It doesn’t get much better than this. Late afternoon sunshine gilds the autumn hills and the empty tarmac curling into the Cromwell Gorge ahead. There’s not another car in view, the intro for Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine on you crazy Diamond’ is dropping into the cabin’s hush courtesy a truly wonderful Naim sound system, and my right foot is poised over the go-pedal of a Bentley Continental GT, its 6.0-litre W12 engine sounding a clarion call to hoonery.

It’s days and cars like this that make one glad to be alive and obscure the otherwise precarious nature of freelance work in a recession. With this mighty 6.0-litre twin-turbo W12 engine responding to my right foot, delivering 423kW and 700Nm to all four 21-inch wheels and capable of a zero to 100 time of 4.6 seconds, I’m having a blast.

Bentley’s chassis boys have returned the suspension, fettling the anti-roll bar and the spring and damper settings to work with the wider track and a now slightly rear-biased weight balance. They’ve also wrought changes to the steering to improve road ‘feel’ and it’s worked. This is a big, elegant grand tourer capable of cruising with enviable refinement, or being hustled through the scenery with unseemly verve.

Sure, the steep switchback up to the Crown Range revealed the dynamic limitations of a 2.3-ton car but it all came together when the road opened out. Trouble is it’s so effortless that you’ll easily do ‘go straight to jail’ speeds without driver or car breaking a sweat. 

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Introducing the latest Continental GT with a line-up of illustrious predecessors was a master stroke for Bentley, for it not only underlined the history of the brand, but the fact that gorgeous lines are timeless – and design themes can link decades almost a century apart.

We had South Island Bentley expert Bruce McIlroy to show us over the 1926 3.0-litre, the 1929 4.5 and his own Derby, which is used as a daily driver. Then he took us for a gentle punt around the Queenstown’s autumn-gilded countryside.

At least, that was the idea; after all the 1929 car isn’t his – but clearly he’s a petrolhead. Looking down the long bonnet thrusting into the scenery ahead, he couldn’t resist getting up a bit of speed.

Then turning into the swervery.

It’s astonishing just how quickly such a big car can gather momentum – and by golly you notice it when you’re perched out back, looking down on front seat occupants with the car’s leather-lined flanks rising only as far as your waist.

With the wind tearing at clothes and flying insects flaying my face I squinted with streaming eyes at the speedo’s trembling needle where it sat at, eek!

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We’re meant to be objective about test bikes, by my innards twitched with unseemly lust when I laid eyes on Ducati’s Streetfighter S. It’s every millimetre a lean, mean grunt machine. There’s no fairing, no pillion pew – just a mighty engine caged within that trellis frame, an aggressive hump of a tank and the smallest seat a road bike can get away with, finished off by the twin megaphone mufflers.

This Mad Max-mobile’s motor comes straight from the mongrel mating of a 1098 and 1198. That means the same lightweight cast aluminium crankcase as the 1198 and shorter intake tracts than the 1098 sports bike – plus most of its performance, with just four kilowatts cut from the power. Ducati says this is the most powerful naked bike it’s ever made.

Fire her up and she sounds it, too – that 1099cc liquid-cooled L-twin motor with its Desmodromic valve set-up snaps and snarls like a pack of feral dogs; thwap the throttle open and it only gets better.

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Some years ago, I was given a Fiat Bambina for my birthday. Not as a going concern, but a ‘restoration project.’ Rather than being puzzled, perhaps I should have taken the hint and crossed the donor off my Christmas card list. But instead I was charmed, and began paying for the wee beast’s storage.

That soon palled, and it became clear I had to get it home. “No worries,” said a mate, “we’ll tow it.”

Now, the traffic regulations permit an unwarranted, unregistered vehicle to be towed provided it complies with the lighting regulations (for a vehicle of this age, that’s one lamp – it’s far more rigorous for cars made after 1976) and provided it’s not operated carelessly or in a manner likely to endanger someone.

Looking at the lichen-encrusted car it seemed impossible that one could tow it at all, and I felt fairly safe – until my mate (let’s call him Bill) spat on the windscreen, whipped my hat off, and used it to wipe a small circle to peer from. The tyres were still inflated, the brakes appeared to work; he was happy. We tied a short length of rope from his tow bar to my front axle, and off we went, with promises to go slow ringing in my ears.

We didn’t get far; on the first blind, uphill left hand corner the tow rope broke...

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The Harley Davidson Fat Boy and HSV GTS have the most in common, both modern variations of muscle-monsters with subtlety a close second to sheer grunt.

Both capitalise on torque, noise, more noise and sheer presence.

And the Ferrari 458? It’s an astonishing piece of kit, a tiny slice of a car, like the HSV powered by a V8 engine, with 540Nm of torque to the Aussie monster’s 550 yet with nearly 300kg less weight to shift.

So the big surprise is that the Harley matches it in terms of torque to weight – at 1Nm to 2.75kg.

Not sure how that works, the Ferrari would leave the Harley for dust; gearing no doubt, and a hefty dose of Italian magic.