Everyday handling heroes - Caterham 270R versus Mazda MX-5 and Toyota GT86

But surrounded by hairpins and dry, unpoliced asphalt, you quickly appreciate Toyota’s sublime reasoning. The steering is light because it makes it easier to wind armfuls of lock on and off, the springs are amenable (up to a well-defined point) to promote weight transfer and the tyres are thin and only modestly sticky to ensure they become frequently unstuck.

It is possible to take curmudgeonly issue with the GT86’s occasionally brazen lack of rear-end traction – but near impossible to do so at Bedford. Here, on the same ground where it won Handling Day proper, the extent of its sideways antics is extraordinary; not just in terms of the car’s capabilities, but also in the lack of skill needed to unlock them.

A piffling bung and you’re on your way and everything from then on – the throttle response, diff, innate sense of beyond-limit balance, steering – encourages you progressively onto the lock stops, and calmly back again.

It is zero-to-hero stuff, and the resulting grin factor is the MX-5’s most prominent foe at Bedford. The new soft-top is several things straight away: tricky to get comfortable in, surprisingly quick and even more liberal with its body control than the Toyota.

Size and weight are the prime reasons for two of the three. The Mazda’s dinky proportions account for the exhaust’s packaging that leaves a bulge under the driver’s left leg and no reach adjustment on the steering rack, while a superfly sub-1100kg kerb weight gives the roadster’s modest 148lb ft far less to do than the GT86’s 151lb ft.

The old-fashioned bob of the MX-5’s chassis is noticeable from the driver’s seat but it comes at little cost to the car’s agility. Its small size, tiny overhangs, quickish steering and absence of extraneous bulk mean that a change of direction occurs swiftly. Compared with the GT86, it doesn’t want for adhesion, either.

Let the car settle on its dampers and it finds a seam of grip not just broad enough to drive very briskly on, but also sufficiently communicative about its limits for you to lean enthusiastically into it.

The secret, most obviously, is better steering feel, the MX-5’s rack weighting up a touch more quickly and consistently than its rival. But it’s also a facet of the chassis.

The permissive suspension telegraphs shifting weight even more sweetly than its rival, prompting a heightened sensation of speed and making each corner a talkative endeavour that uses the seatbacks and your inner ear to leave you in no doubt as to when the rear wheels intend to glide wide of the apex.

As a result, and not least because of the empowering effect of its cleaner-revving, less encumbered engine and bracing abundance of fresh air, the Mazda edges it on the road, being endlessly accessible and fun up to its limit in a way that the GT86 is not, as well as in a way that feels like it ought to be appreciated by everyone, not just those of a tyre-shredding bent.

Back on the track, it takes the rest of the day and all of the next to thrash out this group’s podium places. First to go, shamefully, and in apparent reverse order of outright ability, must be the 270R. It was nakedly brilliant at Bedford, yes. But if we concede that the £30k budget is buying a car for all seasons, a Caterham isn’t ever going to be it.

As always in such company, the Seven provided a better benchmark than it did actual competitor – by which I mean that after half a century on sale, it remains an archetype of the affordable front-engined, rear-drive sports car, and its handling prowess rightly aspired to by the engineers of both its rivals.

Toyota’s singular effort has had us spellbound for the past three years. The GT86 proved, in the best way possible, that a major, mainstream manufacturer still understood where we were coming from and what we wanted. In response, it made its coupé light, not powerful, made it adjustable, not inert, and threw in practicality and economy for good measure.

It deserved to become the world’s best-selling sports car – but it isn’t and never will be.

That’s the MX-5’s job, and Mazda has made doubly sure of it by having it do almost everything the GT86 does, including going sideways on request on track. But rather than making it the car’s reason for being – as it sometimes seems to be with the Toyota – the diff-enabled smoky stuff appears at the tail end of a dynamic package that already manages to be punchily quick, cheerily involving and very easy indeed to adore.