The track? It doesn’t look like a track car and if you sit in its spacious rear cabin with room to spare for two six foot adults or even three if you specify a bench rear seat, it doesn’t feel like one either. But climb into the seat with the wheel and soon this super civilised land-bound executive jet is doing things you’d been pleased to see from a purpose built sports cars, let alone something sitting comfortably the wrong side of the two tonne mark.
The secret, I am told, lies in the way its many and varied chassis systems interact. It of course has a very sophisticated four-wheel-drive system but four-wheel steering too. It has electronically controlled differentials and electronically controlled springs and dampers too plus, naturally, a range of driver selectable modes for the electronic stability systems depending on you’re happy for the car to feel. All of which should make the car feel like an arcade game. But it doesn’t. On the contrary and where it is supremely clever, all this technology contrives to make the car feel pleasingly analogue, responsive and communicative. It grips hard but also slides at will if that’s what you want. For a car of its size and mass, it is profoundly impressive.
Nor is it any less so when you leave the artificial environment of the race track and head out onto the road where, of course, almost all Four Doors will spend almost all their time. The car is quiet and comfortable enough at least in Texas to convince in the role of long distance tourer, though the needlessly hard optional sports seats are to be avoided. It will be interesting to see if the car retains sufficient suspension compliance to cope with the somewhat sterner challenge posed by our more broken road network. But here or there, few will quibble with the quality of the interior fitments, the car’s innate sense of strength or the clarity with which it conveys somany terabytes of information.
Sales begin next month with prices for the 63S model starting from a fairly eye-watering £135,000. There is a ‘standard’ 63 with a trifling 585PS (577bhp) rather than the 640PS (631bhp) of the S, but few are expected to save around £15,000 and have to explain why they didn’t go for the full fat option.