We currently have a VW Scirocco R on test. It is the same colour as the Incredible Hulk and looks phenomenal. It’s named after a Saharan wind and moves like one; this is a seriously, properly quick car, only marginally slower than a Porsche Boxster, because the company that makes both can’t sell you a Volksie that’s faster than a Porsche. Sadly.

Anyway, I was chatting about it with a good acquaintance last night who used to own a Mercedes AMG, and had since toned his taste down a bit because he had had a massive crash and didn’t want to own fast cars anymore. He said he’d kill himself yadda yadda. That logic is ridiculous, and I told him so.

Any car can on the road can (after some time) get up to about 150km/h. I have been in very small, very shit cars doing that speed and maybe a little bit more. And it was horrible. Frightening. Some cars at a standard 120km/h feel like they are at the very edge of their abilities, and should you have to swerve or brake or do anything other than drive in a straight line, you will probably roll over and die and cause an enormous traffic jam and piss everybody off who were happily trying to get somewhere before you inconveniently died. I would much, much rather do 120km/h in a car built to do 250km/h, which the Scirocco can do easily.

I don’t want to do 250km/h, but it’s nice to know that I could, and more importantly that the car could. You simply cannot blame a fast car for trying to kill you (unless it’s a TVR). You only have yourself to blame if you were speeding, and that’s that.

The last TVR, called the Sagaris. I have it on good authority that these were violently impossible to drive.

Speed is a wonderful thing; it is one of the great pleasures of my life. But I do not speed in the wrong conditions and at the wrong time. There is a time for speed and a time to just behave yourself. An airport run at 4 in the morning for a mate is a good, quiet time to stretch your cars legs. The school run is not. This isn’t rocket science.

What I much prefer to experience in a car, and thankfully it’s something that manufacturers are gearing their cars for, is acceleration. That feeling of quickly moving from where you are to somewhere else is what makes us giddy, it shuffles your organs around a bit and if the car is fast enough, the feeling awakens your fight or flight mechanism, which kicks a bit of adrenaline into your bloodstream, widens your eyes and heightens your senses. That is good speed, and more importantly it’s enjoyable within the confines of the law. Which is always nice.

If you’ve ever jumped off anything relatively high and felt the feeling of gravity accelerating your body through space, you will know what I mean. I came across the most astonishing set of facts the other day: an object in freefall will accelerate from 0-100km/h in about 2.8 seconds. There are very few cars on earth that can do this: The Bugatti Veyron cracks it in about 2.5, that stunning new Lamborghini Aventador in about 2.8, the Koenigsegg Agera and reportedly the bang-for-your-buck Nissan GT-R can crack it using a secret launch control. Formula One cars? 1.9 seconds. Which is just insane really.

The new Aventador. Immediately became my new favourite supercar.

Essentially, we as a species are using petrol and 1.5 tonnes of metal to out-accelerate gravity. In a straight line. Think about that; that’s why acceleration feels so good, even in a car like the Scirocco R, which is twice as slow and about half the feeling, but that’s fine by me.

If you own a performance-orientated car, for goodness sake you need to enjoy it. At every racetrack around the country, public track days are held a few times a month. For the price of a decent meal, you can drive your car as fast as you like, without having to worry about the police/kids/pavements/dying. If you get it wrong in a fast corner and spin out, you will hit precisely nothing and the only damage will be to your ego.

I’ve been to a few of these sorts of things at the historic Kyalami and it was some of the very best motoring experiences of my young life. I wholeheartedly recommend it, all you need is to wear long sleeves, pants and a helmet, which you can hire, and of course a bit of petrol. Over inflate your tyres; this will prevent them from wearing too much.

I’d love to meet you there with the Scirocco, but the fleet manager told me (about six times) that if I take it near the racetrack she will kill me. The lady in question is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, but she’s a hardcore rally driver who swears a lot. She probably would kill me to make a point though, making it a more honourable death than dying in a tin can on a highway.