Top Gear magazine asks: electric or petrol?

In the shiny new issue of Top Gear magazine - out now from all reputable outlets (and some less so) - it’s time to choose a side. Saints vs Sinners. Petrol vs electric.

Adopt the new wave of all-electric, silent but deadly-fast machines coming from carmakers you know and love – and haven’t heard of – or cling on to the good old days and celebrate what may be the last hurrah of the petrol-swigging, all-out performance car, brandishing turbochargers, gearboxes, and exhaust pipes? We need to know where your loyalty lies.

In the holier-than-thou corner, we find the likes of the Porsche Mission E Cross Turismo concept – a sort of jacked-up, wagon-body Panamera thingy running front and rear electric motors. Claims of 0-62mph in 3.5sec and 0-125mph in 12 seconds are as healthy as the range – 300 miles, which is par for the premium EV course. 

It’s a concept car, mind. The Jaguar I-Pace is here and ready. A 298-mile range, 394bhp, 0-62mph in 4.5sec and yours for just over £60,000. It’s beaten the Audi e-tron and Mercedes EQ to market, and looks very much like the concept car that previewed it. Promising stuff. 

But it’s yet another crossover – the most common, most boring type of bodystyle these days. So to prove the EV brigade can do mind-blowing as well, Rimac has presented the C_Two hypercar. Claims of 1,887bhp, 0-60 in 1.85sec (with a one foot rollout) and a 403-mile range blow pretty much everything ever seen powered by batteries clean out of the, erm, water. 

But is speed everything?

Well, if you can make do with a mere 711bhp and the idea of a turbocharged lightweight V8 Ferrari doesn’t count as heresy, then the Ferrari 488 Pista ought to appeal just a tad. Its emissions are dirty, but also musical. And 0-62mph in 2.85 sec is right up there among the EVs…

The Germans are still into their heavy metal. At the Geneva show, both AMG and BMW revealed new two-tonne, four-door coupes with twin-turbo V8 power. The AMG GT63 S is an E-Class based AMG flagship with Drift Mode for all the family, and while the M8 Gran Coupe is for now just a concept car, BMW has made it a habit to put cars that look very similar indeed into production. And feel free to keep the green hue, M Division.

Still not decided which side to fall down on? Then might we suggest checking out issue 307 of Top Gear magazine, on sale to all Saints and Sinners now, and via the links below...

Order direct to your door now via this blue link

Subscribe today and save 35 per cent, and get a set of bluetooth wireless headphones worth £24.99 because we're nice like that, via this other blue link

Or just download it to your digital device of choice, via this other other blue link