Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2020 i Evo

HAS THERE EVER BEEN A SET OF MOTORSPORT technical regulations that have transformed the ability of an uninspiring and mediocre road car into an iconic performance car as well as those that governed Group A? Strip away the wings, the spoilers, the box arches, vents and air intakes and return their powertrains and chassis back to those of the cars they were based on and this month’s cover stars are little more than a collection of uninspiring, insipid and, particularly in the case of the Escort, plain worst examples of cars built by accountants rather than engineers. Presented as their mainstream selves they have not a single redeeming feature between them. Group A, be it on the rally stage or the race circuit, produced some of the most inspiring performance…

THERE IS ONE SIMPLE REASON WHY T Porsche appears to have shot itself in the foot somewhat by equipping the new Boxster GTS with the exact same engine as the pricier 718 Spyder and Cayman GT4: economics. Fact is, turning the 911’s 3-litre turbo motor into an atmospheric 4-litre engine has cost Porsche a not very small fortune. So Weissach’s bean counters knew they couldn’t realistically just use it in one car, the GT4/Spyder. Hence the reason why the new Boxster GTS, and the new Cayman GTS, are both powered by the same six-cylinder engine as their two big brothers. I’ll say that again, just in case you missed the significance: the new GTS is propelled by a six-cylinder engine, not by a curiously uncharismatic, turbocharged four-cylinder. This in itself…

IT’S UNLIKELY TO HAVE ESCAPED YOUR notice that things got a bit wobbly financially for Aston Martin as 2019 came to a close. The bills for the DBX’s development were stacking up in the in tray quicker than Aston’s own invoices were being paid and, crucially, there weren’t enough of the latter going out compared to the number of the former coming in. New factories and an all-new car don’t come cheap and Aston Martin was quickly discovering just how expensive expansion is. By the end of January, however, these financial issues appeared to have been addressed by a financial injection from billionaire Lawrence Stroll, which will prevent the company returning to the money markets to borrow nine-figure sums at interest rates payday lenders would consider excessive. Stroll and his…

‘IT WAS ARGUABLY THE FINEST ENTRY LIST EVER ASSEMBLED’ IF YOU’D BEEN STANDING NEXT TO A PARTICULAR section of the N138 heading south from Le Mans at just past 4pm on 10 June 1989, it would have been your last chance to see one of the defining dramas of international motor racing. It would also have blown your mind – both figuratively, and with the air pressure from and volume of the cars passing by just feet away at 241mph, almost literally, too. For that was the last time the Mulsanne Straight – or Les Hunaudières to give it its proper name – would be used without two chicanes breaking the flow, thereby preventing speeds from nudging 250mph. Raw, terrifying speed dangerous enough to curdle the stomach of even a…

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ONE OF THE GREAT PLEASURES OF OWNING A Subaru Impreza or Mitsubishi Evo must be opening the curtains on a winter’s morning to a blanket of pristine white snow. While poor weather would be the excuse for most drivers to crawl back between the sheets and add another 30 minutes to their alarms, a select few cars revel in uncertain conditions. They tread confidently where the rest hesitate, and impart reassurance to their drivers where others send mixed messages. We have three such cars with us today. The skies over the Peak District are heavy with misery, gusts of wind cut through to the bone, and ‘road liable to flooding’ signs litter the verges like oversized confetti. It’s not snowing, and it isn’t raining either (yet…), but we’re promised a…

I TOUCHED UPON THE APPEAL OF THE A35’s cabin in my first report, and it’s showing no sign of fading yet. As a whole the AMG’s interior has a pleasingly premium appearance, from the way leather commingles with piano black and aluminium-y surfaces, to the appearance of illuminated pinstripes and eye-catching air-vent lighting at night. The dual 10-inch screens are the stars of the show, though. They’re almost overwhelming on first acquaintance, such is the number of views – and combinations of views – they offer, but if you’re more technophile than technophobe, with a bit of curious exploration you’ll soon find your ideal configuration. I’ve settled on reasonably trad dials in the instrument cluster, with yellow digits and red needles, for both their clarity and because they have a…

ISN’T IT ALWAYS THE WAY? ONE MINUTE you’re really starting to enjoy something and the next it’s cruelly snatched away from you. Such was the case with the Leon Cupra R ST Abt, which has somehow found its way into deputy editor Adam Towler’s hands. Which means that recently I’ve been behind the wheel of our long-term Golf GTI TCR. First World problems, eh? Yet despite having only spent a few weeks with the Golf, already certain niggles have come to light. First and foremost is a lack of quick access to the driver mode settings. On my previous Cupra long-termer, an Ateca, you used a rotary dial behind the drive selector, which was easy to locate with your left hand without having to take your eyes off the road.…

CURIOUS THING, THE JAGUAR F-TYPE. IN C the brochure and in the metal it looks like the kind of object people should be scrambling over each other to buy, but sales have pottered rather than galloped. And on the road it’s never been the Cayman or 911-beater its broad pricing structure suggested it could (or should) be, though a second-place finish in eCoty 2014 for the F-type R highlighted the appeal of its wilder side. For 2020 Jaguar has implemented a few changes, which could bring some focus to the range at a time when sports cars, and particularly slow-selling ones, are getting harder and harder to justify. Outwardly these changes bring the car into closer step with the rest of Jaguar’s line-up – arguably much needed because the recent…

IT’S A WHEELSPIN-IN-FOURTH KIND OF day, the Mercedes-AMG GT R Roadster is telling me. It’s also telling me, through the rhythmic thump of catseyes under Cup 2s, that Bedfordshire isn’t quite this car’s preferred environment. The AMG rumbles busily over the surface, tyres roaring on the coarse asphalt and cabin plastics jiggling and squeaking as imperfections and road studs jostle and twist the open-topped shell. These first impressions do call into question just who the GT R Roadster might be aimed at. Those who missed out on a Porsche 911 Speedster, McLaren 600LT Spider or Ferrari 488 Pista Spider, perhaps? Even so, it still seems slightly odd to chop the roof off the more focused version of AMG’s supercar. Roadster types will surely be turned off by some of the…

IN THE 18 MONTHS THAT PHIL POPHAM, the former boss of Sunseeker, has been walking through the gates at Lotus’s Hethel HQ (complete with new flags for the long-time naked poles), he’s launched two new models: the Evija hypercar and this, the new Evora GT410. And it’s the latter that he’s had the most direct input with. ‘I was driving an Evora 410 in the US,’ explains Popham, sitting in the company’s new Warwickshire technical office that’s home to 80 of Lotus’s latest recruits to its engineering team, ‘and I took a call on the car’s Bluetooth. After a few minutes it dawned on me that I could hear what the other person was saying, rather than having to second guess as I do in my own Evora. ‘I raised…

EVO’S TRACKDAY SEASON IS BACK FOR 2020, WITH a calendar of events that promises to be bigger and better than ever. We’ll be holding events at three different locations again this year, returning to Goodwood Circuit, Brands Hatch and Bedford Autodrome. There’s also a choice of full-day or evening sessions, all run during the warmer months between May and September. So make sure you book your place now and join fellow enthusiasts and the evo team in 2020 at one (or more!) of our track events. Bedford Autodrome evo’s home circuit is once again on the calendar for 2020, with three evening dates plus a full daytime session. Our evening events will be held on the 2.8-mile South West Circuit, which will test your car’s high-speed stability before you enter…

THE CONCIERGE DOES NOT LOOK IMPRESSED. How dare we use his entranceway to vacate the taxi that has brought us from Nice airport. He shoots Aston Parrott and me a glance that I imagine translates as ‘Move, now, peasants!’, and then remonstrates loudly in French with the taxi’s driver, who outrages him even more by simply shrugging in the way only a taxi driver from Nice can do. Behind our top-hat-and-tailed nemesis, McLaren’s small Monaco showroom awaits with an Amaranth Red McLaren GT in the window. Our McLaren GT. Although somewhat embarrassingly, it transpires that it is not. Our McLaren GT – an identical car, complete with the same black wheels and Vintage Tan interior – is waiting at the dealer’s service centre. This being Monaco, it’s no surprise that…

‘MINIS. BLOODY ENORMOUS THINGS THESE days, aren’t they? Should be called the “Maxi”. S’not a proper Mini like the original…’ It’s usually about this point in the conversation that I nod off. I’ve no particular disrespect for the kind of automotive enthusiast who considers something built in the Midlands in the 1970s to be peak automobile, and it’s not because they’re hissing through false teeth having once face-planted the steering wheel upon crashing a Marina held together with gauze and pages from the Daily Mail. The sudden and uncontrollable urge to doze off is because they’re about the sixteen-thousandth person to utter such a thing, and it’s no more pithy, relevant or insightful than it was the first time some BL bore dropped their freezing-cold take on BMW’s retro hatchback.…

IF YOU OWN A REAR-WHEEL-DRIVE CAR I the upside of Britain’s depressingly dank winters is the freedom to slither and slide your way around your favourite corners and roundabouts in a manner denied you during the grippier, sunnier seasons of the year. However, if you spend your time behind the wheel of a powerful front-wheel-drive hot hatch, the winter months shine a light on traction limitations that are otherwise masked by sticky tyre compounds and clever electronics. The Mégane is a no-nonsense machine at the best of times, with some torque-steer and brief scrabbles for purchase under full throttle in the lower gears even when the roads are warm and dry. In the wet and cold these traits shoulder themselves to the forefront of the driving experience, and require a…

BEFORE YOU BEGIN READING THIS, OPEN UP YouTube and search for ‘Gymkhana Grid 2019 final’. Towards the top there should be a video, around 25 minutes long, showing a blue Toyota GT86 and a red Mazda MX-5 lined up for battle. It’s the same video I watched before deciding right there and then that I had to learn more about the MX-5 and its Lithuanian owner, Mantas Šliogeris. I meet Šliogeris and his team, Thunderwood Racing, during a trackday at a damp and windswept Brands Hatch. A wide variety of cars circulates the tiny Indy circuit, from a completely standard Ford Ka that appears to be a bit of a handful on the slick surface, to the usual high-end sports cars. One car in particular stands out, though: a metallic…

T’S EASY TO BE A CYNIC WHEN YOU’RE presented with the Shelby GT500. A car built with a clear focus on the racetrack but which weighs around 1900kg, is stuffed full of supercharged V8 for headline-grabbing power and is fitted with 305-section front tyres. An exercise in vulgar excess with heavy-duty engineering thrown at it in order to solve its inherent problems rather than a car conceived from intelligent and elegant design. It’s the sort of car that would induce panic attacks in Gordon Murray. There’s a purist lurking in me somewhere, too. I just can’t find him at the moment. Too busy marvelling at how any Mustang – let alone one producing 760bhp at 7300rpm – can get its power down so cleanly and change direction with such precision.…

THERE ARE CURRENTLY JUST SIX LEAF- Nismo RCs in existence – three of them in Japan, three in Europe. And that’s all there will ever be, say the bosses at Nismo. So there will be no road car to follow, and despite the fact that the letters R and C apparently stand for ‘Racing Competition’, there will also be no one-make series, no racing of the car anywhere in fact, not even in the forthcoming electric touring car series. And if that makes the RC seem like one of the most expensive irrelevances in the history of the automobile, consider this: Nissan may have zero intention of taking this car any further as a whole, but certain bits of it will, it says, make their way into the company’s road-going…

SHOULD YOU READ YOUR COPY OF EVO IN page order you will be arriving here having just garnered some insight (hopefully…) on the progress and future of Aston Martin and Lotus. But there’s another British sports car company with a rich heritage, passionate following and enthusiastic fan base that’s planning to return to the sports car arena. So what’s happening at TVR? We know there’s a car. Possibly two. Gordon Murray’s operation has designed an iStream chassis for it and there’s a svelte front-engined, rear-drive, two-door coupe body to go with it. And while the initial plan to offer a range of engine options has changed to just a single off-the-shelf Ford Performance V8, the car pictured here has even been seen testing (possibly as a PR stunt) on the…

ON 2 MAY 1986 HENRI Toivonen and Sergio Cresto died on a mountainside in Corsica. Group B died with them. After Attilio Bettega’s death on the same island a year earlier and the tragedy in Portugal the month before when three spectators lost their lives, the regulations were arguably already on borrowed time, but as the fire consumed the monstrous Lancia S4 the era of the WRC’s most spectacular rally cars was definitely over. Group S had been in the pipeline to succeed Group B, with several prototypes already produced, but although power would have been restricted to 300bhp, it too was now considered too extreme. So in June FISA (then the sporting arm of the FIA) announced that from the start of 1987 the World Rally Championship would be…

IT PAYS TO FORGET REALITY SOMETIMES, and today is one of those days. The surroundings make it easy enough. We’re meeting at Trancas Country Market in western Malibu, the sun has a bleached-out movie-set quality and the aroma of the Pacific Ocean hangs in the air. Trancas is nothing more than a little shopping centre with barn-style buildings dotted around a central car park, but it became renowned for its Cars and Coffee events where you’d find 959s and F40s parked up next to Gullwings and Stratoses. Real life doesn’t really apply around these parts, but fantasy car culture is everywhere. Why Malibu? Well, if you’re going to drive a hot-rodded, air-cooled 911 anywhere then the famous ‘canyon roads’ that climb the Santa Monica mountains are probably the location, conjuring…

VALKYRIE, DBX, VALHALLA, SHARE PRICES, helicopters, motorbikes and boats – you name it, there’s an Aston Martin story behind it. But away from the mid-engined hypercars, the headlines (turn to page 36 for the latest) and the company’s most important car for a generation (the DBX) remains a trio of traditional Aston Martin supersports cars that many consider to still be the beating heart of the company. And an example of one of these has just joined the evo Fast Fleet for the next six months (or 8000 miles, whichever comes first, and depending on how long it takes the AM press team to notice we’ve stopped publishing the car’s mileage in these reports…). The Vantage was the second of seven new cars under CEO Andy Palmer’s Second Century Plan,…

I’VE GOT TWO GOODBYES TO GET through this month, as change continues apace on the evo Fast Fleet. First up it’s time for the Ford Mustang GT to have a proper send-off. If I tell you that I really, really miss that car, still find myself prattling on about it at least once a week somewhere, and with someone, then you’ll probably have a good idea just how much I enjoyed having it in my life, and the extent to which I would recommend spending your hard-earned on one. It’s a great ‘character’, and that’s not to damn it with faint praise, because such a quality is sorely missing in so many new cars these days. Yes, the Stang isn’t quite the bargain it was when it first appeared in…