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OK, let's weigh them up, crunch the numbers and get them straight. Weights pretty even; engine capacity pretty even; power in a sliding scale, with the Aston trailing by over 100bhp; prices in orbit.

What you can't see on that panel is that the Lambo makes its extraordinary 631bhp maximum at 8,000rpm, and its max torque at 6,000rpm. It's difficult to imagine a 6.5-litre V12 revving to such a frenzied height, but it does, rampantly, loving every extra thou.

The 599's engine is similar, based on that of the Enzo. Good starting point. It makes its 620bhp max at 7,600rpm and peak torque comes at 5,600rpm. Another revver, then, but it feels punchier low down in the rev range than the Lambo, and it's almost an exaggerated, semi-artificial super-punch of torque, the kind that Kimi probably likes in his F1 car. You can feel cutting-edge engine mapping at work here.

The DBS's motor is sensational, too. It probably sounds even more entrancing than the Italians, more mellow and tuneful. Even though it makes its 510bhp at 6,500rpm and max torque punches in at a high 5,750rpm, the thrust seems to happen from zero rpm, as soon as you breathe on the throttle. For that reason, you never feel you're getting left behind if you're chasing down the Italians on give and take roads. Wonder what all of this revviness and high-end power will be like on sheet ice? Time to find out...

Our first destination was Auronzo, where there is a brilliant little ice karting track and, more importantly for us, a full-sized one for cars as well.

I don't know how The Stig finds out about these things, but as we stopped to take some static shots of the cars before we binned them, he came walking briskly out of a forest, climbed straight into the Aston - the only car on summer tyres, and therefore by far the trickiest - and proceeded to reel off four perfect laps.

Sideways everywhere, natch, even on the straight bits. He did the same in the Ferrari, then the Lambo, then walked off in the direction of Cimon del Froppa.

Time to admit that our cover image is a fantasy, a complete set-up. Sorry. The Stig didn't crash these cars, but you probably guessed that. More surprising is that we didn't, either. We tried our very best to destroy them, but narrowly avoided it. Driving a car worth £192,000 around corners with a co-efficient of grip too low to walk on doesn't teach you much, other than the meaning of fear. How The Stig did those laps without any sort of build-up or gauge for the grip level will remain a mystery until I croak.

As The Stig's race suit blended with the snow and the trees and he went off to climb sheer 5,000ft-high rock-faces or whatever it is he does in the winter, it was time to attack some tarmac.

The roads in the Dolomites around Cortina are a mixture - tight point-and-squirt switchbacks climbing up the side of valleys between ski resorts; more open, faster sweeping roads running along the valley walls; and further south toward Bologna, super-fast dual carriageways spearing between mountain cliffs. Not all of these roads are appropriate or easy for near-200mph supercars, but they're all tremendous fun.

So. If someone approached you on a fine winter's morning holding the keys to these three cars, which would you choose? The answer is that you wouldn't care. And not only because you'd know you'd be swapping those keys at various points during the day. Even at the end of the test, after many hundreds of clicks, we five car-loving numbnuts couldn't have cared less which car we chose. They do different jobs, they have different natures - all are great.

It can be boiled down to this: the Aston is a work of art, the Lambo a sledgehammer, and the 599 a scalpel. Picking a winner is impossible. If you had £160,000 to blow on a car, it's likely you might have £531,902 to blow on all three. And that's the answer.

If ever an employee would be biased, you'd think it might be an employee of Ferrari - probably the best-known Italian company and perhaps the one held in the highest esteem. Working for the Prancing Horse must be like working at the Vatican.

And even the Ferrari tech guy who helped fit 'our' 599's winter tyres for the ice track work had to admit that the DBS was beautiful. He may have even said that it was better to look at than his beloved Fiorano, though I could never quote him on that.