PART TWO
The Surreal World

Winning part one has given the Mégane R26.R a passport to a more rarefied world. Here the year’s best GTs and supercars fight it out for the ultimate accolade of Car of the Year – assuming they can see off the challenge of our real-world hero, of course. Epic cars require an epic setting, and there are few more spectacular than Mont Ventoux in southern France. The wonderful road to the top of the mountain has become famous as a stage on the Tour de France, but it’s a blast on four wheels too, as we’re about to discover…

An eCoty convoy. The stuff of dreams and screams. It can start small and fragmented. This one did. Initial configuration: Aston Martin V8 Vantage (Metcalfe and me), Nissan GT-R (Green and Wallace), Porsche 911 GT2 (Barker) and Renault Mégane Renaultsport R26.R (Catchpole). We meet at the Channel Tunnel on a pleasantly warm Thursday afternoon for the 16:50 crossing. Harry buys an in-car charger for his iPhone. Andy Wallace just looks happy to be here.   Henry, being Henry, has downloaded The Great Gatsby onto his iPod for the 275-km haul to Reims in the ICE-less, six-point harnessed, roll-caged and carbon bucket-seated Renault. And contingent on a number of factors – but mostly whether anyone actually wants to get out of their Aston/Alfa/Maser/Lambo/Porsche to swap – possibly beyond.   We’ll meet the other cars in France. Alfa and Lambo are being trailered across from different parts of Germany, while Ollie Marriage is driving the Maserati direct from the factory. Ollie, who’s been ticking off various ‘things to do before you die’ ever since he joined evo, has decided not to drive the most direct route from Modena to our motel near Reims – something most of us wouldn’t attempt without at least a handful of Swan Vestas to prop open our eyelids – but to take in the Stelvio Pass en route. This means he won’t be arriving until the early hours of Friday and should be able to grab, let’s see, three hours’ sleep before it’s time to get up again. Oh, and he’s brought along his bicycle so that, on Sunday morning, he can race Henry to the top of Mont Ventoux in open, man-to-man, toe-to-toe, lycra-to-lycra combat. Just as well Henry’s brought along his bike too, then.

Friday morning. The first of four straight 7am starts. The Alfa and Lambo are disgorged from their trailers into the hotel car park and when Metcalfe has finished drooling over the 8C and rolled up his tongue we head for the remains of the Reims motor racing circuit a few miles away. We’re using it principally as a location for photography and the inevitable grid line-up beneath the elegantly faded Jaguar, Ferodo and Cibie hordings pelmeting the pit garages. But the acoustic canyon formed by the pits on one side of the road and the grandstand on the other is too much of a temptation for the more vocal engine/exhaust combos – to wit the Alfa, Maser, Aston and Lambo – not to stage an impromptu drive-by sonic smackdown.

The Aston generates comfortably the greatest number of angry, slightly metallic-sounding decibels, the V10 Lambo the most visceral, bone-penetrating spectrum of frequencies and the swiftest doppler shift. But both performances seem harmonically impoverished after the baritone blare of the Maserati and the frankly mesmerising melange of rising yowls, resonant bellows, crackles, staccato pops, throaty gargles and distant gunfire that constitutes the Alfa’s horn section. ‘It’s hard to believe it’s actually legal,’ muses Porter, flaming up another Camel Light.

After a while, though, it’s just the echoes we hear, the ghosts of racers past, of Fangio, Hawthorn and Clark, ripping down the main straight well into three figures. It’s a crisp autumn morning with a pale blue sky and papery leaves the colour of Cornflakes billowing around the kerbs. Perhaps memories are stored in walls for as long as they resist crumbling to dust. It would be good to think that the vibrations from a couple of thousand contemporary horsepower had excited a sympathetic stirring of long-dormant energies. Fanciful maybe, but as photographers Chris Rutter and Gus Gregory work through their initial set-ups, the atmosphere is haunting and strangely calm. 

'When Metcalfe has finished drooling over the Alfa we head for the remains of the Reims race circuit'

But not for long. What happens over the next ten hours is best described as inspired industry operating on the edge of chaos, in which the requirements of the image-makers bump, grind and gnash against the instincts of the drivers, the naturally evolving dynamic of the group and the need to reach Carpentras, 695 km away, by nightfall. There are incidental moments of magic (distant Alfasong caught on the afternoon breeze), snatches of things to come (Henry has to keep up with the Gallardo, 911 GT2 and Nissan GT-R in the R26.R – and does) and a few things that just make you wonder (the 473bhp, 1740kg Nissan GT-R accelerates every bit as rapidly as the 530bhp, 1440kg 911 GT2). Go figure. And if the figure you’re thinking of is an incy-wincy bit more than 500bhp, you’re probably wrong. It’s got to be a big, fat, juicy chunk more than 500bhp. Calling the quoted power output ‘conservative’ simply doesn’t cut it.

Almost as surprising is the GT-R’s somewhat roughed-up condition as delivered the day before from Nissan’s Press department. ‘Hard-used demonstrator’ seems something of an understatement for a car with visible cracks in the brake discs, a rippled boot-tray from a previous rear-end shunt and conventional Pirelli tyres where it should be wearing the stiff-sidewalled run-flat Bridgestones, whose hard-edged precision fits the GT-R’s multi-faceted dynamic demeanour so well. It’s almost as if the Nissan has been nobbled before its campaign of terror and supercar intimidation has properly begun. The truly worrying thing for the opposition, though, is that it still feels modestly awesome any time the road opens up and/or goes twisty, especially if there’s something tasty and vastly more expensive up ahead trying to outrun it. Which it almost certainly won’t, no matter who’s driving. Even Andy Wallace.

No, we all have a few conditional insights on the way down to the challenge represented by the dazzling ascents and descents of Mont Ventoux. Mine are in the Nissan, when it’s not trying and merely cruising at 90mph or so on the autoroute. We’ve split the cars into two groups to facilitate photographic requirements and I’m in a four-car convoy winding south towards Provence (Harry, Roger and Andy are taking a slightly different route in the Alfa, Aston and Maserati). Gosh, it’s boring. In fact, I’m drawn to think that few cars that get even close to the Nissan’s performance and dynamic capabilities can have as little intrinsic character when the heat’s off.

This isn’t an observation, it’s a disappointment. If you had the luxury of closing your eyes behind the wheel of the Nissan, you could be in any one of a number of bland, six-cylinder executive saloons, though given the armchair-like comfort of the seats and the texture of many of the surfaces you might be inclined to guess late-’90s Ford Granada.  

Thing is, aesthetically the cabin could hardly be more distinctive: dark, tough, macho and loaded with enough digital instrument displays and functions to sate the most ardent Xbox-literate nerd’s thirst for technical overkill. And it’s an odd feeling. Whereas in the Porsche, Lamborghini or Renault you feel instantly connected to the car’s core character, even when tucking away tedious motorway miles, visuals apart the unexercised GT-R is anodyne and unassuming to the point of anonymity. It comes to eCoty with the reputation of being a car defined by what it’s ultimately capable of and nothing more. Nissan has clearly designed it that way but the personality vacuum it creates leaves just a whole lot of attitude. The GT R shares the assassin’s single-minded sense of purpose. Its brutality is cold, clinical and calculated. It could easily be a car designed by a bunch of super-intelligent geeks as the ultimate revenge on impossibly cool Italian machismo and Teflon-coated Teutonic technical arrogance, a car generated not by desire but a specific brief to embarrass the great and the good and blitz the established world order. 

So this is how it’s going to shake out. Getting to Mont Ventoux barely constitutes a warm-up. Motorway chops noted, eCoty will be settled on relentlessly spectacular mountain roads, the winner crowned 1912m above sea level at the summit of a limestone massif in the heart of Provence.

'The GT-R shares the assassin's sense of purpose. Its brutality is calculated'

The contenders will naturally fall into two groups, the GTs represented by the Alfa 8C, Maserati GranTurismo S and Aston V8 Vantage, the supercars by the Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 and Porsche 911 GT2. The trans-genre finalist is the Nissan GT-R (GT comfort and refinement, supercar pace and dynamics) and the real-world interloper from part 1, the Renault Mégane Renaultsport R26.R, henceforth to be known, you’ll be glad to hear, as the R26.R. ‘Real world’ refers more to the $ 36K price tag – a substantial $ 187K less than the Lamborghini’s – than the design philosophy. Humble family-hatch origins notwithstanding, the R26.R is more extreme and hardcore than anything else here, a car so assiduously pared of unnecessary weight and fripperies (including, perhaps controversially, the rear seats) that it makes the 911 GT2 look positively plush. 

Day Two
It’s nevertheless the keys to the GT2 that I have in my pocket on Saturday morning as the now full-strength eCoty convoy sets out for Mont Ventoux from our hotel in Carpentras. If it wasn’t called GT2, it would have ‘benchmark’ written all over it. It’s just so monumentally potent. On the brief blast from the final fill-up to the hotel the previous night, there wasn’t really time for me to get my head round what it’s capable of, other than to swallow hard at the faintly ridiculous way the scenery would speed up with just a tickle of throttle in second or third, then gradually slow to a gentle sigh from the twin turbos. Now the roads are clearer and there’s the Gallardo LP560’s neat new rump on the other side of the windscreen.

The comparative styles are interesting. Every time there’s clear space ahead, the Lambo snaps out a 30-metre gap with a seemingly instant injection of violence. If it were an arm-wrestling contest, the Italian would be trying to get it over through the sheer speed with which it applies maximum force. But it doesn’t work. Before the 911’s arm is smashed into the table, the turbos ramp up its resistance, first to a state of deadlock, then a fightback as the almost supernatural level of torque nullifies the Lambo’s early advantage.

Conceptually, it’s tempting to think of the GT2 as a GT3 with the 911 Turbo’s engine. But, on first acquaintance at least, it’s the engine that dominates. John Barker, who had all the way from Dover to Reims to get to know the car, puts his finger on it: ‘The power output determines how the rest of the car is; you really need those deep bucket seats to keep you in position. You need those tyres (extreme, almost semi-slick Michelin Pilot Sport Cups) to give you the grip. Having said that, it’s actually pretty good for long distances. It’s a proper car, not just a trackday toy.’ The truth is, it’s even more hardcore than the GT3. The ride on the softer of its two damper settings is firmer than the GT3 at its hardest. On the Sport setting it feels as if iron bars have descended from the wheelarches and locked the suspension solid. But to deal with the power it needs to be well tied down. As John came to acknowledge, ‘you just have to accept it’. 

Until 1973, there was a motor race from the bottom to the top of Mont Ventoux on the southern approach that we’re using today (a rally, starting from the town of Bedoin, is still run every June). But these days the road is more famous for cycling and is often included as one of the tougher stages of the Tour de France. British cycling hero Tommy Simpson suffered a fatal heart attack near the summit in 1967. A substantial stone memorial adorned not just with the usual floral tributes but also a variety of cyclists’ water bottles, caps and shirts mark the fateful spot.

The car park at the top is cold – about 11 degrees colder than in Bedoin – and as viciously breezy as the mountain’s name would suggest (vent is French for wind). Apparently, when the northerly Mistral blows, it can almost lift you off your feet. But the wind dries the moisture in the sky, making a gorgeous indigo backdrop for the velvety mist shrouding the surrounding hills. Fortunately, cyclist traffic is light this time of year, and especially this early in the morning, so the Porsche’s mountain dance isn’t just protracted (the big-bore exhaust plumbing barely starts to crackle with heat-soak before the next fix is sought by an eager pilot) but, as everyone who later samples it recounts, genuinely jaw-sagging. And, as the road is parchment dry, neck-pulling, too.

It wasn’t always so crisp and clear-skied while Barker had it, and he pulls no punches describing the flip-side of all that tarmac-sucking adhesion, hard-bodied acuity and turbo-enhanced slam in a rear-drive 911. Basically, unless you’ve got a plug socket in the back of your head and have just downloaded Sébastian Loeb’s car control skills Matrix-style, the driving seat of the GT2 is no place to unpack a gung-ho attitude if the road’s damp with early-morning dew. John recommends trying to conjure up levels of circumspection you never even knew you had.

'The GT2 is monumentally potent. The truth is, it's even more hardcore than the GT3'

But in the dry it’s a different story. Short of sending a gilt-edged invitation, it’s difficult to know how the GT2 could offer more encouragement to lean on the massive reserves of grip, brake deep into the smooth, constant-radius bends and feed in nearly all the power exiting them. It’s hugely addictive, and those brakes, as we’ve come to expect with the ‘GT’ 911s, are simply awesome.

Yes, there is an element of point-and-squirt – simply, the GT2 has so much straight-line shove you don’t need to commit to within a gnat’s whisker of the edge in bends – but that isn’t to say the process is without the feel and finesse that’s part and parcel of the 911 experience. The transparent way the steering communicates, the perfectly balanced weighting of all the controls, the gruff engine note – overlayed in this case with the breathy whoosh of the turbo induction – all cement the sense of mechanical connection with the car. 

There is a price to pay for the superheated acceleration, though, and it’s the old enemy, turbo lag. There isn’t much and, to an extent, with a little anticipation, you can drive round it. But by comparison with the razor-sharp delivery of the Nissan GT-R (the other car with six cylinders, two turbos and 500bhp-plus), its pick-up feels inescapably tardy. Catchpole, who admittedly loves the lickety-split throttle response and reflexive chassis dynamics of a Caterham R500 Superlight almost as much as he loves his bicycle, has a problem with the way the GT2 drags out a sequence of events: ‘You come out of a hairpin and you’re in second, which is a perfectly reasonable gear to be in. You press the accelerator and wait, knowing that the explosion is about to come. So you’re sitting there waiting, wondering if the torque is going to light up the rear tyres and where on the road you’re going to have to correct the slide, rather than thinking about the next corner, the next straight. You’re still worrying about the corner you’ve just been through, which is not how it should be.’ 

'Aston's pretty V8 Vantage now has the engine it should have had all along, and one that suits its $ 130,000 price tag'

Despite this, Henry’s still a big fan. ‘It has the best steering here, the best brakes and a fantastic gearshift. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.’ And Andy Wallace is almost in raptures. ‘It’s staggering how pure it is,’ he grins. ‘For a car that really doesn’t have enough weight up front, you’d never know. The front end is crisp, secure; it feels like there’s weight on it. And everything matches, there isn’t one thing that’s heavier or lighter than the rest. It all comes as a package.

‘The engine just gives you the most wonderful shove. Then you upshift and there’s another rush. The only thing I can fault is the flywheel effect: the revs don’t come down quick enough. I was beginning to wonder if it was me not getting off the gas quickly enough. But you just keep wanting to drive it. It gets under your skin.’

'The Maserati's new 4.7-litre engine seems to bring the chassis alive'

Time to try a different flavour. We’ve three rather wonderful front-engined, rear-drive GTs on eCoty 2008, courtesy of Aston Martin, Maserati and Alfa Romeo. Aston’s pretty Vantage now has the engine it should have had all along, and one that suits its price tag. It sounds sophisticated just burbling into view, more like a 12 than an 8, and it feels much stronger than that of the previous generation car.

The chassis is better resolved too, but it just isn’t gelling as it should on these mountain roads. The steering feels lighter and more alert than before but still lacks genuine feel. And while it’s quick enough, direct enough and well weighted, it doesn’t feel like the access point to an organic, cohesive, subtle, homogenous car. There’s still a hint of the corkscrew body motion and bump-steer that seems to afflict many recent Astons. OK, it isn’t disastrous. Get the Vantage bedded into a corner and it feels stable and composed enough, but apply the power too early and the rear end almost lurches before settling into that curious diagonal bobbing.

As Barker says, ‘Somehow it comes across as capable but cold. They’re spending a lot of time at the Ring, yet there’s not that marvellous depth of control and response you get from a Porsche or BMW M3. It feels better the further you drive it, but it’s never inspiring.’

What’s more, niggles that were easy to compensate for on the run down from Calais to Reims are more problematic now. The cabin is a thing of quality and beauty, but the gear lever, although impressively stubby, is simply in the wrong place, set way too far back, while the padded lid of the central cubby gets in the way of your elbow. The slow, notchy shift quality doesn’t help, while the clutch still has an indistinct, seemingly variable biting point that makes you feel a bit clumsy. And the seats, although amply endowed with lumbar adjustment, lack lateral support (though not as much as the Maserati’s, as I will soon discover).

Richard Porter, it’s probably fair to say, wasn’t blown away when he drove the Aston earlier: ‘I think the best cars here have that certain delicacy to them. This feels a bit more like a wrestling match. It’s not bad. I think if you came here with that car just on its own you’d think… yeah, OK. But there are some unforgiveables: the positioning of the gearlever, and the Emotion Control Unit key thing.’ 

Metcalfe takes a similar view: ‘The one thing the Aston lacks, compared to every other car here, is star quality. With every other car you can name something spectacular about it. And the Aston… well, it’s good. There’s no doubting it is an improvement on the previous model. But there isn’t a stand-out quality that says “gotta have that Aston”. It used to be the looks. Unfortunately, we brought an 8C here…’

Harry has fallen in love with the 8C. In fact, just about everyone has. The interesting thing is that, on the mountain, the identically V8-engined but larger and heavier Maserati is the better car. Crucially, it inspires much more confidence when pushing beyond seven- or eight-tenths.

Like the Aston, the Maser has a new 4.7-litre engine and it makes a huge difference to the feel and appeal of the GranTurismo (especially when you press the button marked ‘sport’, which makes its exhaust every bit as loud as those of the Alfa and Aston. Which is very loud indeed). It’s not rippling with low and mid-range torque, but the extra power does seem to bring the chassis alive. It’s now more feelsome, accurate and malleable than before – the Aston feels wooden, the Alfa unpolished by comparison. As a consequence they don’t press home any size advantage on a sinuous road, or any other type come to that. The four-seater Maser never quite shrinks around you, but you can place it accurately and confidently, thanks to smooth, keen steering, bags of grip and a lovely rounded edge at the limit. Even the latest paddleshift gearbox works beautifully.

Step from the Maser to the Alfa and the 8C feels smaller, tauter, faster. It appears to turn things up a notch. But in truth it’s the GranTurismo that’s the more stable, composed and predictable. The 8C is a lot edgier, quite a tricky car to drive near the limit.

First impressions, though, are off the scale. As Barker says, ‘Even if it were painted matt khaki green, the Alfa would be the most gorgeous- looking car here, so in candy-apple red it’s jaw-dropping. So smooth, so compact, so perfect from every angle. I love the inside too – just what you expect from a modern interpretation of a ’60s car – lots of dials, leather, metal and carbonfibre.’

Hit the start button on the centre console and the V8 takes just a fraction too long to catch, as if to build the tension, and when it does it’s gloriously loud. There’s a keen tautness to the whole car, to the snappiness of its paddle upshifts (and bark-blip downshifts), to the weighty steering, to the firm ride.

The steering wheel feels enormous, fat in your hands too. But although it’s connected to a helm that feels sharp and direct, the 8C is a difficult car to position accurately; it’s actually quite imprecise. Point the Maserati into a corner and you know exactly where you are. There might be understeer if you’ve gone in a little hot, possibly a few degrees of oversteer on a trailing throttle. But you’ll be kept informed. In the Alfa you’re left guessing, which isn’t an ideal outcome for a car with such a lively, mobile rear end. It’s no problem to work around it; just be slightly softer with the throttle. But it’s disappointing when the initial turn-in is so enticingly keen. No car for languid, one-handed power slides, then.

Barker again: ‘Dynamically it was always going to come up a bit short compared with the way it looks, and it certainly has a more precipitous drop-off than the Maser, but because it lacks the GT S’s stronger torque it’s not nearly as keen to slide its rear. To get the tail out you have to use high revs and a tight corner. I found it acceptably driveable, though it feels like it would be a handful in the wet, what with that short wheelbase.’

‘You’d have to be brave if you wanted to drive it really quickly,’ Catchpole concurs. ‘It’s a car best experienced at a maximum of six-tenths and then you’d love it to bits.’ There’s no question, the 8C’s sublime curves, fabulously expressive V8 and undoubted charisma have won it many fans here. Question is, how high will that lift it in the final rankings? It’s been a great day, but even better is to come. 

Day Three
Sunday morning, just after dawn. It’s gloriously quiet on the mountain: before we start our engines at the small car park in Bedoin, the loudest noise on the road to the top is the sound of whirring derailleurs, heaving chests and muttered ‘your butt is mine’ incantations as Catchpole and Marriage pound their way skywards equipped with just two wheels and two legs apiece.

I settle for the GT-R. After its dull, almost soporific performance on the autoroute, I’m expecting something truly extraordinary on the hills. Barker had been first into it yesterday and experienced a raft of oddities that, again, seemed hell-bent on disguising its true potential: ‘From cold the gearbox was all over the place,’ he told me over breakfast. ‘Get it onto tight lock while the transmission is trying to wake up and it’s locking the wheels – you can feel it juddering. And you think cripes, it feels heavy, the transmission feels clumsy, the driveline feels sticky. Is this thing ever going to go? But then it warms up and you warm up and it feels as fast and powerful as anything here.’ 

If anything, that’s something of an understatement. The GT-R is big and feels it. But, as the road starts to climb, for the first time it starts to make sense. And after that it leaves you, like most things trying to keep up, gasping. Even after the GT2 it feels astonishingly responsive and just as blindingly rapid. The twin-clutch upshifts have more in common with automatic rifle fire than meshing cogs, and once the turbos have moved out of their dead zone (zero to 1800 revs, so no chore) the engine simply doesn’t feel turbocharged. The combination is so stunningly sussed, and the uninterrupted stream of acceleration it delivers at even half throttle so savage, it initially nails your attention completely.

But it doesn’t take long for you to realise that what’s going on beneath you is just as remarkable. The non-standard tyres give the all-drive chassis a slightly different character to the regular run-flat Bridgestones – not so taut and steely, more elastic, even slightly squirmy – but the bottom line, in most respects, is just as devastatingly effective: blistering A-to-B, or in this case bottom-to-top, pace. 

It can be a little unnerving at first. The sense of purity Andy Wallace found so alluring in the 911 is absent here. The cause-and-effect loop isn’t straightforward; the classic turn-in/pick-up-the-power technique certainly works but it isn’t the only way. It’s as if driver inputs are being analysed and, if necessary, processed to give an optimum result. You can feel the adjustments being made when you turn into a bend and, even more noticeably, when you reapply the power on the way out. It’s tempting to think that everything is being reduced to point-and-squirt. The word that springs to mind is ‘prescriptive’. The GT-R is telling you not how much fun you could have but how much fun you should have. The good thing is that it gives you more options to play with. If you run out of talent, the GT-R’s still got a bit left, probably quite a lot. And if your idea of fun is humiliating big-gun supercars with a modest investment of driving talent, only one other car comes close. Leave that one hanging for the moment, but feel free to guess.

'No Question, the Alfa's sublime curves and fabulously expressive V8 have won it many fans'

Ollie reckons it’s easier to feel gobsmacked by the Nissan than to love it. ‘The GT-R forces you to recalibrate everything except your emotions,’ he muses after half an hour of high-tech hooning. ‘It’s most impressive on very tight roads. That’s where it gets a chance to show how a big, heavy, relatively practical four-seater coupe can neatly dissect whatever Italian exotic happens to be ahead or behind at the time. It’s an uncanny trick. Thing is, the speeds are so dizzying and so achievable, and you need to look beyond sheer speed.

‘The Nissan has a feel all of its own, a sense of mechanical precision overlaid with electronic integration and the sense of utterly thorough Japanese engineering all through it. I like cars you have to work at a bit, cars you have to think about while driving, and for me it’s not interactive enough. There is a bit of a feeling that it’s doing it all for you and you end up being blown away by the brakes, power delivery, gearchange and its ability to shed its weight, but not its connectivity. It’s a plug-in car like that. You get in and let it strut its stuff.’

Others see it slightly differently. ‘The GT-R is just bloody brilliant,’ says a wide-eyed and grinning Catchpole, surrounded by a thin fog of atomised brake pads and rubber. He’s just driven up the fantastically twisting, deeply wooded and endlessly climbing road from Bedoin. On a route much more suited to his Suzuki Swift rally car than a broad-shouldered, 1700kg supercoupe, he’s driven the GT-R like it was his Suzuki and found it more than up for the job, never wrong-footed by a camber change or tightening radius, always hooked up and occasionally slightly tail-out when powering out of the tighter corners.

'It's the largest and heavier Maserati that's the better car'

‘You can go into a corner and think “this isn’t going quite as planned”, I think I should trim my line this way, or do that. Point is, you’ve got options; I started left-foot braking all the way up the hill, started dabbing the brakes and getting back on the power. Yes, it’s probably doing things you don’t realise, but you know you’re having a very definite input into proceedings. It will go nicely sideways out of a corner and you’ve got to correct it – it’s not going to do that for you. So you’re still very much involved in the process of driving the thing. The lovely thing is, however brave you want to be, however fast you want to go, it keeps up. You never feel disappointed that it hasn’t done quite enough. Which means you tend to keep pushing and pushing, and it’s right there with you.’

It is remarkable that, even on the wrong tyres and therefore riding much more softly (even with the dampers set to ‘race’ mode it’s about at firm as it would be in ‘comfort’ on the Bridgestone RFTs), and sitting relatively high in the soft embrace of a plump driver’s seat (which is deceptively supportive), and weighing so much too, the GT-R is so awesomely capable. Barker: ‘It takes a little more commitment to discover this than on the Bridgestones – the steering and ride aren’t so sharp, don’t deliver such searingly incisive responses – but all that old Evo-style capability is there alright.’

Richard Porter agrees and thinks Nissan should be congratulated for telling the marketeers to take a back seat. ‘The Aston has a whiff of marketing about it, as do the Alfa and Maserati. But there’s a real sense that the GT-R’s engineers went away with some money and came back only when they’d finished. There wasn’t any interference.’ Harry concurs: ‘They weren’t allowed to launch until it was absolutely ready. Didn’t matter whether it took three years or six years.’

 It’s mid-afternoon before I get behind the wheel of the Gallardo and, if I’m honest, it’s the Lambo I’ve been anticipating the most eagerly. It’s the style, the sound, the name. The look of mild elation on Andy Wallace’s face as he hands me the keys only tweaks the sense of expectation. ‘Every time I get in any of these cars I just think what a wonderful machine it is. But the Lambo just feels so incredibly secure no matter what you do with it, especially on the little damp patches of road. There’s no feeling of any body-roll whatsoever, yet that’s not translated into the back sliding everywhere. It’s got heaps of grip.’ 

Having been shattered by the Gallardo Superleggera at last year’s eCoty (in that it felt curiously heavy, its e-gear paddleshift thumped harder than the bloke who knocked out Amir Khan and its ceramic stoppers were more or less appalling) the LP560-4 needs to be nothing less than a revelation. It is. This one’s on ceramics, too, and they’re still a big issue. From cold, the pedal feels as if it’s pushing against a lump of plasticine that’s just been taken out of the fridge. They require a big shove before anything meaningful happens and delicate dabs should you need to finesse a cornering line are off the agenda. But, unlike the Superleggera’s stoppers, getting some heat into the pads works wonders, improving feel and progessiveness to the point where it’s just possible to modulate the immense available retardation in a consistent, reliable way.

The e-gear transmission is much improved, too. No, it can’t hold a candle to the Nissan’s twin-clutch system and it’s still a little thumpier (but no quicker) than the directly comparable transmissions in the Alfa and Maserati. Moreover, the fixed paddles are inexplicably titchy and hard to find if you’ve got any lock wound on.

Too many foibles to rule out a serious shot at the top slot? From a purely objective standpoint, quite possibly. But total seduction doesn’t recognise peripheral irritations and your powers of forgiveness leap by an order of magnitude once the latest Gallardo has you in its thrall. A decent straight and a couple of fast sweepers should be enough. After that, resistance is pretty much futile. The Lambo’s feelgood repertoire when the chips are down – and I’m not talking here about a brisk country drive where the Alfa might engender a similar glow of well being – is unmatched. It’s the full-on supercar experience. 

But it starts with the cabin, which seems to both distill and enhance the best aspects of Lambo cabins past and imbue the architectural drama (achingly Italian) with an Audi-esque solidity, precision and sheen. If you’re between 5ft 6in and 6ft, the seats and driving position are sublime. If you’re Henry Catchpole or Richard Porter you’ll run out of headroom, which is a minor tragedy to be sure. For them. For normal-sized people – John Barker, Andy Wallace, Roger Green, Ollie Marriage, me and, at a pinch if he slouches, Harry Metcalfe – it’s V10 catnip.

Thumb the ‘Corsa’ button on the centre console to open up the throats of the exhaust pipes, crack the windows down a few inches and indulge: supercar heaven is but a few throttle-blips away. Street theatre? Right up there with the Murciélago and, by the standards of the group, off the scale. It’s the LP560’s sheer speed across the ground, however, that makes the deepest impression, shading the 911 GT2, and comfortably matching the Nissan GT-R. All right, you’d hope so; the Lambo is approaching three times the price of the Nissan. Then again, the Gallardo driver will experience emotional highs beyond the reach of the GT-R. Madly responsive as the Nissan’s engine is for a turbo, it isn’t as incisive as the Gallardo’s naturally aspirated V10. The Lambo’s powerplant pulls harder at low revs, harder at high revs (and it has over a thousand more to play with) and has a GT-R-obliterating multi-layered howl that has seared itself into my memory. 

Ollie’s too. ‘The ultimate anti-depressant,’ he enthuses. ‘And by gum it’s got a great chassis – so precise and tidy yet full of nibbly feedback. I adore this car, and somehow it feels less Audi than the first-generation Gallardo, despite sharing more of the R8’s hardware.’

But Catchpole isn’t entirely convinced. While conceding that the Lambo would be faster than the GT2 up the hill, he doubts it would be going down (blame the brake feel). He also has a few issues about the cabin architecture: ‘On the outside it’s a very compact car – short and squat, wheel at each corner. Yet you get into it and it still feels like a big Lamborghini somehow. It’s probably got something to do with the thickness and positioning of the A-pillars. You’re never quite sure where the extremities are.

‘I think the Nissan is easier to hustle on these roads. I drove down the hill in the GT-R, Andy following in the Gallardo, and the GT-R was so precise. And the gearbox worked every time you wanted it to, you didn’t have to think about it. For such a big car you can place the GT-R so accurately in the corners and never have to worry about changing direction or slowing the mass down. It’s all very well having the street theatre but you’ve got to back it up. If you can’t rely on brakes – if you can’t bleed off smoothly as you’re coming into a corner, or you can’t have a confidence dab – then it’s a significant handicap. Especially when you’re up against cars that brake as well as the Mégane. It’s such a massive plus-point. You can’t then just take it out of the equation. Without it a car isn’t complete.’ 

'It's the LP560's sheer speed across the ground that makes the deepest impression'

The Mégane. Before the convoy reached the mountain, we feared for the R26.R. Wondered if the extreme Toyo tyres that almost proved its undoing in a sodden Wales would make that much difference over here. Wondered if the weight saved by the thin Plexiglass rear and tailgate windows and bugger-all soundproofing that magnified the sound of the engine’s turbo rush and exposed a faintly wearing ensemble of road-whine and mechanical whimpering and twittering would be worth the effort. Wondered if it would be able to stay in touch with the GTs, let alone the supercars.

On paper, it shouldn’t have been able to live with either. There isn’t another car here that isn’t at least twice as powerful. But after the first run up the mountain, there isn’t a shred of doubt. The R26.R has too much for the Alfa, Aston and Maser. It’s mixing it, nose to tail, with the Lambo, Porsche and Nissan. No quarter given. 

Despite the humdrum family-hatch facia and less than enthralling instruments, Renaultsport’s boy feels special from the moment you slot your hips into the ultra-lightweight fixed-back carbon bucket seat to the very second it rolls to a standstill, sticky tyres plucking loose gravel from the surface of the tarmac. Too extreme? Not at all. You immediately feel the lightness in the car and its benefits. Because so much weight has been removed, it’s on less stiff springs than the regular R26, which was always slightly edgy when powering out of a bumpy bend. The R26.R has a better ride, more composure, still more traction. Far from being raw and rowdy, it’s civilised and rounded.

And although it’s on trackday tyres that generate an astounding amount of grip in the dry, its manners are very progressive on the limit and the chassis could easily handle some more power. It’ll probably get another 20 or 30bhp in a final swansong version. 

You get to the point where you think you’ve pitched it in just about as hard as it wants to go, and then the corner starts to tighten. But keep it nailed and turn the wheel some more and it drags itself through. The diff is working miracles yet you hardly notice it’s there. Drive the R26.R at 100 per cent and very little on the road would be able to keep up. The other cars here might have something in hand on the straight but, realistically, nothing’s going to come past. 

In fact, most drivers return to the car park in a mild state of shock after a serious strop in the Mégane. Barker: ‘It’s honestly no slower point-to-point than anything else here. Jump on the power early, it hooks up and goes. It turns everyone into a hero.’ Marriage: ‘OK, it was the only car that started to struggle at altitude. Not that it mattered. You could make up every single lost yard under braking and in the corners.’ Metcalfe: ‘That diff is just amazing. Every front-drive car should have it.’ Wallace: ‘You get out of the Lambo and you think to yourself “I’ve just got out of a Lamborghini, everything else is going to be an anti-climax.” So you jump into the Renault and, on idle, it sounds like a pretty ordinary little car. But then you take off and it’s addictive.’ Catchpole: ‘Certainly down the hill you’d take the R26.R over an awful lot of the cars here and get a huge amount of enjoyment. To drive a GT2 to its full potential by comparison, you’re going to be pushing limits that make you feel distinctly uncomfortable.’ 

On the way back to the hotel in the evening the convoy is together once more and I find myself following the R26.R. I’m in the Gallardo so this shouldn’t be a problem, but Andy Wallace is driving the Renault, so it is. The Lambo has the Renault covered all right. What’s shocking is how hard it has to work, how honest the little hot hatch is keeping it. What’s perhaps even more remarkable is that I can actually see how much fun Andy is having. The Mégane is dancing: feinting, weaving and darting like a French prop forward. It’s proving, beyond any doubt, that the motto of this magazine, ‘the thrill of driving’ is as alive and kicking at the $ 36K pricepoint as it is at $ 200K and above. 

'The R26.R is mixing it, nose to tail, with the Lambo, Porsche and Nissan. No quarter given'

The reckoning
There are no duffers here, of course, but the wooden spoon has to go to someone, and this year it’s Aston. The new V8 Vantage is a faster and more focused car than its predecessor. It’s a model of elegance and good taste, has a strong engine with an almost scarily savage exhaust note and great brakes that never tire. But, yet again, the game has moved on. The Vantage lacks the dynamic fluency of the Maser and the out-and-out sex appeal of the Alfa. Desirable? Undoubtedly. But well behind on points. 

The Maserati’s sixth place is unflattering. In every important dynamic measure, it’s a more accomplished mover than its in-group sibling, the Alfa 8C. It’s larger and more practical, too. And less expensive. And Maserati will actually make you one. Does it sound as good as the Alfa? Not quite in our opinion, but that’s largely a question of style. Which is something, incidentally, the GranTurismo has in luxurious abundance. 

Alfa’s simply beautiful 8C could have booked itself a much higher placing had its makers spent a little more time honing the chassis and a little less time tuning the exhaust note. No, scrub that. The exhaust note is every bit as much a thing of beauty as the shape. And, if we’re honest, it’s the almost unprecedented welter of feelgood sensations the 8C brings to the party that make it so special. The very definition of a flawed gem. 

The unquestionable hero of eCoty 2008 is the Megane R26.R. Had the contest been judged purely on a cross-country pace-to-price ratio, Renaultsport’s ultimate, lightweight expression of its hot Mégane would have been a runaway winner. With a slightly more musical engine and a little more power, it might have done better still. But just look at the score – right up there with the supercars. Only the Clio Trophy at eCoty 2005 has done that before. 

The GT2 is so close to true greatness it hurts. Of all the cars, it’s the one capable of delivering the biggest adrenalin rush, the one with the fairground-ride acceleration. But to perhaps too large an extent, the power of its twin-turbo flat-six defines the car, which is fiercely hardcore to cope with the forces. The GT3 may not be as fast but it’s the finer-balanced driving tool and costs a whole lot less too. 

For several of us, the emotional content of the Lambo put it ahead of not just the GT2 but also the eventual winner. But three things prevented the Gallardo from carrying off the ultimate accolade. One, its leaden brake feel. Two, a somewhat less than state-of-the-art paddle-shift transmission. And three, its eye-watering price. On a graph that charted enthusiasm and excitement, however, it would have scored more peaks than any other car. Because, whichever way you cut it, it’s a real supercar: exotic, thrilling and downright desirable. 

'There isn't another performance car on the planet that's as devastatingly cost-effective as the GT-R'

But, in the end, the mighty Nissan GT-R cannot be denied its victory. No, it didn’t ignite the fires of lust like the Alfa and Lambo. Its styling is perhaps an acquired taste. But, the truth is, there isn’t another performance car on the planet that’s as devastatingly cost-effective as the Nissan. It covers all the bases from four-seater GT to rocketship with breathtaking confidence. And, more significantly, its remarkable abilities can be accessed, enjoyed and afforded by the many rather than the few. Head rules heart but, on this occasion, we wouldn’t have called it any other way.

The Final Score

Nissan GT-R - 93.3
Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 - 92.5
Porsche 997 GT2 - 92.4
Renaultsport Megane R26.R - 91.1
Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione - 87.0
Maserati GranTurismo S - 85.8
Aston MArtine V8 Vantage 4.7 - 79.8