Alpine A110S
REPORT 3
£60,645 OTR/£71,689 as tested/£749pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
Does the concept of a lightweight dissolve on contact with Real Life?
DRIVER
Ollie Marriage
Bentley Bentayga
REPORT 4
£157,800 OTR/£198,790 as tested/£1700pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
Does downsizing and plugging in a big, luxurious SUV actually work?
DRIVER
Rowan Horncastle
THE SMALLEST, LIGHTEST CAR IN TG’S CAR PARK, AND THE BIGGEST, heaviest. It wasn’t a deliberate choice, but it quickly became inevitable. We’re off to Mondello Park in Ireland to film James Deane’s smoke machi… mad drift car. That means we need something small, nimble and fast as a camera platform to chase his 870bhp BMW around and something big enough to haul all that camera kit there and back. The plan is an early Sunday drive up through Wales to rendezvous at Irish Ferries’ Holyhead terminal to board Ulysses and sail to Dublin.
OM: How was your drive up? I bet you motorwayed it all the way.
RH: You’re not wrong, including that business class motorway, the M6 toll road. I had to use five of the Bentayga’s 25-ish electrical miles collecting Charlie from the offce and I’d used all the electrical juice by the time we’d breached London, so I’ll be spending the next four days lugging heavy electrical components around and watching my average fuel economy plummet – it’s standing at 27.1mpg right now. That’ll do my green credentials some good. Now, if there’s one thing I’m sure of, you didn’t take the motorway, did you?
OM: The Alpine actually cruises pretty well, but no, I left the multilaners at Birmingham and drew a straight line to Holyhead. Wonderful roads, but busier than I expected, which did allow me to prove what an effective overtaker the Alpine is. And polite, too. It’s not in the roaring, stomping mould, it just slips past stuff lightly and easily.
But there must have been something that irked you about your little Alpine on the way
