Don’t draw attention to yourself. That’s the only way to stay safe in Detroit. Especially if you’re a chubby Englishman with the streetwise nous of a spaniel. Believe me, you want to stay safe in Detroit. Motown was last year ranked as the most dangerous city in America, with a violent crime rate that makes Britain’s roughest urban areas look like the Cotswolds. Keep your head down, stay under the radar, don’t make a scene.

Trouble is, it’s tricky to stay under the radar when you’re driving a bright-orange muscle car with a matt-black shaker hood, an exhaust with the acoustics of a pneumatic drill piped through a Marshall stack and a rear wing the size of an ice-hockey goal hooping into the night sky.

This feature first appeared in the February issue of Top Gear magazine

Words: Sam Philip

Pics: Webb Bland