After the disclaimers have been signed, and the HANS is hooked up to your lid, and the car’s door clicks shut, the next few dizzying minutes as a passenger can generate lifelong memories.
I bring this up because Skoda recently launched the new Enyaq and Elroq vRS models. They’re comfy and capable but prosaic EVs. A nice home-counties venue for the launch event seemed likely, but instead the invite said we have to get ourselves out to Sweet Lamb.
Ah, yes, that famous den of rally-based antics in mid-Wales. The link between the new EVs and the R5 Fabia that Skoda laid on to give rides was utterly tenuous, but who cared? They were both Skodas, which was excuse enough to plaster a smile on everybody’s faces on a sunny Tuesday morn.
Bob Morgan bounced us around Ceredigion’s valleys, which reverberated to the rasp of a straight-piped 1.6 (assembled in Shanghai, as it happens). It was a cool thing for Skoda’s comms people to tee up, but perhaps also a rather savvy PR move. The release of feelgood endorphins must have lasted long into the day.
For me, rally cars are perhaps at the top of the ride hierarchy (and handily they always have a passenger seat). They move with an almost incomprehensible three-dimensionality if you’re accustomed to circuit metal.
Extreme levels of pitch and roll combine with mid-scrambling braking performance on loose surfaces, while yaw and power are used to rotate the car in a way that would get you killed or at least black-flagged anywhere else.
They’re just such a joyful, thrilling expression of what it is to go fast in a car. And they’re surprisingly comfortable, because pliancy is paramount. I can remember charging around the Montserrat mountains with Dakar-winning Nasser Al-Attiyah on especially impish form at the wheel of his T1+ Hilux, gobsmacked at how this battle-truck rode like a Phantom.
So what’s the ultimate combination of car, driver and environment? The answer will be different for everyone, and that’s part of the beauty of it. For the purposes of pub banter you might take an interdisciplinary, time-travelling approach. Max Verstappen in a Jag XJR-9 on his beloved Nordschleife. Cor.
