KTM X-Bow
The alliance between X-Bow and self was uneasy, initially due to a certain physical discomfort, and latterly thanks to a repeat inability to actually keep it pointing in the right direction.
By way of an introduction, the carbon bath and I went for a vigorous exploration of the back roads around the Top Gear test track. This car has recently had a power-hike, to an alarming 300bhp, that causes your head to arrive everywhere suddenly, violently and before almost everything else both mechanical and organic, evoking a sensation not dissimilar, I suspect, to the trauma of being born.
And things get tougher. At around 55mph vibration renders your vision largely useless, a scenario grimly reminiscent of narcotic evenings in subterranean student nightclubs, standing far too close to the PA. Much past 70mph and you can?t really breathe either. Previous metaphor still applies.
But back at the track, where a smooth surface and snug driving helmet largely eliminate these shortcomings, the X-Bow is in its element. The turbo screams, the transmission clacks, you brake race-car hard and feather the throttle through corners that arrive far sooner than you?
?you?re facing the wrong way.
Or at least, I was. The liberties that track driving affords you are seldom tolerated in a car as honest and tech-less as the X-Bow. No driver aids here to flatter the amateur or paper over the cracks of incompetence. Entertain a modest mid-corner lift and the back of the car executes a quick, snappy overtake of the front. But find some faith, keep the throttle in and the steering minimal, and you emerge from each apex faster than the last, more confident, more impressed. (And, in my particular case, only marginally less frightened).
There are astonishing depths to the X-Bow?s abilities on the track, depths that a driver of far greater skill than I might still take some time to truly plunder. But even within the limits of only a handful of laps, it was impossible not to grow into that beautifully crafted carbon monocoque, to begin to understand how someone could spend upwards of ?50,000 on a car that has no practical application, just for the clinical thrill of it. The X-Bow is complete absurd genius, as addictive as it is ridiculous.
Don?t forget, we?ll be revealing details of one car every day from Top Gear magazine?s Big Performance Car Showdown ? a blog with our verdict and video of one of Stig?s laps.
