BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com I have said it before, but I’ll say it again – TopGear doesn’t do awards like everyone else. We don’t draw up a list of categories neatly defined by established body shapes and sizes, because automotive is an i

Look carefully and what do you see? Seriously, lean in close and take a good look. Do you see… a car? If so, Volvo thinks you’re wrong. Well, not wrong. But only half right. Because this is the all new, all electric EX90. And while it’s very much a s

My whole life has been cars, to the point of my mum having to pry Matchbox cars out of my hand during her wedding when I was supposed to be carrying the rings down the aisle. My father was a used car salesman and he always brought cool cars home from

Have you tried explaining the metaverse to an elderly relative? A multi-dimensional digital world is a big leap from looking up your grandchildren on Facebook. And you can’t blame Grandma – even the eggiest heads in Silicon Valley can’t agree on what

This is the production spec Cadillac Celestiq EV. And already, there are a few things we feel we need to clear up. First, it’s hardly a production car: each Celestiq will be entirely hand built. And second, that rather puts us in mind of another car

Generations might seem like an odd name, but it’s because this is developer Kylotonn’s last hurrah before the official licence switches to EA Sports. The philosophy, then, is to cram just about every car and special stage the team has ever produced i

Get the Lando look with these new APL x McLaren trainers, a bargain at a smidge under £600. Yikes. Looking rather striking in McLaren’s signature papaya orange, we’re told the trainers provide an “entirely new silhouette”, are “performance-focused”,

Korea is hardly renowned as a motorsport destination, and the Korean GP, held from 2010–2013, didn’t help matters. The circuit was barely finished in time for the inaugural race, and plans to build a city around the circuit never happened. F1 hasn’t

The 499P has a 3.0-litre, twin-turbo V6 – the same architecture as the 296 GT3 and the 296 GTB road car the GT3 racer is based on. We’re not naive enough to suggest that every single part hasn’t been tweaked, optimised or flat out replaced, but there

I haven’t had the chance to fully eulogise about the Ferrari 296 GTB because my cricketing friend drove it when we were in Germany filming. It is many of the things we now blithely expect a new Ferrari to be: beautifully developed and offering so muc

Last month, Alpine unveiled the A110 R Fernando Alonso, a limited edition of its new track-focused sports car celebrating the team’s Spanish F1 hot shoe. Just 32 examples will be built, each with a unique plaque marking one of ’Nando’s 32 career GP w

I’m standing at the Paris Motor Show looking at a brave new green car. All I can think is, I might be wrong here but too often the cleverest ideas turn out to be the dumbest. The car in question is branded NamX. It’s a biggish electric crossover that

Maserati. The definitive grand touring marque. No other brand lends itself better to the idea of driving a long way, fast, and looking cool while doing so. And now it’s gone electric. Famously not good for going a long way at high speed. But who uses

1.2T 3cyl +e-motors 199 bhp 4spd auto 8.4 secs 61.4 mpg 104 g/km FOR Very quiet and economical in the suburbs, nice cabin AGAINST If you’re just looking for cheap space, this isn’t it Renault originally planned the Austral to be launched in 2021, but

1.5T 3cyl hybrid 211 bhp 1spd CVT 7.2 secs 43.5 mpg 147 g/km FOR Most of the pleasure of EV motoring with none of the pain AGAINST Powertrain gets distractingly noisy on occasion The Nissan X-Trail has always suffered something of an identity crisis.

101.7kWh battery 536 bhp 1spd AWD 4.7 secs 149 mph 388 miles FOR Drives beautifully, incredible refinement, world beating interior AGAINST Some of the tech is overwhelming, it’s heavy, debatable design BMW’s sixth pure electric car is cunningly disgu

77.4kWh battery 321 bhp 1spd 4WD 5.1 secs n/a mph 320 miles FOR Efficiency and range, driving characteristics AGAINST Exterior design not as successful as Ioniq 5’s The Ioniq 6 has a drag factor of just 0.21Cd. That single fact encapsulates all you n

4.0 TT V8 657 bhp 8spd auto 3.3 secs n/a mpg n/a g/km FOR This thing can be seriously hustled on a track AGAINST Expect to see some ‘unusual’ personalisations allelunga, about 20 miles north of Rome, is a tight and technical track, and the fact that

3.0T V6 630 bhp 8spd DCT 2.9 secs 24.1 mpg 255 g/km FOR Fancy roof. Gorgeous looking, absorbing to drive AGAINST Character allows GT work but tiny boot doesn’t In a supercar, real roads often feel like a constrained dawdle. A dropped roof is a remedy

FOR Supremely smooth, hugely comfortable grand tourer AGAINST Big-booted B3 Touring costs £900 less 3.0TT 6cyl 488 bhp 3.7 secs 28.0 mpg 229 g/km To create the B4, Alpina uses a modified example of the M4’s twin-turbo straight-six, with smaller turbo

Subscribe to BBC TopGear Magazine for just £39.49 every 12 issues and we’ll send you a LEGO® TECHNIC™ JEEP® WRANGLER worth £44.99* Have fun exploring the LEGO® Technic™ Jeep® Wrangler. This iconic off-roader is packed with authentic details, includin

or wherever you get your pods… ■

HYPERCAR OF THE YEAR Delivering a simple line to camera in anything with a healthy amount of horsepower, under full acceleration, is an acquired skill… in the Jesko it’s pretty much impossible. It’s not the ferocity of the g-force squeezing me agains

Who would be a car maker in 2022 and beyond? You can’t get the parts, you probably can’t get the staff, grouchy about their waiting times. Sceptics are insisting you’ve gone too soon on EVs, purists wonder loudly why you’re not exclusively building l

Let’s be completely honest here: the Toyota GR86 being in the quagmire of filth that is 2022 was not exactly a hold-the-front-page internet-breaking shock. I’ll be even more honest and say I didn’t even set off to drive it back in May with a complete

The MPV needed a reset. A line in the sand. An offensive strategy to combat the dominance the SUV. Offence: a commodity SUVs trade heavily in. But let’s not pick on an easy target. Let’s consider the demise of the MPV. The Renault Espace, the OG MPV,

The motor show is dead. It was already drunkenly swaying on its feet and coughing up blood before the pandemic, but lockdown handed carmakers a useful cost-cutting case study. Does not spending millions on a poncy display stand, peppering it with gri

Food up. Heating up. Rent up. Even if people are now buying and all that, they’re being killed by the stuff they bought last year because they bought it on credit and the interest rate is up. If they’ve any money left over after that massive cascade

Sure, it’s a £390 Lego set, but you’re building a £2m Ferrari that’s already sold out, so you’ll have to be pragmatic about getting into ownership. It’s one of Lego’s largest sets, with 3,998 pieces. Buy it for the kids, but don’t let them touch it.

Noise. It used to be intrinsically linked with mobility, but it’s rapidly becoming a scarcer commodity. A good noise is now a luxury. Thankfully, the Pagani Huayra R is a car that can deliver on luxuries. And lots and lots good noise. The £2.5 millio

In an ever-increasing world of Photoshops and deep fakes, we’re having to question whether what seeing. But occasionally you simply can’t believe what you’re witnessing even though it’s very much real. This year’s Goodwood Hillclimb was one of those

On the one hand a large pickup truck appears ripe for EV is perfect for cradling an enormous slab of lithium-ion, plus a porky kerbweight isn’t going to scare anyone off. Oodles of EV torque is ideal for towing and hauling and having power points sca

Finally. This is the first of TopGear’s annual awards issues since we’ve been, broadly speaking, unshackled from COVID-19. After nearly three years of restrictions, you will imagine I’ve been busting to return to driving top-end hypercars in exotic l

The origins of a mid-engined Cayman powered by the GT3’s six may not be what you think. “I was very close to Wolfgang Hatz [Porsche’s R&D chief],” Andreas Preuninger, boss of Porsche’s GT car department told TopGear. “One day he said ‘Hey, come on, l

I know people are going to say it’s not a new car, but it’s a restomod, so it sort of is. Bottom line, of all the cars I’ve driven this series it’s the one I had most fun in. I wanted one when I was 19 or 20 and I couldn’t get insured, so this was th

Everyone in the car business loves the Range Rover. The original was a jumped-up farm though we should acknowledge 1962’s Jeep Wagoneer here, designed by a man called Jim Anger – but across 50-plus years it has become the lodestar for luxury. That’s

My Car of the Year 2022 has got to be the new Range Rover. It’s absolutely beautiful, it ticks all the boxes, especially if you want to go off-roading in a car that’s going to cost you well over £100k… which you won’t, but it’s nice to know it’s got

Automotive product cycles often mimic real life – they begin noisy and full of hope, spend some time maturing, settle into the solid mediocrity of middle age and then quietly slip away into obscurity, gently shuffed from price lists. But supercars te

You wait ages for a storied marque to build you a pumped-up sports car with armoured wheelarches stuffed with gnarlier tyres, then two come at once. Porsche has been threatening to give the 911 some ‘Allroad’ treatment for a while now, having built a

This has been a vintage year for the supercar. Some continue internal combustion, with Lamborghini somehow managing to find more life in the ageing Huracán chassis, and Aston plonking the biggest motor it can find in the Vantage. Porsche has sought t

Well aren’t you lot clever. Of course you picked a genuine TopGear hero as your Readers’ Choice Award winner. You voted in your thousands and the Dacia Jogger triumphed in a public vote on TopGear.com in a field of 43 contenders, all of which had bee

Now go and watch the video on BBC iPlayer Some of you will remember motoring journalist and beard enthusiast LJK Setright. He was a celebrity car writer long before anyone had made a television programme about the horseless carriage. His writing was

John Benton is a coiled spring of a man. His Californian workshop may be tucked away in Anaheim, southeast of downtown LA, but that doesn’t mean Benton Performance is a quiet little corner in which to show hushed reverence to shiny old Porsches. Ther

We would all like to think that in these more enlightened and progressive times that we live in something approaching a meritocracy. The cream rises to the top and all that. Discounting for a moment the fact that modern politics has vaporised the not

You and us both. Citroen’s luxobarge pedigree began with the DS, followed by the CX, and then this, the XM. Launched in 1989 and styled by Bertone, one of its key selling points was its self-levelling, electronically controlled hydropneumatic suspens

The art of downplaying a situation is critical for denying its actual severity. This could be as simple as the ‘little’ bit of kerbing which has transformed your wheel into something from The Flintstones, or it could be the crippling hangover after t

As a kid who was approximately a decade away from holding a driving licence, there was no greater thrill in the late Eighties and early Nineties than slipping into the bucket seat and gripping the steering wheel of an arcade racing machine. But in sp

HELLO £129,750 OTR/£150,050 as tested/£3,272pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can the most powerful M car be a proper luxury car? DRIVER Rowan Horncastle I’LL SAVE YOU THE LAZY “HELLO M8” GAG AND GET STRAIGHT TO FIRST impressions as that’s all I’ve got given our lat

GOODBYE £55,435 OTR/£61,955 as tested/£690pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is the Q4 e-tron superior to its VW Group siblings, or just pricier? DRIVER Jack Rix IT’S SIX MONTHS SINCE WE RECEIVED THE KEYS TO AN AUDI Q4 E-TRON – plenty of time for it to leave us stran

GOODBYE £31,995 OTR/£33,870 as tested/£519pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can a van with windows triumph as an EV? DRIVER Andy Franklin IN CASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED, TOPGEAR IS BACK ON THE TELLY, some 20 years after the ‘new’ show started with Clarkson, Hammond and

REPORT 5 £18,745/£19,640/£313 WHY IT’S HERE Can the cheapest MPV cut the TopGear mustard? DRIVER Sam Philip EARLIER THIS YEAR, EURO NCAP awarded the Jogger a dismal single star safety rating, a score that seems to scream, “Keep your precious children

REPORT 7 £94,000 OTR/£115,670 as tested/£2,259 pcm WHY IT’S HERE This is BMW’s techno flagship, what’s it like to live with? DRIVER  Jason Barlow DID YOU KNOW THAT BMW’S ‘i’ SUB-DIVISION WAS COMPLETELY off-the-books at the start? It was overseen by a

Does our Bentayga suffer from anxiety? I’m starting to think so. Actually, given the light bruising I’ve suffered from how much the seatbelt pre-tensioners have gone off recently, I know so. Its inner prang is partly down to ‘Safeguard Plus’, part of

REPORT 2 £47,290 OTR/£53,730 as tested/£734pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s the stepping stone to Jaguar’s all-electric future DRIVER Charlie Rose SO, I’VE FINALLY MANAGED TO SWIPE A SPACE AT THE ONLY ON-STREET charger outside my flat. It’s a 5kWh Ubitricity c

GOODBYE £19,400 OTR/£21,925 as tested/£273pcm WHY IT’S HERE Does relentless all-round competence get boring? DRIVER Vijay Pattni OUR TIME WITH THE HUMBLE FABIA IS UP, AND HERE’S WHAT WE FOUND. Throughout the course of your life, there will almost cer

REPORT 4 £60,645/£71,689/£749 WHY IT’S HERE Does the concept of a lightweight dissolve on contact with Real Life? DRIVER Ollie Marriage I’VE MADE A PLEASANT discovery about the A110S. On the motorway, other cars get out of its way. And they do so wil

GOODBYE £51,295 OTR/£74,146 as tested/£1,004pcm WHY IT’S HERE To live the life most Defenders can only dream of DRIVER Ollie Marriage IF YOU’VE READ THESE REPORTS SINCE THE DEFENDER FIRST ARRIVED back at the start of this year, you’ll be aware of the

GOODBYE £46,035 OTR/£49,400 as tested/£659pcm WHY IT’S HERE It’s the bedrock of Volkswagen’s all-electric future push DRIVER Paul Horrell “IT GETS US FROM A TO B.” WHEN THIS IS ALL SOMEONE CAN SAY OF their car, they shrug apologetically. Yet any vehi

HELLO £32,995 OTR/£33,820 as tested/£410pcm WHY IT’S HERE Maybe the best family hatch – just as everyone stops buying hatches DRIVER Ollie Kew LOOK AT THE STATE OF FAMILY HATCHBACKS RIGHT NOW. FORD ISN’T going to replace the Focus. VW has wrecked the

It all started quietly in 1904, as engineer Henry Royce met a potential new business partner. He’d run a crane company then branched out into new-fangled cars. The other fellow was Charles Rolls, a minor aristocrat and motoring enthusiast who started

After meeting in May 1904 to discuss a potential business deal, Charles Rolls and Henry Royce were all ready to unveil their car by Christmas. The 10 hp became the first car to be given the Rolls-Royce badge. Built in Manchester and sold exclusively

A Rolls-Royce purchase falls firmly into the category that’s marked, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Still, entry to the Rolls-Royce owners club is a bargain at £249,600 for the four-door Ghost saloon. It’s basically a Mondeo for the super

Made to reassure oligarchs that ultra luxury can still exist in the future, the Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100, or 103EX as it is known internally, is 5.9m long, 1.6m high, and powered by four in-wheel electric motors. The 28in wheels don’t immediately

With the seventh generation of Phantom, BMW managed the impossible task of successfully summing up all that was great about Rolls-Royces while also dragging a fusty relic into a new era – the previous version of the Phantom was on sale from 1968 to 1

Let’s start with a simple one. EV means electric vehicle, as opposed to one powered by petrol, diesel, used chip oil, Chanel No 5 or magic. People in the car industry like to use this one. It stands for battery electric vehicle, as opposed to, say, a

BMW might have bagged the Rolls-Royce name for a mere £40m back in 1998, but Volkswagen took the firm’s historic Crewe factory and all the tools. It meant building a bespoke new facility on the Goodwood Estate in West Sussex (the Duke of Richmond’s g