The top ten from Salon Prive

This week the Salon Prive supercar show and Concours d'Elégance takes place in London, running from September 3 to 5 at Syon House. A jamboree of stridently-coloured trousers, tiny delicious things on silver platters, gigantic watches on tanned wrists, and truly amazing cars.

If you're near our fine capital, we highly recommend popping in for a look around. Those trousers are something else. But if you can't make it, here are just ten things you'll have missed...

Ferrari 212 Inter Coupe

Our favourite car in Salon Prive's ‘dramatic coachwork' category is this Ferrari. Interestingly, the 212 received attention from a number of coachbuilders in the early 1950s, and there are numerous incarnations of the sports car, some of them far prettier than others. Designed by Vignale, this is one of the more graceful versions.

Ferrari is very well represented at the event, as you might expect. And not least because of a display that marks 50 years since the launch of the pretty 275. The GTB/4 is a later version, its 300bhp V12 engine yielding a 165mph top speed: not bad at all in the mid 1960s. The car you see here belongs to Jay Kay, he of green LaFerrari fame (we believe he's got something to do with music too).

There's a multitude of Masers at Salon Prive this year, marking the Italian sports car maker's 100th birthday. Among all the predictably gorgeous old classics and iconic racecars there's this, the lesser-spotted Barchetta. Powered by a mid-mounted 2-litre V6 engine with around 300bhp, only 17 were made for a low-key Italian race series. Some were converted for road use, but this one has stayed in racing specification.

Among the entrants in the ‘pre-war sports cars' categories of Salon Prive's concours competition is this rather grand looking thing. In front of its unconventional in-line eight-cylinder engine is a radiator grille that celebrates the rays of the sun. Obviously. The engine is a stonking 7.3 litres in size, yet cranks out less than a modern 1-litre Fiesta: a mere 120 bhp.

Yes. This is a Rover. Yes, that Rover. Among a bunch of cars representing the design work of Italian styling house Zagato, it will sit alongside cars from the company's more typical clients, such as Lancia and Aston Martin. Based on the much more humble Rover P6, its seductive proportions must have caused quite a stir when it first appeared at the 1967 Turin motor show.

The Jaguar D-Type is 60, so fittingly there's a display of them at Salon Prive. The D-Type itself was only ever a racing car, but the XKSS was a limited-run road car spun off 25 unused D platforms. Only 16 remain, a fire wreaking havoc through the factory and destroying nine of them. The clever money is on these being recreated by Jaguar's newly prolific Special Vehicle Operations department.

As well as hordes of classic cars, Salon Prive also plays host to newer machinery, and with no British motor show nowadays, it sits alongside the Festival of Speed as a chance for manufacturers to show off their latest tech. The Superleggera is an electric sports car that appears to strongly hint at the look of the next Mini Roadster...

Stop sniggering at the back. Yes, another new car on display will be the Knobbly. ‘It doesn't look very new!' we hear you cry. That's because it's a continuation of a legendary racer from the 1950s, with a limited ten-off run being made in a similar vein to Jaguar's ‘new' lightweight E-type. Prices start at a stocky £249,000.

Nicely complementing the array of classic Zagatos is an example of the design house's more recent work, in the shape of this re-skinned Lamborghini Gallardo. That may seem old hat when the Huracan's around, but the 562bhp drivetrain from the Gallardo Superleggera isn't to be sniffed at, while the double-bubble roof and bold front end styling ensure more presence than Lambo's latest V10 baby.

The AF8 is a British supercar that mates a 7-litre Corvette V8 - tuned up to a rather healthy 565bhp - to a lightweight tubular steel and carbonfibre spaceframe chassis. Weighing just 1250kg, its power-to-weight ratio tramples all over the Ferrari 458 and McLaren 650S that it's designed to rival.