There is always a buoyant and tentative excitement with the opening of every Geneva Motor Show. It may not be the biggest event on the automotive calendar, but it’s the one that always manages to surprise. For me, the star of 2011 was the Alfa Romeo 4C, a very compact but formidable mid-engined, two-seater sports car that packed as much presence as the new Ferrari FF and Lamborghini Aventador.

Alfa Romeo 4C will go on sale in 2012 - where do we sign?

This is what it must have felt like when the Alfa Romeo Montreal was first presented at Expo’67. Complete strangers were talking to one another, almost giddy at the prospect of this being an Alfa we could actually buy in less than two years for around £35k.

The looks may hook you in, but the stats are more exciting: the Alfa Romeo 4C will use a turbocharged 1.7-litre engine that’s in the Giulietta hatchback, but it’s been re-tuned to develop 232bhp. This in a package that Alfa is determined to keep under 850kg -- that’s 100kg lighter than a Lotus Elise.

Admittedly, Alfa hasn’t had much recent success with building sports cars. The Brera coupé and 8C supercar are both achingly pretty things, but dynamically speaking, they’re pallid affairs. Everybody has their fingers crossed for this one.

In other news, the Ford B-MAX managed to make a mini-MPV both stylish and desirable (above), the Nissan EsFlow concept moved the electric car conversation beyond some sort of pernicious threat to petrol power while Aston Martin presented more uncanny clusters of genetic coincidence.

Aston Martin presented the DB9 mkII, sorry, the Virage at the Geneva Motor Show

Alongside the Cygnet -- named not after a baby swan, but the bastardisation of a Toyota iQ -- was the new Virage, a facelifted DB9 in all but name. You can have a listen to all of the highlights of the 2011 Geneva Motor Show in our Gas Station Podisode Geneva Special.

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