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"It is verry bew-tee-full, ziss Ass-tonne-Marr-teen," said the Italian, properly awed.

Slot in behind the big steering wheel, and you're immediately comfortable, surrounded by beautiful ornamentation and sculpture and some of the highest-grade leather anywhere. Punch the fat key fob into its slot in the middle of the dash, push and hold, and the V12 blips into life. Everything feels very natural.

Next, into the Lambo. This is like nothing else. Upward-lifting scissor doors are an event every time you use them, an intro to the weird world of the LP640. You slide down low into the bucket, pull the door down with a thunk. The wheel seems about 17 miles from the instrument panel, with the base of the windscreen another 85 miles beyond that.

The roofline is low, but doesn't encroach too much, even if you're over six feet tall. Turn the key, and she roars into life after a long, deep whirr from the starter motor. I bet that starter motor develops more power than your average Astra VXR.

The Ferrari is the most saloon-like of these cars to sit in. It is tall and wide, and the visibility is good. You start the engine with a button on the steering wheel, which also has its manettino lozenge for onboard transmission, differential and stability control system settings - plus a row of bright red lights in its carbon-fibre top to tell you you're approaching 9,000rpm - 9,000rpm in a 6.0-litre V12, let's not forget.

It all says cutting-edge tech, a direction Ferrari seems to be making its own, and if they say it's a direct hand-down from F1, we can believe them. The paddle shift blades, like those of the Lambo, are attached to the steering column, not the wheel. I don't understand why - it would be much better to be able to keep your hands on the wheel and change gear with paddles attached to it.

These cars are evenly matched on most roads - it's only at extremely high speeds that the Aston begins to get left behind, which you'd expect given its power deficit. For the rest of the time, its ample torque keeps it in the hunt, though it's not as good at getting its power down as either the four-wheel-drive Lambo or the tricked-up, high-tech 599 with its e-diff.

There is something ever so slightly bizarre going on at the back of the DBS, as if the active dampers are set to do something weird to keep the tyres stuck to the road.

Everything else seems well tied down, including the steering, which lacks the Ferrari's quickness but matches the Lambo for feel. Schofield fell in love with the Aston and stayed in love. "And you don't feel a prat in this car," he muttered at one stage, an indirect swipe at the other two cars, maybe, and some of their owners.

Still, it would have taken a fire crew and a cutting tool to remove Calo from the Lambo. For him, the brutal, shocking, wonderful, weird way was the only way. The Lambo summed up what Italian supercars should be all about - drama, power and exploding pedestrian heads with visual shock. And he's not wrong.

But because I'm holding the pencil, I'll have the final word, and for me, the Ferrari was the car I'd keep forever. You can go deeper into corners with this car, push harder and harder and never quite feel the thing will bite you, even with 611bhp on tap - for instance, you can flick it. Flick a 1,688kg supercar. You can't flick the others like this.

The steering is lightning-quick, feeling almost too light at first, but push on and you begin to understand what it's about - agility, combined with a lack of nervousness at high cruising speed.

All the while, the gearshift is eye-blink quick when you need it to be, or thought-free automatic at other times, and the auto clutch works perfectly at parking speeds. For me, this 599 is a work of high magic - it will take a place in history among the greatest Ferraris, because it somehow combines the docile nature of a grand tourer with the soul of an F1 car. And it has a boot.

But is it really the best car? Of course it isn't. The other two are far too mighty for that. It probably says it all that The Stig did precisely four laps in each...