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It won't stop it swinging shut and hitting you in the face when you're only half-in. Then there is a bucket seat and an infernal and ball-breaking 101-point safety harness. But, once in, things become quite exciting.

There is an unapologetic honesty to the cabin. Some of the regular dash buttons have given way to business-like toggle switches. There are two little tits to reset the fuel-pump cut-outs and a huge red knob to immobilise the ignition. Pull this, press the button, and the V8 grinds into life like a Spitfire's Merlin (which was a V12, I know - stop spoiling it).

It's enough to make you wonder how they manage to make the road car feel so refined, just by adding fabrics of various sorts. It's not just that the engine is louder. It also sounds, and feels, more mechanical; much more like countless components whirring round and round and flying backwards and forwards. In most road cars, what we call the engine note actually comes from the exhaust. Here, it comes from metalwork, and it's glorious.

There are other unfamiliar noises. Without sound-deadening, the gear linkage can be heard clanking away. Even the clutch hydraulics make themselves known, huffing away above the clamour of the V8. And so I set off around Aston Martin's own test track. And that's all very well, but circuit driving has never been my thing. As I said, the N24 can be road-legalised quite easily.

It needs numberplates, some sort of handbrake, and the fixed driver's window (with its inset sliding perspex panel) must be replaced with a normal opening one. Aston has just such an N24, the personal property of boss Dr Bez, which has withal just been given a very thorough service to include replacement of numerous components under warranty. It's this car that I take onto the roads of Warwickshire, I think.

The din, of course, is tremendous. The fat tyres tramline at low speeds, the roll cage interferes with three-quarter vision, and the ride is, as I suspected, on the lumpy side. But once the Aston is on a roll, it becomes tremendously of-a-piece and jolly good fun. All pretence of sophistication has been discarded, to be replaced by an elemental sense that here is nothing beyond that required to make the car go and give you somewhere to sit.

It's a great way to remind yourself what's really going on when you drive. Deceptive, too: I expected it to feel as though it was going faster than it actually was. Turns out the opposite is true.

By the end of it, I was, unusually, ready for a race. Me in the Aston, Hammond in his beloved 911, and Clarkson in the low-fat Lambo. And that's a Top Gear challenge.