Inhaltsverzeichnis für June 2016 in Evo

W E KNEW THERE WAS MORE TO come. When we group-tested the Mini John Cooper Works against five of its closest rivals in evo 211, it finished an underwhelming fourth overall. It earned a decent four stars out of five, but it lacked the focus and intensity of the best hot hatches on the test. It was frustrating, not least because we suspected the squidgy allseason tyres were smothering a keen, agile and entertaining chassis. Rather than banning us from testing its cars and scratching us from its Christmascard list, Mini reached out to us. ‘We’re working on a special John Cooper Works,’ they said. ‘Would you like to get involved?’ Limited to a run of no more than 100 units, the John Cooper Works Challenge will be the most…

BENTLEY HAS REVEALED a concept titled ‘Future of luxury’, and if you look closely, it doesn’t feature a driver. speaking to evo at a small event in london, Bentley’s director of design, stefan sielaff (pictured top right), claimed the company invented autonomous driving, ‘Because our customers have had chauffeurs for the past 100 years!’ The traditional driver environment does not exist at all in the image revealed by Bentley. There is no steering wheel, no gearlever or pedals. There are no seatbelts either. Other features of note include information screens lacquered onto traditional wood panels. at the event, sielaff demonstrated a bendable, transparent screen just 0.5mm thick that could be used for this purpose. ‘It is closer to reality than you may think,’ he teased. Bentley also revealed that 3d…

MY M O T O R S P O R T memories of the 1960s are very limited. Graham Hill being interviewed in bed, recovering from his leg-breaking crash at the Watkins Glen GP in his Lotus 49, is one of them. Phil Read winning a motorcycle race is another, and the clearest of all is a TV special on breaking the land speed record. I can’t remember details today, but it centred on Craig Breedlove and Donald Campbell’s fierce rivalry in the early ’60s. It was the first time the name ‘Bonneville’ came into my orbit and specifically the Bonneville Speed Week. Of all the motorsport events in the world – the Indianapolis 500, Bathurst, Dakar and others – Bonneville Speed Week is top of my list. I’ve yet…

BEFORE WE START, FOR those not in the know, here’s a brief explanation of what ‘machine learning’ is. In simple terms, it is the use of algorithms that can iteratively learn from data, in turn enabling a computer to make predictions and adapt to new situations. This avoids the need for the computer to be explicitly programmed for each situation. we come across machine learning processes all the time. Amazon’s ‘you might also like’ is one example, as is the technology used in fraud protection. Now machine learning is also making an impact on the automotive world. Google’s self-driving car is a near-perfect execution of the process. explicitly programming a car with details on how to tackle every possible permutation in a combination of areas including mapping, traffic avoidance and…

Test location: skaljari, Montenegro GPS: 42.408451, 18.769112 IS IT POSSIBLE TO overestimate the importance of the F-pace to Jaguar’s future? I don’t think so. the Xe and XF saloons offer a more than credible alternative to the monotony of Audi, bMW and Mercedes’ offerings in the same sectors, but neither car is going to propel Jaguar to the top of the sales charts, swell the market share and, crucially, provide the current account with the regular nine- to ten-figure sums that car companies require to survive and grow in today’s market. However, the F-pace has the potential to achieve just that. In 2015 Jaguar land Rover built 489,923 vehicles, with Jaguars accounting for just over a third of that number. With the F-pace Jaguar is expecting to double its sales…

Test location: Col de Braus, Sospel, France GPS: 43.872493, 7.412840 THE AMG DOWNSIZING strategy is now complete, with the 5.5-litre naturally aspirated V8 that was once shoehorned into the nose of an SLK retired and replaced by a 3-litre, twin-turbocharged V6. And with the new engine comes a new name: SLC, signifying the end of the SLK badge, which would have celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2016. On the face of it, transforming the SLK into the SLC doesn’t appear to have been a particularly taxing task for the design and engineering teams. Visually there are new front and rear bumpers, new LeD lights and fresher AMG side-sills and spoilers. Inside there’s a new multi-function steering wheel, 7-inch infotainment screen (up from 5.8in) and new sports seats, and the metal/glass…

THE CRUX MOVE REQUIRES THE LEFT foot on the banisters and the right foot just across the narrow landing on the top shelf of the airing cupboard. Then, judging to a nicety the weight permissible on the warm but slightly rickety mantel (it depends on the current towel quota), I haul myself upwards, switching my right foot mid-flight to a small ledge in the ceiling. Perching on a joist, with my head in the cool dusty darkness and legs dangling through the rectangular opening, I usually take the next moment or two to consider why I still haven’t bought a loft ladder. Because it’s more fun this way I suppose. Stooping awkwardly beneath the rake of the rafters, I make my way past the water tank and shimmy around a…

Letter of the Month Criminal matter I’ve owned four Porsches in the last 20 years, including a GT3 when you could actually buy the things. These days my once favourite car maker just makes me want to shout from the rooftops… not with joy, but frustration. The 911 R is yet another car we can’t buy! In your first look at the model (evo 221) you said it’ll be criminal if they are treated purely as investments. Better call the police. 911 Rs will be flipped for £500k with almost no mileage on the clock. Of course they’re not going to get driven. If models like the 911 R are intended to create a ‘halo effect’ on sales, Porsche needs to seriously reconsider. I know of many genuine buyers, myself…

T H E S E A R E U N C E R T A I N T I M E S . Britain’s membership of the EU hangs in the balance, a man with Shredded Wheat for hair is marching towards the White House, and the Porsche Boxster has a four-cylinder engine. A turbocharged four-cylinder engine, no less. At least you can always depend on the Scottish Borders. The B6357 that runs between Bonchester Bridge and Newcastleton is the kind of road that draws drivers and bikers from far and wide. Skirting the border with England, it packs three or four different personalities into its 14 miles, sometimes fast and flowing with a billiard table surface, sometimes tight and twisty as it tumbles down a hillside, and at other…

OH H O W W E S C O F F E D when the M3 GTS was revealed back in 2009. We could get on board with the Jägermeisterorange look, but the pretty pathetic little rear wing, an extra 362cc for the normally aspirated V8 bringing a small 30bhp hike in power, and a sprinkling of carbonfibre, Perspex and titanium saving 75kg? It didn’t seem a huge return for an asking price of £117,630. To put it into context, that was more than twice the price of an E92 M3 Competition Package, which was £55,365 at the time. You could only reason that you’d have to be mad to buy the GTS. Then we drove one and realised it was pretty special. Then we drove one again – this…

‘ R A C I N G A T U R B O C H A R G E D Group C car was like driving a Ferrari F40 on steroids,’ says Le Mans winner, Bugatti test driver and evo’s fastest pair of hands Andy Wallace. ‘The normally aspirated XJR-12 was a bit of a pussycat by comparison. You could control it on the throttle, knew exactly what the engine would do at any given speed and it was remarkably easy to drive in hindsight. ‘It was still phenomenally fast with 750bhp but at least you knew it would be the same for lap after lap. By comparison the XJR-11 [above] felt pretty much undrivable at times. ‘The problem was that the electronics weren’t as clever as the human brains…

IN A PERFECT WORLD, Fast Fleet cars would be driven only as their maker intended. in this case, that would mean scratching up and down b-roads appreciating the changes Kia has made to the Gt’s engine and enjoying its foolproof chassis. The reality is that they’re frequently used for the less appealing trips this job demands, for example a gridlocked M25 outside Heathrow airport. such a journey is possible in my eunos roadster, despite gearing that puts you at almost 4000rpm at 70mph and NVH levels that weren’t quite contemporary even in 1992, but in the Kia such a trip could almost be described as being pleasant. The recaro seats are great, for a start. Firm, and mounted a little too high perhaps, but very comfortable. the easy action to…

THE vRS RECORDED ITS 12,000th mile this month. It still feels as fresh as it did 11,951 miles ago when it first crunched the gravel outside the office, and if I find the time to clean it, it looks as fresh as it did when new, too, but it has certainly evolved in a few key areas. The standard Bridgestone Potenza S001 tyres were, for the first 2500 miles, noisy buggers on anything but the smoothest of surfaces. But with miles the drone has subsided, and while it’s not 7-series whisper quiet inside, it’s much improved. The Bridgestone’s ‘extra load’ specification also adds a sharp edge to the car’s ride, but this and the noise aren’t insurmountable issues that a switch of brands wouldn’t rectify. With more miles has also…

MY FRIDAY EVENING DASH from evo’s Northants office back to Bristol takes me over the Cotswolds. It’s a pretty good drive when it’s quiet and I can generally learn a fair amount about whatever car I happen to be driving. A couple of weeks ago I was back in the Golf R after some time apart, and just before I passed under the M40 I noticed a few snowflakes swirling around in my headlight beams. Then a few more. By the time I got to Chipping Norton a thick layer of the white stuff had settled. The roads hadn’t been gritted and I had visions of becoming stranded in a line of cars on a bleak Oxfordshire hillside, so I stopped to brim the tank and buy some supplies (chilli…

GOOD PHOTO, ISN’T IT? DICKIE MEADEN, WHO’D somehow found space in his diary to fly out to Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi and conduct evo’s first drive of the mighty McLaren P1, may have been shifting up a gear, but it’s more likely that a fleeting lift of the throttle to balance the chassis mid-slide was the impetus for a moment of rich-running. And suddenly you’re sideways in a £866,000 blowtorch. But maybe Meaden did neither. Trawl through online P1 footage and you’ll notice that when it’s not forming clouds or firing hot globules of Pirelli Trofeo R at tracking cars, it’s spitting flames. In one extraordinary clip at the end of the video that accompanies this photo, it’s as if someone has lit a firework, the exhaust ejecting…

A udi’s latest quattro four-wheel-drive system is focused purely on fuel efficiency. Called ‘quattro with ultra technology’, it will eventually make its way onto all of audi’s non-s and nonrs models with longitudinally mounted engines. But is there any technology within the system that we might see on performance audis in the future? The new system improves fuel economy by sending drive to the front wheels only when you don’t need the extra traction of allwheel drive. in normal driving, a new multi-plate clutch at the back of the gearbox completely decouples the propshaft that runs to the rear differential. this clutch pack replaces the standard quattro system’s self-locking centre mechanical differential. When drive is not being sent to the rear, the new system also decouples one of the rear…

Test location: Circuit Paul ricard, France GPS: 43.246926,5.7962215 THE DRONE, THUDS AND crackles of racing cars wash over the press presentation of the Volvo V60 Polestar. We’re at Paul ricard and so is the WTCC circus. among them is a pair of s60s making Volvo and Polestar’s debut in this FIa world championship. From what I can hear over the noise of the cars, the V60 Polestar road car should be pretty tasty. It has fully adjustable Öhlins dampers (you adjust bump and rebound through 20 ‘clicks’ on the struts themselves) and a 2-litre supercharged and turbocharged engine producing 181bhp per litre, while the guys from Polestar talk at length about their racing heritage. Yet at the same time the V60 Polestar is billed as a ‘365 days’ performance car.…

L A ST Y E A R I WROT E A BOOK A BOU T my time working on Top Gear. I might have mentioned it in this column. This year the book was translated into Polish and a nice man from the publisher asked if I would go to Warsaw to promote it. This is the sort of thing you’re supposed to do if you’re mincing about pretending to be a proper author. Also, I’ve never been to Warsaw and imagined it might be nice to geek out on bleak concrete streets packed with ancient, sputtering Soviet-bloc snotters, so naturally I said yes. As it turned out, Warsaw wasn’t entirely as I imagined. There are, as expected, plenty of extremely wide streets framed by portentous buildings and dotted with…

Well, Singer springs immediately to mind… Antoine Bretzel The 911 R is pretty much it. Or a GT4 with a more aggressive final drive. Y.A. GT4 minus the rear wing, and with shorter gearing and the full-monty GT3 RS engine. kiwi_dave RS 4.0 engine in a GT4, with 918 seats and rear-wheel steering. Alex Burnett GT4 with a Porsche GT2 RS engine, manual six-speed gearbox, 15-inch ceramic rotors, Brembo six-pot calipers. Perfect! Mortalc01l Although 911s are growing on me, the 928 is the one. Late GTS for me. Restomod that with Panamera Turbo S underpinnings and drivetrain. Focus on GT cruising ability rather than making a road-racer. DeskJockey I’d love a modern 928 GT with a new take on the V8, and working electrics. Barry 918 Spider with the Carrera…

G R E A T E N G I N E S M A K E unforgettable cars. It’s that simple. The McLaren F1, perhaps the most unforgettable of all, might well be the expression of an engineering genius with unprecedented freedom to innovate, but it’s defined by its 6.1-litre V12 engine. The greatest of them all, its noise, response and exquisitely violent performance is absolutely at the centre of everything it does, everything you feel as a driver or stunned passenger. At the other end of the scale there are some pretty ropey cars that are forgiven because they have special engines: Ferrari’s Testarossa, perhaps. Virtually any modernday V6-powered Alfa, the Maserati 4200 GT and so many more. We need great engines to imbue cars with charisma and excitement,…

WHEN IWAS AN IMPRESSIONABLE YOUTH BACK in the last quarter of the 20th century, the word ‘turbo’ really meant something. Throttle response you could measure with an egg timer, certainly, but it also possessed a blend of menace and madness born of rallying and grenade-spec F1 Grand Prix cars. Of all the cars to come from that hedonistic high-boost era, the Renault 5 Turbo is one of the few to still hold us in its thrall. The lunacy of the mid-engined, wide-body concept surely sees to that, but reputation, rarity and rally pedigree are the magical fairy dust that ensures it retains a mystique and potency matched by few forced-induction cars before or since. To see a solitary Turbo is special. To see a brace is exceptional. To see three,…

WE DON’T DRIVE MANY Hondas here at evo, so it’s refreshing to get behind the wheel of one on a daily basis. For starters, it hasn’t got the kind of bland, identikit cabin that afflicts most hot hatches. instead you have distinctive features such as a dash architecture that wraps around the driver (a bit like in mcLaren’s Super Series models), instruments split over two levels (with those above the steering wheel perfectly visible, unlike in a Peugeot 208 Gti) and 12 bright shift lights at the base of the windscreen (much easier to refer to than any rev counter). it all helps make the Civic feel special. The driving experience contributes to this feeling, too. For example, work your way above 4000rpm and the steering wheel, gearknob and pedals…

AS SURELY AS HEATHROW will go into panic mode at the sight of the first snowflake, February brings forth the F40’s annual jaunt to the service bays of Carrs Ferrari in exeter. regardless of where the F40 has been living or how many miles it has covered, the timing of the service is sacred. The last few services have included a number of jobs that I would classify as part of a ‘rolling restoration’. this time around, however, the list was bare as we’d addressed all the major concerns. Indeed, the 2016 service was, fortunately, completely routine. the only items that needed replacing were a couple of bulbs. The tyres were checked for both wear and age, which revealed they should be good for at least one more year. F40…

SO LAST MONTH WE discovered just how much power my ‘press-spec’ GT-R is delivering. In case you missed it, the final figures on the Litchfield dyno were 558.6bhp at 7065rpm and 480.9lb ft at 3825rpm. These are perfectly in line with other 2015 GT-Rs Litchfield has seen and so it seems a press GT-R is very much like a customer GT-R after all. Well, an unmodified customer GT-R. Of which there appear to be just a handful in the UK. It seems circa 560bhp isn’t enough for most! I wanted to see what those numbers on the dyno translated to on the tarmac. So at 8.30 on a sunny but freezing-cold Sunday morning, I pointed the GT-R towards Santa Pod, which is just a few miles from the evo office.…

AFTER THE LONGEST, darkest, wettest, coldest, most exhausting of days, there’s nothing like climbing into a well sorted, feel-good interior like the RS Q3’s. The materials ooze quality, the layout is simple, and despite the road testers’ empty sandwich packs and rotting banana skins strewn throughout, it still somehow retains its ‘new Audi‘ smell. The cover shoot for issue 218 (the Porsche 991.2 Carrera and rivals) was one of those days. With a tight brief meaning over 50 photos needed to be taken to be combined into one final image, it was a long night for all. After five hours’ work for that single image, we were all in need of some hot food. For some reason we let evo web editor and YouTube legend Hunter Skipworth lead the way.…

TH R E E V 8 - P OW E R E D S P O R T S saloons from the early 2000s, each using forced induction to make some very large numbers. And not one of Munich’s finest this month: time for something different. The Jag is often overlooked outside of its die-hard following, and the S-type in general hasn’t aged too well, but the R is a likeable blend of performance and comfort. The C5 RS6 is one of those fast Audis that enthusiasts get in a lather over as an estate, but is almost completely forgotten as a saloon. It’s not the most delicate of driving experiences, but there’s no denying its surefooted pace. The W211 E55 AMG is our true sleeper, but underneath the sensible…

WE GO BACK A LONG WAY, T HE Accord Type R and evo. Right back to the very beginning, in fact. Our original Driven piece on the then-new Type R appeared in our very first issue, November 1998, sandwiched between an Astra SRi and an Impreza 22B. Those were the days, my friends… By the late ’90s, Honda was encamped deep in enthusiast territory. The NSX had transformed perceptions of the marque; the Integra Type R had blazed its way into our hearts with its combination of fizzing VTEC engine and peachy road manners; the Accord itself was a front-runner in the BTCC, and now there was a road-going version to provide Type R thrills in a four-door saloon. As John Barker wrote at the time, the ATR was a…

Porsche Cayman (987) THE PORSCHE CAYMAN GT4 IS THE car we wanted the Cayman to be all along. Not that you should feel down about owning a ‘lesser’ Cayman. Even the firstgeneration, 987-series version is still excellent – and ripe for GT4-style improvement. Suspension is a good starting point. Owners rate Bilstein’s PSS10 coilover package highly (£2278.55 from porscheshop.co.uk, without PASM). It features adjustable dampers and lowers the car by 30-60mm. Porscheshop also sells a factory GT3 front anti-roll bar for £300. A lightweight flywheel will give you sharper engine response. RPM Technik fits one to all its CSR-upgraded models; it’s £762 (with a springloaded friction plate) from rpmtechnik.co.uk. A fruitier exhaust note wouldn’t go amiss either, so you can appreciate the faster throttle blips – £956 buys you a…

CH A N G E S T O T H E Nissan GT-R for 2017 might be on the subtle side, but with drivetrain improvements, styling tweaks and a higher-quality interior, they’re still the most significant alterations to the car since the R35’s debut in 2007. Exterior changes are minimal, but Nissan’s ‘V-Motion’ grille design, a new bonnet and redesigned bumpers improve cooling and aerodynamics. That extra cooling is required due to the increased demands of a more powerful engine. Changes to ignition timing and extra boost from the pair of turbochargers see the 3.8-litre V6’s output climb to 562bhp and 470lb ft of torque – improvements of 20bhp and 4lb ft. The twin-clutch transmission has also been refined for less noise and smoother shifts, though we hope the GT-R’s…

T W O H U N D R E D A N D seventy-six thousand. That’s the number of $1000 deposits Tesla Motors had taken for its new Model 3 electric saloon just 72 hours after order books opened on the day of the car’s unveiling. This should serve as some indication that more than a few people have been waiting for that difficult combination of adequate battery range and a relatively affordable price tag. With a quoted range of 215 miles and a starting price of $35,000 before incentives (expect a similar figure when the 3 arrives in the UK), that combination has apparently been realised. The rush for a Model 3 can be explained by other factors, too. Firstly, Tesla’s ability to generate an Apple-like hype is unmatched…

AC H I N E S E - P R O D U C E D , mid-tier ‘ultra high performance’ tyre? You’ll need convicing, and rightly so. GT Radial’s SportActive can’t simply be cheap, as buyers of premium tyres are much more discerning. To steal market share from the more established brands, the SportActive needs to be as good as, if not better than its rivals, and cheaper. To find out how good it is, evo undertook three subjective tests with the tyre, the first of which was with a Golf GTI on a tight, partially wet circuit. The opposition performance tyre here was the Victra VS-01 from mid-range rival Maxxis, and the SportActive felt very similar, up to a point. Neither changed the feeling of the car greatly…

Test location: A816, Oban, Scotland GPS: 56.21384, -5.52265 EVERY NEW EVO CAR THAT MATTERS, REVIEWED AND RATED JAGUAR F-PACE 3.0 V6 SUPERCHARGED //VOLVO V60 POLESTAR // ROLLS-ROYCE DAWN //MERCEDES-AMG SLC43 // FORD MUSTANG ECOBOOST //DS 3 PERFORMANCE The team This month, we asked our road testers to name the first ‘evo’ car they owned… NICK TROTT Editor ‘A 1275GT Mini in yellow with a broken rear subframe. Cost £90… and £470 to insure’ STUART GALLAGHER Managing editor ‘BMW E30 325i Sport – Bilsteins, limited-slip diff. My brother drove it through his garage wall’ HENRY CATCHPOLE Features editor ‘A 2001 Mini Cooper on 15-inch wheels. It was in no-air-con lightweight spec’ DAN PROSSER Road test editor ‘A Nissan 200SX that never ran. With a massive exhaust on it, naturally’ JETHRO BOVINGDON…

Test location: st tropez, France GPS: 43.26768, 6.64071 AS INTRODUCTIONS TO cars go, a piece of closed road in the hills above st tropez is about as good as it gets. the sun is shining, there’s nothing coming the other way and, as Mike duff (erstwhile of this parish and the person i’m sharing a car with on this launch) comments, the only thing that could make it better would be a set of pace notes. duff has been driving hair-raisingly quickly for 45 minutes (and only five of those have been on the closed road) with me in the passenger seat, but now we’re swapping places. time for revenge. I settle into the big, wing-backed bucket seat and adjust the steering wheel. the interior of this new ds 3…

FORMULA 1 CAN BE SO IRRITATINGLY nuanced at times that it’s difficult for everyone to engage in the debate, be it about tyre compounds, aero regs, engine tokens or the format of qualifying – there’s always something! The discussion concerning protection for the drivers’ heads is something we can all get stuck into, however, because before all the technological or regulatory elements, there are ethical and cultural dimensions that will weigh heavily on any rule-change the FIA ultimately makes. Any changes made will be developed in F1 as that is the FIA’s main focus, but they’ll affect all open-wheel championships eventually. So before I give my take on the idea of a ‘halo’ device, I’d like to ask for yours – send them to letters@evo.co.uk. Head-protection for single-seaters was a…

From the forums: community.evo.co.uk/forums Thread of the Month There’s an episode of Narcos where an E39 5-series is featured. Pablo Escobar died two years before the E39 was released. mattcambs After all the effort to get the periodcorrect Land Cruisers and Hilux… N I was watching Gone in 60 Seconds when this thread started. There wasn’t enough time to post each mistake as it happened. NotoriousREV Stunts where they substitute the car they have been driving for the past five minutes for an older version for the final crash/roll. The telltale puff of gas from air cannons used to flip cars. Cars instantly exploding whenever crashed. Clearly visible roll-cages. Neck and neck in a high speed race then suddenly finding an extra 50 per cent of throttle travel and powering…

4500rpm in third gear. With the cast alloy throttle pedal pinned to its stop, this is the moment when the F40 grabs you by the lapels and reminds you why it’s still the boss of boost. If it’s been a while since you’ve driven one, or if you haven’t driven one before, you’ll have spent the considerable time it takes for the tacho needle to creep round the first half of the dial wondering whether the fearsome reputation is justified. Big mistake. When the boost does arrive, it’s not switchlike. It’s more impressive than that. Where once there was calm, those IHI turbos deliver fury and wheelspin in an overwhelming wave of torque that twists the tarmac out from under the rear Pirellis like a bitumen rug. The initial effect…

‘WHO IS THIS GUY? PETER WHO?’ The pensioner in the shorts, socks and sandals looks perplexed. At the entrance to the Quechan Casino Resort in Arizona there’s a bit of a fuss around some foreign guy – enough to make the pensioner pause his busy schedule of wasting his life savings and show some interest. I tell him: ‘That’s Stéphane Peterhansel. He won Dakar eleven times.’ ‘Never heard of him,’ is the response. He returns to feeding his bucket of quarters into the gaming machines. The sports all-terrain vehicle market is, I suppose, typical of the States. Like all the best American motorsport, the demand for sports ATVs originated when people took their vehicles out into the backcountry and raced them. ATVs have always had a working background, but over…

THE ONLY THING THAT has been putting me off a european jaunt in the MX-5 has been the limited space on offer both in the cabin and the boot. For this reason, i’ve bought something called a Boot-bag. Designed to strap onto the rear of the car and offer an extra 50 litres of waterproofed space, it basically gives you a suitcase’s worth of additional luggage capacity for £90. (There’s also a larger, 75-litre Boot-bag available for £117.90.) Installation is simple, with straps fitting underneath the bootlid and a rectangle of foam preventing the underside of the bag from damaging the paintwork. it could do with being a little more secure, but it’s definitely a handy way to occasionally increase the load-carrying capabilities of the MX-5 – or any other…

NOBODY REALISES UNTIL they see the badge. However, once they clock the tla proclaiming ‘aWd’ on the rear, they always seem to view the F-type slightly differently. in many ways they would be right to as well. For a car that retains the r Coupe’s essentially rWd (i’m going all-in with the three-letter abbreviations now) nature, it feels considerably more secure in everyday driving. Where the standard r will wag its tail like a puppy in a tennis-ball factory, with the aWd car 542bhp and 501lb ft has rarely felt more deployable. This is assuming a vague sense of right-foot decorum, of course – something that few at evo seem to possess. ‘still lairy when you push it, isn’t it?’ said Jethro when he handed the car back, while stuart…

FASCINATING MONTH FOR weather in the UK. With heavy frosts, balmy evenings, floods and everything in between, no two days have been the same in terms of the road surface and conditions. Perhaps the mighty 730d has been creating the weather – it really does shift a lot of air. Either way, it’s had everything thrown at it. As you might expect, this hasn’t been a time to drive the Seven on its door handles, so my focus has been to investigate how it manages its bulk in changeable weather and, in particular, to look at how the £1195 Integral Active Steering works. In addition to the variable-ratio steering rack that the words ‘Active Steering’ usually denote in BMWspeak, IAS adds steering from the rear wheels by up to three…

THE FF REPLACED THE 612 SCAGLIETTI in Ferrari’s line-up, and although it was still a very large four-seater, it marked something of a departure for the marque in this niche. Out went the stretched-coupe style of the 612 and in came a more practical ‘shooting brake’ body that offered not only plenty of room for four passengers, but also reasonable boot space – 450 litres, rising to 800 litres with the rear seats folded. The centre section of the rear seats also folded down to accommodate items such as skis. Up front was a direct-injection V12 engine producing 651bhp and sending drive through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. A novel fourwheel-drive solution saw torque for the front wheels taken directly from the crankshaft, on demand, and a top speed of 208mph…