STEVE SUTCLIFFE
No Mclaren F1 or Ferrari F40? Sutcliffe had better explain himself
WELL, WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE? I MEAN, THINK about it seriously – because whatever you include in your all-time top ten list of cars inevitably says more about what you didn’t choose, rather than what you did. Which is where it actually becomes quite painful to make clear and concise decisions.
Where’s the Mclaren F1 in my list, for instance? Or the Caterham R500? And what about the Ferrari F40, which I’ve often given as my stock reply to anyone who’s sussed what I do for a living then asked: ‘So what’s the best car you’ve ever driven?’
When it comes right down to it, however, I’ve realised that the F40, lunatic of a car that it is, doesn’t even get a place in my Perfect 10. Instead, and having thought about not much else for the last couple of months, the Ferrari 458 Speciale gets my number one vote.
Why? Because it’s a massively better road car than the F40 overall, and on a track it’s a fair bit more exciting. And a lot less terrifying. Blimey.
Beyond this, the Speciale also represents an end point for Ferrari’s V8 road cars, all of which have gone in a different direction subsequently, one that has inevitably involved turbochargers and effective but rarely beautiful aerodynamics. This means it sits upon a pinnacle that in my opinion hasn’t been surpassed by Maranello since – except, perhaps, by the Laferrari, which I didn’t choose because it costs five times as much as the Spesh but isn’t anywhere near two times as good.
Until last week I was going to choose a 993 RS as my favourite Porsche because a) there has to be a Porsche in this list, and b) the 993 RS has long been the one that makes me go weakest at the knees. But then I drove the latest 718 Cayman GT4 with a PDK gearbox, and it blew my mind. I genuinely think it’s the perfect sports car for 2021: big but not scary performance from an atmospheric flat-six engine that revs to the end of the universe and back; delicious uncorrupted steering; lovely brakes with exceptional feel and power; serious but again not crazy grip from some wide but not vast Cup 2 tyres; and, above all, it’s just a really nice size car. It feels tiny beside M4s and mid-size AMGS nowadays. And 992s. So I’ll have mine in Python green please, with the lowest ride height available and, yes, carbon-ceramic brakes. Thanks, cheers, next.
There has to be a BMW M3 in my list, has to be, and although I toyed with the E46 CS for a while, the original E30 remains my favourite, ideally the Sport Evolution. In its day this car felt so
much like a full-blown competition car, it was actually quite hard to comprehend. And the dog-leg gearbox and left-hand drive-only layout merely fuelled its allure for me. I couldn’t get enough of it back then, and although there have been many more competent M3s produced since, not least the latest G80 model which represents an almighty return to form, the E30 is still The One.
A similar tint of spectacles has allowed me to select the Lancia Delta Integrale Evo 2 in fourth place, a car I fell for quite hopelessly when I drove one to Le Mans in 1993, despite it actually being not that mind-boggling to drive. I still go a bit dizzy whenever I see a decent Integrale Evo nowadays, although fortunately there aren’t many around in 2021 so it only happens every once in a while.
The C63 AMG Black Series gets my number five slot for a variety of reasons, one of which is that I think it’s one of the rudest looking road cars of all time, A-men. I get a bit irrational about it because of this. But it also happens to be a very lovely thing to drive, with grown-up steering and a massively exploitable chassis, and not a turbocharger in sight beneath its unashamedly long bonnet. And besides, I drove one through a cold night from Calais to the Route Napoleon once, and when I got out to refuel at around 5am at a motorway service station near Gap, having driven it like a deranged person for much of the night, there was an additional eight-inch shard of ice that had formed right the way across its already sizeable rear wing. This remains one of the more perplexing and literally coolest things I’ve ever seen.
The Pagani Zonda I remember driving for the first time alongside a Lamborghini Murciélago and a car named The Edonis, with a young-ish bloke called Chris Harris in tow during a morally dubious week-long visit to supercar valley in northern Italy. We were both completely blown away by the Pagani, me especially, not merely because of the noise and performance of its enormous AMG V12 engine, but also by how well made it was, how premium it felt inside and out, despite the fact that neither of us had even heard of Horacio Pagani the month before we drove his first car.
The Veyron gets a mention because in 2005, in Sicily, it frayed the outer edges of my imagination in a way that not even the Mclaren F1 did when I first drove that car in 1994. It tore the rulebook on how fast fast cars could be into tiny little pieces then tossed the remains casually into the shredder. So despite it being way too heavy and very nearly as ostentatious as a megayacht, it gets a place.
Which means the best Mclaren I’ve driven is not the legendary F1 but, shock-horror, the 600LT. There are faster, more expensive, far more exclusive Mclarens, true, but for me none is quite so complete in its all-round ability as the 600LT. It’s the Mclaren I’d most want to own.
Unlike the Lamborghini Sian FKP-37, which is a ridiculous car that costs an incomprehensible amount of money and is therefore not a car you’d want to let out terribly often. But it’s also a proper big scary Lambo, loud and lairy, hybrid system and all, and I’m deeply glad they’re still making cars like this at Sant’agata. Because when they stop doing so, they might as well close the doors, pack everything away and go home.
So my final car presents maybe the most awkward question of all: does the humble Honda Civic Type R really and truly deserve a place in my list when cars as significant as the Audi R8, Subaru Impreza 22B, Mitsubishi Evo VI and Sierra Cosworth do not? The answer is yes, purely because the FK8 Type R is the best hot hatchback there has ever been as far as I’m concerned, and I couldn’t not include a hot hatch in my list. I’ve spent way too much time having way too much fun in them over the years, so to ignore the best of them all would seem entirely wrong.
It’s tough coming up with your Perfect 10.