IN THIS FEATURE The Gordon connection Race and street car rolled into one More money than brains

It's the Gordon connection every time. I will always go for anything Gordon Murray designs: the Weismann Rocket, the McLaren F1... I just like the way Gordon thinks. As President of the More Money than Brains Club, the minute I heard about the Mercedes-McLaren SLR I knew I wanted one - so when Mercedes said "Would you help us introduce the Maybach?", I did. And then I made a deal to get the very first SLR in America.

I first drove one at a track near Barcelona in 2003. Supercar companies just don't do that sort of thing - you never hear of Ferrari owners getting invited down to beat the hell out of a pre-production Enzo for the weekend. They were saying, come down and see if you can break it. So there we were, a lot of lead-footed guys like me who don't know what they are doing...

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As a kid I was a member of the Bonneville 200mph Club. I got a sticker and stuff for joining but the reason I signed up was because it was a dream to go 200mph. Only a few guys had done it back then. Now here I was, living my dream, doing 207mph, whilst twiddling with the radio! Steep banks meant that you could take your hands off the wheel but I did this [Jay holds his fists open an inch from the wheel]. This car at 200 was so stable. I must have done a couple of hundred miles that day - it was an enormous track, almost 5 miles round.

Mind you, there was one moment when an SLR came in to the pits and a brake calliper was on fire. One of the guys from Mercedes, speaking in a voice just like Arnold Schwarzenegger, looked down and said: "Dat is not a problem. It does not affect the car in any vay..."