Table of contents for January 2024 in Evo

IT’S BEEN A YEAR OF MEETINGS. Lots of meetings. Some very long, some that could have been dealt with via a simple message. A number have been enlightening, some soul-destroying. All have conspired to reduce my time out on the road in 2023. But then we gathered for evo Car of the Year and all was good with the world. It is, without a doubt, the highlight, but this year my anticipation levels were that little bit higher. The thought of a week’s driving in the best cars of 2023 alongside those who have crafted evo into what the magazine is today was the tonic I required. As you will discover (or hopefully have already discovered by reading James Taylor’s excellent story before my ramblings here) the class of 2023…

THE FADING, CRACKED AND WONDERFULLY DISHEVELLED majesty of the Circuito Estoril is a fitting backdrop for the launch of the new McLaren 750S. Nearby the roads scrabble and scrape through rock faces and reach for the coast by any means possible. The sky is sullen. It’s not one of those perfect days on a smoothly manicured surface – all deep black tarmac, brightly coloured kerbs and piercing sunlight. Instead there’s a sort of old-school, no-nonsense feel to proceedings. Confidence, too. After the troubled and protracted launch of the Artura, you get the impression that the 750S – effectively a midlife facelift of the 720S – is something of a breath of fresh air for all those connected to it. It’s a wildly quick, extremely light supercar. Simple. So, McLaren’s latest…

S TEAM RISES FROM THE GT3 RS’S NOSE-MOUNTED radiator. Its front tyres tip-toe a little further into the flood, like a rhino testing the ground at a watering hole. The water rises further, perilously approaching the front axle line. Huddled inside the car following the RS’s cloud-skimming rear wing, I see its brake lights daub red reflections onto the deepening water below, and then the reversing lights wink on, shining bright in the early morning gloom. Looks like we’re going to need to turn around. It’s day one of eCoty 2023, sandwiched between the aftermath of Storm Babet and the rapid approach of Storm Ciarán. The next five days will see us flit north and south of Hadrian’s Wall, from the Scottish Lowlands to the North Pennines and the Peak…

BEHIND THE SCENES…

FOR THIS, THE INAUGURAL YEAR OF THE evo Hall of Fame, we decided to honour not one but two outstanding individuals who have both shaped evo’s world, albeit in very different ways. Selecting our first inductee, our individual of the year, was no easy task. We are fortunate to have so many talented, innovative and inspirational people in our industry, and those working in the field of alternative fuels were often at the forefront of our minds in 2023. The likes of Paddy Lowe and the work Zero Petroleum has carried out with carbon-neutral synthetic fuel warranted recognition; similarly Andy Wilson and his team at Coryton, developing biofuels. And then there were was Olaf Scholtz, the German Chancellor, who lobbied the EU to allow cars powered by e-fuel to be…

TWELVE MONTHS AND ALMOST 8000 miles since we were handed its key, time is up for the Fast Fleet MX-5. It’s actually the fifth Mk4 MX-5 we’ve run here at evo, but we make no apologies for sporadically returning to this generation of Mazda’s roadster as it steadily evolves, because while there are cars that are much more capable and considerably more practical, the MX-5 offers an all-round package that very little else can match, as this latest 2.0 GT Sport Tech model has confirmed. Having become accustomed to my C63 AMG’s incredible long-distance comfort and torque-rich V8, jumping into an MX-5 required a change of mindset. The low weight, peppy naturally aspirated four-cylinder and manual gearbox were no cause for concern, but I did have my reservations about using…

THE LATEST LAND ROVER DEFENDER IS a machine that means business – that’s something that has become very clear to me after covering 9000 miles in the D300 X-Dynamic HSE model that evo ran through the summer. Whether that business is conquering the urban jungle or venturing off the beaten path, or a combination of both, is up to you. For the former role, KS72 WKJ came well equipped. Outside, the rugged looks were offset by the striking gloss finish to the Pangea Green metallic paint (a £895 extra), while inside, despite the purposeful vibe, there were plenty of creature comforts to be found. The Khaki seats, finished in Land Rover’s durable but soft ‘Resist’ material, were 14-way adjustable, with electric memory and a cooling function too, and they proved…

A MG’S GT WAS ALWAYS A CURIOUS beast. Positioned between a grand tourer and a super-sports car it struggled to decide what it wanted to be. It was a schizophrenic torn between taking on anything from an Aston Martin DB11 to a Porsche 911 Turbo. As impossible tasks go, the original AMG GT had one. Now there’s a new AMG GT that includes a pair of optional 911-esque rear seats and a larger boot – two core customer requests – which mean it’s 180mm longer and 70mm higher but the same width as the old car (the GT S, not the wider GT C). At 1895kg it’s also 325kg heavier, much of this down to the now standard fitment of 4Matic+ four-wheel drive and enough upgrades to the chassis hardware…

THE CONVERSATION STARTED BEFORE we’d even finished clearing away the empties as evo Car of the Year 2022 came to a close. What would the likely contenders for 2023 be? Would BMW make amends for the M4 CSL’s poor showing? What was the GT3 RS going to be like if the GT4 RS could barely keep its Cup 2s on the road? How many hybrids would leave us stranded on a moor when their power source drained to empty? Would there be any affordable cars? And would Mercedes-AMG ever speak to us again? We always leave eCoty on a high, craving more, and immediately begin planning the following year’s test. And not only because it’s a great excuse to delay writing the collective 20,000-odd words. The first contenders started to…

9th MASERATI GRANTURISMO TROFEO Compiling the scores on the penultimate night of eCoty is not the work of a moment. The judges get a deadline, which is widely ignored, and then someone, there’s always someone, declares they haven’t had enough time in one of the cars. That someone in 2023 was Henry Catchpole, who picked up the Jethro ‘I need one more drive’ Bovingdon baton in his absence. Only after everyone is happy are the votes counted. The Maserati’s position appears, on paper, to be more than a tumble from grace. From first last year to ninth is not an easy pill to swallow, but the result doesn’t reflect the quality of the car, which impressed despite the challenge of test routes that were at the outer reaches of its…

YOU KNOW IT’S A VINTAGE YEAR WHEN YOU CAN’T decide which key to slide off the kitchen table and into your pocket while everyone is busy inhaling a bacon sandwich. It was tempting to start every day in one of the GTs: the irresistible draw of the DB12 or the subtle charms of the Maserati? But then the appeal of the Carrera T to ease you into the day’s activities was hard to ignore, its crisp mechanicals, oh-so-familiar layout and its willingness to be subdued and subtle (not when painted canary yellow, obviously) enough to get you logged on to the configurator as you waited for Henry to finish individually grinding coffee beans between thumb and forefinger. The M3 CS wasn’t a morning car. It felt hard and harsh, taking…

HEARTSTRINGS CAN PULL HARDER than a Le Mans Hypercar’s hybrid powertrain, and when Ferrari whipped the covers from its fully liveried 499P in autumn last year, it was quite a moment. The return of a full factory-backed Maranello entry into Le Mans’ top class for the first time in 50 years, wearing the same red-and-yellow livery as the 312PB prototypes deprived of victory at Le Mans in 1973 by ill fortune and a rapid Matra, was as big a story as they come in endurance racing, and confirmation that the World Endurance Championship’s still-new Hypercar ruleset really is ushering in a golden era. For it to then qualify on pole position for its first race at Sebring and finish on the podium – and then to score a one-two at…

WHEN I PICTURE AN AUDI S8, I IMAGINE IT BEING driven by an elite hitman making a rapid getaway in a Jerry Bruckheimer film. Or perhaps it’s waiting patiently on a runway, ready to deliver a visiting angry German ambassador to Chequers. My first encounter with KY73 OTZ was in the considerably less glamorous surroundings of a curry house car park on the old Great North Road. Yet despite this, or perhaps because of it, it still made quite the first impression. With its Floret Silver metallic paint shining in the autumn sunlight and complemented by large 21-inch ‘Evo style’ wheels with red brake calipers behind, it looked sophisticated, considered and simply very cool indeed. Contrasting the silver is the imposing front grille, revised in the recent facelift for the…

A GOOD FEW MONTHS INTO LIFE WITH the M4 and, in all honesty, I’m still smitten with it. I didn’t expect a near-1800kg, all-wheel-drive, moderately ostentatious two-door saloon car (I know it’s technically a coupe but I struggle to think of it as anything other than a sleeker-than-average saloon) to work its way into my affections quite so wholeheartedly, but I’m fully under its spell. It’s just so easy to live with; enormously comfy on long motorway slogs (even in the carbon bucket seats) and smooth-riding like a saloon car of old when the adaptive dampers are in their cushiest setting. For such a heavy car, I think the M4 rides really well. Well full-stop, in fact: whenever I test other cars from various genres, they often feel a bit…

MY SENIOR COLLEAGUES AT EVO USED to have it much easier than this. Car launches were more straightforward back in the early years of this magazine, with days of driving across a mix of roads to really sink your teeth into a new model. But the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, with its highly configurable electric powertrain and baffling array of drive modes, is about 15 cars in one. From N Torque Distribution via N Pedal and N Drift Optimizer to N Race, the number of adjustable parameters is borderline ridiculous. Oh, and it can simulate the sound and response of a petrol engine and dual-clutch gearbox if you wish. We have about an hour’s worth of driving on a South Korean mountain pass to decide whether it’s any good, which…

WHAT ABOUT THE…? WHERE’S THE…? WHY DIDN’T YOU INCLUDE THE…? Every year there are a number of cars that aren’t represented in evo Car of the Year for a number of reasons. Some we work until the eleventh hour trying to secure, others we know aren’t going to make the test at the early planning stages because they either don’t reach the mark or are never going to be ready in time. To provide some clarity and insight, here’s why your favourite car of 2023 isn’t in eCoty. Let’s start with the Lotus Emira. This is the second consecutive year the new mid-engined Lotus hasn’t made it to eCoty, not through the want of trying. Last year the V6 manual was pulled by Lotus at the last minute and this…

I CAN’T RECALL DRIVING CONDITIONS ON AN EVO TEST quite like these. Autumnal leaves swirl randomly in front of the Lamborghini’s heavily slanted windscreen, slivers of auburn, brown, ruby and yellow flashing across the road and falling in clumps on its surface. Much of the road is under water, courtesy of the storm that’s been lashing the British Isles overnight. Ahead, John in the McLaren is creating his own bow wave as a muddy river parts before the pointed nose of the 750S, the water level reaching part-way up the doors as plumes of steam rise from its nether regions. Whose idea was it to turn right instead of left? As you may have already read in James’s main story, we had a slight navigational issue one morning leaving our…

MY THREE MOST MEMORABLE DRIVES INVOLVED THE Sterrato, and in two instances I wasn’t even driving it. I confess that I thought the cosplay Lambo was going to be the novelty act of the test, a car to add a bit of colour and fun and then to forget when it came to the serious bit of deciding the winner. Nope. No siree. On the first evening, when it was dark and the photographers had had their fill, I found myself heading down off the hills in the Alpine. In front, just in sight, was Dickie in the Sterrato. He’d cranked up the Lambo’s drive mode so that, when he gunned it, the sound of the warbling V10 filled the landscape, and every time he backed off there was a…

IN THE 25 YEARS SINCE EVO’S LAUNCH, WE HAVE been fortunate to meet, work with, interview, ride along with and be inspired by some truly remarkable individuals, both in the world of road cars and in motorsport. Not forgetting the cars, of course. Over the last quarter of a century we have driven and raced some of the greatest road and race cars on the planet, and when not driving the latter we’ve experienced them close up as they touch the very pinnacle of performance. So we thought it high time we acknowledged the people and the machines that inspire us. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the evo Hall of Fame. A place where the great and the good will be recognised for their outstanding achievements and contribution to the…

HARD TO NAME A MORE CRUSHINGLY complete performance this year than that of Max Verstappen – in any branch of motorsport, let alone at its pinnacle. The Dutchman’s domination hasn’t made for a classic Formula 1 season but it’s an achievement up there with the greats in wider sporting history as well as motorsport itself. Perhaps the scariest thing is that it’s rarely looked as if Verstappen has broken sweat all year, while mistakes have been few and far between. At the time of writing, following the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Verstappen has won 18 out of 21 races this season, with one race still to run, equating to an 86 per cent hit rate. That’s the most number of wins of any driver in an F1 season (the record…

THERE’S A SURPRISING AMOUNT OF tech in the Giulia, some of it hidden. One example is Forward Collision Warning, which I discovered when it gave me a bit of a fright, sounding an alarm, flashing a message and braking the car. In that instant I had no idea what was happening. I’d been wafting along, catching up to a car that was turning off and which I’d easily clear, when it triggered. A delve into the settings showed that, as with many of these systems, you can choose the sensitivity or turn it off entirely. I wish it gave that degree of choice for the stability and traction control but you’ll search in vain for the off button. This feels at odds with the sporty image that Alfa cultivates and…