Awesome Car Stuff For £200

We all know the taxman is evil. He watches you work your ass off all month and then sets his grubby fingers on your wages and pockets a hefty wodge to spend on speed bumps and MPs’ dog food bills.

Sometimes however he forgets his wicked ways and posts you a rebate… And this week Mr Taxman’s sent me a cheque for the grand total of £215.96. How generous. As someone who likes petrol on my cornflakes, I’m thinking of splashing the cash on something…fossil-fuelly. But what options are there for around 200 quid?

If you’ve seen the glossy supercar rental ads, you’ll know you can rent some properly exotic metal – Veyron included. To get your sweaty hands on a Veyron though, you’ll have to stump up the astronomical sum of £16,000. Per day. Oh, and you’ll need to slap down a £50k deposit – just in case you total it Lohan-stylee.

Set your sights a bit lower however and a speedy Audi S5, supercharged V8 Range Rover Sport or featherweight Lotus Elise S1 could be yours for a day’s hooning for less than £215. Nice.

For a chance to properly rag a supercar there are also tons of 'driving experiences' out there – and this time you can get your hands on Ferraris and Lamborghinis – or a Hummer if you like your cars awful. For £200 you can thrash three proper supercars over more than 20 miles.

The problem with renting or 'experiencing' a supercar is that as soon as you get back into your own sh*tbox, it will feel rather crap...One sure-fire way to avoid this issue is to race your own car.

Since track days have taken off, there are lots of places where you can redline your car all day long without the popo making a mess of your rearview mirror. Get yourself to Snetterton (if you can bear venturing into the wilderness that is Norfolk) and you can race on a proper track and receive two driver training sessions for £155.

Sadly though, most of us don’t have the equipment to exploit track days; a 1.0-litre Yaris really ain’t gonna hack it. Then there's the fact that you run the risk of totalling your motor or at best killing your tyres and brakes. Next!

Rally experiences are a cool option, where you'll get to test your driving reflexes and be introduced you to the joys of proper handbrake turns and awesome powerslides. Because the machinery on offer is much cheaper than the gold plated supercars, you also get more driving time for your money. Perfick.

Or if you fancy something completely different, there’s always stockcar racing which sees you compete in wheel to wheel racing and several challenges, including blindfolded driving and piloting a “race-prepared” Reliant Robin.

But what if you’re too young or too badly coordinated to have a driving licence? Fear not, for these mentalists will entrust you with a stunt driving course and teach you the art of handbrake parking amongst other stunty things.

As appealing as the idea of hooning around on a track is, driving a Ferrari for 10 seconds in exchange for a big wodge of dough just doesn’t stack up. However, you can just about get a remap for that money. And slapping a Bluefin kit on my Fiesta ST would offer an extra 10bhp and a healthy dose more torque. Hmm, I think my £214.96 is spent.

What would you do with the money?