In real life it wasn't like that. The stunt team responsible for the celluloid duel admitted that the big cube combatants weren't evenly matched. Out of the crate, the bulky Dodge had too much for the 'Stang; the problem was getting the cars to stay in the same shot. Now tell me you weren't rooting for the Charger all along. Then you wore thick-framed Ray-Bans for a week, right?

If so, you're probably up for this. We're about to ignite a four-way, 1627bhp, Blighty vs Bavaria megasaloon grunt-fest and scorch some tarmac of our own (or pleat it in the case of one massively powerful all-drive contender from Ingolstadt) on the winding roads of the Somerset and Devon coast. But first we have an empty Thruxton race circuit to play with...

This will, of course, be a grin. Heaps of weight, preposterous power. Which is a different proposition entirely to achieving speed by removing mass. Major metal wrapped around mutha-grade firepower requires alternative thinking. Might as well crank commitment up to max too, because there's little room for error once things get moving. Everything to do with sliding may seem to happen in slo-mo but the physics are just as inevitable and the values more spectacular.

You can't just jink or twitch your way out of a situation, either. Go with the flow, but only having already worked out which way the flow is going. No good focusing on your fingertips. We're talking big, pre-emptive inputs, liberal use of corrective lock and throttle travel; real, physical cockpit action. You've got to loosen up, wipe the sweat from your palms, boss it.

Then? Well, there's just something about lighting up rubber the size of real estate, seeing the scenery streak to liquid grey-green then pan from windscreen to side window, smoke simultaneously funnelling across the span of all three mirrors. The sensation of speed may not be as intense as in a tarmac-skimming sports car, but the feeling of momentum is vaguely awesome. Mighty forces are at work and you're at their fulcrum. It honestly doesn't get much better if you like your action large.

But it's immediately apparent that, without doing any of this, the Audi RS6 (΂£57,700, 444bhp) doesn't seem to slow down for Thruxton's corners. It has enormous all-drive grip, traction and drive out of bends. It will even kick its tail wide at a businesslike angle if you lift out of its preferred steady understeer suddenly. From the outside it sounds like the super-concentrated American V8 of a Le Mans Corvette racer muffled by a 30-tog duvet. On the inside it's as quiet and comfortable as it possibly can be given the ambient scream of the tyres and violent transient shifts in g-force pressure against those sculpted Recaros.
Astounding and anodyne at the same time.

The natural off-the-leash attitude of the BMW M5 (΂£52,000, 400bhp) is a kind of insouciant, fag-on oversteer McQueen himself would dig. Given sufficient incentive, it will scribe long, languid, 'it's-nothing-really' arcs with clouds curling off the rear arches all day long. It relaxes into a powerslide with a sigh. Nothing much seems to change. Steering weight and feel are just as good on opposite lock. Stability and suspension control, too. All the driver has to do is balance the relative quantities of throttle and corrective steering. There isn't an optimum angle of drift as such. Shallow or deep, the M5 is cool with both -and anything in between. On the track, it was born to burn rubber.

Needing even less encouragement to break loose at the rear with the traction-scavenging electronics switched off, the S-type R (΂£47,400, 400bhp) does its best to ape the Bee Em's balletic ballistics through the snaking Complex and will go just as smokily sideways but dissipates more speed in the endeavour. It also requires a little more work at the helm to keep the slide tidy; bumps the M5 doesn't seem to notice modulate the Jag's rear-end grip and unsettle the calm of the suspension. It sounds a little strained fully wrung-out too, sharply metallic supercharger whine souring the more mellifluous backbeat of its big, quad-cam V8.

But the most brutal sight of the morning is truly astonishing. Somehow larger. Somehow darker. Somehow broadside for an eternity. Different sound, too: lower, less distinct, more akin to a force of nature. That once feared presence is back - the Lotus Carlton.

We registering any public hysteria yet? Choppers been put on alert? Perhaps it's just as well the new guns in this gang - Audi RS6, Jaguar S-type R, BMW M5 - are down with the concealment angle. Soberly suited in true Reservoir Dogs style, they're careful to present a reassuringly benign face to the world compared with the LC. Hormonal bulges have been smoothed and chamfered, big scary wings and chins left on designers' drawing boards.

The only common signifiers of their phenomenal performance are disc brakes that are nearly as big as those vast wheels which fill the wheelarches as snugly as knuckles in a duster, and callipers (eight-pot for the RS6) hanging behind the spokes like sides of beef. Step back and the look is superhero-trying-to-blend-in, especially the Audi which somehow squeezes a set of 19x8.5in rims under its carefully inflated arches. The M5 and S-type R stuff barely less extravagant 18-inchers under their lightly flared wings and opt for fatter rims at the back: a racecar-aping ten inches for the BMW, half an inch wider than the Jag's. All beautifully de-emphasised, of course, although the M5 - dated as it's now beginning to seem in some ways - only just manages to keep its enormous potential for kinetic thuggery on the safe side of discretion.

Ten years ago the Lotus Carlton knew nothing of steroidal stealth, much less political correctness. The 176mph, 377bhp 'cause for public concern' was neither self-conscious nor apologetic. Quite the opposite, and it's easy to understand why. Between them, GM and Lotus had to perform a modern day miracle: turn the acme of humdrum family saloons, the Vauxhall Carlton, into something that could embarrass any supercar this side of a Ferrari F40 and for which they could charge ΂£48,000.

Apart from the mind-boggling feat of actually summoning the necessary performance, the idea was to bury the core identity and homely image beneath a hugely suggestive muscle suit as pumped-up as today's equivalents are sucked-in. In the event the Carlton bit wasn't completely subsumed. Just enough of it remained to twist the knife into the egos of drivers of more conventional supercars humbled by its pulverising pace. This car was too much to stomach for some people, and not just Porsche 911 pilots. Questions about its right to exist were asked in Parliament. Sensitive souls wanted it banned.

Which makes it infamous, iconic and, quite possibly, legendary - a kind of McLaren F1 of tin tops. Its right to be here needn't be questioned. It earns its wild card both for being the bad-ass blueprint for the megasaloon genre and submitting a set of stats that haven't sagged with age, even though engine technology has ascended from the tree tops to the stratosphere in the intervening decade. You just wouldn't think a 24-valve 3.6-litre straight six developed from the 3-litre lump in the GSi 3000 (even one blown by two Garrett T25 turbos fed through a 'chargecooler') could pose any kind of threat to the state-of-the-art, superheated V8s deployed by the class of 2002. And with a quoted peak power output of 377bhp at 5200rpm it's true that the Carlton is 23bhp shy of the 400bhp pumped out by the normally aspirated 5-litre M5 and supercharged 4.2-litre S-type R and a breezy 67bhp behind the 444bhp twin-turbo 4.2-litre Audi.

Game over, then? It's hardly begun. The Lotus Carlton's first ace is that it weighs 1685kg - beefy enough to qualify for the 'heavy metal' brigade, but significantly more svelte than the next lightest car, the 1720kg M5. The Jag piles another 80 kilos on top of that and the Audi is 40 heavier than the Jag. It means that with a power/weight ratio of 231bhp/ton, the LC gives little away to the M5 (236bhp/ton) and pips the 226bhp/ton S-type R. Only the RS6 is out on its own with 245bhp/ton.

But not even the Audi can match the old-timer for raw twisting effort: 419lb ft at 4200rpm plays 413lb ft. All right, that's 413lb ft between 1950 and 5600rpm but the Carlton's torque curve looks about as peaky as Ayres Rock and benefits from mechanical six-speed drive to the rear wheels rather than via a torque converter to all four.

The only other car with a manual six-speed box, the M5, has a comparatively modest-looking 368lb ft at 3800rpm to play with. True, its ratios are somewhat snappier (the LC will pull 80mph in second and is geared to do 287mph in sixth - or 2250rpm at 100mph) but then, when it comes to the torque/weight ratio our almost pristine LC (preserved by Vauxhall with just 12,000 miles on the clock for perspective-focusing exercises just such as this) is way ahead of the modern game with 253lb ft/ton, followed by the Jaguar (230), Audi (228) and the BMW (218).

When John Barker took the Lotus Carlton to Millbrook for Performance Car in 1991, it recorded the following figures: 0-60mph in 4.8sec, 0-100mph in 10.6sec, a standing quarter of 13.2sec (at 114mph) and a top speed of 163mph round the two-mile bowl, which would have equated to a surefire 170mph+ on the flat, possibly even that controversial 176mph claimed top speed. Too good for modern cars limited to 155mph, though there seems little doubt the M5 and S-type would be able to crack 170mph given the opportunity and Audi reckons the RS6 would be knocking on the door of 190mph. It also claims the RS6 can blast to 60mph in 4.7sec. We'll wait for a right hooker before taking a full set of figures but at Thruxton this German-registered car couldn't quite dip below five seconds and was into the high 11s on the clock before it hit the ton. Even the best independent figures we've seen for the RS6 put it nearly a second off the pace of the Lotus Carlton at 100mph. Old metal rules in the sprint.

When we strap the kit to the Jag, it's even further adrift of its maker's claims - so perhaps there's something about the circuit. But it also fuels the subjective impression that this particular S-type R doesn't feel quite as ferocious as the example that took the scalp of the M5 the last occasion they met.

As we strike out for Exmoor, the suspicion is confirmed. This time out, the M5 has the legs of the Jaguar. Whenever they find themselves on a straight long enough to exploit the difference, it's the German car that either sticks like glue or eases away. The Jaguar is sensationally swift - aided by its exquisitely responsive and smooth six-speed automatic gearbox - but it's the slowest car here. At least in a straight line.

Talking transmissions, the Lotus Carlton's is lifted from the Corvette ZR1 of the time and heavy duty in every sense - tough enough to cope with the prodigious torque but saddled with an imprecise, industrial weight gearchange and thigh-numbingly heavy clutch which occasionally whiffs of pad material but never actually seems to slip - a trait it shares with that original PC test car. Fortunately it has one truly great gear: fourth will take you all the way from jogging pace to 143mph, dispatching 80-100mph in a staggering 3.8sec on the way. Even so, the M5's six-speed 'box (which has never won any awards for slickness) is a model of sweet-actioned acuity by comparison. It's a joy to stir it just to access the creamy warble and urgent upper-reach push of the 5-litre V8.

As ever, the Audi's Tiptronic automatic is good to use. Slotting the selector across to an alternative '+/-' gate gives sequential access to the 'box via deft fore and aft nudges of the lever. Alternatively, you can thumb the paddles on the steering wheel. This is the best bet. Using just third and fourth and the engine's Galactic spread of torque is a phenomenally effective way to travel for what seems like just a handful of revs. The Sport slot on the main lever's gate is largely a waste of time. It delays up-shifts, thus wasting revs and petrol. Such is the low-to-mid-range pulling power of the Audi's partially Le Mans racer-derived lump, it's doubtful if it even needs kickdown.

It's something of a precision-machined sledgehammer, the RS6. A build quality tour de force with flawlessly formed details and a lean beauty that makes the Jag and Bee Em look fussy and the LC almost impossibly macho. Devon, it has to be said, is a long way from its natural habitat. You sense it's aching for those long, straight, lightly trafficked strips of unrestricted autobahn. A place where the rumble from under the bonnet signals the onset of acceleration that almost sucks the moisture from your eyeballs. And all with no perceptible effort whatsoever.

Roads this twisty and bumpy aren't doing it any favours - the RS6 is no sportscar. It handles with immense security and has the best brakes of a fabulously well-endowed group. But it isn't agile enough to seem anything other than bulky, despite the massive cornering forces its gumball tyres are capable of generating. And its steering, while meatily weighted, is curiously inert. The harshness of its ride is a shock, too.

Although fine with large amplitude bumps and dips, the suspension doesn't even try to soak up the single sharp inputs, ripples and ruts which occasionally jar through the cabin structure. Any luxury pretensions are swiftly blown.

In contrast, the M5 feels almost ridiculously nimble and, mostly thanks to its extraordinary body control, it's dynamite to hustle down a demanding road whilst staying remarkably comfortable. The Audi may be stronger but the BMW is both sharper and more supple. RS6 brawn is heavier but M5's is more enthusiastic. Its throttle responds more energetically to any given input and it revs harder at the top end. It needs to, of course. The only duff element is steering that's too light and rather feel-less. Hitting the Sport button adds the necessary amount of weight and feel but also sharpens the already sharp throttle response - which is a matter of taste. It would be better if the functions could be separated.

The Jaguar is softer, more compliant and benefits from a sympathetic pair of hands at the helm that can deftly administer small inputs to balance the car's attitude mid-bend. Its steering is beautifully weighted but meatier and more communicative than the BMW's, a quality put to good use by the terrific grip of the 18-inch Continental Sport Contacts and the chassis' well judged cornering balance with its broad neutral phase. Body motions are closely controlled and contribute to the most cosseting ride of all. Mostly, though, this is the most flingable S-type by a margin.

Ultimately, the Lotus Carlton doesn't corner as quickly as the others. But it does have a chassis that can involve and satisfy broadly along the lines of the M5's and instill huge confidence in its driver. All right, it doesn't compete with the BMW's subtlety and finesse - though it beats the Audi - and body roll is quite pronounced when pressing on. It has a fine ride, though, and stability and body control at speed are impressive.

So was it worth the Lotus Carlton coming out of retirement for one final fight? More worthwhile than Joe Bugner, certainly. They say the last thing a heavyweight loses is his punch and the LC's is still hard enough to put at least two of this year's pretenders in casualty. Even the RS6 which, on paper, carries a 67bhp advantage, is sent staggering across the ring on rubber legs. And outrageous grunt is the Audi's principal weapon. To say that the Lotus Carlton wreaked havoc among its shiny new playmates is being almost laughably kind to their bruised egos.

The fact that it came within a whisker of relegating the most powerful production saloon on the planet to last place is little short of astonishing. In the end, though, the RS6 (so fast, so beautifully put together, so effective) just manages to rub out the ghost from the past. Point-to-point it's by far the quicker car - in fact, it's quickest of all - and as a pure object of desire it scores heavily. Fact is, though, the LC had it licked for outright pace and driver involvement. A sobering thought.

The Lotus Carlton simply savaged the S-type R for straight grunt but the Jaguar is such a beautifully poised and considered package it was never in any danger of being beaten by the old timer. On this occasion, though, it's shaded by the M5. The opening act of extremism at Thruxton and nagging doubt that our test car wasn't at the top of its form were enough to put the M5 back on top.
It isn't just because it seats four people in comfort. It isn't just because everything that contributes to driving pleasure - every last detail - has been meticulously developed and resolved. It's because if the bad guys had been chasing McQueen through the streets of San Francisco in an M5, they'd have given him a head start. Just for the hell of it.