There are many absurdities surrounding the Radical SR3 SL. That it exists at all, for instance, or that I'm driving it in the depths of winter. On track-day tyres. When it's sleeting. That it can barely negotiate a rutted country road without scraping some part of its belly, let alone a speed bump. That it jiggled me around so much that I had to go for a roadside wee. Still wearing my helmet. That must've looked pretty absurd to the cars that crawled past.

SL stands for Street Legal, which means Radical is after a slice of the market occupied most ably by Ariel, KTM and Caterham. It's not the first road-legal Radical - you can add a pack to other models that allows them to be punted around in public, by dint of a rear foglight and one or two other DVLA-friendly trinkets - but it is the first to have been designed and developed with road rather than track in mind.

Words: Ollie Marriage