Ascot, more than anywhere, understands horsepower. It has spent centuries breeding it, grooming it, weighing it and inviting people in elaborate hats to bet on it. The BMW iX3 50 xDrive brings 463 horses of its own to the party, although none of them eats oats.
Aston Martin is not short of powerful front-engined cars, but the new Valen takes things considerably further. Revealed during Monterey Car Week, it is the most powerful front-engined Aston Martin in the company’s 113-year history and according to Aston Martin, the world’s most powerful front-engined production car.
There is sensible and then there is Gordon Murray sensible. The new S1 has no enormous fixed rear wing, its suspension has been softened and it even comes with additional sound insulation. Yet it also has a naturally aspirated V12 capable of reaching 12,100rpm, a proper manual gearbox and a central driving position. In almost any other context it would be considered completely unhinged. Alongside the S1 LM however, it is practically a grand tourer.
Every 15 May, Chile marks Día del Pisco – a national toast to the grape spirit that has been distilled in the Elqui, Atacama and Coquimbo valleys since the sixteenth century, and which carries its own Denominación de Origen protecting the name for producers in those regions alone. It's a spirit built on sun: high-altitude vineyards, some of the clearest skies on earth, and Muscat grapes that ripen into something intensely aromatic before they ever reach the still.
I wasn't in any hurry to get from Edinburgh to Kelso. The drive through the Scottish Borders is one of those routes that's worth taking your time over, with quiet roads, rolling countryside and villages that tempt you to stop more often than you'd planned. It also seemed the ideal opportunity to get to know the new Mazda CX-5.
The car I was driving was fuelled by sustainable fuel from Sustain, produced by recycling atmospheric CO₂. It's part of Mazda's belief that there isn't a single answer to reducing emissions and that different technologies will all have a role to play.
There is a very particular kind of family occasion that sees my wife Emily heading to Cornwall in shorts and a bikini, entirely sensibly, while I sit beside her in a white suit, sweating gently in what turned out to be a genuinely sweltering 35 degrees. The occasion demanded it.
There is a particular kind of English shame that comes from arriving at a country pub in something the size of a small yacht, only to spend ten minutes reversing it into a space clearly designed for a Fiat Panda and a bicycle. I know this shame intimately. I have worn it like a poorly fitted dinner jacket. So when the keys to the Lexus LBX landed on my desk, my first reaction was not excitement about badge prestige or hybrid credentials. It was relief. Here, finally, was a Lexus that might fit into my life rather than requiring me to reorganise the entire village.
There is a moment, somewhere between your third glass of Grenache poured on the banks of the Columbia River and a Basque-inspired Garnacha raised above Walla Walla's rolling hills, when Washington State stops surprising you — and starts making complete sense. This is a wine region that actively refuses to be defined by a single grape, a single style, or a single landscape. Over seven extraordinary days, I discovered that this refusal is not a weakness. It is Washington's greatest strength.
There is a particular difficulty in ending a successful story. Do too little and the finale feels like a cynical exercise in badges and scarcity. Do too much and the qualities that made the original so compelling can disappear beneath the additions.
