Used Ginetta G60 2012-2015 review

The cabin layout is tidy and there’s a particularly nice central touch-screen to handle the entertainment and air-con systems. There’s not too much wrong with the driving position that slightly more space around the throttle wouldn’t fix, either.

It’s the fundamentals that are right about most other things, too. It’s impossible to properly gauge the way a car rides when you’ve only got a recently surfaced race track for company, but ride over the odd kerb and the G60 seems to have a well-damped, firm yet supple set-up, while maintaining very tight control of its body. That’s the hallmark of a properly sorted sports car.

It certainly sounds and goes like one. The V6 makes a proper yelp on full throttle, and the G60 took off down Silverstone’s straights at Aston V8-matching pace. The claim is a 0-60mph time of 4.9sec, which is feasible, as is the 165mph top end. Yet the engine note is suitably restrained should you back off, throttle response is linear and the gearshift positive. Ginetta wants the G60 to be a car you can use every day and, on this evidence, it is.

There are a few edges still to smooth out. The steering geometry isn’t yet optimised for the unassisted rack, so it weights up very quickly and is overly heavy once you’ve got some load in the tyres off straight ahead. Feel is excellent, but it will be made lighter overall – there’s less weight over the front wheels than in a Ginetta G40 R so making it easier to steer shouldn’t be a problem.

The brakes, too, will be given more initial bite; at the moment they want a race car push to lose speed. What needs sorting is only really finessing, though, and the basic dynamics are extremely well sorted. The G60 grips like stink and telegraphs messages about what the chassis is doing superbly well. It sits somewhere between a Porsche Cayman R and a 911 GT3; louder and rawer than one, but less extreme than the other.

It’s early days but already this is a compelling machine. You’d have to make a few compromises, of course. When you buy a hand-built car which is one of only 50 built each year it’s inevitable that you’re not talking about quite the same thing as one that emerges in the tens of thousands