19 Nov 07
Inside, the fighter plane theme continues. There are no dials as such, just electronic LCD readouts on a TFT (thin-film transistor) screen, a technology that's been common for years in computing but is all but unknown in the road car arena. It looks so advanced, authentic and like a military aircraft you half expect an altimeter and artificial horizon to pop up in front of you.
For all this technological pizzazz, to start the Reventon you just twist the key and wait for all those pistons to start shuttling up and down their bores. The noise, even at idle, is entrancing: less sharp than, say, a Ferrari 599 GTB, but richer and more melodious.
Pull the right-hand carbon fibre paddle towards you, squeeze the throttle and this mighty beast just trickles away as if it were a Ford Fiesta. You sit with your bum seemingly on the tarmac, back reclined and knees up. There's precious little space in the footwell even though there are only two pedals, so if you're tall like me you're never going to be comfortable.
Dead ahead, in the middle of all the dancing diodes is a little electronic grid with a dot in its centre. As you accelerate, the dot moves up the grid, when you brake it moves down. Turn into a corner and the dot heads off to one side. It is, in fact, a g-meter capable of measuring both longitudinal and lateral acceleration.
