Table of contents for April 2016 in Evo

AS FORMULA 1 TIES ITSELF in knots with infighting, bickering and petty arguments over who said what, the World Endurance Championship continues to go about its business of attracting big-name manufacturers and world-class drivers while embracing and engaging a growing global audience. Thirty-two teams have entered the 2016 FIA championship and 60 have been invited to take part at the Le Mans 24 Hours, with a further ten on the reserve list. Five manufacturers are running full works entries or providing full factory backing to teams throughout the season, with nine manufacturers entering works teams, supporting privateers or supplying powertrains at Le Mans. Nissan is supplying powertrains to all but three of the 22 teams in the LMP2 class at Le Mans and to ten LMP2 teams throughout the FIA…

Test location: Kyalami Circuit, Johannesburg GPS: -25.996939, 28.071851 PORSCHE 911 TURBO S // PRAGA R1R // LAMBORGHINI HURACÁN LP610-4 SPYDER // CATERHAM 620S // LITCHFIELD AUDI RS6 // LEXUS RC200t F Sport // FORD FIESTA M-SPORT EDITION TWO POINT SIX. That’s the real figure. The press pack may list a 2.9-second 0-62mph time for the revised Porsche 911 Turbo S, but that’s an intentionally conservative figure. In testing, senior engineer August Achleitner and his team repeatedly achieved 2.6-second runs, which ranks this range-topping 911 among the most accelerative road cars of all time. Officially, Porsche quotes the slower time because customer cars should be able to match the claimed figure at altitude and in high ambient temperatures. But you and I also know that the £145,773 Turbo S could not…

Testlocation: Dorking, Surrey Hills GPS: 51.173557, -0.407096 WHEN CATERHAM launched the ballistic, 310bhp 620r two-and-a half years ago, it set new standards of lunacy in the lightweight sector. here was a stripped-out, no-frills trackday car with a higher power-toweight ratio than a Bugatti Veyron but for a fraction of the cost. With a six-speed sequential gearbox, an aggressive chassis setup, no windscreen and the kind of tyres your mum would take a dim view of, the 620r was not exactly the most user-friendly Caterham. the new 620S uses the same supercharged engine, but in a more pliable, road-biased package. It has a windscreen and full weather protection, it runs on less uncompromising avon ZZS tyres, it has a softer chassis setup and it uses a five-speed manual gearbox from a…

Test location: Six mile Bottom, Cambridgeshire GPS: 52.188170, 0.306852 SOME PEOPLE ARE never satisfied. Finally the clamour has been answered and there is a new Focus Rs, complete with four-wheel drive, but you can guarantee that now it’s here, the attention of Ford forums and Blue oval fans will search like the eye of Sauron for the next big thing. and there is an obvious candidate – everyone wants a Fiesta RS. Luckily m-Sport, which builds and runs Fiesta rally cars in everything from r1 to full WRC specification, might just have the answer. What you see here is the Ford Fiesta m-Sport edition. a lowly Fiesta ST-1 is used as a starting point (the engineers use a base car when creating a WRC machine, too, because most of it…

YOU SHOW UP, THE CAR SHOWS UP, and if it’s a slug, you’ll know it. Not within the first few laps, mind. You’ll be too busy checking for leaks, executing explicit radio commands and generally ensuring all the systems work; seat position, brakes, cooling, actuators, it’s a long list. It’s tempting to see testing as a nerve-racking experience for the driver, but these tentative opening laps of a racing car’s life, filled with new noises and sensations, are more torturous for the designers, engineers and mechanics, whose eyes are glued to the screens in the pits. If their calculations aren’t right it can go spectacularly wrong. Look atMcLaren’s MP4-30, which was beyond saving even in the hands of two world champions. Let’s assume they’ve done their jobs, though. Now it’s…

From the forums: community.evo.co.uk/forums Yes. robinoz Drive an Austin Maxi and report back. NotoriousREV Or a Vauxhall Astra from around 1994. securitycheck I suspect that it very much depends on the car. I haven’t driven a really old car or even a moderately old car recently, but I suspect if I were to get into something I used to own in the ’90s, I would find it slow, skittish and tinny. Also, the Cayman GT4. Gavin Will electric steering ever be better than hydraulic or unassisted? More than likely with the development money Porsche is throwing at it. Will the manual gearbox make a mainstream comeback? Very unlikely. Naturally aspirated engines? Beyond hypercars and bikes they are thin on the ground already and unlikely to ever come back. On the…

THE BELLS, THE BELLS! IT’S JUST AFTER 5am and I’m momentarily confused about where I am and what exactly is going on. Big, sonorous lumps of metal are ringing discombobulatingly and rather irritatingly loudly nearby, but why? Earthquake? Nuclear war? Alien invasion? I can’t hear panic in the hallways of the hotel so I assume none of the above. Then I remember. I’d done the usual thing when booking this hotel at the last minute, delighted at finding accommodation so close to the mountain road we wanted to use: Check TripAdvisor – yup, fair to middling reviews. Price is within budget. Sold. What I didn’t check was whether the hotel was attached to a Benedictine monastery. Silly me. With the bells for morning prayer rousing the monks (and everyone in…

it’s dark when we first see it. Parked in the courtyard of Sicily’s beautiful Eremo della Giubiliana hotel, under hazy yellow lights no brighter than a single struck match in a dusty cellar. The detail is lost but there’s no hiding the grand gestures that define the Pagani Huayra BC: those vast centrelock wheels with impossibly slender spokes, the swept-back wing with shark-fin supports and the deep venturi at the rear, the huge, contoured front splitter, the dive planes and the intricate aero shapes that run the length of the body and pump up the Huayra’s stance. And carbonfibre. Everywhere. For that wing, the splitter, the bonnet and the moveable aero devices that sit within it, the entire canopy and engine cover… It’s a spectacular sight and announces that Pagani…

SO I’M NOW THREE months into living with a car I’ve coveted for years. Has the shine worn off? Nope, not yet. I still get that little spike of excitement when I return to it in a car park. That big, sawn-off appearance, all muscle and attitude, just works for me. Unapologetic and bubbling with aggression, the GT-R still looks fresh simply because it’s unlike anything else. Inside it’s not quite so fresh. I’m not a materials fetishist but I admit that the big, blocky dash architecture, hard plastics and the central display screen are pretty shoddy if compared to anything from a TT to a new 911. More of a problem for me is that this massive car has no room inside it at all. OK, it’s fine for…

A FERRARI 599 HAD BEEN high on the acquisition list for some time. My wife and I came very close to buying both a GTB and a GTO three years ago, but in the long run not buying either worked out well as it gave us more time to think through which model we really wanted, given that it would be used mostly for long-distance trips. Ultimately the standard GTB was a bit too soft for my tastes and the GTO a bit too hard for my other half’s, so it seemed a GTB with the HGTE (Handling Gran Turismo Evoluzione) package would be a good compromise. From then it was just a matter of patience, waiting for the right car to surface. When the ideal car turned up, I…

I’ll be honest. After 12 months, seven countries and 33,000 miles, I still don’t know what to make of our range rover sport Autobiography Dynamic V8 diesel. It has rendered me conflicted; unable to accept the affection I have for it but likewise unable to ignore its failings – particularly if you covet driving. But let’s rewind. We specced our car to the hilt back in 2014: 22-inch wheels, full-size panoramic roof, adaptive xenon lights, 20-way powered seats, rear-seat entertainment, the lot. the price? £96,907, up from £82,650 basic. It arrived in December 2014 after a six-month wait and looked good in fuji White with black roof and detailing. A total number of one evo staffer loved the ebony/Pimento leather interior (me), and it became known around here as the…

I WAS SET UP AND READY to go. the issues reported last month were fixed, my coat was zipped up and my helmet was on. this was to be my first proper drive in a Caterham. The peak district offers some decent strips of tarmac for getting to know a car, but it was on the way there that the fun started. you see, the lightly treaded avon ZZS tyres don’t cope too well with wet, cold roads. the morning sun hadn’t quite burnt away the damp from the surface, which made for entertaining handling characteristics, and it was when I was exploring the 420r’s straight-line performance that editor trott’s words came back to me: ‘Careful on wet roads. It will spin up the rears in fourth.’ Honestly? I did…

H&R 2-WAY-ADJUSTABLE FRONT AND REAR ANTIROLL BARS (BMW E36) £334.79 eurocarparts.com Verdamp lang her. Three German words that I cannot translate yet which mean so much to me. If you’re a fan of late-’80s Touring Car racing you will have undoubtedly seen the video montage DTM History – The Golden Years. Six minutes of E30 M3s and 190E Cosworths bouncing off kerbs, sliding millimetres from walls and other cars, and yumping around the Nordschleife all to the soundtrack of BAP’s Verdamp Lang Her. The footage is an expression of how I want a car to behave and handle. These H&R anti-roll bars for the E36 BMW 3-series are not only thicker than standard (by 2mm at the front, 3mm at the rear), but the stiffness is also adjustable, with two…

Peugeot 208 GTi THE PEUGEOT 208 GTI ‘BY PEUGEOT Sport’ is among the best hot hatchbacks on sale today. It has put the standard car in the shade somewhat, but it shouldn’t take much for existing 208 GTi owners to close the gap. One thing both cars lack is a satisfying exhaust note. German firm Clemens (clemens-motorsport. info) sells a full exhaust system for 1149 euros – it makes no performance claims, but the deep, rich note sounds great and there’s a five-year warranty. A major contribution to the GTi by Peugeot Sport’s edge is a limited-slip differential. Pug1Off (peugeot-tuning-parts.co.uk) can supply a Quaife automatic-torque-biasing diff (prior to fitment and sundries) for £869. Along with the standard GTi’s more pliant ride, the changes should make for an even more enjoyable…

THE GENEVA MOTOR SHOW is the only motor show worth the entrance fee. Its compact layout is stuffed to the gunwales with every new performance and supercar worth seeing, and it can all be seen in a day. This year the show opens on March 1, and most manufacturers have teased us with details of what will be hidden under their silk sheets on the opening day. Here’s a rundown of what to expect. 78% Proportion of Brits that claim to have an emotional attachment to their car 2:01.286 Pole position time set by Shane Van Gisbergen for the Bathurst 12 Hours, the fastest ever lap of the Mount Panorama circuit 0.034 Time in seconds separating the two Corvette C7.Rs as they crossed the finish line in the Day tona…

I HAVE REGRETS ABOUT not going to more group C sportscar races in the 1980s, but a greater lapse of common sense is that I never once went to a rally in the group b era. often you don’t know you’re in a golden era of a sport until later. ‘Later’ in rallying meaning less variety of machinery and the death of some of the more dramatic and iconic events. It’s not possible to transport yourself in body back to the mid-1980s, but you can in spirit, because the love affair with the power-crazy era of group b rallying is far from over. Huge numbers of cars still exist and are regularly wheeled out at events such as the Goodwood Festival of speed, but here we’re taking you to the…

FACING A WIDE AND VERY obviously impassable river in an unknown corner of a small Dutch village, I came to the conclusion the car’s built-in satellite navigation system perhaps wasn’t the most accurate or up-to-date I’d ever used. There might well have been a crossing there once – possibly at low tide, or more realistically by a small ferry – but there certainly wasn’t now. With the technology currently under development by HERE, arriving at such dead-ends will one day become a thing of the past. Its HD Live Map system, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, is being touted as the world’s most advanced cloud-based map asset commercially available for vehicles. Cloud-based technology will in itself be the next big thing in automotive…

Test location: Donington Park, Derby GPS: 52.83054, -1.37884 Photography: Aston Parrott IT WASN’T LONG AGO that Henry Catchpole had his body contorted and brain recalibrated by the downforce of the Praga R1 racing car at Donington Park (evo 194). Now it’s my turn. However, today I’m in Praga’s new road car. Yes, road car. It’s called the R1R, it’s based on the R1 racer, and it looks tiny, extreme and, um, rather like a racing car. It is a road-legal machine, though, and the finish is high-quality carbonfibre and Alcantara, the ride height is raised to cope with lumps and bumps, and instead of slicks it’s wearing Toyo Proxes R888 tyres. There’s even a number plate on its vast front splitter. The R1R really is an exquisite and extraordinary sculpture…

Test location: Nobottle, Northamptonshire GPS: 52.261309, -1.013813 SO YOU WAKE UP ONE morning and decide your family car is a bit boring: too slow, too practical, too ordinary. This happens to me a lot, but then again I have an espace. Surely I should get an e61 M5 Touring or find a well-loved but high-mileage e63 AMG? probably. But it seems no matter which family car you choose, inevitably you end up wanting more. How else can you explain this Litchfield-tuned audi RS6 avant and the strong demand for it? and most customers don’t want the milder (relatively speaking) Stage 1 and Stage 2 kits, instead opting for the full-on Stage 3 with a nice round 750bhp. To recap, the audi RS6 is already quite fast. It has a 4-litre…

IT STANDS TO REASON THAT A MAGAZINE dedicated to The Thrill of Driving should find the growing industry (and media) obsession with the autonomous car profoundly unsettling. Rarely a day goes by without a press release or statement from a major manufacturer proudly proclaiming greater and greater commitment to a self-driving future. If news from the US is anything to go by, that’s only set to ramp up further now that the artificial intelligence system piloting Google’s self-driving car could be considered as the driver under federal law. Law, not tech, has always been the single biggest barrier to autonomous vehicles gaining approval for use on public roads, but it seems that even that hurdle has been at least partially removed. Confirming as much in a recent letter to Google,…

THERE’S A LOT OF PRESSURE WEIGHING DOWN on the new BMW M2. At least around these parts. The latest M3 and M4 have dazzled us at times (very specific times on a smooth, dry racetrack), but also frustrated, disappointed and left us with palpitations at others. The bad moments greatly outweigh the good, sadly. And to such an extent that we need a hero to restore our faith in the M division. A brand-new M creation that makes a nonsense of mourning those sparkling old normally aspirated engines. One that is focused on interactivity and fun rather than just pumping out massive torque figures and hitting 100mph in the blink of an eye. An M-car that feels light and agile, bubbling with energy and excitement. Like I said, the M…

THERE ARE SOME OBVIOUS DOWNSIDES to holding the exclusive first test of your quickest and most powerful car – a car that just so happens to be roofless, doorless and windscreenless – in Norfolk in early February. Things such as sleet and chilblains, to name but two. But if said first drive happens to be the Lotus 3-Eleven and the venue is Hethel, then the upsides easily win out. For starters you get to meet the boss for a meaningful chat. You also get to chew the fat with the engineers and check-in with people you’ve known half your life. Better still, you get to hang out in the Hethel test track’s clubhouse – a converted World War II control tower – where legends such as Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell…

BACK IN MAY 2015, I FOUND myself in a quandary. Barely a year earlier i had said farewell to a quite brilliant Mini GP. Now I had the opportunity to be the keeper of a new-generation Mini John cooper Works – the most powerful production Mini ever made, no less. However, we have an unwritten fast fleet rule that dictates that, once someone has run a particular car, they shouldn’t run another model from the same manufacturer for a good length of time. So did I generously suggest that it was someone else’s turn to try a Mini? did I heck. Our JCW arrived with just under 1000 miles on the clock and £8620 of options fitted. That took the base price of £23,050 up to £31,670 and resulted in…

IT’S A LITTLE AWKWARD from some angles – overstyled, a touch too tall and perhaps even a bit ‘look at me’ – but I for one really like staff photographer Aston Parrott’s quiff. Much like Parrott’s impressive coiffure, the RS Q3 is attracting an awful lot of attention. It seems that here in the UK we’re intrigued by it, and from the feedback I’ve received so far, also quite smitten with the hot-mini-SUV oddity. Shooting part of the Porsche 991.2 Carrera group test in issue 218 finally gave me the chance to have a proper drive of the RS Q3 on some of our favourite roads in snowdonia. typically, the rain was biblical, daylight non-existent and the winds gale-force. It’s no place for a beloved quiff, but the quattro drivetrain…

UNTIL VERY RECENTLY, for me waking up on a January morning meant darkness, heavy frosts and greasy roads, and an irresistible desire to pull the covers back over and return to the land of nod. Well, not any more. now when I look out the window and it’s dark, greasy and cold, I can’t wait to leave the house. Why? The impreza. I bloody love this car at the moment. it digs in, burbles, grips, burbles, steers, burbles, shifts, burbles and generally makes every interaction with it, and consequently the road, a total, uninterrupted joy. I do dumb things with it: I change gear too often (because it’s got such a sweet shift), I seek out slippery corners and turn-lift power to induce some wonderful four-wheel drifts, and if I…

WELL, THE SNOW REALLY did arrive here in Geneva, but evo is about the thrill of driving, not storage or parking, so it was time to get some snow tyres ordered for the Camaro. I went on pneus-online.ch and, this being Switzerland, I had a choice of no fewer than seven different snow tyres in 295/30 R19. In England there had been nothing available at all. I couldn’t find any winter tyres with a 305 section, which is the standard size for the Z/28, but narrower is better on snow anyway – not that 295 is very narrow! I ruled out those tyres that were speed-rated only to 240kph (149mph), because, well, you know. Tyres with a low rating for wet grip also went out, because that matters a lot…

TWO SIMPLE RULES TO FOLLOW IF you want to live happily ever after with a Quattroporte. Rule 1, accept that it’s not going to be a cheap car to run and budget accordingly. And rule 2, find a car that’s been owned by someone who understood the importance of rule 1. As Andy Heywood, MD of specialists McGrath Maserati, says: ‘Properly maintained, they’re a really nice car, the best of that generation of Maseratis – much nicer than the 4200 Coupe. You just have to find one where the owner has been meticulous about servicing. It’ll probably only cost you a thousand or so more than one that’s had a much harder life, and it’ll be worth every penny.’ The fifth-gen QP went on sale in May 2004. It used…

Key + = new entry this month. * = grey import. Entries in italics are for cars no longer on sale. Issue no. is for our most recent major test of the car (D = Driven, R = Road test or group test, F = Feature). Call 0844 844 0039 to order a back issue. Price is on-the-road including VAT and delivery charges. Engine is the car’s main motor only – additional hybrid tech isn’t shown. Weight is the car’s kerb weight as quoted by the manufacturer. bhp/ton is the power-to-weight ratio based on manufacturer’s kerb weight. 0-60mph and 0-100mph figures in bold are independently recorded, all other performance figures are manufacturers’ claims. CO2 g/km is the official EC figure and EC mpg is the official ‘Combined’ figure or equivalent.…

AFTER TWENTY YEARS IN production, the six-cylinder naturally aspirated Porsche Boxster is no longer. In its place comes the 718 Boxster, with all-new 2-litre and 2.5-litre turbocharged flat-four engines. When the matching 718 Cayman breaks cover in April, Porsche’s switch to turbocharging for its series production range will be complete. 718 is not just a model type code, but actually forms part of the new cars’ names. Will we ever refer to them as ‘718s’? Let’s hope not, because a 718 is a victorious race car and a Boxster, well, isn’t. Both new Boxsters are, however, more powerful, efficient, quicker and cleaner than their flat-six predecessors. As box-ticking exercises go, Porsche has marked every single square with the clearest of marks in an as-expected ruthless fashion. The switch to turbocharging…

THE 464BHP ATS-V Coupe is Cadillac’s direct rival to the BMW M4 – indeed the American motoring press has labelled it an ‘M4 killer’. It certainly contains ample technology to bring a fight to the M division, so we spoke to David Leone, executive chief engineer at Cadillac, to find out what tech the company has employed to take on Europe’s best. Engine Whereas BMW prefers its six cylinders in a straight line, Cadillac chooses to put its in a V. This configuration can increase the torque that an engine makes at lower revs because the power stroke comes from two sides of the crankshaft. It can also increase crank rotation response because the crankshaft is shorter and therefore lighter. The exhaust valves of the Cadillac’s engine are hollow, the…

Test location: Miami Beach, Florida GPS: 25.779964, -80.130746 THERE WAS ONE particular slide in the product presentation that really stood out. It was a simple graphic that depicted all three versions of Lamborghini’s huracán supercar, along with a pithy little description of each. The LP610-4 coupe was labelled the ‘performance’ model in the range and the LP580-2 coupe, the rearwheel-drive version, was described as the ‘fun-to-drive’ model. The new car, meanwhile, the one I’d travelled to Florida to drive – the LP610-4 spyder – was labelled ‘lifestyle’. The tone was set in an instant. and quite why I’d been brought to a sprawling metropolis like Miami to drive a 200mph supercar suddenly became all too clear. The huracán spyder will, by and large, spend its time crawling glitzy urban streets,…

Test location: Dorking, surrey Hills GPS: 51.173558, -0.407097 LEXUS IS THE LUXURY brand of toyota, that bit we get. But it’s toyota with the World endurance Championship team and toyota that is set to return to the World rally Championship, so why is it that Lexus gets to build a range of sports coupes? Take the LFA supercar, with its searing V10 and a dynamic repartee to challenge the establishment. its gestation began when toyota was making up the numbers in F1 and it came to fruition when the firm had switched to the WEC, in which it secured a world title for its drivers. At the same time toyota got into bed with subaru and the resulting pregnancy produced two confused sports car twins, one being the Gt86, which,…

I SHOWED MY WIFE A PHOTOGRAPH of the car I wanted to buy. ‘Oh my God, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,’ she said. This was a better than expected reaction. ‘Can you get it as an automatic?’ she asked. ‘Ah, no,’ I said. ‘And how many airbags does it have?’ ‘It has none,’ I mumbled. ‘What about Isofix for the baby seat?’ she continued. ‘Not as such,’ I coughed, scratching a stubborn piece of invisible dirt off the laptop. ‘So this wouldn’t be our family car?’ she concluded. ‘But you still want to get one?’ There was a pause. ‘Is this because you’re turning 40? Are you having a mid-life crisis?’ ‘If I say yes,’ I muttered, ‘will you leave me alone to order the car?’ And that’s…

I see them as one step closer to us being banned from driving ourselves, and a grey, boring world. Andrew As a keen driver, I say bring them on. General traffic flow will improve greatly, and safety too, when cars automatically stay in the correct lane and position themselves properly on roundabouts, etc, instead of the appalling driving you see daily on our roads. I’ll save my Ariel Nomad and Fireblade for quiet mornings to nip past all the robot drivers, though! Deputy A fully functioning, integrated automated traffic system seems to be the only way to deal with the ever increasing number of cars and keep traffic flowing as smoothly and quickly as it possibly can. As long as we’re relying on people to drive properly and considerately this…

FRANK VAN MEEL TOOK OVER THE reins at BMW’s M division in January 2015. So, a year into his tenure, we sit down with him for an exclusive interview at the Detroit motor show. And having had some fairly disheartening discussions with M engineers in the past about manual gearboxes, it seems a good place to start. ‘We have an equipment rate of over 20 per cent still with manual gearboxes,’ says van Meel. ‘Also, of course, our main market is the US, and they have this more emotional feeling towards driving with the stick. So, the rational side would say you don’t need any manual gearboxes because they are slower and they use more fuel, even though they are lighter, which is still the benefit of them. But there…

LOOKING WISTFULLY AT A MODEL of Porsche’s iconic sportscar painted in Gulf colours, Stéphane Ratel says: ‘I should have kept many cars, including this 917.’ As an opening gambit for an interview with a magazine for car enthusiasts, this one ranks as ‘expert’. He continues: ‘This was my car – the 917. I think I should have just kept a couple of cars and stayed on the beach. I’d have made more money. I’m working 12 hours a day. It is the truth.’ We meet Ratel in the Kensington office of SRO Motorsports Group – the organisation that controls a number of top-flight endurance racing series around the world (see overleaf). Ratel is an intriguing character. Considered a playboy in his youth, loved or hated, depending on who you speak…

LIKE ALL GOOD THINGS, TCoty has evolved over the years. From humble beginnings, when we’d test a bunch of road-legal cars with varying degrees of on-track capability, it has morphed into something very different. Now resembling an eccentric orgy of increasingly extreme and diverse machinery, it’s as much a snapshot of money-no-object trackday aspiration as a guide to road cars you can enjoy on track. We’re proud to say this is our maddest gathering yet. Bookended by the glorious Glickenhaus SCG003 racer/supercar and the SEAT Leon Cupra Sub-8, with everything from a 1200bhp tuned Nissan GT-R to an Ariel Nomad buggy (plus many more) squeezed in between, it’s a group test like no other. As in previous years, our venue is the excellent Blyton Park Driving Centre and your testers…

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN and into the fire? Having spent a year with a Range Rover Sport (see page 142 for the end-of-term report), I now find myself in a long-wheelbase luxury saloon. Albeit one with M badges. The quest to find the thrill of driving in unusual places continues… This is the latest, sixth-generation BMW 7-series; arguably the most technically advanced car in the world, wrapped in a bodyshell that only its maker could distinguish from the previous model. Ours is packed full of toys, including rear-wheel steering (£1195), ‘Executive Drive Pro’ suspension control (£2450), Bowers & Wilkins surround sound (£4675), an Executive package (£3000 and including sunblinds and soft-close doors), a Rear Seat Comfort package (£4815 and adding massage seats, TVs and a BMW Touch Command tablet…

DURING THE CHRISTMAS break (seems so long ago now…) I swapped cars with photographer Aston Parrott, him taking my MX-5 and me switching into his SEAT. I’d done quite a few journeys in the Leon before, travelling to various photoshoots, so hopping into it again felt as familiar as anything – even down to Aston’s choice of Kiss FM on the radio with the bass turned up too loud (both were soon corrected). The sheer functionality of our Cupra’s estate body was really helpful over Christmas. It was great being able to fit my dog in the boot, rather than having him sitting terrified next to me in the MX-5’s cosy cabin. I also carted the entire family about and even played designated driver, running a gaggle of drunk mums…

AS HUNTER MENTIONED in his report, he and I swapped cars for a while recently. It was a cold and frosty saturday morning when I got my first chance to drive ‘his’ Mk4 Mazda MX-5. Hardly roadster weather, but still the roof came down – albeit with the windows up and the heated seats on. With the roof lowered you can really appreciate the soundtrack coming from the MX-5’s exhaust. It doesn’t make an over-the-top boyracer-style racket, obviously, but it does make just enough of the right kind of sounds to let you know you’re in a sports car. The seats could be better, as they offer next to no body support, are set too high for my liking and offer primitive levels of adjustment. But on a good stretch…

CATCHPOLE TOUCHED on it last issue, and with nearly 9000 miles covered in the Octavia VRS I feel I can answer the following: does the six-speed DSG gearbox work with the 2-litre turbodiesel engine? In a word: no. The combination is tempting if you’ve chosen to live 100 miles from your office and take on the M25 and M1 twice a day. A torque-rich engine mated to a double-clutch gearbox to relieve the tedium of changing from first to second, maybe hitting third, before coming to a halt again looks so right when you’re playing with an online configurator. Unfortunately, at times, both components behave like total strangers when you want them to have an unbreakable bond. I have one big issue with the setup. The gearbox is often a…

THE FITMENT OF A TWIN-TURBO V8 gave the Lotus Esprit the one thing it had always lacked: big-cube firepower to challenge the supercar establishment on equal terms. It was a unique engine, too. No crate motor here for Norfolk’s finest, even if it wasn’t without its issues during the early years of production. Perhaps for that reason, five years ago prices for the 350bhp V8s dipped to a low of just £15,000 for something reasonable. The V8 Esprit appeared in 1996, with the lowerspec GT version – no air con or rear wing – sitting alongside a high-spec SE for 1998. The exotic, limited-edition Sport 350 came along in 1999, and in 2002 the car was facelifted, with 75 Final Editions built by 2004. Guy Munday of Cranley Sports &…

IF YOU EVER WANT TO OWN AN R34 NISSAN Skyline GT-R, buy now. Just get it done, because members of the so-called PlayStation Generation – now in their 30s and early 40s – are coming for it. During their formative years they were indoctrinated by the R34’s exotic heritage, contract-killer aesthetic and earth-shaking powertrain, so their bond with the fifth-gen Skyline GT-R is lifelong. And guess what? In a few years’ time they’re going to want it back. Of course, only a handful will have driven one, and in truth this bond has more to do with the fact that the HICAS rear-steer and four-wheeldrive stability made the digital version an extraordinarily dependable companion on Gran Turismo. It was relentlessly fast, endlessly forgiving and tuneable beyond even the wildest dreams…