The last week of October 2021 has showcased some incredible cars. If you take a moment to think about it, the manufacturers revealed the perfect garage for many. The potent and punchy Audi RS3. The atmospheric and intoxicating C8 Corvette Z06. The sophisticated and cosseting Range Rover. The elegant Mercedes-AMG SL.

Give any car lover this garage and you probably will be thanked in eternal gratitude and hugs. We wreck our minds figuring out what car works for us. It’s what we picture every day. For me, it’s nigh on impossible to name my perfect garage. The choices are always changing and it also depends on where I am in life.

This selection of cars is eclectic. They cover every base needed to satisfy the petrolhead in us.

Let’s start with what might be the crown jewel of the collection. The Corvette Z06. I believe that GM have got this iteration of the C8 just right. The biggest change is under the bonnet. Yes just like the Le Mans racing car or a Ferrari berlinetta, it has a flat plane crank V8 engine. There’s more great news: it’s naturally aspirated! It doesn’t end there. The new 5.5 litre LT6 engine is dubbed as the most powerful naturally aspirated V8 in a road car. Power is rated at 500 kW and torque stands at 624 Nm. It’s a new take as push rods have been ditched in favour of dual overhead cams. Oh, it also screams to a rapid 8600 rpm! On the outside, it’s difficult to distinguish it from it’s base sibling. But concentrate and you see the bigger front intakes, the wider wheel arches and the Y-shaped side intakes. All these small changes add up to make a good looking supercar. What I love about it is that it seems like a summary of every great sports car from the last decade. And that is a great thing. It’s a fitting candidate for occupying the supercar slot in a garage. If you missed out on something like a Ferrari 458 Speciale, this is an excellent opportunity to fill that void.

At this point you need to balance that high from an exciting and brash car with something that is sophisticated. This is where the new Range Rover enters stage. Take a quick glance and you’ll be momentarily perplexed at it being ‘new’. Not the most revolutionary design, but upon taking a closer look, you start to notify the nuances. The exterior design is surprisingly very clean. Not many creases and scoops, the sides look akin to a monolith. The big change in design is at the rear. The glitzy tailights are gone and have been replaced with thin LED lights that projects light like something out of a sci-fi film. It has automatic doors for when closing your own doors becomes too labor intensive. Biggest change underneath the skin is the engine. Gone is the 5.0 litre supercharged power plant in favour of a 4.4 litre twin-turbo V8. Yes, the engine has been sourced from BMW. The other engine options are a straight-six engines in both petrol and diesel trim. The petrol models feature an extended range plug-in hybrid. Power stands at 257 kW and torque is 700 Nm for the diesel. 323 kW of power and 620Nm of torque for the mid-level P440e. Rounding off the six-cylinders is the 375 kW and 700 Nm of torque for the P510e. The range topping P530 with the 4.4 litre V8 has a mountainous 390 kW and 750 Nm of torque. The new change to the suspension is Dynamic Response Pro. The new system uses a 48-volt roll electric control system which is claimed to be better and more responsive than a hydraulic setup. Along with the new engines it also built on a new platform. This ensures rigidity.

So that takes care of the school bus, now we move onto the Audi RS3. While it is ludicrously quick, the RS3 wasn’t praised for what it had to offer in terms of driving pleasure. I’ve experienced the previous RS3 around Kyalami and while it was competent and grippy, it really did rearrange all my organs and blood. So it can only get better? Yes it has. Because the new RS3 drops the haldex system and is replaced by a new system called RS Torque Splitter. The new system makes variable torque vectoring possible with one multi-disc clutch on each of the separate drive shafts. So what does this mean? Well it means that the new RS3 is a much better driver’s tool. It comes with a drift mode and has a more playful character when you poke it with a stick. It still retains the fantastic warbly 2.5 litre five-cylinder engine. It has been garnished with some more oomph and now delivers 300 kW of power and 500 Nm of torque. It also currently holds the nurburgring lap record for production compact cars at 7:40.8. Not that that really matters, but it’s a demonstration as to how far Audi went to shake off the image of an understeering boat with some number plates on it. In the theoretical collection, this would be the compact fun car that you can really drive aggressively while it’s forgiving. Have Audi finally got it right with spiritually reviving the Quattro? Maybe I’m going too far, but it looks promising.

Finally we move onto the coastal cruiser. The new Mercedes-AMG SL. Yes a legendary name is back. And upon first glance it’s easy to mistake it for the GT. Upon taking a closer look you will notice that the convertible is a 2 + 2 seater making it different to the GT. Interestingly the new SL does not share any parts with the GT or any other car in the family for that matter. The other big change is that it loses the metal folding hardtop and now employs a softop canvas. The body is built on a new aluminum space frame platform with a lower center of gravity and improved rigidity. It also will be exclusively available with 4Matic+ all-wheel drive. It also revives an iconic name, the 55 level trim is back. The difference now is that both models have the familiar 4.0 litre twin-turbo V8 engine with power at 360 kW and 700 Nm of torque for the SL55. Power for the SL63 is 430 kW and the torque is 800 Nm. Apart from the power figures the two cars also differ in the suspension setup. The SL55 has an AMG ride steel setup while the SL63 has the AMG Active Ride Control with hydraulic stabilibilizers.

Okay so I know that a garage like this would be out of the reach for many of us, but the reveal of these vehicles has filled me with excitement for the future. Oddly, I also believe there will be a few petrolheads that would have written their names down for a collection of these exact cars. If that happens to be the case, I applaud their choices as these cars are excellent cars. All of these cars play a role and all are wonderful.