Tabla de contenidos para October 2023 en Evo

THERE WAS A PERIOD WHEN Noble and TVR were mainstays of this magazine, fighting for page count with Subaru Imprezas, Mitsubishi Evos and those newfangled water-cooled posh Beetles. And they both more than held their own in any test we cared to throw them into, be it a twin-test or eCoty. Noble and TVR were the fast-growing British sports car brands that continually offered driver-focused alternatives to the mainstream, developing strong followings and supported by robust sales that upset the status quo. What they lacked in final fit and finish they made up for with thrills, engagement and performance that got the establishment to stop and take notice and formulate a plan to get their own slice of this untapped enthusiast pie. Two decades on and the establishment is alive…

IT’S FAIR TO SAY THE LATEST SL HASN’T yet bowled us over, despite now being developed fully by AMG and looking so much tauter than its predecessor. With its short overhangs, muscular arches and crisp detailing, you can scarcely believe they’ve squeezed in an extra pair of seats to make this R232 generation a 2+2. Upon seeing the weeny rear quarters up close, you might wonder why they bothered. But the SL63’s most interesting component sits up front: a 4-litre twin-turbo V8 like the SL55’s albeit with a healthy boost, its 577bhp and 590lb ft representing impressive climbs (from 469bhp and 516lb ft) with cooling, intake and exhaust upgrades plus the obligatory retune. Revised active engine mounts and the addition of an electronically controlled limited-slip diff and hydraulically linked damping…

READING ABOUT ANALOGUE AUTOMOTIVE’S £100,000 Lotus Elise restomod (evo 311 and 313), I can’t help but imagine those of us from the Max Power generation giving each other a knowing nod. For years cars have been getting heavier and heavier, with more tech jammed in, taking us further away from what made us fall in love with cars in the first place. So now we celebrate the previously sneered-at modifiers, give their creations the new title of ‘restomod’, and don’t even blink at the massive sums charged. Yes, the execution may be of a much higher quality than most of us achieved in our garages at home, but surely this is proof – if more was needed – for the manufacturers that consumers are craving a return to old-school-style, light-weight…

ANY JOURNALIST FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE arrived in Maranello to review a Ferrari will know the drill. The flutter of excitement as you pass beneath that famous arch, the rising tension as you look at the impossibly tight schedule for the day, then the mad southerly dash to the road that any committed reader will recognise, with its foliage-encased hairpins at the bottom and more open corners with far-reaching vistas as it climbs. Add in an F140-series V12, with its idiosyncratic gurgle and scream, plus the sound of tortured tyres, and it’s an experience as strong as when a child gets to decide the appropriate ratio of concentrate to water in their juice drink. Continuing the mind-association game, testing a Noble has no less clarity. Rutland lanes, green, fast and…

• Pay £1.66 per issue - saving £4.33 on the retail price • Unique collector subscriber-only covers • Receive your copy first, delivered to your door before it goes on-sale in the shops • Exclusive subscriber offers for evo events and in the evo shop • Subscriber only competitions and giveaways • Free welcome gift VISIT evo.co.uk/subscribe OR CALL 0330 333 9491 QUOTING CODE DE25 Live outside the UK? For our best overseas subscription offers visit subscribe.evo.com/overseas-subscription or call +44(0)3303339491. Calls to 03 numbers will be charged at your standard local rate. The introductory trial offer is limited to one per household per 12 months. We reserve the right to cancel an order if the trial offer is misused.…

I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I SAW A Griffith. It looked astounding, modern yet classic, like a traditional sports car that had been through a gemstone tumbler. It’s been years since I’ve been up close with one and as the garage door goes up, I’m in awe all over again. Great designs usually go through a process where they start out looking new and fresh, then become familiar and start to look a bit dated, and then, after about 20 years, they assume icon status. The Griff appears to have skipped the awkward bit in the middle and gone straight from new to icon. In fact, I suspect that somewhere in a dusty, forgotten attic of the former TVR Engineering works on Bristol Avenue, Blackpool, is designer Damian McTaggart’s original…

I’D NEVER INTENDED THE VANTAGE TO BE a daily driver; the plan was always to keep it for high days and holidays – and annoy the neighbours with its window-rattling start-up, obviously. And always in the back of my mind was the thought of doing some proper road trips in it. Last year we spent a wonderful week exploring the North York Moors and the adjacent coastline. I was contemplating options for this summer when, with immaculate timing, an invitation arrived from Der-by-based AM specialists Aston Engineering to join a group of 20 Aston Martins on a three-day tour of the Peak District and North Wales. That would do very nicely indeed. First there was the small matter of the annual service and health check – always a slightly anxious…

IT’S A SIGN OF THE TIMES THAT DESPITE being the fastest, sharpest, most powerful, most expensive and most extreme Boxster ever made, it is for the sad honour of being the last combustion-engined Boxster that the 718 Spyder RS will be best remembered. Let that sink in for a moment. The next time we see Porsche’s entry-level sports car it will be powered by batteries. Whether this product strategy proves to be prescient genius or premature folly remains to be seen. What we can say is that the finality of this moment makes the Spyder RS unusually significant. Thankfully, Andreas Preuninger and his team have made sure the ICE Boxster is receiving the best possible send-off, with a full suite of changes commensurate with being the first soft-top Porsche to…

WITH OVER 800 EXAMPLES SOLD SINCE its launch in 2022, the B8 Gran Coupé is an important model for Alpina. Primarily sold to the US market, it’s an understated alternative to the likes of the Bentley Continental GT and Mercedes-AMG GT63, with a focus on luxury and dynamic ability. So where BMW’s M8 Competition Gran Coupé has always seemed somewhat redundant in a world in which M5s exist, the more luxurious and more road-biased B8 makes a much clearer case for itself. Which is exactly what Alpina intended. With effortless power, a class-leading top speed and distinctive yet discreet styling, the B8 is intended to be a go-to long-distance tool. Based on the BMW M850i, it comes with a development of that car’s 4.4-litre twin-turbocharged N63 V8, a revised peak…

PADDY LOWE WORKED IN FORMULA 1 for 32 years, winning constructors’ titles with Williams, McLaren and Mercedes, and drivers’ titles with Mansell, Häkkinen and Hamilton, but F1 wasn’t his first or even his second love. ‘The East African Safari Rally used to come past our house every year and I was absolutely crazy about it,’ he recalls. ‘These were the days when it was a proper Safari, when you might only get seven finishers out of the whole field. Pro cars used to come from Europe, Porsche and the like, and generally got beaten by the locals, drivers like Joginder Singh. The only old car I’d love to own is a Datsun 240Z.’ Patrick Allen Lowe was born in Nairobi to parents who were Irish missionaries, and lived in Uganda…

‘IT WAS NOW OR NEVER,’ SAYS JENS SVERDRUP, the chairman and chief commercial officer of Zenvo, describing not just the decision to build an all-new hypercar but to equip it with a brand new, quad-turbo V12. ‘We considered V6, V8 and V12 or making it an EV. Everyone in the company wanted to do a V12 but we were worried it was just car guys living out a fantasy. It doesn’t make any sense; we could probably get the same performance from a V6. So I started asking a lot of my old customers and friends from back in the day and the feedback was one hundred per cent V12. So it turns out everyone else wants it too, and this really is our last chance to make a V12…

WE SEEM TO BE DOING THIS A LOT LATELY. Bidding farewell to cars that have been a formidable presence in our lives. This time not only is the bell tolling for the Audi R8 and Lamborghini Huracán, but also for the spectacular naturally aspirated V10 engine that powers them. All three deserve a proper farewell, but where to take them? For a while the whole idea hangs in the balance, with neither an R8 GT RWD or Huracán Tecnica available in the UK. Then the Gods of Internal Combustion (and Google Maps) intervene. Bookings synched with Audi AG and Automobili Lamborghini’s press fleets and collection arranged from Munich and Sant’Agata respectively, all that remains is to find a suitably spectacular rendezvous point that doesn’t devour too much of our three-day…

@evomagazine @evomagazine @officialevomagazine GINETTA KNOWS HOW TO THROW A PARTY. WE’RE AT G-Fest at Silverstone, a four-day spectacular for the marque’s 65th anniversary. Classic Ginettas from the brand’s past line the paddock, the strains of live music and the smell of barbecue are borne on the summer breeze, and there’s a seriously tasty array of competition cars being readied in the pitlane for races and demonstrations – including the company’s LMP1 racer, which played David to Toyota’s Goliath at Le Mans in 2018 and will unofficially break the Silverstone National Circuit lap record in a demo run later this weekend. But my mind’s on other things. A packed schedule of races includes some for the Ginetta GT Academy series, and our last racing foray in the Fast Fleet G56 before…

A VISITOR FROM STUTTGART FOR THE DBX this month in the shape of the Cayenne Turbo GT, the super-SUV that Porsche sent to its Weissach GT department for a workout in order to show the Brit upstart who produces the best performance SUV. It’s a sector that remains a mystery to many of us, in terms of why manufacturers invest so much to chase performance figures with cars you would never start the process with in the first place. But bills need to be paid, investors rewarded with dividends, high-margin specials funded and, for some, EV ramp-up costs bankrolled. Yet regardless of how well such machines drive and fulfil their remit – and some of them do so surprisingly well and considerably beyond expectations – they still feel like trying…

IT’S THE HEIGHT OF SUMMER IN THE PEAK District. For which read ‘quattro weather’. Later the sun will burst through the clouds for whole minutes at a time, but right now it’s unrelentingly grey and a mist of rain hangs in the air and distorts the view ahead like a heat haze. If only. In the past, this would have been a very good thing for a resolute, heroically stable Audi RS4 squaring up to a BMW M3, the former’s qualities magnified as the M3’s are drowned by the prevailing conditions. But that was then. Now the M3 Competition Touring is armed with xDrive as standard. What hope an RS4 approaching the very end of its production life against a box-fresh M3 that’s borrowed Audi’s long-time secret weapon? You sense…

THE FORD TOURNEO PEOPLE-CARRIER CANTS over like a listing ship. Passengers’ heads tilt in unison, shifting like the bubble in a spirit level. Grab handles are grabbed, torsos are braced against seats – or, for those sitting on the left-hand side, the windows. We’ve just entered the first banked turn of the Charlotte Motor Speedway, and is it ever steep. We’re on a sighting lap before driving the circuit in the new Ford Mustang Dark Horse, with the Ford racing school’s chief instructor at the Tourneo’s wheel to show us the best way around the really rather technical Charlotte ‘Roval’ course, which packs hairpins, sweepers and a surprising amount of elevation and camber inside the outer oval. And it says a lot for the Mustang that a few minutes later,…

AT THE END OF MY LAST PANDA REPORT the car was still in the local garage with its creaking front suspension in pieces. In order to make sense of the apparent bodgery around the bushes and bolts, Paul from the garage came up with a plan which involved reconstructing the front end using parts from a scrap Panda. ‘Hang on,’ I asked nervously, ‘what sort of Panda?’ Not a 100HP, it turned out. Obviously this was a worry because 100HP suspension isn’t like the suspension on other Pandas. The rear axle is bespoke, for example. And the front? Well, it’s hard to know what’s unique at that end because if you search for parts online many bits, including the lower wishbones and anti-roll bars, come up as suitable for all…

IF OUR AUDI TT RS FALLS SHORT AS a long-distance GT, you’d expect our MX-5 to face an even bigger struggle in similar circumstances. However, a recent trip to Zandvoort for the launch of the Alpina B5 GT (see Driven, evo 313) proved that it’s far more capable than you might expect. Last-minute travel arrangements meant taking the Eurotunnel rather than a more efficient Harwich to Hook of Holland ferry crossing, and given my northerly starting point this called for 200 miles of driving in the UK alone – each way. Heading from Calais, through Belgium and finally into the Netherlands, then all the way back home again, saw the MX-5 cover just shy of 1000 miles over the course of a few days, and it performed exceptionally well. I’d…

LONG-DISTANCE GRAND TOURERS PREDATE THE SUPERCAR as one of the cornerstones of motoring, but truth be told, it’s harder than ever to justify their existence. Today’s supercars are more useable than ever and cover great distances with ease, fulfilling the task once reserved for front-engined behemoths like the Ferrari Daytona, Lamborghini Espada and Maserati Ghibli. The two roles have converged through advancements in technology, comfort and refinement, but even so, there’s still an undeniable majesty about a classical grand tourer. A GT’s more regal, sophisticated character is deeply appealing, and one that’s tantalisingly accessible if you venture into the used market. The potential maintenance costs of running such a lavishly engineered machine tend to ward off second-hand buyers, but if you know what you’re getting into, you could land yourself…