Back to Black

Back into the night, and the pin is out. The Black's rear left wheel catches on a smattering of snow and launches into a lairy, lurid slide across the London night. Jeez. Ease off. Easy. We're out of the tunnels now, cranking up the big V12 across East London's industrial wasteland. It's the sort of area described by property developers as ‘ripe for regeneration' and by Top Gear as ‘a bad place to crash a hyper-exclusive supercar'. Or run out of fuel. The economy readout flashes 7.8mpg as the tyres scrabble and scrape for grip on the ice-basted roads. This much is clear: on frozen, snow-strewn tarmac, the Black is a nasty little bastard that you don't want to cross. It's a car that exists in a realm of grip several continents away from where we are at the moment, a sunny land of wide, sticky roads and gentle, soft verges.