Bending the Rules

Crikey, everything’s gone a bit crazy in the last few weeks in F1 over this flexible wing scandal, which fortunately no crass and lazy journalist has branded ‘wing-gate’ or ‘flexgate’. Yet.

In case you haven’t been following it, people up and down the paddock have been getting in an almighty flap (pun intended) over the front wings on the Red Bull and Ferrari.

The regulations state that the front wing must be rigid and remain 85mm off the track, and slow motion footage of the bowing wings on the Red cars and, to an even greater extent, the Bulls show that their wings are clearly in contravention of the regulations. Or are they?

Here’s the thing: before each race the cars must pass scutineering and it’s up to the FIA’s inspectors using a series FIA-defined visual and mechanical tests to make sure the cars are safe and legal to race. If they pass all the tests then the car is legal – it’s as simple as that, even if the car is actually illegal... if you see what I mean? In the case of front wings, a specific load is applied and the component is supposed to stay rigid, which in the case of the Ferraris and the Red Bulls it clearly did. The fact that the test is insufficient is not the problem of the teams.

There will be calls, no doubt, for some kind of retrospective punishment to be applied; for Ferrari and Red Bull to lose their points, but despite the fact that they have raced with illegal wings, I think this would be a disaster for F1. Not because of any kind of garbage about the fans wanting a fair race, but because cheating... no, not cheating... ‘finding loopholes in the regulations and exploiting them’ is part of motor sport – it always has been and should continue to be.

In an interview, Patrick Head said he reckons that Red Bull has developed a kind of carbon fibre with non-linear flexibility – that is to say, when you put 50kg on a Williams wing it flexes 5mm, when you put 100kg on it flexes 10mm. The Red Bull and Ferrari wings might flex 5mm when you put 50kg on them, but flex 15mm when you put 100kg on them. How clever is that?!

Motor sport is peppered with brilliant stories about mind-bendingly creative engineering solutions that are just as interesting and exciting as some of the most epic drives by motor sport heroes. Ingenious ideas like Toyota’s restrictor plate bypass valve that effectively hid itself automatically when it was removed for inspection and basically everything Smokey Yunich ever did to a car. Look him up on Wikipedia or, better still, read one of the many books about him if you want a master class on ‘creative engineering solutions’.

To lose this part of motor sport by regulators starting to apply retrospective punishments would be to lose one of the most intriguing, mysterious and (I think) glamorous aspects of the sport.

The approach to the type of loophole-finding that Red Bull and Ferrari have done should be a shake of the fist and a ‘you pesky kids’-type exclamation by the FIA. They should alter the test they use to determine the legality of the wings, yes, but there should certainly not be any kind of punishment for the races in which they managed to get around the regs. While I believe that the other teams should be bringing the contravention to the attention of the officials who should, if the part is in contravention of the spirit of the regulations, ban the component from future races by improving the testing procedure, they should also accept that on this occasion, they simply were not clever enough.

Or, perhaps, not ballsy enough.

Caterham R400

by Pete Wadsworth

Somewhere in the U.S. there is a laboratory with a 2.5 mile-long particle accelerator. A place where men with thick glasses in white coats can fire an electron down a tube at astonishing speeds and watch what happens under different – laboratory defined – circumstances. Such is the rate of acceleration, if you were to fire a gun at the same end and the same time at which the particle begins its journey, the particle would cover the entire 2.5 mile trip to the end of the tube before the bullet had left the barrel of the gun: which is fast. Not as fast as the R400 however, which makes that invisible spec look like it was dragging its heels and kicking a can on the way.

In concept at least, the R400 is a pretty old car, and uses the same basic theory to achieve its impressive pace as Caterham’s versions of the Lotus 7 always have – ample power coupled to a lightweight chassis – but this latest iteration comes with a few key changes. The first of which is the chassis, which is now built by robots – making for much more consistent feel – and is (a surprisingly noticeable) 13 per cent stiffer than the old one. The biggest change to the new Superlight however, is under the bonnet.

After MG Rover went west a couple of years ago, supplies of the venerable K-Series lump – the motor that powered everything from the Roadsport to the R500 Evolution – dried up, and Caterham was forced to find a new supplier. This posed a big problem: the K-Series was a spectacularly light engine and, thanks to its long-bolt construction, a very tough one too. It was only ever designed to be a 1.4, but was bored all the way out to a 250bhp 2.0 litre in the bonkers, £42,000 R500 Evo. In this state of tune, revving to 9,500rpm, the Minister-tuned Rover was about as much of a road engine as the Pope is a Protestant. It was not happy at low revs, kicked hard at 4,500rpm and needed regular rebuilds to stop it turning inside out.

Caterham needed a new approach if they were to continue to eek more performance from the 7 at sensible prices, and this came in the form of Ford’s new Duratec motor – a much cleaner, lower stressed option that was, unbelievably, even lighter than the old ‘K’. Essentially, Caterham Motorsport simply take the 170bhp Duratec motor from the Ford Focus; change the inlet manifold, fit a shouty exhaust, more aggressive cams and remap the ECU, then drop it into the nose of a wide front-track 7 body. These tweaks put it just 30bhp and 40lb/ft shy of the R500 Evolution engine, but to give you some idea of the extra work involved in wringing out those few extra ponies in the old car, an R500 Evolution engine will set you back a staggering £17,500. The lump fitted to the new R400? About five: a far more realistic proposition.

Now the history lesson is over there is one thing I need to make clear: the R400 in the form I had it is not a road car. It had no doors, no windscreen and no roof. Your top gets cold, but thanks to the unbelievable heat soak from the exhaust on your right, the gearbox on your left and the engine in front of you; the soles of your shoes melt, your legs get too hot and your back sweats. Getting in is a faff of epic proportions – it’s a tight squeeze and doing up harnesses every time you want to go out is a pain, you have to wear a helmet if you’re planning on going over 30mph and if you spend any significant amount of time above 70mph you get a headache, unless you wear earplugs – which is also a pain and won’t protect you from the eyeball-rattling buffeting.

But none of this matters once you put your foot down for the first time – this slime green monster is savagely, cataclysmically, brutally quick. Providing you can get the power down, it will hit sixty in a whisker under four seconds and relentlessly pile on speed as you work your way through the six tightly-stacked ratios. At first it felt - not sluggish - but not as quick as I had thought it would; until I figured out that the engine’s inertia is so low, a very quick shift is required to maintain the rate of progress – and how. Once you get the hang of effectively coordinating your left foot with your left hand, changing gears can be done at a pace that feels more like a Quaife sequential than a Ford six-speed with a short-shifter. 0-100 covered in a four-gear thrash that had me laughing like a total idiot, each shift just before the first ‘braaap’ of the limiter barely changing the engine note and never, ever dropping you out of the post-4,500rpm mania.

Arrive at a corner and feel your body pressing against the harness straps as you blip your way (as quickly as your feet will allow) back down the ‘box – immense brakes pulling you up from the scarcely believable speeds you’ve achieved since the last corner, accompanied by a twenty-one-gun salute from the exhaust barely a foot under your right ear. Now experience the joy of unassisted steering as you ease the R400 into the bend. No slack in the controls, a fast rack and massive levels of feel make for huge grins through the twisty stuff – Avon CR500s serving up fantastic grip – you can drive the thing like a big kart.

An interesting new handling characteristic makes itself felt as you set yourself up for the exit: better low down grunt means that if you put your foot down in a bend, the car doesn’t have time to push into understeer before the engine breaks traction with the rear wheels, so the traditional way of driving a Caterham (out of every bend or roundabout with a whiff of opposite lock) becomes a battle with your own self control, as the temptation to just drift around every corner becomes increasingly difficult to resist. It’s just so easy to bring the tail into play, such is the surfeit of power over rear-end grip, and thanks to the alacrity of the steering (and total lack of weight over the rear end) bringing everything back into line is almost as simple – requiring the merest hint of talent and sufficiently quick reactions. If you can exercise a bit of right-foot discipline and ride out a small-angle slide on the throttle, exceptionally rapid progress can be made.

Like the Exige though, such is the involvement in the drive the R400 is fun at pretty much any speed - partly because everything feels so fast - but mainly thanks to the feeling that you can safely extend the car. Limits arrive at (relatively) low speeds so you feel more able to tidy up a mistake before you find yourself going backwards through a field.

It's also amusing to drive through 'suburbia' and watch people being stopped in their tracks by a bright green something being driven by a bloke in a helmet. And it's always a positive reaction: grins from anyone over the age of twelve; stopping and pointing from anyone younger.

Still, the best way to sum up the new R400 is with a single word: intense. Preceded by an adjective of your choice – take your pick from ‘incredibly’ for example, or any number of words that are far too rude to publish on a family website like crash.net. Every one of your senses is bombarded in such an unapologetic way and there is a refreshing and complete lack of an attempt to separate you – as the driver – from how it feels to travel quickly. Everything feels fast, everything that travels under the front and rear wheels is transmitted to you in a totally raw, unpolished way and yet it never feels overwhelming. If driving a Type-R is like running sand through your fingers wearing winter mittens and a Porsche is like doing it with latex gloves, the R400 is the full-on naked digits experience.

You climb out of the R400 at the end of a drive not just wide-eyed, grinning and sweating, but actually feeling invigorated and alive – as if you have truly achieved something as a human being: chemicals coursing through your veins, muscles pumped and brain alert. It’s a visceral experience that, I suspect, would never dim.

Put simply, I want one. Badly.

John Reynolds Pillion Ride

by Pete Wadsworth

One of my favourite things about my job is that every now and then someone calls me to ask if I’d like to do something really cool – generally involving some petrol-powered, vaguely life-threatening activity and a racing driver intent on scaring at least half a decade off your tombstone inscription. Fortunately I have what some might say is a foolish, unwavering trust in the abilities of talented people so I’m always up for these little jollies. However, there have always been two things I promised myself I would never do: top fuel drag racing and a pillion ride with a motorbike racer.

It’s not that I don’t trust them, but drag-racing is just a bit too extreme and bikers... well, I don’t mean any offence by this, but you’re all a bit mental. I love riding push-bikes, I have done for years and even competed in national trials competition, but when I’m travelling at the kind of speeds an engine can achieve, I like to have more than a couple of millimetres of leather separating my soft, easily punctured skin and brittle bones from rough tarmac and hard steel barriers. What if, what if, what if?

Nevertheless, for some reason of which I’m still not quite sure, when the invitation to sit on the back of one of the fastest road bikes on sale flashed up on MSN Messenger, my inner schoolboy took over and answered, “yes please, who, when and where?”. Oh dear. The ‘who’ was John Reynolds, the ‘when’ was the following Tuesday and the ‘where’ was the terrifyingly fast Mallory Park circuit.

So, as I levered myself into the Dainese leathers in the briefing room six days later, the nerves really began to set in... things weren’t made any better by the fact that the boots wouldn’t fit over my calves. A rather uncouth gaffer tape solution later and yet another worrying variable is added to my already lengthy list. What if my boot falls off, gets caught in the rear wheel, catches fire and the whole bike explodes, killing me to death? I hobble to the pit lane, trying to look like I’m not completely bricking it. I fail.

Reynolds is already on the circuit putting some heat into the bike and he’s looking mighty fast. There are two Alpinas on track being driven by Mallory Park instructors. They’re not hanging around, but the GSX-R1000 is making the D3s look like they’re going backwards.

As the bike comes to a halt in front of us we’re hit by that ‘recently caned’ waft of hot oil and metal and a large dose of adrenalin gets dumped into my bloodstream. The ‘briefing’ consists of being told to hold on tight, sit still and try not to put too much weight on the pilot, which will require me to press my hands on to the tank under braking.

I hop onto the tall pillion seat as gracefully as I can (not very), clasp my hands in front of John and try not to cry. He hoofs it out of the pitlane and we’re quickly on top of the first bend – a long, sweeping, opening right hander. He tips the bike in and I must confess to panicking just a touch – it really feels like the thing is going to fall over – there’s just no way those tiny contact patches can generate enough grip to hold the pair of us... oh, we’ve made it round. John opens the taps down the back straight and I have to hold on tight to stop myself from falling off. We quickly reach the first of the heavy braking zones, so I turn my hands over, press hard on the tank and my second scary moment is milliseconds away – it feels like we’ve dropped an anchor as he squeezes the lever and I’m slightly alarmed to find that my arse is off the seat and my feet off the pegs. Swearing happens, but I’ve stayed onboard. We exit the right hander and tip straight into a left-hand kink – the only part of the track that scared me on every lap – before hitting another braking zone into the tight right hand hairpin. He gets hard on the gas at the apex, dropping the front wheel back onto the black stuff just in time to carve through the fast left that takes us back onto the pit straight. He’s starting to build up the speed now and it takes another loop for me to figure out that I can dig my heels into the pegs to stop my feet coming off in the braking zones. I’m really starting to enjoy myself now.

Strangely the only sound I can remember is that of my own loud breathing inside my lid (its surprisingly tiring) – the screaming in-line four completely passes me by.

Despite the fact that whole experience is a pretty frightening one, the closest thing I can relate it to is being on a really good rollercoaster: you’re scared, but deep down you know you’re safe so you end up having a bloody excellent time. The second we pull away I instantly know that I’m in good hands – of course he’s not trying, but your mind could easily play some nasty tricks on you and that trust I have in these guys pays off again – I can relax and really enjoy this most intense of experiences. By the second lap I’ve got a huge smile on my face – I think you can tell in the pictures.

Just as my arms are starting to get properly worn out, Reynolds backs off and peels into the pitlane, giving me a ‘well done for not being a total wuss’ pat on my arm as I sit up and try to process the experience.

We managed a 56 second lap around Mallory’s organic curves, which felt pretty bloody fast to me, but I’m stunned to discover that a race pace lap around the same circuit would be completed 18 seconds sooner!

Now all I can think about is how much I want a motorbike.

Huge, huge thanks to John Reynolds and Rizla Suzuki for the ride, Mallory Park for hosting the event and the lovely Louise Cain for providing me with the opportunity to risk life and limb for the sake of a laugh.

Lotus Europa S

The Wasp and the Bee. Two small creatures, the existence of which causes me great confusion – I mean, they’re pretty much the same animal aren’t they? Both are yellow and black, both fly and importantly, both are much more powerful than their size would suggest: you could crush either one with your hand, but they wouldn’t half make you pay for it as they went down. Let’s face it, no one can look proud in victory when they’re teary-eyed, squealing and clutching a barely visible wound. However, despite the similarities, they’re actually very different beasts, with very different purposes: Bees make honey; no one knows what Wasps do.

Wasps are aggressive, they flick from left to right with a machine-like precision - purposeful in their lack of purpose, then strike when you leave your guard down with an ill-timed swipe – they are malignant and go out looking for a fight. Bumble bees are much more benign, they’re happy to cruise about the place looking for flowers, they’re fluffy and they’ll only hurt you if you really provoke them. In a children’s story, the Bee would be Moog, the Wasp would be Evil Edna.

A bit like the Exige S and the Europa S. On the face of it, it’s hard to see the point of having both in the line-up. They’re very similar in size and outright performance, and there is an undeniably strong family resemblance, but look a bit harder and the differences soon become blindingly obvious. The Exige is the Wasp – all pent-up aggression and no practical purpose, it just likes to go out to see what it can take down in a good old-fashioned dirty street fight. It can’t make honey; it just eats spiders, stings your dog and scares your girlfriend. But it has a lot of fun doing it. The Europa is the Bee, it’s a bit softer, a bit fluffier and a bit friendlier – it makes your girlfriend say “Aaaah”, rather than “Argh!”; pollinates your flowers and will only sting your dog if he tries to eat it. The Bee works for its living.

Making this distinction is important before you drive the Europa anywhere; if you go into a drive in this thinking it’s going to be like a big Exige you’ll be disappointed. If you go into it thinking it’s going to be a big softy just because it’s a bit bigger and has carpets, you’ll be very surprised. The guys at Hethel have done a very good job of removing the hardest of the hardcore bits of the Exige, without losing any of that crucial Lotus ‘feel’. The steering is just as you would expect: awesome, it feels light, agile, fast; it has an impressive ride and exceptional body control. It’s still stiff, but it doesn’t crash over big pockmarks in the road.

It feels more exploitable than the Exige too, with lower limits it doesn’t snap into oversteer and, despite still feeling mid-engined in its balance, it doesn’t seem to have the inertia you would normally associate with a car like this once the limits of grip have been breached. Information about the road surface and how much grip the front tyres have flows through the thick-rimmed Momo steering wheel and it seems that no matter how quickly you’re going, the car always gives you tonnes of time to react to any situation you’ve managed to get yourself into. Traditionally, the best way to drive a Lotus quickly is to be swift but very smooth, and if you get truly ragged you’re punished by slower lap times and embarrassing understeer. But the Europa seems happy to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and thrown about and offers just as much satisfaction over its limits as it does below. The only criticism I have about the controls is a slightly dead middle pedal.

It is undoubtedly a much more relaxing drive than its little brother, both in terms of the way it handles, the way it rides and the mind set it encourages.

A lot of this is down to the 2.0 litre turbocharged Vauxhall lump being a much less frantic motor than the 1.8 Toyota mill that appears in the smaller models. It’s a torquey little thing and lets you have a nice slice of acceleration pretty well wherever you are in the rev range – flex your right foot beneath 4,500rpm and you’ll quite easily waft your way past B-road dawdlers, keep it on the boil above that mark and things get truly frantic. And then you’ll run out of fuel.

Yes, ‘Business Class by Lotus’ has a lack of range rivalled only by Ford’s GT. But, what is truly irritating is that the Europa – which will get you from rest to 60 in less than five seconds and across a country lane faster than things costing twice as much – returns a truly respectable 25mpg, yet will only get you 160 miles between stops. For what is supposed to be a Grand Tourer this range just isn’t good enough and, for someone who hates filling up with petrol as much as I do, would get extremely annoying.

Another thing that would quickly become an irritation is the car’s inability to keep the outside, out. In the Exige, a bit of a leaky window and a healthy slug of wind noise are just about acceptable. As I said in my review of the ‘S’, “this isn’t a BMW 3-Series – road-holding, handling, performance and exhilaration are the far more important factors in a car like this”. Unfortunately, the Europa is a car that will go head-to-head with the Porsche Cayman and Nissan 350Z, so build quality cannot come second to performance in the R&D process. When water started streaming in through the firmly closed window on my way into work one morning, I was less than impressed. You just can’t get away with build quality issues like this on a car costing more than £30,000 aimed at a market populated by people who want to use their cars to get around every day; as a mode of transport as well as – if not in preference to - a source of fun. It is also far too noisy: the engine is an acceptable volume, but wind noise at motorway cruising speed makes the stereo all-but useless.

Because of this, I’m finding it very difficult to come to a definitive conclusion about Lotus’ latest motor car. If I wanted a sports car that I could use every day Porsche, BMW and Nissan wouldn’t even get a sniff of my £35k – I would be straight down to the Lotus dealer and ordering a Europa. But I’m 25, my back is in fine fettle, I don’t wear a suit to work and I don’t have ‘business clients’ who like to stay dry. The problem is that if someone asked me which sports car they should buy, I would point them towards a Cayman, a Z4 or a 350Z. I simply couldn’t bring myself to recommend a noisy car that leaks to someone who just wouldn’t get the satisfaction from having a truly involving vehicle that you need to get in order to offset being deafened and dribbled on.

In short, there’s no doubt that the Europa is a great car – unfortunately it is also a poor product.

The Generation Game

Pete Wadsworth

Godwin’s Law states, roughly paraphrasing, that the longer an internet forum ‘discussion’ goes on, the greater the chance that one of the participants will end up calling one of the others “Hitler” or “a Nazi”. There’s a similar phenomenon that exists exclusively on car forums; let’s call it, just off the top of my head, Wadsworth’s Law. I’ve just come up with it and it goes like this: “The longer a discussion about a newer version of an existing car goes on, the greater the chance that someone will say something like: “OMG! cars r all so heavy and fat now there like an americans lol!” (sic).

The difference of course, between Godwin’s Law and the rather fantastically named Wadsworth’s Law, is that the chances of your forum nemesis being a Nazi, or indeed Hitler himself, are relatively slim. On the other hand, (despite the questionable grammar) people who bemoan the ever-increasing waist lines of modern cars are absolutely correct to do so.

You only have to look at the fact that newer ‘smaller’ models are often bigger and heavier than older ‘larger’ cars to see hard evidence of this trend, and nowhere is it more freakishly apparent than in the case of BMW’s E39 M5 and E92 M3. Let’s do some of the numbers, shall we? 1605kg vs. 1720kg, 4580mm vs. 4784mm long, 1817mm vs. 1800mm wide, both V8s, both have six gears – without going to a search engine, can you tell which numbers belong to which? They even boast very similar power output and performance: M3 shading M5 in the horsepower stakes by 20bhp, M5 taking a couple of points back by having an extra 75lb/ft of torque (100Nm in new money) and the pair being two tenths either side of five seconds to sixty, with the newer car being ever so slightly quicker.

When they’re sat next to each other, the similarity in size is bizarre, although the M3 manages to look a great deal smaller. The ‘pinched’ rear end, larger wheels and new-school BMW styling coming together to form a much tighter looking package than the previous generation M5. The M3 is far more ‘in your face’ too – all flared arches, After Eight rubber and funky door mirrors to its older brother’s much more discreet quadruple pipes, big rear tyres and slightly lowered ride. To my eyes, both approaches are equally successful and, as it happens, are also extremely accurate visual representations of the two cars’ respective characters.

The M3’s four litre V8 is a masterpiece of modern engineering. Lighter than the old straight six and savage in both noise and delivery, it’s a motor in whose performance you can become truly engrossed. What it ‘lacks’ in twist and flexibility it makes up for in the ferocious (ly clichéd) dash to the redline, and it’s a surprising test of commitment to keep your foot floored until the very end on anything but the straightest and smoothest road. But, and it’s a big (possibly contentious) ‘but’, for all its LISTEN TO THIS panache and nerve testing brutality at the top end, next to the M5’s power plant it feels… deep breath here… a bit chavvy. A bit, well, common actually. VTECish, if you will.

There’s an effortless grace to the way the older car goes about its business, a subtly understated effectuation of its massive speed and power that fits perfectly with the old money ‘M Cars’ style of incognito performance. And yet it still manages to be massively exciting. The E39 gives you a choice of how to cover ground quickly: call on the hugely superior mid-range to devastating effect, or unleash your inner hooligan, wind down the windows and revel in the deep-chested, bellowing V8 soundtrack. Crucially, both approaches are just as satisfying as the other. Conversely, the M3 never really feels like it’s giving you its best until you’re beyond that (admittedly magical) 6,500rpm barrier and ‘properly on it’.

You will find yourself there a lot though - the M3’s engine feels eager: it strains at the leash of speed limits, concerns about the shocking rate at which it can consume fuel if you get a bad case of lead foot, or your own better judgement about driving like your hair is on fire. Everything about it seems to egg you on, from the 8,300rpm red line on the dial in front of you to the confidence that comes from the (now) magnificent brakes. The M5 plays a similar trick on you, but does it in a different way: it tempts with its effortless flexibility and intoxicating muscle car soundtrack rather than goads with a screaming top end and an all-pervading hunger for more revs.

I’m afraid it’s not just in the engine department that old car beats new either. Both are fairly stiffly sprung vehicles but, once again, it’s the M5 that carries itself in a more dignified fashion. The M3 feels like it’s been set up to feel as sporty as possible and, as such, is a bit of a bone-shaker, whereas the M5 feels like it’s been set up to work brilliantly on the road. It doesn’t have three settings for the damping because it doesn’t need them – one size, in this case, fits all. I would even go as far to say that the M5 is a nicer place to spend time. Despite the near identical dimensions, the M5’s cabin feels (and is) much roomier: relatively slender A-pillars do a lot for the feeling of ‘airiness’ but there’s no doubt you’re further from your passenger and the rear seat occupants get far more legroom – it’s no illusion.

On the road the M5 feels a lot more ‘real’ than the M3, although less overtly sporting. Both are fantastic to drive and I’m sure that – outright – the M3 would be faster over a stretch of road, but even though the older car is more cosseting and a lot less direct in the way it responds to your inputs, you ultimately feel as though the experience of driving it is a more worthwhile and involving one. Despite, or perhaps because, the hot 3-Series is so well tied down and glued to the road surface, like so many new cars, at anything less than eight, nine or ten tenths it feels surprisingly muted and in many ways, blunt. The M5 – although undoubtedly requiring more physical inputs - always feels alert, ‘keyed-in’ and, as far as a car its size can, as sharp as a razor. There is less grip than in the 3, and it was surprisingly hairy in the wet, but contrary to what car manufacturers seem to think, ultimate grip is not the be all and end all of performance motoring.

There’s also a gravitas to the older car that the M3 simply can’t match: an integrity and pedigree that seems to be infused within it. It’s a completely subjective thing, and I hesitate to stray into the realm of cliché, but the M5 feels far less sullied by the need to sell a ‘product’ or ‘lifestyle’ or a need to play up to expectations. Put it this way – the M5 feels as though BMW set out to build a hot version of the 5 Series, then they put an ‘M’ badge on the bootlid, the M3 feels as though they did it the other way round – as if the whole time they were thinking “is this enough of an M car?”, rather than “is this car a truly engrossing, involving experience for The Driver?”. Having said that, it could be nothing more than History playing tricks on the objective journalistic mind – as a petrolhead you just can’t get your mind away from the significance of the M5 in the performance car market, nor its reputation as a fantastic driver’s car or how much cooler it is than the M3.

As much as I love the new M3 saloon – and I really honestly do, it’s a great car – every feeling I had, rational or otherwise, was constantly drawing me to the old V8 M5. I’m not a sentimental or nostalgic person either: old school cool is, to me, just another way of saying ‘not quite as good as it should be’ but in this case lower tech really does seem to give better results.

I wasn’t sure what the result of this rather odd twin-test would be, but it seems that the conclusion is a fairly predictable one. Most of the differences between the cars are fairly obvious, but the over-riding feeling is how brilliant the M5 still feels: tight, exciting, evocative, fast – all the best adjectives for a car nut. So yes, the latest in BMW’s long line of saloon-shaped supercars is an utterly fantastic device. But, given that you can get a very decent E39 M5 for £16k these days, is the new M3 saloon really worth £50k? Unfortunately for BMW, the answer to that question is an emphatic, unequivocal, no.

Lotus SC - Barcelona to Dover

Pete Wadsworth

Seeing the runway out of the side window of a plane as you come in to land is, it’s pretty safe to say, never the precursor to a smooth, stress-free touch-down. As the wheel to my left piles into the tarmac and my grip tightens on the arm rest, only the ground is visible through my window – clear, blue sky through the one to my right. This is not going well. We feel the plane twist as the tyre that’s already on the black stuff drags the fuselage onto the straight-and-narrow and slams the landing gear on the far wing down onto the Spanish asphalt. It’s far from over though. We go sideways, the momentum of the pivoting fifty-five tonne jet sending us drifting across the runway then, like a driver catching a slide just a bit too late, the pilot sends us back the other way before gathering it all up at the third time of asking. Hard on the brakes as the Terminal looms large, it appears that we’ve survived.

Finger nails extracted from the vinyl, seat cover sufficiently puckered and life satisfactorily shortened we disembark, hoping that near-disaster isn’t an omen for the rest of our trip.

We climb into a taxi, point at a piece of paper with the address of the hotel on it, and enjoy the trip through Barcelona – planning our photography and video locations and finalising our plans for our Friday of bagging the important shots before our long trip back through France to England.

Things aren’t looking up when we arrive at the hotel to find it completely devoid of any Lotus employees – the only thing that stops us panicking a bit is the presence of a scarlet Elise SC parked outside the reception: the car we’ve come here to drive and, ultimately, deliver back to Lotus’s HQ in Hethel. We pay the taxi driver and proceed to the bar to go over our plan, which is something along these lines: spend the rest of Friday caning the Elise on the planned routes around the Spanish mountains, stay the night in the hotel (booked by Lotus), leave early Saturday morning and head up towards Millau to see the viaduct and check out the roads in the neighbouring national park before driving on to Bourges to stay in a little B&B on the Saturday night. Then we have all day Sunday to cover the 400-or-so miles from Bourges to Calais before heading up the M1 to the Peak District in Yorkshire for some more ‘driving roads’.

The blank look on John’s face when I ask if we can check in before collecting the keys told me that I’d cocked up royally – and the bad luck continued apace. We were only meeting at this hotel, not staying at it, so we’d need another place to sleep that night. Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, car journalists are not wealthy folk (unless they present a rather well-known BBC motoring programme) and are especially poor when they’re trying to buy a house, so a night in a Barcelona hotel was out of the question – what is it they say about the best laid plans?

A new and different scheme was quickly cobbled together: we needed to get as far up France as we possibly could – tonight – and cut the journey down to a day-and-a-half from two. The ferry company was phoned and the crossing moved back to 5:30 on the Saturday evening.

We had spied what looked like a good spot to get some pics of the car on our way up the mountain to the hotel so, since Barcelona was offering us blue skies and a pleasant 23 degrees, we took advantage. Pulling out of the hotel in the Aspen White, left-hand drive supercharged Elise, our trip almost ends before we’ve even started. Concentrating as hard as I am on maintaining some kind of ability to operate a piece of machinery that seems infinitely more complex when everything’s the wrong way round, I find myself forgetting that – on the continent – they drive on the wrong side of the road as well as the wrong side of the car. We manage to avoid the oncoming bus.

Right, fresh start. We pull off the road and into the little car park to get some photos done. Simon snaps away while I gather our stuff together. Separating luggage into cabin and boot – and praising Lotus’s generous gift of a couple of pairs of sunglasses – I extract my TomTom Satnav and switch the thing on. Except I don’t. I take my finger off the button and hold it down again – this can’t be happening – the screen stays resolutely black and lifeless, we almost see tears as I realise that I haven’t bought the charger and the photographer clearly fights back a perfectly understandable desire to punch me in the face. The thought of flinging this miracle of modern technology off the cliff to my right doesn’t so much cross my mind as require a rather large dose of self control to prevent it. We’re now in a bit of trouble: the Lotus guys are long gone, neither of us speak Spanish and we have no idea where we are, so even if we manage to get hold of a map, it won’t actually be a great deal of use.

Guess work is our only option so we make our way down towards the city centre. Navigation consists of arriving at a junction and deciding “which way we like most”, or saying things like, “well, there’s four people going that way and only two going the other – so let’s follow the four”. Just as we’re starting to get a bit concerned, Simon almost shouts “A7 to Girona” into my right ear – we were in this neck of the woods for the ‘Student Gumball’ rally in the summer and the snapper has recognised a road we took. Unfortunately neither of us can remember whether Girona takes us back in to Spain or towards France, but we make the decision to join the road anyway and if we don’t see a sign to the land of garlic and cheese within thirty miles or so, we’ll turn round and try the other direction.

Opting to get on the motorway offers the first chance to experience the extra thirty-or-so horsepower liberated by the non-intercooled Eaton-type supercharger, so I hoof it. The flyweight sports car erupts into the flow of typically filthy and dented Bravos, Ibizas and Ducatos in a satisfyingly meaty fashion before beginning the classically furious hunt for the 8,500rpm redline as we hit the half-way round the dial sweet spot. Lotus explained to us that the ‘V-TEC’ style system fitted to this 1.8 litre Toyota lump is an intelligent one and, according to throttle angle, can switch to the aggressive cam profile anywhere between 4,000 and 6,500rpm. Nail the throttle at a cruise between these two points and you can feel the engine sharpen up as it flicks the cams across to the taller lobes.

Top down in the irritatingly glorious northern Spain ‘winter’ we celebrate enthusiastically as the ‘Francia’ sign flashes overhead and start to take in what a comfortable mile-eater this hardcore sports car appears to be. It’s a firm ride, but not jarring – if there’s one thing Lotus does better then absolutely everyone, it’s damping – and the Probax seats are sensational. The heater is working well against the crisp January breeze, there’s hardly any buffeting and, while we’ve put the fact that we still don’t have a map to the back of our minds, can’t help but feel a bit smug. My only concern is that the wind noise brought on by having the top down is masking a slightly shouty 4,000rpm, 93mph gait – but right now, I couldn’t care less.

A couple of hours and three unsuccessful attempts at procuring some sort of system of navigation later we arrive at the French border. Fuel is required so we make sure the next service station is a priority, and keep our fingers crossed that in amongst the meat, cheese, lock knives and bizarre souvenirs that seem to be a staple of European service stations, will be a map of some description. Things look quite promising as we pull into the eerily quiet ‘airs’ and brim the Elise’s tank with Shell’s finest – a quick bit of maths shows that we’ve averaged somewhere in the region of 34mpg on the first leg of our trip – very impressive. 200km down, an awful lot more to go.

A baguette, some pate and a carton of orange juice is consumed over the map I’ve just skimped on – I object to paying a whopping €37 for a proper road map I’ll use once, so opt for the ‘slightly’ less detailed €6.50 fold-out Michelin map of France. We figure out that we’re a few miles west of Argeles-sur-Mer and decide that Clermont-Ferrand would be a good place to aim to stay that night – it looks pretty major (good chance of a hotel), the road we’ll be on goes right through it (good chance of not getting lost) and it is sufficiently far up the country to make arriving in Calais in time to catch our boat a feasible target. But it’s the N9, which intersects the AP-7 west of Montpellier that is our next target: the road that will take us onto the A75, up to Millau and over to the viaduct. It’s getting a bit chilly by this point, so we decide that it’s about time that the roof goes back on - a gloriously simple process that takes the two of us less than a minute. Time to get back on the road.

The miles fall away, and we’re approaching the point at which we need to navigate our way from the road we’re on to the one that will take us to Millau: a simple task according to our map, a not so simple one according to real life. We come off the autoroute, pay a gargantuan toll (still, a small price to pay for such an easy journey) and attempt to skirt our way around Montpellier and onto the N9... and it all goes horribly wrong again.

Luck takes over the situation once more and we find ourselves bouncing between some tiny French villages – fortunately for us they’re connected by some fantastic roads that give us our first chance to sample the joys of threading this Lotus along a quiet country lane.

Left hand drive makes it difficult – I’m just not used to it, and still occasionally punch the door while attempting to change gear - but it really doesn’t matter. The smooth, well-sighted, sinuous ribbons of asphalt offer the perfect hunting ground for Norfolk’s finest and any dawdlers are dispatched with staggering ease. The supercharger really comes into its own here, allowing you to cane it like you would in an R or an S or simply slot it in third and take advantage of the added flexibility offered by crank-driven forced induction - flowing with the road, not worrying about changing up or down and enjoying the steering and suspension that are always the highlight of one of Chapman’s distant grand children.

It seems a pity that this top-of-the-range Elise doesn’t get the utterly fantastic AP brake system fitted to the 2008 Exige - that’s not to say that they aren’t up to the job, but the slightly spongy feeling the new system so successfully got rid of remains in this car. Something of a highlight on this road are the much more road-biased tyres– the limits are still freakishly high (I remain convinced that even an Impreza STi wouldn’t see which way this went) but the line that separates heroics from a fiery death is far wider, in many ways making it an even more involving and enticing driving experience on the road than the magnificent Exige S.

Once again we’re resorting to a large slice of guess work to find our way onto the road we’re aiming for. Exchanges like, “There’s a sign for Vias!”, “Is that the right way?”, “No. But if we can get there, at least I’ll know where we are” become increasingly regular and, as we draw close to the end of the first hour of not really knowing where we are, we start to get worried again.

Then, as we begin to think that now might be a good time to go and buy a better map, a dual carriageway seems to appear from nowhere, complete with a sign to Millau! Hallelujah! We’re back on track! I never thought it was possible to join a motorway in a triumphant fashion but, in the early Friday evening sunset of southern France, I think I achieved it. We need petrol now: time for another pit stop.

As we approach the viaduct we’ve only got one bar of fuel left and, as the miles tick by with no sign of a service station, I’m starting to get concerned. We’re climbing hard into the Pyrenees now and the weather’s getting worse – it’s at this point that Simon notices a warning writ large onto the underside of the soft top, which, to paraphrase says something along the lines of: “you stand a good chance of getting wet today”. We don’t though and, as we crest another hill, we see it. Emerging from the thick fog as a towering ocean liner coming into port, curving gracefully across the Gorge du Tarne - we’ve reached our second target. We’re above the thickest of the clouds, but right in the thinnest as the spectacular illumination of the Millau viaduct casts a spooky glow across each of the needle shaped stanchions that punch through the steel deck. We drive as slowly as we think we can get away with to give ourselves time to take it all in.

We’re still running dangerously low on the expensive stuff, but we manage to make it to the service station just after the bridge. Having made the mistake of getting something to eat and paying £1 for a 6/8ths size Snickers it’s time for the final stint of Friday’s driving. Tiredness is really starting to become an issue now – we arrived at Luton Airport that morning at 5:15am and it’s now 7:30pm, so we’ve been travelling for a little over 14 hours and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open – but we have to push on. Luckily our planned stop-over in Clermont-Ferrand is, we think, just a couple of hours and 170 miles away, but we have to find a hotel once we get there so our journey may end up being a great deal longer than that.

Just over two hours later we realise that we’ve missed our junction off the autoroute and, as I’m considering smashing the Elise into the nearest bridge parapet and ending the whole ordeal then and there, we see something beautiful. The fjords of Norway, Kate Beckinsale and the welds you used to get on Klein mountain bike frames can sod right off – we’ve just seen the sign for an Ibis hotel. Right in front of a Carrefour supermarket.

The sense of relief is almost overwhelming when we realise that there’s a junction right ahead, and we’re positively ecstatic when our Franglais enquiries at the desk reveal that, yes, they do have, “Oon shombrah avec do lee et une doosh pour le nu-wee”. I’ve never been so pleased to arrive somewhere in my entire life. A trip to Carrefour procures tea in the shape of mozzarella, parma ham, a baguette, some cherry tomatoes and one of those amazing fruit tarts you only seem to be able to get hold of on the continent, and we settle in for a night of French X-Factor (appalling like you could never imagine), a reasonably comfy bed and a well-deserved shower.

It’s at the moment just after I’ve climbed into bed that I have a revelation. I have a bizarre feeling that one of the wires that charges my PlayStation controllers is in the bag I’ve bought with me – the last job it did was to transport bits and bobs to my parent’s house at Christmas and it was kicking around in the bottom. Ordinarily this would be completely meaningless but, since the PlayStation is not a Microsoft product, the lead that performs this function is just a common-or-garden USB to mini-USB cable - the very same connector that you use to charge my Satnav from the computer. I almost backflip out of the bed and leg it down to the reception to mime, “Can I please plug this into your PC and leave it here overnight?” The people attending the desk oblige, and I go back to bed safe in the knowledge that our trip across Paris is in the bag.

Morning comes far too soon and we check out of the hotel in the almost-dark of 7:30am – France’s notoriously difficult capital city stands between us and a ferry crossing after all.

Feeling hardcore, we decide that at least some of today’s journey should be done with the top off. This was the wrong decision and, as we pull in for the first of the day’s fuel stops about ten minutes later, we wuss out the roof goes back on. No matter though, we press foot to aluminium and watch as the French countryside begins to look more and more like Kent and start cursing the apparently abysmal battery life of TomTom’s top-of-the-range GPS device.

The chaos of Friday is left behind as we power our way towards Paris, Satnav switched off to preserve enough battery for it to get us through the home of the Renaissance, the pair of us counting down the 450 miles that make up the trip from our hotel to the southern-most tip of the capital.

Paris causes problems for our sub-orbital navigation system. As you arrive from the south there are an awful lot of roads that criss-cross over one and other, get close then peel away, which really confuse the Satnav – they’re ‘only’ accurate to within a couple of metres so it often can’t decide which road we’re on and tells us to take junctions that lead us off and away from our intended path. Fortunately, despite the shocking battery life oversight, the TomTom is actually bloody good at finding its way around the place and quickly works out how to get us back en route – all in the not-so-soothing tones of Eddie Izzard who, after the three millionth “STAY IN THE LEFT LANE!”, is replaced by John Cleese. It’s very lucky that we did manage to get the thing charged since, for want of a better term, we would have been completely screwed if we’d been relying on a map – directions come thick and fast: In four hundred yards, turn left; stay in the right lane; in a hundred yards turn right... and so on and so forth. It’s nerve-wracking, but we make it through without incident or getting completely and utterly lost.

Time to top up for the final time in France: more pate, baguette, Fanta lemon and super unleaded is consumed and we’re starting to feel like we’re almost there, forgetting of course, that we’ve still got 180 miles to Calais and another 140 on the other side of the Channel before our next bed.

The last leg flashes past and, before we know it, we’re arriving in the monumentally horrible city of Calais. It’s now that we remember it’s January and we’re about to cross the channel, so any thoughts of food are abandoned in favour of not paying money to vomit in to the sea, and we make our way to the port.

The boat is delayed and the weather hideous.

Tiredness is beginning to manifest itself as insanity and never have I felt more eager to be at home – regardless of the probably heinous boat trip that lies ahead of us.

Eventually we’re waved into the loading bay and we edge the Elise over the ramps and into position behind a Passat. Scraping together the last of our Euros to spend on pointless rubbish once we’re aboard, we make our way up to the deck to bag a seat. Simon, who’s not good with the sea at the best of times, finds somewhere to close his eyes and breathe deeply and I head off to find something to pass the time, which I find in the biggest bag of Revels I’ve ever seen.

Making your way around the ship turns out to be a real challenge, it’s rocking so much and so quickly that the floor moves towards and away from you between each step – creating an ungraceful walking style reminiscent of ‘the ether scene’ in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I place a Malteaser on the deck and watch it make its way across the floor at an alarming rate. I hear car alarms going off in the hold. My previously solid stomach is starting to fail me.

Luckily we’re only a few minutes away from the green, green grass of home by this point and it’s with no small sense of achievement that we make our way off P&O’s finest and onto the shores of Blighty.

Another fuel stop at Dover, a short trip up the M20 and we’re onto the mercifully traffic-light M25. A quick drag race with an Evo proves the pace of the Supercharged Elise and, as we catch signs for the M1 and St Albans our epic trip comes to an end.

I’m not ready to feel disappointed that the trip’s over yet, I’m tired like I’ve never been tired before but a night’s sleep in a decent bed brings happy memories of a good thrash across Europe with my brother. We’ve reached the conclusion that the Elise SC is a fine car, offering a satisfying extra dimension to an already excellent package. It was a perfectly acceptable tourer then, when the road turned twisty, was a hugely entertaining companion. I’d still have an Exige S with the performance pack, but for someone less willing to put up with the coupe’s slightly harsher nature, the soft-top version would be a fantastic choice.

Porsche 911 C4 S

Pete Wadsworth

So, Porsche delivered the 997 Carrera 4S to the office on Wednesday so that we could have a go in the Stuttgart company’s flagship after we enjoyed the Cayman S so much a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, our boss Bryn somehow managed to nick the keys off my desk and take the thing to Spa for the GP. As a result I didn’t get a great deal of time behind the wheel, but it was more than enough to get an impression of what the rear-engined Porsche is capable of doing.

I must confess that before now the only 911 I’d driven was a totally knackered 993 round a track with a slightly over-zealous instructor - and I didn’t enjoy the experience at all: the handling was horrible, the air-cooled flat-six felt – and sounded – like an asthma attack and there was so much rust on it that when I opened the door the hinge nearly pulled the mounting out of the door frame. I put this down as being like driving an MR2 with a 355 body kit and judging the 355 by that marker and deleted it from the bit of my brain marked ‘Worthwhile Experiences’.

Nevertheless, I like to think of my 911 greenhorn status as an advantage for reviewing this car, since it seems that every review of the latest Porsche flagship has to be peppered with constant comparisons to ‘old-skool’ 911s that were more feelsome, more involving and more exciting. But, you don’t want to spend the next few hundred words being told that you’ve missed the boat, do you? Still, it’s the only car in existence whose biggest competitor seems to be its predecessor but, since I’ve not driven any of them, I’ll be writing with total 911 objectivity.

Except for when I talk about the looks. The original 911 looks a lot like a Beetle that has been stretched out on Photoshop, but it’s a classic shape and I love it; the 993 looked great and, in GT2 form, still features highly on my ‘Lottery-win garage list’; the 996 looked odd with its ‘fried egg’ headlights but it did herald the birth of the GT3 and GT3 RS, both of which looked cool – the shape just didn’t work for lesser models, which looked cheap. The 997 on the other hand is perfect, particularly with the wide rear-arches you get on the four-wheel-drive models. It’s understated, smooth as a pebble, purposeful and practically proportioned; it looks great in every incarnation from bog-standard Carrera all the way up to the Turbo, GT3 RS and the pant-tighteningly-gorgeous GT2. This 911 has the details that best suit that seemingly timeless silhouette of Porsche’s greatest engineering achievement.

Having taken in the lines, it’s time to go for a drive. Despite the similarities in design between the 911 and the Cayman interiors, the cabin certainly feels very different: you seem to sit lower and closer to the wheel (even after you’ve found your ideal seating position), the pedals are a better distance from your hips and it is unmistakeably larger and more airy than the mid-engined car’s cabin.

Fire the 3.8 litre flat-six and you can feel the extra muscle nestling behind the rear axles. The idle is chunkier than it is in the Cayman, the clutch ever so slightly heavier, the throttle just a touch more eager. Cue insuppressible grin and urge to drive until the tank runs dry.

Of course, being a Porsche, there’s no real clue that you’re driving something very quick – the steering is easy, the gearbox is light and the clutch doesn’t make your thigh explode – until you bury your foot for the first time. At which point you realise that 380bhp is still a lot of grunt and, despite the Veyron doing 0-60mph in a skull-shattering two-and-a-half seconds, 4.6 seconds is still bloody quick. Snatch second gear in the Sports short-shift manual box and the 997 releases another torrent of forward motion, accompanied by that unmistakeable noise I first experienced in the Cayman S. From a standstill, the 4S gets off the line like a WRC car: using the tried and tested ‘handbrake launch for four-wheel drive cars’ technique, it’s possible to catapult yourself towards the horizon at an incredible pace – no hint of wheelspin, driveline shunt or axle tramp – just cold, hard acceleration. The Turbo must be spectacular.

With all that you read about 911 ‘handling characteristics’, I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at the first corner: would it be heaven or hell? Would I want to find the next bend as quickly as I could or park, get out and have a nice sit down? As it turned out, the 997 is - with no in spites ofs, in deference tos or howeverthelesses – a monumentally efficient and wonderfully involving sports car that, if I’d had a bit more time with, would have undoubtedly shown me even more facets to its already endearing personality.

The rear-engined set-up (on the road at least) was more jus than onion gravy – only making itself felt in the most subtle way rather than dominating the drive (in fact, I think the Cayman feels more mid-engined than the 911 feels rear-engined). The nose is a touch lighter than a mid or front-engined car, but it doesn’t feel ponderous and feedback through the wheel is worthy of a Lotus badge. It does have a tendency to understeer if you get on the power too early, but carry a touch more speed into the bend and wait a bit longer to get back on the gas and you’re treated to a fantastically balanced and searingly rapid exit on to the next straight. The four-wheel-drive system is mega, but I don’t think I had enough time with the car/guts/talent to really exploit the system and get a good feel for how it worked. I think a 911 Turbo for a week would really give me the chance to assess Porsche's four-wheel-drive properly. Please?

Hopefully we’ll have another 911 soon, and I’ll make a better attempt at hiding the keys next time so I’ll actually get to drive the thing.

Civic Type-R vs Civic Type-R: Minato vs Swindon

Pete Wadsworth

The Civic Type-R was the car that had given new life to the all-but dead ‘hardcore hatchback’. Odd then, given its popularity in the UK, that its replacement came to the market podgier, blingier, loaded up with gadgetry and in possession of an all-but identical i-VTEC two-litre motor. Albeit attached to a slightly shorter ratio gearbox - presumably to hide the 77kilos it had put on - and with a softened switch from ‘economy’ to ‘performance’ cam profiles. Most worryingly of all though, the new car lost its independent rear suspension in favour of a system designed to achieve two of the worst possible things in a performance car – space and cost savings. Amazing when you consider that the new car is a cool £2,500 more expensive and noticeably smaller inside than the vehicle it replaced.

Things got even stranger when Honda showed the JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) Type-R. Based on the four-door saloon version of the Civic, this car is a massive 68kilos lighter than ‘our’ one, has an extra 25bhp, a limited slip differential and a shell that is a staggering 50 per cent stiffer than the UK spec car. It will be faster, more capable and more fun.

A group test was definitely in order.

Unfortunately, this is a car Honda will not be bringing to the UK – which makes such a test a bit difficult. Thank goodness for Ian Litchfield then, who is not only making the JDM Type-R available and legal for the UK, but was also kind enough to offer Crash.net the first UK drive.

Despite the unpromising spec-sheet (1 extra bhp to haul an extra 77kilos?) after a few miles in the new UK Type-R, a few things become immediately apparent. First of all, the change to a torsion beam set up at the rear appears to have done no harm to the handling whatsoever – turn-in is good, it grips hard, corners flat and tail follows top with a complete lack of drama or fuss – it’s hard to bring the rear end into play but, who cares really? This is a road car, not a track star.

Secondly, the controls are clearly going to be a highlight – the steering has an immediacy and feel that the old car’s helm simply couldn’t get close to; the gearbox is a glorious piece of engineering – fantastically precise and short of throw – and the floor-mounted throttle pedal and well-judged brakes are better than any of its contemporaries.

Thirdly, the engine feels great and, when you thrash it, sounds glorious. Turbochargers can mute exhaust notes and dull throttle responses, but Honda’s resolute stance on natural aspiration means the VTEC lump feels crisp, responsive, eager and once the VTEC light starts blinking it howls its way towards the 8,000rpm redline, feeling only slightly numbed by the portly car it’s hauling along.

Slow down though, and things seem to fall apart at the seams. Impressive body control suddenly becomes a bone-shaking, seemingly under-damped ride that succeeds in making several of my passengers over the week feel sick. It rocks from front to back and side to side, crashing over potholes and, occasionally, scraping its chin on speed bumps. Attack a bumpy road and the nose jitters across the surface, struggling to smooth the bumps and, worse still, failing to keep the wheels pressed into the road – tell-tale TC light flickering incessantly - it’s only when I get out again that I realise how absurdly low this car is. And, once you come off the VTEC high, calm down and check the trip computer (then double and triple check at the pumps) you realise that you’ve only been returning 15 miles for every gallon of super unleaded you put in the tank. A morning of driving like a stoned grandma reveals that even the most cautious right foot will return a best of 32mpg, and a realistic combined cycle of motorways, country lanes, A-roads and town driving gives a best of 24mpg. Simply not good enough. Also back in the real world, the spoiler obscures what’s going on behind you so successfully, you can’t help but wonder if they deliberately chose the most annoying place to put the blasted thing.

The Championship White Type-R Litchfield’s given us looks brilliant. Purposeful, tight and aggressive: like a BTCC car with the stickers taken off. But, there’s no doubt that it fails to match the visual drama of the UK car. It sits higher on its suspension and, if I’m honest, looks like it’s a couple of generations behind the silver motor.

Climbing aboard is a revelation though. The first thing that strikes you is the weight of the door, or rather the lack of it. Even though it’s much shorter than the three-door’s the difference is still stunning and is certainly an indicator of the Jap car’s more focussed remit. It’s more spacious, airy and, in spite of the lower grade plastics, is a perfectly acceptable place to be. I must confess to being a bit worried that today won’t tell the whole story though, it’s wet and the tyres fitted to this car are a touch on the extreme side – aggressive, track-biased rubber.

The JDM car does without much of the UK version’s space-aged dashboard, settling for a conventional rev counter, although it retains the pointless shift-up indicators (too dim to catch in your peripheral vision), chavvy VTEC light and digital speedo. The steering wheel is unchanged, which is a good thing: it’s a great size and very well-finished. The seats are the same too, strike a well judged balance between comfort and support and are covered in high quality, high-grip fabric. Undoubtedly the highlight of the cabin.

Put your foot on the clutch, press the starter button and, somewhat unsurprisingly, it sounds identical to the UK motor, although it is a touch louder at idle. You get the same short-travel clutch and smashing ‘box as the UK car and, at normal speeds, the two cars feel remarkably (uncomfortably) similar.

Olly Clanford (serving as a second opinion) and I find ourselves a decent road and play a quick game of cat and mouse, with Olly chasing in the British car. Unfortunately the cat seems to have got its tail caught, because I drop him like he’s standing still.

From the off, most things feel fairly similar – steering and pedals are both pretty-much identical in feel. The JDM ride is still hard, but feels more compliant and better executed than it does in the UK car and, despite the hardcore rubber, there’s plenty of traction: the LSD makes pulling out of slow corners a cinch and it stays far more convincingly hooked up than the UK car. There’s no pawing across the road surface, very little camber hunting and the steering remains neutral around the straight-ahead – even under heavy acceleration. Turn-in is even sweeter than in the UK car and the grip the Bridgestones are giving up in these, frankly rubbish, conditions is as surprising as it is outright impressive. It quickly becomes clear that this is a much more focussed drivers’ car (despite the extra doors) and a far more willing partner (despite the UK car’s impressive high-speed manners) than the Type-R that appears in official Honda show rooms.

Swapping back to the UK car the reasons for my rapid progress in the Japanese come into focus – following Olly through the bends its clearly visible that not only can you brake later in the JDM car, you can come off the brakes earlier, carry more speed to the apex and get back on the gas even sooner at the other end. Basically, it’s better in every part of the corner and, to really try your patience when you’re chasing, even quicker down the straight.

Understeer becomes a factor much sooner and at lower speed in Swindon’s effort, even though the tyres fitted to this car are clearly more UK-weather biased, but the problem is certainly exacerbated by trying to follow in the eminently more capable wake of the Japanese car. It’s immensely frustrating when you can hear the car in front climbing up the revs as you’re left waiting, waiting, waiting for the road to straighten before you can plant it.

Olly seems to agree with my assessment: “I should admit at this point that I was a bit of a fan of the previous generation Civic Type R: whilst other 'hot' hatches were on a bit of an eating binge, piling on the pounds with long, pointless spec lists and an ever decreasing emphasis on driving pleasure, the Type-R was a focused, high-revving little terror.

“The basic model didn't even come with air-conditioning and the only luxury was a frighteningly bad CD player, but it didn't matter one bit. Once you were planted in the tight seats, considering whether you should find somewhere to buy some earplugs, the last thing on your mind was the lack of heated seats and CD changer.

“I had high hopes for the new version, which looked awesome in the pictures but, having driven it, I'm not sure if I like what it's become. In fact, I'm just not quite sure what it wants to be. I'm not complaining about the way it looks, it's well equipped and – if it weren’t for that ride – comfortable, with great seats and a very funky interior. But that's not what the Type-R should be about. There’s just something missing.”

I thought I could have been ultra-critical because I was also so taken by the previous Type-R, but driving the Japanese car has confirmed everything I suspected. As soon as I sat in it, it was clear that it’s more closely related to its predecessor. Everything is tighter and more precise. It feels more track-focussed and the JDM version is clearly the purer driving experience. As you might expect, the lower weight really makes a difference .

The British car then, presents you with a choice if you want it as an everyday driver, which is what it pertains to be: burn a hole in your pocket, or wear a hole in your spinal cord? Thrash it, and it’s good. Potter around and it will drive you round the bend. Despite of this, it never gives you enough when you drive it hard to forgive it that low speed ride.

The Japanese car, on the other hand, has a much more obvious intent. It’s sharper, harder, faster and a lot more fun. You don’t worry about getting jiggled about around town because you know that its main purpose is to thrill you when the going gets twisty – and, more importantly, when you do push it; it really delivers. It doesn’t try to trick you into thinking it’s supposed to be comfortable by having cruise control and a heated screen. It doesn’t try to fool you into thinking it’s a ‘premium’ car by having indicators in the wing mirrors, fifteen cup holders and a futuristic dashboard. There are no confused messages coming from Japan’s version. There are plenty coming from the Brit.

Britain’s Type-R has had two karate lessons, but wears a black belt. Japan’s Type-R is Ip Chun.

The car in front is a Lexus

Pete Wadsworth

The future of Fernando Alonso has been one of the most talked about stories in Formula 1 ever since it first became clear, back in Hungary, that the relationship between the young Spaniard and McLaren bosses was falling apart.

With most of the top teams tied up, the double world champ is running out of places to go and, despite persistent rumours that he is set to partner Kimi Raikkonen in the red cars, is it really plausible after this year that Alonso would move to a team that cannot have a clear number one driver?

With the current world champion signed, there's no way that the Scuderia could ask Kimi to play second fiddle to Alonso. In fact, the very idea of it is laughable.

Most pundits and fans see Renault as being the most likely option, and a return to the regie would certainly make sense. They've had a poor 2007, but you don't win world championships by accident, and the engineering talent of the team hasn't simply evaporated out of the Enstone ventilation system.

It seems that most of Renault's problems have been with drivers. A line-up consisting of an out-of-form Giancarlo Fisichella and a slightly wild Heikki Kovalainen simply don't have the confidence, never mind the clout, to knock people's heads together in the way that Schumacher or Alonso might. They seem to not know what they need to ask for or how to ask for it, and the team's performance has suffered as a result. Combine this racing line-up with a rookie test driver and it isn't any wonder that they've had a lacklustre season.

The addition of Alonso would surely bring Renault back to the glory days of the 2005 and 2006 seasons. If they got rid of Fisi, Kovalainen would slot in nicely behind Fernando to play the number two man and, with a world champion in the car, development would pick up. It's highly plausible that 2008 could see Renaults, McLarens, Ferraris and BMWs fighting for championship honours.

Of course, Toyota is another name that has been tossed into the 'who will Alonso sign for' hat, but is the Japanese team ready for a driver of Alonso's talent? Would they actually be able to deliver the car that he needs to compete at the head of the field, regardless of his input? The answer to both those questions is 'probably not', and it's hard to believe that Alonso would move to a team - at this stage of his career - simply because he couldn't see the top of the pile of money they put in front of him. But there is a way for Toyota to get their hands on a world champ, start scoring victories and strengthen the relationship between the company's F1 campaign and its road car range.

There is no doubt that Toyota, the largest car manufacturer in the world, has deep, well-lined pockets, so should they need to come up with a Kimi-beating salary to get Alonso to the table, they won't have any problems coming up with an offer that's hard to refuse. However, if you want to sign a world champion, you need to provide them with a team and a car that can deliver results.

As we know, Toyota's F1 campaign involves a works operation and an engine supply deal with Williams. Rather embarrassingly, Toyota is (as far as I can tell) the only manufacturer whose works team has been beaten on a regular basis by the team to whom they supply engines: indeed, the 2007 championship ended with Toyota on 13 points and Williams on 33.

As it stands, this makes Toyota look, well, a bit silly really - the multi-national uber-corporation being beaten by a team of engineers from Oxford. But I think there is a way that Toyota can turn this 'problem' to its advantage.

Toyota actually has two road car brands: one that carries the company's name (Toyota) and its separate 'premium' brand, Lexus. Toyota's aim is for Lexus to compete with the big German luxury marques like Mercedes and BMW in the premium market - signified primarily by the deeply stylish LS600h and monstrous IS-F, which are so clearly aimed at the Mercedes S-Class and BMW M3 they might as well say so in the brochures - while Toyota-badged cars bring in the money from the 'volume' sales.

Conveniently, the positions in which Toyota and Williams find themselves on the F1 grid fits absolutely perfectly with how their Toyota and Lexus brands are perceived within the road car market.

So here's the plan: Toyota Motor Company uses its piles of money to buy Fernando out of his McLaren contract (they should be able to find enough down the back of the boardroom chairs), while Williams remains an independent team supplied by Toyota, but with engines now branded as Lexus rather than Toyota. Of course, in real terms, this will manifest itself as new badges on the car, the cam covers and team clothing, so that bit is cheap.

Toyota then installs Alonso in a Williams and pays his wages at the team, freeing up some money at Grove which can be used to develop the Williams back into a championship-winning package and making Lexus Williams' title sponsor. Couple this with Alonso's input, and a return to championship contention is almost a sure thing – heck, if Toyota are feeling especially flush, they could even contribute to Williams' development budget and 'borrow' technology developed by the massively-experienced Grove team to haul the full works operation up the grid.

This gives Toyota two legitimate F1 teams, both working hard for their respective brands under the company's umbrella, rather than one lame duck getting regularly thrashed by a privateer outfit which buys its engines.

Away from the track, the advantages become even clearer. BMW and Mercedes (Lexus' main competitors) both use their strong F1 links to sell cars, with BMW's M5 using engines "cast in the same foundry as the F1 motors" and Mercedes airing the excellent Fernando vs Lewis vs Mika advert. Not only would Lexus be afforded the same ties as BMW's 'M' range and Mercedes' AMG cars enjoy for its existing performance vehicles (along with the much sought-after halo effect for its diesels, family and luxury cars), Toyota would be presented with an opportunity to 'invent' its own performance brand for Lexus: Williams.

This would allow the Japanese company to effectively split Lexus again, taking them firmly into M and AMG territory with a brand that is pre-impregnated with the racing heritage that is so important for selling performance road cars. Couple that with an F1 star as an ambassador and Lexus instantly gains the credibility performance brand managers can usually only dream of.

Williams were a championship-winning team and, perhaps, the reason they're not as competitive in today's manufacturer-driven F1 championship is because Frank Williams failed to embrace the resurgence of car makers wanting a slice of the F1 action in the same way that Ron Dennis did – effectively turning his (admittedly massive) independent outfit into a team that, for all intents and purposes, runs Mercedes' F1 campaign on the German company's behalf.

Toyota, on the other hand, are keen to run their own F1 team - to be seen to be doing it themselves - but seem to have failed to embrace the fast turnaround management ethos that is so crucial F1 success.

Fernando Alonso, meanwhile, is a double world champion without a team.

Perhaps 'Lexus Williams' is an opportunity that all three pieces to the puzzle cannot afford to miss.