Published:
25 May 2018Although the original 1960s A110 range offered a GT4 version with a 2+2 cabin layout, this modern successor – just like the famous Berlinette version – is a strict two-seater.
Access is easy by class standards and, inside the car, the intimate distance separating the front seats tells you straight away that you’re in compact sports car – as does the unmistakable impression of an appealingly purposeful cockpit.
The seats are deeply bolstered sports buckets with a fixed backrest angle and they’re comfortable enough that they’d be no barrier to the contemplation of a long journey. They are also one of the cabin’s material highlights, upholstered in leather and Alcantara and garnished with blue stitching.
Between them sprouts a raised centre console panel that houses an engine start button, transmission controls, electric window switches and an electronic handbrake switch. It could plainly be more solidly secured and it wobbles a little too readily to conjure the impression of quality that the leather and carbonfibre-style trim it’s finished with is aiming for.
More broadly, the A110’s perceived quality is more vulnerable to criticism than, say, an Audi TT RS’s or 718 Cayman’s is; but in a car whose mission it is to be light and simple, that’s likely to be an acceptable trade.
