Table of contents for May 2024 in Evo

MAKING CARS IS HARD, making supercars is harder still – unless you’re Ferrari, of course, which has a current market capitalisation greater than either Ford or BMW. While McLaren might be catching the scarlet cars on track, it’s in a soapbox race compared with the Italians when you look at the relative performance of their road car divisions. Last month McLaren claimed a ‘major milestone’ in its financial recovery from hitting as close to the bottom as you can get without turning the lights off and walking away, when Mumtalakat, the Bahrain sovereign wealth fund, took 100 per cent control of the business. Not that this has opened the floodgates of cash from the Middle Eastern government fund, which, having poured in a rumoured $1.5bn over the years to keep…

TOGETHER WITH THE GIULIA QUADRIFOGLIO tested on page 78, Alfa Romeo has given its super-SUV a package of updates for 2024, which will likely see it through to the end of its life. Among them, a boost in power from 503bhp to 513bhp, new LED matrix headlights, revamped interior trim and a fresh digital instrument cluster, plus detail suspension retuning. The most significant update, however, is the fitting of a mechanical limited-slip differential at the rear. The price has increased by several thousand pounds, to an £87,195 starting point. In the cabin, the TFT digital instrument panel has been updated with a new set of configurable displays, and textured ‘3D’ carbonfibre trim has been liberally applied over the transmission tunnel and dashboard. Although it’s real carbon, its open-weave finish makes…

READING JAMES TAYLOR’S REPORT ABOUT HIS TIME AT the Porsche Experience Centre (Fast Fleet, evo 320) brought back memories of my visit there in 2016. I went about a month before my Porsche was due to be delivered (no 911 for me, sadly, but a more family-friendly Macan S instead) and after the briefing procedures I was introduced to my driving consultant, Richard. The overall experience was about three hours or so, and in addition to trying out the car on the different circuits and skidpan, it allowed plenty of time for Richard and me to chat about things automotive. I asked him how he got to being a driving consultant and he talked about his father owning a car dealership, which encouraged an interest in cars. He mentioned he…

SIMPLY ‘TURBO’ SUFFICES. WE ALL KNOW it means ‘Porsche 911 Turbo’. Always has, always will. The flagship of the 911 range; the sensible, bargain supercar. As the 50th anniversary of the model is now upon us, there’s no better time to look at why the 911 Turbo changed the face of performance motoring, and what it meant and still means, not just as a car but to the company that created it and the industry as a whole. Porsche wasn’t quite the first, of course. GM had shown that turbocharging could work in a road car as far back as 1962, and while Porsche had been running a 2-litre turbo ‘six’ on the dyno as early as 1969, BMW claimed Europe’s first turbocharged production car with its 2002 Turbo in…

CAR MAKERS ARE BECOMING MORE AND more out of touch with the enthusiast. Cars are becoming too heavy, too big and overpowered. And worse, they are becoming overcomplicated and weighed down with equipment that is not relevant to a pure driving machine and which we never asked for. Manufacturers are also losing touch with the ordinary consumer, putting complex infotainment and ‘aid’ systems into cars that at best are extremely difficult to understand and use and at their worst are very distracting or don’t even function properly. I’ve got close on several occasions over the last few years to saying to a manufacturer at a new car launch, ‘You’ve given us a day to drive this car. I have a choice: I can either spend that time sitting in the…

WITH SUPERB TIMING, THE GR YARIS ARRIVED JUST after we’d accepted Toyota’s invitation to drive a prototype of the second-generation car at Jarama, Spain. It was also just after our massive test of hot hatches, in which the Yaris finished second. The model supplied for that test (evo 318) was the ‘Convenience’ version, which wasn’t what we’d have chosen, having declared a strong preference for the Circuit Pack from our previous interactions, including six months with a long-termer thus equipped in 2021. Our new long-termer isn’t a Circuit Pack model either. The giveaway is the wheels, which are not as thin-spoked and are shod with Dunlop Sport Maxx rather than Michelin PS4 tyres. Mechanically, its suspension isn’t as stiff and its anti-roll bars are a little softer, but more significantly…

THE CUPRA HAS BEEN MY TRUSTY companion on some incredible photoshoots recently, including the one with the MST Mk1 in north Wales (evo 318). After spending the day capturing this fabulous Escort restomod in action, and getting utterly drenched in the process, I was glad to get into the Leon. With its brilliant balance of comfort and four-wheel-drive performance, it was just what I needed to whisk me home swiftly and safely. However, my drive home was a little less joyful than John Barker’s in his GR Yaris… For the first 45 minutes the Cupra and I made great progress across flooded Welsh B-roads. But then, just four miles shy of the motorway, a rough patch of road triggered the dreaded tyre warning light on the dashboard. With four hours…

‘RICH, STOP IT. YOU’RE DRIVING LIKE A knob.’ It was a harsh but fair assessment, wearily delivered from the passenger seat of the Abarth by Mrs M after yet another journey characterised by what I’d describe as juvenile exuberance. Yes, at 53 years of age I probably should know better, but as we’ve been together for almost 30 of them, she really should be used to it by now. Besides, the Abarth is one of those cars you can’t help but bomb around in. Sport mode tends to be the mood enhancer, thanks to the sharper throttle response, weightier steering and endlessly amusing paarrp! from the exhaust. And if you happen to build just the right amount of turbo boost and then back off abruptly, the PAARRP! is even more…

EFFORT AND REWARD ARE AT THE VERY HEART OF what most of us love about cars. Not just our own effort. The obsession with extracting the most from a car, or just making it flow with economical grace, one apex to the next in a wonderfully easy equilibrium, is a naval-gazing but endlessly diverting pursuit, sure. But, very often, feeling and harnessing the effort of the car itself is the reward. Hearing a momentary flare of wheelspin over a mid-corner bump just as the engine hits the sweet spot and the chassis is stretched right to the very limit… well, it’s just bloody good fun. I think it can be boiled down to intensity. We want to be there, in that moment, orchestrating the car’s effort and immersed in the…

SINCE THE CANADIAN BILLIONAIRE Lawrence Stroll took control of Aston Martin following Andy Palmer’s financially disastrous IPO, the company has seen more CEO changes than new car launches. This trend continues with the appointment of Adrian Hallmark, the former chairman and CEO of Bentley, who will be CEO number four when he takes the AML hot seat by October 1st. And you thought certain football clubs were the only ones to chew through senior management at a rate that rivals a child devouring an Easter egg haul. What will Hallmark inherit from ex-Ferrari CEO Amedeo Felisa when he walks through the door at Gaydon? Crucially, a new product strategy, one which started with the DB12 coupe in 2023, the new Vantage revealed in February of this year and an updated…

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BEFORE THE CALAMITY KNOWN AS ‘THE SPLIT’ IN Indy racing circles, the CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) IndyCar series was America’s premier single-seater racing category and a genuine rival to Formula 1. Indeed, as the series spread to Australasia and South America, and eventually even Europe, the power brokers of Grand Prix racing became increasingly nervous, a fear fed by Nigel Mansell’s defection after his F1 title year to IndyCar for 1993 and Ayrton Senna’s test of Brazilian countryman Emerson Fittipaldi’s Penske-Chevrolet in 1992 (also sponsored by Marlboro, like Senna’s McLaren-Honda). It seemed that IndyCar truly could become a world series. CART had been formed after team and car owners became dissatisfied with USAC, the sanctioning body that ran the US’s top-flight single-seater racing championship. USAC was the baby of…

MAYBE KING CHARLES HAS A YETI IN HIS past. Perhaps the Queen kept a Favorit for running around Sandringham. I like to think the Duke of Edinburgh was banging his fist on the Chippendale in frustration when he heard the news of McRae and Grist’s clutch problems in the Fabia WRC with just three stages to go in Australia in 2005. But probably not. However, even without anything less tenuous than a few royal visits to the Czech Republic, I’m glad Skoda found an excuse to release Royal Green Metallic as a celebratory coronation colour option last May. It costs an extra £390 on the vRS Estate, but what a shade it is; positively transformative. Skodas haven’t been ugly ducklings in recent years, but I’d be surprised to hear that…

THE MAZDA CX-60 IS NOT AN EVO CAR. That probably isn’t a surprise. Nor is it a damnation. For every scintillating sports car, a household can also conceivably need a workhorse. And we’re drawn to understated, utilitarian workhorses, aren’t we? Retching over tastelessly wrapped Uruses, swooning over shabby Defenders. I don’t actually do the latter, but I know it’s a common affliction amongst our community. So in many ways the consciously demure CX-60 should be right up our street. Yet I can’t get to that warm, fuzzy place of affection for it. There are too many little things that annoy me. For example, once the engine is started the gear selector remains locked in P for a few seconds and requires three or four attempts to just move it across…

THE FIRST THING ANY PASSENGER IN the 911 comments on is how nice the interior is: it’s a clean, modern design, with that sense of hewn-from-solid quality journos like us often bang on about. It is – one might say, frequently – a nice place to be. Not a perfect place, though. The steering wheel is big, and although its artificial suede ‘RaceTex’ trim feels great, its bulky spokes get in the way of my hands slightly at quarter-to- three, and it has big lumps at ten-to-two that block the outermost displays on the instrument cluster. That cluster has a nice, albeit slightly plasticky, analogue tacho in its centre, classic 911 style, flanked by what looks a little like two miniature tablets, wedged at diagonals to the rev counter. Their…

OUR FIRST EXPERIENCE IN THE THIRD-generation Porsche Panamera is on neither road nor race circuit (though we’ll drive it on both in a few hundred words’ time) – it’s on a wooden platform. Roughly 50 metres long, it’s interspersed with up-and-down ramps at staggered intervals to upset the car as it drives over them; the sort of bumps that’d really make your and your passengers’ heads swing uncomfortably if you ran over them on the road. We’re instructed over the radio to drive along the platform at 50kph (31mph). And… the Panamera is smooth. Very smooth. There’s a bit of a jiggle through the car and a muted thump as the wheels wallop against the ramps, but it’s a distant sensation. This is our first taste of the Panamera’s flagship…

COMPUTER-BASED VIRTUAL ENGINEERING has already helped compress vehicle development times and reduce costs. It allows complex engineering solutions to be packaged and tested before a physical prototype has been built, and many car makers now hold highly detailed digital models of their complete cars, and their tyres. Some anticipate that the next step will be to use these models to drive them virtually in a simulator instead of building early, physical engineering prototypes. That’s the view of Horiba MIRA, the research and development business based near Nuneaton in the Midlands, which has just opened a new £4million driving simulator complex. Its centrepiece is a VI-grade DiM250 Dynamic Simulator, pictured here, which is one of the world’s most advanced multi-axis simulators. Building the first physical, driveable prototypes of a brand-new model…

THERE’S A FLEETING CLATTER OF gravel in the nearside arches. It’s Monday morning and most people seem in a hurry, including our driver. ‘Pronto’ is the pace, the fat Chrysler people-carrier threading its way surprisingly quickly along the narrow country roads outside Modena. No one is pausing politely, so occasionally a wheel drops off the tarmac and onto the loose stones of the verge, the Chrysler squeezed aside by the off-kilter line of a preoccupied Panda or commuting Giulia coming the other way. A thin mist is hanging over the fields and farm buildings on either side of the road, waiting patiently for a spring sun to burn off its ethereal cloak. Our driver is well prepared, dark glasses already in place. The surrounding Emilia-Romagna landscape is flat, and through the…

IT’S NIGHTFALL WHEN I COLLECT THE RS4. IT’S TUCKED UP in the evo office car park, squatting menacingly in the shadows, orange sodium light from the security lamps hinting at the outline of its broad box arches. Its wheels are tucked up inside its arches too, making it clear this is not a standard RS4 Avant. The RS4 Competition is limited to just 75 cars in the UK, bidding farewell to the B9 generation with devil-in-the-detail software and hardware tweaks, chief among which is the option of low-riding, manually adjustable, coilover suspension. You might remember it from evo 314, when it squared up to the BMW M3 Touring. While the current RS4 is reaching the end of its life cycle, the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio is gearing up for the…

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE YOU TO ASK THE owner of a current Land Rover model if it has been stolen yet? My money would be on immediately after they tell you they have one, if my experience is anything to go by. Owners of 996-generation 911s might sympathise, having gone through similar tedium when their icon’s flat-six had a reputation for eating itself. Or Ferrari 488 owners who were asked if they wore Nomex undercrackers during the early days of self-combusting turbocharged Ferraris. Being more mass-market and seemingly on every corner, the perceived Land Rover security issue is vastly bigger. Perceived? Not really. Even Land Rover admits its models built before 2022 – and therefore excluding the current Range Rover and Sport – had security weaknesses. The ‘BCM’ hack…

WHILE BRITAIN’S ROADS WERE WHITE with salt, I made the most of the quiet period to prepare the C63 for 2024’s outings. A combination of preventative and reactive maintenance has kept it in good shape so far, so I’m keen to stay on top of things. First on the list was a full service, and with the mileage nearing the 60,000 mark, some more of that preventative maintenance was in order. With no record of the V8’s injectors having been replaced in its lifetime, I sourced a new set from Bosch (£218), along with a fresh belt, pulley and tensioner kit (£324) to prevent expensive bills further down the road. While pulley and belt failures aren’t particularly expensive in themselves, the components they can damage in the process certainly can…

INCREDIBLE ENGINES HAVE BEEN AN AMG SIGNATURE from the very beginning. In 1965, two Daimler-Benz engineers tuned the Mercedes 300 SE’s powerplant for a German Touring Car Championship entry. Even though the car was not officially supported by the factory, it won ten races in total. Two years later, Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher had left to form AMG. Alongside more race engines came a string of tuned Mercedes-Benz road cars, which continued when Mercedes took a controlling interest in AMG in 1999. However, a recent change of priorities at Affalterbach has seen engines downsized and hybrid tech added, stripping the cars of their unique character. Thankfully, there are still plenty of AMGs in the classic mould on the used market, usually for a considerable saving compared to their…