You're a braver man than I, Jeremy Clarkson. There I was, sitting behind the wheel of your 'Car of the Century', shitting myself. Henry Pearman, the man responsible for the Eagle E-Type Sport, was urging me on. 'I've seen this car beat a Porsche 'round a race track,' he hinted. Yes Henry, but I know how to drive a Porsche. I challenge an average driver to cane this E-Type. Even below the legal limit, the car was all over the place. I felt like a novice skier barrelling down a black run. Towards a tree. Without airbags. Or a crumple zone. Sorry, Henry. Sorry, Jeremy. I guess I'm not man enough for your machine.

It's a shame. The E-Type is the most visually stunning car ever made. Allegedly. Forty-one years after its Geneva debut, the nose-heavy styling still stirs debate. Some consider the Series One E-Type Roadster a timeless classic, blending feminine curves with sporting intent. Others see it as the original 'sports car as phallic symbol', embodying the embarrassing hyper-sexuality of a severe mid-life crisis. Love it or mock it, you can't ignore it. Jaguar's first E-Type still has enormous presence, and perfectly judged detailing. From wire wheels to aircraft style toggle switches to the clearly labelled 'cigar' lighter, you wouldn't want to change a thing.

Someone at BMW decided to put ABS braking on a motorcycle. How better to showcase the capabilities of the then new Automatic Braking System? Luckily, The Boys From Bavaria had just the bike for the job: the K100, or, as it was fondly called by the biking fraternity, 'the flying brick'. One of my mates got one. At a meet, he delighted all assembled by doing full-lock stops on gravel. Wow! Later, after the machine was serviced, he discovered that the ABS hadn't been working.

Don't read that the wrong way. My friend's "all-hands-on-deck" gravel stops were a testimony to his riding ability, rather than the stupidity of ABS. It shows what a rider with real skill can do with a road machine— no matter how basic the technology. UK Petrolheads may diss their American cousins for the foul-handling beasts they call muscle cars, but there is a real skill in driving one of these ancient behemoths over 30 miles per hour. Or around a corner. It ain't pretty, but it IS impressive. In fact, many drivers actually prefer this untainted "man vs. machine" driving experience. Which brings us to the question of the day: how much electronic help does a 'true' enthusiast need?

Driving a go-kart is something of an acquired taste. You sit on a dinner tray, a few inches off the ground. You get a steering wheel, an engine, four tiny tyres, rudimentary suspension and… that's it. At speed, the forces of acceleration, de-acceleration and lateral G's are unfiltered, and vicious. Nannies have been jailed for shaking babies less violently. But if you love to drive, a go-kart unleashes a flood of adrenalin-crazed endorphins that makes it hurt so good. After haring around in a go-kart, driving a 'normal' car feels like, um, nothing.

I'm sorry, did I say go-kart? I meant to say 'Lotus Elise'. Read the above paragraph again, substituting the word 'Elise' for 'go-kart'. The differences between the two are both obvious and unimportant: size, doors, roof, gearbox and top end. The similarities are startling. Ride height low enough to scare a limbo dancer. A tiny engine with a narrow but brutally effective power band. Steering and suspension so direct you wonder where the machine ends and your nervous system begins. Put it all together, and you've got a road car that you can drive like a go-kart, using your entire body to aim the machine with zero-delay, laser-guided precision.

On one hand, we have the Lotus Elise. It goes like stink, stops on a 5p piece, corners like a roller coaster, sits lower than your shins, rides harder than a tea tray surfing down a mountain of medium-sized rocks, and is harder to get into than a Latin textbook. It's the automotive equivalent of tequila slammers. On the other hand, we have the Lexus SC400. J D Power's poster child is more car-coon than car— cosseting its occupants in so much luxury that discussing "handling" and "braking" seems churlish. It's a vodka martini, stirred, not shaken.

So, is that our lot? Must we choose between performance cars that punish us for our passion, and luxury cars where passion mandates indecent exposure?

Cocaine is God's way of saying you're making too much money. "Niche" cars serve the same divine purpose for automobile manufacturers. Porsche's foray into the SUV market is only the most topical example. Volkswagen, renowned makers of the "people's car", are preparing to pit their £60k Phaeton against Mercedes' S-Class. On the other end of the scale, once exclusive BMW will soon offer runabouts to badge-aspiring plebs (1 Series). Audi is messing about with bullshit, I mean, Lamborghini. And Ford is still fiddling with Wilton-clad off-roaders (Range Rover).

You know things are getting out of control when The Big Boys start dabbling in the manufacturing equivalent of freebasing: reviving an old marque. Bringing back the old sub-brands may look like a noble attempt to recapture lost heritage, but it's actually a reflection of boardroom boredom, designed to give bored boffins and their marketing chums a challenge. Bugatti: can a passenger car have as much horsepower as a Spitfire? MG: can a staid Rover sedan be tuned to Fast and the Furious standards? MINI: how do you get new money for old engines, Brazilian style?

David Icke believes that blood-drinking lizards from the fourth dimension secretly rule the world. Owners of the Subaru Impreza Turbo believe their car is attractive. Uh sorry, but no on both counts. Still, there's no arguing with some people. Once they get an idea about their car's physical appeal stuck in their head, even a steroid-crazed Marine drill sergeant couldn't brainwash it out. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but some beholders are as mad as the government's nominal transport policy.

As I lowered myself into the new BMW 7-Series' micro-perforated, climate-controlled, buttock massaging passenger seat, I noticed that my diminutive driver seemed a bit, well, lethargic. He had the half-lidded laid-back look of the seriously pampered. Not what you'd expect from a professional race driver about to hurl 1945kg's of somebody else's luxury car around a racetrack. One chicane later and I shared his complacency. The new 7-Series can be driven at maximum velocity with no more drama than an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Which is to say none at all, then a bit, then not at all. Hell, you could phone it in.

Or perhaps not. That depends on whether or not you know how to remove the sim card from your mobile phone. To use the 7's on-board telephony, you have to extract your sim card, open the phone drawer, take out a tiny plastic holder, fit your sim card into the holder and insert the holder into a small slot. Then, and only then, you can you use BMW's detachable 'portable' phone, or the new iDrive controller, or wheel-mounted buttons, or a separate (and miniscule) keypad, to phone a friend. I don't think the police would call the process 'hands free'.