Once around the block #1:- 2011 Mercedes SLK

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Manufacturers have an accursed time developing their small sports cars to suit everybody's taste, and Mercedes have had it worse than many with their junior sportster, the SLK.

The first issue, launched in 1996, was criticised for being too overtly effeminate, more at home outside a wine bar than slicing through an alpine pass. As if to counter that, the 2004 replacement took styling cues from the McLaren SLR and had a rear suspension that seemed to be directly connected to my spine.

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Driven #31:- Audi Q7 3.0TDi

 

I love big cars. I'm absolutely thrilled if I get the chance to thread an Elise or a Noble along my favourite countryside party-route, and I get considerable joy from small cars in big cities. Feeling vulnerable is kind of exciting. But at the end of the day, when I just want to trundle home, or if I want to cross continents without furrowing my brow, I want a big car to do it with.

But there's probably an optimum size. In the BMW range, for example; I prefer the M5 to the M3. It's just more me; probably because it's bigger. They could even have built an M7 if they wanted, which wouldn't have been better; it would have been too big. It may well even have been rubbish.

And it was with thought of the relative values of bigness in my mind that I found myself at the helm of an Audi Q7; a car bigger than the likelihood of me being disappointed by my next pay-cheque.

 

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