Half Fat

Want is one thing, but these sport coupes (and one convertible) prove that you don’t need a crore-plus, full-fat, 600bhp V8 to have a shit-ton of fun

- Sirish Chandran

AS GOOD AS A CAYMAN? THAT’S WHAT you all asked, in response to the rabid praise we heaped on the M2 Competition last month. It was a question we had no answer to, not because we have no experience of the Porsche, but because fast cars are moving the game on so rapidly it’s impossible to pass judgment on all-important yet highly subjective matters like steering feel, throttle adjustability and the seat of the pants feedback without driving them back to back. And so that’s what this test is all about, an attempt to find out just how good sports coupes have become, and a celebration of the fact that you can now get a properly fast car for under a crore of rupees.

Of course, there is no Cayman here. We couldn’t get hold of it so we got its 718 siblings, the identical (save for the foldable canvas roof) Boxster. At the other end of the spectrum, and at the same price, is the Mustang with a full-fat V8. It defies the very point of this test, to prove you don’t have to go the V8 route to have fun, but if you can get a ’Stang at the same price as a Boxster we had to drive them back to back.

The other three cars are relatively straight-forward. Audi’s S5 is the only four-door with a big(ish) engine. The M2 is a proper sports coupe with a banging turbo-six. And the newest of them all, and rocking the coupe back end, is the C 43 AMG, the turbo-V6 now kicking out more power, more torque, more noise, and more entertainment. It’s a good time to be a fan of fast cars!

SHOW & GO

MERCEDES-AMG C 43 COUPE