Fiat 124 Spider

From £19,495 Available: Now

FEW breeds of car are more fun than a two-seater convertible sports car.

And it doesn’t even need to be fast: having the roof down amplifies the sense of speed, and our clogged roads mean you can seldom use the power of a bigger sports car anyway. For more than a quarter of a century, the Mazda MX5 has been the definitive small sports car. An all-new version arrived last year, and now Fiat has borrowed the MX5’s underpinnings to revive its famous 124 Spider sports car of the 1960s. This Fiat feels quite different from the Mazda: it’s a bit more stylish outside and plusher inside, and the tiny turbocharged 1.4-litre engine puts out an impressive 138bhp.

Italian verve, but made in Japan: not a bad combination.