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Everything you need to know about cars this week: 3 May '20
Ken Block dreams up his next car, F1 plans a return, and a mad Alfa gets a mad price
Is it wrong to put a modern touchscreen in a classic Porsche?
"Get this: an interior-based optional extra from Porsche you might actually want. Not leather-stitched air vent vanes or a mahogany/carbon-fibre steering wheel – but a touchscreen."
Advertisement - Page continues belowThe Bugatti Divo is finally ready
"It may use the Chiron’s platform and 1,479bhp quad-turbo W16, but the Divo is lighter, stiffer, more focussed and somehow even more outrageous than the car on which it’s based, and apparently not at all like it to drive."
These Swiss tuners have built an Alpina B3 Touring rival
"First up is Level 1, which ups power to 429bhp and torque to 464lb ft (from 369lb ft as standard). That’s for wimps though – naturally you’ll want the most power available, so Level 2 brings a healthy 468bhp and 501lb ft of torque from the 3.0-litre straight-six."
Advertisement - Page continues belowThe 2020 Formula 1 season will start in July
"The French Grand Prix has become the latest F1 race to drop off the calendar due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, but the sport’s Chairman and CEO is confident that this season will still go ahead."
#TopGearChallenge Three: Car Design
"It’s time to sharpen your pencils or crack open a new Photoshop file as your #TopGearChallenge this week is to design a two-seat electric sports car."
Review: Lincoln Aviator
"Turns out, the Navigator's baby brother is - when specced correctly - the pick of the Lincoln litter."
How riders train for the TT when the TT's cancelled
"Davey Todd has been riding at the Isle of Man TT since 2018, but had signed up with one of road racing’s biggest names – Honda – for 2020’s event. Preparation had been going well until coronavirus took a hold and crumpled up all the things we take for granted."
Advertisement - Page continues belowHere's how to turbocharge your engine
"Time to turbocharge your engine. Excellent news. Get it right and you’ll be rewarded with neck-snapping performance. Get it wrong and a stock of 2020 calendars would’ve been a better investment. So here’s Top Gear’s guide to turbocharging your car."
SCG is building a Baja-ready kit-car
"The Mini Boot will be sold through the company’s website as a kit of parts 'that can be purchased in instalments'. You’ll need to provide your own engine, too – SCG says the Mini Boot will be developed around a 2.2-litre GM EcoTec crate engine and a Sadev transmission."
Advertisement - Page continues belowNooo! Audi is pulling out of DTM
"This isn’t a result of COVID-19, either. Rather electricity. Audi states that it wants to focus its efforts on electric and customer racing programmes – such as its Formula E and stripped out GT3 and TCR car efforts."
Eight car bits you (probably) didn’t know were recycled
"The Noble M12 was built between 2000 and 2008, a wide, squat 350bhp V6 sports car that firmly established the marque as a presence on the low-production market. Whether it could have achieved its modest success without the benefit of rear lights from the saloon version of the MkI Mondeo (1992-96) is anyone’s guess."
This German tuner's made a 201mph Mercedes A-Class
"The second tier of its tuning – dubbed the RS 525 – swaps out Merc’s apparently insufficient turbo for a much beefier one, yielding a 525bhp peak and a 3.4sec 0-62 time. But those figures pale in insignificance to its new top speed: 201mph. Y’know, as in as fast as a V10 Audi R8. Or a Ferrari F40…"
Apparently this swoopy Chinese EV can do 438 miles on a charge
"Welcome to an EV that can apparently travel a very, very long way between charges. Xpeng, a five-year old company headquartered in Guangzhou, China, claims the longest-range version of its new P7 can drive 438 miles on a single charge of its 80.9kWh battery. Yikes."
The Nurburgring is re-opening to the public
"Beginning on 30 April the ‘Ring will host ‘contactless tourist days’, where extra safety measures will be enforced to minimise face-to-face contact with the track’s staff and other drivers."
Five things we know about the upcoming BMW 4 Series
"Includes: a mad 370bhp 440i and more NEGATIVE CAMBER. Woop woop."
The mad Mini JCW GPs: which one would you choose?
"If you like your hot-hatches a bit spicy, they don’t come more piquant than the Mini John Cooper Works GP, now in its third generation of lunacy. We’ll be getting our hands on the new one as soon as lockdown restrictions allow, but to tide us over until then here’s some pictures of it having a ding-dong, in Germany, with the two previous generations."
Now’s your chance to own a wonderful Peugeot 205 T16
"We love looking through auction lot lists here at TG. Search hard enough and you’ll inevitably find something ridiculously cool and impossibly expensive up for grabs. But today we’ve hit the motherload – a competition-spec Group B Peugeot 205 T16 offered by Silverstone Auctions."
Gaming review: Snowrunner is slow but satisfying
"Your job is to pick up contracts, delivering cargo, towing other vehicles and eventually building a miniature empire across the three separate regions. The meat of the game though is the moment to moment challenge of juggling diff settings, switching to your low ratio box and slowly inching your way up an ostensibly gentle hill."
Extreme E will run mixed-sex teams when it starts in 2021
"Extreme E, motorsport’s premier source of ‘why not?’ attitude, has announced that it will be running mixed-sex teams when it launches, and we can’t help but cheer. There’ll be no quarter asked or given, simply a male and female driver sharing the same car for an equal amount of laps with some sort of aggregation of team times to decide the winner."
What would you put on the back of Bollinger's new rig?
"This new Bollinger B2 Chassis Cab version – available as a two-door cab or four-door double cab, and with a variety of wheelbases – gets the same performance and the same 2.3-tonne payload, but offers 'unlimited work truck variants'."
The Alfa Giulia GTA costs many euros, has many liveries
"What’s that? You’re only interested in the GTAm version – that’s the one with no back seats, a roll cage, and a wing the size of a snowboard? Bad news. You’re going to be €181,500 out of pocket. Yep, there’s a €5,000 premium for the ‘less is more’ version. At current rates it’s scraping £160,000."
You must watch this pair of free motorsport films
"In the early days of lockdown, we published a list of ten must-see racing documentaries. Now, based on the fact a) you’ve had a lot of free time on your hands since and b) most of them need to be purchased in one form or another, I thought I’d share a couple more that are completely free to view. And at under an hour each, easily slotted into a lunchtime/extended tea’n’biscuit break."
Chris Harris on... supercar FOMO
"Recently, I was chatting to a pal in the same trade and he mentioned the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ. I felt no pang whatsoever. He said it was mostly a crap road car for tasteless people, and even without driving it I think I probably agreed, but I didn’t care that I hadn’t driven it. This apathy has been creeping up on me for some time – but I now think I’ve reached the stage where I read about another new super/hyper car and simply shrug."
Ken Block's crazy new car is called the Hoonifox
"Is there an end to the creative lunacy of Ken Block? Simple answer: no. Even in the midst of a global pandemic his brain is salivating at the thought of what he can build next to send tyres screaming into smoke. And this, ladies and gents, is it: the Hoonifox."
Ten alternative best cars for new drivers
"We’ve decided to take a break from building toilet paper forts to impart some troublingly flimsy but overwhelmingly good-intentioned advice on the first cars we’d buy if this were our first time taking the plunge. Because dipping toes is for wusses."
Top Gear’s Top 9: homologation specials
"The 33 Stradale actually started off as a prototype race car, which was reverse-engineered so it could compete in production car racing. Thanks to an all-aluminium, 2.0 flat-plane V8, there was 230bhp on tap. It was potent both on and off the track."
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