A car covered in a sheet. That's what I'm looking at, but beyond that... well, it's clearly not an SUV. Assuming it's pointing the right way the proportions are cab forward, the front arches pronounced, the rear deck flat and wide. If I've got it the wrong way round, it's Vision Gran Turismo or Hot Wheels all the way.
Normally we'd already know what lies beneath. There are very, very few genuine surprises nowadays - information and images are released to media early on the understanding we'll abide by an embargo. But not this time: no early teasers, no leaks, nothing. All we have is rumours.
Pretty educated ones. Ones that were reinforced when we arrived on the roof of the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart to find three cars lined up in front of us - a 959, a Carrera GT and a 918 Spider. Porsche's hypercars. A 40-year timeline of talent and technology. A proper clue. Just in case we were thinking Porsche would invite people to its 75th anniversary celebrations only to unveil some new headlights for the Macan. But what form would it take? Some voices expected a plugin hybrid. But that was the 918, there'd be no point in repeating. So it must be electric.
Oliver Blume, Porsche CEO (also CEO of the whole VW Group, effectively making him his own boss), came on stage. The show began, information drip fed on screens to pumping beats and rotating lights: a power to weight ratio of 1:1, the fastest hypercar around the Nürburgring Nordschleife, 900V charging (definitely electric then), GT3 RS-beating downforce. Juicy stuff.
Denne historien er fra August 2023-utgaven av BBC Top Gear UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Denne historien er fra August 2023-utgaven av BBC Top Gear UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
ELECTROMECHANIC
Meet the electric restomod that you can create at home it's so easy you can do the conversion in a day, apparently
ALL THE SMALL THINGS
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
Volkswagen’s new seven seater ID.Buzz is now the family mover it always should have been
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
Yep, Renault's retro-chic new supermini with an optional wicker baguette holder Scoops the grand prix...
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\"