Sommaire pour February 2023 de Evo

020 3900 1901 eds@evo.co.uk www.evo.co.uk evo, Autovia Limited, 31-32 Alfred Place, London, WC1E 7DP, United Kingdom EDITOR Stuart Gallagher MANAGING EDITOR Ian Eveleigh DEPUTY EDITOR Adam Towler ART EDITOR Rich Browne DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR Jordan Katsianis SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER Aston Parrott EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Sam Jenkins CONTRIBUTING EDITORS John Barker Jethro Bovingdon Henry Catchpole Richard Meaden Richard Porter Steve Sutcliffe GROUP WEB EDITOR Steve Walker EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Steve Fowler CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Stephen Dobie Brett Fraser Colin Goodwin Peter Tomalin CONTRIBUTING PHOTO GRAPHERS Matt Howell Andy Morgan Jade Nelson Dean Smith IT WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT Peter Allen, Jonathan Baker, Patrick Morgan…

WHEN WE PAUSE TO CONSIDER HOW FAR high-performance cars have come in the last decade or so, we tend to point to the latest generation of 800bhp entry-level supercars. However, sometimes if you lower your sights you find a car that – relatively speaking – boasts equally extraordinary stats. A car such as the RS3 Performance Edition. Browse the specification and you really could be describing a supercar from not so long ago. Carbon brakes, adaptive magnetic dampers, multiple dynamic modes including a driver-controlled rear torque split, ultra-sticky tyres, a 186mph top speed and build numbers in the low hundreds. And yet what we’re actually talking about is a special edition built by a mainstream manufacturer in a choice of compact saloon or hatchback body styles. Compared with the regular…

NEWS, INTERVIEWS, TECH AND EVERY NEW CAR THAT MATTERS AN ELECTRIC MASERATI DOES SEEM ONEof the stranger anomalies of the current era (no pun intended), given that qualities such as style and charisma have long tended to take precedence over cutting-edge technology at Italy’s second most famous car company. However, from 2025 onwards all new Maseratis will be offered with a choice of either fully electric or ‘Nettuno’ V6-based petrol powertrains, the EVs inevitably occupying more of the centre stage beyond that date. So given that the new GranTurismo Folgore is the first Maser that will use the company’s all-new electric powertrain, it matters. A lot. This particular example is a pre-production prototype, hence the absence of any interior pictures: Maserati won’t be unveiling the full majesty of the Folgore’s…

TIGHTER RESTRICTIONS AND EVER-INCREASING POWER OUTPUTS make exploiting a modern performance car more difficult than ever. Of course, one solution is simply to book an evo trackday and enjoy the freedom of driving your own car on a circuit, but a company called Hype Motorsport is now offering a new option to put fewer obstacles between the driving enthusiast and a thrilling drive. Owning a performance car is a key accomplishment for many and can be a rewarding experience in its own right, but for those looking to drive frequently on track, it can be a costly exercise. Hype Motorsport offers an alternative by handling the upfront costs, storage and maintenance associated with a track-tuned car, allowing enthusiasts to simply arrive and drive for a fixed sum. Co-founded by Ben…

ISSUE 305’S ED SPEAK RAISES INTERESTING THOUGHTS about the characteristics of 2022’s evo Car of the Year contenders and those of the first eCoty in 1998. I’m sure I’m not alone in realising how favourably the 2022 runner-up compares with the 1998 averages cited, the Toyota GR86’s 1275kg/231bhp/£30k versus 1209kg/247bhp/£42k. I for one am not particularly enthused by the growth in power, weight, complexity and cost associated with much of the performance car market over the last decade. This is why, after building up to owning cars with 300bhp-plus, I stepped back and sought my own ‘reset point’ – a new (in 2012) Toyota GT86. The GT86 isn’t perfect, but that didn’t stop me completely loving it and relishing the purity and simplicity of every drive. Now, as eCoty indicates,…

HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT the Frenchman walking his cat? Not the beginning of a crude joke that plays clumsily with national stereotypes, rather one way to fill the boredom of waiting for your electric car to charge. It’s a thoroughly 2020s problem and one our new Gallic mate (well, we’re on nodding terms) has solved in curious fashion. ‘Is that really the group of people we want to be a part of?’ asks photographer Matt Howell. We’ve not brought a cat, but our car outpunches his Mégane. The Kia EV6 GT combines twin motors for all-wheel drive and a 577bhp peak, enough for a 3.5sec sprint to 62mph and 162mph top speed. Not just quick for an EV, but quick for a family-sized car full stop. A large…

SOMETIMES, SILENCE CAN SPEAK MORE eloquently than any words. We’re sitting in a press briefing at the Honda Civic Type R launch in Estoril, Portugal. Taking us on this deep dive of the new CTR’s technical highlights is Honda Europe’s highly impressive Kotaro Yamamoto. Joining him from Japan via Zoom is CTR programme chief Hideki Kakinuma. It’s all brilliantly Japanese, with lots of colourful and highly detailed slides with evocative/slightly bizarre headings, such as ‘Objective of “Ultimate Sport”’ and ‘Human-Vehicle Unity Handling’. They feature a bewildering array of graphs and traces, illustrating everything from throttle blipping performance to gearshift load. After half an hour I feel like I’ve entered a parallel metaverse created by the makers of Gran Turismo. Having exited the matrix we’re invited to ask questions, with Yamamoto…

CAN IT REALLY BE 20 YEARS SINCE THAT first, V6-powered Golf R32? Well yes, it can, and it is, and to celebrate the occasion we have this, the slightly awkwardly christened Golf R ‘20 Years’. It’s fair to say that evo hasn’t been the biggest fan of the Mk8 Golf R. Its predecessor, love it or loathe it, was such an important milestone in the development arc of the hot hatch, but the 8R is simply not the step forward we might legitimately have expected. On the contrary, in fact: in quite a few ways it’s an inferior and less desirable car to the enthusiast driver. But all of this we’ve documented at length in this magazine previously. The question here is: can the 20 Years add a new page…

’IT DOES NOT PAY A PROPHET TO BE too specific.’ So said science fiction author L Sprague de Camp, and following his advice, I will give a loose prediction that the adoption of EVs will hit the buffers within the next couple of years and certainly before the end of the decade. The simple facts are these: EVs are getting more and more expensive, the public charging network is laughable and 40 per cent of UK households do not have off-street parking (the author included). What all this means is that there is certain to be a huge number of ICE cars around for decades to come. Indeed, the average age of vehicles in the UK car park is already increasing. The government’s blinkered approach to reducing the car’s impact…

THE GROUP C PORSCHE 956/962 OF THE 1980s has a stronger claim than most to be the greatest sports-racing car of all time. Consider that it turned a wheel for the first time in March of 1982, but that a derivative (the Dauer 962LM) won Le Mans outright as late as 1994. In between, it won the 24-hour race at La Sarthe six times in a row, the period equivalent of the WEC five times in a row, the American IMSA series three times, and scored so many individual race wins and regional championships that there simply isn’t the space to mention them all here. New for 1982, the Group C regulations were centred on the use of production-based engine blocks, providing a lower cost base for potential teams and…

WE ALL GET IT. THE FEAR OF MISSING OUT. Especially in a world where images of sunshine, cool cars and happy people are delivered to our phones in a constant stream. Even though I have a pretty low tolerance for car shows – a parked car is a wasted car, isn’t it? – that fear of missing out creeps in from time to time when I see pictures from another Cars and Coffee event packed with unbelievable exotica, wickedly potent-sounding muscle cars and curios that seem to exist only in the surreal world of California. I want to go to a car show. For fleeting moments, I really want to be a part of that scene. Today it’s happening. And I’m excited. It’s early on a Sunday morning and I’m…

IT’S APPROPRIATE THAT IN THIS, EVO’S 25th year, we should have a Maserati Ghibli on the Fast Fleet. The histories of Ghibli and evo are tightly intertwined thanks to cofounder Harry Metcalfe’s love of Maserati’s boxy 1990s Biturbo-based Ghibli II. His blood-red Ghibli Cup – which wore the plate ‘M4SER’ – was a bit of a legend around these parts, as much a member of the team as any of us, and a uniquely quick and characterful car. Much has changed since those heady days. Not least at Maserati, which was owned by Ferrari in 1999, then switched to Fiat Group ownership in 2005, under which the marque pursued volume sales with a new range of Ghibli and Quattroporte saloons and the Levante SUV. Now part of the vast Stellantis…

ASTON PARROTT RAN OUR FAST FLEET Skoda Kodiaq vRS, so you may be wondering why it’s not he writing this goodbye report. He said I should write it because I borrowed the vRS quite a bit, but I suspect the real reason he’s left me holding the baby is that after six months he’s simply run out of things to say about Skoda’s cod-sporting seven-seater. Such apathy is perhaps indicative of the esteem in which the Kodiaq vRS has been held at evo. Personally, I had hoped it would be like some latter-day Subaru Forester Turbo: an engagingly practical car that also blended in some not inconsiderable performance and character. The best of both worlds – and, perhaps, an ideal car for a photographer on evo to run. However, I…

GIVEN ASTON PARROTT HAD ALREADY professed his love for the SVR in no uncertain terms, when a family holiday led me to borrow his Fast Fleet Skoda Kodiaq vRS he wasn’t shy in accepting the swap. It turned out to be an extended stay, much to our photographer’s delight, as our diaries failed to sync for the swap back for some time. When they eventually did, Aston sent an image of one of the Jaguar’s doors with considerable damage present. A classic car-park scrape with the perpetrator leaving no note, but large enough to require bodyshop surgery. Damn it. So while the SVR is having the creases ironed out, a Land Rover Discovery 5 D300 Metropolitan Edition (£75,475 plus options!) is temporarily in its place. It’s a smooth and satisfying…

IT STARTS FROM THE MOMENT THAT IT starts. Or rather it doesn’t. Start, that is. Because when you press the button on the dash that would normally instigate a lumpen rumble, nothing happens. By default the new C63 S E Performance comes to life in Comfort mode, and as such it wakes silently and moves stealthily, solely under electric power. There have been moments – early morning moments – when my polite, neighbourly sensibility would have given quite a lot to be able to pull this party trick in a C63. With this one, there need be no more awkward apologies for startling slumbering villagers. Mrs Saydees and her cat, Bence, at number 55 can sleep in peace. Admittedly it’s less of a concern at Malaga airport in the middle…

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT, BMW’S M TEST CENTRE at the Nürburgring sits proudly in the heart of the most famous village in Germany. Almost in the shadow of the iconic castle and a steak-on-a-stone’s throw from the famous Pistenklause restaurant, this former BMW dealership is itself one of Nürburg’s most recognisable landmarks. It’s not the official home of the M division – that’s Garching, on the outskirts of Munich. Still, it’s fair to say this smart, 1200m² building, where all M cars are looked after when being subjected to hundreds of laps of the Nordschleife and thousands of road miles on local test loops, is a vital asset and an intrinsic element of M’s DNA. For the test and development team, Nürburg is home-from-home. It’s here, as the Nordschleife’s famous…

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@evomagazine @evomagazine @officialevomagazine THE OTHER MONTH I SAID TO a mate that I had developed a sudden craving for a Panda 100HP. Unfortunately, the mate was Jonny Smith with whom I make the Smith and Sniff podcast and we were recording our show at the time. As a result, my idle remark went quite a lot further than if I’d muttered it quietly in a pub. Soon after that episode went live, the messages started to arrive, mostly from Panda 100HP owners uniformly raving about their cars. Not that I needed telling. I loved the 100HP when it was new and seriously considered buying one. I can’t remember why I didn’t. I do remember being quite jealous of Richard Meaden who ran one as his long-termer back in 2007. So…

AS FROST LIES THICK ON THE GROUND outside and I’m tempted to reach for another jumper (or possibly a duvet), it’s good to look back on a thoroughly enjoyable summer and autumn with the Vantage. Memorable days out included joining a throng of other Astons for the Silverstone Classic, a packed Bicester Scramble and the Midsummer Classic run by Aston specialist Nicholas Mee. Best of all was a three-day tour of the North York Moors and beyond. And then there were the innumerable blasts around the local lanes, just for the fun of it. Not once did the Aston feel less than special, and not once did it misbehave (at least not after the rodent-inflicted damage to some sensor wiring had been repaired back in March), and for a 16-year-old…

OUR PANAMERA, THE SNAPPILY TITLED 4S E-Hybrid Sport Turismo, faced its toughest task during its last weeks with us when it was pressed into service as a photography car on 2022’s evo Car of the Year test. It’s a challenging week for the contenders, but the support vehicles are equally pushed to the limit of their capabilities, and when they’re in the hands of our photographers that also includes in the region of 100kg of kit being hauled around too. During that week AEE didn’t flinch. It chomped through the 300 miles to our base two-up and loaded to the gunwales and still returned mid-30s mpg, even with the last 20 miles driven with a little more spirit as we homed in on an end-of-journey cold beer. But it was…

IN 1979 AMC MADE A DEAL WITH RENAULTto sell the French company’s cars through its vast US dealer network. From there things got serious and by late 1980 Renault was taking a 46 per cent stake in the struggling American company and drawing up grand plans for a US invasion, led by locally assembled versions of the R9 and R11 and an Americanised version of the R18. But to lure Americans to their local AMC showrooms Renault really needed a sexy, low-slung flagship. Happily, the company’s advanced research division, BEREX, was working on just such a thing: a striking successor to the Alpine A310, to be called the Grand Tourisme Alpine or GTA. Less happily, by the time Renault realised the GTA could be useful across the Atlantic the project…