Wherein TopGear.com reminds you of the most important thing of the day:
To all our Top Gear fans in the US, let us channel James May for a second and bellow: “GOOD NEWS!”.
Yes, BBC America is airing the first show of our brand new series tonight, Monday 4 February, at 9/8c – so you can see for yourself exactly why the TopGear.com regulars enjoyed our show opener.
Its almost brutal acceleration. Its terrific body control. The way it hustles into corners. The way the suspension, quite firm at town speed, starts to stretch itself and breathe as the car gathers speed, allowing the body to flow gracefully over these difficult surfaces whiles the tyres securely track the tarmac beneath. The bellowing exhaust, the cackles and pops as it shifts gears.
The F-Type has clearly got an edge and an attitude that no Jaguar has had before. It’s a punchy little thing, a proper sports car and no mistake….
As we’ve been waiting for a proper Jaguar sports car for decades, this is all terribly exciting.
Damian Lewis | Top Gear 19x01
Tonight at 9/8c on BBC America.
This is a 16 second reminder that you should watch the BBC America premiere of Top Gear, Monday Feb 4 at 9/8c. You can either read the entirety of this text — which will take you roughly 16 seconds — or you can watch Homeland’s Damian Lewis — this season’s first Star In A Reasonably Priced Car — say the same thing to you in the video above.
If we were you we’d opt for the video if only because it has more exciting edits than this text. The most exciting thing we can do here, perhaps, is leave off the end of this
(Source: youtube.com)
Watch the first behind the scenes from Season 19.
Top Gear UK gets it’s US premiere Monday, February 2 on BBC America!
It’s Aston Martin’s 100th anniversary this year, and clearly, this new Rapide is very excited about the prospect. Just look at that face.
Actually, really look at that face, because it’s a new one, sitting on an updated version of Aston’s rather delectable four door Rapide. It’s now called the Rapide S, and features a host of improvements.
The most important of which is underneath the bonnet. Aston has revised its fabulous 6.0-litre V12 (dubbed the AM11) engine to the tune of 555bhp - some 17 per cent more than before.
Torque jumps to 457 lb ft too, up from 442, and as such, the new Rapide S will accelerate from 0-62mph in 4.9 seconds, 0.3 seconds quicker than before. Remember, the battle for car park superiority is won or lost in tenths. Top speed rises to 190mph.
Details at TopGear.com
The Middle East is a land where the oil is rich, skyscrapers tall and the thirst for expensive cars is insatiable. Don’t belive us? Just check out this showroom. But they’ve never had a car of their own… until now. Actually, next week, where at the Qatar Motor Show, the first ever hypercar from the Arab world is set to be unveiled.
Called the LykanHypersport - which sounds a bit like Luke Skywalker’s latest daily driver - it wants to go wheel-to-wheel with the Bugattis and Koenigseggs of the world.
With a 750bhp, twin-turbo flat-six wedged in behind the driver, the LykanHypersport can apparently hit 60mph in 2.8 seconds (that’s faster than an Aventador) and on to a ‘break neck’ (their words, not ours) top speed of 242mph. Ouch.
But this isn’t just a fast car: it’s also a fast, luxurious car. With diamond-encrusted LED lights, gold-stitched leather, suicide doors and a state-of-the-art 3D Virtual Holographic Display with Tactile Interaction and a revolutionary LD4Motion interactive dashboard (yeah, us neither), it’s… blingy.
That’s not all. Like J-Lo, the car comes with a 24-hour dedicated concierge service and a free $200,000 special edition Cyrus Klepcy watch. Only seven will be produced, though we’ll believe it when we actually see it in the flesh next week.
Making its debut on Audi’s stand at the Detroit Motor Show, alongside the SQ5, Ingolstadt’s latest RS model appears as some well-timed artillery against the also very recently announced BMW M6 Gran Coupe.
It’s based on the Audi A7, naturally, but only in body shape doth this RS7 share any sibling genetics. Because underneath rests the same twin-turbocharged, 4.0-litre V8 engine as used in the upcoming RS6 Avant (itself only announced last month). At this rate we’ll be getting a new RS-model every few minutes.
So that V8. It’s the same one used by Bentley, and Audi in the S8, producing some 552bhp and 516lb ft of torque, which if you’re unaware, is a significant amount of firepower. Audi reckons that - mated to a standard eight-speed automatic box and quattro four-wheel-drive - the new RS7 will accelerate from 0-62mph in just 3.9 seconds and hit a limited top speed of 155mph.
Tick the ‘Dynamic Plus’ pack and you’ll raise that top speed to 189mph. Nice. Incidentally, the M6 Gran Coupe’s pub-lording stats are 0-62mph in 4.2 seconds and the possibility of 189mph. Clearly, the battle for pub supremacy is won in tenths.
