Dan Trent: A Porsche supercar with a manual gearbox and a sting in its tail

And I've got one of my readers to blame. Posting as Maxoge on YouTube he emailed me with a video from a recent track day, driving his Carrera GT around the Nordschleife at a fair old lick. I've watched many variations on the theme over the years. In this one nobody crashes, there's only one (neatly contained) moment of drama and the pace is on the sensible and controlled side of rapid. It's just great seeing the Porsche supercar being used as intended though.

We hear so much these days about cars bought and traded as commodities, the stereotyped owners perhaps never even laying eyes as precious metal languishes beneath a cover in a basement garage hopefully making good on investment potential. Prices, like the £1.8m for a 911 GT2 at auction the other week, just inflate the bubble of hype and speculation, reducing these wonderful machines to trinkets to be traded according to the prevailing winds of fashion and exchange rates.

Somehow the Carrera GT has slipped between the cracks of this world. OK, they go for half a million. But in the league in which they operate the Paganis, Koenigseggs, super-special Ferraris and limited edition McLarens all trade into seven figures. Lost that middle ground between 'regular' supercars and the hypercar elite the Carrera GT still looks a relative bargain.

And as a driving machine seemingly answers so many of the questions posed by the latest crop of exotica, not least the 918 Spyder that succeeded it. Namely, what would these cars be like without the weight and complexity of their hybrid powertrains or the electronic fluffery that permits even the ham-fisted look like heroes?

They'd be like the Carrera GT. There's so much delight in this car before it even turns a wheel, be that the provenance of the high-revving 5.7-litre, 612hp V10 engine designed for Le Mans ambitions Porsche never realised. The carbon chassis that looks almost as beautiful without the bodywork as with it. The luxuriously appointed but stylishly minimalist cabin. The fact it - perhaps uniquely - looks equally good with or without a roof. And that 917-inspired wooden-topped gearknob and fact it stirs a manual gearbox.

Light, devilishly fast and famously demanding of its drivers, the Carrera GT's reputation as a challenging steer extends from the farce of Lewis Hamilton's dad spinning across a village green in Hertfordshire to the tragedy of Hollywood star Paul Walker. Resonance with the death of James Dean in another Porsche many decades earlier will forever give it a sinister reputation.

A new generation of Michelin 'N0' badged Pilot Super Sports retrospectively developed specifically for the car, and worth – according to a development chap I once met – as much as 20 seconds off its original 7-minute 32-second Nurburgring lap, have helped tame its on-limit spikiness. And the willingness of owners like our man Maxoge to demonstrate this simply add to its mystique in my eyes; it's a cool car seemingly bought – and driven properly – by some very cool people.

I want to be one of them. Let the investors and speculators pay millions for rare groove 911s. For a fraction of that the most exotic and rawest of all modern Porsches looks like an absolute steal.