PART TWO: SCOTLAND
THE BORDER THAT SEPARATES ENGLAND FROM Scotland on the A68 is a wild and windswept place. Perched upon high, with the burn-strewn mountains in front, behind lie the tall, dense forests of Northumbria, a claustrophobic mass creeping up in the rear-view mirror, ready to suck you back into their endless, intimidating depths. There’s an invisible cloak of loneliness in the air tonight. It’s mercifully dry, but with no sign of the stars that can dazzle in this part of the world when cloud cover is absent, as the nearby observatory attests.
The little green Porsche’s wheels gently rotate to a stop, and car and I pause. I just need a momentary breather. There are some alarmingly tumultuous sections of road nearby and I wonder, with more than a tinge of guilt, if my low-flying antics registered on any radars, military or otherwise. We’re in a land – like the world – ravaged by the effects of coronavirus, in financial, health and social terms, which makes the eerie silence of this great expanse all the more unsettling, the sound of the wind interrupted only by the heavily restricted gurgling of the 4-litre flat-six ticking over.
No one thought Porsche would put into production an entirely new, naturally aspirated engine for its mainstream sports cars, but then no one could have foreseen the seismic shift the world has undergone in 2020 due to Covid-19. Yet despite the best efforts of outside influences, if last week at Anglesey has proved anything, it’s that if nothing else 2020 is a corker for new driver’s cars.
There’ll be plenty of time to evaluate the Cayman GTS over the coming week. Your six judges – Gallagher, Meaden, Barker, Bovingdon, Catchpole and myself – have eight finalists to drive, ponder over, argue about and make excuses for. In the end selecting those final eight wasn’t too difficult. Most were dead certs: the viciously exciting McLaren 765LT, the polished-to-perfection Civic Type R, the ‘GT4 Lite’ Cayman GTS 4.0, and the loveable BMW M2 CS. It was also obvious, instantly, that the GR Yaris was something special, so that was always going through as well. The F8 Tributo had little trouble earning its place either, although the 911 Turbo S had to work a little harder for its pass. The nearly cars were the A110S and the Golf GTI, neither quite enthralling enough to make the final cut, but for very different reasons. Instead comes the undoubted surprise of week one, the rumbustious, tyre-shredding Italian playboy that is the Lamborghini Huracán Evo RWD. For the first time in years I and every one of the judges genuinely can’t call it. Which for all of us, and hopefully you too, is very exciting indeed.
TUESDAY DAWNS CLEAR AND REASONABLY MILD. Any additional minutes of precious slumber afforded by the Cayman’s rapid progress across the hills to Hawick town centre last night were wiped out by the arrival after midnight of Gallagher in the 765LT, the shuddering boom of the gravellous Ricardo-bred V8 reluctantly reversing into its parking space enough to set the floorboards trembling and the sash windows vibrating. That’s the Longtail to a T: it’s a complete beast of a machine and unambiguous about it. I think I like it a great deal.
Right now we all just need superunleaded, so I’m sticking with the Cayman for the short run to the luckiest petrol station in southern Scotland. Fuelled up, we continue en masse to the first location, which will be our base for the first couple of days. I lead, the Civic tucked menacingly in behind, Jethro in the M2 CS after that, then John in the Lambo and Dickie Meaden in the Ferrari. It’s quite a pack, a snarling congregation of xenon and LED eyes, jostling for position, the weight of responsibility lying with the Cayman and me up front to set the pace and spot the hazards. The sun is shining but they’re pale, watery
