147 & other Alfa owners

Not sure but around late 30's very early 40's

Slow and chuggy

Guzzler but fast

I get a 1.6 civic SE from work. £40 and 300 miles to the tank (unless you drive everywhere at 55mph... dont beleive the 44mpg.

Never had one ad cannot comment

If you are willing to stretch to 8k I can sell you a 55mpg 1.9JTD Alfa with full cream leather. a couple of years old and full service history finished in black. You can still see it here...

Alfa 1.6 is not the best performer, even though it is an alfa I reckon you will dissapointed with the drive/handling (or thats the feel I get from 147 courtesy cars I drive) i'd stear clear of the civic unless you are looking at the Type-R Never heard any bodys opinions on a corolla - is that good or bad? Granny car me thinks like the civic 1.6. Seat TDI would be fun but dont expect luxury.

a two-three year old Alfa 156 would be top of my list in your boots. Decent car, better than the 147. You should also consider the Mini - thery're coming down in price now, and maybe the new fiesta - thats looks kinda cool in a full kit. The new civic is out soon so you might want to wait a wee while. That look hot !

Lol.

If you drive it like a nun, maybe.

No, slow and revvy. They need revving like hell to get anything out of them.

You have a funny definition of 'guzzler' - my mate has a Passat with that engine and has just done a steady motorway run at 69mpg average. His normal more rapid use sees over 50mpg.

When are you going to take the hint that you're asking too much money. You've been touting this around for several weeks with not a sniff of interest - that's sort of a hint that you're way OTT with the price.

Get a 156 2lt TSpark. You'll pick up a very nice 5 year old example for around £3k with a bit of shopping around (our 99V cost us £2800).

The 147 is based quite closely on a 156. Some time ago, I saw running cost figures (can't remember where - motoring mag probably) that indicated that a 156 would cost the same to run as a Porsche Boxter when main dealer serviced. My experience has led me to agree with that finding..they can be frighteningly expensive come service time. If you're on any tight budget, do yourself a favour and get something else.

As I can cope with the running costs, I'd get what I've had for over four years now...best looking and best car I've ever had..

Thing is. I'm selling my Celica GT4/Alltrac. It has 147k miles on it. It is too thirsty and expensive to maintain.

I've bought a Saab convertible. 2 years newer, 212k miles, body is in about same condition maybe better. Big ends were gone. So the last owner totally rebuilt it, fitted a recon box and turbo at the same time.

The suspension is fine, the steering is good, because it is a convertible there is more rattle and scuttle shake, but it drives great, and uses far less fuel. Oh and they are reliable.

Saabs, and most Euro cars over here, seem to be a 50/50 proposition for some reason.

The most you ever see a Euro car over here is sitting outside the repair center...

Even the Big Boys, M-B and BMW spend more time on the lift than on the road.

BTW, I saw a NICE, REALLY NICE 2002 yesterday. Some young lady owns it, says it's her second.

i am trusting she will park it before the first snowflakes...

I am from Pennsylvania, over here in the states, and I was wondering how everyone in Europe gets along without driving a pickup. I never see any pickups on the road over there whenever I watch "The Amazing Race" or news stories involving Europe. Are we Americans addicted to pickups for no reason? I know most American families survived without them during the '50s and most of the '60s. I love small economical vehicles. I am amazed at the different makes and models available to Europeans and not to the US market. A majority of the vehicles over here that are on the road are gas guzzling bricks on wheels.

On another note, remember that Mercedes has been contaminated by Chrysler - but I don't know why BMW is having reliability problems as of late.

Buyers buy the vehicles they want and can afford. In Europe vehicles and fuel are heavy taxed to pay for their socialist system of government so they can get FREE medical care etc, making it more expensive to own a operate a car. There are plenty of vehicles available in the US from domestic and import brands, for those the choose to buy them, but apparently few choose to do so. If buyers can afford to buy larger safer vehicles they will do so. The recent spike in gas prices did not slow larger vehicle sales as much as it increased small vehicle sales. Apparently those that could afforded to buy the vehicles they wanted continued to do so and some went out a bought a small vehicles to use as well. It was the poorer folks, that can not afford to buy larger safer vehicles, that were effect by high gas prices not those that drive the larger safer vehicles. It was the small car buyers that cut back on their driving or converted some of their discressionary spending over to fuel.. WalMart and McDonalds were effected butt upper class stores and restaurants. Unlike Europe, Americas population is more spread out over the country where their is little or no public transportation and people need cars and trucks in their daily work and lives.

"Bob Palmer" wrote in message news:-JSdnbcD snipped-for-privacy@adelphia.com...

i'd /love/ to know where this "larger safer vehicles" myth comes from. have you ever looked at any of the insurer or nhtsa fatality stats? suvs kill many more times the number of their occupants than cars. it's because they're so unstable and because there are no rules regarding cabin crush safety like there are cars. c'mon guy, get with the facts.

LOL. I thought Chryslr was getting a leg up from M-B!

My college roommate had a 2002 Tii. Amazing car! Drove like on rails. Was

3 years old. Couldn't pass the local BMW dealer...

Same with my '73 Volvo 1800ES, 3 years old, 52,000 miles.

Amazing cars, nickle and dime you (well, a couple Franklins here and there) out of your bank account!

Wife (er, EX, that is) has a '94 325i with 45,000 when she bought it, now has 80,000, always calling me with issues. Is on it's THIRD tranny...

You better do a bit more research, if that is what you believe, because your information is not based on facts. Only around 2% of ALL of the hundreds of thousand accidents in the US involve a rollover and the majority of rollovers are the result of striking, or being struck by something, not from instability.. The fast majority of ALL accidents are frontal collisions. The larger the vehicle the less likely properly belted passengers will be injured or killed. If a vehicles height actually made it more likely for it to rollover one should expect to see six wheel trucks rolled over on a daily basis.

mike

BBC's top gear did a review of an F150 in the UK a few months back. Actually it was the F150 lightning, but still. Anyway

Pro - 2/3 seats, qualified for commercial vehicle rates, large load area, car-like driving position cons - huge reletively unpowerfull engine, handles like shit, load area open.

There are *some* pickups, but they're not common, mainly rangers and hi-lux (a downloadable clip on bbc.co.uk/topgear/ does show them trying to destroy a hi-lux pickup - a must watch) but the drop-side transit is far more popular. Its not hard to see why either. The load capacity is greater, the engine more efficient, and, you can drop the sides, makes it more of a flat-bed with fencing. For everyday work, you've got a range of vans, of variosu sizes, from car-based ones capable of taking a full pallet with a car front-end, to long wheelbase hi-cube vans with a 3.5ton GMVW. Did i mention that these are enclosed, so hearer to steal from, and also more efficient, since you've not got the bed's door acting like a 'chute. They're not even that slow - a standard road legal Diesel transit can manage the nurenburg ring in just over 10 minutes.

In short, pickups are too over-engined for family use (engines detuned for those damned slush-boxes) fuel inefficient, don't drive very nicely (poor handling and turning circles) and leave anything carried easily stealable.

You should think about what you're saying. Height is not the be all and end all, neither is mass. Build a 10ft tall car made of lead. Fact is, high cars tend to kill people in the OTHER car. a frontal-colision (aka a dual front-on collision) is not the most common either - no idea where you got that preosterous notion from. Maybe a lack of research

The safer cars are ones with an integrated safety system wih full energy dissipation. I always come back to the last major accident i was in - a brand new VR6 golf hit the rear of my Volvo340 in september

2000 at the end of a british motorway. The golf was scrap, mine needed minor repairs only.

There was also a demonstrative video i saw a few months back. Showed a

4x4 hitting a regular car. a Shogun, and a civic iirc. in a side impact. Well, the high front on the shogun oblitirated the passenger compartment of the civic, then the height of the shogun rode OVER the civic, and rolled over itself. Typical of car-SUV crashes in fact (except a rear-ender). This is how nice tall vehicles roll over.

Next time, if you're going to critisize soeone saying they've not done any research, try actually doing some yourself first.

You can choose to believe whatever you wish, you are entitled to you own opinion, I'm not going to debate someones opinion. I am a retired automotive engineer, with a degree is metallurgy. The facts concerning crash dynamics I posted where not an opinion, they are based on my experience in automobile crash dynamics gained during my thirty years as an automotive design engineer involved with body structure. I helped design those crumple zones and SRS systems. The larger the vehicle the more efficiently they do the job for which they are designed, that is to reduce the terminal speed at which ones organs strike one skeleton, referred to as the 'third collision.' The second being when ones body strikes their belt and SRS system restraints. One can not defy the laws of physics. In nine out of ten collisions the larger the vehicle the less likely proper belted passengers will be injured or killed, period. Those that hate SUVs and do not want others to drive them like to distort the facts about accidents to favor their cause. I don't own an SUV, I drive only larger RWD vehicles. From what I know I will never ride in a small FWD car just to save a few hundred dollar a year on fuel.

mike

"flobert" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Hmmmm....my boss had a Lightening and I asked for a 'ride', he said "Key's in it" didn't have to tell ME twice.

I thought it was a pretty damn good truck for a '68 Corvette! The fact that it handled that well and that fast amazed me.

I've actually seen that on US telly and on the web.

but the drop-side

since you bring up the subject of distortion;

didn't work for ford did you?

For performance against fuel and insurance cost I really don't think you can beat these.

goto

for more info

I agree on the not being able to defy the laws of physics.

However... so you're postulating a "mine is bigger than yours" strategy? What if you neighbor now gets a Hummer? Will you get a yet bigger vehicle? Then he gets an 18-wheeler? Then what?

This is an escalation that does not make sense. As others have pointed out, all that large vehicles do is endanger the smaller ones. As hard as it may seem, one has to think not only egoistically (because that will get all of us killed), but also consider what's around you.

I just shudder everytime I see one of those ridiculously *huge* SUVs, with one *tiny* person sitting in it, mostly on the cell phone (not paying attention to the traffic, thereby greatly increasing the risk of accidents). How dumb is that? It's not about the few hundred dollars a year of gas you save, it's about the insanity of just blowing away a finite resource that your children, and your grandchildren, and their kids will want to use, just to "make you feel safe" (Jim Beam has already touched on the "feel safe" vs. "be safe" points)

But you *would* run over those wimpy folks in their Civics, wouldn't you? The main thing is you survive?