BUY BEFORE THEY DIE - Fast family cars

Alfa SUV and BMW's first M3 estate pack a punch

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SOME petrolheads get a little sniffy at the concept of a high-performance SUV, but there's no doubt many can be counted among the most outrageous fast cars in petrol's twilight years.

Putting powerful engines in heavier, higher-riding machinery is an easy way to deliver straight-line performance, but how these modern performance machines balance practicality and impressive, and genuinely fun, handling is where their real appeal lies.

I imagine there'll be a much greater sense of sadness when the Giulia Quadrifoglio bows out than the demise of this car, even if the bigger of the two offers very nearly the same level of driving excitement with a lot more flexibility and some mild off-road ability. Let's just gloss over the fact that few drivers will ever make the most of the latter.

Behind the Alfa's trademark 'Trefoil' grille lies a 2.9-litre twin-turbo Ferrari-derived V6 engine. Despite featuring forced induction, which can rob some performance cars of character, the Quadrifoglio's powertrain is packed with personality and is good for 503bhp. This criminally underused unit (Maserati's new V6 engine is supposedly related) produces a throaty noise that can interrupted by a cacophony from the exhaust with every upshift in Race mode.