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Not in Germany, it seems, where a devotion to 'sporty feel' and some misplaced faith in the compliance of run-flat tyres has steered some German saloons up a ride-handling path so singular they've made me car sick.

The XF meanwhile pulls away as quietly as a Rolls-Royce Phantom. As first impressions go, this is good. Sorting ride and handling is as much about the full sensory experience as the seat-of-the-pants experience.

RPJ and MC talk at length about the process of dialling out the noises that degrade the experience and dialling in those that enhance it. So while the XF has less tyre noise than the XK, in the 4.2-litre supercharged version I drove, it also has more engine noise.

Let's wait until we know a little bit more, but it's no secret Ford's big European V8, which sees service in Jags and Land Rovers and with a few tweaks in the V8 Aston too, is not state-of-the-art. There are some major developments coming, but no one is saying exactly when. So the XF is stuck with this hand-me-down, just as it's stuck with a lot of the structural and chassis stuff from the S-Type.

Not that the latter is a problem - by the end of its life, the S-Type had the best chassis in its class (RPJ and MC again). The engine? Well, I like it, but it's an iconoclast in a group that is poweredby high-revving Deutsch clones.

It has, however, unquestionably got character, the one thing the Five and the 'E' and the A6 and, God, the Lexus, so totally lack.

In fact, the XF oozes character, from the minute you first really see it in all its modern magnificence (it's a big car, the biggest in its class, yet it manages to look impressive, opulent, without ever looking overfed on its privileged background).

Slip inside, switch on and witness the whole 'Carry On Starting' ritual, and you're aware this isn't just a car with character, but one with a character you'll like. Getting over your bashfulness, you grab that big fat knob, turn it to drive and off you go, V8 burping like the Merlins they used to stuff in Spitfires on the same site where the XF is built. And then you bury it.

And, oh my... that's the bit you'll have to wait for, but let's just put it this way - it wasn't just the designers that had fun here. The two blokes in the front clearly had loads. And the bloke in the back enjoyed himself a whole lot too.