Evo

IT’S NO LITTLE UNDERSTATEMENT to say that it’s been quite the year for evo. Not only have we continued to mark our 25th anniversary but there was also the small matter of us being acquired by the Carwow Group back in the spring. The good news about the acquisition is that nothing changes for evo as a result – or rather the only changes are ones for the better, meaning you will see improvements for the brand that you invest so much of your time and money in, for which I remain ridiculously grateful. Without you we literally wouldn’t be able to do what we do. And what we are doing is growing the brand and improving upon everything we have established over the last quarter of a century. You…

LIFE HASN’T BEEN EASY FOR THE MK8 Golf GTI. After the heights of the Mk7, which was superbly rounded and one of the best GTIs there’s ever been, things came tumbling down when Volkswagen decided that the Golf needed more digitisation and more screens to move forward into the current decade. We won’t beat what is a very dead horse here, but if you’ve ever tried to tap, poke and stroke your way around the eighth-gen Golf’s interface, you’ll know just how much of a blunder that was. But it wasn’t just the HMI system. When it launched in 2019, the Mk8 Golf no longer felt like the class benchmark for quality, while as a hot hatch there was a sense that it had lost some of the polish and…

THIS IS NOT THE NEW FACELIFTED Cupra Formentor, which lands in the UK around the same time as this issue of evo. Rather, it’s the last of the old Formentors, a run-out model limited to 160 cars in the UK. As the Abt badging inside and out suggests, its upgrades have been selected and tested by Abt Sportsline, the German motorsport and tuning specialist that has partnered with SEAT and Cupra on various projects over the years, including the current Cupra Formula E team. A run-out model can be a very good thing indeed, and we rather liked the last Abt-badged Cupra, the all-wheel-drive, estate-bodied SEAT Leon Cupra R ST Abt of 2020 (see evo 271). While this Abt Formentor is a limited-run offering, there are still a handful of…

THIS IS THE FASTEST ROAD CAR AMG HAS ever built. How fast? Well, it takes as long to read its name out loud – Mercedes-AMG GT63 S E Performance – as it does to launch and hit 62mph: a mere 2.8sec. That’s faster even than the AMG One supercar. Find yourself a stretch of straight, dry asphalt (it doesn’t have to be very long), engage launch control, hold the brake, pin the throttle, feel the seat belt automatically tension, hear the V8blat-blat-blat at the optimum revs and release the brake. BLAM! With not even a hint of tyre slip, the AMG GT is gone, into second gear, then third and still hauling in the horizon like you’re in a dolly zoom scene in a movie. Very impressive, although the question…

IT FEELS LIKE THE ABARTH 695 HAS BEEN around forever. It may have gained a new name, a subtly different face and a few other trinkets since the Abarth 500 first appeared in 2008, but climbing into one in 2024 feels very much like stepping into the not-so-distant past. To put things into context, the original Abarth 500 went up against the Mk1 Suzuki Swift Sport at launch, and we’ve been through three generations of Swift since then. Yes, three. So at a time when traditional hot superminis are dying out in favour of battery-powered ones – not least Abarth’s own 500e – is the 695 the ultimate refresher of what a small hot hatch should be, or does it feel hopelessly out of date? A spell in the new…

CUTTING-EDGE CHASSIS TECH, ADAPTIVE ALL-WHEEL DRIVE and a record-breaking top speed helped the Porsche 959 earn instant icon status. Designed to form the basis of a Group B rally car, it was the epitome of automotive engineering excellence in its day. Now, just shy of four decades since the 959 made its debut at the 1985 Frankfurt motor show, Estonian firm Kalmar Automotive has unveiled its own, modern take on Porsche’s ground-breaking supercar. Named the 9X9, it will be offered in three distinct forms, with just nine examples of each being built. Ranging from the ‘standard’ 9X9 to Sport and Leichtbau (lightweight) variants, the line-up is intended to offer something for almost every use case. The product of a three-year development programme, the 9X9 is said to blend the charm…