As a mother of three I am supposed to have dreams of a nice Renault Scénic with lots of practical storage bins in the back and seats that can easily fold down and be cleaned of sick in a jiffy.

The car I dream about, however, is the Mitsubishi Evo IX. Yes, it’s a sensible four-door family saloon with a boot, carpets and a stereo . . . but it also happens to go like stink.

The turbocharged engine explodes when you accelerate, and because it has four-wheel drive, it can go round any corner at any speed. And the best thing about it is that you really feel as though you’re a part of this machine.

That’s also why I like the Ferrari 430 Scuderia so much. It doesn’t have carpets. It doesn’t have a stereo. It’s not like a mobile phone that can take pictures and receive e-mails – it doesn’t multi-task. Everything on it is designed to make it better at being a car.

Much to Jeremy’s horror, I also have a soft spot for hardcore Porsche 911s. And the harder they are, and the more stripped out, the more I like them. I love their mechanical integrity; I don’t pretend to understand the intricate workings of the combustion engine, but I do like to feel in contact with it, and for that I need a gearstick.

The same goes for contact with the road. I want to feel every lump, bump and change of gravel size; that way I know precisely what I’m dealing with. But mask all of this with a comfortable ride and air suspension and the like, and I stop wanting to drive, preferring to be just a passenger. I don’t call an Evo or a GT3 or a Scuderia uncomfortable, instead I think of them as stimulating.

For me, driving perfection is all to do with weight and handling. My enjoyment of a car comes from its lightness and responsiveness. I don’t necessarily need to go that fast to have my thrills. Nor do I need to spend a fortune to achieve it. Recently I had more fun driving an £11,500 Suzuki Swift Sport than I did using a Golf GTI costing twice as much.

I know that people think I drive an Aston Martin V8 Vantage because I’m a girl and I think it looks pretty. That’s actually true, it is pretty. But what I like even more than that is the combination of its manual gearbox, the enormous noise it makes and the way it handles. I wouldn’t really care if it looked like a cardboard box and had a top speed of 90mph.

So, having established my prerequisites for driving fun, my annual participation in endurance rallies for hand-built sports cars makes perfect sense – it’s a chance to get back to my roots.

The biggest problem I have every year is choosing what sort of car to use. The TVRs I dismiss as too heavy and unpredictable. The Radical is far too bonkers, and Morgans, I’m afraid, are just too boring. I looked long and hard at the Ariel Atom but ultimately rejected it, not because it has no storage space – or body panels for that matter – but because I didn’t want to use an intercom to talk to my co-driver Claire. That’s the only solution when wearing the crash helmets that you need when you’re in what is basically a four-wheeled motorcycle.

Having competed in previous rallies in a series of Caterham 7s, I finally decided to ring the changes and try out a Westfield. This has always been billed as the Caterham’s poorer cousin but there really isn’t that big a difference between them, unless you’re an aficionado.

Experts say Caterhams are technologically years ahead and they make the ultimate track cars for hardcore enthusiasts. However, for my purposes – a five-day blat around hairpin bends in the mountains of northern Spain – the Westfield seemed just fine, particularly the light, agile Jubilee Sport model powered by a 2 litre Ford Duratec engine producing 200bhp. That much power in a car that weighs little more than a slipper? Count me in.

Like Caterhams, Westfields are descended from the Lotus 7. They have limited luggage space (they were, after all, intended for 1950s race circuits rather than continental touring), yet we had to accommodate a page-long list of kit, including everything from warning triangles and first aid kits to fire extinguishers and spare fuel.

After we had squashed it all in, my bag had to be strapped to the boot lid, which did nothing to improve our rearward view.

The Jubilee is so named because Westfield is celebrating its silver jubilee this year. The basis of this commemorative model is what the manufacturer calls the Sport model, but in honour of the anniversary it has been given stylish black and silver paintwork, matching piped leather seats, a contoured dash and four-point racing harnesses.

It’s an easy car to drive once you get the throttle balance sorted out. My first couple of attempts had me kangarooing up the road like most youngsters on their 17th birthday. But once you’ve developed a feel for easing the clutch out while applying the power, you’re halfway to conquering it.

The Westfield had been carefully prepared by the company’s engineers, so the only maintenance required was to check the oil every now and then. Our biggest hassle with it was putting the roof up. Not since I wrestled with the scissor mechanism of my last child’s buggy have I sworn so much at what appeared to be a simple fold-out frame. But we discovered – just as with a child’s buggy – that there was a particular knack to it, which by the last day of the rally we just about mastered.

The purpose of any rally is to test the reliability of both cars and drivers. This requires a microscopic attention to detail, particularly on the part of the navigator, who has to know where you are, where you are going and at precisely what time you should be at any given point along the route.

This means having to calculate and stick to an average speed for different sections of the journey. Minutes spent waiting at traffic lights, or for flocks of sheep to clear the road, are much harder to regain than they are to lose. It is therefore essential that you get a move-on from the moment you are waved off in the morning, but not – as we unfortunately did on the second day – get a move-on to such an extent that you are penalised for coming into a checkpoint too early.

Over five days we drove from Angoulême in France, over the Pyrenees, then crossed the mountains of northern Spain to Portugal and back, skimming the Costa Verde and zigzagging up and down the mountainous roads through the stunning Picos de Europa national park, and finishing the rally at Santiago de Compostela. The scenery was breathtaking, the roads were amazing, and there were plenty of hazards, including tractors and herds of cows and horses. One of the cars actually had a horse jump onto its bonnet.

The Westfield took it all in its stride. The acceleration and nimble handling made light of the twisting mountain roads and it only really struggled in two respects. One was its ground clearance, which was generally no problem on the road, but made it impossible to park overnight in the underground garages made available to us.

The other problem was with the turning circle; on a few occasions I had to make a three-point turn to get round some of the hairpin bends, a manoeuvre made all the more difficult by my bag partially obscuring my rearward view. That was even worse on busy town streets whenever I overshot a junction.

Two of the special stages thrown at us on the second and third days involved getting round go-kart tracks in a set time without skidding off. Smaller cars such as the Westfields, Caterhams and Ariel Atom took to this with ease, while larger cars struggled.

Having picked up penalty points (given for our overexuberance on the second day), we could only hope others would mess up too, to even out the score.

We managed to get through the last three days with no further penalties and ended up in seventh place overall – out of 44 entrants. We had formed a team – Team Gorilla – with two other cars, a Smart Roadster and a Caterham 7. The Smart car of Richard Winter and Nick Parkes, just like us, earned six points, so they finished sixth (having received their points later on in the rally), and the Caterham of Roger Tushingham and Mark Pickering came in second with only one point. The overall winner was a Spanish Lotus Elise driven by Jonathon Nicholson and Christian Santos. This gave Team Gorilla the first team prize.

In addition to the team prize, we also won in the 2000cc class, and to top it all off, we were also awarded the best Westfield trophy.

In terms of our choice of car for the job, the Westfield was perfect. Sure, the turning circle was a nuisance, as were the lack of storage space and the fiddly roof. But if you like driving a proper, no-frills car on proper, no-frills roads, and in a competition, it’s brilliant. And at just less than £20,000 for the basic Sport model, it’s good value too.

Vital statistics

Model Westfield Sport Jubilee Edition
Engine 2000cc, four cylinders
Power 200bhp @ 6700rpm
Torque 181 lb ft @ 5200rpm
Transmission Five-speed manual
Fuel n/a
CO2 n/a
Acceleration 0-60mph: 4.9sec
Top speed 135mph
Price £19,950 (as a kit), £25,999 (built)
Verdict Forget getting your hair done
Rating

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