Greatest drives

The fastest group test in history

2007-05-31T11:27:20Z

What happens when you have a Bugatti Veyron for 24 hours and line it up beside a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, Aston Martin DB9 Sport, Audi R8 and Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera? It must be…

The fastest group test in history: By Steve Sutcliffe and Chris Harris, with photography by Stan Papior, Tom Salt and Matt Prior

The crusty cabin of a Ford S-Max is an excellent place to sit and contemplate what will happen over the coming two days. Its hushed cruising ability and modest performance represent the perfect preparation for the muscle that awaits us near the Franco-German border. Emails have pinged about for the past few weeks; the final itinerary is still vague, but the cast is fixed.

Mike Duff will ferry a GT3 RS from nearby Stuttgart, Lamborghini UK has diverted delivery of its Gallardo Superleggera to meet us, Aston had the good grace to loan us its drift-tastic DB9 Sport for the week, and I’m certain someone is currently driving an Audi R8 through France and creating a 50-mile bottleneck of mobile phone paparazzi.

Not wishing to spoil the continuity of authors chosing unsporting wheels, Steve Sutcliffe will arrive tomorrow morning in a rented Opel Meriva with smouldering brake pads to continue the story.

Such is the collection of aluminium, steel and carbonfibre at our disposal, and yet this event has a special significance for me. Until recently, I thought I would never drive a Bugatti Veyron.

This wasn’t something that bothered me too greatly, because the car’s philosophy of scram-jet performance set against vast mass didn’t interest me. But now we’re just a few hours outside Molsheim, home of the Bugatti factory, I’m experiencing twitches of excitement. At this point I put it down to being a little curious about what 987bhp feels like in a road car.

The following morning, we park the S-Max in the knowledge that it will be cruelly ignored for many hours. It sits outside the new Bugatti factory, its seats full of journalists and photographers with one thing on their mind: “Is this it? Is this really where the world’s most expensive glamorous car is produced?”

Fortress Molsheim is an assembly plant. Outside contractors supply bits and ship them on pallets, and a small staff assembles them in a building no larger than a mid-size Tesco Metro. It is an intriguing operation, and remarkable for the sheer friendliness of its staff.

There is a rule of diminishing helpfulness in this business: as cars become more expensive, so dealing with the organisation tends to become more excruciating. So you understand why we all look at each other in a slightly bemused fashion as PR man Julius leaps from the blue Veyron he’s coasted from the gates, and asks if anyone fancies a trundle in it. “It’s easy to drive,” he begins affably, before a pair of crow’s feet appears either side of his spectacles, “but also a complete animal.”

Enjoying the 987bhp squeeze

He’s not kidding. I had already decided not to think about the value of this vehicle; to do so would have made it impossible to experience its performance. But as we slide into traffic and a ratty Sprinter van brushes near the rear wing, it is hard to avoid the £839,000 reality. Give or take a few options, that’s eight Porsche 997 GT3 RSs.

Five hundred yards later we filter onto a dual carriageway, I push the throttle pedal two-thirds of the way towards the rubberised stop and my perception of the word ‘fast’ is irreversibly altered. We drive for a while, then stop at the beginning of some fine, empty asphalt. Two facts spill out of the conversations that mingle among the cars. First, the Veyron is not as physically big as we’d expected.

Second, if Dr Piech had decided to add Aston Martin to his supercar empire earlier this year, he could have chosen any one of these cars as his company wheels. As it is, we’re assured he doesn’t actually own a Veyron. Mrs Piech does instead.

It’s only when you see a collection of cars like this that you appreciate the vast growth in global wealth over the past decade. Bugatti aside, each car here is a profit-returning commodity produced in significant volume. Try ordering a £76,825 Audi R8 from your local showroom and you will be politely asked to wait two years.

This century, Lamborghini’s production figures have grown at a startling rate. There was one full year of production in the 1990s when just 24 new Aston Martins left the factory, but last year production broke the 7000 barrier. And the Porsche 911 is a phenomenon, although the £94,280 GT3 RS is produced in smaller numbers.

But my point is this: the world is supposed to be falling out of love with these cars, and yet more and more people are buying them. They are the target of environmental groups, but the net effect of reducing the CO2 emissions of every Golf
by a couple of g/km would be far greater than removing all of these cars from our roads. These objects should be celebrated
as engineering and styling exercises.

Isn’t it interesting that BMW has been unable to crack the expensive coupé marketplace, and yet Audi – the inferior brand in most respects – has just arrived with unparalleled pomp? The R8 is a majestic thing. Opinion is divided on its styling, but no one can find fault with the size, specification and noise. The RS4 could only ever serve as temporary accommodation for this engine, and as the R8 leaves the car park on a solo sortie, we listen to its exhaust noise pinging between the conifers and nod in appreciation.

Then the Lambo fires up and people dive for cover. Noise becomes physical in this car. As the bypass valves open, the Superleggera makes the most ungodly racket. It’s not especially musical, either, just brutal.

I wonder if cars need to be so loud these days, but anyone with a trace of petrol in their veins cannot fail to be exhilarated by this trick Gallardo, its extra 10bhp and 100kg reduction in kerb weight. I smile as it screams away, then admonish myself for sanctioning such volume. Shame they bought the wheels from Demon Tweeks, though.

Wherever you park a vivid orange GT3 RS, it will attract attention. Some 40mm wider around the hips than a regular GT3 and sporting a wing of some intent, it takes the quasi-racer look to new heights. It is also a baffling combination of the surprisingly useful (the ride comfort is amazing for such a car) and the plain infuriating.

Whoever chose the specification of this well used German press car ignored the box marked ‘air conditioning’. Unsurprisingly, its cabin has already assumed a distinctly tangy aroma.

A front-engined layout marks the Aston DB9 Sport out as the anomalous member of the group. There were damp patches on the route here and the others had to wait a while as the game old Brit tried its best to summon some traction before giving in and titillating its driver with oversteer.

Amusing and attractive it may be, but can the DB9 be anything but overshadowed in this company, or does the front-engined V12 GT still occupy its own special territory? I referred to this car as the new 550 Maranello last summer. Wonder if I was being a touch over-euphoric? And so the stage is set. Over to you, Steve.

It doesn’t matter how long you have been doing this job, or how many times you’ve see a collection of exotic fast cars gathered for a photo shoot. The moment you first see the group as a whole is always a special one. It’s the moment you realise why you are here, and why the tedium of the journey to get you here no longer matters.

And when the lead car of that group just happens to be a Bugatti Veyron, well, your mind goes quickly to another place. You might even need to pinch yourself, or just giggle for a bit for no particular reason.

When editor Chas Hallett and I arrive at the car park deep in the middle of nowhere in the hills above Alsace, we see the group of cars we’re here to drive. And we look at them, then we look at each other, and then we laugh. We’ve driven here in a tired but hired Vauxhall Meriva through heavy rain and even heavier traffic for the last four hours, but the moment we see The Group everything changes.

To the right of the Veyron is a bright orange 911 GT3 RS and to the left of that is a Gallardo Superleggera, an Aston DB9 Sport and an Audi R8. It’s the most astonishing collection of shapes and sizes either of us has ever seen in one place, assembled in theory for just one story. And, of course, the numbers game in this instance is a highly amusing one to play in itself. In the blue and black corner sits the £839,285, 987bhp Bugatti Veyron. Add the combined power and prices of the other four and you get £430,759 and 1795bhp. Just about half the price of the Veyron, in other words, and very nearly two times as much power.

But this is not a group test in any traditional sense of the term. To compare any of these cars directly with the Veyron would be an entirely pointless exercise. Think of it instead as a celebration of all things wonderful when it comes to fast cars. And perhaps we’ll see just how fast the Bugatti is a little later by driving it back to back with some of the others.

IT’S ONLY A CAR

We don’t have long with the Veyron – just 24 hours – so I can’t resist climbing aboard. There’s a slight sense of anti-climax when you get into the Bugatti because, at the end of the day, it’s still only a car.

Initially you climb inside, run your fingers over the turned aluminium that swathes the centre console, feel the comfort and support of the big bucket seat, maybe prod one of the beautifully crafted aluminium indicator stalks (6000 euros
a pop, by all accounts) and you think: it’s very, very nice in here. But it’s still only a car. How can anything on four wheels be worth this much money?

So you turn the key and then press the button, and the 8.0-litre W16 quad-turbo engine bursts luxuriously into life. Wap-wap on the throttle and the crank instantly responds, not quite with the same fury as a competition car’s but very crisply for a big-capacity turbo. And even then you start to wonder. Perhaps it is worth all that money.

Certainly beside even the Gallardo – arguably the next most exotic machine here – the Veyron feels different, more expensive, more complex. Even the way its steering responds so smoothly as I edge out of the car park separates it from the other cars here. There’s a polish, a depth of mechanical sophistication that simply isn’t present in any of the other cars, not even in the Aston Martin (especially not in the Aston Martin, if we’re being brutally honest).

A quarter of a mile up the road and the Veyron is already doing things that the other cars absolutely do not do. When I drove this car on its launch in Sicily in 2005 I was gobsmacked by its performance and by its refinement, true, but I wasn’t blown away by it overall. To be honest, I thought it was slightly devoid of personality.

But on these roads, which are tighter and twistier and way more entertaining than any of the roads I drove on in Sicily, the Veyron is bursting with energy/character/personality, call it what you will. Even after five minutes it feels so much more convincing as The Ultimate Creation.

Perhaps they’ve changed it, perhaps it just works better over these roads; either way, I’m completely knocked out by what the Veyron can do. Not merely by how fast it is when you put your foot down (and it really is heroically, cataclysmically fast) but also by how well it steers, how nimble it is over these narrow roads, how serenely its seven-speed DSG gearbox works, and how cleanly it rides and handles, even over quite lumpy surfaces.

It is genuinely hard to believe that this car weighs 1888kg from the way it snaps so incisively from one direction to another, or how swiftly it stops when you lean on the middle pedal.

But the best bit, of course, is what happens when you find a straight piece of road and put your foot down. Because only then do you get to feel what it’s like to have 987bhp under your right foot. I’ve driven the car that won Le Mans for Audi in 2002 and I’ve driven a Jag F1 car that had 900bhp, and I can tell you here and now, the Veyron feels quicker than either of them within the confines of a winding mountain road.

Okay, in reality it’s not quite as accelerative as an F1 car, because F1 cars have similar amounts of power to the Bugatti but weigh three times less. But factor in the Veyron’s torque – all 922lb ft of it, twice that of a modern F1 engine – and you start to understand how and why it’s as quick as it is.

Truth is, in a straight line it would obliterate any car that lines up on the grid for this year’s Le Mans 24 hours. And above 180mph even an F1 car would start to go backwards beside the mighty Veyron.

It is difficult to describe what that sort of thrust feels like on the public road, harder still to understand how the Veyron deploys so much firepower so neatly and effortlessly to the asphalt. And that might be the most impressive thing of all about this extraordinary car: how calm and controlled it is, considering how quick it is from point to point.

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING

For a little perspective, I climb out of the Bugatti and into the Superleggera and drive it over the exact same roads I drove the Veyron over. It’s amazing how much less civilised the Lamborghini feels straight away, and how crude its gearbox in particular feels by comparison.

The Lambo’s ride is also miles harder and noisier than the Veyron’s. You feel things in the road surface that weren’t there in the Bugatti, and the stripped-out wheelarch liners fizz with stones and whatever else the Gallardo’s big sticky Pirelli P-Zero Corsa tyres can pick up and fire into them. The din this car makes just driving along the road at 50mph is quite stupendous by comparison after the Veyron.

But it’s not slow, the Lambo, and when you do open it up enough for the engine and exhaust to drown out all the rest of the interference, the sound is nothing if not impressive. It’s not an especially tuneful noise, but in terms of volume it’s up there in the AC/DC league of impact. And you never tire of the sound it makes, either.

The real surprise, though, is discovering how rapid the Superleggera feels, even after the Veyron. No, it’s not in the same class when it comes to raw energy, but you can cover ground in the Lambo very, very quickly indeed. To the extent that you’d need to make full use of what the Veyron can do and be a decently good driver to get away from the Superleggera.

That’s partly because of the Lambo’s tyres and brakes, both of which have been designed to deliver other-worldly performance so long as you are prepared to really lean on them. The flip side to this, of course, is that if you drive it slowly the Superleggera’s tyres feel oddly lacking in bite, while its carbon ceramic brakes are equally dead in response to begin with. But the point is that the Gallardo is the only car here that stands any chance at all of living with the Veyron if the Bugatti decides to go for it.

Throw it down the road by the scruff of its neck and the Gallardo will develop sufficient performance, grip, balance and braking ability to just about keep the Veyron in sight – so long as you don’t come across any genuinely long straights.

Not even in the 911, as we’ll discover a little later, is there enough pure performance to be able to do this. It’s the difference, in the end, between 522bhp in a 1330kg car (Lambo) and ‘merely’ 409bhp in a 1375kg car (GT3 RS). And it’s the difference between being dropped by a Veyron in a heartbeat or having enough pure performance to at least keep the
game alive for a while longer.

Which isn’t the case with the Aston or Audi R8. Driving the DB9 over the same roads as the others is a fascinating exercise because it teaches you that speed is not everything. Compared with any other group of cars, the DB9 Sport would be a hugely fast and accomplished machine, but in this company it feels like driving down the road in your favourite armchair. Yet it’s a delightful car to drive, the DB9, in spite of its softer chassis responses and comparative lack of straight-line go.

For starters it makes a lovely noise, one that’s almost as loud as the Lambo’s blaring soundtrack but more textured in quality. It also steers beautifully and rides with way more sophistication than the Gallardo.

The Aston is also so nicely balanced and such a sweet car to drive that it feels game for anything you’d care to do with it, be that stroking it along at 40mph or scrubbing the shoulders off its tyres drifting it at 60mph. But ultimately it’s not in the same game as the others. It’s a classic GT machine. We invited it originally to keep honest the Ferrari 599 that was also supposed to turn up.

In the event the Ferrari failed to appear, which meant the Aston had the playground all to itself. If that also meant it was an oddity on its own among a group of rear and mid-engined supercars, so be it. To a man, each of us adored driving the Aston, especially on the long slog back home to
the United Kingdom.

The same goes for the Audi R8, which is genuinely the most civilised supercar the world has ever known. You climb into this car and somehow know instinctively where everything is and how it works. It has an amazing sense of logic and clarity to its design, and that stretches to the way it drives. If the fact that there are no surprises whatsoever lurking in its closet makes the R8 just a teeny bit plain and sensible in this company, then in the real world that’s an enormous compliment.

Here is a genuine 187mph supercar that sounds and goes and handles very much like the real deal (because it is the real deal). But it’s also a car you can jump into and drive for hundreds of miles in almost as much refinement and comfort as there is in the Aston. From most angles it also happens to look rather sensational. As a package, it’s hardly surprising Audi can’t build them fast enough and has sold out of cars until 2009.

Yet within the context of this particular group of cars the R8 is blitzed by at least three others. The Aston it can handle, but if you encounter and try to live with a Superleggera or a GT3 RS in your new R8, be warned: you will come very unstuck
very quickly. And if a Veyron happens to appear in your rear-view mirror, it’s best to wave a white handkerchief out of the window and pull over, if only to save yourself from the ignominy.

PLAYING CATCH-UP

As it happens, I was in the GT3 RS and not the R8 when, finally, the Veyron appeared in the mirror. My friend Mr Harris was driving the Bugatti and the deal had been that he would leave the car park 20sec after I set off. Then we’d see how long it would take him to catch me and, when he did so, whether it would be possible for him to get past.

On the way down the mountain the GT3 RS completely blew me away. I expected it to have explosive throttle response, fabulous steering, mighty brakes and fantastic body control. And it did, just like the regular GT3 I drove a couple of months back.

But I also expected it to ride like a rollerskate and be generally pretty evil to drive unless I was at 10/10ths, but no. The RS felt damn near as smooth and refined over the ground as the R8, only the 911 had a much bigger punch down the straights and a lot more bite at its front
end. “Perhaps he won’t be able to catch me at all,” I started to think.

And then it appeared, hovering like a missile behind me, its xenon headlights burning two big holes in the back of my head. As the road got tighter and twistier I became aware that I was driving the GT3 RS about as hard as I’m prepared to drive a car on the public road, yet the Veyron would not go away.

It just sat there, watching me, watching it. Waiting. Then a shortish straight appeared, I caned the 911 as frantically as I could in third gear and, whoosh, Harris and the Bugatti just blew by me and the GT3 RS like we were standing still.

I will never, ever forget what that looked and sounded and felt like. It’s some car, the Veyron, it truly is. And this was some group test. Cue credits, roll the soundtrack. Oh yes, and don’t forget to watch the DVD of it all next week.

175mph in the middle of London

2006-07-26T11:30:16Z

Euston Road was a bit busy, so Steve Sutcliffe went to London City Airport for some record breaking

175mph in the middle of London: by Steve Sutcliffe, with photography by Stan Papior and Mitch Peshavria

On paper it was the simplest of ideas. After all, we’ve driven hundreds of fast cars down all sorts of runways over the years to answer that most straightforward of questions: what’s the fastest? But this time it was different. This time we were in London. And this time we were after a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

So although the idea itself may have been simple, its execution would be anything but. We wanted, if possible, to clock 200mph – legally – within the confines of the Greater London area, and as far as we knew there were just two places where we could do it. One of these is a little place by the name of Heathrow; the other is London City Airport.

Given that Heathrow is the busiest airport in the universe, we knew that realistically we had just one shot: to persuade the good folks at London City Airport, right next door to Docklands and within sight of St Paul’s Cathedral, to let us in.

Enter Autocar publishing manager Paul Garlick, who began negotiations with LCA back in January this year. Finding the right day was always going to be the hardest part because of the airport’s busy international flight schedule, but six months later, on a roasting hot Saturday afternoon, we made it. Amid a small army of security people, TV news crews, local radio station presenters and firemen, we had the runway to ourselves for four hours. Which meant that, at last, our idea of setting a brand new London Land Speed Record was going to happen.

Trouble is, the runway at LCA isn’t exactly the longest of its type. Give or take an inch, it’s pretty much exactly one mile long, and even a Bugatti Veyron would struggle to reach 200mph in that space. Actually, that’s not entirely true; it could easily reach 200mph in a mile, but then it would have no room to stop – and at the end of the runway at LCA there isn’t a field like there is at most other airports. Instead, you go straight into the River Thames.

So the 200mph barrier wouldn’t be broken. But we still had a heck of a good group of cars to compare, as well as a little bit less than a mile of speed-limit-free asphalt on which to run them. And a local man of the cloth, the Reverend Robert Avey, who would act as referee for the Guinness attempt.

Within the group there were several key scores to be settled. Would the Mercedes SLR McLaren – all £317,000 of it – take care of the Ford GT, for instance? We all suspected the 612bhp McMerc would be quickest, but at the same time we knew that the Ford would be no walkover. Equally, we wondered how close the amazing new Porsche 911 Turbo would get to the top of the tree, and also whether the BMW M6, with its sometimes fairly liberal speed limiter, might give the 911 something to think about.

And there was one car we knew almost nothing about. All we did know about the Shelby Daytona coupé was that if it went even half as good as it looked and sounded, not even the SLR would be safe. As for the Corvette Z06 and Alpina B5, they had almost 1000bhp between them and would give the others a run for their money. And Bentley? We’ve already hit 208mph in a Flying Spur, so a bright red one was duly delivered.

To comply with the Guinness rules, we had to do three identical runs in each car and measure the average speeds of all three runs using our regular GPS data-logging equipment. And each car would need to travel over the exact same distance; in other words, we had to set the same starting point and the same braking point for each car.

The Alpina went first and without much drama, but with an awful lot of mechanical sophistication, logged an effortless three-way average of 151.5mph. On its best run the 493bhp B5 clocked 155.4mph, proving just how much the wind was gusting on the runway that day, hence the need for an average over three runs.

Next up was the Bentley, all 552bhp, £117,500 and two and a bit tonnes of it – and quite a performer it was, too. The Flying Spur blew its way through 100mph in 10.5sec and eventually to an average of 156.6mph with such ease that we had little idea how fast we were actually travelling. Until it came to the braking point, when the Bentley’s tail rose towards the sky and its nose all but ground itself into the runway. Stopping the Bentley within the confines required was, shall we say, quite an eye-opener on run number three.

The deliciously named Shelby Daytona was next, and if there was a prize for loudest exhaust note of the decade this car would win it at a canter. With its 500bhp Roush-tuned V8, the £91,650 Daytona coupé may have been from the old school of car design, but it was also quick with a capital F. Away from the line, it left two enormous great rubber marks as its rear tyres struggled for grip. Three fairly cautious gearchanges later and, with my ears just about ready to split, the Shelby hit 159mph before the braking point. It felt more like 259mph from behind the wheel. Fantastic.

To put that into context, the massively rapid new 911 Turbo, which was next up, was only 2.6mph quicker in the event. Rare are the occasions on which you can accuse a 911 Turbo of lacking power. But in this instance, fast though it felt in isolation, the 911 simply lacked grunt beside its quicker rivals. Off the line it was incredible, taking a mere 3.6sec to hit 60mph, but beyond three figures it was merely impressive. In the end it hit 161.6mph, which was good, but not quite as crushing as we’d expected.

The real surprise came when the theoretically slower BMW M6 beat the Porsche by a whisker. In spite of its speed limiter, the BMW hit 162.3mph on the runway, its seven-speed sequential gearbox picking gears off with such precision that over three runs it recorded 162.5mph, 162.1mph and 162.3mph – easily the most consistent bunching of the day. BMW’s M Division will no doubt be quietly smug about this.

On the other hand, the M6 (as well as the 911 Turbo) got thumped by the Corvette on the strip. The Z06 is one of those cars that feels ever so slightly rabid in its delivery, often struggling to maintain traction, even in third gear on a dry surface. But it’s also monumentally fast, wheelspin or not. After a wrestling match with the six-speed manual gearbox the like of which even Kendo Nagasaki would have been proud, the Corvette hit 165.4mph, with a best of 167mph. Beside that, the 911 Turbo was nowhere.

And so to the cars we’d been waiting for, the battle of the big hitters: the Ford GT versus the Mercedes SLR McLaren.

Theoretically the McMerc should have walked it. Despite weighing a broadly similar amount to each other (both around 1750kg), the SLR has more power (617bhp versus 500), more torque, traction control and an extra gear. But the mid-engined Ford has better traction, and in this instance we suspect it was running with, shall we say, an engine at the peak of its fitness.

By 100mph they were virtually inseparable, the Ford needing 8.6sec to reach three figures, the SLR just 8.4sec. But by the time 150mph had registered the sheer grunt of the McMerc was beginning to tell and it was already 0.6sec quicker (16.5sec versus 17.1sec). Yet the vagaries of aerodynamics still had one key card to play, and as they continued to accelerate past the speed at which the likes of the 911 Turbo and M6 had quit, the Ford’s more slippery shape, specifically its lack of frontal area, allowed it to reel the SLR back in.

At the line it was desperately close – so close that on the Ford’s best run it actually levelled with the SLR’s worst figure. But the McMerc went as high as 175.7mph on one run, and averaged out over all three runs the results read: Ford GT 173.8mph, Mercedes SLR McLaren 175.1mph.

Had there been another half a mile to play with, the GT may have pinched it and driven itself into the record books. But on the day it was the SLR that was quickest, and not even the folks from Guinness could argue with that. The London Land Speed Record was ours. (And thanks hugely to the people from London City Airport for letting us do it.)

Hard and fast

2006-05-17T11:32:14Z

It’s irresponsible but wholly irresistible. We couldn’t help taking the new 911 GT3 to the Nurburgring and putting it up against a BMW M6. Chris Harris was there to referee the fastest twin test of the year.

Hard and fast: by Chris Harris, with photography by Mark Bramley

Ah the joys of low frontal area and 415bhp. Heading north from Stuttgart on the A81 and the GT3 has been the splodge of tomato ketchup in a grey rabble of large German saloons for the past hour. The speed limit seems to alter every few kilometres: 100km/h, then a burst of 130km/h, then a sneaky fillip of 120 and a bank of cameras to catch those napping.

Eventually the de-restricted sign appears and the Mercs, BMWs and Audis squabble and jockey for immediate superiority. It’s an entirely justifiable activity, because in these few crucial moments they justify the extra expenditure incurred going for a 535d over a 530d. If they don’t do it now, they’ll never find inner peace.

And so they swarm about, four of them. Lights ablaze in sparkling sunshine, jinking left then right, using every move from the Berndt Schneider school of irritating your quarry.

And the GT3? Well, like I said, that’s the beauty of knowing you have the key to a particular area of the toy cupboard that nothing in the immediate vicinity does. The 535d takes a few kilometres to subjugate its foes, by which time it is travelling at just under 150mph.

The driver calmly shims right into the middle lane, brings the diesel super-saloon up to a 155mph simmer. And we truck through at 180mph.

The GT3 is an extraordinary car from Porsche. I didn’t expect it to be like this. Conventional thinking was that the car would occupy the hardcore heartland between regular Carrera and Turbo.

I thought it would continue on the slightly irascible course taken by its predecessor – a car that always hinted at usability because of the practicalities it offered, but one that was too unyielding to use daily.

Autobahn ally
Okay, the 997 GT3’s ride isn’t about to gain itself a tog rating for softness, but I’ve been driving it for three hours now and I have no headache, no body ache and the radio is audible at 150mph. Three years ago I completed the same journey in another red GT3 – the second-generation 996 – and it was grating by comparison. Four years before that, with a Groundhog Day sense of repetition, I drove an early original GT3 back to the UK. Cruising in it on these same stretches of autobahn was torture compared to this car.

Version 997 is exceptional at high speed. As we watch the 535d wobble with submission in its wake, you notice how little steering correction is needed at these speeds. How the rear axle movement and front lift that have blighted fast Porsches for generations just don’t figure. Eventually it cruises up to 185mph, at which point the claimed 192mph maximum seems cautious.

There is a purpose to this journey. Another German manufacturer has
slightly different ideas on the matter of the performance coupé. The BMW M6 has almost identical straight-line performance, its mass-reducing measures hint at occasional circuit use and it costs the same money. By chance, Autocar has an M6 in the office, but where to meet? Well, halve the distance between Teddington and Zuffenhausen and, with the beautifully choreographed sense of inevitability that would suffix a Blue Peter presenter saying, ‘Here’s one I made earlier’, the pin drops on a place called the Nürburgring.

But not the circuit itself, although it would be unprofessional not to sample a few laps in each car. If there’s one thing people should know about this driving Mecca, it’s that the roads around here are some of the best in Europe. Perfect for powerful rear-drive coupés, but technically challenging enough to uncover underlying issues.

I drove the M6 at the launch in Spain a year ago, and although its sheer pace and thuggish presence were captivating, every move it made was undermined by the obligatory M5-is-£15,000-cheaper concern. Twelve months later, those misgivings have been confirmed: more people seem to be buying the saloon.

It takes three-and-a-half hours to arrive in the beautiful Eifel mountains, whose peaks provide the obstacles for the Nürburgring to weave around. Time being tight, I have to jump straight into the M6 and for a few minutes I wonder if during the morning session I’ve forgotten how to drive.

The BMW feels so inert after the GT3; every control surface seems muffled. This is partly because the M6 requires far less arm strength than the Porsche, but mainly because having pumped heavy clutch and brake pedals for hours, brushing the M6’s postage stamp foot brake and lightly pulling a lever behind the steering wheel is an anathema. I nearly ripped it off. Likewise the steering itself: so light at first you wonder if the arms haven’t detached themselves from the wheel hubs.

Light control weights are contrasted by heavyweight pace in the M6. Porsche is making some big claims for the GT3’s straight-line speed. We had a brief attempt ◊ ∆ at matching the 8.7sec 0-100mph time and scored a best of 9.4sec – some way off the factory time. I’ll concede that it might just nip under the 9sec mark under ideal conditions, but I just can’t see where those extra tenths will come from. What isn’t in any doubt is that on the road the M6 can slug with it all the way to 155mph. Whereupon its speed limiter calls time, leaving the GT3 with a further 37mph to play with, and on the autobahn that’s a facility you find yourself using regularly.

Both are normally aspirated high-output motors designed to work at crank speeds at odds with their cylinder capacity. And both are, in very different ways, quite stunning.

Porsche’s historical immunity to widgets is sadly on the wane and the GT3 now has a Sport button that alters the throttle mapping, adjusts the anti-lock and traction control parameters to allow more slip and releases an added 25lb ft of torque. Why this extra shove should require a button is anyone’s guess. But I protest loudly because there is nothing else to criticise in, on or around this engine. It pulls from 2500rpm, steams through 5000rpm (at which point, in Sport mode a butterfly valve opens in the induction system) and pulls with fevered energy all the way to 8200rpm.

The M6’s power delivery is quite similar. It, too, revs into the eights, pulls from low down and possesses that linearity of delivery we all crave. It makes significantly less noise, though, and its transmission just isn’t in the same league as the Porsche’s. This M6 was showing 6000 miles and in the faster shift modes each change resulted in a metallic clank from the rear axle that really made you feel for its health.

On the road, SMG is an easy system to use, but this car needed upchanges smoothed slightly by the driver’s right foot, and it rarely executed the perfect downshift. The Porsche’s manual ’box is superb, even if the brake/throttle spacing isn’t ideal for heel-and-toe shifts with the brakes at road temperatures. The short shift is a touch too difficult to engage, though.

Credit where it’s due: for something bearing in on two tonnes, the M6 is surprisingly agile. Through the sequences
of second- and third-gear turns that characterise these roads, it carves accurate, rewarding lines. It responds well to direction changes and carries impressive speed. There is a definite level of detachment in the M6, though; you operate it, but you rarely feel an intrinsic part of the action. And why, given that BMW has spent millions releasing the left foot from the burden of clutch duty, is the brake pedal canted so far to the right of the footwell?

Controlled aggression

Now acclimatised to the M6’s bluff responses, the GT3 seems to fidget and scuttle. But unlike its predecessors, the 911 is a superb road car in its own right. With the PASM set to soft (there are just two stages available: hard and soft) it is firmly damped but always completely controlled.

The 997 isn’t a small bodyshell, but the GT3 seems minuscule after the BMW. There isn’t another tin-top I’d rather drive on these roads: it fires out of turns, the optional ceramic brakes are epic and, unlike the M6, you feel intrinsic to the task at hand.

Tyres play a big part in this performance. Porsche has developed a completely new Michelin Pilot Sport Cup for the GT3. It has more grooves to move water, but in compound and construction it is pure track day tyre. Unsticking it requires abject brutality.

Now, BMW did the same thing for the M6 – with a Pirelli P Zero Corsa – but unfortunately this car runs a set of regular Continental Sport Contacts. This is the first time I’ve tried them on the car, and the truth is that the Pirelli adds a sizeable dimension to its overall handling abilities. The small amount of ride comfort they sacrifice is repaid with far superior grip.

Fast laps of the Nordschleife confirm as much. On Continentals, the M6 just doesn’t have the front end you need; it understeers heavily, doesn’t turn in well and can struggle for traction on the exit of tighter turns. Having 500bhp doesn’t help, either, because the M6 links the turns very swiftly indeed. And those brakes were finding the going very tough after two laps.

And the GT3? Predictably excellent. Far more forgiving than the previous car, especially in the way the rear axle behaves over bumps. The factory has been cautious with the amount of understeer built in to the chassis, but there’s a whole range of adjustment to sort that out should you want to.

I’d just leave it where it is, bar adding the optional carbon buckets, because the standard sports seats just aren’t up to track work. Even on a busy public day, punctuated by somersaulting bikers, shunted Alfas and some Armco repair works, it ran an 8min 27sec lap.

But the telling moments in the GT3 are on the road. We all know Porsche can make a fast, invigorating track car. But I just didn’t credit how amenable the GT3 could be as everyday transport.

And that alone is why it makes the £80k BMW charges for an M6 look even more questionable now than it did a year ago. Pare it back to £65k and the M6 would be an incredibly appealing, cost-effective super-coupé. But at GT3 money it is cruelly exposed, and ruthlessly dismissed.

The Greatest Drives on Earth: Mille Miglia

2006-04-26T11:22:58Z

When it comes to road races, few have the allure of Italy’s legendary Mille Miglia, and it’s hard to think of a better car in which to drive the route than the Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster.

The Greatest Drives on Earth: Mille Miglia: by Richard Bremner, with photography by Barry Hayden

It's almost impossible to imagine how differently the Mille Miglia would have been viewed if you'd been an Italian watching it tear through your village in the early 1930s. And not just because the race was for real back then, rather than today's excitingly indulgent time-trial nostalgia-fest.

To a 1930s farm worker, digging a living from a patch of land, the race would very probably have been the most exciting spectacle of the year, a torrent of noisy colour rocketing tomorrow's world to their doorsteps. It was a chance to see heroic men battling ferocious machines and for some, perhaps, a symbol of freedom - not only from the drudgery of the land, but from fascism, for this was the era of Benito Mussolini's Italy.

The Mille Miglia was born because a group of men known as the four musketeers set about 'creating something absolutely sensational which will make the automobile world from its slumbers'. That was in December 1926, and what Giovanni Canestrini, Count Franco Mazzotti, Count Aymo Maggi and Renzo Castagneto dreamed up was an event called the Mille Miglia 1000-mile road race through some of the most beautiful scenery in Italy, its drama, colour, spectacle, noise and recklessness would electrify not only those competing, but it’s spectators, too.

'The world's most beautiful race' ran for 24 years - it halted during World War Two until the inevitable happened and a big accident caused multiple deaths. The Italian government banned it, and though there were attempts at reconfiguring it, the race died in the late '50s. Until it was revived, that is, in 1982. Today's annual Mille Miglia, eligible to any car that could have taken part in the original event, is not a race, though you could easily think otherwise when you see the participants ripping through the countryside. Along with Goodwood, Pebble Beach and the international motor shows of the world, it ranks as one of the motoring events.

And what has all this got to do with Lamborghini'? Not much, on the face of it, given that the company was born well after the Mille Miglia stopped, which means that even the oldest 1964 Lamborghini is seven years too young to take part. But there's a stronger link than you might think. When it comes to 'creating something absolutely sensational that will wake the automobile from its slumbers', Lamborghini has something of record. Not merely because Ferruccio Lamborghini actually succeeded in founding a company to rival Ferrari (motivated by the desire to snub Enzo Ferrari, whose slack attitude to after-sales service the Ferrari-owning Ferruccio resented), but with several of his cars. The first sensation was the 1966 Miura, the second the 1973 Countach both achieved nothing less than a redefinition of the supercar - and there are several lesser marvels such as the Espada and the LM002 off-roader. Though more conventional in supercar terms, today's Murcielago and Gallardo hardly fall short when it comes to visual sensation, either. Lamborghini has grown out of the same spirit that inspired the Mille Miglia.

Which is why we came to be collecting a brand-new Murcielago Roadster from the Sant'Agata factory one brisk spring morning. A MurcieIago would look dramatic even if it were grey on a grey day, but in orange under a brilliant blue sky it hijacks your attention like a firecracker at a funeral. The black hood and graphite-grey wheels make it look meaner than an angry bouncer, and if you still feel its presence falls short on the malevolent front, you can electrically raise the airscoops flanking the engine. Normally they rise automatically, to shovel cooling air into the maw of a hard-worked and hot 572bhp V12.

All of which makes you want to get in it. Press a finger on the front edge of the door handle to flick it free, grasp it, heave and the big door cantilevers skywards. From there it's a short, crouching drop into the seat. A slightly offset wheel, a full set of surprisingly sober instruments and an absolute constellation of warning lights - including an alarming one depicting the Murcielago at a 45-degree tilt to warn of rollover bar deployment failure - confront you in a cockpit that is beautifully crafted. You sit amid a mix of unwavering double-stitched leather - you wouldn't have seen that in Lamborghinis past - whose contrasting orange threads look terrific. It feels rich and workmanlike.

And, of course, you'll be wanting to remove the roof, for which you'll need a good 15 minutes. You'll be plucking at studs, peeling Velcro, unhooking rods and carbon spars and compressing them, folding, manoeuvring, tugging, jerking and - if things go badly, swearing and ripping knuckles. This roof isn't easy to remove, and re-assembling it is a memory test as much as a manual workout. You’ll master it with regular use, but beware cloudbursts.

The sky looks clear as we strike northwest fur Brescia and the start of the Mille Miglia, where we'll also visit the new Mille Miglia museum. From there we'll skirt Lake Garda before spearing south towards the legendary Futa and Raticosa passes, the kind of roads you dream of if you get behind the wheel of a Lambo.

BIG BULL

Even if you've driven a Lamborghini before - and I've had the privilege several times - it's impossible not to feel intimidated by its bulk and the feeling that it will be difficult to see out of. In fact, you can see ahead with ease, and with a paddle-shift transmission, driving it is go-kart simple - so there's no embarrassing stall as we leave the factory gates.

Apart from your proximity to the ground, what hits hardest is the noise. It doesn't take long to realise that the gnashings of the V12 are coming at us through a roof whose fabric is close to useless as a sound-deadener. It's a noise potent with promise, but it does undermine an otherwise comfortable car. You can pretty much get the seat where you want it - virtually impossible in the old Diablo - the major controls are to hand, the minor switches easy to pinion with a digit The ride is surprisingly pliant, too. The car follows the contours of the road pretty closely, but you're rarely jostled to distraction. So if the journey to Brescia is slightly frustrating - the only chance to even begin exercising this car is away from autostrada tollbooths, when the unfettered bellow of the V12 tempts you into a lunge at oblivion, it's still a real pleasure. A pleasure for others on the road, too, who regularly photograph it with their phones.

Later that afternoon we drive into the Piazza Loggia in Brescia, where the Mille Miglia will start next month. We think nothing of the fact that there's no traffic around much of this elegant square, park the Roadster up for a photo and watch the crowds grow exponentially around it, until a policeman asks whether we have a permit to park the car. Er, no. But he generously lets us finish as it dawns on us why the square is free of Pandas, Puntos and pedestrians.

Today there is no clue to the throng of classics that will soon overwhelm this town. We head out for Lake Garda among the sludging traffic. The MurcieIago is easier than you'd expect in this kind of traffic - as long as you remember that it gets wider behind you - though the gearshift is sometimes clunky at low speeds, mainly because the revs drop very abruptly over the last 500-1000rpm to idle, making it hard to avoid jerking progress.

Looking rearwards isn't so easy - a tiny trapezoid is your rear window, and much of it is filled with engine lid, which often means you have to crane to see even the rooftop: following cars. You'd never see an Elise.

You've got door mirrors, of course, but they are full of the swelling muscle of bodywork. Not very practical, but it's a Lamborghini kind of a view. And you can always out-accelerate whatever lurks behind you.

There's not much to out-accelerate am the lake bar bicycles, such is the traffic, but when the roads clear it's easy to imagine the pleasure of blasting about in the company of Alfas, Abarths, Lancias, Mercedes and Porsches. The urge to surge only intensifies when we visit the excellent Mille Miglia museum. Among the hundreds of exhibits, including some marvellously obscure machines such as Stanguellinis, is period car footage.

In one film the camera is strapped to the door of red car – frustratingly I can't identify it, but it must be from the ‘50s judging by the shape of its front wing - which is hurtling down a twisting pass. It’s probably not going that fast - not as fasts we will be going - but the combination of its lurching body-roll and the violent switchbacks of the road almost has me car-sick.

The car's battle to constrain itself is one persistent image - the other is the relentlessness of the road's contortionism and the flashing beauty of the landscape. Watch this footage and you'll be aching to have a go Raticosa passes, which the museum staff tell us are among the highlight drives of the event.

So we hurry south again, using autostradas because we want to get to the Futa and Raticosa passes, which the museum staff tell us are among the highlight drives of the event.

Truth be told - and I almost feel guilty writing this, given the excellence of the Murcielago in other departments - the engine's din is getting to us, and I find myself vowing that if I ever buy one (highly likely, of course) it will be the hard-top. Another reason is the sticker on the header rail instructing you not to exceed 200kmh (125mph). Why? Because if you do you may just see the Lambo's canopy flailing in the rear-view mirror. And that's at just 60 per cent of the Murcielago's top speed potential.

Such troubling thoughts will be banish when you reach one of the highlights of the Mille Miglia drive. There's scenery here oft verdant, mountainous kind, and a route that rises and falls as much as it twists. These, surely, are the roads we were seeing in those films. Peel off the roof, and you're going to feel more a part of it, intensifying the full, physical experience of this car, though it is not actually a particularly physical to drive. The biggest effort will be of concentration - this car is not small, and demands precision of the driver, especially on these tight roads. There are big forces to control. After a half-hour, high-speed burst along the Futa pass I feel as if

I've had a light - and exhilarating - workout. Mille Miglia combatants would have been keeping this up for hours at a stretch, and in machinery of wayward character.

But the task is eased by the MurcieIago's superb steering, a precision tool bundled with the kind of energised feel that is so rare in modem cars, and a set of carbonfibre stoppers, whose resilience, as we plunge towards valley floors through endless confections of twists, is mighty. Actually, they're overlight at lowspeeds – just like an Audi's, oddly- but that disappears when the going's rapid.

Though this is quite a big car, one of its most astonishing feats is not to feel it when you fling it at second- and third-gear hairpins, and it's impossible to resist the enjoyment of feeling this big brute of a car muscle its way through a bend as if it were a ballerina. Of course, the Murcielago understeers somewhat if it's launched hard into tight turns. But you can kick the tail around slightly even with the traction control on - an arrangement it's sensible to maintain when your run-off area is a rock-face or a rapid descent onto the switchback road 10m below. It's hard not to admire the bravery- recklessness, even - of those Mille Miglia combatants.

It was the failure of a tyre, indeed, that killed this race and stole the lives of Alfonso de Portago, who was driving, 10 spectators and his co-driver. That was in 1957, two years after the 1955 Le Mans crash that killed 55 people. Three days later, the government decreed the end of the Mille Miglia and all road races in Italy. But that ban could hardly kill the pleasure of driving an athletic car hard along a picturesque road, nor the pleasure of seeing spectacular machines streaming through dramatic scenery.

It's why beautiful, fast and physical cars, cars like Lamborghinis, are built and bought today. The Murcielago Roadster, though able on a scale beyond the wildest imaginings of a 1930s racer, captures that same spirit, in small part because it supplies similar inconveniences with its soft roof. The Mille Miglia was an A to A event - it ran from Brescia to Brescia and the Roadster will likely be used as an A to A car, a car that like this race, is all about glorious indulgence.

Before the NSX supercars were crap

2005-11-29T12:37:17Z

Honda's NSX has finally died after 16 years, but it should be remembered as one of the most important supercars of the 20th century, says Andrew Frankel.

Before the NSX, supercars were crap, by Andrew Frankel with photography by Charlie Magee

It shouldn't have been like this. This was the last time we would meet, the final fling of an affair 16 years in the making. I wanted, needed even, my closing encounter with the NSX to be an epic: how else to do justice to a car that influenced and informed a generation of supercar constructors?

I had it planned to the last detail. We’d go back to the mountain where we’d first met, I’d listen to its V6 whanging off its walls one last time, and find the spot where the photographer had told me to slow down, grow up or find another way home. And we would have a ball.

Except it didn’t work out like that. Indeed the fact that the mountain was shrouded in fog was almost a relief, for this was not the NSX I had come to drive. From the moment I first peered excitedly through its window, it all went wrong. For where there should have been a short and stubby gear-stick – my gateway to heaven – there instead sprouted a grotesque T-bar.

This was the automatic NSX. The NSX that dares not speak its name. The bastard son of the NSX that should be seen but never, ever driven. The clunking, clip-clawed, four speed slushtronic wretch of an NSX, with its hateful electric power steering and, most cruelly, its detuned engine. I didn’t even want to sit in it. But I have children to feed so I devised a strategy. As I drove this NSX, I would use the familiarity of its environment to rekindle the memories of all those proper NSXs whose sheer genius changed the way fast cars were made. And do you know what? It worked.

Before the NSX, supercars were crap, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. My predecessors never said as much because, until they drove the NSX, they could never have known. But you didn’t need much time in the lightweight, all-aluminium wonder from out East to know it made the likes of Ferrari’s malevolent 348 and the already ageing Lotus Esprit Turbo look pretty sick.

It was at least as quick as the Lotus and not only out-handled the Ferrari (not difficult) but sounded better too (almost unbelievable). But that was just the start: it also possessed the build quality of a 911 and the reliability of, well, a Honda. It even had a decent boot, for heaven’s sake. In short, it brought the piano lid crashing down on the fingers of the established European supercar constructors and things would never be the same again.

How important was it? Well, I have no doubt for instance that, were it not for the NSX, the Ferrari F430 would not be the paragon of supercar virtue it is. For all the wonderful things it did on the road, perhaps the greatest service the NSX ever did for the true enthusiast was to jolt Ferrari out of the complacency that had brought us such mediocrities as the 348, Testarossa and Mondial.

But the NSX was not perfect. Deep within the warm, inviting folds of ever BSX there lies a shard of ice just where you’d expect to find a heart of gold. It’s there to catch the unwary. I can remember watching a road tester throw an NSX deep into a field while trying to make it perform for the camera and I can remember others skittering off race tracks when their intrepid pilots have played fast and loose with the traction control button.

I’ve had a fair few of what are known round these parts as ‘NSX moments’ myself. Last year I drove one 4500 miles in five days and forgot about the NSX’s phenomenal appetite for rear tyres until I found myself negotiating a wet right-hand curve on an Italian autostrada on half a turn or more of left-hand lock. Even the strange, 16-year-old beast pictured here with its two pedals and bigger wheels from the later 3.2-litre version contrived to spit me sideways out of a corner when a rear tyre brushed the dry painted white line at its perimeter.

Back then, back when the NSX was merely the freshest face on the block and mine the spottiest in the office, I knew none of this. I knew only of a car with a redline higher than that of any Ferrari, a driving position I could actually work with and a gear-shift with an action of military-spec precision. I wanted to drive it forever, sell my flat and live in it. I can remember bundling friend after friend into its passenger seat and howling off up the road, simply because I didn’t want them to die without first hearing that noise.

But you could never do full justice to an NSX on any single journey for the sheer sense of occasion offered by a Ferrari over a given distance was always going to make up for its dynamic shortfalls. However good an NSX was to drive, it was always going to be far better to own.

Not, of course, that I ever managed to do that, though I have probably spent more cumulative time at the helms of NSXs in the last 16 years than many who have actually gone out and splurged on one.

Honda may not have sold too many of late but, like James Dean, it’s legend will only truly come alive after its death. And then it will become known as the most influential and important supercar of the late 20^th century, the one that helped make all the others better.

Which is why I’m not going to let this toothless NSX end one of the most important chapters of my automotive education. I’m going to find another – I don’t care if it’s a 3.0-litre or a 3.2, whether it has five speeds or sic, so long as it has work for my left foot. And when I do, believe me, we won’t go out with a whimper, but snarling, howling and shrieking through the gears, hitting 8000rpm in every last one of’em. In an NSX there should be no other way.

‘So let’s try plan B, then…’

2005-11-22T12:41:20Z

We were determined to use our Discovery’s off-road ability to the full. But even Steve Cropley had his doubts when he got halfway across this frozen river in Iceland

'So let's try plan B then...:by Steve Cropley

It was a funny thing to be doing on a Tuesday morning. Swinging a 12-pound sledgehammer to crack the ice of a frozen river, while standing on the same icy shelf I was steadily pulverising, with a couple of feet of freezing water surging underneath.

The ambient temperature was well below zero and a fierce 50mph wind was adding serious wind-chill. The whole scene seemed distinctly bizarre. Here was I, the proverbial cartoon character sitting in a tree, busily sawing off the bough he’s sitting on.

Still, we had to smash this ice. That was the expert advice. You can’t cross any river without knowing how deep it is. And if we’d attempted to drive out onto the unbroken surface the car would probably have dropped through into the water, possibly damaging itself and certainly with no chance of going forward or back.

Our 20-strong crew had gone to Iceland, summoned by a letter from Land Rover to drive Discoverys ‘on some of the most challenging routes our experts can find’. This was day two and our team leader, David Sneath, had been excelling himself. So far we had tried mountainous snowdrifts and extended expanses of ice, ridiculously slippery hills, washboard roads with chassis-wrecking potholes and rocky, tyre-busting tracks.

Even the expanses of 70mph asphalt road had featured well-concealed patches of ice on which the average mountain goat could hardly have kept its footing. Friendly Icelanders had told us this early winter ice and snow was unseasonal, and that driving conditions would get much worse than this.

Worried hacks kept observing that these same conditions (of which our deftly-powersliding taxi driver made light as he took us to dinner one evening) would be enough to bring the British nation to a halt.

We had seen a lot, but not an icy river. We needed to cross it to complete the mission Sneath had appointed that morning – to reach the spectacular Langjokull glacier, an expanse of ice the size of Yorkshire in Iceland’s south-western inland.

We had done the town of spectacular hot springs called Geysir (geyser, geddit?) and the awesome half-frozen waterfalls at Gullfoss – like a kind of wintry Grand Canyon – but this was by far the day’s biggest obstacle.

Never give up

Sneath is not a man to be thwarted. As project engineer of the current Range Rover, he played a leading hand in convincing a bunch of hard-headed Bavarians – back in the days when BMW owned Land Rover – that they should stick with the more expensive and complicated, but much more effective, low-range transmission for the Range Rover, and so give it the world-beating off-road capabilities of its predecessors.

They had been all for simply sticking another body on the BMW X5. It wasn’t easy, but he and a few key colleagues managed it. You can’t prove such things to serial doubters without being an off-roading expert yourself, and Sneath runs the training-driving-proving wing of the company, a worldwide organisation called Land Rover Experience. Part of that job is to set up stern driving challenges for people like us.

By turns, and swings of shovel, spike and sledgehammer, we gradually shattered the ice. It took 30 minutes, during which time Sneath and his LRE helpers measured the water’s depth in various places with stakes. Ice is amazingly strong stuff. Despite my fears, I found you could stand on the edge of a six-inch crust and bash away without fear. Quite fun, actually.

Our eight Discoverys were lined up on the road leading into the abyss, all of them silver except for Autocar’s HSE V6 diesel, whose dark green paint picked it out from the white surroundings. In this place, you’d choose dark green to be conspicuous.

Weeks before, some bright spark at Land Rover had suggested that we might like to crate up our own Disco and send it in a container, by sea with the rest of the test vehicles, to see if it could cope in Iceland like the rest. It was a bit of a bind to be without it for three weeks, but those regrets melted away when I spotted it in a Reykjavik hotel car park, the engine whirring at idle and the interior nice and warm.

Along the way it had acquired an aluminium skid-plate, so thick you could see it meant serious business, but beautifully sculpted to the undersides so it barely hurt ground clearance. Our Disco was still wearing its 19-inch alloys, but the tyres were now a more aggressively patterned type, needed for ice and snow.

Inside it had an additional Garmin sat-nav system (the standard DVD-based system couldn’t function in Iceland because mapping of the country isn’t complete), the cabin pockets were bulging with energy bars and bottles of water. There was a two-way radio in the upper glovebox and a complement of spades and tow ropes in the boot. We were ready.

Ice up to the doors

In the intervening 36 hours our Discovery had been tested and never found wanting. But this icy river was bigger than anything and I was worried. Would the six-inch-thick icy plates attack the body? (It looked like it.) Would the river floor have enough purchase? (It was zero degrees in there.) Would we cope with the rocks? (I’d seen them razoring tyres already.) Would I make a fool of myself? (I’d done it many times before.)

Sneath drove slowly into the broken ice in his own well-used LRE Disco. The ice shattered more and the Disco soon bumped to the bottom, with freezing water at the deepest point halfway up the driver’s door. Deep enough. As he crawled steadily across the 30-yard expanse, huge lumps of ice began to collect in front of the car, barring progress.

The car stopped, wheels still turning slowly. He reversed. Then forward ‘with a bit more passion’, which is his expression for giving it a bit more Wellington boot. More progress. Then another hang-up. The skidplate was doing its stuff – breaking the ice and forcing smaller pieces under and around.

But a couple of big sections had half-removed his driver’s side wheelarch cover. As an onlooker, you couldn’t help noticing the unevenness of the river floor and the way the car swayed and heaved drunkenly. It took six runs to get through. This wasn’t going to be easy.

We were fourth to go. The others had made it, but with a struggle, and I felt apprehensive. All right for them, I thought: their bond with the car isn’t as strong as mine. No time to think now, though, I had to configure the car.

Select low range – you need torque and flexibility. Then second gear, plenty low enough. Air suspension at the extra-height setting to add clearance. Terrain Response set for grass-gravel-snow (to soften throttle response and distribute drive to all four wheels). Lastly, switch off the stability control, because we’d been finding the sudden yaw sometimes induced in slippery conditions could cut engine punch just when
you needed it.

Hands at 10-to-two, I pressed gently on the accelerator, enough to build momentum and try to create a bow-wave, if one were possible. The car bucked hugely over submerged stones but kept going straight. I could hear water flowing past the doors, plus the clonking of huge pieces of ice into the hard parts of my car. No time to worry. Steer straight. Easy on the throttle. We kept going and I almost thought we’d make it. The Discovery stopped at the last minute, though, with the wheels still turning.

David, directing things from the bank, was unconcerned. Take her back 15 feet, he instructed, then give it the beans. Rush the bank. The build-up of ice under the car and the steep bank had conspired against us. More momentum and we’d do it – and we did. Our Disco scrabbled to join the others up the steep river bank, already re-freezing in rivulets from the water others had deposited.

We parked neatly in the line. My companion, another admirer of what off-roaders can do in extremis, was as elated as me. ‘Try that in your Audi TT,’ he said.

'Glacier ahead'

On we drove toward the glacier, convoy spreading on the sometimes dusty road to maintain visibility. Then this awe-inspiring natural feature, a white expanse of frozen water reaching beyond the horizon to show the curvature of the earth, hovered into view.

Icelanders play about on glaciers in snowmobiles, and we had some of that in mind, but first we had to get down to the edge, through deep, deep snowdrifts and across a vast expanse of rocks. Our original intention was to get all eight cars down to the snowy shore, if that’s what you call it. But first we had to traverse 100 years’ worth of snowdrifts. And we still had the 50mph breeze building walls of snow as soon as you knocked them down.

Three Discoverys got through and one of them was ours. Sneath, experienced at steering for the right place and using the right amount of ‘passion’, simply bashes a route through with his own Disco. But his tracks were deep and the next one made them deeper and got stuck. David winched him through and then it was our turn.

The technique for attacking snowdrifts is pretty rudimentary. But it needs skill, like all off-roading. Again it’s low range, full-height suspension, stability control off and grass-gravel-snow selected. Then you simply rush the snow, staying as straight as you can, building momentum as well as you can, getting through as far as you can, but backing off as soon as you realise the situation is hopeless. Which it was, by the time we’d got two-thirds of the way through the bottomless 20-yard stretch of whiteness. That’s when we learned a new skill – the snatch-tow.

Land Rover Experience types don’t talk a lot about this, and they’re careful how they use it, but today they had special ‘kinetic’ tow ropes. These have a degree of stretch in them so you can start from a slack position, then drive forward quickly until it’s taut, a move that doesn’t depend quite so much on the traction of the towing car to get the stuck car out. I wasn’t too keen to try this with our Disco. I’ve seen tow ropes – the ordinary non-flex kind – pull parts off cars when jolts were applied. Here, there was no choice. We dug a snow hole around my buried front hook, connected the rope to David’s car and he took off in his Disco like a scalded cat.

White-knuckling the steering wheel, I expected a noise like a massive kitchen accident, then to see front parts of my Discovery launching skywards. Instead there was abrupt but cushioned acceleration and my car drove through the drift under pretty good control. The Disco’s front and rear tow hooks are so strong, it was explained, that you can suspend one by its front hook, with another hanging off the rear.

On the way back to Reykjavik I conducted a surreptitious inventory of my car’s condition – post ruts, post rocks, post icy river and charging snowdrifts and being snatch-towed out. It was fine. The tools were rattling in the rear. The tyres were a little noisier at a cruise than the rubber I left behind, but not enough to discourage me from keeping them on the car for a while at least, along with that superb skid-plate. These had been extreme conditions, but my car’s condition was unaltered. A fine dinner lay ahead and all was right with the world.