SIX-MONTH anniversary approaching fast as I write, it’s almost time for me to bid the C63 S farewell. Much like the car itself, that time has gone extremely quickly. There’s normally a getting-to-know-you phase with long-termers, but I felt immediately at home with the AMG, and we’ve got on famously ever since (the 503bhp V8 certainly helps). With the racing season well under way, I’ve been using the Benz to ferry me to various race meetings and tests, which means lugging a massive kit bag around containing my fireproof clothing, crash helmet and box-set of Racing Driver Excuses. Often it proves too big to stash in the boot of a car, so ends up riding shotgun strapped in the passenger seat, but the C63 swallows the bag easily.…

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