Man in the MIRA: What really happens in a full Autocar road test?

The controller asks: “What kind of speeds do you think you’ll be hitting today?” Lane replies that we’re looking to go 150mph-plus, but it’s met with the immediate sucking of air through teeth. “Lots of standing water today, so make sure you recce properly,” says the controller.

It’s not ideal, but our only choice is to press on. This really is the best weather we’ve had since the car arrived at Autocar Towers a good week earlier and Maserati wants the car back at its Slough HQ before the day comes to an end.

With everything signed off and radio checked, the day’s testing can begin. First up is fuel economy testing – a case of setting a speed and doing endless circuits of the track’s bowl.

We follow this with the ‘everyday’ economy test, whose 20mph and 30mph segments feel utterly excruciating when you’ve got clear Tarmac stretching into the distance.

But sunshine begins to slice through the cloud cover and pockets of the road have started to dry out. A quick check of the BBC Weather app suggests we’ll have dry patches for only an hour, so we make a beeline for the Dunlop circuit.

Lane jumps out, rifles through his backpack, pulls out a roll of the world’s skinniest gaffer tape and then attaches our VBox timing gear to the MC20’s windscreen. It feels a little incongruous to me, but it does the job.

I writhe into Lane’s spare crash helmet – I’ve got an absolute whopper of a forehead and this Arai’s a size or two too small – and we head out onto the track. He immediately hits a rhythm: throttle, brake, lift, turn, throttle.

Before I can brace myself, the rear end has snapped straight and we’re off for another round. I may feel like I’m in a tumble dryer, but it’s all key to understanding the car: progressively pushing it harder and asking “awkward questions” of the chassis to see how it responds in an environment you simply couldn’t replicate on the road.

A good half an hour of sickening rounds later, we pull into a quiet lay-by off MIRA’s mile straight so that snapper Jack Harrison can grab all the detail photographs.

We’d normally do this out in the wild, but today’s schedule leaves little room for manoeuvre.

I’m impressed by the tricks of the trade, such as angling the side mirrors as far down and wide as they’ll go so that you can’t see the camera in any of the cabin shots.

“Interiors can be a bit of a pain,” says Harrison grunting, as he contorts himself over the MC20’s buttresses. His camera snaps a couple of times and he continues: “Bright colours are so uncommon and privacy glass is so commonplace, so balancing the light coming in with the interior itself is tough.”

Next, Lane heads out onto the straights solo to test brake fade. Then we’re off to the fabled MIRA canteen for a look at the data. Enter the designated road testing laptop, a great hunk of grey plastic running an ancient version of Windows.

Lane taps away for a moment, swears because it’s frozen, and then we’re finally presented with an acceleration table.

He glances at the seemingly baffling matrix of numbers and says: “Second gear, 20mph to 40mph: 1.9 [seconds]. That’s not bad, but that definitely hints at something spinning.

There’s wheelspin there because a Porsche 911 Turbo with four-wheel drive and a bigger contact patch, on a dry surface, is closer to one second. Something like an Aventador SVJ is more like 1.6.

“By 40mph, the traction’s coming in a bit more and all we can do is floor it on days like this. As soon as you start trying to feather the throttle, you don’t know what you’re getting – and with a boosty engine like the MC20’s, you’re very unlikely to do better than the car’s hard-working ECU.”

And that, there, is the je ne sais quoi in an Autocar road tester. They’ve driven almost every car launched over the past decade.

Whereas I’m sat with my mind boggled, Lane’s immediately got an idea of where the Maserati fits into the pecking order.

He continues: “Third gear, I snagged it at under 20mph, so 20-40 is 2.24 seconds, and now you start to see the consistency of a turbo engine: 30 to 50, 1.6; 40 to 60, 1.3; 50 to 70, 1.2; 60 to 80, 1.6. The acceleration chart would look like Table Mountain.

“These are respectable numbers in the damp. The car’s clearly hooked up – but sometimes you might just have a look at something else to sense-check it.

You get a good feel for these things after long enough, but if we just look at the new Aston Vantage, in fourth gear from 50 to 70 was 1.8 seconds, and the Maserati’s 2.2. That checks out because the two cars actually have a similar power-to-weight ratio, but the Vantage has shorter gearing.”

While Harrison and I finish our lunches – the hoisin pork chops are delectable, by the way – Lane heads out onto the track one final time.

He takes figures for wet emergency braking on a strip of asphalt that’s been soaked by sprinklers to an almost glass-like finish. Then it’s off to do noise tests at a range of speeds, before brimming the car with fuel and seeing what it tips the scales at on an engineering-grade weighbridge.

It’s finally time to wrap up – for me, at least. Lane will now get on the blower with road test editor Matt Saunders and road tester Illya Verpraet, with each providing their view on the Cielo and the week’s other test subject, the Hyundai Santa Fe.

A couple of days later, I ask managing editor Sami Shah if the words have landed yet, so that I can have a peep and check if it tallies with my memory of the car.

Lo and behold, the test’s pretty much complete: the pictures and copy are on the page, and it fits right down to the final word. All that’s left is for our artists to create the graphics for dimensions, economy, acceleration, and braking. Then it’s onto the next production week. 

It takes an immense effort to turn it all around so quickly, so thank you for reading – and for placing your faith in our road tests.