FAB FORD

SPECTRAFLAIR. OTHER CAR COMPANIES MIGHT HAVE used DuPont's wild iridescent paint system, but none employed it to better effect than TVR. It's a point being proved to us in spectacular style by this glorious T350C, rainbow-like bursts of diffracted light dancing across its bodywork as it basks in the autumn sunshine.

- by RICHARD MEADEN

It might have temporarily stolen the show, but the T350C has some impressive company in our gathering of modern classic sports coupes. Joining it from the '00s is the Z4 M Coupé, while the '10s are represented by the Evora Sport 410 and 981 Cayman GT4. Four more different characters you couldn't wish to meet.

It’s a magnificent if rather melancholy group. TVR is gone. Lotus is on life support. BMW has no plans to replace the current Z4 with a dedicated sports car. Even Porsche is in a pickle, having executed a hasty handbrake turn on its plans to supplant the outgoing Cayman with an EV-only successor. Glory days and end of days in one neat test.

We're told the reason for this depressing atrophy is lack of interest in sports cars, but that's hard to believe when you're presented with this pulse-quickening scene. Legislation certainly hasn't helped the cause. The need for safer, quieter, less polluting cars has driven the market towards bigger, heavier, less raucous products. The result? A reflexive outcome where the cars become less desirable so fewer people buy them. It's a sad state of affairs.

Better, then, to remind ourselves how good we had it. And how good we still have it, by celebrating the fact that the most expensive of these cars (the GT4) can be had for new Audi RS3 money, with the cheapest (the Z4 M Coupé) available for rather less than a new Polo GTI.

Finally, to ensure your humble scribe doesn't indulge in a rose-tinted nostalgia trip, we've brought along our youthful control judge, Yousuf Ashraf. Just three years old when TVR launched the T350(!) he will be driving all four cars for the very first time.