Tag: topgear.com

You know that saying about reinventing the wheel? Turns out that was the chosen metaphor because wheels are generally pretty good at their job. Nevertheless, in the ’90s, Mercedes and Saab both built concepts and prototypes that were steered with joysticks instead. Presumably the latter got on board because it wanted to take the whole…

Not wanting to be outdone by BYD’s 1,500kW ‘Flash Charging’, Geely has now announced its fifth generation ‘Geely Smart Charging Station’, and we’re told that it delivers a peak power output of 2,250kW. Impressive, but surely they could have come up with a cooler name? We’ll call it Quicksilver Charging. One for the Marvel fans…

Well, it’s taken me decades of driving very fast cars in Italy, but today I’ve found the only policeman in the entire nation without an ounce of love or appreciation for cars in his veins. Perhaps the only citizen of this amazing and beautiful country who couldn’t care less about anything with four wheels and…

Earlier this year, Rolls-Royce announced the grandiosely titled ‘Project Nightingale’. It was to be a 5.76m-long, two-seater convertible with an electric powertrain, and as the first car from Rolls’ exclusive new Coachbuild Collection, just 100 would be built. But despite its relative rarity, the new droptop will undergo some fairly serious testing. We’re told that…

The story of Brabus, founded in 1977, really starts early in the same decade when Bodo Buschmann begins working at the family dealership, Auto Buschmann KG. He sees the passion customers have for cars. Mostly Mercedes-Benz models. He’s studying law and business administration in this period too, but soon drops the theory in order to…

Has anyone warned Hyundai that Nissan is trying to muscle in on its pixel-based design language? This is the new Pixo, and we’re told by Masato Koyama, Nissan’s head of exterior design, that it features a “bold, cube-shaped silhouette”. And check out those pixelated wheels. It’s still quite clearly a rebadged Renault Twingo though, isn’t…

It might be renowned for producing the stuff that our internal combustion engined cars run on, but now Saudi Arabia is turning its attention to something very different entirely: EVs. What you’re looking at above is the Exobot Sedan and Exobot SUV. Designed and manufactured by startup CEER Motors (Saudi Arabia’s “first homegrown automotive brand”)…

Big news for affluent moths: this is the new Bentley Torcal. Visible, eh? You certainly won’t miss it coming up the back of you on the motorway at night. But don’t be fooled by that luminescent schnozz – behind it is an EV at great pains to make as little fuss as possible about the…

A comeback. A frankly enormous one. We’ve not been able to buy a GTI-badged Peugeot since the beginning of the decade, around which time the old 208 and 308 GTI hot hatchbacks – both underrated things – were retired from sale. It returns on a 208, albeit in a way we suspect Peugeot didn’t initially…

Frank Stephenson is a car designer with more hits than the Beatles, including the Escort RS Cossie, first BMW Mini, Maser MC12, numerous Ferraris and the McLaren P1. These days he runs his own consultancy – Frank Stephenson Design. Here he shares his views on the Audi RS5. The fast German estate has long been…