Table of contents for September 2023 in Evo

SO LONG FIESTA. SO LONG the car that gave so many of us our first solo drive and that first taste of unbridled freedom to go anywhere we wished. Which often meant the Fiesta was also the car in which many experienced their first crash (not me, I had an older brother to demonstrate how to do that). And so long to the car in which many experienced the thrill and fear of their first motor race (that was me, and I chose the same Fiesta race car to explore Paddock Hill Bend’s gravel trap for the first time, too). The Fiesta is also the first from its sector to throw in the towel. The whys and the wherefores have been discussed endlessly: falling sales, Ford’s aim to be 100…

THE WORLD HAD STOPPED. FLIGHTS were grounded, borders closed, families communicated by Zoom and the sick and elderly died alone. Aside from those enjoying regular parties in Downing Street and the endless sunshine scorching the UK, we’ll remember 2020 rather grimly. Bad times. Yet for a few wonderful months I was running an Audi RS7 Sportback and things suddenly looked a bit more promising. A big Audi RS model that didn’t just look cool but was sharp, exhibited fine balance and possessed genuine poise? Could it really be true? It was. Mostly. I really enjoyed its shockingly urgent performance, sky-high quality and the way it seemed to suck up poor road surfaces with no fuss at all to deliver a sense of unstoppable, irresistible omnipotence. Later, we discovered it still…

THE HYDROGEN-POWERED BMW X5 accelerates like an EV to blend with the traffic on the M3, as expected. There’s no internal combustion engine under the bonnet, the space instead occupied by a fuel cell that is being fed hydrogen and air to generate electricity which is then delivered to the rear-mounted motor and, when required, to a small but powerful battery. In fact, the only slightly unusual aspect of the experience is the sound, which starts as a woozy, Tron-like drone, like it’s running over a corrugated surface, but is escalating with ever-greater urgency. ‘It was composed by Hans Zimmer, the Hollywood composer,’ says Dr Jürgen Guldner from the passenger seat. I’m tempted to keep my foot hard in simply to discover what it sounds like at maximum speed. Guldner…

I FELT COMPELLED TO WRITE IN RESPONSE TO RICHARD Downey’s letter (‘Going for woke’, evo 312) lambasting your magazine for daring to write about ‘battery cars’ and thus betraying its core readership of ‘driving enthusiasts’. Putting aside the somewhat lazy co-optation of the word ‘woke’ (read: ‘It’s political correctness gone mad!’) and even the arguments for and against the adoption of zero-carbon alternatives, the bottom line is that EVs are here and they are here to stay. They make too much sense to most people in most scenarios to go away, and whilst you may not agree with the way it’s happening, it is most definitely happening. So why is it important that evo covers EVs in its pages? Because without magazines such as evo standing up for you and…

SO MANY YEARS. SO MANY MEMORIES. I’M NOT SURE which marks the relentless passage of time more starkly: the fact that it’s 30 years since Prodrive’s blue and yellow 555-liveried Subaru Imprezas first gunned it down a WRC stage, or that it’s 15 years since the iconic partnership between Prodrive and Fuji Heavy Industries came to an end. The Prodrive P25 marks another significant landmark. No, not evo’s 25th anniversary, but the introduction of the ultimate factory Impreza, the bubble-arched 22B STI. It’s a happy coincidence that the first issue of this magazine featured an exclusive UK first drive of the 22B. Yes, Subaru eventually shipped a batch of 16 Type UKs in 1999, but the early Japanese-spec model was a true unicorn. Securing the first (and at that time…

IT’S AKIN TO RED BULL RACING TAKING A HUMBLE hatchback, instructing the genius of Adrian Newey to make suitable modifications, painting it satin dark blue with yellow and red graphics, then destroying the opposition in the BTCC and beyond. Not a marketing exercise but a road-going homologation special, designed in the same workshops at Milton Keynes that build Max’s cars, that becomes an unstoppable force on the track. As impossibly cute and cuddly as the little green Mini sitting expectantly in front of me is, I’m reminded that’s exactly what happened all those years ago, when the then F1 world champions really did take our national car maker’s people’s car and forge it into a formidable competition machine. All of which must make this 1965 Mini Cooper S more authentic…

BMW COULDN’T HAVE PICKED A TOUGHER TIME to launch its most hardcore E92 M3, the GTS. Arriving mere months after the Gen 2 997 GT3 RS and a year before the revered RS 4.0, you could say it drove straight into the perfect storm. Worse, building so few of them ensured the vast majority disappeared into collections, rarely to be seen or indeed sold. When it was revealed, BMW suggested a total of 150 GTSs would be made, but in fact just 138 were built by the M division; a criminally small number for such a special car. Looking back it seems like an anomaly in BMW’s model line up, but cast your mind back to 2010 and you’ll recall the E92 M3 was a real force in GT2 and…

THE MIGHTY M5 CS DESERVED A rest. Two European adventures in the space of just a few weeks – one of which included a couple of laps of the Nürburgring – and a corresponding spike in evo’s fuel costs meant I was ‘relegated’ to the Superb SportLine Plus for a recent trip to Spa-Francorchamps. To be honest, I didn’t feel hugely hard done by! There’s something inherently cool about the Superb’s functionality, and with 276bhp, four-wheel drive and a dual clutch ’box it is perfectly suited to a long, quick drive across northern France and into Belgium. And that’s pretty much how it played out. The Superb is almost absurdly comfortable, quiet too, and although it looks a little bit drab inside it’s a real quality item. Even better, Skoda…

IT’S FAIR TO SAY THE EMIRA DIDN’T have the smoothest of launches. And I don’t mean the soaking that managing director Matt Windle got when the heavens opened over Hethel as he introduced Lotus’s first ‘all new’ sports car since the Elise. Our first drive in the summer of 2022 yielded mixed results, and the same was the case for other magazines. A mismatched specification for the preproduction test car presented us with a V6-engined, six-speed-manual First Edition with a Sport-spec chassis – stiffer springs and dampers – but equipped with the more road-biased Goodyear Eagle F1 tyres from the Tour-spec car in place of the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s that Sport models leave the factory with. It made for a strong on-road car, albeit one that reached the…

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I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING: where’s the 3-series? The car BMW built to create and define the compact sports saloon sector. The benchmark in terms of driving dynamics, quality and, of course, sales. The 3-series is a phenomenon. Or rather it was. Its star hasn’t faded as such, rather its position has been challenged, and not by the usual suspects. Audi Sport and Mercedes-AMG may square up to the M3, but further down the pecking order an A4 or C-class in non performance dress-up have struggled to impress, their go falling short of matching their show. Not so the offerings of Alfa Romeo and Jaguar. The XE isn’t long for this world and production is a little on/off depending on parts supply and where JLR needs those all-important chips to…

LAST YEAR’S VISIT TO THE NÜRBURGRING (see evo 307) allowed the C63 to show just how much it has to offer, so more of the same was always on the cards for 2023. Hence why this month I found myself back at the Eurotunnel for another trip to the Eifel region, this time in a group whose cars included a BMW Z4 M, an E92 M3 Competition and, just to make a mockery of our fuel consumption, a Volkswagen Up GTI. Another smooth Le Shuttle crossing complete, we hit the French autoroute then briefly tolerated Belgium’s corrugated roads before a fuel stop at Spa-Francorchamps. While not deliberate on our part, last year’s trip happened to coincide with a €0.30-per-litre tax reduction on petrol prices in Germany, making the fuel bill…

I KNEW IT AS SOON AS JOHN BARKER dropped a gear and screamed past the dawdling Toyota Avensis. Giving chase in my S1 Elise, I fumbled into second gear and pulled out to overtake, throttle against the stop, and watched the squat, jet-black car grow smaller and smaller in front. Stones were pinging from under its aluminium diffuser as if to ward me off the pursuit, and after just a moment or two I’d fallen well outside the danger zone. The Analogue Elise Super Sport is a different animal, and getting a taste of it might just cost me a large sum of money in new parts… I’ve spent the last two years rebuilding and rejuvenating my Elise, being extremely careful not to tamper with the ethos set out by…

THIS IS THE END, NOT ONLY FOR OUR Huracán Spyder on the Fast Fleet, but also for its spine-tingling, eardrum bursting, borderline-antisocial yet totally endearing, exciting and heroic V10 appearing in a production car. There might be a further run-out special to accompany the Sterrato, but in terms of series production Huracáns, the current Evo models – coupe, Spyder and Tecnica – are the end of the road. Over 20,000 Huracáns will have passed down the Sant’Agata production line when the last one is built next year and the model makes way for its hybrid replacement that’s due soon after. And if you want a new Huracán, sorry, you’re too late: the remaining cars are all sold. Classifieds it is, then. Our Spyder arrived in the midst of winter. Not…

NAMED AFTER A CRATER LAKE ON THE ISLAND of Bali, the Batur is a rebodied Continental GT Speed that follows on from the Bacalar (see evo 286), the run of 12 barchettas that if nothing else gave Bentley the increasing self-confidence to publicly undertake these more extreme projects. Such endeavours fall under the remit of the company’s in-house coachbuilder Mulliner – the oldest entity of its kind in the world – which offers, much like the exclusive operations of other high-end vehicle manufacturers, varying levels of ‘bespoke’, from unique colours through to complete cars. There will be 18 Baturs constructed, and yes, you guessed it, they’re already pre-sold: at this level a company has a very good idea who will buy such cars before the designer’s pen even touches the…

IT MAY NOT LOOK LIKE IT BUT THIS IS THE facelifted AMG A45 S. Honestly. The press pack is staring me in the face telling me about the new headlights, the AMG-specific grille, and how the badge above said grille is no longer a three-pointed star but the Affalterbach coat of arms. The AMG Performance steering wheel is new too and there’s been a serious upload of new software, but the hardware remains untouched. This means the A45 S continues to be powered by the M139 turbocharged 2-litre engine, which is still the most powerful four-cylinder production engine in the world, with a specific output of 209bhp per litre. Its unchanged 415bhp peak beats the Audi RS3’s five-cylinder by 21bhp, yet both generate 369lb ft of torque for their four-wheel-drive…

THE BATTISTA’S NATURAL FREQUENCIES DON’T readily resonate with those of the petrolhead. We interpret its rakish Pininfarina-penned lines and understand its speed well enough, but we prefer to converse in the relatable century-old language of cubic capacity, cylinders and horsepower, not kilowatt hours, lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide batteries and permanent magnet AC synchronous motors. No matter. These might be uncomfortable times for dyed in-the-wool car fans, but if you embrace the fact that the EV supercar’s job is in part to create a degree of dissonance, then the existential fear fades. Better, when presented with the opportunity to drive one, you’re less concerned with the nomenclature and more engrossed in discovering how this new-age exotica speaks to you and works with the road. As you’d expect from arguably the…

A PPARENTLY WE ALL OUGHT TO SPEND MORE TIME being ‘present’, ‘in the moment’, ‘conscious’. Right now, both hands on the unassisted wheel, sole of my right foot in conversation with the servo-free brake pedal, ears full of four horizontally opposed cylinders doing their thing and mind absorbed with the road ahead and the next gearchange to come, I feel pretty darn present. Such is the way with many classic cars from the ’60s of course. Just as so often the downside is that brakes, power, reliability and so forth aren’t quite present enough. Herein lies the appeal of the restomod, a classic car with modern engineering upgrades, and the Porsche 911 has become the darling of the scene, myriad specialists offering their own take on the legend. Hungarian outfit…

THESE ARE PRECIOUS MOMENTS AND THEY’RE GROWING rarer by the hour, day, week, month and year. I’m handed a key – an actual key that must be inserted and twisted – to a car made by the Spartan Motor Company in Australia and imported, further developed and made road-legal by an outfit named Le Mans Coupes here in the UK. We know these guys well as they’re also the people to go to for the fabulous Superformance range of GT40, Shelby Daytona Cobra and Corvette Grand Sport. Wonderful monsters all. Anyway, the Spartan. That rarest of things. Anewcarthat ’sproperly light, that takes great pride in its manual gearbox and, refreshingly, doesn’t try to be all things to all people. Forget bandwidth. The Spartan weighs 700kg and has 460bhp. It’s hair-on-fire…

HAVING BEEN DRAFTED IN BY GINETTA FOR an intensive customer testing programme, evo’s Fast Fleet G56 GTA has barely taken a breather since our own James Taylor drove it to an impressive double podium result at Oulton Park (see last month’s Fast Fleet). We’ll be racing it in the GT Academy series once more this season, at Silverstone, where I, as a complete novice, will be sharing the drive with James. But with our G56 tied up with other duties until then, there’ll be no time for me to get a feel for it until lights-out. Gulp. I’ve never driven a racing car of any kind before and the prospect is daunting and deeply exciting all at once. Thankfully, I won’t be going in completely blind, because Ginetta suggested I…

BOND WAS CAUTIOUS AFTER THE camera cars had peeled off the circuit. At the front of the field the pair of Valkyries – a road car and a track-only Pro – had bolted, their vulnerable V12s in need of some fast cooling air after a 40mph lap of filming. Yet for all their downforce and searing speed they couldn’t compete with the riotous pair behind them: a DB3S and DB4 GT Zagato. The former’s disdain for rear tyres could put Jethro’s antics to shame, the latter’s soundtrack was, I’d wager, the best the Silverstone crowd heard throughout the Grand Prix weekend. But BMT 216A was playing it safe. Along the Hamilton Straight its straight-six was stretched, yet through turn one and the fiddly sequence that follows it took it easy,…

CLIMBING PRICES, HIGH DEMAND AND INCREASINGLY arduous allocation procedures have made owning many of the latest thoroughbred supercars no more than a pipe dream for the majority. Look to the classifieds for their recent predecessors, though, and there’s a healthy supply of outstanding performers available for a fraction of the price and effort. Unlike supercars of old, more modern offerings won’t necessarily break the bank to run, either, many models coming with surprising reliability and the reassurance of lengthy warranty programmes, should the worst happen. So what will it be? From Italian exotica in the form of the Ferrari 458 Italia to Japan’s high-tech, hybridised Honda NSX, via the bargainous but brilliant McLaren 650S and an evo Car of the Year-winning Porsche 911 GT3, here are our recommendations for some…