The new MG ZT may look like a lumpy saloon, and cost as much as one, but in fact it's a very carefully disguised sports car, complete with snorting nostrils, in keeping with the company's illustrious traditions - traditions that cling on and continue to be felt even now MG is a branch of boring old wake-me-up-when-it's-over Rover.
So, despite its complacent size and shape, and despite the way the doors go "chunk" rather than "poink" when you close them, and despite the fact that the entire package appears to be pointed squarely in the direction of the company car park, the ZT never lets you believe for a second that it isn't something that you should be hustling between straw bales at an enthusiasts' weekend in the heart of East Sussex. Miraculous: a sports car that takes golf clubs. You'll believe a business executive can fly.
At MG recently, the cry went up: "Send the Guardian a new ZT - and don't spare the horsepower." And so it was that a range-topping, 4.6-litre V8 version of the car arrived on the doorstep for our nervous inspection. Not for us the footling ZT 120, with its mimsy 1.8 engine, nor even the ZT 180, with its utterly yawnsome 2.5-litre V6. As for the 2.0-litre turbo diesel version - what would they be taking us for? Some kind of wimp? No, we got the petrol-scarfing, police-badgering, unnecessary-in-all-directions ZT 260 so that we could experience the ZT in all its barking madness.
How unnecessary is the ZT 260? Well, it's got four exhaust pipes, for a kick-off. That's probably three more than your car has got, and is almost certainly two more than are strictly necessary. But there they are, anyway, in two cheeky pairs, peeking out from under the car's otherwise utterly conservative-looking rear end, and housed in their own bright steel hoods - an early indication that, when it comes on all boardroom-friendly, the ZT is playing the impostor.
I didn't get round there to have a look, being otherwise occupied in the driving seat; but I imagine those exhaust pipes throw out sheets of roasting-hot red flame as the car accelerates, in the manner made popular by the Batmobile.
Quite apart from roaring in glorious, cinema-style Sensurround (there were times on my travels when I seriously began to wonder whether the engine was mounted behind me, as in a formula one car), an engine so unstintingly tooled-up is bound to be headstrong and, indeed, seemed quite capable of doing its own thing without any assistance from a driver at all. The car needs nimble feet and hands and the way it stands up and powers off the blocks can catch an unwary novice out at first. Indeed, on my debut outing in the ZT, the car reached 40mph while I was still checking the rear-view mirror for cyclists.
The engine's speed has been artificially limited to prevent you getting into trouble on German autobahns, but that still allows plenty of scope for getting into trouble on British motorways. Or, indeed, on British A- and B-roads, which the ZT handles with great nimbleness. Given the car's shape, and the presence in the interior of plush carpets and the usual range of executive-nannying extras (a Harmon/Kardon stereo, a gently massaging air-control system), you would expect the traditional sporty sensations to have had the edge taken off them by spongey suspension and the various dampenings and cushionings that today's saloon owners demand. And you would be quite handsomely wrong.
Those things that saloons generally exist to help you ignore - the thud of the speed bump, the crinkle of the gravel - are all talkatively available to you in your ZT via the steering column and pedals. Obviously it's not going to duplicate the bracingly intimate experience of hurtling into the future while poised merely centimetres above the road surface in the bucket seat of an MG roadster. But it's going to come staggeringly close - and to the surprise, almost certainly, of your passengers, who may well have climbed in beside you in the false expectation of a relaxed and easy time, only to feel their eyeballs flatten under pressure from the G-forces.
If I had wanted to disguise our ZT still further, I would have chosen a different colour. Ours came finished in a shade MG refers to as "monogram twilight chromactive", which sounds like something you might take for constipation and which, even un-ingested, was capable of a certain loosening effect, being essentially a punishingly loud and weirdly kinetic blue, that seemed to shift uneasily towards the purple end of the spectrum even as you stood still and looked at it.
To judge from the variously aghast reactions of passers-by, the colour seemed to function as a large and flashing neon sign saying, "Potential yob on board." Get one in plain navy, on the other hand, and the car would all but disappear into the throng. You could be the biggest thrill-seeking Tarmac-botherer in your neighbourhood and nobody need know.
The lowdown
MG ZT 260 V8
Price: £33,490
Top speed: 155mph
Acceleration: 0-60mph in 6.2 secs
Consumption: 21.5mpg
At the wheel: William Hague
On the stereo: The Today programme
En route for: Silverstone
