Why the star of eCoty 2025 wasn't actually a car

We’ll come back to the bag of chocolate waffles and the Ferrari in a minute, but I want to start with the one really big disappointment from eCoty 2025. Something that engendered an even more crushing sense of despair than discovering just how young Yousuf is. Dismay deeper even than that felt by photographers Andy and Olgun when the Vanquish rolled off the transporter looking greyer than a wet November morning. 

No, the biggest disappointment was an absence. The absence of any really affordable car in this year’s otherwise very healthy line-up. The cheapest car in the test was the Audi RS3, which at £62,000 feels like the preserve of automotive photographers and early bitcoin investors. We scoured the pages from the last year’s worth of magazines, even searched the recesses of the online-only reviews, hoping to unearth a forgotten gem that cost less than the purple livery on the Revuelto (£42k, before tax…). But, like Old Mother Hubbard, we came away empty-handed. Disappointingly no equivalent of 2024’s MX-5 or GR Yaris was to be found.

However, I do have a consolation in the form of one of the stars of this year’s test. You can’t have failed to notice it, there on every page to be savoured. I am talking, of course, about the roads and the sumptuous scenery surrounding them. There for all to enjoy, if you can find the time and budget to get to the south-east corner of France. A GT2 Stradale might be a bit of a dream, but the Verdon Gorge looks even better and is financially much more within reach.

There were lay-bys that I’ve stood in many times before over the years, but even so the views from them were as breathtaking as the first time. Lac de Castillon was the startling turquoise of an energy drink, Col de la Bonette almost otherworldly in the low evening light. And the N85 was as flowing and fabulous as ever.

Despite all my years of driving around this region there was even one, absolutely jaw-dropping stretch that was new to me. The way the D28 clung and carved its way along the Gorges du Cians, an enormous red-rocked ravine, was incredible. Driving the Morgan Supersport through the arches and tunnels (is there a definite depth when the classification transitions?) I was absolutely awestruck at the raw grandeur of it all. It felt like a theme park, something plucked from a Pixar dream. 

All of which makes it a little ironic that some of my best drives of the week took place in the dark. Driving across the French countryside, you often have very few of the niceties that you find in the UK in terms of catseyes or other reflective markers to help guide you. 

You’re more reliant than ever on what you can see in the light thrown from the headlights, and when you’re low down in something like the Lamborghini the view is restricted even further. Yet the Revuelto, its wild V12 yowl seeming even louder in the confines of the night, cemented its place at the top of my list one evening. If you don’t feel completely happy with a car then you find yourself being timid on the throttle and tentative in the corners, but the Revuelto’s steering, chassis and centred mass inspire so much confidence that you could push on even in the darkness, secure and happy in the knowledge that it’s underneath you.

By contrast, the Defender Octa gave a brilliantly lofty view and reminded me of an old V8 Discovery thundering through Kielder Forest at night on the Pirelli Rally. You needed to pick and choose the corners you committed to, but setting it up early and learning to love the lean and feel at ease with the squirm was so much fun. The BMW M2 CS was a balanced joy, the 992.2 GT3 a three-pedal delight. The Alpine a breathtakingly precise way to pick apart a road.

And then there was the Ferrari 12 Cilindri. Often eCoty feels like a slightly surreal bubble: sublime cars move from stunning location to stunning location and the real world is shut out. But on this occasion, there was the faintest pop as reality made a reappearance. I’d left the others and stopped at a small supermarket to go in search of some food to quell a rumbling tummy until supper and wandered out with a packet of excitingly exotic chocolate-covered waffles. Suddenly seeing the Ferrari alone in the car park amongst the humdrum and the quotidian, it was like a sole sunflower in a field.

Detached from the rest of eCoty, for some reason I felt like a child again, seeing a supercar in real life for the first time. Except this time I had the key. This time I was allowed to walk up to it, get in and drive this slice of modern Daytona with a naturally aspirated V12 for an hour along some of the best roads in the world. What a week.