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Robert Coucher
Octane
|February 2026
Get behind the wheel of a proper car - while you still can
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Our 25 Cars That Changed The World feature illustrates just how the car has evolved over 140 years, thanks to supreme engineering creativity and advancement. Yes, the internal combustion engine has morphed from a single-cylinder design of less than one litre in capacity, producing just under one horsepower, to an 8.0-litre W16 leviathan knocking out over 1000bhp.
Yet now the pursuit of net zero is fast killing one of our biggest and brightest industries in a bid to halt climate change, without the provision of a better answer to our real world transport needs.
This story is from the February 2026 edition of Octane.
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