Tag: topgear.com

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…

It’s the Porsche Taycan’s crossover cousin, the Cross Turismo – think Audi Allroad and you’re spot on. There’s also the Sport Turismo which comes with the same estate-y features, but without the extra ground clearance and body cladding. So it’s a Taycan, but estate-ified? Yes. Mechanically, the Cross Turismo is largely identical to the Taycan.…

McLaren has a new logo. That’s it up above. Surprise! It says ‘McLaren’. There’s plenty of history behind this “evolved brand identity” though, because the fresh wordmark was inspired by the sign that used to sit above the family service station in Remuera, Auckland. That’s where Bruce built his first winning race car, and it’s…

The Countryman JCW is the fastest, most powerful production Mini available today. As well as the hugest. And heaviest. It’s therefore a fairly typical sports SUV so instead of considering its puzzling blend of size and speed a nonsense, you could consider it a cut price Cayenne or a budget Urus. We’re at Dunsfold where…

Big news in the world of small cars: the TG award-winning Renault 5 now gets an improved WLTP range of up to 259 miles – and doesn’t ask for a penny extra of your hard-earned cash. That’s for the ‘Comfort’ Range, and represents an improvement of, er, four miles from its 52kWh battery. All counts…

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…

So here’s a question. If you had the enviable task of assembling the ultimate garage of any occasion dream cars – with the one common thread tying them together being three pedals in the footwell and a stick in the middle – how different would it look to this? Naturally, making this evoked nostalgic reminisces…

How to phrase this without sounding absurdly ungrateful and, possibly, clinically insane. I should just say it: I’m completely over hypercars. They’re amazing, spectacular and highly varied. Mostly huge fun to drive, too. But for the love of God, can’t we just get some normal performance cars for normal people? Poor me, right? I can…

It’s at about 11.30pm that I begin to think this truly was a terrible idea. The Spirit of Tasmania – an old Greek ferry – lumbers out of the relatively calm Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne, Australia, into the notoriously tempestuous Bass Strait. Suddenly, as we enter open ocean, the great vessel begins pitching fore…