Innehållsförteckning för January 2021 från Evo

IF YOU HAD SAID TO ME IN SPRING THAT WE WOULD have been able to gather 16 new performance cars at Anglesey Circuit for a week, followed by taking our favourite eight to Scotland for a further five days of assessment on some of our favourite roads, it wouldn’t have been a Covid test I would have suggested you needed. But 2020 has been all about the unexpected. Planning for the unknown and reacting to the unpredictable, we’ve all had to do it in one form or another. So it is with a huge amount of pride for the evo team that this issue we are able to bring you one of our biggest eCoty tests for a number of years. This year was always going to be a significant…

ARGUMENTS HAVE RAGED FOR generations, and will continue to do so, over which was – and is – the original Q-car. Cars that slip under the radar while making progress. Cars that blend in. Cars that ghost between point A and point B undetected, and are anonymous to all but those with an eye for the subtly swollen wheelarches, an additional exhaust tip and a wheel and tyre package an inch or two larger than you would find on the mainstream model on which they’re based. Our forefathers saw BMW’s E34 M5 become peak Q-car, while Mercedes’ 500E was the preferred choice for those who wanted something from Stuttgart, via Weissach, rather than being hand-assembled on a line at Garching having started life in Munich. Lancia Thema 8.32? Naturally, anything…

IN ADAM TOWLER’S REVIEW OF THE FERRARI 812 GTS (evo 280) he was incredulous that the 6.5-litre motor could have the same ‘feral’ top-end rush that a Honda K20 can achieve. I would have thought the physics are very similar in both remarkable engines. The Honda 2.2-litre H22A1 engine from the early ’90s Prelude was redlined at 8600rpm and with a cylinder capacity of 539.25cc is directly comparable with the Ferrari’s 541cc. I would consider that the main restrictions on rpm would be reciprocating mass, and with almost 30 years’ more development the pistons, conrods and valve gear in the Ferrari should be at least as capable of achieving the same loads as those of the Honda. Interestingly, it is my understanding that cylinders of around 500cc tend to offer…

‘THE WAY THE RS7 TURNS IN IS SURPRISING FOR A BIG AUDI’ AUDI IS FIELDING TWO CONTENDERS THIS YEAR, and although they’re not far apart in performance, they could hardly be more different. One is a minimalist version of its mid-engined supercar while the other is a five-door ‘coupe’ incorporating the full contents of Audi’s technology toy box. The R8 V10 RWD uses the tamest version of the venerable 5.2-litre, naturally aspirated V10, delivering ‘just’ 533bhp to the rear wheels, as its name suggests. Those wheels are 19-inch items and no factory upsizing is offered. You can’t add adaptive dampers either, making this the simplest and least expensive but potentially most rewarding R8 in the range. Meanwhile, the RS7 is on 22-inch wheels (21s are standard) and has four-wheel drive,…

BEYOND A FEW UNLIKELY STRANDS OF SHARED Bavarian DNA, you’d struggle to find two more divergent takes on the front-engined, rear-wheel-drive formula than BMW’s M2 CS and Morgan’s Plus Four. And yet both possess an uncanny ability to make you want them. If you read last year’s eCoty you’ll know we fell for the Plus Four’s big brother, the Plus Six, in an unexpectedly large way. Yes it had some fairly major flaws, but it made us smile and it made us rethink what it is that constitutes driving enjoyment. When so much effort and focus is placed on simply going faster, this will always be refreshing. Unsurprisingly, the Plus Four taps into the same emotions and prompts the same questions. In fact thanks to its more modest 2-litre turbocharged…

8th PORSCHE 911 TURBO S No, your eyes are not deceiving you: a 911 hasn’t won eCoty. That should give the conspiracy theorists something to think about. Astonishing on track, the 992 Turbo S is one of the most accomplished of its kind for a very long time. It has, as expected, performance in abundance, more than you can ever need on the road (as have so many of our finalists if we’re being frank), and how it uses its muscle is no less superlative inducing than any of the other supercars that arrived in Scotland. Across any road in any conditions it has the ability to leave you short of breath and nodding approvingly at how it has processed the terrain and delivered you to your destination. And yet……

DOWN ONE, TWO, THREE GEARS. ONE, two, three yelps, each higher than the last. There’s no disguising what you’re about to do in the Huracán. In front of me its two huge tailpipes squat with the rest of the car and the sound of the V10 rips the Scottish air asunder. Barker is keen for dinner. Thankfully I’d been expecting it, so the M2 is primed and amazingly the gap doesn’t grow anything like as much as you might think as the little BMW sets off in pursuit, that creamy straight-six winding all the way round to its red line. For the next half an hour I chase the Lambo. Firstly across open moorland, dipping the clutch and moving my left hand as fast as I can. Then harrying the…

NINE MONTHS RUNNING AN Aston Martin Vantage have come to an end (see page 144) and whatever replaced it was always going to be a bit of a contrast. And contrasts to two-seater sports cars don’t come much greater than a grey estate car parked in the Vantage’s space. evo’s Dravit Grey estate car is more than just a 3-series Touring, however, for ahead of the arrival of the first official M3 Touring in 2022, a G21 M340i xDrive is the fastest and most powerful 3-series wagon you can buy, thanks to its 369bhp B58 3-litre turbocharged straight-six. As the xDrive nomenclature indicates, it’s four-wheel drive – the only drive option available with this engine, which also means BMW’s eight-speed automatic is the sole transmission. Previous exposure to this drivetrain…

IT’S BEEN A WHILE, I HEAR YOU SAY. AND you’d be right. SG54 is still alive and kicking though, I’m pleased to report, albeit spending more time staring at the inside of its barn than it has in the last 15 years put together. That said, it’s never been a garage queen, as regular evo readers will know, and it’s rather late in the day to start now. So what’s new? Well, since my last report about a year ago (evo 268), when the big Lambo returned from an epic 4000-mile Scandinavian trip, for obvious reasons this year’s driving trips have been written off. So sadly not much has been added to the odo. And talking of mileage, if you’ve looked at the figures at the end of this report…

IT’S SIMPLY KNOWN AS THE LIMITED Edition. Not the most flamboyant of names for a car with such evo credentials, but nothing if not accurate, given this Civic is very limited indeed. Just 20 are available in the UK, and they’re already all allocated. In fact, only 1020 of them are being sold globally (most – 600 – in the US), finally answering a question we’ve pondered for some time at evo: given how potent the standard FK8 Type R already feels, just how mind-bogglingly effective would a sharper, lighter, more tightly focused version be? It was immediately apparent the FK8 was something special, even back on the international launch in 2017. There we were, flying down the autobahn at nearly 170mph, carving across Germany’s minor roads at tremendous speed,…

‘IT’S STILL IN GOOD SHAPE,’ SAYS Andreas Preuninger, director of Porsche’s GT product line, taking a step back like an artist from his easel to consider the car in front of him. The car in question is not actually his work, because Preuninger joined Porsche’s fabled GT department after the inaugural GT3, the 996.1, was completed. But this was the first car he used when he started the job. The car that informed his initial thoughts on the GT3 project 20 years ago. ‘I drive it from time to time. It’s kind of interesting how performance perception changes through the years.’ It is somehow very heartening to hear him say this. When Preuninger says that new is better than old, you now know that it’s an opinion that comes from…

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THEIR MANUFACTURERS BOTH BEGIN WITH A. They both… um… have steering wheels? This is definitely the ‘odd couple’ category. Ostensibly you could say that they are both capable of going off road, but in R guise the Nomad really isn’t designed for those sorts of shenanigans – tarmac is its territory. So, in terms of compare and contrast, with these two it is more the latter. Let’s start by clambering into the Ariel, which is easier said than done. For something that has no doors or windows it provides a curious puzzle for entry and exit strategies. One leg, bottom, other leg? Two legs, then bottom? Head first? Once you’ve made it into the one-piece plastic seat (good lateral, no lumbar), you’re presented with a screen surrounded by a number…

SURELY THE OVERALL WINNER MIGHT COME from this pairing: a car that is billed as an improvement on the 2018 runner-up and a car that is a more affordable version of the 2019 victor. This could be the top two, right here. The Prost v Senna battle at the head of the field. Certainly the initial impressions are fabulous. The first mile or so in the lightweight Alpine is like an exploratory swish with a modern tennis racquet after playing with a heavy, old wooden one. It reacts with such easy immediacy. Whether it’s shedding speed, darting into a corner or responding to the throttle, it does so with an effortlessness that is like breathing through a menthol-cleared nose. By contrast, the Porsche makes an instant impact with its engine.…

TWO TECHNICALLY SIMILAR BUT OH SO different brothers from a different mother you couldn’t expect to meet when it comes to Porsche’s 911 Turbo S and Bentley’s Continental GT V8. Both may owe their existence to the VW mothership, have four-wheel drive, eight-speed gearboxes and turbocharged engines, but really that’s where the faintest of family resemblances begins and ends. Which is why the decision on which of these two, if either, makes it through to Scotland won’t be determined by how they thunder around Anglesey for three days. Loudly in the case of the Bentley; blink and you’ll miss it when it comes to the 911. Bentley’s new Continental GT V8 is at eCoty purely on its own merit. With a W12 behind its mesh grille the latest GT is…

THERE WAS SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL about this year’s eCoty. Not least the final group of cars. Every one of them was exceptional. Rare is the year that boasts such quality or diversity of character. If 2019’s test felt like slim pickings, 2020 has been an embarrassment of riches. Ironic given the crap for which this godforsaken year will otherwise be remembered. Perhaps because we’ve not been able to enjoy ourselves as we would otherwise do, eCoty 2020 was special for reasons that extended well beyond four wheels, fine roads and a few pints of free beer. I’ve worked with Barker, Gallagher and Morgan for half my life, and watched Bovingdon, Catchpole and Parrott arrive at evo as enthusiastic pups and rise to the top of their professions. Without wishing to…

AS IS THE CASE EVERY YEAR, YOUR eCoty judges react with a look of horror, surprise and amazement that, after two weeks of driving the best of the very best, they are expected to produce a finishing order. Every year we have the same dance. Some stall for time. Others pick up a microfibre to clean a stubborn piece of the dirt from the underside of a diffuser. A few even offer to go and refuel a car. Hell, they’ll even do the sandwich run. What they won’t do is commit to a finishing order. There’s always one who breaks first (usually me, because the look from the photographers waiting to plan podium images strikes the fear of god into me) and then a dribble of score sheets start to…

MY LAST REPORT (evo 279) WAS A DIZZY recollection of big servicing expenditure and new parts for the 996, but now I’ve calmed down a bit I thought I’d go into more detail about the new Kline Innovation exhaust system. I’ve retained the factory manifolds – for now – but everything aft of them is new, including consumables such as the lambda sensors. Junking the standard 600-cell cats for freer-flowing 200-cell items in theory releases a bit more power and torque, and then there’s the X-pipe design with the gas paths merged in the middle of the car at the rear and then directed to the silencers in the corners, which are now single-chamber items. The pipe diameter is 57mm before the cats and into the tailpipe trims, and 63mm…

ON THE UPSIDE, THE ECONOMY OF the Mazda 3 continues to impress. It’s rarely below 40mpg for a tankful, which means I typically get 400 miles between fill-ups. On the downside, despite having clocked up over 5000 miles, the innovative 1.8-litre engine hasn’t become freer and more willing. It still feels like it’s lacking torque, despite having a small supercharger and a mild-hybrid system to help out, so apart from fill-ups, it’s a disappointment. Mind, I think that if I was driving a car with 150bhp, which is what the 178bhp Mazda feels like it has, I could get 40mpg or better. There is performance at the top end, but with such long gearing there’s rarely the opportunity to go there, and even if you do and wring it out…

YOU WAIT FORTY YEARS FOR ONE BMW M3 Touring to arrive and then two come along at once. OK, not exactly two at the same time and, technically speaking, only one is a bona fide M-car, or rather it will be, once it arrives in 2022, but with Alpina’s new B3 Touring touting a genuine M motor (a first for an Alpina), it’s cause for celebration. Alpinas have always had a cult appeal, a car that if you know, you know. And if you don’t, you think it’s merely a BMW with a bodykit, some wheels that look impossible to clean and a set of coachlines that add a retro touch in today’s flame-surfaced world. This latest G21 3-series-based Alpina Touring is no different (although our press demo is minus…

REMEMBER 2009? OBAMA WAS SWORN in as America’s 44th president, British drivers held both the Formula 1 and IndyCar titles (Jenson Button and Dario Franchitti respectively), Séb Loeb won his 1000th WRC title and Peugeot was victorious at Le Mans. Oh, and there was a global swine flu pandemic. It was also the year Lamborghini launched its Super Trofeo one-make race car and with it aspirations to build a road-going equivalent. Eleven years later and the £260,000 Huracán Super Trofeo Omologato (STO) is that car. Combining a rear-wheel-drive chassis with the most potent V10 that Lamborghini offers, the STO takes the very best from both the Super Trofeo and GT3 Evo race cars to create the most extreme road-going version of the company’s entry-level model yet. Aerodynamics are key to…

IN THE POST-WAR YEARS ROVER HAD a reputation for making dependable but starchy cars, like redoubtable maiden aunts made metal. By the 1960s, though, changes were afoot. The Rover-BRM racer burnt the company’s trad image in the white heat of its gas turbine engine, especially when it lasted the distance in the experimental class at Le Mans in ’63. Two years later the same car ran as an official entry with Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart driving, bagging 10th place. Rover’s big news of ’65, however, was the acquisition of a lightweight 3.5-litre V8 engine from Buick to put some pep in the step of the stately P5 four-door and bring welcome muscle to the smaller P6 saloon. Suddenly Rover carried a sportiness unthinkable ten years earlier. The only thing…

THE ECOTY FORMAT IS A SIMPLE ONE: PULL together the most exciting, thrilling, engaging, surprising and entertaining performance cars we have driven over the last 12 months and pick a winner. The eCoty format is a minefield: try to pull together the most exciting, engaging, surprising and entertaining performance cars of the last 12 months and hope they are available when we need them, they turn up and don’t break down, and they live up to the hype and promise to warrant their inclusion. Despite all that 2020 has thrown at us, this year’s eCoty format is very much the former. All bar one car on our wish list was available (the AMG GT R Black Series couldn’t be extracted from Germany in time), our chosen destinations could accommodate us,…

‘THE CIVIC HAS A DEPTH OF CLASS YOU DON’T NORMALLY ASSOCIATE WITH A HOT HATCH’ UNSURPRISINGLY, THE YARIS ATTRACTS THE most attention among the hatchbacks. Yes, that’s the latest FK8 Civic Type R in Racing Blue and a German-registered, all-new Golf GTI, but will you look at this little Toyota?! We’re lucky it’s here at all. Strings have been pulled, and on day two it rolled into the Anglesey pitlane wearing show plates because there hadn’t been time to register it. Subaru and Mitsubishi seemed to be delivering rally specials every couple of months when evo was born 22 years ago, but it’s been years since we’ve seen a car like the GR Yaris. Arguably, this is more special than any Impreza or Evo because there wasn’t a three-door, four-wheel-drive…

WHILE THE SPECTACLE OF ECOTY COMES FROM the wild disparity between a broad list of contenders, it is at its most intense when very similar cars fight tooth and nail for their place in the final. This year the most conspicuous internecine battle is undoubtedly the one between the Ferrari F8 Tributo, Lamborghini Huracán Evo RWD and McLaren 765LT. To have three such potent mid-engined supercars in the same year is pretty remarkable, but to have three such different mid-engined supercars is truly exciting. Cars of this calibre always add to the show, of course, but when they’re thrown in with such a special group of contenders, their participation also offers the possibility of some delicious David and Goliath battles further down the line. All in good time. Right now…

THE BORDER THAT SEPARATES ENGLAND FROM Scotland on the A68 is a wild and windswept place. Perched upon high, with the burn-strewn mountains in front, behind lie the tall, dense forests of Northumbria, a claustrophobic mass creeping up in the rear-view mirror, ready to suck you back into their endless, intimidating depths. There’s an invisible cloak of loneliness in the air tonight. It’s mercifully dry, but with no sign of the stars that can dazzle in this part of the world when cloud cover is absent, as the nearby observatory attests. The little green Porsche’s wheels gently rotate to a stop, and car and I pause. I just need a momentary breather. There are some alarmingly tumultuous sections of road nearby and I wonder, with more than a tinge of…

OH, WOW. TIME AND AGAIN I FOUND myself saying those words. This was the finest of Car of the Year contests, for the cars, for the locations and the team. Covid-19 may have scuppered our plans for a foreign-based contest, but the UK was at its most attractive and gave us two weeks of mostly fantastic weather, all the better to admire its fabulous scenery. My most memorable drive wasn’t on the test itself but the run home from Anglesey at the end of week one. I could have taken the quick route – A55, M6 – but it was early afternoon, the sun was in a cloudless sky and I was in the Huracán. So I took the interesting route: the A5 to Betws-y-Coed and then Bala, and from…

HOW WAS ANGLESEY?’ I ASKED EDITOR Gallagher on the eve of McCoty. I was hoping the answer might be ‘wet and miserable’, having missed all the track action due to self-isolation. It wasn’t. ‘Absolutely mega,’ he replied with a genuine look of glee. ‘And the beauty is,’ he continued, ‘we got all that crazy action on the track so don’t need to worry too much about handling shots this week.’ We both nodded, sagely. ‘Can you do me a sideways shot in the Lambo, mate?’ It’s 9.01am on the first morning of our little Scottish adventure and Aston Parrott, as usual, hasn’t quite read the script. I haven’t so much as sat in the RWD and, honestly, feel a little ring rusty to be pitching it sideways into a turn.…

IT’S ALL OVER, THEN. THE ASTON MARTIN Vantage has left the evo car park for the last time and with it has left a rather fast hole in our fleet. For all the troubles inside the factory and in the boardroom, Aston Martin continues to turn out a suite of models that offer a collection of character traits we admire greatly in a driver’s car but are finding increasingly hard to track down, regardless of the manufacturer. And the Vantage’s character was a standout part of its appeal during its nine months and 8000 miles with us. I was given the arduous task of collecting KR69 HTE from Aston Martin’s Gaydon HQ, which was a rather surreal yet exciting glimpse into the world of someone fortunate enough to order their…

FOR AS LONG AS I’VE BEEN LIVING with the Duster one thing has consistently annoyed the hell out of me: the horn beep function when the car locks automatically. It starts as a minor niggle, until you find yourself walking in and out of your house with the key card in your pocket. Or if you get home in the dead of night. Or you’re on a petrol station forecourt. What I initially regarded as a friendly beep, beep at journey’s end has now become something of a trigger for all kinds of profanity. I’ve consulted the owner’s manual, and all-knowing Siri, but to no avail. If anyone knows how to silence the Duster’s forlorn Road Runner-style mewling without resorting to explosives or a chainsaw, please get in touch. Thankfully…