A road tester remembers

During the Nineties John Barker was the road test editor at Performance Car magazine, and he tested all of these cars back when they were new. Power figures today make the Lotus Carlton seem rather tame, but I absolutely loved it – it was such an amazing car for Vauxhall, and Lotus, to build. Prestability control, its extremely long throttle meant you really had to ask for the power.

Straight out of the box the Maserati 3200GT was a pretty sorted and exciting car – the only concern was the somewhat spiky nature of the performance delivery. It was good to see Maserati coming back strong after fiddling around with the old model for so long.

The power boost over the original DB7 was welcome, but with the Aston Martin DB7 Vantage what you essentially had was a re-bodied XJS. However much you admired the look, the package was quite restrictive and it never quite had the build quality you wanted – however it was a fantastic car, and just what Aston Martin needed at the time.

Corvette, the perennial underachiever; it always did the numbers, and had some interesting tech, but it just never seemed to work in Europe. The Corvette ZR-1’S interior and build quality didn’t quite meet our standards, plus they’re lefthand-drive-only and for me, just not compelling enough.

The TVR Cerbera was unique, really out there. The only bits it bought in were the differential and the gearbox – amazing for such a small company. I remember enjoying it; at the time it was phenomenally fast. There were reliability issues, but people knew they weren’t buying a Porsche.

Today a well-sorted Speed Six would be a very nice thing, and the Maserati has an appeal. The Corvette and Aston don’t really do it for me, but I’m very attracted to the Lotus Carlton. I drove one last month and it’s still a thrilling, well-made car.