Let's piste again

It is once again time to embark on a trip up a mountain, nail some planks to my feel and chuck myself down steep, snow-covered slopes.

Wish me luck

Rides

With my fabled Mini Cooper S continuing to cost me lots of money and the mileage climbing sky high, I started thinking about a different car.

This is a tough decision for me and one I make seldom - I have only chosen and bought 3 cars in the past and only one of those was what I really wanted at the time.

So I've spend some time scouring the magazines, reviews, price lists and so on and eventually came up with two cars which I test drove last week

Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0GT

I actually went and drove 2 of these, one was an auto and one a manual. The auto is a DSG box with manual change paddles

First car was the auto - drove around the outskirts of Oxford and felt a bit cheated by the route, but nevertheless I ended up less than impressed. I didn't feel involved in the driving experience. It made all the right noises and did mostly the right things but even using the manual shift still felt a little distant. Thinking about it afterwards, I decided it was the auto box - I just didn't like it - it always lagged behind what I wanted it to do. Not a great start

Second Roc was driven out in the country. I immediately felt the car was more alive and much more fun to drive. We did a bit of A road work and then lots of lanes and it was great fun. The engine pulls right from the low range to not far from redline and it's eager and responsive. Steering was good but not pin-sharp and overall it felt more eager but less positive and precise than the mini - But it's a bigger car. I really enjoyed this drive

Audi TT 2.0 Roadster

I don't want a roadster, but it gave me a good idea about the TT. Considering the shared heritage if the two cars, I was really surprised at just how different this car felt. It was sharp and nimble and fun and pretty damn quick. I immediately felt in complete control - like I knew how it would behave. There was no sense of anything other than precision in the steering and even when pushed around the lanes it did exactly as you'd expect - complete with a bit of understeer and rear slide at times.

The TT had buckets of grin factor, where the Roc was a bit of a brief smirk. I didn't have much doubt at the end about which one I prefered.