AC CARS
AROUND SINCE 1901
NOW OWNED BY South African-born businessman Alan Lubinsky
KNOWN FOR Going bankrupt occasionally, and collaborating with Carroll Shelby for the V8 AC Cobra
It stood for 'Auto Carriers' originally. AC didn't come to worldwide attention until the Carroll Shelby came asking for a sports car to drop a V8 into for racing. The infamous 196mph motorway test led to today's 70mph speed limit. Now it'll sell you restomods and an EV.
ARIEL MOTOR COMPANY
AROUND SINCE 2000 (though the Ariel name appeared on bicycles as far back as the 19th century)
NOW OWNED BY Still a British owned business!
KNOWN FOR Warp-speed scaffolding with nutty Honda engines
Simon Saunders' genius Hondapropelled scaffolding is genuinely the closest thing you can get to a road-going go-kart, and famously made a right mess of Clarkson's face when it starred on TopGear back in December 2004. Three generations of Atom later (including a wild 500bhp V8 edition), Ariel went off-piste with the magnificent Nomad, realising all our life-size Tamiya RC car fantasies. The little Somerset outfit now has a waiting list Ferrari would be proud of, and continues to work on a near-1,200bhp ‘HiPercar...
BAC
AROUND SINCE 2009
NOW OWNED BY Neill and lan, the Briggs brothers
KNOWN FOR Single-seater half-tonne missiles with exquisite build quality.
The Briggs Automotive Company (though it could stand for Bats**t Angry Car) will sell you a true single-seater experience for £170k. Mono R features stronger graphene-embedded carbon bodywork, less weight, and more power 343bhp pushing just 555kg. Plenty.
This story is from the June 2022 edition of Top Gear.
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This story is from the June 2022 edition of Top Gear.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
ELECTROMECHANIC
Meet the electric restomod that you can create at home it's so easy you can do the conversion in a day, apparently
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Word is there's no such thing as a decent, small, simple, reasonably priced car these days. Allow TopGear to investigate
VOLKSWAGEN ID.BUZZ 7-SEAT
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BMW M5
TO THE POINT: THE NEW BMW M5 IS AN excellent car. It's very fast, confident, endlessly configurable and now offers a not inconsequential 40ish miles of electric-only running for happy tax returns.
VAUXHALL GRANDLAND vs FORD EXPLORER
These two brands have been the 'pile it high, sell it cheap' kings of the UK market for decades, but their new core models take a very different tack...
CAR OF THE YEAR - 5 STAR
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MEANWHILE... IN THE FUTURE
Catching rockets with chopsticks isn't the only autonomous tech going on in Elon Musk's world...
KING OF THE HILLS
You wait for one 800+bhp super GT, then two rock up at once. It's the Aston/Ferrari showdown we've all been waiting for...
PACKAGE
What better way to test the Hyundai Santa Fe's SUV-ness than hand delivering TopGear magazine to each and every subscriber in... New Zealand?
MYTH BUSTER
\"THE GOLF GTI WAS THE OG HOT HATCH\"