Features

Backlanes. If you take it on its sexy coupe looks, this is the place where the Brera should be showing its sporting mettle and I'm feeling strangely unmoved. Not that the car is particularly bad. There's nothing eminently serious for me to seize upon with the usual journalist's rabidity, more that I'm just not stirred - which is somehow worse.

It's all about feel. The optional 18-inch wheels are tramlining and this JTDM is under-sprung, meaning that there's plenty of dive under braking, prow-raising under steam and a fair old amount of lean into corners.

When you actually get the car heeled over, it has plenty of grip, but flick-flacking from left to right will have passengers making uncomfortable noises way before the limit is even grazed. The steering has also been wound up to make the Brera appear more nimble.

Two-and-a-quarter turns from lock-to-lock might sound good, but it just doesn't suit the car, and turning in hard makes that body roll even harder to forgive. It's also more than possible to get an axle to make a worrying twanging noise on bumpy roads. This is not good. It would make any rear-seat passengers feel more than a little concerned in their thickly C-pillared cell.

Actually, it won't make rear seat passengers do anything because you won't have any. Despite this being labelled as a 2+2, there really aren't back seats to speak of. In my driving position, the front seatback touches the rear squab and if I try to move to a position where you could get a child sat in the back, I'd need hand controls because I'd be sat cross-legged on the front seat.

I'm big, so my wife tried it too, all 5ft 4in of her, and found very nearly the same problem. This doesn't happen in Alfa's GT, which is a good-looking car that is also cheaper than the Brera spec for spec. Er...

Similarly irritating in the Brera is the fact that it's impossible to get comfy in the front seat, simply because it will not drop low enough, forcing you to tip it backwards to get your head off the door pillar.

I ended up with a terrible Lamborghini-circa-1980, long-arms/ short-legs scenario that made me: a) look like a berk and b) have less fine control than I would have liked. An ergonomic screw-up for average-height people. Enough to stop you buying the car if you're taller than 6ft.