MOTOR Magazine Australia

“COLIN CHAPMAN MUST BE TURNING in his grave,” said every third internet commenter on the subject of a Lotus sports utility vehicle. The next level of sophistication was “if it saves the company and lets us drive Lotus sports cars, then I’m all for it. I just don’t want to look at it or hear about it, thanks.” So what are we to make of the Lotus Eletre? Saviour or sacrilege? Now that Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche and Maserati all build SUVs of one form or another, should Lotus miss out on this cash bonanza? Looking at the sales aspirations, it’ll probably never be that much of a bonanza. Lotus is a minuscule operation and even if the Eletre was to transform its sales by an order of magnitude, it’d still represent…

01 296 DROPS ITS TOP Open-air variant of 296 revealed, but what else is coming? WHILE WE’RE PATIENTLY waiting for our first drive of the Ferrari 296 GTB on Aussie roads, Maranello has already added a new variant to the mid-engined supercar’s line-up. Enter the 296 GTS, an opentopped sibling to the GTB, offering limitless headroom to accompany the plug-in hybrid’s shocking performance credentials. Like its fixed-roof sibling, the GTS is powered by a plug-in hybrid 3.0-litre turbocharged V6 producing 610kW and 740Nm, sending power to the rear wheels through an eightspeed dual-clutch. Part of its performance is thanks to a 122kW/315Nm electric motor mounted between the engine and gearbox, fed by a 7.5kWh lithium-ion battery, which helps to get the roadster to 100km/h from a standstill in a claimed 2.9 seconds, and can offer…

TOYOTA AUSTRALIA HAS confirmed a manual variant for the GR Supra is coming to Australia. The three-pedal coupe was confirmed globally with a short and sweet press release, followed by Toyota Australia quickly locking it in for our shores. According to Toyota the gearbox is “newly developed” and has been tailor-made with “feedback from customers and fans alike”. So not just a carry-over unit, then. This will be the first time the MkV generation Supra will be available as a manual, with only an eightspeed torque converter automatic previously on offer. The Supra’s twin under the skin, the Z4, did have a manual transmission offered with its four-cylinder variant, of which only two were sold locally before being pulled from the market. A European release indicates that manual Supra’s will be easily…

IT’S ALL HAPPENING at the MOTOR YouTube channel this month. To get our adrenaline fill we headed to Haunted Hills with the Jaguar F-Type P450 R-Dynamic to give offerings to the Gods of Drift. Using the British coupe’s 5.0-litre supercharged V8 we turned a set of tyres into sacrificial smoke in the holiest of motoring traditions. Scan the QR code on this page to see how it all went down, as well as Daniel Gardner’s full review of the mean green machine. Elsewhere we took the recently crowned Sports Car of the Year champion, the Subaru BRZ, and our Mazda MX-5 GT RS long-termer to Heathcote for a good old fashioned drag race. We understand that the drag strip isn’t where these two will spend most – if any – of their time. But…

WIN THIS NEXT MONTH! MOTOR MAGAZINE PRIZE PACK Yes, you can win a year’s subscription to MOTOR but we make you work for it. We’re curious souls and would like to hear stories of the cars you were driven in to your wedding – or a first date. We’ll pick the best story and you’ll be sorted with the world’s best performance car magazine (MOTOR). We’ll even pay postage. So make it romantic. WINNER LETTER of the MONTH A SLIGHT CASE OF OVERBOMBING VISITING DARWIN IN the 1970s, I rented a Mini Moke, rounded up a mate and went for a drive down the track. It was the end of the wet season so there were some impressive puddles to avoid. Then came the brilliant idea – get the mate to stand by…

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