The press were rendered mute when the covers were pulled from this. Why was this slab-sided, flat-backed, narrow-tracked Alfa so ugly? Was it actually finished, with its black hole of a grille and frameless headlights? It was. The SZ’s shape troubled less with time, and it was way, way better to drive than it looked.
What we said then: “Could this week’s road test subject be the most significant to leave the halls of a British manufacturer since the McLaren F1?”
Who would have thought it? A maker far too reliant on a glorious back catalogue, often with disappointing results, fires itself into the future with the first premium European all-electric car in the world. It looks nothing like an E-Type, an XK or a Mk2. But it does look, and go, like a Jaguar.
What we said then: “What makes the Lotus Carlton a truly great supercar is the sober thoroughness of its execution.”
The Carlton was a middle manager’s motor, well able to pound motorways and cart families. There was a hot one, too: the 3000 GSi, which pounded harder and carted faster. And then GM instructed Lotus to extract ferocious pounding and carting from the Carlton. Once transformed, this 377bhp Vauxhall outsprinted Ferrari’s Testarossa and annihilated the BMW M5 to become the fastest saloon in the world. Nobody expected that.
What we said then: Ettore Bugatti was not being entirely kind when he described a Bentley racing car as ‘le camion plus vite du monde’ – the world’s fastest truck.