Confession time: I’m still gently smitten by the very first, 2007 R8. Built to standards so high it made other supercars of the time appear victims of such dubious construction techniques as Birmingham nailing, it looked, and felt, engagingly compact, was elegant enough -with flair aplenty in such delicious touches as the carbon fibre ‘blade’ …

Heard an interesting take on the electric car driving experience the other day from one professor Gordon Murray; he of the extraordinary McLaren F1 (which I never got to drive because I was working for Top Gear magazine at the time and one Jeremy Clarkson wrote a derogatory column about everything else you could buy …