Oh, don’t worry strippers still exist. In Europe that is:

Except that the BMW has better bits underneath that make it a better drive, should you care about that. Of course nobody does, but on those base cars the premiumness stems from there.

I was also thinking the comparison for lesser versions, say are the oily bits in a Camaro 2 litre turbo as good as say those of a BMW 430i Coupé?

Or about .5 of a percent of those two thirds for the quality and performance.

There are still some difference, but mostly where you can’t see them. In the oily bits. The difference has been reduced but so has the price gap.

I currently drive an automatic (because reasons...) and when someone has to drive my car I always if they know how to.

Big circular fog lamps in cars need to make a comeback.

AFAIK all windows roll down in Puntos... 🤔

Here in Spain it is usually cheaper to take the plane than the AVE (fast train).

I wouldn’t say 2 litres are “big motors” over here*. Just mid-sized. Although anything bigger than that or with more than 4 cylinders is indeed in the massively expensive to run territory.

Crossoverising cars always makes things worse.

Sometimes though you just have to. I was in Sicily with a GC4 Picasso a couple of weeks ago and while we avoided the narrowest parts of the places we visited, it was inevitable to go into some small streets.

Ours was gutless below 1500rpm so you had to make sure you worked with the gearbox to stay in the powerband. In the motoway also sometimes you had to downshift to fifth to gain speed (especially below 120km/h). It has to be said that we were 5 all the time in the car so we had 350kg extra at least on board which will…

I didn’t check the GC4 Picasso, but my two previous rental cars were a Giulia 2.2D and a Yaris Hybrid both were around the 7 to 8l/100km. And both were driven briskly and on a combination of motorway and mountain roads (and a tiny little bit of city).

Many times in Europe you have to drive through those narrow streets to actually get anywhere.

Foot buried in the carpet always? Lots of city driving? Mountain passes? A combination of the three?

If interesting is a completely nornal economy hatchback you are in for a treat at pretty much any rental agency!

A family member has GLA220d 4Matic.

I did! But I’m European anyway. The previous time it was a Giulia, and that was quite something...

So you had to drive from Paris to Nice. That means that you had to cross the entire country. And decided that the best choice was the smallest car available? You could have scored a B or C segment car which would have been much more adept at long motorway trips and it would have been something equally european.