On Saturday I had the chance to test drive the Tesla Roadster at the Zurich Motor Show with my colleague Sam. Our appointment was early, before the main doors to the show opened, so we had to enter via the back of the building. We ended up on the stand of the Swiss Ecological Car association, or whatever they were called, with whom Tesla shared their exhibition stand. There was no Tesla Roadster on the stand itself, just some arbitrary electric micro car, the make of which was not immediately obvious. Across from this Eco-Stand was Aston Martin, and in the distance we could see Lamborghinis, Jaguars and various souped up Mercs, Porsches and Ferraris. The excitement in the air was palpable, and the arrival of the mini-skirted hostesses for the various stands only added to the festive atmosphere. We craned our necks to get glimpses of the various bodies on display, admiring their curves and their technical specifications.

Meanwhile on the Tesla stand, manned by three nervously excited male geeks, we were handed what passed for the Tesla Roadster brochure: a single A4 printout with a few of the specs, the price and the delivery times on it. Slightly underwhelmed we waited for our test drive.

Getting into the car required some acrobatics for someone of my height, but once inside the driving position and the build quality were superb. Then we headed out for the test drive. What came next is difficult to put into words...

I have never driven or been in anything so fast, so responsive, so much fun in my entire life. I felt like someone had transported me into the future and given me a taste of things to come, before cruelly returning me to the petrol engined present. The incredible amount of torque generated by the Tesla's electric motor from 0 to 14,000 revs and the absence of gears and a clutch makes this the closest thing to warp drive you will experience this side of Buck Roger's in the 25th Century.

When I returned to the stand in the exhibition hall something strange had happened - the tanned, elegantly dressed and expensively coiffured Aston Martin salesmen whose attentions we had previously coveted suddenly looked like Rimini pimps, their wares like gold plated baubles in a cheap souvenir shop on the Costa del Sol. In the distance one of the stands had resorted to making their hostesses lap dance around the cars on offer, dry ice smoke billowing around what now looked like gilded horse buggies trying not to show their age. We had glimpsed the future, and suddenly all of this looked so yesterday.

I read somewhere that Tesla Motors has just raised an additional $40 Million through a convertible bond issue to cover its cash needs for the next 3 years. This is a company that has single-handedly returned the USA to the forefront of the global automobile industry. Meanwhile, bringing up the rear are GM, Ford and Chrysler, asking for $25 BILLION in handouts just to stay in business for another year. To research a bigger Hummer perhaps, or to figure out how to bring back the horse drawn carriage?

Meanwhile BRABUS, the german high-end tuning firm that takes Mercs and Porsches and gives them an extra dose of horsepower in exchange for an addtional $100k or so have lavished their attentions on the Tesla. However, as they do not understand electric motors, all they did was cosmetic "enhancements", including installing a speaker system to make the BRABUS Tesla sound as if it had a petrol engine. How is that for totally not getting it? It is as if Henry Ford decided to make his first cars more attractive by filling them with horseshit to make them smell more like the horse buggies they were replacing...