To start the Alpine S, you press a large orange-red button between the seats. The car roars into action and because it is sparingly insulated to save weight, you can hear the engine clearly. The Alpine S works both for the highway, although the noise level gets quite high, and city traffic, but that's not where I want to test its performance. My sights are set on winding roads outside of town.

Find a brand new body part

Once I get out to the winding country road, I roll up my shirt sleeves and let my horns grow out on my forehead. I let the rhythm come in through the first corners and get the tires and brakes up to temperature. Then it is full attack that applies. Fast gear changes, tight cornering and rock-hard braking. Over and over again. The Alpine S does exactly what I want and it feels so great that I never want to stop. A Porsche salesman in Gothenburg once said that the feeling with a Boxter was like discovering you had an extra body part you didn't know you had. With the Alpine S, it's like finding a completely new body part, which is also taken from a top-trained athlete! That makes the Alpine S clearly one of the most fun cars I've driven. Thank you Renault for taking the plunge and building this amazing car!

The second car in this article is the newer of the two, the Toyota GR Yaris Four. A small, compact car that also won the title of car of the year in its regular design. As a GR Four, it's anything but ordinary, and had the internet abuzz when my fellow journalists around the world started posting their articles about it. This is probably the closest you can get to a real rally car that can be found at a regular dealer. Apart from a few details, I would almost dare to say that it is the size and that it has four wheels and a steering wheel which is the only thing it has in common with the standard Yaris. Externally, the GR Yaris is wider and with larger air intakes and it looks really naughty despite its small size. And that's exactly what it is.

Absolutely fantastic performance

The engine in the GR Yaris is a three-cylinder machine of 1.6 liters and 261 horses. In combination with its compact format, low weight and four-wheel drive, this gives an absolutely fantastic performance. Outstanding. The only car I can recall with a similar concept that was street legal and not rebuilt to infinity is the Audi A1 Quattro. The GR Yaris, on the other hand, feels even harder and more potent than the A1 Quattro.

I said it was barely possible to recognize the GR Yaris from the tame standard version. That's not quite right, because when I step into the GR Yaris, I don't immediately get the feeling that this is something completely extra. No, the car rather feels a bit boring with certain details that gossip that it is not the standard version. Among other things, a GR logo on the steering wheel, racy pedals in metal and a small emblem next to the handbrake where it says that the car has been developed for the FIA World Rally Championship. Of course, even the alcantara-covered sports seats reveal that it is no ordinary car.

Alpine S works GR Yaris absolutely flawlessly

I manage to squeeze in my loan of the GR Yaris just as the snow spread the most across our country and it feels as if the snow-covered roads are begging me to slide on them. As I said, the GR Yaris is four-wheel drive and with a knob you can set how the power should be distributed to the front and rear wheels. In normal mode, the drive on the front wheels is 60 percent and 40 percent on the rear. If you turn to sport mode, the four-wheel drive changes to send 70 percent of the power to the rear wheels and 30 to the front. In track mode, the power distribution is 50/50. Perfect for the wintry roads where front and rear grip is just as important.

In order to get the most out of the GR Yaris, I spontaneously feel that I want to drive it on the same roads that I drove the Alpine S. Although the cars are very different, they remind each other. It is above all the driving pleasure and how much time and energy Renault's and Toyota's technicians put into achieving the result I am referring to. Just like the Alpine S, the GR Yaris works flawlessly in normal city traffic and on the highway. Possibly that you have become too used to automatic transmissions and not having to sit and whip with a manual gear lever when driving in a queue.

One hundred percent joy behind the wheel

When I finally got out of town and onto the road I drove six months earlier with the Alpine S, I once again got horns on my forehead and a big grin on my face. If you know what you're doing, it's a good idea to disconnect the anti-skid system, and after several hours behind the wheel on snow-covered roads and ice tracks, that's naturally my first move. With the GR Yaris, I have full control even when the going is at its widest. Before each curve, I tap the brake so the car gets a little unbalanced and the rear end tends to swing out in one direction. I quickly get on the gas and have time to downshift so I have full power immediately when I release the clutch. Now the nose of the car points towards the inside of the curve and the rear end towards the outer edge. Now it's just a matter of steering with the gas pedal to maintain the angle of the cable. You get the best results and the most effective drag if the front wheels are as good as straight and all the power is pushed straight ahead, even if I'm lying on a wide stand. In this mode, the 50/50 distribution of power is incredibly useful.

As with the Alpine S, I can't get enough of the GR Yaris and this kind of driving. I never want to stop and it hurts to return these cars after my time with them is over. These are cars that arouse desire but at a level that feels financially reasonable. Of course, neither the Alpine S nor the GR Yaris are cheap, but compared to what you usually pay for the same performance, they actually are. If you buy one of these cars, I guarantee you one hundred percent joy behind the wheel that you will not tire of. These are cars built for us who love to drive and want to do it fully with horns on our foreheads and a big smile on our faces.