A CAR reader’s festival ride in the Jaguar XKR 75

CAR reader Archie Robertson, from Hertfordshire, won a money-can’t-buy prize at the 2010 Goodwood Festival of Speed thanks to CAR Magazine and Jaguar: an XFR super saloon for the weekend and VIP tickets to Goodwood including an unforgettable ride up the hill. Archie and his wife Judy spent Friday at the Festival of Speed with Jaguar hospitality thrown in. But the highlight of the day was a ride in the new Jaguar XKR 75, sitting alongside Jaguar’s chief chassis guru and driving legend Mike Cross, as he slithered and rocketed up Lord March’s front drive.

3,000bhp supercar selection set for Birmingham

THE NEW age of efficiency appears not to be dampening manufacturers’ desire to build high-performance flagship cars, with 3,000bhp worth of shiny new models set to descend on Birmingham’s Performance Car Show in January. Among the headliners are the Jaguar XKR-S GT, the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, McLaren 12C Sprint and Aston Martin Vanquish. The Ferrari steals the outright performance headlines, with 0-62mph dispatched in just three seconds and 100mph disappearing in only 6.5 seconds, courtesy of a melodious 6.3-litre V12 engine under the long bonnet.

Driven: BMW i8

When BMW unveiled the Vision EfficientDynamics concept at the 2009 Frankfurt motor show, we wrote: "for our money, it's the first time a major carmaker has really attempted to communicate ‘green' technology in an aesthetic sense." Fast-forward five years and we've swapped the show halls of the IAA for a beauty spot on the north-west coast of Scotland. And, while the car's name has changed to i8, our sentiment towards this genre- and era-defining car remains. Admittedly the production car's design execution hasn't received the universal praise of its concept forebears, but, on a remote outpost of the British Isles, a Protonic Blue i8 couldn't look more exotic.