Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

And this is just the flake on the tip of the iceberg. Because there is also a device that can spot bikes and suchlike in the blind spots, and another that flashes up a warning message on the windscreen via a head-up display if it thinks you are travelling too close to the car in front. Then you have night vision, which puts a Blair Witch Project image of the road ahead on a screen in the dash.

You can even drive this car when you are fast asleep. Citroën was the first car manufacturer in Europe to introduce lane assist, a device that buzzes if it thinks you’re drifting out of lane on the motorway. Audi, though, has gone one better. Providing you are travelling at more than 40mph, its system will actually steer you back in line. And if you have the active cruise control switched on, it will even brake on your behalf if there’s an obstacle ahead. All that’s missing is an alarm clock to wake you up when you arrive at your destination.

Wi-fi? Well, as we know, this doesn’t work in a house if the walls are more than 2mm thick, but somehow, Audi has made it work in a car. Which means that actually you could drive down the motorway, catching up on your emails, safe in the knowledge that the steering, braking and navigation are all being taken care of by electronics.

Of course, you might think that this veneer of mostly optional electro-trickery has been fitted to mask the shortcomings of a fairly dreary car. But no. It’s lighter than the old A6 and, even though it’s shorter, it’s more spacious inside. It is also extremely well made and finished beautifully. It is a wonderfully nice place to sit, and thanks to absolutely fantastic seats, comfortable too.

Until you set off. Yes, you can adjust the way the gearbox, the throttle and the suspension behave, but the simple fact is that no matter what settings you select, this new car does not ride quite as well as the BMW 5-series. It doesn’t handle as well, either. And the entry-level 2-litre turbodiesel engine is not quite as refined as the unit that BMW uses. But that said, it should be capable of averaging 57 mpg, which is remarkable.

So. Yes or no? Well, I much prefer it to the overstyled Mercedes E class, which was designed mostly to take Carol Vorderman to the airport. And I think for a number of reasons it is better than Jag’s XF, but what about the 5-series?

Tricky one. Taken in their base forms, there’s no way to split them, really. The Audi matches the 5-series for economy and the Beemer is slightly nicer to drive. They really are Manchester City and Manchester United.

For sure, if you fit a few options to the Audi, you will have something that is mind-bogglingly good. But if you’re not careful you could end up spending more than BMW charges for the bigger-engined 530d. And that’s better than mind-bogglingly good. All things considered, that’s probably the best car in the world right now.

A man died recently. He was called Lieutenant-Commander Peter Twiss and he began his career, quietly, as a tea taster for Brooke Bond. Then, in 1939, he joined the Fleet Air Arm where, as a carrier pilot, he had much success in the Mediterranean, earning a Distinguished Service Cross and bar.

In 1943 he came back to Britain and switched to the twin-engined Mosquito, in which he spent a great deal of time bombing France and generally shooting down German Junkers 88s. Before the war ended, he left for America where he became Tom Cruise, testing naval fighters.

After the war ended he became a test pilot with Fairey Aviation and on 6 October 1954, he took the experimental Fairey Delta 2 on its maiden flight. I had a model kit of one of these as a child and thought it to be the most beautiful thing in the world. For Twiss, though, it was more than just that.

He became convinced that the delicate little jet with its Concorde-style drooping nose could fly faster than anything else in the skies at that time. And so, five months after a US air force Super Sabre had set a new record of 822 mph, Twiss climbed aboard his beloved FD 2 and headed for a course that had been laid out along the south coast near Chichester.

Flying at 38,000 foot, he did indeed break the record. Although actually what he did was smash it. Because the average speed of his two runs was 1,132 mph. Twiss, then, had become the first man ever to beak the 1,000-mph barrier. And for his services he was awarded the OBE and the threat of several lawsuits from market gardeners in Sussex who claimed his sonic boom had smashed all the glass in their greenhouses.

You might imagine that after he retired from test flying, he’d put his feet up and do a spot of gardening. But no. After 4,500 hours in the big blue, in 148 types of aircraft, he appeared at the helm of a Fairey Marine speedboat in the Bond movie From Russia With Love and features in Sink the Bismarck! at the controls of a Fairey Swordfish torpedo plane. And he developed cruisers. And flew around in gliders and was married five times.

This is what I call a proper life. A full life. The life of a man who could lay on his deathbed and think, Good. I didn’t waste too much time in the ninety years I was awarded.

This brings me neatly on to a track called ‘Time’ from Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon , which is about how we waste and fritter our days away, waiting for someone to show us the way.

This is how most people live. Life is long and there is time to kill today. But, actually, there isn’t. Life is desperately short and no matter how much you do, there’s always a twang of regret that you didn’t do more. No matter how much you see, you always think that if only you’d gone round one more corner and over one more horizon, you’d have seen something else. I bet when Tom Jones is summoned by the grim reaper, he’ll think of a girl that he could have slept with but didn’t, and that will make him a bit sad. I bet that even Peter Twiss spent at least some of his life wishing he could have shot down one more German bomber and gone 1 mph faster in that Fairey Delta.

I’m in the same boat. God knows, I’ve travelled over the years, but instead of reflecting on all that I’ve seen and all that I’ve done, I will go to my grave thinking, Shit. I never went to Pontefract.

This is why, if you have the wherewithal, it’s very important that you go out tomorrow morning and buy a supercar.

I’ve had my share of them over the years and they are all stupid. Impractical, ruinously expensive, difficult to park and they leave you with dirty fingers every time you open the bonnet to retrieve your (very small) suitcase.

However, that said, supercars are to cars what jet fighters are to the Airbus that took you to Corfu this year. They are built to excite the speed gene that lives in us all; they are designed to release the cocktail of chemicals that is titillated when we are small and we are pushed higher and higher on the swings.

What’s more, supercars are the last great division of the global motor industry where engineers and stylists can try out new ideas and new ways of thinking. When you build a car that can travel at two hundred and something miles an hour, you need to make the brakes from exotic materials and think carefully about what effect the air has at those sort of speeds. Anyone can make a saloon. It takes a genius to make a supercar.

At present, there are two standout examples of the breed. The McLaren MP4-12C, which is science and maths, and the Ferrari 458, which is also science and maths. With a bit of Renaissance art thrown in for good measure. Both use brute force to give you the go, the periodic table to give you the stopping power you need and Palo Alto electronics to give you a level of grip in the corners that beggars belief.