The best Valentine’s Day wheels

There’s seating for three. Need we say more? 

Well, all right then, if we do need to say more – how about 6.1-litre BMW V12, six-speed manual, more than 600bhp and a complete lack of any driver aids? That ought to help you grow chest hairs. And it’s built without compromise, from carbon fibre, titanium, kevlar, magnesium and even gold leaf. 

And then there’s the raft of pioneering technologies and materials that you should definitely not talk about with your passengers – unless you’re dating Danica Patrick and Carmen Jorda. 

And, if the sheer speed, exclusivity and technology is all a little too common for you, there’s always the one-off Ferrari 365 Tre Posti or Bizzarrini Manta Concept.

Whoa, rein it in there. You’ve clearly had a few successful Valentine’s Days in the past – likely why half of your kids are born in October. 

And, if you don’t already have one, may we suggest the eight-seat Citroen SpaceTourer, mostly because it has a cool name, and partly because there’s a new snow-ready concept version of it with four-wheel-drive and a six-speed manual.

With a giant bar splitting the cabin in two, no roof and about a third of a windscreen each, you’ve the perfect excuse to avoid the increasingly dreary small talk that you and your maybe-not-so significant other have been reduced to.

And, to distract you from your spiralling relationship, there’s a sonorous, mid-mounted V10 and about 10,000 miles of headroom. Best consumed in warm weather, which probably means the south of France.

Minds out of the gutter, now. 

Thanks to the seating arrangement on the Gordon Murray-designed Rocket, you’ll literally clash helmets at every turn. That’s because, as much as it looks like a single-seat racer, this is two-seat tandem track car. 

It’s from the visionary mind of Gordon Murray, as we’ve said, and came from his Light Car Company in the early 1990s, at around the same time as he was helping to create the epochal McLaren F1.  

So, you might be wondering, what are the stats on this pocket Rocket? Well, they’re pleasing, to say the least. It weighs just 381kg – an absolute featherweight in car terms and far less than KTM X-Bows and Caterham Sevens – and helps make the name of the Light Car Company a pleasingly literal experience. 

A tuned, one-litre engine from a Yamaha superbike makes up to 171bhp at more than 10,000rpm, run through a five-speed sequential gearbox to the rear wheels. This means a power-to-weight ratio of 456bhp per ton, zero to 60 in four seconds and a top speed of around 150mph. 

And it’s street legal in the UK. 

It’s like Kevin Parker once sang in lilting falsetto – solitude is bliss. And we’d argue that nowhere is it more blissful than at the wheel of a dedicated single-seat track weapon. Just noise, speed and beautifully executed engineering, and no chance for that pesky reproductive instinct to get in the way of it all. 

The BAC is as quick as a speed date but infinitely more successful. You’d have to say it’s better looking than half of your Tinder matches and far less likely to be disappointing in person. And, with all the time and money you save by not dating, you might even be able to afford one. 

As you might be able to surmise, this is something else entirely. To call it a car would be inaccurate, to call it a all-terrain vehicle would be an almost criminal understatement of the finished product. 

If you blended a tank, a troop carrier, a tractor and dinghy, you’d be somewhere in the same ballpark as the Avtoros Shaman. Built for the wildest parts of Russia, the Shaman will keep going long after civilisation has collapsed and humanity has been swallowed whole by antibiotic-resistant diseases / radioactive zombies / house prices. 

But, as any doomsday prepper will tell you, it’s no good building your ark after it’s started raining. So get in now, and buy a ticket to your own salvation!

It’s shaped like an avant-garde computer mouse, it’ll (purportedly) do more than 300mpg and it’s as rare as uncooked beef. But far from being the wheels of the eco-warrior, the XL1 checks all of the boxes for proper wooing – no, really. 

It’s built from supercar materials, but it’s all put towards being environmentally friendly. It was developed at great expense, but it still has a VW badge on the front – probably still the badge best known for ‘unassuming luxury’, regardless of other manufacturers’ efforts in that regard. And the fact that you laid out about £100,000 for the privilege is an appealing prospect, but only if you never, ever mention it. 

While you’re at it, don’t mention any of what we’ve just said. Just let your intended Valentine sit slightly behind you in the staggered seating setup and admire your chiselled visage as you nonchalantly pilot the XL1 to a Michelin star-worthy pop-up. And thank us later.