Less than 48 hours after Steve Cropley handed Porsche’s head of research and development, Wolfgang Hatz, the 2015 Issigonis Trophy at our annual Autocar Stars awards, our man Andrew Frankel climbed from the seat of the new 911 GT3 RS, fired up his laptop and delivered another five-star verdict.

Hatz and the team he was so quick to acknowledge at our awards bash have done it again.

The warmth and humour with which Hatz received his honour won over our audience from across the automotive industry, but it’s the quality of the cars for which he is responsible – and particularly the ones with “the engine at the wrong end”, as he so eloquently put it – that brought him to our winner’s podium in the first place.

The brilliance of Porsche is that it delivers consistently top-notch products across such a wide range of vehicles, from thoroughbred racers for the road through to family-orientated SUVs.

That, you suspect, is because engineering – as opposed to marketing, bean counting or any other distractions – is at the very heart of every decision it makes.

Long may it continue.