This week, Cropley gets up close and personal with Fiat's 500e, is refreshed by an old car event that doesn't shove aside all your other weekend commitments and feels a bolt of joy at the acquisition by Gridserve of Ecotricity's Electric Highway.

Monday

Electrified week. I spent a fascinating few days with Fiat’s 500e, a car I tried in left-hand-drive form months ago but have been itching to assess in the real world ever since. Why real world? Because no matter how many left-handed miles you do on the rutted, high-crowned roads of Britain, you can’t form an accurate idea of a car’s ride quality while bumping along in the gutter.

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At first, the 500e seems bigger than its petrol Fiat 500 sibling, but there are only a couple of centimetres in it. (We measured.) Striking impressions are of a familiar design cleverly progressed, and a heartening improvement in materials and assembly quality. A week is enough time to show how quickly you stop missing a conventional drivetrain, too. For me, the 500e’s quick and precise departure from rest is full compensation for the lack of clutch bite and an H-pattern. In fact, I liked everything about the 500e except its range, which is plenty for a city car (Fiat’s description) but marginal for me. Give it the Renault Zoe’s 240 miles and I’m on the hook.

Tuesday

How refreshing to go to an old car event that doesn’t shove aside all your other weekend commitments. I turned up early for the latest of the British Motor Museum’s Gaydon Gatherings (second Tuesday, 5pm to 8.30pm, book online) to find the place already stacked with cars of every era, make, hue and value. The weather was perfect, there was plenty of space, chat was lively and you could tell that the 750-odd attendees were, to a person, delighted to be there. Best of all, it was free. Ran into head of collections Stephen Laing, who reckoned the attendance boded well for the British Motor Museum’s busy round of activities right through the summer.