Ferraris are renowned for being quick, but I was grinning from ear to ear at how they can shrink sixty years into six months - including six hours in Wales.

Perhaps it was fitting that the cars which can change time and relative dimension in space to bring out the Dr Who in any enthusiast should materialise in what has become the ancestral home of the time lord, Wales.

I was happy to act as a time traveller behind the wheel of two models helping celebrate 60 years of Ferrari with a six months world tour, along with over a dozen other Taffy-Toffosi who turned out to make one of the most exotic and expensive £2M convoys to ever sweep through Wales when we were given a Welsh welcome in Usk by customers of Dick Lovett Cardiff, the Ferrari dealership for Wales.

I was handed a diamond topped red and silver designer baton at Birmingham and delivered it into the Taffy-Toffosi hands at the Celtic Manor Resort hotel, Newport.

I used a 612 Scaglietti grand tourer, surely one of the most seductive and stylish four seater coupes money can buy at around £172,000, and a two-seater 599 GTB Fiorano, costing about the same.

That’s big money but they are big cars with big V12-cylinder hearts pumping out around 600bhp. With the latest sequential transmission giving a choice of driving modes they deliver all that power with precision and passion.

There was no opportunity to explore the handling limits of the cars but in urban traffic or on sweeping main roads the steering responses were easy but effective and the brakes behaved with a beautiful balance between effort and result.

The cars’ ride qualities were surprisingly supple when you knew of the performance potential, but the suspension in these Ferraris has been designed to take all in their elegant stride. The seats are surprisingly large and comfortable and I found an ideal driving position within seconds of climbing in.

Dr Who would have been jealous. Attractively styled both inside and out with most secondary switches close to hand and in sight, the designers obviously thought no one ever drinks a bottle of water in a Ferrari because there is no space to store it ready for replenishment. It is one of the idiosyncrasies of an icon.

Come to think of it, I have never seen Dr Who drinking bottled water in his time machine. Within hours of entering Wales, the relay baton was being carried over the Severn Bridge for the West Country leg of the UK tour. Sixty years had passed in an unforgettable six hours.