The weather was appropriate for the cars, not so much a photoshoot. With the cloud base lower than our ankles and morale scarcely any higher, we sat for hours hoping the rain would stop and the gloom would lift. Not just hoping, actually – the weather apps on our phones promised clear skies 45 minutes from now, but that number never seemed to come down. We waited and waited and waited, like a corporate ladder climber always six months from promotion.
The mist would blow out briefly, then back in again, but eventually the rain eased just enough for us to get to work. We took our pictures, shot the video, drove the cars as much as we needed to and the job was done. And by then, a crystal clear picture had emerged – one of these cars was comfortably the most enjoyable to drive, one the least by a distance, and it wasn’t at all the way I saw it panning out while we were stuck atop the hillside watching the rain hammer down.
This is not a conventional triple test. Were it a laboratory experiment, we would control for two key variables. The first is degradation over time – any car, almost regardless of its condition, will lose something as it grows older, and that will have consequences for the driving experience. The second is the iterative process – the more a car manufacturer builds a certain sort of car, the better it will get at it, particularly at the very start of a bloodline.
