From Tesla to Phantom, why clever cars are fun

What do a £300k Roller, a pill-shaped diesel hybrid, a pure electric saloon and an £8k city car have in common? Nothing. Not a sausage. Yet each one in turn is triggering the same involuntary spasms in my cheeks, causing the edges of my mouth to curl upwards. Most curious.

There can be only one explanation: that joy needn’t necessarily come from cremating a set of tyres and generally acting like a yob. There’s pleasure in cleverness, too, in exceptional design that fits the brief and then some, because when a set of engineers really put their heads together something outside of the box often emerges. And things that are different, tend to be fun.

Photography: Rowan Horncastle

This feature was originally published in issue 285 of Top Gear magazine.

Take the VW Up, probably the least unusual thing here, but with its three-cylinder engine thrashing away in front of you, your foot constantly welded to the bulkhead and enough bodyroll to take the paint off the doorhandles, I defy anyone to say it’s not a hoot.

And this is on an airfield – around town, it’s better still. It’s nimble because it’s small, and because it’s small, it’s cheap – £8k for a car that looks and feels like a proper VW? Insert happy face emoji here.

Remove cost from the equation, promote fuel economy to the top of your list, and the VW XL1 is what you get – a 313mpg monument to aerodynamics and lightweight materials that proves even the Germans can get a little crazy sometimes.

It is not fast – in fact, I’m amazed 68bhp pushing 800kg feels quite this sluggish, and noisy, but every minute spent in it is an event. It has gullwing doors, and digital wing mirrors, and wonderful unassisted steering (wasn’t expecting that), and the world is a better place with it.

Same could be said about the Tesla Model S. A small start-up company from California has brought EVs into the limelight in a way no established manufacturer could, not because it’s deploying a particularly unique type of powertrain, but because it’s slathered in Silicon Valley tech, and new-trousers-please fast.

Engage Ludicrous mode, and you can actually feel the blood being squeezed to the back of your body, leaving nothing but your colourless, gurning face peering out of the windscreen. Sounds painful, but it’s utterly addictive.

Mark Higgins – he who recently piloted the Prodrive Time Attack Subaru at an average of 129mph around the Isle of Man TT course – joined us at the track and was only interested in one car: the Tesla. We gave him a couple of laps in it – he came back grinning like a kid, and enthusing about the “ridiculous” performance. ’Nuff said.

Meanwhile, the Phantom isn’t as fast, nimble or fuel-efficient as the other three, but driving one – or preferably being driven in one – is extraordinary. Steering it through town is like sailing Abramovich’s gin palace down the Regent’s Canal, but the ride is so superb and you’re so isolated from the outside world that it’s impossible to care about anything going on in it.

And that’s what makes the Phantom so, so special – that it cloaks its cleverness in a thick hide of traditional luxury, so you don’t know exactly why it makes you feel so good every time you step inside, it just does. The ultimate joy machine? Of these four, you bet.