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Everything you need to know about cars this week: 16 June '19
TG telly returns, we get a go in Lambo's off-road supercar, and the Supra taken on the M2, Alpine and Cayman
Range Rover Velar SVAD review: hot SUV driven
"Mentally it’s an increasingly hard car to justify – expensive to buy and run, and with a power unit rapidly approaching end-of-life obsolescence. So, a confession: I rather liked it. It’s flattering, I like that it swerves the full-ticket fakery of an SUV that thinks it’s a sports car. It’s a more honest, pleasing car than that. This could catch on."
Advertisement - Page continues belowReview: Mercedes GLC
"A talented all-rounder from Mercedes. An easy to recommend if soulless piece of kit"
The man who helped build Jaguar has passed away
"Norman Dewis, former Jaguar test driver, works racer, and all round gentleman, has sadly passed away at the age of 98."
Advertisement - Page continues belowThis lawnmower does 0-100mph in 6.3 seconds
"Honda’s just nabbed itself a Guinness World Record. Its latest ‘Mean Mower’ – which uses the 200bhp 999cc four-cylinder engine from the company’s CBR1000RR motorcycle – is officially the fastest lawnmower from 0-100mph. Because that’s apparently a thing."
TG's Toyota Supra mega-test pt1: Supra vs BMW Z4
"Ne’er before have two cars been mentioned in the same breath more often. Supra and Z4, or ‘Zupra’ if you ask the wittier corners of the Top Gear office. We all know the story by now: Toyota wanted to revive the Supra badge but needed a partner to make it financially viable. BMW had the straight-six engine Toyota needed, wanted to keep their Z4 alive, and fancied saving a few quid themselves. So Toyota and BMW butted heads for a bit, defined the chassis, engine, gearbox and electronics that BMW were putting on the table, stuffed them in a couple of wheely bags and parted ways to go and meet their separate briefs. Bit like an automotive Ready, Steady, Cook."
The Ultima RS is a 1,200bhp, 930kg hypercar from Leicester
"You’d be forgiven for not having heard of Ultima. But you’d have been missing out, too. See, while Koenigsegg, AMG and Aston Martin all currently hone their latest prototype racer-esque road cars, Ultima’s been offering something along those lines from the 1980s. And all from little old Leicester."
Say hello to the Mercedes-Benz GLB
"The Mercedes-Benz GLB is a “compact” crossover that uses the same basic underpinnings as the new A-Class and B-Class. Bigger, though, so there’s room for seven seats."
Advertisement - Page continues belowThe new Bentley Flying Spur will make chauffeurs very happy
"Does a limo need to be good to drive? Bentley certainly seems to think so. This is the new Flying Spur, and it’s had heaps of driver-focused tech thrown at it to ensure it’s the company’s deftest saloon car yet. Chauffeurs have never had it so good."
Yikes, this restomod Porsche 356 RSR might be perfect
"We met Emory Motorsports a few months ago, and immediately fell slightly in love with the idea of restomod Porsches that aren’t 911s. With its new 356 RSR, we’re head over heels. It’s a much more serious piece of kit; power is up from 200 to almost 400bhp, but still in a car that weighs around 900kg. Expect it to be a small handful."
Advertisement - Page continues belowTG's Toyota Supra mega-test pt2: Supra vs Porsche Cayman
"Something unusual happened on the launch of the Toyota Supra in Spain a few weeks back. Tetsuya Tada, the Supra’s chief engineer, openly expressed his admiration for Porsche. This doesn’t happen. Representatives from one company scrupulously avoid talking about another’s product, let alone praise it. Yet here was Tada-san saying he admired Porsche’s attention to detail, citing an instance where he knows they made a minute adjustment to the brake software, and openly saying he was disappointed Porsche had moved away from the flat six to the turbo four, but that the Cayman was still the only rival that mattered, the car they had benchmarked."
This is the brand new BMW 3 Series Touring
"This is the brand new BMW 3 Series Touring. It looks… decent, doesn’t it? Still a little fussy – as we maintained with the saloon – but overall not a bad looking thing at all."
TG's Toyota Supra mega-test pt3: Supra vs Alpine A110
"Make no mistake – there’s a battle going on for what makes a car a success. But it’s not so much a war of words as it is a bleeding-knuckles, last-man-standing melee between words and numbers. It’s ‘lightness’ versus ‘789bhp’, ‘deftness’ vs ‘0-62 in 2.9’ and ‘fun’ vs ‘1.4g’."
Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato review: wild, off-road Lambo tested
"Need to get to your Alpine retreat? Bolt the snowboard on the roof and head for the snow line. Bored with Sunday evening traffic back into LA? Why not take a diversion across the trails? Want a supercar that can survive the harshest environment of all: daily life in a megacity? The Sterrato has you covered."
TG's Toyota Supra mega-test pt4: Supra vs BMW M2
"Earlier this week, the Zupra zaw off the BMW Z4. Apologies. That didn’t surprise me. I suspect that BMW never realised it was in a deadly head-to-head with Toyota – The Germans were just going through the motions of creating another roadster, while the Japanese were in a desperate need to prove themselves. Not only must their car be better than the Z4 (the humiliation if BMW built a roadster that out-handled Toyota’s comeback coupe), but it needed to be strong enough to assuage the firm’s inability to create this car itself. And that’s a much tougher, more open-ended, philosophical task."
Say hello to the new Alpine A110S
"Since the Alpine A110 came out in 2017, people (such as us) have been saying its superb chassis could handle, and indeed deserved, more power than its tiddly 1.8-litre turbocharged four-cylinder provided. Happily, Renault was paying attention, and for the new Alpine A110S has increased the 1.8’s output from 248bhp to 288bhp, by dint of a beefier turbo. 0-62mph takes 4.4 seconds – a tenth of a second quicker than standard."
Top Gear’s Top 9: sensible first cars
"The telly boys’ first cars have been battling it out. Here’s some more consumer advice"
The Aston Martin Valkyrie will race at Le Mans
"Aston Martin is going back to Le Mans. And it wants outright victory in 2021. New rules will replace the current LMP1 prototypes with race-modified roadgoing hypercars that will be the new top class of endurance racing. And, in the Valkyrie, Aston Martin will have one of the fastest hypercars."
Top Gear TV returns this Sunday! Here's your series 27 preview
"Notwithstanding the whole ‘crumbling of the global political and social order’ thing, it’s a fine time to be alive. The weather is fine, the days are long, and Top Gear is returning to your tellies with a shiny new presenter line-up. Yes, TGTV is back! Series 27 sees Paddy McGuinness, Freddie Flintoff and Chris Harris tackling the fastest, hottest, toughest Top Gear challenges to date: pushing their cars, and themselves, to the very limits of endurance. All because no one takes testing cars as seriously as Top Gear. And also because they really should have checked the small print of their contracts more closely before signing."
Caterham reckons its 270S is the perfect car for drifting
"So, you want to learn to drift huh? You’ll be needing huge amounts of power from a highly-tuned engine and a healthy tyre budget then, surely?
Well, perhaps not, because Caterham reckons that the bottom-of-the-range Seven 270S, with its Ford-sourced 1.6-litre Sigma engine and 135bhp, is the perfect car to get you going sideways for the very first time.
And so, as a drifting novice and the newest member of the TG team, I find myself posing as the willing guinea pig for this experiment. Our laboratory for the day is the lower paddock at Brands Hatch – home to the recently re-launched Caterham Drift Experience – and the scientists are a group of instructors with more research hours behind the wheel of Sevens than you’d care to imagine."
Here are some new pics of the Aston Martin DBX SUV
"Aston Martin has started building its very first cars at the brand-new St Athan factory in south Wales. Those cars? Pre-production versions of the DBX with a slightly-less camouflaged paintjob than we’ve seen before."
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