anyone seen this mag?

Do you read Evo? In this months it's their car of the year, and the Megane R26.R proves it's self quicker cross country than an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, a Alfa 8C and a Maserati GT S. Also, the Lambo LP560 (new Gallardo), Porsche 997 GT2 can't drop it on the twisties at all hehe! The way it worked was first they had iirc 11 cars, that were the acheiveable ones, things normal people could aspire to - and then the winner went to fight against the 6 fantasy cars. For the Megane, they were all just utterley amazed at the amount of grip and drive where instead of it understeering if you had your foot down with lock on it just went round the corner quicker! And it had the optional titanium exhaust, which looked cool, but then it should for 3 grand...! It got the working class hero award, with them all having well over twice the bhp, and costing at least 4 times as much as its list price - and it was still more than a match for them on the various mountainy test routes.

The Nissan GT-R won though, as it was the overall most awesome - despite the fact the press car Nissan had given them being a 'well used demo' in their words. There was visible cracking on the brake discs, ripples in the boot from a previous rear ender and it didn't even have it's bespoke hard walled Bridgestones, it was just on some regular tyres (forgotton the brand now). Also, when cold, the gearbox was just a mess, flicking between ratios and then the ABS and things also went nutty as you could hear wheels locking up and feel it as you tried to get out of your parking space. They said whilst that made a difference it was still just unbeleiveble the way it hooked up out of corners and stuff and just redefined what they thought was possible from a big, heavy (some 1,800kgs) two door coupe, with all the comfort you'd ever need, four proper seats and a big boot! They did however agree with every other car place that's driven one that, in reality, it has a fair chunk more power than it's official figures, well over 500bhp.

For SteveH - they really liked the BreraS, the new Prodrive tweaked one. They said it had just changed it from crap to really quite awesome! They wanted more torque low to mid from the 3.2, which is unchanged, and despite Prodrive dropping 100kg (don't worry, it still has all the toys) it still weighed some 1,800kg apparently. But it was a great drive, Prodrive used the FWD for the S as they tweaked with the chassis, and made a really damn fine job of it, and it could easily take the power - so they just wanted a bit more of it :-) The wooden spoon went to the new Subaru Impreza STi, in S330 spec as it was just a pale shadow of the original, and even though it was, when driven hard, sometimes a great car

The 8C was loved by all of them, ignore Clarkson's bollocks, the only problem was they said it was a shame the chassis set up hadn't had a bit more work on it, as it was too rolly and quick to slide at the back, but that wasn't as fun as it sounds as it was a bit unpredictable apparently.

It was arround for a few years, got shelved by Future publishing, the brand got bought and is now back on the shelves. Been out again for about 6 months now with most of the original team on it.

Can be hard to get hold of though. Buy it, you might like it.

Am I the only one who finds the 8c one of the most ugly cars ever made? Can't help but thinking something's drastically wrong with its proportions.

Tom De Moor

I think it looks well cool, especially in pearl white with the anthracite multi-spoke wheels. There was a rag top one at the motorshow with that paint and wheel combo and it just looked unbeleiveably awesome :-) Pretty much my fave car of the show, even though there was a Veyron, 599, some Zondas etc. Although the Zonda was a joint fave hehe.