Evo Magazine

IT’S BEEN A YEAR OF MEETINGS. Lots of meetings. Some very long, some that could have been dealt with via a simple message. A number have been enlightening, some soul-destroying. All have conspired to reduce my time out on the road in 2023. But then w

A MG’S GT WAS ALWAYS A CURIOUS beast. Positioned between a grand tourer and a super-sports car it struggled to decide what it wanted to be. It was a schizophrenic torn between taking on anything from an Aston Martin DB11 to a Porsche 911 Turbo. As im

MY SENIOR COLLEAGUES AT EVO USED to have it much easier than this. Car launches were more straightforward back in the early years of this magazine, with days of driving across a mix of roads to really sink your teeth into a new model. But the Hyundai

THERE’S NO NEED FOR MARTIN WILLIS (INBOX, EVO 315) to go gentle into any good night. The thrill of affordable driving is still out there. I’ve feathered my own nest with affordable smiles for miles with an MG TF 160 (purchased for just over £1000 in

THE FADING, CRACKED AND WONDERFULLY DISHEVELLED majesty of the Circuito Estoril is a fitting backdrop for the launch of the new McLaren 750S. Nearby the roads scrabble and scrape through rock faces and reach for the coast by any means possible. The s

THE CONVERSATION STARTED BEFORE we’d even finished clearing away the empties as evo Car of the Year 2022 came to a close. What would the likely contenders for 2023 be? Would BMW make amends for the M4 CSL’s poor showing? What was the GT3 RS going to

WHAT ABOUT THE…? WHERE’S THE…? WHY DIDN’T YOU INCLUDE THE…? Every year there are a number of cars that aren’t represented in evo Car of the Year for a number of reasons. Some we work until the eleventh hour trying to secure, others we know aren’t goi

S TEAM RISES FROM THE GT3 RS’S NOSE-MOUNTED radiator. Its front tyres tip-toe a little further into the flood, like a rhino testing the ground at a watering hole. The water rises further, perilously approaching the front axle line. Huddled inside the

Compiling the scores on the penultimate night of eCoty is not the work of a moment. The judges get a deadline, which is widely ignored, and then someone, there’s always someone, declares they haven’t had enough time in one of the cars. That someone i

HOWEVER TRITE IT SOUNDS, SIMPLY making it to eCoty is a win in itself. I’m not sure many of the manufacturers believe us, but to be fair, unless you’ve been directly involved it’s impossible to appreciate how seriously we take it. The miles we cover

I CAN’T RECALL DRIVING CONDITIONS ON AN EVO TEST quite like these. Autumnal leaves swirl randomly in front of the Lamborghini’s heavily slanted windscreen, slivers of auburn, brown, ruby and yellow flashing across the road and falling in clumps on it

JOIN ME BACKSTAGE FOR A MINUTE OR two. Head for the wings. Exit pursued by Barker in a bear suit. Don’t trip over the bag of cleaning cloths and assorted squirty bottles. No point rummaging in the supermarket bags either; lunch was divvied up and dev

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. FOR SOME OF YOU reading this, that could be a lifetime ago. The youngest members of the evo team were probably still in nappies in 1998. Even for those of us who today are nearer pensions than Pampers, it does seem an age ago. Sinc

MY THREE MOST MEMORABLE DRIVES INVOLVED THE Sterrato, and in two instances I wasn’t even driving it. I confess that I thought the cosplay Lambo was going to be the novelty act of the test, a car to add a bit of colour and fun and then to forget when

YOU KNOW IT’S A VINTAGE YEAR WHEN YOU CAN’T decide which key to slide off the kitchen table and into your pocket while everyone is busy inhaling a bacon sandwich. It was tempting to start every day in one of the GTs: the irresistible draw of the DB12

MY FIRST ECOTY AND, ASIDE FROM the pressure of writing the main section of the test that precedes these pages, just as special an experience to be a part of as I’d imagined: for the roads, the cars and the company. Stand-out car for me was the McLare

IN THE 25 YEARS SINCE EVO’S LAUNCH, WE HAVE been fortunate to meet, work with, interview, ride along with and be inspired by some truly remarkable individuals, both in the world of road cars and in motorsport. Not forgetting the cars, of course. Over

FOR THIS, THE INAUGURAL YEAR OF THE evo Hall of Fame, we decided to honour not one but two outstanding individuals who have both shaped evo’s world, albeit in very different ways. Selecting our first inductee, our individual of the year, was no easy

HEARTSTRINGS CAN PULL HARDER than a Le Mans Hypercar’s hybrid powertrain, and when Ferrari whipped the covers from its fully liveried 499P in autumn last year, it was quite a moment. The return of a full factory-backed Maranello entry into Le Mans’ t

HARD TO NAME A MORE CRUSHINGLY complete performance this year than that of Max Verstappen – in any branch of motorsport, let alone at its pinnacle. The Dutchman’s domination hasn’t made for a classic Formula 1 season but it’s an achievement up there

1998 Porsche 911 Carrera (996.1) 1999 Porsche 911 GT3 (996.1) 2000 Porsche 911 Turbo (996) 2001 Pagani Zonda C12-S 2002 Honda NSX-R 2003 Porsche 911 GT3 (996.2) 2004 Porsche 911 Carrera S (997.1) 2005 Ford GT 2006 Ferrari 599 GTB 2007 Porsche 911 GT3

WHEN I PICTURE AN AUDI S8, I IMAGINE IT BEING driven by an elite hitman making a rapid getaway in a Jerry Bruckheimer film. Or perhaps it’s waiting patiently on a runway, ready to deliver a visiting angry German ambassador to Chequers. My first encou

THERE’S A SURPRISING AMOUNT OF tech in the Giulia, some of it hidden. One example is Forward Collision Warning, which I discovered when it gave me a bit of a fright, sounding an alarm, flashing a message and braking the car. In that instant I had no

TWELVE MONTHS AND ALMOST 8000 miles since we were handed its key, time is up for the Fast Fleet MX-5. It’s actually the fifth Mk4 MX-5 we’ve run here at evo, but we make no apologies for sporadically returning to this generation of Mazda’s roadster a

A GOOD FEW MONTHS INTO LIFE WITH the M4 and, in all honesty, I’m still smitten with it. I didn’t expect a near-1800kg, all-wheel-drive, moderately ostentatious two-door saloon car (I know it’s technically a coupe but I struggle to think of it as anyt

THIS MIGHT BE ONE OF THE MOST SPECIAL driving memories I’ll ever have below 40mph. It’s a golden-skies evening at Donington Park circuit. I’m driving the evo25 Seven, roof off. Just ahead of us is Caterham CEO Bob Laishley, in a Seven 420 Cup. Just t

THE LATEST LAND ROVER DEFENDER IS a machine that means business – that’s something that has become very clear to me after covering 9000 miles in the D300 X-Dynamic HSE model that evo ran through the summer. Whether that business is conquering the urb

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THE MÉGANE RS TROPHY-R WAS AN engineer’s dream: a car with all the right bits in all the right places. It was no surprise that it went to the Nürburgring Nordschleife and set a new fastest lap time for front-drive cars, its 07:40.10 lowering the reco