Table of contents for November 2022 in Evo

DURING FERRARI’S PRESENTATION of the Purosangue someone asked if they had presented potential designs to customer clinics. Flavio Manzoni, senior vice president of design, looked almost confused by the question. ‘No. Customer clinics can’t offer [us] anything,’ came the succinct response. Never let it be said that Ferrari lacks confidence. Clinics should not be mistaken for feedback from customers who live and breathe the brand and the cars they own, drive and cherish. When that kind of customer provides a critique or a suggestion, you listen. But when you rely on views provided only because the person giving them was available on the day to view a car they know nothing about, the resulting product is predictably drab. These clinics are largely responsible for so many of today’s forgettable new…

IS THE STANDARD 992 CARRERA BETTER than the Carrera S? There’s an argument that the base model’s 380bhp and circa 4sec 0-60 time is plenty and that the less potent engine is sweeter. The two models are powered by essentially the same 3-litre, twin-turbo flat-six, the only difference being that the 380bhp version’s turbos are slightly smaller on the compressor side, and you’ll find some owners who reckon that this gives better initial throttle response. Maybe. There’s a much more compelling reason for choosing the entry-level Carrera, though. If, having saved the money on the 440bhp Carrera S (circa £13k), you then find yourself craving more power, Litchfield Motors has a very cost-effective solution. For the trifling sum of £1194 (£500 less than the Sport Chrono Package option) you can…

IN THE NEAR QUARTER OF A CENTURY SINCE ITS NOW-ICONIC Zonda first appeared on a stand at the Geneva motor show, and three decades since Horacio Pagani established his eponymous car company, this is only its third car. Yes, there have been coupe and roadster versions of both Zonda and Huayra, track specials and limited editions – lots of limited editions in fact, nearly as many as Porsche knocks out 911s – but the new Utopia, codenamed C10, makes the trilogy. Utopia bears more than a passing resemblance to the original Zonda, with its rakish nose, squared-off tail and quartet of exhaust pipes. Unmistakably a Pagani, there’s a uniqueness to its design that makes most of today’s crop of unobtainable hypercars – Utopia customers will hand over at least £2.2million…

THIS IS THE MATURO STRADALE, A NEW restomod of the Lancia Delta Integrale that promises the ferocious performance and excitement of a Group A Delta rally car inside a road car-style body. Maturo Competition Cars is a Dutch restoration company that’s been working on reimagined Deltas for the last five years or so, joining its main business of refurbishing both Lancias and other period rally cars with new or heavily restored elements in both road-going and competition forms. The new Stradale aims to bridge the gap between its existing road car and Group A models, with a run of ten examples on the cards. Each is built from an existing 16v Integrale chassis, stripped back to bare metal and strengthened with over 250 new weld points to increase structural rigidity.…

IN 2009 GENERAL MOTORS DECIDED IT wanted out of Saab after 20 tricky years in charge, so attempted to sell the company its product boss, Bob Lutz, once described as ‘decidedly weird’. The resulting cat’s cradle of fiscal shenanigans involved a near sale to Koenigsegg, a bid endorsed by Bernie Ecclestone and a threat to simply shutter the place, before a last-minute deal was struck with Spyker in January 2010. Improbable though it seemed that a tiny sports car maker could turn around the ailing Saab, the Dutch company didn’t waste any time in proving it was serious. In June 2010 it hired former Pininfarina designer Jason Castriota to style its future cars and three months later it signed an engine deal with BMW to power them. But not to…

THE 562BHP R8 PERFORMANCE RWD MAY BE THE lowest rung in Audi’s ladder of mid-engined, ten-cylinder machines, but it’s a supercar alright. The ‘young entrepreneur’ types in the black-with-black-with-black current-shape RS6 knew it as they floored their V8 alongside with a dramatic bellow on the A55 to north Wales; the young lad with his nose pressed up against the smeary rear side-glass of an ageing Nissan Qashqai did too. Same for my neighbours, who congregated around it at the weekend, the point rather belligerently rammed home to them early this morning when Ingolstadt’s finest yelped into life on cold start and I selected Drive as quickly as I dared. It is low and wide, pointy and extravagant, loud, and it screams power and speed even if you don’t know the…

THE DRIFT GOES ON AND ON, AND IT’S NOT like anything I’ve felt before. Time seems to have slowed right down, so I have more than enough of the commodity to ponder what ICE car could do something like this. Maybe one of those wild professional drift cars: a 3-series Compact with an S85 V10 from an old M5, and a rear diff set up purely for the task of drifting; something that could snap fully sideways purely under power in a fast, gentle curve, then stay there while the rears are bonfiring almost for eternity. Like this N Vision 74 just has. What makes this all the more surreal is that there’s no screaming V10, or ludicrously boosted straight-six for that matter, audible in the cockpit, but rather the…

‘THIS TIME,’ I THINK, AS I DASH through the rain towards the XJR-15, ‘perhaps I won’t put the headset on.’ Reaching the sleek, RAF-blue supercar I swing open the thin little door and then slide across about a foot and a half of sill and seat, slotting my lanky legs beneath the curiously shaped Nardi steering wheel as I slither in and shut out the weather. It’s an entry that’s easier described than done. Once ensconced, I feel like I’m sitting almost centrally in the car, not far from the driving position of a McLaren F1. Visibility is great and, surrounded by an airy, rain-spattered bubble canopy, I’m reminded of another supercar: a Zonda. The amount of bare carbon is reminiscent of a Pagani, too, although there is a considerably…

MORE LONG-RANGE JAUNTS IN THE SVR this month, with a drive out to the Bilster Berg circuit in central Germany and back in just 36 hours. That’s quite a lot of driving in one go, and I must admit I was feeling the strain by the end, but the Jag was still a great car to do the journey in. It also gave an opportunity to really stretch the V8’s legs on the autobahn, although the heavy traffic meant that, in reality, it boiled down to one particular section that was quiet enough to really go for it. As with any vehicle, approach the last ten per cent of the envelope and the SVR suddenly goes from feeling as planted as you’d expect a sporty two-ton SUV to feel to…

’I’M JUST GOING OUT FOR A DRIVE.’ THIS has pretty much been my catchphrase for the last six months as any opportunity to drive our A110 has been grabbed with both hands – for an hour, maybe two, sometimes several. Such is the allure of the Alpine. No matter how often or for how long I drove it, I never grew tired of the way it handled whatever road was put in front of it. Where so many modern performance cars hammer and bully their way along a road, making jagged, aggressive progress, the A110 would simply flow. The uncommon suppleness to its ride made it a maestro of extracting the maximum enjoyment from less-than-perfect surfaces. Never did I feel like I ought to be making my way to a…

THE PEUGEOT GOT A WELL-EARNED respite recently with the brief arrival of a facelifted Ford Fiesta ST. I’m delighted to say that as much as I enjoyed a week in a Mean Green ST – relishing the slicker shift from its stubby little gearlever, in particular – I also breathed a sigh of relief when I got back into the GTi. I’m fully attached to the thing now I’m weaving more pleasurable routes into the mostly business miles it seems to cover. The Bilsteins I recently had fitted can likely take some credit. A week driving something else made me realise how accustomed I’ve become to the 208’s dinky-wheel, high-dials driving position, too. The set-up was infamous when Peugeot first steered its cars down this route, but I’ve always been…

LET’S NOT FOCUS TOO MUCH ON THE ‘L’ for now. Much has already been said about the new M4 CSL’s credentials to wear that particular badge despite a decent 100kg reduction in mass compared with an M4 Competition. Instead let’s focus on the lengths to which the M division has gone to create this car and mark its own 50th anniversary. And discover if the result honours all the great cars that have gone before and sets a new benchmark for the M cars of the future. Deal? Okay, then. There aren’t enough pages in this magazine to go into great detail about each and every mechanical, structural, hardware and software change, but here’s a brief overview. The headlines are a 39bhp boost to the 3-litre twin-turbocharged straight-six for a…

SIX DECADES, MILLIONS BUILT AND THE number one selling sports car in the world; roads without Ford’s Mustang on them would be a duller place (quieter, too), which is why the bunting should be hung high for the arrival of the seventh-generation version when it lands on our shores late in 2023. It could, after all, be the last petrol-powered Mustang we see. In fact, it probably will be. Ford hasn’t messed with its tried and tested formula when it comes to its latest pony car, with both the 2.3-litre EcoBoost four-cylinder and 5-litre V8 retained, albeit with significant upgrades to both engines. The four-pot has a new fuel injection and ignition system, a higher compression ratio and a new turbocharger, making it both more fuel efficient and more powerful.…

DESIGN It’s a Ferrari, so there’s still a high degree of drama when it comes to the Purosangue’s design. Aero features include ‘air bridges’ at the base of the A-pillars and active openings in the lower front grille, with a sizable rear diffuser and a fixed roof-mounted spoiler. Ferrari calls the rear-hinged rear doors ‘welcome’ doors, required to improve entry and exit to the rear of the cabin, which will only be available with two individual seats. There’s a focus on luxury rather than performance inside, so leather finishes outnumber carbonfibre ones, although customers can spec a military-grade bulletproof fibre floor (yes, really) in place of carpet for a more utilitarian feel. THIS IS NOT THE SUV YOU WERE expecting. It’s Ferrari’s new four-door, four-seat sports car with four-wheel drive…

ON SEEING THE ARIEL HIPERCAR FOR THE first time, one wag suggested it showed why the Somerset company hadn’t bothered with bodywork on its previous models. Conventional it is not. Something a ten-year-old would draw in their maths book when dreaming of Batman’s next car it might be. As the marketing types say, it started the conversation. It also distracted a little from what is beneath the Hipercar’s carbonfibre body, namely the work of a long-standing, tireless project Ariel has been at the centre of since 2017 (see evo 298) and which has now made its debut. ‘Hipercar’ – which stands for HIgh PERformance CArbon Reduction – is the result of a number of British-based firms, including the likes of Cosworth Engineering, collaborating to design and develop an electric sports…

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THIS SHOULD BE A EASY SLAM DUNK. The M240i xDrive might have a slightly more powerful version of the lovely ‘B58’ 3-litre turbocharged in-line six-cylinder engine that it shares with the revised Supra, but in every other department the Toyota holds all the aces. Firstly, it’s now available with a six-speed manual gearbox. This is the sort of U-turn we support wholeheartedly. It’s also smaller, lower, has a stiffer structure and weighs 188kg less than the astonishingly heavy BMW. The Supra offers the purity of rear-wheel drive and the playfulness of an e-diff and it is exotic and intriguing where BMW’s latest coupe seems at once conventional yet wilfully awkward. The two-seater Toyota has a higher starting price – £53,495 to the M240i’s £47,515 – but that seems fitting for…

@evomagazine @evomagazine @officialevomagazine EARLIER THIS YEAR WE SAID goodbye to the Fast Fleet’s first full EV, an Audi RS e-tron GT. Now it’s time to welcome our second, which once again hails from the vast VW conglomerate but this time brings a little more Catalonian pizzazz. Like the Audi this isn’t just any EV, rather it is one that promises to be fast and fun, and looking at the spec sheet (with some reservations) you’ll see why: the Cupra Born is the closest thing yet to a hot hatchback with batteries for biceps. Our version is a top-spec V3 with the larger 77kWh (net) battery. This starts at a fairly serious £41,975 but comes with plenty of kit, such as LED headlights and a de rigueur rear light bar, plus…

DURING THE PAST MONTH M25 OMP has not been out much, but I have done enough miles to experience the new and massively improved seating position. Any lower and I would struggle to see over the dash, and with legs out almost horizontal towards the pedals, the wheel all the way back towards me and the new gearlever the perfect distance away from the wheel, it’s hard to believe I’m in the same car. It’s genuinely night and day. We’ve just finished another two-day stint at Swift Performance for the most recent build stage. The first job was replacing some of the recently fitted rose joints, which were causing a bit of a racket in the freshly stripped-out interior when they shouldn’t have been, so were believed to be a…

LOW SLUNG AND FREE OF UNNECESSARY complexity, an MX-5 will always be a welcome Fast Fleet addition. Picking up where our 2019 MX-5 2.0 SE-L Nav+ left off (see evo 274), this 2022 GT Sport Tech range-topper comes equipped with a selection of tasty factory-fit upgrades while retaining that charming back-to-basics sports car formula we’ve grown to love. Taking delivery as an MX-5 virgin, first impressions are good. Stooping down to reach its door handle is a novelty that’s yet to wear off, and although the seating position is a little too high, the occasion of driving a compact two-seater is something I could definitely get used to. Having covered over 3000 miles in my C63 during the past couple of months, slotting into an MX-5 is a refreshing experience.…

IT’S THE SERIOUSNESS OF IT THAT’S TAKEN me by surprise. It’s been about a decade since I last drove a TT RS and in my head I had it filed as ‘a posh TT’ – the one people choose if their pockets are deep enough and they want Audi’s smallest coupe with all the bells and whistles and an engine that sounds expensive. So I hadn’t expected to drop down into seats that favour high, snug bolsters over squidgy padding. Or to grasp the steering wheel and find not plush leather but instead that curious, beyond-dry feeling of Alcantara. Or to look in the side mirrors and see the ends of the fixed rear wing clearly in view. Or, most significantly, to drive away and discover a firm ride –…

THE STELVIO’S LAST RUN WAS TO A family gathering in Maidenhead, taking in the delights of the M25 and M40 and ending up at a place called The Ivy Leaf Club for a birthday celebration. As the Alfa swung effortlessly into the venue’s car park, the heads of the middle-aged male contingent of our family all turned in unison, like the head of Grace Jones in that Citroën ad in the ’80s. I smirked, as I knew what was coming. Sure enough, almost instantly I was bombarded with a mix of both questions and admiration. During the last six months this has been a common theme, because in the world of SUVs, the Stelvio really stands out amongst the bland alternatives. To my eyes only the Lamborghini Urus and now…

ARE WE SECRET PERFORMANCE SUV fanboys? Protesting to the point of distraction, hoping you won’t notice our hidden-in-plain-sight addiction to 2500kg behemoths with the dynamics of a supertanker and an image as palatable as a pub chain’s mid-week meal deal? I raise it only because a reader asked me. We have, after all, run performance versions of SUVs on evo’s Fast Fleet ever since the original Cayenne Turbo came to stay over a decade ago. There’s been the odd Range Rover, including the Sport, too, and for some unfathomable reason, an Evoque. Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio, Aston Martin DBX, Jaguar F-Pace SVR, a couple of Skoda Kodiaq vRSs, and a very orange Lamborghini Urus have all been through the car park gates. In 25 years that’s more SUVs than 911s…

DID YOU THINK THE CRAZE FOR OPEN-top cars without a windscreen was a) reserved for those with money to burn and b) a fad you’d hoped would go away? We’ve bad news if you did, because here’s another. Yes it’s a gen-1 Mazda MX-5 (NA in MX-5 speak) without a roof, windscreen or passenger seat. It has been created by Rome-based Gorgona Cars and is called the Concept NM (for ‘naked monoposto’) and it’s inspired by a similar concept Mazda produced soon after it launched its iconic roadster. To create the NM, Gorgona has not only removed the ’screen, but has also welded both doors shut from their midway point down to the sills to increase rigidity and body stiffness (the top of the door still opens to aid entry…

CHASSIS Sitting on a new, lighter aluminium chassis, the Purosangue has 30 per cent more torsional rigidity and 25 per cent improved beam stiffness over the GTC4 Lusso, and a claimed dry kerb weight of 2033kg. At each corner is an active suspension system comprising a passive spring over an adaptive damper, using Multimatic’s ‘True Active Spool Valve’. This controls the damper rate via the 48-volt electrical system, allowing for more force and higher frequencies to be applied compared with a traditional adaptive or semi-active system. It also allows for variable and continuous distribution of roll stiffness and actively lowers the body by 10mm as required. Consequently there are no traditional anti-roll bars. Ferrari’s PTU four-wheel-drive system now includes software derived from the SF90, and the 812 Competizione’s independent four-wheel…

BY THE MID-1980S THE POWER OUTPUTS OF turbocharged F1 cars had gone berserk. From being little more than a curiosity barely five years previously, now you had to have one of the little 1.5-litre turbocharged engines if you hoped to win a race, and indeed by 1986 the turbo route was the only one allowed by the rules. Up to 1000bhp was often available in race trim, with as much as 1500bhp during qualifying – but only for one lap or so, before the engine was little more than a coffee table. The sport’s governing body decided to act, and announced that naturally aspirated engines would be making a comeback alongside the turbo engines for 1987, with turbos banned completely from 1989. They would be of 3.5-litre capacity, unlike the…

COULD THE NEW AMG C63 S E PERFORMANCE turn out to be a watershed moment in the history of performance cars? You may have heard the rumours, and we can now confirm they’re true: AMG has indeed dropped its familiar 4-litre turbocharged V8 to meet emissions regulations and the prevailing times we live in, and yes, the new C63 is powered by the expected four-cylinder engine with additional hybrid boost. That’s right, no more V8s. But the smallest of AMG’s super-saloons now also possesses a set of numbers like nothing else: consider 671bhp, 752lb ft (as a minimum!) and a kerb weight of 2111kg. Whichever way you look at it, the new C63 is a giant, for better or for worse. The new car uses the rather special M139 four-cylinder…

WHAT CAN WE SAY ABOUT EVO’S DEPARTING Cupra Fast Fleeter? No, that’s not a rhetorical question – I mean it: what can we actually say that we haven’t already said? I knew the day was approaching when I would have to write this end-of-term report, and I can’t say I’ve been particularly looking forward to it. The Cupra Leon Estate has been a fast and fairly practical means of transport, but I’m afraid I just didn’t gel with it in the end, and I can’t say I miss it now it’s gone. For me, the trouble with cars like the Leon is that it feels rather obvious the game has moved on – both for manufacturers and for driving enthusiasts. With the former, the obvious lack of real joy in…

RECENTLY I NEEDED A FIVE-SEATER FOR a few days, so John Barker kindly agreed to swap ‘his’ Peugeot for ‘my’ Alpine for a while. After rendezvousing for the exchange, I clocked up another 100 miles or so heading out to an evo photoshoot and then back home, so the hybrid 508’s battery was fully depleted. As my house has no driveway there was no possibility of topping up the battery there without draping a cable across the pavement, which probably wouldn’t have made me too popular with passing pedestrians. So when popping into town the next afternoon I thought I’d see if I could grab a bit of charge ‘in the wild’. First stop: Morrison’s. A relatively new store that opened in 2018, it has dedicated a whopping four spaces…

IS THERE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT our Kodiaq vRS other than it’s a monstrously practical family car? And that it’s blue? Erm, well there needs to be. Otherwise, surely you’d just buy a cheaper version of the Kodiaq and use the spare cash to buy something genuinely fun? Does using a vRS every day provide more enjoyment than running a Kodiaq SE Drive for daily use and, say, a 987 Boxster S for the odd blast into the countryside? I think the answer is probably a very firm no. However, life isn’t quite as simple as we like to think when imagining fun ways to divide up imaginary money. A vRS may cost from £46,690 but in reality the circa-£13k bump from an entry level model is broken down into…

THERE ARE TWO VERY DIFFERENT routes I can take to evo Towers v2.0: the direct route using the shortest amount of B-road but the maximum number of miles on featureless A-roads and motorways. Or the evo route, which is the polar opposite. For the last six years the latter has been the route of choice unless I’m in a car that requires a little more room on the road or doesn’t enjoy being thrown around, such as Range Rovers, Rolls-Royces and anything from Volvo. The Panamera serves up a large dilemma when it comes to which route to take. Take the evo route and, while describing it as a hoot would be a stretch, the Panamera does deliver a challenge by requiring a heightened awareness of your surroundings and a…