The 3 stages of our cars: Morgan in the garage, Alpina under the car-port, Passat outside.
The Supersport is not 5 years old and has clocked 40k km - with the rate slowing. It had a couple of issues last year (clip on base of PAS reservoir and batter) but has run without fault this year (fob batteries don't count). I almost feel I can rely on it. I will happily take it to work even if rain is expected, and I try not to be too precious about it - it can take a bit of a splash. And amazingly it doesn't leak too much!!
The Alpina (apart from not being 4wd) is about as usable as a supercar can possibly get - and as far as I can figure out the only way to upgrade it would be to a FF. And I am highly confident it won't let go any time soon (currently at 107k km) - and scheduled for an oil change in another 20,000km!! The "expected time to replace rear brake pads" went from 16,000km when I picked up the car to 17,000km after 5,000km of driving!
To clarify - that is a 530ps car which stonking all round performance - which continues to better the official urban mpg figures - feels utterly solid and dependable.
When I was a boy 530ps was what the F1 cars of a few years before had produced, cars needed servicing every few thousand miles (oil change at least) and fuel economy was the same as the Alpina.
The show demonstrated just how far automotive design and production has come - the quality of paintwork for example (although a 599 owning friends is convinced that Morgan's is better than Ferrari's on that front), build quality, trim/material quality, durability. Then there is the design process - the JLR 3d virtual reality room and the Aston sound room shows the length manufacturers are going to achieve what they believe is perfection. I had a Rapide for a week and never even considered the sound of the door unlocking.
(At least they didn't show the Aston egronomics department - stop sniggering, they must have one, don't they? They don't? Ah, that'll explain it!!!)
