Now in its second year, the Chelsea AutoLegends show rolled its status of ‘biggest show on wheels in London’ out onto the capital’s streets by organising the Pistonheads Supercar Run.

An explosion of V8s and V12s, cloaked in both old and new metal, gathered at Waterloo Place just outside the Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall: orderly rows of supercars parked in the middle of London may be an unusual sight when none of them is painted in baby blue or is sitting outside Harrods. Ferrari 599 GTO and Enzo haughtily lined up side-by-side with a Lamborghini Miura and a Miura S, a more modern Gallardo, the psychedelic KTM and the V8 Corvette-powered Interceptor in amethyst.    

Chelsea AutoLegends is a compact, suave yet informal motoring feat displaying its collections of Le Mans cars of various historic denomination, rally and racing models, supercars and vintage Italians along the grassy edges of the Chelsea Hospital grounds; yet the Sunday Times Supercar Paddock within the show remained empty for most of the morning, as more than twenty cars in convoy leapt from traffic light to traffic light, weaving among buses, taxis and preoccupied Londoners suddenly smiling; the cars chased each other along a route which miraculously never overlapped with the concomitant pushbike run organised by the evergreen London Mayor Boris Johnson.

How do you keep together, on London streets, a convoy of over 20 cars which snort, howl, wail and rumble, smell of Castrol Oil and overenthusiastic gear changing, and are worth anything between ￡40k and ￡1.4m? Easy: you lead the pack with a Lotus Exige, give a suggested route through Regent’s Park, Sloane Square and Battersea Park, argue with the local Police when they refuse to let the beasts take a break in the London cavalcade of the year, urging them to move on, and queue them up at the entrance to the Chelsea AutoLegends show, enjoying the unique sight of Sir Stirling Moss waving the chequered flag at each and every one of them.

A solitary Bugatti Veyron sulked in the cordoned-off area on the Chelsea Hospital grounds, waiting for the rest of the supercars to join it. Perhaps it’ll have better luck next year.