Indice dei contenuti per June 2020 in Evo

HAVING NOWHERE TO GO PRESENTS YOU WITH AN awful lot of thinking time. Time to ponder the what ifs, the what nows and the how abouts that bubble to the surface from time to time but disappear just as quickly when your train pulls in or the traffic lights turn green. So, is Ford’s decision to can development of a fourth-generation Focus RS a good or bad thing? Has to be the latter for me. I understand the business case as to why the project was shelved, but rather than these being barriers, was this not an opportunity to showcase the ingenuity of the engineers and their ability to address and get over these? A Focus RS customer isn’t going to buy a Puma as an alternative, so rather than…

OCCASIONALLY A JOVIAL POST SPREADS throughout social media prompting you to come up with a line that, should you ever end up kidnapped or in some kind of trouble, would alert the outside world without drawing undue attention from those holding you hostage. It has to be something that sounds feasible in isolation, but out of character to people who know you. For me I reckon something along the lines of, ‘I’m really starting to go off Caterhams,’ or maybe, ‘Thinking about it, Pastor Maldonado was pretty underrated,’ would do the trick. Anyway, I mention this because I’m beginning to think some of BMW’s junior designers are being held against their will. Perhaps the recent spate of misshapen designs and George Foreman grilles isn’t simply misguided styling, as we’ve all…

IF YOU’RE A REGULAR CONSUMER OF motoring content, be it in print or online, the chances are you will have enjoyed countless images taken by Andy Morgan. A leading car photographer for more than two decades, Morgan made his name at evo, working as its staff photographer from 1998 until 2008, during which time he built an extraordinary body of work containing some of evo’s most memorable images. Now a well-established freelance, Morgan remains a regular contributor to evo, along with many other editorial titles, including Vantage, Enzo and 000. He also works with numerous car brands, who value his passion, professionalism and clean, purist style. In this, the first of a fresh regular series of ‘Life Through a Lens’ features, we quiz Morgan on how he got into the…

ASTON MARTINS HAVE LONG BEEN celebrated for their raucous soundtracks, but this pair – the GT8 and V600 – revelled in that reputation, ramping up the decibel count to ensure the old ‘AM305’ Vantage went out not so much with a bang as a sonic boom. It was with us a long time, that generation of Vantage. From 2005 until 2018 it stood firm as a pillar of Aston’s range, proudly entering the fray as the affordable Aston to tackle the 997.1 Carrera. And for a while it did just that with considerable success. But as Porsche cycled through generation after generation of 911, the AM305 soldiered on – not without improvement or evolution, but never with the resources available to its nemesis in Zuffenhausen, and so the Porsche powered…

FAVOURITE ROAD RACER? INSTANTLY my thoughts went to the wonderful Mégane R26.R. The harnesses, the placcy windows, the lack of radio, rear seats and air conditioning. But then I realised that I always think of the .R as more of a barely disguised tarmac rally car than a road racer. Is there a difference? Arguably not, but in my mind a road racer has just a touch more of the sports car and less of the supermarket. Which leads me to another brilliant car: the Lotus 2-Eleven. The original Exige has always had the air of a mini GT1 racer about it, but the 2-Eleven takes things even further towards the pit lane. And whereas its predecessor, the fabulous 340R, is too stylised to be mistaken for a race car,…

A MINI. A HUMBLE MINI IS MY choice ahead of machines such as 700-plus bhp Porsche 911s, sensational Speciales and maniac McLarens. And let’s not forget the Renault Sport road racers, Astons with attitude and Fords that will fight you should you dare look at them. Yes, a Mini. A Mini that at its launch the engineering team responsible naughtily suggested was the equivalent of an M-car conceived in Oxford, perhaps a Cooper CSL. This was no ordinary Mini. It was no ordinary Mini Cooper S John Cooper Works either, because the GP was the result of what Mini’s engineers could achieve when looking to create the ultimate. The recipe was simple: less weight (50kg lighter), the smallest of power hikes (8bhp) and a sharper focus applied to the car’s…

THE CATERHAM SEVEN JPE WAS, I have to be honest about this, absolutely f***ing crackers. But in its own way it was also absolutely fantastic. It weighed less than half a ton but basically had a Vauxhall touring car engine in its snout. As a result it was one of the biggest potential accidents ever to have been produced with a set of number plates attached to it. And I couldn’t get enough of it. It was one of those cars that you had to have a fairly stiff word with yourself about before driving it. First time I drove one was on the Blakey Ridge road, the one we use regularly at evo and which winds its way across the North York Moors. And it was wet. The ratio…

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LIKE BEING TOLD AS A CHILD ‘DON’T touch it, it’s hot’ and having an overwhelming urge to handle whatever ‘it’ might have been, the whole country suddenly going into lockdown seems to have awakened some primal desire to get out of the house and go for a drive. I won’t, of course (I was never daft enough as a kid to stick my hand on the hob either), but after a particularly damp and wretched winter the run of sunny and dry spring days that unhelpfully coincided with the start of the nation’s self-containment has made the current situation all the more miserable. Luckily, I found time for just a couple more drives in the Rallye before things started getting serious. One was the car’s first outing on track, which…

I’S HARD TO IMAGINE A PROJECT THAT taps into the prevailing mood more perfectly than the new Stratos. It at once conjures the spirit of an untouchable icon, remixes a supercar that exists in that sweet spot where analogue and digital worlds were merging to spectacular effect, and satiates the longing of the superwealthy to attach themselves to something bespoke. Part unobtainable concept car, part Ferrari, bristling with evocative Italian coachbuilding tradition, and with an intriguing backstory full of twists and turns, this remarkable car has all the makings of an iconoclast and cult hero. Left field, but irresistible. Think Lancia Hyena or Alfa SZ, but with Ferrari blood running through its veins. So what exactly is the MAT Stratos? Well, the short version is that it’s built by Manifattura…

IN THE LATE ’80s YAMAHA DECIDED TO celebrate its new role as a Formula 1 engine supplier by making a hardcore supercar, powered by a house-trained version of its racing engine. The initiative was pushed by the company’s promo-seeking sporting goods division and, after a false start with a sport prototype-alike design from a firm in Germany, Yamaha hired International Automotive Design in Sussex to create something more radical. Working in league with Ypsilon Technology, the Milton Keynes-based Yamaha subsidiary that built the F1 engines, and to a radical exterior style created by Mooncraft in Japan, IAD confected a tantalising spec for this unique machine. It started with the engine, a de-tuned version of the OX99 racing V12, hence the car’s name, incorporated as a load-bearing part of the car.…

FULLY FOCUSED. CONCENTRATING ON THE ROAD AHEAD. NO bleating of satnav instructions, no music, and ideally, no other traffic. Just empty tarmac wriggling off into the distance and a machine to get you to the other end. The cars on the following pages are designed for moments such as these. They’ve been excused from the mundanities of the daily grind, given a hall pass from family duty. Some have been built from the ground up with no other goal than pure entertainment, others started with an even purer purpose – winning races. What they all share is an ethos, a sometimes intangible quality that elevates them beyond more conventional performance cars. Jethro Bovingdon explores this theory with the first of our tests, revisiting a model that many consider the ultimate…

YOU’LL SEE MANY PARED-BACK, sharpened-up cars in this collection, but none of them has quite the focus of the Honda NSX-R. There’s a substantial weight saving, a precision blue-printed V6 VTEC engine, and a chassis that’s reworked in virtually its entirety… but the NSX-R took the concept a notch higher. This we discovered in 2002 during our Car of the Year contest. If it had been a one- or two-day affair, the 911 C4S would have won. As it was, we spent a few days in north Wales, on wet and dry roads and a wet and dry Anglesey racetrack. This allowed everyone to get to know the NSX-R properly, and you need to, because it’s not a car you warm to instantly. Sure, it has superb, carbonfibre-shelled Recaros and…

RARE IS THE OCCASION A TURBOCHARGED Porsche feels a bit gutless. 991 GT2 RS? Not short of ‘go’, is it? Any 911 Turbo for that matter – they tend to feel even faster than the numbers on the tin suggest, always have done. Even Porsche’s current entry-level car, the much-derided 2-litre 718, makes a healthy, turbocharged 296bhp and feels good for every last Pferdestärke. And yet, right at this moment, the 4-litre twin-turbo V8 in the Panamera GTS I’m driving feels if not limp, then certainly subdued. That’s a bizarre comment to make about a 454bhp superlimo, I’m well aware of that, but the shapely, streamliner rear of the Mercedes-AMG GT63 4-Door ahead is marching away from us every time the road runs straight and there’s absolutely nothing I can…

THE TIME HAS COME TO SAY GOODBYE TO our MX-5 SE-L Nav+. It spent the last six or so months with us after replacing the fun but ultimately flawed Soul Red GT Nav+ that we ran for most of 2019. The reason behind the swap was that, although the GT confirmed that Mazda’s work on upgrading the 2-litre engine to 181bhp was an undoubted success, the car’s chassis still proved to be a weakness. The SE-L replacement, however, was fitted with a selection of Mazda-sourced accessories that promised to go some way to fixing this. To quickly recap the differences between the two, gone were some of the plusher GT’s non-essential gizmos, including the rear-view camera, blind-spot monitoring and Bose sound system, while the Bilstein dampers were replaced with Mazda’s…

YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP. AFTER TAKING years to complete the build of my garage/office I finally felt financially solvent enough to show my long-suffering cars some love. Then came Covid-19. While this hideous pandemic renders any four-wheeled problems entirely inconsequential, I thought an update on the non-press fleet cars in my life might provide you with some amusement. Over the years I’ve ‘invested’ many happy hours pondering the ultimate Three Car Garage. Consequently I’d like to claim my trio as the result of careful curation, but that would be a lie. Instead it’s an accidental mix of good fortune, loyalty and sentimentality seasoned with a dash of ill-advised purchasing and a side of overstretched finances. As some of you will recall, I bought the 964 RS back in 2006.…

OUR MINI HAS RETURNED TO ITS MAKER, after what felt like, and indeed was, a fairly short stretch of time. Ordinarily we’d hang on to a long-term test car for around six months, but the Mini’s busy schedule during my time at the wheel meant that by the four-month mark it was already approaching its ‘look, we’ve got actual customers who want one of these and it’s worth less with a five-figure mileage’ odometer reading. Aside from the prospect of a road trip to Monte Carlo in celebration of the Mini’s 60th anniversary (evo 268), I was initially ambivalent about the car’s appearance on the Fast Fleet. The brand has long suffered from having unavoidably painted itself into a corner from a design standpoint – call your brand ‘Mini’, and…

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN SO DIFFERENT. BY now, the first rounds of the Porsche Sprint Challenge should have been completed. The first pots handed out on the podium, the first mouthfuls of warm fizzy wine tasted, possibly the first exchanges of paintwork, and certainly the first lost splitter or six, all marking the start of the newest race series for those looking to make their first tentative steps from club racing to something a little more serious, but without the expense or commitment required for a championship such as Porsche’s own Carrera Cup. This is where the new 718-based Cayman GT4 Clubsport comes in. Replacing the previous-generation (981) GT4 Clubsport that raced under GT4 regs and in series such as the Nürburgring’s VLN championship, this new car still remains eligible…

BRITTLE, CRACKED WIPER BLADES DRAG themselves over the windscreen and just about clear a patch big enough to navigate through. The sun didn’t really rise today but any effect it’s had is now rapidly waning, the iron-grey sky darkening by the second. Sadly, not by so much that the headlights are having any real effect. In between a filthy day and a howling, forbiddingly black night, all is thick gloom and driving rain. This is not the road racer dream. Not the place for aggressive spring rates or barely there tread patterns. And yet I’m having one of the best drives of my life. I’m on a particularly gnarly section of the spectacular North Coast 500 route in Scotland and gripping the shiny, heavily worn Alcantara steering wheel of a…

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CAN BE A FUNNY OLD THING. Consider the difference between two ostensibly similar terms – street racer and road racer. The first probably conjures up images of teens in noisy hatchbacks bouncing off kerbs outside a local fast food establishment. The latter? Your thoughts are possibly already wandering to Moss and Jenkinson on the Mille Miglia, or the angry wedge of an Alfa Romeo 33 on the Targa Florio. We’re infinitely more interested in the latter, but that too is nuanced. Le Mans aside, the days of brutal endurance races on public roads are largely over. There are few real ‘road races’ left, at least outside of motorcycling. But through inspiration, technology, homologation, or by virtue of being little more than a race car with an MOT,…

WORDS HARDLY SEEM NECESSARY. The motorsport success and legacy is so deep-rooted that it transcends usual constraints and continues to be retold to audiences old and new. The aesthetic is unmistakable and, even today, the driving experience is completely unforgettable. Nearly any car that could fall under the heading of ‘road racer’ is pretty much guaranteed to turn my head, but nothing quite hits the spot like the GT40. And you needn’t spend £10million on a real one. The Superformance ‘continuation’ cars are just as physical, enthralling, demanding and rewarding. I would have one in a heartbeat. The question is, which one? The purity of a Mk I with a smaller, rev-hungry 289 cubic inch V8? Or a Mk II with a 427 big block? Or maybe you want to…

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO ADMIRE RENAULT’S sheer chutzpah. When France’s national car company decided to go motor racing in the ’70s, it threw itself headlong into the new and mysterious world of turbocharging rather than taking the conventional route. It began publicly in sportscar racing during 1976, and its 2-litre, V6-powered homegrown prototype would score an emotional win at Le Mans in 1978, but in 1977, at the British Grand Prix, it started arguably an even bigger challenge: to win in Formula 1. The Renault RS01, with its little 1.5-litre, iron-block, single-turbo EF1 V6, was a staggeringly bold entry, for not only was Renault taking up the 1.5-litre forced induction option ignored by all and sundry, it was also building its own chassis and running its own team in-house (no…

THE S209 JOINS THE EVO FAST Fleet due to Covid-19. That’s a rather stark, weird statement, but fundamentally it’s also a true one. When owner David Price lent us his brand new limited-edition Subaru it was for its appearance two issues ago, where it took on the Mercedes-AMG A45 S in a natural arena for cars such as these: the wild and challenging roads of Dumfries and Galloway. The S209 was outgunned, but emerged at the very least the moral victor. We were blown away by the A45, as we have been every time we’ve driven one, but that old Scooby magic got under the skin of both Dickie Meaden and me. By the end of the test we loved it, flaws and all. David had put his new purchase…

IT WAS INEVITABLE, REALLY. NO sooner had I finished writing last month’s report on enjoying the drier weather and how it had revealed a further layer of enjoyment within the Vantage than we received the call that the UK was to stop what it was doing and stay at home. There was a week or so from that copy being filed and the lockdown being imposed, however, providing around seven to ten days to further explore the Aston’s infectious character and conduct the briefest of comparisons with a near identically specced Vantage fitted with Aston’s seven-speed manual gearbox (evo 273). Such was the demand for the Vantage AMR, the model Aston initially launched with the Graziano seven-speed manual, that the 200 examples sold out almost immediately. But worry not, because…

APPARENTLY IT’S CALLED A FLASHBULB memory – the human brain’s ability to recall in vivid detail the moment when you heard a significant piece of news. Most of the UK population collectively acquired one at 8.30pm on Monday 23 March 2020, hearing the prime minister announce that the country would be entering a lockdown with immediate effect. For me, though, the memory of that moment will be somewhat different. With the subject of the imminent broadcast seemingly inevitable, I decided to make the most of the brief window of relative freedom still available by grabbing the key to our A35 and taking the long route home from evo Towers on some familiar B-roads. Well, I say familiar, but their eerily deserted state was anything but. There was no risk of…