Evo Magazine

IT SOUNDED A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME; a simple one, too. Select the ten cars you would choose for your dream garage: your Perfect 10. There was a caveat, of course: you had to have driven them. Ah. Compiling such a list was not the work of a moment; in

IT’S ABOUT THE TRANSITION. TODAY, rolling through drifting autumnal mist and on to the soaring, twisted hill-roads around Brescia in northern Italy, it’s about the change of pace from mild to wild. In some cars you want it to be like throwing a switc

FLOAT INTO THE CUSHIONED SEAT and hear a little sigh from the quilted leather as you settle into what is by today’s standards a chair of larger than normal proportions. The sound of a motor whirrs over your shoulder as the chrome-plated hook brings y

CHANCES ARE THIS COULD BE THE FIRST time you’ve read anything to do with Hyundai’s Kona, the crossover niche being one we tend to steer clear of: the automotive white goods of our roads; a necessity rather than a desire. There are exceptions, there a

TWO VERY DIFFERENT RACING CARS this month, one anchored in the present but from a marque very much looking to a new future, and the other from a giant of the sport prophesying where it thinks the future may lie. The latter is the Porsche Mission R co

LIKE MANY MOTORING JOURNALISTS, I’ve sat alongside Gavan Kershaw as he’s spirited the latest and greatest Lotus around the Hethel circuit with swift grace, and marvelled at how easy he makes going insanely fast seem. Sure, he’s equally adept at the s

NO DOUBT YOU HAVE ALREADY SEEN THE signs at the pumps telling you that petrol has changed and have spotted the E10 signage. So what exactly is different and how does it affect someone who enjoys driving? In a bid to reduce CO2 emissions, all standard

THE TALBOT SUNBEAM LOTUS WAS a mongrel. For starters, it was based upon a stopgap hatchback built on a cut-down Hillman Avenger chassis, hastily confected in just 19 months to give the ill-fated Linwood plant something to make. Even company bosses th

I’M STILL THINKING ABOUT IT. RIGHT NOW, number ten remains blank. Despite days of idle agonising over this list, I continue to deliberate. Rarely has something so inconsequential felt so important. But I’ve got to start writing and I’m hoping that al

CAYMAN GT4? HANG ON A MINUTE, THIS ISN’T A 911. The engine’s in the wrong place for a start. And the number after the letter ‘GT’ is too high. I’m glad you noticed. Of all the great cars in Porsche’s current and back catalogue, and there are quite a

WELL, WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE? I MEAN, THINK about it seriously – because whatever you include in your all-time top ten list of cars inevitably says more about what you didn’t choose, rather than what you did. Which is where it actually becomes quite p

PUTTING TOGETHER A LIST OF YOUR PERFECT 10 cars and then trying to rank them in order of desirability is a bit like being asked to choose your favourite child. And it’s made even harder when you’ve already got well over ten cars parked in your garage

THE MORE I THINK ABOUT THIS, THE MORE impossible a task it seems to be. While ten slots should in theory give more than enough room, my initial shortlist required the sort of substantial and traumatic pruning that would reduce Alan Titchmarsh to tear

A DOUBLE-DECKER BUS? IT’S AN ODD ONE THIS, BUT getting to drive a double-decker (around the West Circuit in evo 100) was one of the best things I’ve done. I grew up riding buses ‘up town’, watching the driver’s skill or sitting up front upstairs. The

WHERE TO BEGIN? YOU KNOW IT’S GOING TO BE A tough list to compile. Then you actually start doing it and the full melon-twisting magnitude of Sutcliffe’s challenge ties your head in knots. Suffice to say it’s the only time I’ve ever wished I hadn’t dr

OH BLOODY HELL, YOU MUST BE THINKING, WHY are car journalists always eulogising Porsche 911s? Well, the thing is, Porsche 911s are really, really good. And the 997 Gen 2 GT3 RS, for me, is the best of the lot. For starters, it’s the 997 shape, the la

NO HEAD SCRATCHING. NO CHIN RUBBING. THE answer to the question I’d never been able to give without layers of equivocation – ‘what’s the best car you’ve ever driven?’ – arrived fully formed, Martini-liveried and in lightest Weissach Pack guise on 22

OKAY, A 997 GT3 RS 4.0 IS A PREDICTABLE CHOICE, but for all the right reasons. For me this is the ultimate factory 911 and the pinnacle of the era that evo was born into. Nothing conveys a sense of purpose quite like the 4.0, from the angry, serrated

‘THE BEST HOT HATCH there has ever been,’ says Steve Sutcliffe, and John Barker feels there’s a bit of BMW E30 M3 in there somewhere, too. Throw in the group test victories, the eCoty performance that saw it finish ahead of both Porsche’s 911 Turbo S

AFTER SHOOTING FORMULA 1 since the early 1990s, Peter J Fox has plenty of anecdotes and insights about motorsport’s premier championship, some of them repeatable, some of them not suitable for print to save a blush or two. But one of his observations

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THE IDEA TO TAKE AN OCTAVIA vRS to Bonneville Speed Week was cooked up in a far-fetched ‘what if?’ conversation with then Skoda PR manager Pietro Panarisi. A ballsy and unlikely way to mark the tenth anniversary of the vRS performance brand, it would

WE SEEM TO SPEND AN INORDINATE AMOUNT of time talking about weight on evo. In 2021 it is entirely normal for a sports saloon like the new BMW M3 to weigh over 1700kg, and for the new breed of high-performance EVs to top two tons with ease. It has bec

IN A NEW CAR, SOME THINGS take longer to get used to than others. My first enthusiastic entry to a roundabout in the Mégane RS was mildly unsettling and impressive almost simultaneously, thanks to ‘4Control’, which suggests four-wheel drive but is ac

LIFE WITH THE 503BHP GERMAN supersaloon is a mixture of crushing competence, numerous comments about the car and its colour (largely very positive, despite what the internet suggests about the styling) and weapons-grade self restraint to not drive ev

IF YOU RECOGNISED OUR NEW MÉGANE as the very car that appeared in last issue’s hot hatch group test, then our new Leon may look familiar to you too. It was also present at that five-car gathering, where it emerged trailing the Renault, which in turn

ASTON PARROTT REALLY WANTED A GO IN OUR NEW M3, AND as he had a big drive coming up he asked if I would swap the BMW for his Skoda for a week or two. I’d been curious about this new Octavia vRS for a while, so figured it would also be a good opportun

AS MENTIONED IN LAST MONTH’S REPORT, THE ARTEON arrived just in time for the school holidays, so its key was firmly grabbed and its ample boot loaded for various staycations: firstly a seaside jaunt to Brighton, then a weekend in Yorkshire, so a grea

‘IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME,’ SO the saying goes, but few would have predicted that the manufacturer to build it would be Toyota. With the exception of 2018’s limited-edition Yaris GRMN (400 made and mechanically rather different from the GR), T

THE TIME HAS COME. CUE THE TRAGI-OPERA orchestra, the wailing of the damned, the hand wringing. Mamma mia! They want the Alfa back! All good things have to end at some point, and sure enough there’s been no shirking the inevitability of the Alfa’s re

AMONG THE MANY ACCESSORIES offered for the DBX, you can get a roof-mounted bike rack. Why? First, there’s the aerodynamic drag. Second, if you’re less than 6ft you’ll need to carry your own steps, but trumping them both is the thought of losing hold

I’D BOUGHT A CD WITH THE MICHEL Legrand soundtrack to the 1971 film Le Mans. It’s quite hard to find actually,’ says Adam Towler, clearly still quite pleased with his purchase, six years later. ‘Anyway, I’d transferred it to my phone, hooked that up

BMW’S M2 WAS A ‘NEARLY CAR’ IN ITS original iteration. There were flashes of brilliance now and then, as you’d expect from the spiritual successor to the glorious 1-series M Coupé, but we had our reservations over its dynamics. There are no bad cars