You sit high, right up there in the clouds, peering down upon other road users in their little saloons and hatchbacks. A deity surveying his creation. But soon enough you find reality fails to match expectation, so in fact you sit up there in your lofty chair and eye the cars beneath you jealously, wishing yours wasn’t so outrageously heavy, or so vast, or teetering so precariously on its stilts.
You aren’t superior after all. Because as you thunder along these rain soaked roads in a way only 600bhp or more will allow, aware that you are leaving only just enough space for another vehicle to squeeze through on the other side of this little ribbon of asphalt that tumbles down the hillside, and that when you turn the wheel in your hands you feel nothing from the tyres upon the road, nor can you intuit how much grip there is on which to lean – that’s the moment you realise that all the computing power and the pile of hardware that works so busily to keep you and this machine upright and on course can do only so much. You barrel along this lane at speeds few other vehicles of any kind would have an answer for, but when you reach the far end, palms sweating because of the stress of it all, you ache to be driving something smaller, lighter and lower, and not so eternally in conflict with the laws of physics.
And you do so not that you might go faster still, but that you might actually enjoy it. I drive these very high performance SUVs and once the shock and awe of their speed and uncanny agility wears off, I tend to think one of two things: either that I would prefer to be in a tall, high-riding car that didn’t pretend it was some sort of sports car; or that you could give me a fast hatch, saloon or estate instead and I would be far happier.
