OF THE HILL - Magazinos.com

DECEMBER 2017

TOYOTA HILUX

TG's indestructible favourite: Is it still the perfectpick-up?

Rs300

KINGWe celebrate one of our most famous

racing machines with a drive to remember

OF THE HILL

The MINI Countryman goes down Electric Avenue

Fuel crisis: Go around the country on ONE tank of fuel. Sounds reasonable

THE GAME CHANGERSTen TG heroes, one incredible trip

T O P G E A R . C O M � D E C E M B E R � � � � 0 0 3

One of my favorite lines comes from our global Editor-in-Chief Charlie Turner, who once wrote: “In our world, time is marked more notably by the new cars that have thrilled us than by the passing of days and months.” This issue is a celebration of that ethos, with a curated gathering of automotive time capsules for every red-blooded car enthusiast. These stories feature

the best of the best and the rarest of the rare, each redefining the top tier of performance and thrills, each delivering that experience with the particular nuance of the brand behind it. We also revisit some of our best-loved local features: from a brilliantly visceral Toyota Celica and a Ford Capri to a glorious expression of technology that is the Porsche 718 Boxster, to a new, more committed alloy of pace and potent thrills in the Alfa Romeo Giulia QV; they are all here, together.

Priyanga’s nostalgia-laden feature on Ananda De Alwis and the Ford Mk1 Escort Mexico – a duo best remembered for over three decades of audacious, odds-defying hill climb races – gives us a glimpse into one of our country’s legendary racing stories. It also allowed us access to pore over a genesis point for Ford’s blue-collar performance cars, perhaps whose bloodline continues on in a modern Focus ST. Ford created the Mexico to pay homage to Hannu Mikkola’s victory in the grueling 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally, and our own example still manages to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand. On a sunny October afternoon in Pannala, thanks to Kishan Perera’s tireless restoration efforts, the shining Sebring Red beacon of noise and kinetic fury reemerged from the depths to tear up a hallowed racetrack once more.

Now, it is difficult to comprehend the mental state of any man who would take up a challenge to drive around the country on only one full tank in a Mercedes Vito van during a fuel crisis. But, Sam did it! After 1,342 kilometers, three days and an undisclosed amount of caffeine, he groggily made it back to Colombo. He tells me how the delight of travelling across hundreds of kilometers of switchbacks, humps and serpentine curves through our beautiful country outweighs the effects of short-term sleep deprivation, motion stutter and hallucinations of zombie bug swarms. It might be the height of octane-frazzled irrationality, but long, nonstop drives of 1,000 or more kilometers do produce excellent subject matter for one-of-a-kind stories. However, please don’t let him convince you of this feat as some kind of milestone in Sri Lanka’s modern automotive annals.

It’s been a fantastic year for cars, in which the speed of development continued to build exponentially, but due to the relentless innovation of the industry that makes this business so addictive, 2018 promises to be even better. The team and I look forward to continuing to deliver the exclusive, up-close-and-personal access you expect on a monthly basis. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to having you along for what promises to be another truly extraordinary year.

From everyone at TopGear Sri Lanka, happy holidays and a very Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Enjoy the ride, friends.

Issue 008 December 2017

E D ’ S L E T T E R

Vishva Ahangama E D I T O R - I N - C H I E F

v [email protected]

Welcome

D E C E M B E R � � � � � T O P G E A R . C O M0 0 4

048 Ford MkI Escort Mexico We celebrate one of the country’s most famous racing machines with a drive to remember in Pannala

056 Light SpeedAt the very edge of human understanding exists a group of cars for which “super” just doesn’t cut it. All hail hypercars

062 Mercedes Vito Go around the country on ONE tank of fuel. Sounds completely reasonable to us

Contents

Features062


072 Rosemeyer We pay tribute to the brave German road racer who nearly cracked the 300mph barrier. Back in the Thirties

081 The roundupHere are some of TG’s favorite local stories that graced our pages

086 Game changersWe take the category winners of our favourite cars on an unforgettable roadtrip

Contents

Features048

Don’t miss the actionGet your copy today

Available at leading supermarkets and bookshops | Rs400


113–119 Data All you need to know about the best cars and bikes on sale today. Your car not there? Sell it, and buy one that is, then...

Contents

081“Like I’d left an actual chicken in there, first to defecate, then to die and finally to decompose ” 045

Reid

“I’m an old fart who doesn’t much like change and loves the sound of engines ” 044

Harris

Garage099 What we’re running at TG

Drives010 Toyota Hilux014 Sin R1 550016 Audi RS5 vs rivals022 MINI Countryman S E 024 Honda CB Unicorn 160025 Nissan Qashqai vs Peugeot

Intake028 A day in the life030 TG gadgets032 TG watches034 Progress report036 Eye witness037 The TG guide038 Turboholics Motor Bash040 BMW Club042 Pub ammo

010

072

016


Making it happenBEHIND THE SCENES

THIS MONTH

WHAT: Mercedes-Benz VitoWHERE: Yala

What do you get when you cross a swarm of maroos with a hulking van in the

dead of the night? A million angry insects

WHO: SamWHERE: Honda Event

Illegal sticker pasters will be punished by law! Trust me, I know how this feels

#brandnewcartrampstamped

WHAT: Herd of buffaloWHERE: Batticaloa

We stop midway for a parade of Sri Lanka’s first racing car(t) – is

this why a car is called a ‘beast?’

WHO: RickyWHERE: Back of the Vito This is the only sleep TG’s

Art Editor gets – on the road. So we didn’t dare

wake up the beast!

WHO: DiloshanWHERE: Roadside

Caught in the act: One graphics designer about to pocket a mini watermelon. Just smile and wave, Dilo!

MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED IN THE FOLLOWING TERRITORIES:Australia, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia & Singapore, Middle East (English), Middle East (Arabic) Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia,

South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Turkey

22,Flower Terrace, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka.T:011 2577387, 011 4389406 [email protected]

BBC Top Gear magazine is published by Capital Media (Pvt) Ltd under licence from BBC Worldwide Limited, 101 Wood Lane, London W12 7FA.

The Top Gear logo and the BBC Blocks are the trade marks of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Used under licence. © Immediate Media Company Limited. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited without permission.

F O R M O R E T O P G E A R VISIT TOPGEAR.COM

P U B L I S H E R Antoinette Ludowyk

A D V E R T I S I N G & S A L E S

Anushka SamarasingheIronika Gavilipitiyage

Rashmi MoraisRavi FernandoShobiya Clinton

B B C W O R L D W I D E , U K P U B L I S H I N G

P U B L I S H I N G D I R E C T O R Chris Kerwin

P U B L I S H I N G C O O R D I N A T O R Eva [email protected]

www.bbcworldwide.com/uk--anz/ukpublishing.aspx

D I R E C T O R O F E D I T O R I A L G O V E R N A N C E Nicholas Brett

C E O Tom BureauD E P U T Y C H A I R M A N Peter Phippen

C H A I R M A N Eckart Bollman

D I R E C T O R O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L L I C E N S I N G A N D S Y N D I C A T I O N Tim HudsonI N T E R N A T I O N A L P A R T N E R S M A N A G E R Anna Brown

C O N T R I B U T I N G W R I T E R S

E D I T O R - I N - C H I E F

Vishva AhangamaD E P U T Y E D I T O R

Sam D. Smith

C O N T R I B U T I N G P H O T O G R A P H E R S

Amitha Thennakoon, Charith Calvin Kulasiri, Diloshan Leon Jehan D Adahan, Thiwanka Katipearachchi

S U B - E D I T O R

Avanti Samarasekera

Darshana Abayasingha, Dayan Fernando, Gishanka de Silva, Hisham Samsudeen, Ishraq Wahab,

Jan Sellayah, Kalim Iqbal, Priyanga Samaratunga

T O P G E A R U K

M A N A G I N G D I R E C T O R Adam WaddellP U B L I S H E R Simon Carrington

E D I T O R - I N - C H I E F Charlie TurnerA S S O C I A T E E D I T O R Tom Ford

C R E A T I V E T E A M

A R T E D I T O R Ricardo de Silva G R A P H I C D E S I G N E R S Diloshan Leon,

Leyanvi Mirando, Sajith Sukumaran,Yomal Vajrajith Payagala

WHAT: Team CMWHERE: CM Headquarters

We like to celebrate the little things – like CM’s first employee who is STILL a rockstar in the company!

D E C E M B E R � � � � � T O P G E A R . C O M0 1 0 D E C E M B E R � � � � � T O P G E A R . C O M0 1 0

CONTENTS

Honda CB Unicorn 160p24

3008 vs Qashqaip25

Audi RS5 vs rivalsp16

Sin R1p14

MINI Countryman S Ep22

Every new

car and

bike that

matters,

rated or

slated

T O P G E A R . C O M � D E C E M B E R � � � � 0 1 1T O P G E A R . C O M � D E C E M B E R � � � � 0 1 1T O P G E A R . C O M � D E C E M B E R � � � � 0 1 1

hanks to the former trio on TG TV, the Toyota Hilux has become quite a legend for its indestructability.

Whether it be torturing one to near-death, making a boat out of another or piloting yet another to the North Pole, the venerable Hilux has always proved itself to be one of the toughest motorised creations this side of a Tiger II tank. This is something that is made blatantly obvious by the number of LN��/�/�s you see running around, undeterred, on an almost daily basis, not to mention the insane resale values these indefatigable relics of off-road supremacy are able to command. Without a doubt, the Toyota Hilux has been able to carve its way into the Sri Lankan landscape in a similar way that it has done across the second and third worlds, thanks to its reputation for dependability and reliability, so much so that it’s rather infamously become the

wheels of choice for armed forces and militias the world over. Need a troop of guerrillas transported to your next uprising? Look no further than a Hilux!

Although you might not want to do so in this particular Hilux, because despite the rough and tough lineage that the current car no doubt upholds, gone are the days when pick-ups were bought solely by builders and rednecks. The versatility that the double-cab bodyshell has brought, plus the tax concessions that many nations (evidenced particularly in the UK) provide to pick-ups if classified as a light commercial vehicle, mean that more and more professionals are switching to the cab + tub body style. The manufactures, keen not to miss a trick, have taken full advantage, offering posher and more cosseting versions of their once utilitarian pick-ups, keen to direct more car buyers into this segment. And with the likes of Fiat, Renault and even Mercedes-Benz all showing off new

LuxLife

WE SAY: THE LATEST HILUX CONTINUES A LONG LINE OF

TRADITION FROM A LINE KNOWN FOR INDESTRUCTABILITY.

Toyota Hilux

LKR10mn

T


trucks, it’s a segment that shows no signs of slowing down.

With all that in mind, the latest Hilux must not only uphold its reputation, it must do so in an increasingly crowded market place. Externally, first impressions are good. Those who love their pick-ups adorned bumper to bumper in chrome ‘n’ cladding may need to look elsewhere, but those of us who have a semblance of taste can appreciate the less garish approach, even if it would be a stretch to call the Hilux “handsome”. This generation of Hilux goes into the field with Toyota’s latest family face grafted on to it, as already seen on the Yaris and Corolla. Other than that, it’s all normal fare for those accustomed to what a

Hilux is (i.e everyone reading this).Inside, things have moved on a bit

more, most noticeably for those sitting in the back. Those of us who have been stuffed into the back of double cabs of old may not have fond memories, perhaps wishing they had a hacksaw to cut off their appendage when drawing the short “backseat straw”. Happily, things have improved greatly with the latest generation of ‘lux. We’re not talking about S-Class luxury back there, but in addition to a decent amount of wiggle room, you also get rear AC vents and cup holders integrated into the arm rests. To be honest, even with longer-legged drivers, you can envision four people being fairly comfortable on long trips.

“Toyota has made a genuine effort to make the Hilux more car-like inside”

Toyota has made a genuine effort to make the Hilux more car-like inside. You get an electric driver’s seat (the front passenger has to make do with brute force), a multifunction steering wheel that adjusts for both height and reach, digital climate control and a tab-like infotainment system. Again, you’re not in the lap of luxury here, with hard plastics encapsulating you, even despite Toyota’s somewhat feeble attempt at dolling things up by adding some shiny plastic around the gear selector and window switches. In practice, these particular pieces will likely end up getting scratched up, and is an obvious sign of trying a bit too hard. That infotainment system too, it has to be said, is not the most intuitive for ��, even among the off-road crowd, and lags behind the competition. Those of us used to the “second gear lever” that was used to select between four-wheel and two-wheel drive may be surprised to find this function has now been tasked to a rotary selector knob. A small change, as it essentially does the same thing, but it would definitely point towards the intention of making the Hilux just a bit more friendly towards your average car buyer.

OR TRY THIS

Ford RangerThe Ranger

remains another

favorite for a lot

of reasons. The

Wildtrak version

has plenty of

torque too.


December I 2017

ScreenThe screen

kinda looks like a tablet. Doesn't employ software

to match

HVACAircon is of

the automatic variety, a definite

step towards car-like interiors...

4WDThe rotary knob

replaces the famliar "second gear stick" when selecting 2wd

or 4wd

SteeringMultifunction

steering wheel and cruise control.

Things are definitely a lot plusher

AirbagsSafety leaps

forward with 7 airbags, including

a knee bag for the driver

01 02 03 04 05

LIFE INSIDE

Still, this “carification” of the pick-up genre has led the Hilux to be an equally refined and comfortable drive. As we weren’t able to do any proper off-roading, we can only speak about the Hilux’s road manners, which, for a two-tonne pick-up, were impeccable. The cabin is well-insulated, with road and even wind roar kept to a minimum. Despite Nissan’s decision to equip its Navara dual cabs with coil springs all round, the Hilux persists with the tried and tested leaf spring setup. Well, why not? It’s been in practice since the days of the horse and cart, and is the most accepted way of suspending whatever heavy load you may decide to plonk in the rear of your new LKR��mn cab. When driving sans any weight in the back, you get the feeling that the ride may just improve a tad with a couple of sand bags lobbed in the tray, but that’s not to say that an un-laden Hilux is a bouncy castle over bumps either.

Gone are the respected D�D power lumps that the previous Hilux enjoyed; instead, we have a �.�-litre turbodiesel lump with ��BHP and an all-important ��NM of torque. This is coupled with a smooth-shifting �-speed automatic gearbox in our test car, although a

manual is also offered on lower spec models. The power figures are respectable, but the translation when you’re behind the wheel is not quite as impressive. While not taking away anything from a brilliantly refined and smooth drivetrain, the Hilux just doesn’t deliver the power with all the conviction of, say, a Ford Ranger Wildtrak. The Hilux is definitely a more tamed animal, and depending on your mood/maturity, the lux’s smooth and progressive power band may or may not appeal, as opposed to more instantaneous deployment. This is, however, an incredibly smooth engine and drivetrain, with an automatic gearbox that is able to read your inputs well.

The off-road merits of the Hilux, although not tested, are pretty evident. New to this generation of Hilux is a hill-decent function, which enables novice off-roaders to descend steep and slippery inclines with peace of mind. Meanwhile, the safety conscious among us will be pleased to see that you’ll be cocooned in the event of a collision, with seven airbags (including a knee bag for the driver).

So, is the Hilux the sensible choice

We'd suggest staying away from the topmost

numbers here.

Ideally, this is the cleanest you'll ever see

the load tray

Who needs seamless integrated design. Not

Toyota, it seems

then? Well, yes. Although it’s true that even if you cut out the floor and remove the engine ala Flintstone-style, people would still buy it, it’s still not hard to see why. I’ve personally piloted an early 90’s Hilux that has done over half a million kilometres, and it still felt tight as a drum. And to be honest, scratchable shiny plastic aside, there’s nothing that tells me that this won’t be able to do the same. While the Hilux may fall down in a few areas, once you spend enough time behind the wheel of one, you can start to see why they’ve always been such a popular option for the buying public. The reason? Solid dependability. SAM D. SMITH

The Hilux tries to blend

butch with luxury. Norris

meets Bond?

UP CLOSE

VERDICT: The Hilux offers a lot of dependability, but none of the drama. Will appeal to many.

2753cc 4cyl turbodiesel, 4WD, 174bhp, 450Nm

11kmpl

0–100kmph N/A

2075kg

SPECIFICATION

710

IMA

GE

S:

JE

HA

N D

AD

AH

AN


VERDICT Ugly as you-know-what, but the R1 cobbles together tried-and-tested bits into an adrenaline hit. Just stick to enjoying it at night.

6200cc V8, RWD, 542bhp, 640 Nm

n/a km/l, n/a g/km CO2

0–100kmph in 3.5secs, 299kmph

1400kg

SPECIFICATION

710

There’s an old adage

that a prettier car goes

faster. Not in Bulgaria...

in Cars is the new arrival on the boutique supercar scene. Based in Bulgaria and the brainchild of businessman and racing

driver Rosen Daskalov, the company’s first road car is called the R�. Slotted into its tubular spaceframe chassis is a Corvette LS� V� engine. Once Sin has gone to work on the �.�-litre unit it develops ��bhp and ��lb ft of torque.

At the kerb, the R� weighs �,��kg, so it’s relatively light, and the specs say it’s as quick as a �� GT�. Buyers can choose between a sequential paddle-shift gearbox and a �spd manual, and it’s rear-drive. So far, a start-up supercar-by-numbers.

And yet, there is sophistication here. Such as double-wishbone suspension with in-board Öhlins springs and dampers. Brakes by AP Racing. The body is all carbon fibre, and the rear wing moves to balance downforce and drag.

The cabin is neatly trimmed in leather, which gives a high-quality feel, although the switchgear is cheap. At least the low- slung seats give a perfect seating position, while the steering wheel reaches right out towards you. The steering is electrically assisted and very light, which means the car is easy to manoeuvre. Problem is, it gets quite vague at high speed. The R� is good at reaching high speed. With a good chunk of power and not too much weight,

S

WE SAY: BULGARIA’S ’VETTE-ENGINED

SUPERCAR AIN’T BAD

Sin R1 550

It’s a Sinit is really fast. The soundtrack is true V�, too, all rumbling thunder and barking exhaust note. The open-gated manual ’box adds a layer of engagement that paddle-shift supercars have lost, although you need to be precise with your shifts to avoid slotting the wrong gear. Pricey error.

The suspension is relatively soft, so the car rides quite fluidly rather than being crashy. The chassis balance, meanwhile, is very aggressive – there’s almost no understeer whatsoever and lots of oversteer, even when you’re off the throttle, so you have to be very quick to catch sudden slides. It’s rewarding, but you’ve got to be on the ball.

The R� �� costs €��,�� (before tax) and no more than �� will be built per year. Want more power still? The supercharged R� �� should do the trick. DAN PROSSER

December I 2017

What is an Audi RS car? What differentiates an RS to other cars in the range? These are fundamental questions.

They’re also questions the new RS� fails to address.

What was Audi trying to achieve with this RS? Has it given up entirely on making its RS cars fun to drive? RS, RS, RS. No matter how many times I write it out, I still can’t equate this particular car with that badge. I appreciate I’m giving away a verdict that is not going to be happy reading for Audi, but seriously, Ingolstadt, this was your answer to the BMW M� and Merc C��?

Or perhaps Audi Sport, the parent arm now headed by ex-Lambo boss

Stephan Winkelmann, has got it right. That people paying the thick end of £��k don’t want a car that might challenge them, just one that delivers speed with as little drama and engagement as possible. A faster Audi. That’s fair enough, perfectly reasonable. But in due course I’ll tell you why the RS� doesn’t fulfil that role very well, either.

Now, over the next few pages you will see lots of pictures of cars with smoke pouring from their back tyres, and you might deduce that the Audi’s poor showing has come because it’s four-wheel-drive and won’t misbehave in the same cartoonish way. Not so. Smoking tyres are irrelevant. There, I said it. I drive like this for pictures, never on the public road.

Making an RS of it

WE SAY: RS CARS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HIT AND MISS. SPOILER

ALERT: THIS ONE ISN’T A HIT...

Audi RS5

IMA

GE

S:

MA

RK

RIC

CIO

NI


December I 2017

So here’s the new RS�. On price and power and practicality it lines up very nicely next to the BMW M�, and almost as nicely with the more expensive Mercedes and less torquey Lexus. That’s the only car without turbos. But visually they separate into pairs, the shadowy M� teaming up with the magnificently garish limited-edition C�� Edition �, while the Audi falls into step with the Lexus. Both tread a more conservative path: less carbon, more chrome, less width, more ground clearance, fewer wings.

For my money, Audi has always done understated detailing very well, but here I’m not so sure. You see the black trim around the lights front and back? It serves no purpose other than a touch of cosmetic

mascara. And what’s with the tarty wheels? Come on, Audi – you’re better than that. Alongside the bespoke swollen arches of its German rivals, the RS� comes across as a car that’s had less energy – and direction – invested in it.

I wouldn’t have my C�� with all the decals, but as a piece of design it’s knock-out – its great coupe shape enhanced by fat, packed-out arches and just the right hint of aggression. It has real presence. Menacing in black or matt grey, I’d be tempted to go more subtle and let the arches tell the story. The M� isn’t as pumped (it’s been around a few years now so it’s all too familiar) and this Comp Pack car is cheekily doing without the ��in Comp wheels it should be wearing. Dynamically it’s the right decision.

The Lexus looks big. Some in our party love the slashed lights, the pinched grille, but what I wonder is just how much more podgy it would look without them. As it is, it sits heavily on its multi-spoke wheels. Visual weight reflects actual weight in this instance – the RC F is �,��kg, a quarter of a tonne more than the BMW. It wants for nothing inside. Well, except the application of some ergonomic intelligence. The cabin is a mouse-operated, slider-controlled, multi-layered nightmare. The graphics are cheap, the operating system baffling, and members of the TG design department emerged shaking their heads at how many different typefaces and conflicting design touches there were. And if TopGear’s designers are having a pop…


“ The M4 is fast, buzzy, angry and compelling: a sports coupe able to raise the heart rate”

The RC F is porky but still

one of the best driver’s

cars out of this pack

0 1 8 D E C E M B E R � � � � � T O P G E A R . C O M

December I 2017

What the Lexus does get right is the driver’s seat. Beautifully shaped backrest that gives the whole car a GT vibe that the rest of it carries off pretty well. Because this is not a sports car. As we’ll see, it’s too heavy, too lazy for that. There’s no mistaking the intent of the Merc’s seats. They do the clamping; you do the wincing. Sharp bolsters poke you in the thighs, thin padding rubs belts against backs. So leave the £�,�� AMG Drivers Package unticked unless you like a spot of light masochism.

Elsewhere, the Mercedes is very convincing. Great driving position, user interface, layout, materials. Same goes for the BMW, albeit with a layer of slap removed. It’s a little less brash indoors. You’ll never notice the cut-outs in the seatbacks – unless you have children who enjoy administering a toe punt to parental kidneys.

A quick word on practicality. They all cope with four plus weekend baggage. Beyond that, all can be fitted with roofboxes, and probably towbars too. So they’re justifiable. The Audi is the least controversial, of course. It’s not one to upset the applecart, so it starts discreetly, gently pats gearshifts through and exhibits all the charisma of a TDI. But quieter. And perhaps less charismatic.

The cabin is very well organised, but – and you’ll have spotted the theme developing here – it’s not very sporty. The others proudly site their buttons for noisy zorsts, crashy suspension, punchier gearshifts and snappier throttles on the console. The Audi has a solitary Drive Select control, in a dark and secluded spot. It’s as if it would rather you not use it. In fact, the message the RS� conveys, full stop, is that it doesn’t really want to

do anything too taxing.But what happens when you do?

Disappointment, mainly. A lack of appetite on the car’s part, a disillusionment on yours. It doesn’t even feel fast, which is a remarkable thing to say for a car that recorded easily the fastest �–��mph time (�.�secs in our hands). It’s the teenage athlete that wins the sprint, but sucks the joy out of parental pride by turning to you slack-shouldered and muttering, “I told you I was fast.” Enjoy the moment, you want to tell the RS� – don’t be so sodding sulky.

Because the RS� drives as if it’s in a sulk. It’s not just incompetence, but a doughy blandness. It’s as if the engineers themselves had no enthusiasm for the task. The engine may be downsized, but Audi hasn’t taken that opportunity to shovel it any further back in the bay; instead, wider front tyres have been fitted to combat the understeer. But it hasn’t brought any more balance to proceedings, and I’m pretty certain Audi has boosted the electric power steering to compensate, with predictably dismal results for feedback.

So I know what you’re thinking. It’s an Audi. It’s quattro. All-weather performance is its thing. No drama, just more speed. Well, yes, but Audi already has a car that does that: the S�. If the RS badge is to mean anything, the car needs to have some pizzazz. The RS�, flawed though it is, has that; so too the RS�. But the latest RS� is automotive Teflon: once driven, instantly forgotten. And it’s not like it delivers speed and security well – the chassis is fundamentally woolly, steering

Ollie waiting to get out

of the Teflon RS5 and

into Any. Other. Car

Audi not quite nailing the

understated detailing

thing? Discuss...


accuracy is poor, body control is weak. These are fast-car facets that shouldn’t be got wrong, no matter what your car is designed to do.

Moving on. The Lexus is an idiosyncratic old girl. A plump GT with no torque and ridiculously long gearing (for all its faults, one thing the RS� gets right is closely stacked mid-range gears), you only ever get to properly uncork it in second. The natasp noise is marvellous, although too muffled, and it’s a bit of a muffled drive. Purposefully so. Its brief is that of a GT, so it feels heavy under braking. You sense the forces building up through the front wheels – snappy direction changes are not in its repertoire.

The C63 and the

M4 Competition Pack

jostle for first place

VERDICT: Comp Pack’s ride and power delivery tweaks continue to tame the fighty but thrilling M4. And we’re a bit braver now.

2979cc 6cyl twin-turbo, RWD 444bhp, 549 Nm

13.6km/l, 204g/km CO2


1515kg

SPECIFICATION

810


December I 2017

But I once wrote this was a better road car than the M� and (Comp Pack aside), I still stand by that. The Lexus may be heavy, but it’s well sorted. The M� is lairy. Several colleagues approach it so tentatively I fear there must be a snake wrapped around the doorhandle. The Competition Pack has tamed the tail’s wilder habits. Snappy turbos acting on a tightly wound diff gave the back axle of standard M�s too much to do, especially given the precision and bite of the front end. The Comp is more cohesive. But copy the spec of this one – on its ��s, the M� does not ride adequately. But it’s fast, buzzy, angry

and compelling. I wish BMW would smooth out the gearchanges, polish the stability control and beef up the brakes, but it’s a proper sports coupe, the M�, able to raise the heart rate.

But it’s not the best car here. That title belongs to the Mercedes. Not just because it has a twin-turbo V� and the whole swoopy coupe thing going on, but because it’s an addictive drive. The steering is meaty, grip is strong, it’s better balanced and more predictable than any rival, disguises its weight well, kicks like a mule and sounds like thunder. It’s not quite as darty and alert as the BMW, and road noise is

more of an issue than in the Lexus and Audi, but when colleagues turn to me and insist it’s one of the very best cars on sale today because of the way it so perfectly fulfills its brief, I find myself agreeing with them.

Where does that leave the RS�? Lost, really. I can’t remember the last time I was so underwhelmed by a car, had so much difficulty working out what it’s for, who would buy it, what role has been envisaged for it. Audi’s RS cars have long ricocheted between hit and miss. I can’t ever remember one being this wide of the target, though. OLLIE MARRIAGE

VERDICT: The most disappointing car of 2017. If you want a fast, secure, V6 Audi, save £15k and buy an S5. Or a diesel A5. Or don’t.

2894cc, V6 twin-turbo, 4WD 444bhp, 599 Nm

13.8km/l, 197g/km CO2


1655kg

SPECIFICATION

510

VERDICT: This is how it’s done. Genteel when asked, addictively exciting on cue, but it’s always on your side. An AMG V8 masterpiece.

3982cc, V8 twin-turbo, RWD 503bhp, 699 Nm

13.9km/l, 200g/km CO2


1730kg

SPECIFICATION

910

VERDICT: Combo of manic engine with lumpen body and cruise-happy gait takes some swallowing, but the RC F is refreshingly oddball.

4969cc V8, FWD, 471bhp, 530 Nm

11.1km/l, 251g/km CO2


1765kg

SPECIFICATION

710



Iam going to show that rather large, grey creature in the room the door early on by telling you that this latest Mini is by no means

mini at all. The countryman was always the answer to those loyal fans that decided to multiply, and since then they’ve been given the �-door and the Clubman to fulfil their slightly larger Mini needs. Now in its second generation, the Countryman must tempt new buyers into the Mini fold, while offering enough crossover-ness for Mini-besotted small families to be entranced (or entrapped), too.

This, the Countryman Cooper S E All� Plug-in Hybrid, apart from being a mouthful of a model name, denotes that this is also the first Mini Hybrid offered here. The engine is a three-cylinder turbocharged unit, with a plugin electric motor. Interestingly, that’s the same drivetrain you’ll find in the BMW i�, albeit in a heavily detuned form and reversed; see, in the i�, the petrol engine is at the

MaxiMini

WE SAY: MINI BECOMES HYBRID-FIED. BRINGS WITH IT SPACE AND PRACTICALITY

back, powering the rear wheels, while the electric motor powers the front. Here, the petrol engine powers the front and features an electrified rear axle.

On the road, the Countryman holds true to the Mini philosophy of being a great drive, that is if you compare it with other small crossovers in the market. But, if you’re coming away from a Mini � Door and expecting the same driving dynamics, you’ll be disappointed. The steering is nicely weighted, the engine and electric motors are responsive, but, and this is especially a problem for something that carries the “Cooper S” badge, the countryman just doesn’t fizz in the way you’d want it to. It all feels very grown up when you’re behind the wheel, with the four-wheel drive system allowing for a very stable and predictable experience, giving you the reassurance you’d expect. It’s just not go-kart like, like the smaller Mini’s are.

It’s quick off the line though. The combined petrol and electric drivetrain is good for a �-�� time of �.� seconds, which

Fold-out bootlip cover for

when you need to stop

and take in the view

if you consider the Countryman’s �,��kg weight (batteries and motors certainly weigh you down), is quite respectable. When all motors are combined, you get ��bhp and a rather impressive ��Nm of torque. Mini claims the Countryman can run up to ��km on electric power alone after the batteries are topped up from the mains, which is certainly appealing to city dwellers. You can also run up to ��kmph on electric power alone, although if doing so, expect your electric range to deplete drastically.

As with all Minis, the interior is

Mini Countryman Cooper S E Plug-in Hybrid

LKR13.8mn

IMA

GE

S:

JE

HA

N D

AD

AH

AN


December I 2017

VERDICT: A safe and sensible way to graduate from the smaller Minis, even if it does loose a bit of occasion.

1499cc 3Cyl turbo + electric motor, AWD, 221bhp, 385Nm

N/A

0-100kmph in 6.8 secs, 197kmph

1,660kg

SPECIFICATION

710

6

Renault CapturWhat should I know?

The facelifted Renault Captur has it all to

lose. See, this higher, slightly butcher, dull

to drive Clio is Renault’s best-selling car

in the UK. It’s now resplendent with trickier

LED lights and supposedly plusher trim. Er,

maybe our one left the factory in a hurry.

Should I care?

About the cheapness inside? No, it’s hard-

wearing and the zip-off seat covers are

genius. But the Captur will, in the next year,

face younger, cooler crossovers from Seat,

Hyundai, Citroen and Kia, all of which look

more interesting. What’s the USP here?

delightfully quirky and will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time in any of their recent creations. A novel feature to look out for is the fighter-jet-esque retractable HUD: rather than project the HUD onto the windscreen like most cars, you get a separate electrically folding glass slab that you can choose to hide if you so wish. The quirks continue around back, with a pull-out cushiony thing that can be draped over the tailgate to transform your rear boot lip into a fashionable and rather expensive bench. But it’s these interior additions, and the sheer abundance of space and luggage room, that will likely endear the Countryman to a loyal band of fans. There’s space inside for four adults in comfort, with the rear seats proving to be supportive.

The Mini Countryman then is probably the most interesting small crossover in the market today. It may not be as fun to drive as the other models in their line-up, but is instead a sensible and safe performer on the road, with the added peace of mind of

all-wheel-drive. The plug-in hybrid element is very much a toe-in-the-water exercise for Mini, as they prepare to unveil even more electrified models to their range in the not-so-distant future. For now, it works to take advantage of the added tax benefits the hybrid element brings, but it’s also very much a way of getting the rest of us ready for the concept of electrified Minis. The Countryman is just the start…SAM D. SMITH

7Nissan X-TrailWhat should I know?

The facelifted, pumped-up X-Trail now

looks softer but more sophisticated.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for

the infotainment, which is still outdated

and still living the Nintendo 64 dream.

Must try harder...

Should I care?

Muchly, if you have five children. It will

amply carry seven people with all their

kit and go off-road. While the Kodiaq

looks and drives far better, the X-Trail

just pips it on practicality and space.

Don’t ignore it until you’ve tested both.

S O , W H A T E L S E I S N E W ?

BMW 520d Touring What should I know?

Most of the new 5s we’ve driven have

been loaded to the gunwales with

optional kit. This one’s more modestly

specced, like the one you might buy.

Should I care?

Yep – it’s still excellent. BMW’s 2.0-litre

diesel is punchier than Merc’s equivalent,

but nothing like as lusty as the torquier

6cyl BMW. The 5’s plush ride and fine

handling and interior aren’t affected

by the more modest motor.

8

VERDICT: Suits its purpose, but won’t be as rare as its name suggests.

163cc, single-cylinder, air cooled, 13.82bhp, 13.92 Nm @ 6000RPM

n/a

0–100kmph n/a, 106kmph

134kg

SPECIFICATION

810

TheUnicornHonda CB Unicorn 160LKR349,500

Disc brake, but no ABS. Steady on then, Jan!

As petrolheads, we all have that one motorcycle or car that always eludes us, known as “the unicorn’’ to many.

Considering that I had a pre-scheduled meeting with my ‘unicorn’, I’m sure the patient gents from TopGear were surprised to find me… well, a little off schedule.See, my unicorn is the Honda CB ��, and what I am testing today is the Honda CB Unicorn ��. I think my lack of enthusiasm is justified. Honda’s CB series is legendary; it has been known for silky smooth, reliable, thoroughly enjoyable and well-rounded motorcycles throughout its history. Honda built the CB from a humble but incredibly efficient ��cc, and progressed to the CB ��, which is equally efficient at what it is designed to do with its massive displacement. The CB Unicorn �� has big shoes to fill!

At first glance, it’s a stylized

better-angled and more ergonomic bars! This should improve the Unicorn’s comfort and usability, as currently, the lock turn, which is crucial in city commutes, is a bit of a stretch and the bars could be wider for comfort.

The price at the time of testing is LKR��,��, which isn’t cheap. However, this bike should find plenty of happy buyers in the premium end of the smaller displacement commuter segment.JAN SELLAYAH

WE SAY: THE UNICORN 160 KEEPS THE CB LEGEND ALIVE!

commuter, which is not a bad thing in the mundane world of visually unappealing offerings. The bike’s bikini fairing around the full-time headlight with a tinted visor provided a good initial impression not only in styling but also safety. The tank and tail are also heavily styled in lightweight plastic fairing, as is the facade to hide the steel tube frame. One of the most crucial aspects of a commuter bike is reliability, and I am happy to see, in true CB style, that the Unicorn �� has a kick-start as well as a self-starter – something I look for in this sort of motorcycle. The funky and fashionable digital meter is easy to read, but is a little gimmicky as there really are not many functions available via the two-button control. I also found it hard to use.

Whereas I loved the bike’s well-damped rear mono shock, which had no problem handling my frame. In fact, it was downright fantastic, and gave me a feel of quality and confidence during the ride.

The Unicorn’s handling isn’t sporty, as the front fork travel is long. This is pronounced even more as it has a strong Nisin-sourced front brake caliper for its vented disk. In that context, I feel the front end could be a bit stiffer sprung. However, the Unicorn’s purpose is to be a commuter, and with that in mind, I can appreciate the longer fork travel (compromise) for rough roads this bike will have to overcome. The engine and its refinement were a surprise for a single-cylinder motor. It’s easy to use and had virtually no vibration, which is usually a feature available at this end of the market. The fly in the ointment for me are the handlebars. Come on, Honda! Give us

D E C E M B E R � � � � � T O P G E A R . C O M0 24

December I 2017

IMA

GE

S:

DIL

OS

HA

N L

EO

N


December I 2017

WO

RD

S:

TO

M H

AR

RIS

ON

, IM

AG

ES

: M

AR

K R

ICC

ION

I

1618cc, 4cyl turbo, FWD, 161bhp, 240 Nm

20.7km/l, 134g/km CO2


1369kg

Nissan Qashqai Tekna+ 1.6 DiG-T 163PS

1199cc, 3cyl turbo, FWD, 128bhp, 230 Nm

23.0km/l, 120g/km CO2


1270kg

Peugeot 3008 GT Line PureTech 130

VERDICT: Still good, but facelift is something of a missed opportunity.

610

159

5m

m

710

VERDICT: Interior gives serious kerb appeal. Bodes well for future Pugs.

But however much time/money/effort Nissan’s spent on those new

headlights, there’s no escaping the fact the QQ looks a bit last-gen next to

the 3008. The Qashqai appeals on a purely practical level, but the 3008 has

it licked when it comes to kerb appeal. And that matters.

Plainly. Like it or not, you’re buying so many of them that manufacturers can’t

pump them out fast enough. The Qashqai is, in Britain anyway, the default

choice – a regular bestseller. Facelift (which mainly adds refinement and a

new nose with more chrome and LEDs) aims to keep it competitive.

Look inside. The interior is good-quality and well laid out, but the infotainment

could use a complete overhaul and the general appearance is plain and

unambitious. Wins back points for panoramic roof in top Tekna+ trim, mind.

Meanwhile, the Peugeot has what its maker calls i-Cockpit – two screens, few

buttons and a tiny wheel. Flash, but biggest bugbear is that for drivers of a

certain height/build, the steering wheel will obscure the view of the dials. Still!

...like the Pug. If kids have forced you into buying something sensible, you

might as well buy one that has some flair. The 3008 isn’t the best-driving

crossover but it is interesting – something rare for family cars.

There’s no questioning the fuss-free practicality, even if its boot is smaller

than the Peugeot’s and there’s nothing between their rear seats. It remains a

fine crossover, but even with this facelift, it’s fallen behind some rivals...

Nissan Qashqai vs Peugeot 3008

WE SAY: WHICH CROSSOVER MAKES US LESS CROSS? HMMM...

Q U I C K T W I N T E S T

162

4m

m

Just what the world needs. More crossovers…

Any fun?

How so?

Which one do I want?

Not as much as a normal hatchback. Lower C of G and less mass makes

a better-handling car. Once among the class best, the QQ has lost out in

recent years to the Seat Ateca and Mazda CX-5. It’s fine but won’t set the

world alight. Main annoyance is super-harsh ride on the big 19s.

Tiny wheel makes the 3008 feel quite agile, even though it isn’t. Softer

chassis than the QQ makes it more comfortable. And QQ is available with

AWD but not the 3008, at least until the PHEV version arrives later this year.

Both cars have much driver assistance tech, like lane-keeping, etc.

4394mm 4447mm

T O P G E A R . C O M � D E C E M B E R � � � � 0 2 7T O P G E A R . C O M � D E C E M B E R � � � � 0 2 7

IntakeFaces. Retro. Entertainment. Car Culture. Every month

We have run this image through The Official TopGear Picture Analyser – a nifty piece of tech that involves showing it to the team in the office and measuring the number of “oofs”. This one broke the machine. The car is Ayrton Senna’s Honda V��-powered �� MP�/�, which took him to his third and

final world championship. The helmet belongs to current McLaren driver Stoffel Vandoorne, who whipped up the crowds at London’s first pre-British GP demo run with a neat slide out of the pit lane

and a series of precision donuts next to Horse Guards Parade. A timely reminder of McLaren at its best.

PIC OF THE MONTH

SENNA’S McLAREN IN LONDON

IMA

GE

: G

ET

TY


ILL

US

TR

AT

ION

: E

vg

en

y P

arf

en

ov

2.00pmAlarm goes off. I’m not a morning person, so night shoots work well. My life has very little routine but six weeks on set has a good structure and allows me to have an hour each day in the gym.

3.30pmBack to the hotel for a coffee, cool down for �� minutes and get ready. Travel �� minutes, normally in heavy traffic, to unit base.

5.00pmWe have breakfast after getting changed into costume. I have to wear the same suit as Daniel Craig, right down to the watch, then it’s hair and make-up and one last check to ensure everything’s correct.

5.30pmTransport to the set. Most days we have a different location or a closed road.

6.00pmBig safety meeting about the filming that evening and any stunts to be performed. Today we are driving down the steps towards the river Tiber, so all safety crews, boat crews and divers are on hand to discuss.

8.00pmAfter we have waited for the sun to set, and once all the cars are prepared and cameras in place, we look at rehearsing the stunt and the stunt coordinator will talk us through what the director is looking for. For most of the stunts we have already

rehearsed the best we can so there are no surprises.

9.00pmWe start different action on the lead-up to the steps with various cars and trucks obstructing the DB�� and forcing it down the steps. Each shot is taken from different angles with tracking cars in front, then behind, so one five-second shot can take all night. We have roughly �� people working on this two-car chase.

1.00amLunch is served! This is normally delivered in a take- away container and handed to us in the car to eat as fast as possible. There are times when we are doing very little, but you can guarantee the moment lunch is called, we’re flat-out.

2.00amBack to the scene where we bounce the cars down the steps from different angles. The river Tiber has very strong currents so the breathing apparatus in the car is important and the divers on standby. Thankfully the cars hold up very well all night and no steering parts break, just a few twinges in my back after heavy landings off the steps.

6.00amIt’s a wrap, the roads are opened for local traffic and I head back to costume to get changed and then head back in the minibus for the hotel and straight to bed.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF...Mark HigginsRally driver by day, Bond’s stunt driver by night


SUPERVELOCE ARUM 18CT V12 Elaborate as it is, this V12 coffee machine does little an £89 Nespresso machine

can’t. It takes the same capsules – so the coffee itself will taste the exactly the same. But who cares? It’s made from gold,

aerospace-grade alloys and hand-laid carbon fibre, it weighs as much as the average 11-year-old and there’s a built-in

grappa dispenser. Because Italy. They’ve only made 10 and, as of the day we’re writing this, four are left.

Lucky, then, that there are cheaper, non-gold V8 and V10 versions. superveloce.co

CAFFEINE FIXGADGETS

NESCAFÉ ALEGRIA A 510 A compact design that will fit just about anywhere, the Alegria A 510

holds enough water for 10 cups, while one coffee cartridge can

produce 40 Americano or Cappuccino, 60 Latte Macchiato or 120

Espresso. LKR30,599; Singer Sri Lanka

FRANCIS FRANCIS X9 The elliptical, chrome-plated aluminum body Francis Francis

X9 espresso machine is just as stylish to have in your home as

is the smooth and deliciously aromatic espresso it makes.

LKR37,000+; Illy Sri Lanka


You can picture the meeting... lots of smoking, shoulder pads and perms, but also an agenda: to get a shiny new car magazine noticed on Britain’s crowded newstands. In case Clarkson in a leather jacket and sunglasses (and giving away his very own Ford Escort Cosworth) wasn’t enough to do the job, it was decided that some cars were required. Not one, not ��, not ��, but every single car currently on sale to the British public at the time of going to press. Well, all except the Ferraris because they were the only manufacturer that refused to play ball. And so the cars were gathered and arranged on the Brooklands banking and a cover flap deployed that covered most of them up. Still, it was a show of force, a logistical masterpiece and an excellent way for the staffers to have a good go in everything in one hit. And here we are, �� years on, still adhering to the code that any car has the potential to be a TG hero.

ISSUE #1, OCTOBER 1993BACK IN THE DAY

#TWITSDaniel Ricciardo

Felt good to be dancing

my way around these streets again #MonacoGP

HEY@NICO_ROSBERG

AT LEAST YOU WENT OUT ON A HIGH. GLAD I COULD HELP

WITH YOUR FINAL CELEBRATION

LAST WEEKEND

Dealt with qualifying as

best I could. Start 5th nonetheless and gonna be sprinkling herbs all over this shiz

tomorrow

18 hrs ago I wrote to @BrendonHartley I was sorry for the problems they had. Now they are winners!! Holy shizen

what a crazy race that is

Celebrity ‘wisdom’, as seen on social media

Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit

that was a race


OMEGA Seamaster Aqua Terra 150m Co-Axial Master

Chronometer 41mmThe symmetrical case has been

crafted from stainless steel, with

a wave-edged design featured

on the back. 220.12.41.21.03.002;

LKR828,000; Chatham Luxury

Watches

JAEGER LE-COULTRE Ultra Thin Réserve de

MarcheIn the deep azurite blue of its

dial, the stainless-steel Master

Ultra Thin Réserve de Marche

confers sophistication to

masculine wrists. 1378480;

LKR1,585,000; Chatham

Luxury Watches

TAG MonacoSince its debut in 1969 with

the (then non-TAG) Heuer

Monaco 1133B, the

Monaco has enjoyed

countless iterations from

re-editions to tribute

pieces. CAW211P.FC6356;

LKR825,000; Colombo

Jewellery Stores

WATCHES OF THE MONTH

ROLEX SUBMARINER DATE The Oyster Perpetual Submariner is the quintessential divers’ watch, the benchmark in its genre. Introduced during the pioneering era for

scuba diving, it was the first watch to be water-resistant to 100 metres (330 feet). With the subtly redesigned Oyster case, distinctive dial with

large luminescent hour markers, graduated rotatable Cerachrom bezel and solid link Oyster bracelet, the latest-generation Submariner Date is

firmly in line with the original model launched in 1953. Equally at home underwater as it is at a gala dinner, the Submariner sets new standards

of robustness, reliability, comfort and timeless sporting style. 116613LB; LKR1,912,100; Chatham Luxury Watches

IWC Da Vinci Chronograph Edition

“Laureus Sports for Good Foundation”

The 42mm chronograph has an

in-house 89361-calibre

movement, with a 68-hour power

reserve, and a flyback function.

IW393402; LKR2,324,000;

Chatham Luxury Watches

PROGRESSREPORT

Lotus EliseLaunched back in 1996 and still going strong, the Elise has become harder

and faster over the years. But better?

The Elise has become more extreme. You can still have a relatively simple non-supercharged model, but most buyers these days opt for the hardcore Cup versions. The market has shifted, and Lotus has had to shift to match it.

It doesn’t help that Lotus has been through a few upheavals, none of which has added stability or boosted cashflow. The Elise has only had one significant update in its life, and that was back in ��. Since then it’s all been evolutionary tweaks that make it hard to keep track of what’s changed. Rumour has it we’ll see an all-new Elise in ��, but what form will it take? Which direction will it take?

That’s an interesting thing to ponder, but, in the meantime, let’s

Without the Elise, it’s doubtful there would actually be a Lotus any more. It was a gamble that paid off, a

reimagining of the original Lotus Seven, only with added habitability. You could conceivably, if you were small, agile, had few friends, even less baggage and were a bit masochistic, run one as your only car. Possibly.

It was simple (a two-seat, mid-engined, rear-drive roadster) yet radical (all aluminium, box-section tub, glued together). None of that has changed, but the philosophy has. The original Elise was nippy, affordable, fun and plain magic to drive. It was aimed purely at B-road enjoyment, but as time has progressed that’s changed.

LOTUS ELISE CUP 250 Engine: 1798cc 4cyl, 243bhp, 184lb ft

Transmission: 6spd manual, RWD

Performance: 0–62mph in 3.9secs, 154mph

Economy: 37.4mpg, 175g/km CO2

Weight: 860kg

LOTUS ELISE S1 Engine: 1796cc 4cyl, 118bhp, 122lb ft


Performance: 0–62mph in 5.8secs, 126mph

Economy: 40.0 mpg, 168g/km CO2

Weight: 755kg


cut away the knotty middle section of Elise history. These two are the bookends: an original, ��bhp Series � and the latest Cup ��. They are clearly pitched at different audiences. The original Elise was a nudge under £��,�� when it was first launched. The Cup �� is £��,��, and that’s before all the lightweight parts are added (titanium exhaust, carbon trim) saving ��kg, but adding another £��,��. Ouch. So equipped the latest Elise weighs ��kg.

The Series � weighs ��kg. And it dances down the road. There’s nothing complex going on here, just a long gearlever with a short throw, an engine with just enough thrust, a gorgeous Stack instrument cluster,

elegant bare metal and perhaps the most delicious steering ever devised. The perfectly formed, small-diameter wheel writhes gently in your hands as the Elise feels its way along the road. It’s dainty, yet eager to turn, and tingles with feedback. It glides along, light over the roughest patches and, as an experience on a summer’s evening, there’s nothing to touch it.

Of course, taken to a track it would soon run out of grip and ideas, and we all want to go faster and harder, don’t we? Don’t we? Personally, I’m not sure. On the road, the Cup �� feels clumsy after the Series �. There’s still a detectably Elise feel to the way it goes down a road and it’s still small and light, but the nuanced feel and

dexterity have been smothered by fat tyres, harder suspension and more power. Gone, mostly, is the sense of flow. Now, this is only in relation to the original, because by any modern measure, the Cup �� is accurate, light and a brilliant communicator, but it’s a notably more aggressive, harsher car than it used to be. It is fast, and the open-gate gearlever is a thing of wonder and joy, but the wing, the attitude – I’m not sure they sit that easily on the little Elise.

The sales figures can’t be wrong – they are the reason we have an Elise at all – but I can’t help hoping that the next Elise will be a return to the radical simplicity that marked out the original as one of the greats. OMIM

AG

ES

: R

OW

AN

HO

RN

CA

ST

LE

FA

NC

Y O

NE

IN

Y

OU

R G

AR

AG

E?

1997 S1 ELISE Clean and original S1 in a desirable

colour and which has only covered

64k miles from new. Comprehensive

service history, too.autotrader.co.uk

2009 S2 ELISE SC

218bhp supercharged model

with 30k miles on the clock. Two

owners from new, in Starlight

Black with AP Racing brakes.autotrader.co.uk



I’ve been wanting to do a barrel roll since I was eight. Imagine I was a kid watching the AMC barrel roll in The Man with the

Golden Gun. I now know that jump was real, but the car didn’t drive out. Still, it was the best it could be back in the Seventies. If they’d not done that, I wouldn’t have just done the best barrel roll in the world ever.

I’ve got a great relationship with JLR since the loop [Grant looped the loop for the F-Pace launch]. We had a meeting after that, �� months ago. They said, “We’ve another car launch coming up. We’ve got some ideas. Have you got any?” I whacked this one down on the table thinking there’s no way… and they loved it.

Gary Powell and Lee Morrison are my stunt coordinators. We’ve all known each other for years and they’re the best, they work on Bond. We started with Jaguar’s computer simulation. I had my doubts about simulation. It got us on the road, but I reverted to old school: let’s get in the car and start jumping it. It’s as simple as that. We looked at the

footage after each jump and refined it. Originally we jumped from the take-off ramp into an air bag. The first few were done by a robot with me on the outside watching. Not a remote control, but an actual GPS-guided robot.

I had to get in a car and start jumping it. The first six jumps were into the air bags. Eventually I had to go for it. The first jump I’d landed but then flipped over onto my roof.

I actually landed with the second jump. Took a good whack, though: broke my ribs, with less than four weeks to go. It’s a �.�g rotation, and when you suddenly land, that energy has to go somewhere. The landing ramp is crushed concrete; the top layer we made a little bit more fluffy so it soaks up a little bit of the energy.

I probably jumped that jump a dozen times and landed on the wheels maybe six times. The rest have been rollovers or nose-to-tail or ended upside down. We had a couple of centimetres either way and the speed had to be exactly ��mph. The easiest way was running in on the cruise control, then I’d concentrate on my line.

The car’s suspension is designed to take a �.�g accident and break, to take the energy out. We still used the original components, but strengthened to take the �.�g hits. The record we’ve got is the farthest barrel roll in a production car. It really was off the production line. Guinness immediately sealed it to check. There was nothing trick – no big suspension, it’s only strengthened. But we did have to put in Lexan instead of the glass and a roll cage.

Up until less than �� hours before the launch, we were going to do it live.

THE TIME I BARREL-ROLLED A JAGUAR E-PACE

EYE WITNESS

Terry Grant13.07.17

We didn’t because we wanted to get a pretty landing. Although we landed each time, some of them weren’t as pretty, and the risk of us flipping over on our roof was greater. It’s such a risky stunt. So we showed a movie of me doing it the previous day.

You always have doubters online, saying, “That wasn’t for real.” We checked every single box, �� per cent. We’ve got proof all the way through. There’s not even an edit in that film, there’s not a cut to a landing. That’s it. It’s all done in one.

THEY SEE HIM ROLLIN’ Terry Grant in one remarkable piece clasping the Guinness World Records certificate. Brave


IMA

GE

S:

GE

TT

Y

MY EPIC ROAD

BI-3151, SpainHas everything from cliffs to beaches, it even has an abandoned nuclear facilty. How cool is that? All of it wrapped up with the usual mix of beautiful turns and smooth tarmac...Galtxu Adur, TG.com

Cheeky blasts, UKThe B2141 Lavant to South Harting, and the A285 Chichester to Petworth. Neither is on an Alpine scale, but there are beautiful South Downs views if you’re taking it easy and some amazing corners if you’re not.

Anthony McCarthy, TG.com

We all love driving, but at some point – whether for fuel, food, work or to escape the fetid talons of

that hitchhiker you picked up on the outskirts of Letchworth Garden City – you’ll have to stop for a bit. And stopping means parking. But before you slot into that bay, make sure you read TopGear’s indispensable guide to vehicular stoppification! 1) Pick your space carefullyAre there indecipherable parking regulations? Is the area poorly lit? Is the space in question rather shorter than your car? If you’ve answered “yes” to the above questions, congratulations! You’ve found a prime Parisian parking space. Bump on in.

2) Embrace technology Many modern cars are equipped with parking sensors, an audible aid to safe reversing. An annoying intermittent bleeping noise means “continue backwards at pace”. A rapid bleeping noise means

“time to ease it off a bit”. A continued bleeping noise means “just a few feet of room left”. The sound of crunching, splintering metal means “yep, that’ll do”.

3) Respect the regulationsParent and child spaces are solely for the use of parents with small children. If your child is old enough to lift you above their head, you are not eligible to park in a parent-child parking space. Your trio of Bichon Frises do not qualify as your children, no matter how often you may refer to them as such.

4) Use the appropriate bayOnly a scooter may park in a scooter bay. Only an electric vehicle may park in an electric vehicle bay. Only a Michael may park in a Michael Bay.

5) Park within the marked linesIf your car is too large to fit within a bay’s markings, sell it immediately and buy a smaller car.

6) Carry plenty of loose changeThe world might be turning contactless, but not the good old-fashioned, humble ticket machine. To pay for parking in Britain, you’ll need coins. A lot of coins. Ideally a few examples of every coin ever minted, pre- and post-decimal. There’s a machine just around the corner from TGHQ, which, so far as our thorough investigations can deduce, accepts only ��-pence pieces produced between �� and ��. These coins now trade hands in the West London region for as much as ��p apiece.

7) Forget the mobileOnly ever attempt to pay for your ticket using a car park’s automated phone system if a) you have several hours to kill and b) you very much enjoy the sensation of tearing your hair from its follicles, strand by agonising strand.

Car park ticket barriers might look flimsy, but are surprisingly unyielding. Just trust us on this one...

THE TG GUIDE TO...parking


TURBO-HEADS UNITE!TURBOHOLICS MOTOR BASH

WITH MAXXIS 2017

T urboholics.lk, an emerging auto-enthusiast platform in Sri Lanka, held its Turboholics Motor Bash �� on � October

at the BMICH car park. The event brought together a large gathering of car enthusiasts at one of the year’s most-anticipated car-related events. By creating the atmosphere and experience of an international motor event, Turboholics aspires to bring the Sri Lankan automobile community together on a single platform.

A fascinating and unique range of individual and club-owned cars, including a number of project cars, were showcased, presenting a glimpse into the country’s love of all things car. The participating vehicles were also given the opportunity to take part in various pageants and parades. DJ music and street dance acts provided entertainment, and the event was covered by professional photographers and bloggers.

One of the most noteworthy moments was special guest appearances by world-renowned national and international racing superstars. Local racing superstar Dilantha Malagamuwa stated, “I am very proud and impressed with what Turboholics is doing for the motorsport culture in Sri Lanka. It’s not easy to organize such an event, but they have done a great job. Honestly, I can’t imagine how many cars and people are here today.” Ashan Silva, Shafraz Junaid and Belgium-based racer Angelique Detavernier also made appearances.

Turboholics Founder Heshan Rodrigo conveyed his heartiest gratitude to all the participants, MAXXIS Tyres and the Turboholics team for supporting the event. He also stressed on the importance of building a strong auto-enthusiast community comprising passionate, adroit and educated individuals, to elevate the country’s automobile industry.

IMA

GE

S:

EL

EP

HA

NT

EY

E P

HO

TO

GR

AP

HY


BMW CAR CLUB

IMA

GE

S:

AM

ITH

A T

HE

NN

AK

OO

N

EVENT

A dedicated club of car enthusiasts celebrates the group’s inaugural event

he BMW Car Club Ceylon hosted its very first event at Mount Lavinia Hotel on �� October, with special cars from decades past, as well as

the latest and greatest, taking part in the festivities. Prior to the official event, members held a celebratory drive from Marine Drive to the hotel, with cars such as the E��, E��, and E�� taking part in the mini rally.

The participating cars were also driven around the hotel’s courtyard, where they had their pictures taken, followed by a member meet and greet at the hotel’s car park. Thereafter, the cars were guided to the car park, where lively music and refreshments provided the perfect ambiance. The members were also handed event-themed health drinks in line with BMW icons.

Afterwards, the members gathered at the hotel’s Regency Room, which was adorned in white and blue to go with the BMW roundel logo. The traditional oil lamp was lit, with first preference being given to the directors of the local dealership as a term of respect for their efforts and commitment to the BMW marque, followed by the club’s board and

management committee.The presentation started off with a

speech from the president, explaining the importance of creating a club for BMW and the values that must be upheld in the community. The vice president then took over, explaining what BMW stands for today, the goal of Future Mobility and the importance of members' contribution for the marque to prosper in Sri Lanka.

A video courtesy of Bruno Ciccarini showed footage of BMW from its inception until today, including extremely positive member feedback, which made it feel as if they were a part of a historic brand. After the video montage, the members were guided through the club’s website.

Following this, the club’s first honourary members were given special awards, commending all of them for having contributed significantly and staying loyal to the BMW marque for decades.

Finally, the director of the local dealership presented a vote of thanks, emphasizing the importance of the BMW club and its members.

T


TOPCAR PANAMERA STINGRAY GTRRegular readers will know that this little corner of the mag has

featured several Porsches. And here’s another. It seems some

of the most finely honed performance cars in the business are

catnip to unsympathetic tuners. Porsche fans may not mourn the

loss of a standard Panamera as much as a motorsport 911, but

TopCar’s Panamera Stingray GTR Edition still has the potential to

offend. Corvette and Nissan fans might be upset too, with that

name. Pay TopCar £22,000 and you get a body kit so wild, it’s

necessitated new doorhandles. Pay even more and you can

have crocodile leather and 24-karat gold inside. Classy. SD

TECH FOR DUMMIES

BEST BITImproves efficiency

and cuts lag a little

WORST BITIt’s an expensive, bulky

manifold casting

Since turbochargers are near-universal, let’s quickly recap. Exhaust gas leaving each cylinder is fed into a semi-spiral pipe – the

scroll – to feed into a turbine wheel, causing it to spin. On the same shaft as the turbine, but in a separate housing, is another wheel, the compressor, through which the inlet air passes. So the spinning of the compressor pushes more air into the engine, mixing with more fuel and producing more power.

Thing is, in a four-cylinder engine with a conventional single-scroll turbo, all four exhaust outlets are joined together to feed the turbo. Remember, the exhaust from any given cylinder doesn’t come as a smooth flow; it’s a pulse that comes out on every other

up-stroke of the piston. The pulses from each cylinder’s exhaust, mixing in the exhaust upstream of the turbine can interfere with one another and set up standing waves, like in organ pipes. It can mean that at the very moment gas should be coming out of one cylinder’s exhaust port, there’s a wave of back-pressure inhibiting it.

That means the engine doesn’t entirely rid itself of its spent gas so can’t ingest as much clean air. It also means the turbine gets less exhaust passing over it, so pushes the compressor less vigorously.

By splitting the exhaust manifold into two, the problem mostly goes away. Cylinders that fire �� degrees apart each share a manifold – in the normal

�-�-�-� firing order it’s � with �, and � with �. Then, for instance, cylinder �’s exhaust has gone away before cylinder � opens its exhaust valves. The two independent manifolds keep their paths separate right through the scroll, up to the turbine wheel.

With less back pressure in the manifold, the engine breathes more freely and the turbo spins with less inhibition. That means less lag and more power.

It also allows the engineers to play with valve overlap and spark timing, often increasing efficiency some more. But the reasons for those advantages don’t fit in this page – nor indeed, my friends, inside my limited brain space. PAUL HORRELL

MODS ’N’ SHOCKERS

Twin-scroll turbo


IMA

GE

S: J

OH

N W

YC

HE

RL

EY

,GE

TT

Y,

BJE

LL

EK

LA

NG

A VERITABLE ARSENAL OF INFO, SOME OF IT USEFUL

Electric dreamsAfter several quality control

issues, Tesla’s Model X is clearly causing Elon Musk

some sleepless nights, though this might have

something to do with the fact that, by his own

admission, he’s kipping in a sleeping bag beside

the production line.

ALL THE RAGEAccording to a survey of 2,000 drivers by a car insurance company best known for its jowly dog:

113mphThe speed an American woman was travelling when she took a selfie using Snapchat’s ‘speed’ filter, which shows people how fast you’re going as you take a photo. Unfortunately, she was so busy doing this that she crashed into another car, leaving its driver with serious injuries. Despite this, Snapchat has refused to remove the filter. #NoJoke

SOUND ADVICEIf you’ve stood near a trembling subwoofer, you’ll know that sound waves produce a certain amount of energy. But could it be converted into something more useful? Could you, say, use traffic noise to power a street light? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Even the roar of a passing lorry generates barely 1/100th of a watt per square metre. In contrast, sunlight hitting the Earth produces about 680 watts per square metre. Hence we have solar panels, but no enormous noise-catching nets.

A DRIFT AT SEA The problem with cruise ships is that they don’t have kart tracks. Thankfully one company has addressed this obvious error by including one on its newest liner, the Norwegian Joy, which is currently being built in Germany. If that doesn’t float your, er, boat, then head down a few decks to the virtual reality room where you can race a pretend hovercar. Anything to forget you’re stuck on a floating holiday park with hundreds of pensioners, eh?

LUMBAR SPORTEach year, JORA (Japanese Office Chair Racing Association) holds a series of two-hour endurance races on 180m street circuits complete with hairpins and, more alarmingly, cobblestones. Your chair must be standard-issue office equipment on regular castors, and there are no pit stops except to swap riders. The winning team members each receive a 90kg sack of rice, which is quite difficult to spray around the podium but goes really well with teriyaki chicken.

PROCESS THISEven today, McLaren’s F1 is one of the world’s fastest cars, but its brain is stuck in the Nineties, and can only talk to a Compaq LTE 5280 laptop. “This is because they run a bespoke CA card, which is the interface between the software and the car”, said an engineer, before another game of Lemmings.

Overall, half blamed this behaviour on the need to vent frustrations, a third put it down to bad habits, while the rest went with the highly scientific reason of “I just get angry in the car.”

58%

11%

of drivers admit to acting aggressively while driving

31% have sworn at strangers

26% shout at others

have deliberately tailgated

1 1 3 M P H

33% use the horn aggressively


My two favourite sports are test cricket and motor racing – both of which look unlikely to exist in their current format �� years from now. This upsets me. Many of you won’t know what cricket is, or care about men wearing white clothes standing in a field for five days, but I hope most of you enjoy the spectacle of cars racing each other.

It’s no surprise that motorsport is in an apparently terminal state. It’s the most expensive sport of all and has to rely on the involvement of carmakers to support it. Those carmakers can only justify the amounts they spend by treating it as a marketing exercise for current and future technologies – most of which for the past decade have been about as useful to the cause of exciting, close racing as Diane Abbott. Many of the sage old voices have groaned on about this for years – if you want decent racing you have to do it without the carmakers – and they are partly right. Car manufacturers are in the curious position of being both the midwives of motorsport and its executioners.

They join a code, they enhance it and then they leave. Just look at the LMP� class at Le Mans for next year. No Audi, no Porsche, just a brace of self-defeating Toyotas. Of course, this is all part of the cycle of popularity – it’s understandable that carmakers alter where they spend, but never before have we had so much money being diverted away from conventional forms of the sport and redirected towards a single entity: Formula E.

Have you watched any Formula E? It’s a bit baffling, but there are a few shunts, some reasonably close racing at times and the cars look and sound about as exciting as boiled cauliflower. Not so different to Formula One, some might say. But the machines have to change batteries to finish a race, which is a bit crap, and they’re no faster than a Formula

Ford. For someone raised on Kimi pinning it flat through Eau Rouge at ��mph, it just doesn’t hit the spot. And yet, five years from now, Formula E could kill Formula One.

There are far more carmakers committed to Formula E than to F�. Imagine being Honda, spending a fortune on a hybrid powertrain in Formula One that doesn’t bring much R&D benefit to your core business and which leaves you looking silly every race weekend? You’d be

mad to continue – so, clearly, they are mad. Fundamentally, I’m against Formula E because I’m an

old fart who doesn’t much like change and loves the sound of engines, but the one hope I have is that the rule-makers in the electric series encourage a full-on technology battle between the brands. It’s not inconceivable that we could see �,��bhp machines with aero so absurd they need to breed a new species of racing jockey to sustain the g-forces. Like the loopy Can-Am Series in the early Seventies that culminated in Porsche arriving with a �,��bhp ��. I still don’t know what they could do about the lack of noise. Maybe play a recording of a Matra MS�� on a loop through the PA system?

The short term actually looks quite bright, so long as you enjoy GT racing. All the car brands need to keep a toe in racing, and to do it in stuff that actually looks like a road car you might buy – that’s GT� and GTE. Just imagine if the outright Le Mans victory were contested between a Porsche �� and a Ferrari ��?

The prototype hybrids leave me cold – I like cars that look like cars. We are about to enter another great GT era, but the electric aftermath looms like a spectre over the sport many of us adore. It could still be a fascinating,

thrilling spectacle �� years from now, and if it isn’t, I dearly hope I can still

watch those men in white lurking in that field instead.

“ I’m an old fart who doesn’t much like change and loves the sound of engines”

IMA

GE

: G

ET

TY


What’s the most crucial quality in a new car? Performance? Economy? Safety? Its ability to make you marginally more attractive to the opposite sex? Until recently I’d have said it was a combination of all of them, but I can tell you that right up there with these is smell.

It’s true. What good is your fast, economical love wagon if it suddenly develops an odour so offensive it makes even passers-by want to puke? I witnessed this phenomenon first-hand recently with my new family car – a Mercedes GLE ��d. OK, it’s not fast, ��mpg isn’t much to write home about and nobody so much as looks at me twice in it, but it’s the nicest car I’ve ever leased, so I quite like it. Or at least I did.

That fondness was tested recently when one minor indiscretion left the car all but ruined. I somewhat stupidly left a half-eaten chicken salad in a carrier bag in the boot, under the hot sun in an airport car park for two weeks while I went on holiday. Upon my return, the GLE’s interior aroma was no longer an oasis of leather and wood. Instead it reeked powerfully of death – like I’d left an actual chicken in there, first to defecate, then to die and finally to decompose on a bed of rotting leaves and fermented caesar sauce. The pong had permeated the seats, the headlining, the carpets. It was so spectacular that other returning holidaymakers visibly recoiled from across the car park when I opened the boot.

I’ve spent many weeks trying to get rid of the stench. I’ve tried Febreeze, the local Romanian car wash, plug-in ozone generators and more elbow grease than you can imagine, and it’s only just begun to subside. But rather than make me hate the GLE, that atrocious pong has brought us closer together. Not because I particularly like the pervasive smell of decay, but because I firmly believe smells are an essential part of any automotive experience.

Most new cars smell largely the same: leather, adhesive and chemicals. It’s a reasonably pleasant pong, but there’s nothing original here, nothing that helps drivers bond with their new purchase.

It’s a biological fact that the olfactory bulb (the bit of the brain which handles smell) works with the regions of the brain that store emotional memories. It’s no wonder, then, that I still remember that steamy, sweet-smelling whiff as my old Ford Fiesta

overheated. It helped cement memories of the people I was with, the places I visited and the faces of the AA repairmen I called out. Also etched on my brain is the smell of dying clutch from my Astra GTE ��v, and mould from my MkII Polo with the leaky sunroof.

Sure, nobody wants their car to break down just so they can bask in the smell, but makers could certainly do more. BMW and Merc do their bit by adding selectable atomisers to such cars as the �-Series and S-Class, but these are a bit lame. Who wants their car to smell of Golden Suite No. � or Sports Mood? These fragrances are a cop-out, designed to appeal to everyone, everywhere.

I want every car to come with a scent generator that can create scents based on a driver’s mood or environment. The technology is certainly out there to generate smells on command – they do it in cinemas at so-called �D screenings. So how about performance road cars that generate the smells found at a racetrack when Sport mode is enabled? Or the smell of fresh popcorn as your satnav guides you to the local cinema? Or a little flurry of Lynx Africa when you pick your girlfriend up? The possibilities are endless.

So come on, carmakers. We already pay through the nose for our motors, you might as well start rewarding our nostrils with some

cool scent-based innovations. Or at the very least can someone please just come up with something that can tackle the

smell of a rotting two-week-old salad?

“ Like I’d left an actual chicken in there, first to defecate, then to die and finally to decompose”


What’s interesting to me is not just the way car design has changed in the last �� years, but how my role has changed too. In the past it was much simpler. Packaging and hardware were really the domain of engineering, and designers tended to wrap clothes

around what was already a given. Go back another �� years even, and the role of the designer was very much that of a stylist in its purest form. You were given a set of hardpoints, joined the dots, and tried to make it look pretty.

Not so any more. Back then, my job was to shape the interior and exterior. My job now is to think up ideas of how a car should be, what should be in it and how it should operate. It’s much more philosophical – what does a customer want this vehicle to do? How should they interact with it? How can we design it to work better in people’s lives?

I don’t think you’ll find any other discipline in the company with a more holistic knowledge of a vehicle, because we deal with every aspect of the interior and exterior. Typically it takes four years to design a car from start to finish, and design will input from the very beginning right through to the very end. As a result, we collaborate with engineering more than ever – I even have engineers in my design team. And there’s a mutual respect now that perhaps wasn’t there before, even five years ago.

Another huge change is the speed at which we now work. Back in the early Nineties, car design was still very much a manual process. We’d draw

sketches with pencils and markers – even chalk. We’d render these full size and stick them on the wall, use tape to make our adjustments and then modellers would take the measurements from them to cut the clay. Now, Photoshop, Alias and �D- printing have cut the time it takes to get to a design by around �� per cent. Yes, we still start with a pencil and paper, but we very quickly move to digital renderings.

I grew up in an era where you drew a picture with a clear intent of what you wanted to come out the other side, because one render would take you half a day. If you wanted to adjust a tail lamp, that’s another half a day. Now we can change a design four, five times in a single day. There’s an abundance and pace of ideas that we never had before. Sure, sometimes it can take the focus off getting to the right solution, but it allows designers to be creative and take risks because they have so much freedom to experiment. With the advent of autonomy and electrification, that innovation is more important than ever, because the notion of how we think about cars is changing, and so as designers we must too.

The worry about autonomous cars, for me, is that they may become slightly characterless. But I’m optimistic that our emotional relationship with the motor car will continue. I believe even if people won’t necessarily want to own a car, they will want to have an attachment to one. The challenge for brands will be to find the right place for themselves in that new future. What really gets me excited though is electrification and the design freedom it offers. With I-Pace we’ve started on a whole new journey. I don’t know where it’s going to take us in

the future, but I’ll certainly be watching with great anticipation.

Ian Callum, director of design, Jaguar

“ Even if people won’t necessarily want to own a car, they will want to have an attachment to one”

We celebrate one of the country’s most famous racing

machines with a drive to remember in Pannala

WORDS: PRIYANGA SAMARATUNGA / PHOTOGRAPHY: D ILOSHAN LEON, JEHAN D ADAHAN


Return of the King

FAST FORD



he story of the Mk� Ford Escort Mexico bearing registration number ‘� sri ��’ is the stuff of local automotive legend. The most battle-hardened stalwarts in Sri Lanka’s tightly knit racing community cannot help but go all misty-eyed when relating stories of the man who competed at the

Mahagastota Hill Climb for �� uninterrupted years and the machine that accompanied him for �� of them. This fascinating tale is much about the aforementioned man as it is about the machine, and deserves a bit of a back story; so bear with me as I take you down memory lane.

My first encounter with Ananda De Alwis was at a Mahagastota Hill Climb pit enclosure in the late ��s. He and the missus were digging into a packed breakfast they had brought from home that morning, waiting to be called for their run up the fabled hill. Their trusty Orange Crush-coloured Escort too was nearby with the bonnet up, warming down after the non-stop �� kilometer trek to Nuwara Eliya. Both owner and car looked very out of place amid the fully race-prepped Imprezza STIs, Evos and such in the paddock. You would be forgiven for assuming that someone was playing a terribly unfunny joke—surely this portly ��-year-old man in tattered racing overalls with his relic of a car from the ��s was no match for the bazillion BHP’d monsters that flanked them. They were not, of course. Not anymore at least. Although the duo was highly competitive in the initial two decades of their partnership and found many successes at Mahagastota and other such local race events, as the competition got faster thanks to better equipment, Ananda and the Mexico were seemingly stuck in a racing time capsule, happy to just compete and grab the occasional minor podium place.

When Ananda was called up for his timed run later that day, I managed to sneak a peek into the cockpit before set-off. Gone was the jovial elderly man I had seen in the morning, stuffing his face with sandwiches. A steely-eyed demeanor of determination had descended upon his face when the flag dropped, and the ��-odd seconds that followed was one of the best displays of car control I had ever seen. The driver had grabbed the scuff of the vehicle’s neck and was wrangling it all the way, with the car obediently following every command like a well-trained hound. The pair, it seemed, were locked in a very aggressive waltz, with Ananda leading every step. Only through decades of ownership can a man be this confident in his machinery. Finally, as they crossed the finish line, the crowd and the pits erupted in applause—it was apparent the twosome were adored by all. Ananda had posted a decent time, but alas, it was not good enough for a top three finish. So, with the racing done for the day, the De Alwis duo headed back home to Kelaniya the same evening, leaving yours truly in a state of unabashed admiration. This was racing in its purest form – ‘proper old school’,

“This fascinating tale is much

about the man as it is about the

machine”


FAST FORD

Just enough room

for a tire...or two

A racing pedigree

waiting to shine again

The Mexico

post-facelift

These boots were

made for...driving?


“Amid the pampered,

trailered-in race cars, Ananda and

his plucky little Ford were a most welcomed breath

of fresh air”

THE BUILD LOG

"Kishan has managed to keep things pretty much original, save for a few performance and reliability based upgrades"

The Mexico's new heart gets

tested on the UK dyno before

being sent back to sunny SL

EngineOverhauled and blueprinted existing 1600cc Crossflow engine by Ford Xflow specialist Stephen Curson of Vulcan Engineering at Brand’s Hatch, Kent, UK.Power 138hp at 5950rpmTorque 133ft/lbs at 4600rpmStage 3 unleaded head Kent 234 Cam

SuspensionOverall Superflex poly bush kit 2” lowering blocks and front lowering springs 145lbs Front adjustable GAZ damper inserts on standard GT strutsAdjustable Track Control Arms (Front)Adjustable GAZ dampers (Rear)Suspension camber, toe and castor setup to Tarmac Group 4 rally spec

Fuel SystemTwin Weber 40DCOE carbs – jetted & choked Facet HP fuel pumpFilter King fuel regulator and filterK&N filtration

ExhaustAshley 4-2-1 header and 2 box 2” exhaustHeat wrapped

Ignition SystemElectronic ignition systemCompetition BOSCH coilOmex Clubman rev-limiter

TransmissionOriginal Bullet 2000E 3 rails semi – close ratio gearbox fully overhauledQuick shifter leverFast road competition clutch with extended release-bearing carrier-lightened fly wheelRear Axle with new CWP 3.77 :1 standard Mexico final ratioQuaife ATB unit


as the kids would say. Amid the pampered, trailered-in race cars being attended and piloted by swarms of serious-faced mechanics and chisel-jawed race drivers with corporate sponsorships aplenty, Ananda and his plucky little Ford were a most welcomed breath of fresh air.

The dynamic duo continued to compete at the annual hill climb until ��, promptly after which Ananda announced his retirement from racing and put the Escort up for sale, a move that took his peers by shock as many expected the partnership to last till death did them apart. “It was time to move on,” he had nonchalantly replied when enquired as to the reason for getting rid of his mechanical soul mate. Unsurprisingly, owing to its race pedigree, the �� was sold in a flash, leaving a trail of other potential buyers sorely disappointed, yours truly among them.

Ananda de Alwis passed away from a heart attack barely two months after letting go of the Mexico. The funeral was a dignified celebration of his life and five decade career attended by the good and the great of Sri Lankan motor racing, with one Escort-shaped attendee noticeably absent. The ‘� sri ��’ had seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet with only the sporadic rumor as to its fate.

Eventually, I was able to track it down in Battaramulla, where its new owner, Kishan Perera, had resolved to do a ‘ground-up restoration’ on it and had proceeded to dismantle the poor Escort. The car was in a sorry state, with the bare chassis resting on stilts and rest the of its mechanical and body parts strewn all over the place, some even hanging off the garage walls. It appeared as if she had exploded into a million pieces upon learning of the demise of her former master.

“Not to worry,” said Kishan as if reading my mind. “She will be up and running in no time.” This “no time” did not happen for four long years due his obsessive need for perfection, which included several trips to the UK in search of parts. Even the engine was shipped there to be overhauled and tuned by a Ford

FAST FORD

• The Mk1 Ford Escort (1967-1975) is one of the

all-time great rally cars, with perhaps its most

famous victory being the 1970 London to Mexico

World Cup Rally at the hands of Finnish rallying

ace Hannu Mikkola and Swedish co-driver

Gunnar Palm. In tribute to the victory, Ford

released the limited edition Escort Mexico in

November 1970, with a production run of 10,352

cars, of which, only two cars made it to Sri Lanka.

A LEGENDARY TALE

Mexico in another life –

A big-name sponsor

for Ananda

“Bullying the car into submission did the trick, for the old dear was a glutton for punishment—the more abuse it got,

the more it responded”

Thanks to Kishan Perera, Dinesh Jayawardana & Pannala Speedrome



specialist. Though I admired Kishan’s perfectionist approach, there were times I wanted to shout at him to get a move on. The legendary De Alwis-Mexico needed to back to its former glory ASAP!

Fast forward to September ��, the Escort was finally done and Kishan was satisfied with the result. With a little persuasion I was able to borrow and take her to Pannala Speedrome Circuit, its first track outing since the rebirth. There was method to Kishan’s madness after all, as the finished product was faultless. He has managed to keep things pretty much original, save for a few performance and reliability based upgrades (see build log). Standing in the midday sun on the Pannala start/finish straight, it looked absolutely glorious in Sebring Red (the official paint code tag for this particular shade of orange).

Unable to contain my enthusiasm anymore, I quickly hopped into the snug bucket seat and set off. Immediately, I could tell there was something amiss. The car felt heavy, unwieldy and no matter how smoothly I tuned into corners, it kept missing the apex by yards. It was all going horribly wrong; so much so that I resorted to blaming the car for my woes (as all self-respecting drivers should!). I wanted to point fingers at the fat tyres for having too much grip and the steering for being too heavy. All that pent-up excitement I had started draining away slowly. Was I expecting too much of the car or was it another confirmation of the old adage advising to not meet your heroes?

Dejected, I was about to give up and retire to the pits when it clicked. I remembered how the old man had manhandled this car up the hill that day, many years ago. Could that be the answer? Was I doing it all wrong? It was indeed. The instant I began being aggressive with the steering, throttle and shifts, the car came alive. It is at the last quarter of the rev range that this engine is at its happiest, with the twin Webbers at full flow. The understeer too disappeared when I began yanking the steering like a maniac, smoothness be darned! Bullying the car into submission did the trick, for the old dear was a glutton for punishment—the more abuse it got, the more it responded. With the very short-throw gearbox, upgraded brakes, plus all of Kishan’s added goodies working in perfect harmony, what followed was an evening of pure automotive bliss where Ananda’s old Ford and I conquered Pannala lap after lap till nightfall brought the proceedings to a reluctant end.

Kishan says he is taking the ol’ girl to Mahagastota next year, back to her old stomping ground. It will surely be bittersweet to see it running up the hill without her usual partner in crime at the helm. Ananda de Alwis was, and always will be, the greatest part of her legacy; but as the man himself had said, it was time to move on and forge brand new memories with a new companion.

FAST FORD

MAKING THE CUT

...unless it's to leave

others eating its smoke

It was the one time Priyanga

didn't want the shoot to end

The Mexico

likes it rough

The new and improved

Mexico in the limelight


Light speed

H Y P E R C A R S

At the very edge of human understanding exists a group of cars for which “super” just doesn’t cut it. All hail hypercars

WORDS: JASON BARLOW


WHAT WE SAID THEN

Perhaps the most impressive

part is the engine. It just goes

on accelerating, accelerating

and accelerating Issue 67

WHAT WE SAY NOW

The brakes can be interesting

and the handling lively, but the

engine is unlike anything else.

Headline power figures

may have grown since 1994,

but in terms of raw thrills it

remains unsurpassed

M c L A R E N F 1


“Enough with these tiny, wiggly

roads. I want large roads to

show off my large speeds”

Another unnecessary

early-morning milk run.

Well, why wouldn’t you?


H Y P E R C A R S

Legendary automotive writer LJK Setright – who once filed a column in Latin – is the man credited with coining the term “supercar”. He was writing about the Lamborghini Miura in ��, the first road car to go mid-engined, prompting Enzo

Ferrari’s famous barb: “The ox pulls the cart, it doesn’t push it.” Il Commendatore would change his mind soon enough.

At what point did the “supercar” make the species jump to “hypercar”? When the McLaren F� arrived. It’s said that Gordon Murray and Ron Dennis began hatching plans for their road car in the departure lounge of Milan’s Linate airport following the �� Italian Grand Prix – ironically, the only race McLaren didn’t win that season. It arrived four years later, in May ��, but the media wouldn’t drive it until ��. If Gordon Murray is the greatest racing and automotive engineer of the modern era, then this is what the inside of his head looks like. Only not in the ways you might automatically assume: yes, Murray was – still is – obsessive about weight, but he also appreciated the usability of Honda’s then-new NSX, he loved music (big Bob Dylan fan) so the audio system was a corker, and the driver sat centrally (so no pedal offset to worry about or visibility issues), passengers set back either side, in a car that had a compact footprint. Only Alec Issigonis’s original Mini is more cleverly packaged.

Of course, the F� also had a carbon-fibre chassis. The engine, designed by BMW Motorsport’s Paul Rosche, remains one of the very greatest ever made: a �.�-litre, quad-cam, ��-valve, ��° V��, that produced ��bhp at �,��rpm, and �� torques between �,��–�,��rpm.

Those numbers have been firmly eclipsed by plenty of others since, but if that bothers you, you’re looking in the wrong place: the F� weighs �,��kg, and if the last �� years and �� issues of TG have taught us anything, it’s that our priorities have become confused. There’s nothing confusing about the F�’s power-to-weight ratio of ��bhp-per-tonne.

The F� was never meant to race, but it won Le Mans, very convincingly, in ��. It also stood for so much more than its top speed, but in �� racing driver Andy Wallace set a new production-car world record of ��mph. I spent two unforgettable days with Wallace and an F� last year, courtesy of owner Simon Kidston, solidifying my opinion that this isn’t just the greatest hypercar of all, it’s the best car full-stop, the one I’d sell my kidneys and maybe even my family to own. Why? Because, as much as it pains me to say it, this is Peak Automobile. We’ve been in reverse ever since.

The F�, famously, has no power steering, no servo on its brakes, no anti-lock, and certainly no traction control, forced induction, or flappy paddle ’box. It pre-dates ESP, airbags, and it’s true that many have been crashed. I drove it in the wet, and I wouldn’t choose to do so again. Wallace says its high-speed aero performance is “interesting” (something to do with unexpected vortices at ��mph – can’t say I noticed), but in every other respect, the F� feels entirely modern. Almost futuristic, in fact. (Elon Musk bought one when PayPal paid out for him.) Those who work on these cars – it could be done from Woking via a modem in the early days, and the old DOS

laptops that ran the diagnostics have only just been updated – will tell you

WHAT WE SAID THEN

You thunder along on a

tsunami of sound, simply

not believing what the speedo

is reading Issue 111

WHAT WE SAY NOW

Nothing comes close in terms

of detailing – a sculpture in

carbon fibre. A Huayra is

fast, but loses the buzz and

immediacy that make the

Zonda so enthralling

P A G A N I Z O N D A

Um, I’ll take the Veyron,

please. It has much

better aircon


H Y P E R C A R S

1993

200519

992011

1996

20082002

201419

94

2006

20002012

1997

20092003

201519

952007

20012013

1998

20102004

20162017

1479

1000

900

800

700

600

500

400

300

Mc

La

ren

F1

Fe

rra

ri E

nz

o

Bu

ga

tti V

ey

ron

Fe

rra

ri F

50

Me

rce

de

s C

LK

Po

rsc

he

Ca

rre

ra G

T

Ma

se

rati

MC

12

Ko

en

igs

eg

g C

CX

As

ton

Ma

rtin

On

e:7

7

Mc

La

ren

P1

As

ton

Ma

rtin

Vu

lca

n

Pa

ga

ni H

ua

yra

Bu

ga

tti C

hir

on

Ko

en

igs

eg

g R

eg

era


chassis set-up is a tricky process. Those who own them will confirm it’s also cripplingly expensive.

Murray’s engineering genius nevertheless ensures timelessness. It rolls more than a ��-spec hypercar, but rides beautifully. The controls, unassisted or not, are perfectly weighted. The driving position and interior ergonomics are flawless. And when you go for it… My God. There is almost no sense of mass, minimal inertia. The engine has its roots in BMW’s Eighties F� masterpieces, and it feels like it’s mainlining all that history. The gearbox can be tricky, but you get used to it. The centrally mounted rev-counter is the only dial you watch, and pretty soon you’ll be going faster than you can think in a way utterly unlike any other car, ever.

Even the Bugatti Veyron. We had one of those along for the ride, too. Actually, the best thing about the Veyron is that it, too, feels like no other. Bugatti’s achievement is no less than McLaren’s, just different in feel and flavour. But it’s much heavier. I’ve done more than ��mph in the Veyron, but it’s how it behaves at ��mph that’s just as impressive. The way it pulses and whirs and whooshes when you prod the �.�-litre, ��-cylinder, quad-turbo engine into life has something of Frankenstein’s monster about it. You can picture the process in your head, and it’s an awesome thing to be part of. At no point does a Veyron sound as charismatic as an F� – or the Porsche ��, Pagani Zonda, and certainly not a V�� Ferrari – but it certainly sounds impressive. VW’s best people made this car work, Michelin made its tyres work, they gave it the repeatability of a Polo in all the extremes a Polo has to operate in, and then they made it capable of ��mph. Incredible.

People with the money to back up their instincts are buying early Veyrons. McLaren F�s dropped to around £��k in the late Nineties, and they’re now worth £�m–�m. (It’s the new Ferrari �� GTO, and that’s a £��m car.) The Veyron is tipped to be the fin de siècle symbol, the last non-hybridised hypercar (to think, we used to be sniffy about turbos). Perhaps Pagani’s Zonda might acquire that sort of status, too; after all, Pagani will surely be rolling out a one-off Zonda Revelation even as the four horsemen of the apocalypse are raining hellfire down on Modena. Pagani deserves its place here because this wonderfully idiosyncratic carmaker didn’t exist back in �� and now it does. It also hasn’t gone bust yet. I’ve driven the Zonda F, the Zonda LM, and a Huayra, and had scary moments in all three. So they do still make them like they used to.

The LaFerrari and Porsche �� Spyder are where we’re at right now. These are extraordinary pieces of engineering from the two companies who have elevated us more often and more consistently than anyone else since TG arrived in November ��. So to say we’ve been stuck in reverse since the McLaren F� isn’t fair: Ferrari’s Hy-KERS system is a fully integrated part of the LaFerrari overload – “torque shaping”, they called it – while there’s no denying that driving the �� on e-power alone is a key part of the Porsche blitzkrieg. So, so clever, these two. And the McLaren P�. I just can’t help wondering what their analogue equivalents would be like, shorn of the extra weight the e-gubbins entails (�� RS, P� LT or LaFerrari Speciale, anyone?) And, as the technology vaults forward, whether the three of them are going to be left looking like hypercar v�.�, at the far end of the world’s most exotic cul-de-sac. Or perhaps anything still powered by internal combustion will automatically be deemed a renegade. We’ll find out in ��.

WHAT WE SAID THEN

Nothing can prepare you for

the shock of the acceleration

when you open the throttle and

unleash nearly 1,000bhp and

923lb ft of torque Issue 180

WHAT WE SAY NOW

Given the Chiron has 50% more

power, the Veyron’s kick isn’t

so startling, but its ability to gel

250+mph performance with

ease of use is monumental

B U G AT T I V E Y R O N

WHAT WE SAID THEN

The 918 is the car with the

biggest difference between

Race mode and “all off”: switch

off all the electronic minders,

and the fastest Porsche

becomes tricky. Leave them

on and you’ll

be gasping Issue 265

WHAT WE SAY NOW

These days a Huracán

Performante is quicker around

the Nürburgring, but we don’t

care. The wall of torque, the

grip, that race-derived V8...

P O R S C H E 9 1 8 S P Y D E R

WHAT WE SAID THEN

The genius of Ferrari’s creation

is its simplicity. The LaFerrari’s

cloaked electronics mean it

is more natural on the road,

and the chassis is sweet

as honey Issue 265

WHAT WE SAY NOW

No EV mode, no plugs or cords

to fumble with, the LaFerrari

takes fuel-saving tech and

turns it into V12-enhanced

savagery. Its 950bhp demands

respect, but its performance is

approachable

F E R R A R I LaF E R R A R I

ISSUE 180 Why go for a drive in one

Veyron when you can have

a convoy of three? These

are the issues we often

have to ponder at TG

0 6 2 D E C E M B E R � � � � � T O P G E A R . C O M

ONE TANK

Whoever thought a Mercedes-Benz Vito would be the ultimate machine to take a band of

misfits around the countryWORDS: SAM D SMITH /

PHOTOGRAPHY: D ILOSHAN LEONAROUND


THE ISLAND IN THREE DAYS

AROUND


‘It cannot be done. Not at all…’ This was my initial reaction when asked to take a van around the perimeter of this beautiful country. Of course, vans circumnavigate the island all the time; heck, they’re the backbone of our tourism transportation industry, ferrying eager sightseers to and from the most far-flung parts of the nation, all

day, every day. And despite my love of high-powered, fire breathing performance cars, I suppose I do have a bit of a soft spot for vans. Like many of us, I passed my (Sri Lankan) driving test in none other than a Nissan Vanette. In a past life, I’ve piloted everything from Suzuki Hijets to Mitsubishi L��s for shoots around the island, and I cannot deny that vans can be a bit of a laugh. And there’s simply no arguing about their versatility, especially when you need to haul people or equipment cross-country. Plus, sitting up far higher than normal, carrying what could pass itself off as a small living room behind you, coupled with the heightened sense of spatial awareness needed when manoeuvring, it is a novel experience… if done every once in a while.

So no, my reservation about taking a van over �,��km wasn’t because I snubbed the vehicular form. It was because what we wanted to do with the van was something I suspect no one in the history of island gallivanting has ever attempted to do – to complete the entire journey on a single tank of fuel. One tank. Just the one.

The van chosen for the challenge? A Mercedes-Benz Vito. Now, Mercedes means a lot of things to a lot of people. Quality, reliability, prestige. But economical? Perhaps efficiency isn’t the first thing to cross your mind. In fact, Mercedes has comparatively only just thrown their full weight behind the most well-known way of eking out the miles, rolling out a series of hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars over the past few years. The Vito itself may feature regenerative braking, but the energy doesn’t go back into the drivetrain, and is instead used to help power the ancillaries. What the Vito does have, however, is a diesel engine. Diesel may be the latest enemy for governments in the western world, but as we all know, is significantly more efficient than petrol. Efficient enough, though?

Mercedes claims about ��km/l for the Vito, a superb hybrid-rivalling figure, no doubt. But you’ve always got to take claimed economy figures with a heavily granulated pinch of salt at the best of times. Indeed, as I enquired from other Vito and V-Class owners on the days running up to the challenge, I’m reliably informed that the actual figures seen are closer to ��km/l. Hmmm.

There were two questions I got asked the most regarding the challenge. The first was, understandably, how big was the tank. It’s easy to say you’ve driven x amount of miles on a single tank if that tank is equivalent to the size of a small nation’s fuel reserves (which coincidently don’t seem to be that much after all, but more on that later). Be under no illusion, this was not an extended-range fuel tank. It was the normal, ��-litre job that you’ll find standard in any Vito; and �� litres isn’t particularly large for a van that is already bigger than some trucks.

The second question was, was I planning on running with the air conditioning on. Now those that know me know that, even in the coldest of climates, I’ll still refuse to roll down the windows to enjoy a breeze of fresh air. Probably to the dismay of the team at Mercedes, there was absolutely no way I was about to travel the length and breadth of this tropically inclined country without a good blast of air conditioning. We compromised by fitting a plastic sheet to divide the driver’s area from the load area, and switching off the rear air-conditioning system. The one other modification made was the removal of the rear seats, making it essentially a cargo van with windows. That was it. Everything else, from the sound system, to the electric seats, to the averagely built humanoid-navigator/art director were left in place.

This was not a merely a test of the machine, this was a test of my ability to drive a car economically – in comfort.

DAY ONEThe first of our three-day jaunt around the island started at the god-awful time of �AM. The plan was to head down the E��, past Galle, through Matara, Hambanthotha and finishing the day up at Cinnamon Wild, Yala. This was also decidedly the easiest day of the three, with “just” ��km to cover. Despite the early departure, there was still potential to get caught up in stop-start situations, which would have a snowball effect on fuel efficiency. Stopping a car wouldn’t really hurt the figure, but the energy needed to get it back up to speed would be the killer. To

You’ve seen the hit movie

“A Bugs Life”? Well, this

is sorta the opposite

No one said anything

about keeping it clean…


ONE TANK

No Sam, you’re supposed to save fuel.

This one isn’t about handling, darn it!

Cacti make an appearance while we

shoot the Good, The Bad & the Vito

“Probably to the dismay of

the team, there was absolutely

no way I was about to travel the length and

breadth of the country without air

conditioning”


ONE TANK

The photographer had been

perfecting the high jump for this shot

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME

avoid this scenario, we decided to head in the opposite direction, towards the Kadawatha E�� expressway entrance. Joining the expressway early on, it was apparent that this was also going to be the easiest place to maximise our fuel economy, with a relatively flat and traffic-free run to dispatch ��km. Thanks to cruise control, I was actually able to relax a little, too. That was until I found the range prediction function on the Vito’s information screen. Predicted Range? ��km. We were trying to double that. This cannot be done…

As we pull in for breakfast in Matara, I whip out the calculator. Arguably, this is something that should have been done before I’d booked the rooms and had taken delivery of the van, but what the hell; better late than never, right? We knew the route would be roughly �,��km long, and that the tank held �� litres. For arguments sake, let’s add an extra ��km to that total. Simple arithmetic left us with a target fuel economy figure of ��.�km/l. Nineteen kilometres per litre! You’d struggle to squeeze that out of a solar-powered Aqua with tyres filled with helium and a perpetual motion machine fitted in place of the motor! A quick look at the trip computer reveals that I’ve “only” managed ��.�km/l down the highway – a clear straight road that should theoretically be the best place to maximise that figure.

At this point, the TG philosophy of “ambitious, but a bit rubbish” couldn’t have rung any louder in my head. Still, there’s not much that can be done at this point – so we plodded on. The stretch down to Hambanthota provided many an opportunity to test out the Vito’s overtaking ability – at the expense of fuel, precious, precious fuel yes, but better to keep up momentum than to get

“Each town has its own unique

charm to it, with scenes that differ

completely from anywhere else”

Because to try it, you’d have to leave home… Geddit? Seriously though, if you want to try it yourself, here’s how we’d do it again.

Trincomalee

Jaffna

Anuradhapura

Dimo 800

Matara

Yala

Arugam Bay

RouteOur route literally took

us around the island,

but that doesn’t mean it

was just coastlines to

our right all the way.

You can follow this

map, or choose to do it

completely differently.

Either way, you’ll

experience some of

the best driving roads

the country has to offer.

Rest !Attempting such a

journey in just three

days was no mean

feat. Plan for longer if

you want to enjoy

yourself. In addition to

a good night’s rest, we

consistently took

breaks as

recommended, every

two hours. Get out,

stretch your legs and

enjoy the scenery (as

long as elephants

aren’t around).

Fuel UpIt’s not just fuel in the

tank you’ll need. Don’t

be afraid to exploit the

wonders of coffee

when driving – pack a

flask of the stuff. Avoid

energy drinks if you

can, as the sugar high

usually ends with a

bad crash

(metaphorically

speaking).

Checkl istEnsure your vehicle is

in good condition.

Correct tyre pressures,

enough fuel (ahem),

jump leads, phone

chargers and the usual

under bonnet checks

before setting off are

all essential. A good

playlist also goes a

long way!

Vavuniya

1342kmsDistance traveled



We genuinely thought

we’d need these

No matter where we go, herds of

buffalo keep popping up…

The TG team, ladies and gentlemen.

Always alert. Always on the ball. Don’t mind us, we’ve just accidentally

stumbled into a postcard


stuck behind a dawdling truck doing �� or a bus that stops every �� meters. Better not push the pedal all the way down though…

Granted, a van isn’t exactly everyone’s first choice for an epic road trip, but there’s no denying its sheer practicality. There was a time when vans were as common as family saloons in Lanka. Every man and his dog had one. But, over the past few years, sea-sawing taxes, rising fuel costs and diminishing road space seem to have sent the versatile van to the back of the class. There are a few things that one can come to appreciate about road trippin’ van-style though. We were behind the wheel of the short wheel base variant of the Vito, but even in its smallest guise, it’s still a very large and imposing object, almost monolithic in its black-on-black guise. There’s road presence, but not the kind I’m used to. The driving position is also one that’s suited for those who like to lord over traffic, and with a wide range of electric adjustments in the Vito, getting comfy wasn’t too much of a challenge at all.

It isn’t long before we find ourselves on the wide and welcoming roads of Hambantota. Evidently constructed in anticipation of a commercial boom, it’s somewhat odd to find such high quality and spacious roadways in what can only be described as pretty desolate surroundings.

It wasn’t too long ago that this still-sleepy city was nominated to become the next commercial capital, but perhaps the fact that it’s already taken us close to five hours to get here from the existing one may be one small indicator of why this project was apparently doomed from the outset. For now, though, we pass through, with not much to see.

It wasn’t long before we reached our first stop for the day, Yala. Sadly, there would be no safaris for us, as the number one priority on the agenda was sleep. Driving long distance takes a lot out of you on the best of days; and with the added pressure of taming one’s right foot, I unscientifically conclude that the mental load is doubled. We park at the hotel, finish lunch and head straight to bed. Tomorrow’s departure time? �AM.

DAY TWOWaking up on the best of mornings is a chore for the majority of us. Waking up at �AM, with the prospect of spending a predicted �� hours on the road, doesn’t really help. You’re torn between the thought that you’re incredible privileged to undertake such a challenge and the realization that you may have been incredibly foolhardy to propose it. But, after a too-close-for-comfort encounter with a wild boar, there was no time to

lament on past decisions.It should be stated upfront that traveling

through areas such as this at the dead of night is not really advised. Wildlife does tend to make an appearance, and of course the last thing you want to end up doing is upsetting the natural residents of this beautiful location. Speeds were kept low until we were out of the woods, so to speak, but nothing could prevent the sheer number of flying insects that lost their lives in the line of duty. The swarm of not-quite-locusts was almost biblical in their plague-rivalling presence, akin to flying through a small, dark cloud.

The road to Lahugala was sparsely populated, but consisted of a mixture of uphill and downhill terrain. Conscious of my need to save yet more fuel, I decided to experiment with shifting into neutral for the downhill sections, preventing the regenerative braking system from harvesting my momentum. I’m not sure if it worked, as at times, it required more engine revs to get back up to speed, but the �-speed gearbox did its best at upshifting when put into eco-mode.

By the time we got to Lahugala, daylight had broken, and our hopes of getting a sunrise shot at Arugam Bay were melting in the morning light. We pass through wooded, but notoriously elephant-invested stretches of road, with scenery

ONE TANK

Gentle acceleration,

smart coasting and

traveling when traffic

was less prevalent

were the secrets to

achieving 21km/l. Such a

figure is certainly

achievable under the

right circumstances, but

bear in mind that the

van was kept light. Our

back-up van carried

our luggage and

equipment, while

drivers Sylvester and

Harin did impromptu

recces of our route

before bringing up the

rear when we thought

we were going to

splutter and die in the

middle of the road.

SO, HOW DID WE DO IT?The van did the entire trip, with Sam behind the wheel, but back-up was never far behind.


on either side of us that looked like it could’ve been lifted straight from one of Constable’s paintings. Barely half an hour later, we’re back near the coastline, having driven through vastly flat expanses filled with paddy. It’s this incredible kaleidoscope of views and scenery that makes me conclude that waking up at �AM to witness one of the most beautiful parts of the country was actually a small price to pay. Every single moment is just achingly beautiful.

Now firmly on the east coast, we pass areas that were utterly devastated by the �� Tsunami. It may have been thirteen years ago, but you still catch the odd glimpse of a desolate, heavily damaged house. It makes you wonder whether there’s simply no one left to claim them.

We reach Trincomalee by �PM. It’s been a long, but beautiful drive up the east coast. Each town has its own unique charm to it, with architecture and scenes that differ completely from what you’d see anywhere else on the island. It’s clear that this is less of a challenge and more of an adventure. Averaging a much more target-friendly ��.�km/l, the fuel gauge has dipped below

the halfway mark. Having completed ��km (over half way of our journey), suddenly I’m quietly confident that we just might be able to do this. It’ll be touch and go, but we’re not out of it yet!

DAY THREEToday is the day. Not only is it the most gruelling of the three days, with �� hours planned road-time, it’s also when we find out just how ambitious we’ve been in trying to get a van around the island on one tank of fuel. The estimated range readout that predicted we’d have failed by now had turned out to be very pessimistic at first. For most of the trip, it had stayed at the estimated “��km left in tank” prediction, but passing Batticaloa yesterday, that figure had been steadily dropping. Now, it says ��km remaining. Fingers crossed, it’s still optimistic…

We leave Trinco at the slightly saner time of �AM, with a breakfast destination of Jaffna. On our way, we’d be passing through areas that witnessed some of the bloodiest conflicts in history. Many of the scars of war have (at least superficially) healed in the years that have passed,

and the ease of passage through these once heavily fought areas is something that wasn’t unexpected, but was heartening in its own way.

Virtually every road we take is beautifully smooth tarmac. The A� is as arrow-straight as can be imagined, and it’s hard to resist the temptation to gun it. But, with speed limits strictly enforced, even if it weren’t for the question of economy, we’d still have to settle at the cruise-control limited speed of ��kmph. Post-breakfast nap done and Jaffna explored to the best of our ability without sacrificing too many miles, we head back down the same route we came.

So far, the weather had largely been kind to us, with the odd light shower springing itself casually upon us. That all changed as we set sights for Anuradhapura, with the heavens opening in a torrid storm that would put the great deluge to shame. As we piloted our small ark down the rapid-like roads nearing Vavuniya, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the fuel warning light pops up, with a prominent message telling me that I’m now running on reserve… Running on reserve? The tank is only a quarter full. I had so

“We’re stopping for nothing, and instruct the back-up van to

clear a path”

Thanks to DIMO, Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts, Antyra and the Sri Lanka Police


ONE TANK

far assumed that the reserve limit would be when I ran the van’s tank down closer to empty. I’ve often played chicken with my fuel tank warnings and have generally won…most times. That’s under the assumption that empty actually means there’s a bit left. But, not all cars give you that little bit of grace.

Things are not helped by road construction, and all of a sudden, despite having the A/C on, I’m beginning to break into a bit of a sweat. We reach Anuradhapura, with about �/�th of a tank showing on the fuel meter. Traffic has been bad, and my fuel economy for this trip has “only” been ��.�km/l. Heavy rains and roadworks have meant that we’re way behind schedule, and the last few kilometres were particularly challenging fatigue-wise. It was �PM, and I had to get some shut-eye. An underground carpark provides shelter, and the rear of the van becomes a rather uncomfortable mattress.

By �PM, we’re back on the road, but the mood inside the van has taken a noticeable turn for the worst. I’m alert, but the rains haven’t stopped. Keeping an eye on the real-time fuel economy

meter has been a constant element of this trip, but I find my eye focusing on it more often now. It’s at times like this that you learn to appreciate some of the Vito’s luxuries, such as the automatic wipers and intelligent lighting. It doesn’t sound like much, but with half my brain focused on ways of conserving fuel, auto-dipping lights are a godsend.

But none of it is enough. By the time we reach the outskirts of Kurunegala, the meter has firmly rested itself at �. The Ed-in-Chief calls to check on our progress, and I update him with the sad news. According to my best estimates, we’ll be lucky to make it to Giriulla. It was a valiant attempt, we conclude, but a rather optimistic one. Finally, the A/C goes off. The goal now is to get it as close to Colombo as possible. Meanwhile, across the island, a fuel supply crisis has been unfolding. Somewhat poetically, the Vito sails past long lines of vehicles, their owners waiting to panic-buy whatever petrol is left. With permission from the manufacturer to run the Vito till it coughs and dies, we have a couple of jerry cans on us, for the eventually.

But, it doesn’t cough. It doesn’t die. It continues past Giriulla…and Minuwanagoda, and Kotugoda, and Ekala and now past Ja-Ela. Colombo is just in sight, but we opt not to take the E�� Expressway, lest we become stranded on the hard shoulder. By now, none of us can believe we’ve made it this far. I set each town as a mental goal, an achievement to be proud of if we stop there, but the van keeps going. Was that a stutter? No, it was the lumpy change between �nd and �rd. We’re past Wattala, and the Colombo �� finish line is in sight. We’re stopping for nothing, and we instruct the backup van to clear a path for us so we can keep the momentum up through the last few intersections. We can do this.

We did do it. It’s �AM, and there’s only a security guard at the Mercedes-Benz showroom, but after �� hours on the road today, a triumphant cacophony from the Vito’s little horn is the best celebration ritual we could think of. Shattered and exhausted, we decide to find out just how much we had left in the tank…about ��ml.

�,��km. �� hours of driving. � tank. Done.


R O S E M E Y E R


…and it isn’t a Bugatti or Hennessey-Lotus lovechild.

It’s an 80-year-old Audi. This is its driver’s story...

WORDS: OLLIE KEW / PHOTOGRAPHY: DENNIS NOTEN

THE FASTEST ROAD CAR EVER

BEYOND THE LIMIT

D E C E M B E R � � � � � T O P G E A R . C O M0 74

R O S E M E Y E R

on American soil, which annoyed the dark undercurrent to this story: the Nazis. Hitler was obsessed with establishing a resurgent Germany as a scientific, engineering and sporting might, and while American athlete Jesse Owens and a British steam locomotive humiliated different strands of that plan, the Nazis seized upon newly constructed autobahns as another PR coup. If Germany couldn’t build the fastest automobile on Earth, it would instead showcase its peerless motorway network by creating the undisputed fastest road car.

Bernd Rosemeyer found himself spearheading one half of this titanic battle after a meteoric rise through motorsport, despite the fact he wasn’t what you’d call a model National Socialist. Quite the opposite, actually. All German racing drivers were “given” honorary membership of the SS, but well-liked Rosemeyer was let off wearing the uniform and allegedly mocked high-ranking Nazis on the podiums of his Grand Prix victories. This precocious young man who’d won over one of the most eligible women in Germany – national sweetheart and world-renowned aviator Elly Beinhorn, who’d flown around the globe aged just �� – was more interested in racing than politics.

The son of a mechanic, Rosemeyer was born in Lingen in north-west Germany on �� January ��. This is where I’m headed next – a four-hour haul on the autobahn with snapper Dennis uncomfortably astride his camera bag. I’d like to slash the journey time, but the modern reality of derestricted roads isn’t a utopia of wailing revs and three-miles-a-minute speed. Too. Many. Roadworks. All maintaining Germany’s reputation for immaculate asphalt. Brief sprints, dropping a handful of gears on the R�’s left paddle, rousing the V�� and fast-forwarding the monotony are moments to savour. Outrun the baleful song chasing us along, ignore the speedo, pray that trucker is checking his mirrors… squeeze the ceramic brakes, activate cruise control, watch the arrival time creep back in the wrong direction.

Just like the roadside memorial, hometown tributes are subtle. Aiming to park the Spyder directly under the “Bernd Rosemeyer Strasse” roadsign, I inflict the dregs of my GCSE German on the taxi driver who’s resting in the balmy evening sun awaiting the next commuter train of fares.

“Bitte, sprechen sie Englisch?” He frowns. “Of course.” “Er, can I park das auto under der Rosemeyer sign… danke?”

Four rings emblazoned on its nose, the furious machine scythes down the autobahn. Its young driver has tunnel vision again. A great rival has described the road “like a narrow white band, the bridges like tiny black holes ahead. It’s

a matter of threading the car through them.” More than five hundred horsepower rages behind his head as a gale-force headwind pummels the windscreen. Ninety seconds ago, all was still. Now, a kilometre disappears under the ��-inch tyres in �.�� seconds. A timing line beckons the four rings, but will remain unbroken. Bernd Rosemeyer won’t bask in the glory of being the fastest man on-road.

This isn’t really a story about taking a �.�-litre Audi R� V�� Spyder to Germany’s fastest roads. It’s the story of the individual who set the benchmark. If we’re going to consider road cars capable of �� miles an hour, it’s worth remembering the maverick racer who came closer to that speed on a public highway than anyone since.

The memorial to a national hero who lost his life shortly after reaching ��mph in the beautiful and terrifying Auto Union Stromlinienwagen is poignantly unassuming. You’ll find it �� yards from a layby next to the southbound A� motorway, �� minutes below Frankfurt. Venture past the picnic tables, and between the trees there’s a pocket of history. I park the R� and wander through the woods.

A path has been worn through the undergrowth to the spot where an engraved stone pillar and wooden plaque commemorate Germany’s “Silver Comet”. It’s hidden enough that those who are just stopping to dump litter and wring out children will never know it’s there, but not so secluded to have been forgotten. The bedding plants are tidy, the grass tended. Oblivious traffic roars past feet from the Armco, but here, it’s peaceful. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that arriving here is eerie, because it’s the first time Bernd Rosemeyer has ceased to be a dashing face smiling back from a history book and become a person who really lived, set sensational records, and died yards from this spot almost �� years ago.

The Thirties was the decade of speed. Between �� and the start of World War II, the land-speed record was increased �� times, upped relentlessly from ��mph to ��mph. This arms race was played out between Brits, mostly

Bernd the poster boy.

“Holder of two new world

and 13 class records”


“Derestricted roads aren’t a utopia of

wailing revs...”


This isn’t just the best car Audi makes. I’ve been lucky enough to drive the Honda NSX, McLaren’s Sport Series, and the evergreen Porsche �� Turbo, but for me the R� is still the most complete super sports car on the planet. It has pace, comfort, and savagery. It has a forgiving, gratifying, endlessly tweakable personality and one of the very finest engines of my lifetime. And you want the Spyder. No, really, I know the image is a bit GTA: Vice City, but to be intimate with that soulful V��, giving its operatic all to a world-class paddleshift gearbox and quattro drive at its absolute peak is life-affirming, infectious, addictive. We’ll miss these engines when they’re gone, and the R�’s is one of the last atmospheric �,��rpm sopranos left standing. It elevates the whole experience, so much so I’m not fussed the “dynamic steering” doesn’t have the dexterity a ��S pours back at you. It’s not perfect, but little worth falling in love with ever is.

This isn’t the new, more powerful R� V�� Plus. It’s the standard version, with “just” ��bhp – almost exactly as powerful as the �.�-litre, V��-powered Stromlinienwagen in which Rosemeyer went head-to-head against Mercedes’s Rudolf Caracciola in �� and ��, trading speed records through the Rekordwoche (Record Week) and beyond. The Auto

His expression cracks from quizzically territorial to a broad grin, and he demands we visit the Italian restaurant across the street, its walls covered with pictures of Lingen’s fastest son. My new best friend – Oliver, it turns out – also suggests a detour. “Go �� metres to the turning circle (roundabout doesn’t translate), take the first road, and you will find Rosemeyer’s garage. They prepared all his racing cars there.” I’m agog. “Wow, it’s still there, after all these years?” “Nein, it was knocked down years ago. It’s now a Lidl.” Scheisse.

The odour of bolognese und parmesan is tempting as we investigate the archive photo tip-off, but we’ve lingered too long in Lingen, especially after a €�� fill-up of ��RON fuel and limited-edition Haribo. I like Germany. Our hotel’s kitchen shuts at ��pm, and the R�’s nav says we won’t arrive until twenty past. But it’s an exquisite evening, and the blazing sunset bathes the R�’s crackling tailpipes in an afterburner glow. The car is mighty cross-country. We arrive on the correct street at �.��pm. I love Germany. I love the R�. The street is closed for emergency roadworks, the diversion is to Godforzäken via Narnia, and the only restaurant still serving by the time we arrive just after midnight has a McBloody enormous, rowdy queue. I hate Germany. I still love the R�.

Come for the pasta,

stay for the gallery of

Mr & Mrs Rosemeyer

Car side panels warped,

Rosemeyer accelerates

into his fateful final run


“Rosemeyer thought all cars handled

this waywardly”

Union was a tuned Formula One car wearing streamlined dress (hence the literal name), and Bernd was one of the few racers who’d mastered this terrifying heavyweight’s evil handling. Because he’d grown up a talented motorcycle racer, and hadn’t taken four-wheeled racing seriously until the mid-Thirties, he thought all cars handled this waywardly.

Bernd won five GPs between �� and ��, and the Vanderbilt Cup in the US in �� (he stored a portion of his $��,�� prize money in a New York bank account, eyeing sanctuary if war broke out.) Meanwhile, his record runs were becoming ever more dangerous. On �� June ��, crosswinds twice pushed his car onto the grass at speed. On �� October, he was the first man ever past ��kph (��mph) on a public road. The next day, an engine failure caused fumes to fill the cockpit at over ��mph. Rosemeyer kept the car on the road, brought it home safely, and had to be lifted unconscious from the cockpit. On �� October, when the repaired car broke down, he swapped into an open-wheeled, �.�-litre racer and set flying-start records over �km and �� miles. Yes, a day after nearly being suffocated at velocities only pilots knew, Rosemeyer got three world records. As Rekordwoche drew to a close, he was the fastest man on-road, and a German hero.

Mercedes, scorned for its failure to overthrow Auto Union during an event of national pride, reworked the aerodynamics of Caracciola’s car over Christmas, and did away with drag-creating radiators, in their stead installing an ice tank to cool the W�� Rekordwagen’s ��bhp supercharged V��. By the turn of ��, Merc was ready to race again, and Auto Union had a problem on its hands. Due to the cost of hiring the autobahn for complete closure (during �� the road was only shut in one direction, and Rosemeyer made a speed run through traffic – the mind boggles) Auto Union and Mercedes kept a gentleman’s agreement to split the Reichsmarks, and share the empty straights.

The rebuilt AU wore deeper side skirts and its own ice system that bought �� seconds of running before the engine overheated. Rosemeyer was bolted in under a streamlined shroud. If the V�� detonated, he would have no escape. The ice tank upset the car’s centre of gravity, and the skirting made the Stromlinienwagen super-slippery but dramatically unstable. Hasty wind-tunnel testing showed just a six-degree deviation from the straight-ahead was unrecoverable, but there was no time for a redesign. On �� January ��, the road from Frankfurt to Darmstadt was closed for the showdown.

R O S E M E Y E R


LIVED FAST, DIED TOO YOUNGa) Bernd and Elly, king and queen of

German land speed and air exploration

in the Thirties b) Auto Union’s star

driver at speed on the AVUS banking

in 1937 c) Rosemeyer – in shirt and tie

– waits to be enclosed into the mighty

Stromlinienwagen d) Donington, 1937.

Rosemeyer wins the 80-lap race, sets the

fastest lap and cements his reputation

as a gifted Grand Prix racer e) Tyre

tracks after the 28 January accident.

Rosemeyer earlier remarked: “The joints

in the concrete surface felt like blows,

which made the car resonate, but this

disappears over 240mph...”


R O S E M E Y E R

a faint pulse, which quickly ceased. Auto Union never attempted a speed record again. Hitler turned the driver’s funeral into a political rally. Rosemeyer’s wife was disgusted. Elly and her ��-week-old son Bernd Jnr survived the coming war. Caracciola, angered by what he saw as unnecessary risks robbing a young life remarked afterwards: “Bernd literally did not know fear. Somehow I never thought a long life was on the cards for him.”

What fascinates me about this story is that even in ��, the speeds make for ludicrous reading. Two-hundred-and-sixty-odd miles per hour. That’s still in the rarefied atmosphere where few cars have dared to breathe. The fastest I manage in the R� the following day is ��mph, while the Spyder charges my phone, plays my music, and air conditions my pinned right foot. Four rings emblazoned on its nose, the furious machine scythes down the autobahn, its young driver remembering speed didn’t always come easily.

It was bitingly cold. Rosemeyer’s mechanics didn’t add ice to the car’s cooling tank – they just pumped in water at the ambient temperature. At �am, on his first run, Caracciola’s Mercedes tore through the flying kilometre in �.� seconds, and the second pass averaged out at ��.�mph. Rosemeyer’s response was a ��.�mph test run. “Passing under bridges the driver receives a terrific blow to the chest”, he said. “Because the car is pushing air trapped under the bridge aside. When you go under a bridge, for a split-second the engine noise disappears and then returns like a thunderclap when you’re through.”

What he couldn’t see from his cramped cockpit was the buckled panels along the car’s flanks, warped by the monumental ground effect the car was generating at top speed. Nearly �� years before Lotus, Auto Union had inadvertently created the world’s first downforce-critical car, but the forces being inflicted on this infant technology weren’t understood. Bernd told his mechanic “I’ll only try once more to approach [the record]”, and accelerated south. His previous pass had been �.��sec faster than the Mercedes – at ��mph. Repeating that to seal the higher average would steal the glory.

The official explanation of what happened next was a gust of wind in a clearing unsettling the car. It’s also possible the bodywork simply disintegrated under massive aerodynamic stress. After the windshield was found intact away from the wreck, it was suggested it’d detached at speed, causing Rosemeyer to flinch and lose control. Snaking tyre tracks betrayed that, even over ��mph, the ��-year old fought to save his swerving car left then right before it hit a grass bank and somersaulted twice, slicing through several trees and a stone milepost. Bernd was found �� metres from the road. There wasn’t a mark on him; his arms lay resolutely by his sides. When team physician Dr Gläser reached him, he found

A rare moment of

peace and quiet for the

glorious-sounding R8


THE ROUNDUP

This job is spectacularly good at creating moments that remain with you for the rest of your life. Some are grander than others, of course, and some markedly

sportier. In the search for the ideal balance between driving excitement and quiet pleasure (really, we do try), we’ve hurtled across race and go-kart tracks, busy two-lane highways, and the country’s serpentine roads. Here are some of TG’s

favorite local stories that graced our pages.

BEST OF THE BEST

WORDS: V ISHVA AHANGAMA

A collection of our best stories and photos


N E W O L D W H E E L S

M E TA L M E TA M O R P H O S E S

1.

2.

How could we pass up the opportunity to meet three vintage Alfa’s in the metal? We couldn’t. Our meeting with Dayan – a medium-build, reserved stockbroker and managing director of the Italian Thoroughbred Motor Company (ITMC) – and his collection of Giorgetto Giugiaro’s finest was everything we hoped it would be. The mostly-resto, partly-mod Giulia – with its downward-sloping bonnet, wraparound windshield and rear window with the descending rear roof – is one of my favorite cars. It’s not often you get to meet one of your heroes – especially one you’ve been dying to meet all your life.

This is the story that made us appreciate local machines with a potency for sinister thrills. Just sitting in either of these cars felt almost dangerous, and these two works of angry art would be better served occupying spots in the Marvel Comics universe. Rough? You bet. But, they faithfully continue our tradition of modified machines with an arrogance to flip off far more expensive rides.

It was absolutely necessary to feature the new Giulia QV – a machine that has carved a prominent niche for itself in my all-time, all-league, all-star hall of fame of immortal automobiles – and track down some of its ancestors for a one-of-a-kind bloodline story. These cars are ultimately fantasies for most, but they are – in terms of price, performance and practicality – kinetic works of art that also convey the country’s motoring ethos: We don’t do subtle. Also, please note that Gishanka somehow managed to quote Eminem in the drive review.

“It is ironic that, �� years ago, Alfa Romeo invited Enzo Ferrari to use its cars and form what is today called Scuderia Ferrari. Alfa Romeo was the first step for young Enzo. Today, the company that Enzo founded has helped develop this all-new Alfa Giulia. Hang on to that fact and consider it for a moment. Cars don’t get any better fettling than Ferrari having a hand in it.”

Dayan Fernando

A visit to the island’s most serious Alfisti at the coolest resto(mod) facility promptly blows our collective minds

Man’s attempt at playing God of the wheel yields the rebirth of a Ford Capri and a Toyota Celica TA22

B L O O D L I N EWe track down some of the new Alfa Romeo Giulia QV’s relatives for a family get-together

3.

S A M E C AT N E W S T R I P E S

W H E N I N L I T T L E R O M E

4.

5.

The Jaguar F-Type’s presence meddles with the brain. Menacingly sleek and beautiful, its contours (especially in the blue and white of this Project �-inspired livery) make it seem at home on a track rather than on Colombo’s streets. Even though cars are ultimately about driving (and Priyanga did LOVE the time he spent in it!), creations like this Jag are the four-wheel equivalent of automotive art — much better appreciated when they are standing still.

I visited my hometown to (finally) drive the �� Boxster – a car whose main purpose in life is to provide a sensation akin to flying a few feet above ground. I also managed to get my hands on a modern Camaro, a pony not that different from its predecessors in how it raises the hairs on the back of your neck with its freakish power. For sheer panache, almost nothing on earth beats good old American muscle prowling through Negombo on a warm Wednesday morning.

We come face to face with the new big cat in our urban jungle. But does it have what it takes to be a new Jag

We visit two marvels that reignited enthusiasm for drop-top sports coupes and American muscle cars

BEST OF THE BEST


C O L O M B O B Y C A M A R O6.

With fast ponies so deeply embedded in my petrolhead veins from an early age, the prospect of featuring two more eaters of Mustangs was almost too good to be true. These monsters have been touchstone moments throughout my love affair with cars; and with the two cars in this feature, the Chevy boys clearly wanted to make a BIG statement. So, we set about putting together another legendary shoot. After a modern retro enactment across Colombo, one thing became very clear: Even after all these years, these kings still rule the streets.

“Out on Colombo roads, the two big Camaros being driven in tandem was a sight to behold. These two dwarfed everything they came across on the road that day. A glimpse of the duo bearing down upon them was enough to make fellow road users hastily move out of the way. They made such imposing figures that tuk-tuks and bikes alike, who usually have no regard for personal space, rather uncharacteristically kept their distance.”

Priyanga Samaratunga

They’re unsophisticated and absolutely absurd; so why can’t you stop staring at these Chevrolets?

Just when I thought a shiny new SUV had more than enough oomph to chug you up the social ladder, Sam brings devastating news. There’s a big, bad new boomer roaming the streets. Meet Stuttgart’s new Mad Max machine. Meet the closest thing to a street-legal sports car in SUV clothing. Meet �� bhp and �� Nm of smile-inducing metal. Meet the Porsche Macan Turbo Performance Pack. Thanks to the trusting chaps at Porsche, who kindly handed over the keys for a long drive across Singapore, Sam tells us about fearsome speed and thoroughbred sounds in an unforgettable back-road dance partner.

“It’s rather surreal how good the Macan PP masks it’s ��-beating speed around town. It almost feels as if it’s most comfortable pottering around, navigating in and out of multi-storey car parks, and generally looking good outside the fanciest buildings in the region. True to the Porsche way, the steering is never overly light, nor is the throttle twitchy. You’d expect to be on tenterhooks each time you decide to deploy even half of what’s given, but instead Mr. Hyde waits patiently at the last quarter of the throttle pedal. But, when awoken, all hell breaks loose.”

Sam D Smith

S I N G A P O R E S L I N GAdventures abroad continue—this time behind the wheel of the fastest small SUV from Stuttgart

7.

BEST OF THE BEST


R A L LY - B R E D R O A D WA R R I O R

T H E O R I G I N A L S I N

A H O T - H AT C H A N D A H AT C H - L E S S

8.

10.

9.

Often, there’s greater joy to be found at the less-expensive end of the performance spectrum, in cars that deliver pure, simple and accessible thrills for mere mortals like us. Subaru’s STI �, close to fifteen years old now, is still amazing in concept, capability and exploitable performance. Ishraq’s feature explained why driving this rally-bred race legend – in this age of the perfect, the seamless and the soulless – has to count for something. Here’s to the underdogs!

Honda’s Type R has always been a bad boy’s car, and everyone knows it. Just being seen at the wheel of such a thing is prima facie evidence that you’re a regular traveler beyond the borders of good sense. For our local contribution for a celebration of Honda’s supercar-slaying machine, Ishraq brought together an FD� and an Integra Type R DC� for an unforgettable track day in Pannala. Several notches down from the physical burden and financial jeopardy of supercar ownership, these precision-built speed demons are still as menacing as they were back when they were new.

“As I sit on the steps adjoining the start-finish line at Pannala and gaze upon the two cars I've had a crack at today, I can’t help but childishly think “Golly, I'm lucky”. Two iconic machines that symbolise the beginning and end of the normally aspirated Type R era. Cars built with soul and passion, engineered to ignite every human sense. I only wish I could wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. If I had to pick my groundhog day, this would be it.”

Ishraq Wahab

If you’ve ever imagined owning a car whose emergence from the dark recesses of a garage compares to opening a hangar door and rolling out an aircraft into the glow of warm tropical sunlight, the little marvel in this story would have made you ecstatic. Sam’s feature on the Peugeot �� GTI and its day in the sun on a go-kart track proves that, when it comes to unadulterated fun, this legend still has it. And then some.

Three Subarus in a closed track – You can’t contain these beasts!

Speed tests are a thing of the past with Honda’s new Type R taking its cues from masterpieces of the past

What do you get when you pitch a full-sized car against a go-kart on a karting track? A thrashing. That’s what

THE A TEAM


Call them what you want – game changers, best of the best, cream of the crop – these are the 10 cars that rocked our world over the last 299 issues, together for the first time...

WORDS: JACK RIX / PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK RICCIONI & ROWAN HORNCASTLE

TEAM


G A M E C H A N G E R S



Alayby on the B��, Exmoor. Evidence of a deluge fills ankle-deep, metre-wide holes all around us, but this morning the driving gods are smiling, for the hills are dripping in sunlight and the tourists are still in bed. Peace, beauty, total silence... all are

shattered as Paul Horrell comes barrelling towards us in a Rolls-Royce Phantom, splashes to a stop and screeches that after his four-hour voyage from north London he’s “starting to rethink his stance on the redistribution of wealth”. Don’t blame him – it looks utterly magnificent, even on ��s with white-wall tyres.

Others follow. An Ariel Nomad pedalled by Ollie Marriage, the world’s most waterproof man, a �� Mini Cooper that Elliott Webb declares the rattliest thing in existence, and a Discovery � in full G� Challenge spec that parks jauntily on the grass verge. Because it can. Then a Cayman GT� and Ferrari �� Speciale: the two best-sounding cars here, both denied their big entrance by the chin-scraping geography of our potholed car park. Lurking at the back is an Audi RS� Avant, VW Golf GTI MkV and Impreza RB�. And then the trailer sitting conspicuously in the corner opens and regurgitates an immaculate £�.�m Bugatti Veyron. Right now, it looks like the inaugural meeting of an unusually inclusive owners’ club: “If it’s got four wheels, come on down!”

This is not a comparison test. How could it be? These are the incomparables, the cars that over the past �� years have established themselves as the high-water marks in their respective genres. Just being here is a big win. But there are still some questions to be answered, because each earned its place at this table based on memories that were forged in period, against a backdrop of its contemporaries. Times and expectations have ploughed on. Are they really as good as we all remember, or have our inner accelerometers and gyros been forever tarnished by the capability of modern cars? Let’s find out.

Given I was doing my A-levels in �� when the original BMW Mini launched, Tom Ford fills me in: “We first got hold of a pre-production car, I remember driving it around central London and it got more attention than a bright-yellow Lamborghini – people were stepping out into the road, flagging it down and shouting at it.” Fair to say the excitement surrounding it has died down a bit �� years on. Steve Dobie, who’s clearly a bit spoilt, points at it sitting forlornly in the corner of the car park: “It’s like an actual person’s car.”

But to judge the Mini Cooper by its bubbling paintwork, modest ��bhp Chrysler engine and interior made of Kit-Kat wrappers would be to miss the point entirely, because the way it drives and moves beneath you is still so sweet compared to today’s harder-riding and heavier

incarnation. Paul, who currently runs a “gumshoed” Cooper S long termer, sums it up: “It was always derided as a poor supermini because it had poor rear-seat and boot room. But that was because it wasn’t a supermini at all, it was a sports coupe and they packaged the driver (lovely, low, straight-ahead position) and the rear multi-link suspension, and then

wedged the rear bench and luggage into what space remained.”

No such issues for the Audi RS� Avant. I took one of these from London to Marbella and back when it launched in �� and still regard it one of my great drives. But what I remember as crushing acceleration from the ��bhp �.�-litre V�, deployed liberally at every toll booth, is several clicks tamer these days. And I’m not the only one with warped recall – Ollie M remembers the RS� for its “engine and ride quality. But if that’s ride quality, things have moved on a lot, and the engine isn’t as noisy as I’d like either.” Paul goes one step further: “That car has just one problem: it has no suspension.”

But the handsome Audi isn’t without a fan club. Ollie Kew is “shamelessly in love with the stance, noise, image”, and doesn’t think Audi will ever top it, while Steve had one of his “all-time great drives on the way home in this in the wet. I drove it like a big V� hot hatch, which is what it feels like, given how narrow and manageable it is compared with modern sports saloons.”

If you want a real hot hatch, though, it’s got to be a Golf GTI, right? In truth we agonised over this one – could a Golf GTI MkV really stand up against the depth of talent that the past �� years has produced? Is it too conservative, too old, too underpowered? Nope. Drive it for �� metres and it’s clear this is emphatically the right choice, because in a world where modern hot hatches can feel too flat and locked down, it breathes with the road, offers adjustability and reveals itself more the harder you push it. This low-mileage example also felt outrageously tight. Honestly, it could have rolled out of the factory days before.

“On the little B-roads to and from our location, it has the perfect amount of power and grip to enjoy yourself without being a knob,” says Steve, our unofficial hot-hatch correspondent and resident potty mouth. “Not the most exciting hatch of the past �� years, but surely the best rounded.” Ollie Kew concurs: “I never found myself rooting around for an adaptive-damper button or wishing it had a front diff or a RevoKnuckle or anything else that’s now deemed a must-have. It just feels spot-on.”

Ollie M offers a bleak outlook on our hot-hatch future: “I wish VW could find a way to improve on the MkV, although that might be an impossibility.”

Consider this an early tip-off – with good examples now going for as little as £�k, we must go forth and buy them all immediately.


Just out of shot, a bootful

of luggage and two dogs.

Yep, the RS4 is that useful

From pro journalist to

giggling school boy... all

it takes is a Bugatti Veyron

“This is not a comparison test. How could it be? These

are the incomparables”



“Magical controls, perfect driving position, the GT4 is a wondrous thing to operate”


While you’re at it, it might be worth checking out Impreza RB�s, too. This, one of just �� special editions and polished to within an inch of its life, is insured for just £��,�� – if you’re not fussy, you can have one for a lot less. The reaction when we pop the bonnet is priceless. Snapper Mark Riccioni, a man with a dark past, can’t help himself and starts pointing and talking: “Forged dump valve, HKS Super Drager exhaust, carbon strut brace, aluminium pulley cover, Uniroyal tyres... nice.” It looks a lot like Devon around here, but apparently we’re in a Sainsbury’s car park in Staines.

Once we stop staring and start driving, Tom goes all misty eyed: “The RB� got me and Charlie reminiscing about when we were younger and did a version of the Impreza vs Evo test every other month. We loved it.”



J A C K R I XFERRARI 458

SPECIALE

Great spec, the

greatest engine,

and just feels

more special

than anything

here. Now pass

my branded

baseball cap

P A U L H O R R E L LPORSCHE

CAYMAN GT4

The Phantom

was of course

wonderful, what

extraordinary

stateliness.

Golf, yes, lovely.

But the Cayman,

oh, Lord

T O M H A R R I S O NBUGATTI VEYRON

As an example of

what’s possible

when the

most talented

automotive

engineers are told

to “make it so” – the

Bug is unmatched

O L L I E M A R R I A G EPORSCHE

CAYMAN GT4

Perhaps the

best driving

device that I’ve

ever driven (if

it had shorter

gearing). I like

driving. I’ll have

the Cayman

OLLIE KEWAUDI RS4 AVANT

Less nose-heavy

than a new RS5.

I’m shamelessly

in love with the

stance, noise,

image. Don’t

think Audi will

ever top it

If you had to choose oneAnd you can’t just have the Veyron and sell it to buy all the others...

Ollie M reckons it’s hamstrung by its crap tyres, but “flows well” and Rowan Horncastle cuts through the road-test talk and tells it like it is: “The Subaru made me live out my childhood dreams. Didn’t drive as well as I’d hoped, but that didn’t matter as it had a PHAT exhaust and went blub blub blub.”

Similarly, the Discovery � transcends normal road-test analysis, because it’s just such a brilliantly useful thing. OK, so the G� Challenge spec is a bit overkill, but beneath the winch, roof rack and spotlights, the interior and powertrain is perfectly standard. And we chose the �, before it was facelifted with a fancier grille and lights, for a reason. Over to Charlie Turner: “I remember when we first photographed the Disco. It was such a game changer, the perfect piece of utilitarian car design, with the capability to tackle anything. To me, it looks as contemporary now as it did back then.” In fact, so moved by the Disco was the editor-in-chief that he

phoned the owner and asked how much. “Not for sale,” came the reply.

Paul drove the Disco home and “arrived very relaxed. It goes down the road rather like the Phantom. Same loping gait.” High praise indeed, and yet more from Ollie M: “It has the delightfully “utility” vibe that Land Rover has now largely abandoned – it’s halfway to being a Defender in the best possible way.”

If muddy fields are your thing, may I suggest an Ariel Nomad? Yes it’s missing five seats and a bodyshell over a Discovery, but one jaunt down a dirt path, one blast down a B-road and you won’t care, not even if it’s pouring and you’re soaked to the underpants. Lightweights have a tendency to take themselves a bit seriously, to be a bit uncompromising in their pursuit of putting the visceral ahead of the practical, but >>


C H A R L I E T U R N E RROLLS-ROYCE

PHANTOM

It’s impossible to

choose one, but

for the sheer

incongruous

amusement of

punting it down

a B-road, I’d

take the Rolls

S T E V E D O B I EFERRARI 458

SPECIALE

The Golf GTI

was a proper

hero, but

performance

cars are about

theatre, and

nothing delivers

like the Speciale

R O WA N HPORSCHE

CAYMAN GT4

If I could have

one, I’d go to

Sharkwerks for

an exhaust and

shorter gearing.

I’d probably

crash, but die

a happy man

T O M F O R DARIEL NOMAD

Because I care

very little about

going fast these

days, and the

Nomad makes

me grin like

I’m heavily

medicated

“Otherworldly as it was in 2005, the game

has moved on”


Ground clearance? We’ve

got a whip stick and

spotlights, we’ll be fiiiiine

Ollie off to find a nearby

gravel rally stage and live

out his WRC fantasies

What happened next?

Answers on a postcard

to the usual address


Specs

B U G AT T I V E Y R O N 1 6 . 4Produced: 2005–2011

Engine: 8.0-litre W16 quad-turbo, 987bhp, 922lb ft

Performance: 0–60mph in 2.4 seconds, 253mph

Transmission: 7spd dual-clutch, AWDEconomy: 11mpg, 596g/km

Weight: 1,888kg

H Y P E R C A R

R O L L S - R O Y C E P H A N T O M V I IProduced: 2003–2016 Engine: 6.75-litre V12,

453bhp, 531lb ftPerformance: 0–62mph in 5.7 seconds, 149mph

Transmission: 8spd auto, RWDEconomy: 19mpg, 347g/km

Weight: 2,560kg

L U X U R Y

A U D I R S 4 B 7Produced: 2006–2008

Engine: 4.2-litre V8, 414bhp, 317lb ft Performance: 0–62mph in 4.6 seconds, 155mph

Transmission: 6spd manual, AWD

Economy: 25mpg, 265g/km Weight: 1,720kg

U S E F U L

M I N I C O O P E RProduced: 2001–2006

Engine: 1.6-litre 4cyl 114bhp, 110lb ft


Transmission: 5spd manual, FWDEconomy: 42.0mpg, 163g/km

Weight: 1,150kg

S M A L L C A R

S U B A R U I M P R E Z A R B 5Produced: 1999

Engine: 2.0-litre boxer, 237bhp, 258lb ft


Transmission: 5spd manual, 4WDEconomy: 28mpg, 239g/km

Weight: 1,235kg

SUPERSALOON

F E R R A R I 4 5 8 S P E C I A L EProduced: 2013–2015

Engine: 4.5-litre V8, 597bhp, 398lb ftPerformance: 0–62mph in 3.0 seconds, 202mph

Transmission: 7spd dual-clutch, RWD

Economy: 23.9mpg, 275g/km Weight: 1,451kg

S U P E R C A R

P O R S C H E C AY M A N G T4Produced: 2015

Engine: 3.8-litre flat-six, 380bhp, 309lb ft


Transmission: 6spd manual, RWDEconomy: 27.4mpg, 238g/km (est)

Weight: 1,340kg

S P O R T S C A R

V W G O L F G T I MkVProduced: 2005–2008

Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo, 197bhp, 207lb ft


Transmission: 6spd manual, FWDEconomy: 35mpg, 189g/km

Weight: 1,328kg

H O T H AT C H

A R I E L N O M A DProduced: 2015–present

Engine: 2.4-litre 4cyl, 235bhp, 221lb ft Performance: 0–62mph in 3.4 seconds, 125mph


Economy: 25mpg, 265g/km Weight: 670kg

LIGHTWEIGHT

L A N D R O V E R D I S C O V E R Y 3 Produced: 2004–2009

Engine: 2.7-litre V6 turbo diesel, 188bhp, 324lb ft


Transmission: 6spd auto, 4WDEconomy: 27mpg, 270g/km

Weight: 2,429kg

O F F - R O A D

“Bunging it into corners

feels so right and wrong

in equal measure”

Claiming it’s perfect family

wheels, Charlie takes the

Phant for a test schoolrun

Yeah, nice bunch of

cars, mate. But you’ve

left your lights on

With the 458 dawdling,

the GT4 attempts an

audacious overtake



the Nomad just wants to roll around and have a laugh. That’s a philosophy TopGear has always been on board with.

“Nothing made me laugh out loud more,” says Ollie K. “Such fun to see the components going about their business.” Charlie chips in: “It’s the car we all doodled as kids made real. Back then we could only have a Hornet or Wild Willy, now you can have the full-scale Tamiya car that makes you grin from ear to ear on every journey.”

For the brave among us, an unlikely high-speed hero on the day is the Phantom. There are those who will insist it’s best experienced while reclined in the back with something expensive and bubbly in your hand and your socks firmly embedded into the shagpile. But this is not so: if your chauffeur has a day off, ensure you seize the opportunity. Rowan jumps out, his eyes a little wider than five minutes earlier: “It’s so much fun to drive quickly because you have to think about what you’re doing. Bunging it into corners just feels so wonderfully right and wrong in equal measure.”

Hunt them out and there are some nasty plastic hinges on the inside, plus a woefully bad sound system, but the overall impression is of immense solidity. “An appropriate machine to tool about in with the radio warning of impending nuclear war,” points out Ollie K, and just fantastic to look at, says Paul: “Best of all is to be an onlooker as it sails past: what extraordinary stateliness.” Our mind boggles at how good the new one needs to be.

But then, “How on earth will they top the Veyron?” was a question we all asked when it first emerged in ��, shattering our preconceptions of how fast a road car could be while maintaining civility. Now we know, the answer is the �,��bhp Chiron – more powerful, quicker, better-riding, better-handling, better-looking, just better... but it’s not a Veyron.

This car here is an early demonstrator, an original ��bhp coupe with a leggy ��,�� miles on the clock, and just one of three Bugatti has held onto in Molsheim (the other two are a Super Sport and a Vitesse). I’m sitting next to Andy Wallace, Le Mans-winning race driver, Bugatti test pilot and our chaperone today. He’s also the man encouraging me to “slow down to ��mph, knock it into first and clog it.” I do as I’m told and, after the briefest of pauses, we teleport to a point in the distance and my face hurts. The Veyron’s abililty to turn high-octane unleaded into an incomputable rush of motive force without breaking traction for a nanosecond is still a thing of wonder.

The sensation is described by others as “shockingly fast,” and “a bit like that pause rollercoasters do just before they drop you down a huge descent,” but the surprise to us all is that otherworldly as it was in ��, the game has moved on. “It feels a bit old now, but still as small and hard-riding as I remember,” Ollie M

remarks, while Tom reckons “It feels smaller the faster you go, but the engine’s a bit laggy and those run-flat tyres don’t help the ride on a road like this. Weirdly, it feels more like ��bhp... the Super Sport is a big improvement.”

Unlike the ��mph Veyron, the Ferrari �� Speciale is more concerned with rpm than mph. This ��bhp �.�-litre

flat-plane crank V� is likely to go down in history as the pinnacle of natural aspiration, before turbos smothered all the fun. Winding it to the �,��rpm limit, in any gear, is to be ensconced by greatness, to feel it vibrate through every pore. Let’s call it a car-gasm. Trouble is, on these roads it’s practically impossible to touch those lofty peaks, so what you’re left with is hyperactive steering, fairly unyielding suspension and a car that needs a lane and a half to keep a safe distance from the passenger-side ditch.

And yet it still manages to feel as special as anything here. We love the de-striped look, the lack of carpets and the Sabelt harnesses (this is an expertly specced example), and given a bit more space to breathe it would undoubtedly show its true colours, a fact Charlie knows all too well: “I made the mistake of telling some far-better-off friends of mine that this car was for me the zenith of Ferrari sports cars... they all went and bought them and now I have to live with permanent car envy. We will never see its like again.”

Which leaves just the Cayman GT�. Yes, we have just one Porsche here, and it’s not a ��. Surprised? Don’t be, frankly we’re running out of superlatives to describe it. Rowan gives it a go: “It could be one of the greatest cars of all time. Especially as the �� is such a shameful disappointment. Ollie M picks up on a similar vein calling it “perhaps the best driving device ever, if it had shorter gearing” and for the first time in his life Paul is simply lost for words, adding only: “That Cayman, oh, Lord.”

Its secret, we all agree, is that its size, manual gearbox and ��bhp feel just perfect on UK roads. Its performance is substantial, but you can use a substantial proportion of it, and you don’t need to be in triple figures to enjoy it. “Magical controls, perfect driving position, just a wondrous car to operate, I’d have one over a GT�,” says Steve, while Ollie K clearly finds driving it a semi-religious experience: “We’re all going to have to get a lot better at finding ways to evangelise about it, because GT�s will feature on every greatest Porsche, greatest sports car and best of the decade/century test until kingdom come.” Amen to that.

Another big thank you – this time to the Kentisbury Grange Hotel, Barnstaple, and also to the owners of the Mini Cooper, Impreza RB5 and 458 Speciale for trusting us with your prized possessions


IMA

GE

: W

OL

FG

AN

G W

ILH

EL

M F

OR

DA

IML

ER

AG

2��’s F� W�� Hybrid is arguably the most successful racing car ever. It scored �� wins from �� races, versus the McLaren MP�/�’s �� victories

from �� in ��, or Ferrari’s F�� which won �� of the �� races it competed in during ��, in the midst of Michael Schumacher’s imperial phase.

The W�� also made pole �� times, locked out the front row �� times, and had the same number of one-two finishes. Such a performance in the frenzied cauldron of contemporary F� is a mind-blowing achievement. In fact, so thoroughly has Merc conquered the complexities of the turbo hybrid era that even now, what feels like hundreds of races later, its key rivals are still scratching around for a solution.

It’s rare to have the opportunity, but we were present at key stages during the development and debut of the W��. Merc’s High Performance Powertrain division, tucked away near the village of Brixworth in Northamptonshire, is where the power unit magic happens, and there could be no better tour guide than engineering director Andy Cowell. He showed us a supercomputer, overseen by �� experts running constant simulations, measuring the variables and optimising the engine’s envelope depending on the circuit.

They are tested to the point of destruction; they were simulating Spa on the day of our visit.

F� began using KERS (Kinetic Energy Regeneration System) in ��, a technology originally supplied and honed by Merc. There’s little doubt that getting their cumulative brainpower around this early manifestation of hybrid tech helped as the W�� came together.

The power unit (which comprised six different systems – the �.�-litre V� internal combustion engine, the turbo, a motor generator unit for kinetic energy, another for heat, an energy store, and a control box that oversees all the electronics) was also ingeniously packaged. The compressor and turbo, we soon learned, sat at opposite ends of the powerplant, one of those holy F� technical advances where everything cascaded virtuously – packaging, efficiency, dynamics.

“The fastest racing car needs an outstanding driver, great vehicle dynamics, great aerodynamics, and a lot of grunt that’s always there,” Andy Cowell told me at pre-season testing at Jerez, several years later, as modest as ever but fairly sure he was in for a good year. “And that means lots of specialist teams pulling together, to look after one car. Then it’s down to tactics, and reacting to events. I don’t think it’s down to an individual area.”

RACING LEGENDS

Mercedes-AMG F1 W05WORDS: JASON BARLOW


100Ariel Nomad

TopGear’s long-term cars. Tested & verified

109 McLaren 570GTTime for a fresh perspective on the Mc570

107 Fiat 124 SpiderDo you go Fiat, or do you go Abarth?

101 Skoda KodiaqSometimes seven seats just aren’t enough

104 Peugeot 3008Bonjour to our newbie from Peugeot


December I 2017

A s I write this, we’ve had the Nomad for exactly one week. I’ve done �� miles in it. I haven’t driven another

car. So far, it has done two unnecessary, early-morning milk runs, taken my brother and me to a Saturday-night party in London (walking into a pub with a steering wheel was a notable ice-breaker), it’s been the star at a local charity car show, been down to Exmoor for the mega test and was my transport to Essex for the £�� challenge. And no, the sun hasn’t shone for every mile. But remember, there’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only the wrong clothes. More on that next time.

I’ve documented my affection for the Nomad on many occasions previously, not for its off-road ability, nor for its resemblance to a Tamiya toy, but for the purity of fun it offers. It’s just a joyous thing that capers about like a spring lamb. So I’m now going to find out if that stacks up over the course of several months.

I’ve run daft stuff before (the Radical SR� SL springs to mind), and if that

taught me anything, it’s that a windscreen makes a heck of a difference. It costs £�,�� to add one to the Nomad. Make sure you have the £�� Perspex footwell side panels too – essential to stop wind, water and mud flowing up your trouser leg. And the roof lights and glow-in-the-dark aerial, if only for amusement purposes. Another £�,��. The Nomad isn’t cheap. In this instance, the price has ballooned by £��,��.

With carefully selected options, you can orientate your Nomad in whichever direction you choose. I’ve gone for an off-road spec that works on-road – ��-inch wheels with All-Terrain tyres, and heavy-duty adjustable Fox suspension (£�,��). It rides calmly and is remarkably stable for something so short and soft. Body roll is a hoot. The heavy tyres do compromise wheel control and exacerbate steering kickback, but if that matters to you, there are other options. But it’s still nimble and quick – way quicker than people expect when they clock a dune buggy in their mirrors.

TESTER’S NOTES It’s an absolute hoot for a short blast, but what will it be like to live with for a few months?

2354cc 4cyl, RWD, 235bhp, 300 Nm

13.6km/l


670kg

SPECIFICATION

MILEAGE: 1,565 KM OUR KM/L: 8.9

Laughing matterHelloAriel Nomad

OLLIE MARRIAGE

No man more mad for a

Nomad. Ollie Marriage

meets his match


It’s not a boast you’ll find in Honda’s brochure, but the Civic makes an excellent Car

For Taking Stuff To The Tip. I’m sure it’ll carry all the equipment required for windsurfing and wingsuiting and Alpine trouser-pressing too, but the Civic is also most proficient at swallowing the stuff that won’t fit in your wheelie bin. Vast boot with a wide aperture, not so much fancy leather ’n’ stuff that you wince when throwing bags of garden waste in the back.

I’m told ‘the tip run’ is one of the main reasons buyers choose SUVs over conventional hatcbacks. Unless your local municipal waste management facility is located at the end of a mud track atop a mountain, I humbly suggest they’d be equally as well off with a Civic. Got more than two

offspring? Maybe go

for a van instead

Size mattersReport 2Skoda Kodiaq

ANDY FRANKLIN

Skip in its stepReport 3Honda Civic

SAM PHILIP

I’ m not angry, I’m just disappointed. The simple fact is that the Kodiaq’s seven seats just aren’t big enough

for three kids and their car seats. The issue lies not entirely at Skoda’s

feet, because it’s partly down to the bulkiness of kids’ car seats. However, it doesn’t help that the back seats are fixed and not far enough away from the middle seats. This means you end up bringing the middle seats forward so the child in the back has more room, but that then squashes the child in the middle up to the back of the driver’s seat. Regardless, it’s still cramped for a little one in the back.

The Kodiaq just needed a couple of inches more in length to solve this. You could argue it’s slightly dangerous in the case of an accident and the solution clearly lies in having one child out of a

kid’s seat so they sit further back or all in less bulky child seats.

However, there is enough room to get a pushchair down by the side of the rear seat and some bags behind. But I doubt it would swallow enough luggage for a week away. The flip-side is that when the rear seats are down, there’s ample room in the boot. Perhaps Skoda felt the Kodiaq would be bought by families of four who need a spare seat every now and then. Or maybe it’s aimed more at familes with older children. I’ve not tried carrying seven adults yet; my hunch is it will be a squeeze.

In other news, I’m really enjoying this car – it doesn’t feel like an SUV, more like a normal car. Which is very refreshing.

TESTER’S NOTES Loving the Civic’s six-speed manual gearbox. Not loving the Civic’s electronic handbrake.

1498cc 4cyl turbo, FWD, 180bhp, 220 Nm

17.2km/l, 133g/km CO2

0–62mph in 8.2secs, 220kmph

1,548kg

SPECIFICATION

MILEAGE:6,718 km OUR KM/L: 14.6

TESTER’S NOTES It’s getting lots of attention from the public. But many think it looks like a BMW X�.

1395cc 4cyl turbo, AWD 148bhp, 250 Nm

14.5kml, 156g/km CO2


1,578kg

SPECIFICATION

MILEAGE: 10,000 km OUR KM/L: 14.6


December I 2017

Has Alfa’s new start

only been a false

dawn? Ask Mr RAC...

Surprise, surprise!Report 6Alfa Romeo Giulia QV

ROWAN HORNCASTLE

As the golden sun set over the M��, the Giulia Quadrifoglio started to shudder. Moments later, RJ�� KYZ came to rest in

one big, fat Alfa cliché on the hard shoulder.Yep, after just three months of

ownership the Alfa has broken down. Go on, laugh your little head off and tell me you told me so. Haha! Ha. Ha. Ha. You done yet?

Given the car was developed in just two and a half years, we were expecting some electronic gremlins – even Charlie’s McLaren is riddled with then. What we weren’t expecting was the toys to be thrown out the of pram this early. And by toys, I mean fundamental mechanical parts.

Before the Giulia came to a stop, the pistons sounded like they wanted out of the cylinders ASAP, the valvetrain tapped away like Michael Flatley, and a full house of warning lights glinted away on the dash.

“I’ve never seen so many engine fault codes in my life,” the RAC man said with raised eyebrows. He wasn’t wrong. Thank God his grey box had a digital display, otherwise we’d have needed a fax paper roll: multiple cylinder misfires, low fuel rail pressure, low idle speed – the list went on...

Mr RAC managed to clear some of them and get the car going again. Worried, he chaperoned us �� miles back to London.

But then, when he left – and a mile from home – it conked out again. We waved it off on a low-loader the next morning.

Alfa’s techies went back and forth as to what the issue was. And getting a clear answer hasn’t been easy. They told us it was because it had no fuel. I proved to them it had more than half a tank. They then said it was a fuel sender issue. Then the fuel pump and lines. Then a missing ball bearing was to blame. Hmm. Either way, I got it back. And was delighted. So I took it to meet its competitors on the RS� group test. Where, after one last triumphant drift, the ‘Check Engine’ light came on and the car retreated into limp-home mode. Blast! It’s now back in the Alfa workshop.

TESTER’S NOTES The ‘well, it is an Alfa’ excuse for a breakdown is wearing a bit thin.

2891cc V6 turbo, RWD, 503bhp, 500 Nm

12.2 km/l, 189g/km CO2

0–1 00kmph in 3.9secs, 300kmph

1524kg

SPECIFICATION

MILEAGE: 6718 km OUR KM/L: 14.6


Come rain or shineReport 4Mercedes-AMG SLC 43

The deluge of rain endured during most of October didn’t allow for much roof-free driving, but on the flip side,

when it does pour down, having a good ol’ hard roof really does make a difference over a fabric top in the noise stakes.

I daren’t rattle the den of rattlesnakes that is luck, but so far, fears of a fatal bird poop attack on the matte paint have been avoided, phew. Instead, the few shiny bits on the car, i.e the “Midnight Package” high-gloss bits of plastic trim, have managed to get themselves a pretty stubborn set of water stains. A bit of elbow grease should do, but a tad annoying.

In other matters, the slightly old school cabin design starts to grow on you. It did

look decidedly last generation, with its flat surfaces and straight lines initially, especially compared to the mushy, smooth and flowing interiors of the new generation of Merc interiors. However, I have a feeling this simplicity of style may last the test of time a bit better in the long run. The interior materials are pretty decent though, with good texture and feel to all leather, metal and plastic bits.

The rather slower pace of driving, courtesy of the weather, did allow a bit more play time with the functions of the car. One of these was the various drive modes. There are five in total: ECO, Comfort, Sport and Sport+ each of which gradually deliver more and more throaty and thrusty throttle profiles, quicker shifts, firmer steering, etc. The fifth “Individual” mode lets you create a mode of your own, including pure manual shifting.

To be honest, some of these seem redundant. I would be happy with just an Eco and Sport+ mode, because who has time for anything else? And, it’s an AMG, for Thor’s sake. Who dabbles with puny Sport mode when you have Sport+? Bet that was the marketing team sticking their unwanted heads in the engineering department.

TESTER’S NOTES Avoiding bird doo-doo, and fiddling with sports modes. Life is good.

2,996 cc V6, Twin Turbo, RWD, 367bhp, 520 Nm

12.8 km/l


1,595kg

SPECIFICATION

MILEAGE: 400 km OUR KM/L: 5.8


How many fingers would you need to count off what you consider to be the desirable Peugeots launched in the

past two decades? I’m guessing, sadly, that you’re not even going to need all of one hand. But maybe this is going to change. I predicted this back in ��, when Peugeot unveiled the �� RC Z to the world. That car metamorphosed, without much fiddling, into another long-term car I was lucky enough to run – the RCZ. “Peugeots are cool again!” I remember thinking, but then what happened? Well, many more Peugeots came, but not until the current �� with all its snazzy interior love, did another Pug grab the attention of the TG office.

And, as it happens, I again am the lucky recipient of the cool French car.

Full disclosure first: the car you see here is a bit special. Because we were so excited to get one onto our fleet, the road-test department went crazy with the configurator. “Let’s have a high-spec car,” they said, “with a tiny engine. Oooh. And an auto.” All of which is great.

However, since the road-test department’s configurator frenzy, Peugeot has stopped importing the �� with the �.� petrol and an auto ’box, meaning we have a relatively rare car on our fleet. No more will come to the UK once the cars in dealerships have been sold. Early to say, but I feel this is the UK’s loss.

High-spec, by the way, means GT Line – one rung off the top of the spec ladder. And with it comes pretty much the entire shooting match. On top of almost everything, the �� was specced with the following: metallic paint at £��, Grip Control at £��, opening glass roof at £��, nappa leather heated seats (and driver massage) at £�,��, FOCAL premium hifi at £�� and, finally, Visio Park � (��-degree and automated parking system) at £��. Which takes us from an original on- the-road price of £��,��, up to an as-driven cost of £��,��.

But enough of that, there will be many of you wondering exactly how well a �cyl �.� petrol gets on with a six-speed auto. I was wondering that, too, before I stepped

into it. The answer: good. On the �� launch, I drove the ��bhp �.�-litre diesel, the ��bhp �.�-litre diesel and the ��bhp �.�-litre petrol… so almost all the engines minus the �.�. And the interesting news is that, while the �� is obvs much more immediate to accelerate and react with a higher-power engine, even with the ��bhp �.�-litre petrol, it’s enjoyable to drive. Not in a throw-it-into-corners-and-hope-you-come-out-the-other-side way, but in a I’m-knackered-and-it’s-the-end-of-the-day-I-just-want-a-stressless-drive way. And, frankly, I think that’s most of us after a day in the office. Add to that the auto and you have, probably, the ideal car to tackle the stop-start A�� out of London at �pm on a work day.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the �� pans out. I’ve had many requests from the team to borrow it – a good sign.

TESTER’S NOTES Happy to welcome a touch of French style to the TopGear Garage. Bonjour.

1199cc 3cyl petrol, FWD, 131bhp, 311Nm

19.2 km/l


1270kg

SPECIFICATION


Interior is high-quality,

hard switches and

gearlever feel class

December I 2017

French fancyHelloPeugeot 3008 GT Line

ESTHER NEVE

1 0 4


Jack found a quiet

place to prepare for

his X-Factor audition

TESTER’S NOTES Better than a �� on slippery roads... just imagine what the new �WD M� will be capable of.

2993cc 6cyl TD, 4WD, 261bhp, 475lb ft

53.3mpg, 138g/km CO2

0–62mph in 5.4secs, 155mph

1770kg

SPECIFICATION

MILEAGE: 15,554 km OUR KM/L: 14

530d SpecialeReport 4BMW 530d

JACK RIX

A��-minute return dash on some of Exmoor’s finest tarmac. A Ferrari �� Speciale in one direction, a BMW ��d

xDrive in the other. Yes I’m a lucky git, but the reason I’m telling you this is because on that day, on those roads, it was the Five that shone brighter than the Speciale.

Some context: I was tasked with returning the �� to its owner, who had loaned it to us on pain of death for our game changers test (p��). It was dark and wet, I was shagged, the road was decorated in clumps of mud, I had ��bhp spinning two Pilot Sport Cup �s under my right foot. At that point, the thought of handing back a £��,�� Ferrari in perfect condition was more appealing than wringing out the V� to �,��rpm one last time. So I threaded it as gently as I could, constantly scanning for oncoming headlights, managing its considerable width. Don’t get me wrong, I felt privileged, but fun? Nah.

Handover complete, I jumped in the Five and set about making up for lost time. Knocking it into Sport and manual modes, I took off, revelling in its low-hanging torque vs the Speciale’s top-shelf sparkle, and superb adaptive LED headlights peering around the corners as I steered. Mud? Standing water? Pah, the xDrive dealt with

it all without any particular skill or dexterity required from the driver. Fun? It was bloody hilarious, cocooned in my plush bubble, it just monstered the conditions and got me where I needed to be safely and swiftly. It’s not a driver’s car in a hairy-chested, oppo-lock kind of way, but my word BMW still knows how to make a car handle.

In other news, the interior refinement isn’t only soothing at motorway speeds, it makes it the perfect impromptu voiceover studio... no expense spared here at TG. And while the display key and its wireless charging pad are endlessly impressive to friends and family, in reality its uses are limited. The ��º cameras, on the other hand... a godsend with those ��-inchers.

A sunny summer’s Sunday morning in the English countryside. A Jaguar F-Type. An

Aston Martin DB��. Three things that make you get out of your Union Jack bed set and go for a drive, y’know, just to stock up on good ol’ Britishness.

See, having borrowed TG’s DB�� for the weekend, I swanned down to the south coast to be greeted by my dad’s F-Type. Which, according to him, is another front-engined, wonderfully styled, RWD GT. To which I replied, “…with half the cylinders and a lot cheaper interior”.

Is the DB really £��k better to drive? Simple answer: no. The body control over gnarled cresty country roads was worryingly flabby, and it’s frightfully wide. Whereas the F-Type with its manual ’box and lithe agility was far easier to thread at speed.

But does James Bond drive a Jag? No. Which is the only argument ammo some Aston owners need.

Flying the flagReport 5Aston Martin DB11

ROWAN HORNCASTLE

TESTER’S NOTES It doesn’t matter how good the leather smells, you can get a stylish GT for a lot less cash.

5204cc V12 twin turbo, RWD, 600bhp, 700 Nm

10.5km/l, 265g/km CO2


1,875kg

DB11 SPECIFICATION



Confess my sinsHelloMazda CX-5

OWEN NORRIS

My team of durability

testers getting to

work on the Mazda’s

interior fitting

TESTER’S NOTES Impressing me so far with its level of kit, looks, and build quality.

2191cc 4cyl diesel, FWD, 153bhp, 380Nm

40.1kmpl, 147g/km CO2

0-100kmph in 10.1secs, 198kmph

1690kg

SPECIFICATION


I’ve got to confess I’ve not driven many Mazdas before, apart from squeezing into an MX-� on a PCOTY shoot, so

I’ve no preconceptions of what to expect from running this all-new CX-�.

On paper, it’s ticking a lot of the boxes for my family. Ride height raised to please the missus, decent boot for all the twins’ gear, nice interior to look at while sat in traffic. But the claim with this mid-size SUV is that it’s also supposed to drive not only well but, according to my road test collegue, it’s actually – whisper it – fun.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ve not driven it on any decent roads yet, so I’ll save that for another report – we’ll just talk

spec level. We’ve got the top of the range Sport Nav model with the perky �.�-litre diesel engine and a very smooth �spd auto ’box. Snowflake paint (£��) and safety pack (£��) are the notable options. Sport Nav gives an impressive level of kit. It comes with gunmetal ��s, head-up display, heated steering wheel and a ��- speaker Bose stereo. All very good so far.

My only question is: should it be an AWD instead of just FWD? Given the lack of harsh winters recently and the amount of time this car will spend in town, I’m leaning towards FWD being just fine, but I’ll let you know in future reports.

It’s certainly good-looking, though. With its whale shark mouth front end and taut rear end to the beautifully simple graphics inside, it’s doing a good impression of a premium German. All good so far, then.

December I 2017

Report 5Perodua Axia

Just when I thought I’d never have to

worry about fuel conservation again,

the news breaks that we were in for

another week of fuel dilemmas; this

time, not strike-related, but still

ridiculously inconvenient for a majority

of the population. Thankfully, I was

able to get a full tank on the Monday

of the madness, but with the Axia

taking just 33 litres, it wasn’t much to

be getting on with. Cue the driving

techniques I honed with the Vito, and I

managed to see 13.9kmpl sometimes.

Hooray. SS

Report 6Nissan Micra

It’s summer (as close as we’ll

get, anyway). Drive anything

else for more than a half hour

at 70mph or thereabouts, and

its windscreen is slick with

squashed flies. Not the Micra.

No matter what you do, its

’screen stays clear. Could be

canny aero, or simply a happy

accident. Either way, you save

a bundle on washer fluid. We’re

up to nearly 7,000 miles, and it’s

not had a refill. Meanwhile, the

Micra has been on sale for a few

months now, and I can count

the number I’ve seen on the

road on one hand. New Ford

Fiestas are already everywhere,

it seems. It just shows the scale

of the challenge that the little

Nissan faces. TH


Sibling rivalryReport 7Fiat 124 Spider

STEPHEN DOBIE

Such is the shortage of small, affordable sports cars, one of our �� Spider’s closest rivals is made by Fiat itself. Well,

Fiat’s performance car arm. For around £�,�� more, you can have the pumped-up Abarth ��. The extra cash not only buys you an aggressive styling makeover – with optional retro rally colour schemes – but an extra ��bhp (��bhp in total), a new suspension tune, a limited-slip differential and more powerful Brembo brakes.

And an obscene exhaust system. This car is louder aurally than it is visually, believe it or not. That is not a compliment. In town, pedestrians will stare at you, while on the motorway you’ll have to turn your music up really loud to disguise its droning. Its more driver-focused chassis also makes a meal out of urban roads. Fiat’s �� is one of the easiest-going roadsters on sale; Abarth’s is not. After one drive home, I concluded Abarth has made a louder, less comfortable ��, confident Fiat’s is the right one to have.

Three days later, and the Abarth had managed to talk me around and convince

me that all other cars need to stop taking themselves so seriously. Yes, it thumps its way through town. But on an enjoyable piece of road, its extra precision over its Fiat base car is tangible. The ��’s immediate body roll into corners has gone and the rear axle is much more trustworthy. It’s noticeably quicker, too, though the engine feels more vulnerable to turbo lag, and you have to work the gearbox harder to keep the Abarth on the boil. Which is fine, because the shift remains fantastic.

Inside, it’s a mixed bag. Alcantara is pointlessly on the dashboard rather than being usefully on the steering wheel, but the red rev-counter pleases my inner child, and Abarth’s logo is a more inspiring thing to have staring back at you from the steering wheel than Fiat’s.

Is it worth the extra six grand? Objectively, no. Fiat’s roadster would be far easier to live with, considerably less embarrassing in traffic and it’s not that much slower. But flawed as it is, the Abarth is the clear winner if you enjoy driving. Which I do.

The head might

disagree, but the

heart definitely

wants the scorpion...

TESTER’S NOTES The Fiat �� is nicer to live with, but its Abarth equivalent is more fun to drive.

1368cc 4cyl turbo, RWD, 138bhp, 240 Nm

18.7km/l, 148g/km CO2


1,050kg

SPECIFICATION



Porsche by night,

shepherd's delight

TESTER’S NOTES Porsche makes a rare ergonomic misstep with the slightly over-buttoned centre console.

1,984 cc Inline 4 Cylinder, Turbo, AWD, 237 bhp, 350 Nm

13km/l


1,845kg

SPECIFICATION


How to change a tire 101Report 5Porsche Macan

GISHANKA DE SILVA

Had a troublesome month, but not really the Macan’s fault. Dropping one of the teens at a tuition class close to a

construction site resulted in the poor wife facing a rear tire blow out with a scarily large rod stuck in the rear tire. Gallant husband to the rescue, but discovered decades of experience in changing tires didn’t help much when faced with this exercise. I know they hardly face flat tires in the West, but do they have to make it so mind-boggling to change a darn tire?

Luckily, we had invested in the (optional) compact spare tire, or so I thought. One needs a darn engineering degree to figure out this tire removal and re-inflating mechanism deployed by Porsche. A normal tire change of �� minutes turned into an hour, most of which was taken up by head scratching.

Thinking time highlights included figuring out having to insert a special wheel guide rod to slide off the hub (Porsche deploys wheel lug bolts rather than lug nuts). The electric air inflator had to be attached to the battery terminals rather than the cigarette lighter. Wondering how the rather flat-as-a-pancake compact tire would fit in that ��” tire space (It did, with a magical origami balloon expansion-like trick) and how it would deflate back into a compact shape (It did that, too)? I’m sure all these have sound engineering and safety reasons, but dang is it way off the regular rule book.

Other than that annoying evening, not a frown else to report in ownership. The leather-cocooned cabin is always a special place to be: the controls are rock solid and feel reassuringly over-engineered. On a tired day, you do feel that the steering effort could be less strenuous.

But, when your spirits are in-tune, man, does this SUV shine. In fact, most of the time, especially at speed, you marvel that this actual is an SUV at all. If any evidence of the excellence of Porsche’s engineering boffins was required, a chance to babysit a second generation Porsche Cayman for a few weeks was an eye-opener. As lovely as that car was, the Macan felt twice as sharp and sprightly, especially around corners. One’s a benchmark mid-engined sports car, and the other’s a sports SUV. Yes, they’re close to a decade apart, but just let that statement sink in.

Share the love

Report 5McLaren 570GT

STEPHEN DOBIE

T O P G E A R . C O M � D E C E M B E R � � � � 1 0 9T O P G E A R . C O M › D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 7 1 0 9

With the bosses on holiday, they’ve left their cars for the kids to play with. So Rowan has taken charge of the

Aston DB��, and I’ve been enjoying the McLaren ��GT. Plans change when you’ve got a supercar. Mine concentrate on two things: driving my favourite roads, and taking it to friends and family to sit in, prod buttons and enjoy.

That involves leaving London and heading a long way north, something the GT takes the pain out of like few cars I’ve driven – even proper luxury saloons. I got in it knowing McLaren has set this up to be its most usable car yet, but even so, it staggered me with its ability to laugh off long distances. It’s so quiet at a quick cruise, with none of the fatiguing tyre roar performance cars normally smother you with.

The gearbox is super-smooth in auto, too. After an hour on the motorway I’d almost forgotten I was in a McLaren, befuddled when other road users stared,

pointed or waved. Combine panoramic vision from its ginormous windscreen with polite road manners and it really doesn’t feel like a low-slung thing that needs its nose lifted over speed bumps.

All the more reason to turn off onto a better road and remind yourself this is actually a carbon-tubbed supercar. Naturally, it immediately lacks the precision of a ��S and feels tangibly slower. But press the ‘Active’ button in the centre console, twiddle the engine and suspension into Sport, the gearbox into manual and the stability control into Dynamic and the car transforms. It remains a bit of a softie, but pick the right gear in a tight corner and it still delivers the pulse-quickening hit a car this potent ought to. And I love the way the GT allows a bit of slip when you really use first or second gear in a straight line: a momentary smearing of the tyres before you project towards the horizon (or the national speed limit). One which makes you smile, not panic.

My time with the little Mac also coincided with the first birthday party of my nephew, little Max. Perfect for showing the GT off to excitable toddlers and having a positive influence on bairns growing up in a car-wary world. Max adored it, pulling the paddles, putting his ‘brum brum’ noises into practice and operating the IRIS touchscreen with greater prowess than me. He was only too happy to prove how practical the GT’s extra rear compartment is, too. Apparently this is a McLaren able to transport three, just like the iconic F�…

Is it just us, or are

road testers getting

younger these days?

December I 2017

TESTER’S NOTES McLaren’s softest supercar can still please children and man-children in equal measure.

3799cc V8 twin turbo, RWD, 562bhp, 600 Nm

11.3km/l, 249g/km CO2


1,495kg

570GT SPECIFICATION



Step 1: Select subscription type

12 Issues for Rs3,000 (save 16%)



Delivery: The abovementioned prices include delivery. Delivery within Colombo and its suburbs

will be made via courier. Delivery to outstation and remote locations will be by post. Capital Media

(Pvt) Ltd. cannot be held responsible for any delay or loss caused by third-party suppliers.

Step 2: Address details

Title First Name SurnameAddress Mobile Number Email Address

Recipient details (if different from above)Title First Name SurnameAddress Mobile Number Email Address

Step 3: Send cheque/cash to:

WHY SUBSCRIBE?

SUBSCRIPTION OFFER

Going beyond the numbers to show how a car truly feels!

Opinionated, entertaining and always on point, BBC TopGear Sri Lanka puts readers in the driver’s seat. The world’s leading motoring and car culture brand, with editions covering 50 countries, BBC TopGear is the real deal for true petrolheads.

The country’s most exciting automobile magazine will bring readers up-to-date news, drives and rides with the latest launches in the market both here and overseas, stunning features, witty content, and a buyer’s guide complete with all noteworthy cars available in the local market. Moreover, Top Gear readers get the ‘real story’ behind the world’s most exciting cars in their inimitable, honest, irreverent and humorous style.

When you subscribe, you can enjoy the following every month:

• News, reviews and expert opinions on motoring, lifestyle and the best brands (from Nissan to Audi)

• Features on cars that have been road-tested in the most extreme and exciting conditions and locations

• Ambitious motoring adventures in the way only Top Gear knows how!

Subscribe today and enjoy the convenience of having BBC TopGear Sri Lanka magazine delivered to your doorstep!

Capital Media (Pvt) Ltd.22, Flower Terrace, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka.Telephone: +94 112 577 387

All cheques should be drawn in favour of Capital Media (Pvt) Ltd. and crossed Account Payee Only.

Bill me: If you require an invoice or need further information, call us on +94 112 577387 or fill this form and send to Capital Media, and a subscription representative will get in touch with you.

facebook.com/TopGearSL

instagram.com/topgear_srilanka

twitter.com/TopGearSriLankaFIND US ONLINE


Start your subscription today

S U B S C R I P T I O N

NEWSSTAND

PRICE

Rs300

Don’t miss out on the action with the biggest car magazine in the world!

SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE UP TO 35%

This offer is subject to availability and valid

for Sri Lankan delivery addresses only

www.capitalmedia.lk/topgearSubscribe online

[email protected] us

TORQUE(Nm) The ‘shove’ you feel in a car during acceleration

HORSEPOWER (bhp) the amount of energy left once parts like the gearbox, alternator and water pump have all been powered. A higher figure means a more powerful engine. PRICE

in millions LKR, where listed, includes taxes, but may change without any notice

MODEL CHOICE The ones that are here…

SOME WORDS......about the car

TRANSMISSIONType of transmission. The number refers to the number of gears. Automatic (AT), lineartronic (LT), manual (MT), triptronic (TT), s tronic (ST), steptronic (STT), xtronic (XT)

ENGINE TYPE capacity in cc, and number of cylinders, or in Liters, ‘i’ stands for inline, while ‘v’ stands for v configuration. An engine with larger capacity generally makes more power. More cylinders mean smoother power delivery.

AUDISenok Trade Combine�, R. A. De Mel Mawatha, Colombo � | �� | www.senoksl.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LA� �.� TFSI B� 12.5 1395/4i 7ST 150 250 8.5 139 15A� �.� TFSI B� 15.9 1984/4i 7ST 190 320 7.2 240 15A� �.� Quattro TFSI B� 16.9 1984/4i 7ST 252 370 6.3 240 15

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LA� �� TFSI 14.7 1798/4i 7ST 190 320 7.9 233 15

A6 35 TFSI Ultra

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LQ� �.� TFSI 9.5 999/3i 7ST 116 200 10 198 19

Q2

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LQ� �.� TFSI 11.7 1395/4i 6ST 150 250 8.9 204 20

Q3

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LAudi Q� �.�L TFSI Quattro 19 1984/4i 8TT 252 370 6.9 233 9 Q� �.�L TFSI Quattro 27 2995/V6 8TT 333 440 6.1 250 9

Q7

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LTT Coupe 16 1984/4i 7ST 230 370 5.9 250 11TTS Coupe 20 1984/4i 7ST 292 380 4.2 250 11

TT / TTS

DISCLAIMER

We do our best to make sure that the TopGear data section is the most up to date, accurate, and authoritative guide on the market. However, our information is only as good as what is provided to

us by the dealers in Sri Lanka and our diverse sources of information, which we rely on to obtain maximum information. Since some dealers may not release pricing and some model specifications

onto the market at the time of print, we cannot guarantee that all information reflected here is completely accurate. Therefore, these prices are subject to change without notice. It is best to visit a

dealer website or showroom to be 100% sure. Vehicles pictured and specifications detailed may vary according to specification offered.

A4

BAIC Micro CarsHead Office & Service Center ��, Kandy Road, Wedamulla, Kelaniya | �� | www.microcars.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LElite 4.25 1499/4 AT 116 148 NA NA 14

X25

FUEL EFFICIENCY How far would one litre of fuel take you?

TOP SPEED Need we explain?

HOW MANY SECONDSit takes to accelerate to reach the highway speed limit.

Audi’s bestseller undergoes a full generation change, and becomes a nagging worry for other Germans in the game

A good-looking, accomplished executive saloon – now with that beardy front grille after the redesign

Finally, Audi creates a trendy crossover with Evoque desirability

This is the car Audi says rivals the Range Rover Evoque

The latest Audi Q� looks small from the outside, but is bigger where it matters

Chasing away old stereotypes, the latest TTS is impressive and supercar-fast

A reasonably priced small SUV in an already crowded space. We can’t wait to drive it around

Everything you need to know about buying new cars


BAIC-

HYUN

DAI

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LFashion 3.85 1498/4 AT 116 148 NA NA 14

D20The brochure claims this is the distinctive shape for a pleasant journey. We are intrigued

Fiesta

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LFiesta Hatch 5.2 1500/4 6AT 107 149 NA 220 10Fiesta Sedan 5.4 1500/4 6AT 107 149 NA 220 10Fiesta S 5.6 1500/4 6AT 107 149 NA 220 10

The new Fiesta is a changed animal with its new Aston Martin-esque frontend, but still familiar

Focus

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LFocus 6.6 1600/4 5AT 125 NA NA NA 9

The Focus is still a joy to drive

Kuga Trend

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LKuga Trend 9.5 1500/4 6AT 180 240 10.1 200 10

An intriguing option in the burgeoning mid-sized SUV segment

5 Series

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L��e Luxury Line 23 1998/4 8AT/ST 184 420 6.2 235 NA��e M Sport 23 1998/4 8AT/ST 184 420 6.2 235 NA

Remains a top-notch exec thanks to cosseting cabin and ride. Big, smooth and brilliant

Ranger

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LRanger Base 7.7 2200/4 5MT 120 285 NA 200 13Ranger XL 8 2200/4 5MT 120 285 NA 200 13Ranger XLT 9 2200/4 6MT 159 385 11.8 200 13Ranger XLT 9.6 2200/4 6AT 159 385 11.8 200 12Ranger XLT 9.6 3200/5 6MT 200 470 10.9 200 11Ranger XLT 9.9 3200/5 6AT 200 470 10.6 200 10Ranger W/TRAK 11.5 3200/5 6MT 200 470 NA NA 10

The Blue Oval's staple pickup truck for quite a few years—just point, and it will go

GEELYMicro CarsHead Office & Service Center ��, Kandy Road, Wedamulla,Kelaniya. / �� / www.microcars.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LLC �.� 1.96 1.0 CVVT 3 MT 67 88 NA 151 18Cross �.� 2.4 1.0 CVVT 3 MT 67 88 NA 151 16LC �.� AMT 2.49 1.0 CVVT 3 AMT 67 88 NA 151 15Cross �.� AMT 2.74 1.0 CVVT 3 AMT 67 88 NA 151 15

PandaIt’s back, it’s slightly rounder and it’s still popular. Come ’ere, cuddly Panda, we want to give you a hug

HONDAStafford Motors ��/�, Maradana Road, Colombo �� | �� | www.honda.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LBR-V 6.8 1479 7AT/TT 119 145 NA NA NA

BR-VFeatures an impressive options list, with two extra seats

City

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LCity 6.7 1479 7AT/TT 119 145 10.5 NA NA

Looks like a facelift, but it’s all new underneath too. Brings in more space, features and an up-market feel

Civic

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LCivic FC� 9.5 1597 7AT/TT 125 151 8.4 NA 16

The new CIVIC is better to drive, and roomy too

BMWPrestige Automobile��-�� Pannipitiya Road Battaramulla | �� | www.bmw.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L��i 11.5 1598/4 8AT/ST 136 NA 9.2 210 NA

3 SeriesNot only the benchmark small exec, but one of the best saloons of all time. Now with a facelift, so even more excellent

7 Series

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L��Le 40 1998/4i 8AT/ST 258 NA 5.3 250 NA

As attractive a proposition as the Merc S-Class, the � is phenomenally good

i3

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� 8.5 REX

ElectricNA 123 250 7.9 150 14.8

The future is here—its electric, and we love it! The rest are now playing catch up, from a long way behind

i8

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� 38 1500/3i 8AT/ST 231 320 4.4 250 NA

There’s nothing else like this supercar. This performance car makes hybrids look like gas-guzzlers

X5 xDrive 40e

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� 26.95 1997/4 8AT/ST 113 250 6.8 210 NA

The fatter, new seven-seat X� places it firmly in a size category above the X�—thankfully, it’s bigger on the inside too

225xe xDrive

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� 13.75 1499/3i 8AT/ST 136 220 6.7 202 NA

Follows BMW’s latest naming strategy, but is very much its own car. And a rather good one at that

2-Series Gran Tourer

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� 15 1499/3i 8AT/ST 136 NA 9.5 205 NA

Proof that compact dimensions, functionality and variability can be combined with dynamic design

DATSUNAssociated Motorways��, Union Place, Colombo � | �� | www.amwltd.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LS 2.1 799/3i 5MT 53 72 15.98 180 25.17T(O) 2.0 799/3i 5MT 53 72 15.98 180 25.17

Redi GO Spun off the Kwid platform, the third new-age Datsun is the most promising of the lot

FORDFuture Automobiles�� /�, Parliament Road, Battaramulla | �� | www.unitedmotors.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LEverest Trend 17 3200/5 6AT 200 470 11 200 10

Everest TrendStill comfy and practical for the whole family, and excels at towing duties

DFSKUnited Motors Lanka PLC��, Hyde Park Corner Colombo � | �� | www.amwltd.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LMPV (Petrol) 3.6 1.5 DVVT 5MT 85 145 NA 160 13.5MPV (Diesel) 4.3 1.3 TDI 5MT 57 190 NA 140 14

Glory Another interesting prospect from DFSK

HYUNDAI Hyundai Lanka ��, Pannipitiya Road, Battaramulla | �� | www.prestigegroup.lk/hyundailanka/

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LAccent 9.2 1600/4 AT 122 15.9 10.4 220 12

AccentAn affordable subcompact with great mileage, loads of style and plenty of safety features

Elantra

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LElantra 9.9 1600/4 AT 126 15.77 10.6 220 10

After a complete overhaul, it’s flamboyant, feature-rich and much better to drive

EON

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LEON 2.3 814/3 MT 55 74.5 16 180 21

The EON is an interesting little number. It has all the things required of a little city car

Grand i10

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LGrand i�� 3.5 998/3 AT 65 9.6 14.9 200 18

Hyundai finds and fills a gap between the i�� and the i��, and this one fits the bill perfectly

Santa Fe

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LSantafe 21.1 2199/4 AT 190 24.6 8.1 240 10

Hyundai takes the fight to the Honda CR-V’s doorstep

Sonata

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LSonata 15 1999/4 AT 152 20 8.8 220 8

The Sonata features contemporary styling, with powertrains to match

Tucson

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LTucson 16.9 1995/4 AT 175 41 8.1 220 12

Strengthens Hyundai’s SUV portfolio by filling up the gap left open by the bigger Santa Fe and the smaller Creta


JAGU

AR-M

INIJAGUAR SML Frontier AutomotiveNo. ��. Flower Road, Colombo � | �� | www.jaguar.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LPure 24.2 1999/4i AT 174 430 8.7 208 18

F-Pace Jaguar’s first attempt at making an SUV, and what an attempt it is. It’ll do pretty much everything you request of it

XE

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LPrestige 17.9 1999/4i AT 194 320 7.7 237 13

Finally, Jaguar has provided a credible alternative to the C-Class and the �-Series

XF

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LPrestige 19.5 1999/4i AT 232 340 7 248 13

This model has brought Jag to the same level as its German counterparts. It drives as good as it looks

JEEPDiesel & Motor Engineering PLC P.O.Box ��, No:��, Jethawana Road, Colombo �� | �� | www.dimolanka.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� 23.5 2997/V6 8AT 240 420 9 202 7

Grand CherokeeThe more-rugged alternative to an Audi Q� or a Volvo XC��. It also comes with a glorious HEMI V�

Renegade

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LLimited � x � 8.9 1368/4i 6AT 140 236 11 184 8Limited � x � 9.9 1368/4i 9AT 160 250 9 184 7

Meet the Fiat ��X’s Yankee cousin. It drives with Euro sophistication and added fun

Wrangler Unlimited Sport

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� 19.9 2800/4i 5AT 196 460 10.7 145 8.5

Where the rest of the SUVs give up, the Wrangler soldiers on. Hardy, ancient and pretty damn tough

LAND ROVERSML Frontier Automotive No. ��. Flower Road, Colombo � | �� | www.jaguar.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LSE 19.9 1999/4i AT 237 340 8.2 199 12HSE 22 1999/4i AT 237 340 8.2 199 12

Discovery Sport The most glamorous Land Rover to-date is also a proper mountain trekker

MAHINDRAIdeal Motors��, Galle Road, Colombo � | ��-�� | www.idealmotors.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LK� 4.8 1198 MT 82 115 13.96 134 14

KUV 100 ( Petrol )Mahindra’s attempt at stealing the Swift’s spotlight. As big as a hatch, pretty spacious and edgy styling

Scorpio S10 4WD (Diesel)

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LS�� 18.2 2179 MT/AT 120 280 13.44 170 14

This improving SUV offers great value, practicality and decent road manners

XUV500 W10 AWD (Diesel)

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LW�� 19.5 2179 MT/AT 140 330 13.5 190 13.85

A sportier brother – more practical and clever, with a lot of charm

MAZDAColonial Motors Ceylon297, Union Place, P.O Box 349 Colombo 02. | 117 699 555 | www.mazdalanka.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LMazda � HatchbackT 6.2 1496/4i 6TT 112 148 12.1 106 21Mazda � Sedan 6.4 1496/4i 6TT 112 148 12.1 106 21

2The last � was a sleeper—it never set out to be sparky, but somehow achieved it. The same happened again. Just with a hint more polish

3

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LMazda � 9.0 1598/4 4TT 104 144 8.8 123 19

The �’s design language moves to the �; so does its handling verve

6

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LMazda � 12.2 1998/4i 6TT 156 200 9.5 129 18Mazda � -�.�ltr 18.0 2488/4i 6TT 188 NA 9.1 129 NA

A handsome, mid-sized saloon with some clever engine tech under the hood

CX5

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LCX�-IPM 15.6 1997/4i 6TT 154 198 9.2 124 17

The CX-� is pretty, reliable and drives well, too

MERCEDES- BENZDiesel & Motor Engineering PLC P.O.Box ��, ��, Jethawana Road, Colombo �� | �� | www.dimolanka.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LA �� AMG 19 1991 AT 375 475 4.2 250 14

A-ClassMerc’s newest offering is dressed to kill. This is now the stepping stone to Benz ownership

C-Class

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LC-�� 13.2 1595 AT 153 250 8.3 225 17C �� e 17.8 1991 AT 208 350 5.9 250 48C �� Coupé 19 1991 AT 208 350 6.8 250 17C - Cabriolet 22 1991 AT 181 NA 7.8 233 16

The excellent new C-Class returns to traditional Merc values and quality. It’s as soothing as a champagne jacuzzi

E-Class

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LE �� AMG line 19.4 1991 AT 181 300 7.7 240 17E �� e 21.6 1991 AT 208 350 6.2 250 48E �� Coupe 29.9 1991 AT 241 NA 6.4 250 16E �� MATIC 61 3982 AT 563 750 3.5 250 11

Fresh new styling with a touch of character, a great engine and new features that make it an irresistible offer

S-Class

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LS �� hybrid 35 2143 AT 201 500 7.6 240 23S �� hybrid 38 3498 AT 301 370 6.8 250 17S �� e 51 2996 AT 328 700 5.2 250 36

One of the best cars in the world. It redefines what a car will be expected to do in the future

GLA AMG

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LAMG GLA �� MATIC 20 1991 AT 375 475 4.4 250 13

Offers an AMG experience, a multitude of features and guaranteed smiles

CLA

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� Coupe 12.25 1595 AT 120 200 8.7 210 19�� AMG �MATIC Coupé 20 1991 AT 375 475 4.2 250 14

The AMG-fettled version is powered by the most powerful four-pot in production. Also, looks smashing

GLA

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LGLA �� 12 1595 AT 120 200 8.7 200 18

A bigger A-Class. Offers a good ride, enough features and is fun to drive

GLC

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LGLC �� MATIC 18.9 1991 AT 208 250 7.3 222 15

With good space, a stylish interior and decent on-road dynamics, the GLC is a great all-round package

GLE

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� MATIC 28.3 2996 AT 328 480 6 247 12�� MATIC Coupé �� 33.5 2996 AT 361 520 5.7 250 11

The M-Class with a new name is vastly better, offers great quality and is good on the road

GLS

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LGLS �� MATIC 33.5 2996 AT 328 480 6.6 240 11

All the creature comforts you need, and a boot that can easily swallow your camping equipment

SLC

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LSLC �� AMG 28 2996 AT 361 520 4.7 250 13SLC �� 19.5 1991 AT 181 300 6.9 237 17

Previously known as SLK, this little roadster isn’t all-new, but makes do with a facelift and a new powerplant

MGUnited Motors Lanka PLC��, Hyde Park Corner Colombo � | �� | www.unitedmotors.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L� Full Option 5.2 1.8TC 5MT 118/5500 215 8.2 240 22� Full Option 6.2 1.8 TC AT 118/5500 215 8.2 240 22

MG 6The startling success of the MG � surprised everybody

MINIPrestige Automobile�, Castle Street, Colombo � | �� | www.mini.com.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L� Door Cooper 10.5 1499/3i AT 134 220 7.9 210 20� Door Cooper S 13.9 1998/4i AT 189 280 6.8 233 18

3 DoorIt's all about the drive. The MINI 3 Door is powered by a Twin Power Turbo engine that's faster than ever.

5 Door

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L� Door Cooper 12.7 1499/3i AT 134 220 8.2 207 20� Door Cooper S 14.7 1998/4i AT 189 280 6.9 232 18

The MINI 5 Door is only 161mm longer than the original, but you get two more doors and 67 litres extra in the boot.


MINI-

RENA

ULT

MITSUBISHIUnited Motors Lanka PLC��, Hyde Park Corner Colombo � | �� | www.unitedmotors.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LAttrage 5.6 1.2L CVT 75 100 12.8 170 21

AttrageThis affordable sedan by Mitsubishi checks all the right boxes

ASX

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LASX �.�L �WD GLS ASX 14.5 2.0L/4i 6STT 145 197 11.7 191 12�� AMG �MATIC Coupé 20 1991 AT 375 475 4.2 250 14

A crossover that combines rugged practicality with a sleek compact design, making it at home in urban and countryside environments

L200

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�WD Double Cab 8.2 2.5L/4i MT 107 200 12.2 152 12�WD Double Cab 8.3 2.5L/4i MT 107 200 12.2 147 12Sportero �WD Double Cab M/T 8.7 2.5L/4i MT 132 324 NA 167 14Sportero �WD Double Cab A/T 8.9 2.5L/4i 5AT 132 324 NA 165 14

The ultimate hardworking pickup truck. True durability and passenger comfort are a part of the package

Montero

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�.�L Petrol Montero GLS 26.5 3.0L V6 4AT 178 267 9.9 175 8�.�L Diesel Montero GLS 34.5 3.2L 4i 5AT 160 373 9.5 174 10

The ‘King of Terrains’ has returned with a more chrome-heavy face. It’s significantly more expensive, too

Outlander

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LOutlander �.�L �seater 19.5 2.4L/4i CVT 162 222 10.2 198 10Outlander PHEV 16.9 2.0L/4i NA 115 186 11 180 25

Outstanding range, low emission and great performance

NISSANAssociated Motorways��, Union Place, Colombo � | �� | www.amwltd.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� seater std Roof 8.5 2488/4i MT 127 356 14 200 13�� seater std body High Roof 8.7 2488/4i MT 127 356 14 200 13�� seater wide body High Roof 8.9 2488/4i MT 127 356 14 200 13�� seater std body High Roof 7.9 2488/4i MT 127 356 14 200 13�� seater wide body High Roof 8.9 2488/4i MT 127 356 14 200 13

E26 – NV350 A full-fledged, versatile people carrier

Navara NP300

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LAuto 9.3 2500 7TT 187 450 10.7 220 12Manual 8.9 2500 6MT 160 403 NA 220 13

The sparkling performance and comfy cabin should be particularly appealing to buyers

X-Trail

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LHybrid � Seater 13.9 1997/4 XT 181 360 9.3 240 13Gasoline � Seater 16.3 1997/4 XT 142 200 NA 240 11

The X-Trail used to be a rufty-tufty thing. Now, it’s been refined. As a result, we think it’s better

PERODUAUnited Motors Lanka PLC��, Hyde Park Corner Colombo � | �� | www.unitedmotors.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LAxia 3.2 1.0 L AT 50 91 NA 200 NA

AxiaNow comes with a sportier look to match its smarter features

2008

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� Active 8.1 1.2L/3 AT 110 205 10.3 188 20.8�� Allure 8.9 1.2L/3 AT 110 205 10.3 188 20.8

A high-rise supermini that's increasingly popular in the wake of the Juke. A little mash-up, which just about works

PORSCHEEurocars Porsche Centre - Sri Lanka�� Kandy Road, Kelaniya | �� | www.porsche.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� Boxster 21.30 2.0L/4 (Flat) MT 295 380 5.1 275 10�� Boxster 24.40 2.0L/4 (Flat) AT 295 380 4.9 275 11�� Boxster S 34.75 2.5L/4 (Flat) AT 345 420 4.4 285 10

718 BoxsterStep one into Porsche-land is still a divine experience

718 Cayman

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� Cayman 20.65 2.0L/4 (Flat) MT 295 380 5.1 275 10�� Cayman 23.70 2.0L/4 (Flat) AT 295 380 4.9 275 11�� Cayman S 34 2.5L/4 (Flat) AT 345 420 4.4 285 10

The baby �� is a great sports car with supernatural handling

911

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� Carrera 49.80 3.0 L/6 (Flat) AT 364 450 4.4 293 10�� Carrera Cabriolet 55.60 3.0 L/6 (Flat) AT 364 450 4.6 290 10�� Carrera S 55.10 3.0 L/6 (Flat) AT 414 500 4.1 306 9�� Carrera S Cabriolet 60.85 3.0 L/6 (Flat) AT 414 500 4.3 304 9�� Turbo 89.60 3.8 L/6 (Flat) AT 532 660 3 320 8�� Turbo S 102.30 3.8 L/6 (Flat) AT 580 750 2.8 330 8

Iconic. Instantly recognisable, fantastic to drive and near-perfect

3008

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� Allure 11.9 1.2L/3 AT 130 230 10.5 188 18.2�� Allure 12.9 1.6L/4 AT 163 240 8.9 206 16.7�� GT Line 14.5 1.6L/4 AT 163 240 8.9 206 16.7

Mk� has a smarter, more shapely look. The cabin is genuinely special in design and execution. Drives as well as it needs to

PEUGEOTCARMART�� Union Place, Colombo � | �� | www.peugeot.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�� Allure 12.5 1.6L/4 AT 163 240 9.2 203 14.1

508Peugeot’s replacement for the �� is actually quite nice. The facelift helps as well

Cayenne

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LCayenne S e-hybrid 31 3.0 L/V6 AT 416 440 5.9 243 NA

Big and bad (in a good way). Perfect if you want a Porsche, but are scared of Lankan roads

Panamera G2

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L� e-hybrid 38.40 2.9 L/V6 AT 462 700 4.6 278 NA� e-hybrid Executive / LWB 40.40 2.9 L/V6 AT 462 700 4.6 278 NA

A �� for the family man, with two extra doors and a rear seat

RANGE ROVERSML Frontier AutomotiveNo. ��. Flower Road, Colombo � | �� | www.landrover.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LVogue 59 2993/V6 AT 254 600 7.9 210 14Vogue 60 2995/V6 AT 335 450 7.4 210 9Autobiography 63 5000/V8 AT 502 625 5.4 255 8

Range RoverThis is not an SUV. That’s too common a badge. Instead, think go-anywhere luxury car. Or GALC. Hmm, catchy

Evoque

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LSE 19.9 1999/4i AT 236 340 7.6 217 13HSE Dynamic 23 1999/4i AT 236 340 7.6 217 13

A Range Rover for a younger, more stylish, more urban audience. One for fashionistas, not farmers

Range Rover Sport

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LHSE Dynamic 39.5 2995/V6 AT 335 450 7.2 210 9AB Dynamic 43 2995/V6 AT 335 450 7.2 210 9AB Dynamic 48 5000/V8 AT 502 625 5.3 225 8

A prettier RRS would be a contradiction, but the latest one definitely comes with less thuggishness

RENAULTAssociated Motorways��, Union Place, Colombo � | �� | www.amwltd.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LRXL 2.7 1000/3 AMT 67 91 19 145 23.1RXT (O) 2.8 1000/3 AMT 67 91 19 145 23.1

KWID AMTWith space to comfortably fit five adults, the car has been popular for obvious reasons

KWID MT

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LRXL 2.3 800/3 MT 53 72 12.57 143 25RXT 2.3 800/3 MT 53 72 12.57 143 25RXT(O) 2.3 800/3 MT 53 72 12.57 143 25

Lightness continues to be KWID’s mantra

Clubman

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LCooper 12.5 1499/3i AT 134 220 9.1 205 20Cooper S 15.5 1998/4i AT 189 280 7.2 228 17

The most sophisticated MINI ever built with the iconic split rear doors, designed to let your instincts take over.

Countryman PHEV

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LCooper S E 13.8 1499/3i AT 224 385 6.8 198 43

Plug it in. Pack it up. Fit it all in. Space, power and fuel efficiency combined with design.

Want a sports car that’s actually an SUV? This is as close as it gets

Macan

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LMacan 18.50 2.0 L/4i AT 248 370 6.7 229 11Macan S 27.80 3.0 L/V6 AT 335 460 5.4 254 8Macan GTS 30.70 3.0 L/V6 AT 360 500 5 255 8Macan Turbo 40.30 3.6 L/V6 AT 400 550 4.6 263 8


SSAN

GYON

G- ZO

TYE

TATATATA Motors Sri Lanka�� Jetawana Road, Colombo �� | �� | www.tatamotors.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LGenX Nano - Automatic 1.9 624/2 AMT 37 51 NA 105 21.99GenX Nano - Manual 1.6 624/2 AMT 37 51 NA 105 21.99

NanoA compact, low-priced hatchback available in automatic or manual transmissions

SSANGYONGMicro Cars Head Office & Service Center��, Kandy Road, Wedamulla, Kelaniya / �� , �� / www.microcars.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LRexton W �L 9.34 1997/4i 5AT 155 360 NA 175 10Rexton W �L (High Spec) 10.38 1997/4i 5AT 155 360 NA 175 10

RextonPacked with equipment at a mouthwatering price. A big soft-roader that won’t eat into your wallet

SSANGYONG Ideal Automobile ��, Union Place, Colombo � | �� | www.ssangyong.com.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LTivoli 6.5 1600 ST 128 160 10.3 220 9

TivoliThis is SsangYong's first new model under Mahindra & Mahindra ownership. We can’t wait to drive it

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LTivoli DLX Petrol 5.97 1597/4i 6AT 128 160 NA 170 10Tivoli DLX Diesel 6.64 1597/4i 6AT 115 300 NA 175 12

TivoliThis is SsangYong's first new model under Mahindra & Mahindra ownership. We can’t wait to drive it

SUBARUSenok AutomobileNo. ��, Nawala Road, Koswatta, Rajagiriya | �� -� | www.senoksl.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LForester XT (Turbo) 15.5 2.0L LT 234 350 7.5 221 11.2

ForesterWhat it lacks in school-run glam, in more than makes up in rugged transport capabilities

Impreza

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LImpreza 9.5 1.6L AT 111 150 12.4 185 9.1

The all-wheel drive makes the Impreza a trusty all-season companion, and remains an exciting prospect

WRX

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LWRX (Turbo) 16.5 2.0L LT 260 350 6.3 240 11.9

The Scooby turbo is back, minus the Impreza name but with the same huge wing

XV

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LXV 12.7 2.0L LT 145 196 10.7 187 10.5

The small crossover is comfortable in its own skin and packs a punch

SUZUKIAssociated Motorways��, Union Place, Colombo � / �� / www.amwltd.com

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L LXI with Airbag 2.2 796/3 MT 51 69 17 150 16 Lxi Smart Plus 2.3 796/3 MT 51 69 17 150 16 K�� Vxi 2.8 998/3 MT 67 90 13.3 150 24.7 K�� Vxi AMT 2.9 998/3 AMT 67 90 13.3 150 24.7

AltoMaruti’s idea of cheap transportation. Gets the tried-and-tested engine and Alto’s platform

Baleno

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LBaleno Zeta 5.4 1197/4 AT 96 115 NA NA 21.4

Capable, sizeable hatchback that feels good on the inside, and can hold its own against rivals

Celerio

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LVXI Hatchback AMT 3.1 998/3 AMT 67 90 NA NA 23.1ZXI Hatchback - �.� L Manual, Full Option 3.1 998/3 MT 67 90 NA NA 23.1ZXI (O) Hatchbak - �.� L AMT, Full Option 3.1 998/3 MT 67 90 NA NA 23.1

Another no-frills commuter. But, there’s a pleasant surprise this time – an automated manual gearbox

Ciaz

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LCIAZ ZXI Sedan Automatic 6.0 1373/4 AT 96 130 NA NA NACIAZ VDI+ Diesel Hybrid 6.1 1248/4 MT 86 200 12.2 NA 28.09

Maruti’s answer to the cities of the world. Available in petrol and diesel, manual and automatic guise

Vitara

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LVitara 10 1586/4 AT 96 156 12.5 180 NA

It’s a compact, five-seat SUV that’s designed to be affordable, practical and easy to live with

Wagon R

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LWAGON R STINGRAY VXI 3.1 998/3 MT 67 90 15 NA NAWAGON R STINGRAY VXI AMT 3.3 998/3 MT 67 90 15 NA NA

More spacious than its predecessor and much nicer to look at. Definitely for the family man, or woman

TOYOTAToyota LankaToyota Plaza No.��, Negombo Road, Wattala / �� – � / www.toyota.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�.�MT 5.9 1300/4i 5MT 94 121 NA 160 15�.�AT 6.2 1300/4i AT 94 121 NA 155 15�.�AT 6.6 1500/4i AT 102 136 NA 160 13

AvanzaThe trusty brand’s latest MPV offering

Camry

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LPetrol 21 2500/4i CVT 176 231 9.4 210 9Petrol/Hybrid 17.9 2500/4i ECVT 156 213 NA 180 13

The handsome new Camry is fast and spacious, and has a great cabin

Corolla

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LGLI 9.7 1600/4i AT 119 154 10.5 180 12

The new one is still a very good, refined and comfortable sedan for businessmen

Fortuner

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LPetrol 21.5 2700/4i AT 161 245 13 170 8Diesel 22.8 2400/4i AT 145 400 12 170 8Diesel 27.7 3000/41 AT 158 360 12 170 8

Brutal power and great value. Interiors are practical and stylish

HiAce

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LLH�� Flat roof 8.6 3000/4i MT 90 197 NA 135 8LH�� High roof 8.9 3000/4i MT 90 197 NA 135 8KDH�� High roof 9.6 2500/4i AT 99 260 NA 135 7LH�� Flat roof 8.4 3000/4i MT 90 197 NA 135 8

The trusted commuter. The latest offering is sure to be a crowd pleaser

Hilux

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/L�WD MT 8.7 2500/4i 6MT 99 260 NA 180 11�WD AT 8.9 3000/4i AT 158 360 NA 175 10�WD MT 8.1 2500/4i 6MT 99 200 NA 150 11�WD MT 4.9 2500/4i MT 99 260 NA 150 12�WD MT 4.8 2500/4i MT 99 200 NA 150 13

Uncompromising and unbreakable. Enough said

Land Cruiser

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LURJ�� Petrol 38.7 4500/V8 AT 300 439 7.7 195 5VDJ�� Diesel 43.4 4700/V8 AT 229 615 NA 210 6HZJ�� Diesel 36 4200/6i MT 127 285 NA 170 6

A bigger, thirstier version of the Prado, with a V�. Possibly one of the best off-roaders money can buy

Land Cruiser Prado

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LLJ�� Diesel 27.5 3000/4i MT 92 197 NA 145 7GRJ�� Petrol 34.5 4000/V6 AT 273 387 NA 175 6KDJ�� Diesel 31.9 3000/4i AT 168 410 NA 175 8

Big and thirsty, with plenty of power on or off the road

Prius

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LSemi Option 11.5 1800/4i ECVT 95 142 11.6 180 16Full Option 11.9 1800/4i ECVT 95 142 NA 180 16G 6.2 1500/4i ECVT 71 111 NA 70 20

The futuristic styling conceals a well-resolved hybrid

Yaris

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LE 5.9 1300/4i CVT 96 123 NA 170 14S 6.6 1300/4i CVT 96 123 NA 170 14

A key car for Toyota in Europe. The engine choice is great and is still as clever

ZOTYEUnimo Enterprises��, Hyde Park Corner Colombo � / �� / www.unitedmotors.lk

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LZ�� 2.0 1.0 L 5MT 50 90 NA 150 19

Zotye Z100The Z�� is a stylish car with key features for the urban commuter

RAV4

PRICE ENGINE TR BHP NM 0-100 TOP KM/LRav� 20.5 2500/4i CVT 174 233 9.6 200 10

Toyota practically invented the compact crossover with the first RAV� in the mid-��s, and it’s still a big player in the segment


APRILIA Colonial Motors (Ceylon)449, Negombo Road, Peliyagoda | 117 449 449

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPSR�� 198,300 150 11.39 11.5 122 6 120SR�� RACE 370,000 150 11.39 11.5 122 6 120

SR150Quite possibly the most fun scooter on sale right now, and unlike any other you’ve seen. This is serious business

BAJAJ David Pieris Motor Company 75, Hyde Park Corner, Colombo 2 | 114 700 600 | www.dpmco.com

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPCT-�� UG 198,300 100 8.2 8.05 109 10.5 N/A

CT-100 UGBajaj’s salvo in the exec segment is quite a looker, and is a perfect ride for the city and beyond

APRIL

IA-MA

HINDR

A

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPPLATINA �� ES UG 213,800 100 8.2 8.6 108 13 N/APLATINA �� KS UG 207,900 100 8.2 8.6 108 13 N/A

Platina UGSuperbly comfortable to ride and versatile enough to cover miles with ease

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPDISCOVER �� DISK 261,700 125 11 10.8 119.2 8 N/ADISCOVER �� Drum 250,900 125 11 10.8 118.5 8 N/A

DiscoverA swanky, affordable cruiser for city rides. There’s nothing understated about this bike’s looks!

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPPULSAR ��LS 293,250 135 13 11.44 122 8 N/APULSAR ��UG �.� 328,590 150 14 12.76 143 15 N/APULSAR NS �� 373,900 160 15.5 14.6 142 12 N/APULSAR ��UG DUAL DISC 379,990 180 16.8 14.22 145 15 N/APULSAR �� NS 431,850 200 23.17 18.3 152 12 N/APULSAR �� RS 622,650 200 24.2 18.6 165 12 N/A

PulsarA popular bike for those who crave power and flamboyance. Fast, fun and practical

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPBAJAJ V 313,250 150 12 13 135.5 13 N/A

Bajaj VThis quirky-looking commuter does just fine. Just point, and it will go anywhere

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPAVENGER STREET �� 346,700 150 14.54 12.5 148 14 N/A

AvengerIf it's the open road you seek, get behind a sportster that's designed to take on the streets with every ride

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPHF DELUXE 212,500 100 7.8 8.05 112 10.5 100

HF DeluxeComfortable over long distances with sound road dynamics, this new bike is on a journey towards progress

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPI SMART �� 235,000 110 7.8 9 115 12.8 103

iSmart 110Exciting and packed with nice features, it’s time to add more power to your trips

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPPASSION PRO 239,999 100 7.8 8.04 N/A 12.8 105

PassionA blend of striking style and performance, it now gets a tech boost with the inclusion of Hero’s patented i�s technology

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPGLAMOUR 264,500 125 9 10.35 129 13.6 120

GlamourLooks sharp, and has some nifty features to keep you ahead of city traffic

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPHUNK 335,000 150 14.4 12.8 146 12.4 140

HunkNow with more power, the Hunk is all about muscular looks

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPX TREME SPORT 315,000 150 15.4 13.5 147 12.1 140

Xtreme SportIf you want performance with a bit of style, this is just what the doctor ordered

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPKARIZMA ZMR 425,000 225 20 19.7 157 15.3 180

Karizma ZMRThe only challenger to the Pulsar �� DTSI, it finally gets a much-needed facelift and a fuel-injection system

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPDIO APDR-� 239,500 110/1 8 8.94 103 5.3 83

DioThe refreshingly new Dio is a stunner. One of the best lookers in the country

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPNAVI APDR 215,500 110/1 8 8.96 101 3.8 81

NAVIA cross between a motorcycle and a scooter, the NAVI is a weird little thing – in a good way

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPCD �� DREAM DX APDR 216,500 110/1 8.31 9.09 109 8 86

CD 110 Dream DXHonda’s attack deep into Hero territory. Wing riding for the commuter

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPCBF TWISTER APDR-� 241,500 110/1 9 8.97 108 8 89

CBF TwisterThe edgy-looking Twister was always a head turner

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPSHINE APDS-� 265,500 125/1 10.16 10.3 123 10.5 93

ShineIt’s now got a fair bit of ‘shine’ with its bits like alloy wheels, electric start and sporty decals

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPCB HORNET ��R (SINGLE DISC) 405,500 160/1 15 14.76 140 12 110CB HORNET ��R (DOUBLE DISC) 439,500 160/1 15 14.76 140 12 110

CB HornetForward-leaning shrouds and a carbon-patterned cover add to its muscular look. It looks fine, and goes well, too

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPCBR ��R APDDS 685,500 250/1 25 22.9 150 13 135

CBR 250RThe �� has been around for a while, and is quick enough to tear up our roads

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPCENTURO NXT 249,950 110/1 8.5 8.5 115 12.7 N/ACENTURO DISK BRAKE 251,950 110/1 8.5 8.5 115 12.7 N/A

CenturoLoaded with a list of features that are the first in its class

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPGUSTO �� (SCOOTER_ 234,950 110/1 8 8.5 120 6 N/AGUSTO �� (SCOOTER) 249,950 125/1 8.5 10 120 6 N/A

GustoDeveloped in Pune, styled in Italy, the Gusto is the first scooter in India that comes with a unique height-adjustable seat

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPRODEO UZO (SCOOTER) 249,950 125/1 8 9 ± 0.5 109 4.5 N/A

RodeoMore focused on youngsters, this takes on the likes of Activa and Dio

HEROAbans Group 498, Galle Road, Colombo 3 | 115 777 000 | www.abansgroup.com/subsidearies/abans-auto

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPDAWN 185,000 100 7.8 N/A N/A 10.5 100

DawnIf you’re looking for a bike that can be fun on long jaunts, the Dawn has a lot going for it

HONDAStafford Motor Company718/7, Maradana Road, Colombo 10 | 117 607 200 | www.honda.lk

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPACTIVA I APDR-� 219,500 110/1 8 8.94 103 5.3 83ACTIVA �G APDR 229,500 110/1 8 8.94 105 5.3 83

ActivaEdgy styling that looks good even in the face of fresh competition, Activa owners can swear by its quality and reliability

MAHINDRAIdeal 2wheelers No 611, Galle Road, Colombo 06 | 112 221 222 | www.idealmotors.lk

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPROCKSTAR 249,950 110/1 8.5 8.5 115 12.7 N/A

Rockstar A relaxed stance, looks that grab your attention and plenty of kit. What’s not to like?


ROYA

L ENF

IELD-

YAMA

HA

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPClassic 1,000,000 350/1 19.8 28 187 15 130

ClassicA true beast. This is the most refined bike in the bullet stable

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPRumbler 1,050,000 350/1 19.8 28 192 20 107

RumblerWith a powerful ��cc engine, it gives new meaning to highway cruising

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPHimalayan 1,150,000 411/1 24.5 32 182 15 134

HimalayanThe first purebred Indian adventure motorcycle, it can go pretty much anywhere, and looks the part, too

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPGN��H 288,900 125/1 12.5 10 107 10.3 N/A

GN125HThe bike is a favourite with riders who want the essence of commuter riding with a dash of traditional style

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPAccess 246,900 125/1 8.7 10.2 102 6 N/A

AccessThe new flagship scooter combines the best of both worlds, power and mileage, with SEP technology

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPLets 224,900 110/1 8.4 8.8 98 5.2 N/A

LetsStanding out from the crowd, the new Suzuki Let's comes in a range of stylish dual-tone colours and trendy graphics

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPVXL 367,000 125 10.06 10.6 114 7 97VXL 395,000 150 11.6 11.5 114 7 110VXL-ELEGENT 430,500 150 11.6 11.5 114 7 110

VXLIt looks premium, it feels premium, is zippy and now, also available in ��cc flavour. What’s not to like?

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPSXL 385,000 125 10.06 10.6 114 7 97SXL 410,000 150 11.6 11.5 114 7 110

SXLThe new Vespa SXL has a unique design with a V-shape grill to complement its sleek cast

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPFAZER 459,900 149/1 13 12.8 137 12 N/A

FazerPurely a commuter, it has surprisingly good handling, with a refined engine

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPALPHA 231,700 113/1 7.1 8.1 104 5.2 N/AALPHA TWO TONE 237,700 113/1 7.1 8.1 104 5.2 N/A

AlphaYamaha’s attempt to take on the scooter segment, the new disc brake variants will be available in new exciting colors

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPFASCINO 243,700 113/1 7 8.1 103 5.2 N/A

FascinoThe all-new Yamaha Fascino is a performer whose skill and virtuosity enthralls you with grace

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPSALUTO 235,300 125/1 8.18 10.1 112 7.6 N/A

SalutoYamaha’s having another crack at the ��cc commuter bike segment

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPR�� 641,500 149.8/1 16.76 15 136 12 N/A

R15Now tweaked for better performance, this is still a fun ride

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPRAY Z 233,300 113/1 7.1 8.1 104 5.2 N/ARAY ZR DRUM 253,900 113/1 7.1 8.1 104 5.2 N/ARAY ZR DISK 271,500 113/1 7.1 8.1 104 5.2 N/A

RAY ZFun to ride, looks good and is a Yamaha

ROYAL ENFIELD B Z L Lanka 122/2, Arnolda Place, Colombo 5 | 717 730 887 | www.royalenfield.com

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPBULLET 900,000 350/1 19.8 28 180 13.5 95

BulletThe thump is enough to buzz your senses, and this bike can ride on almost any surface

YAMAHAAssociated Motorways185, Union Place, Colombo 2 | 112 309 300 | www.yamaha.lk

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPFZ �� 408,000 149/1 13.8 13.6 135 12 N/AFZ S 424,900 149/1 13 12.8 132 12 N/AFZ S TWO TONE 438,900 149/1 13 12.8 132 12 N/A

FZStreet-fighter looks and performance to go with it. The FZ aims to give you the thrills of a litre-class bike

SUZUKISuzuki Motors Lanka371, New Nuge Road, Peliyagoda | 112 914 769 | www.suzukimotorcyclessrilanka.com

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPGixxer SF 399,000 150/1 14.6 14 139 12 N/AGixxer 388,900 150/1 14.6 14 135 12 N/A

GIXXERThe latest version Suzuki’s street sport bike. It comes loaded with many features to make rides more stable on every road

VESPAColonial Motors (Ceylon) 449, Negombo Road, Peliyagoda | 117 449 449

PRICE ENGINE BHP NM WEIGHT TANK TOPLX 325,000 125 9.9 10.6 114 7 97

LXDesigned with efficiency and functionality in mind

Scott Devon founded the originally titled Devon Motorworks in Los Angeles in 2008, looking to capitalise on the imminent death of the second-gen Dodge Viper

by buying up the rights, and producing his own super-coupe on the same underpinnings. The Devon GTX was the handsome result. It used the same 8.4-litre V10 and running gear as the Viper (albeit pumped up to 650bhp), but wrapped up in a carbon body with a completely redesigned and far smarter cabin, butterfly doors and its strange shaved-off wheelarch blisters. Ouch.

And the car wasn’t just a rebodied, retrimmed Viper with a rocket up its backside. Devon went to the considerable trouble of developing a new active suspension system that offered 60mm of ride height adjustment. Prod the button, and the TX could scoot up a steep driveway. Press it again, and it’d shrink-wrap itself onto the track. Worked well for the McLaren P1, that idea.

The GTX’s ultimate goal had been to set a new Nürburgring street-car lap record, and it proved its potential in testing by setting a lap record at Willow Springs raceway in California and briefly holding the Laguna Seca lap record too, before it was, ironically, taken back by the Dodge Viper ACR, complete with a Devon-style rear wing.

Years active 2008–2013

Number produced Two

Cost new $500,000 (est)

USP World’s biggest-capacity engine

Power claims 650bhp @6000rpm 590lb ft @ 5000rpm

Performance claims 0–62mph in 3.4secs, 200mph max

Reason for failure Financial crisis

Chance of resuscitation Absolutely nil

THE SUPERCARS THAT ALMOST MADE IT

Rare breedDevon bid $5m for the right to own Chrysler’s

Viper platform and catapult the GTX into production at a rate of 36 cars a year. However, Chrysler wasn’t prepared to sell for less than $10m, and as the recession bit hard, negotiations broke down and Devon ran out of money. The outfit was wound up in 2013 with just two prototypes produced, one of which sold at auction for $220,000 a year earlier.

Meanwhile, a bailed-out Chrysler emerged from financial oblivion and in 2013 began production of an all-new Viper, launching a short-lived standalone SRT sub-brand and almost reaching the Devon’s claimed power outputs, offering 640bhp and 600lb ft in standard trim. The story’s now come full circle, with the slow-selling Viper destined to be canned for good in 2017. Something tells us there won’t be a bidding war this time.

SpecificationWHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

“ The Devon wasn’t just a Viper with a rocket up its backside...”

Devon GTX

WO

RD

S: O

LLIE

KEW


OF THE HILL - Magazinos.com

Documents

Transcript of OF THE HILL - Magazinos.com