We associate many things with the word Porsche – chief among them engines where luggage compartments should be, vast rear wings and durability – but one of them is not informality. The brand-organisation of Stuttgart’s finest is one of order and regimentation: all dealerships are one of four designs, everything is done according to a manual. Done the right way.

You have this in mind when a very kind man you’ve met just ten minutes earlier drops you off at the Bahrain International Circuit, so you can spend some time around the WEC Porsche LMP1 team as they begin an intensive five-day test of the 2015 919 Hybrid. I expect security guards, fussing, secrecy and formality. As we breeze past the first security guard who merely waves at the Saudi registered 997 GT3 RS, I assume there must be some inner-gated area to keep the riff-raff away, but there isn’t. We mooch straight into a paddock area that looks something like Silverstone by Four Seasons and park where the density of Porsche street cars seems unusually high.

I jump out, grin at the disappearing burble of Akrapovic GT3 RS exhaust and text the Porsche PR person. She wanders out and offers me a drink. This is unnerving. I have been here more than three minutes and no-one has taken me aside to tell me the rules, laws and things I will most probably get wrong. Instead we grab a cool Cola and Heike, the cigarillo smoking PR lady natters about the test and then, after several minutes, mentions that I will not be allowed to photograph the new 919 in any state of nakedness. I wait for this order to usher forth the usual flurry of other rules and regulation, but instead Team boss Andreas Seidl wanders over looking far too young and stress-free to be running a major motorsport team.

The Porsche LMP1 unit is the calmest, most relaxed, most accessible race team I’ve encountered.

‘We started from nothing, and this was a big challenge but it also meant we could make the team just as we wanted it – the people, the processes.’

Seidl himself embodies this new way of thinking for Porsche coming from a long period with BMW in both F1 and DTM. The company has traditionally run its motorsports projects from the same buildings, using the same people at its Weissach R&D facility, but the enormity of the LMP1 challenge forced a change in direction.

‘We still recruited heavily from within Weissach, around forty percent of the team came from there, but we needed new people, people who were hungry to go and win. You need that motivation if you’re going to keep people motivated for a full five-day test like this.’

He then strolls with me around a garage with no sneaky cordoned-off areas or covering screens.

‘This is exactly the same lay-out as a race weekend. We must have identical systems here as for a race weekend because that’s the only way we can test ourselves under pressure.’

There’s the usual banks of data screens and Penfold-noses squished up against them. The 2015 919 is circulating as we speak, its every minute movement being scrutinised by 25 data acquisition engineers who then feed all information to two primary data engineers, who then feed a summary of those data to the race engineer, who is the only person allowed to speak to the driver. Siedl defined the process and his body language suggests he both likes it and is proud of it.

‘Last year we were very conservative with our strategies,’ he says. ‘In fact we didn’t have many options because we had to focus on the basics – in many ways this was a good thing because we didn’t become distracted, but for this year we can push harder with the race strategies.’

Marc Lieb completes a scheduled pit-stop as we wander out of the garage and Siedl has to peel away to do some grown up work, then along comes Alex Hitzinger, the Technical Director for the 919 Hybrid project. As a man who began his career at Toyota’s World Rally Team in the late ’90s, resisting the temptation to talk Sainz and rear-glass strength is difficult. When he says the 20,000rpm Cosworth V8 was ‘his project’ I resist the urge to hug him.

Hitzinger is the archetypal motorsport engineer in that he is the master of understatement. I ask him how similar the car is to last year’s 919 ‘It’s really an evolution for 2015,’ he says with the vague suggestion that he wishes it was more radical. So how many components have been carried over? He shrugs a little as he ponders: ‘Maybe some components on the rear brakes.’

I stammer something along the lines of ‘You mean it’s an evolution but completely new?’ and he coolly nods. ‘The concept is an evolution, but we have developed every aspect of the car. Last year we were a little over weight, this year we will be on the minimum.’

And when he says everything is new, he means it. The carbon tub, the suspension components, the transmission, the motor – in fact for this test the main carry-over parts are the 2014 spec tyres. To me it seems curious that the car is still called a 919 and looks so similar, the obvious counter-argument being that a 917 from 1970 didn’t share much with its 1972 offspring.

Lieb is out of the car now, replaced by Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg who, minutes earlier, was very keen to know just how firm the ride on his new company 991 GT3 might be on the road: ‘I don’t want it too stiff, I like it to be comfortable. Normally I drive SUVs! But I watched the video and I’m really excited about getting the GT3!’ He then saunters off to speak to his engineer. Nico Hulkenberg watches internet car videos. I like that.

I kill the minutes waiting for Marc to un-bash his body trying to absorb the sheer scale of these race teams. Compared to a Formula One operation it’s still a modest affair, but the amount of kit they lug around the world is still eye-popping. Again, the entire logistics operation was defined from new, and that resulted in the largest containers being 180kg lighter than those of any other race team. Think of them as RS containers.

And that’s the way with the Porsche LMP1 racing team.

Marc Lieb is, for my money, the most interesting story in what is now a nine-driver Le Mans Porsche 919 team. He began in the lower formulae and then graduated to Porsche’s Carrera Cup championship back in the 996 days. Since then he has been a stalwart Porsche man – moving up through the GT programme and becoming one of the Manthey Nürburgring legends on the way. It’s unusual for someone to make the switch from GT to prototypes at such a mature stage in their career, but clearly Porsche saw a talent that needed exploiting.

He wanders in looking like man who has spent too much time in a cramped cockpit, but smiling like he always does. He had a good winter break. What’s the main job for the next five days?

‘We are here making set-up. But we’ve just had a winter break and, with the LMP1 car, it takes a little longer to get up to speed. It’s always good to have the other drivers around, I’ve only had one year in LMP so I’m still learning, so we can overlay out laps with each other. Of course were here to give our input to the team and make the car better and faster and stronger, but we also concentrate on ourselves.’

The car is an evolution (but completely new). Does it immediately feel different?

‘It feels like an evolution. But you do feel small areas where you think that’s a big improvement and some areas it doesn’t feel like anything but you can see it on the data. It’s a similar car to last year but improved. For example, we really wanted to have better braking – I went out and did three laps and immediately felt it was better than last year.’

Do you struggle to concentrate when you have so much seat time in one day?

‘Think I clocked 750km yesterday! If you sit 7 hours in a car then its just a long day, the last outing was not nice. But, it’s okay. It’s physically quite hard to drive – the g forces are much more than a normal racing car. But if you’re in the car all day it’s pretty tough. Tougher than Le Mans.’

On the physical challenge, talk us through the Brazil season finale last year. That looked like a 6-hour sprint race!

‘We were absolutely flat-out and with the new tarmac there we could push like qualifying every lap. Everyone was on a similar pace. The guy that made that Tarmac should surface every other track in the world! Just phenomenal. Everyone said it was brilliant and it was so much fun driving.’

Is the pressure to drive flat out in LMP1 a problem given that you have to share track with slower cars. Isn’t it the job of the fast cars not to hit the slower cars?

‘It’s very difficult. One problem is the speed difference. We are a lot quicker in acceleration, we are a little slower in the turns than the old P1 cars, but that’s why we’re so quick in the straights. It’s really difficult to judge sometimes if you come across a GT car with 60kmh more speed and the guy sees you in the mirror 200m behind you. Next half a second you’re there and he doesn’t know if you’re going right or left. Brazil was a tough race, the track is narrow, you had to take risks – you had to balance the risk the whole time. In my second stint, I felt so bad because I made so many mistakes, but I wasn’t gaining or losing time to Anthony Davisdon. After the race I said to him “I made so many mistakes” and he said “Me too”. But when you hear the guy on the radio say ‘you just lost 2 sec in traffic’ you go for the risk.’

How often do you get that adrenal rush after a risky move – like ‘Phew, I got away with that one’?

‘In Sao Paulo, it was quite often,’ said with a sizeable grin.

Another F1 driver in the team this year. Surely you want to be faster than him!

‘Ah, it’s not just with Mark and Nico, we have bloody good and quick drivers in the team. Timo and Romain have so many years experience – Neel has lots of experience in prototypes and Brendon is very quick young Kiwi. I mean you just try not to be the slowest [in the dark at Le Mans last year, Marc was the quickest] but sometimes it is what it is. It always changes, over one lap, traffic, longer stints and it’s really interesting to see how it all works. Where else can share the data on the same car with five other really talented drivers? It’s really good. You can improve yourself, it’s brilliant. As a group we have a very good atmosphere, and that means a lot.’

What was it like getting back into a GT car for Daytona a few weeks back?

‘To be honest in Daytona for testing, the first two or three laps I felt like I was driving a boat! It was terrible! I was locking the brakes, I turned in and it felt like the car had broken suspension! But then it was all good.’

What’s the new GT3 RS street car like?

‘Which GT3 RS?,’ he says laughing loudly.

The one they made a model toy of, and the pictures of that model were leaked on the internet!

‘I think that the model toy looks really nice!’

That’s a good answer.

The man is Porsche to the core. No way he’s causing trouble and speaking out-of-turn. And it really is Porsche that matters to Marc. I ask him if the cars are free to race each other and he says they are, but there have to be some rules and that ultimately all that matters is Porsche winning. Which one doesn’t come into it. I suspect among his teammates, he feels this the strongest.

A geeky differential question now – with a 4WD machine than can run 2WD and has so much torque, the diffs must need lots of set-up?

‘Pre-season, quite a lot. Once into the season not much. It’s a fixed mechanical diff at the rear. But we have so much influence from the front diff too – you can have it spin in inside front wheel and destroy the tyre, or it can give understeer, it’s not so easy – we’re still learning that and there’s a lot more potential in the car. You have to understand if the problem coming from the rear of the car or the front and its really not always easy to know. Good data guys can see this though – you won’t believe how much data these cars produce. Sometimes it’s too much data, but they do a great job to make it work.’

He probably needs to sleep now, but he’s still smiling and chatting. He’s always been the most sensible Porsche factory driver in terms of company car choice, usually a diesel Cayenne for family duties, but this time he’s allowed himself an indulgence:

‘It’s such a cool car. I wasn’t sure what I was going to get, maybe a Macan, then they said I could have one and I thought I could do it for one year.’

And then just before he leaves, he drops the most perfect little drop of inside knowledge. I ask him if the steering wheel is the same as last year’s:

‘Mostly, just a few changes. We have some input from Mark, they’ve been using these complicate wheels in F1 for some time. It’s a lot better. We practice out of the car – and you’re given a 25-page driver manual which shows you how to go from 2WD to 4WD, it’s all in the book. You have to learn it, and it has to be quick.’

The 919 Hybrid comes with a drivers’ manual. How cool is that?

"**** you Travis Oval-piston-face." The words repeated and scorched the inside of my head and the anger grew and swelled and assumed a magnitude which left me no longer in control of it.

"I JUST WANT TO GET TO MY HOTEL!"

"MY COCKING HOTEL."

The man walking on the sidewalk next to me did that thing where you walk and stoop and wince simultaneously in an attempt to make yourself at worst physically smaller, and at best invisible. I remember thinking "How can he know I'm so angry if I'm shouting inside my head, he must have special powers?" And of course then I realized I had unknowingly transferred from the sensible to the antic state. I was shouting out loud. I was ranting. I was livid.

And I was sitting a Porsche 918, in the armpit of downtown Dubai staring at the hotel I so desperately needed to enter and use for sleeping purposes. It was literally fifty yards away with nothing but ten lanes of seething traffic between the carbon nose of my borrowed Porsche and it. And yet I'd spent that past hour and a half attempting to reach that 50-story oasis of sprung mattresses, and condensed milk sachets and failed each time. How hard could it be? Who was the sadistic ***** who made it impossible to cross the Sheikh Zayed Road? It was groundhog day with 887 hp and lashings of hybridity.

And Travis? I'd tweeted a smug photo of the Porsche earlier and he replied questioning whether the many 918 videos I'd produced left me with more seat time than most owners. Cheeky *****.

Let me tell you this Travis: I love the 918 - I love it with an elemental devotion I reserve for my children, my dog, and my ********* - but right at that moment I wanted to burn the ****ing thing. One massive napalm strike to vaporize the road, the man on the sidewalk and everything animal mineral or vegetable within shouting distance. Maybe even me. I hated it for no reason other than my sense of withering desperation and self-loathing. I wanted Travis to see this manifestation of 918 seat-time. He needed to see the other side of the deal.

And where the **** was Spinelli anyway?

Yep – that Spinelli. Founding Jalopnik editor, languid New York raconteur, fellow video producer for the past few days, and a man still shimmering in the 150 SPF sunblock he'd slopped about his blue epidermis hours earlier. Blue? Spinelli turns white on exposure to bright sunshine. My last sight of him was his ghostly visage peering through the windshield of a 458 Speciale as I gave the 918 full-beans down some side-road and opened a 200 yard gap. That's what a man on the edge of reason in a hypercar can do to a pallid New Yorker in his little soft-****, non-electric Ferrari. A BAAAAAM! of motorsport V8 meshed against a WHEEEEEEESH! of electricity and, well, you're gone. Solid gone.

The Porsche jumped a time-zone, Spinelli didn't.

I couldn't be ****ed to wait for him. I was broken. I founded the Spinelli fan club; I love the man, but events had led me to a dark place. I hated everyone at that moment including him and the incessant beam of his LED front lights in my mirror, so I left him after an hour of uselessly circulating Dubai in search of the mattress and the milk sachets. And the citrus shower gel. Oh, shower gel.

I left him because minutes earlier, I'd explained that I was directing us using a combination of sky-scraper orientation and poor local knowledge – and even then, even after the tragedy of this admission, Spinelli didn't offer to use his sat-nav. He had sat-nav people! That's insane! He could have saved us from madness, but instead he chose to follow me as I peered up at the 828 meter high Burj Khalifa in search of a vague position, and a hope that somewhere it might be possible to switch from the south-bound 11 highway onto the north-bound carriageway without driving to Abu Dhabi and back again. But that was academic now, he was gone and I didn't care for his well-being. Nothing saps empathy like raw, spit-flecking anger. Spinelli and his Speciale could get ****ed for all I cared.

I found the 11 North and then my phone rang. I looked at the handset just long enough to remain in the right lane and miss the off-ramp so clearly marked '11 North' and so began another journey perpendicular to the direction I needed to travel in.

Did you know that flicking the bird in Dubai is not a good thing? You can be arrested for offering the middle finger of truth and justice to your fellow road users – no evidence is needed, just the word of a local. Some berk in a Patrol nearly stoves the rear of the Porsche in a, well, I'm tempted to say kamikaze lane-change, but no Japanese pilot in WW2 ever displayed quite the same level of aggression and disdain for personal longevity as an indigenous Dubai driver. My fingers fold inwards in preparation for the swift unfurling of that sole middle digit, and then I remember the chat. Self-vasectomized, I allow myself a decent bellow of the word '*****', before pulling a U-turn back to the 11.

There are many problems associated with using the second tallest building in the world as a guidance tool, chief among them the impossibility of judging distance. Twice I'd thought I was underneath the thing, only to discover it was about ten blocks away. Like a poorly calibrated F1 wind-tunnel, my radar was broken and I'd just been scared of admitting it to myself. The 918 was a development car whose normally excellent navigation wasn't UAE friendly and my iPhone was dead. Behind me, mirroring my every wrong move was an intelligent man with a fully-functioning satellite navigation system at his disposal. But I'd dropped him now.

Hypercars are intimidating: noise, speed, lack of visibility all burr together in one ball of nervousness, but there comes a point of desperation where the sheer awesomeness of them can be weaponized in traffic. I'm usually passive and looking not to crash in something this tasty, but I soon discover that all drivers in the battle of the aggressive lane-change, even psychotic cab drivers of Pakistani origin, are keen to avoid collecting a million dollar machine. I think this as I ping south of the hotel on the 11 for the fifth time, sand scrunching under my eyelids and Spinelli a distant memory. Maybe he just headed to Riyadh?

I try to loop back again and fail. I stop at a gas station and sit in the car shouting at myself and tiredness and the sand embedded in my eyeballs by a 1000hp dune buggy four hour earlier and the world; and not the 918. The 918 is actually exemplary in these conditions. Travis, I'm so glad I called-off the napalm strike.

The epiphany comes on the next pass. I locate the 11 heading north. I recognize the building. I swoop past it and make the tricky little turning and the sense of relief, the sense of knowing the ordeal is about to end nearly has me in tears. How the hell does that work? Why do these moments of intense frustration and tiredness and general desolation trigger such an infantile reaction in me? I don't cry at funerals. I must be socially backwards.

Straight to floor 35: I wonder at the citrus shower-gel, plump the bed, check emails including a roaster from editor Hardigree. I then send a placatory message to Spinelli. My feelings towards him have mellowed as my frenzied state thawed. He makes his way back at almost the same time. I can't ask him if he used the navigation – either answer would trigger a regression to the homicidal me. The next day I'd discover the Ferrari sat-nav couldn't find the hotel anyway.

We arrange to go for some food – good curry in the hotel restaurant. Spinelli passes on the slices of water mellon for desert; I don't. I spend the majority of the night sitting on a porcelain bowl making wrong noises and wondering how I can poison Okulski, Hardigree and Spinelli in one single event.

There are miles in a 918 Travis, and there are miles.

An atmospheric V8 as everyone else opts for turbos: is this M4 rival the purists' dream? Time to find out.

They came and took it on a transporter – those evil people from Audi UK decided that six months was my lot in the best fast estate car on the planet. Watching it roll onto the truck was unpleasant; like leaving a loved one at an airport. I bonded with that car in a way I hadn’t for many years.

It had only been back with me a few weeks after its unscheduled trip to have the brake booster looked at. Extensive investigations revealed nothing broken or malfunctioning, so they left it alone. That over-sensitivity and sudden shortening of the pedal remained until the last day, and I just drove around it. I suppose it means a part-return to the bad-old-days of over sensitive Audi brake pedals, which is a shame given that in all other respects the RS6 not only exorcises all of the generic fast-Audi faults, but adds in a dynamic repertoire so good it’s a class leading machine by some margin. I’d like to try a car on the standard steel rotors to compare it.

In 9500 miles of hard driving, the RS6 averaged nearly 23mpg. The tank takes a trickle over 75 litres so 350 miles is a realistic range, but the car is so comfortable and in possession of such long legs that fuel-stops do seem more frequent that you’d ideally want them. For something this size and offering this type of performance to average that is quite something.

The beauty of having more performance than most people could understand is that the driver rarely has to use a car’s full potential – this is the case in the RS6. But calibrating an engine and gearbox to snick together both smoothly and responsively in everyday driving isn’t easy and that’s where Audi’s engineers have done a stunning job. This is a powertrain that allows you to saunter along with a brush of throttle and a moment later can send you up the road with enough thrust to worry a 911 Turbo.

The cabin is vast and expensively finished. The front and rear seats were perfect for all who travelled in it. The dog liked the boot and the luggage straps were genius for separating bags from hound. The optional B&O hi-fi kept me amused for hours and the iPod interface for phone and tunes worked faultlessly. That isn’t always the case.

And I loved the specification. Ordering a car from new is a lottery, but Audi let me have my way, despite some sounds of consternation coming from Milton Keynes when I asked for non-metallic Nardo grey, no privacy glass and no RS6 badging. I always want my fast estate cars to be sleepers – they are so much more appealing that way. I suspect it will end up for sale at an Audi dealer soon and a few people have enquired about it. I’ve been a bit cagey to be honest – it would be like running into an old favourite girlfriend.

This really is the ideal specification: I’ve listed it below. Anyone ordering a similar car should follow chassis and exhaust route – for £1000 the pops and bangs are worth it.

Nardo Grey Audi RS6: £75,500
Bang & Olufsen Advanced Sound System: £6300
Dynamic Package Plus: £10,725
Heated front and rear seats: £100
Inlays – aluminium and black: £1250
Manual sunblind for rear windows and rear doors: £210
Mobile phone preparation: £175
Sports exhaust: £1000
Twin spoke 21in alloys: £1900
Total as tested: £97,160

I managed to puncture a tyre on a pot hole before Christmas, and took a ***** from the inside of the rim too. Both needed replacing. Otherwise there was no mechanical or bodywork story to tell. The thing felt impregnable and likely to give years of service – I just wish they were with me.

I’d best go and find another car now.

The full history of AMG, when it is one day written, will cite the arrival in 2007 of the C63 as the turning point in the company’s fortunes. Not because it triggered the most significant upturn in revenues – that surely came with the hugely popular 2001 SL55 – but because this was the first AMG which many people felt beat the equivalent BMW M product at its own game. Over 40,000 people bought C63s, and I strongly suspect most of them didn’t regret the decision.

It was a magnificent car – a kind of German muscle saloon that confirmed the essential appeal of that most basic of recipes: wedging a massive motor into a small bodyshell. It shimmied and growled and went like stink, and it looked fantastic.

Mercedes unveiled the new C63 at last year’s Paris motorshow. The specification was difficult to discern in practical terms because we were told the car shared its 4-litre twin-turbocharged motor with the new GT coupe – but given that we hadn’t driven the coupe, the reference was rendered somewhat meaningless. So we were left to judge the car by aesthetics alone – and I wasn’t entirely sure. The sculpted flanks of the new C-Class don’t lend themselves to supplementary muscle and I thought compared to the old car it looked a little underwhelming, accepting that the estate version was a very competent styling exercise.

The numbers were undeniably impressive though – the top S model would have 510hp, an 85hp advantage over the new BMW M3.

Wasn’t until I drove the GT in late November that I understood why AMG boss Tobias Moers had an especially mischievous glint in his eye that night in Paris. I’d asked him if he was confident that they’d done enough to allay fears that that losing the gorgeous atmospheric V8 wasn’t a big problem. “Not at all – juts wait until you drive it”, he’d replied, sounding disturbingly Schwarzenegger.

The new bi-turbo 4-litre V8 wasn’t only a big advance in terms of motive force, but it also carried a rumbustious soundtrack with ample growl and exhaust popping for even the most ostentatious potential C63 customer. All this at a time when the world (except me) was kicking the new M3 for being too mute.

It still isn’t quite the optical kidney-punch I’d hoped for. That’s what I think when I see ten of the new C63 models parked together at Faro airport. If you’d nipped a last-of-the-line 507 wagon on the end of that display, people would have spent more time looking at it than at the new model.

Yes, the wider front arches bring some added stance and the extra rear track fills those spaces more effectively, but compared to the new M3 this is a much more subtle looking machine. Some people will enjoy such invisibility. Ten miles later I’m wondering how something so unassuming looking can spool-up in third gear on a dry surface. The C63 S is monstrously potent from low revs – there’s torque limiting in the first three gears, but even then on a dry surface the car wants to break traction under full power.

And it keeps revving too. The torque management gives the sensation of thrust building through the rev-range, and the noise is so damn good you want to take it out between 6-7000rpm. Those last normally aspirated 507 edition cars were sensational, but this is a better engine. And it makes the C63 a much faster car.

On the road the softest damper setting of the three is the way forward. It’s not plush and I’d want to drive it on a UK B-road to pass final judgment, but on broken Portugese roads it’s not too firm. The heavily-revised electric steering does what the very best electric systems of the moment all do – just enough to not spoil the efforts of the exceptional components around it, but little more. The old car steered better.

That’s about all it did better. Limited cruising range was its biggest problem and the spec sheet of this new model doesn’t bring much reassurance of any improvement with a weeny 66-litre tank, but Mercedes is claiming 30-plus mpg on the combined cycle with the new turbocharged motor and my ***-packet calculations based on some road driving supports the claim. For many people that will make it much more appealing.

The decision to use the trusted AMG MCT 7-speed automatic transmission with wet clutch looks confusing on-paper. The 4-litre bi-turbo V8 runs with a Getrag dual-clutch ‘box in the GT sports car (it has a different internal code because of this: M178 for the GT, M177 for the C63, despite sharing identical internals) and even accepting the fact the transaxle configuration would have caused a headache, the MCT was feeling pretty old compared to the competition.

Well they’ve worked hard on it, and the result is a much sharper, more intuitive box of tricks. It also has a higher torque rating than the Getrag DCT, so you get 516 lb ft here in the S model, where the swoopy coupe makes do with ‘just’ 479lb ft. You can choose different shift-speeds, or just use the paddles. There’s a slight delay to shifts even in the fastest mode, but I just didn’t have a problem with it. Combined with that mighty engine it makes for a stunning road-car powertrain. In race mode, with the exhaust set to ‘noisy’ it is positively flatulent.

I’m sure the standard spec of these cars will alter according to market, but the general gist is this. The S has 510hp/516lb ft, the base car 476hp/ 479lb ft – there are small differences in claimed performance. Both can have their top speeds raised above the standard 155mph, although curiously the estate is pegged back to 175mph instead of the saloons 181mph. The S gets the trick electronically controlled differential that can open and lock as needed, the standard car makes do with a normal mechanical locking diff. The open differential is no longer available.

The S also comes with dynamic engine mounts as standard, a specific ‘race mode’ for the Dynamic Select system (dampers, gearshift, engine) and a load of cosmetic stuff to help justify a £13.5k premium over the standard car. Ceramics are only optional on the S and cost £4,285.

For extra noise you can opt for the ‘three-flap’ sports exhaust that adds a link pipe between the parallel downpipes to create V8 music. AMG has worked very hard to make this car musical and the optional sports exhaust is especially naughty-sounding.

At the track the C63 S can melt a set of rears in a matter of minutes. On the road the 265 section rear Michelin Supersports are up to the task, but get them hot on the circuit and they take serious pain. Is there another car on sale with over 500lb ft that uses such narrow rears? I can’t think of one. The new M3 peaks at 406lb ft and has a 275 rear.

It’s not a track car, but it’s still a hoot to drive there and very competent if you can resist switching all the systems off and pulling smokies. There’s the usual safety-window of understeer (which can be eradicated by about 3mm of throttle application) and the ceramics are very, very powerful. But even on a big, open circuit like Portimao, it’s the C63s engine that dominates the experience. It offers vast performance and the way it keeps pulling above 120mph makes me suspect that it’ll win the Autobahn outside lane competition against the other small German hotshots.

The front bucket seats are excellent, but they won’t sink quite low enough for me. The wheel is pleasingly round in light of some recent AMG efforts and the cabin is a chrome-fetishist’s dream environment. Some will find it a little too much, but you can’t ignore the quality or the easy, intuitive workings of the infotainment system. I still find the Mercedes solution much more fathomable than those found in an Audi or BMW. The optional Burmester hi-fi is rollickingly potent.

The front arches are 14mm wider arches each side than on a base C-Class and the front is 54mm longer, but it somehow doesn’t quite have the pugnacious small muscle saloon car looks of its predecessor. Even so it remains a very attractive, quietly powerful machine. The estate is prettier than the saloon to my eyes, and anyone in the market for a compact saloon capable of going very, very fast needs to try one the moment they land in the UK.

And for those who think the M3’s contrived sound signature is too much to bear, this might well be the car for you. I wouldn’t want to call that comparison until I’d done a comprehensive back-to-back test. Either way, they’re both much more talented than any of the immediate competition.

The all-new C63 loses the classic 6.2 litre atmospheric V8 for a smaller-capacity turbo motor. Will that stop it being quite the brilliant muscle car its predecessor was?

Watching eight-year-old boys play the game you lot insist on calling soccer is a peculiar pastime. As a spectator you are vaguely aware that the humanlings are governed by some sort of laws and rules, but it is hard to decipher what those are. Furthermore, despite each child being regularly reminded that they have a role to play, a specific space to occupy on the field, they cannot resist simply running after the inflated pigs bladder. They simply swarm after the ball as it gets hacked around the field.

Recently I watched a game and underwent an epiphany: it dawned on me that children's football (it isn't bloody soccer, it never was) exists as a metaphor for the modern motor industry. Want to know why?56

Isn't it obvious? Because Jaguar is making an SUV, that's why. Eight-year-olds, soccer – no, NO, football – SUVs, Jaguars. That's what we're talking about here.

Specifically: why is it brands who were once specialists and synonymous with a particular type of car (the young football players) now simply follow the latest market trends (the ball) with scant regard for their reputations or historical brand values? Ergo: why is Jaguar, a company owned by the same people who own Land Rover, the pre-eminent exponents of the Luxury Sports Utility Vehicle, now making a luxury sports utility vehicle? I've been pondering this for a while and it makes no sense whatsoever, and yet it also makes all the sense in the world. If I sound confused today, it's because I am.

Once upon a time, there were specialists. If you wanted a sports car, you went to a Corvette shop, or a Porsche shop. If you wanted a fast sedan you went to BMW and if you wanted to let the neighbors think you actually had a few more pennies than they initially assumed you had, you bought a Mercedes E-Class. So. ****ing. Simple.

The age of the specialist was innocent, exciting and, for many of those companies, financially ruinous. So, many of them were bought by larger car companies or they ceased to exist.

And then came the complications, and the age we now live in, the age of the generalist. In this new world the pressures of global success have manifested themselves as a quest for volume and this means everyone has to do everything. Porsche has to make SUVs and BMW has to make front-wheel-drive hatchbacks and Ferrari has to sell T-shirts. And, in the most part, I don't like the world of the generalist.

This can partly be attributed to a personal aversion to generalists – because the ultimate expression of such a creature is a politician, and I don't much like them. It's a terribly over-used idiom, but being jack-of-all-trades and master of none is a most depressing epitaph. Many car companies are being sucked into this potentially dangerous vortex of trying being everything to everyone.

Every CFO on the planet will now laugh at my naiveté, but would it really be impossible for a company like BMW to make 500,000 cars a year, cars it wanted to produce and which squared with the brand image it has carefully cultivated for decades, and still make good money? I can't see why it would be impossible.

The car-maker lexicon of big-business is littered with the language of constant expansion: synergies, economies-of-scale, eighteen new models before next month, Q1 this and Q4 that. The only way any company can justify itself or make itself look good is to tell the world that it is getting bigger and making more money, and in the land of cars that means you need to enter more market segments. So Jaguar makes an SUV. Did I tell you Jaguar is making an SUV?

Which, of course brings us to the Bentley Continental GT3 R. Keep up at the back there: where else would it lead us? Bentley, the company that is so obsessed with low crank speeds it made a pushrod V8 sail through Euro 6 engine legislation, has decided that it needs to appeal to a more pelvis-forward audience. Bentley does after all have a stunning pre-war racing heritage, and at the start of the last decade it won Le Mans again. But the modern Bentley image, the one that is currently making oodles of money is about as sporting as a pair of brogues.

But the Bentley marketeers, or someone on the Politburo at VW has decided that it needs to be more sporting, so it begins an FIA GT3 campaign and they release a road car to build the link. And, shazzam, it has a white car with decals and a spoiler and it's sat outside my house and I'm wondering what the **** is going on. It looks ridiculous. Bentley doesn't need this. This isn't Bentley.

And then I cross my WO's and summon the courage to be seen in public in the spearmint wonder stripe and, once I've found calmness it dawns on me that the GT3 R is a brilliant road car. It displays all of Bentley's core values: comfort, speed, that aura of general massiveness and wanting to crush poor people – and it's just more fun than the other cars Crewe makes. And it doesn't have to be white and you aren't forced into taking the stickers. So the silly Bentley that many of us think is a niche too far is actually a brilliant Bentley. Hmmmmm.

And here lies the big problem with my views on specialists and generalists. Yes, the specialists have become generalists – but then those generalists are within organizations that have become so huge that they have fragmented (still with me?) back into smaller groups of specialists in their fields. And that's why the Porsche Cayenne Turbo is so damn amazing. I don't want a 190 mph SUV, but if I did, I'd like it to be built by Porsche.

It is weird that JLR needs a Jaguar SUV, but you just know it'll be good. And as long as Porsche releases an RS once in a while, I'll just shut up and keep watching. Not sure how I'd feel a about a Land Rover luxury saloon though. That might twist my melon right out of shape.

Chris Harris meets Howard Donald and his classic Porsche 911.

73rd Members' Meeting testing.

Some of the highlights of what must be the best Geneva show ever. 488 GTB, 675LT, GT3 RS, Aston GT3, Vulcan, Aventador, Regera, Cayman GT4 etc.

Ford Focus RS, Honda Civic Type R, Mazda MX5, a Ruf, the crazy Mercedes G500 4x4 Squared and some high-quality swear words to round-off our coverage of Geneva..

Proving that German car engineers have a sense of humour. Thank you Andreas Preuninger of Porsche. Full Cayman GT4 film later tonight.