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Eventually, we get it straight and I just dial in a few revs and stop being such a wuss. Wheelspin ensues. Lots and lots of wheelspin.

As we change up to third and the rear wheels break traction yet again, I go all tight inside. My abdomen crunches.

I pray my passenger can't see me gurning with the effort of balancing 650bhp on the see-saw of 1,150kg and rear tyres the width of industrial lawn rollers. It's not pretty, but we're still going in the same direction - and nobody is screaming. Not yet.

Everything's gone 'whooshy'. I swear there's a place where your vision goes black-and-white in order to create the resolution necessary to stop you becoming a carbon-fibre mosaic on the nearest tree, and it's fair to say that the extra gumption feels beefy.

It's provided by a pair of turbos the size of footballs, and the thrust surfs the Apollo along the scarred dual carriageway outside Stoke Poges like a supersonic tidal bore.

"This engine we have had running all the day at 800bhp," barks the Belgian Gumpert test driver, Francois, above the tumbledryer that is the Gumpert.

"It just got a bit hot with the - how you say? - the water in the cooling. But we can have 1,000bhp if we want."

The bare and basic 650bhp is feeling like more than enough at the moment. Like I said, that 650bhp is spinning the rear wheels in third in the dry if you get medieval with the six-speed sequential, something that requires you not to lift for fear of unsettling the car.

By 'unsettle' I mean 'crash'. And it's not one of those namby-pamby gearboxes, either. This one has a clutch (although one that you don't use on full-throttle upchanges) and the harder you stab at the tall gearlever the better the change you get.