Britain's best driver's car 2015: Lamborghini Aventador SV and Porsche Cayman GT4

By virtue of everything you can hold, touch, shift and toe, the GT4 is a marvellous thing to pedal. “The best EPAS yet,” Frankel declared. Also, I’d say, the best manual gearbox, the best seats and, save for the distance between the pedals, the most satisfying driving position – one overtly primed to convey the sensory pleasure of a back-seat engine and pointy front end.

As a counterpoint to the GT4’s delicacy along the same length of B-road, the SV brooded with bad intentions. Where the Cayman slings you deliciously low, the Lamborghini’s hip point is practically that of a skateboard, and at very low speeds the stiff-backed ride isn’t dissimilar, either. But the car’s savage, simmering talent crystalises almost immediately. “Grips as hard as anything else here, communicates as vividly, blows the Ferrari into the weeds on emotional appeal,” Saunders remarked.

Its tactility, through the revised steering rack, is starkly terrific and, when combined with four-wheel-drive security, helps the Aventador’s improbable size and massive speed to shrink around you, even on Norfolk’s narrow lanes.

It impressed on track, too. Indelicacy with the throttle tends to induce understeer but, as Prior suggested, “it’s docile at some pretty big speeds, and I’m disinclined to find out too much what happens beyond that”. Frankel cited its Corsa mode for making the transmission’s upshifts so violent that they can potentially upset the car between apex and exit – although there wasn’t anyone in the pit lane who didn’t prize the Lamborghini’s ability to make its naturally aspirated ferociousness seem usable. Saunders, its champion, went one better: “Turning the Aventador – any 700bhp mid-engined V12 car for that matter – into something that feels so at home on a scrappy British B-road, and still capable of liveliness and even a natch of adjustability on circuit, is little short of a miracle.”

The real miracle, though, was to come. Truthfully, whether you liked the Cayman or not wasn’t ever in question – it’s plainly fabulous – but the extent of our admiration at Snetterton was initially dictated by the time of day you drove it. The weather was ghastly in the morning and Frankel called it “spikier in the wet than expected. Excellent traction tempts you into using too much power too early and ending up with armfuls of opposite lock”.

Even Prior, a confirmed devotee, agreed that the GT4 “wasn’t at its best on a damp track” and only became the “old-school” car he remembered when it dried out a little. It was Saunders, though, who consciously stuck the knife in, with a lowly fifth-place rating: “I’ve cost a fine car a podium finish here. But I couldn’t in all good conscience rank the GT4 higher, given that I genuinely think everything above it is more rewarding. Very grippy and composed on circuit and as superbly balanced as ever. But I want a Cayman to be more playful, actually. And I don’t care if it’s quicker than a 911. I had fun – high expectations, too, I guess – but I could have had more fun.”

On another day, the rest of us might have argued the GT4’s case more vociferously. But not here; not in this contest. Fun is the single-market currency of Handling Day, and to find it in comparatively short supply is reason enough to rank something else higher. The SV and GT4 were both brilliant. That they didn’t travel to Yorkshire was unfortunate – yet it only serves to highlight the compelling standard of the cars that finally did.

Read the rest of Britain's best driver's car 2015:

Introduction

Part one: Audi RS3 and Mercedes-AMG GT S