Supercar Londinium!
Discussion
I know it comes in for a whole load of stick, is irrefutably overpopulated and suffers an entire legion of folk pricklier than a stegosaurusly proportioned hedgehog but our great capital has at least one, hugely redeeming feature...
Namely, a supercar landscape that eclipses even Alderley Edge in Cheshireland.
Verily, it is only when visiting the metropolis that I enjoy the delightful slide into an outspoken mode of wholly gregarious, automotive appreciation.
When you park up, in some obscenely expensive car storage facility in W1 or somewhere close by and the first vehicle you nearly crash because of, is a shocking violet Diablo VT Roadster, you know the business of the day can go hang and it's time for some heavy duty autolust.
Parked next to the near pink wedge was a new SLK55 AMG, quite inconspicuous amongst this riot of Axis-powered, metallic excess but as it was leaving, a great acoustic dividend was reaped by standing to attention and politely clapping as something iresistably of [i]das Messerschmidt[/i] roared the few yards into the inevitable congestion of capital damnation.
Not to worry, I hadn't left the car park but already had noticed another Diablo, this time asleep beneath it's manufacturer motiffed blanket and next to that, a 360 rag top.
As I walked out into the glorious sunlight bathing Portman Square, the delights only intensified.
One of the latest [i]proper[/i] Bentleys elegantly grumbled past, an Arnage with the new twin lights arrangement and a better reminder of the glories of The Hundred Years War I couldn't in that moment have imagined: boy, do I need one of these suckers again!
Perhaps the greatest moment of fawning, slightly moist adulation, arrived only moments later: the German Rolls Royce Phantom is something simply prevented from legal roam to the north of Watford and such a shame for this monument to leviathan progress, like the kipper of the glen, surely something which Parliament by statute should decree as permanent pounder of each and every British motorway, for the righteous aspiritions of the land's fast hooning aspirants?
And this was how the day progressed: quite possibly, it's zenith signified by the sight of Bristol's venerable showroom, that mighty blue Fighter resplendant within, the very symbol of defiant, imperious splendour: stupid, illogical but crushingly magnificent. Stirling Moss has one...I ask you...
More nose-lampost interfaces followed and just as I was pondering how such joys could be topped, the contender for the day's most profound autocoital moment growled religiously forth.
I was prostrate before The Holy One, something with more style than a dumb waiter full of Audrey Hepburn and greater breeding that man has surely ever known, a celestial rapture of Modenese glory that I simply froze, a distinct tickle of 98 octane tear rolling to blur the manifestation of perfection before me.
A black 612 Scaglietti...[b]Oh - my - GOD!!![/b]
And so it was that the miserable lumber north followed, all too soon after, these memories of motoring Avalon crystal in my conscience.
The sun gave way to grey, the warm balm of late summer surrendering to the merciless march of early autumn and as Birmingham came and went, even the grace of the equine in field gave way to the depressing stench of dankened ferret.
...and the supercars were gone.
Namely, a supercar landscape that eclipses even Alderley Edge in Cheshireland.
Verily, it is only when visiting the metropolis that I enjoy the delightful slide into an outspoken mode of wholly gregarious, automotive appreciation.
When you park up, in some obscenely expensive car storage facility in W1 or somewhere close by and the first vehicle you nearly crash because of, is a shocking violet Diablo VT Roadster, you know the business of the day can go hang and it's time for some heavy duty autolust.
Parked next to the near pink wedge was a new SLK55 AMG, quite inconspicuous amongst this riot of Axis-powered, metallic excess but as it was leaving, a great acoustic dividend was reaped by standing to attention and politely clapping as something iresistably of [i]das Messerschmidt[/i] roared the few yards into the inevitable congestion of capital damnation.
Not to worry, I hadn't left the car park but already had noticed another Diablo, this time asleep beneath it's manufacturer motiffed blanket and next to that, a 360 rag top.
As I walked out into the glorious sunlight bathing Portman Square, the delights only intensified.
One of the latest [i]proper[/i] Bentleys elegantly grumbled past, an Arnage with the new twin lights arrangement and a better reminder of the glories of The Hundred Years War I couldn't in that moment have imagined: boy, do I need one of these suckers again!
Perhaps the greatest moment of fawning, slightly moist adulation, arrived only moments later: the German Rolls Royce Phantom is something simply prevented from legal roam to the north of Watford and such a shame for this monument to leviathan progress, like the kipper of the glen, surely something which Parliament by statute should decree as permanent pounder of each and every British motorway, for the righteous aspiritions of the land's fast hooning aspirants?
And this was how the day progressed: quite possibly, it's zenith signified by the sight of Bristol's venerable showroom, that mighty blue Fighter resplendant within, the very symbol of defiant, imperious splendour: stupid, illogical but crushingly magnificent. Stirling Moss has one...I ask you...
More nose-lampost interfaces followed and just as I was pondering how such joys could be topped, the contender for the day's most profound autocoital moment growled religiously forth.
I was prostrate before The Holy One, something with more style than a dumb waiter full of Audrey Hepburn and greater breeding that man has surely ever known, a celestial rapture of Modenese glory that I simply froze, a distinct tickle of 98 octane tear rolling to blur the manifestation of perfection before me.
A black 612 Scaglietti...[b]Oh - my - GOD!!![/b]
And so it was that the miserable lumber north followed, all too soon after, these memories of motoring Avalon crystal in my conscience.
The sun gave way to grey, the warm balm of late summer surrendering to the merciless march of early autumn and as Birmingham came and went, even the grace of the equine in field gave way to the depressing stench of dankened ferret.
...and the supercars were gone.
quality day DeR. 
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