Evo Magazine

I HERE HAVE BEEN GREAT GOLF GTIs and lacklustre ones, just as happens within all trans-generational product lines. With ascendency to the often self-proclaimed and overused ‘iconic’ status usually comes controversy; every family has its slightly weir

A LEFT-HAND-DRIVE ASTON MARTIN Vantage Roadster dozes quietly in a gravel car park in Warwickshire, the ‘key’ tucked away in my pocket. The weather is mild and sunny, but not quite what this particular example was built to experience. Why? Well, the

IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG, A COUPLE OF MILES AT THE most, or until you reach the first corner. Then the magic reveals itself and every piece of praise, adulation and respect that has ever been spoken or written regarding the E30 M3 is confirmed. It’s one

PORSCHE MUST BE KEEPING A BEADY eye on sales of its Taycan and Panamera models. While the pair have some fundamental differences, the Venn diagram also crosses at several points, not least their five-door fastback layouts, four-seat cabins, broadly s

BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, WE’LL NO doubt have experienced a few days of ‘quattro weather’. The long and mostly dry summer will be behind us, leaves will be falling, and the roads won’t be offering quite the frictional properties they have over the p

MASERATI’S MOMENT IS NOW. YES, WE’VE HEARD IT ALL before, the promises of a rebirth, that this time it will really be different, and sometimes, for a while, it has been. But then the quality and relevance of the product has drifted off beam, the reso

WHEN JOHN BARKER FILED HIS COPY FOR last month’s first drive of Ferrari’s Roma, someone in the evo virtual office asked, tongue firmly in cheek, when the Roma convertible would be launched. And here it is. Granted, it isn’t called a Roma Spider or GT

IT’S BEEN A CONTENTIOUS PROCESS to this point, but the WEC Le Mans Hypercar class is finally taking shape, with early adoptees coming into focus and new entries coming in thick and fast. Toyota Gazoo Racing has been the most precocious of the factory

THREE YEARS AFTER UPSETTING THE hot hatch status quo with its superb i30 N Performance, Hyundai has revealed a mid-life update for the model, introducing increased engine outputs, some lighter components and the option of a dual-clutch transmission.

THOUGHT 2020 COULDN’T GET YOU down any more? Nissan would like to line up and take a final swipe at your nether regions as it informs European customers that the only cars it wants to sell them are its Juke and Qashqai crossovers and the Leaf EV. It’

IF YOU’VE EVER FELT CAUGHT BETWEEN THE SCYLLA OF AN HGV looming in your rear-view mirror and the Charybdis of average speed cameras in a set of motorway roadworks, help may be at hand. The results of the final phase of a Department for Transport tria

THE DUAL-CLUTCH TRANSMISSION (DCT) SEEMS TO HAVE BECOME THE DEFAULT GEARBOX FOR ALL TYPES OF VEHICLES. CAN IT BE BETTERED? Richard Moore, propulsion director, Lotus: ‘The beauty of the transmission is that there is no perfect answer. For driver engag

THIS MONTH T-U T Letter used on car badges, generally to denote ‘turbo’ unless we’re talking about the Ferrari Mondialt, where it meant the engine (but not the gearbox) had been turned lengthways, or the Cizeta-Moroder V16T, where it stood for ‘trans

EVERY MONTH THE PAGES OF EVO GLITTER WITH desirables. ‘That looks good.’ ‘Does it come in manual?’ ‘So that’s what it’s really like.’ ‘How much?!’ ‘Oh, another Porsche. OK, it’s amazing, but still…’ My monthly routine of making my way through the pag

AFTER DOMINATING 1970S RALLYING WITH the Mk1 and Mk2 Escorts, Ford entered the ’80s with a pair of interesting issues. The first was the Escort, which with the Mk3 of 1980 had switched to front-wheel drive. The second was their rally team, specifical

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS, SIX GENERATIONS, AN unrivalled motorsport pedigree and an expectation to be the best sports saloon in the market. No one said it was ever going to be easy for the new G80-series M3 and its M4 coupe brother, and as if to confirm tha

BMW ISN’T A NATURAL OPERATOR IN THE hot hatch market. It’s dabbled a few times, with its E36 3-series Compact back in the 1990s and early noughties, but even with zippy four-pots or brawny six-cylinder engines and rear-wheel drive they struggled to f

YOUR PASSENGER WON’T get why the E30 M3 is so revered. There’s nothing ‘wow’ about the light grey interior and initially not much excitement in the engine department, the in-line four at first offering modest urge and sounding plain and a bit tappety

■ Pay just£3.00per issue (our original 1998 price) instead of £4.99■ Save £23.88per year on the shop price with an annual subscription■ Free deliveryof every issue straight to your door■ Access to exclusive subscriber competitions■ Get £10 offevotrac

IF THE MULSANNE SPEED WAS A blockbuster Hollywood film franchise it would be less Fast & Furious, more Vast & Luxurious. At more than 5.5 metres in length, tipping the scales at 2685kg and costing upwards of £250,000, it was, until very recently, Ben

‘WHEN I WAS AT COLLEGE THERE WAS A celebrated American writer by the name of Susan Sontag. Generally speaking she used to get right up my nose, but one thing she wrote about photography really stuck with me. Her quote was: “Photographers, connoisseur

IT’S LONGTAIL TIME AGAIN, AND THIS TIME it’s the turn of the Big Daddy – the Super Series car with its claws sharpened and the sort of stringent weight loss and muscle-building regime that would make an East German training camp coach blanch. Many ha

IT’S STRANGE, IS IT NOT, THAT AMONGST THE growing wave of automotive icons being ‘reimagined’ by assorted specialists, the project that seems to have set teeth on edge is the only one to be led by the man responsible for the design of the original ca

IF YOU NEVER EVEN GOT A CHANCE TO DRIVE Jannarelly’s new Design-1 sports car, you could derive plenty of entertainment from watching others get used to the quirks of entry, operation and exit, and a further layer of enjoyment from their reactions imm

THERE’S A MOMENT WITH A NEW long-termer – usually when it first shows up at an evo photoshoot – when you can gauge what you’re in for over the next few months by looking at the reactions of the assembled journalists. Back in October 2019, when I roll

I’VE READ A COUPLE OF TIMES THAT IN addition to being the sports car that it’s mainly pitched as, the Supra can also happily play a GT role. This month I put that claim to the test by spending a few days in our Toyota doing some touring, if not on a

READING OUR JETHRO BOVINGDON’S FAST Fleet reports on his 996.1 Carrera provokes mixed feelings. On one hand there’s solidarity, but there’s also a slight rivalry, an arms race if you like around who can make the best wannabe GT3. And who can make the

THE MAZDA’S STYLING CONTINUES TO divide opinion. I liked it the moment I first saw it. Fresh from the local hand car wash it looked superb, its gloss black wheels gleaming and its optional (£670) Machine Grey metallic paint accentuating its pebble-sm

SINCE FITTING THE NEW LIGHTWEIGHT wheels to the 993 (evo 276) it has sadly not moved an inch, due at first to the lockdown and then the flurry of work activity as the restrictions eased. However, I have firm plans to test the new set-up on some of ev