Uncomfortable, noisy and fitted with a gearbox that wouldn't ever go into gear, along with a pair of front tyres that had been fitted with minds of their own. You can do what you like with the steering wheel, but if those Michelins snout a bit of camber that takes their fancy, forget it. You're going where they want to go. I'm not joking.

If a snow plough had left one of those little grooves in the road, I would now be writing this from the snow plough base. Because that's where I'd have ended up. Later in the day, when the hangover had been blitzed, then, yes, of course, the GT3 shone.

It was an exciting companion on the road, as good as any Ferrari and, at a whisker under £80,000, good value too. I liked very much the way it soared to nearly 8,500rpm before I needed to change gear, and the huge traction afforded by those fat back tyres and the flat-six engine on top of them.

I even quite liked - in a 'shit, I'm going to die' sort of way - the moments when they lost traction and the car wiggled its hips while it decided whether to kill me or not.

All this seat-of-the-pants, thrill-a-minute stuff was in keeping with the ice-white paint and the shouty styling. So, make no mistake, on the right road this GT3 is what engineers call 'a right old laugh'.

So yes, it works without the history: if this had been the first 911, we'd love it so much we'd all want to lick its private parts.

But is it better than the last GT3? Or the GT2? Or the GT3 RS? Maybe, on a track, some decimal points could split them; maybe there, among the marshals and the red and white kerb stones, the spoilers and the roll cage would look less ridiculous. But on the road, I'm buggered if I can tell the difference - any more than I can tell the difference between an Evo 8 and 9.

It is, in this respect, a bit like a Bond film. The same basic formula endlessly tweaked and fiddled with to make it 'different'. But the fact is that, with its camber hunting tyres and no boot, and a chin spoiler that's defeated by even the smallest sleeping policeman, it's a bit of a Moonraker.

So if I were going to buy a 911, I'd stick with the basic Carrera 2 Thunderball or the turbo Goldfinger.

Look at it this way: in the whole of cinema history, the sequels that have been better than the originals can be counted on one hand. There was French Connection II, Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior and The Godfather Part II. And that's it. And the best Hannibal Lecter film was Manhunter - the Michael Mann original.

Other Jeremy Clarkson Articles
Jeremy Clarkson Home Page
Jeremy Clarkson - Joins the Fast Lane
Jeremy Clarkson - The Germans
Jeremy Clarkson - Hits Back

Other Car Reviews
Porsche 911