A dozen years on and a clean-shaven Goodwin is stepping into the new four-wheeled Scorpion IV. The three-wheeled version is still made, appealing to those who don't tire of explaining to people that two wheels up front and one behind can be as entertaining as one at each corner, but commercially four wheels is obviously the way to go.

So here we go then, driving once again out of Mark Grinnall's farmyard base in Worcestershire in a vehicle carrying his name. The ink on the deal is still wet so we have to be a bit cautious about what we say, but if we tell you that the Scorpion's engine is a 1.8-litre turbocharged unit that's built in the German town of Ingolstadt you'll have a rough idea what we're talking about.

Power is also a bit hush-hush, but Grinnall will offer the base ΂£26,000 version with 260bhp. Three hundred horsepower and more will be an option and will take the price up to about ΂£30,000. Not too outrageous for a car that will have a power-to-weight ratio of around 500bhp per ton.

This car is very much the prototype and Grinnall has pointed out that a few things will be sorted before production begins in a few months' time. Dynamically though, bar a little final tweaking, it's pretty much there.

Under the dashboard there's a harmless-looking knob that controls boost pressure. All the way to the left gives the minimum and all the way in the opposite direction delivers the full beans. It's wet and the narrow roads are slick with mud so I select the former, but even minimum boost is enough for me to be fired out of the farm and almost into the field opposite.

There was a lot of foot-tapping and gazing up into the sky when horsepower was discussed earlier, but from what I can feel there is substantially more than 260bhp in this prototype.

The first thing you notice after the ferocious power is how supple the ride is. The Scorpion looks totally different to trackday warriors such as the Radical and Westfield XTR and feels it too. The front suspension is by double wishbones but the rear is by trailing arms.

Now, the old Beetle gave trailing arms a bad name but properly fabricated and designed (as the Scorpion's are), they work very well. The suspension has been tuned by Roddy Harvey-Bailey, whose company also supplies the dampers. H-B knows his stuff and has had a hand in many of Britain's specialist cars.

There's stacks of room in the cockpit, though some will find the lack of side bodywork rather unsettling. It feels as though you're sitting quite high up, but that's probably due to the low sides. The seats are fixed, although both the steering wheel and pedals adjust.

I wear a helmet because it's cold and I'm a wimp, but the screen is very effective and in the spring and summer you'd only need eye protection. Grinnall intends to offer a roof and small doors but I'm not convinced it needs them.

Road drying, confidence growing, boost turned up to halfway; now we're up there with the fastest of the fast. Grinnall is gunning for the Caterham R500 and is not off-target. The last car I drove that was this manic was the turbocharged Hayabusa-engined Dax Rush. Like the Dax, the Scorpion will spin-up a rear wheel well into the first four of the available six gears. The Grinnall, however, gives more accurate messages and is easier to control. The steering, using a rack fabricated in- house, is light, accurate and fast.

Mark Grinnall says he's still working on the brakes. The system, which uses Hi-Spec Billet callipers, is fine, but the balance from front to rear is not quite right. They work well, but don't yet have a confidence-inspiring bite and feel.

You'd like Mark Grinnall as much as you'd like the Scorpion. He's very much like Lee Noble; no big sales predictions, no bold claims. He's made a car that is outrageously fast yet refined enough for a blast on a Sunday morning or a two-hundred-mile thrash to a trackday.