Sounding off

You can tell a lot about a supercar’s performance from its specification sheet and even more from the accompanying press material. But the vogue for hypercars has impressed upon me the merits of a third indicator, namely the quantity and quality of the involuntary sounds it can squeeze from the lungs of your passenger.

Now I’m not saying for a moment that it is fun or clever to use a car as a device to alarm your passengers. In fact as possibly the worst passenger ever to grudgingly get into a car from the wrong side, I regard with the greatest suspicion anyone who considers it a good idea to try and make me gasp at the brutality of said car’s acceleration.