Table of contents for December 2024 in Evo

IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME SINCE we’ve had a month driving so many new performance cars from manufacturers who many might have thought had walked away from such things to seek out untapped lithium mines. Three new hot hatches from within the VW Group, the latest addition to AMG’s GT family and Aston Martin’s new Vanquish make a healthy quintet to start with. The Vanquish is the third new model under Lawrence Stroll and completes the reinvention of the existing AML line-up ahead of ‘his’ first all-new car, the Valhalla. Mazda has also updated, refreshed and tweaked its evergreen MX-5. It may have been inspired by the Lotus Elan, but the MX-5 is now doing a better impression of a Lotus Elise by staying in production and remaining relevant longer…

BRAKE THROUGH THE COMPRESSION, nudge the kerb on the right, then commit hard into the uphill left-hander, reaching full power at the summit of the crest. That’s what the AMG GT63 Pro I’m following has just done, but then it is being driven by five-time DTM champion Bernd Schneider. Bernd knows this car, and to say he knows how to drive would be an understatement of epic proportions. The rainfall over Circuito Ascari doesn’t seem to faze him, nor the fact that we’re running on Michelin Cup 2 Rs – not ideal for clearing water. Deep breath, pile the speed in. Schneider is kicking up a shower of spray ahead and the wipers briefly sweep the screen. I’ve just about followed his line through the entry but the GT63 feels…

THERE’S SOME STERN MUTTERING in Italian, then the Ferrari staff turn to me with a smile. ‘Can I have your mobile phone, please,’ says one. I hand it over, and the cameras are covered in security tape. ‘And your laptop.’ The webcam gets the same treatment. I don’t know exactly what’s in the next room behind the black curtain entrance, deep within Maranello’s inner sanctum, but it’s clearly something very, very special – and highly classified. I’m ushered into darkness, and then through another curtain. My eyes adjust to the bright lights and make out the five scarlet forms at the end of the room: 288 GTO, F40, F50, Enzo, LaFerrari. Ferrari’s complete ultimate hypercar history. At the other end is the next chapter: the F80. It looks unbelievably dramatic,…

MY VAN KNOWLEDGE IS NOT GREAT, BUT IT WAS certainly a small Mercedes, much smaller than a Sprinter and I’m guessing with something like a 2-litre diesel engine under the bonnet. Somewhere around 120bhp? Whatever, I’d been behind it for miles, never getting a chance to pass, so quickly was it being driven through the corners. A bit of a shock when you’re in a Porsche Cayman GT4 yourself. A few miles later the Merc pulled into a lay-by where a large collection of amazing cars were parked. It was 2015 and we were on Scotland’s now famous North Coast 500, shooting evo Car of the Year. Anyway, from the van leapt a young lass, not very tall, and wide-eyed at our selection of Lamborghini, McLaren, Porsche and Ferrari exotics.…

PLACE YOUR BETS, PLEASE. WHICH DO you reckon will be quickest around a circuit? A 740bhp, carbon-tubbed mid-engined supercar; an active-aero 911 with damper and diff settings you can tweak mid-lap; or a dedicated track car with a fraction of the power but also a fraction of the weight? We’re as intrigued as you to find the answer. It’s been a while since we’ve been to Anglesey Circuit for an update to evo’s lap time leaderboard but we’re making up for lost time by bringing some remarkable metal (and carbonfibre) to put against the stopwatch. The McLaren 750S is an even more potent evolution of the 720S, which set a searing lap time of 1:11.05 in 2018. We already know the 750 is superb on track from its launch at…

’IT’S A GREAT LONG-DISTANCE MACHINE,’ said deputy editor James Taylor while chatting about his Giulia long-termer. A lightbulb immediately pinged on in my head: I had a long distance to cover soon – a 450-mile run up to the Scottish Highlands for a holiday – so it would surely be remiss of me not to verify the Alfa’s abilities in this department by borrowing it for the week in question. Or at least that was my excuse. I actually just wanted to grab some time in the Quadrifoglio, but it soon became apparent that it really is a great long-distance machine. It’d been a while since I’d been in one, and I’d forgotten how remarkably relaxed its ride is when the DNA selector is left in Normal. We’re talking properly…

BRIGHT YELLOW AND ANGULAR IT may be, but calling the new Renault 5 E-Tech a supercar would be generous. It’s too tall, too short and too narrow, powers its front wheels, runs on electrons, and makes a mere 148bhp. But drive one through Nice, ahead of the first dealerships getting their cars, and you might as well be in something low-slung, mid-engined and thirsty for hydrocarbons. The attention never stops. While we’re parked up for photography in the mountains, the driver of a Peugeot 208 passes with a huge smile on his face, then returns two minutes later and asks to have a look around. A couple of cyclists take a break from their arduous climb to do likewise. Later, a driver in a Taycan rushes up behind then whips…

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE they stay the same. The age-old adage applies to much in today’s world – war, politics, natural disasters… and the forecourt of a Mazda showroom. For next to an electric SUV with ‘suicide’ doors, you’ll still find a little two-seat roadster, familiar in all measures from the one they ripped the covers off at the Chicago motor show over 35 years ago. Still a manual, still rear-driven, still with four petrol-fed cylinders, still neither augmented by nor able to be plugged into a supercharger. For some, the Mazda MX-5 will seem old-fashioned in the closing moments of 2024. For others – particularly those who nod off when yet another new two-ton electric crossover with more horsepower than range graces their Facebook timeline – it…

WHETHER IT WAS THE INVESTMENT REQUIRED FOR the roll-out of Volkswagen’s electrified ID models, or ever-tightening regulations that were to blame, we can all agree that the Golf hit a rough patch with the Mk8. The flagship R lost the premium touch and dynamic edge of its predecessor, while a rung further down the ladder the GTI suffered similarly. Now, though, Wolfsburg hopes to redeem itself with the mid-life Mk8.5 facelift, so we’re driving the updated R and GTI Clubsport back-to-back to see if they’ve regained the missing spark. Not a whole lot has changed on paper, with the new R adopting the uprated 328bhp output of the Mk8 R ‘20 Years’ special edition (a 12bhp increase), and the GTI Clubsport unaltered from its predecessor with 296bhp. At the core…

@evomagazine @evomagazine @officialevomagazine IF YOU’RE INTO CARS IT’S NOT UNUSUAL TO GET a craving for a particular model. Sometimes these cravings pass quickly, other times they follow you around, haunting your waking hours until you’re convinced you have to do something about them. And this is how I ended up with a Fiat Panda 100HP. I’d driven these when they were current and adored their flawed but funtime character. So much so, in fact, that I’d seriously thought about buying one new. Only the notoriously thunky ride put me off, but I reckoned there might be ways to mitigate that, going so far as to speak to a boffin at Lotus who suspected that some aftermarket dampers might be a good place to start. I later discovered that this is…

SIX MONTHS INTO MY LATEST BOUT OF MX-5 ownership and we’re getting along swimmingly, NKD and me. There’s something about driving a nimble, lightweight roadster, slicing through a roadscape dominated by bloated, overweight crossovers and SUVs, that never fails to put a smile on your face. But I’m not blind to its shortcomings. The 2-litre four in the ND1 (that’s shorthand for 5s built between 2015 and 2018) is no ball of fire, with a slightly limp top end and no great enthusiasm to rev out. And the chassis is a tad soft for a sports car too, with a surprisingly compliant ride but a lack of control over tricky roads and a touch too much pitch and roll under braking and cornering. Fortunately there’s a specialist that can address…

AS I WRITE THIS, MY SOCIAL MEDIA streams are once again clogged up with pictures of the Northern Lights, inevitably shot on people’s iPhones in their back gardens. It’s something that a) I never know is happening, b) fail to see on the rare occasions when I do, and c) wouldn’t know how to capture on my phone’s camera anyway. Thankfully the same can’t be said for the light shows produced by our S8. From the colourful interior ambient lighting to the various dances and animations at ignition, there’s no way you can miss our long-term limo’s visual treats, but the real star of the show is the Matrix HD Headlights. Observant readers may have worked out from my Twitter (sorry, X) name, Washlander, that I’m based in the East…

NUMBERS. AUDI’S LATEST RS3 DRIPS WITH NUMBERS. A few of the defining ones remain the same: five cylinders and a single turbo for the 2.5-litre engine that produces 394bhp and 369lb ft are unchanged from its predecessor. It’s still furiously quick as a result, with a 174mph top speed and a sub four-second 0-62mph sprint time, and it’s now five seconds quicker around a certain circuit in Germany, completing the near 13-mile lap in 7 minutes and 33.12 seconds, obliterating the previous record for compact cars held by the BMW M2 by more than five seconds. Then there are the numbers the accountants enjoy, such as the nearly 80,000 RS3s that have been sold since the model was first introduced in 2011, making it far and away the biggest-selling Audi…

NO PUSSY-FOOTING AROUND, LET’S CUT TO THE CHASE: does the new M5 – all 5.1 metres and 2500kg of it – manage to shrink around you and disguise its weight? Incredibly, the answer is yes, yes it does. A couple of years ago we were impressed when the engineers at BMW M GmbH managed to pull the trick with the 1700kg M4 coupe, but for them to do the same with the much bigger and heavier M5 is quite astonishing. Almost unbelievable. Some excellent tuning and specific technologies help deliver this confounding result and we’ll explore them in due course, but it’s not game, set and match yet, of course. Even with this unlikely result in the bag, another crucial question still hangs in the air: is the new M5…

AFTER ALL OF THE CHAT – THE TECHNICAL INSIGHTS, the design philosophy, the shaping of the dynamic character, et cetera – after all of that, there’s unvarnished reality and your unfiltered response to it. The first Vanquish I laid eyes on was outside the entrance of the launch hotel and it wowed me. In metallic red with gold wheels, it looked sensational: low, long, beautifully sculpted. For me, without hesitation, it’s the best looking Aston Martin in 25 years. A great start. The car we were allocated was more subtle, with multiple shades of grey, but the shape still looked fabulous, quietly aggressive. Dropping into the driver’s seat, the cabin exuded simple class and when it started up, the V12 was just loud enough, just edgy enough. Then, before we’d…

HAVING FITTED A SET OF GORGEOUS Nitron NTR40 coilovers in August, the Lotus now has all the makings of my perfect road-going Elise, with all the distinctive traits of the standard car but polished to a higher degree. To bring the whole package together, this month I paid a visit to Carmarthenshire-based suspension specialist RaceShocks to nail down the set-up of the new Nitrons exactly to my tastes. You may not have heard of RaceShocks, but you will be familiar with their work. The MST Ford Escort and Kamm Manufaktur Porsche 912c have both been subject to the company’s suspension wizardry, and I was hoping they could apply some of that to my car. When I arrive in the workshop there’s an eclectic mix of metal around, from a Lotus…

THE RATE OF PROGRESS OF PERFORMANCE CARS HAS been astonishing over the last two decades. We’re now in an era where hot hatches can have more power than a new Porsche 911 Carrera, and warmed-up saloon cars can out-accelerate a BMW M3 from a couple of generations ago. Never has so much performance been available in relatively modest, everyday packages. You don’t even need to buy new to access this daily high performance. Venture into the classifieds and there’s a huge spread of second-hand useable performance cars that are no more taxing to live with than entry-level models yet come alive when the moment allows. Whether it be a traditional sports saloon, a jacked-up hot supermini or something from the modern breed of four-wheel-drive hyperhatch-based estates, we’ve shortlisted some of…

IT’S A SOMEWHAT RISKY MOVE criticising a Honda with the Type R badge, given the passionate following the red ‘R’ has. When it comes to the Civic, it’s not something I’m usually inclined to do anyway. After all, who doesn’t love the forbidden fruit of the wild EK9, the historical significance of the ubiquitous and beloved EP3, or the class-crushing excellence of first the FK8 and now the FL5? However, it’s the last of the naturally aspirated Type Rs we need to have a chat about: the FN2. As a final hurrah for the brilliant Honda K20 engine, reworked to provide a more flexible, torquier delivery, this version should by now have taken its place as a solid-gold modern classic. Yet a glance at the classifieds proves this emphatically is…