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Having rejuvenated two brilliant small cars for the electric age already, Renault has made it a hat-trick with the latest Twingo, which it promises will cost less than £20k when it lands in the UK at the end of this year.

That's a budget car price that the Twingo's design, at least, doesn't sit alongside. It looks and feels a more complete car than that. "The proportions are frankly perfect," says Laurens van den Acker, and although he might say that, because he designed it, we wouldn't disagree. "It looks like a bonbon," he says. "You could eat it." It is, we think undeniably, cute.

It looks good inside, too, with a small-outside, big-inside feel, and there's a lot of glass plus little segmentation between occupants to make it feel a bright and airy space.

There are bold and simple instruments and dials and buttons - many of them real - to add to the fact that although this is a budget car, it features some premium touches.

To counter the fact that short cars can't have generous rear accommodation and a big boot at the same time, the Twingo has separate rear chairs that slide independently of each other. And next in the thoughtful-touches stakes, the boot floor is split 50/50, so if you have, say, the charging cables in the cubby beneath, you don't have to empty the whole boot to access them.

The battery is modestly sized, at 27.5kWh, but that's perhaps inevitable for an electric city car, especially at this price.

Of the BYD Dolphin Surf, Fiat 500e and Hyundai Inster, only the Korean offering has a longer range, and its starting price is more than Renault promises.

The Twingo is good to drive too, tackling back roads with enthusiasm and fine body control, which it combines with a smooth, composed ride at odds with its lowly positioning.

So along with its feeling of solidity, the Twingo brings a sense of fun, enjoyment and involvement. In a world of grey cars with grey interiors, it's nice to find some colour being brought back to budget motoring.

"The St Bernard is a high pass, opening late and closing early.

"It is one of the very few ways across this part of the Alps, and in summer the motorist may find himself behind strings of coaches and oil tankers climbing majestically in their lowest gears, at a rate which is slow, over-heating and exceedingly tedious for a holiday car. At the end of the summer the pass grows dangerous, as the wild gusts hurl great masses of snow about, and poor workers who are returning late to Italy after the Swiss season are often overwhelmed."

This Autocar description should make modern drivers very grateful for the Great St Bernard Tunnel, and indeed the Mont Blanc Tunnel just a few miles west on the French-Italian border, both of which were bored in the early 1960s, "certainly drawing Italy closer to the rest of Europe by land communications".

The idea for an underground road connection between the ski resort of Chamonix and the Aosta Valley dated back to at least 1937, when Autocar first reported on plans to "move Paris and Rome 120 miles or so closer to one another", as motorised vehicles grew rapidly more numerous.

France and Italy fighting a war against one another rather complicated matters, so an agreement on boring through Europe's tallest mountain wasn't reached until 1949 - and not ratified by both parliaments until 1957.

The tunnel was set to be 7.4 miles long and 7.0 metres wide and take three years to finish, with the total shared cost projected at nearly £7m (or £145m in today's money). Meanwhile, the complementary 3.4-mile Great St Bernard Tunnel was going to be funded in its £6.5m entirety by private enterprise - and carry not just vehicles but also a new pipeline delivering crude oil from the seaport of Genoa to a refinery up in Collombey-Muraz.

Enjoy full access to the complete Autocar archive at the magazineshop.com

Boring on the Italian sides of both started in 1958, with the builders entering an informal race - in which the Mont Blanc team soon fell behind, due to internal flooding. "Inhabitants of the Aosta Valley are claiming that this confirms the legend that there are subterranean lakes and hidden deposits of uranium and precious metals in this mountain," noted Autocar.

Their rivals won by a month, as in April 1962 "a strong blast of explosive removed a few feet of rock separating Italy from Switzerland, and opened a new route between southern and northern Europe".

"Before the final charge, a small hole was drilled through from the Italian side, and Italian wine was piped to Swiss colleagues, who responded by feeding back cigarettes" - treats they had certainly earned, as "grave engineering difficulties had been encountered".

We elaborated: "The mountain is superficially made of the best kinds of rock, but inside there proved to be a lot of rotten stuff and cracked strata, and far more water than had been expected. At one bad patch, the Italian engineers took about six months for 300 yards or so."

It was finally opened to traffic in March 1964, "a very special Fiat 2300S with Pininfarina coupé bodywork, built for the occasion, first through from the south", while "from the north there was a convoy of British cars", which had arrived from Southend via Geneva aboard a British United Air Ferries Carvair.

These aircraft - successors to the Silver City Bristol Freighters that had taken drivers across the Channel in the 1950s - enabled a driver to escape London for the Mediterranean in just three hours and at a cost of about £30 (£540 now).

A third Alpine connection was announced at the inauguration of the Mont Blanc Tunnel in 1965, due to link Turin to southern France through the Mercantour Massif. At 7.5 miles long, it was expected to take five years and cost £14m.

Construction began in 1974 and the Fréjus Road Tunnel was opened in May 1980 - and upstaged months later by the Gotthard Road Tunnel in southern central Switzerland, burrowing beneath the "tortuous climb over the 6900ft St Gotthard Pass that used to cause many a boiling radiator in summer".

We concluded: "There will soon be motorway virtually all the way from northern Germany to the southern tip of Italy" - a prospect that is now our reality, meaning Reggio Calabria is a day away by car, when it should really be two. Three cheers for civil engineers.

The Porsche Taycan has gained a Hyundai-inspired virtual gearbox system as part of an update that also brings the option of additional range, plus an overhauled infotainment system.

Named E-Shift, the new system simulates an eight-speed sequential gearbox. Engaging E-Shift adds a rev counter to the digital instrument panel and gears can be selected using the paddles on the GT sports steering wheel, which is added with the Taycan’s optional Sport Chrono package. It is standard on the 1094bhp Turbo GT model.

Porsche claims the system provides engine braking similar to that of one of its combustion-engined cars, with “noticeable shift jerks” when a new gear is selected. The simulated gearbox’s behaviour and the ‘engine’ sound played through the interior speakers are different for each variant of the Taycan.

Hyundai was the first to offer a simulated engine and gearbox in an electric performance car with the Ioniq 5 N. It received critical acclaim for how it boosted driver engagement and the car was awarded a rare five-star verdict in the Autocar road test.

Andreas Preuninger, the boss of Porsche’s GT division, recently told Autocar that the Hyundai’s simulated ’box was “very impressive” and his “biggest takeaway” after driving one. “We [Porsche GT] are automotive nerds and discussions about how to improve driving engagement are always happening,” he said.

Alongside E-Shift, Porsche has added the option of low-rolling-resistance tyres for the rear-wheel-drive entry-level Taycan. The new rubber boosts the model's range by 12 miles, giving the saloon a claimed 434 miles between recharges and the Sport Turismo estate 416 miles.

Meanwhile, the Taycan’s infotainment system has been updated to the latest generation introduced with the Macan Electric and Cayenne Electric. It is said to offer five times the processing power of that in previous Taycans, bringing faster responses to inputs and new graphics.

Journalists gathered to try the Bovensiepen Zagato in Austria were surprised when a second Bovensiepen model was suddenly revealed – one with 790bhp, and not simply for us to ogle.

Anybody who appreciates the back-catalogue of the Bovensiepen family – custodians of Alpina until the naming rights transferred to BMW last year – will recognise the conceptual similarities between the 05 GT, as this second model is known, and the now-extinct Alpina B5.

Take a mainline BMW, give the styling a shot of sporting elegance, revise the suspension with comfort in mind, turn up the wick and ply the cabin with leather. The format served Alpina well for decades, and now that BMW will use the Alpina name to purvey lavish versions of the 7 Series, the Bovensiepens needed little encouragement to continue their fine work on the 5 Series.  

The key difference between this 05 GT and B5 BiTurbos of old is that here the engineering revisions to the donor car are no longer quite as involved. There is no reinforcing of gearboxes, no extra radiators, or chassis bracing. Then again, there needn’t be. The 05 GT isn’t based on an M550 or suchlike but on the full-blown G99-generation M5 Touring (and only the Touring, because there will be no saloon for the foreseeable future). Note that buyers will need to order the car through Bovensiepen Automobile, which is not offering the 05 GT package as a retrofit to used M5s.  

Taking such a brute as the starting point for the 05 GT makes for some extraordinary numbers, in this case 790bhp and 811lb ft, the latter from barely above tickover. The claimed 0-62mph time is "less than" 3.6sec, while top speed is given as 190mph, though because the car is geared to hit 227mph even in seventh, the double-tonne must be fair game on an autobahn. All said, this car is faster than an M5 Touring.

Having briefly considered binning it off, in the end Bovensiepen elected to keep the electric portion of the M5’s plug-in hybrid powertrain but left it untouched. The motor inside the eight-speed gearbox therefore continues to make around 200bhp, and of course it means the 05 GT can operate as an EV, albeit only for 35 miles or so.

Meanwhile the twin-turbo 4.4-litre petrol V8 gets new intake plumbing and a titanium Akrapovic exhaust from the silencer back. It alone is responsible for the 05 GT’s 72bhp uplift over the regular M5’s output. Flybys at the Salzburgring racetrack, where we drove the 05 GT, were riotous events reminiscent of low-flying jet aircraft.

Elsewhere, the M5’s M Adaptive dampers have been retuned and the 05 GT is fitted with its own bespoke Eibach springs, as well as new strut-tower braces. The staggered wheel set-up of the regular M5 is also dispensed with and 21in alloys (with milled spokes) are fitted all round. Model-specific ‘BOV’-marked P Zero R tyres, bespoke from Pirelli, complete the package with an M5-matching contact patch.

Bovensiepen doesn’t tinker with the tuning of the steering or the rear-steering, or the four-wheel drive system, which behaves as per the regular M5, with its myriad of modes and traction control settings.

What it has tinkered with, and tinkered well, is the styling. This is the work of Frank Stephenson’s studio and it offers a wholesale revision of the standard car’s porcine thuggery. A black pin-stripe down the flanks – along with the concave sills intended to reduce visual weight – is bookended by subtly sporting bumpers and neat roof spoiler. It will take a while for a bumper script that reads ‘Bovensiepen’ rather than ‘Alpina’ to feel normal, but this is a smart styling effort that strikes the right tone on a challenging canvas. 

Which brings us to the interior, where it is a similar story to the outside. All the saddlery expertise that the Bovensiepens accrued while in command of Alpina has been brought to bear and it is superbly plush in here, with endless potential for customisation, including embossing of the headrests. It’s just a shame that the donor car is so plastic-heavy across the dashboard. It cheapens the ambience, though this can hardly be held against Bovensiepen Automobile, whose diligence in maximising comfort extends to offering several tyres of piping for the upholstery. 

Comfort is something the 05 GT ought to do well on the road. We won’t know for certain until we drive one in the UK, but the way this revised chassis dealt with the fiendish undulations of the Salzburgring was promisingly languid but underpinned with confident-inspiring control. That said, Bovensiepen ought to offer 20in wheels with a little more sidewall, just to be on the safe side in terms of secondary ride. Unfortunately, a grand total of six laps doesn’t permit much more in the way of meaningful real-world dynamic analysis. 

Performance? Monumental; move on. Towards the end of the day, a familiar pattern unfolded during a few spirited laps with one of Bovensiepen’s factory hot-shoes in a Zagato prototype. The 05 GT would have unnerving stability in the big brake zones. It would then turn in beautifully for a big car, only to fall off the back of the Zagato as its nose-y balance and weight counted against it on the way to the apex. Then, once rotated, it would inexorably reel in the smaller coupé on the exit like a Lancaster bomber bearing down on a microlite. It is just monstrous and has the depth of performance and monolithic composure that tends shrink big miles with ease.

Nonetheless, one suspects those who do spend the €51,000 (circa £44,000) or so that Bovensiepen is asking for this conversion will be mainly in it for the aesthetic improvement and the chance to have a truly bespoke cabin. After all, the effects of the uplift in power will be negligible on the road, and at 2555kg the 05 GT offers no weight saving next to the standard M5 Touring. In fact it’s 5kg heavier. 

It’ll be interesting to see if the 05 GT can remedy the M5’s slightly stilted B-road ride in the UK, mind. If it can, as well it might on this evidence, then along with all the other modifications, the asking price and seventh-month build time begin to look if not outright alluring then at least palatable. For Alpina's traditional customer base, added appeal comes in the form of rarity – these days the factory in Buchloe has capacity only for 100 or so of these conversions annually. 

Price £144,000 (approx) Engine V8, 4395cc, twin-turbocharged, petrol, plus 195bhp AC synchronous electric motor Power 790bhp Torque 811lb ft Gearbox 8-spd automatic, 4WD Kerb weight 2555kg 0-62mph Less than 3.6sec Top speed 190mph Economy 53.3mpg CO2 124g/km Rivals Audi RS6 GT