Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2022 i Evo

THERE’S NO ESCAPING IT, THE THRILL of driving is harder to seek out with every passing day. In the pursuit of, quite rightly, catching the reckless and dangerous, every motorist has a higher probability of being snared in the authority’s net. The process is black and white: the camera caught you, here’s your fine. Shame the cameras can’t also catch the uninterested and dimwitted who drive at night with no lights on because they see an illuminated dashboard as confirmation someone has turned their dipped beam on for them, too. But it doesn’t have to be doom and gloom, because away from the congestion, the ANPR cameras and the Vauxhall Zafiras in stealth mode there are venues and activities up and down the country that allow you to go play…

INVINCIBLE. IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO describe how the BMW M5 CS felt on the recent evo Car of the Year test (issue 293). On narrow, bumpy roads, this huge car seemed small and absurdly agile. When the rain came down and others floundered, the CS cut through the water and armed its driver with so much feedback that driving up to its considerable limits was easy and intuitive. Nothing could get close. Surfaces that perplexed the Porsche 992 GT3 and unravelled the Ferrari SF90 were deftly dissected. No four-door saloon had ever emerged a winner at eCoty until 2021. The M5 CS walked it. Today there’s no chance of rain. And seeing the M5 CS line up against a car built by Cadillac, you’re probably thinking there’s even less…

REGARDLESS OF YOUR FEELINGS TOWARDS such vehicles, the rollout of ever faster, more powerful and more extreme super-SUVs isn’t coming to an end anytime soon. The majority understand why manufacturers are hooked on them: they deliver huge profit margins, which is justification enough for their makers to seemingly contradict their claims to be on the road to carbon net zero and continue to sell you a car that’s heavy, big and powered by an engine that struggles to reach 20mpg, and won’t just create its own hole in the ozone layer but can smash right through it. While there are enough people with strong enough credit lines to fuel them, 600-plus bhp behemoths are here to stay and to help fund the scramble to electrification. And now Aston Martin has…

‘THE M15 WAS, WITHOUT A SHADOW of a doubt, the best car we ever made,’ says Lee Noble, not boastfully but with certainty. The handful of journalists who got to drive the prototype in 2006 agreed with him, including Steve Sutcliffe, who wrote: ‘It feels like a very quick, very grown-up version of the M12 but with the same great steering and handling and soothing ride.’ At that moment, Noble Automotive looked poised to step up a gear. The M15 should have been the car that cemented the reputation of Lee Noble and the company that bore his name. Instead, just 18 months later, Lee had lost everything. Today, he is working out of a small, single-storey workshop behind a row of terraced houses in a north Lincolnshire village. There’s…

DESPITE BEING DARK GREY WITH dark wheels, the Mégane RS would occasionally cause onlookers to swivel and stare. And why not? It’s a great-looking fast hatch, one of the best, I reckon, with its wider yet perfectly blended front and rear arches and wide snout with neat chequered-flag-style lower lights. Another reason to stare is that it’s so darned rare; in eight months and 8000 miles I saw only one other, and that was the replacement we had while our long-termer went in for service. The RS is now off sale here, so it’s not going to get any more common. As I write, there are about eight on AutoTrader, one orange, a couple in white and a few black, but none in Titanium Grey (like ours) and none with…

‘GIVE IT TIME,’ I WROTE AT THE END OF MY first report on our 2-litre GR Supra. Well I’ve done just that and, I’m glad to report, the relationship is definitely starting to blossom. As it almost always does when you get more familiar with a car and learn to look beyond its foibles and begin to appreciate, cherish even, the things it does well. In the smallest-engined Supra’s case, such things are not perhaps the ones you’d expect. For instance, I’m really beginning to like the way this car rides, and the way it suppresses road noise. Indeed, I just really like the way it goes down the road when you aren’t necessarily trying to remove the Lightning Yellow paint from its door handles. It glides, does the Supra,…

IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE A TOUGHER start to life on the Fast Fleet than the one endured by our RS3. Collected from Germany by digital news ed Jordan Katsianis, driven at speeds unsuitable for winter tyres across the autobahn system and then, almost as soon as the RS3 made it over the Channel, thrown into a group test with 911 Turbo S, M4 Competition xDrive and GR Yaris (evo 295). It was filthy, thoroughly abused but very definitely unbowed. The RS3 exudes toughness and has really shrugged off the pressure. It arrived on the aforementioned winter tyres and, to be honest, felt a little underwhelming. I’d heard nothing but good things, but the sharpness I’d hoped to discover wasn’t quite there. Aside from an amusing ability to slide around roundabouts…

IT’S BEEN A YEAR SINCE WE FIRST WENT BEHIND THE scenes of RML’s fascinating Short Wheelbase project (evo 286). Since then much has happened. So much, in fact, that we rejoin the team at the Millbrook Proving Ground, where ‘Car Zero’ is undergoing detailed set-up work and extensive accelerated reliability and durability testing. Between that first visit to the studio and this test drive at Millbrook, we’ve visited RML’s Wellingborough HQ on a number of occasions to see Car Zero in build. As it has progressed, it’s clear the project is something that the wider RML workforce has embraced. When it was ready to be started for the first time, everyone in the building gathered round. Michael Mallock made a short speech, and then it was wall-to-wall smiles as the…

SOME MOMENTS JUST STICK IN THE MIND. It’s early October, 2005, and my feet crunch onto the expansive gravel frontage of a rather grand Tuscan hotel, the sort of establishment that until a year or so earlier I’d been completely oblivious about, before I commenced this privileged gig driving and writing about cars. It is my first Porsche new car launch, a real pinch-myself moment as in front of me is a sweeping arc of 987-generation Cayman S models, meticulously lined up, mostly in dazzling Speed Yellow and Guards Red. Oh how I fell in love with that car on those testing, scenic Italian lanes, but it didn’t take long for dreams to ferment in the mind and to imagine how extraordinary it would be with a 996 GT3’s Mezger-series…

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FOR A GUY WITH A WEBSITE PACKED with such vibrant images, who’s Canon-sponsored (the only automotive photographer on the camera company’s books), who’s the official photographer for Pikes Peak and the Formula Drift series in the USA, LA-based Larry Chen is extremely self-deprecating. ‘I consider myself someone who doesn’t have that much natural talent,’ he confesses. ‘I recently saw the feature you guys did on my good friend Camden Thrasher [Life Through a Lens, evo 292] – now he’s a natural. With me it’s more like a game of chance. If I’m there earlier than Camden or I stay later, or if I go more days, or I shoot more photos and potentially push my body to shoot from more places, then there’s a chance for me to get something…

THEY SAY THE BEST THINGS COME to those who wait, and I’ve waited longer than most on the evo team to get a turn behind the wheel of an A110. Having read all the reviews, and witnessed many a road tester doing the ‘delicate steering’ mime while talking enthusiastically about the little French sports car, the wait has been almost agonising. But perhaps it’s been worth it, because now I’m not just getting a drive in an Alpine, or even a couple of days with one; instead, I’m getting to live with an A110 for months on end. Chuffed? You bet. Some clarification as to exactly what our long-termer is may be required. As you’re probably aware, the A110 range has recently been subject to a bit of a tidy-up,…

SAY HELLO TO OUR CUPRA LEON ESTATE 2.0 TSI VZ3 4Drive 310PS DSG. Quite a name for what is, under the skin, quite a familiar car. Haven’t we just run one of these on evo’s Fast Fleet? Yes, that’s true – but that was a hatchback and front-wheel drive; this one is a wagon and four-wheel drive. I actually ran a grey, previous-generation Leon Cupra estate a while ago, with the Abt upgrade; quite a sleeper that one was. As with that car – when they were badged as SEATs, remember – Cupra is selective as to which bits from the VW Group parts bin it will allow you to have in which model. If you want drive taken to the rear axle you have to have the estate, and…

WHERE TO BEGIN WITH THE URUS? I’M sure many of you have already made up your minds about it without even so much as sitting in one. And that’s okay, because perhaps more than any other new car currently on sale, it exists to provoke strong reactions. When your Urus is painted in Oompa Loompa orange and upholstered with the hides of a hundred Space Hoppers, those reactions are amplified tenfold. Approval is exhibited by having passengers or sometimes the driver of passing cars point their cameraphone at you with goggle-eyed enthusiasm. Presumably to be immediately uploaded to their social media channels. Disapproval comes in the form of 1000-yard straight-ahead stares while resolutely refusing to let you merge in a traffic queue. Sometimes you get some interaction in the form…

ONE THOUSAND, SIX HUNDRED AND ninety kilos. No, that’s not a misprint, BMW’s new ‘junior’ sports coupe weighs 120kg more than the previous generation M4. And yes, we’re well aware of the improvements in occupant safety and that economies of scale mean exotic weight-saving materials aren’t always an option. And yes, we’d rather cars such as this existed than not. But seriously? A two-door BMW coupe tipping the scales at nearly 1.7 tons with a tank of fuel on board and no occupants? This needs to be good. When I gather myself, one initial thought is that the M240i xDrive will be a car defined by numbers. There’s not just that weight figure but also the not-so-small matter of 369bhp between 5500 and 6500rpm, and a numerically identical 369lb ft…

THERE ARE CHALLENGING TIMES AHEAD for all car makers. In early 2021, the UK government confirmed that it would ban the sale of petrol- and diesel-engined new cars in 2030. Other governments around the world have announced similar plans with deadlines a few years later. Some large-volume car makers have announced the end of internal combustion engine (ICE) development, others that their range will be entirely BEV (battery electric vehicle) within a few years. But what will low-volume, specialist car makers do? There’s an argument that the environmental impact of the ICE cars of all specialist car makers combined is so small as to be indiscernible, another that the future of personal transport should logically contain a number of low-emission solutions alongside BEV, perhaps allowing hydrogen fuel cells and ICE…

READING JETHRO’S COLUMN IN EVO 296, IT IS CLEAR TO me that the beautiful thing about ‘the thrill of driving’ is that it evolves with driver age and time. I recall evo describing the common bond between their readers, from the young person with their first warm hatchback, filling up at the same petrol station as the more mature driver who had the same passion 20-30 years earlier, but was now lucky enough to afford a supercar. Having progressed through that journey myself, I would add another driver at that petrol station: someone filling up a car from the 1920s to around 2000, who is still looking for different and new thrills of driving. For me, the ‘new thrill of driving’ comes in the shape of an S1 Elise and…

I POKE MY HEAD THROUGH THE GAP in the hotel room curtains but there’s no great surprise in store: I’ve already been keeping more than one eye on the weather forecast for the last 24 hours, with increasing dispiritedness, and the rapidly scudding clouds and wet, wind-swept pavements are unfortunately what I had expected. Yesterday was unseasonably sunny; today, less so to say the least. By the time I pitch up at the nearby Anglesey Circuit for a bacon and egg bap there’s a river running through the pitlane and the rain is incessant. Blast! So it’s not exactly Circuito do Estoril in warm spring sunshine, but still, it’s hard to be downbeat when there’s a gleaming silver Weissach Packe-quipped GT4 RS parked in the pit garage with evo’s name…

I HAVE A FEW ROAD TEST MEMORIES indelibly preserved in my mind. They can be played over and over like Tik-Tok clips but more immersive; I’m in the car and can feel what’s going on. One is of the Mégane R26.R on the Bala to Ffestiniog road (oh, the poise!), another the Pagani Zonda heading up a twisting, wooded road in northern Germany (a supercar should not be this easy to powerslide!). Turns out there’s one I didn’t know was in there: the Noble M12 GTO on the A47 Hinkley bypass. It all comes flooding back. I’m delivering the M12 back to Noble in Barwell, Leicestershire, a couple of miles north of Hinkley, and this mini-movie is all about the sound and feel of the effortlessly gutsy, twin-turbo V6 behind.…

I’M ABOUT TO FIRE UP THE ASTON after three and a half months of winter hibernation in a local storage unit (the car, that is, not me). There’s a certain frisson, not least because any last trace of Mobil 1 will have long since drained from the cylinder walls, so I’m about to fire an engine that is, in large parts, dry. And I’m going to do it with the throttle pedal pinned flat to the floor. This is counter-intuitive, to put it mildly. The thought of the 4.3-litre quad-cam V8 exploding into life, revs flying instantly to the red line, has my finger hovering nervously over the start button. But apparently Gaydon-era Astons have a neat trick, whereby pinning the throttle tells the engine management not to send fuel…

LANE SIX AT HEATHROW’S TERMINAL 2 short stay car park is a sneaky barsteward. It knew that I knew that it was there, lurking in the shadows, its entry late and on a bit of an acute angle. I doubt it knows the E63 S has such poor steering lock, but I do know it enjoyed roughing up the outer edge of a 20-inch diamond-cut wheel. Bollocks. It’s a horrible noise and an awful sensation. Like all such incidents, it plays out in slow motion, brain frozen and unable to tell your limbs to react to avoid the inevitable impact. ‘I should get him to stop and reassess but I can’t. I can’t stop him from smearing soft aluminium against hard stone. Perhaps it won’t be as bad as he…

HAVE YOU EVER FOUND A PEN THAT makes your writing feel neat and flowing and easy all at once? That’s the feeling of the McLaren GT’s steering. After many cars with electric power steering, the feel and connection of the McLaren’s hydraulic power assisted steering is obvious before you’ve left the car park. It would be a couple of hours before I would revel in its feel again, as having switched into our GT for my turn behind its wheel, I headed due west on the A14 and M6 before dropping down the M5, final destination the Morgan Motor Company. So, a good test of its GT credentials right away. Rewind slightly, and while the wide, dihedral-opening door gets you closer to the seat when getting in, and also means…