Inhaltsverzeichnis für April 2024 in Evo

BACK IN 2016, FORMER EDITOR Nick Trott booked in a Renault Zoe for a week’s appraisal. At the end of the first day there wasn’t a mad scramble for the key to try Renault’s version of a Nissan Leaf. We didn’t want to step on the editor’s toes, after all… A few observations quickly came to light during that week. Firstly, it took a long time to charge the 29.9kW battery via a three-pin plug and an extension lead dangling from the window. Secondly, the estimated range of around 90 miles didn’t last very long on the back-roads between evo’s office and Nick’s house less than 30 miles away. And finally, Nick was clearly smitten – and what’s more, his reasoning made a lot of sense. Here was a compact…

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN IT WAS easier to list the sectors Mercedes-Benz hadn’t launched a model in, such was its desperation to be represented everywhere. Up until recently you could, for example, choose between an A-class saloon – a conventional three-box, four-door saloon – or a four-door CLA – a saloon with a coupe-ish sweeping rear window and a boot. And that was on top of the regular A-class hatch and the CLA Shooting Brake (a slightly bigger hatch trying to be a swoopy estate). And when the product planners took a microscope to customer research, they concluded that customers who weren’t buying the AMG GT coupe were skipping on by to the Porsche dealer to pick up a 911 instead because they wanted two rear seats with which…

A QUICK GAME OF WORD association: think ‘mid-engined’. Does your mind run to supercars? GT40, F40, Gandini, Giugiaro…? The exotically cab-forward proportions the mid-engined layout lends itself to so well. Lots of cylinders, lots of horsepower, lots of drama. Exactly the type of emotive, inspiring cars you’ll find on page 60 in the second half of this test, in fact. Or does it flip to the other side of the coin: the small, nimble, neat sports car? Ever since little Coopers did battle with front-engined Ferraris on the Grand Prix circuit in the ’50s and ’60s, and Lotus took on the old-guard Offy-engined roadsters at Indy, light, compact cars that put the engine behind the driver’s shoulder blades and which can outpoint more powerful Goliaths have held a special kind…

IT TOOK A LITTLE WHILE FOR THE MEN FROM Maranello to get their first mid-engined supercar into production; time-served Il Commendatore folklore has it that Enzo preferred his prancing horses pulling the cart, not pushing them. Nevertheless, the dazzling appeal, drama and commercial threat of the Lamborghini Miura could not be ignored, and in 1973, seven years after the emergence of the mid-engined Lambo, Ferrari launched its new road car flagship, the 365 GT4 BB. The ‘Berlinetta Boxer’ had been first seen at the Turin motor show of 1971 and took plenty of inspiration from Pininfarina’s P6 concept of 1968. An elegant, dart-like form, what it lacked of the pioneering bravado possessed by both the Miura and its Countach successor it made up for with a timeless beauty that hasn’t…

FORD HAS ALWAYS HAD AN UNCANNY knack for giving the people what they want. Strolling through this greatest hits collection, past Cortina 1600Es and Fiesta XR2s, Sapphire Cosworths and Focus RSs, you’re reminded just how deeply embedded in our collective psyche the Blue Oval has become. Len Keen sees it every time he conducts a tour: ‘More than any other manufacturer, people can associate with the cars here. You see it in their faces when they come in: what Fords mean to people.’ And that’s no happy accident. For successive generations, canny marketing underpinned by rigorous product development has engendered not only sales success but a deep and enduring affection. Len’s ‘day job’ is press officer for vehicle operations at Ford’s Dunton HQ but he also has responsibility for the…

LAST YEAR SAW THE 993 RESIDING in my garage more than I’d care to admit. Being able to occasionally get my hands on some of the real gems we are fortunate enough to run on the Fast Fleet (2023’s M5 CS springs to mind) unfortunately means that the Porsche can sometimes get nudged down my priority list. I made a concerted effort to put some miles on it over the festive season, however, and it was testament to Porsche’s engineering that it showed no issues after months of sitting idle. Returning to the 993 also reminded me of some of its challenges, such as the leisurely warm-up of both its engine and cabin. In those moments I couldn’t help but acknowledge how accustomed I had become to the luxuries of…

POWER UNIT ENGINEER ALEXANDRE DE Sousa has just asked me to put my foot to the floor from a standing start, in a prototype Alpine A290. We are on polished sheet ice, on the surface of a frozen lake in northern Sweden. The accelerator pedal hits the stop and the front Michelins – conventional winter tyres, without studs – slip a little, grip a little, smoothly metering out the power and allowing the electric hot hatch to gather pace swiftly. Then we hit the brakes just as hard, on a split surface – polished ice under the right-hand wheels and graded, grippier ice beneath the left – and the A290 stops equally undramatically, ABS and electronic brake distribution working away in the background to keep its path straight and true.…

IN 2058, THE FIRST COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR FUSION REACTORS began operation, the resulting abundance of cheap, clean energy enabling physicists to make time travel a miraculous but hazardous reality. One of the developers and first users of the time-travel system, Shinichi Eichhörnchen, had a passion for old internal combustion engined cars, Lotuses in particular. He therefore seized the opportunity to travel back to 1970 and, posing as the motoring correspondent of the Diss Express, secured an interview with Colin Chapman. In awe at their meeting, nervously, he opened with the question: ‘What specification would you want to see a Lotus having in the future, for example, in 2024?’ The faintest of smiles beneath a distant gaze settled on Chapman’s face, that genius brain ‘imagineering’ all the capabilities that the next 54…

AS AUTOMOTIVE RITES OF PASSAGE GO, OWNING A mid-engined car has to be right up there with the best. Make it a mid-engined supercar and there’s surely little to touch it. For many decades, whether you were buying new or used, it almost certainly meant buying Italian, which exposed you to engine-out servicing for everything but emptying the ashtrays. Thankfully in more recent years the genre has moved on, with models becoming more diverse, more reliable, more useable and – crucially for attainability – far more numerous. Such abundance has transformed the used market, as has the growing network of excellent specialists to maintain them at less than main dealer rates. As a result the mid-engined supercar dream has become viable for more of us than ever before. It’s certainly…

‘THE CHALLENGE IS NOT MERELY THE SHEER TECHNICAL NATURE OF THE ROAD, MORE THAN ENOUGH IN ITSELF’ IF WALLS COULD TALK, WHAT WOULD THIS particular stone wall say, I wonder. About knee-high, it’s punctuated by short gaps along its length, each exposing a cold, unyielding face at 90 degrees to the road; carnage when you drop the corner of your Impreza 555 into one on Dirt Rally 2.0, potentially career-defining if you misjudge one doing the real thing, life-threatening if you then flip over the edge. The road I’m on is, in part, lined with them, but they’re just one hazard on this particular stretch of asphalt that has a notoriety in motorsport almost unrivalled. That’s down not only to the peculiar combination of hazards, but where it is, and…

‘FOR MILE AFTER MILE THE M2 CLIPS TURN–IN POINTS AND NIPS AT APEXES’ A MG AND BMW M HAVE been taking shots at each other for decades, trading blows and landing ever-more-powerful punches on each other up and down the product lines. So much so that the M development team stopped looking at what AMG was doing some time ago and instead turned to see what Porsche was up to, to determine what it had to do better to get the upper hand over its Affalterbach rivals. It’s a strategy that has seen M2s, 3s, 4s and 5s pull away from their A, C and E counterparts and continue to lord it over their rivals. Back-to-back eCoty wins with the M2 CS and M5 CS cemented M’s return to form,…

‘YOU’RE RIGHT-HANDED, AREN’T YOU?’ asks Mark Robins from the passenger seat of evo’s Carrera GTS. I’m guessing it’s not the fact I’m wearing a watch on my left wrist that’s tipped Porsche’s instructor off. ‘Ye-es?’ I reply, tipping the 911’s nose into one of the Porsche Experience Centre’s arcing, technical corners. ‘Have you ever noticed you sometimes relax your grip with your left hand when you turn the wheel, but you don’t with your right?’ he asks. This is the first of several Sherlock Holmes-like observations I’ll learn from today, about my driving style, and also about how our 911 handles at, below, and beyond its limits. And how to apply those lessons on the drive home and, hopefully, for years to come. Every new Porsche customer is offered a…

‘In many ways the “lesser”Giulia matches the Quadrifoglio, or even betters it’ ‘YOU CAN’T CALL YOURSELF A PETROL head unless you’ve owned an Alfa.’ Isn’t that the saying? If so, I’m a fully paid-up petrol head: a 1967 Alfa Giulia Sprint GT with my name on the V5, if only for 18 months until it was sold to pay architect fees for the Gen 1 ‘Meaden Project’ house build. Being an Alfista is an affliction you die with, not from, but that doesn’t mean palliative care isn’t welcome. Especially when it comes in the form of a rather gorgeous 23MY Giulia Veloce, which arrived at evo last summer. I wasn’t its original custodian – John Barker nabbed it first – but once I got my mitts on it in November,…

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@evomagazine @evomagazine @officialevomagazine YOU KNOW THE OLD MOTORING journalist cliché about great cars feeling right in the first 200 metres? Well, the Abarth 695 ain’t that. The driving position seems too high, your feet land strangely on the pedals, and the steering wheel only adjusts for rake when what you crave is more reach. Far from feeling right, it feels wrong before you’ve turned a wheel. That’s the bad news. The good news is the Abarth is such a boisterous character that those negative first impressions are soon blown away, with a generous blast of turbo boost and a flatulent parp from the exhaust. Personality counts for a lot in small, sporty cars and the 695 has it in spades. In fact, it’s a riot. ‘Imagine a Chihuahua with the…

I HAVE FOND MEMORIES OF RUNNING A fast Leon Estate long-termer for eight months back in 2015, in the days when they were still called SEATs. So I’m rather pleased to find myself behind the wheel of one once again. That earlier, previous-generation car was front-driven, with a manual gearbox and the ‘280’ engine (276bhp). Our latest is four-wheel drive, with a seven-speed DSG transmission and its 2-litre TSI engine in ‘310’ tune (306bhp). Like that old car, the current Cupra Leon Estate still neatly blends performance, style and practicality in one package. The ‘style’ part is enhanced on this particular car with Graphene Grey metallic paint, a £930 option, that nicely complements the satin black and copper 19-inch alloys, which are standard and the only wheel available on the…

HOW TO FOLLOW SIX MONTHS AND 10,000 miles in Aston Martin’s DBX707? With another six months and, most likely, a similar number of miles in the twin-turbocharged, V8-engined, premium-luxury SUV that’s developed over the fence at Gaydon. Although the similarities between the 707 and the Range Rover Sport P530 stop at that engine configuration and the number of driven wheels. Too heavy, certainly on the wrong side of right-sized and more powerful than it ever needs to be, the RR Sport is a car we love to hate but is secretly one that many would like to have parked within their household fleet – or already do. Despite their on-paper performance credentials they are not performance cars to replace the established norm, they are not cars we rise early for…

AS THE CAR INDUSTRY APPROACHES THE PRECIPICE OF full electrification, the internal combustion engine is living out its twilight years in a variety of exceptional performance machines. However, if you’re looking for a truly attainable new driver’s car, right now you may find your options are lacking. Once upon a time, the supermini offered accessible thrills for all, and while there are still a handful being made today – as we discovered in our hot hatch megatest inevo 318 – increases in size, weight and price have made them less desirable than their predecessors in many cases. Even more so now those models from a generation or two ago are more affordable than ever. So from the cheeky Fiat Panda 100HP to the hardcore Mini John Cooper Works GP, via…