Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

There’s more. To distinguish this new hot model from its lesser brethren, Jaguar’s stylists have seen fit to spoil the very thing that gives this car such appeal. Its looks. Up front, there’s a new nose that suggests the car is frowning. Then you have two suitcase handles on the corners – I have no idea why – and at the back a large spoiler, which is fine if you are eighteen and a yob. But not if you are forty-eight and a solicitor.

What Jaguar has done is taken, say, Keira Knightley and ‘improved’ her looks with several nose piercings and, on her forehead, a dirty great tattoo.

And now we get to the 5-litre supercharged V8 engine. It, like the car, is old, but that hasn’t stopped the engineers squeezing about 40 more brake horsepower out of it. Inside, it must look like a lemon that’s been run over by a bus.

So. There we are. The looks are gone. The interior is old and the engine’s a pensioner with a new pair of training shoes. And yet…

In two important areas, the car’s age pays dividends. First, it still uses a proper automatic gearbox, not an eco-sop flappy-paddle manual. And its roof is still made from canvas rather than steel. Normally, I’m not given to camping, but somehow, in a car, it’s nice to be protected from the elements by nothing more substantial than one of Bear Grylls’s hats.

Not that I needed the roof up much because at the precise moment this car was delivered, the rain stopped, the sky turned blue and the temperature shot up to what felt like a million. You’re going to like driving any convertible in conditions like this, and I must say, I liked driving this one a lot.

Foremost, there’s the speed. It’s properly fast. And for once in an XKR, the exhaust thunder is audible not just to passers-by but to occupants of the car as well. I particularly enjoyed the distant gunfire rumble it makes on the overrun. I was on the overrun a lot. In fact, I spent most of the week speeding up, just so I could slow down again.

I also liked the steering. It’s not an especially light car, but it feels nimble and agile. The only thing you have to remember is that the chassis was set up by a man who likes to go sideways all the time, so you have to be a bit careful before engaging the full enchilada.

Not to worry. Unlike other XKRs I’ve driven in recent times, this one doesn’t bang and crash over potholes. It’s actually quite smooth. You can therefore cruise about the place, no problem at all.

Soon, though, you start to encounter some issues again. When, for instance, you use the paddles to override the auto box, there’s no easy way of getting it back into ‘Drive’ again. Also the seats aren’t very comfortable. And I’m afraid that when you arrive at a friend’s house, they will see the blingarama styling add-ons and will not be impressed. ‘Oh dear’ was the most common reaction.

At this point, I must get to the price. It’s £103,430. And it doesn’t matter if you squint or stand on your head or say it really fast – that is a lot of cash. Half-price Aston DB9? Not any more.

It’s easy to see what the people at Jaguar have done here. They are busy developing the new, small sports car that many are billing as the next E-type. And over at Land Rover, finishing touches are being put to the new Range Rover. There simply isn’t the money, or the manpower, to come up with a new XK, so, to keep it alive, they’ve sprinkled a bit of mustard powder on the old girl in the hope they can sell a few in Qatar.

Jaguar might pull that off. But here? No. It’s a lovely car to drive and it’s very fast. But it’s too expensive and too embarrassing when you get where you’re going.

Buy a Mercedes SL instead. Or, if you’ve been swept up in that ‘Aren’t we marvellous?’ euphoria from the Olympics and you really want an XK, look in the second-hand columns of this paper and buy one from a period when it was new.

On a recent trip to America I maintained my 100 per cent record of never having driven though Nevada without being stopped by the police. Six trips. Six heartfelt roadside apologies to a selection of burly-looking men in beige trousers.

I was pulled over the first time for travelling in a Dodge Stealth at a very huge speed indeed. So huge, in fact, that they’d had to use an aeroplane to catch me. So vast that it would have needed three boxes on the official form. And only two were provided.

Seeing that bureaucracy would prevent him from recording how fast I’d actually been going, the extremely good-natured policeman said, ‘Listen, son. I know and you know how fast you were going. But, hell, it’s a beautiful evening. Let’s call it eighty-five.’ And then, after I’d said I was going back to Britain in a week, he gave me two weeks to pay the fine…

A few years later I was back and going even faster in a Chevrolet Corvette when, once again, Frank Cannon arrived on the scene with a stern face and a big piece. This time he was so staggered to find the communist host from that Limey motoring show on his patch, he saluted and let me go.

And so we now spool forwards to last month, when, in an attempt to show my children the real America, where real Americans live, I was taking them on the state’s back roads, flashing past remote shops where signs advised us that guns were welcome on the premises. But aliens were not.

Soon we arrived in Radiator Springs. There were a few tractor carcasses, a motley collection of trailers and one police cruiser by the stop sign I hadn’t noticed. He was very angry that some goddamn Limey had dared to breach the law in what was almost certainly a communist-made Range Rover and wanted to see my driving licence.

Finding it turned out to be a time-consuming affair. So time-consuming that after five minutes he harrumphed and let me go, saying he had better things to be getting on with. Quite what these ‘better things‘ might be in a town such as his, I’m not sure. Almost certainly they would be alien-related. Or possibly something to do with communists.

Despite everything, though, I like driving in Nevada. Even the back roads are so smooth, it felt like we were on a conveyor belt. You never need to accelerate or brake or steer. Cruise control was invented for Nevada. Driving there is as tiring as taking a bath.

I also like the sense that everything is 500 miles away and that no matter how hard you try, every journey is always completed in exactly half the time quoted by locals. ‘How far’s Las Vegas?’ you ask. ‘Ooh, about eight hours,’ they say. And you get there in four.

And this is even though you are forced to stop every twenty minutes because the view, which you thought couldn’t possibly get any more extraordinary, just did. And then a moment later you have to stop again because you want to photograph the dashboard, which shows two things. The time is 6.30 p.m. And the outside temperature is 47ºC.

I must confess that as the time came to leave, I wasn’t much looking forward to driving in England, where every journey takes twice as long as you’d expected and there are mealy-mouthed Peugeot drivers who won’t let you by and every road is closed so that traffic officers can safely retrieve a sweet wrapper from the carriageway and potholes are repaired by people who are being deliberately stupid and you can’t reason with law enforcement because it’s all done by cameras and petrol costs more than myrrh and it’s raining.

But then, just twenty-four hours after leaving Nevada, I found myself on top of a moor in Yorkshire, in the drizzle, about to get inside a Lexus LFA.

A couple of years ago a friend called about this car. He’d been offered one instead of payment for a job and was wondering if it was worth it. Embarrassed to admit I had no idea what he was talking about, I said, ‘Er, no.’ So he took the money and bought a Ferrari instead.