ALL GUNS BLAZING

Lamborghini’s Aventador SVJ and Nissan’s GT-R Nismo are two old warriors at their fiercest and most brutal, determined to go out on an adrenaline-fuelled high

- JETHRO BOVINGDON

IT’S ALMOST SPOOKY. THE DRIVING environments couldn’t be more different: one elevated on an extreme-looking but nicely squishy seat, your legs bent as they would be in a saloon car, visibility easy and reassuring; the other set behind a vast, raked-back windscreen, seat just a carbon shell with some woefully unsupportive padding and set bolt upright, your legs splayed beneath the fully extended steering column, widescreen door mirrors filled mostly with intakes and huge, sharp-edged wheelarches, and a whole lot of carbonfibre aero addenda visible through the venetian blind-style engine cover when a little more of a rear view might be welcome.

Yet as the road wiggles into the gloom, puddles clawing ominously from the edges of narrow lanes and hiding God-knows-what, these two wildly different machines have the same appetite and enthusiasm; they summon the same unbelievable speed. Extracting it is an exercise in restraint, occasional moments of fullthrottle joy and many more in a kind of blind panic as tyres skate over standing water and bumps shuffle the cars off line in a heartbeat. Two cars so extreme they seem to have wholly forgotten about the real world. Especially when it’s gripped by winter.