Evo -julkaisun November 2024 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

WHY THESE THREE CARS FROM a country that has given us so many landmark performance cars; breathtaking, exhilarating cars that more often than not leave us in awe when compared with the (relatively) rather staid products from Europe? What’s so special about Japanese performance cars, anyway? ‘Everything’ is the short answer. As Europeans we spent decades being snobby over the quality of the products being produced by Japan’s car manufacturers. Ferraris were faster (on paper, at least), Porsches engineered to a higher standard (well, certainly to a higher cost), Jaguars more capable, the big German trio of Audi, BMW and Mercedes pretty much untouchable. Regardless of whether it was on road or track, Japan was all but invisible outside of its home market. Not that this stopped it from innovating,…

WHAT DID YOU DO DURING THE COVID lockdowns? While most of us were sorting through long-lost boxes of photographs or binge-watching Tiger King, retired architect Hal Walter used the enforced downtime to produce an exhaustively detailed 36-page document that would become the blueprint for building his perfect Porsche 911. In his youth Walter dreamed of becoming a car designer, but opportunities in his native Australia were all but non-existent, and he lacked the courage to follow his dream to the other side of the world. Channelling his energies into architecture, he enjoyed a career in which he rose to the top of his profession, but cars had always remained a passion. Post-retirement his creativity inevitably needed an outlet, and so began the process that would ultimately lead to this: the…

THE AZENIS HAS BEEN around for a number of years now and its high spots were best in curved aquaplaning, backed up by a fair result in the straight-line test, and low rolling resistance, where it was second only to the Michelin. Generally though, the Falken struggled to match the standard of this high-quality field. It was seventh fastest around the wet handling circuit, almost four seconds off the best lap time, and was ranked seventh subjectively too. Compared with the others it seemed to lack grip generally and so couldn’t carry as much speed. It was easy to trigger anti-lock into the big stops and needed time to settle into the turns, to lock onto the line, while getting back on the throttle you had to be tentative so…

AS MUCH AS WE’D LIKE TO SEE A modern take on the 106 Rallye, Peugeot’s PSE range is shrinking rather than expanding, the recent axing of the 508 killing off the first and so-far only Peugeot Sport Engineered model, the 508 PSE. So the closest we’ll get (for now) to a 208 PSE remains the GT version we’re running. While it may not engage like its lightweight ancestor, the 208 can certainly challenge it in terms of practicality. Ours continues to lap up long-distance journeys better than you’d ever expect from a little ’un, and it still regularly achieves economy figures that beat even those of the 106. A glance at the powertrain status display during low-speed moments through villages and the like frequently reveals that its mild hybrid system…

BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, THE Murciélago will be two decades old, and I’ve a hunch that our time together could soon sadly come to a close. More on that later, but mileage-wise it seems to have taken an inordinate amount of time to get the last 50,000 miles on the Lambo’s long-suffering odometer. Of course, 300,000 miles was never on the agenda when I collected the then-brand-new Murciélago from Lamborghini Manchester way back one drizzly autumn morning 20 years ago. What was on the agenda was the determination that, since I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever get another crack at owning a new V12 Lamborghini, it wouldn’t be consigned to a garage, only to emerge on dry, sunny days. Nope, I was going to drive the hell out…

I’LL BE HONEST, I WASN’T EXPECTING TO form much of a bond with the Abarth. Yes, I love hot hatches, and yes, I liked the idea of a fizzy little car with a snorty engine and a manual gearbox, but previous short-term exposure to an Abarth saw me struggle to get beyond the church-pew driving position and slow steering. Fast forward six months and in the immediate wake of its return to Abarth UK I can tell you my predictions of a rather lukewarm Fast Fleet experience proved to be considerably wide of the mark. Truth is, I miss it. RE23 TGX arrived at evo having served a short spell on the Abarth press fleet. It wore those early miles well, retaining enough of that satisfying box-freshness for it to…

AFTER TWO GENERATIONS OF STRAIGHT-SIX-POWERED M3s, in 2007 BMW turned to a V8 to enable its new E92 coupe (and saloon-bodied E90 sister car) to join the arms race with Mercedes-AMG, Audi and Lexus. Taking the E60 M5’s extravagant S85 V10 engine as a base, two cylinders were removed to create the S65, a 4-litre, naturally aspirated V8. This meant that, as with the V10, this V8 wasn’t underpinned by a unit found in BMW’s ordinary line-up, but was instead a pure M creation. And it showed: the result was one of the great naturally aspirated V8s. Unlike most rival V8s, the S65 utilised individual throttle bodies for class-leading response (and induction noise), while the screaming 8400rpm red line was also the best in its class. Outputs of 414bhp and…

IN A SIMILAR FASHION TO THE E92 M3, THE F10 M5 MARKED a huge step up in performance, usability and refinement over its predecessor. The wailing motorsport-derived V10 of the E60 was something that could never be equalled, but with superbly judged dynamics, a spectacular turbocharged V8 powertrain and Q-car looks, the F10 was a worthy replacement. The early 2010s were a transformational period for BMW, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing. The likes of the F80 M3 and F82 M4 were far from perfect in their original forms, but the F10 M5 was different. Launched in 2011 as a rival to Mercedes-AMG’s E63, it got things right from the get-go. At its heart was BMW’s 4.4-litre twin-turbocharged S63 V8, and though a reduction in displacement and cylinder count is…

THESE ARE TRULY THE END OF DAYS. Witness the RS6 Avant GT, a spectacular last hurrah for Audi’s petrol-powered super-estate before it cedes to a battery-powered successor. The decision to go all-in on EV might be questionable, but credit where it’s due, for the GT means the RS6 has its chance to rage against the dying of the light. Just 660 Avant GTs will be built. All are sold, despite the £177,115 price tag (that’s more than a £60k premium over the regular RS6 Avant), though with just 60 allocated to the UK the GT is sure to be a rare sight and doubtless a coveted future classic. Though unchanged from the regular RS6, the GT’s headline stats still grab your attention. With 621bhp and 627lb ft from its twin-turbocharged…

YOU MAY REMEMBER A GINETTA RACING car joining evo’s Fast Fleet last summer, as staff writer Yousuf Ashraf and I competed in seven races in the Ginetta GT Academy – the Leeds firm’s entry-level racing series for adults. Those last two words wouldn’t normally be a point to clarify, but with the Ginetta Juniors championship still a step on the ladder for aspiring race drivers aged 14-17, Ginetta offers two different entry-level series. That car was the G56 GTA. This is the next rung on the ladder: the G56 GT Pro, or GTP for short. Like the GTA, it’s a muscular front-engined GT car, with a 3.5-litre V6 driving the rear wheels and a brutishly handsome design that reminds me a little of a Dodge Viper-ish classic GT car crossed…

‘THE W1 FORMS THE BASIS OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF ULTIMATE SERIES CARS AND BEYOND’ MCLAREN CLEARED THE tricky ‘second album’ hurdle with aplomb. The F1 had long been established as an automotive deity, a new generation’s 250 GTO and seemingly untouchable, but the P1 has held its own as an equally significant hypercar. It’s rare, too, although not F1-rare, with 375 built compared with the mere 106 F1s that McLaren produced during a lifespan shortened by global financial issues and the consequentially low demand for $1million hypercars. The P1 was, and remains, a technical titan with its torque-fill hybrid powertrain and active aerodynamics, while its looks are proving ageless (although as the 15-year-old in our household pointed out, it’s still not as cool as the OG). Now McLaren has…

JAPAN. NO OTHER NATION EXPRESSES ITS PASSION for engineering through such esoteric cars or pursues its individual ideas of perfection with such fanatical dedication. With the values of Japanese modern classics now rising to meet those of European counterparts, these once-obscure cult icons are finally getting the wider attention they deserve. So what better way to celebrate than by bringing together three of the greatest Japanese performance cars of the last 25 years? Not for a fleeting afternoon, but afternoon, for several days on some of our favourite roads. Ample time to dig to deep into their characters, explore their capabilities and remind ourselves what makes each of them so special. You You know you’re dealing with an elite level of car when two commend themselves for inclusion without the…

AVE YOU EVER SEEN ONE WITHOUT THE WING? I’M not convinced I have. Put down £23,000 for a Honda Accord Type R in late 1998 and, were you so inclined, you could politely ask your local Honda dealer to leave its prominent aerodynamic aid off the specification list. If you’d opted for Nighthawk Black Pearl or Titan Silver Metallic rather than this car’s Vesuvio Red, it’d be in the running for one of the decade’s most anonymous-looking performance cars. But nobody actually did that, right? It takes a certain kind of buyer to choose a family saloon with a set of Recaros and a red line at seven-five, and that buyer is probably going to leave the big carry-handle on the back right where it is, subtlety be damned. Along with…

THIRD IN 2022 BUT SIXTH this time around suggests the Pirelli has lost some of its edge, but a look at the data shows that it hasn’t actually performed any worse this time, it’s just that a couple of its rivals have improved and leapfrogged it. So while there were no outright wins for the P Zero, the majority of its scores were strong and in the wet it was highly rated subjectively. The Pirelli was fifth in wet braking, stopping just over 2.5m beyond the best, third around the wet circle and second fastest on the wet circuit, where it was described as having great feel. It was neat and responsive, felt strong on the brakes, had great traction and was sweetly balanced for the most part too, just…

OUR WINNER THE LAST time we tested this size, the Bridgestone continues to deliver with a string of table-topping performances, missing out on the overall win this time only because a couple of key rivals have upped their game. As in 2022, it set the pace on the wet handling circuit, getting on for a second faster than the next best tyre, and set the standard around the wet circle and in straight aquaplaning too. Consolidating this, subjectively it was ranked equal second for wet handling, demonstrating good bite and traction, and although it could slip less progressively than some, it was manageable. It felt great on the brakes too, which makes its last place in the straight-line wet brake test (3.7m longer than the best) look a curious result,…

TEN MONTHS, 5137 MILES, SEVERAL trackdays and one Track Car of the Year test later, the evo25 has returned home to Caterham HQ. It almost felt like the day would never come; our special-edition Seven had become such a familiar sight in the office car park, and Caterham allowed us to keep hold of it for much longer than originally planned. Eventually they’d forget we had it, I thought. And hoped. I’m gutted that it’s gone, but I’m equally grateful that I got to spend so much time getting to know this Seven in every environment imaginable. To begin with I feared I might not get the chance, given how popular it was with the rest of the team. By the time I nabbed the key our Caterham had been…

IT’S NO SECRET THAT I’M AN ALFA FAN, SO it was with great delight that I nabbed the key to RY73 FXZ from regular custodian James Taylor. I spent plenty of miles in our previous Alfa – the four-cylinder Giulia Veloce – and enjoyed its deftness and impressive turn of speed. It looked great, too. Less muscular than the Quadrifoglio, but beautifully svelte and super-stylish. Trouble is, despite its abundant appeal, the Veloce suffers from not being the Quadrifoglio. That might sound disappointing, as people like us aren’t supposed to be so easily swayed, but hopefully it’s forgivable given the seductive qualities of a 513bhp twin-turbocharged V6 and that jacked four-door physique. Life feels good when you’ve got a Quadrifoglio to walk up to and take for a drive. It’s…

THE PERFORMANCE CAR LANDSCAPE WOULD HAVE looked very different over the last five decades without BMW. Its M division, founded in 1972, has produced some of the best driver’s cars ever to hit the road, and in the process has provided a stream of benchmark models for its rivals to chase. In recent years, stricter emissions regulations, downsizing and electrification have seen some of those rival cars falter, yet by and large BMW’s M machines have remained strong. In fact, some rank among the greatest the department has made – think of the eCoty-winning M2 CS and M5 CS – while others are the only options worth recommending in their respective segments. Price tags have risen with performance, however, putting those latest offerings out of reach for many, but the…

STEP INSIDE THE NEW BENTLEY Continental GT. No need to slam the door; pull it gently against the catch and it’ll softly motor itself closed, while the motorised ‘butler’ armature proffers the seatbelt over your shoulder. Depending on spec, you might be inhaling lungfuls of leather or sitting on smart suede, while looking at a carbonfibre dash with black chrome, or engine-turned aluminium with trad brightwork, or walnut, koa, oak or perhaps eucalyptus veneer. Or, in this car’s case, a bold diamond-brushed aluminium and magenta highlights combo. Press the starter button and, initially, there’s silence. Since the new Conti GT is a hybrid, it defaults to electric mode on start-up. The new 4-litre-V8-plus-e-motor set-up replaces both the unhybridised 4-litre engine option in the previous Continental and the flagship W12. It…

IT’S BEEN FILTHY WEATHER EVER SINCE I FIRST DROPPED INTO the new Ferrari 12 Cilindri’s low-set driving seat, but, as if by some divine coincidence, the mist rises and the sky begins to clear shortly after we cross the German border and pass a sign with those four tantalising diagonal strips that demarcate an unrestricted stretch of autobahn. Smoothly opening the throttle pedal to its stop in any high-performance car is quite a moment, but when that car has 12 cylinders and revs to 9500rpm… In this case, though, it’s more than an engine, and more than a car, isn’t it? The two things together are more than the sum of their parts here because a Ferrari is one thing, but a V12 Ferrari… that’s a thing in and of…

WELCOME TO A MUSEUM LIKE NO OTHER. Instead of a theatrical entrance hall or a tantalising gift shop shimmering by the ticket booth, we’ve drawn up at a security gate. Outside a grey box of a factory. Once cleared, we’re chaperoned through corridor after corridor, albeit ones lined with a diverse array of trophies from every corner of the globe. Things are looking up. As the signal bars on our phones ebb away, we arrive at a pair of doors so large and thick it’s easy to assume they occupy a sole what3words address apiece. They heave open to reveal three-dozen rally, endurance and Formula 1 race cars, all gathered carefully in their respective tribes under enough snaking ventilation pipes to make Kevin McCloud woozy with their industrial chic. It’s…

THE PILOT SPORT 4 S HAS long been the tyre of choice for a number of significant car makers, and although there’s now a Pilot Sport 5, the ‘old’ tyre continues to impress. If you were looking to pinpoint what has lifted its performance since the last test, one significant improvement is its straight-line wet braking, where it has jumped from third to first, and by a useful margin too. To this it adds a tranche of strong results where it matters. It was especially impressive in the dry, where it was just 0.65sec behind the fastest and rated second subjectively. It was a tyre that felt comfortable with the challenge: grippy, composed and precise, with strong traction and a fluid feel through transitions. It has great steering feel, too:…

TWO OR THREE TIMES A YEAR I THINK ABOUT selling this car. And two or three times a year, the next time I drive it, such thoughts dissipate like a splash of unleaded on a filling station forecourt. God, this car is good. Given it’s been around four years and 12,000 miles since the Rallye last appeared in Fast Fleet (evo 283), that’s a lot of ‘will I, won’t I?’ moments and an equal number of ‘not a chance’ drives where my resolve once again collapses. So you probably deserve a bit of an update. (And speaking of absent Rallyes, someone should give Dickie Meaden a nudge, as it’s been even longer since you’ve seen his Indigo Blue example in these pages…) During 2020 (remember that?) a change of circumstances…

I DIDN’T PLAN TO UNDERTAKE THE 600-mile round trip from home to Anglesey twice in a month, but there I was perched in UXJ as it pummelled the M6 into submission for the second time in as many weeks, still asking myself what this car was designed to do. Interior room isn’t its thing. Despite being a car that occupies so much space on the road, it offers very little of it on the inside. Neither is comfort something it has much interest in: the M-specific seats are as hard as the ride is unforgiving, the massage function akin to someone tapping you on your spine with a small hammer. And there are lots of minor things that irritate, including a speed limiter function that after a while gets bored…

YOU KNOW IMMEDIATELY WHEN YOU HAVE filed your review copy on a car if it’s going to stir the manufacturer’s PR into firing over an email to highlight why you’re wrong. You might have gone off message and stuck your head above the parapet, gone against the status quo and called out a car others have lavished with fawning praise (despite privately agreeing with you). The PR might personally disagree with your view on a car they are paid to represent, or more often than not the strongly worded missive has an overpowering whiff of ‘I’ve been told to send this by my superiors but I agree with everything you have written.’ Suffice to say, after our first drive of the Porsche 718 Boxster 2-litre in 2016, we received ‘the…