Evo -julkaisun August 2017 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

‘While the endless specials grated with some people, they all sold, and for a profit, too’ FINALLY, THE ANSWER TO A QUESTION THAT has cropped up at least twice a month here at evo since, oh, I don’t know, when we started back in 1998: who is going to buy Lotus? We’ve speculated many a time within these pages about the company’s future, what it should build and who should take ownership. Some stories have resulted in strongly worded correspondences or lengthy telephone conversations. But as of 1 July, current owners DRB-HICOM will have sold a 51.1 per cent stake in the British car company to Geely, the Chinese owner of Volvo and the London Taxi Company. Not natural bedfellows, I grant you, but Volvo seems to be doing okay.…

“Everything to the rear of where the seats will go isn’t ‘inspired’ by F1; it is F1 in the literal sense” MERCEDES’ hotly anticipated F1-based hy percar took a step closer to reality at the Nürburgring 24 Hours race in May. Celebrating its 50th birthday, AMG’s ‘gift’ to the assembled media was a close-up encounter with the hybrid powertrain of its 275-off, 2.3million-euro, 1000bhp-plus Formula 1 car for the road. It wasn’t disappointing. The car is named ‘Project One’ for the time being, and AMG was keen to clarify that everything to the rear of where the seats will go isn’t ‘inspired’ by F1, doesn’t take specific elements from F1 and shouldn’t be referred to as ‘F1 transfer’. It is F1 in the literal sense. With a few alterations to…

THERE ARE RUMOURS THAT A ‘TOURING PACKAGE’ WILL soon be introduced for the new Porsche 911 GT3. It is said to include a manual gearbox and exclude the rear wing. Apparently the Porsche configurator in Germany briefly listed it as an option and there have even been spyshots of a GT3 without a wing – or could that be a new 911 R? I hope that such a package makes it to fruition, as it is exactly what I would spec. Judging by the success and desirability of the 911 R and the demand for that model, there would be no shortage of customers – true purist drivers – thinking the same. Rear seats would be a great option to have with Touring spec too, as it would be the…

IT IS A RARE DIESEL THAT finds unanimous approval within the walls of evo, and the original SQ5, for all its 479lb ft of torque and associated thundering pace, never quite hit the spot. Customers like diesels though, and Audi sold 62,000 first-gen SQ5s worldwide following its 2012 debut. They made up a high proportion of UK Q5 sales too, which is probably why there always seems to be one sitting six microns from your rear numberplate on the M1. Diesel is taking a lower profile within the VW Group these days, so it’s not a surprise that a petrol engine is now available in the SQ5 for the first time. In fact it’s currently the only engine choice for the Q5. Specifically, it’s the same turbocharged 3-litre V6 you’ll…

LAMBORGHINI DIDN’T SPARE THE ELECTRICITY FOR THE international launch of its Huracán Performante. Clearly rocking the idea that expenditure of amps was better served by a multimedia light show and megawatt sound system than investing in any form of performance-orientated hybrid powertrain, it hit the home run with a widescreen projection of the numbers 6:52.01. It’s a sequence with a hybrid-hypercar-slaying resonance sure not to have been lost on the audience of hacks clued-up on Nordschleife lap times, though perhaps no easier to comprehend. Certainly not for me. I’ve done a quick lap of the Green Hell in a 903bhp P1 with McLaren development ‘hand’ Chris Goodwin driving. Mildly shattering it was, too. Sub 7? Although McLaren says yes but has never revealed the exact figure, I’d go with a…

NOTHING. ACCELER ATING FROM a standstill to 60mph, not even the blink of an eye separates the fastest version of a bulky German saloon (one which, in a more basic spec, is popular with taxi companies around the world) and this year’s Porsche 911 GT3 RS. At least by the reckoning of Porsche’s own figures for the GT3 and the data stream from our VBOX suckered to the windscreen of Mercedes-AMG’s E63 S. Like an apex athlete and a serial steroid abuser, they punch precisely the same hole in time and space, freezing the clock at 60mph with perfect synchronicity: 3.4sec. I’ll give you a moment for that to sink in. And another to acknowledge the presence of another Porsche, the Panamera Turbo. It sticks in a 3.4, too. Of…

NOT ONLY IS NEIL’S CAR HISTORY vast, it also includes some varied and exceptional models. It started with the obligatory small hatchbacks, but soon took a more left-field approach when he replaced a Fiesta with a Volvo 340 – his first taste of rear-wheel drive. A classic in the form of an MGB GT saw Neil start to work on his cars himself, but rather than simply maintaining them he also got into modifying: a Toyota MR2 Turbo was tuned to around 300bhp and a Fiesta ST to 330bhp. Today he has a pair of Minis in his collection: an R53 Cooper S JCW with nearly 250bhp and a 1987 1275 GT that’s being built as a trackday special. It hasn’t all been so impressive, though. A Porsche 944 that…

NEW ARRIVAL ‘There’s a contrast between the DS brand ethos and my personal expectations of a good hot hatch’ ’IT’S FAST, IT’S GOT A manual gearbox and it’s yellow.’ When the editor used those words to hint at what I’d be driving for the next few months, the DS 3 Performance (DS being the luxury sub-brand of Citroën) wasn’t the first car that came to my mind, but perhaps that’s one of the reasons why it’s such an intriguing prospect. The ingredients for the Fast Fleet’s latest arrival are interesting. It has a 1.6-litre turbocharged engine with 205bhp and 221lb ft of torque, making the car good for claims of 0-62mph in 6.5sec and 143mph flat out. There’s also a close-ratio six-speed ’box, a Torsen limited-slip differential, Brembo brakes, DS…

RUNNING EVO’S MX-5 RF alongside my old Eunos Roadster is proving a fascinating experience. Few other cars, aside from perhaps the Porsche 911, have stayed so true to the same formula over the course of a quarter-century or more – and even the 911 has both grown in size and undergone fundamental changes, first from air to water cooling and then from natural aspiration to turbocharging. The MX-5, meanwhile, has stuck rigidly, for better or worse, to the same formula. It’s broadly the same size, the Mk4 being only 60mm wider and 5mm taller than the Mk1, but 35mm shorter, and in basic 1.5-litre form its engine differs in capacity by a scant 102cc, in favour of the older car. There’s still an aluminium bonnet and Mazda still uses its…

UNLESS YOU’RE a professional chassis engineer, there’s a strong argument for leaving your car’s suspension well alone: a large team of experts spent tens of thousands of hours fine-tuning the ride and handling to be just-so, therefore the chances of you improving upon all their hard work are, well, slim. However, the big names in aftermarket dampers – Koni, Bilstein, KW, Öhlins, etc – create products that are developed by professional chassis engineers who have honed their skills in motorsport and have strong ties to the types of car makers that find favour in evo (KW, for instance, supplied the coilovers for BMW’s extreme M4 GTS). This is why, despite the evermore sophisticated nature of dampers fitted to cars by their makers, the aftermarket continues to thrive, with customers prepared…

TIMMY HANSEN PUT IN WHAT HE called ‘possibly the best laps I have ever made in my racing career’ in the final race at the Belgian round of the FIA World Rallycross Championship in May. However, after Hansen’s Peugeot 208 picked up a puncture, Johan Kristoffersson sneaked his VW Polo ahead as Hansen emerged from a last-lap joker – an extra section of track that adds two or three seconds to a lap time and must be completed once during the race. Hansen had beaten fellow Swede Kristoffersson in the first semi-final, getting the ‘holeshot’ (i.e. he was first into the opening corner) in an intense battle that saw nine-time WRC champ Sébastien Loeb forced into the barriers, ruling him out of the final. It was an even worse day…

EVO HAS HAD AN ON-OFF love affair with BMW’s M4. We admire its muscle-car looks, performance potential and rear-drive chassis. Being a product of M GmbH also infuses it with a desirability that rivals are still some way from achieving. Yet it’s been a struggle to wholly fall for the M4. Its turbocharged 3-litre straight-six has the punch to fire it down a road and around a track with a force Anthony Joshua would swerve. But this has also been its downfall. So thuggish has been the delivery to the rear tyres that not only do they give up the fight for traction earlier than you are expecting, but so too does the rear suspension, throwing in the towel at the first sign of any loading through its springs and…

BRUCE SOUTHEY GRIMACES when I tell him it looks as though there’s plenty of space around the chunky-looking V6 sitting under the bonnet of his Mk1 MX-5. Appearances can be deceptive: a phrase that neatly illustrates both the difficulty Bruce and business partner Tom Bullick have had in squeezing the Jaguar unit into a small Japanese roadster, and the character of said roadster when equipped with the aforementioned V6. Rocketeer, the name of Bruce and Tom’s company, speaks of men in sheds, experimenting, engineering, so it’s ironic that, given Bruce’s day job as a user experience designer at Ford Motor Company, his design methodology is a long way from scratching around on a draughty driveway. That V6 looks almost factory-fitted with good reason: Bruce had the Mazda’s engine bay laser…

IN MANY WAYS, THE NIO EP9 WAS just another impossibly low, wide, electrically powered supercar with mind-boggling acceleration. Until ten minutes past four on the afternoon of 12 May 2017, that is. At that precise moment, racing driver and Nürburgring specialist Peter Dumbreck embarked upon his fourth and final lap of the day at the Nordschleife, and six minutes and 45 seconds later had marked his – and Nio’s – place in history with a new lap record for a non-seriesproduction car. The one-million-megawatt car was suddenly the talk of the motoring world. ‘The EP9 was Martin Leach’s brainchild: to make the ultimate car,’ says Nio’s head of performance programme, Gerry Hughes. An automotive luminary, Leach was vice-president of NextEV, the company behind the emergent Nio brand, but passed away…

INTRODUCTION IN ALL 19 YEARS OF EVO’S EXISTENCE, I DON’T think we’ve tested a broader or more intriguing group of track cars than this. Topped by the remarkable £2.2m, 820bhp Aston Martin Vulcan and tailed by the ready-to-race £3500, 67bhp Citroën C1, this is a brilliant, eccentric and eclectic spectrum of racing and trackday cars. In driving these cars for enjoyment on track, we’ve peeled back the layers to explore their ability to entertain, then pushed to the limits of their performance (and sometimes our own) to build a complete picture of what this wonderful and weird collective has to offer. Rich or poor, novice or expert, hardcore racer or trackday tourist, when it comes to flat-out fun in all its forms, we really have never had it so good.…

WHILE THE OCTAVIA’S 227bhp is a commendable amount of shove, it’s some way short of the 280bhp-plus that the hottest Volkswagen Golf and SEAT Leon models deliver, yet all these cars use essentially the same 2-litre turbo engine. With the vRS 230 sporting an electronically controlled limited-slip differential and adaptive chassis control, just like those more potent Golfs and Leons, I reckon it would cope well if given, say, 25 per cent more go. So this month I’ve looked into some of the remap options that are available – the kind you might want to consider if you own a vRS – and it turns out the figures that can be achieved for quite modest amounts of money are eye-widening. One of the more affordable offerings is from Superchips, who…

THE TROUBLE WITH the future is it quickly becomes the present and then, in equally short order, the recent past. The first time I drove an i8, during eCoty 2014 (the silver car pictured here), it very much felt like I was in some kind of time machine. The looks, the technology and, yes, the driving experience all felt like something very fresh. A few years later and that bold Bavarian vision of the future is parked outside my house, thanks to the benevolence of editor Gallagher, who wants to share the i8 love. Its presence has certainly taken the sting from losing my old Fast Fleeter, the stonking AMG C63 S (the final report for which you may have read on p148). I’m struggling to think of two more…

By today’s hot-hatch standards, 113bhp and 0-62mph in 8.8 seconds sounds pretty snoozeworthy. But don’t dismiss the new Up GTI on the stats alone – this little car adds up to more than the sum of its parts. evo was invited to drive a pre-production version at a test session with Volkswagen board members in South Africa, and we came away smiling. Let’s start with the engine. By adding a high-pressure turbo to the little three-cylinder motor and upping the compression ratio, throttle response is surprisingly sharp. The noise piped through the speakers via a sound actuator is perky if not throaty, but it’s augmented by an audible whoosh from that turbo. Second gear is a bit too long for our liking (cue engineers shrugging shoulders, sighing and cursing CO2…

“The cabin is filled with a melodious note reminiscent of a 930 Turbo’s” YES, THE GT2 RS IS happening. Porsche’s worstkept secret since the last one is out, and we’ve called shotgun on a development ride with GT division boss Andreas Preuninger. Physically, the prototype is a GT3 RS under a black wrap, converted by Preuninger’s team to GT2 RS technical specification. They’re extremely cagey about details, as the model won’t be homologated until the first preseries cars start running off the line, and that’s still a few weeks away. What they will tell us is that it has a 3.8-litre engine from the Turbo S with water-spray intercoolers fed by a 5-litre tank, plus a bespoke exhaust and revised internals. Outputs will be ‘more than 650bhp and 750Nm [553lb…

JAGUAR AND RENAULT HAVE turned to the camouflage wrap this month to ‘reveal’ the first details of new performance cars. For Jaguar, this meant asking our friends at Mission Motorsport to apply a wrap to its forthcoming XE SV Project 8. Produced by the same team that brought us the F-typebased Project 7, Project 8 will be the most powerful road-legal Jaguar in history, with a 5-litre supercharged V8 producing 592bhp. It will also have four-wheel drive. Despite the best efforts of the camo, it’s clear from the images that the base XE has undergone some serious architecture redesign. There’s a considerably wider rear track, and we’re led to believe that we can expect a model built in the spirit of BMW’s M4 GTS. Only 300 examples will be handassembled…

OF ALL THE MODELS IN the Jaguar XE range, it’s no great surprise that our favourite has been the 3-litre supercharged S, the version best equipped to make the most of the car’s sophisticated and sparklingly good chassis. Yet with ‘only’ 335bhp, and without a rabid SVR halo car to lead interest from the front, the S had looked rather lonely as a rangetopper, caught between the everyday and the extraordinary. Now, as part of a subtle raft of upgrades for the 2018 model year, Jaguar has boosted the power of the S, in effect dropping in an F-type S-specification V6 with 375bhp and 332lb ft of torque (the former figure identical to the F-type’s, the latter down by just 7lb ft). That certainly reasserts the XE’s authority against its…

JAMES BOND DRIVES AN Aston Martin, Tony ‘Iron Man’ Stark drives an Audi R8, David Brent drives a Vauxhall Insignia. Life’s cruel. It’s fair to say Vauxhall’s stalwart family hatchback/repmobile has always struggled to slip the surly bonds of mundaneness and touch the face of good. But, for a few years after its 2008 launch, that didn’t matter. The Insignia was a particularly comfortable market fit – a sprawling model-range that understood every angle of average, catering for fleet and company car audiences that cared more about putting miles under wheels as painlessly as possible than dynamic flair, classy fittings, cutting-edge tech or straightforward, must-have desirability. Things were simpler then. But now ‘premium’ is the new mainstream. Vauxhall’s answer is the new, larger, sleeker, classier, kit-dense and cheekily named Insignia…

This M3 isn’t going to be a pushover. Sure, the F80 generation has taken a while to come good but, having spent a couple of days with this Competition Package version – with its extra 19bhp, upgraded suspension and reconfigured drive modes – I’d say it’s pretty much back to full strength. This car drives like it looks – pumped, tense, up for it – and sounds like it looks, too, the growl of the twin-turbo straight-six ever-present, evoking memories of the iconic, naturally aspirated M Power straight-six slotted in the nose of the E46. I don’t see any obvious flaws in its armour. But here comes the Giulia Quadrifoglio. Much praised and now here in the UK, the Alfa is restoring faith in the Italian brand, coming almost out…

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO RISK YOUR own car, or perhaps aren’t 100 per cent convinced that trackdays are for you, you do still have a couple of options. Firstly, there are any number of trackdaytype experiences you can choose from. Audi and Porsche both run driving-experience days at Silverstone, for example, and BMW has recently revamped its M Driving Experience, which is offered at MSV circuits such as Brands Hatch, Oulton Park and Bedford Autodrome. These manufacturer-backed days aren’t cheap – the BMW one costs £595 – but they do offer a good taster for those not wanting to commit too many resources to their first trackday. We recently sampled the BMW M Driving Experience at Oulton Park. You spend either a morning or an afternoon doing three activities.…

IF YOU’RE AFTER THE MAXIMUM BANG for your buck in a hatchback, the Ford Focus RS would almost certainly be on your shopping list. But don’t discount its little brother, the ST, as it’s also a very rewarding machine. Launched in 2005, this was Ford’s first performance model using the Mk2 Focus. It borrowed Volvo’s five-cylinder turbocharged engine and, with 222bhp and 236lb ft, it definitely had the ‘go’ to accompany the aggressive styling – evo recorded a 0-60mph sprint of 6.7 seconds. It wasn’t all about straight-line speed, though. The ST had nicely weighted and responsive steering, a wellbalanced chassis, strong brakes and a remarkably complaint ride. Inside it was pretty racy, with sculpted Recaro seats, a unique steering wheel and an extra instrument pod with three gauges. Three…

END OF TERM IT’S FITTING THAT MY last drive in the C63 S was one of the best: a one-day round-trip to Anglesey Circuit to drive the new 911 GT3. It was a long day in the saddle; one that started with a 4.30am alarm and finished with me arriving back home just before 9pm. In between was the best part of 500 miles of motorways, majestic A-roads and nadgety B-roads, all dispatched in effortless, engaging style. As I’ve discovered over the last six months and nearly 10,000 miles, that’s the nub of the C63 experience. I’d never run a Mercedes before, let alone an AMG model. I suppose deep down I never considered myself a Merc person. This car has made me revise that belief. It did everything so…

KNOCKING ABOUT IN A drop-top supercar for half a year is likely to sit pretty high up on any petrolhead’s bucket-list. Running an R8 Spyder was, of course, a brilliant experience – one I may never be lucky enough to repeat. And with the Spyder’s £129,990 base price taken up to £167,740 by options such as carbonceramic brakes (£7700), the gloss carbon exterior styling pack (£4900) and the Sport Plus Pack (bringing Audi’s three-mode magnetic adaptive dampers, Dynamic Steering and a sports exhaust, for £3500), this R8 really was deep into supercar territory. But before I get into the many reasons why it was such fun, there are a few (decidedly firstworld) irritations I want to air. My first complaint relates to the attention a car like the Spyder gets…

= 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…