I was bored. I’d eaten everything in the fridge, learnt to play the piano and beaten myself at chess. And then someone from Jaguar rang to see if I wanted to go to South Africa for the weekend. Damn right I did. Getting there is very easy — you go on a plane — but working out what to expect when you arrive is rather more tricky. On the one hand you think you’ll spot Peter Gabriel with a bone in his nose, chanting. Or maybe Charlie Dimmock bouncing up and down in Nelson Mandela’s rose beds. But on the other hand you suspect you may be hacked to pieces by a machete-wielding mob.

You certainly don’t go to South Africa for the viniculture. We stayed at a vineyard and on one evening they took us to the cellar, which was full of huge steel vats and pressure gauges. It was like being in a nuclear power station.

And what did the finished product taste like? Well pretty much like the stuff that comes from the outlet pipe at Sellafield. I doubt the French would put it in their windscreen washer bottles.

So what about ebony and ivory getting along in perfect harmony? Yes, apartheid is over but all the black people seem to have got now is the vote, and a carrier bag each. I’m not kidding. Even if you go far out into the blazing heat of the hinterland, you will find the roadside littered with people who are just sitting there, with a plastic bag, doing nothing.

Occasionally one will stick out his thumb so you can give him a lift to a new bit of roadside where he can sit with his bag, doing nothing. But the back seats in the Jag were too small so I’m afraid I just cruised on by.

I don’t think I’ve been anywhere where the rich, behind their razor wire and automated sprinkler-fed lawns, live quite so close, and yet quite so far away, from the poor and their plastic bags. I don’t think a Guardian reader could cope.

Frankly, though, I had more important things on my mind. For 30 years I’ve toured the globe looking for the same light that we saw in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Paul Newman takes Katharine Ross for a spin on his new bicycle. You know what I’m talking about; that dandelion-flecked morning promise of warm summer breezes to come. Well it’s there, in South Africa.

And Christ almighty, it gives good mountain. It’s a bit like Greece, and Yorkshire and northern California. But of course it’s not because the clouds are pure Wilbur Smith; they could only be African. And then you have the Lowry trees, with their Lionel Richie hair-dos. You don’t find those anywhere else either.

Then you spot where the post-sanctions money was spent. On the roads. They’re amazing.

Now they’ve worked out that tyres go on cars, rather than round one another’s necks, they’ve created one of the best driving countries anywhere on earth.

Eventually I got to Cape Town and oooh, what a place. It’s often said that London, New York and Rome are the world’s three great cities but none has much of a backdrop. That’s why I prefer Hong Kong, Wellington and Reykjavik. You have the restaurants and the shops and the bars. And all the time you can admire God’s axe work in the background.

In many ways Cape Town is like Sydney or Vancouver. It has a Britishness to the architecture and there’s a sort of touristed-up dock area where you can pay too much for stuff you don’t need. But in Cape Town you have Table Mountain just there, right at the end of your nose.

This — and I’ll take no argument, thanks — is one of the world’s great cities. And South Africa, despite the hilarious attempts to make wine, is one of the world’s great countries. I loved it.

Jaguar had made the most of the three-day trip, too, providing helicopters to take us into the mountains and Ribs to take us round the coast. They provided choirs every time there was an embarrassing silence and at night they provided telescopes so we could look at Saturn.

They’d also provided 16 chauffeur-driven long wheelbase XJs to ferry us around when we were drunk. And 45 XKs for when we weren’t. Although by the time I got there 700 journalists from around the world had been through the programme, so there were only 39 left.

So, what’s the XK like? Well, if you go faster than 130mph I can report that the front end starts to get a bit light. You lose some of the “feel” from the wheel. And this, in one of the strangest games of consequences ever, is because of the need to provide a decent-sized boot.

Here’s why. EU rules say that the compulsory high-level centre brake light has to be mounted within a certain distance of the rear window. And because the rear window on the XK convertible is small, so it’ll fit in the boot without taking up too much space, the only place to fit the brake light is on top of a big rear spoiler. And because it’s so big, the front of the car starts to “lift” at speed.

Of course, you wouldn’t expect there to be a similar problem in the coupé, which has a big rear window, but this is Jaguar, a small company that’s been losing money hand over fist in recent years. So thanks to a need to economise, both models get the same spoiler. So both have the same high-speed handling issue.

You see a similar thing going on with the aerial. Most cars these days have one inside the front windscreen, hidden away. But because the Jag has a heated front windscreen, and the heater elements mess with the reception, it comes with exactly the same sort of electric antenna you used to fit as an after-market accessory to your 1976 Ford Cortina.

And to think this car is made in the same factory that used to churn out second world war Spitfires. Though, of course, back then British ingenuity wasn’t at the mercy of American next-quarter accounting.

Because of these two little things the Jaguar is not a car from which you walk away saying “I have got to have one even if it means cutting out my own tongue”. It’s not a car that stirs the soul and breaks your heart. Instead it’s a car you’ll decide to buy after a logical process of elimination.

Yes, a 6-series BMW is faster, but come on. This is not a car that stirs your soul either; just your stomach. It’s hideous. And with that silly iDrive malarkey it’s also far too complicated.

So what about the Mercedes SL? Well, unless you can have the AMG growler, the answer’s no. It’s just a bit too boring.

The Jag, on the other hand, isn’t. It is pant-wettingly pretty and it makes just the most visceral, animal snarl when you boot it. On the move this turns into a muted version of the noise you got from 1970s American muscle cars. You’ll adore it.

You will also adore the simplicity of the undersides. It rides on proper suspension, not some oleohydrypneumatic nonsense, the controls work brilliantly and while the back seats aren’t big enough for hitchhikers, or even their carrier bags, the front is spacious and wonderful.

There’s only one small thing. The Aston Martin V8 Vantage. This comes from the same company, Ford, was designed in essence by the same man and has basically the same engine. But it sounds even better and is even prettier to behold. So, would you always think, if you had the Jag, that you’d bought second best? Honest answer? Yes. But there is another way of looking at it. Aston Martin has a properly crap reliability record whereas the latest figures put Jag ahead of every other car maker in the world except Lexus. So what you have with the XK is a reliable way of enjoying at least some of the Aston magic.

It’s like Cape Town, then. You have a taste of Africa without the malaria, the flies in your eyes or having your genitals cut off by angry locals. Yes, the wine’s rubbish, but like the aerial and that high-speed lift it’s a small price to pay.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model Jaguar XK 4.2 convertible
Engine 4196cc, V8
Power 300bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque 310 lb ft @ 4100rpm
Transmission Six-speed automatic
Fuel 25mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 269g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.2sec
Top speed 155mph
Price £64,995
Rating 4/5
Verdict A spectacular savannah cruiser and more reliable than the Vantage

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