Tabla de contenidos para November 2017 en Evo

THE ART OF ROAD TESTING IS NOT ONE THAT EVO takes lightly. We cover thousands of miles on road and track to pull together the fairest and most thorough tests we can. On occasion, when a car goes pop (yes, it does still happen) or pulls a sickie halfway through a test, we’ll wait until we can do the test again rather than fudge it with what we already have. And evo has never been one to try to figure a new car down a motorway slip-road during a launch event, just so we can be first with a half-hearted result. And we won’t send someone to collect lunch in a car and then ask them to write a road test off the back of it, either. This is why…

BEING GENEROUS, YOU might say that the Ferrari Californiaof2008onwards is far from our favourite product to have slipped through the gates at Maranello. To call it the modern-day equivalent of the Mondial would be a touch harsh, but even so it’s never looked like a thoroughbred Italian supercar and the current ‘T’ version doesn’t drive as well as its stablemates – or most of its rivals. There is hope, then, that its replacement, the Portofino, will be far more worthy of the badge so many pay so much for. Certainly, first impressions are good. It actually looks like a Ferrari for one thing: there’s a hint of F12 mixed with 488 GTB about its nose and a pair of tightly tucked-in hips ahead of the rear arches. Ferrari’s design team…

‘It gathers pace with increasing intensity and commotion’ TWO-HUNDRED AND FIFTY horsepower isn’t a lot in the modern autosphere, but it feels like plenty when directed through the rear tyres of a car as simple and slender as a Mazda MX-5. Particularly as Northamptonshire seems to be auditioning for the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race and farm vehicles have left a thin sheen of various brown substances on the county’s B-roads. The MX-5 in question is Brackleybased BBR GTi’s first turbocharged take on the fourth-generation model, following naturally aspirated packages for the 1.5- and 2-litre cars. The conversion is based on the largerengined MX-5 and centres around a twin-scroll hybrid turbo, a bespoke exhaust manifold and a stainlesssteel downpipe. Gases are cooled by a front-mounted aluminium intercooler, while…

IT’S ARGUABLE THAT THE BMW M2 is the best small M-car in a generation, yet German tuner AC Schnitzer believes there’s still some room for improvement. As a result, it has developed this, the ACS2 Sport. The package effectively massages the M2’s engine and suspension, and looks for what is claimed to be a faster and more involving driving experience. Given the standard car sets the bar quite high, it’s fair to say Schnitzer has its work cut out. The ACS2 gets off to a good start, though, with its turbocharged 3-litre straight-six treated to a tickled ECU that delivers impressive headline figures of 414bhp and 428lb ft – gains of 49bhp and 59lb ft over the M2. The revised motor then plays a deeper tune through a quad-exit, ACmonogrammed…

FROM THE DRIVER’S SEAT IT feels like there might be a major upset… First up is the most powerful car, the Mercedes. The challenge with cars that have the potential for massive oversteer is that getting the speed out of them means treading a thin line, and slipping off it can turn very quickly into two fat black lines. This is annoying in the slower corners, when you just want to get on with things, and heart-pounding when it happens through the fastest corner on the lap… Stability control was set to Sport for the warm-up lap and first flyer, allowing some slip and thus showing where traction is likely to be an issue, which is pretty much everywhere. It does a good job, keeping the tail in line without…

AS A MOTORSPORT FAN, YOU MAY BE ASKING WHAT in the name of Nelson Piquet Jr is going on with your sport. Manufacturers are jumping ships and joining bandwagons quicker than NPJ could react to a radio message during a night race. And once-headline motorsport series are now staring at vast empty spaces in the paddock where the corporate hospitality units of the world’s biggest car makers previously stood. Formula E would appear, on the face of it, to be the biggest benefactor of this shake-up. Recently Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Porsche all confirmed their switch to the all-electric single-seater series with full works teams, and within days of each other. Merc ditched Germany’s DTM touring car series to fund the switch, while Porsche will end its World Endurance Championship…

YOU KNOW THE SCORE WITH BUYING THE latest must-have high-performance car. You either need to be a blood relative of the company CEO or be prepared to allow the dealer’s sales director to drink your wine collection and hang your art in his smallest room. Oh, and if his kid is looking for a prom date, he can take one of your offspring – and you’ll have to pick up the bill for the chopper so they can arrive in style, too. Then and only then will he instruct the receptionist to allow you beyond the coffee machine and the copies of Vogue to sit outside his office, feeling like a fifth-former who has been spotted challenging the geography teacher to a round of Jägerbombs. Even if you make it…

WHEN THE LUPO GTI WAS launched at the end of 2000, a number of road testers – including our very own Mr Meaden – likened it to the Mk1 Golf GTI. And you could see their point. As with the classic Golf, the Lupo was small, light and bags of fun. With cars growing inexorably bigger and heavier, that was something to celebrate. And now, like those early Golfs, the Lupo GTI is emerging as a modern classic with a strong following all of its own. In fact, looking at the stats, little wolfie (Lupo meaning wolf, a nod to VW’s Wolfsburg HQ) had quite a bit more bite than its great-grandad. Whereas both (initially at least, in the case of the Golf) had 1.6-litre fuel-injected four-pots driving the front…

‘A CAR THAT MUST BE useable day-to-day.’ Much to the disbelief of almost everyone here now, that was one of the goals that former evo writers Dan Prosser and Jethro Bovingdon were aiming for when they finetuned the Challenge’s chassis and tyre combo. Anyone who’s been in it since would never describe it as ‘useable’. If they were being kind, they might call it ‘track focused’. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love this car and I am totally happy using it every day. But that’s because ride quality and NVH aren’t really things I worry about in my own cars. If a car drives well and is engaging and thrilling, I’ll easily forgive a bumpy ride and some slight vibrations. But even I will admit there’s been something not…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE EVO TRACK DAY TEAM descended once more on the banked oval of Rockingham for our third track evening of the summer. As attendees gathered in the paddock the rain held off, and as the klaxon sounded, the pitlane was opened. The obligatory plethora of Porsches, from old 911s to Cayman GT4s, were a welcome sight. So too was an Italian duo: evo’s long-term Giulia Quadrifoglio and a GTV6 bookending the last 40 or so years of Alfa Romeo production. The warm mid-evening temperatures provided pleasant respite for those roaming the paddock. On track, negotiating the sevendegree- banked Turn 1 – throttle pinned – was a riveting feat for many. Perfecting, or otherwise, the braking point for the tight Turn 2 often set the tone for the…

LOTUS EXIGE CUP 380 // AUDI RS3 SPORTBACK // ASTON MARTIN VANQUISH S VOLANTE // CATERHAM SEVEN 420R DONINGTON EDITION // BBR MAZDA MX-5 TURBO // AC SCHNITZER M2 I HEAR THE EXIGE CUP 380 A FRACTION BEFORE I SEE IT: the resonant whah-whah-whah of the supercharged V6, just above idle and barely silenced, as it reverberates across an empty high street. First impressions count, and mine of this Lotus is that it has just turned left instead of right at Arnage corner to arrive at this rural part of Bedfordshire. Its shrunken Group C-esque form looks starkly low, compact and angry sandwiched amongst the typical vehicles and street furniture of an English village. It has red wheels, for heaven’s sake. Anticipation of this incongruous rendezvous with Hethel’s most aggressive…

FORGET FOR A MOMENT that this year Caterham’s Seven celebrates its 60th anniversary. What’s more relevant, for this car at least, is that Donington Park circuit is celebrating 40 years since it was re-opened. To mark that event, Caterham dealer and trackday purveyor BookaTrack has used its experience with the Seven to create what it thinks is the ultimate Caterham. The Donington Edition starts as a 420R, with its dry-sumped, 210bhp 2-litre Ford Duratec engine. However, for your £47,500 (a regular 420R starts at £35,490), there’s also the carbonfibre dash from the range-topping, supercharged 620R as well as that car’s nose-cone, with its extra intakes and bigger oil cooler. The Donington also has a host of trackday paraphernalia, including a full roll-cage from the 420R race car (previously known as…

THIS IS SHAPING UP TO BE A BRUISING encounter. The new Audi RS5 has not long arrived in the UK (see Driven, evo 238) and already it’s spoiling for a fight. Lighter, faster and more agile than before, it’s got the recently revised BMW M4 Competition Package and hard-hitting Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe firmly in its sights. The last RS5 was depressingly underwhelming. Its glorious naturally aspirated engine and elegantly enhanced shape promised much, but it was undermined by a chassis that delivered the sort of poise and grace you’d expect from an Ed Balls Strictly Come Dancing routine. Audi’s riposte has been to shave 60kg from the new model with the help of the firm’s scalable MLB architecture, while a heart transplant means a new, 444bhp twin-turbocharged 2.9-litre V6…

THE SEATING POSITION IS SO HEAVILY reclined, you feel less like the driver of a car and more like an astronaut ready for launch. The steering wheel, ugly to look at with its chunky, tacked-on digital display but so perfect to hold, reaches to within a hand’s span of your sternum. Strapped tightly into the bucket seat with your feet stretched way out ahead, you peer through the letter-box windscreen, the gap between the thick black sun-strip above and the blue-trimmed dash below scarcely more than a few inches. It looks vast, fearsome and daunting from the outside but, within the cabin, the Maserati MC12 Versione Corse feels so very right. How we scoffed when Ferrari first announced its FXX programme back in 2005. The idea that anyone could be…

THE R32 GENERATION Skyline GT-R was conceived for one reason: to succeed in Group A racing in Japan. It was staggeringly successful, too, winning 29 races from 29 starts. At the car’s heart was an RB26DETT 2.6-litre DOHC twinturbo engine that, while rated at 276bhp, had huge tuning potential. This was linked to a four-wheeldrive system called ATTESA E-TS – Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-Terrain with Electronic Torque Split. Channelling all the power to the rear wheels in normal conditions, it could shuffle up to 50 per cent to the fronts if required. There was even rear-wheel steering, or HICAS – High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering. Homologation required the release of a Nismo R32 in 1990 and 560 examples were produced – 500 for the road, the rest…

HAILING FROM AMERICA, CHARLES started out with cars that couldn’t be more different from the small hatchbacks that most Europeans begin with. Instead he drove cars so huge that their ‘hoods’ were measured in acres. This was mostly thanks to his mother, who would only help him buy a car if it was ‘big enough to keep him safe’. This meant he owned some true Americana, including a Mercury Eight. As soon as he could, though, Charles got himself into some smaller performance cars, starting with a Chrysler Laser Turbo (has a car ever sounded so ’80s?) and a Ford Taurus SHO (for ‘Super High Output’). Charles would have kept the SHO, with its revvy, Yamaha-built V6 and manual gearbox, had his wife not crashed it into a wall. But…

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN FIVE years since I first wrote an evo Fast Fleet report, and if there has been a theme for the last half-decade, it has been ‘change’. When I started off – initially on evo.co.uk, then in the magazine soon after – my garage in Surrey contained a Ferrari F40, an F50, a Koenigsegg CCR, a Mosler MT900S and a Jaguar XJR-15. Today the garage is in Texas and only the F40 remains from that original fleet. Now the other members are three McLarens – a P1, a 675LT Spider and a 650S Spider – plus a Ferrari 599 GTB HGTE and a Maserati GranCabrio. In the interim, three McLaren 12Cs have come and gone, as have three more Ferraris: a 612, a 430 Scuderia and a…

‘The car becomes so unresponsive to the throttle it seems almost bored, and the gain in fuel economy is small’ HAVING DISCOVERED LAST month that it is possible to have the feistiest engine setting without the feistiest auto gearbox response, I have now settled on my favourite everyday ‘Drive Profile’. Press the Cupra button on the dash and four options are offered – Comfort, Sport, Cupra and Individual. Comfort really takes the edge off things – perfect when I’ve got my mum in the car. Cupra is a bit too much for daily driving – the engine’s too loud and I don’t like the heaviness of the steering. In theory, Sport should be the ‘Goldilocks’ setting but the steering is the same and the suspension control is just not resolved.…

IN FOUR OR FIVE DECADES’ time, long after new petrol vehicles have been consigned to the history books and remaining examples of the 2018 Bentley Continental GT are parked on lawns in Villa d’Este and Pebble Beach, curmudgeonly old millennials will peer through its slim side glazing to glean a taste of how GT cars used to be. When they do, they won’t be faced with the disappointing black mirror of a long-obsolete infotainment system, like they’d seen in the nearby McLarens and Aston Martins. Instead, they’ll see three small analogue dials: one an outside air temperature gauge, another with its needle pointing to one of the cardinal directions, and the last a stopwatch. Back in 2017, the owner of a new Continental GT can choose to show either these…

YOU THOUGHT THE Vanquish was done with, didn’t you? After all, the DB11 is rolling out of Gaydon in healthy numbers, we’ll have driven a V8-engined variant by the time you read this, and the DB11 Volante will be along soon after. Surely two V12-engined GT cars is one too many for a firm the size of Aston? It seems not. A replacement for the current Vanquish will be along eventually (there’s a new V8 Vantage to hit the road first), but for now the car has entered its twilight years having been freshly invigorated in Vanquish S form, with one minor facelift left to go. And that’s great news, because the Vanquish S really is one very special Aston Martin. Or, rather, two very special Aston Martins, because the…

BLAME RS3 DRIVERS IF WE have a particularly wet and windy autumn. Each and every one of them will be praying for rain – perfect conditions in which to appreciate the capabilities of Audi’s new super-hatch. We’ve been here before, of course, having already driven the updated RS3, albeit in saloon form, on the ultra-smooth desert roads of Oman (evo 235), but there’s nothing quite like a bumpy Bedfordshire back-road to unmask a new hot hatch. And this latest RS3 is one of the hottest. Its refreshed 2.5-litre, five-cylinder TFSI engine produces 394bhp – up from 362bhp – in turn making this the most powerful car in its class. The 0-62mph claim of 4.1sec is two-tenths quicker than before, a tenth quicker than a Mercedes-AMG A45’s and a further tenth…

PARKED AT THE START OF the Millbrook mile straight, the C63’s engine is settled to a low, purposeful idle that hints heavily at the performance potential. Pull both aluminium gearshift paddles towards you to engage the launch mode, then tap the right one briefly to confirm you’re ready. Plant your left foot on the brake and your right foot on the throttle and wait for the V8 to start bellowing and crackling at a preset 3500rpm before side-stepping the brake and letting the computers do the rest. It sounds easy, but in reality getting the rear-wheel-drive Mercedes off the line takes practice. Selecting the traction control’s halfway-house Sport setting and carefully feathering the throttle helps the C63 roar to 60mph in 4.3sec, which is a few tenths behind Merc’s claim…

‘The fastest and finest Aventador you can actually buy this side of the hardcore SV’ ASULTRY THURSDAY AFTERNOON IN the south of France and, somewhere on a road snaking up the side of a mountain, the main event is toothache versus Aventador S. Willing 400mg of recently swallowed Ibuprofen to get a grip while 730 violently vocal horsepower chases the arc of a yellowing sun before it disappears behind the ragged skyline of the Col de Vence, it’s a throb-off. And, if it weren’t for the Aventador’s unremitting intensity on this insanely twisted and, frankly, too narrow ascent, I’m pretty sure my previously dormant wisdom tooth’s tectonic rumbling would be having the better of it. I can’t help thinking there’s an entire Top Trumps Rolodex of cars more suited to…

‘You need to be more careful on a classic that doesn’t have a clearcoat. The paint will be a lot softer, so caution is key’ POLISH, WHAT IS IT? Many people don’t realise that polish is abrasive and its purpose is to remove defects. With modern cars, you’re not touching the paint at all. In fact, the polishing process removes a very small amount of the clearcoat, because it’s the clearcoat that gets damaged. A polish is designed to remove that damage, whether it be in the form of water marks, acid-rain etch, fine scratches or swirl marks. HOW CLEAN DOES THE CAR HAVE TO BE BEFORE POLISHING? Ideally the car should be clinically clean. That means decontamination to remove tar, bug-squash and brake-dust build-up, then degreasing and then a…

‘You’d have to be extremely brave or really daft to spend your full £50,000 on the car, as any Ferrari needs a sizeable contingency budget’ AFERRARI FOR THE PRICE OF A NEW BMW 540i? It’s possible, but at this level a purchase is fraught with danger. Fortunately, evo’s John Barker, Richard Meaden, Adam Towler and James Disdale are here to offer words of wisdom. JB: What an exciting – and terrifying – prospect! Mondial? No thanks, I’m not a fan of the looks and I drove one new and it wasn’t fast even then. The 456? A V12 would be intoxicating but it could be potentially ruinous. For me, it has to be a newish V8, something that hopefully will only need servicing and consumables. I could be tempted by…

‘I asked them to investigate a clicking sound from the front suspension when the car was on full lock’ THERE IS A GIULIA-SHAPED hole on my drive as I write. No, the Quadrifoglio hasn’t been dismissed back to Alfa UK for unacceptable behaviour, rather it’s gone for a service. It’s refreshing that, in 2017, a car with 503bhp requires a once-over every 9000 miles, as the Alfa does. I’ve long been suspicious about service intervals that are more than double the UK average yearly mileage. Is this really any good for a performance car? Or any car, for that matter? I would much prefer – and welcome – more frequent check-ups, especially for a car with enough performance to circulate a certain German racetrack in under eight minutes. In a…

‘Like power and mpg numbers, official weight figures can vary significantly in the real world’ ALMOST EVERY CAR I’VE ever owned has had a quoted kerb weight of under 1000kg. In my early years of driving, this was somewhat budgetary; cheap, economical cars also tend to be fairly light. But these days it’s because I enjoy the driving experience of a lightweight car – the lack of inertia to every movement, be it through a series of twists on the road or in a punishing braking zone at the Bedford Autodrome. But I’ve never known precisely how much any of my cars have weighed. Instead I’ve relied on the official figures, but just like mpg, power or performance numbers, these can vary significantly in the real world. I’ve always erred…