Evoの November 2016 の目次

BACK IN JUNE I travelled to continental’s proving ground in uvalde, texas, to conduct evo’s annual tyre test (evo 226). there are several such facilities throughout europe that we could have used, but we chose uvalde for one very good reason: its stateof-the-art dry handling test track. the £1.5million circuit, designed by continental’s test engineer, angelo Pérez-Riemer, was completed earlier this year. We’re told just as much design and engineering work went into the track as a high-performance tyre, making it one of the best circuits in the world to test and develop suspension systems, chassis electronics and, of course, tyres. the track is around two miles in length and varies from six to 12 metres in width. there are 17 corners, significant elevation changes, tricky cambers and parabolic crossfalls…

Test location: Munich, germany GPS: 48.08908, 11.61941 It’s been suggested by some that the new Panamera turbo is worth buying purely for the way its rear wing deploys. standing in a lay-by somewhere near the Austrian border with germany, I ask evo contributor Adam towler to press the relevant button. Out of that now very 911-like backside, a portion of the rear deck rises, then separates and extends sideways quite mesmerisingly, to stretch almost the full width of the car. It’s like a motorised version one of those extendable dining room tables. Only cooler. the old Panamera turbo had a similar wing, but the new car’s aero appendage is bigger, and to be honest the whole car, while recognisably related, is much better-looking than the first-generation version. It is still…

Test location: B660, Bedfordshire GPS: 52.215493, -0.409760 Jaguar’s 3-series rival (copyright: Britain’s weekly motoring press) has enjoyed a successful start in coaxing drivers not just out of their 3-series, but their C-classes and a4s as well. understandable, maybe, given the Xe’s broad spectrum of charms, which seem to have its german rivals’ specialist subjects covered. However, while the Xe is selling solidly, its makers are acutely aware that it can’t rely on a single, rear-drive configuration to build on that initial success, hence the introduction of today’s must-have drivetrain accessory: four-wheel drive. The Xe was designed from day one to be offered with four-wheel drive. The system is that already used in the XF and F-Pace: a transfer case carrying a multi-plate wet clutch pack that runs a chain drive…

HERE AT EVO WE PRIDE OURSELVES on our endless quest for great driving routes. TomTom and Garmin have nothing on our ability to sniff out a string of alpine hairpins, locate a stretch of derestricted autobahn or track down tarmac that unfurls itself across some rugged moorland vista. We call it work, but in our hearts we know the places we get to drive cars are often a fantasy only a fortunate few will have the funds, time or opportunity to enjoy. But let me share a secret. There is another network of roads, as real and within reach as those in the pages of this magazine are distant and the stuff of dreams. They can be roads you know as intimately as the back of your hand, or roads…

SKYLINE . IT’S SUCH A familiar term amongst car enthusiasts and conjures strong images and even stronger reactions. There are lovers and haters. The former, as is so often the case, fuel the fire of the latter. They’re almost religious about the big, complex Japanese coupe and their fanaticism is matched by the blind rage that characterises those who take against the Skyline. Of course, I’m talking about the Skyline GT-R, the car that arrived in 1989 with fourwheel drive, four-wheel steer and twin turbochargers, and then evolved through two more generations and endless refinements. The car that swept all before it in Group A touring car racing and was inevitably banned. But the Skyline we’re driving today couldn’t be more different: small, light, rear-wheel drive and without even power…

THE LAST FEW MONTHS have seen uninterrupted slumber for the mighty Ferrari 599 HGTE. With the range of other cars in my garage at the moment, its services have just not been called upon, as the McLaren 650S serves as the daily driver and the P1 is the default choice for weekend drives. Recently, though, the 599’s luck changed when my eldest suggested we take the 12-cylinder beast for a spin. With the cover off the car, I hit the boot-open button on the key so we could unplug the battery conditioner. The boot popped right up and the cord was quickly unplugged. With that out of the way, it was time to open the doors, climb in and bring the Enzo engine to life. This gave the first indication…

A WEEK TRAVELLING along the Devon and Cornwall coastline was the plan – and a perfect opportunity to figure out what makes the Juke so popular with the British public. My girlfriend Cara and I wanted our stopovers to be as close to the sea as possible, and the best way to achieve this was by camping. So we packed the Nissan full of all the necessities for surviving in the wild, which with the Juke’s modest boot space basically meant transforming it into a van and watching the back windows and rear seats get steadily filled with kit. We started our week away inland in the picturesque city of Bath. The Juke was completely at home in this urban environment, its extra height over a ‘normal’ hot hatch affording…

THERE’S NO WAY OF dressing this up, so I’m just going to come out and say it: I qualified 17th out of 18 cars at Snetterton. The back row of the grid. I do, of course, have a great many excuses to explain such a dire performance and, naturally, I’m now going to run through them in detail. One: the first lap I drove in qualifying was the first time I’d been around Snetterton, full stop. Actually, that’s the only excuse I’ve got… Snetterton was the venue for my third outing in my Caterham racing car. If you’ve been following these reports, you’ll know that I’m exploring the Caterham racing ladder this season, working my way up the rungs until I reach the R300-S category at Croft. I competed in…

‘HOW ARE YOU GOING TO fit a bike in there?’ was the first question my friends asked me (slightly sarcastically) when they first saw the F-type. In response, I generally laughed and changed the subject, because deep down I’d thought the same thing. The boot is pleasingly capacious, but there’s no denying that it’s just not the right shape for a bicycle. For a couple of years, Jaguar sponsored the all-conquering Team Sky road-racing team and even developed a special F-type to carry a couple of bicycles during timetrial stages. It involved removing the rear screen and replacing it with a specially moulded piece of carbonfibre. Sadly, the sponsorship swapped to Ford at the beginning of this year, so my plan to half-inch this special adaptation came to naught.…

REMEMBER DANY BAHAR? Back in the late 2000s the ex-Ferrari marketing man promised to transform Lotus with an entire new range of cars – no fewer than five of them, topped by a new Esprit. It never happened, and Bahar quickly fell from grace. But the Bahar years did give us some cracking cars – not least the V6-engined Exige. Previous Exiges were pocket road-racers: tiny Elise-based coupes with fizzing four-pot engines. When the Series 3 arrived in March 2012, priced at a smidge over £50,000, it was immediately clear this was a different sort of Exige. It used the 3.5-litre supercharged Toyota V6 from the Evora S, with increases in track and wheelbase to make space and add some extra composure. At 1176kg, it was around 240kg heavier than…

W E’VE LIVED THROUGH THE ER A of the small sports saloon with a big, naturally aspirated V8 motor, and are now comfortably into the age of turbos and downsizing. But before all of this took place, you could guarantee that Mercedes’ offering would dwarf all others in terms of cylinder count and displacement. It all started officially with the W202-based C43 AMG in 1997. A replacement for the straight-six-powered C36, the ‘43’ debuted the classic M113 V8 engine in 302bhp form. This was hooked up to a five-speed torque-converter transmission, so while there were chassis changes and a subtle bodykit, AMG maintained its position by providing a more mature, comfortable offering, albeit with a tyre-shredding wild side. After the advent of the W203-generation C-class, by 2004 there was…

V ALENTINO BALBONI IS BEST KNOWN for his 40-year career at Lamborghini, during which time he helped develop some of the brand’s most iconic models. While Italy’s working laws saw him retire in 2008, the legendary test driver has been hard at work creating his own tuning brand – VB. Its first product is a new exhaust system for the Lamborghini Aventador LP750-4 SV. While no power improvements have been revealed, the 6.3kg grade 2 titanium system should shed some weight from the back of the SV. All TIG-welded by hand, right down to the billet-cut titanium mounts, the system takes 350 hours to produce. It’s why VB will make only 30 units, each for an ‘unspecified’ cost. The system had its debut at the Concorso Italiano during the…

‘The All-New Renault Mégane GT sets a fresh benchmark’ FOR MANY YEARS now Renault has placed driving pleasure towards the top of its agenda when developing new models, and in the process it has won many friends amongst car enthusiasts. Now, with the advent of the All-New Mégane GT, Renault looks set to expand that fan base still further. As if to emphasise its spirited soul, the All-New Renault Mégane GT has a low, sporting stance complemented by strong, dynamic exterior lines, a bold, attractively aggressive front end treatment and unique, distinctive lighting signatures front and rear. This chic, confident look is echoed by the beautifully crafted and comprehensively equipped interior, the ergonomics of which place the driver firmly in control of the action. With decades of experience fine-tuning the…

SOURCES IN ITALY have indicated that Lamborghini’s new boss, former Ferrari F1 chief Stefano Domenicali, is strengthening the firm’s motorsport ambitions. the logical option is Le Mans, via an expansion of the existing customer motorsport programme (Huracán Super trofeo) and using knowledge gained from racing the same car in Gt3 categories. Lamborghini has never entered the 24-hour race as a factory team, although various privateers have competed with Diablos and Murciélagos – with little success. At the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours, five marques competed in the GtE classes: Ford, Ferrari, Aston Martin, chevrolet and Porsche. the category has seen a significant increase in exposure, partly due to the injection of marketing value from Ford. A Lamborghini entry would place the company in direct competition with some of its…

ELON MUSK, CEO OF TESLA Motors, has announced ‘Part Deux’ of his master plan for his electric car company. It follows on from his first master plan devised a decade ago, one that involved building an electric sports car (the Roadster), a more affordable car (which became the Model S), an even more affordable car (the upcoming Model 3) and providing powergeneration options not necessarily related to cars – something Musk achieved by funding solar-panel manufacturer SolarCity. Part two is a little more complicated, with plans for creating home-based solar-roof and battery storage options, expanding Tesla’s product line to cover all major segments, developing autonomous vehicles to a point where they’ll be ten times safer than manual driving, and allowing owners to make money from their autonomous Teslas when they’re…

Test location: north York moors GPS: 54.41666, -0.75 SOMETIMES IN THIS game you find yourself out of step with your colleagues. You’re enjoying a car, its agility, the booming power delivery and sweet balance. then you step out and hear: ‘Can’t get on with that, can you?’ erm, well yes, actually. ‘What’s the steering all about?’ pipes up the next voice. ‘the chassis feels sharp but there’s not enough feel,’ joins in another. it doesn’t help that these are people i respect and usually agree with. even four-time indyCar champion Dario Franchitti is damning and i don’t feel equipped to deep-dive into damping traits with him… it’s eCoty 2015 and the mercedes-AmG Gt S is being systematically torn apart by the savage roads and isn’t winning many friends. i rather…

Test location: Riseley, Bedfordshire GPS: 52.23818, -0.51102 ONLY CATERHAM aficionados looking closely might be able to spot the Seven 310R’s unique visual identifiers. It’s the first Caterham available with optional LED headlamps, true, but they look much the same as the old lights. And anyway, this is a Caterham, so what did you expect? The mechanical changes made to create this new model are similarly stealthy. The 310R has the 1.6-litre Ford Sigma engine from the 270, but it’s fitted with the upgrades required to move a Caterham Tracksport racer up to the company’s Supersport series. That means new, more aggressive cams and a remap that increases peak power by 17bhp to 152bhp. The weight is the same as the 270R’s at 540kg, but thanks to the extra power the…

Test location: Blyton Park, Lincolnshire GPS: 53.453830, -0.685840 We’ve groWn used to the mind-blowing performance of radical’s road-legal track monsters, but this new rXC Turbo 500r really is something special. Built around a simple but strong and light tubular steel spaceframe, the range-topping rXC is powered by a twin-turbo, 3.5-litre v6 Ford ecoBoost engine good for a mighty 600bhp and 465lb ft of torque. The seriousness of those figures really hits home when you learn the 500r weighs just 1070kg and costs £201,000, because combined they equate to a hypercar power-to-weight ratio for McLaren 650s money. It’s fun to pop the gullwing door, then step up and over the sill and drop yourself into the driver’s seat. The view out is pure Le Mans racer, framed by that bubble windscreen…

UNSURPRISINGLY, THE FOCUS IS NOT ONLY THE quickest, but also the easiest car to get off the line. Over 300bhp is so much more efficiently deployed through all four wheels. The front-wheel-drive cars take rather more patience… The Golf and Leon are very similar, with their boisterous turbocharged torque all too easily overwhelming the front tyres not only in the initial phase, but also as the power peaks higher up the rev range in first gear or when the torque thumps back in with the change to second. Too few revs can be just as disastrous because the engines bog down, then reignite with no finesse. Judging an upshift is also challenging, as it has to be done through dial-watching, with no real aural cues. All in all, tricky, and…

THE LATEST 308 GTI TRULY IS A RETURN TO FORM FOR Peugeot, so much so that we’re running one on the Fast Fleet. But with a relatively modest 266bhp it would have been hopelessly outgunned in this month’s hot hatch group test (starting on page 60). The French marque doesn’t have a fully equipped rival for the likes of Volkswagen’s Golf GTI Clubsport S for the time being, then, but if you know where to look, you’ll find a 308 that makes the Clubsport S look about as thrilling as an overloaded wheelie bin. ‘We start with the standard 308 GTi engine,’ says Laurent Guyot, ‘then we fit a massive turbo.’ As the man responsible for Peugeot Sport’s customer racing programmes, Guyot has overseen the development of the new 308…

‘ THE NICE LADY IN THERE , ’ says Oliver Gavin, motioning to the Glen Nevis visitor centre that he’s just emerged from, ‘informed me that there’s still quite a lot of snow on the top of the mountain.’ I look at the boot of the Corvette in front of me. It’s a huge boot. Bigger than any boot in any other 650bhp two-seat sports car I can think of. And it’s stuffed to the gills with waterproof clothes and glucose-filled supplies. But it doesn’t have any crampons in it. For what won’t be the last time in this adventure, I wonder if we might have taken a bit more kerb than our dampers are set up for. Oliver Gavin, in case you aren’t familiar, is arguably the UK’s greatest…

TOYOTA HAS HAD A BAD time of late, regularly finding itself stealing headlines due to recalls on bazillions of cars over safety concerns. There are others, too: Jaguar’s F-Pace had a recall as soon as it went on sale because of a wiring issue, Porsche’s 991 GT3 had an engine recall, and Vauxhall is recalling its Zafiras due to the cars being so unremittingly dull. Or something. So recalls happen. They’re often just manufacturing glitches or caused by third-party parts. But what about design issues, where something is obviously wrong or so unsafe that it surely shouldn’t have passed the prototype stage? Take the 308 GTi’s steering wheel. When you first sit in the car, you snigger at how small the wheel is. Then, after grabbing it, you think it…

IT WAS MEANT TO BE A road-trip that I’d never forget. And it most definitely was, but not necessarily for the right reasons. The plan was to drive in convoy with a BMW M2 to the Nürburgring 24 Hours, complete a parade lap of the circuit in the M2, watch the race, then take the E46 to Berlin for a holiday with the girlfriend. We set out as a group early on the Friday morning, with editor Nick Trott and videographer Sam Riley in the M2, and me following in my M3. Everyone was in good spirits and we swapped between cars en route, at which point I discovered that I really wanted an M2! The journey there couldn’t have gone better. Then we arrived at the circuit to the…

IT’S BEEN A YEAR SINCE the SC went pop. I can’t quite believe it either. To recap, its moment of mechanical (and financial) destruction occurred at an evo track evening when I wrong slotted from fourth to first. Nothing much happened to be honest; as I released the clutch pedal I felt a tiny nip as engine speed attempted to catch up with road speed. I caught it just in time, or so I thought. The rears didn’t lock and there was no outward sign of problems. However, inside the engine, valves hit pistons – rather evenly it would appear during the post mortem – and over the next couple of weeks the car gradually lost power. There was no smoke, no oil, and certainly no sparks or flames…

WITH TRACK TIME AT ONE of evo’s track evenings booked but my Eunos Roadster currently awaiting a few bits and pieces, it was the Kia’s time to shine on circuit this month. There were a few certainties: it would be a great deal faster than my MX-5 and a doddle to get used to if its road handling was any indication. I was less certain about whether it would be fast enough, and as it’s one of the less extreme front-drivers around, I also wasn’t sure whether it’d be particularly fun. I needn’t have worried. After chatting to Kia’s performance-car chief Albert Biermann recently, he most likely has something tasty planned for the next Proceed GT, but the current car is as much a hidden gem on track as…

I’VE BEEN IN DENIAL FOR the last couple of weeks, but now I have to confront the fact that I only have a month of Bentley custodianship left to enjoy. Life with a Bentley is an odd mix of the ordinary and extraordinary. It’s such a fabulous thing, you feel as though it should be kept for best – special occasions that warrant its pomp – but it’s so accomplished and accessible you find the most tenuous excuse to drive it. Let’s just say the Meaden fridge has never been so well stocked with milk. Is there anything I don’t like about the Conti? Not really, but if I was forced to be picky I’d say the powered bootlid is a bit slow to raise (especially if you’re waiting in…

THERE’S ONLY EVER BEEN ONE PURE-BLOODED ALFA V6 and it’s difficult to say for which characteristic we love it more – its swooning good looks or its spine-tingling wail. evo old boy John Simister once compared the latter to a choir of tenors channelling ‘O Sole Mio’ down a drainpipe, but today we make the case for this wonderful engine’s visible charms. A 60-degree V6 designed by Giuseppe Busso, it debuted almost four decades ago as a 2.5-litre single-overhead-camshaft powerplant in the Alfa 6. Since then it’s featured in numerous Alfa specials and is practically a dead cert on any ‘greatest engines’ shortlist. Transversely mounted, longitudinally mounted (notably for the SZ), carburetted, fuelinjected, turbocharged, naturally aspirated, given additional camshafts and valves, it was ultimately bored out to 3.2 litres before…

THE FINAL PIECE IN one of motorsport’s most mysterious jigsaws has been nudged into position at last – with the restoration of Audi’s stillborn mid-engined Group S rally car. Called RS 002, the odd-looking creation has spent much of its life on static display in Ingolstadt. It was created in 1986 by Audi Sport engineers without the direct knowledge of the company’s management after an earlier, less radical-looking mid-engined project was captured by a spy photographer and dismantled hours after its existence was made public. The 002 had been the only non-runner among the handful of known prototypes for Group S, which was designed to produce safer rallying than the legendary Group B regulations while creating more freedom for manufacturers to enter the sport without building hundreds or even…

TECHNOLOGY WITHIN cars doesn’t come much more controversial than speaker-augmented engine sounds. we, as car enthusiasts, prefer our engine’s exhaust system to have been tuned for performance, and if it happens to sound good as a result, then that’s a welcome bonus. however, it’s a different view when it comes to engine noise amplified through a car’s stereo system. yet as turbocharged engines dull exhaust notes and all but eradicate induction noise, and as sound insulation improves and legislation restricts volume, engine sounds emanating from speakers may soon be the only way to hear any satisfying mechanical chorus from inside your car. the task of trying to convince car enthusiasts that ‘fake’ engine sounds are acceptable is no mean feat, but car manufacturers from audi to Porsche are investing millions…

Test location: A4086, north Wales GPS: 53.09357, -3.95485 For peopLe Who really care about the finer points of driving, the Mk5 Volkswagen Golf GTI was always a more appealing car than the faster, four-wheel-drive r32 model. Similarly, in porsche circles the base-level 911 Carrera has often been considered the superior car to the faster, more expensive Carrera S. In fact, there are many examples in recent history of the cheaper, simpler version of a performance car being preferable to the range-topping model. It isn’t just a matter of affordability, either. In the case of the Golf GTI and r32, the front-driven model was genuinely more engaging and rewarding to drive (although the r32’s six-cylinder engine was a much sweeter thing than the GTI’s turbocharged four-pot). All this considered, then, what…

Test location: Riseley, Bedfordshire GPS: 52.23818, -0.51102 A FRONT-ENGINED, REARdrive car with more than 400bhp should be treated with caution and respect, shouldn’t it? So you’d expect the 3-litre twinturbo, 404bhp Alpina B4 Biturbo to be a bit of an animal, regardless of the automatic gearbox and folding metal hard-top, wouldn’t you? However, first impressions are that of a luxury supercabriolet, because the changes Alpina has made to the standard 4-series interior might be subtle, but they elevate it to a much more elegant level. The leather feels plush, the Alcantara-covered steering wheel incredibly soft, and the blue dials are so much classier than the black items in BMW’s M4. As you’d expect, the B4 has buttons on the back of the steering wheel to change gear with, instead of…

Test location: New Forest, hampshire GPS: 50.885534, -1.539745 The auTomoTive industry’s widespread shift to turbocharging should be very good news indeed for engine tuners. With nothing more than an eCu remap the likes of Southampton-based DmS can achieve massive power and torque gains, but they’re locked in a tugof-war with manufacturers who are trying to protect their carefully aligned model hierarchies. The oems have long been trying to safeguard their eCus with passwords and access codes, but these have a habit of slipping out the back door. in response, manufacturers have taken to locating the eCu somewhere that makes it near impossible to access. ‘The eCu on a mercedes-amG C63 is hidden between the engine and the lower subframe,’ says DmS founder Rob Young. ‘it’s tucked right back. With the…

I’LL PREFACE THIS MONTH’S COLUMN by saying that it absolutely isn’t one of those ‘Oh it was better in the old days’ moans. That said, you can’t ignore the fact that track limits have become a significant and potentially very problematic issue in motorsport, and it’s a consequence of the acres of asphalt run-off that bubble-wrap many of today’s circuits. The risk-to-reward ratio has changed beyond recognition and it means current drivers can go offpiste – either by taking a wider, faster line or getting away with serious errors – with almost total impunity. When it was grass or gravel or, god forbid, trees, ‘track limits’ simply didn’t come into it, mainly because they were too obvious to be written down – something that made the racing all the more…

‘BEDFOR D AUTODROME’S WEST CIRCUIT IS WHER E BR AGGING R IGHTS WILL BE WON OR LOST’ ANY CAR THAT DITCHES ITS BACK SEATS IN search of performance needs to make that sacrifice count on track, so although the GTI Clubsport S has already proved its mettle on the road, Bedford Autodrome’s West Circuit is where bragging rights will be won or lost. With every dynamic mode set to its most aggressive and stability control disabled, the Clubsport S feels sharp and urgent. A few first-lap squirms and wriggles from the rear end suggest a certain dynamic instability, but as the Cup 2 tyres switch on with temperature, the Golf finds its feet. Traction is challenged out of the first tight hairpin, but it puts the torque down well. Braking…

I’’VE MET AUTOMOTIVE CEOs before and they don’t look much like Mate Rimac, with his youth and his scraggly beard making him stand out against the suits. I’ve tested supercars before, too, and they don’t drive much like the Concept One, the acceleration and unusual handling of which I’ll get to later. And I’ve visited countless car companies before and they don’t feel much like Rimac Automobili, with the camouflage-trouserwearing workforce and the unconventional way in which things are done. The Concept One is Rimac Automobili’s first customer car. It costs £1million, give or take, and after driving it on the Croatian coast, I’ve got it pegged as a three-and-a-halfstar car. That doesn’t really add up, does it? It loses half a star because nobody over 5ft 10in will be…

IF YOU’VE READ THIS ISSUE’S story on the ‘Hakosuka’ Nissan Skyline GT-R (see page 92) then you’ll have read that Tetsu Ikuzawa, the 74-year-old pictured on the preceding pages, is the man credited with starting the legend of the Skyline. But there is more to the story. During our day with Ikuzawa in his amazing personal museum, he confesses that it was a friend of his who was driving the far superior Porsche 904 on that day and before the race he asked this friend to let him lead for just one lap. The friend acquiesced, the crowd went wild as the boxy Prince saloon came past in the lead for one lap and the legend was born. Ikuzawa’s own incredible story was just beginning too… Ikuzawa raced a Brabham…

WHEN I POPPED OVER to RPM Technik recently to see how work on the SC was progressing (see page 122), I took the GT2 so that they could take a look at its right rear corner. I’d detected a loose feeling from that corner (well, looser than normal!) since returning from the Scotland trip and so wanted to get it checked out. With the car up on the ramps, sure enough a leaking damper was spotted. This would be an MOT failure, so I’ve taken the car off the road until it’s fixed. So that’s two 911s off the road – great! The options are to get the current damper repaired and reconditioned by Bilstein (around £100) or buy a brand new one (around £400) or to go nuts…

IT TOOK TWO WEEKS TO run-in the RS6. Which was handy, as I’d already committed to take it to Le Mans. Throwing a single bag into the RS6’s boot felt a little wasteful and I thought perhaps I should have asked a colleague or two if they wanted to join me. Then I remembered that I had, but I’m a miserable bugger when it comes to road trips so Henry Catchpole rather sensibly asked Audi if it had another RS6 he could take, which is how he came to join me with a quite splendid C5 RS6 Avant Plus. Boy, did it look cool. I mean achingly, retro cool without even trying. In an instant I was reminded why this particular RS product line is held in such high regard.…

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, IT’S been more than five years since WX11 first graced these pages. Ferrari 458s were still pretty thin on the ground back then and there are few who won’t recall the well-deserved hype the new V8 from Maranello attracted. As regular readers will know, WX11 was purchased primarily to run on 6th Gear’s supercar driving experience events, but I couldn’t help ‘appropriating’ the new arrival and using it as a daily driver on the long commute from the office near Tamworth to just north of Sheffield. Admittedly, we got off to a shaky start when a faulty fuel sender left the car stranded on the hard shoulder of the M1. It then took a while before I trusted it fully… To be quite candid, looking back…

THE MX-5 WAS LONG overdue a trackday, and with its new Dunlop SportMaxx RT 2 tyres fitted, I didn’t really have an excuse. So it was off to an evo track evening on Bedford Autodrome’s South West circuit that the MX-5 and I went. The Dunlops have done a good job in giving the MX-5 that extra bite that it so badly required on the road, and so it also proved on track, but the body-roll issue was even more noticeable on circuit, where the car could be pushed that bit harder. Roll aside, the MX-5’s brakes stood up surprisingly well. It’s wearing OEM pads, but even after five-lap runs they continued to perform. This is largely due to the MX-5’s low weight, which means the car just doesn’t…

IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE my last 996 update, but perhaps you remember I signed off on the eve of picking it back up from Litchfield. With new Powerflex bushes, refurbished Bilstein PSS9 dampers and new Agency Power rear control arms to allow me to lower the car but still get the correct camber settings, it’s fair to say I was quite excited. Litchfield had been in touch with Bilstein (and its Porsche guru, Jörg Hoffmann) and after much discussion we all agreed that GT3 ride height was perfect for my aim to create a roadoptimised but track-capable 911. This setup also looks cool, which shouldn’t really come into it but inevitably does! The front runs one degree of negative camber and the rear 1.52 degrees – all within the…