Innehållsförteckning för June 2021 från Evo

THIS ISN’T THE FIRST LOTUS REBOOT AND I DOUBT many can remember exactly how many there have been before. Certainly few have been successful beyond keeping the company alive long enough for the next enthusiastic buyer to come along and provide everything Lotus required to be the world leader in waiting it clearly was. And repeat. Vision80, the strategy put together by former CEO Phil Popham and current MD Matt Windle, is the shared goals of Lotus and its current owners Geely and Etika Automotive of Malaysia. And while Windle will be the first Lotus MD to have the backing to implement such a plan, in some respects he can only do so because of the work carried out during the last 18 months of the company’s 21 years under…

EMIRA IT IS, THEN. The name given to the car that will create the bridge between the Lotus we know today and the electrified Lotus of tomorrow. And it will happen within the decade. Not bad for a company that was still sourcing the chicken wire used in the Elise’s front clam opening from the local farm supplies shop as recently as 2016. Lotus today isn’t the Lotus of, well, any time in the last 80 years. Regardless of its owner and the promises given, it has rarely had the support it always needed. Poorly funded, under-resourced and often forgotten and left to fight for itself, it’s a miracle Lotus still existed for Geely to buy in 2017. No more the distant owner with a flaky credit line, China’s most…

IT’S YET TO BE NAMED, AND EVEN IF YOU have pockets deep enough actually getting hold of one will be no easy task, but one thing’s not in doubt: this is a front-engined Ferrari berlinetta with an 819bhp naturally aspirated V12, and just the thought of that is enough to fry our minds. That horsepower figure, some 30bhp clear of the already monstrous 812 Superfast’s, is joined by the equally spectacular statistic of 9500rpm – a stratospheric 1000rpm increase beyond the point at which the Superfast hits its peak. To achieve this, Ferrari claims to have carried out some significant engineering work on the F140-series V12’s internals, and also to its breathing, both in and out, and we’re not surprised: as far as the art of the internal combustion engines…

I WAS CERTAINLY TAKEN ABACK WHEN READING STUART Gallagher’s review of the new BMW M3 Competition (evo 285), specifically towards the end of the third paragraph, where to my amazement he admitted that he likes the car’s grille. Well done, I thought. Many haven’t had the balls to confess to that. So on I went with the review, flicking over to read the third page, then the fourth – all very good, real-world points covered, etc. But then my concentration was blown apart as I realised that there were no pictures of that grille that you proclaim to like until the fifth and final page! Or was that the point, you sneaky editor you? I’m still not sold, but nor have I got £74,815 to buy one, so BMW probably…

BIG FOUR-DOOR SALOONS DON’T BELONG on track. There, I’ve said it. Hardly a contentious statement, but it still feels a bit mean-spirited when the GTAm goes to such efforts to seem at home in a pitlane. It certainly looks the part, with those prominent Sauber-sculpted aero parts, the squat ride height, centre-lock rims and impressively athletic stance lending it the same purposeful look perfected by Ferrari with the 488 Pista or Porsche with any number of its GT 911s. The GTAm’s aura is everpresent, but a circuit environment definitely throws it into sharp relief. With a helmet strapped on your bonce and the gently rising fizz of adrenaline flooding through your bloodstream, the silly seats and fiddly harness straps suddenly make more sense. The incongruity of being in a two-seat…

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THE 370Z IS NO MORE. SURPRISED? NO, I THOUGHT NOT. My guess is you’d already consigned it to that same great car park in the sky where the GT86 is about to pull into a space, and possibly about five years ago at that. As far back as 2015, David Vivian penned a group test in these pages for the arrival of the Mk3 Audi TT and introduced the gravel-voiced Nissan with the phrase ‘long in the tooth’. Yet the 370Z soldiered on, an anachronism in many ways, a big, honest, thirsty coupe of the old school, and one we’ve always had a soft spot for here at evo. At times it felt like that love wasn’t shared by those at Nissan UK, where in later years it seemed like…

AS POTENTIAL CONQUEST customers for the GR Supra go, I suspect I could be exactly the kind of person Toyota is looking for. I love a powerful coupe, don’t have a desperate need to impress my neighbours by having a premium badge on the car parked outside my house, and I couldn’t give two hoots about any of those Supras of old. All of this meant I could approach the latest Supra with an open mind, and also that there was minimal risk of me getting all het up about its engine and some of the components in its cabin being of Bavarian rather than Japanese origin. Instead I could just get on with enjoying this car for what it was. But what exactly was it? It was certainly distinctive.…

BEFORE YOU GET IN, JUST KNEEL DOWN in front of the car and put a temple on the tarmac. Pretend you’ve just dropped a wheel nut and you want to see how far it has rolled under the car. What you’ll find is a mostly flat undertray, but around the front wheels there are also small spinneys of angular, aggressive aero vanes that wouldn’t look out of place protruding from part of an F1 car. It gives you a sense of just how serious this new GT3 is. As you stand up and brush the small bits of gravel from your knees, the huge, swan-neck wing and pugnacious nostrils will come back into view. On reflection, perhaps you didn’t need to hit the deck to see how serious this car…

NO, THERE HASN’T BEEN A MIX-UP AT THE printers. This isn’t the same Lapiz Blue Mk8 Golf R that we reviewed in evo 284, although you’d be entirely forgiven for failing to spot the difference between then and now. The reason for there being another R in the pages of Driven is that there was one key option missing from that first example to join VW’s press fleet, and that was the R Performance Pack, which amongst its features promises some new software called ‘Drift Mode’. Hmm. Given the new torquevectoring rear axle in the Mk8 R allows for power oversteer, as exemplified by the opening image to the piece in 284, the idea of a dedicated drift mode brings to mind a Volkswagen Golf behaving more like a Mk2…

RICHARD PARRY-JONES, WHO HAS DIED AT THE age of 69, was responsible for transforming Ford’s dynamic reputation in the ’90s. A Ford man from the start of his working life until he retired in 2007, he managed 30,000 engineers around the world and delivered multiple vehicle projects as chief technical officer. RPJ was passionate about engineering and relished the challenge of rescuing Ford’s reputation after withering press reports of the dire MkV Escort. The Focus that replaced it was a spectacular improvement. Damper iterations during new car development occasionally run into the hundreds. On the Focus, around 1000 were tried, front and rear. Mondeo, Ka, Fiesta and Puma were all delivered under his direction and they were so good that rival car makers had to respond, raising standards across the…

A DEVELOPMENT DRIVE IN THE V12 Zagato? Surely some mistake? Not exactly, though you could be forgiven for thinking it odd that we’re apparently putting miles on a development prototype of a car launched in 2011. In truth there is an element of time travel to this feature, but only in so much as this is effectively the car Aston Martin would have built had the considerably more potent S version of the V12 Vantage existed when the original V12 Zagato project was started. The V12 Zagato and I go back a long way. Right back to the beginning, actually, when I was racing with Aston Martin at the Nürburgring in VLN and N24 events. As had become something of a tradition at Aston during the era of Dr Ulrich…

‘YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THAT!’ IF Michael Mallock, CEO of RML Group, had a pound for every time he’s had to say that to a visiting journalist he’d be retired by now. Knowing what you’ve seen and not seen is a bit of a standing joke when visiting RML’s expansive Northants HQ, yet the self-styled ‘high-performance engineering’ outfit has made a serious business from specialising in white label projects. However, today is different. No secrets, no multi-year NDA muzzles, and definitely no polite invitations to un-see something. Instead Mallock is giving us exclusive access to RML’s first in-house project and the team responsible for designing, engineering and building From Le Mans prototypes and World Touring Cars to record-breaking EV hypercars, classic continuations and one-off commissions for ultra-wealthy clients, RML is the…

YEARS AGO, RUMOUR HAD IT THAT AT LEAST ONE car company referred to the button for turning off stability/traction control as ‘the journalist button’. I’ll wager that was true. Motoring journalists in search of exciting action shots in cars they don’t own will turn off systems designed to save them from crashing. Customers who’ve just paid tens of thousands for their car? Not so much. What, then, to make of the facility to switch a 600bhp, two-ton saloon like the BMW M5 or Mercedes-AMG E63 from four-wheel drive to just rear-wheel drive? Some might wonder why this is even a thing, but there’s heritage and a bit of marketing behind it. The M5 and E63 can trace their bloodlines back over 30 years, to when their forerunners were smaller, lighter,…

INTERVIEWING JAMIE LIPMAN IS LIKE throwing yourself into a whirlwind. Which is appropriate, because that’s pretty much how he arrived on the automotive photography scene 15 years ago. Now 36, Lipman was born and raised in the south-east of England but has been domiciled in the US since 2017. His portfolio is evidence of an exceptional talent and a dynamic career trajectory, one which has seen his work published everywhere from single-make UK tuner magazines to US billboard campaigns for mega marques such as Toyota and Tesla. But ask him where the impulse to take photos came from and he’s lost for an explanation: ‘I couldn’t tell you. My mum wanted to be a BBC camera operator at one point, but got told she couldn’t do it as she wasn’t…

OUR FOCUS’S RUNNING-IN MILEAGE IS now complete, so I finally got to extend its engine this month. As suspected, the 2.3-litre four-cylinder feels decently potent now it’s fully uncorked, propelling the ST along at entirely contemporary hot hatch speeds despite its peak power figure of 276bhp sounding a touch off the pace. That’ll be the 310lb ft torque peak playing its part, it being a figure that scores the Mk4 Focus ST a Top Trumps advantage over all of its direct rivals. However, along with that torque comes an undesirable side effect: torque steer. A couple of decades ago, when the old adage that ‘you can’t have more than 200bhp in a front-wheel-drive car’ started to be disproved, torque steer was very much a hot topic, especially in relation to…

I FIND MYSELF LOPING ALONG IN THE M550i more than charging around and I reckon that’s partly because I’ve spent a chunk of time in the latest M5 Competition (see page 94). The two models are about £30k apart but share about 99 per cent of their DNA, including their V8s and kerb weights, pretty much. However, there’s a huge difference between how the two feel and, as a result, how you drive them. Well, how I drive them. The big differences are that the M5 has some steering feel where the M550 has very little, and that the M5 rides more tautly but is also more responsive and so doesn’t feel as heavy, and as a result the M5 feels more agile. Altogether, this makes corners in the M5…

IN 2016, THE THEN NEW BMW M2 PUT IN a rather lacklustre performance at eCoty, finishing plumb last. Not a great result for a rear-drive M-car that should have been a more polished and finely honed version of the already excellent 1M. That its contemporary M3 and M4 cousins hadn’t blown our driving shoes off either started to cast doubts over not only the direction M was heading, but BMW as a whole. Each new generation of car felt like it was doing enough to stay ahead of the competition, but only by margins so slim you had no hope of slipping an overly plump M Sport steering wheel in the gap. The lustre was gone, the polish fading and the ultimate driving machine morphing into a that-will-do machine. The…

IN A PREVIOUS LIFE THEY WERE CALLED GTIs. They were cars that defined and dominated sectors, inspired a generation and put Peugeot on the map as a company that was less about quirky design and engineering and more about creating a fully resolved product that had the widest appeal possible. Be it 205 or 309, when the GTI badge was applied it resulted in more than just a breathed-on mainstream model; these early day Peugeot GTIs set the benchmark for affordable driver’s cars. And then, after the 106 and 306, it all stopped. The fallow years followed, excellence only briefly reprised with the recent 208 and 308 GTi by Peugeot Sport (and the unofficial GTi, the RCZ). Then we were led to believe that was it: Peugeot was out of…

PORSCHE GB’S KERMIT-HUED 4-LITRE Cayman GTS has been no stranger to the pages of evo over the past six months, but its open-air twin in the 718 GTS range, the Boxster, has been absent since our first Driven test of the model, which was overseas, back in issue 271. It’s time to put that right, with the added bonus that Porsche has chosen to specify this particular GTS with the twin-clutch PDK gearbox option. Did I just say that was ‘a bonus’? That might not sound like the sort of traditional evo-talk you’re used to, but given that plenty of column inches have been devoted to bemoaning the yawn-inducingly long gear ratios of the manual GTS drivetrain, perhaps PDK might be the way to go? As our Henry Catchpole wrote…

I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING. IT’S EASY to be cynical about the Alfa Romeo Giulia GTAm. For starters, there’s the issue of slapping Alfa’s most evocative designation on a car that, though usefully lighter than the model on which it’s based, can hardly be described as truly alleggerita. You can also question the point of a four-door saloon with only two seats. Likewise the legitimacy of a near-£160,000 asking price. Such dispassionate reasoning is water-tight, right up until a nice man from Alfa Romeo drives into view in what is currently the factory’s only GTAm, whereupon one longing look at the gorgeous, spangly green, carbon-clad device sees any argument against it crumble to dust. No doubt about it, this is one stunning machine. The backstory only adds to its desirability.…

FEW COMBINATIONS IN MOTORSPORT HISTORY are more evocative than ‘Ferrari’ and ‘Le Mans’. The company made its name there, in part, by winning the first post-war race in 1949, and Enzo Ferrari considered a good performance by his cars in the 24 Hours vital throughout the ’50s, ’60s and into the early ’70s. From there the marque played more of a supporting role, with Daytonas and then Berlinetta Boxers in the GT class; when it returned for outright glory it was as an engine supplier to the factory Lancia squad in the Group C era of the 1980s. When Group C fizzled out in the early ’90s, GT cars returned to front sportscar racing as a more affordable, privateer-based formula, and early contenders included 348-based and then F355 racing machines,…

‘THROTTLE RESPONSE SHARP ENOUGH TO SHAVE A PEACH…’ 6.45PM, ALREADY DARK. THE PLAN WAS to snap the dying embers of a sunset before segueing into a night shoot, but the thick grey blanket of cloud has doused any chance of a flame-fringed horizon. Apart from a few brave joggers pounding through the misty drizzle, it really is a desolate shore. Thoughts tumble back years to my last night shoot, half a world away on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Gone midnight, all I had for company was a (celestial) Milky Way, the camera’s blinking red LED repurposed as a miniature lighthouse for finding my way back to base when I wandered off into the salty wilderness, an ever-colder can of Heineken clutched to my chest and the sound of photographer Andrew…

THERE IS A RATTLE. OR PERHAPS A buzz. Probably something, now I think about it, somewhere between the slower rate of a rattle and the almost constant tone of a buzz. Let’s say that there is some sort of medium-paced vibration in the passenger side of the dashboard. It’s not a constant thing but it has happened at some point on most journeys recently. It’s not as annoying as the sticky surface of my Clio’s steering wheel or the lack of engine in my Escort, but it’s mildly irritating when it happens. Just thought I should mention it. Balance out the oversteer and ‘sonorous red line’ stuff. Talking of which, I had a chance to pit the T-R R against the latest Golf GTI Clubsport recently, and although the Clubsport…

AS EFFECTIVE AS THE PIRELLI SOTTOZERO winter tyres were in poor conditions, it’s great to have the sticky P Zeros back on the Alfa. With their 60 treadwear rating, they can feel more like 1980s one-lap qualifiers, but while this makes them utterly useless in sub-zero conditions, in sunnier climes the response and grip they give the Giulia’s front end is just fabulous. Despite this, the twin-turbo V6 has more than enough mumbojumbo to overwhelm the rears, sometimes with amusingly thuggish consequences. What makes the Quadrifoglio particularly naughty is that with just a double nudge of the centrally mounted DNA rotary wheel to select Race mode (with the dampers knocked back to ‘mid’ to retain ride composure, naturally) you’re into maximum-attack mode with absolutely no safety net whatsoever. In essence,…

‘Current supercars are accessible and exploitable by all of us’ IT’S PROPERLY NUTS FINDING A BRIGHT green, Italian-registered Aventador filling your driveway each morning, but even that’s nothing compared to finding it being reversed onto your driveway in a snowstorm. I’d been out for a play in my winter tyre-shod Golf and was in my kitchen making a brew when I heard the unmistakable drawl of the Aventador’s V12. ‘It can’t be,’ I said to myself, thinking about how few cars I’d seen out there but, yes, it was Dickie, keeping our appointment to swap cars. It’s such a shame having a car as fantastic as the SVJ and being unable to take people out for a ride because of Covid. I was chatting over the fence with my neighbour…

AGTI-BADGED VERSION OF THE UP ALWAYS seemed like a no-brainer – so much so that Volkswagen even hinted at such a thing way back in 2011 when the Up made its motor show debut in Frankfurt. It took until 2018 for a production version to arrive, but better late than never, right? The Up was an entertaining little sprite in standard form, and it only got better by strapping a turbocharger to the 1-litre three-cylinder engine, tying down the chassis a little and daubing the appropriate GTI visual cues over its boxy shape. The result didn’t set any new standards for feedback or chassis balance, but what the 113bhp Up GTI did offer, in an era of increasing performance, expense and sheer size, was uncomplicated driving fun. Throwing the GTI…