Here he is, a gnarled old man at the wheel of a partially fossilised Suzuki SJ410 doing exactly 60kph along a quiet road just outside the Spanish city of Seville. His face is a mass of tan leather engineered by the sun, his bemused frown at the road ahead betraying his failing eyesight, his wandering line betraying his failing steering box. He is not expecting what happens next.
As we round a corner and the road ahead blossoms into a valley-long straight, not an oncoming lorry in sight, I push back my shoulders, pull the left-hand paddle of this Lexus IS-F twice... and floor it.
Everything goes a bit odd, as 417bhp tries to divorce the rear pair of tyres from their comfortable tarmac roost. The Suzuki pings towards the IS-F like its brakes have suddenly jammed on, and the vacuum pipes in the Lexus's Yamaha-fettled engine reach critical mass at 3,600rpm, open some big noisy valve and replace the cultured low-rev Lexus hum with a thick, dangerous-sounding bellow.
I can't see his face clearly, but our dear old chap in the SJ jogs the wheel as the IS-F lunges forward, grabs another gear, shimmies slightly as it touches a dusty median and charges off up the valley like an angry lump of pure evil. A Lexus that makes people flinch because it's so noisy? I like that. I like that a lot.
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