Driving the GT-R up the main approach to Goodwood House today was like introducing a soap star to the Queen. We all know it’s going to happen one day but there’s still something rather vulgar about it.

Lord March’s latest money-spinner is a tie-up with BMW for a public on-road, off-road driving experience around his 12,000-acre estate. It was launched today in the dampest conditions I’ve seen in months. Some of the track driving was abandoned it was that wet.

Lord March, who looks remarkably similar to Hugh Grant these days, has the Midas touch at the moment. His Festival of Speed is second only to the British GP as the top motoring event in the country.

Surprisingly, the BMW engineers and mechanics were secretly itching to peep inside the GT-R. They had some electric i8s available and I would gladly have swapped. To put it bluntly, the Nissan looked like a fish out of water at Goodwood. Yet there’s no doubt it would destroy all the M5s and M3s we had available to drive.

And there’s the rub. The GT-R is a crowd-pleaser of epic proportions. But is it classy? I think not…