Having driven both, Mr Cropley is still struggling to pick a winner between two of the best sports cars on sale this week. Elsewhere, he goes hunting for a seemingly impossible-to-find tyre after an unwanted rocky encounter...
Monday
There’a serious choice to be made here. The Alpine A110 that I’ve just given back and the Porsche 718 Boxster still on the premises failed to cross over last week, so I photographed them separately as identically as my phone could manage. The trouble is that every time I think about which of these sports cars I would choose, I reach a different conclusion. Actually, part of me doesn’t want to reach a conclusion at all: one of the worst aspects of the ubiquitous car magazine ‘comparo’ is that one car gets labelled a loser.
The more you think, the more different the pair seem. The Alpine feels smaller, more agile, more delicate and more throttle-responsive, with a ride that’s comfortable in more places than the Porsche’s. The Porsche goes beautifully, has fine steering, great handling and a structure that’s more rigid than open-tops five times the price. There’s a feeling of unimpeachable quality and practicality and two big boot spaces to back that up. The standard seats are excellent, it will have better residual values and its dealers are ritzier. But to hell with it: I would choose the Alpine – and fret every day about being made to decide.
Tuesday
If you’ve not read Sir James Dyson’s wonderful autobiography Invention: A Life, today would not be too early to start. Of course, the story of the stillborn Dyson luxury electric car, related warts and all by the inventor, is paramount for people with our kind of priorities, but Dyson’s book is packed with many other things, too: inside detail of his many inventions that show the power of relentless determination and a fascinating view of how much pure thinking he continues to do on the burning issues of the day.
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If I only had one car to use for every journey it would be the Porsche.
if I had an alternative for daily driving then I'd have the Alpine. The alternative for daily driving, of course, will be the Porsche.
Like Flukey, i would have to pick the Porshe of the 2 as its both manual and a soft top. The fact that Porsche let you choose both coupe or convetible, and gearbox makes all the difference. But if the Alpine was manual, but still a coupe i would find choosing between them more difficult.
Also, its shocking that the Sandero's spare is optional, and fortunate that this one has it. But surely of more concern are the huge numbers of cars where no spare is available. If Euro NCAP were to do one thing useful one day it would be to credit to cars for having a spare, or at the very least run flats, and we would see the number of cars with them increase over night if that was the only way to get 5 stars
If you're happy with giving a machine the enjoyment of banging gears for you then you're probably okay with giving another man the enjoyment of banging your wife for you.