HIGH FLYERS

An ultimate driving machine, the ultimate machine for a driver, and a luxurious take on a supercar are among the creations sampled by Darius Sanai.

PORSCHE 911 GTS

Anyone who hasn't driven a Porsche 911 recently might be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about this iconic car. The 911 is not as outlandish as a Lamborghini or a Ferrari; it's not as stylishly appointed as an Aston Martin, nor as comfortable as a Mercedes SL.

The 911 Turbo, for so long the benchmark, halo-product 911, may be one of the fastest cars ever made - the Turbo S breaks 60mph in less than three seconds, which is superbike fast - but it's not as raw or thrilling as any Ferrari.

So our Porsche sceptic might approach the 911 GTS with some, well, scepticism. This model doesn't have the Turbo's four wheel drive (or turbocharger), and it's cheaper, sitting above the 'standard' Carrera and Carrera S models in the range. What is the point of it?

You realise the point just a few seconds after sitting inside, firing up the engine behind you, and turning the wheel. The steering, even at low speeds, before you have done anything fun, has granular, textured feel to it that is immensely satisfying. There seems to be no slack when you turn it: the car reacts, and not only do the wheels turn instantly but the whole car follows, nugget-like, instantly.

Carry on down the road and you realise this car has the sharpness of response of any supercar, Ferrari included: indeed it is sharper than some supercars I have driven because it is lighter, and the steering feel, so crucial to enjoying the driving experience, is better. You don't need to do anything but steer the 911 GTS down the road at the same speed as everyone else to notice this.

This sounds simple, but the simplicity, this purity of driving experience, is missing or lacking in many of today's fast cars. Over-light steering, ride that's rock-hard without revealing anything, cornering that just seems to happen without you noticing: these are common traits in many highlyengineered cars. The 911 is just as engineered, or more so, than any of them, but seems to retain a simple joy that harks back more to the super-GTI cars of the 1980s, than many of its peers.

This is not to say that the GTS is in fact a GTI: very far from it. With 408 horsepower and a relatively light body, it burns from zero to sixty in 4.2 seconds. But importantly it wants to involve you getting there. Outside town, I put pedal to the metal on a twisty road. Instead of instantly going 100 mph, like its Turbo big brother, the engine breathed in and barked louder and louder, gaining more bite as the revs rose, and really snapping through its top end. As a car that rewards the proper driver, it has plenty of the effortless low-down torque that 911s have always had, but only really shows the sharpness of its teeth if you keep the revs rising above 6000.

Hit a corner fast, stab on the brakes and then power out, and the GTS will do that unique thing that the best 911s have always done, thrill you by moving its weight around like a ballet dancer while poised on the edge of its adhesion, before catapulting down the next straight and daring you to hold onto the gear until its peak. Inside, the GTS looks slick and purposeful, although it's not a work of art like an Aston or luxurious like a Mercedes. It's beautifully finished and extremely functional. "Mean", as a friend put it, as a compliment.

People, apparently, buy 911s to show off, but that wouldn't wash where I live and work, where every other car seems to be a head-turning super car and 911s are more common than Fords. Instead the 911 GTS is the very opposite: a car for the very serious connoisseur of cars, who wants the essence of a Porsche without going overboard for a racetrack special. In that respect, there's nothing better.

LUX Rating 18.5/20

BENTLEY MULSANNE

I was musing over the new Bentley Mulsanne with a friend, a Bentley aficionado who has just bought one to add to his small collection of Continentals, new and vintage. I had just spent a week or so in the Mulsanne, the new, top of the range, bigger-thanthou Bentley saloon, and, having used it as an everyday car rather than the intercontinental transport it was perhaps designed for, told my friend that it was a magnificent car, but perhaps a little impractical for the school run in South Kensington, London.

"How so?" he replied, genuinely puzzled. It was a little long to park in central London. "To park?" he answered. "Why would you need to park it? What was your driver doing?"

Therein, I realised, lies the conundrum of the Bentley Mulsanne. Bentleys, both traditionally and in current times, are cars designed to be driven. Even during the brand's doldrum years, the 1970s and 80s, when a Bentley was essentially a Rolls- Royce wearing sports clothes, they were the cars you bought if you wanted to cultivate a raffish, sporting air. More recently, Bentleys have been gentlemen's rockets, turbocharged versions of country house drawing rooms aimed at giving the driver maximum excitement with minimum effort.

But what of the Mulsanne? Anyone buying a car of this price level will plainly also have a fleet of other machinery. A Bentley person tells me that the net worth of the customers of the Mulsanne is a multiple of those who buy the Continental models, which are half the price but not by any means cheap. Their other car purchase this year is as likely to be a Riva boat or an Agusta helicopter as something with four wheels. But will they drive themselves?

Sitting in the driver's seat of the Mulsanne in Mayfair, pointing the steering majestically around the corner into Old Bond Street, the answer initially appeared to be affirmative. I was enveloped in a chamber of hand-stitched leather, deep wood veneer, the shiniest chrome, old-fashioned switches and dials hiding an ultra-modern car underneath.

Touch is very important when driving a car of this level. You can be caressing what appears to be the finest calfskin, the door handles could be coated in vicuna, the steering wheel could be made of the most ethically-farmed rare alligator, but if the indicator stalk has the plastic feel of a mass made Japanese car, then that's the feeling of quality you'll remember.

In the Bentley, everything felt hand-crafted, personally machined for you.

The engine, which produces roughly as much power and torque as the Space Shuttle, was pleasingly quiet but also had a background roar that hinted that city pootling duties were fine, but that it belonged on the open road, bellowing its heart out as you tore along the road to your Gloucestershire estate/villa on Cap Ferrat (delete as applicable), to the sounds of popping Cristal corks from the back. Squeeze the pedal to overtake a dawdling taxi, and instead of gliding majestically forward as you might expect, the Musanne surges with a howl.

Succumbing to temptation, I took it out onto the open road one morning. Around corners and roundabouts I expected a machine of its girth and comfort to be a wallower: you wouldn't imagine a car as long as a junior superyacht to be nimble. Yet it was terrific fun: you felt ever so slightly naughty throwing it around, as if you might break the cut glass decanter hiding behind the wooden picnic tables in the back (actually there are picnic tables but no decanters, which I thought a terrible oversight from Bentley). But this is a car tuned to be thrown around: while you couldn't call it nimble, it never felt ragged, and it was never anything less than fun.

So, a driver's car then? Or a car for your driver? Thinking about it all - the comfort, the power, the fun, the size - I realised it is a driver's car, as long as you have the lifestyle that Bentley assumes you have if you can afford to buy it. For a regular commute between those homes in Cap Ferrat and Gloucestershire, nothing could be better, and at the end of each journey you'll have somewhere to park it. The Bentley Mulsanne is indeed a driver's car - assuming you have a driver.

LUX Rating 18/20

ASTON MARTIN DBS VOLANTE

Eagle-eyed readers may recall that in the last issue of LUX I reviewed the 490 horsepower Aston Martin Virage Volante and waxed lyrical about its blend of luxury and power. Who needed more performance and power from the top of the range DBS Volante, I asked?

Shortly after the Virage disappeared back to Aston Martin's sleek HQ, I took delivery of a DBS Volante, in ice white, lacquered wheels, red upholstery. It looked regal, in a king-of-the-world sort of way, or perhaps a bling way, or perhaps just a contemporary cool way. I wasn't quite sure, but what it certainly wasn't is old-fashioned-British in its luxury cues, like you might expect an Aston to be.

I didn't expect to be given the opportunity to eat my words quite so soon, and was quite prepared to stick defiantly by them. The DBS has 510 horsepower, 20 more than the Virage, which sound significant but is only around 4 per cent more. Surely someone like me, not a professional driver, without access to a racetrack, wouldn't notice the difference?

Slide the glass key in the slot in the sculpted dashboard, press the Start button, and, from the howl, or bellow, which sounds like the noise a giant would make having sat on a skyscraper lightning rod, you know you're in a completely different car. Where the Virage was restrained, the DBS is outrageous.

I retraced the route I had taken in the Virage: out to some English country lanes, with the suspension switched to its sharpest setting. The DBS howls even as it bowls along at normal speeds, filling the tree-tunnels with noise. You may wonder whether a car based on the DB9, which is more of a cruiser than a sports car, could cut it as a proper sports/supercar on these roads. By proper, I mean a sports car that you can fling around and immerse yourself in, with no excuses. Would it be the kind of car you talk about and say, "Yes, it went very well for a beautiful, expensive, work of art" (as I suspected); or would it actually be a near-supercar, beauty and art be damned?

If you can hear the sound of pages being eaten right now, that is your writer. The DBS flicked itself into a racing frame of mind like an athlete taking a particularly good dose of illegal drugs. It was balanced and poised around the sharpest corners and the V12 devoured long straights with neckscrunching speed to match the ear-massaging roar. You are left with little doubt that you are in a proper, road-burning, race-tracking, pedigree sports car.

The DBS still lacks that last hint of agility and focus compared to, say, the raciest Porsches or Ferraris. But it has something else: art and grace. And it's a convertible - that seemed almost irrelevant while I was immersing myself in it. It's a faster, more focused car than the Virage and a luxurious alternative to a supercar.

LUX Rating 18/20