Sunset Sprint

A four-litre flat-six that revs to nine thousand and makes every one of those revolutions audible. No turbochargers, no hybrid assistance, no delay between your right foot and the rear axle.

Rear-engined means the mass sits behind you, and on a road cut into a cliff that is either the most reassuring layout ever built or the most demanding. On Chapman's Peak it is both, in the same corner.

• Revs to 9,000 rpm — one of the highest-revving road cars ever homologated.
• Magnesium roof, carbon bonnet and wings. Every panel is an argument about weight.
• Rear-axle steering: the back wheels turn with the fronts above 80 km/h, against them below.

There is nobody to race and nothing to hit you. Nine kilometres of road cut into a cliff above the Atlantic, a naturally aspirated flat-six behind you, and three runs to find a rhythm. The surface changes every few hundred metres and the light drops the whole time you are driving it.

The surface is the story. Patched tar, expansion joints, tunnel concrete — you feel the road change under you without looking down. The engine sits behind you as a constant presence rather than an event. Almost no impacts, because on this road there should not be any.

Every setting is configured before you sit down — force feedback, haptics, seat position, field of view. Select the experience, and drive.