Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i Evo

THERE ARE A FEW GOOD REASONS why using hydrogen to directly power cars is a good idea and we’ll come onto them a little later, but the best one for enthusiasts like us is apparent the moment this prototype fires up: it sounds glorious, a heavy, rich, loping V6 drawl that’s indistinguishable from the sound of one burning hydrocarbon fuel. Yet there is no aroma, even if you drop on one knee and stick your nose in one of its tailpipes. Built for Bosch by French sports car constructors Ligier, the JS2 RH2 looks like a cross between a road car and a race car, which is pretty much on the money because the front is LMP3 racer while the bodywork and the rear end housing the Maserati twin-turbo ‘Nettuno’…

EVERY ECOTY HAS ITS MOMENT. THIS YEAR mine came early on day four as the sun climbed over the Route Napoléon. It was the perfect morning. Cool, crisp air. Gas-burner blue sky streaked with white cirrus clouds. Valleys draped in soft blankets of mist and the trees burnished with spectacular autumn colours. Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur at its most beautiful. And the car? Ferrari 12 Cilindri. Sometimes eCoty days begin with a convoy, but today it’s just me and the sulphur yellow spaceship, carefully stalking our way out of Digne-les-Bains. Our destination is the Col de la Bonette – one of the highest roads in Europe and an iconic stage of the Tour de France. All the ingredients for a God Tier drive. It needs to be, for while I’ve got a…

SENIOR STAFF WRITER YOUSUF ASHRAF Yousuf made his eCoty debut this year, bringing a level of youthful enthusiasm and sense of professionalism that we worked tirelessly over the week to break. EDITOR-AT-LARGE JOHN BARKER JB’s youthful professionalism was beaten out of him some years ago and replaced with wisdom, dark humour and one-liners delivered quicker than his corner entry speeds. CONTRIBUTING EDITOR HENRY CATCHPOLE Elected to drive to and from eCoty in the Corvette. A decision he soon regretted due to the Lambo-style seat design. Last seen stooped at the bar for medical purposes. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF STUART GALLAGHER Took on the planning for this year’s eCoty, immediately regretted it. Was delighted to discover on the eve of the test that a 12th car had been included. CONTRIBUTING WRITER COLIN GOODWIN The…

12TH AUDI RS3 SPORTBACK Our first contender to fall by the wayside is the Audi. Yousuf was impressed with how the RS3 performed against such a standout field and was surprised at just how good it felt regardless of which big hitter he had just climbed out of. Like the majority of the judges, however, he felt it lacked the feedback and the absolute responsiveness that mark out a really great hot hatch. ‘It would be unkind and untrue to say that it’s downhill after the start-up, but the burbly way the five-cylinder comes to life is one of the best things about the RS3,’ was Henry’s take on the updated hyperhatch. ‘Finding the fun can be a little hard work, but I still enjoyed getting into it every time.’…

TWO ECOTY FIRSTS THIS YEAR. Though the McLaren Artura Spider came very close last year, the Revuelto is the first hybrid to win. And though variants of the Gallardo and Huracán have finished second (and the Diablo VT 6.0 too, back in 2000), the Revuelto is also the first Lamborghini champion. Since 2021’s Huracán STO, with its active aerodynamics and patented forged composite materials, it feels like Lamborghini has been gathering momentum technologically, creating cars with the dynamics and tech to match the dramatic design and remarkable engines for which it has always been famous. In the Revuelto, that journey arc has arrived at a truly complete car. As Colin observed, it’s a Lamborghini you don’t have to make excuses for, and as John said, it is a definitive 21st-century…

WE’LL COME BACK TO THE BAG OF CHOCOLATE waffles and the Ferrari in a minute, but I want to start with the one really big disappointment from this year’s eCoty. Something that engendered an even more crushing sense of despair than discovering just how young Yousuf is. Dismay deeper even than that felt by photographers Andy and Olgun when the Vanquish rolled off the transporter looking greyer than a wet November morning. No, the biggest disappointment was an absence. The absence of any really affordable car in this year’s otherwise very healthy line-up. The cheapest car in the test was the Audi RS3, which at £62,000 feels like the preserve of automotive photographers and early bitcoin investors. We scoured the pages from the last year’s worth of magazines, even searched…

DESPITE A LARGER THAN ANTICIPATED FIELD FOR THIS YEAR’S eCoty, there were always going to be cars left behind that might have been considered shoo-ins for inclusion. Chief amongst these is BMW’s new M5, a car for which we had high expectations. Yet while it has impressed to an extent, there have been heavy caveats in both saloon and Touring forms. Yes, it’s monumentally powerful with over 700bhp, and stupendously quick too, but it’s also aloof, remote and, unless driven absolutely at its limit with everything wound up as high as it will go, generally inspires respect rather than adoration. A number of potential candidates fell foul of international launch calendar timings, hence why Ford’s Mustang GTD, Ferrari’s F80 and 296 Speciale, Porsche’s new 911 Turbo S and Lamborghini’s Temerario…

RATINGS + = new entry this month. Cars in italics are no longer on sale. Issue no. is for our most recent major test of the car (D = Driven, F = feature, FF = Fast Fleet). Engine shows details of the car’s combustion engine, or for EVs the peak combined output of the electric motors in kW. Weight (claimed) is as quoted by the manufacturer, with a manual gearbox if offered. In most cases this figure is to DIN standards, i.e. with fluids, including a 90 per cent full fuel tank, but without a driver. However, where only a ‘dry’ weight is quoted (i.e. without any fluids) this is indicated by *. Note that a dry weight makes a car’s power-to-weight ratio (bhp/ton) appear more favourable. Weight (tested) is…

SHOWING ITS COMMITMENT TO THE European car market, Hyundai Motor Group recently opened a 25,000sq m extension to its test facilities at the Hyundai Motor Europe Technical Centre (HMTEC) in Russelsheim, Germany. The investment of €150m, plus €50m in equipment, brings state-of-the-art testing facilities including one of the largest semi-anechoic chambers in Europe, a powertrain dynamometer with partially robotised driver and a four-wheel-drive rolling road with up to 162mph (260kph) capability. Tyrone Johnson, managing director of HMTEC, says the investment will help speed development of European-specific models and also produce data that will be shared with Hyundai’s other operations. Many of the test cells, including the rolling road, can be run at temperatures between-40 and +50deg C, reflecting the extremes found in Europe, from the Nordic states to Turkey in…

NEIGHBOURS, AS THE SYRUPY THEME TO the TV show of the same name would have it, everybody needs good neighbours. Fortunately, we do. So when the lovely lady next door was confined to weeks of house rest after an operation, we wanted to help in whatever way we could. My wife started by taking round some cake. Shortly after which my role in this became clear. Our neighbour was worried about her car, my wife said. Specifically, that as she would be unable to drive for a while, it would fester on the driveway and in this colder weather the battery would go flat. I hate the casual nuisance of a flat battery, so this seemed like an opportunity to be useful. Don’t worry about a thing, I said to…

‘THE ULTIME ALWAYS SEEMS TO BE ASKING FOR MORE COMMITMENT. IT IS UNASHAMEDLY EXTREME’HENRY CATCHPOLE, EVO 340 ALPINE A110 R ULTIME LET’S ADDRESS THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM straight off the bat: the A110 R Ultime costs more than 2023’s evo Car and Track Car of the Year, the Porsche 911 GT3 RS. For a flyweight with a 1.8-litre, four-cylinder turbocharged engine this will be, to some people, a price tag the diminutive French wonder simply can’t pull off. Good job that eCoty measures a car purely on its ability then. Over the course of the next few days we’ll be able to deliver the definitive verdict on the most extreme and focused road car that Alpine has ever produced. The new suspension, aero and gearbox are only a few…

Power, price and performance figures are secondary metrics at eCoty, but as it happens, this year’s numbers king is also the outright winner – and by a clear distance. Put simply, the Revuelto is everything we once hoped and dreamed a V12 Lamborghini would be like to drive. The spec sheet might leave you apprehensive, the V12 no longer acting as a singular force but supported by e-motors and batteries, pushing the weight close to two tons. But far from diluting the experience, every ounce of voltage and processing power is used to serve the driver and allow you to access the thrill of a big, bad Lambo more readily than ever. Never before has a V12 Lamborghini been so exploitable, so agile, so nuanced, so spectacularly fast. The Revuelto…

ON EVERY EVO CAR OF THE YEAR THERE’S ONE drive that you recognise as an absolute banker, one you know you’ll replay in detail, a memory that’s being written straight to your brain’s hard drive. For me, this year’s came on the morning of day two, in the Lamborghini Revuelto, and it started with a bang. Shuffling out of the hotel car park in EV mode and heading just up the road to get petrol, a message flashes up on the facia alerting me to the fact that it will need to start the engine shortly as the battery range is almost exhausted. Not yet fully awake, I read the message but don’t take it in. Moments later a V12 bomb goes off behind me, ripping through the cockpit. It’s…

MY LAST ECOTY WAS JUST under ten years ago. How different it all is today. Out of the dozen cars this year, only one has a manual gearbox and two have hybrid powertrains. Plenty of food for thought here: what is a Lamborghini with no fewer than three electric motors going to be like to drive? A Lamborghini with 1001bhp to boot. Barker is only a year younger than me but apart from him I’m by far the oldest judge. The worry is not that I won’t be able to keep up with the youngsters on the road (I’m used to that: Meaden, Barker and Catchpole are more skilled drivers than I), but that I will come across as a Luddite. I detest the parasitical intrusion of modern ADAS systems…

RACING RADIO-CONTROLLED CARS IS an underrated first chapter in a life built around cars. Speak to many racers or engineers and the seeds of their passion were sewn in karting, season upon season of competition ruthlessly funded to nudge the lucky few into their dream jobs. Richard Hall, founder of Great British Sports Cars, is proof that your future career can instead be held literally in the palm of your hands. ‘I’d always enjoyed mechanical things and started doing radio-controlled car racing when I was around seven,’ he says. ‘I got my first car, a Mardave, made in Leicester, and joined the local club in West Bridgford, racing at club level. By secondary-school age I was competing at national level in the Tamiya Euro Cup, then 1:10-scale Touring Cars, building…

THE CAR PARK AT OUR HOTEL HAS TAKEN ON THE role of a truck stop. It’s early Monday morning and what would ordinarily be a sleepy nook behind a retail park in southeastern France has become a temporary HGV transport hub. Artics and trailers disgorge various cars as forms are signed, keys handed over, and spare tyres wheeled into support vehicles. Breath mists in the autumnal morning air, feet are stamped and hands rubbed to keep warm – or perhaps with glee, for this is the biggest eCoty test since 2016, with no fewer than 12 contenders. Each is among the greatest driver’s cars on sale today. One will turn out to be extraordinary. The driver delivering the Maserati GT2 Stradale also has a trio of Ferraris in his truck…

DAY TWO, 12 CILINDRI, AND the first drive of the day. The Ferrari’s V12 feels omnipotent, its eight-speed auto seamless. Steering perhaps a little quick for nondescript French roundabouts, ride height not challenged by the speed humps in and out of villages, ride quality just so. Gentle throttle openings make passing the Berlingos and Twingos utterly effortless. The 12 Cilindri’s GT roots and DNA are still present and correct. You’re out and in before the driver has registered near half-a-million euros of yellow Ferrari go from an object in their mirrors to one gently pulling away towards the horizon. If I could be bothered to pair my phone to yet another in-car system, I’d find a suitable Matt Monro track to play. And then the Octa hoves into view and…

HERE WE GO AGAIN. THAT’S what I was thinking after my first drive in the GT3. Like meeting an old friend, whatever generation I find myself in, GT3s and I just seem to pick up where we left off. Such familiarity is pleasing, but so too is the confidence these cars exude. They really are a lesson in the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality. Purity and simplicity are key; a stick shift is rare indeed in 2025, as is a minimalist approach to dynamic modes. It creates a sense of timelessness that’s hard to match and makes every interaction refreshingly instinctive. Andy Preuninger and his team might be running to stand still thanks to the mandatory fitment of four catalytic converters and two gasoline particulate filters, but…

HOW THE HELL IS THAT Morgan keeping up? A pattern was emerging here. I couldn’t shake it in the Revuelto the night before, and the next morning the Supersport was humbling me again, this time in the GT3 as I led the group to our first location. Road closures had diverted us to a mountain pass wide enough for one car, occasionally two, with fallen rocks and debris lining the road like boobytraps, ready to pop a tyre or scuff a splitter. We navigated these carefully, Dickie in tow in the Supersport, but as soon as we got back on the main route the GT3 was free – in its happy place somewhere near 9000rpm, picking the road apart with stunning grip and precision. I wouldn’t see the Morgan again…

1998 Porsche 911 Carrera (996.1) 1999 Porsche 911 GT3 (996.1) 2000 Porsche 911 Turbo (996) 2001 Pagani Zonda C12-S 2002 Honda NSX-R 2003 Porsche 911 GT3 (996.2) 2004 Porsche 911 Carrera S (997.1) 2005 Ford GT 2006 Ferrari 599 GTB 2007 Porsche 911 GT3 RS (997.1) 2008 Nissan GT-R 2009 Lotus Evora 2010 Porsche 911 GT3 RS (3.8, 997.2) 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0 (997.2) 2012 Pagani Huayra & Lotus Exige V6 2013 Porsche 911 GT3 (991.1) 2014 Ferrari 458 Speciale 2015 Porsche Cayman GT4 2016 Porsche 911 R 2017 McLaren 720S 2018 McLaren 600LT 2019 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 2020 BMW M2 CS 2021 BMW M5 CS 2022 Maserati MC20  2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS (992.1) 2024 Porsche 911 S/T (992.1) 2025 Lamborghini Revuelto…

AT THE END OF EACH DRIVE, THE Duster gives you an ‘Eco Score’ with a rating of up to five ‘leaves’ for acceleration/speed, anticipation and gearchanges. It’s told me I have a ‘dynamic’ driving style (which I’m taking as a compliment) and although I’ve managed five leaves for acceleration and anticipation, I rarely get more than one for gearchanges. That’s partly because – as Sam pointed out last month – the Duster’s gearing is remarkably short. You can get more leaves by keeping the digital rev counter in a narrow green zone at all times, which requires shifting up as early as possible. If you stick to it, you’re in third gear by 19mph. Regardless of revs, I find changing gear smoothly in the Duster a bit of a challenge.…

HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT HOW YOUR driving habits set an example for your children to copy, and the potential consequences of their driving style being influenced by any dangerous behaviours that you exhibit? Without question, your kids will be affected by the way you drive. If a turbulent mindset, poor attitude to risk and the odd emotional outburst are part of how you drive, this will automatically have a detrimental effect on how your children will eventually drive – it will be seen by them as normal behaviour. Taking risks may be part of your driving DNA, but just after your children pass their driving tests they might start using your precarious tactics with such limited experience that they become a disaster waiting to happen. Here’s the thing: drivers…