Tag: topgear.com

Hands up if your long path to petrolhead status began in the digital confines of classic PlayStation driving sim, Gran Turismo. If you can tear those hands from your joypad, anyway. JDM used car prices are now heading rapidly north, linked perhaps to those avid gameplayers in the late Nineties and early Noughties having slightly…

Tamara Ivancova is 24 years old. She has already worked for the AlphaTauri and McLaren F1 teams, Aston Martin’s road car division, motorsport gods Prodrive, and now she’s dreamt up her own car company and plans to tour (and save) the world in a homebuilt prototype. But sure, broadsheets: you crack on telling the world…

A pure electric Cayenne with a 113kWh (108 usable) battery, 360-399 miles of official range and a maximum of 1,140bhp and over 1,100lb ft of torque in Turbo guise. Porsche’s most powerful production roadcar ever. Some punchy numbers, huh? A motor on each axle gives AWD, next-gen traction control and stability control the ability to…

One of China’s elder statesmen. So to speak. Unlike so many of these insurgent brands that were apparently set up five minutes ago and already sell cars in the millions, Changan has been in the manufacturing game for 45 years. Its first effort was a van in the 1980s, before it moved onto cars in…

The locals call it a ‘baby blizzard’. It’s the sort of thing that would be declared a national emergency in the UK, but Detroit powers on. Formerly America’s most formidable industrial city, Motown has seen good times and, more recently, bad. But it’s currently resurgent. Michigan Central Station – bought and renovated by Ford to…

Did I mention that it was really hot? With no aircon, I was forced to keep opening the electric canopy to prevent passing out, which, unbeknownst to me, removed exactly one “start” from the tiny battery every time I did it. And I had to remember to blip the throttle every 10 to 15 seconds…

When did everything get so complicated? A few years back, if someone handed you a set of car keys, you didn’t need instructions. You just got in and drove off. Then along came the Toyota Prius and suddenly cars needed a ‘startup sequence’ – foot on brake, press this button, wait for screen to boot…

In the late 1970s, Maserati hit upon a radical, borderline blasphemous idea. What if it hit pause on building very interesting sports cars and grand tourers that many people admired but no one bought… and instead tried making some money? This brave ‘stop going bankrupt’ strategy would see Maserati take BMW on at its own…

Job simulators are particularly in vogue at the moment in gaming, and they don’t get more satisfying than Roadcraft, the driving game that has you repairing bridges instead of overtaking racers. And if you thought you’d punched out, we’ve got news for you: the ‘Reclaim Expansion’ has arrived, and it’s added tonnes more honest work.…

Ah the little legend that was the AE86? Oh yes, this is a car that’s steeped in narrative, some of which is fable. At the time of launch, it wasn’t actually seen as very important, at least not in the UK. Some context. Back then, 1985, most of Toyota’s range was dynamically pretty ropey, especially…