[berettafan]

Sounds like cayman money to me. If no garage to keep it in I’d stick with modern stuff that sorta blends in and isn’t special. I got a GTI this past year and love rowing the manual transmission. Acceleration is enough to entertain and handling (fwd aside) is a total hoot. Tight and refined are perfect descriptors for it. Wrx is a hooligans dream but refined isn’t a word I’d use. More of the current Japanese version of the old fox bodied 5.0. Might be a good choice for crap roads and snow. Put some meaty all seasons on it and woohoo! All of the above being modern cars there should be some blending in to avoid major attention and dings and such would be less stressful than with a premium brand.

If I wanted something more special/less practical I’d probably have gone cayman or boxster. To me bigger = less ‘tight’ feeling. Kinda special but still somewhat practical would probably be bmw as you mentioned. I’m not sold on modern bmw build quality at all but they sure can be fast.