Editor-in-chief
Due to some spicy festive deadlines, I’m actually writing this two weeks before Christmas in a fog of late nights and turkey lunches. The ideal moment, then, to reflect on what’s been a year of change. Change for us in the TopGear family as we adjust to the TV show being rested for the foreseeable, but also in the auto industry as a whole. Has there ever been a more exciting time to cover cars? I can’t think of one, but then again my brain is clogged with cranberry sauce.
The themes are broadly what we’ve been witnessing for a while, but in 2023 somebody, somewhere pinned it because shifts are happening at an unprecedented rate. We know the Chinese are coming to steal everyone else’s lunch, but in ’23 they actually arrived with a wave of affordable, high tech EVs making landfall in Europe. For car fans like you and I, the lack of brand awareness and design heritage makes its hard to decipher between them, but do the general public – more motivated by price and range – really care? We’ll keep you posted.
More icons, their legends forged on fruity combustion engines, are being reimagined for the EV age – Range Rover, Porsche Boxster, Nissan GT-R, Lexus LFA – all have electric replacements coming, but the ripple effect of that is a celebratory one-last-blast feeling around the petrol engine. In 2023 we drove the glorious GMA T.50, Aston Valkyrie and countless Porsche GT department specials, in 2024 we’ll see a Bugatti Chiron replacement, a Lambo Huracán successor, a Red Bull
