Is the GT3 putting a touch too much emphasis on the racer element of its road-racer brief?

Alone among motoring magazines, we steer clear of race-tracks when it comes to assessing the best drivers’ cars of the year. Not because we don’t like circuit driving, but because it often gives a distorted picture. There’s only one place to properly assess road cars, and that’s on the road. The advantage, of course, is that we get to discover some of the greatest roads and the most inspirational locations. And this year we’ve had an absolute ball, soaring through the Scottish highlands and finishing up on the Isle of Skye. If you haven’t been there, the following pages will give you a taste of what you’re missing. And what a terrific group of cars we were able to enjoy there, from the brilliant little Clio 200 Cup to the awesome Murciélago SV. How do we choose between such extremes? To the left, our judges explain exactly what they’re looking for, and over the following pages they’ll drive all the cars before registering their scores. In a twist on previous years, the cream of our road-testing team will then take the top five cars for one final blast along those highland roads to be absolutely certain of nailing the greatest drivers’ car of 2009. It will be fast, it will occasionally be furious (have you seen John Simister when he doesn’t get his own way?). But most of all it’ll be a hell of a lot of fun. Place your bets now…

Another early-morning commuter train rattles by on the line running directly behind the local hotel, reminding some of the more bleary-eyed just why they slept so badly last night. Mist is hanging over the field beyond, a proper autumn morning, and as the first banks of cylinders come to life, clouds of white water vapour tumble from quad, twin and huge single exhausts into the cold air.

‘The V12 Vantage really is as stunningly fast as you’d hope and just keeps getting faster’

A small but hardcore group of smokers, Hayman, Rutter and Vivian, are adding their own white clouds to the atmosphere as they suck on the first Marlboros of the day, ending their night-time fasts. The sun is still just low and hazy enough for Xenons to flicker on behind dew-covered headlamps as everyone heads for the nearest bucket seat.

Then Harry finally emerges from the roadside restaurant, a yolk-stained napkin still tucked into his collar. The glowing butts are stamped out and the last doors thunked shut before the greatest convoy the town of Dumbarton has ever seen slowly rumbles, warbles and buzzes out, and heads north.

It feels a bit like the latest in a series of adventure novels. evo Car of the Year 2009: A New Dawn. Amongst the cast-list of people and cars are some old protagonists back again and new ones spoiling for a fight. As we begin swooping along the irrefutably bonny banks of Loch Lomond, I’m sitting in perhaps the most familiar eCoty player of them all.

‘Going two-wheel drive has created a very different Gallardo’

The Porsche 911 GT3 has a formidable history in this competition and in Riviera Blue it’s already off to a good start in ’09. I’m near the back of the pack and despite the time of day a campervan has already inserted itself in our midst and its trundling progress is slowing the rear half of the line. It would be a foolish person who would bet against the GT3 winning yet another crown, but as we crawl along there are habitability issues that might just lead some to ask whether the second-generation 997 car has put a touch too much emphasis on the racer element of its road-racer brief.

The gearbox is unashamedly butch in its action, the ride ruthlessly well damped but brutally short in its travel, and the fixed-back seat doesn’t fall into the category of one size fits all. It can leave you feeling just a touch beaten- up after a while, as Ollie Marriage was willing to testify yesterday evening after driving it up here.

The Evora ahead scythes past the blue German with gas hob and a few seconds later I follow, flat-six howling gloriously. A couple of corners, a couple of late leans on the firm middle pedal later, and the ride doesn’t seem so bad; it just seems to be part of the hewn-from-granite integrity that means you can attack a road – even a narrow one, lined with trees and walls and poorly surfaced with an inconsistent dampness – jaw-slackeningly hard. The stability of this latest GT3 is incredible. It allows you to commit to things late but with complete confidence as you place the car with pinpoint accuracy and rely on the massive reserves of grip and poise.

Our first halt is Tyndrum and one person now definitely wide awake is eCoty virgin Chris Harris. Having been volunteered by Harry as the test fodder for the Noble M600, he’s quite candid: ‘It is absolutely immense! I’ve not driven a car that’s snapped its tail under power at 200kph on a totally straight road. Ever. It’s probably the most extreme road car experience I’ve ever had – I just wasn’t prepared for it at all.’

Roger Green, who turned 21 again the previous day, has been sampling the California at a rather gentler pace: ‘It’s a very different sort of Ferrari experience and possibly one that suits the more cruising pace that we had on those roads just then…’

‘Metcalfe says he would put the SV through to the final five just for the way it looks’

‘You should have held back and then sprinted through, like me,’ interjects an unusually feisty Tomalin, who has just turned up in a lightly smoking Clio. ‘Well, anyway,’ says Green, ‘this is a more relaxing Ferrari, less grrrrr [cue perplexing tiger impression from Simister as he wanders past] but a lovely way to start the day.’ Good.

We’re heading up onto the endless straights and general magnificence of Rannoch Moor next and there only one sort of engine seems appropriate for such a setting. Pull the carbonfibre bar on the door to arc it shut then, just for a moment, enjoy being cocooned in the warm, reassuring interior of an Aston Martin. There’s something slightly wrong about lightweight fixed-back buckets being adjusted by electric motors but the Alcantara on the steering wheel is perfect. After the GT3, the Vantage, with its ride better tuned to rough roads, feels like a much more relaxing place to be as we climb up to the moor. More relaxing, that is, until one of those straights appears in front of you and that huge engine gets to work.

It really is as stunningly fast as you’d hope and it just gets faster the more you pile on the revs. And because there’s almost an old-fashioned 911 lightness about what’s going on at the end of the steering column and a sense that, particularly in the wet, traction really could be an issue, it feels almost as though the engine could simply take control and run away with you.

After about 160 degrees of the long 180-degree left-hander that finally deposits you among the mountains, the rear P Zero Corsas decide that I’ve pushed them far enough and let go. Although the short wheelbase could make it feel snappy, the compactness actually makes it feel manageable so we ride the slide out nicely and keep going to the next meeting point at the Glen Coe ski station.

I love the fact that you’ll find the Lagonda-winged badge of an Aston fighting for equal rights in an eCoty car park with the yobbish rear wing of a Focus RS. It’s like deciding to merge a rock festival with a classical one. We’re waiting for a few stragglers but the Focus is up next on my hit list and, as the Scirocco R has appeared as well, Peter Tomalin and I decide to head for the fantastic bends that lead down through the rocks in the shadow of the Three Sisters. Chris Rutter piles into the Ford’s passenger seat with a rucksack of lenses and we head off.

I’ve driven the Focus a lot and it’s a car that I loved when I first tried it on the Col de Vence, in the south of France. Since then, however, no two examples have really felt quite the same. This one feels good but it is still a shock to the system just how much you have to ‘man up’ and take it by the scruff. The steering wants both hands on the wheel all the time and the engine has got huge kick but doesn’t appreciate a wavering right foot. It’s a car that wants you to commit, throw it at a corner, work the diff. Despite not being the most precise of tools, it always seems to be egging you on to cut corners tighter, narrow every margin possible and attack ever harder.

All this hustling can be enjoyable and, when you’re going flat out, the RS is more than capable of strutting around on these bigger roads like one of the antlered stags, warbling its five-cylinder cry. The trouble is that when you back off or want to drive just a bit more smoothly it seems to become a bit sulky. As Eveleigh puts it later, ‘about one in three drives is brilliant in the Focus. The other two are just frustrating’.

The Scirocco R couldn’t be more different. Smoothly rapid is what it does best. Knock the lever into D, pull away and if it weren’t for a certain tautness from the wide footprint you could be in any number of VWs or Audis. The DSG shifts seamlessly whether left to do its own thing or manipulated by the switch-like paddles on the back of the wheel. It rides so well that it smoothes roads out without bothering to even tell you about the bumps the suspension is dealing with. There is nothing shouty about what it does. You get the feeling that R and RS wouldn’t be found drinking in the same bar.

‘Skimming the surface of the road for km after km, feeling the rear squat and shimmy out of corners, I am in heaven’

You take clean lines through every corner in the Scirocco, slicing the exact path you intend with no need for adjustment. At times it’s all so seamless you think this must be what it’s like for a top-flight racing driver when they’re in full flow, driving with complete accuracy and never upsetting the car. Heading back down the valley there’s a long, sweeping left-hander, described on the inside by a single rail of Armco. In the Focus you feel you might need to use the whole width of the road at any point in the corner. In the Scirocco it feels like you keep a tight and ruthlessly consistent line with the Armco throughout the length of the bend as though a rope were attached to the very mid-point in the car. Don’t let the VW’s 40bhp deficit deceive you either, for it feels every bit as quick as the Focus, no doubt helped by the DSG ’box which barely pauses for enough breath to give its signature parp on every upshift.

The Scirocco R is a hugely impressive car… but (and you knew there was a but coming) it is also strangely unmemorable to drive. You use the huge grip (but don’t go beyond it), extend the brilliantly punchy engine and travel very quickly. Yet you end up feeling slightly dispassionate about the whole process. It looks great too, but if this is meant to be the ultimate in Scirocco-land then I want really deep splitters and skirts with properly blistered arches. I also suspect that it is a car that needs a good piece of road to attack to make it fun to drive. You won’t find much to excite about a drive down to the supermarket in the Scirocco. Unless you’re going to the one in Fort William. Which we are.

The whole team meets up again in the next car park and as a few head inside to clear the shelves of an assortment of food and drink, I take another chance to wield the trusty dictaphone under a few noses…

‘The Artega has got that tough/cool character nailed,’ says Vivian. Ollie Marriage has been struggling to keep up in the MX-5. ‘Sadly it’s engine feels flatter than a pressed flower and about as alive so it’s relying on its chassis, which, fortunately, is a great fallback position.’ Harris says that the California doesn’t feel like a Ferrari to him while Harry is gazing at the Lambo SV. ‘I’d put it through to the final five just for the way it looks,’ he says.

The orange food and drink arrives and is consumed, then the keys are divided up once more. As we all move in the direction of our new cars I notice Tomalin, almost strutting, with the key for a Lamborghini in his hand. What he hasn’t seen is a woman pushing her trolley full of cat food rather faster than normal on a collision vector towards him. I sneak into the Clio and watch as the wooing unfolds. Carefully judged phrases like ‘young man’ and ‘size of your Balboni’ are thrown out by the canny lady to entice the Tomalin, who is now leaning on the Lambo in an attempt at nonchalance. At one point I swear he blushes before saying something gushing about her Honda Jazz two bays away. Tomalin eventually meets us at the petrol station just up the road and, when we push him, mumbles something about a nicely turned ankle and a bet with Simister.

The next few kilometres after we’ve fuelled up provide more big, sweeping bends, which are not really the Clio’s forte. It’s still great fun but I think it will shine more brightly on Skye tomorrow, so I resolve to return to it then.

At the next changeover I make a grab for the Gallardo because having planned today’s route I know that the next stretch should be fantastic. For once, I’m not wrong. The combination of the Balboni and the deserted 30-kilometre stretch between Invergarry and Bunloinn provides me with my first truly memorable drive of eCoty ’09. It starts before the Balboni has even turned a wheel, because some inspired person in the Lamborghni press office has specced this car with a manual ’box. Just clacking the lever through the open gate is ridiculously satisfying. As Lothario Tomalin says, ‘A manual shift can be such a big part of enjoying a car and it seems such a tragedy that people like Ferrari are leaving them behind. Especially when they’d just got them so right.’

The first couple of kilometres feel a little awkward in the Balboni and the reason is an unfortunately familiar one: The Brakes. There is nothing wrong with the big carbon discs’ ability to stand the car on its pointy nose – their ultimate stopping power is fantastic. What’s annoying is the lack of modulation when you just want to brush the pedal for a bit of confidence or if you’re driving more conservatively and want to gently wipe off speed. Then you seem to be working with what feels like a couple of centimetres of dead travel at the top of the pedal. You’re exerting pressure but nothing’s happening, then SMACK, the calipers find purchase and suddenly you’re making rather jerky progress. The answer is to be committed and brake late everywhere, standing on the middle pedal hard. Which is exactly what I end up doing for the remaining 30 or so kilometres.

Going two-wheel-drive has created a very different Gallardo. It’s not just the dynamic balance that’s different either. By ditching the gubbins from the front axle the steering has gained clarity and the whole front end seems lighter and more instantaneous in its response. Also, as a consequence of sending all the power to the rear axle the throttle feels more scintillating and the engine stronger as drivetrain losses have been reduced.

Skimming the surface of the road for kilometre after kilometre, feeling the rear squat and shimmy out of corners, I am in heaven. Admittedly this bit of the A87 could have been made for this sort of car; fast enough that you can actually extend the vocal V10 all the way to its 8500rpm red line in several gears, wide enough to accommodate the broadest of supercar hips, yet with endless interesting and testing combinations of corners and elevation changes. If I’d had time to look at the view rushing past the narrow side- window I would probably have been even more enraptured.

There’s a layby not far from the end of the road and a few of us congregate there in order to swap cars and repeat some of the stretch we’ve just driven. I opt, perhaps surprisingly, for the XFR. As the vents swivel, the gear selector rises and the V8 rumbles distantly into life, it feels good to be in the Jag. Yes, I’m sitting a lot higher in the big leather chair and as I turn back the way I’ve just come it feels strange adjusting to the gently rolling mass of a 1900kg saloon. But as John Barker says, ‘500bhp is 500bhp, no matter how big and heavy the car, and you overlook the XFR at your peril.’ To switch off the traction control you have to press the DSC button…and keep pressing…and keep pressing…and then just when you’re about to give up, a little orange light blinks on in the rev-counter and you’re off the leash. It’s understandable that they want you to be sure about turning everything off because it can be a wonderfully wild ride.

You need to use the paddles on the back of the wheel to change down into corners and help the brakes out. Then you simply pick up the throttle and catch the initial snap as the rear steps out of line before holding the lazy, long-wheelbase slide with the supercharger shrieking. A slightly demonic-looking Barker again: ‘You can do to hot hatches what they do to the supercars – hunt them down. The small fry usually give in to save being nudged aside and you can get past going broadside and gesticulating like a demented real estate agent.’ Quite.

‘It’s probably the most extreme road-car experience I’ve ever had’

Ultimately, of course, it’s not a sports car and that, I suspect, will affect it’s overall placing. But the big Jag certainly deserves its slot here. I guarantee that there was no nicer place to while away the hours on the motorway up to Glasgow yesterday, yet it is still more than happy to behave like a hooligan up here. It feels like going for a kick-about with your granddad and then discovering that he’s actually quite strong and difficult to tackle.

We eventually catch up with the others at Eilean Donan Castle, where rumour has it David Vivian spent most of his childhood holidays in one of the turrets. It’s here I make my last change of the day and post myself into the Evora. The clouds are closing in as we head towards the bridge over the sea to Skye and soon the first big drops of rain start to splash on the windscreen. I’m following Harry in the Balboni and as we pass the huge range of jagged peaks known as the Cuillins, darkness has closed in and the spray is getting denser in the headlights. It’s clear that Harry is treading carefully on the Gallardo’s track-biased tyres and so when a long straight presents itself I give the V6 everything and sweep past. A minute later I can’t even see the Balboni’s headlights in the rear-view mirror. The Evora is simply the ultimate car for these conditions. Despite roads that I don’t know and weather that is verging on treacherous, the Lotus is so friendly that you can just keep pushing. The magnesium steering wheel is constantly working in your hands, telling you everything that is going on, but it speaks in the equivalent of a an experienced pilot’s voice: calm, relaxed and reassuring. So you carry a bit more speed. Then you encounter a vicious bump mid-corner but the long-travel suspension just soaks it up. No drama.

So you push on, faster still. Standing water is probably handled with less finesse by some boats. Ian Eveleigh said something to me earlier today that seemed more than a little foolhardy at the time: ‘Anyone who crashes an Evora is a complete idiot.’ But right here and now I understand exactly what he means. Arguably the engine hasn’t got enough power to really make trouble for the chassis, but even when the rear starts to swing a little wide it happens so slowly and naturally that you enjoy it rather than panicking to gather it up.

The rain eases from airborne flood to merely torrential and up ahead I can see the rest of the convoy. As I creep up to the back of them I can see that the last car in the line is a newcomer. On the outskirts of Portree he turns his blue lights on. Roger, in the Focus immediately in front, simply ignores them and carries on in the wake of the rest of the convoy, so muggins behind is forced to stop and do the talking. They’re actually very friendly officers and it turns out that they’re just intrigued as to what a bunch of supercars is doing on Skye on a Monday evening. Half-way through my chat with the policemen, Harry ‘team player’ Metcalfe catches up. Coming across the scene of one of his staff having a chat with a policeman and unsure as to what might be going on, he does the decent thing and… slowly overtakes before disappearing into the night!

Uig is where we’re staying. The Uig Hotel to be precise, and it hadn’t occurred to me that it would be a tricky place to find. Not until I discover a bemused-looking John Hayman in an orange Murciélago and several others on a single-track piece of road on a wind-ravaged hillside. Eventually someone finds a postcode, Hayman plugs it into the Lambo’s sat-nav and we set off after him at an alarming pace down a dark road that isn’t really wide enough. After quarter of an hour the sat-nav has led us back to where we started but is now pointing us in the opposite direction, the phrase ‘please make a u-turn’ evidently having been wiped from its vocabulary. Five minutes later we are all outside the hotel, wondering exactly how we missed it in the first place.

As the night unfolds, the Skye Brewery provides the drink, the hotel’s kitchen provides the crocodile-tail starters (no, really) and the main courses and everyone provides opinions.

The Ferrari rides as well as the Jaguar, apparently; the MX-5 might need yet skinnier tyres says Barker; the Artega has an engine that the Evora should be jealous of, says someone else; Harry calls the Evora’s steering ‘delicious’, which everyone agrees with; the Focus is dividing opinion and Green reckons the SV is making a mockery of the case for million-dollar supercars. Three cars already seem destined for the final five but the other two spots are very much up for grabs.

In the bar afterwards a slightly tipsy Tomalin is telling anyone who’ll listen that the Noble’s telemetry indicated that he had used 97.1 per cent of the M600’s throttle travel whereas John Hayman had only managed a 73.5 per cent. The normally ebullient Chris Harris is looking a little jaded, however. Apparently he was driving the Aston for all he was worth on the way here when he had the indignity of being overtaken by John Simister, who was in a GT3 on Cup tyres. I’m sure it’ll all look better in the morning…

‘Three cars already seem destined for the final five. The other two spots are very much up for grabs…’