Issue June 2018 - Evo (2024)

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Produced by world-class motoring journalists and racers, evo communicates the raw emotion of owning, driving and testing the world’s greatest performance cars.Bringing together informative car reviews, vivid photography, exciting track tests and dramatic drive stories in glorious landscapes, evo is considered the bible for performance car enthusiasts.

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Table of contents for March 2015 in Evo

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IN THIS ISSUEEd speakI TOOK A STEP BACK IN TIME THIS month with the help of a BMW E30 M3 Roberto Ravaglia edition. Now before you think I’m going to hark on about when cars were simpler, more involving and charismatic machines… er, you’ll be kind of right.The cause for the M3’s arrival was to attend the 76th Goodwood Members’ Meeting in something suitably (though only just) period. It was brilliant. I’ve always had a soft spot for BMW’s hom*ologation special, every drive a ‘pinch me’ moment of driving simplicity matched to engineering perfection. This time was no different.Rear-wheel drive, 215bhp, 170lb ft of torque, five gears, and an LSD. Oh, and 225/50 R16 tyres. I couldn’t have wished for more, and quite frankly I didn’t need any more at 6am on a…2 min

REGULARSBRING ON THE COMPETITIONTWO DOORS, COMPACT PROPORTIONS, blistered body work. Sound familiar? It should – it’s been the visual recipe for some of BMW M’s most enticing models since the E30 M3 (and the 2002 Turbo before that).It’s a recipe that, following a short hiatus, the BMW M2 revived in 2016, but one key ingredient was missing: a true M engine. There’s no doubt the M2 was an appealing car (if not a faultless one), but for all its rowdy road and track behaviour and stocky stance, it never quite felt like the naughty exercise in back-room engineering that its 1M Coupe predecessor had.No longer: BMW’s new M2 Competition, which will replace the regular version in the M line-up, is arguably the car the M2 should have been from the star t. There’s…6 min

REGULARSAudi RS5 Sportback1 BODYThe RS5 super-GT will soon be available in Sportback form for the first time, gaining two rear doors and a hatch as per its mainstream A5 Sportback relative. The RS5 Sportback shares the standard A5 version’s 60mm increase in length over the equivalent coupe, bringing rear-seat passengers extra leg and headroom. The boot is bigger, too, though not as capacious as the RS4 Avant’s.The RS5 coupe’s wider body styling has been carried across, with Audi’s designers lengthening the rear box arches by 54mm to suit the Sportback’s long side-profile. The extra length of the Sportback over the coupe adds 45kg to the lesser S5, and we expect this to be mirrored on the RS5, leading to a kerb weight of around 1700kg.2 POWERTRAINPowering the RS5 Sportback will be the…3 min

REGULARSADVANTAGE ASTONMatt Becker Chief EngineerASTON MARTIN’S HEAD OF vehicle dynamics, Matt Becker, has become one of Britain’s most highly regarded car engineers, and deservedly so. Having learnt his trade at Lotus for 26 years – much of that under the watchful eye of his dad, the late great Roger – Becker left to join Aston in 2015, shortly after Andy Palmer took control, and hasn’t had a moment to spare since.He now commands a 250-strong team, and the new Vantage is very much his first Aston. Becker explains: ‘Although the Vantage shares quite a lot of its fundamental components with the DB11, I’d say the majority of the dynamic characteristics of the car are down to me – particularly in terms of the suspension kinematics, the compliance targets we set, the…6 min

REGULARSNew AMG C63 revealedWHILE THE MERCEDES-AMG C43 SHOWED off its 2018 upgrades at the Geneva motor show in early March, its bigger brothers, the C63 and C63 S, had to wait until the New York show a few weeks later for their moment in the spotlight.The entry-point C63 models – in coupe, saloon, estate and cabriolet forms – now have the same electronically controlled limited-slip differential that previously only came with the S specification cars, while both the non-S and S are the recipients of a new gearbox. Gone is the previous C63’s seven-speed MCT auto, in its place Mercedes’ nine-speed transmission, as found in the C43 and many more of the company’s models. It still features a pack of wet clutches rather than a torque converter, despite this more powerful integration, while…5 min

IN THIS ISSUEEd speakI TOOK A STEP BACK IN TIME THIS month with the help of a BMW E30 M3 Roberto Ravaglia edition. Now before you think I’m going to hark on about when cars were simpler, more involving and charismatic machines… er, you’ll be kind of right. The cause for the M3’s arrival was to attend the 76th Goodwood Members’ Meeting in something suitably (though only just) period. It was brilliant. I’ve always had a soft spot for BMW’s hom*ologation special, every drive a ‘pinch me’ moment of driving simplicity matched to engineering perfection. This time was no different. Rear-wheel drive, 215bhp, 170lb ft of torque, five gears, and an LSD. Oh, and 225/50 R16 tyres. I couldn’t have wished for more, and quite frankly I didn’t need any more at 6am…2 min

Issue June 2018 - Evo (2024)

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