Features

Each jerk is punctuated by the chuff and twitter of wastegates that sound like I've just run over a family of songbirds with one of those industrial lawn rollers.

It should be a spine-shattering experience driving this car along a UK road, but the Gumpert feels bizarrely compliant.

OK, so it could do with a bit more ride height and a bit less spoiler, but it grounds out less than it should and the speed is ridiculous. At one point we saw a speed so illegal I was convinced it was km/h. It wasn't.

And you can feel the aerodynamic package hovering the car to the floor. In fact, I reckon this is one of the quickest cars I've ever driven, and that includes some track specials.

Indeed, the Gumpert is pitched as a racer that is uncompromised for the road.

Well, I can attest to its abilities at making the world operate on a different definition of time, but there are some concerns.

For a start, the car we were driving is a development mule. The doors and crash structure are in the wrong position for convenient entry and exit, the interior isn't finished - except in bare carbon - and you won't find much in the way of luxury around here.

But these are concerns the Gumpert team feels it will have addressed by the time the first RHD customer cars break cover later on this year. And it's those things that will make or break the Gumpert.

The engineering is there, the car is well set-up and the engine builder - MTM - knows its stuff, so it should be reliable. But it needs to make comfort changes to stop it being an oddity and to defeat the dangers of its daft name and looks.

But, in the face of such outrageous performance, a £190k price tag starts to look like a weird kind of bargain.

Tom Ford