All good things come to an end. Nelly Furtado probably wasn't thinking about Sam Sheehan's time at PH when she wrote that song, but it's true for him too. Alas fate has dealt him a new hand, and he's off to play it now for a less discerning audience. Many have written for PH over the years, yet few have approached it with so much boundless enthusiasm - not just for the subject matter, but also for the unseen and unsung work behind the scenes. Sam brought a cheeriness and can-do attitude along to work everyday without fail, and buoyed our spirits even when he was late and had forgotten to do something essential. He will be missed.
Naturally we will be seeing him off in the usual manner (or five of us will be, suitably spaced) but we've also accorded him the honour of a Buy Hard testimonial, so we can all rejoice at the spectacle of him picking the wrong car one last time. Foolishly we let him choose the battleground, and because he's been (again, foolishly) driving around the North Coast 500 route in his stupid Clio, he said we should all think long and hard about which cars would be better suited to the job of touring Scotland. Which is all of them, of course - but we stoically agreed to land on two.
Nicer colleagues than us might have given him all the money in the world to play with, but going from heavily used Renault to a barely run-in Aston Martin DBS Superleggera doesn't leave the right taste in the mouth, so we've limited proceedings to £50k. Other than that, the car in question simply needs to be subjectively good at the business of propelling two people round some of the best driving roads in the world while accommodating sufficient luggage for a week spent in hotels. To the classifieds...
This is a tricky one. For a North Coast 500 dream car, do you prioritise the miles around Scotland, or the miles getting to Scotland? Of course, the best GT cars should more than adequately fulfil both requirements, but surely a suspicion would always linger that your balance of priorities was skewed the wrong way - wanting more of a GT on the motorway or more of a sports car once up there.
I've done the NC500 before, and it was the best couple of days driving I've ever done. That journey was in a GT86 and, though brilliant, it was a tad wearing on the 1,000 miles to and from the route. Initially my £50k was going to an Alpina, because there's little that better blends refinement and entertainment. But if there's a V12 Aston Martin in the hypotehetical GT budget...
This isn't just an old Aston Martin, either, but a manual DB9 Sport Pack - about as focused, beneath the DBS, as the DB9 ever was. I really like the idea of cruising beyond the border in an Aston famed for just that sort of thing, with the additional involvement of a gearlever and an upgraded chassis - lighter wheels, stiffer springs, thicker anti-roll bars - when the opportunity eventually arose. Somehow this one has only covered 16,000 miles since 2009, too - maybe I'll have to do two laps of the route, then...
Go big or go home. Or better yet, go comfy and fast and four-wheel drive. Is the venerable GT the car we'd choose to scramble up Applecross? No. If you're looking for something liveable and lithe for under £50k, I suggest you buy an Alpine A110 and persuade your other half that evening wear should be limited to a nightie. But if you want something that's going to romp round Scotland in idiosyncratic style while offering a liberal amount of elbow room, you choose Bentley.
Of course, for the money, you could have the rapacious W12. But I wouldn't. The 4.0-litre V8 introduced in 2012 is better (if not quite as nice as the S version launched two years later) chiefly because it feels less onerous over the nose, but also because it emits the kind of seductive growl that suits the GT down to the ground. On a motorway - because there's plenty of that involved either side of doing the NC500 - the car is imperious. Less so out of a tight right hander, but I guarantee you'll spend less time questioning the decision than Sam did in Blue Flame.
Certainly there are few better viewing platforms for taking in a coast or a loch or an oversized hill. You'll observe them with magnanimous pleasure as you sweep by. And when it rains - as it assuredly will do at some point - you won't have to slow down so much because Bentley had the foresight to fit four-wheel drive to its tourer-bruiser from day one. There are several examples in the classifieds just under budget, but I'd haggle hard to bag this one in cloudburst grey. Then pack heavy.
While I'll go to the grave vowing that no car could possibly be actually more fun on the NC500 than my Clio 182, I'll admit that when it comes to its grand touring abilities, there's room for improvement. A lot of room. Which is why I've gone for a car that's neither more spacious nor better at doing grand tourer things for my final Buy Hard choice: a 987 Porsche Boxster Spyder. PistonHeads has never been about logical decisions, after all...
Stay with me, though, because the Boxster Spyder is a car in which you could absolutely expect to have a very good time touring. Ok, so the thin roof doesn't provide masses of insulation for the motorway slog up to the Highlands, nor will its manual, tent-like operation be appreciated much when the rains suddenly arrive over the next crest. But as a fairly compact, light and surprisingly supple mid-engined sports car, what it can do on the actual NC500 ought to more than make up for the tinnitus that sets in permanently halfway up the M74.
After all, this is one of the finest driver's cars known to man, perfectly poised to let you breathe in that Highlands air and soak up its sights while dancing along any section of its 500-mile route. The car I've chosen here is the holy grail of 987 Boxster, as it mixes the bark and delivery of that 320hp 3.4-litre flat-six with a manual gearbox. For someone who did the NC500 from London and back in a 133k-mile-old coilover-shod Clio, the thought of one day returning in this light-footed alternative sounds like an absolute dream.
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