Colin Goodwin

This month Getting a handle on 10 great-handling cars

HERE WE ARE in San Diego And sunny Southern California- The land of the cool car, cruising to the beach on warm wings. Except that you don't we many cool cars around. It's all Mercs, Toyota pick-ups and boring Japanese saloons. I saw a 1970 Chevelle convertible on interstate 5 in Los Angeles and a lovely1968 fastback Mustang in downtown San Diego but otherwise the pickings were very lean. The interesting cars mm be coming out on special moons only. A pity because When I first visited America a The early 1980s, there were nods of interesting old muscle cars on the streets.

Still I mustn't grumble. The weather has been gorgeous and its been a good month for cars at home. We've just had the annual Autocar UK handling day and as usual it was a fantastic day out. Here area few tasty motors we had to play with: Audi R8. Porsches Cayman S and GT3 RS, Lamborghini Murcielago 640, new BMW W3. Mercedes C350, Lotus 2 Eleven and a Renault Megane R26.

You are not going to be bored With the keys to that lot. Unfortunately,. there was on and off rain and a permanently damp circuit. Not good for the nerves.

That is the slight problem with the handling day. I'm always worried sick about spanking something very exotic and valuable in front of a large crowd. I got off to a bad start by almost writing off the Merc C350 within a few seconds of getting in it. I have an excuse: someone had disabled the traction control and the ABS and didn't bother to tell me. There was a warning light to tell me that they were both U/S but of course as a hot-headed hack I just jumped in the car and tried to drive it as fast as I could.

I braked for a tight hairpin from about 160kph and just slid straight on towards a tyre wall. It was really just a matter of cadence-braking furiously and wondering how bad the damage would be and whether it might be worth running away across the fields and joining the Navy.

Anyway by pure luck I didn't hit anything solid and better still, no one saw me lose control. Perhaps it's not a bad idea to have an early wake-up call in something sub-£50,000 (Rs 40 lakh). I calmed down after that incident, that's for sure. The Audi R8 won the competition and quite rightly so. What a fantastic car. The beauty of it is that the average owner can extract 85 per cent of the car's ability 95 percent of the time. The exact opposite, in fact, of the 911 GT3 RS. Really good drivers, of which Autocar has several on its payroll, can really wring the Porsche's neck around a circuit but for the average driver getting the maximum out of the RS is rather a risky business. Still, it's a great car.

I absolutely adored the Lotus 2-Eleven. Incredibly fast with a fantastic chassis and the best steering of any car made today. Just like driving a racing car yet it is just about road-legal. I could have spent all day driving round and round in it. It was not only one of the fastest cars around the circuit but also one of the most controllable, though I did spin it having a race with Steve Sutcliffe, who was in the green GT3 RS.

What else is new? I've signed on to the new Autocar India forum and am looking forward to some lively debates with you guys and girls. Forums in the UK can get a bit boring but chatting to fellow enthusiasts thousands of miles away in a different continent is much more fun. Besides, I feel I know you all a bit anyway.

I've been doing loads of flying lately because at last the weather has been OK in the UK Last month I had to fly the aeroplane down to Goodwood for the historic racing weekend because it was to take part in a static display of old aeroplanes. I suspect they wanted it there because it's owned by Top Geat's James May. With James away in the US, I flew it down to Goodwood. Much to my delight the place was already (it was the day before the event opened) packed 4ffi a most incredible collection of racing cars, motorcycles and aeroplanes. I had a very pleasant afternoon chatting with fellow enthusiasts and meeting up with old friends. Only one problem: I wasn't going to be racing anything myself. Never mind, you can't have everything in life, can you?