BBC Top Gear Magazine

@jack_rix editor@bbctopgearmagazine.com His name is Thommie and I’m staring at his belly for the second time in as many days. Yesterday he was stretched across a table like a go-go dancer, shirt lifted to reveal his prize torso, for a group photo non

This is the new Lotus Emeya, and it is 17mph slower than the last saloon car to wear four doors and a Lotus badge. That infamous Nineties troublemaker – because not enough has been written about it – was a Vauxhall breathed on by Norfolk’s specialist

You read that correctly: the GTI badge has a future in the electric age after all, and the Volkswagen ID.GTI concept is the car that proves it. Huzzah! Based on the ID.2all concept that was revealed back in March, the ID.GTI is the hot hatch version

Just because your 1 of 110 V12 Aston was inspired by a Seventies racer doesn’t mean you can pay tribute to the brownest of all the decades by painting it in Dulux Nappy. Try one of the Fifties racing green hues instead…

From the developers of mobile game New Star Soccer, early access PC game New Star GP turns its attention away from expensively haircutted millionaire footballers and instead towards expensively haircutted millionaire F1 drivers. Looking a lot like cl

A smoothly sweeping seconds hand is often used by a budding watch fancier as an indicator of quality. If you are close enough to tell the time, you can see whether the hand ticks once per second, or glides around majestically. But who made this the h

To create this special ‘Ferrari Edition’ home speaker, Bang & Olufsen took its standard Beosound 2 and added some shiny red paint and a prancing horse logo. It then whacked an extra 50 per cent on the usual asking price and waited for the suckers to

It costs almost £5,000 to spec the ‘Bentley rotating display’, a sort of giant Toblerone in your dash with veneer on one side, three dials on another and a touchscreen set into the final face. Crewe says it has 40 moving parts and tolerances of less

The styling has been overhauled with sharper lines making for a less frog-like appearance, with sleeker headlights and brake lights. That’s all in the name of improved aero, and together with optimised wheels and tyres, Tesla claims the Long Range AW

Fancy living off-grid, EV style? The Hummer EV EarthCruiser could be the answer to your prayers Extreme H – a hydrogen-powered sister series to Extreme E – is set for launch as early as 2025, we’re told. Clock’s ticking Meet the Polestar Synergy, a f

This is the world beating EV hypercar – the Rimac Nevera. It’s fully electric, has over 20 straight line acceleration world records and currently holds the electric production car record at the Nürburgring. Only 150 will ever be built with each one c

If someone had asked me which F1 driver would produce the standout performance of 2023, I probably wouldn’t have said Carlos Sainz. But in Singapore, he not only reminded us that he is world class, but that the skillset of any F1 driver is something

A new and bigger generation of Mini hatch arrives, impelling me to vent my periodic rant about the harm being done by the endless physical growth of cars. It’s not just the Mini. And it’s not just me. I’ve got actual backup from Which? and the Britis

Lamborghini has often felt like the last dinosaur, roaring forlornly in the face of electric’s meteoric impact. No more. The Revuelto is a revolutionary Raging Bull. The replacement for the Aventador, Lamborghini’s biggest beast, is now a plug-in hyb

Hello and welcome to the EV charge facility at PastyLand, Cornwall’s favourite pasty based theme park! This facility is operated by Chargerine, the West Country’s most exciting and least reliable provider of public charge points. To get started, simp

£50,000 (est) FOR Relaxed cruising, the Dolby Atmos audio set-up AGAINST Cheap trim, what are those B-pillars doing there? Combine C-Class trimmings with E-Class dimensions and, presto, the new CLE-Class is born. It’s a soft-edged two-door meant to c

£53,995 FOR Can be cheeky fun, plug-in version can tow up to 1,500kg AGAINST No seven seat option available here Six generations of CR-V, who’d have thought. They grow up so fast. When the first version launched in 1995 it was the tip of the new wave

£210,313 FOR Looks gorgeous, performance, powertrain is magnificent AGAINST HMI is still glitchy, it’s expensive Ferrari hasn’t made a front-engined Spider since the 365 GTS/4 – Daytona – in 1969. That’s one of the sharpest looking cars in the entire

£270,000 FOR Quicker, smoother and more reliable than a standard Classic AGAINST Seriously pricey. Interior plastics need replacing It’s hard not to drive a Range Rover Classic with a smile on your face, and that smile gets a little bit wider when yo

£68,500 FOR Some cool tech inside you’ll want to show off to passengers AGAINST A swing and a miss – some nice touches, dull overall Lexus has spent its entire existence trying to be alternative while at the same time hovering awkwardly near the cool

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SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY Price: £232,820 Engine: 5.2-litre V10, 602bhp, 413lb ft, AWD Performance: 0–62mph in 3.4secs, 160mph Weight: 1,600kg (est) WHAT IS IT? One of 1,499 dirt-hungry arrivedercis to the Huracán – and incredibly, the ‘baby’ Lambo’s s

SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY It all started with a question. “Could we make Speed Week as low carbon as possible, without compromising on the, y’know, speed?” What followed was a crash course – from a team within the BBC that knows about these things – in

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SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY We had a plan. Transport all the cars using electric trucks. It’s becoming more feasible these days and a great way of cutting our carbon emissions. Scania stepped up, offering us its prototype electric tractor units to pull c

THE NUMBERS ARE always bigger with trucks. The Scania 45 R/S 450 has a 624kWh battery pack. With only seven tonnes of load onboard the 15-tonne truck, the range indicator was showing nearly 500 miles. Even at its gross weight of 64 tonnes it can stil

SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY You can’t see air move. Pity really. It’s doing a lot of work around here. Some of it good, some more… alarming. The wind turbine at the top of the Gotlandring’s jump churns in the breeze as I watch Wookie hurl the 911 Dakar u

SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY How is Formula E not the biggest sport on the face of the planet? By now it ought to have amassed the wealth and global audience to make LIV golf, Saudi Pro League footie and Formula One look about as powerful as a village law

Power: 270bhp Top speed: 140mph Well, they had to start somewhere. But the MkIs looked rather awkward, weren’t very quick and needed to tap out for a sub halfway through each race. Power: 335bhp Top speed: 174mph Second-gen car could actually complet

SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY The sense of wrongness is what gets you. You’re peering down the barrel of a honeycomb themed Lamborghini Huracán interior, or across the fetish crisp arcs of a set of Porsche 911 dials, and beyond is, basically, a path made f

SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY Don’t you think it’s interesting that we didn’t load a single Audi or Mercedes into our Scania-shaped toy boxes? We politely asked for an AMG One but Merc said no. What about the F1 tech-inspired hybrid C63? Merc said… no. How

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SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY You know when you’re setting up a new console game and it asks for a rough skill level to decide whether you need a full suggested racing line, all of the traction control and assisted braking so that you don’t punt yourself i

THE REASON TG ENDED UP ON THE Swedish island of Gotland wasn’t just to do with the Gotlandring – the island itself has become a bit of a poster child/giant laboratory for Swedish sustainable development. From an industrial base that centred on limest

SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY Better stick that music from the Hovis ad on because I’m about to sound like an old fart. There was a time, not very long ago, when a hot hatch was a hot hatch. You knew what you were getting, a lightly souped up shopping trol

SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY “IT’S GOING TO BE A FINAL THREE. PLUS ONE,” says editor Jack, giving me the kind of side eye usually reserved for someone reaching for a bottle during a bar fight. “So… four?” “No. It’s a final three, but we’ve decided that th

It’s 11pm and TG is wandering through Alfa Romeo’s museum with scarcely another soul to be seen. This is quite the privilege and it prompts an important thought: the hit rate of these guys is extraordinary. There’s a pale blue late Thirties 8C 2900B

The thing with concepts is they’re supposed to point to the future – all very optimistic at the time, but what if the company doesn’t have a future? Rather looks like everyone’s wasted their time then, doesn’t it? And in the case of Saab, if some of

“Mark, I am sorry for the parts taking a long time. There have been some transport issues, but I promise they will be delivered soon.” Vitaly’s honesty and upfront approach is very admirable compared with many Mercedes specialists out there. Especial

Indeed – these two share a basic bodyshell, doors and a bootlid. The 981-gen Cayman (the better looking MkII version of Porsche’s mid-engined sports car) was first revealed in late 2012, and over a decade on it’s still on sale – in facelifted, rebran

Before Microsoft became a household name in gaming with its Xbox consoles, the megacorp turned out the odd PC game to give computer users something to do in between staring vacantly at Excel spreadsheets. Every so often we’d even get a racing game in

GOODBYE £59,545 OTR/£65,521 as tested/£665 pcm WHY IT’S HERE  Is this the SUV antidote you never knew you needed? DRIVER Peter Rawlins SO THERE WE HAVE IT. AFTER NINE MONTHS WITH A VW MULTIVAN in our lives it’s finally time to say goodbye. Not for th

HELLO £48,495 OTR/£53,345 as tested/£534 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Does Alfa’s late arrival deserve a place at the small SUV party? DRIVER Esther Neve FOR REASONS BEYOND ME, IT IS OFTEN SAID THAT GREEN CARS ARE unlucky. Genuinely no idea where the idea comes

REPORT 4 £48,380 OTR/£50,030 as tested/£629 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can Mazda join the large/luxe SUV party? DRIVER Andy Franklin TO SOUTHERN FRANCE, A 14-HOUR TRIP FROM LINCOLNSHIRE TO Cahors in the Lot region covering almost 800 miles. Proper road test m

REPORT 3 £14,795/£15,445/£213 WHY IT’S HERE It’s no longer the UK’s cheapest new car, but is it still a TG hero? DRIVER Greg Potts LAST MONTH I WAS REVELLING in the Sandero’s sense of fun. This month I’ve been reining it in on an economy drive. This

REPORT 3 £54,075 OTR/£63,795 as tested/£773 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Can an electric BMW look, feel and drive… like a BMW? DRIVER Jack Rix WHEN A CAR OBSESSED FRIEND OF MY WIFE, WHO I’D LITERALLY just met at a party, invited me to a private track day at Goo

REPORT 3 £62,995/£66,607/£680 WHY IT’S HERE Is the ownership experience as bright and sunny as the car itself? DRIVER Ollie Marriage IT’S 19 DECEMBER. THE PHONE rings. It’s Marshall van centre: “Er, I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, but… your

HELLO £34,825 OTR/£36,625 as tested/£458 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is a hatch-coupe-crossover a mashup too far? DRIVER Paul Horrell IT CAME WITH DELIVERY MILEAGE, AND ITS VERY FIRST JOURNEY WAS to carry a proper load: four people, and enough camping gear to

Which has the greater EV range, the Range Rover P440e or an electric mountain bike? Here are the stats. Battery: 31.8kWh plays 0.72kWh. Power: 105kW plays 0.6kW. Weight with driver/rider: 96kg plays 3,072kg (bit more than Land Rover’s official 2,810k

HELLO £46,525 OTR/£50,615 as tested/£774 pcm WHY IT’S HERE To find out what impact the TT has had on Audi DRIVERS Vijay Pattni WHILE IT’S A CHEERY ‘HELLO’ TO THE TOPGEAR FLEET’S NEWEST member, philosophically it’s actually a ‘goodbye’. Following 25 y

GOODBYE £31,995 OTR/£32,790 as tested/£398 pcm WHY IT’S HERE Is Chinese domination of the small EV scene inevitable? We find out DRIVER Greg Potts IT’S BACK! AFTER LEAVING US FOUR MONTHS AGO, THE FUNKY CAT HAS finally returned from its trip to the ve

The Romanian government started Dacia back in 1966 under the watchful eye of communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. It was called UAP (Uzină de Autoturisme Piteşti, or Pitesti car factory) at first, even if the southern Romanian city didn’t have a car

Good news! The Dacia Sandero arrived on UK shores in its second generation and immediately became the most affordable new car on the market. Prices have crept up since then, but the Sandero is still the cheap and cheerful option for basic motoring. I

You used to be able to get a Dacia Sandero (last gen, not the posher current one) for a headline grabbing £7,995, the cheapest car on sale in the UK. It had unpainted bumpers, steel wheels and no radio but it was an option. That not many people took

Dacia didn’t go in for concepts much back when it was communist, but French ownership has injected a certain something into the styling department. The Duster SUV was previewed in 2009 with a concept of the same name – the end car had little to do wi

Dacia is currently living its best life – where Volkswagen’s takeover of Skoda brought something of a laughing stock into the German carmaker’s fold, Renault bagged itself a brand that was basically unknown in western Europe, but with a solid custome

Do the company’s first 30 years count? Dacia was meant to be waving the industrial flag for the Socialist Republic of Romania, a project commissioned personally by dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. Presumably the irony of cocking a snook at the corrupt and

Dacia came out fighting at the beginning of 2023 when news emerged that BMW was set to charge its drivers to unlock the heated seats in the firm’s cars – the carmaker offered free hot water bottles for two days at selected dealerships, so-called ‘hea

READY TO MAKE THE SWITCH? WE SEPARATE WHAT’S HOT FROM WHAT’S NOT These small cars are perfect for urban life, but the trade-off is a much lower range PRICE: £37,395 RANGE: Up to 136 miles This TG favourite has retro styling and a brilliant interior,

WHAT: RICCI’S PAJERO WHERE: THIRSK, UK Proof that off-roaders are ballooning. Grenadier and Defender make Ricci’s first-gen Pajero look like a kei car. Actually fits in a parking space, too WHAT: PERSONAL HELICOPTER WHERE: MUNICH MESSE, GERMANY We lo