2008: Best of the racers

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Aston's gentleman racer

One of the happiest trends of 2008 has been the emergence of a whole bunch of brilliant racing-versions-of-road-cars. We’re sure there’s a snappier name somewhere, but you know the stuff we mean: track-prepped, sticky-tyred production cars with proper roll cages and racing exhausts and lots of lovely things like that.

Here are some of our favourites from the last year:

X-Bow GT4: bewinged flyweight heads to GT4. Just imagine duking it out on the track alongside Astons and Corvettes. Scary.

Lotus 2-Eleven GT4: Lotus takes it to KTM with its own featherweight racer. We’ve driven it. It’s awesome…

Lambo Gallardo Trofeo: thirty of these in a one-make race series? Sounds like a good day out to us. Just imagine the noise..

Scirocco N24: That’s ‘N24’ as in ‘Nurburgring 24 hours’ – yes, VW took this lovely little racing Scirocco to the big ’Ring race. It did well…

R8 GT3: it’s the V10 one. It’s rear-wheel drive. It wants to eat all the Gallardos for breakfast.

BMW M3 ALMS: We might even see this at Le Mans next year. If we ask really, really nicely…

Aston Vantage GT4: The car of choice for the discerning gentleman racer. Now even noisier and faster. Good.