How fat is your car?

This was meant to be a straightforward test. Take a notoriously chubby hot hatch for a lap of the TopGear test track, rip out all the unnecessary weight, lap it again, crow about how much quicker it went the second time and make a sweeping generalisation about how all modern cars are far too fat and wasn't it better when your Austin Allegro tipped the scales at seven kilos and...

Because this is TopGear, things didn’t quite work out like that. Firstly, just before we pitched up at the TG test track on a cold, grey winter morning, rain occurred. A lot of rain. We arrive at Dunsfold to find the track entirely under water, Beluga whales gambolling gracefully through Hammerhead, and a man with a wooden leg and a West Country accent claiming Gambon in the name of Kernow. In the parlance of the TG Lap Time Board it is VW. Very Wetness is our first problem.