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

Seduced by a sexy Italian

Where am I going now?! CAMERAS!

If ever there was a car which needed a reversing camera, this is it. The wing mirrors are excellent but the Ferrari-esque glass hatch over the engine is tinted, so looking directly out of the back doesn’t show much.

There is a rear parking sensor, which helps, but I lived in fear of an expensive crunch and often parked in a space further away than I would normally have chosen just to be safe.

As is normal with anything this sporty, you go the long way round rather than tackle roads with speed humps. I’m not surprised that the streets of Wandsworth are lined with X5s, Q7s and MLs with all the speed humps spread out around there.

There are two things which are disappointing about the engine: the way it looks and the way it sounds.

The sound can be fixed with the optional loud exhaust. The consensus of opinion at the Ace Café was that the road exhaust is too muted, although it’s said that the loud option drones badly. The look means that although there is a nice glass panel, all you see is a plastic box with the letters “4C”.

The boot is more espresso than Americano

The hatch to the boot and engine doesn’t have gas struts. Instead there is a prop, which means if you are putting something in the boot you have to put the something down, open the boot, fit the prop and then pick something up. Or resort to the tactic familiar to VX220 owners of employing your head as a prop.

The only way to open the boot is a lever in the door jamb – a part Alfa shares with Ferrari. There is no boot release on the back or the key fob. Still, you won’t be putting much in there. The boot is tiny; use the space wisely as there is no storage in the cabin and the front, which houses the air-con unit, doesn’t open. If you want storage space, buy a pick-up truck.