Evo October 2021

ACROSS THIS AND THE PREVIOUS TWO issues of evo we have conducted a trio of group tests featuring solely hot hatches. And we make no apologies for this, or for the fact that we will be publishing a fourth and final shoot-out before the year end, bringing together our favourite cars from all three tests. Initially, we thought we would have just one big blowout ultimate test. Bring together a dozen or more hot hatches and let them fight it out amongst themselves until there was one left standing. But there were two reasons not to do this. The first was that a test of that size doesn’t allow you to drill down to the minutiae of each car, to convey its character and report its good and bad elements. The…

WE CAN HEAR IT COMING FOR MILES, THE HEAVY V8 beat rising and falling as the car accelerates and brakes, getting closer. Any moment we expect it to appear around the corner closest to us and, confusingly, it doesn’t. The sound gets louder and louder and when the Mustang eventually bursts into view it assaults our eyes and ears simultaneously. The colour! The stripes! In the insect world this sort of colour scheme is a warning that shouts ‘stay away or I’ll leave a bad taste in your mouth!’ But as digital news editor Jordan Katsianis attests, when applied to a Mustang, it draws interest; as he headed up the M1 from London, every BMW M and Mercedes-AMG wanted to race him. Maybe it was the noise that attracted them, or maybe…

YES, IT IS GETTING ON A BIT. AND YES, IT does still share some components from the Chrysler parts bin. And, well, yes, you probably did forget that Maserati still makes the Ghibli. But if you enjoy your supersaloons with a unique slice of character and personality compared with the usual suspects, then Italy’s answer to the M5 has just got a whole lot more compelling and, crucially, competitive. As with the Quattroporte (issue 287), Maserati has added a Trofeo model to the Ghibli line-up, which means that for the first time the smaller of the two saloons from Modena now has an eightcylinder engine where previously only a choice of six-cylinder petrol or diesel units was available. And where the infotainment system might be borrowed from Chrysler via parent company…

ITS RADIUS APPEARS TIGHT AT FIRST sight but you can carry more speed into, through and out of this uphill righthander than initially anticipated. That the exit opens up to present an arrow-straight stretch of tarmac that’s masked by the entry is a welcome discovery. This is a good corner. Well sighted, quick enough to be a challenge, yet not so quick that you need to take liberties to enjoy it. In, say, a 992 GT3 Touring with a manual gearbox, you’d downshift to third on approach, confident that you’ll be operating within the engine’s peak torque range at the corner exit. After a few runs you’ll pick up the throttle earlier in the turn, feel the diff hook up with more conviction as it catches then balances the torque and…

IN THE LATTER DAYS OF MY SCHOOL education a good friend had an original Mini as his first car. He now reads evo, but I don’t think he’ll mind me saying that few can have combined such naive fearlessness and irrepressible enthusiasm for driving flat out behind the wheel of that British motoring institution as he did. Oh how we giggled uncontrollably as one near-death experience was quickly followed by another, the raucous howl of the mercilessly thrashed 1-litre A-series emanating from a bodyshell two-parts rust to one-part filler, and covered in a variety of shades of British Racing Green that had seemingly been applied by a blind man with an assortment of aerosol cans. I think in modern terms we might have been called a ‘menace to society’. Matters got…

FOR 20 YEARS A VEHICLE DYNAMICS engineer for Jaguar and then Jaguar Land Rover, and more recently the founder of Life110, the Alpine A110 tuning company whose work has so impressed us, David Pook attributes at least part of his fascination with suspension and chassis behaviour to a radio-controlled car. ‘I was into suspension from an early age,’ he reveals. ‘It stemmed from my dad – an electronics engineer – bringing back a Tamiya Sand Scorcher from Japan when they first came out and building that up and seeing brilliant working suspension. It just grabbed me.’ Enthralled by the Sand Scorcher, Pook went on to race radio-controlled cars at UK regional and national level until he left school. ‘I learnt so much about suspension set-up in that time because it’s the same…