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So, where are you going for your holidays this year? Tuscany? The Dordogne? Spain? The list of possibilities is seemingly endless. But it’s not as long as the list of places you don’t even consider. Yakutsk, for instance, or Algeria. I bet you never really thought about Haiti either, or Iran. But topping the list of places I bet you’re not going to is Germany.

Don’t you think that’s a bit weird? I mean, most of the places that don’t stack up as tourist resorts fail because you’ll be shot or because you’ll come home with an interesting new disease. Neither is even a remote possibility, however, if you take the family to Munich.

And there’s more. What is it that Tuscany has that Bavaria lacks? There are mountains, lakes and the promise of many cloudless days sitting around a swimming pool. You can even find a bottle of local wine that will make you just as drowsy as the stuff you get in Italy.

And then Bavaria really gets cracking, because there’s no possibility of running into John Mortimer at the greengrocer’s. You won’t be woken at 6am by a teenager on a 4cc motor scooter, and you won’t be troubled by strimmers on a Sunday because this is Germany and that sort of thing is banned.

What’s stopping you from going, I imagine, is not the country itself but the people who live there — the Germans. But if we look back over the summer of sport, it’s hard to see why this should be a problem.

I mean, did you see that ape the Spanish sent to Wimbledon. What, apart from basic bone structure, do you have in common with him? And then there was the World Cup. The Italians all looked greasy and disgusting, the Portuguese were worse, and the French appeared to be Algerian, whereas the Germans, to be honest, looked like us. Except for the glaring fact that they could actually play football.

Yes, you might be thinking, the Germans do look like us but they are not like us because they have no sense of humour. Really? So when was the last time an Italian made you laugh? How many times have you left a French restaurant with your sides rent asunder? And where’s the comedy in taking a donkey to the top of a bell tower and hurling it over the side? The Germans, on the other hand, do have humour. It’s just tuned a little differently from ours. To prove this, I shall now tell you a German joke. A man is out shooting rabbits with his friend. He takes aim and misses, slightly to ze left. So he reloads, aims again and misses by the same margin to the right. He then puts his rifle away. “What are you doing?” says the friend. “Well,” says the man, “on average, ze rabbit is dead.”

To us, this, is about as funny as soil. But tell it to a German and you’d better make sure the St John Ambulance people are on hand, with oxygen. If this joke had been written earlier, our boys could have read it out at the Somme and millions of lives could have been saved.

So why do they find it so hilarious when we don’t? Well, that’s simple. Our humour is based around cruelty whereas there it is based around maths (and farting, obviously).

This becomes obvious when you look at the new Porsche 997 Turbo in the 911 series. You’ll note it’s the 997, which means it’s one newer and one better than the 996. But it isn’t one better at all. It’s millions better. If I’d made it, I’d have called it the Porsche Jesus Christ Almighty Would You Look At That Bastard Go.

Of course, it’s the same basic shape as all previous 911s but the engine is completely different. In fact it’s completely different to any engine we’ve ever seen before because the turbos have variable vane technology. This means they work like small boosters when the revs are low — good for immediate response — and rockets when the revs are high.

The upshot is 473bhp, which doesn’t sound like much. But if you put your foot down, I promise, all thoughts of a power shortage will be gone immediately. Because this car doesn’t accelerate. It teleports. Bang, and you’re in the next space and time continuum.

The figures suggest there are faster cars, and on a track there are. The Ferrari 430, for instance. There are cars, too, that are more fun to drive; the Pagani Zonda springs to mind here, and the Ferrari again for that matter. But on a normal everyday road, where a Zonda’s massive rear flanks don’t fit and a Ferrari’s low nose keeps graunching, you can exploit all of the Porsche’s power and torque all of the time. In the real world nothing could hang on to the tail of a Turbo. Nothing.

And of course, being four-wheel drive there’s immense grip even when it’s raining. And better still it’s well made so it won’t go wrong as often as its Italian rivals. And it has four seats and sat nav and a phone and all of the things you’d get in a Mercedes or an Audi.

Oh, and let’s not forget fuel consumption. Because of the variable-pitch turbo blades it has a Wesleyan attitude to consumption and, as a result, doesn’t even attract the gas guzzler tax in America.

As a technical exercise, then, the 997 Turbo is hugely impressive. And yet I wouldn’t buy one any more than I’d go on holiday this year to Baden-Baden.

Some of this is down to the styling. The Porsche Turbos from the late Seventies were pretty, almost dainty little things. And they were simple. The 997 is none of that. It is small compared with most supercars, but it doesn’t look it, and it’s been blunderbussed with trinketry.

Every panel, every small corner, every nook and every cranny is fussy and overdone. And on my test car the brake callipers were yellow. I’m sorry, but how complete does your life have to be for you to worry about the colour of your brake callipers? I know of no one apart from David Bowie who wakes every morning to think: “Hmm, I’m good-looking, rich, a rock star and crikey, I’m also married to a supermodel.”

Inside there was a problem too. My car had the optional sports seats, which have electrically adjustable side supports. Fine, but even on their widest setting they’re still too small for those who haven’t seen their feet in a while. If you’re not David Bowie, stick with the standard seats. They’re fine.

The seats, however, and the brake callipers are only small reasons why I wouldn’t have the 997 Turbo. It isn’t even the Onanist City Boy image that still clings to the car. No, for me, I would steer clear for exactly the same reason you will not be taking your holidays in Dortmund. There’s no passion.

Just last week I drove the new Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. It was, of course, a preposterous car, loud and shouty where the Porsche is smooth and unruffled. Jarring and stiff where the Porsche is comfortable and controlled. It isn’t as fast as the Porsche either, despite being £33,000 more expensive. And yet the Lambo grabs you by the heart and the Porsche just doesn’t.

Even though the 911 is the better car, by hundreds of miles, I’d buy the Gallardo. But then I’m a man who’s having two holidays this summer. One in the Isle of Man. And one in Botswana.

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