The brilliant cars you need to drive at least once

2: McLaren F1

The greatest supercar this country has produced. Moved the global boundaries of road car performance further and faster than any other. Commercially unsuccessful when new, its speed, scarcity and race record meant it would in time acquire the status of true automotive legend.

1: Ferrari F40

There have been times – rare ones, I concede – where briefly the Ferrari F40 is superseded in my mind as the greatest road car I’ve driven. It happened a few years back with the LaFerrari, and many years before with the McLaren F1. But once time is allowed for true perspective, there it always is. The F40. 

Twist the key and press the little rubber button. Mayhem breaks out behind you. Anyone who says a turbo engine can’t sound good has never listened to one of these. It’s growling and gurgling, spitting and popping, and that’s just at idle. If its looks don’t intimidate you, the noise will.

You need to respect this machine, but also to trust it. Unlike other Ferraris made around that time, 288 GTO included, the F40 is remarkably faithful on the limit, so if the boost arrives a trifle suddenly at the exit of a corner, you can be reassured that, first, the chassis will tell you the moment traction is about to break and, second, the steering will round up any movement at the back without even the need to lift.

1: Ferrari F40 – continued

It’s number one because of all the thousands of cars I’ve driven doing this job, it’s the one I think of most. It’s the one I most miss being in, the one I most don’t want to get out of. Speed and grip? They’re incidentals. It’s about the sense of occasion, the totally immersive driving experience; it’s every crackle from the engine, every scrape from the gearshift, every snatched breath and every tick of the bodywork as you sit at journey’s end, unable to take in what just happened.

And yes, it is also that this is Enzo’s last car. I know he was difficult, know too he cared little for his road cars and even less for those who drove them. But I don’t care. The F40 has his defiance, his iconoclasm and, though I never met him, what I imagine to be his spirit, too. It is, to me, still the most exciting road car in the world, if now far from being the fastest. I don’t know how you get to drive one before you die, but believe me, it’s the one you should covet above all the rest.