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Just had my first ride in Jaguar’s XFR. That’s the headline grabbing 503bhp, M5 killing goliath that’s been getting the motoring press all excited this year if some of the recent rave reviews are anything to go by. In case it wasn’t already clear I’ve always been a bit of a Jaguar fan, so hopefully you’ll understand why it’s one of the cars I’ve been anxious to get my paws on these last few months.

Obviously I can’t tell you much about the little intricacies of driving the thing from the passenger seat, but what I can tell you is that it’s rather fast. Really? No sh*t Sherlock! If anything, what surprises is the way in which the XFR presses on without the slightest hint of drama so that you’re being conveyed at a frankly rather naughty pace while the scenery glides by as though it were a gentle Sunday afternoon stroll. The soundtrack from the supercharged 5-litre V8 is best described as a kind of muted bellow. It certainly doesn’t disappoint but if it were my money, I’d want it to be just a little bit more tuneful.

In essence though, they’ve got it just about right. This is a Jaguar. It’s not a sports car, but it is an incredibly refined sporting saloon. And it doesn’t need to shout about it. In fact, the only obvious giveaway is those bonnet vents.

Inside it’s the pleasing little highlights that set this car apart from others in its class; the details you’ll still be discovering a couple of years down the line like the tiny Jaguar logos embossed into the rear air vent adjusters. The silver drive selector knob wouldn’t look out of place on a 1970s record player, but it sits comfortably enough among the other switchgear on the XF’s wide centre console. Big, ungainly levers are so last century.

I’d have liked to have seen how the car dealt with a few fast B roads rather than just hoofing along some dual carriageways near Solihull, but there wasn’t time. We’ve all seen the figures and it’s proven to be a refined cruiser too, but is it really as agile as reports suggest? I’ve no reason to doubt them so far.

It’s reassuring that Jaguar seem to have got so much right with the XFR. There are few current cars I’ve felt such a strong desire to own were it not for the small issue of £60,000. It deserves every success.

Every other week there seems to be a new electric car concept at the moment. Possibly the wackiest yet is the Trabant nT, which surfaced at Frankfurt last month. Remember the original? As the saying goes there are some things that are best left forgotten, so this one did catch my attention. Who’d revive the car that has for decades symbolised the Cold War and East German industrial failure?

That accolade goes to Herpa, a German company more used to building scale models. And they’re deadly serious about the Trabi. It’s powered by a 45kW electric motor and should be good for up to around 130 km/h for 150 miles on a single charge. Herpa is working with IndiKar, a German parts manufacturer which built the prototype, and they’re looking for investment to enable them to move the project into full production by 2012. I rekon they’ll get it even though – quite miraculously – they’ve actually managed to make the styling even more ghastly than the car it emulates. Clearly a lot of effort went into this and I hope they succeed. I really do.

Now I’m sorry SAIC, but you’re missing a trick here. There is a future for Longbridge, but in these energy conscious times it’s not the MG TF. It’s an electrified Austin Allegro.

I thought it had been sounding a bit throaty lately. Mid-overtake it happened. ROARRR chink… chink… Oh bugger! That’s what too much use of the loud pedal does to an old car, or the very, very deafeningly LOUD pedal as it had now become. Turned out my MG had spat its new exhaust centre section clean out of the downpipe. I managed to tie it to the gear selector rod with an old bit of wire I had stashed in the boot for just such an occasion leaving only the first four gears selectable for the last couple of miles home, so no real harm has been done.

I must admit I’d taken pity on the Maestro having not driven it since its fleeting visit to North Yorkshire in August. The tax is up soon and by mid-October opportunities to take classics out in the dry are few and far between, so that’s it now. It can stay in the garage until I’ve put aside yet more money for fixing broken BL cars. It has to be said though, D428 has excelled itself this summer. It’s almost the car it should always have been.

I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. I am of course talking about the scrappage scheme and this weeks announcement of its extension to cover another 100,000 cars. Yes, I know I frequently ramble on about it but I challenge anyone with an ounce of petrol in their veins not to get a bit squeamish at the thought of a fairly desirable, spotless low-mileage car with many years use ahead of it being mauled by a mechanical grab and then unceremoniously reduced to the size of a coffee table. It’s fundamentally stupid beyond words.

So when the pot finally does run dry, will the industry have to come to terms with the inevitable and cut production? Will scores of Hyundai dealers close? Or will the handouts just go on and on like a DFS sale?

It looks like the next couple of months at work are going to be pretty hectic, but at the moment I don’t care. I’m probably due a shouting at for something I forgot to do before going on leave but right now none of that matters because writing this from the garden of our villa in rural Provence all’s well with the world. It’s 29 degrees with a refreshing Mistral breeze, and the only company is the olive trees and the neat rows of vines, oh and the cicadas and the various other oversized creepy crawlies they have over here. I know it’s not good form to gloat, but – well, that’s the way it is sometimes.

Of course, my search for seclusion from the crowded little corner of England I call home has been typically eventful. I was supposed to be taking the XJR on its long distance trial, but intermittent running problems left us doubting its ability to make Calais let alone Cavaillon, so the job of getting us here was entrusted to my Rover 75. I could have headed straight for the autoroute but with all the grandeur of the Alps so close, it seemed a shame not to make a small deviation through Belgium, Germany and Switzerland on the way south.

A day on the autobahns, fast but civilised. A day on the Susten and Furka passes, tough but exhilarating. A day driving through rural France, terrifying. Yes, really.

There’s a road that threads its way south along the hillside from Apt near where we’re staying called the D943. It’s the equivalent of a ‘B’ road in the UK but poorly sighted and perilously narrow with no centre lines. If you look at it on a map, it’s just one long zig-zag. Hairpin left follows sharp right and then sharper right over narrow bridge. Repeat unremittingly for about ten kilometres. The longest straight is about enough to get the car into third for a second or two before going for the brakes again as the next chevron board looms large. ‘Roadcraft’ talks about something called limit point analysis for assessing the severity of bends but I don’t need that because I’ve got my parents in the car, so I just go by the volume of the wails of discontent in my left ear. Even I recognise, though, that this is a place for caution.

Unless you’re a local, it seems. Battered old 205s and Twingos (scrappage doesn’t seem to have caught on in these parts – good on them) appear from nowhere and form an impatient queue as I try to avoid the Xsara that’s just about to exit the blind left-hander where my front left wheel will be at roughly the same nanosecond. The fuel tanker ahead isn’t holding me up, it’s losing me rapidly. And the pretty little hillside villages of the Luberon are just as exciting. In the narrow winding streets there’s no one-way system, but the preferred practice seems to be to proceed at Mach One anyway and then hit the brakes hard if Monsieur E Leclerc happens to be coming around the corner. And finally, what’s the fascination with those annoying, noisy little scooters? Italy has a bit of a reputation for this sort of thing and you half expect rural France to be all nice and laid back with the occasional 2CV tootling along (though there are lots about), but it’s pretty manic on the roads here too.

I have to say, though, at this precise moment it doesn’t appear to matter.

“Now you’ve passed the test, you can really learn how to drive.” Why do people say that, over and over again? Think about it for a moment. It’s a damning criticism of how we’re training new drivers. We know that there’s something vital missing from the whole training regime, and we see the driving test as nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome, perhaps not even entirely relevant to “real driving”. Whatever that is. What happens after the test? Do we just “gain experience” throughout the rest of our driving careers, or could there be something left untaught beyond the basics of car control and the highway code? Can we expect new drivers to go out and learn all that by themselves, unsupervised? And what makes a “good driver” anyway? Most of us would say we are, but how do we know? Is there anything we could improve, and would it be worth the effort if we did? I could go on all night, but hopefully you can see where this is going.

After the pass plus scheme, the first port of call for the relative few drivers wanting post-test training is the Institute of Advanced Motorists. Then they discover that enrolling now costs £140, and that’s the end of that. Why would you want to commit to “Advanced Driving” if you don’t know what it is or how it would benefit you? Well, if you’re keen about not only driving safely and responsibly but – heaven forbid – actually enjoying it at the same time then the High Performance Club run an annual ‘taster’ day for under 27 year-olds. I went along last year to see what all the excitement was about and came away inspired, so when I was asked if I’d like to come along again this year I could hardly say no.

After breakfast and a good humoured talk about what “high performance” driving is (it’s all about the driver, not politically incorrect fast cars or high speeds apparently) we’re given demonstration drives by members in their own cars, which range from run-of-the-mill Fiestas to classic Porsches and modern BMW ‘M’ cars. We’re encouraged to ask questions and compare aspects of the demonstration drives with our own driving, before swapping over and taking our mentors out in our own cars. The feedback is helpful and positive, not at all patronising and I come away from the morning with plenty to think about. I’d driven with Phil a couple of times the previous year and at Millbrook, so his insight into how my driving had progressed since then was particularly helpful. Any mention of “workshops” usually breaks me out in a cold sweat, but we have a couple of inspired discussions on overtaking technique and circuit driving (HPC isn’t only about road driving) before we get back into the cars ourselves after lunch.

Take a quick look at HPC’s website and you’ll see that the Club’s values are “Passionate about driving”, “Focussed on self improvement” and “Fun-loving”. Meet any of the members and you’ll realise that they mean every word of that. The enthusiasm from members and other young drivers is infectious, and once again I’m feeling truly uplifted and enlightened. There’s still so much to learn.

Typical. As soon as I bring my Maestro home there’s a painful blister on my left foot, making each gear change an acutely uncomfortable experience. Being as I’ve just taken part in the Allegro Club’s annual economy run I’m cursing it for not choosing the other foot.

Even so the MG did itself proud, achieving 44.89 mpg over the 43 mile route through Hampshire, a mixture of dual carriageways, ‘B’ roads and urban traffic. On the initial run my aim was to keep the engine spinning below 2500 rpm as much as possible, which meant no more than 55 mph even on the fastest stretches of road and generally one gear higher than I’d normally favour through the speed limits. One interesting observation I made on a quiet A31 was the number of motorists not participating in the run who seemed quite content to bumble along at about the same speed. Clearly we weren’t the only drivers trying to burn as little fuel as possible.

Of course, economy driving isn’t just about driving a bit slowly. I wanted to see how far I could get without having to stop and that requires healthy following distances and careful anticipation at every roundabout and every traffic light. I managed as far as the Shepherd & Flock roundabout in Farnham where it seemed the long tailbacks were going to render all my previous efforts worthless, but once out of the Surrey town it was almost a clear run to the finish. To the group at the pedestrian crossing in Four Marks for pressing the button at precisely the wrong moment, I hold you personally responsible…

My second run resulted in 26.99 mpg. I’ll leave you to imagine how I achieved that, but needless to say it was significantly more entertaining from my point of view than the annual procession around Monaco on telly. Austin Allegros on the run achieved results of up to 58 mpg, with my car about 6^th from the bottom in the final standings on account of its comparatively big 2-litre lump. I’ve concluded that ‘eco driving’ techniques do make a difference and old cars aren’t the filthy fume belchers our government would perhaps like us to believe.

Over the last decade or so I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time reading about other people being paid to drive various cars that don’t belong to them, so on the very rare occasion someone chucks me the keys to something I haven’t driven before and asks me what I think I can only jump at the chance. It doesn’t happen very often, but today I drove a friend’s original XJ40 based XJR. Welcome back to the world of the ‘80s city stockbroker.

Four miles isn’t enough to form much of a bond, but it’s just enough to get a few first impressions together. The first thing you notice the instant you begin to move is the steering, which is heavy. The small wheel jigs all over the place in response to every tiny imperfection in the road surface which those wide tyres seem to be so good at finding. If that’s what it’s like at low speeds, I got the impression that keeping this leviathan pointing where I wanted it with a few more horses unleashed would be a bit of a struggle, but thankfully that wasn’t the case on my short drive. The engine’s the standard 4-litre AJ6 used elsewhere in the range, and as I’d expected it’s all very serene at lower speeds. Kickdown from 30 didn’t initially result in any fireworks but it does seem to come to life more and more the faster you get – most of the power seemingly emerging once beyond about 3500rpm.

And beyond that I’ll have to reserve judgment. It will be interesting to find out how the later supercharged XJR compares, and I’ve a feeling I’m going to have ample chance to do that.

There's only one car that these could be destined for...

I’ve got a new set of wheels, but the rest of the car is in Gloucestershire. Allow me to explain. A while ago I struck up an agreement with a friend whereby he’d loan me his Jaguar XJR for a few months, and all I had to do was stump up the cost of sorting it out with a clean MOT. Since I’d always fancied a supercharged XJ on our driveway I could hardly refuse. I’d been watching a tidy sapphire ‘M’ reg on on ebay for a while and it seems there are few more affordable ways of installing 322bhp beneath your right foot these days, but I’d rather keep the money for my holiday this year.

So that’s how I ended up outside an industrial unit near Dagenham on Sunday evening, meeting a man in a van with some wheels. For reasons I haven’t yet grasped, the car’s sitting on a set of Sovereign alloys at the moment and we wanted to restore a bit of originality. Unfortunately good 17 inch XJ-Sport alloys are getting ever more scarce, but it looks like my £195 on ebay has bought me a perfectly usable set. All the tyres are Pirelli P-Zeros with a good 4-5mm tread and no obvious damage, so we might even get away without having to approach any banks over funding for replacements for a while at least.

Now we just need to get them united with the car, then it’s play time.

I wonder what’s being said at Honda’s Tokyo HQ this weekend? After three – let’s face it – fairly mediocre seasons in F1 they run out of money (so the press release implies) and sell Honda F1 Racing Team to Ross Brawn, just as it approaches its finest hour. You can’t blame a manufacturer for wanting to protect its core business interests, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. Was that one-two finish all down to the Mercedes engines? I’m not convinced.

I’ve never been a particularly dedicated F1 follower, but I do think this season’s already got the makings of an epic battle. Will it keep me on the edge of my seat all summer? Probably not, but after today’s race it’s looking anything but dull.