Gallery: these are the cars the Fiat 124 Spider must beat

Fiat has today launched its 124 Spider. To call it long-awaited would be to dumb down the monstrous anticipation this little car has bred. It’s not just a return for dinky little Italian convertibles, it’s also - what with its rear-drive and little turbo engines - something that should drive well too.

But it won’t have things easy. Allow us to talk you through the cars the wee Spider must beat…

If it’s a stylish, roofless two-seater you want, then no other car below £30,000 ticks the boxes with quite so much authority.

It’s sharp to drive nowadays, too, but that’s hardly the priority here: its slick dashboard, pointy snout and four-ringed badge are of upmost relevance to its target buyer.

The downside? The cheapest is, um, £29k. Before you’ve ticked the lovely, desirable options boxes…

Also just nipping in below £30k is the Z4. It’s closer in ethos to the Fiat, what with its front-engine/rear-drive layout, though its folding hard-top roof ensures it will be comfortably porkier than the weeny 124.

It’s a perfectly fine thing the Z4, but it’s not as much fun as it should be. This ought to be the 124 Spider’s easiest scalp.

Want a feverishly impractical convertible with overtly retro connotations? If you’re nodding along enthusiastically, you probably already own one of these.

The old two-seat Mini Roadster was closer to the 124 Spider in spirit, but it has now disappeared off the price lists alongside its plain odd Coupe twin. If you want a drop-top Mini now, it must be this pram-roofed four-seater. Keen drivers may scoff, but London will be riddled with them next summer.

Want a feverishly impractical convertible with overtly retro connotations? If you’ve lost every single one of your marbles, you probably already own one of these.

It’s fair to say it’s a bit more retro than a 124 Spider. As in it harks back to a time when sewage and female voting rights were new-fangled.

File it under fun but very, very silly.

The best roadster you can buy at any price is a Porsche Boxster. Yeah, a 488 Spider is faster and ultimately more exciting, while a Rolls-Royce Dawn will be more luxurious. But no drop-top balances power and grip or fun and practicality (it has two boots!) as well as a Boxster.

You’ll need £40,000 to buy one new, but worry not: a mere five grand bags you a late ‘90s mk1. The circa-£20k a 124 Spider ought to cost will buy an exceedingly tidy mk2 of 2008 vintage, while £27,000 buys an early mk3.

Ignore any image-based misgivings: buy well and you’ll buy something unbelievably satisfying.

Of course, your affordable fun car doesn’t have to be roofless. In fact, given the lack of cheap roadsters on the market, it might be easier if it isn't.

Keen helmsmen (and helmswomen) should look no further than a GT86 (or its Subaru BRZ twin). Its 2.0-litre naturally aspirated engine requires revving, its snickety manual gearbox needs smooth operation and its rear-drive chassis just asks to be exploited.

Luxury and style barely made it onto Toyota’s to-do list. Anyone who’s driven one was smiling too much to care.

We could name any one of the hot hatches on sale at the moment: we’ve never had it so good, with just about every mainstream manufacturer turning out a fast hatchback of great quality these days. Even Kia…

But few have nailed the necessary fun factor as well as Ford has with the wee Fiesta ST, and none have done it for less than £20,000.

Again, style and luxury aren’t on the options list. Again, you really won’t care.

In all objective ways, the Abarth 500 is not as good as a Fiesta ST. Not even close.

But bring subjectivity into it, and you have one of the friskiest little front-drivers on sale.

The ride is unrelentingly hard, the driving position is woeful and it’s effectively just an overpowered, snazzed-up Fiat 500. But if it’s affordable Italian fun you’re after, this makes the 124 Spider look all too straight-laced.

And you can even get it with a soft top.

You can probably ignore all of the previous slides, though, and just buy one of these.

Nowadays it’s nearly as stylish as the TT, almost as fun to drive as the Boxster and as painless to run as the Fiesta; it’s a best-of-all-worlds package that you can have shiny and new for £20,000.

No wonder Fiat looked no further for something to base the new 124 Spider upon…