Supercars

Arrival: The Audi A5 S Line and the Finest Fifty Yards in Black Tie

For over a century, every single motorcycle bearing the iconic spread-wing eagle logo, known as The Eagle Of Mandello, has been built in the same spot: Mandello del Lario, a postcard-perfect town nestled on the dramatic eastern shores of Lake Como in northern Italy. The factory has been looking out over the shores of Lake Como since 1921.

There are sensible ways to test a compact family SUV. You could take it to the supermarket, fill the boot with shopping and fill the back with kids. Or you could point it north from Hampshire, drive to Aberdeen, divert through the Cairngorms and see whether it still feels like a good idea several hundred miles later.

The latter seemed more like me.

The Tour: Le Touquet, a chateau in Fontainebleau, Chateau de Chambord, Chaumont-sur-Loire

The queue for LeShuttle's Flexiplus lounge told its own story. McLarens, Ferraris, Lamborghinis — you name them, they were there, idling politely in line like schoolboys waiting for the tuck shop to open, their owners doing that studied nonchalance that only a man leaning against half a million pounds of carbon fibre can attempt.

There is a distinct moment when a motorcycle ceases to be merely a collection of moving components and becomes an event.

With the 2026 Pan America ST, Harley-Davidson hasn't just updated a model range; they have codified a subculture. Born from the sun-baked asphalt of the American West Coast, the Pan America ST represents a fascinating paradox: the intersection of unyielding Milwaukee iron and genuine apex-hunting intent.

A Car With a Serious Identity Crisis, and I Mean That as a Compliment

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.