Inhaltsverzeichnis für August 2024 in Evo

£50,000 IS NOT AN INSIGNIFICANT amount of money, but it is a far more palatable sum than the near £100,000 an M3 saloon would have cost you, give or take a few quid, when it was box fresh in 2021. When the circumstances are in your favour, depreciation is the car enthusiast’s friend. It’s been a regular theme in Inbox and across our social channels that new cars are too expensive and not worth the outlay. Even if the monthly costs look acceptable, there is still the deposit and final payment to bankroll. But now money is given away to anyone with a mobile phone and supply is outstripping demand, and that means the classifieds are no longer a process of self-inflicted disappointment and frustration. Original BMW M2s that haven’t covered…

VOLKSWAGEN HAS STRUGGLED TO maintain its hold on the hot hatch market in recent years, the Mk8 Golf not being quite as well received as the company would have hoped. Meanwhile its Spanish relative, Cupra, used the same MQB Evo platform to create its latest Leon in 2020, and while it suffered from the same infuriating HMI, we found it to be a more engaging package. Now Cupra has given the Leon a mid-life update, and while the changes are subtle, they help make it an even more attractive offering. As before, to avoid treading on the toes of the all-wheel-drive Golf R the hottest Leon hatchback makes do with a GTI Clubsport-spec powertrain, sending 296bhp to the front wheels only. Peak Leon performance comes instead from the Estate, which…

‘IT’S CONSIDERED THE LARGEST SINGLE–DAY SPORTING EVENT IN THE WORLD. MOTORSPORT’S SUPER BOWL’ ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE LAPS, 497.5 MILES, nearly three hours of racing, and it all comes down to this: one lap and four corners stand between the Arrow McLaren IndyCar team and Indy 500 glory. It’s the 40th anniversary of McLaren’s first Indy 500 victory as a team, with Johnny Rutherford in 1974. Its last win in this race was in 1976. The team’s 25-year-old Mexican driver, Pato O’Ward, has been knocking on the door of an Indy 500 win for the last five years (and finished second in 2022). As the final lap begins, he sweeps past Team Penske rival (and last year’s winner) Josef Newgarden to take the lead. Four corners to go… Rewind three…

THE WINDOW IS DOWN BY NECESSITY. THERE’S A LOT of glass in this car and seemingly every square inch of it is gathering the sun’s rays and focusing them directly onto my torso. The rush of air is welcome, then, but there are other benefits too, such as unfettered access to the snorting of a pair of twin-choke carbs bouncing off the scenery just to my left. And to my right, on this single-track road. The carburettors are competing in volume with a rasping exhaust note, the same way the lingering smell of hot oil and vaporised V-Power is competing with the privet and brambles and weeds in the hedgerows either side. With a steering wheel constantly writhing between my hands and a plastic dashboard rattling away like a Ming vase…

IF YOU REALLY CONCENTRATE, YOU CAN ALMOST hear the sound of a Clio Trophy chirping under ABS going into a hairpin, revs high, sniffing at the rear bumper of a Lamborghini Gallardo. That was nearly two decades ago, when the Skittles-coloured, 3479bhp parade that was eCoty 2005 descended on the N85 in southern France, otherwise known as the Route Napoléon. I’ve never been here before, but having absorbed the words and pictures from tests in the pages of evo over the years, it almost feels like I have. I’m standing in a layby with a glorious 360-degree vista of the French Alps and a just-driven V8 keeping me warm. Drinking in as much of the scenery as I can before setting off again, the words of Henry Catchpole pop into…

TWENTY FIVE HOURS AND FIFTY FIVE MINUTES. That’s how long it takes once you leave London Heathrow to the point when you touch down in Christchurch, New Zealand: 11,784 miles in a pressurised aluminium tube, stopping once for fresh(ish) air in Singapore, a whole day in the air eating too much chicken satay and watching films that would go straight to DVD if such a thing was still a thing. Yet every minute is worth it; every hour at 36,000 feet brings you closer to a destination that takes outstanding natural beauty and wraps it in facsimiles of some of the greatest driving roads on the planet. Such roads demand serious consideration as to which car to take to explore this remarkable landscape. Travelling to the other side of the…

MAZDA’S CX-60 SHOULD HAVE BEEN ONE of those off-radar cars evo could get behind: a straight-six turbodiesel – newly developed in a world where this never happens – in an unassuming, well-packaged, right-sized SUV built to Mazda’s ‘everything you need and nothing you don’t’ engineering approach. It was never going to be an MX-5 but there was a hope it would prove that such cars don’t need to be the size of a small housing development and have more power than a top fuel dragster. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. There were positives in its design: clean and distinctive, no fussy enlarged features for the sake of it. Well proportioned, too. Some would say unadventurous, but this is a functional car to do a job. Although after six months we’re…

ASTON PARROTT’S CUPRA LEON long-termer is frequently the fastest-moving object on any given evo photoshoot. I took the opportunity to see why by borrowing it for a few laps at one of evo’s recent readers’ track evenings at Bedford Autodrome. That first meant emptying the Cupra’s contents into the pitlane: camera kit bags, light stands and tripod, miniature jet-wash and water tank, spare shoes, bumper pack of microfibre cloths… It’s possibly the first time the Leon’s boot has been empty since joining the Fast Fleet a few months ago. Such is the life of a camera car. As it turns out, it’s also a very handy track car. The front-wheel-drive Cupra Leon 300 impressed in hatchback form on this same circuit in evo 318, in a mega-test of every hot…

THERE ARE MANY DRIVES YOU CAN undertake to get to know a car. There’s the serious road test of a few days of pure, undiluted and uninterrupted driving across multiple routes, roads and terrains. Log the fuel, average speed and distance covered and make continuous notes on how you feel as a driver and what the car does at any given moment. Or there’s the repeatable commute that requires you to place your bag behind the driver’s seat (how quick is the keyless opening?) and lean in through the driver’s door to add your coffee cup to the holder (is that a simple, straightforward process that’s achievable in a single action or does it require a lean and twist?). Get in, foot on brake, press start, engage reverse and you’re…

‘WHEN I INITIALLY PROPOSED A FOUR-wheel-drive M5, everybody wanted to murder me,’ says Franciscus ‘Frank’ van Meel, director of BMW M GmbH. ‘They said: “It’s sacrilege. It’ll never be the same car.”’ Except it wasn’t the end of days for the biggest M saloon, partly because the car was still 100 per cent rear-drive until the rear tyres couldn’t cope, partly because adding xDrive allowed the M engineers to lift the power to over 600bhp, safe in the knowledge that it could be shared by all four tyres when necessary. Frank is recounting this tale from the pit wall at the Salzburgring where we’ve come to drive the F90 M5’s successor, the soon-to-be-launched G90. I feel it’s only fair to warn anyone who thought the F90 getting four-wheel drive was…

ON A WINTERY NOVEMBER NIGHT IN BERLIN, MATE RIMAC IS in sparkling form. Holding court with the assembled media he’s in free flow on why the car we will see in the morning is the way it is. ‘When I arrived at Bugatti there were five proposals for the next car: an EV hypercar, a hypercar with a hybrid range-extender, a hybrid hypercar with the engine driving all four wheels, and two pure-electric options with four seats. They weren’t Bugattis. They weren’t the cars we should be making. They weren’t the cars our customers wanted us to make.’ The car Rimac knew Bugatti should make to replace the Chiron is the one you see here. A mid-engined, no-holds-barred, near-1800bhp bona fide hypercar. ‘A car only Bugatti could make.’ Which means…

THIS MESSAGE IS BEING COMPOSED ON A GRUBBY MOBILE phone (after spending a few days left on a tent floor), surrounded by dazed and fatigued Le Mans-goers on the ferry back to Portsmouth. More than ever, Le Mans has proved to be a tonic to the potholes, tech gimmicks and general apathy creeping into modern motoring life, restoring my faith in motoring and mankind in the space of a few days. This year was a particularly good one for me, in terms of the racing but also in the company I was with and the convoy getting there, which involved me co-driving a very trusting friend’s McLaren 720S. But the reason I’m so chuffed and compelled to write this email rather than joining the snorers on the ferry has more…

‘THEY’VE KEPT THE DRAMA. IT COULD ONLY BE AN AMG GT’ THIS IS A FIRST: WAITING FOR THE TIDE TO go out so that we can start a test. North Sea waves are still gently lapping at the edges of the tarmac strip that we want to drive, so, without any Canute-like inclinations, we’ve got to hang fire for a while. Everything else is pretty much situation normal, however, with James, Dean (it would be very much not normal without that comma) and me hanging around in the parking area behind a petrol station, cleaning cars and eating confectionary of various flavours. The machines on the receiving end of the microfibre cloths and medicinal-smelling bug spray both pose intriguing questions, even if they’re not immediately obvious. In what sense is…

MOVEMENT FOR MOVEMENT’S SAKE Retracing the roads he grew up on, James Taylor rediscovers simple pleasures THIS ISSUE OF EVO IS ALL ABOUT GREAT DRIVES: A drive on far-flung roads on a faraway continent; a drive in the most bedroom-poster-worthy of modern supercars; drives in the wilder parts of the UK, and the most preternaturally pretty parts of mainland Europe. But the right car really can make the roads on your doorstep a truly great drive. In the right machine, in the right set of circumstances, you can have a special drive that you’ll remember long after the engine’s cooled, all within a 30-mile radius of your driveway. And there are few machines more right for a special drive than a Caterham Seven. Regardless of the road or the time…

GIVEN PEUGEOT SPORT’S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE hot hatch genre, you could be forgiven for thinking the new 208 GT isn’t particularly evo-relevant. The version you see here comes with a mild-hybrid 1.2-litre three-cylinder engine that produces 134bhp – or just 14bhp more than the 106 GTi that launched 27 years ago. However, being turbocharged it does have a whole lot more torque – 170lb ft to be precise, 67lb ft up on the ’90s classic – and while it may not wear Peugeot Sport or GTi badges, its compact size, relatively light kerb weight (1228kg) and nippy 0-62mph time (8.1sec) should automatically qualify it for consideration if you’re in the market for a supermini. It’s a segment that’s been hit hard in recent years, making the 208 one of the…

A COUPLE OF LONGER JOURNEYS IN THE M2 this month, heading from home in Cambridgeshire to as far west as the Llŷn peninsula, just below Anglesey in Wales, then a few days later trekking all the way back east and beyond, into the depths of Norfolk. The latest M2 is an excellent long-distance machine, calm and relaxing at a motorway-speed cruise, to the point where you barely even think about the car you’re travelling in. (Actually, is that a good thing or a bad thing?) The spell is only broken by road surfaces with rough textures, which bring on some prominent tyre roar, or repeated expansion joints or seams, the thump-thump thump-thump from which are on the harsh side aurally. It’s a small price to pay for the performance you…

IN US NAVY PARLANCE, VAQ IS THE designation for Electronic Attack Squadrons. ‘V’ stands for ‘fixed wing’ (they use Boeing EA-18G Growlers), ‘A’ stands for ‘attack’ and ‘Q’ stands for ‘electronic’. Follow those same three letters In Canada and you’ll be more likely to find a Growler on the bonnet of an XK120, because they stand for Voitures Anciennes du Québec. Of course, you might be thinking of Visual Air Quality or Variance Adaptive Quantization or Visiting Airman’s Quarters. In Volkswagen Group lingo, however, VAQ stands for Vorderachsquersperre, which translates as ‘transverse front axle lock’. You can see why everyone uses the TLA (three letter abbreviation). Perhaps the awkward naming is also why it doesn’t seem to be trumpeted as much as I think it should be. It is a…

HONEY, I SHRUNK THE ASTON. WHEN IT came to replacing my still very much missed V8 Vantage, I’d thought long and hard about what I wanted from my next toy – and quickly realised that it had to tick many of the same boxes as the Vantage (and not just by being an almost identical shade of red). First, it had to be rear-wheel drive. Second, it had to be a proper sports car, so no hatches, saloons, estates, wafty convertibles or, God forbid, SUVs. And third, it had to be a preeeety car (yep, I really am that shallow). Where I was happy to depart from the Aston was in terms of running costs and usability. The Vantage hadn’t thrown up any nasty surprises, but maintenance costs of around…

THE SILENCE OF THE HOTEL’S underground car park is shattered in an instant. Any expectation that a car with the graphic ‘t-hybrid’ applied to the lower portion of its door would go quietly is immediately dismissed. If anything the guttural growl of the flat-six is angrier sounding than any previous modern-era turbocharged Carrera motor, like it’s trying to prove the point that despite an additional battery and the inclusion of an e-motor, the 911 – and specifically its trademark flat-six engine – has lost nothing in its transition to the hybrid era. The echoing confines of a closed-roof car park might bolster its claim, but somehow I don’t think it needs any kind of assistance. Less than a month earlier a scruffy black 992.2 had given a few assembled members…

Swatch Neon Wave £115 swatch.com If its recent Moonswatch collaborations with Omega are a bit too hype-over-substance for you, perhaps Swatch’s recently resurrected Neon collection will hold greater appeal for being more true to type. There are six models to choose from, including three-handers and chronographs, each recalling an ’80s or ’90s design but upsized to suit today’s tastes. Our pick is the Wave (pictured), for its just-so vibrant Swatch style. Toledano & Chan B/1 £3200 toledanoandchan.com For their first watch, artist (and car and watch collector) Phillip Toledano and watch designer Alfred Chan have turned to their shared passion for brutalist architecture for inspiration, specifically the Breuer Building in New York. The result is a unique asymmetric piece that already counts Porschephile Magnus Walker among its enthusiastic wearers. Just…

‘ELECTRIC CARS AND RAW SPEED ARE NOTHING NEW. OF MORE SIGNIFICANCE IS HOW THEY DRIVE’ THREE DISTINCTIVE HIGH-PITCHED flares of revs are fired from the 488’s exhausts: Whap. Whap. Whap. Third gear is primed, the derestriction sign mere metres ahead. Then comes the roar. Full throttle. A turbocharged Ferrari V8 in full battle cry squeezes the 488’s tail into the surface and a wall of noise smashes over us. It’s even louder than usual because, some light wind noise aside, we’re sitting in electric-car silence – and now glued to the rear bumper of one of Maranello’s finest, matching its metre-per-second speed. Third gear in the Ferrari becomes fourth. Fourth snaps to fifth, each upshift accompanied by asnap-pop from the exhausts. The distance between the 488 and its pursuer remains…

‘SO MUCH PROPULSION IN A CHASSIS THAT CAN DEPLOY IT IS A MOUTH – WATERING PROSPECT’ MIURA. COUNTACH. DIABLO. MURCIÉLAGO. AVENTADOR. When it comes to the Supercar Hall of Fame few can hold a candle to Lamborghini’s dynasty of top-tier, showstopping icons. As the latest in that long and iconic bloodline the new Revuelto carries a tremendous burden of expectation. One amplified by the emotive challenge of introducing electrification to Lamborghini’s showroom line-up. Bigger. Heavier. More complex. More expensive. The penalties for making the supercar sustainable present unpalatable reading, but Lamborghini has tried unusually hard to ensure the upside extends to more than pill-sweetening increases in power and performance. The promise is a new take on Lambo’s time-honoured thrills. The fear is a compromised, tech-heavy car that’s somehow less than the…

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MY INITIAL MILES IN THE NEWLY REVISED MY24 Morgan Plus Four are something of a culture shock. Seeking to avoid six hours of sunshine bearing down on my temples, I’ve elected to keep the roof on, and the sheer volume of wind noise on the motorway is initially overwhelming. Upon closer inspection that’s hardly surprising, given that I can see daylight in several places and the fabric itself is a long way from the thick, cosseting soft top you might find on, say, a Porsche Boxster. A jet of outside air is blasting up my shirt sleeve – quite pleasant given the heat, although there is air conditioning, too – and while the new Sennheiser audio system sounds punchy at 30mph, there’s very little hope of hearing anything now we’re…

IT’S BEEN AN UNUSUALLY FULL-ON month for the Abarth, with umpteen airport runs and local bombing around bolstered by it making its circuit debut at an evo track evening at Bedford Autodrome, plus a run down to Goodwood for one of our full trackdays. I’ve really settled in with the 695C. Far more than I thought I would, to be honest. It speaks a lot for the car’s character that I’ve formed such a bond, but it’s also indicative of how much I like the simplicity and unreconstructed way in which it goes about its business. You wouldn’t think a boisterous car like the Abarth would be good at long distances, but small(ish) fuel tank aside – 35 litres is good for 250 miles before you start playing fuel-light roulette…

IT FEELS ODD TO INTRODUCE A CAR I’VE owned since early 2021 (and which prior to that was owned from new by my dad) to evo’s Fast Fleet. Regular readers may recall seeing it before, in issue 309, when we dedicated an Icon feature to the Fiesta after Ford announced production of its evergreen hatchback was coming to an end. A generous gift from my dad to mark my 50th birthday, AJ16 RMO had covered less than 5000 miles when my name replaced Meaden Snr’s on the V5. Given the escalating values of fast Fords I probably should have mothballed it to preserve its box-fresh condition, but that would be a waste of a great car. Instead, I’ve covered around 4000 miles per year in it, frequently for fun but…