Features

On the road, I put my foot down and - Oh. My. God. - a valve, deep in the bowels of the exhaust system flicked open, or shut or something, and the sound of all hell burst forth from the tail pipes.

It's not a V8 noise at all, any more than the Ferrari 430 makes a V8 noise. It's not a rumble or an off-beat strum. It's an ear-splitting bellow. At 5,000rpm, it can kill birds. At 6,000rpm, you can hear it, and I am not joking, two miles away. This is easily - and I mean by a huge margin - the loudest car on the market today.

Strangely, however, it's not loud at all in the cockpit, which meant I wasn't unduly distracted, which meant I noticed it wasn't anywhere near as fast as I'd been expecting. They say it'll do 0 to 60mph in 4.9 seconds, the same as an automatic DB9, but it doesn't feel that way.

Every time I pulled out to overtake another car, I was left on the wrong side of the road feeling a bit disappointed. That said, not as disappointed as those people coming the other way, but let down nevertheless.

I should have read the figures before I set off because the Vantage only produces 380bhp and that's 20 less than you get from a Jaguar XKR. What's more, you only get 302 torques, which doesn't sound very plentiful either.

Maybe I was expecting too much, but whatever. If you do buy a Vantage, be careful what you choose to take on at the lights.

My colleagues tell me that even the Jaguar XJR will keep up. So that means that an M5 or an SL55 will thrash it. Even the 175mph top speed is less than I'd been hoping for. Maybe the penalty for sticking on that big front spoiler isn't only aesthetic.

It can't be a weight issue because the magnesium, composite and aluminium body sits on a bonded aluminium chassis. Which means you'll eat heavier fairy cakes.

So what about the ride? Well, to test that I gritted my teeth and headed for my favourite route which is a mass of bumps and crests. This is a road that destroys Maseratis, and caused the F430 to bottom out endlessly. It's this road which probably did for my back, and you know what? The Vantage was brilliant.

Oh, it's firm all right, but it never crashes. The whole thing felt beautifully damped and controlled. So damped and controlled in fact that it never bottomed out once. Pity. I would've like to have knocked that air dam off. I'll just have to settle for the enjoyment of having driven a car which proves James May to be wrong.