Matt Prior

Oh, mate. I had no idea. I had read about the Rocket, of course – the tiny sportster designed by Gordon Murray and made by the Light Car Company in the early 1990s. When it was new and I was a skinny teenager, I would have devoured every word and remembered every statistic from Autocar's Rocket review and performance test.

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And some numbers just stick, no? You will never need to look them up again. You will forever know that the Jaguar XJ220 did 217mph and the McLaren F1 made 627bhp. So when I accepted the generous offer from a reader to have a drive in his Rocket last week, and as we stood looking at it, I said: “385 kilos, isn’t it?”

“That’s what [LCC founder] Chris Craft told me,” replied the owner, “and he was a pretty straight guy.”

I’ve since been back to check Autocar’s test. The Rocket tipped our scales at 400kg carrying more than 20 litres of petrol, so Craft’s 385kg claim would have been spot on.

Which makes the Rocket the lightest road car I’ve driven on the road. Presumably a Sinclair C5 doesn’t count. I have driven (very few) lighter cars with engines and numberplates – Austin Seven specials – but only on a circuit. These 750 Motor Club racers tend to be in the low-300s. Murray once designed one (for racing only) at just 280kg.