Magazine group tests are great, but the best bit is usually the drive home

Comparison tests have always been one of the things I enjoy the most about this job. They’ve been a staple of automotive magazines for as long as I can remember. Long before I became a motoring journalist, I’d spend hours poring over group test data sections in Motor, paying particular attention to the natty little profile line drawings annotated with each car’s dimensions. Yes, I was that sad.

The biggest treat of all was reading Car magazine’s ‘Giant’ Tests. Like much of what Car did back in those heady days, it set the template for imparting detailed information and in-depth opinion while bringing a bit of spark to the commentary. The stacked cornering shots that accompanied the text were just as descriptive, with anything from the latest superminis to the hottest supersaloons stuck on their door handles by a steely-eyed Roger Bell, cucumber-cool Gavin Green or grinning Brett Fraser.

As you can imagine it was a dream to find myself working with all those characters, not to mention another great assessor of cars, John Simister, when I started my first full-time writing job at Carweek. As a road tester, naturally.

However, it was only after I moved to Performance Car and started working with my esteemed colleague John Barker that I learned the best part of any group test isn’t the test at all, but the drive home afterwards. I was reminded of this just a few weeks ago, as the all-wheel-drive hot hatch test from evo issue 332 drew to a close.

It had been a full-on test, culminating in a day of driving and filming at Anglesey circuit. The track shut at 5pm, so after packing up and some quick farewells, we were ready to make the long trip home. I’m sad to say that in recent years when heading back from a far-flung test location, I’ve tended to point my car towards the motorway, find a Louis Theroux podcast and submit to the process.

This test was different. It had been an epic few days and JB had a glint in his eye, so when he said he was taking a cross-country route back from Anglesey towards Shrewsbury and down onto the M6, I said I’d tag along. I’m glad I did.

One thing you need to know about JB is his world-class collection of hardcore cartography. It’s comprised mostly of old Ordinance Survey maps, but he’s a magpie for anything with a connection to the places we tend to drive. And so we make our way off Anglesey, just as the sun begins to drop behind the Snowdonia range, JB in the A45 S with me tucked behind in the Yaris. Nothing to prove. Just some fabulous terrain to traverse in two cars perfectly suited to the task.

It proves to be an absolute gem of a drive. The scenery is sensational, bathed in crystal-clear evening light that seems to render everything in high definition. The kind of views that live more vividly in your memory than they ever can in a photograph.

Glimpses of the road spool out ahead of us like one of the spidery scrawls on John’s old maps. After the predictable excesses of filming at Ty Croes and the stop-start nature of conducting back-to-back comparison testing and photography on the road, just driving for mile after mile and hour after hour is truly liberating.

JB and I don’t drive like we used to in the good old days, but we’re not hanging about. Both cars right in their sweet spot. Well within themselves but carrying speed across the ground, picking off slower cars with precision and courtesy. Maximum progress while drawing minimum attention.

The Yaris and A45 help in this regard. Supercars are great but they’re painfully provocative. Two compact, grey hatchbacks are an unthreatening presence in the mirrors and don’t make a show of overtakes.

The funny thing is, no matter how many times I’ve tried, I simply can’t replicate the feeling of a ‘home run’ under any other circumstances. I think it’s partly to do with retracing familiar steps. I’ve driven the roads we gravitate towards for group tests since the mid-’90s, so it’s inevitable that every visit is a nostalgia trip of sorts. Plus, the older I get, the more I value the opportunity to add fresh experiences to the cache of memories.

The term ‘group’ applies to the team of road testers as well as the cars being compared. At evo (and Performance Car before it) we’ve always taken care to ensure a comparison test presents a collective view – an underrated quality in this age where the cult of personality is king. It also continues the tradition of young testers being shown the ropes by their more experienced colleagues.

I can’t imagine a time when group tests won’t be an essential element of the content evo produces. They’re part of our DNA and provide a detailed narrative and comparative context you simply can’t get from reading or watching single-car tests of rival cars. Long may that continue. Not least because if you think the test looks like fun, you should try the drive home…