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Thrustmaster states that this is “an exact replica of the Enzo Ferrari wheel”. Now having pawed over an Enzo at the Sydney Motor Show last year, I’m pretty certain that the steering wheel is made of real carbon fibre rather than the carbon fibre patterned plastic seen here. That said, I’m well aware of the cost of real carbon fibre since it’s one of my favourite materials when building up mountain bikes, so it comes as no surprise that Thrustmaster hasn’t gone with the real thing. Also, since one of the main advantages of carbon fibre is its light weight, it’s not really necessary either.

Ok, aesthetic similarities with real supercars aside, the Enzo wheel does look pretty cool. What’s even better is that it feels great to the touch as well. The wheel itself is ergonomically excellent and just feels completely natural when you wrap your fingers around it. Of course you’d expect the steering wheel from a car costing almost half a million pounds to feel good, but this alone is worth the licensing cost that Thrustmaster had to pay the motorsport legends from Modena.

The paddles behind the wheel are also finished in mock carbon fibre and do complement the wheel well. The top paddles used for gear changes have a pleasing solid click to them and add to the tactile feeling while driving. In fact it feels so good changing gears that even people that usually stick with the standard automatic gearbox setting on games could find themselves delving into the world of manual gear manipulation. There is also a set of lower paddles which can be used for acceleration and braking if you don’t fancy using the pedals, although I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to.

There is a total of nine action buttons that can be configured to do anything from changing the driving view, to yanking up the handbrake to make that 180 degree turn. There’s also an eight-way D-PAD mounted on the centre of the wheel so you shouldn’t have to grope around for a keyboard when you’re navigating menus.

The clamping mechanism comes as a separate part from the main steering wheel which seemed a bit odd at first. However, once I mounted it to the bottom of the wheel and tightened it up to my desk it was locked solid in place. No matter how enthusiastic my driving became the wheel didn’t slip a millimetre.

If there’s one part of the package that’s a little disappointing it’s the pedal box. That’s not to say that the pedal box is bad, but since the wheel is so well built, it makes the pedal box feel a little light and insubstantial. This initial view was confirmed when I started playing games and I found the pedal box sliding away from me. Of course I soon managed to tailor my driving style to avoid this happening, but every now and then I’d get a little heavy footed and start to lose my pedals under the desk.