Alfa Romeo 4C

Step – or rather, clamber – into the 4C, and you’ll find an environment befitting of a hardcore sports car. Parts of the carbon fibre chassis are left exposed – very intentionally – to give a high-tech race car feel, while stitched leather and functional, no-nonsense plastics make up the rest of what you see. It feels very appropriate to the car, but most of the materials on display, and the way in which they’re constructed, don’t feel anywhere near as lustrous as they do in other sports cars like the Porsche Boxster.

Most of the other controls are reasonably conventional – with the possible exception of the gear selector buttons – so they’re pretty easy to find and use. It’s rather unforgivable, though, that at this money, you only get an aftermarket Alpine stereo that has nowhere near the ease-of-use or depth-of-functionality you get with the fully integrated systems in most rivals. There’s a very limited amount of adjustment for your driving position, too. For instance, you can’t crank your seat up and down or adjust the angle of your backrest.