Almost Great: Nissan 300ZX

You always remember your first time. For me, it was late at night, on one of those roads that rolls and whoops across Dartmoor. It was pitch-dark and raining – not that hard, but the kind of rain that wants you to know it’s not messing around, either.

The targa top was open, twin panels usefully stowed in the boot. But the airflow over that long hood was blasting the rain droplets up and over my head. That was because I was driving way, way too fast. The foolishness of youth made me either not think, or not care about wayward sheep, the stone walls flashing by far too close to the big coupé’s barrelly flanks, or the prospect of difficult conversations with the Devon and Cornwall police force in the (admittedly unlikely) event that some of their officers should be out on the moor on a night like this.