Confirmation of this arrives when I take the Nissan along to an OPT Drift Club practice day at Silverstone where a couple of the larger car parks have been cordoned off for novices like me.

For the first exercise, the doughnut, I have a club regular sitting alongside to pass on a few tips. I'm instructed to circle a cone at increasing speed until I detect the onset of the dreaded understeer, then dip the clutch pedal and a split second later bring it back up sharply while simultaneously giving it merry hell with the accelerator. This, I very quickly discover, does the trick. The revs flare as the rear tyres spin-up and the tail suddenly becomes very mobile. Let the wheel slide through your hands - and now it's a case of juggling throttle and opposite lock to continue circling the cone, only sideways.

Get it right and it feels absobloodylutely fantastic. I manage a couple of jammy doughnuts before progressing to the next exercise, the figure-of-eight. Get the tail swinging one way around the top half of the '8' and the idea is that the momentum when it swings back will carry you into another perfect oversteering drift, but now the other way for the bottom half. There are higher-speed exercises too, but the queues are longer, and I decide to quit before I make a complete arse of myself. Judging by the turnout, the Drift Club is going to go from strength to strength, though it'll have to make sure that practice days like this are as thoroughly marshalled as the competitive events that take place on the Silverstone circuit itself. Several of the drivers I spoke to thought the organisation could have been better, and while most drivers were helmeted, plenty of others weren't. I guess it's a learning curve for everyone... If you fancy taking part in the UKD1 drift championship, which kicks off on April 11, or just want to go along and spectate, take a look at www.ukd1.com

The 350Z just keeps getting better and better. Have I told you how much I love this car? Ten thousand miles in, the 3.5-litre V6 is pulling ever more strongly; keep your foot in all the way through the upper reaches of the rev range and it really flies now - quite different in delivery to the examples we've road-tested previously.

And the further and harder I drive it, the more I love the chassis too. There's plenty of seat-of-the-trouser feedback, plenty to challenge you (and reward when you get it right), and always the safety net of the electronic stability program if you want to make good progress but have left your heroic trousers at home. ESP still allows a couple of degrees of slip, so it's a good way of learning where the limits are.

There's a fast-growing fan club for the Z-car, both here and in the States, where it went on sale well over a year ago. It's not been without teething problems, though. I've heard that a number of cars are suffering from chipping paint at the front, though OV53 YPA only has a couple of tiny nicks. Creaking noises from around the tailgate are another bugbear - apparently there's a problem with the seal that Nissan knows about. Our local dealer, Northampton's Camden Nissan, has promised to have the car back in when a modification is available. Unfortunately, while it was in for its first service, they weren't able to fix the smaller creak from the driver's seat (I'm assuming it is the seat and not one of my hips). I'd also asked them to investigate a rumble that sounds to us like a wheel bearing, but they could find nothing amiss. Maybe it's tyre-roar. After I mentioned this last month, a couple of readers directed me to a US website where owners have been reporting possible suspension geometry problems with early cars, leading to a kind of rumbling noise and 'feathering' of the inside edges of the front tyres. Again, nothing seems amiss with our car, so perhaps Nissan found a mod for Euro-spec cars.

Understandably, after 10,700 miles and a morning gorging doughnuts, the original Bridgestone Potenzas are getting towards the end of their legal life. Since we've always thought the road roar excessive, we've decided to try a set of Michelin Pilot Sports. They should be fitted very soon, as should the Nismo bodykit. And then I'm off to do some doughnuts in a McDonald's car park. (The last bit's a joke, by the way).