Evo July 2022

CARS ARE GETTING TOO HEAVY, TOO powerful and too fast for the road. We can’t enjoy them for fear of being papped by a camera poking out from the rear window of a Ford Transit or the self-appointed public police force submitting dashcam footage of us doing something they don’t approve of despite it not being remotely dangerous, reckless or illegal. Yep, driving in the UK hasn’t been much fun for a while now and conditions aren’t improving anytime soon. Actually, that’s not strictly true. It’s still possible to gather a (small) group of friends and enjoy a few days away in each other’s company on the road and in the restaurant later that night. Such trips might take more planning than they once did, but from our own experience, and…

SILENCE. NOT SOMETHING YOU EXPECT when you’ve just fired-up Porsche Motorsport’s hottest new development prototype. But then there’s never been a Porsche Motorsport product quite like the 718 GT4 ePerformance. This full-EV machine – which packs a 1073bhp punch and can lap most racetracks faster than a 992 Cup car – is billed as the future of Porsche’s one-make motorsport business. This makes the GT4 ePerformance a Big Deal, both for marking the moment Porsche took another emotive step away from internal combustion, and for the company accepting that its motorsport customers (of which there are thousands) will expect and want to go racing in EV machines. Crucially, it’s also a pointer to what we can expect from Porsche’s future EV sports cars, as everything learned in the development of this motorsport…

CHANGE PETRIFIES US; REMOVES US from our comfort zone; whips away the security blanket we’ve clung onto oh-so-tightly to for oh-so-long; leaves us feeling vulnerable and afraid of what comes next. We liked it just the way it was. Why did someone have to change it? Progress is the answer (or the justification, depending on your level of cynicism) and, in our automotive world, fear-inducing change comes in many forms. When Porsche announced in the mid-90s that the 911 would no longer rely on the atmosphere to keep its flat-six cool, the hand-wringing was so severe it could strip the skin from the gnarliest of knuckles. The switch to automatic or double-clutch gearboxes at the cost of the manual gearbox? Less of a polarising change, more of an answer to market…

WHEN IT COMES TO ITALIAN EXOTICA few cars boast a more evocative name or more mythical status than the Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsa. Born out of a beef with Enzo Ferrari – boy did that man have a knack for making enemies – this low, lithe and lasciviously curvy machine was the brainchild of a dazzlingly talented engineer by the name of Giotto Bizzarrini. To understand the car you have to understand the man, so before we get under the skin and behind the wheel of the 5300 GT Corsa Revival, let me offer a bit of a history lesson. Bizzarrini made his mark well before embarking on his eponymous venture; first at Alfa Romeo, where he worked as a test driver and engineer in Alfa’s skunkworks, before being headhunted by…

YOU’RE LOOKING AT THE FASTEST BMW EVER. ON A NUMBER of parameters, too. Which is something of a relief, because the M4 CSL has a lot to live up to. Headline billing in M Division’s minor product onslaught during its 50th year, for one thing, counterbalancing the wildly controversial XM plug-in hybrid SUV while it’s at it. But those three letters – standing for Competition (formerly Coupé), Sport and Lightweight – put considerable heft on its shoulders. Somewhat ironic given the model’s intense weight saving. Much like GTO Ferraris, the CSL lineage makes sporadic, infrequent appearances, perhaps putting all the more pressure on the spec sheet of each car deemed worthy of the badge. Luckily, the M4 CSL’s doesn’t disappoint, and its headline figure is an almost suspiciously neat 100 kilos.…

OF ALL THE UK’S SPECIALIST CAR MAKERS, MORGAN IS FAR and away the oldest and most celebrated. It was founded in 1909 by HFS Morgan, a motoring pioneer who designed a light and inexpensive three-wheeler as transport for the masses that sustained the company well into the 1930s. By then, HFS recognised it was time for change and in 1936 introduced the 4/4 (four cylinders/four wheels). It was an immediate hit and the handsome Plus 4 derivative has set the style for most subsequent four-wheel Morgans. Change comes slowly; HFS’s sliding-pillar suspension was still in use until 1975 and the third-generation three-wheeler has just been launched (see evo 296). Meanwhile, the current Plus Four and Plus Six share the look of the 1950s Plus 4 and, although based on a bonded…