The way we were

I’m currently working from home, so have of course spent much of the day reading old copies of evo. Issue 050 from December 2002 has been especially entertaining.

It was no surprise to see things that are now banished to history, such as the introduction of a new TVR (unless I’m eventually proved wrong), a 200mph ‘MG’ and a double-page advert for cigarettes. Then again, some things never change, as was illustrated by one of your columnists moaning about how powerful road cars had become!

A classifieds page caused some heartache – how about a Lancia

Integrale Evo 1 for only £10,500? – while Stephen Bayley’s contribution to a ‘Sexiest Cars’ feature was the source of much mirth. His photo was very reminiscent of Alan Partridge, as was the accompanying text, in which he extols the virtues of driving an automatic Citroën ‘because you need one hand free for fornication’…

But the highlight of this edition was a quote from issue 009, contained within a ‘50 evo Moments’ feature that looked back over the early years of the magazine. One of your contributors, identified only by their initials (an anagram of these being MR), described road testing a 996-generation Porsche 911 GT3 and admitted to having got it up to 145mph on ‘a wet minor road’ somewhere in Germany.

I’m still trying to decide if this behaviour embodies the true spirit of evo or if it was just daft and irresponsible. Maybe back then the two went hand in hand… Peter Walton