GO BIG OR GO HOME...

Meanwhile in Peterborough... one of John Hennessey's other mega-horsepower creations is giving the crowd what they want

- OLLIE KEW

Children are agog. Mums with prams retreat while dads puff out their cheeks and nod heads in synchronised appreciation. The most powerful road-legal truck in the world has made its grand entrance at Britain's biggest, most enduring lorry themed festival. Pity it wasn't moving under its own power.

Caution: this story is now reversing. I'm rewinding a month, to when the TopGear office received word from Texas that John Hennessey was sending his latest four-wheeled metaphor for America on a pond-hopping foreign exchange. A picture of the most preposterous dandelion yellow pickup truck detonated into TG's group chat. What exactly do you do with a Dodge Ram TRX which left the factory blessed with a 702bhp Hellcat V8, went south to Hennessey boot camp and returned with a military grade off-roading upgrade and a 1,012bhp conversion?

They call it the Mammoth 1000 TRX. An uprated supercharger that ingests more air than the swept capacity of an Audi RS3's entire engine is bolted onto a 6.2-litre V8 and the result is more horsepower than the original Bugatti Veyron. Despite weighing near as dammit three tonnes, it'll romp from zero to 60mph in 3.2 seconds and rip through a standing quarter-mile in 11.4 seconds, choking a Ferrari Roma on its potent fumes.

The Mammoth invades my corner of Lincolnshireville amid a national cost of living crisis. Immediately it causes a personal one when a brim of the tank sets me back £188. Clambering back inside via the pop-out side steps, the dashboard calculates those 96 litres will get me 225 miles. And to think Texas is ready to riot over gas topping £1 a litre.