This is the second part of an article devoted to my trip to Knockhill’s Official Scottish Motor Show.  To read the first part click here.

So, what did the afternoon bring?  Well, quite a number of delights as it happens.  They included: a bird of prey demonstration, supercar versus superbike (the highlight of the show really), an air show with a biplane, cheerleaders, more car stunts, a Morgan parade, a lap for the winners of a competition in a Maserati and more cheerleaders!  So, let’s tackle these in order.

The birds of prey were in one tent, and quite menacing they were too.  Not as menacing as the Koenigsegg mind you – that car is supreme.  They weren’t sharing a tent, but for some reason one popped into my mind as I saw the other.  The display was actually quite good, but not enough to keep me engrossed.  That being the case, off I went back to the supercar tent to see an Aston Martin Volante, a Pagani Zonda (arguably one of the best looking cars around), a Spyker and even a James Bond DB4.  Classics all of them.

In terms of engineering, the Ariel Atom 3 (with a speed of 0-60 in less than 3 seconds) just amazes every time I see it.  I’m yet to have a go as it were, but it looks like a real blast.  It was a treat just seeing it again and made my mouth water even more to feel the force of that supercharged madness.

One of my favourite parts of the show was the bike versus car showdown (even the lady liked this bit, even if she wanted the bike to win).  This featured a superb bike rider – I think it may have been a Phil Giles but I’m waiting for confirmation of this – versus Gordon Shedden.  The bike rider had the excellent Honda Fireblade with 1,000 CC of power, whilst Shedden, of the BTCC, had a 750 BHP Subaru Impreza.  This uprated monster made one hell of a noise and was slightly delayed to the track.

The format of the race between the bike and the car had two sections.  First of all was a drag race, a simple race up the straight from the bottom of the Tri-Oval.  This would be driven three times, with the victor being the best of the three.  The next part of the race was the full track time.  Well, the drag race was superb with both the car and the bike giving it full beans and with some banter between.  Seeing the Fireblade pulling wheelies as it tried to tear from the line was superb – only matched by the raw aggression and noise of the hugely powerful Impreza.

Unfortunately, the car was simply too heavy to move off the line as quickly as the bike and so the bike won the drag.  However, on the actual lap the car took it, being a full second ahead.  Maybe things would have been a bit different after a few more attempts, but luckily Shedden managed to pull this one off and stopped when it was declared a draw.  It was fabulous entertainment and clearly it got the crowd going.

Sadly, there weren’t too many promotions girls to get snaps of, but as the next section of the entertainment was to be the cheerleaders at the Peugeot Hardie stand then perhaps I shouldn’t complain too much.  They were extremely good at what they did and managed to get the crowd worked up a bit – they had been surprisingly quiet most of the day!  Perhaps they were noisier on the Saturday.

Before the last show, I wanted to make sure I’d covered everything so I did a last full tour.  There I saw an actual F1 car driven by Alonso, as well as a Seat BTCC car that I wanted to have a sit in (but wasn’t allowed).  I also saw a rally car in bits - though this was on purpose.  The amount of engineering and parts involved is simply staggering.

The Morgan parade was simply fantastic.  If you love cars that look classic (even if they were only made a few years ago) then you would have taken a lot away from this.  The parade was led by the amazing looking AeroMax – frankly there aren’t many cars that look like this one alone, so to see it out on the track was a real treat.  Granted, I’d probably have gone for one of the older, more stylish Morgans if I was buying one, but each was special.  Not only that, but they made a fantastic noise as they went zipping around the track.

There was one lucky programme buyer – that’s for sure.  This winner was allowed to slot themselves into the incredibly posh Maserati Quattroporte (a beautiful saloon that fuses power, style and comfort) along with their guests and be shuttled around the track by Gordon Shedden.  I was extremely envious I must say as it would have been a great one for the photo album.

So, let’s sum up The Official Scottish Motor Show.

Good: Meeting Gordon Shedden, Being there for the official unveiling of the Koleos, getting a scoop on the Beira (that’s in another article), seeing the cheerleaders, being up close and personal with some of the fastest, meanest cars in the world.

Bad: Sometimes it wasn’t very clear where to actually go, the track parking was ample but the ‘road’ to get there was terrible, there weren’t enough pit girls, there definitely weren’t enough freebies going around.

We’ll go over the history and all the usual features in a minute - let’s just say first of all that the R500 is a monster - in the truest sense of the word. That ‘500′ in the name refers to the bhp-per-tonne, except it’s wrong. This car has 520 brake horsepower per tonne. This is generated from a Ford 2.0 litre Duratec engine - so it will be hardy and reasonably free to rev.

Let’s get this over with - it’ll probably take you longer to read this than it will for the R500 to get to 60mph. The reason being that with 263bhp and 177lb/ft of torque, you’ll be going 62mph in about 2.88 seconds. Let’s put that in perspective. It’s faster than a lot of motorbikes and is only one-third of a second behind the Bugatti Veyron.

Yes, it’s only slightly slower from the standing start than the car that was, for a time, fastest in the world. That came with the benefit of many electronic controls and four wheel drive too, unlike Caterham’s effort.

The R500 puts the power through a six speed manual gearbox (none of this fancy e-gearing or steering wheel pedal nonsense) straight to the rear wheels and the 13-inch lightweight Caterham alloys. Whilst you might think that they sound too small, remember, this is not exactly a huge car to begin with and it actually makes it look extremely well proportioned.

So you’re probably wondering what the secret is behind the Caterham? Well as I mentioned at the start of this article, it’s all down to the weight. A real focus has taken place at the factory for this car - putting it on an athlete’s diet. As such, it comes with carbon-fibre fro the nose, dash and wings, as well as thinner body panels, wishbones and aluminium housings. All this means a further 9kg from the kerb-weight.

Of course, you need to be able to stop well too, so you’ve got four piston callipers grabbing vented discs at the front and twin piston callipers at the back - so even more weight is saved. Granted, the carbon fibre gear stick, instrument panel and keyless ignition. However, you won’t be seeing many toys in here - this is after all a proper racecar to tan the hides of such young upstarts as the Ariel Atom.

No doubt you’re wondering who Caterham is, if this is the first time you’ve heard the company mentioned. Well, here’s a quick history lesson. Colin Chapman created the original ‘7′ (you can see that image on the grille) as a Lotus in 1957, with the idea of ‘adding lightness’ - an ethos that is still followed to this day. The whole point therefore is to create a sports car that has a low mass, has great agility and is a pure ‘drivers car’.

Forward to 1973 and Caterham purchased the rights to manufacture the car from Lotus - a decision that I’m sure they have never looked back on. Whilst mechanically things have improved, the overall design was so solid that you’d be hard pressed to really highlight all of the differences.

Newer developments include the Nearn family selling the marque. However, the new management team is still dedicated to respect the heritage and yet continue to progress into the future. If the R500 is anything to go by, I’d certainly say they are true to their word.

Caterham Cars remains one of the few British owned and British manufacturers - they even purchase their parts in the UK where at all possible. Another interesting thing to note is that Caterhams remain the choice for those looking into building a kit car - they are simply the ‘must have’ marque for a race or a part-time garage project.

So why get excited about it? Well, there’s nothing quite like driving an incredibly low-slung agile rear-wheeler. If you don’t believe me, hire one of these, or even a Mazda MX-5 (still significantly bigger than a Caterham) or similar and you’ll see what I mean. The purity of the driving experience, the thrill of the tires against the tarmac and the wind in your hair will be something you’ll want to do again and again.