BOSS LEVEL

Put four great performance car minds in the same room, toss in some random topics and you have yourself a conversation for the history books

WORDS JACK RIX PHOTOGRAPHY TOM BARNES & HUCKLEBERRY MOUNTAIN

“You know, I originally thought your cars went so fast because they were powered by French brandy...”

Gordon arrives first, a little early, catches us off guard. Not that he cares, he’s casual and confident, happy to strike up a chat with whoever’s nearest – hands in pockets, loose-fitting blazer over colourful untucked shirt. His punctuality makes sense, the other three have a combined 6,761 miles of travel to get here, Surrey based Gordon has 28. Mr Hennessey barrels in next – big smiles, even bigger handshakes, thick Texas charm. He and Gordon gravitate towards each other, I flap about trying to find them both a glass of sparkling water – bit too early for a cocktail.

Things are going well. Two of our four star guests have arrived, brawling between rival factions of the performance car elite has yet to materialise, and despite Masterchef final levels of stress there’s hope we might pull this off.

Christian von Koenigsegg rocks up with a small TV crew in tow. They’re filming a documentary on the great hypercar entrepreneur for Swedish TV and thought this might be interesting to include. We shall see. More handshakes, nods, introductions, another sparkling water. A lock-in is looking unlikely.

So it’s Mate Rimac bringing up the rear – not a power move from the 34-year-old whippersnapper, his PR assures us, but sticky traffic on the A40. In he comes, suit, no tie, trainers and orders... a pint of IPA. He’ll go far this Rimac chap.

So that’s it, a full complement, four of the biggest and most influential names in the car industry, in one place. Later tonight we have the TopGear.com Awards ceremony to attend, but for now the rules are simple: there are no rules. We want an open debate, four great minds swapping ideas and opinions on various subjects, chosen at random from the golden tombola of topics. Release the balls...

Can an EV ever be more exciting to drive than a combustion engined car? And if so, how do we get there?

John Hennessey: In a straight line, yeah. But with weight, battery technology and fast charging there’s still a lot left to come. You’re going to drill everybody in a drag race, but if we go to the Nordschleife, it might be a different story.

Gordon Murray: At the moment, the answer is categorically an electric car can’t give you all the emotional stuff. For somebody my age or even down to 30- or 25-year-olds, it’ll never give you the emotional experience of a lightweight dynamic motor car with the noise and the rest of it. However, there will be a time when people of a certain age are not here anymore, and the people left won’t remember that stuff. Electric cars will become the norm. And then companies will build sporty ones that handle properly, it’s just a timeline. You can’t just draw a line now and say that’s it. It’ll change.