Supercar customers have clearly decided to adopt the same bullish attitude this year. Half of Aston Martin's One-77 £1million supercars have sold before they hit the road, Rolls-Royce is expecting sales to match figures for 2008, which was a record year, Bugatti's £1.5 million Veyron convertible has 30 customers already, and so it goes on. The supercar market shows few signs of drying up, despite the recession and stiff new EU emissions laws, so just what is it that keeps customers flashing their cash? Why are we addicted to supercars?
Here's why. The gleaming red lump of metal you see above is the fastest production Bentley ever built and costs more than the average price of a terraced house. It's the new Continental GTC Speed.
Underneath the bonnet lies a 6.0-litre W12 engine that develops 600bhp and sends 553lb ft of torque through four huge driven wheels. It will thrust the 2.5-tonne leviathan from standstill to 60mph in 4.5 seconds and carry you to a maximum speed of 200mph. The car above costs £171,760: the range starts at £153,400 but this one has red stitching on black leather (£630), an iPod interface (£280), a special Naim audio system (£4,840), a boot lid that opens and closes itself (£620), a reversing camera (£4,840), an alloy fuel filler cap (£170), 20in alloy sports wheels (£790) and aluminium facia panels and centre console (£6,190).
Sounds expensive, doesn't it? Actually, it's a bargain. The supercar sits at the pinnacle of man's automotive achievements. It's the result of decades of honed craft, countless hours spent in laboratories sweating over intractable engineering problems, working out how to defy physics by shifting an inordinate amount of weight around corners at high speed, how to send 500lb ft of torque through the tyres without the car digging a hole the size of the Albert Hall and, above all, how to make people gasp, blink, laugh and cry out in excitement as a flash of metal and power thunders by.
The supercar is a huge success story for mankind. We've worked out how to make boxes of metal that are as plush as Claridges' lounge on the inside, yet accelerate two tons of metal to 60mph in under five seconds. We've discovered how to deliver peerless sound quality from car speakers, how to install tiny lights that illuminate footwells at night and how to build speed into the look of a supercar.
Specialist Bentley engineers working on the GTC Speed build each W12 engine by hand and test it by listening, because their aural skills beat any machine. It takes an average four and a half hours to trim a GTC steering wheel; the cross-stitching for an interior takes a week by hand. It takes 150 hours to build the whole car; a typical family car takes about 30 hours to manufacture on an assembly line. That £153,000 price tag isn't all sunk in profit.
Or consider Rolls-Royce. It takes 460 hours to hand-build a Phantom. Craftsmen weld the aluminium spaceframe chassis in 2,000 separate locations; every morning, the team does a 12-inch test to check the atmospheric conditions on the metals. Each car is painted five times, sanded between coats and polished by hand for five hours.
Then, of course, there are the hours and money spent on technical development, which the supercar industry drives in its quest for ever-quicker, more-efficient cars and occasional Formula One forays, the results of which filter down to other manufacturers. Why does your Audi A4 have a paddleshift gearbox option? Because Ferrari invented it. The Italian marque's quest for better aerodynamics and efficiency – from rear diffusers to super polishing the camshafts – gradually emerges in moderated form on cars from volume manufacturers looking to decrease emissions.
But the clincher, the dealmaker for these beasts, is the experience of driving one. I realise I'm in the fortunate position of being able to get behind the wheel of these cars. Most people will never touch one, which is why they see no reason for its existence. And yet, I can honestly say that it thrills me nearly as much simply to pass one on the road, or hear one approach from behind on the high street, as it does to drive one. In a sense, the former is more thrilling because once you're inside a Ferrari or Lamborghini, you can't see the shape of it on the road, how it squats and shudders with heaving, throbbing power.
But driving such a rare species is a transcendental moment that goes way beyond motoring. Time and space distort when you touch the throttle. You can't believe that forces so violent can be expelled so smoothly. In the Bentley, while a classical symphony washes over you from the speakers, and quilted, silky leather wraps itself round you, a mere blip of the throttle pedal sends you from 70mph to somewhere very illegal, very quickly, and only the fact that you are up the backside of the car in front, which was a speck on the horizon a second before, will alert you to your speed. The chassis certainly won't because the suspension has been trained not to let on that you are in a car and not on a magic carpet.
Whether jolts are soaked up in a Phantom, or transmitted to the roaring cabin of a Murcielago, however, a supercar transforms the brutality of a thousand tiny petrol explosions into opulent, magnificent transportation, that is available any time you turn the key. It's like having U2 play in your living room whenever you fancy, or the RSC at your call to perform in the garden. It's like a private jet, only better, because it is more usable.
It invokes the emotion Concorde used to, and look at that sad eagle now, its wings clipped. Heaven forbid that our supercars end up in museums, or confined to race circuits, because mankind wouldn't let them breathe on the road. In the words of Pink Floyd, whose drummer, Nick Mason, has some pretty special supercars, "Shine on, you crazy diamond."
THE FACTS
Price/availability: from £153,400. On sale now
Tested: Bentley Continental GTC Speed, 6.0-litre W12 with six-speed auto
Power/torque: 600bhp @ 6,000rpm/553lb ft @ 1,750rpm
Top speed: 200mph
Acceleration: 0-60mph in 4.5sec
Fuel economy (Urban): 11.2mpg
CO2 emissions: 396g/km
VED band: M (£450)
Alternatives: nothing until Rolls-Royce launches the new Ghost Verdict: insane power for four seater
On the stereo: Underdog (Save Me) by Turin Brakes
Telegraph rating: Five out of five
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