Buy with your head, drive with your heart: Alfa Romeo 4C Coupe

Seduced by a sexy Italian

Roundabout: Our Vulture feels for himself the Alfa's light weight, wide tyres and dynamic handling

You’ll also read that it’s not dialled into the road enough. That isn’t true either. What it does have is extraordinary levels of grip. The 235/40 rear and 204/45 P Zeros, and the light weight which defines the car, means that it’s not slidey fun like a Caterham but something you can lean on into corners.

There have been a number of suspension mods and the press car has the very latest upgrades, so maybe this is more representative of the breed than earlier reviews.

Getting in and out of the Alfa 4C Coupe is an acquired skill

Another thing that you may have heard about the 4C is that every journey is exciting. That it turns the mundane into an adventure. This isn’t strictly true either. You need to be in the right mood, and to a lesser extent it needs to be the right journey. If you are tired and just want to get home, it’s too jarring. It’s not a city car and while the automatic with paddle shift means you are not pumping a heavy clutch, this is a car which rewards effort. If you are not of a mind to put in any effort in, don’t expect to enjoy the ride.

Slope: On the 30 degrees of Brooklands' track banking, the inertial reel seatbelts wouldn't unlock

It doesn’t do the racing-car-for-the-road thing of shimmering on idle, or the lurch as you put it into gear, but it does have the same steering feel as a track car. Unassisted, it’s heavy at rest, and too light – much, much too light – going straight ahead at speed. There is a vague bobble like a 1980s 911 on the motorway, which you have to just get used to and roll with.

Perhaps it could do with some more aerodynamic downforce on the front. Beyond that, the steering is fantastic, a complete antidote to the synthetic steering of everything from a Fiat 500 to a modern 911. I recently drive a £100,000 911 Targa around a track and it felt great, but not genuine like a 4C.