Supercars

The problem with reviewing electric cars without a home charger is that you very quickly become an unpaid infrastructure correspondent. You stop thinking like a motoring content creator and start thinking like a logistics manager.

After six Audis of my own over the years, I am either fiercely loyal to the brand or simply institutionalised. Probably both.

So, when Audi handed me the keys to the new Q8 Vorsprung, a £100,000-plus luxury SUV complete with a panoramic roof the size of a Chelsea flat and enough technology to make NASA blush, I felt quietly smug. This, surely, was going to be excellent.

And it was.

Mostly.

Harley-Davidson's Heritage Classic is a light-touring cruiser that offers a direct visual link to 1950s rock-and-roll-era America, while hiding highly capable modern technology beneath its traditional styling.

Nobody at the Cure EB Silver Butterfly Dinner could tell me what I'd arrived in. Damian Lewis was there, the evening was compered with great charm by Dominic Holland — introduced everywhere, to his evident amusement, as Spider-Man's father — and DS had generously donated a week with the N°8 as a lot in the charity auction, which gives you some idea of the company it keeps. Yet the question I fielded most often that night concerned the long, low, faintly menacing machine parked outside. Nobody knew the badge. Everybody wanted one.

The 2026 Aprilia SR GT 400 is a City Adventurer that Aprilia says rewrites the rules of the mid-displacement GT scooter segment by blending urban functionality with a genuine spirit of adventure. Dubbed a crossover, this bike brings a fresh, fun attitude into the maxi scooter genre.

There are some vehicles that suit Salisbury Plain. A Porsche 911 does not. A Bentley Flying Spur might, provided you had someone following in a support vehicle with a calming herbal tea. A Fiat 500 would just look as though it had taken a wrong turn on the way to a garden centre.

The Toyota Land Cruiser, however, looks entirely at home.

The first thing you notice about the Maserati GranCabrio Trofeo is not the speed, although with 542 horsepower and a 196mph top speed it has quite enough of that to rearrange your hairstyle permanently. Nor is it the noise, though the Nettuno V6 produces a soundtrack so gloriously operatic that nearby pheasants briefly consider filing noise complaints. No, the first thing you notice is how astonishingly beautiful it is.

So naturally we took it touring through Wiltshire valleys and along Dorset’s coastal roads, to show it off.

Glide the Streets, Own the Journey

It isn’t about just arriving at your destination; it's about savouring every mile with a smile.

Some cars impress me. Some cars intimidate me. Some cars arrive on my drive, sit there for half a second and then immediately reorganise the chemicals in my brain at first glance. The Lotus Emira V6 SE is one of those.

One expects many things from a night on the King’s Road. Discreet wealth, theatrical entrances, perhaps the occasional supercar idling with all the subtlety of a champagne cork. What one does not expect is a diesel Mazda causing passers-by to pause, squint, and wonder if they have momentarily mistaken it for something wearing a prancing horse.

Chelsea, Confidence, and a Case of Mistaken Identity