Indice dei contenuti per May 2021 in Evo

A CONVERSATION WITH BENTLEY’S CEO, ADRIAN Hallmark, delivered a piece of insight that subconsciously you and I had most likely already considered, but which we had yet to hear from such a prominent figure in the industry. Essentially, he made the point that any car sold leading up to the proposed ban on the sale of petrol cars in 2030 could still be on the road and in perfectly serviceable condition for at least another 20 if not 30 years after it is first sold. He went on to say the industry has a duty to support these cars and not leave customers high and dry. It’s why Bentley is taking a keen interest in Porsche’s development of synthetic fuels, although it has yet to start its own programme. Supporting…

‘Making it feel very similar to the ICE car meant getting the weight distribution perfect’ IT’S DAMP, COLD AND I’M IN A PORSCHE 964 with a 440bhp motor in the back. Experience tells me that extreme caution will be required. I used to knock around in a 964 Turbo S in the late ’90s and that had 380bhp and was a bit of a beast, with some good oldfashioned lag thrown in and not much in the way of an electronic safety net. That this car has an extra 60bhp is of concern, but the bigger issue is that it’s electric. I’ve driven almost all current EVs but never a classic car that has had an electrical transplant. We’ll get into the philosophy of electrifying classics, and indeed the morality…

DEVILISH RED FLAMES SUDDENLY LICK AROUND the centrally positioned tacho, signifying I’ve selected N mode. It’s a fun, if frivolous, flourish of animated theatre, but I’m more interested in the massive oil and coolant temperature readouts that now share screen-space in the binnacle: the more options designers seem to have with TFT screens, the more they seem to provide everything bar the info that enthusiast drivers actually want to know, but not when it comes to Hyundai’s N department. It’s a tiny detail but it makes me smile all the same. It’s very much ‘Albert Biermann’, once of BMW M, now head of N, and it makes me think of the authenticity and passion for driving that the bigger i30 N is shot through with. The i20 N’s bigger brother…

ANY CONVERSATION WITH NIGEL Harniman is likely to involve a laugh. He may be a very serious photographer – as evidenced by the quality of the pictures printed here – but he’s also a very funny bloke and a font of entertaining anecdotes from four decades in the snapping game, which pour forth even during the briefest chat. He’s also a slightly unusual subject matter for Life Through a Lens, in as much as he doesn’t shoot editorial and never has. A quick look through his Instagram account reveals that should the mood ever take him then shooting cars for motoring magazines really wouldn’t be a problem, but his speciality is lavish, time- and labourintensive images (stills and video) for advertising and corporate clients. These types of pictures involve a…

THE T-ROC R IS A BIT LIKE THAT neighbour of yours. You know the one. You pass each other in the street quite regularly and you both say ‘hi’ perfectly amicably. About twice a year you are forced, by dint of Hermes having misdelivered, to pop round and knock on his door and then there’s an awkward extension of the ‘hi’ conversation into ‘All well with you?’ without actually knowing what ‘all’ might refer to. You think Alan (or is it Steve?) is something to do with finance or possibly IT. He’s fine, harmless, a bit dull. Ordinary. Then one day you’re chatting to Jill, who lives at number 42 (incidentally she doesn’t really know what you do and, yes, there is a reason she never says your name), and…

IT WAS, I’LL CONFESS, PURELY FOR practical reasons that I wanted to borrow editor Gallagher’s grey estate car. It’d been quite some time since a sub-proper-M BMW had floated my boat, but at least our 340i had enough room to carry one – an inflatable kayak, to be precise – which immediately gave it an advantage over the GR Supra I was running at the time. So that’s how, last October, I found myself loading up our 3-series Touring with holiday gubbins and settling into its thoroughly agreeable cabin. If I enjoyed nothing else about the car over the next week, I thought to myself, at least it had that interior going for it: comfortable, well appointed, far from gloomy thanks to the optional Fiona Red leather, and extra airy…

BMW’S M-RANGE USED TO BE A straightforward concept to get your head around. There was the small, racy one: the M3. There was the bigger, more relaxed one: the M5. And that was pretty much it. But that was also 30-plus years ago and it really is time we moved on, isn’t it? After all, BMW M has. It would be simple to dismiss the new M3 Competition as nothing more than a four-door incarnation of last month’s cover star, the two-door M4 coupe. But that’s never been the whole story since BMW M announced in 2013 that it was to add to the M3 stable and split the range, resulting in the two-door coupe and cabriolet gaining the M4 nomenclature. Curiously, for many the Three has consistently outshone the…

PORSCHE ANNOUNCED RECENTLY THAT it is investing $24million in a plant to produce carbon-neutral synthetic fuel for its internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. It is the first car maker to do so, and it looks like a smart move. The annual output from the plant in Chile, South America, is expected to be 55million litres by 2024, ramping up to 500million by 2026, and Porsche will be the sole customer, using it at its ‘Porsche Experience’ driving centres and to fuel its motorsport championships. This season’s F1-supporting Porsche Supercup Championship will trial an ExxonMobil-developed biofuel under race conditions, then in 2022 synthetic ‘efuel’ components will be added. However, Porsche is not banking on governments around the world allowing road-going ICE vehicles a stay of execution, even though they too could…

CERTAIN CARS I’LL ALWAYS ASSOCIATE WITH particular individuals. Ferrari F40? That VHS I had as a kid in which a flat-capped, moustachioed Mansell melted Pirellis and showed it who was boss at a misty Fiorano. Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth? Andy Rouse, intense in an openface helmet, beating the Texaco works car at Brands Hatch while I jumped up and down in front of the telly. Original Group A Prodrive Subaru Impreza? Col… You get the idea. When it comes to the Talbot Sunbeam, that rather unlikely hot hatch that transformed into a rallying world-beater via Lotus and the Coventry-based Talbot competitions department, it’ll always be the young Henri Toivonen, the superstar sensation of 1980s rallying. Toivonen ran a limited programme in 1980 but took a surprise win on the Lombard…

MENTION LOTUS CARS TO McLAREN HIGH-UPS and, in an official capacity at least, you’re unlikely to hear how former Lotus employees and Lotus chassis tuning DNA run like a thread through the company. Which rather goes against anecdotal evidence and the career back-stories of a number of key engineers. One thing is for sure: drive a McLaren and you can’t help but have those five letters – L, O, T, U and S – drift to the forefront of your mind. Why exactly is that, though? Today I’m at the wheel of a very orange, explosively powerful 720S Spyder. Am I really trying to draw a parallel between it and a tiny lightweight sports car launched 25 years ago with just 118bhp? Of course, there are the obvious similarities in…

IT STRUCK ME AT THE LATEST ECOTY test that perhaps the era of the great all-round performance car is over. In a world where so many cars can do everything well all the time, it’s natural to gravitate towards extremes, to want to mainline the wildest experiences and seek out cars that present an opportunity to feel like you’re on the edge. Of something: grip, reason, the boundary between road car and no-holds-barred racer. As power outputs continue to spiral and performance becomes more and more accessible – homogenised, even – we crave something raw, something that makes us feel alive. Brilliance is no longer enough. This trend has created some extraordinarily thrilling cars in recent times and slain the monsters of old. You see a picture of an old…

OUR CUPRA FORMENTOR IS NOW RUN IN, so this month I’ve been able to start exploring its full performance. And I have to say, I’ve been having a riot. It’s every bit as quick as you’d hope a fast Cupra product would be, its 306bhp resulting in an impressive 4.9sec 0-62mph time and properly punchy in-gear acceleration. It’s just a shame that the accompanying sound produced by the quad exhausts is a little underwhelming, as the plumbed-in noise is not for me. Shooting the new Golf R for last month’s issue provided an opportunity to see how the Formentor compares with a similarly powerful, four-wheel-drive hot hatch. The Cupra lost little, if anything, to the 316bhp VW in a straight line, but when it came to cornering speeds, the Golf…

HERE’S THE HEADLINE. AND IT’S A GOOD one. After many twists, (U-)turns and broken dreams, Project Arena Red is alive. And in place of the sadly departed M96 engine is a 3.8-litre direct-injection 9A1 lifted from a 991 Carrera S that a reversing lorry hadn’t noticed. The resulting carnage along the entirety of its nearside flank unwittingly provided the perfect donor for my reborn 996 Carrera. So, what I now have is a 996 with somewhere around 400bhp, a complete chassis overhaul and so much trick fabrication and invention by Litchfield that, I suspect, it will remain forever unique. To say I’m happy with how things have turned out is something of an understatement. Of course, it also means I’m an idiot. I knew the old engine would need a…

LITCHFIELD HAS AN EYE FOR SPOTTING cult cars and then working quickly to offer upgrades. It did it with the Alpine A110 and such is the firm’s reputation that owners were sending their brand new cars to its workshops to be upgraded before they’d even driven them. So it’s no surprise that the Toyota GR Yaris has attracted similar attention, Litchfield already offering a suspension upgrade as well as an engine uplift that takes the 1.6-litre triple to just over 300bhp. Given the deluge of positive press the Yaris has had, you’d think it was beyond improvement, but a bit more power never does any harm, does it? I’m more interested in the suspension work, though, because I feel like I’m a rare dissenting voice on this aspect of the…

THAT NOISE YOU CAN HEAR IS THE internet gnashing its teeth at the thought of the next-generation AMG C63 no longer being powered by a hot-vee twin-turbocharged V8 engine. Just wait until they hear that its replacement will have only four cylinders and be hybrid-powered. It’s part of AMG’s strategy to integrate electrified powertrains not only across its traditional model lines but also Mercedes’ EQ range of electric vehicles, with AMG also developing bespoke EV models. Before the first of those AMG EQ models arrive, Affalterbach will be busy phasing out pure internal combustion engines and replacing them with hybrid variants under its new E Performance brand, two examples of which we will see this year. The first will be the GT 73 four-door (above right), a near-800bhp plug-in hybrid…

YOU SETTLE YOURSELF IN THE BIG, RED SEAT, CHECK the leg-room and assess the view of the screen in front of you. Then there is the eternal question of which of the cup-holders you should place your drink in. Soda safely stowed, the cinema lights dim and you think to yourself, maybe, just maybe, 007 will die this time… It’s with a similar mindset that I imagine you are beginning this feature. Maybe, just maybe, they will say that two pedals are better than three this time… To be honest this isn’t really about crowning a winner or taking sides. After all, there are plenty of reasons why people choose to or, more pertinently, have no choice but to buy one option rather than the other. No, this is hopefully…

THUMB THE BUTTON. FEEL THE barrel ‘click’ with the lock mechanism. Swing the door open, step over the sill, twist your torso as your hand grabs for the seat and then fall into that oh-so-familiar cockpit. Hello Elise, it’s been a while and it’s good to be back. Can it really be 25 years since Julian Thomson’s diminutive roadster first stole magazine headlines? How has the Elise survived all that Lotus has got itself into over the last two and half decades? How can this iconic British sports car still be a benchmark when it comes to experiencing the thrill of driving in its purest form? How many ordered a 240 Final Edition when Lotus announced that this year will be the last that you will be able to buy…

@evomagazine @evomagazine @officialevomagazine ON PAPER, I ADMIT, THE EXCUSE to run another Giulia Quadrifoglio on the evo Fast Fleet looks rather thin. This facelifted version has some LED tail lights, the centre console and switchgear is improved, NVH is reduced, and there’s a new infotainment system. All told, it doesn’t sound like a great deal is different, but then there never was anything wrong with the 503bhp twinturbo V6, or the rear-drive chassis, so why change for change’s sake? Moreover, with a new key player in the market in the new G80 BMW M3, it’ll be interesting to see how a modernised – however slightly that may be – Giulia stacks up against it across months rather than days. That’s enough of an excuse for me! So what have we…

THE GOOD NEWS? KIDS ARE BACK AT school. The bad(ish) news? I’m back on school-run duties, along with most of Peterborough it seems, meaning the early morning roads have returned to their pre-pandemic congested state. Secretly I don’t mind, however, as at least it has given me an excuse to a) leave the house and b) drive. On the latter point, my eldest moved schools in September to a location half an hour away, meaning I get a longer daily trip to enjoy, including a really nice stretch of autobahnesque parkway that shows off the S3’s rapid acceleration and multitude of noises (mostly fake), and from there a few miles of twisty B-roads, where our Audi is in its element and I get to revel in its impressive grip levels.…

AMONG THE RS MÉGANES, CIVIC TYPE Rs, i30 Ns and even Fiesta STs that hog the hot hatch limelight, the Focus ST can sometimes find itself elbowed into the shadows. It’s not that it’s a car without merits – far from it, in fact – but because its chosen role leans more towards being an all-rounder than an all-out action hero, it perhaps doesn’t shine as brightly as some of its contemporaries in the relatively short timeframe of a regular road test. A long-term test ought to be a more suitable stage for it to show the full extent of its talents, then. So for that very reason, this month we welcome to the evo Fast Fleet our first Mk4 Focus ST. It’s not the hatchback version, though, because uniquely…

IT’S A RISKY BUSINESS NAILING YOUR colours to the mast during eCoty when it’s the first time you’ve driven a particular car, but you don’t get to the lofty position of attending endless meetings and signing off Aston Parrott’s coffee expenses if you’re not prepared to take a punt. Which is why I put the GR Yaris top of my eCoty list. Two weeks on road and track left me smitten and bitten by the Toyota’s infectious enthusiasm and ability to put a grin on the most miserable of faces (mine) with every drive. And that enthusiasm didn’t waiver when managing editor Ian Eveleigh ran out of excuses and finally relinquished his grip on the GR’s key in a snow-swept car park on the outskirts of St Neots (lockdown glamour…