Evoの November 2019 の目次

DID YOU KNOW THAT THE 1.6-LITRE Peugeot 205 GTI was ‘sweeter’ than the larger 1.9? The early 1.6-powered Mazda MX-5s were ‘sweeter’ than the 1.8 that followed, too, while you can be assured that the 3-litre six in BMW’s E36 M3 was a ‘sweeter’ unit than the 3.2-litre that succeeded it. Perhaps ‘sweeter’ is analogous to ‘slower’, and I do find it a little more than a coincidence that proponents of the ‘sweeter’ cars tend also to be owners of those particular models. I don’t often frequent Porsche forums, but no doubt somewhere there’s an early Boxster owner who’ll swear in the name of their rebuilt engine that the 2.5 is sweeter than the later 2.7s. With 911s, though, there’s a case to be made for the basic Carreras and…

IT IS INEVITABLE, THE PLUG’S OVERTAKE of the pump. One day, not so long from now, we could be viewing performance car favourites such as the current 911 GT3 as the swansong to 150 years of internal combustion. And this, the Porsche Taycan, is the point of no return. The scales have tipped. The brand that represents the very essence of sports car manufacturing has revealed its hand. Tesla was the disruptor, but this is the response. Not so much a cold war arms race, more a frontline military offensive. This is Porsche putting its reputation, and €6billion, into shoring up its position at the figurative head of performance motoring. The Taycan, with its new factory, platform and personality, has it all on the line. It must transfer Porsche’s reputation…

GULF OIL’S COLOURS ARE OFT-REPEATED, but rarely are they used officially on a car, particularly one designed for road use. The Ford GT Heritage Edition launched at Monterey Car Week in 2018 was a rare exception, and this year sees another in the form of the Gulf Oil Heritage Edition Mustang. Unlike the GT, where Gulf worked directly with the manufacturer, the Mustang is effectively a dealership special developed by Brown Lee Performance and sold through Brown Lee Automotive in Morrison, Tennessee. Happily, though, it’s far from a badge’n’stickers job, and develops more power than Ford’s own Shelby Mustang GT500. The livery, naturally, is designed to evoke the first partnership between Ford and Gulf Oil, from the GT40 that competed at Le Mans in 1967. Like last year’s GT, the…

1. NEW CIRCUITS The city racing venues are a great way to reach a new motorsport audience who won’t traipse out to a World War II airfield at a weekend, but the latest Formula E cars have outgrown the current circuit designs. Each season the cars are quicker, but the current circuits are now too tight and poorly configured to let them race to their full potential. Long straights and tight corners results in clumsy racing. The cars, drivers and spectators deserve better. It’s also time for Formula E to break out of the city once in a while. Be brave and head to Brands Hatch Indy for a weekend… You never know, you might enjoy it. 2. NIGHT RACING A former or current dockside car park doesn’t look its…

FUNNY HOW A RUSTLE OF LEAVES can deafen when there’s complete silence. Green foliage bursts from any and every exposed crevice, crack and gulley, frenzied in growth now that it’s completely unrestricted by human hands. Decay, rot, subsidence, erosion; slowly, but with a sense of crushing inevitability, nature is reclaiming what was once its own. RAF Upwood’s days are most definitely numbered. New housing is well under the wire, encroaching on and then systematically consuming its core buildings that once stood neat and proud. This is ground that would have shaken to the roar of Rolls-Royce Merlins slung under the wings of De Havilland Mosquitos and Avro Lancasters, and latterly the thunder of its Avon jet engines on the groundbreaking English Electric Canberra bomber, but now there’s simply the distant…

‘THE E46 M3 WAS A RETURN TO FORM FOR BMW M AFTER THE E36 THAT SO DISAPPOINTED’ MENTION BMW’S M3 TO ANYONE WITH EVEN A modicum of superunleaded running through their veins and the first thing that will come to mind is the iconic, motorsport-inspired E30. It isn’t fast by today’s standards, but its revhungry 16-valve S14 engine is one of the very best, and when combined with the gloriously tactile chassis ensures the E30 remains highly desirable 30 years after its debut, with the very best examples attracting six-figure price tags. For those of us with more modest means the E30 M3 boat has well and truly sailed, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have an M3 parked on your driveway for a reasonable sum. And while, to the…

IN EVO’S FEATURES SECTION THIS MONTH we’ve taken a look at the endangered species that is the naturally aspirated, manual-gearbox-equipped performance car. Now here’s another endangered species for you: the three-door hot hatchback. Once upon a time, three doors was the norm. Even if five was an option, three was still seen as superior, for the reduced shutline count, better-balanced fenestration and, according to hot hatch folklore, lower kerb weight and more rigid bodyshell. Oh, and also because it didn’t make you look like a boring fart. Today, the near-universal adoption of five-doors-only has seen that stigma mostly disappear, but there was still no question about speccing our new Golf GTI TCR with anything more than a trio of portals. Call it one last chance to enjoy that link with…

TAKING YOUR CAR TO AN AIRFIELD MAY not have the same kudos as going to a proper trackday, but as I discovered this month, when evo’s Mustang was invited to North Weald Airfield in Essex by Ford tuning company Steeda UK for one of its driving experience days, there are several advantages. By far the biggest, quite literally, is space. Most trackday organisers will, quite rightly, wave the black flag if you start running off onto the grass or doing one too many pirouettes, but on Steeda’s well-organised event not only was there virtually nothing to hit, but spinning was literally encouraged. I managed to go almost the whole day without sending deputy editor Adam Towler’s pony car around in a smoky circle, but when I finally did, getting slightly…

IT DOESN’T TAKE TOO LONG TO REALISE that calling more and more specialists and looking at more and more forum posts won’t change the answer. If you’re told that your 996 needs an engine rebuild, the figure seems to be about £15,000. There are ways to reduce that bill – if the cylinders have fallen victim to bore scoring (where the Lokasil cylinder lining starts to scratch and score) perhaps you’ll only need to have new liners put into one, two or three of the six cylinders. You might get away with £7500 or so. But I quickly decided this wasn’t a make do and mend, but a full-on #makethe996greatagain exercise. I was going to do it properly. Of course, there remained much mystery surrounding the cause of the misfire,…

I WONDER HOW THE MÉGANE TROPHY-R will be perceived in years to come? After 40-odd years of hot hatch history in the UK, the relentless march of technology, evolving social attitudes and market trends, we have arrived here, now, in summer 2019, with two cars that blow into tiny fragments the hot hatch ceiling. One, the Mercedes-AMG A45 S, packs an absurd 415bhp, and weighs an equally absurd 1560kg. The other is this exotic and eye-wateringly expensive Renault – an arguably even more extreme proposition. In the ripe, mellow, autumnal days of the pre-electrification internal combustion engine’s lifetime, is this really as focused, uncompromising and ears-pinned-back-fast as the hot hatch is ever going to get? In addition, the Mégane Trophy-R may very well be the last of the hardcore Renault…

TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO THE FIRST AUDI S4 reached the heady heights of inclusion in the very first evo Car of the year. It’s fair to say the latest S4 will not be replicating that feat, but that’s no slight on the competence of Audi’s latest hotshot saloon and wagon, more a reflection of how far the performance car game has moved along in the past two decades. But while the S4 remains both V6-powered and twin-turbocharged, today’s model drinks diesel. The stuff was just taking off in 1998 thanks to brawny Volkswagens and surprisingly swift Peugeots, but four years on from Dieselgate it seems an optimistic, if not misguided move by Audi. It’s not without precedent though. Recently we drove the latest S6 and S7 (evo 263), both of which…

AUDI’S RS6 AVANT IS ONE OF THOSE performance cars that shouldn’t be a hit, but is. It will rarely win a group test because its rivals from Stuttgart and the other side of Munich (when it builds such a car) are judged to be more focused, sharper and more rewarding to drive when not loaded to the gunwales. Yet it’s the RS6 that many of us would purchase if it were our own money. The RS6 has always had that additional personality trait, the one that appeals on a level beyond driver modes, power outputs and the nuances of steering feel; it’s the faithful companion that will never say no. Having invented the fast estate car concept 25 years ago with a little help from Porsche, with its latest RS6…

THE LEGACIES OF HENRY FORD, ENZO FERRARI and Ferdinand Porsche live on through the car companies that continue to carry their family names. Ferdinand Piëch, who passed away in August at the age of 82 following a short illness, never started his own car company, never drove through factory gates with his name above them. But he did build one of the biggest and most successful automotive groups in the world from the ashes of a failing car company – a company that was reportedly only three weeks from closing its doors for good when the Austrian presented an ultimatum to the then VW board: do it my way, or we will all be looking for new jobs. The rise of the VW Group’s power and influence over the last…

I LOVE CARS, HAVE DONE ALL MY LIFE FROM MY VERY EARLY formative years: Hot Wheels, Scalextric, my dad taking me to see the RAC rally to watch Lancias, Subarus and Mitsubishis battle for honours. My fate was sealed and a fascination for sports cars has been there ever since. I have been lucky to own an array of performance cars, from Lotus, Porsche, BMW and Alpine, to my current McLaren 570GT and Porsche 996 Turbo – manual of course – that give me two diverse offerings. So why am I so fed up with the current array of hypercars, and in particular the Lotus Evija (evo 265)? First of all, what a fabulous design. I love it. However, what a missed opportunity. All sports car fans have been waiting…

THERE COULD BE ONE REASON WHY FERRARI has replaced the 488 GTB after just four years in production, and that reason could be the McLaren 720S, the GTB’s versatile, 700bhp-plus, British rival. It’s more likely, though, that there are a number of reasons. Maybe there’s a hybrid model on the way (aside from the SF90 Stradale) and the 710bhp F8 Tributo is holding the fort until it arrives; it seems an unusual step for Ferrari to make a third car on the same platform in such a short space of time, and this one has its roots in the 458 Italia that launched only a decade ago. Yet whether it’s knee-jerk or stopgap or was in the plan all along, there’s no question the F8 Tributo is a great looking…

CAN IT REALLY BE 20 YEARS? SEEMS HARD TO believe so many summers could have passed since the 996 GT3 was introduced to the world’s motoring press in a somewhat low-key launch in rural Germany. But two decades it most certainly is. A fact backed up by a catalogue of vivid memories gathered during the many hundreds of hours and thousands of miles this magazine has spent behind the wheel of every iteration of GT3 since 1999. We could have drawn together all of those cars for a definitive GT3 gathering, but so sizeable is that body of work we would be required to dedicate an entire magazine issue to the task. Not a bad idea, I suppose… That or we’d have to skim over them with scant regard for…

I UNDERWENT A DRIVING REBOOT this month. Sounds technical, painful, too, but involved nothing more than using a piece of simple machinery for 48 hours. To be more specific, a Caterham Seven 310R, a performance car that has very little in common with the evo Fast Fleet R8 aside from the fuel it burns and a few core components required to create it. What two days in a 540kg, 152bhp Seven does is make you reassess every part of your driving process. With the R8 you walk up to its door, pull it open once the keyless entry has unlocked it, slide yourself in, place your phone in the charging tray and the key in the neat little slot on the other side of the gear selector. Foot on the…

I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO DRIVE A Light Car Company Rocket recently. It was, I realised afterwards, the same colour scheme as my Mk2 Escort (although the Rocket’s kind owner was more specific about the colour designations – Carrara White body and Riviera Blue wheels). But that’s not the reason for including it here. The drive to Wales to meet the little Murray machine was completed in the E53 and the Mercedes was its usual impeccable self on the early morning motorway mooch. The cabin really is a lovely place to spend time, and not being a full-fat 63 AMG the ride from its multi-chamber air suspension is a little more relaxed. It’s not S-class levels of serenity inside, but when you shut the door you nevertheless get that sense…

ONE LAP OF THE SILVERSTONE International Circuit is enough to be reminded just what fun you can have in a Kia Stinger GT S. It has its flaws – brakes that wilt relatively quickly, an automatic gearbox that’s a little slow and doesn’t always want to give you that decisive downshift, and plenty of pitch, dive and roll – but the fundamentals are shockingly appealing. It steers with precision, the 3.3-litre twin-turbo V6 is gutsy and has a nicely raucous edge, and the big Kia’s balance is extremely fluid and adjustable, with a tendency towards easily provoked and prolonged oversteer. The Stinger is a real entertainer. No wonder Kia UK didn’t want to see its final evaluation vehicle and first press car sent to the crusher towards the end of…

HYBRIDISATION WAS ALWAYS THE plan according to Lamborghini boss Stefano Domenicali, but the negative effects on lightness have thus far seen the technology kept on the back-burner. That’s about to change, though, because the company has turned to lightweight supercapacitor technology for its first crack at hybridisation in a new, limited-production flagship model. It’s called the Siån, and rather than being a direct replacement for the Aventador, it previews what’s to come from Lamborghini’s next generation of series production models, much as the Reventón of 2007 paved the way for the Avantador to follow the Murciélago. The Siån’s hybrid system combines an updated, 774bhp version of the naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12 found in the Aventador SVJ with a 34bhp electric motor, giving a peak combined power figure of 808bhp at…

IT’S THE LE MANS 24 HOURS RACE, 1999, and four Audi prototypes line up to take the start, a new era in motorsport for the German manufacturer. What no one could have known then was that this was also the dawn of an extraordinary new chapter in the history of Le Mans, and the wider motorsport world, and would lead to Audi challenging Porsche’s towering record of outright wins at la Sarthe, as well as bringing new levels of professionalism and investment to sportscar racing. But just why had Audi entered two different cars from two different teams? To understand this strategy is to have a grasp on not just the rules of the time, but also the person writing the cheques. The recently departed Ferdinand Piëch was a man…

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IT’S ONE OF THE MORE EYE-SURPRISING factoids relating to Bentley’s centenary that a marque so apparently steeped in racing has actively participated in top-level motorsport for a total of just three of its ten decades. More remarkable is the fact that much of the folklore that surrounds Bentley’s competition successes still centres on the legendary exploits of Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin and the flamboyant band of ‘Bentley Boys’ who between them secured so much success at Le Mans, with four consecutive wins between 1927 and 1930. Those colossal machines and charismatic drivers were where the marque’s reputation was forged, but it would be more than 70 years before Bentley would once again tackle the world’s most famous endurance race, thanks to investment from new owner Volkswagen. Victory in the 24…

I KNEW THE DAY WOULD EVENTUALLY come, but it didn’t make the Stelvio’s depature any easier. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I was first handed the key, but now the Alfa has gone I’m really missing the versatility of an SUV with 503bhp. The last SUV I ran was a Nissan Juke Nismo RS, and the first time I turned up to a photoshoot with it, Dickie Meaden and Jethro Bovingdon instantly burst out laughing. This was not the case with the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio. This time the responses were more along the lines of: ‘Is that your new long-termer? Nice work. They’re meant to be good…’ Over my eight months with it, that praise would start to look like an understatement. So the Alfa had…