MUSK GOES MAINSTREAM

The 3 is so rapid it’s borderline whether the sensation is even enjoyable

Tesla: you’ve heard the name, you’ve probably seen a few around, maybe seen an unfeasibly fast Model S embarrassing some pretty storied names in YouTube drag races. But only now can you actually buy one. By which we mean ordinary people with a few hundred quid in their pocket each month to fund a car can now choose a Silicon Valley alternative to a sensible mainstream car. The Model 3 is where Musk meets mass market.

Well, mass-ish. Predictably the initially touted sub-£30k price never materialised, at least not in the UK. The entry-level Standard Range Plus’s $38,990 home-market price translates to £32k, but swells to £37,340 by the time it’s paid its passage, import tax and VAT, making it ready for sale in the UK.

For that you get a single electric motor driving the rear wheels with sufficient force to get you to 62mph in 5.6sec and give you a 254-mile range on a full charge. It’s a big, £9k step to the next model, the dual-motor Long Range, but the benefits are equally sizeable: an entire second lopped

off the 62mph sprint and almost 100 miles added to the range.

But the £60k+ starting prices of the Jag and Benz allowed us the luxury of pushing to the top of the Model 3 ladder. Our £49,990 test car goes by the name Performance, and never has anything printed on the tin been so apt.

Unlike its Model S big brother, there’s no Ludicrous performance mode on the 3. Neck muscles around the world will rejoice at that news because even in Sport mode the 3 is so uncomfortably rapid that it’s borderline whether the sensation is even enjoyable. Tesla says it’s good for 62mph in 3.4sec and our VBOX data showed it could get to 100mph in less than nine. We’re used to Silicon Valley Model S supersaloons giving sports cars a bloody nose but this baby Tesla is as quick as a baby Lambo from only a handful of years ago.

If it all gets a bit too much, or you just want to avoid killing your 329mile theoretical range, you can switch to Comfort mode. But make sure you’ve not left it there before taking someone on at the lights. Comfort adds 4.0sec to the 0-62mph time, meaning even a Kia e-Niro will have you in a straight line.

You’ll make it back up in the bends, though, whichever mode you’ve selected. Because the way this car goes round corners is almost as shocking as the speed it’s carrying when it gets to them. It disguises its bulk with solid body control, front-end grip and, best of all, high-geared, smartly-weighted steering that actually manages to impart useful information about the state of play at the front end. You can even nudge the tail out in a cheeky oversteer slide.

And for all its bonkers performance focus, the 3 is also an extremely relaxing car to drive. Despite wearing lower-profile tyres than the Kia, and riding on plain old steel coils, not the air springs of its posher Model

S brother, its ride quality is excellent. So is visibility thanks to the low scuttle and, like the other cars, the Model 3 can be driven effectively using only the accelerator if you configure the maximum amount of regenerative braking available. Press to go. Lift off to slow.

The absurdly impractical Hollywood-smile white leather interior is a £950 option, but with a standard full-length glass roof flooding the cabin with light you could stick with black and it’d feel plenty big. It is big. More so than you’d imagine, both in terms of passenger space and places to put phones, wallets, bottles and all the other stuff too many manufacturers forget to make provision for.

That kind of thinking, the long range and the ready access to Tesla’s speedy Supercharger network (not free, sadly for 3 buyers) shows Tesla can do the sensible stuff needed to take on the car game’s established players. But an actual car game – an arcade driving game you play by steering with the real car’s wheel – plus daft gimmicks like the log fire display and selectable fart sound effects (yes really) illustrate just how far removed Tesla is from its stuffy rivals.

If this is starting to sound like a clean sweep, it’s not quite that simple. Why, for instance, is a car that looks like a hatchback and so obviously ought to be a hatchback actually a saloon with a frustratingly small boot opening? Our guess is a hatch’s hinge mechanism would have made it difficult to carve out as much headroom while maintaining the low roofline. The high floor also means rear passengers have to sit with their knees up, which won’t be comfortable on long trips.

And there’s that familiar suspicion of sub-Benz build quality about the interior trim and the flimsy charging port cover in the rear quarter, and although it’s a pretty shape, it’s also pretty insipid. This Performance model could get away with more mouth to go with the trousers. ⊲