Founded in the arena where Adolf Hitler once saluted his marching Youth brigade, the Norisring is a fast street circuit with a substantial history of Porsche successes. In 2014 I drove a 991 around its hallowed hairpins. ‘Have you never driven a racetrack before?’ My colleague’s rhetorical question stung as I swooped the 991 Cabriolet around the Grundigkhere hairpin. ‘I want two wheels on the kerb!’ ‘If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get,’ I retort. Thing is, the No

Reprising 1981’s James Bond epic For Your Eyes Only aboard a ski-racked Evora, Johnny Tipler goes off-piste in the Alps. I’m in Geneva, gateway to the Alps, luxuriating in the Hotel d’Angleterre beside the lakeside promenade, on a Lotus Cars press trip. I’ve driven an Evora down from Hethel, crossing the channel Dover to Calais on board a P&O ferry, then the Autoroute payage, passing Reims and Dijon in the small hours. Mine’s the copper-brown car with gold coachlines that’s b

Two very different takes on modifying a 911: a supercharged 993 and a stripped-out 3.2 Carrera Club Sport. Both are brimming with attitude, yet one is a suave mile-muncher while the other’s a trackday bruiser. There’s more than one way to skin a cat,and what we have here are two opposing takes on how to customise a 911, demonstrating the model’s versatility and its complicity to become the object of the owner’s fantasies. The modifications made to this unlikely pairing were e

En route to Monaco, Johnny Tipler airs the new 1.6 Elise on some of the finest driving roads in Europe. Welcome to La Route Napoleon and the Gorge du Verdon. We’re literally blown away. Snapper Fraser and I are no lightweights (physically, at least, if not intellectually), but the gust of wind from the canyon exit takes us clean off the pavement. The lightweight Elise 1.6 tips the scales at a mere 876kg, and for a moment we’re worried. We’ve driven the magnificent Route Napol